In The Closer, Chappelle discusses a transgender friend whose own family defends him against charges of insensitivity. Where’s the crime?
In The Closer, Chappelle discusses a transgender friend whose own family defends him against charges of insensitivity. Where’s the crime?
D ave Chappelle holds a distinction nearly unique among comics: Whenever he drops a special, it’s news. His latest Netflix offering, The Closer, immediately got him accused of “pointless transphobia and homophobia” (The Daily Beast), “Betrayal” (GQ) and “anti-LGBTQ diatribes” (GLAAD).
The Closer is not one of Chappelle’s best efforts — he has done nine of these specials, including six for Netflix, and the new one is probably the least effective among them — but in its compassion it’s the opposite of transphobic. Chappelle exhibits a lot of humanity, a lot of humility, and a lot of self-questioning as he does his best to grapple with the question of how to be respectful of transgendered people while acknowledging that in comedy, nothing should be ruled off-limits, particularly if your brand of standup is saying the unsayable. Chappelle insists on the right to continue to tell the truth as he sees it, but he isn’t interested in antagonism for its own sake. What he’s doing isn’t trolling. He genuinely doesn’t want to hurt people. He goes out of his way to clarify how important he thinks it is to be sensitive to trans folks. Saying there can be humor in transgenderism is just saying, “Welcome to humanity. Everybody’s funny.”
The centerpiece of Chappelle’s special is a long reminiscence, not really a comedy bit, about a trans performer he knew named Daphne. “Knew,” past tense, because Daphne committed suicide in October 2019. Daphne Dorman was a male-to-female standup comic whose family is defending Chappelle. Nothing in The Closer would have bothered Daphne, two family members have said.
“Daphne was in awe of Dave’s graciousness,” Dorman’s sister Becky wrote in a text to The Daily Beast. “She did not find his jokes rude, crude, off-coloring, off-putting, anything. She thought his jokes were funny. Daphne understood humor and comedy — she was not offended. Why would her family be offended?”
After Chappelle mentioned Daphne in a previous Netflix special, Dorman bragged about it on social media. Another sister, Brandy, said in a Facebook post that Chappelle “loved my sister and felt empathy towards her human experience and, yes, he makes terrible jokes that are also funny. News flash, our whole family does that. Our funerals are laughter through tears, we mourn by remembering the times we laughed together, and yes, some inappropriate humor, too. . . . As often as Dave stands up for Daphne, we will be there for Dave. This man is our tribe, and we mourn alongside him.”
Chappelle noted in that previous special, Sticks & Stones, that Daphne had laughed especially hard at the jokes he did about gender.
Becky told The Daily Beast that it’s completely wrong to blame Chappelle for the suicide. “No one knows what life was like for my siblings and I. We are products of how we were brought [up]. Dave was the biggest bright spot for Daphne; she was enamored for the first time. Blaming Dave is beyond the wrong thing to do. He helped her and let her be comfortable while talking with him. She had many demons; Dave Chappelle was NOT one of them.”
Since Chappelle is evidently full of fondness for Daphne, stamping him as a hater requires ignoring the tenor of his remarks and focusing very narrowly on just one contention, which boils down to six words: “Gender is a fact,” Chappelle stated. And he said he was on “team TERF,” meaning he agreed with J. K. Rowling that male and female are defined biological categories. (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, a term coined by the trans movement to insult and marginalize popularly held views, followed the path of “Tory” and “Impressionist” in becoming embraced by those it was meant to denigrate.)
The trans movement would have us believe that referring to the intransigence of DNA amounts to hate speech. That’s not only wrong, it’s self-defeating. If the trans movement wants to be accepted, it should stop insisting that others must sign on to its revolutionary biology, built around the insistence that men can give birth.
“Gender is a fact” would not have been a controversial statement 20 years ago, and only a small minority would disagree with that statement even today. If saying “Gender is a fact” makes you transphobic, no matter how respectful you may be of the feelings of trans people, no matter how gracious you may be to trans people, no matter if you have (as Chappelle has) set up a trust fund for the daughter of a trans person (Daphne), then the trans movement is insisting on ruling out of bounds the views of most people. When you declare most people out of bounds, though, you’re really just marking your own position as extreme. That isn’t the path to acceptance, and the angry calls by trans activists for Chappelle’s special to be yanked strike most people as far more troubling than anything Chappelle has ever said. Whatever happened to “agree to disagree”? Chappelle is telling trans folks, “I respect you, but I disagree with you.” Trans individuals and their allies reply that disagreement is itself disrespect, and not only is it disrespect, it’s hateful and beyond the pale. It must be punished. Chappelle is one of the finest practitioners of his art in America. Shutting him down can’t be the answer to the question of how trans people can gain respect.