Ridicule is nothing to be scared of Making a joke can be an act of love

This ridicule might strike some as unusually cruel, a form of bullying and an instance of an “unsafe place” in her public school. But it was the mockery and jokes which were precisely what was healing for Nat. In her words: “It showed that they cared because they acknowledged my hurt, but they also showed that I didn’t have to let it overcome me. By drawing attention to my scars, they showed me that I didn’t have to feel ashamed of them. By laughing at me, they showed me that it was okay to laugh at myself.” And just like that, her cutting stopped.

But as I see it, there was another, deeper aspect to their ridicule that helped her to heal. It was the faith they had that she would take the jokes with a good spirit. Implicit in their teasing was their understanding that N would join in on the fun. And the bond created by that faith was the healing she needed. They trusted her to know that implicit in their mockery was care and love. Their leap of faith meant she felt less alone.

A university chaplain once told me something that seems to capture the spirit of our age: the highest ethic for the students she talks to, she said, is to not hurt another person’s feelings. That is a line that the kids will not cross. Not only do we not presume to tell one another how to live, we affirm others in their choices (largely to feel affirmed ourselves in our ethical, nonjudgmental behaviours. We are all such good people). Yet this seems to me to be profoundly anti-life, as well as deeply disrespectful of another’s capacity for good faith. How can one even begin to form real relationships if one is too afraid to hurt another person? How can we discuss ideas and feelings, debate them or contest them? How can we be authentic if we are constantly monitoring our every thought and action so as to not disrupt another’s sense of well-being?

It all reminds me of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Most of us have at least a passing acquaintance with its two main characters, the swashbuckling Petruchio and the fiery-tongued Kate, the shrew. Even if one is inclined to look punitively at Petruchio’s “taming” of Kate, as many are, one cannot help but smile at the repartee between the two. They build upon each other’s insults and innuendos. The true lovers that they are, they go for the jugular, like the lover’s pinch, which, as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra says, “hurts and is desired”.

In this, Kate and Petruchio are like other beloved Shakespearian lovers, Beatrice and Benedict, who never fail to land a hit. When Shakespeare has couples hurl barbs and banter, it is a reliable measure of their mutual affection, of their fitness for true friendship, and a measure of their equality. The brilliance of their mutual ridicule is a sign of respect. As Slavoj Žižek says: “The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other.”

If we refrain from ridiculing even the most sensitive thing about a friend, it reveals our belief in a friend’s weakness, not in his strength. Through our “respect for another”, we demonstrate our low view of their capacity for grace. In a reversal of morals, we come to believe that respect means to tiptoe around the sensitivities of another rather than to treat them with humour and good faith. Yet it is precisely both those things which can lead to healing because the good faith itself creates the bonds of love.

Making a joke is always a risk and an act of faith. Comedy, says comedian Charlie Demurs, is “like throwing a rock into a window and turning it into stain glass”. Something is broken: a placid surface, an ideal, a politeness. But the breaking of a social nicety is only the prequel to a more beautiful transformation. We laugh. Laughing makes us feel better. We have had faith in others. That faith creates a connection.

“It is somehow very typical of the modern sense of self,” writes Rowan Williams, “that when we speak about ‘self-confidence’ these days, we’re often talking about something that is in us – rather than having the courage to engage, to venture out, to be confident enough to exchange perspectives, truths, insights, to move into a particular kind of conversation or dialogue.” Or the courage to tell a joke, the courage to make fun of something, or even of someone. The difference between being merely mean and being funny is obvious. The spirit of the person is the determining factor, though of course even ridicule that is intended to cause hurt can be turned to nothing if one meets it with unselfconscious laughter; an insult loses its power if one refuses to feel insulted.

Consider this anecdote: a friend of mine has a son-in-law who is a trans man. This friend, who is the mother-in-law, was once waiting to use the restroom while her son-in-law was in it. When he came out of the restroom — at last — carrying with him a magazine my friend said to him: “Just like a man! To take so long using the toilet.” It was meant good humouredly, clearly. She not only embraced her son-in-law’s identity, but felt self-confident enough to, as Williams says, venture out, to include him in a joke about men. But instead of laughing the son-in-law bristled, feeling offended by his mother-in-law’s teasing about his toilet etiquette as a man.

Why is this, I wonder. First of all, it is possible that he still felt some compunction around discussing restroom use, perhaps left over from his upbringing as a girl. But I wonder if it is because a joke at your expense necessitates a moment of vulnerability — the breaking of the window, to use Demurs’s metaphor — which means that there is a moment when one isn’t in control, where one’s sense of self is not in one’s own hands but handled, somewhat roughly, by the observations of another. Here is Williams again: if we “take for granted a basic individualist model, the hard core to which everything has got to accommodate itself, you drift towards a steady expectation that the best relationship you can be in to the world is control. The best place to be is a place where you can never be surprised.” This sounds right, and why, as Matthew B Crawford has pointed out, propaganda is somehow the opposite of funny. Jokes require a letting go, not just a release of tension, but a transformation of it.

I am not suggesting that trans individuals are all unfunny, of course not. But, rather, that in a society in which individuals are thought to come into being through a process of inward-looking self-discovery, one is bound to be fragile, self-protective, and preoccupied with control. Surprises, such as those a punchline delivers, would be felt not as a delight but as a punch to the ego. The individualist wants to protect her self-identity, which can lead to controlling how others speak and behave, which can lead to isolation, which can lead to more desire for connection with others, which can lead to frustration, defensiveness, fragility and increased isolation. And so it goes. It is our openness to being surprised by others that may lead us out of our alienation from others.

The most surprising thing anyone has ever said to me came in the form of an unexpected joke. I told a man I was dating how I said goodbye to my closest friend the last time I saw her, not knowing that it would be the last time, as she was struck and killed by a car just days after. The loss of this friend still feels like an open wound, and the fact that I had the chance to hug her and tell her I loved her before we parted for the last time has always been a comfort. It was a moment of real vulnerability for me to express these things to this man. He listened intently. Then he said, quietly and calmly, “Well. Maybe if you hadn’t had such a beautiful final goodbye, she wouldn’t have died.”

It was the most shocking thing anyone has ever said to me. Ever. I stood stunned for a moment then doubled over, clutching my stomach and reeling. It felt like I had been sucker-punched in the gut. I had been taken utterly by surprise.

And what did I do to the man who dared to say such a thing? I married him! A man who had such faith that I would take his remark as it was intended — as a joke that in itself was intended to show his faith in me — deserves all my faith, and my openness, and my willingness to let go of control, and to be endlessly surprised. He has since held me close and spoke tenderly to me of the passing of my friend in ways that I did not always expect, and which have brought not only healing but also, of course, laughter.