#up for ricky gervais“ and then we had the proper argument with me crying and him doubling down on getting to send me transphobic articles

[aoifereal]

Still feeling kind of incredulous about what sparked my argument with my older brother this morning. Like he's always been a bit of a debate bro but until the past couple of years he's had broadly liberal tendencies. Today though, he said:

- he thinks Ricky Gervais has done great jokes recently and that you should be allowed to joke about whatever you want. He dismissed my sibling saying you should try to avoid punching down with "if it's funny it's funny". I bit my tongue for this stuff beyond agreeing with my sibling it's a normal privileged dude opinion, and difficult to argue against because it's very easy to shift around language to avoid seeming to cross any lines while making the implications clear.

- then he said that he doesn't think there should be any different treatment of people of colour (in the context of he thinks you should be able to make racist jokes) and that historical racism "shouldn't have any impact on how we treat people today". When I pointed out that in order to get to the point where people are equal more work needs to be done he doubled down. This is where the conversation heated up because I said it was the most stupid thing I'd ever heard him say. Unfortunately he would proceed to impress me further.

- Then onto feminism, he said that he thinks there are less women CEOs because women just "want to be in the boardroom less than men do". I questioned him on it and he said because of the long hours. Then I tried explaining to him how misogyny functions in the workplace to make those environments hostile to women. During this he said that women don't get promotions because they ask for them less than men. And Why Do You Think That Might Be , Connor. As soon as it was clear he wasn't able to say anything more he said the final most stupid thing.

- Feminism "wasn't an issue before the industrial revolution". I asked what he thought the whole deal was with us having kings and male inherited wealth for several hundred years was. He said it couldn't be an issue because "our longest reigning monarch was a queen". Literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Why Do You Think She Got To Be Queen, Connor. Do you think maybe, there was some sort of unlikely circumstance leading to that. He couldn't answer that so just went back to saying that feminism wasn't an issue. At this point I think I literally just sputtered and started saying the world primogeniture over and over again like a madwoman. Then someone else loudly changed topic.