Last Wednesday, Dr. Steve Gimbel, professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College, gave a philosophy lecture on humor ethics at St. Lawrence University. During this lecture, one of the things Gimbel posited was that we put ourselves at a moral risk whenever we decide to crack a tendentious joke. By tendentious, Gimbel doesn’t mean innocuous jokes that are meant to be innocent and not elicit harm. He means controversial jokes that are not innocent at all and can actually elicit real harm.
But, Gimbel didn’t just acknowledge tendentiousness in his lecture and stop there. He went on to point out how, because we put ourselves at such a moral risk, we are ethically obligated to make sure we execute such jokes with great caution. At the end of the day, it is up to the audience to interpret how good the joke was. They are the ones who are digesting your words, after all. If we want to be ballsy, we can be ballsy. But, it sure better be one hell of a joke. Because, if your audience decides it wasn’t funny, then that means you are obviously doing something very seriously wrong.
Now, sometimes, in our struggle to find a happy medium between two extreme virtues, we end up going a little too far, as demonstrated in the satirical article entitled “The Oppression Olympics.”
One can argue that “The Oppression Olympics” attempts to look at intersectionality from an open-minded lens through satire. However, the whole point of intersectionality is to demonstrate how different parts of a person’s identity overlap and how each person experiences oppression differently. Its aim is to not to pit one person against another. Rather, its goal is to have people acknowledge some of these differences and come together in solidarity.
Intersectionality has been integral in addressing the widest number of experience. In the words of Kimberle Crenshaw, it has been integral in “mapping the margins.” Framing intersectionality as something that pits people against one another takes a step beyond misunderstanding to cause harm. Mocking a framework that joins people together cannot have any aim but separation. “The Oppression Olympics” longs for the age of “color-blindness” as an antidote to racism.
Intersectionality aims to expose the various, overlapping ways that systems of oppression interact in the lived experiences of all people. Instead of ranking experiences of oppression and valuing one experience over another, this model does the important work of connecting experiences. Power structures separate and divide. Intersectionality acts as a mosaic, each experience a piece of the larger image. The shape of power structures, their functions, can only become clear when accounting for all possible information.
The problem with “The Oppression Olympics” is more than the failed attempt at humor. The problem is not that the article attempted to push the envelope or start a controversial conversation about intersectionality. The problem is that “The Oppression Olympics” espouses a model of anti-racism and feminism that cannot work. A model, that in a quest for equality, supports oppression through obfuscation. A model that might feel a lot easier, but a model that cannot create effective.