“𝙄𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙖 𝙟𝙤𝙠𝙚!”
When is it just a joke?
When a joke is ‘casually’ made about women.
A joke that ideally in a ‘boys’ room’ would be tolerated, because they find it funny!
Boys will be boys, won’t they?
And they just do not want to withdraw the joke !
Even when they are given a respectful and educated audience, they are still evolving.
They do not want to concede to a misjudged faux pas. They WANT to continue laughing at the joke.
They’ll joke about breasts and bottoms and hips and shopping and sex and everything under the sun. And attach a woman to it. And everyone will have to laugh. They will hold on to their right to make these jokes. And they will defend it, as a right to be light-hearted, to be funny, to make others laugh, at the expense of women.
So they will circulate them in boys’ room groups.
Ok!! Go! Vent there!
Take it to your private spaces where the immaturity of juvenile manhood is celebrated!
Where men, arm in arm with each other, will guffaw at sexist lewdity.
but never call each other out, or call in, if at all.
Men hardly ever display their chivalry by standing up to men.
Or encourage them to do better.
They do not.
No matter their title, age, or status.
No matter what
THEY. DO. NOT.
So, their jokes spill over everywhere wherever they can blur or erase a boundary.
Every room becomes a boys’ room.
And an entitled boys’ room at that!
Boys’ room jokes are laughed at, even by the boys who don’t want to laugh, because #macho maybe!
But then boys’ room jokes seep into the public because there are more boys than women.
And women are often conditioned to let boys be boys.
And many women also internalize the misogyny after so many generations of allowing and letting them be and being reduced to a joke and laughed at.
They also join the boys’ club and laugh at the boys’ room jokes.
even in 2025…
Makes them cool?
Accepted?
Smart?
Un-problematic??
Or just unaware of how they’re sabotaging their selves!?
They just do not see the harm, and many, in the desperate need to be accepted, cared for, loved, financed etc, do not even see the vicious conditioning of these very clutches…
Never mind all that.
When does just a joke 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 being funny?
When a woman, finally a woman in 2025, shakes her head, raises her hand and says, ‘Wait! Dude, that’s not funny!’
We’re done listening to this crap, and it’s time you learnt not to make such jokes.
It’s when A woman speaks up for MANY women, who may not always speak up
or who may be ignorant of the dynamics, and be one of those also laughing even though the joke is on HER.
The self-deprecating humor would not do her any good.
So a woman says, ‘No! Enough! Stop!’
And her explanation of why it is not funny is then gaslit, because now she has turned an erstwhile ‘boys’ room’ happy moment,
into a negative and toxic space.
The bro code slides in to passively aggressively mock the whistleblower.
Research articles surface to gaslight with highlighted sections that mock reasoning.
Women who are ‘unhappy with themselves get offended easily‘,
and cannot tolerate people having a good time and laughing.
LET THAT SINK IN ..
“Let’s not take it further. Let’s keep things positive.”
Care to dissect that?
No?
Allow me.
Speaking up for ourselves, let alone for other women, is a negative trait.
Women are expected to keep things polite, nice, and easy space for misogynistic comments.
They’re expected to turn away their gaze, shut their eyes, and silently move away, swallowing their complaints & discomfort.
and keep the space ‘positive’.
Husbands tell their wives. fathers tell their daughters.
‘Why bother with this nonsense?! Ignore it and move on’
Keep it positive.
Walk away from inappropriate comments, lewd jokes, objectified and stereotyped anti-woman messages,
But keep the interaction positive.
Listen to garbage against women on a public platform,
but take it out in person with a 3rd person, or in private, or better still, shut up and walk away.
but keep the effing space positive..
God forbid the offender gets offended!
Thou shalt not offend the man by calling out his entitlement to inappropriate behaviour in public.
Because the onus to keep the space positive, despite the hurt and discomfort, is on the woman!
Oh! And there is a better part yet to come.
When other women, stand up to support the woman who first said NO, the women are immediately labelled.
So no, don’t talk
Don’t complain
Don’t call out in public
And yet, not one man openly agrees to tell his brother,
‘Dude, that’s not cool!’
‘Stop it!’
‘She said it was offensive, just back off!’
NOT. ONE. MAN.
Maybe they are afraid to stand up to other men?
Maybe they are happy to let stronger women handle the situation? (and be blamed for it!)
Maybe they’ll even go explain with another woman to say, ‘Just because we didn’t say anything doesn’t mean we condone it!’
Well.
Yes, if you do not openly say that you denounce it, if you have the time to come to a woman’s page and explain to her why you kept silent, if you have to explain your silence at all.
Then you condoned it.
Until then, NOT ONE MAN
And to the women who kept silent, I understand. I do.
It takes courage to speak up, or even give a +1.
It takes courage to learn that your ability to speak up and share your opinion comes because women have come before you to make way for you to speak up. It takes courage to speak your mind, and go back and flinch when asked to explain why you spoke up?? No, speaking up did not come easily.
And while we have many women conditioned and ignorant of that conditioning to demean themselves, demean other women, always find a misogynistic joke funny, we HAVE to realise that when women stand alone in a room full of men and say, ‘You cannot talk about us this way!’
When they speak like that, you must stop giggling and let them speak. Then you must keep your infighting and petty lame issues aside, and let them speak and support what they say, for it is BECAUSE of women like them that we have all earned the agency to even giggle today, or even to write this post, at half past midnight.
For it is not about us as individual women. It is about every individual woman in the whole that we speak for. And if you do not understand that, then I can assure you, you will still live to feel the benefits of their stand, their ‘bossiness’.
Assertive women are bossy, aren’t they?
Bossy enough to call out misogynistic rhetoric and take the flak for disrupting the peace and positivity.
It is that bossiness that will hopefully save you from the consequences of your complicit silence.
By Luvena Rangel
Luvena Rangel is a National award winning Yoga teacher trainer, thinker, writer and international speaker based in Bangalore. She is an unapologetic advocate of diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion and shares deeply on sociopolitical and cultural issues. Her friends describe her as a ‘cycle breaking’ parent and she wears that tag with pride!
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