Currently having trouble reconciling how "It's a joke, therefore it's insincere" and "It's funny because it's true" exist in the same universe.
Make up your mind, please. Is somebody "telling hard truths, intended to challenge," or is it "comedy, therefore you can interpret it however you choose, so choose not to be offended"? Because I hear these statements coming from the same mouths, sometimes right after each other.
If comedy is about being "edgy," then why is that used as a defense of comedians making jokes about the most oppressed groups out there? Wouldn't it be far edgier to piss off the bigots than to dunk even more on the targets of their bigotry?
Going back to the topic of sincerity, don't people realize that "sincere" doesn't mean "literal," and a statement (literal or not) isn't rendered insincere by people laughing at it?
I'm reminded once again of Popehat's Rule of Goats: If you say you're only f****** a goat ironically, you're still a goat******.
If you say bigoted crap "jokingly," you're still saying bigoted crap...that is, unless you're explicitly doing parody.
And parody is about turning something on its head-- if you're not playfully subverting a trope but rather sound/look exactly like you're perpetuating that trope, guess what? That's not really parody. Or else it's terrible parody, and the cost of doing terrible parody is that the intended targets of your parody will just think you're on their side.
(Yes, I know what punching down means. I know what Poes are. But I think just tossing out those terms without explanation can lead to misinterpretation.
Or even people applying the terms to things that are actually the opposite, like calling fowl for "punching down" when someone jokes about JK Rowling being a TERF because she's a woman.
Yes, JK Rowling is most likely highly privileged in most respects compared to the person joking about her, but also that's calling out a specific person for a specific thing they did. That is, it's behavior-based rather than identity-based. If you snarked about women because JK Rowling is a TERF, that's where the problem would come in.)