It’s because you think women are idiots and bad at money management

This Instagram post from Career Contessa that was meant to be a joke post, was really not that funny to me.

I actually saw no humour in it when I read it:

Maybe I’m really out of touch but I’d like to think I’m pretty open-minded about most things, and have a good sense of humour.

In case you aren’t aware of this site, they posted funny quotes before, and are supposed to help women build careers, etc. It’s aimed towards women, not men, so their messages are all female-centric.

That’s why I took a bit of an offense to them posting this.

From a sarcasm angle, I don’t even see the sarcasm in it. What’s so sarcastic about saying: “stop paying your taxes” as a funny play on it being a self-care thing?

Women are meant to help other women on this site but all I got was bitchy remarks

The comments (bile really) I got back to my reply which I have since deleted to remove stupid needless negativity from my life, ranged from:

“You’re a humourless bitch”

“Lighten up it’s just a joke, JESUS”

“I can’t believe you think this is real, learn to recognize sarcasm”

For a bunch of women following an account purported to support other women to empower them to make more money and crush it in life, it is sort of an eye-opener that we as women don’t really believe that.

They were rude and frankly, a clear representation of why other women seem to hate other women, well newsflash…. it is because some of us do hate other women.

It actually isn’t a big deal, but what is a big deal is I don’t see the humour in this “joke” even knowing it is supposed to be a joke, but that gives them the right to shame me for not finding it funny.

Do I need to always agree that something is funny when I don’t or else risk getting shamed for it?

If someone makes a joke about women being inferior to men, am I also supposed to laugh because it’s just a joke, and I as a humourless bitch should lighten up?

Just because I don’t find it funny doesn’t give anyone the right to attack me. Your sense of humour differs from mine.

I don’t find bodily function or crude jokes funny either, so I don’t laugh at them. Is that a direct reflection upon me and therefore a flaw in my character?

No, I simply just don’t find it funny because it isn’t to me.

I don’t see why I should get shamed for it, or made to feel terrible for standing up for women’s rights when the guys I hang with, make sexist jokes and I tell them I don’t find it funny to talk about women that way, and how would they like it if their daughter was the focus?

Back to this post.

It bothered me the whole day.

Not necessarily the comments (they hurt, but then I realized that they cannot help themselves, they are who they are so I let it go), but the question about WHY this bothered me so DAMN MUCH.

Then it dawned on me.

I don’t equate ‘self-care’ with being a deadbeat, irresponsible dolt

I am probably going too deep into this, but I guess that’s where the joke fell flat for me.

Irresponsibility and shirking of your promises and cheating other people out of what they are due does not equate to any form of self-care to me.

Self-care jokes are things that are actual self-care items, not paying taxes or not contacting your landlord, or not doing math any more, are just irresponsible actions not self-care ones.

You know how the saying goes that every joke has a half truth?

Well, most of the joke ‘self-care’ items for women, seem to relate to money or math so this is what the trigger is to make it funny.

I felt as a personal finance money geek, that this kind of hit a little deeper only because it has a half truth that women are seen as financial idiots.

YES. Women are seen as financial idiots.

We as a society find it funny and find humour in the stereotype that men are supposedly terrible at household tasks and childcare; but women are financial dolts who cannot be trusted with money because they’ll take the taxes that aren’t paying, or the rent they’re skipping out on, and go shopping for new shoes with it.

Or going into debt for whatever stupid trinket comes their way.

How about the one about stiffing your landlord on their due rent?

Wait. Why are women even renting anyway? Maybe they’re young, hot singletons, but even single women can buy homes and be homeowners.

Why is it even remotely funny to be cheating someone out of their income? They worked hard, saved their money, invested it in a home, and it’s a “self-care” joke to not pay them what you owe them?

Uninstall your banking app?

Is that a self-care act? Why is it even remotely funny?

Is it because women generally don’t have any money in the bank, or are deep into overdraft or credit card debt, that it could have a grain of funny truth in it to ignore your money problems because you’re a ditz?

Oh, and women are bad at math so we should forget it.

I love this one /sarcasm

That’s another one that I find not to be funny at all as a joke.

Also a half-truth society-wise, but a 100% lie in my books.

It’s something people just want to believe – that women are bad at math – when they are not. And even women believe it, so it’s supposed to be funny to forget math to be a jokeyself-care act.

If Little Bun had been a girl, I would have been equally as strong pushing her into seeing how fun math and science is, and how easy it is (and cool!)

How is not paying your taxes as a self-care act?

How is that even self-care?

Not paying taxes so you can… have more money?

Why? Because you don’t make enough money and/or have money and don’t want to pay the taxes that you owe?

The more taxes I pay, the prouder I am because it means I am making BANK.

That doesn’t even make any sense to me because employees have taxes deducted from their payslips, so they tend to receive tax refunds, not requests.

Only freelancers like myself have to set aside money to account for taxes.

Or that you don’t pay your taxes (somehow) so that you have that cash to go shopping instead?

Or maybe that women don’t know how to pay taxes, or do taxes, or are financially irresponsible idiots, so this is a half truth because *brainless giggle* we’re just a bunch of shopaholics.

(Okay, I may be a little bit of a shopaholic but really, I am also very financially responsible I assure you.)

These jokes aren’t jokes any more if they’re things we actually believe

So in a way, what this sarcastic “joke” from Career Contessa is “true” because we as a society believe it to be true, so therefore it qualifies as something to make fun of.

This site preaches to women about empowering them, building up their careers, making money, bla bla bla…. but with this one post, they turned me off completely because they don’t actually believe the drivel they are posting.

But what we don’t realize is that what you keep repeating, even if it is a joke, starts to hurt and become true over time.

Then imagine telling your kid:

Lighten up, JESUS! I only called you a good for nothing imbecile as a joke!!!

If you keep telling your child that they’re insignificant and will never rise to be anything, they will go one of two ways – be determined to prove you wrong, or believe you.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword because if you keep telling your child they’re the best, they’ll either believe you and turn into brats, or not believe you and think you’re just saying that because you’re their parent.

So if we keep pushing these stereotypes under the guise of ‘jokes’ and refuse to change the way we are ‘joking’, our attitudes and beliefs won’t really change.

This applies to all tasteless jokes actually, including sexist ones, racist ones, and anything that used to be a publicly accepted joke but now is not.

Examples?

“I have a dishwasher at home, it’s called my wife.” <— heard this gem the other day and gave them a look that could have burned through stone.

“Oh you must be on your period / have PMS” <— heard this one too

..and any time you have ever heard people “joke” about Chinese food buffets containing cats and dogs, or anything along those lines.

Unacceptable, right?

So don’t laugh at it.

Teach them a lesson by NOT joking about things that aren’t funny, like this stuff I mentioned above, but also jokes that come out about how your spouse is a house elf or a moron.

And don’t shame people into awkwardly laughing at a joke that isn’t that funny to them either.

Or shame other women and tell them they’re “humourless bitches”

I am not veering into the realm of calling the song “Baby it’s cold outside” as a song about rape (you have to take into account the context in which the song was written, and it was a song about feminism back then but in today’s times is completely unacceptable as lyrics), but these societal ‘jokes’ about women being bad with money management or at math, are timeless.

There is no context to take into account.

It just is a half truth we believe and keep hammering home under the guise of jokes.

They transcend any kind of context to take into consideration because they aren’t funny to me, because I actually believe there is no truth to them.

What say you?