Now that sex-based rights are countercultural, they need all the help they can get.
Now that sex-based rights are countercultural, they need all the help they can get.
C onservatives generally expect to live within the parameters of a counterculture. Most right-leaning pundits and personalities consider themselves “pre-canceled” and so feel relatively free to speak their minds. This is not the same for liberals who depend on liberal institutions and professional opportunities. But there is, I think, one exception to this: comedy. As a means of keeping sex-based rights in the mainstream, this space is becoming increasingly important.
Earlier this week, I noted Bill Maher’s skeptical monologue on transgenderism and how he attempted to transcend the U.S. culture wars. Maher argued that some things — scientific integrity and child welfare among them — are more important than political point-scoring. He was soon joined by a comedian from the U.K., Ricky Gervais, whose Netflix special, SuperNature, this week also poked fun at trans extremism.
Though their primary intention was to entertain, both comedians made serious points. “If something in the human race is changing at a previously unprecedented rate, we have to at least discuss it,” Maher said. He added: “If kids knew what they wanted to be at age eight, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God, nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg-leg surgery.”
Meanwhile, Gervais ironically spoke of his preference for “the new women” (“the ones with beards and c**ks”) over the “old-fashioned women” (“the ones with wombs”). He said: “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 f***ing bigot!’ ‘What if he rapes me?’ ‘What if she rapes you, you f***ing TERF whore.’”
Knowing full well the criticism he’d attract from this material, Gervais challenged cancel culture’s advocates to consider the ways in which their tactics could backfire. It’s impossible to predict, in ten years, “who the dominant mob will be.” For example, “The worst thing you can say today is, ‘Women don’t have penises,’ right? Now no one saw that coming.”
In just a few minutes of stand-up, Maher and Gervais were able to hit all the main points that trans skeptics have been making for years: The lack of scrutiny, the censoriousness and intolerance of dissent, the experiments on children, and the undermining of women’s rights.
Transgender ideologues insist that sex is a very complicated issue that only “experts” should dare comment on. Irreverence toward sacred cows has innate comic value, but it’s the truth, bluntly stated, that often makes people laugh the most. Maher’s and Gervais’s material will no doubt elicit a sigh of relief from many doubtful liberals: Maybe it isn’t transphobic to think this, after all?
In his Netflix special, The Closer, Dave Chapelle also found transgenderism to be ripe for comedy. “Gender is a fact,” he said, sympathizing with angry feminists by likening transgenderism to blackface. After considerable backlash, Chapelle doubled down. When attacked on a stage in L.A., he spontaneously joked to his audience: “It was a trans man.”
The object here is not to offend the transgender community. Rather, it’s to puncture an overinflated sacred cow that’s blocking reasonable discussion and debate on highly contentious issues. Redefining sex affects far more people than a minority of individuals who identify as trans. There’s much more at stake than people’s hurt feelings.
In recent years, comedic writers have satirized elements of transgender orthodoxy. In an episode of South Park, a TV presenter at the “Strong Woman Competition” asks the defending female champion how she feels about competing against a trans woman. “Amazing. I feel honored to be part of history,” the female athlete says. The presenter (who seems doubtful) mentions that her new opponent, whom she’s not yet met, is “not exactly your average trans athlete.” The female athlete rebukes him for his “bigoted” implication. They are then joined by a massive, muscly bearded man who we learn only just began identifying as trans two weeks previously. “I can’t tell you how free I feel now I’ve started identifying as a woman,” he says. “Now I can compete as female, I’m ready to smash the other girls!”
Similarly, in a 2019 episode of Family Guy, an amusing encounter occurs at a bar:
BARTENDER: Excuse me, ma’am, no porn at the bar.
CUSTOMER: It’s okay — I’m transgender.
BARTENDER: Oh, I had no idea. Do whatever you want all the time.
Once again, the target of the joke is not those who identify as transgender as much as those who are too afraid to call out even the most egregious antisocial behavior simply because the person involved is at the top of the identity-politics hierarchy.
That transgenderism is proving such ripe material for reputedly bold comedians confirms that sex-based rights are countercultural. It also reminds us that sex-based rights need all the help they can get.