1.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. You go over to him and say: “I’m fantastic in bed.” This is Direct Marketing.
2.You’re at a party with a group of friends and you see an attractive man. One of your friends goes over to him and says: “That girl over there is fantastic in bed.” This is Publicity.
3.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. You ask for his phone number. The next day you call him and say: “I’m fantastic in bed.” This is Telemarketing.
4.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man you already know. You go over to him and say: “Do you remember how good I am in bed?” This is Customer Relationship Management.
5.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. You get up, smooth your dress, go over and serve him a drink. You straighten his tie seductively and say: “I’m fantastic in bed.” This is Public Relations.
6.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. He comes over to you and says: “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.” This is Branding, the reputation of the name.
7. On your way to a party, you realize many attractive men live nearby. You start blasting your horn, roll down your car window, and drive slowly, yelling for all the world to hear, “I–AM–FANTASTIC–IN–BED!” This is spam.
I love double-barreled jokes–jokes that make you laugh, and then laugh again. This is a multi-barreled joke, with many successive re-authors including me.
Is this joke sexist? If you said yes, would it still be sexist if I switch the genders, so that a man keeps telling women he meets that he’s very good in bed? There are people who would see either version as offensively sexist, and if one of those people would tell me how to write jokes about sex that aren’t sexist, I’d sure like to know!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Elaine of Kalilily // Mar 25, 2003 at 9:43 am
Now, I’m usually first in line to point and shout “sexist! sexist!” But I didn’t respond that way to these jokes. First of all, their intent is not to demean women in any way; their intent is to give a clever perspective on those marketing terms. Second, there is nothing demeaning about women being sexual or even blatantly sexual on their own terms, so using that as an example works. It would work as well if the genders were reversed. It does make me wonder, though, where the line is that I find it obnoxious to cross.
2 Betsy Devine // Mar 25, 2003 at 12:14 pm
I agree, there is some hard-to-define line beyond which a joke offends me. For example, I’ve read versions of this riddle with several different groups inserted as “XXX”:
“What do you call a swimming pool with 5 dead XXX on the bottom? A good start.”
To me, that’s an ugly joke no matter what you put in for XXX.