The Junia Project editorial team agreed completely with Rob Dixon’s thoughts on the use of gender-based humor in the pulpit.
But to be honest, we weren’t sure how readers would react. Would people see this as an overreaction? Being too sensitive? Making a bigger deal out of something than we needed to? Those questions were decisively answered within hours of publishing 5 Reasons Not to Use Gender-Based Jokes in the Pulpit.
The 100+ comments showed that most people have negative reactions to this kind of humor. Aside from many simple affirmations like “Is this something that needs to be said?!” and “I can’t believe anyone in a pulpit would be that clueless”, readers shared insights and examples that showed how widespread this problem is. Interestingly, many of the comments came from men.
We came away with four new insights from the discussion that I’ll share a little further down. But before we get there here are a few “must read” comments, especially if you are someone who ever picks up a microphone on any kind of platform:
“I find it extremely distracting.“
“I basically left a church because he wouldn’t stop doing this!”
“I can’t listen to anything else after.”
“I can think of one more: Gender-based jokes are dehumanizing.”
“’They’re inherently sexist’ isn’t enough?”
“It leads me right out the door. I feel the same with any sort of ethnic “humor.” There is no place for any of it, but I am glad if a pastor is relaxed enough to show his true colors so I can leave early.”
“I have been in many services where I spent thirty minutes reeling from the sting of some painful joke at the expense of women.”
“Sexism costs: 1) Giving my non-Christian wife a reason to ignore the sermon. 2) Belittling my marriage struggles with cheap “happy wife” lines. 3) Forcing me to reject community by making every men’s event about violence. 4) Reminding me of the dismissal of my wife and daughters giftings…”
“Most pastors would never think of making racial jokes in the pulpit. Gender jokes should be just as obviously off limits. I don’t like it anymore if the joke is on men, just for the record…”
“I’ve heard more gender stereotype jokes aimed at men (by men). Though they may have been intended to come across as self-deprecating, it can be used as an excuse to disengage from their families. “I’m just a man. That’s my wife’s thing.” Thus raising children and running a household isn’t a man’s responsibility. And the jokes give other men the perfect excuse to opt out, too.”
BLOG
“I am equally frustrated with the big dumb buffoon male trope as I am with the ditzy female or poor overworked wife/mother trope. Let’s cut out all ‘humour’ that reduces people to one characteristic. It’s not just insulting; it’s a disastrous dismissal of the complexity of humans created in God’s image.”
”When I realize that all a “preacher” is doing is a standup routine, I’m out the door.”
”…I remember getting really upset during the sermon one day because the male youth pastor described someone being weak, as, “He was acting like a little girl!” It got big laughs, but as a woman sitting there next to my strong but impressionable middle school girls, I was offended and angry.”
”How am I supposed to take seriously the advice of someone who thinks I must care only about shopping and my husband about sports, when we don’t fit the stereotypes?”
“May I add Point 6? It reinforces an “us vs. them” mentality between men and women…Preachers talk constantly about the need for spouses to respect each other. Well then, stop pitting us against each other!”
“I know many preachers who make jokes about marriage think they are being cute or clever or amusing their audience, but these days, with over 50% of the adult American population being single…the marriage jokes only make singles feel more excluded and marginalized than we already are.”
“This is one of the main reasons that I stopped attending my previous church. As a single professional woman in my 30s I couldn’t take any more of the “let’s celebrate all the things women do around the house” portrayal of women [and] Duck Dynasty-based quotes about ‘real men grow beards’.”
”I’ve been in church when the pastor decided to joke about ‘ditzy blonde women’. All I could think about is how many of those women would not be back the next Sunday.”
Here are four things we learned from your comments:
1) Don’t assume people approve of gender-based jokes just because they laugh. It can be a natural response to an awkward situation.
2) People really do leave churches because of sexist behavior like gender-based jokes and illustrations.
3) Gender-based jokes are offensive to both men and women; to marrieds and to singles.
4) People find gender-based humor more distracting or offensive than engaging.
Within days Rob’s post became the 5th most viewed post EVER on our blog.
This suggests a serious disconnect between leadership and “those in the pews”. There is a reason this kind of thing doesn’t sit well with us – it goes against God’s ideal of an equal partnership between men and women established at creation.
This reader summed it up well:
Preachers and church leaders are in positions of power. They need to be humble and sensitive in their leadership. We get plenty of sexism in the world. Church, kindly leave it at the door!”
It seems that people often go along with sexist practices in the church even when they don’t agree with those practices. Why is that?
YOUR TURN: How can we encourage pastors to reconsider their use of humor based on gender-stereotypes?
Related posts
What It Says (Rob’s reflections on the tremendous response to his post.)
5 Ways to Avoid Undermining Your Theology of Gender
5 Things I Wish Male Egalitarian Pastors Would Do
More Things We Wish Male Egalitarian Pastors Would Do
So God Created Man: Battling Gender Microaggressions
Image Credit: iStock.com
Gail Wallace
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For myself, I have been called ‘girl’ so many times by pastors, men, and even some women will use that term. Excuse me, at 56 years of age, I am a woman. Or better yet, I’m simply a PERSON. There is a rebel in me that thinks anytime I hear men calling women ‘girls’ – I hope the women turn right around and them ‘boys’. The term ‘girl’ is just a dismissive way for a man to not have to acknowledge that a woman is his equal, so he tries to ‘downgrade’ her. Sadly, this is tolerated almost everywhere.
Yes, the only time I’m completely okay with being called a girl as someone well into adulthood is at my dance studio (and with friends from that studio), and that is because many of them use both girl and boy. A lot of them are teachers, and it seems that they just use the childhood term for everyone. But a conversation about a girl marrying a man, for example, always gets my dander up. There are laws against that! Either it’s a girl and a boy, or a man and a woman.
” “Preachers and church leaders are in positions of power. ”
Is this really true? I think this is the problem.
Jesus warned “The princes of the Gentiles lord it over one another but IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU” .
If we were really doing things His way “preachers and church leaders” would REALLY be in positions of service, not power. There would be a very different attitude in their manner before people…as fellow labourers in the Gospel they would have to be very much more in tune with the feelings of others and less concerned with gathering consensus from others…i.e. by humour, cajoling, self-expression, manipulation, etc.
How would a SUCCESSFUL store clerk approach customers? Just because a ‘preacher’ has a larger audience the approach should be the same. He or she needs to consider others before themselves. It is only the need to be ‘popular’ and gain ‘control’ that causes a leader to tell jokes in the first place. If the first need is to help souls find Christ then the need of those souls would come before ‘getting a laugh’ or finding personal acceptance with them.
Sometimes humour is thought to set the people at ease but true humour creates a nervous tension, often pitting one person against another. This opposes the concept that Jesus ‘broke down the walls of partition between Jew and Gentile, bond and free, male and female’. Do we wish to erect them again? A local 24/7 ‘funny radio’ station has regular announcements given in a sarcastic tone with a strained voice and with canned laughter such as : “We don’t mean to offend you but if we do you have our sincere apologies…HAHA”. They often joke about their offensive nature. I doubt that there is such a thing as a joke that is NOT at the expense of someone; either their gender, race or character. So if you intend to use humour, think it through thoroughly and consider all the possibilities…even if you intend to use it against yourself. It may go much farther than you expected, in the end.
There has to be a better way of communication for the purposes of helping souls. We are not to leading them or control them; We are to help them. The difference is subtle and requires much thought.
“Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy:” 2 Cor. 1:24
The issue of power is most definitely a problem! Great points.
I didn’t get to see the original, but I fully agree with these conclusions. Gender based jokes are of the same genre as the ‘my smokin’ hot wife’ assaults from the platform. They are comments used to demean and dismiss the strength and value of women in their inherent gifts and dignity.
It gets very tiring.
Thankfully I’ve not had to endure the “smokin hot wife” syndrome!
After reading your original post, I put this up on my Facebook page:
Q4U: What’s your first response to this story?
A teacher gave his students the following essay question: “Why do you want to live?” An hour was allotted for them to write. One student wrote, “I want to live a life so long I can finally understand women, although I know I’ll probably die first.” The teacher gave him an A.
What I did not include was that the story was told by a pastor giving Week of Prayer at our Christian high school just a few years ago. He, himself, was the teacher in the story. He told this story to prove the point that females are incredibly complicated and males are incredibly simple.
At the time, I was dismayed by his failure to recognize each and every child of God as a complex individual who should not be reduced to a caricature.
Now, I am dismayed by how many of my Facebook friends, mostly women, found the story funny and told me to lighten up. Only a couple of my recent students, and a fellow teacher, took it to task as a form of stereotyping.
How do we make change when so many have such laid back, live and let live attitudes?
How indeed, Cheryl. Hopefully these kinds of articles are shared enough that the accepted narrative will change!
When I was a youth pastor, the senior pastor introduced me to a new family at the church as, “the youth babe.” He thought he was being funny, but I felt 2 inches tall. I always felt no one would fully respect my role if the senior pastor didn’t.
These kinds of jokes and comments would never be acceptable in any other work place environment. Thanks for posting all of the comments!
Kelly, WOW, he called you ‘babe’??? How dismissive. I probably would have lost all grace and called him ‘sugar babe’ in front of that family.
Ugh! I have no words, but my guess is that happens far too often. And I’ve found some men think these kinds of remarks are a compliment 🙁
Gail, I find this to be true in all areas of egalitarian Kingdom culture. In our Free Methodist tradition we see equality between men and women, between all races, between all socio-economic classes, and between laity and clergy. The problem with humor “at the expense of” any human being is that it in some way devalues and even dehumanizes them. It is interesting that in our larger culture when a film makes fun of a nation’s president or a cartoon makes fun of a religious founder the culture responds with indignity to limiting our freedom of speech or expression. Yet when we step into the church we recognize that we are not “of this world” and that we respect and honor all people as we recognize their infinite worth as created in the image of God. We therefore as Kingdom people, follow the biblical teaching expressed clearly in James 4. Therefore it is not just a matter of taste or sensitivity in how we use humor, illustration, narrative, it is core to the teachings of God’s Word in creating a different kind of community than we experience in the world. As pastors we are the ones who “set the pace” or “create the culture” of a congregation, so it rests on us to be an example of the very culture we know God is or wants to create. It is accurate for a person to hear the way the pastor speaks, both in and out of the pulpit, to determine the respectful egalitarian nature or lack thereof within the congregation. It is also accurate to see who is the servant/leader of that congregation in terms of gender, race, economic class and whether laity are or are not equally empowered.
Denny, thank you for pointing out that this is a much bigger issue than just women’s status – it is about the dignity of every human being! It is more about acting as Kingdom people and being a kind of community where everyone is respected and valued. As you said so eloquently, what people hear from the pastor both in and out of the pulpit should reflect the core values of our faith. I so appreciate this deeper expression of what I was trying to say!
That is a powerful collection of comments, Gail. thanks for gathering them all from Twitter, Facebook and the Blog.
Tim, I followed the shares around Facebook and Twitter to see how people were responding because I was curious if there would be some pushback. There was one comment on Twitter that was kind of “oh, come on!” but it has since been deleted. When I started seeing how many people were truly offended by this kind of thing I started collecting the comments. Thanks for appreciating the work 🙂