QUEER HUMOUR

The Boyfriend sent me this video, which is pretty much the most hilarious thing I've seen this week. (WARNING: super not safe for work.)

Sometimes I feel like it's wrong to laugh at things like this. My writing too, contains dialogue and themes that some would find unbelievably offensive. I suppose I'm too inside of it, because I'm always sincerely shocked- SHOCKED- that anybody would find my sense of humor offensive.

I was catching a train with a heterosexual and super liberal friend once and we were discussing different neighborhoods in the city when i said I wouldn't go to a certain neighborhood for fear of being "Matthew Shepherd-ed." Okay, it's not guffaw funny, but I don't think it's hideously offensive either. I was making light of a very real and legitimate fear I felt. My immediate thought was "oops, I've offended my friend," but then that gave way to something else. "Wait a minute, " I thought, "I'm the one who's fearful. I'm the one without my civil rights here." And then I thought, "Fuck it. I can say whatever I feel like saying."

As another example, I was with a group of friends discussing what their nicknames were in high school. When it got to me, without missing a beat, I responded "faggot". Nobody laughed. I thought it was funny.

I guess my question is this: is offensive humour a part of queer culture? Do queer people become funny as a defense mechanism or a survival tactic? Is the collective queer threshold for dark comedy wider because of a lifetime full of abuses? If you consider the popularity of John Waters, Margaret Cho, Absolutely Fabulous, Charles Busch, and Sarah Silverman, I would say that it is. Because if it isn't, well... then I'm just an asshole.

Hopefully though I'm just carrying on a tradition.