Once again, Netflix is under fire for yet another transphobic "comedy" special from a tired and out-of-touch comedian.
No, Dave Chappelle doesn't have a new special. This time, it was Ricky Gervais who decided to get in on the fun of punching down and trading his usual technique of telling (mostly unfunny) jokes to just going on angry rants about trans women and cancel culture.
How has comedy come to this? You used to have to watch Fox News to see old men yelling about the LGBTQ+ community like this.
"I love the new women. The new ones we've been seeing lately," Gervais says in his new special on Netflix, SuperNature. "The ones with beards and cocks. They're as good as gold, I love 'em. No, it's the old-fashioned ones, they go, 'Oh, they want to use our toilets.' 'Why shouldn't they use your toilets?' 'For ladies!' 'They are ladies -- look at their pronouns! What about this person isn't a lady?' 'Well, his penis.' 'Her penis, you fucking bigot!' 'What if he rapes me?' 'What if *she* rapes you, you fucking TERF whore?'"
Damn, and we thought Dave Chapelle hated trans women! It appears Gervais wanted to show him what real hate and ignorance look like.
See how Gervais has painted trans women as not just rapists, but as crazed extremists who don't care about women being raped, but only care about being gendered correctly? See how he ignored that trans people are actually the victims of sexually assault at staggering high levels, with studies showing that one in two transgender people will be sexually abused or assaulted in their lives? I guess that's what passes for comedy now.
Maybe it's funny because it's so untrue?
"You don't know who the dominant mob will be," he continued. "You know, like, the worst thing you can say today -- that get you canceled on Twitter, death threats -- the worst thing you can say today is, 'Women don't have penises,' right? Now, no one saw that coming. There are no 10-year-old tweets saying 'Women don't have penises.' You know why? We didn't think we fucking had to!"
There obviously have been tweets about trans women and trans women's bodies for as long as Twitter has been around. There were even articles about this exact issue and this exact language a decade ago. None of this is new.
Gervais couldn't stop, though. "In real life, of course I support trans rights," he said, while apparently speaking from a fantasy world. "I support all human rights, and trans rights are human rights. You know, live your best life. Use your preferred pronouns. Be the gender that you feel you are. But meet me halfway ladies. Lose the cock. That's all I'm saying."
Surely Gervais is smart enough to know that words affect real life, that media affects real life, that what he says affects real life. Otherwise, why would he constantly feel the need to say everything that pops into his head?
Netflix is really becoming known as the go-to place for transphobic former-comedians to go when they want to take a break from telling jokes and instead go on hateful rants.
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