Comedians have been finding themselves in hot water this year. After the infamous Chris Rock slapgate incident and David Chappelle being attacked on stage, it is now Ricky Gervais who’s facing backlash for a joke he made.
Gervais recently released comedy special “SuperNature” on Netflix and has been drawing a barrage of criticism from the trans community. And for a valid reason. Just four minutes into the special, the comedian dives right into the material about trans people.
He starts off by saying, “Oh, women!” “Not all women, I mean the old-fashioned ones. The old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs. Those fucking dinosaurs. I love the new women. They’re great, aren’t they? The new ones we’ve been seeing lately. The ones with beards and cocks. They’re as good as gold, I love them. And now the old-fashioned ones say, ‘Oh, they want to use our toilets.’ ‘Why shouldn’t they use your toilets?’ ‘For ladies!’ ‘They are ladies — look at their pronouns! What about this person isn’t a lady?’ ‘Well, his penis.’ ‘Her penis, you fucking bigot!’ ‘What if he rapes me?’ ‘What if she rapes you, you fucking TERF whore?’”
During the special, the Brit also discusses the rise of cancel culture, saying –
“You can’t predict what will be offensive in the future”. “You don’t know who the dominant mob will be. Like, the worst thing you can say today, get you cancelled on Twitter, death threats, the worst thing you can say today is, ‘Women don’t have penises,’ right? Now, no one saw that coming. You won’t find a ten-year-old tweet of someone saying, ‘Women don’t have penises.’ You know why? We didn’t think we fucking had to!”
Before ending the show with – “Full disclosure: In real life of course I support trans rights. I support all human rights, and trans rights are human rights. Live your best life. Use your preferred pronouns. Be the gender that you feel that you are. But meet me halfway, ladies: lose the cock. That’s all I’m saying.”
As we mentioned earlier, the problematic nature of jokes hasn’t gone too well with the members of the Trans community, with the US LGBTQ rights group Glaad even labelling it as “dangerous”.
In a statement published last night, the organisation wrote “We watched the Ricky Gervais ‘comedy’ special on Netflix so you don’t have to. It’s full of graphic, dangerous, anti-trans rants masquerading as jokes. He also spouts anti-gay rhetoric and spreads inaccurate information about HIV.”
Twitter too witnessed a similar set of reactions, with many users calling out Gervais’ hypocrisy. Here are some of the responses we found –
(Featured image-Credits – Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
