<\/span><\/h2>\nDisability is not funny, not per se.<\/p>\n
It puts people into other moods than wanting to laugh all the time. This is not obvious to some so it makes sense to place it in writing.<\/p>\n
There are funny moments, depending on how you look at it. Disability may bring about clumsiness, restrictions in various other ways, and complications might have funny aspects. They often if not always contain bitterness and disappointment which do require the involved disadvantaged people to go over it with a smile or at least with grace, though. That is the essential element. If that element of grace is not there, the attempted joke or humor is non-inclusive about already excluded people in society. Then, that is what marks and sets off discrimination.<\/p>\n
Disability humor always seems to evoke both fear and joy, both embarrassment and slapstick. Almost never is disability humor outright tasteful, positive and nice. It often seems to play with stereotypes. There usually is a degree of ‘hoops’ involved.<\/p>\n
I stitched together a cow hide cover for my prosthetic arm. So when someone says, what’s that, I can tell them “I am half Wolf, half animal” (as the “half man, half dummy” thing got old real fast). But I am not sure whether public etiquette would allow for a cheerful laughter here. However, this is my personal invention and it’s definitely cool when you see the real fur. Also, that grows old after a while.<\/p>\n
One of my shirts says “It was a lot worse than it looks”. But you are probably not supposed to laugh either. Besides it’s not really too funny either because it was in fact a lot worse than it looks. It’s more like a blood freezer, but then that’s what makes a good amputee ‘joke’. Conversely someone may ask ‘how much worse can it be?’ which will suspend them motionless in content space. It can be a lot worse but is that the road you really want to go down?<\/p>\n
The “Keep staring, I might do a trick” is one of the great commonplace one liners. I also like “Give them a finger and they’ll take the whole hand”. I am not sure how other people accept the sentence part “given them a finger” as there is a real ambiguity here.<\/p>\n
But of all the disability jokes, this one brings it to the point:<\/p>\n
A woman puts out an ad for the guy with the most incredible sex powers ever. When the door rings, she finds a guy without arms or legs sitting in a wheelchair is waiting in front of her door. When she asks him, what are you doing here? He answers, well I’m here for your ad in the paper. She asks, so how did you imagine this would go? He replied, well how do you imagine I rang the doorbell?<\/em><\/p>\nI guess I may also write a book. I could include the usual iron biters’ credos such as “where there is a will there is a way”, or, “ah, you are disabled? then you can go participate in the paralympics” (bwahahaha). Maybe it will be good to do answer general questions (such as “how could you (…) do this incredible (…) …?” with general answers such as “I always was taught by my grandmother how to kill roaches” or “I believe in God and that gives me power”.<\/p>\n
But what really was the best moment of disability humor, that was right after the amputation, a good friend asked me whether I’d now have to also wear black leather coats, suits, white ties, wear brown leather gloves, become a “real evil” guy, and always have a purring white fluffy cat on my lap (‘animals don’t betray you’) while plotting how to kill humanity. Just like in James Bond. I think that was a day when we laughed all afternoon.<\/p>\n
Let us explore in what context disability humor is placed and how it can come across.<\/p>\n