Carnival has existed for centuries as a space where people could shed their inhibitions, forget social conventions, laugh, stop trying to look serious and respectable all the time, and instead be irreverent and disrespectful for a change.
We don’t have carnavalesque spaces any more. Whenever anybody tries to make a joke, an army of sour puss prudes emerges to lecture on some entirely idiotic distinction between “punching up and punching down.” And then some idiot begins to share tales of horrible trauma caused by the joke, and all fun dies under the angry glares of the self-righteous.
The congenitally humorless publish endless exhortations denouncing people for not taking every one of their neuroses into account when trying to express themselves.
In the absence of regular, socially acceptable ways to vent, playful, irreverent impulses curdle, rot, and begin to emit noxious fumes. When they finally escape – and the repressed always returns, no matter how much you try to stuff it under a mountain of prohibitions – they look like Trump’s mocking of the disabled and inspire a burning desire to rebel by inflicting a Cruz or a Trump on the world.
There is a crowd of people bearing responsibility for the bastardization of the political space that we are witnessing, and the prudes who trawl social networks and blogs looking for a sentence, a word or a pronoun to feel mortally offended by are among them.
Clarissa's Blog 
You just need to be less figurative with your mortal offenses, and the problem will solve itself soon enough.
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Don’t worry, all they need is playing a long session of Cards Against Humanity and everything will be alright!
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Off-topic, Clarissa, but what happened to the snow on your website? Surely, WordPress doesn’t think winter is over yet?
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Yes, they turn it off very early. It’s like a sign that they want you to ditch your Christmas tree and move on. Creeps.
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Okay, I get it — the snow was a “holiday” decoration.
Since you and N starved all week to celebrate your own holiday this weekend, are you going to post a photograph of your great 2nd New Year’s feast?
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Oh yes!! Carnival! I agree so much. This is why I feel like I can’t write exactly what I think so often on my blog. I have been attacked a few times just for being honestly confused about the correct political response that’s necessary to embrace if you’re a liberal or a feminist.
I have played lots of rounds of Cards against Humanity. It’s a good carnivalesque activity. But it’s certainly not politically correct by any means.
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What’s this Cards against Humanity that people keep mentioning? And why do I have no clue about it?
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It’s a party game for adult young’uns.
Cards Against Humanity
From your posts, I don’t see a lot of students or administrators at your university enjoying this game if they have problems with swearing or adultery in stories.
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Didn’t Carnaval originate in an era of more rigidly enforced social rules and restrictions, not less? At the end of the day/Carnaval, a peasant was still going to be a peasant for the rest of his/her life, and the king was still going to be the king. The jester, of course, was an exception, but only in the role of the jester.
Fragile and fluid identities cannot take the least bit of fun, reversal or challenge.
How can you have an opposite day for the “rules” if we’re all claiming there are no “rules”?
I will agree there’s no designated place and time to laugh and be merry in public. It would do wonders for people’s rage and blood pressure. I don’t like that I have to worry about some bored and malicious 3rd party taking instant offense and advantage of innocuous things. Apparently the zeitgeist is to freak out spectacularly over something small and then that makes the news somehow.
Here’s a very safe video clip that will offend absolutely no one:
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Great point on fluid identities! It’s easier to let go for a while if you know for certain that the identity is not going away. But when it can easily erode at any time, one will be grasping so much harder to keep it in place.
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