Sorry about the delay (got distracted).
If ABC have a history of policing previous jokes and weaponising offence on behalf of other groups - then this joke would be hugely hypocritical for them to make. You can't run a system that promotes non-offence to X group on pain of repercussions but is allowed to bash Y group with zero consequence. That doesn't sit right.
Personally, I'd go back to the law and use that as a benchmarker. If what you're saying isn't hate-speech or incitement to riot then people shouldn't be attempting to create consequences via social pressure. A huge amount of what I write on Medium is massively offensive to some people - but it's not hateful and it's not incitement. I've never been flagged and I've never been banned (yet).
I see your argument about hurt feelings - and perhaps that was the wrong wording. I am not offended by the joke because I am not the target of the joke. In this instance the target of the joke was a particular gay man and then gay men more generally. However, the other comment on this thread hasn't taken offence in the same way you have. Why? I don't know - you're gay men and you have different feelings about it. Your feelings of distress can be acknowledged, you can be offended - but the world doesn't have to change as a result. I make that argument all the time.
Your feelings are valid, but they perhaps indicate a direction of change that is unhelpful. I don't want to invalidate the feelings of BIPOC writers ike Jeannette Espinoza for example; but I find her brand of rhetoric to be counter-intuitive and counter productive to the direction of travel she wants. I can be sympathetic to you because this joke by this woman in this context has clearly caused you psychological distress - but I think the correct response may be to question why. Individual responses and individual growth is better than knee-jerk group pressure. This isn't a simple 'fragility' argument, I don't think that terminology is useful I find such arguments disingenious, it's more of an observation to consider.
If people make me angry (and they do) I try and work out why and where it stems from. Not so I can be less angry and dismiss it, but so I can work out who/what I'm really angry then what I can do with it. I think society needs to consider long and hard what they want the consequences of particular modes of speech to be - and more importantly how they want those consequences to manifest.
