If you’re cracking a political joke, make sure women and LGBTQ people aren’t the punchline

When the punchline of your joke is portraying a politician dressed in women's clothing or kissing a same-sex partner, you're telling on yourself. Same applies to anyone laughing or sharing that joke too, for that matter.

So, why, in 2018, is the internet chortling away at images of a balloon depicting Mayor of London Sadiq Khan wearing a yellow bikini?

This weekend, the 29ft-long balloon will be flown over London's Parliament Square as a response to the Donald Trump baby blimp erected to protest his UK visit. Khan is wearing a yellow bikini, which is a statement about his response to a series of controversial "beach body ready" ads on the London Underground which were eventually banned.

"Free speech" activists behind the Khan balloon say the event "marks the fight back for free speech in our country." Yanny Bruere, the organiser of the stunt, is reportedly a "far right" supporter but claims to have no political leanings.

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Funnily enough, they didn't have much of a fight on their hands when it came too exercising their right to free speech. Khan — who allowed the Trump blimp to fly over London in the name of free speech — happily granted permission for the balloon to fly. "If people want to spend their Saturday looking at me in a yellow bikini they're welcome to do so — I don't really think yellow's my colour though," Khan told ITV London.

3,400 contributed to a crowdfunder for the event, which its organisers say aims to make sure Khan loses his job as mayor at the next election in 2020. What's not clear is how Khan dressing in a bikini makes him any less fit for office.

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As journalist Flora Gill pointed out, there's a crucial difference between the Trump balloon and the Khan counterpart. The former portrayed Trump as a crying baby "because no one wants to be compared to a crying, whining infant." But, "it shouldn't be ridiculing to dress Sadiq Khan in women's clothes," wrote Gill on Twitter. "Women are awesome — dressing as one isn't embarrassing!"

So, what precisely is the message behind showing Khan — a cisgender, heterosexual male politician — dressed in women's swimwear? That the worst insult you can hurl at a male politician is that he's a woman? This isn't free speech, this is rank misogyny dressed up as a political statement.

Perhaps the real question we should ask the organisers is not what they think of Khan, but what do you think about women?

It would be something of an understatement to say we're living through politically divisive times where many turn to humour and satire as a means to cope and escape.

But one thing that seems to be cropping up more and more is caricatures of male politicians dressed up as women or kissing other male politicians. We've seen dresses painted onto Donald Trump following his directive to White House staff that female employees should "dress like a woman." We've seen a pregnant Trump being cuddled by Putin projected onto buildings. And most recently, we've seen the New York Times publish a cartoon animation of Trump and Putin's relationship presented as romantic, rather than political.

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As HuffPost's James Michael Nichols stated at the time that this type of supposed humour had been circulated since the months preceding the 2016 presidential election. "LGBTQ people have been confronted with a curiously offensive idea that we’ve been told to accept as humour: that the strange relationship between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin could in some way be romantic or sexual," writes Nichols.

The New York Times animation prompted widespread criticism, with many pointing out that these attempts to mock and deride Trump are actually just plain homophobic.

Protest art and political humour has become a fixture of this political era. But, through these caricatures, people are not only expressing their political views, they're revealing other beliefs they hold -- whether unconscious or ignorant. Namely, how they view LGBTQ people and women.

In the cold light of day, these so-called jokes about Trump being gay, or Khan being a woman, are nothing more than a thinly veiled statement that seems to say: anything that's not a white heterosexual male is therefore weak and/or ridiculous.

Note to everyone: if you're cracking a political joke, make sure women and LGBTQ people aren't the punchline. It doesn't look good.

UPDATE: Sept. 2, 2018, 11:08 a.m. BST This post has been updated with additional background information.