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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Earlier merge/redirect 2 Listing Jokes 3 General Content 4 Examples 5 your mom in hebrew 6 Rock band 7 Minor Issue 8 This page should be merged 9 edit protect? 10 Examples 2 11 Requested move 11.1 Survey 11.1.1 Survey - in support of the move 11.1.2 Survey - in opposition to the move 11.2 Discussion 12 Rewrite 13 Shakespeare 14 On the Subject of Shoes 14.1 U.S.-centric? 14.2 2006 World Cup 14.3 So's? 14.4 this is stupid 14.5 Sexist 14.5.1 Proposed Resolution 14.6 "crude" phrase, etc.

Earlier merge/redirect

This page should be merged with The dozens because it is redundant; the page Your mom redirects to The dozens. SCHZMO ✍ 23:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Just do it already, this page shouldn't even exist! pm_shef 03:54, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• Seperate linguistic concept While dozens uses "your mom" they are not the same thing. Dozens is an insult contest, while "your mom" is a specific type of insult, as well as a sarcastic retort. Dgies 22:29, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The comments to merge above are about a far inferior prior version of the article.--Kchase T 04:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I still think it should be merged, actually. --Galaxiaad 14:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

• Colloquial insults similar to Your mom are also found in the British (Your mum) and Irish (Yer ma) English, and they are in no way related to the Dozens. How about, rather than redirecting, adding the European equivalents to separate the context from The Dozens? Lauranen 13:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• Merging the two makes no sense. "Your mom" has become much more than a simplistic element of a Dozens contest - that much is clear. 76.185.19.196 02:14, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• Merging them would be dumb and redundant. Don't do it, the two are completely seperate. DurotarLord 14:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Listing Jokes

Please don't list "Your mom..." jokes here. It's unencyclopedic and duplicates the existing list at The Dozens. Dgies 05:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah someone might want to get out into the sunlight sometime and notice how 'your mom' jokes in the movies and on tv aren't the same in delivery or content as the ones used in real life. --68.20.3.186

What about a link to Yo Mamma on MTV?--Xlegiofalco 18:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Aside from similarity in name, it has much more to do with The Dozens than it does with insulting mothers. Dgies 04:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Some poor soul who lives under a rock may need to know what the "Yo momma" title of the show refers to. I added a See Also section and put a link to Yo Momma and The dozens. Angrycrustacean 05:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I know where you live poser —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.161.48.246 (talk)

I know where your mom lives. 137.22.25.157 05:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

LOL —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.26.101.71 (talk) 14:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC).

General Content

Should there be a "the use of an absurd attempt at an insult" in the retort section? That doesnt seem very neutral. --Kittens! 22:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe add something to the effect not to use "Your mom" if the person's mother has passed away as this can ruin the nature of the "joke" quite substantially.

Examples

There has been some sort of wiki war regarding the examples. The current one is "Person 1: I'm going to the shop Person 2: Oh Yeah? Your Mom is going to the shop!"

There are basicly three usagesv(they overlap) I have seen so far (and many people, esp here in Montreal, have actually never heard of these, so there might be a point adding this to the wiki):

- one where person one says that p1 or p2 does or is something, and the 'retort' is that 'your mom' is or does the same thing

- one where p1 says something and p2 does not know what to retort, or does not actually intend to retort something that makes any sense. i.e. "Person 1: Your dumb! Person 2: Well.. Your Mom!"

- the third usage is usually in a somewhat ambiguous statement involving sexual allusions. i.e. "Person 1: What are you doing? Person 2: Your Mom!"

I agree that this might be silly and insulting, but its nevertheless part of north american youth culture; and since not everybody knows about it, maybe some examples would help... Anton

Agreed. I wouldn't be opposed to putting those three examples in, complete with more encyclopedic versions of the explanations you posted. I don't like the "going to the shop" example because it doesn't really make any sense as an insult, despite the article claiming "Your mom" is an insult. At the very least I think the one present example should be changed, possibly to "What are you doing?" as per your comment. Angrycrustacean 06:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'm partly responsible for nuking the extra examples. It's because this can turn into a big pile of tasteless jokes really fast. I do agree that there are three common forms of retort. I suppose it would make sense to explain those three forms and give a single (non-gratuitous) example of each. I intentionally used a tame example because I didn't want to encourage "your mom"-joking vandals. Dgies 15:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Bit the bullet and added in refined versions of the examples Anton suggested, as well as removed the Napoleon Dynamite reference which I don't think had a place in the article now that we have more generic examples. Hopefully an expanded list won't encourage people to add more, but I feel the article is much more thorough now. Angrycrustacean 00:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

your mom in hebrew

האמא שלך

Oh my god the Hebrew Wikipedia makes my head hurt! If you have a page for האמא שלך there, or want to make one feel free and I will gladly include a link to it. Dgies 02:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

That's cool. Your mom in Chinese: 你的媽媽. 75.178.178.11 03:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC) xIxFellxInxLovexAtxThexSeasidex

Your mom in Polish: twoja stara. It translates almost directly and is insultive in the same way. Doesn't look as impressive as Hebrew one, though. ;-) 193.59.72.35 16:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC) Kosma

Rock band

There is/was a rok band called Your Mom; they appeared on the Road Rash: Jailbreak soundtrack. I'm not sure if that's notable, and the band didn't have muh success, but it is a good example of how famous the joke is in its own right. --Switch 09:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you please provide a reference for this? -- Dgies 15:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Other than owning the game myself, and having the soundtrack listed in-game and in the manual (on pg 23), I don't know of a site that lists all the soundtrack contributors. I only know that they contributed a song called "Cosa Nostra" to the game. The song details: Written by Josh Turner, Conor O'Neill; published by One ill (ASCAP), Blanket Party (ASCAP); recording courtesy of Do Ray Me. Their website, according to the game, used to be located at [1], but that domain name has been reassigned since then. Can't do better than that though, sorry. -Switch ^t 16:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the same band, but it doesn't matter for the purpose you're suggesting. I added it to the article.--Kchase T 19:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Minor Issue

Hey, I know it's nothing major, but a couple of times the article refers to it as being part of "North American culture", but I think it's much more of a global thing. It's just as common here in Britain, or in I think any european country212.32.11.115 15:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree that previous versions of the article were a bit provincial but the current one makes that mention only once while discussing American pop-culture references. —Dgies^t c 16:32, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Very right. In Germany, "Deine Mutter" (Your Mom) is a very common response to anything.

This page should be merged

A page called The Dozens is basically the same thing as Your Mom. I think that this should be merged with that page because there really is no difference. Also, for The Dozens, stop calling it strictly an African-American tradition, because MANY non-African-Americans like to do this. --JustN5:12 02:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• They were merged, but the dozens had very little info on the non-dueling uses of the term, and was getting a bunch of people asking "what the hell is this" expecting nonsense retorts instead of African American heritage. I'm not convinced its possible to write a single cohesive article which both covers African American insult dueling, and the more general use of people's mothers for insults or comebacks. —Dgies^t c 02:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • That brings up another point: The Dozens and variants of it are not just strictly an African American tradition.JustN5:12 00:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
    • The origins, heritage, and continuing use of insult duels are a complex enough issue I won't try to argue except to say the proper venue for it would be at Talk:The dozens. —Dgies^t c 02:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

edit protect?

Something tells me that would be a good idea.

I've asked twice since the last unprotection. Feel free to try again at WP:RPP. They might appreciate the irony of a protection request coming from an anonymous user. —Dgies^t c 21:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Examples 2

There should probably be a section with a few examples of use, such as on the That's What She Said article. I might add one later. Randomfrenchie 20:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

There used to be a section, but I removed it. The whole thing lacked references and was a huge magnet for people adding dumb jokes. Please don't add any more examples unless you have references for them from reliable sources. —dgies^t_c 20:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

How could you possibly cite sources for examples? It will not get vandalized much because it has been semi-protected. If it is vandalized, we will change it back. I do not think there should be 20 examples, but maybe 4 or 5. It would be good ones that the Wikipedia community agrees on. It wouldn't hurt. Randomfrenchie 01:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Difficulty in getting references is no excuse for adding material without it. Regarding semi protection: That is not permanent. Yet even when semi protected, well-meaning editors, whether unaware of the attribution policy, or just feeing silly, will add their own favorite your-mom comebacks. Look what happens to The dozens.

In an ideal world, we would have a small list of retorts, with citations for each one. In the real world, we need some mechanism to prevent the article from becoming a big list of things made up in school one day.

It might seem that I'm being a big spoilsport, but I managed to take what was a bunch of bad jokes replaced with a redirect, and turn it into a moderately complete, serious, well-referenced article so I'd rather not see it backslide. —dgies^t_c 02:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 11:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

This article needs a rewrite. It's telling a story and this is not a book. It should about this subject only. Jet123 ^{~~My talk page~~} 23:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "telling a story". What change did you have in mind? —dgies^t_c 05:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Shakespeare

The shakespeare quote seems slightly suspicious. Beotch! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.241.142.68 (talk) 01:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

On the Subject of Shoes

Am I in the minority, or has no one else ever heard "Your mom wears Army shoes"? I've always heard it as "boots"...User:Snyrt

U.S.-centric?

Speaking as a Brit, this article does not describe language I encounter in my home country. So perhaps emphasis should be put on which parts of the English-speaking world this applies. Same goes for dozens; at first I thought that referred to roulette as I'd never heard of it before. EdX20 23:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

2006 World Cup

Tried to add the following under Popular Culture but my edit didn't save. I am neither unregistered nor newly-registered so don't know why not. Maybe someone could add it.

"A recent high-profile incident related to mother insults was in the final minutes of the 2006 World Cup foootball (British English)/soccer (American English) final when Zinedine Zidane of the France team was sent off after violently responding with a head-butt after hearing an insult from Italy player Marco Materazzi. Lip-readers were employed by media outlets to determine what was said by Materazzi. [[2]]" EdX20 23:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

So's?

in my neck of the woods (devon, UK) the insult is so's your mum, eg:

"thats weird." "so's your mum!"

anybody else?

YOUR MOMS. ALL OF YOURS!!!!!!! hahahahahaha <------ hey! whoever rote that, shut up.

this is stupid

why is everyone talking about your mom? that is so stupid and immature man just shut up thats dix man dix

Sexist

It is inherently sexist to crudely degrade women and to call it humor. This is true in every culture on the planet. Basic humanity calls for respect of other people. All major religions, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc (even New Age) call for mutual respect. For this article to have minimal balance (a WK requirement), the fact of sexism must be provided. Rlsheehan, June 14, 2007 (moved from archive page)

Wikipedia:Civility is a mandatory policy and must be followed. More important is that BALANCE be maintained: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view This also is mandatory policy. This article currently reads as if is is just fine to degrade women: a balance point of referencing sexism is needed. Please read the links, any basic book on ethics and religious values, and WP:NPOV. Rlsheehan June 14, 2007

Oh, come on. Its just a Junior High joke. Calm down. --Mackilicious 02:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL applies to editors, not articles. WP:NPOV says we must represent all views. What sources do you have to indicate anyone besides you believes that your mom jokes are insulting to women?--Chaser - T 03:51, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You ask for sources: Let's start with Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 from the Bible. In the ten commandments, God tells people to honor thier mothers and fathers. Likewise, the Qur'an says: "....and your parents shall be honoured. As long as one or both of them live, you shall never (even) say to them, "Uff" (the slightest gesture of annoyance), nor shall you shout at them; you shall treat them amicably." (17:23). Filial piety is a cornerstone Confucianism. Yes, honor for mothers is close to a universal human value. Now the burden shifts. You must provide equally authoritative references which claim women should be degraded and mothers should be trashed. WP:NPOV says we must represent all views: Banance is required. Rlsheehan, June 15, 2007

So no sources indicating the jokes are sexist?--Chaser - T 14:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I again call for your sources. What authority says we should degrade women and mothers? Rlsheehan

Yes filial piety is well-supported by references, but you want to make the claim the jokes are inherently sexist, while I'd argue they are an insult-by-proxy and are not really targeting the mother. So you need to provide a source which claims insults like these are sexist. There's no need to accuse Chaser of wanting to degrade women just because they disagree with you. —dgies^t_c 16:00, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

• Okay, one, all "Yo Mamma" jokes are sexist, otherwise they'd be "Yo Pappa" jokes or "Yo Parents" jokes. But they're not. This article is perfectly neutral and accurately depicts the jokes as they are done in popular culture. Two, the Bible is not a real good source because not everyone believes it to be accurate and/or true. Three, Wikipedia is not censored as one can easily tell from articles such as list of sex positions. And fourth, why should we be required to fix a problem that only one individual sees as a problem. Based on consensus alone, the article seems to be fine. Useight 22:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

No they are not. They are insults by proxy, they refer to whomever it is believed the target has the closest emotional ties to. So is it sexist to expect American adolescent males to have closer emotional ties to their mothers than to their fathers? Carewolf 14:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Yo momma's an insult by proxy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.240.236.8 (talk) 20:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

is it just me, or has someone added a veritable landslide of "ya mum" jokes? If it happens further it should be stopped. One or two examples are good, but it's starting to get out of hand. --LastmanSAC 05:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Your mom jokes are not sexist. The reason its 'your mom' and not 'your dad' is that a lot of guys in the ghetto don't have a dad or know who their dad is. But everyone has a mom and knows who their mom is. You could say it makes it more hurtful (because it attacks someone who is near and dear) or less hurtful (because saying 'your dad' would remind the person that they do not have a dad.

In any case who cares if a fringe minority of radical feminist thinks its sexist. Such opinions have no place in a wikipedia article. Stick to the facts not your personal interpretations.

--Jon in California 10 September 2007

Proposed Resolution

Yes, sexism is somewhat subjective (although many of these jokes seem egregious to me). The article currently has a sexist bias which requires some balance. I propose a new section titled "Criticism" or "Potentially Offensive" which would be something like this. Rlsheehan, June 16, 2007

Some of this humor has the potential to offend some people

• Some consider sexually degrading humor to be sexist
• Some believe that mothers should be honored. This might be based on the ten commandments of the Bible, similar sections of the Qur'an, or broader aspects of filial piety.

• I don't see the sexist bias you're talking about, you'd need a citation that the jokes are sexually degrading, and the statement "Some consider sexually degrading humor to be sexist" is sort of a useless tautology. —dgies^t_c 17:04, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

"crude" phrase, etc.

Regarding this edit, referring to it as a "crude phrase" violates WP:NPOV, which requires we be neutral in our coverage. Saying that the jokes degrade women is an opinion, and at least requires a source to indicate "some critics say..." or somesuch.--Chaser - T 01:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

No, this is not an opinion: this is a universal human value Please read the discussion I initiated on the now archived talk page. WK requires minimal BALANCE. It is OK for people to have an article about sexist jokes, but reference must be made to sexism for balance to exist. Rlsheehan June 14, 2007

You didn't start a discussion. You made a comment in an archive. Anyway, Material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, so if there isn't one for these assertions, I will remove them.--Chaser - T 02:09, 15 June 2007 (UTC)