"This Is A Feminist Bookstore! There Is No Humor Section!!!"
That's the caption from a cartoon by my late friend John Callahan.
I was reminded of it by a story I just saw.
Ruth Marcus writes in the WaPo about a 76-year-old male professor who, upon being asked for floor requests in a crowded elevator, called out something like "Ladies' Lingerie!"
It, of course, harkens to the days of department store elevator operators, and I find it funny.
It could have just as well been "Better Dresses" or "Housewares!"
Marcus explains:
The episode, which has not been previously reported, occurred last month in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King's College London and the 2014 recipient of ISA's distinguished scholar award, made the remark after someone in his elevator called out to ask for floor requests.Simona Sharoni, professor of women's and gender studies at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, took offense. As she recounted in a formal complaint lodged less than four hours later, Lebow "said, with a smile on his face, 'women's lingerie,' and all his buddies laughed. After they walked out, the woman standing next to me turned to me and said, 'I wonder if we should have told them that it is no longer acceptable to make these jokes!' It took me a while to figure out that this man thought it was funny to make a reference to men shopping for lingerie while attending an academic conference. I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that we froze and didn't confront him. . . . As a survivor of sexual harassment in the academy, I am quite shaken by this incident."
Note the thinking that we should all go around assuming that grown adults -- namely, grown adult women -- are fragile beings, too broken by their life experiences to take a joke.
Now, it's possible that this woman went through years of hell from some monster. The reality is, human beings are largely resilient. But there's now a religion -- the religion of victimism -- being used to allow some unearned power over others.
And this is a prime example of it.
If you are so traumatized by a joke like "Ladies Lingerie!" in an elevator that you need to file a complaint to the authorities (those running an academic conference, in this case), you should probably go see a therapist to help you work out your fragilities.
Women who file complaints like this are basically screaming that they are not men's equals, but fragile bits of porcelain with a Ph.D.
Life goes better with levity. If you are a woman who can't take a joke, perhaps you should be teaching in a controlled environment like a nursery school instead of at a college.
UPDATE: Better reporting of the story here at Chronicle than in Marcus' account.
via @MarcoRandazza
If this guy had done the audience call-out for the elevator scene in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, she’d have died of cardiac arrest right there.
Most casual fans can’t remember the entire routine, so they’ll call out the “ladies lingerie” line by itself. It is possible the offender is a fan of that sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania!
Radwaste at May 7, 2018 3:29 AM
Some people are too busy being offended to see the irony/sarcasm/attempted humor (because they're better than the rest of us, you see).
DrCos at May 7, 2018 4:18 AM
Some people are too busy being offended by the punchlines to realize that they themselves were the punchlines.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at May 7, 2018 4:50 AM
...professor of women's and gender studies...
Which is a longhand term for "nonentity."
Patrick at May 7, 2018 6:51 AM
Think of the time that went into filing this complaint and then sucking this 76-year-old accomplished prof into defending himself.
Amy Alkon at May 7, 2018 7:03 AM
It's been suggested that he was riffing on an Aerosmith video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Yrhv33Zb8
I suspect it was just a joke (as I said above) from the days of elevator operators.
You have to be a special kind of intersectionality-infused broken to see this as an insult and something worthy of complaint.
Amy Alkon at May 7, 2018 8:25 AM
Well, it could have been worse, they could have said that this joke was as harmful as going through female genital mutilation *coughelevatorgatecough*
Sixclaws at May 7, 2018 8:57 AM
When PTSD was sort of discovered, someone was trying to study people who had traumatic things happen and found a significant group who had had some very bad things happen but no PTSD. This was puzzling for a pure cause-effect model of PTSD. Soldiers with no residual nightmares for example, or people who did not freak out after an earthquake.
I will admit that the prof I knew who made sexual jokes about every 10 minutes was over the top, but examples like this represent people who are traumatized by essentially nothing. Life is tough. You will have friends and relatives die, you will get sick, crazy people will become your governor/mayor/president, wildmen will wave nuclear weapons around, you will get mugged, there will be layoffs at work. People who freak out over little stuff are guaranteed to not be happy, be a wreck because these bad things can't be avoided.
By the way, a funny version of the joke is:
A crowded elevator and a guy in back calls out "ballroom please" and the lady in front of him steps forward and profusely apologizes.
cc at May 7, 2018 9:13 AM
It took me a while to figure out that this man thought it was funny to make a reference to men shopping for lingerie while attending an academic conference.
Maybe his buddies laughed when he said it because they know he doesn't wear any lingerie when he pole dances for them at the Chippingham Men's Club.
JD at May 7, 2018 2:24 PM
So, just curious, did he get off in the lingerie section?
william lowery at May 7, 2018 2:57 PM
This kind of crap makes me glad I'm into running and doing bodyweight workouts. I doubt that you'll find many snowflakes among the running and weightlifting crowds.
Although, when I was running the Cinco de Miler five mile on Maryland's Eastern Shore yesterday, I admired a lady's Hebrew tattoo on her upper back, partially exposed by her wife-beater kind of top -- can I say that anymore? -- but I called her Ma'am*, and she insisted that I call her Miss, because she was younger. But it turns out she was joking.
*Ma'am is a term of respect for ladies, from pre-historic times, for you millennial snowflakes.
mpetrie98 at May 7, 2018 3:03 PM
This “ladies lingerie” as a stop on an elevator is a trope that has has been used in everything from children’s movies (“Flushed Away”) to episodes of MASH and Mythbusters.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElevatorFloorAnnouncement
Aaron H. at May 7, 2018 3:19 PM
I can think of a few more resonable responses
"Its good to know a man of your age still gets it up"
"If you really want to wear panties you dont need to pretend to buy them for a woman"
"Trust me, you wouldnt look good in corset"
"They dont sell clothes in your wife size here"
lujlp at May 7, 2018 3:44 PM
From the second link:
"For decades, women and other marginalized groups in the academy had to put up with white men who decided what counts as a violation and what is ‘frivolous,’" she wrote in an email."
So, of course it is the fault of "white men."
What a racist she is!
charles at May 7, 2018 5:09 PM
In the immortal words of Megan Kelly, "Toughen up, Buttercup.
Jay at May 7, 2018 6:59 PM
In the immortal words of Megan Kelly, "Toughen up, Buttercup.
Jay at May 7, 2018 6:59 PM
Another elevator joke is "this must be the local" [rather than the express, because a lot of the buttons have been pushed]. I consider "ladies' lingerie" just as inoffensive. Adults should be prepared to deal with the little quips people make. If you insist on being offended, why not say "Hey, don't say that anymore; people see that as sexist these days" and be done with it, instead of reporting the remark to officials and demanding an apology?
Jane at May 9, 2018 4:00 PM
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