Guest post: An open letter to my male friends who make sexist “jokes”

This is guest post is by Doreen Bloch, a young entrepreneur and author. Doreen is the author of the forthcoming book, The Coolest Startups in America, and the CEO and Founder of Poshly Inc. She is a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council and is a regular contributor to Under30CEO.

When I asked Doreen to explain what impelled her to write this post (originally posted on her blog), she told me that one of her guy friends pseudonymously tweets comedy and sarcasm, and that in addition to being a popular tweeter, he’s a leader in his offline community. “His tweets are fantastic, but every now and then, he makes sexist jibes that show deep hypocrisy between his supposed philosophy of equality and his articulated sexist generalizations of women.” Doreen told me that the specific tweet that prompted her post is irrelevant, “because it’s not about one instantiation of sexist commentary.” Doreen said she hopes that her post will result in those who speak sexism being more thoughtful about the power of their words, and that, encouragingly, “it began an honest conversation on these topics between my friend and me.”

What I love about this post is that it’s a short, direct, but not terribly confrontational explanation of why sexist jokes are never “just” jokes. That’s a conversation that I have annoyingly often, and Doreen’s post is clear and concise enough that I might just print it out and carry it around with me so I can hand it out to the people who want to mansplain to me about why jokes about getting a blowjob from Michele Bachmann are totally hilarious. But then, of course, I’d miss out on all that honest conversation.

An open letter to my male friends who make sexist “jokes:”

Put that “joke” aside for a moment.

I don’t mean to put it out of your mind.

I mean separate from your words two parts: (1) your attempt at comedy and (2) the true words you have said or typed.

Don’t your words make you sad?

You try to force a laugh where there is no comedy.

And laughter, like tears, make us vulnerable. The emotional connection of a laugh imprints upon us as a truth. Sexist “jokes” become psychological patches in the glass ceiling we’re trying to break.

I ask you, as a leader future and present, to think twice, or three times for good measure, before speaking, writing and yes… tweeting sexist comments. It’s not about political correctness or cultural difference, it’s about women having it harder than men in many ways as it is. We face enough of an uphill battle against the many myths I dare not type; if you’re my friend, you’ll help me up, not put me and my fellow women down.

We need you as allies. So make jokes about sex, love, politics… we’ll laugh with you. But try to form humor around backward concepts about gender, and we will not laugh alongside you. And don’t tell me to “stop hatin'” on sexism. I will hate on it. Because it hated on me first.