Not funny
Okay, this is a rant. It's a rant about transphobic humor, and I'm cutting it to spare those who've been the target of that kind of humor, not to spare people who don't think it's worth getting pissed about.
( No, Taco Bell, you didn't need to branch out from bad ethnic stereotypes to other forms of offensive humor. )
( No, Taco Bell, you didn't need to branch out from bad ethnic stereotypes to other forms of offensive humor. )
She is forced to flee the bar amid the jeers and taunts of everyone there.
Ba dum dum shhhhhhh. That's the punch line.
But noone I was watching with laughed. In fact, we'd only been watching for the irony and the chance to do a bit of 80s jeering ourselves. But this scene kind of sucked the fun out of that.
How could we sit laughing at the badness of the film when it was not just bad, it was offensive? Sexual assault for comedic effect for crying out loud.
I could stop thinking of the humiliation that a woman like her, in real life, would feel. Thinking she's met someone who's interested in her. Enjoying being appreciated for her beauty. Enjoying being just another woman in the crowd. And then the betrayal. The brutality.
It made me fucking sick to my guts just thinking about it. It still does.
The thing is no one really finds it funny anymore - trans humour isn't really humour. But ti's going to take a while for it to actually go away. TVNZ will still air crappy movies like Crocodile Dundee, Taco Bell will still use lazy ad execs to write their crummy advertisements.
Just for a little while longer. But eventually, like the attitude that says taunting trans people is funny, the willingness to even air that crap will go away too.
We just have to keep on fighting it.
So even though I'm all the way in NZ I'm going to make a point of complaining to Taco Bell. Thanks for the heads up.
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