I love comedy, and not in a bland, inoffensive Ned Flanders sort of way. I admire the audacity and cleverness of the Onion's best articles, I found it hard not to laugh and squirm at the same time when watching Ricky Gervais' original 'Office' and yes, I actually believe any topic can be the subject of a joke - if it's actually funny. Good comedy is hard, and the more sensitive the subject matter, the harder it is to be funny about it.
Of course, there is also a time and place for everything. Joking about the allegedly terrible quality of the Russian car brand Lada might be deeply offensive to someone who is an engineer for that brand and has spent their life trying to design the Perfect Lada.
The issue of context brings me to the actual topic I wanted to discuss - ironic sexism and racism. Especially among twenty-something college-educated people, it's almost sort of a shibboleth that attempts to express (1) how past actual sexism and racism they are so they can joke about it and (2) they are edgy enough to say offensive shit.
Indulging this particular kind of comedy is pretty typical for people who live in a bubble where they don't have to deal with gross instances of sexism and racism, but the world beyond that as well as the hidden world within that bastion of lily-white, self-described liberalism is a scary place where racism and sexism have violent and harmful consequences.
In addition, there's this thing called Poe's Law. Who knows whether you're being ironic or not? You can't expect people to read your mind.
There's the danger that if you propagate your ironic forms of abusive comedy, it gives actual sexists and racists the idea that it's okay to think that way. Next time you post something inane like 'make me a sammich bitch' on Facebook, the people who like that post may actually be the vile sort of guys who think a woman's place is in the kitchen. That may also be a good place to ponder where you really stand on that sort of issue. It's not because you don't think of yourself as a sexist, that you don't hold any sexist notions.
But what about free speech, right? For one, not every place in the democratic world is required to humour that right. Even so, the point is not that I think it should become illegal to make (bad) jokes, but if you're hell-bent on saying something offensive, you should know that people are going to respond to it and call you out on bad taste. Covering yourself in the Free Speech Blanket will be about as effective as constructing a bunker made out of poop.
