Here's the full transcript of his standup, for anyone not interested in watching it. My read of it is that Chappelle spends almost the entire special wanting to have his cake and eat it too. He'll...
Exemplary
Here's the full transcript of his standup, for anyone not interested in watching it.
My read of it is that Chappelle spends almost the entire special wanting to have his cake and eat it too. He'll make edgy jokes that he knows are inappropriate as sucker punches to women and trans people in particular, but then he'll walk it back with comments on how the people criticizing don't really understand who he is and what he stands for. He'll give a quoteable moment that paints him in a favorable light before diving right back into another shitty jab.
Example (cw: transphobia)
Now… I am not saying that to say, that trans women aren’t women. I’m just sayin, that those pussies that they got… You know what I mean?
[audience laughs]
[applause]
I’m not saying it is not pussy, but that’s like Beyond Pussy or Impossible Pussy. You know what I mean? It tastes like pussy but that’s not quite what it is, is it? It’s not blood, that is beet juice. [laughter] Oh buddy, I’m in trouble now.
Sure, he says trans women are women -- right before getting everyone to laugh at their genitalia.
There's a recurring subtext throughout the piece I don't think he's intending to convey, but it rings through loud and clear. He gives several anecdotes about times in which people criticized him for being misogynistic or transphobic, and each time, instead of doing any sort of introspection, he just tells himself that they don't know him and they're being unfair. He never considers that people repeatedly telling him he’s problematic might be doing so with cause but instead inverts their grievances, making himself look like the wronged party, even when he admits to the wrongdoing himself. In fact, he often doubles down on the issue in his retelling.
Example (cw: slurs, threats)
So, then after, I am shopping I go all the way to the back of the parking lot, I’m parked all the way in the back and as soon as I open my car door I hear a voice go, “David Chappelle.” Just like that. I didn’t even have to look, I knew it was her. And I looked back and sure enough there she was, that face. To be honest with you, she probably wasn’t even that old. She’s probably around my age. But she was a White woman, this bitch looked terrible. [laughter] I’m going all the way. I kept my cool, I was nice. I said, “Hello, miss.” And she didn’t say anything back, all she said was “I watch your comedy.” I said “Oh-oh.” And then she says, this is true, she goes, “Sounds to me… like you, hate women.” I said, “Well, you know what, miss? It’s art.” You are free to interpret this art however you like but I can tell you as the maker of this art that I don’t believe that I feel that way. And she said, “Well, I think…” And I said, “Shut up, bitch! Shut the fuck up!”
[laughter]
“Before I kill you and put you in the trunk. Ain’t nobody around here.”
[audience cheers]
I’m just kidding, I didn’t say that. I felt that way, but that’s not what I said.
He defends himself from accusations of hating women -- by joking about murdering one.
There was a user who used to post on Tildes who, after the JK Rowling controversy broke, said something to the effect of "she's a professional author; she knows how words work". It was something that really stuck with me, because so many people were trying to argue that Rowling didn't really mean what she said. That user succinctly pointed out that Rowling's entire career is built around knowing exactly how to convey exactly what it is that she wants to, using only the words that she chose for that purpose.
I feel like it applies here too: Chappelle knows how words work; they're his entire career. So when he tells us he doesn't hate trans people or women he obviously wants us to believe him, but I can't really square that with all the things he says that he knows willfully come at their expense. He might not hate them, but he also doesn’t show that he particularly understands or cares about them.
This may just be a natural consequence of celebrity in the age of social media. I've seen multiple celebs go from being fairly middle-of-the-road or apolitical on various issues get called out on...
Exemplary
He never considers that people repeatedly telling him he’s problematic might be doing so with cause but instead inverts their grievances
This may just be a natural consequence of celebrity in the age of social media. I've seen multiple celebs go from being fairly middle-of-the-road or apolitical on various issues get called out on something mildly problematic they said, get sucked into an internet vortex of abuse, and come out the other side getting radicalized or jaded in one way or another.
A constant drumbeat of cyberbullying, even if you're technically punching up is going to have an effect on people. At some point, the assumed power dynamics of the 'punching up' vs. 'punching down' dichotomy starts to break down when you reach a certain scale.
Even if people telling him he's wrong are doing so with cause, how is he supposed to parse that for himself? Because 90% of the comments one might get online are going to be garbage. They'll be dunks and cheap-shots that interpret what he said uncharitably, they'll be abusive, they'll likely include racist remarks and death threats (and even rape threats if you're not a cis man). So how is someone on the receiving end of that shit-funnel supposed to interpret the feedback they're getting even if we, who have the benefit of distance and the ability to approach it analytically, might decide the thing that got the shit-funnel aimed at them was bad? Every day on social media there is some meme or other about how perfectly normal human interaction is "a trauma response" or "abuse actually." Who can take any of it seriously?
I agree that this is a huge problem with modern discourse. I wrote my thoughts more at length about it here if you're interested, but that's a much longer post and the relevant part to what you're...
I agree that this is a huge problem with modern discourse. I wrote my thoughts more at length about it here if you're interested, but that's a much longer post and the relevant part to what you're saying is mostly this:
When one side alleges the criticisms are fair, and the other alleges that the outcry is harassment, it's very likely that both are right because so much discourse is happening that you can easily find examples of both valid and abusive posts. Furthermore, for the target of the discourse, the messaging skews heavily towards the perception of abuse, even if there is genuinely very little of it. Messages aimed at or about individuals don't arrive in neat little piles, sorted by whether or not they're abusive -- they come in a giant flow, all mixed together, but you can bet the abusive ones stand out more.
I think Chappelle's situation is a little different, as it seems to be not just a recent, modern development but a career-long issue. In the standup he references multiple different instances of people taking issue with him, including someone calling him out for being transphobic 16 years ago. He even acknowledges that he was using inappropriate slurs and going, in his own words, "too far". He tells us this story because that moment generated a community backlash and he uses that backlash as his grievance without acknowledging that he had a role in directly provoking that. He admits the wrongdoing but never connects it to its direct social consequence. He never has his moment of "oh, I can now see why they were so mad at me", even in hindsight.
The emotional locus of his show is the unfairness with which he's been treated, but it rings hollow for me when he so readily treats other people with the same unfairness. It's clear through the nature of his humor that he knows where the "lines" are, because he's quite skilled at transgressing them for a step before stepping right back into "fair" territory. Your question of how he's supposed to know is a fair one, but I also think he knows more than he's letting on, which is what gives his punchlines their, well, punch.
This is not to say that the people being abusive towards him are doing the right thing either. They absolutely are not, and I hate that this has become widely seen as the only correct response to people with difficult or discriminatory behaviors. I actually think the people who engage in this kind of thing are making things worse, because their abusive messages override the more measured and thoughtful advocacy that could get someone to change their mind or consider a different perspective. Like you identified, it is much easier for someone to discard all criticism wholesale when even just some of it reveals itself to be garbage.
Of course, there's also another side to this phenomenon where some people choose to interpret any and all pushback as abusive, even when it's not and is just plain, regular criticism.
I haven't actually seen it yet so I can't comment on the content itself. I just know that Chappelle's whole deal has been to skewer sacred cows to put people on edge and then pull it back to...
I think Chappelle's situation is a little different, as it seems to be not just a recent, modern development but a career-long issue.
I haven't actually seen it yet so I can't comment on the content itself. I just know that Chappelle's whole deal has been to skewer sacred cows to put people on edge and then pull it back to invite introspection about the feelings that provokes. Most of the criticism I've seen seems to be snapshotting those specific offensive jokes without really highlighting the context they're being made in. In some cases it even seems like people are taking instances where he seems to be saying "I can understand where they're coming from," like with the Blackface comparison, and people are making that out to be like he's promoting that comparison rather than just an example of him listening to and summarizing certain perspectives in society. This is kind of a tough thing with comedy where it's not one-size-fits-all so if you're not in on the joke you're probably going to be mad about it. But on the flip side, if the comedian doesn't seem sufficiently in with the community the joke is for it's going to land very differently. For example, I find Russel Peters' whole bit kind of hacky and lame but not offensive. But if someone who looks and sounds like Pete Holmes came out and did the exact same bit you can bet I'd be way madder about it. In Chappelle's case he seems to be trying to address something at an intersection point between gender, sexuality, and racial issues so it's hard to draw out a boundary on who gets to speak for it without it being offensive.
But I think my main point is that the backlash seems to stem from the weird form of media criticism that happens online where people are only able to engage with media as a form of cultural scorekeeping. Like they just tally up each statement that might offend a group, tally up the catchy phrases that might support each group, count up the instances of representation or lack thereof, and then decide they can summarize what its' all about based on where the balance falls. That seems like a really shallow way to engage with anything since it's not even really about absorbing and understanding what it's about. Evangelicals do this too with movies and music and every time I read something like that I have no clue what to make of it.
IIRC you're a teacher by profession right? So I would actually appreciate your feedback this. What it actually reminds me of is this really really good article I read maybe 10 or 15 years ago from an English teacher observing how her students have changed in how they do literary analysis over her career. I wish I had clipped it when I saw it but it's impossible to find now. She said she had noticed over time that her students were getting worse at "close reading" and engaging with the book and the author directly. What they were doing instead was basically writing things about themselves that were somewhat tangentially related to the themes of the book and mining individual quotes or passages that reinforced what was basically a personal essay. She said kids were getting better at parsing phrases and paragraphs and summarizing them, but worse at extracting meaning from engaging the work overall.
This was mostly in reference to her disdain for the emphasis on standardized testing. She blamed the tendency of writing assignments to prioritize being able to write a coherent, 5-paragraph essay rather than an ability to deliver meaningful insights or analysis. I can't help but feel like a lot of media criticism now is partly a result of that generational cohort growing up to become critics.
Meta note: I'm splitting my response here into two separate comments. This is the part about Chappelle, and I'll respond to your questions about teaching separately. Thanks for your thoughtful...
Exemplary
Meta note: I'm splitting my response here into two separate comments. This is the part about Chappelle, and I'll respond to your questions about teaching separately. Thanks for your thoughtful responses and question -- you've given me a lot to think about and share!
Most of the criticism I've seen seems to be snapshotting those specific offensive jokes without really highlighting the context they're being made in.
I get what you're saying, and my original post definitely looks like I'm just sniping him via a couple of choice quotes, but I was really just wanting to use those as concrete anchor points of what I saw as recurring issues in the whole set. I, like you, hate the cheap takedowns and shallow analysis that pervade much of modern media criticism, but I also think it's a mistake to assume that everybody is coming from that place, or that those are only happening in opposition to Chappelle instead of in support as well. I promise you that my dislike of his set is coming from a genuine, considered place and not the result of shallow scorekeeping, but I can also promise you there are a lot of people out there who support his set for vapid, score-keepy reasons as well.
The place I'm coming from is that I altogether stopped talking about comedy online after beating my head against a wall of the shittiest takes in support of provocative comedy for years on reddit. Fans of the genre tended to pivot between two stances, choosing whichever one let them deflect earnest discussion or criticism the best. If I were to critique the provocation, I'd get "lol triggered" and a paternalistic response that I didn't understand the deeper, more meaningful commentary behind the bombast. On the other hand, if I were to critique the commentary, I’d get a response that the point is merely the provocation. It was always an unwinnable situation, and the people doing this pivoting would hop back and forth between both stances fluidly, all while seemingly completely unaware that they were doing it. I was simultaneously a rube for failing to understand the deep, meaningful insights that only comedy can achieve and a sucker who fell for trying to find actual meaning in what was obvious trolling.
I don't have a problem with provocative comedy and in fact think it's often an incredibly powerful way to yield insights — something I believe Chapelle himself has done well elsewhere. But, for me, the strength of the comedy lives or dies by the nature of the insight produced and not the existence of the provocation alone. The people I used to argue with didn't ever make space for that in our conversations, however, because they couldn't ever conceive the idea that someone could simultaneously understand the joke and also find it unfunny or bothersome.
And I get it: I'm a humorless killjoy. Nobody likes someone raining on their parade. Of course, the people who so would rail against me for messing with their fun never seemed to care when I brought up that were messing with mine. It was all a one-way street that protected their feelings while disregarding mine. Part of the reason I am so humorless was because it became very clear to me early on that "humor" was the excuse so many people online were using to be shitty to others. Mike Birbiglia covers it well in his "I'm Joking" bit (it's only 45 seconds, and worth a watch for context).
I think the worst aspect of provocative comedy, even the stuff that's done well, is that people tend to see in it a tacit permission to emulate it, and emulate it poorly. You mentioned "context collapse" in another thread here, and I've watched a version of that happen countless times online, where people will take provocation from a comedy bit and apply it elsewhere as if it's both a universal truth and fundamentally funny on its own. Louis CK gave people the idea that it was both desirable and hilarious for people to tell me, a gay guy, to "quit being a faggot and suck that dick" regardless of the context. South Park gave them even more support. The most infuriating part of this wasn't that it happened, but that the people being dicks to me simultaneously claimed moral authority in doing so, granted to them by their Holy Fathers CK, Parker, and Stone. I'm much more forgiving of someone who's being shitty and knows it than someone who's being shitty but dresses it up as if they're also in the right. I suspect this is probably what bothers you about a lot of the people critiquing Chappelle, especially those who are dressing up abuse in the language of justice.
The reality of Chappelle's piece for me here is that I understand it, and I still don't think it's particularly funny or insightful. I get what he's going for rhetorically and could give a beat-by-beat rundown of how he constructs his argument and builds towards his thesis -- his "closer". Ultimately, I don't think he adequately supports his thesis though, and I don't think the commentary brought forth by most of his provocations is particularly valuable. I also believe much of it is outright regressive. Like the people gleefully calling me a faggot and telling me to suck a dick as if doing so were the height of comedy and insight, Chappelle spends much of his set punching down on trans people as an act of both humor and righteous truth while simultaneously trying to convey the genuine hurt he experienced from them punching down on him. His thesis -- that the harm he's faced is unfair -- is weakened to the point of uselessness because he cannot connect that harm with the harm he's actively doing to others within the set itself, much less outside of it. Whether this oversight comes from ignorance or a calculated duplicity doesn't matter. I think he's smart enough for it to be the latter, but I'm willing to be charitable and assume the former. Neither is a good look for him, however.
If I'm being really honest about what bothers me the most, however, it's less about Chappelle's words themselves and more about his reach. Many, many people out there will invariably take what he says in this special and run with it, seeking to effect those same provocations in their own life but with even less consideration and skill. For every person you're bothered by who's giving an unfounded, knee-jerk critique to Chappelle's piece without really considering it beyond a pull quote or two, there's another person delighted with the idea of ragging on trans women's "Impossible Pussies" with their friends or, more likely, strangers on the internet en masse. Chappelle, in failing to understand trans people yet deciding to speak definitively on them anyway, has essentially given his permission for others to treat trans people in dismissive and demeaning ways. Even if his stand up was hilarious (which I, even charitably, don't think it is), I would still find this inexcusable.
And I promise you, as best as my reputation here can count for, that I came to these conclusions as the result of genuine, earnest consideration and not dishonest, motivated reasoning.
Meta note: This is response 2, regarding your question about teaching. If you ever by chance find that article again, please send it my way! It sounds fascinating, and I greatly appreciate the...
Exemplary
Meta note: This is response 2, regarding your question about teaching.
If you ever by chance find that article again, please send it my way! It sounds fascinating, and I greatly appreciate the perspective of people who've been in the field longer than I have -- especially those who taught before the onslaught of standardized testing.
My entire career has taken place under the shadow of NCLB, so I've never known an educational environment as a teacher that wasn't based in standardized testing. That's a much larger conversation, but the succinct version is that I believe that the greatest sin of "accountability culture" in education is a killing of the joy of learning. The best way I've learned to convey this to people outside of education is to talk about ice cream. Most people love eating it, but most people would also stop liking it as much if I started measuring them while they ate it, tracking their time spent on each bowl, limiting the flavors they had access to, and giving constant messaging about how their performance with ice cream compared to their peers and normed standards of eating. Much of my job as a teacher is about trying to find joy within a system that is set up to crush the spirits of students and teachers alike.
On this backdrop, it's easy to paint a lot of troubling trends about kids and their abilities. I don't know that I have the perspective to say anything definitively, but I'll also say that our concerns tend to be less about kids achieving high levels of literary criticism and more about kids even reading the book in the first place. You're probably sick of me quoting myself at this point, but I talked a bit about it here:
A majority of my students do not habitually read. I am not exaggerating for effect--I literally mean more than half. Many of my students are flat out non-readers, meaning that their skills are low enough that they are unable to read what they're supposed to. At this point they are several grade levels behind and will only fall further as they age. As such, most of them hate reading and do not do it even when it is incentivized or mandated, whether through family or school. By middle school, the books they can read are infantilizing, and the ones they want to read are too difficult for them. This gap only grows.
Having the patience and stamina to sit through a long, rich text is a prerequisite to being able to give rich, deep analysis. Many of my students will never arrive at the analysis destination because they are literally unable to board the bus to get there in the first place. It's heartbreaking.
The same goes for critical thinking -- it requires time, consideration, and a willingness to sit in a destination-less space for a while, not sure where you'll end up. I have definitely noticed, over time, a decreased appetite and ability for this. My students want immediate answers. Waiting is torturous.
I see it in myself too. If a website doesn't load immediately, I'm frustrated. If the video isn't engaging in the first seven seconds, I click away like I never even wanted to watch it in the first place. I've been struggling to get myself back into the habit of even finishing fiction books. It'll take me weeks to finish one -- my average reading session time will be just a few minutes. I can recall a time, not that long ago, when I used to devour books, reading them for hours without stopping, finishing several in the span of a single weekend.
I used to put up a "Riddle of the Week" on my board -- something that required clever, critical or lateral thinking. I'd leave it up all week and let students puzzle over it. I'd have students come up to me days later, excited to have finally figured it out. They'd talk about how they'd think about it while at home, discuss it with their parents, etc.
I stopped doing it because there came a point at which more and more students would just search the internet for the riddle in order to get the solution. Also, there came a point where students were eager to share the answer with one another, and I got frustrated that they were so content with this. The fun in the riddles was supposed to be in the thinking required to get the answer, but increasingly it felt like their fun was only in acquiring the answer. I think modern kids are being socialized to prioritize instant, effortless gratification. Reading, deep thinking, sustained analysis -- all of these are antithetical to that. It doesn't mean kids can't do these or even that they don't want to -- it just that they have much more of a hill to climb in order to get there. They have to fight against the impulses that have been so dutifully encouraged by modern tech, from such an early age.
With regards to media criticism, I think we probably share a similar bother. The drumbeat of the past decade has been on "representation", and the media landscape has undergone a truly impressive shift for which I'm incredibly grateful. I do believe that representation matters, and it warms my heart to know that kids of all stripes are growing up with access to media that they can both see themselves in and learn about others' experiences from. The first book I ever read that had a gay character was when I was in my 20s, and they weren't even the focus of the book. I can now walk down to my school library and find 20+ books with gay main characters, easily.
Where I take issue is that some people see representation as the endpoint, rather than a means. For a long time, I watched people praise books not because they were necessarily good books but simply because they had diverse representation in them. I'm certainly not against diverse representation, but I found the laudatory refrains some of them received to be frustrating because I felt like I was being asked to discard the lit-crit part of my brain that wanted to dive into the prose, the themes, the subtexts, etc. Furthermore, it felt patronizing to me to praise a book simply for who it's characters were rather than the entirety of the story itself. Again, I'm delighted that we have so many books with, for example, gay characters, but I still think a book with a gay character can be a bad book or a poorly told story.
I'll also add to this that there was a troubling trend in YA criticism for a while that treated any and all discriminatory content as wrong. I remember reading a book (which I can sadly no longer remember the name of) that had a homophobic secondary character. This was essential to the plot and the conflict and anchored the main character's experience in real-world prejudices. The novel didn't support the character's homophobia in the slightest, but I remember going on Goodreads and being surprised by the number of people who panned the novel simply for including homophobia.
I get where it comes from -- a lot of adults especially want to protect kids from discrimination, and that's something I share with them -- but I also feel that fiction is one of the safest spaces we have for kids to be able to confront and explore difficult topics. If we eliminate any books that even convey problematic content, we're not equipping students to be able to handle those difficult topics. I think we have a tendency to think of kids as fragile, when in reality, they're pretty resilient. I think fiction in particular can be a powerful tool for this, but I don't think it will happen in a walled garden where we police any and all transgressions.
There are, of course, texts that go so far in the opposite direction that I don't think kids should be reading them, but I also think that even the most problematic texts can still be valuable as teaching tools and jumping off points for reflection if considered properly and strategically. I ragged on Chappelle's standup in my other post as being problematic, but I'll admit that untangling why I felt that way about it and figuring out how best to articulate it was a valuable process for me. I want kids to be able to have that same opportunity, and I think we do them a disservice by assuming they can't handle or shouldn't be exposed to difficult things.
The last thing I'll say is that exploring "difficult things" in education is, well, difficult in today's world. Most teachers default to a sort of milquetoast neutrality on almost everything interesting about the world because of the potential for blowback. Parents are not shy about raising issues and blowing things up on social media, and we are long past the point where most parents assume good faith in their children's teachers. We do our jobs with a wall up, knowing we're always one mis-step away from a shitshow. Kids mostly read this as us being guarded, out of touch, or boring. Most kids genuinely want to dive into challenging, juicy, interesting, real-world issues, but attempting to navigate those in a classroom is often not worth the trouble. In thinking about this out loud right now, I'm also wondering if that doesn't play out in some of the criticism you're identifying as well? Perhaps some of the shallowness you're seeing is a result of the fact that we teachers are limiting our own depth out of safety as well.
Critical thinking is necessary and failing to apply critical thinking remains unacceptable, especially for people with power and money. Forgive me if I don't feel particularly bad about the...
Every day on social media there is some meme or other about how perfectly normal human interaction is "a trauma response" or "abuse actually." Who can take any of it seriously?
Critical thinking is necessary and failing to apply critical thinking remains unacceptable, especially for people with power and money. Forgive me if I don't feel particularly bad about the cyberbullying directed at a wealthy comic who has Netflix bending over backwards to stay in his good graces when entire internet communities exist to bully and harass the (largely powerless) targets of his jokes.
I've been doxed, I've been harassed, and I've come through it. Doesn't mean it was easy, and obviously I think people shouldn't harass others as a general rule, but I attribute my success there to my relative wealth, my relative position of stability, and my support network. I struggle to believe that this kind of thing hits harder for someone who is wealthier, has more stability, and has a larger support network.
In addition, this particular comic has said that he is, largely, happy about this episode of "cyberbullying", which make it even harder for me to take seriously the argument that the mean internet transes radicalized him into terfery.
No offense but a lot of times this ends up sounding like sour grapes. I was responding to a statement that basically argued "If a bunch of people are dumping on you consider that there might be a...
Critical thinking is necessary and failing to apply critical thinking remains unacceptable, especially for people with power and money. . . I struggle to believe that this kind of thing hits harder for someone who is wealthier, has more stability, and has a larger support network.
No offense but a lot of times this ends up sounding like sour grapes. I was responding to a statement that basically argued "If a bunch of people are dumping on you consider that there might be a good reason." But it's the internet! There is absolutely no reason to assume there would be a good reason for it. If anything it's quite likely there is not a good reason for it and it's actually just bored trolls taking the opportunity to join a dogpile. What critical thinking is supposed to be done there? Is everyone supposed to go through some kind of reeducation struggle session until their beliefs come into conformance with whatever the idiosyncratic motivations of an online mob happen to be? It's not even like there's anything one could reasonably do to make the hate stop coming. Any apology will be deemed insincere because nobody has standing to accept such an apology. And it's not like most of the criticism is even coming from a reasonable place. It's quite likely you're not going to agree with all the ideological positions and worldviews and metaphysics and whatever other philosophies of the people criticizing you. So what do you do? Just disappear or be honest?
Having money doesn't really change people from still just being people. It's also untrue to say celebrities have "a larger support network." Fame is actually extremely isolating. Chapelle himself talked about this. And if you don't believe him Jack Gleeson also talked about it when he retired from acting.
In addition, this particular comic has said that he is, largely, happy about this episode of "cyberbullying", which make it even harder for me to take seriously the argument that the mean internet transes radicalized him into terfery.
a.) Not sure it's accurate to take statements made as part of a comedy bit as literal statements of sincere belief. That misrepresents what shock-comedy is actually doing.
b.) Yeah he's figured out a way to make the outrage cycle work for him. What else is there to do when this is the milieu we're stuck in but to ride the outrage wave? Expect to see more of this because it's really the only rational way to function in the entertainment business. Online shitstorms are basically impossible to anticipate and stay on the good side of if you also want to remain publicly visible and engaged at all. What you're seeing is an emergent property of the way this sort of discourse unfolds.
Consider the position of the people who are mad at you because you made fun of them. Especially consider the position of people who write well-researched, long-form pieces which are generally...
There is absolutely no reason to assume there would be a good reason for it. If anything it's quite likely there is not a good reason for it and it's actually just bored trolls taking the opportunity to join a dogpile. What critical thinking is supposed to be done there?
Consider the position of the people who are mad at you because you made fun of them. Especially consider the position of people who write well-researched, long-form pieces which are generally positive but criticize one particular aspect of your work (example). Ignore people who are being abusive to the extent that you can.
As you say, almost anything will get you harassed on the internet. Saying you took the vaccine will get you harassed on the internet. It can't be an acceptable excuse for promoting bigotry, because then everyone would get a free pass.
This is where the internet's tendency to cause context collapse comes in. When I was younger one of the main deals with shock comics was to needle censorious scolds, the main difference between...
It can't be an acceptable excuse for promoting bigotry, because then everyone would get a free pass.
This is where the internet's tendency to cause context collapse comes in. When I was younger one of the main deals with shock comics was to needle censorious scolds, the main difference between then and now is that the censorious scolds back then were Moral Majority types who got mad at you for using profanity, blaspheming, and talking about sex at all (especially non-hetero sex).
We might agree with the goals that the modern censorious types have in ways we didn't agree with Jerry Falwell types, but I think it's only natural that people who are temperamentally inclined to not like being told what to say and how to think are going to write bits designed to tweak the sensibilities of people trying to claim that authority regardless of the goals they want to advance by leveraging the power.
I do see what you're saying, but is it then never acceptable to criticize something a shock comic says, even when actually criticizing the comedy rather than the political content, as the post I...
I do see what you're saying, but is it then never acceptable to criticize something a shock comic says, even when actually criticizing the comedy rather than the political content, as the post I linked does?
I certainly don't think Chappelle should be "censored" in the sense that he not be allowed to perform or tell these kind of jokes, but I do take issue with a service of which I am a customer using my money to pay him to tell the world that I'm just like Rachel Dolezal (sp?), and suspending (and then firing) an employee who agreed with me. I'm paying them, I'm allowed to have opinions about the service they provide!
It's always appropriate to critique what a performer says. But online, the stuff being said isn't critiqued in any thoughtful way, it's more like taken as a casus belli to initiate hostilities...
but is it then never acceptable to criticize something a shock comic says, even when actually criticizing the comedy rather than the political content, as the post I linked does?
It's always appropriate to critique what a performer says. But online, the stuff being said isn't critiqued in any thoughtful way, it's more like taken as a casus belli to initiate hostilities against them. Critique is usually about taking the stuff being said and examining it, raising the issues it raises or brings up. What happens online isn't that, it manifests as calls to get the person fired, initiate boycotts, direct hateful messages their way, and basically every other weapon at anyone's disposal to make life unpleasant for them. There is no examination of the content, it instantly jumps to "You hate [X]" and "You must support every bad thing associated with [Y]."
Sometimes there may be some articles here or there that articulate what the problems actually are, but the person in question is generally not allowed to disagree in good faith with any part of these. So there's no dialogue or persuasion happening here, it's functionally just coercive powers being deployed to harass people who don't maintain the ideological commitments that some group of people have decided is the objectively correct moral framework against which no disrespect can be tolerated.
Okay! You're talking about a phenomenon I'm not participating in or discussing, so I don't think we can really continue meaningfully. I agree that what you're saying is bad, but it's not what I...
Okay! You're talking about a phenomenon I'm not participating in or discussing, so I don't think we can really continue meaningfully. I agree that what you're saying is bad, but it's not what I see myself of any people I follow on Twitter etc doing.
And I've seen plenty who have never had this problem, not to mention plenty who have ran into this problem and reformed and made amends with the problematic behavior they displayed. I think it's...
This may just be a natural consequence of celebrity in the age of social media. I've seen multiple celebs go from being fairly middle-of-the-road or apolitical on various issues get called out on something mildly problematic they said, get sucked into an internet vortex of abuse, and come out the other side getting radicalized or jaded in one way or another.
And I've seen plenty who have never had this problem, not to mention plenty who have ran into this problem and reformed and made amends with the problematic behavior they displayed. I think it's unfair to pose this as a question without acknowledging the full playing field.
This is one of many paths that people can take. Are celebrities more likely to take this path than the average person who doesn't have the same scale of reach? I don't know, but also no one knows and I don't think we'll do a lot of good by theorizing excuses for people with bad behavior without simultaneously acknowledging the people with good behavior and asking what happened differently with them. Furthermore, if we spend all this time talking about the negative and ignoring the positive, people may get the false idea that this simply is an outcome, forgetting the people that don't cause them emotional outrage as they leave less of a mark on their psyche than those who upset them.
So how is someone on the receiving end of that shit-funnel supposed to interpret the feedback they're getting even if we, who have the benefit of distance and the ability to approach it analytically, might decide the thing that got the shit-funnel aimed at them was bad?
If anyone has the means to talk to a professional, it's someone with a lot of money. I'm not going to excuse bad behavior for a public figure who knows what they're doing with words who refuses to talk to a professional or take active steps to better themself. Plenty of people in the public eye are good people and I think it's unfair to them to act like this is an expected outcome. With platform comes responsibility, and I'm tired of people acting like they aren't responsible because it's convenient for them to be lazy about it.
You will notice that in your comment highlighting we should do this, you don't actually reference any examples. Because a few of the recent ones I can think of, like Lindsay Ellis or Natalie Wynn...
I don't know, but also no one knows and I don't think we'll do a lot of good by theorizing excuses for people with bad behavior without simultaneously acknowledging the people with good behavior and asking what happened differently with them.
You will notice that in your comment highlighting we should do this, you don't actually reference any examples. Because a few of the recent ones I can think of, like Lindsay Ellis or Natalie Wynn or even Chrissy Teigen, they definitely did not take the tack where they are cowed by public pressure into shutting up and "talking to a professional" to "better themself." They talk to professionals to cope with the tide of emotional abuse they're getting and then they either tell the haters to fuck off and keep doing what they're doing, albeit with a lot less respect for the crowds online they thought they were a part of.
What does "better themself" mean? What if they actually just disagree with most of the criticism against them? What if they just think people need to grow a thicker skin rather than being actively opposed to their rights to exist? Is there room for them to disagree there or would you just say they are "bad people" who need to submit to "betterment?" Because at that point this isn't a dialogue, this is people deciding they get to sit in moral judgement of everyone else without any humility about what they do and don't know of other peoples' inner lives.
I didn't reference any examples because I don't want to sit here and argue specifics about each individual in question. I'm not on this website to engage with pedantry. If you truly think that no...
I didn't reference any examples because I don't want to sit here and argue specifics about each individual in question. I'm not on this website to engage with pedantry. If you truly think that no one can reform or has reformed or changed their opinion then it doesn't matter what examples I bring to the table, you'll find some way to diminish them in an effort to bolster your statement that it is an inevitability without any actual science to back it up. You have a hunch, I admitted that this hunch probably plays a part and spent time acknowledging that we need to understand it better.
Is there room for them to disagree there or would you just say they are "bad people" who need to submit to "betterment?"
Bad behavior is not "bad people". Good people can display bad behavior.
Because at that point this isn't a dialogue, this is people deciding they get to sit in moral judgement of everyone else without any humility about what they do and don't know of other peoples' inner lives.
Why is your takeaway from my message so black and white? Why must people be absolutely good or bad, as in if we're keeping track of some kind of moral calculus on their lives and as soon as someone is 50.01% bad we change their label?
I'm merely stating that there are people out there who are not assholes and who do not abuse their platform because you failed to mention them in any way shape or form in your response. I simply wish to point out that there's more than one possibility here and that to consider one outcome without at the very least acknowledging the other is not the way to have a discussion about something.
I didn't mention it because it is not relevant to the point I was making or to the comment I was replying to. When I'm talking about people who did a thing, why would I spend an equal amount of...
I'm merely stating that there are people out there who are not assholes and who do not abuse their platform because you failed to mention them in any way shape or form in your response.
I didn't mention it because it is not relevant to the point I was making or to the comment I was replying to. When I'm talking about people who did a thing, why would I spend an equal amount of time talking about people who did not do the thing? How does that make sense?
If you truly think that no one can reform or has reformed or changed their opinion
Where in the world did I say this? Why is your takeaway from my message so black-and-white?
Bad behavior is not "bad people". Good people can display bad behavior.
So you say, but it's hard to reconcile this when you immediately say things like "there are people out there who are not assholes," which implies you're presupposing certain people as assholes. Do you understand why interacting with people with this mentality might not put you in the best position to understand what they're actually trying to say instead of whatever you're assuming about them?
I simply wish to point out that there's more than one possibility here and that to consider one outcome without at the very least acknowledging the other is not the way to have a discussion about something.
If you want to have a discussion about this thing feel free to raise the points you want to have a discussion on. But I might point out that simply saying "Why aren't you discussing the thing I would rather you discuss instead of the thing you're discussing" is also not really the way to have a discussion about something, it's only having a meta-discussion.
The comment is talking about how this behavior is not acceptable. You replied and made the argument that it was acceptable by providing some anecdotes. You've presented reasoning as to why this...
it is not relevant to the point I was making or to the comment I was replying to
The comment is talking about how this behavior is not acceptable. You replied and made the argument that it was acceptable by providing some anecdotes. You've presented reasoning as to why this person was committing unacceptable behavior. Presenting a counter-argument shows your reader that you understand another position exists and that you've considered it. Surely you should not be surprised when someone else comes in to reinforce the point of the original comment by providing said counter-argument?
Where in the world did I say this? Why is your takeaway from my message so black-and-white?
Because you seem to be focused on discounting it as a possibility. You continue to provide a singular narrative, albeit slightly shifted. You acknowledge that these people probably go to therapy, but then insist that the reasoning is different than what was presented. You spend the entirety of your reply presenting the idea that I'm discounting what you've already presented or that what I presented isn't feasible or possible. What takeaway am I supposed to have when nearly every sentence you present is dismissive of what I've presented with no acknowledgement of even the possibility that anything I presented could happen?
implies you're presupposing certain people as assholes
I think we can all agree that assholes exist in the world. I wasn't making the claim that any specific person was an asshole, just making a generalized statement.
Do you understand why interacting with people with this mentality might not put you in the best position to understand or persuade them?
Why do you assume that I've written any specific person off as an asshole before interacting with them?
If you want to have a discussion about this thing feel free to raise the points you want to have a discussion on.
I'm merely providing the counter-argument that you did not address because I believe it is intellectual dishonest to ignore all possibilities, especially when we have no hard evidence. It's unfair to a reader who is not versed in the nuances of this kind of discussion to be only presented with a singular view of the world and it is unfair to the people who do not display the behavior you outlined as it ignores or at the least minimizes their existence.
I think this is the confusion here. I never said Chappelle's bit was acceptable. I said the nature of celebrity in the age of social media is going to make it so a bunch of people inundating you...
The comment is talking about how this behavior is not acceptable. You replied and made the argument that it was acceptable by providing some anecdotes.
I think this is the confusion here. I never said Chappelle's bit was acceptable. I said the nature of celebrity in the age of social media is going to make it so a bunch of people inundating you with "feedback" is unlikely to prompt the sort of introspection we would presumably want. I'm not talking about the person's views or actions, I'm talking about the outcomes/results of this mode of engagement that we're all implicated in with the overall aim of wondering "how would we actually like this to go ideally?" and "what would need to happen for it to go that way?"
If you wanted to talk about an alternative-mechanism to this, it would be helpful to provide examples of different outcomes. I am genuinely curious about the the cases where you say this underlying dynamic plays out constructively. You said yourself that if we could compare them against the negative ones we might get a more complete picture, but you're not actually helping fill out the picture, just implying that there is a bigger, prettier picture I'm not seeing. But what you said was basically just "Well I've seen it go the other way."
I at least tried to meet you half-way and come up with cases where it did go a different way, even if that was just people going "Ugh, I'm just going to distance myself from this stuff" rather than "I'm going to troll these people." But if you think me coming back with that was "dismissive" or "me focusing on discounting this as a possibility" I don't see how it's any less dismissive than you just implying I don't have a complete picture without actually helping complete the picture.
I think we can all agree that assholes exist in the world. I wasn't making the claim that any specific person was an asshole, just making a generalized statement.
Whether it applied to anyone specific wasn't the issue so much as trying to reconcile that statement with saying "Bad behavior is not 'bad people.' Good people can display bad behavior."
I actually agree with that statement about separating the sinner from the sin, but I'm trying to point out that the rest of your paragraph makes it seem like while you've accepted that statement on an intellectual level, maybe you haven't really worked it into your working model for how you interact.
I'm merely providing the counter-argument that you did not address because I believe it is intellectual dishonest to ignore all possibilities
Why this pervasive assumption of bad faith? Why is it "this person is being intellectually dishonest" and not "here's something this person maybe hasn't considered" or "I wonder if this person has thought about this alternative outcome that they're dismissing for reasons they haven't gone into here?"
I'm struggling with a response to this because this reply is much more measured and you're willing to engage, but I have already disengaged from the content. Rather than address your specific...
I'm struggling with a response to this because this reply is much more measured and you're willing to engage, but I have already disengaged from the content. Rather than address your specific issues, I'd like to help you (and hopefully others) understand why this is particularly frustrating to me.
This is ~lgbt. This is not ~news or ~movies or ~tv. This is supposed to be a space to discuss LGBT issues. This is supposed to be a place where LGBT individuals feel safe. Yet this post, and many others like it, have attracted a sizeable crowd which have entered into this thread and either provided sympathy to bad actors or downplayed issues which simply did not affect them in the same way as the LGBT users in here are affected. There is no way to distinguish between someone who is coming here to attempt to discuss nuance and someone who is entering here to be a troll, be dismissive of LGBT people, or otherwise pick a fight.
I can't put into words how endlessly tiring it is to be attacked all across the internet for simply believing that dismissing others based on some attribute they possess such as their skin color, who they are attracted to, how they present themselves in public, how their thought processes are slightly different than others (neurodivergence), or what abilities they have shouldn't happen, ever, under any circumstances. Often times you'll see these very groups of people retreat on the internet into safe spaces because it's so fucking exhausting to have to deal with this. It's so predictable that as soon as I saw this thread go up on Tildes, despite the first comments being strongly negative of this behavior, that I simply knew that it would get infiltrated with people playing devil's advocate, excusing behavior, or otherwise invading the space to provide their opinion.
If you want to enter a space like this you need to remember the human even more than in other spaces. You have to recognize that the people you are engaging with are already at wits end dealing with people who attempt to erase their identity, their thoughts, and their contributions all over the internet. Just go onto any major platform and take a look at the discussion going on about this. How many times can you spot people excusing his behavior? How many times can you spot someone not even engaging with the content and merely entering these spaces to declare how much they hate "faggots and trannies"?
When you enter a space like this to have a discussion it is your responsibility to engage in a civil and productive manner because the people you are trying to engage with are already discriminated against. This means that you may need to temper your message. This means that you may need to spend more time being careful that your message isn't construed in the wrong light or really ensure that someone understands your initial position. Entering into a thread like this the way you did is likely to upset many who don't have the emotional capacity to engage with you and try to determine what you're actually saying.
In this thread we have people who are already on edge for good reason, who spend their mental faculties and emotional bandwidth helping to educate others and engage with people who aren't aware of how life is for them. You're then asking these very same people to engage with your content in good faith while ignoring how the rest of the world engages with them. Why should they engage with a questionable response in good faith when there's so many instances of this going wrong in the internet? What olive branch have you extended to ensure that others understand your stance, that you are not a bigot in sheep's clothing?
You asked me why there is an assumption of bad faith - this is precisely why. You're smart enough to know how to make an argument. You're smart enough to have learned why and how to implement counter-arguments. You're smart enough to know that establishing the counter-argument is an easy way for you to inject your own opinion on the subject or at the very least establish your viewpoint on some of the content that was presented. You're smart enough to know that not actively dismissing bigotry is tacitly endorsing it (paradox of tolerance). I know you know all of this, and yet I'm left perplexed by you challenging whether I think this is intellectually dishonest or not. If you're dismissing it, why are you withholding these reasons rather than clarifying your point? I'm left completely flummoxed trying to understand where the disconnect is and I'm already too emotionally exhausted and disconnected to bother pursuing this thread to see where it lies.
dubteedub posted it to ~tv, I only moved it to ~lgbt about 6 hours ago, after it had already been up for 20 hours and the large majority of the comment threads were already going. There were 48...
dubteedub posted it to ~tv, I only moved it to ~lgbt about 6 hours ago, after it had already been up for 20 hours and the large majority of the comment threads were already going. There were 48 comments before it was moved, and have been 15 posted since then (almost all of them inside this specific thread).
Apparently Chappelle's discussions of his trans friend Daphne are not supported by her other friends: https://twitter.com/coda_robo/status/1447774035576860674
Not defending Netflix here, but she was fired for leaking internal/confidential information, just as you or any other employee would be from any company.
Not defending Netflix here, but she was fired for leaking internal/confidential information, just as you or any other employee would be from any company.
Which is just the standard low effort crap that stands for journalism these days. Incorrect. They didn't say she didn't do anything wrong. They said they don't think she joined the meeting with...
if you go back to the original employee suspension that started all of this, the headline was that she was suspended for tweeting something critical of Netflix.
Which is just the standard low effort crap that stands for journalism these days.
the reason Netflix gave was that no, she wasn't suspended for being critical of Netflix, she was suspended for attending a meeting she wasn't supposed to be in.
and then they admitted, in writing, that she did absolutely nothing wrong by attending that meeting
Incorrect.
They didn't say she didn't do anything wrong. They said they don't think she joined the meeting with ill intent or that she did so with knowledge that she shouldn't be there. Yet, she still wasn't supposed to be in that meeting. To their knowledge she didn't do anything wrong on purpose, but she did still did something wrong.
If you do something that is wrong, even if you didn't know it was wrong at the time, was it still wrong to do it?
Should they have suspended her over it? Absolutely not and that was a dumb move given the timing, but still doesn't mean she wasn't wrong.
I see no reason to take Netflix's explanation of why they fired or suspended someone at face value.
Well the info leaked. She said she leaked the info. They say she leaked the info. So it seems like she leaked the info and got fired for leaking the info.
I am not trans, but I am an ally, and whichever stand up of his I watched most recently a few years ago made me really uncomfortable. And not in the “maybe this guy is on to something” way. I...
I am not trans, but I am an ally, and whichever stand up of his I watched most recently a few years ago made me really uncomfortable. And not in the “maybe this guy is on to something” way. I haven’t watched him since, because ick.
Even if this is accurate, its poorly timed discipline. His other specials were pretty good overall, but this one felt totally unpolished, like he came in trying to get in trouble with the...
The tweet thread went viral, quickly spiraling into a conversation about free speech and cancel culture. Netflix then suspended Field along with two other employees for trying to attend a director-level meeting they weren’t invited to. Another trans employee is quitting the company over how the special — and Field’s comments — were handled.
In a statement emailed to The Verge, a Netflix spokesperson pushed back against the idea that Field was suspended for tweeting. “It is absolutely untrue to say that we have suspended any employee for tweeting about this show,” they said. “Our employees are encouraged to disagree openly and we support their right to do so.”
Even if this is accurate, its poorly timed discipline.
His other specials were pretty good overall, but this one felt totally unpolished, like he came in trying to get in trouble with the twitterati. Most of the set fell flat, and any time it appeared he was back on track, he'd spoil it with a cheap joke. The set just felt lazy and hostile, even if he didn't intend on that.
Chappelle went into this as someone known for nuance and came out tone deaf. Going off on 'woke culture' or 'cancel culture', no matter how relevant, has been played out.
I don't think that companies behaving differently in different countries is necessarily hypocrisy. In oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia there's not much choice. I'd be in the closet in Saudi...
I don't think that companies behaving differently in different countries is necessarily hypocrisy. In oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia there's not much choice. I'd be in the closet in Saudi Arabia, too.
We're talking about a government that killed a man for being critical of them. I wouldn't put it past them to ban Netflix for defying them, Streisand effect or not.
We're talking about a government that killed a man for being critical of them. I wouldn't put it past them to ban Netflix for defying them, Streisand effect or not.
Wow, the tweet wasn't even that bad. I think it's more that she dared defy the king than anything else. As far as being an "ally" I'd say I'm pretty garbage, and before this I would've even...
Wow, the tweet wasn't even that bad. I think it's more that she dared defy the king than anything else.
As far as being an "ally" I'd say I'm pretty garbage, and before this I would've even defended Chapelle's last special. He flirted with danger there, but I at least felt he had a good intention, and intentionally took a rocky road there to use mass appeal to get his point out. I haven't seen the new special yet, and may edit this comment if I watch it tonight, but his response to the criticism is the sort of thing that is definitely just for publicity, and always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's very much the "They're just hatin'" school of deflecting criticism. I just realized this is more in response to the thread.
I haven't seen the special, as I'm not keen on watching people tell me I don't deserve to exist, but I'm genuinely curious: what was his intention that you're talking about?
He flirted with danger there, but I at least felt he had a good intention, and intentionally took a rocky road there to use mass appeal to get his point out.
I haven't seen the special, as I'm not keen on watching people tell me I don't deserve to exist, but I'm genuinely curious: what was his intention that you're talking about?
To be clear, I was referring to "Sticks and Stones," which was his previous Netflix special. He's talking about the LGBT movement and how "It's not just one movement, but they're all sitting in...
To be clear, I was referring to "Sticks and Stones," which was his previous Netflix special. He's talking about the LGBT movement and how "It's not just one movement, but they're all sitting in the car." It's about the interaction of various sub-groups, largely satirized but not generally mean. The issue, I think (I obviously lack the required perspective) is not the broad concept, but the little digs that sneak in. It's very pro-LGBT in concept, and he's mostly just relaying what he's heard from LGBT friends about the movement.
My defense was basically that yeah, he made some dumb digs, but the joke, as a whole, is LGBT-positive, it's intended as a humorous observation of group relationships. I didn't think it was "that bad," at the time, but also as a matter of perspective, I'm in a position where I'm not victimized for my gender or appearance. If you, or anybody else, wanted to look into that segment, it's at 22:20 in "Sticks and Stones," but I can also understand if you didn't want to.
EDIT: I forgot to say the bad part in the first paragraph, it's there now.
The most recent special he actually respects people's pronouns. He correctly calls Daphne, his trans friend who committed suicide a few years back, a woman. He doesn't say "this is a man in a...
The most recent special he actually respects people's pronouns. He correctly calls Daphne, his trans friend who committed suicide a few years back, a woman. He doesn't say "this is a man in a dress" despite what that one thing about him being a TERF will have people believe.
You're right, he never specifically says that, and he does actually use the proper pronouns when talking about his recently deceased trans friend. However, immediately before that he had this to...
Exemplary
He doesn't say "this is a man in a dress" despite what that one thing about him being a TERF will have people believe.
You're right, he never specifically says that, and he does actually use the proper pronouns when talking about his recently deceased trans friend. However, immediately before that he had this to say:
If you listen to what I’m saying, I’m not even talking about them, I’m talking about us and “they don’t listen.” It’s very annoying. And they have canceled people, more powerful than me. They canceled J.K. Rowling, my God. J.K. Rowling wrote all the Harry Potter books by herself. She sold so many books, the Bible worries about her.
And they canceled it because, she said in an interview and this is not exactly what she said, but effectually she said that gender was a fact. And then the trans community got mad as shit, they started calling her a TERF. I didn’t even know, what the fuck that was. But I know that trans people make up words to win arguments. [laughter] So I looked it up. TERF is an acronym. It stands for Trans-exclusionary radical feminist. This is a real thing, this is a group of women… that hate transgender. They don’t hate transgender women but they look at trans women the way we Blacks might look at Black face. It offends them like, “Oh, this bitch is doing an impression of me.” [laughter] Now I shouldn’t speak on this because I’m not a woman nor am I a trans. But as we’ve established… I am a feminist. [laughter] That’s right.
I’m team TERF. I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact. You have to look at it from a woman’s perspective. Look at it like this, Caitlyn Jenner whom I have met, wonderful person. Caitlyn Jenner… was voted, woman of the year. Her first year as a woman. Ain’t that something? Beat every bitch in Detroit. She’s better than all of you. [laughter] Never even had a period, ain’t that something? [laughter] I’d be mad as shit if I was a woman. I’d be mad if I was me. If I was in the BET awards, sitting there and they’re like “And the winner for n*gger of the year… Eminem.” My man. [audience laughs] Gender is a fact, this is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. That is a fact. [laughter] Now… I am not saying that to say, that trans women aren’t women. I’m just sayin, that those pussies that they got… You know what I mean?
I’m not saying it is not pussy, but that’s like Beyond Pussy or Impossible Pussy. You know what I mean? It tastes like pussy but that’s not quite what it is, is it? It’s not blood, that is beet juice. [laughter] Oh buddy, I’m in trouble now.
And only then does he start telling the story about his trans friend... Which, given all the horrible and confused shit he just said (and admitted to agreeing with), honestly felt to me like the classic "See, I can't be a transphobe since I had a trans friend and didn't publicly misgender her!" excuse.
I like how the comedian who built his career on calling out white people's bullshit and tackling racism just went "it's okay, I'm not transphobic, I have trans friends".
Exemplary
I like how the comedian who built his career on calling out white people's bullshit and tackling racism just went "it's okay, I'm not transphobic, I have trans friends".
So, just making sure I'm up to speed, are we at the point that everything said by a comedian on stage is absolute truth and not setup for jokes? Not defending what he said, just asking. Also...
So, just making sure I'm up to speed, are we at the point that everything said by a comedian on stage is absolute truth and not setup for jokes?
Not defending what he said, just asking. Also curious if everyone here thinks Bo Burnham stayed in a single room for an entire year to shoot Inside.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Either he, personally, is transphobic, or he's playing a character on stage who is - but (at least from what I can glean from the transcript) he doesn't criticize...
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
Either he, personally, is transphobic, or he's playing a character on stage who is - but (at least from what I can glean from the transcript) he doesn't criticize that character's beliefs pretty much at all. He's either stating sincerely held personal beliefs or making up someone who holds those beliefs and presenting that person uncritically. Either way, as an artist, he's espousing those beliefs.
I don't really feel qualified to participate in the larger conversations of this thread because I believe comedy, shock comedy in particular, exists outside of the social conventions of the time....
I don't really feel qualified to participate in the larger conversations of this thread because I believe comedy, shock comedy in particular, exists outside of the social conventions of the time. That's what it's for. It's a place where people say all the things you're not supposed to say. Some people don't like it, which is ok.
But it has been frustrating to read articles and comments that claim with a straight face that Dave was self identifying as transphobic. That was clear sarcasm. It was saying: I know that's what people are going to say so I'm just going to write it into the act.
Dave has a history of pushing buttons on purpose. It's trolling as performance art. It's an entire genre of comedy.
Dislike it, say it's not funny (in this case I'd agree, the special wasn't that funny), use it as a starting point for conversation, but don't engage with it like it's an attempt at real discourse! It's comedy!
Please note: I personally think some of Dave's jokes in this special, and some of themes, are outdated and tone deaf. I'm not here trying to defend transphobia.
That's all well and good, but this is how people think about trans people. Comedy that exposes hateful rhetoric as acceptable is harmful, directly. Much as it wouldn't be acceptable for me, a...
Dislike it, say it's not funny (in this case I'd agree, the special wasn't that funny), use it as a starting point for conversation, but don't engage with it like it's an attempt at real discourse! It's comedy!
That's all well and good, but this is how people think about trans people. Comedy that exposes hateful rhetoric as acceptable is harmful, directly. Much as it wouldn't be acceptable for me, a white person, to uncritically portray a character on stage who thinks non-white people are intellectually inferior to whites, it is unacceptable for a cis person to uncritically portray a character who self-identifies as a transphobe.
Whether the antecedent of "I" in "I'm a transphobe" means Chappelle or Chappelle's on-stage persona, it's an uncritical portrayal of hate and that is, in and of itself, hateful.
Amazing that he's managed to grasp at least one aspect of basic civility after twenty years of trans jokes. Too bad it wasn't long enough to recognize he shouldn't punch down. Maybe in another twenty.
Amazing that he's managed to grasp at least one aspect of basic civility after twenty years of trans jokes. Too bad it wasn't long enough to recognize he shouldn't punch down. Maybe in another twenty.
Yes he was even doing them in his standup acts before the Chappelle show. His earliest jokes on this typically boiled down to comedy of surprise where some female presenting figure in a story he's...
Yes he was even doing them in his standup acts before the Chappelle show. His earliest jokes on this typically boiled down to comedy of surprise where some female presenting figure in a story he's telling would be revealed to have a dick. Not particularly sophisticated or funny, he mostly phased out these kinds of jokes in preference for commentary on black culture, especially throughout the success of the Chappelle show. Why he decided to return to this topic when being entirely uneducated on it is anyone's guess, but it's grown increasingly hostile in recent years.
Netflix is dealing with an internal outcry unprecedented in its history [...] I guess they avoided leaks longer than Google, but that sort of trust doesn't last. (See the article if you want to...
Netflix Inc. employees raised concerns about offensive material in Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special “The Closer” days before its release, warning executives that a series of jokes about gender-neutral pronouns and the genitalia of transgender people was potentially inflammatory and damaging.
The company’s leaders, including global head of TV Bela Bajaria and co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos, decided the show didn't cross the line, sparking Netflix’s most significant public labor dispute in recent memory. Employees have taken their grievances to internal forums and Twitter; at least three were suspended for crashing a meeting, then reinstated following outcry. Now the company is planning to host an internal event with trans activist Alok Vaid-Menon; meanwhile, employees are planning a walkout on Oct. 20.
[...]
Netflix shares lots of company data, including salaries and quarterly results, with employees as part of its culture of freedom and responsibility. It does so on the condition that those employees don’t share financial results or the performance of individual titles with the public. But the Chappelle special has prompted leaks unprecedented in the company’s history.
I guess they avoided leaks longer than Google, but that sort of trust doesn't last. (See the article if you want to look at the numbers.)
Sticks & stones, eh? He seems to dish it out but can't take it and complains when people joke back. I wonder how he feels about comedians using the N word? I grew up in a place where KKK was...
Sticks & stones, eh? He seems to dish it out but can't take it and complains when people joke back. I wonder how he feels about comedians using the N word? I grew up in a place where KKK was relatively common and they'd regularly make jokes about black people and you can imagine where that goes should it get out of hand. It seems lost on him that jokes aren't always so benign and can have different outcomes depending on subject, conditions, etc.
The generation names have changed meaning in certain internet cultures. Boomer is just shorthand for "old people that don't get my generation" and zoomer is just shorthand for "spoiled young...
The generation names have changed meaning in certain internet cultures. Boomer is just shorthand for "old people that don't get my generation" and zoomer is just shorthand for "spoiled young people that never suffered and are addicted to their devices".
For example, if you watched an old movie and liked it you say "I've watched this boomer movie the other day and..." even tho the movie is probably only 20 years old. i.e. the matrix is a boomer movie. Or if there's a new trend/show that you don't get why it's popular you say "I don't get these zoomers and their tiktoks and vtubers".
Of course this is all colloquial online discourse, the change in the terminology always takes a bit to catch up on serious discussion/articles. But the nicknames for the generation are no longer direct references to the generation, but to a certain way of thinking.
Ricky Gervais isn't really a standup though. He's done six, relatively short, standup tours in a little over 30 years. Most of them in the early 2000/2010s. A big standup act like Stewart Lee or...
Ricky Gervais isn't really a standup though. He's done six, relatively short, standup tours in a little over 30 years. Most of them in the early 2000/2010s. A big standup act like Stewart Lee or Jimmy Carr (who arguably is the biggest name in standup) will have a new show every couple of years and be on tour most of the time. Carr famously works for about 10 months a year and has done for 30 years - his first show was with Gervais, funnily enough.
Ricky Gervais, measured by what he chooses to spend his time on, is a writer and a sort of actor - not a standup (he's also not very funny, but that's by the by). He's very much like his pal Stephen Merchant, who has done standup but mostly writes and acts. Nobody would call Merchant a standup, even though he can fill a theatre if he chooses.
I don't really know about the other guy. I've seen clips here and there but he doesn't seem very good. American standup comedy is very different though. I usually don't like it. Yes, I'm including Bill Hicks in that..
Speaking of repeating the same lame jokes as reactionaries, Gervais did exactly that during his last special too. He straight up copied the "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme...
Speaking of repeating the same lame jokes as reactionaries, Gervais did exactly that during his last special too. He straight up copied the "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme premise, but just replaced helicopter with "chimp". I shut the special off after that.
Super nitpicking, and you're right for the most part, but: neither dysphoria nor dysmorphia, which are different, are required for being trans, which is usually how I see people categorize "sex...
Super nitpicking, and you're right for the most part, but: neither dysphoria nor dysmorphia, which are different, are required for being trans, which is usually how I see people categorize "sex and gender disagree". And dysmorphia isn't even technically a positive diagnostic criteria for being trans, although the validity of that is certainly up for debate.
Here's the full transcript of his standup, for anyone not interested in watching it.
My read of it is that Chappelle spends almost the entire special wanting to have his cake and eat it too. He'll make edgy jokes that he knows are inappropriate as sucker punches to women and trans people in particular, but then he'll walk it back with comments on how the people criticizing don't really understand who he is and what he stands for. He'll give a quoteable moment that paints him in a favorable light before diving right back into another shitty jab.
Example (cw: transphobia)
Sure, he says trans women are women -- right before getting everyone to laugh at their genitalia.
There's a recurring subtext throughout the piece I don't think he's intending to convey, but it rings through loud and clear. He gives several anecdotes about times in which people criticized him for being misogynistic or transphobic, and each time, instead of doing any sort of introspection, he just tells himself that they don't know him and they're being unfair. He never considers that people repeatedly telling him he’s problematic might be doing so with cause but instead inverts their grievances, making himself look like the wronged party, even when he admits to the wrongdoing himself. In fact, he often doubles down on the issue in his retelling.
Example (cw: slurs, threats)
He defends himself from accusations of hating women -- by joking about murdering one.
There was a user who used to post on Tildes who, after the JK Rowling controversy broke, said something to the effect of "she's a professional author; she knows how words work". It was something that really stuck with me, because so many people were trying to argue that Rowling didn't really mean what she said. That user succinctly pointed out that Rowling's entire career is built around knowing exactly how to convey exactly what it is that she wants to, using only the words that she chose for that purpose.
I feel like it applies here too: Chappelle knows how words work; they're his entire career. So when he tells us he doesn't hate trans people or women he obviously wants us to believe him, but I can't really square that with all the things he says that he knows willfully come at their expense. He might not hate them, but he also doesn’t show that he particularly understands or cares about them.
This may just be a natural consequence of celebrity in the age of social media. I've seen multiple celebs go from being fairly middle-of-the-road or apolitical on various issues get called out on something mildly problematic they said, get sucked into an internet vortex of abuse, and come out the other side getting radicalized or jaded in one way or another.
A constant drumbeat of cyberbullying, even if you're technically punching up is going to have an effect on people. At some point, the assumed power dynamics of the 'punching up' vs. 'punching down' dichotomy starts to break down when you reach a certain scale.
Even if people telling him he's wrong are doing so with cause, how is he supposed to parse that for himself? Because 90% of the comments one might get online are going to be garbage. They'll be dunks and cheap-shots that interpret what he said uncharitably, they'll be abusive, they'll likely include racist remarks and death threats (and even rape threats if you're not a cis man). So how is someone on the receiving end of that shit-funnel supposed to interpret the feedback they're getting even if we, who have the benefit of distance and the ability to approach it analytically, might decide the thing that got the shit-funnel aimed at them was bad? Every day on social media there is some meme or other about how perfectly normal human interaction is "a trauma response" or "abuse actually." Who can take any of it seriously?
I agree that this is a huge problem with modern discourse. I wrote my thoughts more at length about it here if you're interested, but that's a much longer post and the relevant part to what you're saying is mostly this:
I think Chappelle's situation is a little different, as it seems to be not just a recent, modern development but a career-long issue. In the standup he references multiple different instances of people taking issue with him, including someone calling him out for being transphobic 16 years ago. He even acknowledges that he was using inappropriate slurs and going, in his own words, "too far". He tells us this story because that moment generated a community backlash and he uses that backlash as his grievance without acknowledging that he had a role in directly provoking that. He admits the wrongdoing but never connects it to its direct social consequence. He never has his moment of "oh, I can now see why they were so mad at me", even in hindsight.
The emotional locus of his show is the unfairness with which he's been treated, but it rings hollow for me when he so readily treats other people with the same unfairness. It's clear through the nature of his humor that he knows where the "lines" are, because he's quite skilled at transgressing them for a step before stepping right back into "fair" territory. Your question of how he's supposed to know is a fair one, but I also think he knows more than he's letting on, which is what gives his punchlines their, well, punch.
This is not to say that the people being abusive towards him are doing the right thing either. They absolutely are not, and I hate that this has become widely seen as the only correct response to people with difficult or discriminatory behaviors. I actually think the people who engage in this kind of thing are making things worse, because their abusive messages override the more measured and thoughtful advocacy that could get someone to change their mind or consider a different perspective. Like you identified, it is much easier for someone to discard all criticism wholesale when even just some of it reveals itself to be garbage.
Of course, there's also another side to this phenomenon where some people choose to interpret any and all pushback as abusive, even when it's not and is just plain, regular criticism.
I haven't actually seen it yet so I can't comment on the content itself. I just know that Chappelle's whole deal has been to skewer sacred cows to put people on edge and then pull it back to invite introspection about the feelings that provokes. Most of the criticism I've seen seems to be snapshotting those specific offensive jokes without really highlighting the context they're being made in. In some cases it even seems like people are taking instances where he seems to be saying "I can understand where they're coming from," like with the Blackface comparison, and people are making that out to be like he's promoting that comparison rather than just an example of him listening to and summarizing certain perspectives in society. This is kind of a tough thing with comedy where it's not one-size-fits-all so if you're not in on the joke you're probably going to be mad about it. But on the flip side, if the comedian doesn't seem sufficiently in with the community the joke is for it's going to land very differently. For example, I find Russel Peters' whole bit kind of hacky and lame but not offensive. But if someone who looks and sounds like Pete Holmes came out and did the exact same bit you can bet I'd be way madder about it. In Chappelle's case he seems to be trying to address something at an intersection point between gender, sexuality, and racial issues so it's hard to draw out a boundary on who gets to speak for it without it being offensive.
But I think my main point is that the backlash seems to stem from the weird form of media criticism that happens online where people are only able to engage with media as a form of cultural scorekeeping. Like they just tally up each statement that might offend a group, tally up the catchy phrases that might support each group, count up the instances of representation or lack thereof, and then decide they can summarize what its' all about based on where the balance falls. That seems like a really shallow way to engage with anything since it's not even really about absorbing and understanding what it's about. Evangelicals do this too with movies and music and every time I read something like that I have no clue what to make of it.
IIRC you're a teacher by profession right? So I would actually appreciate your feedback this. What it actually reminds me of is this really really good article I read maybe 10 or 15 years ago from an English teacher observing how her students have changed in how they do literary analysis over her career. I wish I had clipped it when I saw it but it's impossible to find now. She said she had noticed over time that her students were getting worse at "close reading" and engaging with the book and the author directly. What they were doing instead was basically writing things about themselves that were somewhat tangentially related to the themes of the book and mining individual quotes or passages that reinforced what was basically a personal essay. She said kids were getting better at parsing phrases and paragraphs and summarizing them, but worse at extracting meaning from engaging the work overall.
This was mostly in reference to her disdain for the emphasis on standardized testing. She blamed the tendency of writing assignments to prioritize being able to write a coherent, 5-paragraph essay rather than an ability to deliver meaningful insights or analysis. I can't help but feel like a lot of media criticism now is partly a result of that generational cohort growing up to become critics.
Meta note: I'm splitting my response here into two separate comments. This is the part about Chappelle, and I'll respond to your questions about teaching separately. Thanks for your thoughtful responses and question -- you've given me a lot to think about and share!
I get what you're saying, and my original post definitely looks like I'm just sniping him via a couple of choice quotes, but I was really just wanting to use those as concrete anchor points of what I saw as recurring issues in the whole set. I, like you, hate the cheap takedowns and shallow analysis that pervade much of modern media criticism, but I also think it's a mistake to assume that everybody is coming from that place, or that those are only happening in opposition to Chappelle instead of in support as well. I promise you that my dislike of his set is coming from a genuine, considered place and not the result of shallow scorekeeping, but I can also promise you there are a lot of people out there who support his set for vapid, score-keepy reasons as well.
The place I'm coming from is that I altogether stopped talking about comedy online after beating my head against a wall of the shittiest takes in support of provocative comedy for years on reddit. Fans of the genre tended to pivot between two stances, choosing whichever one let them deflect earnest discussion or criticism the best. If I were to critique the provocation, I'd get "lol triggered" and a paternalistic response that I didn't understand the deeper, more meaningful commentary behind the bombast. On the other hand, if I were to critique the commentary, I’d get a response that the point is merely the provocation. It was always an unwinnable situation, and the people doing this pivoting would hop back and forth between both stances fluidly, all while seemingly completely unaware that they were doing it. I was simultaneously a rube for failing to understand the deep, meaningful insights that only comedy can achieve and a sucker who fell for trying to find actual meaning in what was obvious trolling.
I don't have a problem with provocative comedy and in fact think it's often an incredibly powerful way to yield insights — something I believe Chapelle himself has done well elsewhere. But, for me, the strength of the comedy lives or dies by the nature of the insight produced and not the existence of the provocation alone. The people I used to argue with didn't ever make space for that in our conversations, however, because they couldn't ever conceive the idea that someone could simultaneously understand the joke and also find it unfunny or bothersome.
And I get it: I'm a humorless killjoy. Nobody likes someone raining on their parade. Of course, the people who so would rail against me for messing with their fun never seemed to care when I brought up that were messing with mine. It was all a one-way street that protected their feelings while disregarding mine. Part of the reason I am so humorless was because it became very clear to me early on that "humor" was the excuse so many people online were using to be shitty to others. Mike Birbiglia covers it well in his "I'm Joking" bit (it's only 45 seconds, and worth a watch for context).
I think the worst aspect of provocative comedy, even the stuff that's done well, is that people tend to see in it a tacit permission to emulate it, and emulate it poorly. You mentioned "context collapse" in another thread here, and I've watched a version of that happen countless times online, where people will take provocation from a comedy bit and apply it elsewhere as if it's both a universal truth and fundamentally funny on its own. Louis CK gave people the idea that it was both desirable and hilarious for people to tell me, a gay guy, to "quit being a faggot and suck that dick" regardless of the context. South Park gave them even more support. The most infuriating part of this wasn't that it happened, but that the people being dicks to me simultaneously claimed moral authority in doing so, granted to them by their Holy Fathers CK, Parker, and Stone. I'm much more forgiving of someone who's being shitty and knows it than someone who's being shitty but dresses it up as if they're also in the right. I suspect this is probably what bothers you about a lot of the people critiquing Chappelle, especially those who are dressing up abuse in the language of justice.
The reality of Chappelle's piece for me here is that I understand it, and I still don't think it's particularly funny or insightful. I get what he's going for rhetorically and could give a beat-by-beat rundown of how he constructs his argument and builds towards his thesis -- his "closer". Ultimately, I don't think he adequately supports his thesis though, and I don't think the commentary brought forth by most of his provocations is particularly valuable. I also believe much of it is outright regressive. Like the people gleefully calling me a faggot and telling me to suck a dick as if doing so were the height of comedy and insight, Chappelle spends much of his set punching down on trans people as an act of both humor and righteous truth while simultaneously trying to convey the genuine hurt he experienced from them punching down on him. His thesis -- that the harm he's faced is unfair -- is weakened to the point of uselessness because he cannot connect that harm with the harm he's actively doing to others within the set itself, much less outside of it. Whether this oversight comes from ignorance or a calculated duplicity doesn't matter. I think he's smart enough for it to be the latter, but I'm willing to be charitable and assume the former. Neither is a good look for him, however.
If I'm being really honest about what bothers me the most, however, it's less about Chappelle's words themselves and more about his reach. Many, many people out there will invariably take what he says in this special and run with it, seeking to effect those same provocations in their own life but with even less consideration and skill. For every person you're bothered by who's giving an unfounded, knee-jerk critique to Chappelle's piece without really considering it beyond a pull quote or two, there's another person delighted with the idea of ragging on trans women's "Impossible Pussies" with their friends or, more likely, strangers on the internet en masse. Chappelle, in failing to understand trans people yet deciding to speak definitively on them anyway, has essentially given his permission for others to treat trans people in dismissive and demeaning ways. Even if his stand up was hilarious (which I, even charitably, don't think it is), I would still find this inexcusable.
And I promise you, as best as my reputation here can count for, that I came to these conclusions as the result of genuine, earnest consideration and not dishonest, motivated reasoning.
Meta note: This is response 2, regarding your question about teaching.
If you ever by chance find that article again, please send it my way! It sounds fascinating, and I greatly appreciate the perspective of people who've been in the field longer than I have -- especially those who taught before the onslaught of standardized testing.
My entire career has taken place under the shadow of NCLB, so I've never known an educational environment as a teacher that wasn't based in standardized testing. That's a much larger conversation, but the succinct version is that I believe that the greatest sin of "accountability culture" in education is a killing of the joy of learning. The best way I've learned to convey this to people outside of education is to talk about ice cream. Most people love eating it, but most people would also stop liking it as much if I started measuring them while they ate it, tracking their time spent on each bowl, limiting the flavors they had access to, and giving constant messaging about how their performance with ice cream compared to their peers and normed standards of eating. Much of my job as a teacher is about trying to find joy within a system that is set up to crush the spirits of students and teachers alike.
On this backdrop, it's easy to paint a lot of troubling trends about kids and their abilities. I don't know that I have the perspective to say anything definitively, but I'll also say that our concerns tend to be less about kids achieving high levels of literary criticism and more about kids even reading the book in the first place. You're probably sick of me quoting myself at this point, but I talked a bit about it here:
Having the patience and stamina to sit through a long, rich text is a prerequisite to being able to give rich, deep analysis. Many of my students will never arrive at the analysis destination because they are literally unable to board the bus to get there in the first place. It's heartbreaking.
The same goes for critical thinking -- it requires time, consideration, and a willingness to sit in a destination-less space for a while, not sure where you'll end up. I have definitely noticed, over time, a decreased appetite and ability for this. My students want immediate answers. Waiting is torturous.
I see it in myself too. If a website doesn't load immediately, I'm frustrated. If the video isn't engaging in the first seven seconds, I click away like I never even wanted to watch it in the first place. I've been struggling to get myself back into the habit of even finishing fiction books. It'll take me weeks to finish one -- my average reading session time will be just a few minutes. I can recall a time, not that long ago, when I used to devour books, reading them for hours without stopping, finishing several in the span of a single weekend.
I used to put up a "Riddle of the Week" on my board -- something that required clever, critical or lateral thinking. I'd leave it up all week and let students puzzle over it. I'd have students come up to me days later, excited to have finally figured it out. They'd talk about how they'd think about it while at home, discuss it with their parents, etc.
I stopped doing it because there came a point at which more and more students would just search the internet for the riddle in order to get the solution. Also, there came a point where students were eager to share the answer with one another, and I got frustrated that they were so content with this. The fun in the riddles was supposed to be in the thinking required to get the answer, but increasingly it felt like their fun was only in acquiring the answer. I think modern kids are being socialized to prioritize instant, effortless gratification. Reading, deep thinking, sustained analysis -- all of these are antithetical to that. It doesn't mean kids can't do these or even that they don't want to -- it just that they have much more of a hill to climb in order to get there. They have to fight against the impulses that have been so dutifully encouraged by modern tech, from such an early age.
With regards to media criticism, I think we probably share a similar bother. The drumbeat of the past decade has been on "representation", and the media landscape has undergone a truly impressive shift for which I'm incredibly grateful. I do believe that representation matters, and it warms my heart to know that kids of all stripes are growing up with access to media that they can both see themselves in and learn about others' experiences from. The first book I ever read that had a gay character was when I was in my 20s, and they weren't even the focus of the book. I can now walk down to my school library and find 20+ books with gay main characters, easily.
Where I take issue is that some people see representation as the endpoint, rather than a means. For a long time, I watched people praise books not because they were necessarily good books but simply because they had diverse representation in them. I'm certainly not against diverse representation, but I found the laudatory refrains some of them received to be frustrating because I felt like I was being asked to discard the lit-crit part of my brain that wanted to dive into the prose, the themes, the subtexts, etc. Furthermore, it felt patronizing to me to praise a book simply for who it's characters were rather than the entirety of the story itself. Again, I'm delighted that we have so many books with, for example, gay characters, but I still think a book with a gay character can be a bad book or a poorly told story.
I'll also add to this that there was a troubling trend in YA criticism for a while that treated any and all discriminatory content as wrong. I remember reading a book (which I can sadly no longer remember the name of) that had a homophobic secondary character. This was essential to the plot and the conflict and anchored the main character's experience in real-world prejudices. The novel didn't support the character's homophobia in the slightest, but I remember going on Goodreads and being surprised by the number of people who panned the novel simply for including homophobia.
I get where it comes from -- a lot of adults especially want to protect kids from discrimination, and that's something I share with them -- but I also feel that fiction is one of the safest spaces we have for kids to be able to confront and explore difficult topics. If we eliminate any books that even convey problematic content, we're not equipping students to be able to handle those difficult topics. I think we have a tendency to think of kids as fragile, when in reality, they're pretty resilient. I think fiction in particular can be a powerful tool for this, but I don't think it will happen in a walled garden where we police any and all transgressions.
There are, of course, texts that go so far in the opposite direction that I don't think kids should be reading them, but I also think that even the most problematic texts can still be valuable as teaching tools and jumping off points for reflection if considered properly and strategically. I ragged on Chappelle's standup in my other post as being problematic, but I'll admit that untangling why I felt that way about it and figuring out how best to articulate it was a valuable process for me. I want kids to be able to have that same opportunity, and I think we do them a disservice by assuming they can't handle or shouldn't be exposed to difficult things.
The last thing I'll say is that exploring "difficult things" in education is, well, difficult in today's world. Most teachers default to a sort of milquetoast neutrality on almost everything interesting about the world because of the potential for blowback. Parents are not shy about raising issues and blowing things up on social media, and we are long past the point where most parents assume good faith in their children's teachers. We do our jobs with a wall up, knowing we're always one mis-step away from a shitshow. Kids mostly read this as us being guarded, out of touch, or boring. Most kids genuinely want to dive into challenging, juicy, interesting, real-world issues, but attempting to navigate those in a classroom is often not worth the trouble. In thinking about this out loud right now, I'm also wondering if that doesn't play out in some of the criticism you're identifying as well? Perhaps some of the shallowness you're seeing is a result of the fact that we teachers are limiting our own depth out of safety as well.
Critical thinking is necessary and failing to apply critical thinking remains unacceptable, especially for people with power and money. Forgive me if I don't feel particularly bad about the cyberbullying directed at a wealthy comic who has Netflix bending over backwards to stay in his good graces when entire internet communities exist to bully and harass the (largely powerless) targets of his jokes.
I've been doxed, I've been harassed, and I've come through it. Doesn't mean it was easy, and obviously I think people shouldn't harass others as a general rule, but I attribute my success there to my relative wealth, my relative position of stability, and my support network. I struggle to believe that this kind of thing hits harder for someone who is wealthier, has more stability, and has a larger support network.
In addition, this particular comic has said that he is, largely, happy about this episode of "cyberbullying", which make it even harder for me to take seriously the argument that the mean internet transes radicalized him into terfery.
No offense but a lot of times this ends up sounding like sour grapes. I was responding to a statement that basically argued "If a bunch of people are dumping on you consider that there might be a good reason." But it's the internet! There is absolutely no reason to assume there would be a good reason for it. If anything it's quite likely there is not a good reason for it and it's actually just bored trolls taking the opportunity to join a dogpile. What critical thinking is supposed to be done there? Is everyone supposed to go through some kind of reeducation struggle session until their beliefs come into conformance with whatever the idiosyncratic motivations of an online mob happen to be? It's not even like there's anything one could reasonably do to make the hate stop coming. Any apology will be deemed insincere because nobody has standing to accept such an apology. And it's not like most of the criticism is even coming from a reasonable place. It's quite likely you're not going to agree with all the ideological positions and worldviews and metaphysics and whatever other philosophies of the people criticizing you. So what do you do? Just disappear or be honest?
Having money doesn't really change people from still just being people. It's also untrue to say celebrities have "a larger support network." Fame is actually extremely isolating. Chapelle himself talked about this. And if you don't believe him Jack Gleeson also talked about it when he retired from acting.
a.) Not sure it's accurate to take statements made as part of a comedy bit as literal statements of sincere belief. That misrepresents what shock-comedy is actually doing.
b.) Yeah he's figured out a way to make the outrage cycle work for him. What else is there to do when this is the milieu we're stuck in but to ride the outrage wave? Expect to see more of this because it's really the only rational way to function in the entertainment business. Online shitstorms are basically impossible to anticipate and stay on the good side of if you also want to remain publicly visible and engaged at all. What you're seeing is an emergent property of the way this sort of discourse unfolds.
Consider the position of the people who are mad at you because you made fun of them. Especially consider the position of people who write well-researched, long-form pieces which are generally positive but criticize one particular aspect of your work (example). Ignore people who are being abusive to the extent that you can.
As you say, almost anything will get you harassed on the internet. Saying you took the vaccine will get you harassed on the internet. It can't be an acceptable excuse for promoting bigotry, because then everyone would get a free pass.
This is where the internet's tendency to cause context collapse comes in. When I was younger one of the main deals with shock comics was to needle censorious scolds, the main difference between then and now is that the censorious scolds back then were Moral Majority types who got mad at you for using profanity, blaspheming, and talking about sex at all (especially non-hetero sex).
We might agree with the goals that the modern censorious types have in ways we didn't agree with Jerry Falwell types, but I think it's only natural that people who are temperamentally inclined to not like being told what to say and how to think are going to write bits designed to tweak the sensibilities of people trying to claim that authority regardless of the goals they want to advance by leveraging the power.
I do see what you're saying, but is it then never acceptable to criticize something a shock comic says, even when actually criticizing the comedy rather than the political content, as the post I linked does?
I certainly don't think Chappelle should be "censored" in the sense that he not be allowed to perform or tell these kind of jokes, but I do take issue with a service of which I am a customer using my money to pay him to tell the world that I'm just like Rachel Dolezal (sp?), and suspending (and then firing) an employee who agreed with me. I'm paying them, I'm allowed to have opinions about the service they provide!
It's always appropriate to critique what a performer says. But online, the stuff being said isn't critiqued in any thoughtful way, it's more like taken as a casus belli to initiate hostilities against them. Critique is usually about taking the stuff being said and examining it, raising the issues it raises or brings up. What happens online isn't that, it manifests as calls to get the person fired, initiate boycotts, direct hateful messages their way, and basically every other weapon at anyone's disposal to make life unpleasant for them. There is no examination of the content, it instantly jumps to "You hate [X]" and "You must support every bad thing associated with [Y]."
Sometimes there may be some articles here or there that articulate what the problems actually are, but the person in question is generally not allowed to disagree in good faith with any part of these. So there's no dialogue or persuasion happening here, it's functionally just coercive powers being deployed to harass people who don't maintain the ideological commitments that some group of people have decided is the objectively correct moral framework against which no disrespect can be tolerated.
Okay! You're talking about a phenomenon I'm not participating in or discussing, so I don't think we can really continue meaningfully. I agree that what you're saying is bad, but it's not what I see myself of any people I follow on Twitter etc doing.
And I've seen plenty who have never had this problem, not to mention plenty who have ran into this problem and reformed and made amends with the problematic behavior they displayed. I think it's unfair to pose this as a question without acknowledging the full playing field.
This is one of many paths that people can take. Are celebrities more likely to take this path than the average person who doesn't have the same scale of reach? I don't know, but also no one knows and I don't think we'll do a lot of good by theorizing excuses for people with bad behavior without simultaneously acknowledging the people with good behavior and asking what happened differently with them. Furthermore, if we spend all this time talking about the negative and ignoring the positive, people may get the false idea that this simply is an outcome, forgetting the people that don't cause them emotional outrage as they leave less of a mark on their psyche than those who upset them.
If anyone has the means to talk to a professional, it's someone with a lot of money. I'm not going to excuse bad behavior for a public figure who knows what they're doing with words who refuses to talk to a professional or take active steps to better themself. Plenty of people in the public eye are good people and I think it's unfair to them to act like this is an expected outcome. With platform comes responsibility, and I'm tired of people acting like they aren't responsible because it's convenient for them to be lazy about it.
You will notice that in your comment highlighting we should do this, you don't actually reference any examples. Because a few of the recent ones I can think of, like Lindsay Ellis or Natalie Wynn or even Chrissy Teigen, they definitely did not take the tack where they are cowed by public pressure into shutting up and "talking to a professional" to "better themself." They talk to professionals to cope with the tide of emotional abuse they're getting and then they either tell the haters to fuck off and keep doing what they're doing, albeit with a lot less respect for the crowds online they thought they were a part of.
What does "better themself" mean? What if they actually just disagree with most of the criticism against them? What if they just think people need to grow a thicker skin rather than being actively opposed to their rights to exist? Is there room for them to disagree there or would you just say they are "bad people" who need to submit to "betterment?" Because at that point this isn't a dialogue, this is people deciding they get to sit in moral judgement of everyone else without any humility about what they do and don't know of other peoples' inner lives.
I didn't reference any examples because I don't want to sit here and argue specifics about each individual in question. I'm not on this website to engage with pedantry. If you truly think that no one can reform or has reformed or changed their opinion then it doesn't matter what examples I bring to the table, you'll find some way to diminish them in an effort to bolster your statement that it is an inevitability without any actual science to back it up. You have a hunch, I admitted that this hunch probably plays a part and spent time acknowledging that we need to understand it better.
Bad behavior is not "bad people". Good people can display bad behavior.
Why is your takeaway from my message so black and white? Why must people be absolutely good or bad, as in if we're keeping track of some kind of moral calculus on their lives and as soon as someone is 50.01% bad we change their label?
I'm merely stating that there are people out there who are not assholes and who do not abuse their platform because you failed to mention them in any way shape or form in your response. I simply wish to point out that there's more than one possibility here and that to consider one outcome without at the very least acknowledging the other is not the way to have a discussion about something.
I didn't mention it because it is not relevant to the point I was making or to the comment I was replying to. When I'm talking about people who did a thing, why would I spend an equal amount of time talking about people who did not do the thing? How does that make sense?
Where in the world did I say this? Why is your takeaway from my message so black-and-white?
So you say, but it's hard to reconcile this when you immediately say things like "there are people out there who are not assholes," which implies you're presupposing certain people as assholes. Do you understand why interacting with people with this mentality might not put you in the best position to understand what they're actually trying to say instead of whatever you're assuming about them?
If you want to have a discussion about this thing feel free to raise the points you want to have a discussion on. But I might point out that simply saying "Why aren't you discussing the thing I would rather you discuss instead of the thing you're discussing" is also not really the way to have a discussion about something, it's only having a meta-discussion.
The comment is talking about how this behavior is not acceptable. You replied and made the argument that it was acceptable by providing some anecdotes. You've presented reasoning as to why this person was committing unacceptable behavior. Presenting a counter-argument shows your reader that you understand another position exists and that you've considered it. Surely you should not be surprised when someone else comes in to reinforce the point of the original comment by providing said counter-argument?
Because you seem to be focused on discounting it as a possibility. You continue to provide a singular narrative, albeit slightly shifted. You acknowledge that these people probably go to therapy, but then insist that the reasoning is different than what was presented. You spend the entirety of your reply presenting the idea that I'm discounting what you've already presented or that what I presented isn't feasible or possible. What takeaway am I supposed to have when nearly every sentence you present is dismissive of what I've presented with no acknowledgement of even the possibility that anything I presented could happen?
I think we can all agree that assholes exist in the world. I wasn't making the claim that any specific person was an asshole, just making a generalized statement.
Why do you assume that I've written any specific person off as an asshole before interacting with them?
I'm merely providing the counter-argument that you did not address because I believe it is intellectual dishonest to ignore all possibilities, especially when we have no hard evidence. It's unfair to a reader who is not versed in the nuances of this kind of discussion to be only presented with a singular view of the world and it is unfair to the people who do not display the behavior you outlined as it ignores or at the least minimizes their existence.
I think this is the confusion here. I never said Chappelle's bit was acceptable. I said the nature of celebrity in the age of social media is going to make it so a bunch of people inundating you with "feedback" is unlikely to prompt the sort of introspection we would presumably want. I'm not talking about the person's views or actions, I'm talking about the outcomes/results of this mode of engagement that we're all implicated in with the overall aim of wondering "how would we actually like this to go ideally?" and "what would need to happen for it to go that way?"
If you wanted to talk about an alternative-mechanism to this, it would be helpful to provide examples of different outcomes. I am genuinely curious about the the cases where you say this underlying dynamic plays out constructively. You said yourself that if we could compare them against the negative ones we might get a more complete picture, but you're not actually helping fill out the picture, just implying that there is a bigger, prettier picture I'm not seeing. But what you said was basically just "Well I've seen it go the other way."
I at least tried to meet you half-way and come up with cases where it did go a different way, even if that was just people going "Ugh, I'm just going to distance myself from this stuff" rather than "I'm going to troll these people." But if you think me coming back with that was "dismissive" or "me focusing on discounting this as a possibility" I don't see how it's any less dismissive than you just implying I don't have a complete picture without actually helping complete the picture.
Whether it applied to anyone specific wasn't the issue so much as trying to reconcile that statement with saying "Bad behavior is not 'bad people.' Good people can display bad behavior."
I actually agree with that statement about separating the sinner from the sin, but I'm trying to point out that the rest of your paragraph makes it seem like while you've accepted that statement on an intellectual level, maybe you haven't really worked it into your working model for how you interact.
Why this pervasive assumption of bad faith? Why is it "this person is being intellectually dishonest" and not "here's something this person maybe hasn't considered" or "I wonder if this person has thought about this alternative outcome that they're dismissing for reasons they haven't gone into here?"
I'm struggling with a response to this because this reply is much more measured and you're willing to engage, but I have already disengaged from the content. Rather than address your specific issues, I'd like to help you (and hopefully others) understand why this is particularly frustrating to me.
This is ~lgbt. This is not ~news or ~movies or ~tv. This is supposed to be a space to discuss LGBT issues. This is supposed to be a place where LGBT individuals feel safe. Yet this post, and many others like it, have attracted a sizeable crowd which have entered into this thread and either provided sympathy to bad actors or downplayed issues which simply did not affect them in the same way as the LGBT users in here are affected. There is no way to distinguish between someone who is coming here to attempt to discuss nuance and someone who is entering here to be a troll, be dismissive of LGBT people, or otherwise pick a fight.
I can't put into words how endlessly tiring it is to be attacked all across the internet for simply believing that dismissing others based on some attribute they possess such as their skin color, who they are attracted to, how they present themselves in public, how their thought processes are slightly different than others (neurodivergence), or what abilities they have shouldn't happen, ever, under any circumstances. Often times you'll see these very groups of people retreat on the internet into safe spaces because it's so fucking exhausting to have to deal with this. It's so predictable that as soon as I saw this thread go up on Tildes, despite the first comments being strongly negative of this behavior, that I simply knew that it would get infiltrated with people playing devil's advocate, excusing behavior, or otherwise invading the space to provide their opinion.
If you want to enter a space like this you need to remember the human even more than in other spaces. You have to recognize that the people you are engaging with are already at wits end dealing with people who attempt to erase their identity, their thoughts, and their contributions all over the internet. Just go onto any major platform and take a look at the discussion going on about this. How many times can you spot people excusing his behavior? How many times can you spot someone not even engaging with the content and merely entering these spaces to declare how much they hate "faggots and trannies"?
When you enter a space like this to have a discussion it is your responsibility to engage in a civil and productive manner because the people you are trying to engage with are already discriminated against. This means that you may need to temper your message. This means that you may need to spend more time being careful that your message isn't construed in the wrong light or really ensure that someone understands your initial position. Entering into a thread like this the way you did is likely to upset many who don't have the emotional capacity to engage with you and try to determine what you're actually saying.
In this thread we have people who are already on edge for good reason, who spend their mental faculties and emotional bandwidth helping to educate others and engage with people who aren't aware of how life is for them. You're then asking these very same people to engage with your content in good faith while ignoring how the rest of the world engages with them. Why should they engage with a questionable response in good faith when there's so many instances of this going wrong in the internet? What olive branch have you extended to ensure that others understand your stance, that you are not a bigot in sheep's clothing?
You asked me why there is an assumption of bad faith - this is precisely why. You're smart enough to know how to make an argument. You're smart enough to have learned why and how to implement counter-arguments. You're smart enough to know that establishing the counter-argument is an easy way for you to inject your own opinion on the subject or at the very least establish your viewpoint on some of the content that was presented. You're smart enough to know that not actively dismissing bigotry is tacitly endorsing it (paradox of tolerance). I know you know all of this, and yet I'm left perplexed by you challenging whether I think this is intellectually dishonest or not. If you're dismissing it, why are you withholding these reasons rather than clarifying your point? I'm left completely flummoxed trying to understand where the disconnect is and I'm already too emotionally exhausted and disconnected to bother pursuing this thread to see where it lies.
dubteedub posted it to ~tv, I only moved it to ~lgbt about 6 hours ago, after it had already been up for 20 hours and the large majority of the comment threads were already going. There were 48 comments before it was moved, and have been 15 posted since then (almost all of them inside this specific thread).
Wow. She got a link to a virtual meeting, clicked it, and got fired.
Apparently Chappelle's discussions of his trans friend Daphne are not supported by her other friends: https://twitter.com/coda_robo/status/1447774035576860674
big fuckin yikes, will be interesting to see how badly they can continue to fuck this up
Not defending Netflix here, but she was fired for leaking internal/confidential information, just as you or any other employee would be from any company.
Which is just the standard low effort crap that stands for journalism these days.
Incorrect.
They didn't say she didn't do anything wrong. They said they don't think she joined the meeting with ill intent or that she did so with knowledge that she shouldn't be there. Yet, she still wasn't supposed to be in that meeting. To their knowledge she didn't do anything wrong on purpose, but she did still did something wrong.
If you do something that is wrong, even if you didn't know it was wrong at the time, was it still wrong to do it?
Should they have suspended her over it? Absolutely not and that was a dumb move given the timing, but still doesn't mean she wasn't wrong.
Well the info leaked. She said she leaked the info. They say she leaked the info. So it seems like she leaked the info and got fired for leaking the info.
I am not trans, but I am an ally, and whichever stand up of his I watched most recently a few years ago made me really uncomfortable. And not in the “maybe this guy is on to something” way. I haven’t watched him since, because ick.
Even if this is accurate, its poorly timed discipline.
His other specials were pretty good overall, but this one felt totally unpolished, like he came in trying to get in trouble with the twitterati. Most of the set fell flat, and any time it appeared he was back on track, he'd spoil it with a cheap joke. The set just felt lazy and hostile, even if he didn't intend on that.
Chappelle went into this as someone known for nuance and came out tone deaf. Going off on 'woke culture' or 'cancel culture', no matter how relevant, has been played out.
I don't think that companies behaving differently in different countries is necessarily hypocrisy. In oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia there's not much choice. I'd be in the closet in Saudi Arabia, too.
We're talking about a government that killed a man for being critical of them. I wouldn't put it past them to ban Netflix for defying them, Streisand effect or not.
Wow, the tweet wasn't even that bad. I think it's more that she dared defy the king than anything else.
As far as being an "ally" I'd say I'm pretty garbage, and before this I would've even defended Chapelle's last special. He flirted with danger there, but I at least felt he had a good intention, and intentionally took a rocky road there to use mass appeal to get his point out. I haven't seen the new special yet, and may edit this comment if I watch it tonight, but his response to the criticism is the sort of thing that is definitely just for publicity, and always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's very much the "They're just hatin'" school of deflecting criticism. I just realized this is more in response to the thread.
I haven't seen the special, as I'm not keen on watching people tell me I don't deserve to exist, but I'm genuinely curious: what was his intention that you're talking about?
To be clear, I was referring to "Sticks and Stones," which was his previous Netflix special. He's talking about the LGBT movement and how "It's not just one movement, but they're all sitting in the car." It's about the interaction of various sub-groups, largely satirized but not generally mean. The issue, I think (I obviously lack the required perspective) is not the broad concept, but the little digs that sneak in. It's very pro-LGBT in concept, and he's mostly just relaying what he's heard from LGBT friends about the movement.
My defense was basically that yeah, he made some dumb digs, but the joke, as a whole, is LGBT-positive, it's intended as a humorous observation of group relationships. I didn't think it was "that bad," at the time, but also as a matter of perspective, I'm in a position where I'm not victimized for my gender or appearance. If you, or anybody else, wanted to look into that segment, it's at 22:20 in "Sticks and Stones," but I can also understand if you didn't want to.
EDIT: I forgot to say the bad part in the first paragraph, it's there now.
Ah, understood - thanks for clarifying!
The most recent special he actually respects people's pronouns. He correctly calls Daphne, his trans friend who committed suicide a few years back, a woman. He doesn't say "this is a man in a dress" despite what that one thing about him being a TERF will have people believe.
You're right, he never specifically says that, and he does actually use the proper pronouns when talking about his recently deceased trans friend. However, immediately before that he had this to say:
And only then does he start telling the story about his trans friend... Which, given all the horrible and confused shit he just said (and admitted to agreeing with), honestly felt to me like the classic "See, I can't be a transphobe since I had a trans friend and didn't publicly misgender her!" excuse.
The full transcript, so you can judge for yourself.
I like how the comedian who built his career on calling out white people's bullshit and tackling racism just went "it's okay, I'm not transphobic, I have trans friends".
So, just making sure I'm up to speed, are we at the point that everything said by a comedian on stage is absolute truth and not setup for jokes?
Not defending what he said, just asking. Also curious if everyone here thinks Bo Burnham stayed in a single room for an entire year to shoot Inside.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
Either he, personally, is transphobic, or he's playing a character on stage who is - but (at least from what I can glean from the transcript) he doesn't criticize that character's beliefs pretty much at all. He's either stating sincerely held personal beliefs or making up someone who holds those beliefs and presenting that person uncritically. Either way, as an artist, he's espousing those beliefs.
I don't really feel qualified to participate in the larger conversations of this thread because I believe comedy, shock comedy in particular, exists outside of the social conventions of the time. That's what it's for. It's a place where people say all the things you're not supposed to say. Some people don't like it, which is ok.
But it has been frustrating to read articles and comments that claim with a straight face that Dave was self identifying as transphobic. That was clear sarcasm. It was saying: I know that's what people are going to say so I'm just going to write it into the act.
Dave has a history of pushing buttons on purpose. It's trolling as performance art. It's an entire genre of comedy.
Dislike it, say it's not funny (in this case I'd agree, the special wasn't that funny), use it as a starting point for conversation, but don't engage with it like it's an attempt at real discourse! It's comedy!
Please note: I personally think some of Dave's jokes in this special, and some of themes, are outdated and tone deaf. I'm not here trying to defend transphobia.
That's all well and good, but this is how people think about trans people. Comedy that exposes hateful rhetoric as acceptable is harmful, directly. Much as it wouldn't be acceptable for me, a white person, to uncritically portray a character on stage who thinks non-white people are intellectually inferior to whites, it is unacceptable for a cis person to uncritically portray a character who self-identifies as a transphobe.
Whether the antecedent of "I" in "I'm a transphobe" means Chappelle or Chappelle's on-stage persona, it's an uncritical portrayal of hate and that is, in and of itself, hateful.
Amazing that he's managed to grasp at least one aspect of basic civility after twenty years of trans jokes. Too bad it wasn't long enough to recognize he shouldn't punch down. Maybe in another twenty.
Did he make trans jokes before his specials in 2017?
Yes he was even doing them in his standup acts before the Chappelle show. His earliest jokes on this typically boiled down to comedy of surprise where some female presenting figure in a story he's telling would be revealed to have a dick. Not particularly sophisticated or funny, he mostly phased out these kinds of jokes in preference for commentary on black culture, especially throughout the success of the Chappelle show. Why he decided to return to this topic when being entirely uneducated on it is anyone's guess, but it's grown increasingly hostile in recent years.
Netflix is dealing with an internal outcry unprecedented in its history
[...]
I guess they avoided leaks longer than Google, but that sort of trust doesn't last. (See the article if you want to look at the numbers.)
Sticks & stones, eh? He seems to dish it out but can't take it and complains when people joke back. I wonder how he feels about comedians using the N word? I grew up in a place where KKK was relatively common and they'd regularly make jokes about black people and you can imagine where that goes should it get out of hand. It seems lost on him that jokes aren't always so benign and can have different outcomes depending on subject, conditions, etc.
Just for the record, Dave Chapelle is gen x, not a boomer.
The generation names have changed meaning in certain internet cultures. Boomer is just shorthand for "old people that don't get my generation" and zoomer is just shorthand for "spoiled young people that never suffered and are addicted to their devices".
For example, if you watched an old movie and liked it you say "I've watched this boomer movie the other day and..." even tho the movie is probably only 20 years old. i.e. the matrix is a boomer movie. Or if there's a new trend/show that you don't get why it's popular you say "I don't get these zoomers and their tiktoks and vtubers".
Of course this is all colloquial online discourse, the change in the terminology always takes a bit to catch up on serious discussion/articles. But the nicknames for the generation are no longer direct references to the generation, but to a certain way of thinking.
Is this like post post modernism?
Ricky Gervais isn't really a standup though. He's done six, relatively short, standup tours in a little over 30 years. Most of them in the early 2000/2010s. A big standup act like Stewart Lee or Jimmy Carr (who arguably is the biggest name in standup) will have a new show every couple of years and be on tour most of the time. Carr famously works for about 10 months a year and has done for 30 years - his first show was with Gervais, funnily enough.
Ricky Gervais, measured by what he chooses to spend his time on, is a writer and a sort of actor - not a standup (he's also not very funny, but that's by the by). He's very much like his pal Stephen Merchant, who has done standup but mostly writes and acts. Nobody would call Merchant a standup, even though he can fill a theatre if he chooses.
I don't really know about the other guy. I've seen clips here and there but he doesn't seem very good. American standup comedy is very different though. I usually don't like it. Yes, I'm including Bill Hicks in that..
Speaking of repeating the same lame jokes as reactionaries, Gervais did exactly that during his last special too. He straight up copied the "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme premise, but just replaced helicopter with "chimp". I shut the special off after that.
Oh, that article is wonderful, thank you for linking it! Definitely a useful reference in the future.
Sex is biological. Gender is psychological. Dysmorphia is when the two do not agree.
Super nitpicking, and you're right for the most part, but: neither dysphoria nor dysmorphia, which are different, are required for being trans, which is usually how I see people categorize "sex and gender disagree". And dysmorphia isn't even technically a positive diagnostic criteria for being trans, although the validity of that is certainly up for debate.