We have been together for something like 1 year and a bunch of months. We have the same interests, we graduated in similar topics, we share similar career goals. He is serious with me: never played games, never done anything to make me mad on purpose, never done anything to make me jealous of other girls and we have always planned a future together since the beginning of our relationship. We often discuss moving in together eventually and we want this relationship to be long term. I know his family, they know mine. I have spent holidays with them and when I used to live far away they offered me a bed to sleep in so that I could spend the weekend with them. He is also involved in the Church and teaches kids the Bible and supports me with my chronic illness in the best way he can. He is supportive, caring, loving… Everything a woman could dream of.
The perfect love story, right?
Well. Not really perfect. I have his sense of humour with a burning passion. He LOVES making jokes and he tells them all the times and often he makes everyone laughs with outstanding word games or brilliant ideas… But sometimes OH MY GOD. He makes me want to run as fast as I can. The examples I’ll give you are some “jokes” that at this point I don’t even know if they are jokes anymore or he really thinks this shit.
1. He is the type of person to make racist jokes ALL THE FUCKING TIMES. Calls black kids “monkeys”, says the n-word all the times. Once also happened that someone was causing troubles on the road and having some risky behaviours that may cause an incident and he says “Do you want to guess that person’s skin colour???” implying that black people are the ones who always cause problems. He is, in fact, kinda racist. I am a biologist and I have debunked for him the fact that there are no human races and handed him some science books on the topics but nothing. He still thinks that races are a thing ad sometimes he calls me “black” because I’m from Sicily and he is from a northern place so my skin is darker, I have dark nipples and my hair and eyes are black. As I said he also teaches kids the Bible and sometimes he makes jokes about that one time when he literally answered “all the NORMAL PEOPLE are white” when a black kid asked him why he was white and he was black. Like this shit is funny. What the hell???
2. As I mentioned, I have a disability (chronic illness) and he sometimes makes AWFUL jokes about it. For example, once we were invited to a party for the memory of a friend of him who died of cystic fibrosis. There were this girls’ family members and all all her friends to remember her. As I said. It was a party for a DEAD DISABLED GIRL. He was able to say, in front of me and other people, “Well at least she \[referring to me, disabled\] gets all the attention because she is sick and people care for her but nobody cares about me because I’m healthy: being healthy SUCKS!”. He was trying to make a joke but we all stared at him. Nobody laughed. WHAT IN THE FUCKING WORLD makes you think that this is something appropriate, ESPECIALLY IN THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT???The other day he said that he is happy to be in a relationship with me because he is seen as a hero/saint just because he is so sweet and caring to be with a disabled person.
3. When we walk or when he drives, he calls EVERY GIRL a bitch. He is always making fun of other random girls. Sometimes he makes rape jokes too with his friends: they joke about raping girls they are mad at for some reason. This is fucking disgusting. He also had a phase when we constantly joked about wanting to hit me. Like out of nowhere he turned to me and says “I really want to hit you”, “I want to push you in the middle of the road when a car is coming” as a joke. Are you fucking stupid? And the peak of it was when he, AS A JOKE, cheered with his friends in front of me and other girls TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. Like these idiots in the middle of a bar drank TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE praising hitting women and laughing at it… IN FRONT OF 3 WOMEN like everything is fine. They said shit like “the secret is to hit them in places that are often covered by clothes so others don’t see it” and they all laughed. We almost broke up because of this but I forgave him because he spent the night crying and he told me “it was a joke” and all sorts of things.Talking of sexism, a week ago he said that “he is happy that I’m living on my own because when we will find a home for both of us he won’t be doing house chores because I know how to do everything so why should he bother learning when I can do everything?”
4. The most disgusting jokes he does are jokes on kids. I want to throw up every times he says them to the point that I can’t even write them down because I’m too disgusted. Let me just say that once he make jokes on my niece who is going into puberty (she is in middle school) and he made jokes about her maturing body. How can someone even THINK this thing??? And not only he thought them but he SAID THAT TO ME, HER AUNT, LIKE EVERYTHING IS FINE.
I hope that you are as disgusted as I am. The only reason why I haven’t broken up with him because of his jokes is that I think he really wants to be funny and think this is “black humour”. If you don’t consider the crap that he says, he acts all the opposite. He does not act like a racist (I also want to adopt a kid and once I asked him if we was ok with the idea of adopting a black kid and he said that the kid would be his child regardless of the skin colour), he is not violent towards me (soon after making the house chores jokes he told me that the Bible wants women to be “under” the men but not because men are superior or men must control women, but because men are responsible for women wellbeing and they must protect them, it’s their responsibility) and when he comes to my home he always helps me clean after I cook for him and he NEVER hurt me physically. Regarding my disability, he is absolutely supportive and makes sure I am ok always checking on my health and being present if I need something and he often gives his money to associations to help other disabled people or for environmental causes. He is actually good with kids when he teaches them the Bible and plays with them and all the kids love him. He is not a misogynist but he is actually sensitive and caring and it happened more than once that he hugged and supported female friends when they needed it, checking if they were ok and talking to them and I’m absolutely a fan of that and I encourage him to do these things for female friends (I am not jealous and holy shit if a friend is sad HELP THEM even if they are the opposite sex!).
However, his jokes are awful but he just won’t stop.
Any advice? I guess the whole point of the post is that I don’t know if I should be concerned by these jokes and think that he is actually telling something he believes or if they are just jokes because what he says and what he does, don’t match (yet?).
TLDR: My boyfriend makes racist/misogynist/homophobic (even tho I have not mentioned them in the post)/ableist jokes and it just won’t stop, but his actions don’t match his words so I don’t know if I should be concerned about what he says or not.
17 comments
You should absolutely be concerned by these “jokes”. Run away. Far, far away from this guy. He is a toxic person.
How can you love this person? Are you for real?
That’s a yikes from me dawg
why the fuck are you dating a racist, misogynistic, ableist pedophile🤢 do way better, and break up with him
So lemme get this:
he’s racist, makes ableist jokes about your condition that make you feel bad, has hero complex, is misogynistic, jokes about wanting to hurt you, makes disgusting jokes about children and comments on other people’s bodies.
Aaaaaand you see those jokes as “black humor”.
I’ve been there. I know you have good faith in him, I had it too, but there’s a spanish saying that goes “entre broma y broma, la verdad se asoma” (in between jokes, truth rises), and most of the times that is what’s happening.
Good comedy is not for everyone, because comedy consists in making people *laugh* about the real world with what they have in their knowledge. Good dark humour specifically is meant to laugh about the things we know are bad, but not because we believe in them: mocking stereotypes, mocking disgusting things about society, mocking things BUT knowing they are bad and letting the public know. If not, that’s just someone being an asshole. This type of comedy should always challenge your thoughts and move you towards a different, more morally adequate place. In Spanish we say “se apunta hacia quien está arriba de ti, en el poder. Nunca hacia abajo, el oprimido”.
Idk if I explained it properly but I hope that the message goes across this mess, lol.
My point here is: he’s probably not a good comedian. Or a good person. Do as you see fit with this information, but personally I wouldn’t hang around people like him just because I don’t wanna put myself in an environment where I’ll be sudeenly uncomfortable because of the people that are there and I don’t have enough energy to spend on telling them to stop. There’s a limit on how much of those comments someone can handle before snapping.
Expressions create identity.
If someone consistently says racist, bigoted, and misogynistic things then yeah, then that person *is* racist, bigoted, and misogynistic. These aren’t jokes – jokes have punchlines and they make people laugh. The things he says are neither of these. Dark humor is a product of trying to cope with difficult situations – but there’s no difficult situations. They’re just toxic statements that he believes he can make because he thinks he is in a position of power to say things like that.
Non-Black people who aren’t racist don’t say the n-word or refer to black kids as monkeys, or refer to whiteness as normative.
Non-Abelist people don’t make other people’s disabilities about them, and sure as fuck not brag that being with a disabled person is good for their image.
Non-sexist non-mysogynistic men don’t call women bitches or glorify domestic violence.
I worry that you’re really more in love with the image of what you wish this guy was rather than who he actually is.
Uh…these are not jokes. Your dude is a bigot and a creep. He is not “kinda racist” if he’s calling black children “monkeys” and telling them to their faces that they’re not normal because they’re not white. That’s like, white hood in the closet racist.
If this is the kind of man you’re dreaming of, you need to wake up. He sounds like someone who puts on a nice face to the world because he likes to be thought of as a godly, altruistic person, but as soon as he’s behind closed doors the mask comes off.
I mean, the only advice that isn’t “break up” that I can give you is explaining to him why his “dark humour” is NOT funny and asking for that to stop. Abuse, non-consent, racial, misogynistic, underage jokes ARE NOT FUNNY, and it is not a matter of “being too sensitive”. I personally find that this seems like his way of being ableist, racist, misogynistic and expressing sexual interest in prepubescent girls while covering it up as “a joke”. (What I find funny is that these “dark jokes” are never about his (assumed) cis-het white male self. How interesting.) You asked if we’re disgusted? I should hope everyone is. What I don’t understand is that you seem to be defending him when you’re clearly not comfortable with this part of him. Either you break up with him or you don’t (but know what you’re signing up for, because I doubt this side of him will change – speaking from experience with my own sibling). Just my two cents.
Ok people so you agree with me that these jokes are disgusting. What do you suggest me to do to understand if they are REALLY jokes or not?
Tomorrow I’ll be meeting one of my friends that knows my boyfriend and I’ll ask her an advice. Then I was thinking of talking about this issue with my boyfriend directly and his family. Often they invite me for lunch and my boyfriend often does these kind of jokes. I laugh it off even if I am uncomfortable, his parents say the jokes are not funny and he should stop. Maybe I should catch the occasion to actually discuss the issue and tell, in front of his parents, all the other jokes he is saying, hoping for constructive criticism and him quitting his bullshit and realizing he is not funny.
Or maybe he will defend his opinions and his “points”. But at this point if he even tries for real to defend the idea that black people cause troubles or some other shit there is only one thing to say.
Do you think that discussing it in front of his parents would be ok?
So you’re dating a bad person. You are who you’re with.
Sorry op hate to say it but this would be a deal breaker for me. When I was a teenager I had cringy shitty humor like that (but Jesus even not that bad compared to what you’re saying). I still look back with complete embarrassment. I couldn’t imagine being that person in my 20s
OP, think of this too. Your boyfriend makes the wrong joke, in the wrong setting, with the wrong people. Not only is it embarrassing as it is. It can have severe consequences. He could get assaulted, lose his job/career, you could have consequences by association. Could you imagine?
Sorry again, at this stage in my life (late 20s) this would be non negotiable for me. Call it compatibility call it being an actual adult. It’s not okay. It wasn’t okay when we were young teens it’s not okay as someone in their 20. The difference is when you’re a young teen you aren’t held accountable, and sounds like he still isn’t held accountable.
Those comments about your niece? Hes teaching bible school? Hes a predator. You and the bible are his beard, proof that hes too good and pure to be a pedophile. As an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse my alarm bells are ALL going off. I would worry about every single child he is in contact with. This is NOT black humor.
At my sister’s baby shower someone got a pair of cute wee little baby socks. I said that it was optimistic to think there were only going to be 2 feet. She has a healthy pregnancy. THAT is dark humor. Rape “jokes” are little windows into his mind and soul.
These are not jokes. These are sincerely held beliefs that you don’t want to believe are sincerely held beliefs or that he does not want to present to you as sincerely held beliefs.
He’s a maniac.
You’re a biologist and you’re with this dude?
How can someone so smart, act so dumb.
I hope this is fake and not that someone who went to school to be a biologist has to ask bunch of strangers if their weirdo, racist, pedo boyfriend has a messed up sense of humor.
Maybe his church group could help weigh in on this. None of this behavior seems very godly.
These aren’t jokes, dude. This is him testing the water to see how far he can take things with you. The first time he slaps you I’m sure it will have been a “joke” or “your fault for making him angry.”
Don’t second guess yourself here! The feelings you have are correct and NONE of this is normal.
He’s a sexist, racist, ableist pedo and you don’t know what to do? This can’t be a serious post surely, you’ve just described the worst piece of shit human I can imagine.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Run.
I’ve got a pretty fucked up sense of humor and I don’t find any of that funny. You really can do better, you know? Disability or not.