The Wounded Humor of a Child-Hating Culture

Saw this meme today—“In 1920, we took children out of the coal mines. In 2020, the most popular video game is Minecraft. The children yearn for the mines.”

A couple years ago I would’ve laughed at this joke. But now it just lands differently. When I remember the part of me laughing at such jokes, I remember the repressed, sadistic part of me. And it doesn’t make me laugh anymore—because I’ve alchemized that sadism. Transformed it. Now it just feels… hollow. And on top of that, it feels morally corrupt not to say something when jokes like this are shared and circulated online.

It reminds me of something JD Vance once said. He was sharing this moment on a New York subway—his child started crying, and the people around gave these angry looks. Not at him, but at his child. And he spoke about yearning for a society where there’s a village-like energy in raising children, where that kind of thing is met with warmth, not contempt. He wondered out loud: what would it take to turn society around so that the default response to a crying child isn’t hatred, but care? It also makes me wonder if the children that do cry in such spaces are feeling into the undercurrents of casual child hatred – looking at children as burdens, while uplifting cats. If you haven’t watched his interview, you should – because it really unpacks the “childless cat ladies” comments he had made, which he acknowledges as a dumb way of saying what he wanted to say.

That moment floored me. It was one of those moments where I just felt how insightful of a human being this man is. And how impeccable his integrity is in not denying that he made the crass comments but that it was a moment of dumbness and that he held Grace for himself in that. In spite of repeated attempts by the interviewer to shame him for what he said in the past, he held Grace. He’s had a truly remarkable journey. And what a beautiful counterbalance he brings to President Trump’s brutish manner of speaking.

That casual child-hatred energy? It also shows up in the militant edge of some abortion activism. Not all of it—many people involved in abortion activism still hold grief and complexity. But there is definitely a faction where the heartbreak of ending a human life is entirely cut out of the conversation. Sanitized. Branded. Celebrated, even. Its quite jarring.

Through my own sexual trauma healing journey, I’ve noticed how much my humor profile has changed. The things that used to make me laugh don’t anymore. Especially as I feel deeper into my desire for fatherhood, into tenderness, into what children actually go through, into the full embodied gravity of what I went through.

I still honor the the First Amendment rights of the person who created that joke and those who laugh at it. But I also have mine. I don’t need to pretend your joke is harmless when I believe it is not. I don’t need to silence my judgment just to placate your punchline.

Where Judgment Becomes Taboo

I call myself a MAGA progressive now. In this world, judgments are permitted. In the Performative Progressive world I came from, judgment gets pathologized. People are so afraid of feeling shame that they preemptively shame anyone who expresses judgment.

And that shows up in principles like “Don’t yuck someone else’s yum"—a common rule of engagement in queer culture. A loaded rule often rattled off at the start of sensual gatherings—leaving little room for discussion and trapping people into agreement from the vulnerable place of wanting connection. If it sounds less like consent and more like indoctrination, you are not alone. I remember feeling off about that even when I was deep in that world. Like… what if someone’s yum is rooted in abusing children? In sexually abusing children? What if your yum should be yucked? Why does your pleasure get a moral shield?

Pleasure and desire absolutely contribute to the compass of your path. But they are not sacred in and of themselves. They can mislead. Plenty of men addicted to porn feel pleasure from watching rape porn. Is that really guiding them in the right direction? I don’t think so. I think that pleasure is only useful to the extent that it points them back to their own wounding—so that, eventually, they can reorient. Sometimes you have to go deep down the wrong path before you can even see the right one.

The Danger of Numbing What Repels Us

But the deeper truth for me is: if your yum is really true, really rooted—you don’t need everyone else to withhold their yucks to validate it. Stand in it. Let others react. That’s life.

I now categorically reject the principle “Don’t yuck someone else’s yum.” And I invite you to do the same. Because it dampens the disgust response of the body—a response that is critical to developing discernment, and staying embodied and awake.

I’m curious–

Have you ever had a moment where a joke you used to laugh at suddenly felt hollow? What changed?

Have you gone through a similar humor shift after healing trauma or connecting to your embodied desire for parenthood?

If you’ve rejected the “Don’t yuck someone’s yum” rule too, I’d love to hear what helped you break free of it.

How do you relate to the idea of disgust as a guidepost in moral discernment?