Did you see the show? Transphobic is just about the last word I'd use to describe it, or Chapelle's message.

I can't bring myself to watch it. All I know is a quote from it where Chapelle describes himself as being on "Team TERF". Having spent months subjecting myself to abuse from TERFs in an attempt to empathize with them, I'm too scarred to expose myself to more of that.

So you might be right. Maybe Chapelle was taken out of context. I doubt it, given what I've read, but I can't say for sure since I haven't watched it.

But suppose it is homophobic, or transphobic. I'm actually okay with Netflix hosting it if so, but I don't want there to be double standards. Would Netflix host a racist stand-up routine? Perhaps one where the comedian says they're on "Team White Power" instead of "Team TERF?" Of course not! That's what grinds my gears - transphobia is edgy, apparently, not hateful like racism.

And if Netflix is really committed to diversity of perspectives, why did they no-platform the Saudi Arabia documentary?

I haven’t watched it either (yet). I found this an interesting perspective however - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/dave-chapp...

I have sufficient resolution on it from people who did watch it and had a wide range of takes on it from "it's not transphobic, don't be a dumbass" to "it wasn't exactly transphobic, but it wasn't good and I understand why people consider the bad jokes transphobic" without subjecting myself to it.

Netflix's reaction is really the main subject of my comment. The way to interpret the show is just not relevant anymore. Netflix made it about Netflix.

More importantly than any of your associates, I have two important data points:

I watched it and it was definitely not transphobic.

Dave's trans female friend that committed suicide, her family supports Dave and says they believe it's not transphobic.

Every single criticism I've seen has been general. None of them, except the ones which take stuff out of context, have specific gripes. That's how you know this is about shutting down debate they don't want to hear.

You'll understand if I weigh the accounts of trans people who watched it over what you, Dave Chapelle, and the family of a trans person who can't speak for herself said.

You really gotta wonder how Dave would feel if a white person tried to explain to him how a joke he saw as racist wasn't actually racist, and besides, my black friend said it's fine...

There must be some analog to "mansplaining" that fits, here. "Transplaining"? Hmm...

I've seen cissplaining used to good effect.

Before she died she supported Dave, as well.

My main point stands: criticism of his special is too vague. It's almost as if many of the critics never watched the whole thing, having formed an opinion about it early on and stopped watching. I watched the entire thing and it is a single piece. There are no standalone jokes in that special. Every single word is in support of the last words he speaks.

I even watched the special a second time to be sure I hadn't been bamboozled by Dave's wit and charm. I felt even more sure after the 2nd viewing that it's not transphobic.

I am not discussing or interested in this hypothetical person who hasn't watched it but is still commenting as though they did.

To reiterate:

>> "You'll understand if I weigh the accounts of trans people who watched it over what you, Dave Chapelle, and the family of a trans person who can't speak for herself said."

Tl;dr: I'm parroting someone else's opinion on a show I didn't watch.

> I have sufficient resolution on it from people who did watch it

Never trust other people's opinions on matters like this.

Other people trust other people trust other people and you get mountains of wrong. Forming an opinion-based purely on other people's opinions is just a form of prejudice.

My trust is based on cancelling Netflix long ago after a string of stand-up shows full of bigoted jokes. I don't need another data point.

Seeing that the last third of the show was a homage by Dave Chappelle to a comedian trans friend of his which committed suicide, maybe you should.

Do you believe Netflix ought to reject popular comedians, if they tell jokes that some people could interpret as racist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, antisemitic, ableist, or misogynistic? Do you have any favorite comedians yourself who wouldn’t be affected? Would you mind if I scan their body of work just to make sure they aren’t harming any vulnerable communities?

They wouldn't be my favorite comedian if they dumped on critics, doubled down on the subject of the criticism, and didn't speak out on the firing of people who took issue with it after complaining about "cancel culture."

25 million for 10 million views in first few days. Is that too little? I have nothing to compare it to but it seems like this controversy is only going to lead to more views.

I don't understand why some people think it's okay to offend some groups and not others. Religious people may be deeply and sincerely offended by bad language, jokes about promiscuity, or jokes about religion. Should comedians be banned from discussing those topics because they might offend the religious? Trump supporters might be offended by jokes about Trump, Biden supporters, Biden. Are those beyond the pale?

It seems to me like some people have decided that the various 2SLGBTQQIA+ folks must not ever be offended but it's perfectly fine to offend some other groups. That doesn't make sense to me. If causing offense is wrong it should be equally wrong to offend anyone. Or, if it's okay to be offensive then it should be okay to offend anyone.

In this case the irony lies in one of Chappelle's jokes from his special...murder a man and no one cares (Jaylin Craig), but have a joke that offends a gay person and you will be a target for cancellation.

I agree with the sentiment but you're conflating what someone believes with who they are, ie, something someone can change vs something they can't.

I don't really think anything should be off limits and off color jokes are an important art form to feel out emotions but I also think there's a clear difference in your examples.

Many jokes about people are grounded in aspects of a person which they can’t change. And even things they can in theory—can they really? Being obese isn’t just a choice.

And of course nobody can change the past.

Making jokes about aspects of transgenderism should be seen as a sign of cultural acceptance, not rejection.

I don't think there's a difference. Most people are the religion they are born into. There's no choice about that. Similarly, you have no choice about the religion or political alignment of your family.

As a general rule, punching up is more acceptable (and funnier!) than punching down. Making fun of the groups that are traditionally dominant in our society (certain religions, political leaders etc) is more compelling comedy than mocking those that have been traditionally victimized and oppressed.

> As a general rule

The whole movement of correcting social wrongs is made by barking at a social hegemons. And now we come full circle as people seem to believe there are general rules again, except they are the opposite of the rules that started to be barked at.

With a caveat: it's not possible to agree that we have come full circle. The previous hegemon canonized the ones in the "down" direction. And so we get to you, babbling about everyone agrees that it's better not to attack the "down" people.

Sure.

I don’t disagree with this, but is mocking Trump supporters punching up or punching down? Honest question.

Is a black man above or below a gay man in the oppression Olympics ranking?

A black woman came up with and wrote the foundational paper on intersectionality. Your comment is based on incorrect assumptions. A person can be both black and gay and experience a different kind of life based on that intersection. Black and native trans women suffer more by every metric than just about any other group of trans people.

> Black and native trans women suffer more

Not by virtue of its blackness, indigenous or sex status, but only in relation to other people. If other people were to praise blackness, indigenousness and being non-man, it would not suffer, but thrive.

Do not essentialize.

Yes, things would be different in a completely different culture other than the one we're discussing. That's why I weigh claims of oppression from Copts higher than I do from Baptists.

Now we discuss "claims of oppression by identities", yet before it was just "identities". Before identity was enough, when called out you switch to specific oppression. Almost as if you didn't care either way: before there were no individual experiences, now it's relevant. It really is a disease...

My mistake was to engage.

Depends on who is in the ring. But doing it to them as a group, I'd call that punching down in most cases.

A lot of the late night comedians keep their jokes focused on the politician and his TV cronies. Any jokes targeting supporters have always been about a specific person because of something they've done or said, rather strictly based on their politics. Ex: Colbert's Seditionists Roundup. Or will say, "supports are of the former president claim..." then offer a direct quote, usually using a clip of the person in question making whatever statement is the butt of the joke.

When they were in power it was punching up. Now I think it's just punching sideways or up depending on who's doing the punching, unless they're celebrities or Orangemanbad himself, in which case up.

It's almost impossible to punch down on Trump supporters because they overwhelmingly represent a movement by which the privileged classes are attempting to maintain their privilege and power, and because they're constantly punching down with their mockery and disdain for marginalized classes and their issues.

I wouldn't call Trump supporters privileged classes. Aren't they mostly blue collar workers? Not the political, cultural, financial elites and high earning immensely privileged urbanites?

The sources I've seen claim most of Trump's support comes from Americans making above median income, but privilege is intersectional, and the forms of privilege you listed don't overlap perfectly. In general, by privileged I meant taking the side of the status quo, IE (mostly) white, cisnormative (supporting exclusively heterosexual marriage and believing only two biologically-derived genders exist,) culturally Christian and conservative, which in the US is always the more politically and culturally defensible position.

Of course, not all of these apply to all Trump supporters (his gain among Latino and Black voters in the last election being a counterexample) but I seriously doubt none apply to any.

Mockery isn’t inherently comedy, so the question of punch direction isn’t necessarily relevant.

It’s also important to distinguish between mocking of Trump versus Trump supporters, as these are often conflated.

These “marginalized” groups seem to be running the country though, and cancel anyone who disagrees with their agenda

To quote MLK, 'A riot is the language of the unheard,', short of a riot, this 'cancel culture' seems to be an effective tool to effect change by directly pulling on economic levers. The fact that people are complaining about how effective it is, seems to reinforce how effective it is.

It’s certainly effective, but so is a thermonuclear bomb. The question is whether the outcome, fully accounted, is the desired one. It’s accelerating cultural polarisation, perhaps one of the most caustic and dangerous forces in modern society.

Anxiety ridden upper middle class white people claiming to act on behalf of these "marginalized groups"

The assumption you're making is all groups are formed on an equal premise. [People who see psychics] and [korean women] are both groups

It is not about "offend" some group, it is about deny their humanity. All persecution that ever happened in history always started with campaigns of dehumanisation, so now weary groups fight tooth and nail against all kinds of dehumanising rethoric. The problem is that the line between edgy humour and dehumanising propaganda is fuzzy at times.

I understand the sentiment, but I think additional sensitivity may be merited where the group being offended is disadvantaged or subject to persecution.

To put it another way, it's been said that comedians should punch "up" (i.e. make fun of those in power) and not punch "down."

A good angle I read (but can't cite, unfortunately) is that some comedians punch up until the only people left to punch are the ones paying their salary, so they punch down at whoever it's still socially acceptable to make fun of. And then they keep doing it until it's no longer acceptable and start making their critics the whole focus of their routine. We used to call comedians who attacked critics hacks. Now they get Netflix specials.

Nobody presecutes them in the west.

From what I see what happens to people that have the audacity to not cave to their demands completely and immediately that are victims of persecution.

Governments, NGO, academia, media and big corporations are outwokking each other on the issue.

I prefer dave to jessica yaniv...

I could not get married in the US until less than a decade ago. I can legally be fired in roughly half of the member states of our union based on my identity. I can be legally denied healthcare treatment. This isn't even getting into discrimination with random individuals, which can and does happen in the west. Unfortunately "we don't stone our queers" is not something you get a golden sticker for.

I get it's very en vogue to say marginalized communities secretly control society (Jewish marxist globalists etc) but don't you think we'd have secured equal treatment under the law first? If society is suddenly caving to any and all of my capricious whims I certainly didn't get the memo

> I can legally be fired in roughly half of the member states of our union based on my identity.

What? Where? And how? "At will" is one thing, but being fired purely because of how you identify? What?

> I can be legally denied healthcare treatment.

Wait, what? Are you talking about about all healthcare, specific procedures, or what? As far as I know, an ER can't refuse to provide healthcare treatment so you must be referring to specific things and not the general umbrella of "healthcare".

Legitimate, sincere questions- I honestly don't know anything about anything.

It was legal in the US (in some states) to fire people for being gay or transgender until very recently: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/06/15/sup...

If you really didn’t know this, you might seriously consider whether you have anything to add to this kind of discussion.

The healthcare issue is more complex. Here’s a useful summary: https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/07/23/you-dont-want-second-b...

> If you really didn't know this, you might seriously consider whether you have anything to add to this discussion.

Two things here:

1) Being snarky with someone asking a sincere question is a wonderful way to alienate them and leave a bad taste in their mouth regarding the topic at hand.

2) The parent said they "can be fired", not "until over a year ago, I could have been fired". They were asserting that this is the current state of affairs, which it isn't, so I asked a sincere question about it. If asking questions to clarify a statement doesn't "add to the discussion", clearly I was taught how to have a conversation incorrectly. But I, and most rational people, don't think that's accurate. So, y'know, maybe take your own advice and consider what your comment brings to the table instead of trying to dunk on people.

As for healthcare, I appreciate the link. It confirms what I was wondering, which is that the parent's comment only applies to specific, specialty services and not the general umbrella of "healthcare".

You have the same rights as every biological man or woman that was born in us (depending on your sex). You already have equal treatment. You want to extend, change and bend the law because the outcomes with current system doesn't suit you

To praise weakness and call it merit.