Not a joke, or is it

[Nonfunny]

I am a regular poster, very long term, mostly on FWR but also here and there. NC for this.

My DH I have long considered as one of the good ones. He doesn't like the term feminist but he has been a SAHD for years, completely supportive of my career, an excellent father, also a TERF in terms of gender issues, and generally seemed all round reasonable. He has two adult daughters which are high achieving scientists of whom we are both very proud.

Tonight he, out if the blue, told me a "joke" he saw on Facebook, which went like this (sorry for the graphic language). What do you call a woman with a tight cunt? Well, you wouldn't know.

I was at first stunned and then blew up big time. And then, I am rather ashamed to admit, I became upset and tearful. (I am a post menopausal woman who is not particularly secure about her body). He just could not see why I was making "a fuss" about a "joke". He became quite verbally abusive, and has gone to sleep in the spare room, declaring me a humourless bitch.

Am I over reacting?

You are not overreacting, OP. I'm not surprised you were upset and confused. An equivalent would be.

"What do you call a man that can't financially support his family?"

BTW, I would love DH to be a SAHD. Just thinking that this is an equivalent patriarchal bullshit joke.

This is great stuff, well done you 👏🏻👍🏻😂

Thank you for all the replies everyone. Just finding that many people don't think I reacted inappropriately to something I should have taken as a joke is very helpful to me.

Just to answer a few people. I have never given birth vaginally so that doesn't come into it. I never until last night had a concern about that part of me, although I have plenty of hangups about plenty of other parts. And he knows that and has always been absolutely complimentary about my body, which is why it came as such a shock.

He was definitely not referencing transwomen etc, it was a stupid "locker room banter" thing he read on the internet, which I think he gave zero thought to (not an excuse though).

I dont want to give too much detail about his work situation but he gave up a high-level professional career to look after our disabled child, and he could not return to it now after more than a decade out if the profession. My work/our child's needs are also such that someone needs to be available at a moment's notice, and I am not always available and sometimes not even here (as in not in the country). But he does "work" in that he is actually building us a house, himself. So he most definitely is not sitting scrolling on his phone all day.

I appreciate the person suggesting i make stupid jokes at his expense, that might well be an idea, but that just would not be me. I am not a crude joke telling type of person and I would never make remarks about anyone's body, even if they had done so to me. It's just not me.

He's not socially awkward and he's not a geek (that would be me, on both counts).

I'm not going to be binning him for his stupid and hurtful behaviour, it really was out of character and I think his (nasty) reaction was actually out of embarrassment once he realised I took his "joke" as something serious.

This certainly real! Why would i make up such a silly thing? I mentioned he is a terf because to me that is a red line and a man who wasn't, wouldn't be in a relationship with me (other people's opinions may vary, but I wanted to mention that he sees women's rights and spaces as non-negotiable and he fully understands safeguarding etc). I dont know why he doesn't like the word feminist. He most certainly is a feminist. He would react very badly to anyone infringing on my rights or those of his daughters. He just doesn't like the label.

He is looking sheepish this morning, but is busy getting our child ready for school and we can't talk now. I have a work meeting (Zoom to another time zone) in a few minutes so any talk will have to wait till later...

I’ve come back to this thread and after reading some more comments it’s obvious that ppl are interpreting this joke in very different ways, which is both interesting and confirms what a shit joke it is bc it’s so unclear what the jokes actually meant to be. I assumed it was directed at a woman who did NOT have ‘a tight c*nt’ and it’s a cruel rug pull, but it seems that some ppl are thinking it’s to do with trans women and the fact no one knows who they are, and also about popular culture and the way ppl fear discussing trans issues 🤷🏼‍♀️🤯😵‍💫 blimey. It would be interesting to find out what OP’s other half intended or to mean. He may have a completely different interpretation.

It’ll still probably be shit though.

Wrote my last post during time OP posted her update. Thanks for providing more info. Sorry you were upset, hopefully he will avoid making the same mistake again. I hope he apologises for calling you a bitch though, if he used that word. Embarrassment wasn’t an excuse. Hope your meeting goes well x

Isn't that actually what this joke is? i.e. the man wouldn't know because his dick is tiny, i.e. nothing will feel tight to him?

I thought it was a joke about men having a small penis. The joke was from the internet and would assume that it would be a joke told between men, so the ‘you’ would be male. As in you wouldn’t know as your penis is too small to realise.

@RandomForest

L.o.l 😆 🤣

I love ❤️ your jokes

Brilliant ...

None of my post says that it does. I don't think his reaction was justified, which is why upthread I wrote, "I do think verbally abusing his wife and calling her misogynistic slurs is awful. I am sorry that my previous posts failed to clearly spell that out."

I shouldn't have to keep repeating myself just to ensure that nobody misunderstands me.

No. You’re not.

If the joke is so funny tell him to tell it to your daughters. I'm sure he won't have any problem at all with sharing the hilarity with them. And all the females in the family for that matter. His female friends? His friend's wives?

I dont know why he doesn't like the word feminist. He most certainly is a feminist. He would react very badly to anyone infringing on my rights or those of his daughters. He just doesn't like the label.

Unfortuately the word is very badly misinterpreted, as we see all over social media where men blame feminists for all kinds of odd things, saying false things about what “feminists want….” and “feminists don’t care about…..”
These will be the same people who put stupid jokes on Facebook like the one your dh told you, so he’s most likely been influenced by them to believe that feminism is something that it isn’t. These people have done a lot of damage.

Although, deliberate misrepresentation of feminism isn’t new. In the 60s and 70s it was portrayed as women burning bras and randomly kicking men in the balls.

I have been thinking about this thread and have actually become fairly furious with it. Not with OP's posts but many of the rest of yours. It's been implied that I am not a good and loyal enough member of the sisterhood, but you are not the right-on wonderful feminists you smugly seem to think you are.

You have all apparently bought into misogynist, male-centred myths about women's bodies. Having a vagina that isn't tight is a bad thing. Why would it be a bad thing? Because it decreases the penetrator's sexual pleasure. How fucking phallocentric is that?

The other week there was a thread where you all agreed that large labia are ugly and disgusting, and that being told your labia is long enough to be visible is just about the worst insult ever.

Why are you all so prescriptive and authoritarian about how a woman's genitalia ought to be? If it's not tight on the inside, it's wrong. If it's not neat on the outside, it's wrong. How is this feminist? It isn't. It's sexist drivel.

Feminist would be hurrah for your big, fat, loose foof and hurrah for your massive swinging beef flaps. All female bodies are beautiful.

And another thing: Retorting with infantile insults abut men isn't feminist either. It isn't funny or clever, it's puerile and misandrist.

I’m older but I have got over the surprise that seemingly nice guys can revert to vulgar talk at the drop of a hat.

I suspect the word cunt is seen by you as very derogatory (I agree), whereas him being a bloke doesn’t ’get’ how often it gets used to put women down and he just sees it as a descriptive word.

i remember a couple of years ago on MN a woman was horrified to over hear her husband refer to a tuna sandwich as looking like an old woman’s gash.

Men never fail to disappoint. It’s the only thing that is predictable.

You may have over reacted, but his response is not good either.

I think you’re right. That makes sense.
If only the idiots out there would understand that “tightness” is muscle tone not size. And that muscle tone gives a feeling of tightness whatever the size of the man’s penis. It’s incredible how many people seem to think that vaginas are literal cavities, that might be wider or narrower, instead of a muscular tube whose walls are closed together when “at rest” as it were.

Genius!!

The amount of people saying their marriage would be over based on this incident is ridiculous. People would really break up a marriage, a home, and destroy the lives of their children because their partner of 20 years, who had never previously raised any red flags or caused issue or alarm, made a crass joke and called the op a humourless bitch?

The op herself admits to shouting at her husband first.

Op, I get that you may have been upset by the pretty unfunny 'joke', but given your description of your husband and marriage up to this point, I would assume it was just something he thought you would find funny, as he apparently did, and it was not a personal dig. Especially as you say he always praises your body.

I would apologise, I'm sure he will also apologise for making you feel insecure.l, and move on.

I love the posts that state that it would be a fine joke if it were directed at TW! How lovely that we are all up in arms against rude insults to other people as long as its just people like us. If its strangers frim another group then fair game! Goes aling with the notion that s man is a feminist because he supports his wife and daughters. “for my friends everything, for others:the law” is not a principled stance.

Thanks again for the further discussion, it is very interesting. Of course I am not considering leaving my marriage because he was a jerk last night. We've both done and said plenty of jerky things before, it's a 20-year marriage for heaven's sake! I'm quite opinionated and he can be quite thoughtless. Can lead to situations sometimes.

I just wanted some support, if appropriate, for the idea that his was not an acceptable "joke, or response to my response to it, and I got it. I am not going to continue to beat him over the head with it (which is what I already did last night, in a tone of some considerable fury). But I guess I suddenly thought, after the argument, in which I really let him have it, "oh, was I in fact being humourless and too much up my own arse (or cunt, as the case may be)"?! I think not now. But I should have dealt with it with a bit more restraint and reasoning if I wanted him to learn something/think about what he had really said, rather than his having a kneejerk defence (a little drink had been taken, by both, although we were certainly not drunk!).

The comment by a PP about how even the nicest of men can be crass sometimes is very true. He said some inappropriate things in front of his daughters when they were younger, and was absolutely horrified when I pointed out how they could be interpreted (as if he had some sexual interest in them, which is of course not the case, he just put a compliment very clumsily). He never did that again and was very embarrassed. Maybe not all men, but I do think they really don't think things through sometimes....and they can have little awareness of what things feel like for a woman. He is the type of guy who would always cross the street or take another route to prevent a woman feeling scared, and would be the first to step in with no regard to his own safety if he saw a woman or girl being harassed. He gets the "bigger" things, but it seems that toxic masculine "culture" still seeps in anyway at times. It's quite depressing really.

He said some inappropriate things in front of his daughters when they were younger, and was absolutely horrified when I pointed out how they could be interpreted (as if he had some sexual interest in them, which is of course not the case, he just put a compliment very clumsily).

Wait, what?!

He could make that 'joke' as long as he understood that I would never ever ever want to have sex with him ever again.
And 'humourless bitch'? Really? So not only misogynistic but also unoriginal

Exactly and remember Martin Niemollers famous poem ( 'First they came') about indifference towards the plight of minority groups)

I love the MN LTB responses we always get for this stuff. “OP you should end a 20 year marriage because of one comment - I definitely would, I say with confidence from my phone over a cup of tea and the 17th episode of Bluey today” Yeah great advice, definitely do it OP! Get yourself down to the solicitors office tomorrow - enjoy explaining to your children why you’re turning their lives upside down! “Daddy told a joke I didn’t like and so we have to sell the house now” 🤣🤣

Being serious, I’m more interested in the distinction you make between you “massively blowing up” and him “becoming verbally abusive”. What’s the difference? If you’re honest was there actually a difference? I’m not gaslighting you, minimising what happened or implying you deserved it or anything like that, I’m just wondering what actually was said by each party.

From what I’ve read, I think you were right at the start. He made a crap joke which upset you, which was bad. You overreacted, which was bad. He overreacted to your overreaction, which was bad. He apologised and then you rejected his apology, which was bad.

Shake it off and move on with your lives is my advice!

He said some inappropriate things in front of his daughters when they were younger, and was absolutely horrified when I pointed out how they could be interpreted (as if he had some sexual interest in them, which is of course not the case, he just put a compliment very clumsily).

Okay...

It's not the joke that makes me say LTB, it's the mindset revealed by the "humourless bitch" comment and the only-just-revealed inappropriate comments in front of his DDs.