Don't laugh, you little Nazi

An Oregon State University study claims juvenile humor is fascist

Juvenile humor is fascist, according to researchers at Oregon State University.

The researchers sent out a survey directed at transgender and gender-nonconforming undergrads (TGNC) studying engineering and computer science in the United States, asking questions about gender and engineering education.

They offered $5 Amazon.com gift cards as compensation for completing the survey.

They got 723 responses: 374 invalid/incomplete responses, 299 responses from TGNC undergrads in engineering education and 50 “malicious” responses. They wrote:

Malicious responders accounted for about 15% of the questionnaire’s responses.

Here’s the first problem: 50 out of 723 is 6.92%. If you ignore invalid responses, 50 out of 349 is 14.33%. Not 15%.

Here’s the second problem: the “malicious” responses were those where students treated the survey like a joke. Some wrote things like, “I identify as a gift card.”

Some percent of undergrads answering literally any kind of survey might treat it as a joke. And although gender issues are serious, discussing gender can make young adults uncomfortable and irreverent humor is a maladaptive defense mechanism that some people use to resolve uncomfortable feelings.

This is not as mature as offering a nuanced and well-reflected answer when asked about one’s gender, but young adults cracking jokes when you try to ask serious questions is fairly normal. And 14% sounds about right.

Another student identified their race as “Afro/Klingon-Asiatic Galapogayation.” One said their race is “Native American (Elizabeth Warren).”

Under the category “Disability,” several people listed being trans. One wrote, “My country is run by communists.”

Under the category “Gender,” one wrote “pansexual attack helicopter.” Another wrote, “Quasi-Demi-poney; bankai-released state queercopter with a hint of faggotdrag lesbian and homosexual upside-down Frappuccino cake.”

Of the 50 “malicious” respondents, 12 of them (24%) identified their gender as being an attack helicopter or aircraft of some sort, hence the title of the paper “Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy.”

Here’s the third problem: the fact that 24% of respondents would reference the attack helicopter meme, derived from the 2020 sci-fi short story by Isabel Fall titled "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter," as well as similar repetition of responses under the “Race” and “Disability” categories, suggests sampling bias issues.

But the researchers did not use traditional scientific methodology. Instead, they explain, they applied “trans/queer methodologies.”

The researchers noted, “We did not intend to separate any complete responses into a ‘malicious’ category until faced with the problems of harm to the research team and potential skewing of outcomes.”

In other words, they got back some irreverent responses, personally took offense and instead of completing the study as planned, they did one attacking the irreverent students.

It was disturbingly clear to our research team that the malicious responses could not be dismissed and indicated that discussions of gender and sexuality in STEM education are flashpoints for fascist ideologues living “inside the house” of engineering and computer science.

They also explain that respect for the queer community is crucial among STEM students who “frequently work in fields such as fossil fuels, defense, construction, and technology upon graduation, and could be taught about these field’s relationships with national and global racial capitalism and ongoing apartheid in Palestine.”

Note they did not say apartheid involving Palestine—in other words between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank—suggesting Israel does not exist as such. If a student had written “Israeli” as their race, would that be a fascist response?

Here’s the fourth problem: They fail to mention whether the irreverent responses came from trans or gender nonconforming students themselves, though apparently all respondents fall into those categories.

More importantly, their conclusion assumes that one can correlate irreverent, offensive humor with fascism. The funny thing about that is, calling offensive humor “fascist” is arguably, in its own way, a fascistic thing to do.

Humor is a weapon against fascism and fascism polices humor along its own determined lines of acceptable conduct. Whatever is decided to be “acceptable” is not the point. It can be Catholicism, heteronormativity, whiteness or even even transness. Fascism is not the content of the system but the manner in which the system is maintained. Is it by community input, free and democratic dialogue? Or by castigating the non-compliant as deviant, sinful, evil?

Of course, humor is not always an antidote to fascism, and in fact making fun of fascism itself can trip into the territory of making light of fascism.

But if these researchers were not so self-important, then instead of pivoting to pearl-clutching and name-calling they might have pivoted to science by trying to figure out what was happening here. Why do some students resort to sophomoric humor? Is malicious sophomoric humor maladaptive? Did they joke more about their own gender or their own race? Why attack helicopters specifically?

One would think a group of queer theorists would have some understanding of the value of the burlesque, and could expertly unpack where Rabelaisian irreverence ends and true malice begins. But instead, they ended up attacking the very kids they reached out in an effort to understand.

As I see it, these students are having emotions about these questions and reaching for humor to regulate those feelings. That’s good. They’re reaching for offensive humor, and that’s not ideal, but it doesn’t make them Nazis.

The paper did convince me of one thing, though. There is a problem with fascistic thinking in our universities. But it’s not coming from the STEM students.