More funny than Ricky Gervais.
The problem with middle-aged rich men trying to do transgressive comedy is that they aren't actually capable of saying anything genuinely transgressive. The things they claim they're being punished for saying are always things that are perfectly acceptable to say with zero irony. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be getting these big shows and televised routines.
Get deep enough into any queer community and you will hear plenty of things that are actually transgressive (and often really funny) because the list of things queer people aren't supposed to talk about is far, far longer than some millionaire pretending to live in fear of being called a bigot by teenagers on twitter could imagine.
Remember when Seinfeld was complaining that people were too PC because students didn't laugh at a joke he told? Like the joke was just a shit joke.
Same thing with this Gervais thing and Chappelle before him. The issue isn't that they're making fun of Trans people. The issue is that they aren't actually telling jokes. They're not setting up and subverting expectations or making clever commentary tinged with humour. They're just repeating actual transphobia rhetoric and saying it's a joke. If it wasn't delivered as part of a stand up routine Gervais' material would be indistinguishable from the crazed rants of someone like Nick Fuentes (who I should remind people fucking loves lady dicks). If you're defense is going to be "it's a joke" then tell a fucking joke.
Like if we were to take a trip back to Jim Crow America and listen to all the comics doing bits about how black folk are in fact just a bunch of lazy n-words who'll rape your wife we'd agree today that they were not a group of freedom loving truth tellers and were in fact just a pack of baying racist dipshits who sought to maintain and were active participants in the racist, oppressive system that existed at the time.
What Ricky Gervais "joke" is trying to say is that trans women are men and they'll rape you. Fuck him.
gizmodo.com
