Twitter went into meltdown on Monday after a clip from Ricky Gervais’s new Netflix special where he makes fun of the transgender community found its way onto the internet and now the comic has decided to defend himself against his critics – and unsurprisingly has doubled down on his right to free speech and doing whatever the hell he wants.
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Gervais was speaking to The Spectator (really cool newspaper bro!) when he said the following:
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My target wasn’t trans folk, but trans activist ideology. I’ve always confronted dogma that oppresses people and limits freedom of expression.
It was probably the most current, most talked about, taboo subject of the last couple of years. I deal in taboo subjects and have to confront the elephant in the room
I talk about AIDS, famine, cancer, the Holocaust, rape, paedophilia…the one thing you should never joke about is the trans issue.
They just want to be treated equally.
I agree; that’s why I include them.
But they know I’m joking about all the other stuff, but – they go – ‘no, he must mean that’.
I suppose he has kind of got a point there, but I guess the argument against that is that transgender people are already massively marginalised and regular victims of hate crimes, so when you see a comedian joking about them and questioning their identities then it can have the knock on effect of normalising this kind of behaviour and could literally lead to people dying/getting the shit kicked out of them. Another point is that ‘AIDS, famine, cancer, the Holocaust, rape, paedophilia’ are all inherently bad/evil things (for lack of a better word), whereas the vast majority of transgender people just aren’t in that category even slightly, so even via his explanation Gervais is stoking the flames of ignorance and hate by associating the trans community with all that other awful shit.
Anyway, there’s obviously a massive debate there and I can’t really do justice to it in a couple of sentences but maybe think about the consequences for the transgender community before you go around blindly defending Gervais’ right to say whatever he wants. Think about what it means for the people being joked about for a second. It’s a lot more than Gervais joking about a rapist or a paedophile as they’re already almost universally hated by everyone in society because of their actions. Trans people are just trying to get by and are having a hard enough time as it is.
For more of the same, check out Ricky Gervais’s thoughts on cancel culture. Any ideas what he thinks about that?
