Their reasoning, almost universally, is this: "If you said it about a girl, you'd never get away with it!" That's probably true. It's also not a valid way to determine if a joke is sexist. The people who are upset over this joke are using the same logic as those who decry so-called "reverse racism." ( Not a thing .) To those people crying sexism, here's a handy way to tell whether a joke is racist or sexist: Does it get laughs at the expense of a marginalized group? If so, it is probably inappropriate. Here is a bad way to decide if something is racist or sexist: Flip it around and switch the genders or races, find a "double standard," and label the joke unfair. We're allowed to crack jokes about the patriarchy because there's such a thing as a patriarchy. It seems ridiculous to have to remind those complaining about the joke about this, but we live in a world where baby girls are sometimes aborted or killed after birth just for being girls , where women in the richest country in the world get paid less for the same job as their male counterparts, and where women make up half the population but only about a fifth of the Congress. Silverman's joke doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in that world. And, no matter if she's your favorite comedian or not , it was smart, subversive and pretty funny.