Let’s Stop Telling Sexist Jokes

Awhile back, a number of years ago, I chaired the Artist-Lecture Series committee at the University where I work, and I hired a well-known Evangelical feminist to come and speak. She came and did a fine job at presenting and defending her point of view, but I don’t remember a single thing she said during her talks. All I remember is the fact that when we were alone, she wanted to tell me off-color, sexist jokes at the expense of men. I remember feeling embarrassed and befouled. She thought she was being cute. And maybe, just maybe, she thought men should get a good dose of what they’d been dishing out for years: turnabout fair play. But as Christians, do we really believe that two sins make a right?

A few months ago I was studying and co-teaching John Stott’s book, Basic Christianity, and was struck by the depth that he went into them when he explained the ten commandments. On page 69 he says that to break the last five of the commandments “is to rob a [person] of the things most precious to [her]/him, [her]/his life (you shall not kill), [her]/his home or honour (you shall not commit adultery), [her]/his property (you shall not steal), and now [her]/his reputation (you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour).

“This [ninth] commandment is not only applicable to the lawcourts. It does include perjury. But it also includes all forms of scandal, slander, idle talk and tittle-tattle, all lies and deliberate exaggerations or distortions of the truth. We can bear false witness by listening to unkind rumors as well as by passing them on, by making jokes at somebody else’s expense….”

Robbing people of their reputations is a type of theft. By extension then, robbing a group or class of people of their reputations, putting them down, etc., is also bearing false witness and theft. Therefore, sexist jokes are in the same category of, and just as bad as, racist jokes, no matter which direction they’re aimed. Unfortunately, there are many Evangelicals, who, while being horrified at the idea of telling jokes at the expense of blacks, think that it’s cute to tell them at the expense of women (or men, as the case may be).

I think that when jokes at the expense of people and classes of people are looked on as “cute,” it is especially appalling. Some couples get into this downward maelstrom, and if someone doesn’t stop it, it can easily end in divorce. I saw that happen to my pastor a number of years ago, and it was very painful to watch. Unfortunately, this is a trap that is all too easy for pastors to fall into. Telling jokes from the platform humanizes them, and they see that as a great need. They deeply want to be beloved and the response they often get from the congregation is overwhelming approval and backslapping good times. Unfortunately, some pastors are not very discriminating concerning who can get hurt in the process.

When an elder counsels a pastor to stop telling sexist jokes, it’s not because someone in the congregation has an “over-sensitivity” to the subject. It’s because he or she believes that it is sin.