Background: I \[30M, hearing\] have been dating my boyfriend, Nate, \[34M\] for the past 4 months. Nate is profoundly Deaf (his wording). I am learning ASL, but we mostly communicate via text or writing.
This past weekend we traveled to Nate’s hometown and I met his friends for the first time. His friends are mostly Deaf or Hard of Hearing. I had heard about them a lot from Nate and I was super excited. At the get together there were 5 of us (Nate, his best friend Dean, Dean’s girlfriend Sara, Jules, and myself – all Deaf except myself). So in order for us to get to know each other better, I bought a game I found online called We’re Not Really Strangers. Essentially everyone takes turns drawing cards where there is a question like "What’s your favorite movie and why?" and everyone goes around an answers it.
Well, we were having a great time and then Nate gets a card that says "What do you think would be the song on my \[Nate’s\] myspace profile?". Everyone laughs but I answer the question with "Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. Nate laughs harder than I’ve ever seen but Dean, Sara and Jules looked uncomfortable. The game ended and Dean took me aside and said my joke was "at best inappropriate" but he found it offensive and insensitive. He said that Deafness isn’t a joke and that as a hearing person it’s cruel to make fun of it. He also asked why I would make such a cruel joke in front of 4 Deaf people. I immediately apologized and asked Nate if he thought it was inappropriate. Nate said he could see people being offended by it, but he thought it was funny and wasn’t offended in the least. I apologized to him as well, just in case.
Yesterday, I sent an apology to everyone individually via text and I heard nothing until this morning from Sara who asked me to not contact her again.
Here is the text I sent to Sara:
"\[Sara\], I wanted to apologize for my joke yesterday. Upon retrospection, I think my joke may have come off as mean or even offensive which was not my intent. I really enjoyed meeting you and I hope that you can forgive me."
I feel absolutely awful. Nate and I make dark jokes all the time and I really felt I was just being funny. I spoke to my hearing friends and they said that they could see people being offended but they felt it was a joke between two people who know each other.
TL;DR AITA for making a Deaf joke about my boyfriend with his Deaf friends?
NTA. Sounds like your boyfriend is cool. Harmless jokes are harmless. Some people get offended. If they do, then you rightly apologize, say you meant no harm, and adjust your communication strategy with them.
Sounds like you handled it just fine.
TBH, you aren’t an AH. Humor between friends can get dark and twisted, and if Nate was fine, isn’t that what matters? But yeah, reading the room is a thing. You needed to be aware that not everyone finds the same things funny. So, not an outright AH, just gotta remember that sensitivity can vary. Tones & intentions hard to convey in text though. Light ESH maybe? You for the oopsie, them for overreacting. Not a biggie, we live, we learn.
YTA Nate may not have been offended but he doesn’t speak to every deaf or hard of hearing person. You may want to get to know people before breaking out the disability jokes. Nate was fine with it but his friends were offended.
NAH. I think this is an important lesson that there is always going to be variation within communities in what jokes are acceptable and unacceptable. Especially from strangers with unknown intentions. When hanging around new people I always avoid ‘edgy’/‘dark’ jokes for exactly this reason until I can gauge what kind of humour people have and what things are off limits.
You handled the situation well, took accountability and gave a genuine apology. I don’t think anyone is the AH- it’s fine for your bf’s friends dislike to jokes from hearing people about deafness, and it’s fine for you and your boyfriend to make jokes between yourselves- but definitely avoid that kind of thing when hanging out with his friends in future.
I don’t think anyone did anything wrong initially but I’d call the one friend who responded to her friend’s boyfriend’s apology with “don’t contact me again” is going into asshole territory.
Hi, deaf person here! The joke was funny as fuck, and theyre being really weirdly sensitive. Don’t beat yourself up over it, you did everything correctly and they are choosing to stay offended. It sort of sounds like they just don’t like you and are just using the joke as an excuse.
Reminder to add your judgement if you think OP is N T A!! I think your opinion is extra important here, your vote should count
There’s no such thing as being “weirdly sensitive” when it comes to dark humor. Anyone can be made uncomfortable with those so when telling them you should be ready for any reaction.
Whoa! Wait. This counts as dark humor now?
I may be out of touch, but when I was a kid, dark humor was dead baby jokes.
People really need to learn that if the disabled person is laughing and finding a joke funny (and/or joking about it themselves) that it’s okay to laugh too.
I’m half deaf in both ears and use hearing aids on a daily basis. If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry. It’s hard being even partially non-hearing in a hearing world. Just like it’s hard being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. We have to find the good in the bad, and sometimes that’s dark humor.
Edit: and they all may have also been deaf but I mean, why were they so sensitive? They should in all theory understand the joke. It was funny.
I think this is tricky and you’re going to get a lot of mixed responses. Might be unpopular but I think YTA. A joke isn’t funny unless your audience laughs along with it. And your audience wasn’t just Nate. When there are other people there, the joke is no longer between the two of you. While your intent is not bad, it can be construed that way.
I have a group of friends of various ethnicities and cultures. We have made racial jokes to each other because of our shared history and friendship. We don’t make these jokes when we’re spending time with people outside of our friend group who had no context for our humor or the history of our friendship.
NAH. You’ve been dating a Deaf dude for 4 months so you felt comfortable making a Deaf joke to him- which is fine, he laughed, but there were several other Deaf people there who didn’t know you, weren’t comfortable with you, and were uncomfortable with the joke.
You text/wrote to your boyfriend instead of signing since you’re still learning ASL. You’re already entering someone else’s space, you’re not able to use ASL to communicate with them, and you’re fine making a joke like that in front of strangers (the joke isn’t offensive to me personally, I just think it’s kind of dumb and obvious)…a little caution is fine when you’re with strangers.
From Sara’s perspective, she’s Deaf, and the first time you met her you made a joke about deafness. Why would she want to speak to you again? Terrible first impression.
I actually think you are right. At first I thought Sara was overreacting, but I think it’s more that she never met me before and the first time she did I made a joke that was dark. In my defense, although I never met Dean or Jules before, I know Nate has talked about me with them so they may have known I like to joke around. I still feel awful that I made others feel bad, especially when I just wanted to make people, specifically Nate who my joke was directed at, laugh.
This is a great response. Although the joke wasn’t directed at Sara, it did target an identity she holds. Best reserve dark humour until you know people better & they’re ok with it.