Group Inferiority

You know what I'm tired of? Group inferiority. The mindset that someone must be bad / inferior / insert-bad-thing-here because they're of a certain demographic. "Oh, but people don't do that anymore, do they? We're far more advanced and enlightened and better than that now! Look at how Politically Correct we are! Woo!"

Riiiiight. Sure, it's totally unacceptable to tell a woman she "can't" be a construction worker if she wants to. It's unacceptable to tell an African-American we aren't going to rent to him because of his skin color. It's not allowed to tell someone they didn't get a receptionist's job because they're in a wheelchair.
But there is still a lot of prejudice out there. It's taken the form of humor, but it's not detoxifying the stereotypes. It's reinforcing them - and that concerns me.

Take "blonde jokes", for example. Nobody believes them, they're harmless...right? Except that I still see people making unconscious assumptions about how ignorant, helpless, and downright moronic people -with-light-hair are! Sure, it seems funny, but it's separatist and ultimately destructive.
"But...OK, fine, but that's not really bad. Blonde people do it too! It's all in fun, anyway!"

How about sexism?

"We've done away with that. Women are equal now!"

Y'know, last time I checked, there were two sexes. And it's the male gender that's getting bashed now. And it's all in the name of "humor". Maybe my humor-detector needs recalibration, but I really have a hard time finding humor in things like "men are always wrong", and "men can't understand anything", and "men are ignorant pigs".
And, perhaps the saddest of all, is that I've heard these statements from men. And not in jest. These destructive and harmful statements are being internalized. Children are growing up believing this garbage. It's not just children, either - if you tell someone they're a useless, worthless, ignorant piece of trash long enough, they'll start believing it. Even if they're not. I've been told by adults that they are wrong, worthless, and ignorant - because they're men. The worst part about that is, of course, that if I try and deny their worthlessness, well obviously I'm just reinforcing their statement, since I'm telling them that once again, they are WRONG!
Sure, some of it may be said "in jest" but quite frankly, that's one of those "humorous" statements I don't see any humor in.

Destructive, insulting humor isn't funny. We need to stop and listen to ourselves, and realize that words cannot be unsaid. If something is said long enough, and loud enough, people will start to believe it, regardless of how stupid or patently untrue it really is. Let's stop "humorously" degrading each other. Humor and good feeling isn't a teeter-totter. We shouldn't need to put someone else down to feel better about ourselves. We should be able to lift one another up, instead of putting each other down.

Men are not bad. Women are not stupid. We're not from different planets, we're all from THIS ONE. I think it's high time we stopped trying to get each other to go back to Mars and Venus, and started trying to get along on Earth.