Comic Franchesca Ramsey (aka Chescaleigh) is best known for her video “Sh*t White Girls Say…to Black Girls” (SWGSTBG). But this video is serious-serious rather than funny-serious; it’s about how to respond when someone is offended by your offensiveness. I like that she calls herself out for making a video (now removed from her YouTube channel) that made fun of transgender people; in it, she dressed up like a drag queen to see whether people thought she was male or female. Her intention wasn’t to be mean; she thought it was funny. But when it was explained to her that for actual transgender people, this guessing game isn’t amusing — it’s an often-cruel fact of life — she listened. Not at first; she was defensive, as most of us are when we’re accused of being insensitive. It took a bit. But better you should take a while to process than to knee-jerk apologize while secretly seething and thinking the other person is TOTALLY humorless/over-sensitive/”so P.C.” So let it marinate!  Ponder the possibility that you’re getting your back up because maybe you’re a teensy bit in the wrong!

Anyway, here are Chescaleigh’s thoughts — obviously in line with SorryWatch’s — on why your crap-apology-bingo responses will not fly:

It’s always instructive to hear a comic talk about how he or she realized a joke that seemed funny is actually cruel. (Kate Harding gets the last word on how rape jokes CAN be funny, when they address power dynamics — we went into this in more detail in an earlier post, and please, if you click on that link, know how sorry I am for the horribly dated Grumpy Cat reference.) Jason Alexander’s excellent apology for making a gay joke on the Craig Ferguson show was one of the impetuses (impeti? impetigo?) for us doing this blog. We like pointing out good apologies as well as abysmal ones. Get on that, Canada.