Just kidding

Many abusers use ‘humour’ to manipulate and control their victims. Often, these jokes start out so innocuously that victims don’t even notice them, at first, or even laugh along with their abuser at their own expense.

My abuser regularly made fun of my appearance, what I ate, what I wore and how I parented my children.

I think of myself as someone who doesn’t take myself too seriously and can give as good as I get, so it took me a while before I stopped laughing along with him and started calling it out for what it really was: bullying and, ultimately, verbal abuse.

Disguising abuse as a “joke” is a way many abusers exercise control over their victims. When your abuser mocks you in front of friends or family, for example, and everyone laughs, they’re trying to make clear to you just how in control of the narrative they are. If even those closest to you are laughing along with your abuser, however can you expect to be believed when you finally stand up for yourself and tell people who they really are?

Jokes which are made to victims in private are often far more sinister in their character than those which the abuser uses in front of groups of people out in public.

Jokes can be a form of gaslighting when used to make a victim doubt their own memory or experience of events: “You must have been on the loopy juice again to remember things that way,” or “no one can take a nutter like you seriously.”

Sometimes, abusers make veiled threats disguised as jokes, grinning at you when they say things like “you deserve a slap for that kind of behaviour” or “you really need putting back in your place.”

My abuser once joked that he had fantasised about pushing me down the stairs late in my pregnancy so that it caused a late-term miscarriage. He followed up by saying “just kidding” with his usual smirk. He wasn’t kidding, at all.

Most of us instinctively know when something is genuinely funny and can take it with good humour. But let’s stop laughing at the digs and threats that clearly aren’t jokes.

Remember, the power rests with us: when the audience doesn’t laugh, but instead reacts with disapproval or disgust, it’s no longer a joke.