Iker Casillas: “I’m gay” Does he deserve the media and social lynching for his joke?

ALBERTO OF THE WEAVER FIELD Professor of Social Anthropology at Pablo de Olavide University

Monday, October 10, 2022, 12:40

Casillas’s joke, posting on his Twitter on Sunday “I hope they respect me: I’m gay”, is costing him. Thousands of Internet users have considered it frivolous and offensive. The whole world has jumped on him: the LGTBI + associations have shouted to the skies and most of the press censors his behavior, calling him, to say the least, clumsy. Josh Cavallo, the Australian footballer who recently had the courage to come out of the closet, has been outraged. The Higher Sports Council itself has rushed to publish a tweet in which it denounces how much remains to be done to raise awareness in this field. Carles Puyol, who had played along with the joke —”it’s time to tell our story”— has been forced to apologize, just like Iker himself. His justification, that his account had been hacked, has not convinced almost anyone.

In part, you have to congratulate yourself. The social response, belligerent with this type of joke, shows that civil society and its various institutions take responsibility for the discrimination that homosexuals still suffer. And that the majority criticizes that soccer is one of the last bastions of the overwhelming heteronormativity. However, the dust raised by the two controversial tweets is part of a debate that arises recurrently and on which the human being has not yet agreed: that of the limit of humor.

Aristotle already wrote that “the public does not want the unfortunates to be mocked.” In ancient Rome, Cicero was also aware that acceptable mockery had its limits, but he used his caustic verb to shoot left and right. Today it would be unimaginable for any congressman to make a joke about Echenique’s disability -the ‘Unidas Podemos’ deputy-, but, in his public debates in the Senate or in any litigation, Cicero used the mockery of physical defects, something that he liked very much, as long as it was done with ingenuity. Some will say that we have evolved. But, in fact, people do make jokes about Echenique online. What’s more: the politician himself has starred in some jokes in which he laughs at the fate of him in a wheelchair.

For some, only members of a minority would have the right to play jokes on themselves. It is self-harming comedy. In the United States, comedians like Sarah Silverman have sparked controversy. If there had been more blacks in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust would not have happened, she assured in a show. And she immediately blew up the audience: “Or at least not the Jews.” Although there are those who censor it, another part of the spectators tolerates this type of humor: Silverman is Jewish.

It is difficult to agree. Everyone understands that, if you are part of the group that is the object of the joke and you have suffered, do not feel like laughing and it bothers you. But, on the other hand, humor also makes it possible to play down any issue and even talk about it freely. The networks were flooded with memes and jokes about covid, despite the millions of victims around the world. 9/11 or any other tragedy encourages black humor. For some, everything in life has its funny side. One of the keys, for the joke to be admissible, is the need for a certain time to pass so that we can get some distance. “Humor equals tragedy plus time,” said Mark Twain. It seems that only recently have we agreed that the suffering of homosexuals is unbearable according to our norms of coexistence. Hence, certain jokes raise blisters.

In any case, humor should never be taken out of context. Iker’s occurrence was a nod to the continuous annoyances of the pink press that each week awarded him a new romance. Puyol and Casillas have given sufficient signs of tolerance and example. A gay friend, to whom I consulted his opinion, wrote to me telling me that we are losing our sense of humor, that there is an excess of tension and that humor is not at its best. I wrote to him asking when we were going to tell our story. “We’re going to wait for it to clear up,” he answered me gracefully, accepting the joke.