A recent viral post of Jonah the Transgender Cards Against Humanity Player burning a card that read “passable transvestites” has been the subject of recent controversy. After posting the image of the burning card to his Tumblr, the creator of the cards, Max Temkin, a 30-something white male, publicly apologized and regretted ever having written the card. All good, right? Everybody be respecting the rights of the transgender community, word up.
But wait. Apparently Jonah started getting flak for not respecting the other offensive cards. So he issued an apology for singling out a lone card that was offensive to his subjectivity without taking into account the racist and other variously offensive cards in the deck.
Props to Jonah for understanding the subjective relativism that currently dominates our culture. But come on. The game is a party game meant to offend. It’s called Cards Against Humanity, not Cards For Humanity. Subjects like this, as well as Frances Bean being offended by Lana Del Rey, as well as trigger warnings designed to apologize for offensive material in the literary canon, have gone too far. What happens when an entire culture starts apologizing too much?
It’s just like that person on the subway who apologizes to everyone he casually touches. Is brushing against my arm really worth an apology? No. It only makes that person look weak. Anyone who is confident and able does not apologize for accidentally offending people, unless they’re politicians.
I’m all for understanding the plight of others, walking a mile in your friend’s shoes, etc., but it seems America in 2014 is taking this a bit far. This apologetic paradigm may stem from the imperialism of the Bush years. As liberal Americans, we were forced to apologize to the world for meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. Now with Iraq splintering into factions, we feel compelled to apologize yet again for having encouraged the first steps of creating a plurality of extremist Muslim nation-states. As many pundits on the right have noticed, this makes the U.S. looks weak and sets the stage for stronger countries—who don’t apologize for anything—to assert themselves (ahem, Russia).
I’m not going to apologize, that’s for sure. I’m going to say what I believe and encourage people who are subjected to suffering to embrace that and turn it into something positive by saying what they believe too. Should Jonah have apologized according to me? No. But it makes him look pretty open-minded for doing so. In my opinion, Mr. Temkin is the one who’s to blame for not standing by his satirical game in the first place.
I hope more people take my perspective so we don’t turn into a culture of apologizing weaklings, afraid to stand up for what we believe in. My hope is that by not being so sensitive, we allow for judgment, discussion, and deeper understanding through laughing and poking fun.
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