sexist jokes and Orkut invites

ok, you guys have now knocked .danah off my top-nine friends view on my dashboard (why can't we order and sort other wys?), so now it's nine guys. i may have to drop one of you guys, no hard feelings, just to improve the scenery on my orkut home page.

This was an email sent to all of one guy's friends on Orkut. I am one of this guy's friends because i know this person professionally. When i received this note, i simultaneously recognized the intended joke and felt the shudder of being so blatantly seen as an object. But, i've been thinking about jokes lately.... My advisor is fascinated by sexist jokes; he even did an ethnography on it, resulting in a paper entitled "The Fraternal Bond as a Joking Relationship: A Case Study of the Role of Sexist Jokes in Male Group Bonding."

I could be thankful for being the target of this joke, because at least i was included amongst the guys in receiving the note; perhaps i should see it as an attempt for group bonding. This is obviously the polite thing to feel - brush it away and don't take it personally. But, does that encourage this type of joking? Is that a type of joking i want to regularly receive from my professional peers?

The joke hurt because it made me feel like an object, like the baseball card that Orkut encourages you to collect. If a person has more friends than all but 8 other people on someone's list, they end up on their front page. Apparently, to this guy, the aesthetic of my fuzzy hat and False Profit T-shirt is more important for his front page than his actual friends. He barely knows me; he wants me there so that i can improve the scenery of his home page. That makes me feel genuinely gross and sad.

I've turned off comments because misbehaving readers have asked us to write more notes expressing our personal experiences. This is a posting offering my emotional turmoil, not a piece of text intended to be critiqued.