“They canceled JK Rowling – my God. Effectually she said gender was fact, the trans community got mad as shit, they started calling her a TERF … I’m team TERF,” - Dave Chappelle, The Closer
So he has a history of making transphobic comments, doubled down to the point of openly self-identifying as a TERF, then tried to turn it around and imply that he is the real victim here by saying that the LGBT+ community was punching down toward the Black community by, uh… [checks notes] calling out homophobic comments.
Also, as a side note, in that same special Chappelle said he would no longer make jokes at the LGBT+ community’s expense… then resumed said jokes about a month later.
Yeah, and I totally have Bigfoot in my closet. But you can’t see him, he’s shy. Which is why he hides in my closet. Only I’m allowed to see him. But he’s totally real!
Well that does it. I’m going on Netflix right now and see if his latest show is on there, and I’m going to watch all of it. I’ll just have to convince myself that his words are beyond the pale.
Hey, here’s the thing about that, though: it’s not a “trust me” situation.
You have Google. You have YouTube. You have access to all of the internet (since, you know, you’re here).
You could have typed a few keywords into a search engine and informed yourself, instead of pulling the ridiculous trolling farce act of wringing your hands and helplessly exclaim, oh, well, gee, I just don’t know what really happened!
You CHOSE to be ignorant to pretend there’s room for doubt and waffling.
And when someone does that, it’s more or less assured that when someone does take the bait and do their homework for them, they’ll just turn around and pick at it with further disinegenuity and play stupid all over again, with “Well, he said this, but I don’t think it means…” and so forth. So what would even be the point anyway?
You could have informed yourself easily if you had any intention of being honest and thoughtful in contributing here.
But you didn’t, and your arguments haven’t been honest and thoughtful, they’ve been all about trying to push ridiculous free-speech grounds absolvement of bigots having to face responsibility for their bigotry, while putting a cherry on top of that by trying to use deliberate ignorance on your part to try to make your own bad take into someone else’s fault somehow for THEM not doing YOUR homework for you.
Just un-fucking-believable trollishness, in every way.
Dude, seriously, I don’t know if you’re being intentionally obtuse and contrarian or if you’re just missing the point worse than Shaq at the free throw line, but, well, you’re missing the point worse than Shaq at the free throw line.
The issue isn’t that Chappelle’s comments constitute a clear and present danger liable to result in an imminent lawless act and are therefore outside the purview of First Amendment protections, the issue is that A: this pretty unequivocally paints him as an asshole and B: his comments are harmful because they further normalize and encourage such views and discrimination. THAT is the problem: it makes light of, serves to “other,” and denies the identities of what is in all likelihood the single most vulnerable group in American society.
And, really, going all “butt freeze peach” here isn’t even the right windmill to go after because it’s not even a free speech thing from a legal perspective. All that does is protect you from governmental retaliation based on what you say, not from receiving public blowback for being a douche canoe.
The problem with “google it” is you can still miss context. My searches would lead me to believe it’s a knee jerk reaction and I’m not saying it is a knee jerk reaction but I haven’t seen enough information from you or google to suggest otherwise yet. It does leave watching his show as pretty much the only option to learn about the issue at this point.
I cannot fathom the logic behind “I’d rather have a completely impartial stance on a potentially horrible issue because a person who has an informed stance isn’t feeding me the information, than have an informed stance myself because I read a fucking article”.
And it’s incredibly charming that you’re just assuming out of hand that I, a person with a dog in this fight, am just some wildly irrational actor having a silly knee jerk reaction to a harmless joke rather than recognizing hate speech directed at me. How condescending can you possibly be? You have no dog in this fight and you obviously could give a shit one way or another. You know what, be my guest, don’t bother informing yourself or forming an opinion on this at all. Your support will not be missed.
Go back to horning on Gadget, it’s what you’re good for.
Alright, done. One hour and I’ve seen what all the buzz is all about. And I have to say, it’s as much of a nothingburger as I thought it was. Just your standard Twitterrage that got blown way out of proportion. Glad we can move on now.
Gee, look at that, I called it. More playing stupid and refusal to acknowledge what’s in front of you.
And in the service of, yet again, more trolling.
Please just leave if this is all you’re going to contribute (“contribute”). You’re obviously only doing it to get a response at this point, and clearly it’s hurting one of the people most positioned to be affected. You’re just being being a jerk to be a jerk for some misplaced contrarian “both sides” value you hold, and I don’t know why you think this is the place.
Actually, I don’t need to fool anyone. I took the time to actually watch the show, since I have a Netflix account and time to waste. But you haven’t named a single line from his repertoire that you find offensive. Sounds to me you are only blindly following behind a manufactured controversy by some online SJWs with no real causes to support and hair trigger tempers. And I thought I was the uppity European here…
How DARE a minority group of people assert their ability to decide for themselves what their own self-perception consists of and make their own determinations about whether or not they’re being mischaracterized, slurred, or otherwise spoken of with cruelty by outsiders with greater social power?
It’s all just MADE UP! They should, obviously, instead be letting the majority group tell them what to think and when they’re allowed to be upset. It’s sooooooo simple! Why didn’t anyone realize this before?!?!?
Ya’ll know I don’t like to step in and stop conversation, but this has become really heated and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of progress in convincing one side to see the side of the other.
Before this devolves into name calling, I urge you all to take a breather from this before you upset each other more than you already have.
And in case this is perceived as me taking a side or dismissing anyones concerns, please know that this topic is one that affects me and the person I love more than anyone else in the world personally, so yes I do care, but I also care about all of you and really don’t like seeing things become this hostile.
I hate to see a group of people I care about tear into each other, and it really doesn’t seem like those on opposing ends are going to see eye to eye anytime soon. So again, I urge you all to take a step back from this argument and let it cool off enough for it to become a conversation again.
It is easy for those who are safe within a heard to not recognize the danger to those outside of it.
Mockery of persons in otherwise isolated communities, particularly those whose members are actively being murdered because of who they are, is not harmless. It dehumanizes them, legitimizes disregard for them… makes them appear to be demanding special privileges and therefor deserving of being ‘shut down’. That becomes the cover for those who carry out the violence.
If those who carry out such mockery have the right to do so, those they mock have the right to demand they stop.
To be fair, and this isn’t knocking the memory of Bobby Driscoll, which was one of Disney’s original sins, the filmmakers can be forgiven if they didn’t know who he was or what became of him because if you’re not a geek like we all are, or a critic who had better know their film history, you’d have to dig up that information, even on the internet. That being said, the comparisons between the character and the actor’s fate are eerie at best, and tasteless at worst.
Now I say this, first and foremost, as a gay man, and someone who is as alarmed and defensive of a community that a number of us here belong to: words hurt because they can be weaponized. When we listen to someone like Chappelle or JK Rowling, we don’t hear jokes or wizardry world plot points, we hear grievances and even personal beliefs that are able to connect with an audience. People like Chappelle are talking, his audiences are listening. Sure, plenty of people are JUST laughing, but some of them AGREE with what he is saying. It isn’t merely a joke to them. As for Chappelle, his relevance is past term as far as I’m concerned. He was cool in High School when he was cutting edge about racism and getting white people like me to laugh at ourselves. “I’m Rick James” was the IT phrase. Then he took that sabbatical and I don’t think he has ever been the same since. I’ve moved on, so I don’t really care about him one way or another at this point. However, comedy is adaptational and evolves with the times. It would seem to me that he is merely grasping at straws for the material.
However, I am also willing to listen to his fans, or those who may not be familiar with his work, and what their opinion is about the ongoing debate (fight) for Trans rights and visibility in general. Coming from someone who was bullied every day of his life for being gay (even before he knew he was, thus being robbed of what should have been a great time to come out and develop on my terms) as well as having family who are homophobic, so it hits at home; I’m not going to assume anyone else in here, or the person I walk past down the street is a bigot. I say talk, debate, or even get a little fiery about where you stand. But also remember to listen to each other. You can find common ground, even when you might disagree 99% of the time.
PRIDE Month is coming up too. It looks like I’ll be missing most of it because of travel/work so I would like to come in here at one point or another and see people appreciate what the month means, as well as post together in solidarity over this site, in one form or another, that has always been welcoming to LGBTQ+ member, and run by one of the finest people I know and a best friend <3
So here’s the problem with just watching the one specific Netflix special then dismissing it out of hand as being overblown: It wasn’t a one-off. There’s a pretty long track record of such jokes/comments pretty much since Dave Chappelle came back from his post-Chappelle’s Show exile. He also consistently doubles down on these things and, in the one special, said he would stop said jokes then resumed roughly a month later. So we have him going back on his word, which can be seen as another slap in the face here. On top of that he tried to portray himself and the Black community in general as being the victims of persecution from the LGBT+ community because of backlash he and others received after making homophobic or transphobic comments. That further demonstrates an utter lack of remorse and the belief that he did nothing wrong.
Then there’s the elephant in the room here. One which you, CD, either don’t or can’t fully understand because you’re not American: This is part of a larger cultural backlash that disproportionately targets the LGBT+ community. I don’t want to get too political here, but at the end of the day probably the Trump administration’s biggest legacy is saying the quiet part out loud and laying bare how many people frankly support the fact that cruelty is a feature rather than a bug. That’s not just some random tangent, it ties directly to the point I’m trying to make here. In the United States there are largely successful efforts to roll back hard-earned rights.
Too many states to list here without completely sidetracking this have banned trans kids from playing sports. There’s the “don’t say gay” law in Florida and substantially similar legislation in Texas. My aunt is a state representative and was recently bragging about helping to get a “bathroom bill” passed in Oklahoma. Alabama banned trans minors from having relevant surgeries. Texas legally classifies helping minors transition as child abuse. Unless John Roberts pulls a rabbit out of his ass in the next month Roe v. Wade is about to be history… and an amicus brief submitted during arguments for the case in question openly encouraged the Court to use this as a springboard to go after Obergefell v. Hodges AND Lawrence v. Texas. Turning it into something to laugh about or minimizing it just makes it easier for people to look the other way. Not only is it punching down, it’s punching down at a group that has a legitimate and honestly well-founded fear that what rights they do have are not going to last. Just to give some frame of reference here re: how recent some of these rights are, Obergefell was only decided in 2015, meaning gay marriage has only been legal nationwide for seven years. So gay marriage here hasn’t even lasted as long as Seinfeld yet.
So, yeah, it is impossible to look at one specific Netflix special in a vacuum and get the larger scope of why it’s such a touchy subject and sets people off. It’s not Dave Chappelle per se, it’s all the other cultural and societal baggage that absolutely cannot be separated from this controversy.
Thank you to everyone who listened, and especially Goa and Winston who see how impossible it is for me to be impartial about this. It’s like asking me to stop and consider how dangerous fire really is in theory when I’m standing inside one. It’s easy for you to make it into a thought experiment or a hot take about cancel culture when your country isn’t actively, maliciously dismantling your human rights and the population around you hasn’t for the last six years been getting emboldened to murder you in the street. Straight up: You don’t know how this feels. You just don’t. You have no place to speak, but this is a message board and I can’t stop you.
I can, however, stop myself. I’m out of this topic.
That wasn’t even a deep dive either. That was just on the legal front, never mind social issues like how basically any reporting on a trans individual with any sort of public presence (apart from Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, or Elliot Page, anyway) gives you probably even odds that whoever is covering that particular story will deadname them or the explosion in “groomer” rhetoric over the last few years meant to create an underlying association that being trans is analogous to being a sexual predator, which serves to further dehumanize and whip up moral panic.
There’s just way too much beneath the surface for “lighten up, it’s just a joke” to fly because, at least in the United States, it’s definitely not just a joke.
The situation is different here. Perhaps not as inflammatory, whether it will stay that way I don’t know. The most recent controversy has been during our recent federal election when one of our politicians expressed transphobic views and our prime minister continuing to support her as a candidate regardless. The voters decided and both lost their positions, we now have a government that will not accept that kind of view.
I’m not naive enough to think that the matter is now settled. A member of the conservative media has expressed his platform is now the centre of the resistance and is pushing for the former government to skew even further right wing. He was recorded recently also being transphobic and he is a Sky ‘News’ presenter. Which brings me to another point nearly 90% of our media coverage is controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s machinations and his organisation tried desperately to keep that political party in power and failed.
Here is an example of one of their clumsier attempts to confuse matters
That pie chart was seriously published in one of our newspapers.
Anyway I’m getting off topic the point I’m trying to make is our media doesn’t report on these issues very much if at all and try to push their own agenda. Trying to google it didn’t make it any clearer because it just returned superfluous information.
This is going to sound very tinfoil hat but I don’t read newspapers or watch televised news anymore or if I do it’s with a constant air of scepticism.
