some people really need to examine why they only value people who can contribute to society & not people who are just good to other people. why do you hate me because i don't have a job when i've been nothing but nice to you? does me being unemployed have an impact on you or are you just bitter and projecting
Honestly, I believe "punching up", especially against men, is rooted in the patriarchy.
I saw a post about how easy it is to root out "fake allies" by "punching up". If they get mad or upset then, by the posts logic, they are fake allies because "they should know it isn't about them". Reading that post made me start to realize how that thought process is actually enforcing the patriarchy on men. Specifically the part of patriarchy/toxic masculinity around emotional suppression.
So, to start, let me establish my first argument. Punching up is rooted in bigotry just like punching down. When the tire meets the pavement it doesn't matter if you're part of group X or group Y, the oppressed group or the oppressor group, judging someone based on their attributes and not their character is wrong. I like to say it this way, "Punching up is still punching somebody.". If you get punched by one person, then you are entitled to defend yourself, but that defense does not extend past that person. It does not entitle you to punch another person just because they look similar to someone who punched you.
Argument two, the concept of fake allies. "Fake allies" is a term that bothers me to no end in this context. The definition of an ally is as follows- a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose. I pulled that off a simple google search. It's all about cooperation, two or more sides working together. If one side is hurling insults, being bigoted, or, in our case, "punching up", then they aren't working together with their ally very well.
All of that to say this, expecting men, or anyone, to just suppress their discomfort around bigoted statements, else they be "outed" as a fake ally, is forcing them to conceal their emotions in order to be accepted. The exact same thing that the patriarchy does with toxic masculinity. If you only support men who hide their dissatisfaction, discomfort, or negative feelings, then you are enforcing the rigidity of toxic masculinity and the patriarchy onto them.
TL:DR- Punching up used to expose "fake allies" is akin to saying, "If you aren't ok with my bigotry then you don't support me.". Which enforces toxic masculinity when targeted against men and highlights that support is expected to flow only one way.
Apple Music has deleted Holly Valance’s satirical song, thereby proving why it was so necessary.
By: Andrew Doyle
Published: Jan 30, 2026
Holly Valance is an unlikely satirist. Yet the pop singer’s latest track, ‘Kiss Kiss (XX) My Arse’, takes aim directly at the pretence that human beings can change sex, and that a man need only declare himself a woman for it to be true. Upon its release the song immediately reached the top of the iTunes bestsellers chart, only to be swiftly deleted by Apple Music. Valance had committed the cardinal sin of ridiculing the establishment.
The song is based on Valance’s 2002 number one hit ‘Kiss Kiss’, now reworked with new lyrics for Pauline Hanson’s animated satire A Super Progressive Movie. This is the song’s opening verse:
‘They say that I’m a he but I’m a she,
Cos I gotta V and not a D,
And I don’t care what people say,
I’ll never be a him or them or they.’
Unsubtle? Perhaps. But let’s not forget that its target is the least subtle ideology that has ever been birthed. This is satirical mimesis; the essence of parody. For Apple Music to delete the track surely proves Hannah Arendt’s point that the ‘greatest enemy of authority’ is ‘contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter’.
It is an indictment of the state of the comedy industry that pop singers are left to do the work of comedians. Television panel shows are now bland affairs thanks to the sheer lack of courage on display. The woke movement represents one of the most authoritarian, intolerant and illiberal developments in the recent western world. It demands conformity, peddles fantasy at the expense of truth, and punishes freethinkers. And yet most of today’s comedians are eager to prop it up rather than see it tumble.
They are called ‘regime comedians’ for good reason. They have willingly turned themselves into cheerleaders for the powerful, bolstering those who have bullishly set the agenda, or – as the satirist Chris Morris once put it – ‘doing some kind of exotic display for the court’. It is a great shame that so many of Morris’s former collaborators now fall squarely into this category.
To put this cowardice into perspective, consider the example of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Just one year before he was gunned down by Islamic terrorists, the cartoonist and editor-in-chief Stéphane Charbonnier (known as ‘Charb’), was profiled in Le Monde. Was he not worried, the interviewer asked, about possible reprisals for drawing cartoons of Mohammed? For his answer, he paraphrased the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata: ‘I would rather die standing than live on my knees’.
If a man like Charb refused to back down from criticising an oppressive ideology – in spite of the death threats he received on a daily basis – why is it that so many of our comedians are too afraid to tackle the woke? These activists may talk tough online, but in real life they are about as intimidating as a sea sponge. While the impulse to preserve a mainstream career is understandable, it does suggest a lack of genuine vocation if that means ignoring the target that is most in need of skewering.
How can comedians resist addressing this topic? Surely every funny bone within their bodies should be trembling at the kind of nonsense that the culture war so reliably throws up. Consider this viral video from September 2023, in which a congregation at a Christian church in Texas are led in a prayer of celebration to the ‘divine diversity’ of drag queens.
Too often, comedians are pretending not to notice what everyone else can so plainly see. Perhaps the concern is that comedy ought not to cause offence, but this is a very specifically twenty-first century understanding of the art form. If you think comedy can’t be cruel, you don’t know anything about it. Aristophanes, the father of comedy, was indiscriminate in his targets. It’s just that he had the good fortune to live under a system that didn’t punish the clowns.
The problem of industry gatekeepers demanding the sanitisation of comedy was perhaps best illustrated recently by the stand-up Rosie Jones, who suggested the following ‘rules’:
‘Before you tell a joke, you need to analyse it, and that comes down to three things.
First, who are you? Do you have lived experience, or experience close to you?
Second, who is your joke about? What is your intention – is it positive or negative? Are you punching up or punching down?
And third, why are you telling the joke? Are you asking a question to open up a conversation and make people think differently, or are you saying it simply to be controversial?’
Of course, Jones is completely entitled to draw her own personal red lines in comedy. All creatives set their own parameters and make choices about which topics to broach and why. For most comedians, it’s simply a matter of whether or not they have the ability to make their material funny. The notion of ‘punching up’ and ‘punching down’ is redundant, as comedy punches in all directions. As for ‘lived experience’, audiences would soon grow weary if stand-ups only ever joked about themselves.
In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Jaques defends the right of comedians and satirists to mock any target. He insists that he ‘must have liberty / Withal, as large a charter as the wind / To blow on whom I please’. He begs the duke: ‘Give me leave / To speak my mind, and I will through and through / Cleanse the foul body of th’infected world, / If they will patiently receive my medicine.’ But this being Shakespeare, it’s never so simple. The duke quickly points out that those who dress in motley and judge the world are often prone to vice and folly. In other words, who will satirise the satirist?
It’s a reminder that no-one ought to be shielded from mockery. Not even the emperor, standing naked in his ‘new clothes’, can fail to be deflated by the shrill laughter of the child who refuses to play along. Activists tend to attack comedians because they know that their power depends upon intimidation, and it is very difficult to be afraid of someone if you find them funny. It was a neat trick for the establishment to reposition itself as the underdog, because it meant that it could retain its power behind a mask of oppression.
But even if we were to accept that mocking the powerful is a form of ‘punching down’, the pugilistic metaphor collapses upon examination. ‘Punching up’ is inherently a subjective notion. For instance, is it ‘punching up’ or ‘punching down’ to ridicule millions of working-class voters for being stupid and racist, a standard punchline of many a middle-class comedian in the wake of the Brexit referendum? Regime comedians often complain about those who ‘punch down’ in their jokes about transgenderism. But surely ridiculing a movement whose end result is the erosion of women’s rights and the medicalisation of homosexuality is the very definition of ‘punching up’?
Which brings us back to Holly Valance. Her new song satirises one of the most powerful and destructive ideologies of our times, one that not only threatens the rights of women and gay people, but also rejects the entire principle of objective truth. And yet Apple Music has deemed this to be too offensive to retain on its platform. It is the modern-day equivalent of the Bishops’ Ban of 1599, which saw satirical works publicly burned. Once again, the establishment is being protected in the name of virtue.
It is often said that to recognise who holds the power in society, you need only look to those you’re not allowed to mock. Today’s culture war has left many comedians confused about who is most deserving of their attention. Little wonder that even pop singers like Holly Valance are stepping into the breach.
==
For what it's worth, the song is back on the platform.
You don't get to pretend you're "marginalized" when a company worth $4 trillion is running interference for you and acting as your flying monkeys and enforcers. That makes you the establishment.
Let's not forget that this is the same class of people who will dead-ass tell you that cancel culture is a myth.
Currently listening to a very good video essay about the plague of whitegirl pickme billionaires with fabricated victim complexes that we as a society are currently inundated with, and the leading example of this is Ms "White Women's Emotional Support Billionaire" Swift herself. I'm only part way through, but its very good so far.
