Huffington Post – by Melissa Jeltsen
A bar in Plano, Texas, is under fire after an employee scribbled a domestic violence “joke” onto a chalkboard at the establishment.
The joke read: “I like my beer like I like my violence. Domestic.”
Courtney Williams, who was at the bar, Scruffy Duffies, on Saturday night, posted a photo of the offending sign on the Facebook page of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The image quickly spread across the Internet.
Before posting a photo of the sign, Williams complained to multiple managers about it, only to be told she was overly emotional and should “calm down.”
“When I told him it was in extremely poor taste and that I’d appreciate it being taken down, he told me to calm down, and that if I hadn’t been so ‘aggressive’ the conversation would go better,” she wrote.
The sign was eventually removed after Williams left the bar. When she later returned, Williams was refused entry. She chronicled the ordeal online later that night.
“The sign immediately struck me in the worst way,” she wrote on her Facebook. “Not only did it dreg up some unpleasant memories in my life, but it struck a chord that this bar was condoning domestic violence as a joke and expressing that victims were no more important than the type of beer someone was drinking.”
The bar, Scruffy Duffies, released a statement on Facebook in response to the incident, calling the sign offensive and pledging to investigate.
Scruffy DuffiesBar · 2,855 Likes
It has come to our attention that one of our female employees wrote something offensive without owner’s approval. Domestic violence is something our family unfortunately has overcome in the past, therefore this subject is one we don’t take lightly. We are currently investigating the situation and proper actions will be taken immediately. We thank you for your patience and again want to ensure this is not our stance.
In a phone call with The Huffington Post, Williams said she was disappointed the bar singled out a female employee in its statement.
“At this point, what I’d really like to see is just a heartfelt apology,” she said. “I felt like I was begging, pleading with them to take the sign down.”
“They need to know that words matter,” she added.
Each day, on average, three women in the U.S. are murdered by intimate partners — husbands and ex-husbands, boyfriends and estranged lovers. Despite the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, the U.S. still has the highest rate of domestic violence homicide of any industrialized country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/bar-domestic-violence-joke_n_5397927.html
Ban the complainer from ever entering the bar again, and leave the sign where it is. People have become so super-sensitive about everything that’s said these days that humor is almost illegal.
Don’t like domestic violence jokes? Or racial jokes, fat jokes, political jokes, religious jokes? Tough tush-burgers.
You don’t have to laugh at them, and you don’t have to repeat them, but you CANNOT run around telling other people what they can or cannot say. That’s how we’re losing our first article rights. (and that’s why this dumb joke is in the news — to assist in the process of removing those rights)
And please put these types of statements in their proper statistical context:
“Each day, on average, three women in the U.S. are murdered by intimate partners..”
That’s three women out of the 6700 people who die everyday. I’d say the battered women are doing pretty well for people stupid enough to marry lunatics. The vast majority of men have no desire whatsoever to hurt women. If YOU choose to sleep with dogs, you’ll wake up with fleas.
So tired of hearing about the thought police shitting on everyone while at the same hypocritical time, they’ll find no problem in thrashing the white male into the ground with their jokes, often delivered by a gay, black comedian. A damn joke is a joke, I think it’s hilarious, because there is zero truth in it. I think the bar owner is trying to be funny and that’s that. Fvckem!
It’s like the old one liner about women:
Man at the bar A) “You know why women are evil?”
Man at the bar B) “uhhhhh, because, well, you tell me.”
Man at the bar A) “Anything that bleeds for a week and lives, must be evil.”
Pretty funny stuff, but it sure ain’t the truth.
Sure, I will put in my two cents. 🙂 I support free speech and freedom of association. I also support choosing your audience wisely. Some jokes maybe should not be told in mixed company, out of respect for those who cannot handle it (I’m also a bit old fashioned).
I’m a woman, and I’ve been in a violent domestic situation where I was the one being attacked. I resist the two terms allowed for that: “victim” and “survivor.” It was a situation, I got myself out of it, and I’m better off now.
I speak about it (briefly) when an opportunity arises (like this) which is not that often, just to say: it is a serious thing, and it is harmful when people treat each other violently, and very often (but not always) there is some personality disorder/sociopathy involved. Each situation is different. Therefore I don’t think you really can get at the truth of “domestic violence” in such general terms as this person is a monster, this person “asked for it,” this person is an idiot, etc. Also and maybe especially so, treating people as victims and survivors, in my opinion, is coddling and may help temporarily during the crisis, but it is better for that person to get back on their feet and out of the situation. It’s not fun, but the experience of going through something like this can make you stronger and more compassionate if you want to view it that way, or you can just keep repeating the same patterns or not heal from it (none of this is easy and I don’t mean to imply that it is). You can make the lemonade from the lemons. Whatever. We all have bad stuff happen to us.
OK, now I’m getting to my point about jokes that are “in bad taste” or whatever. I love jokes of all types, including these. Humor is very healing and dark humor can be especially healing. Some of them don’t hit me as all that funny, but we have gone too far for far too long in squelching expression, and freedom of thought and freedom of speech are essential to a free society. That includes jokes. Just walk away if it offends you.
I loved the way we used to be able to tell jokes that we can apparently no longer tell because so many people are so easily offended these days. But also, I loved the way that some of this stuff was not so much “in your face” in the old days. Now it is plastered all over the TV, the chalkboards, you cannot easily get away from it. Used to be, the joke tellers would gather in one room and tell the jokes, and the others who had more delicate dispositions, might be in the other room, doing something different like washing dishes. 😉
In response to the other comments. I agree with what was said by all three. I am also tired of people not being able to take a JOKE. It was just that A JOKE. Very few people in this world that we live in today can deal with other peoples humor or opinions. I was raised to NOT tell these type of JOKES in public. Therefore if you don’t like it leave. Their loss of income will tell them that they have gone too far.