Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special, “The Closer”, has been causing an uproar in online spaces. Many narratives are being told and I disagree with a lot of the ways it is being discussed. Dave is being criticized for his remarks on the LGBTQ community. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten blowback for speaking about the community, and a large portion of the special is a response to the criticism he’s received for his past transgression towards the community. My goal with this piece is to explain how the discourse around this comedy special is not helpful to the goal of LGBTQ acceptance, and how this situation could be used as a learning experience for Dave Chappelle and his defenders, showing them the misconceptions they have about LGBTQ people and the harm these misconceptions cause to members of the community. I’m approaching this topic with the assumption that Dave is being honest and acting with the best intentions. I want to be charitable and assume the best intentions of everyone involved.
I want to make one thing clear before jumping into the content of the special. I don’t care about the discussion of whether or not the transgender jokes in the special are comedy or not. My father was a comedian. A raunchy comedian. Growing up, his humor was always present in my life (for better or worse), and it was the framework that shaped my view of comedy from a very young age. I learned that comedy is highly subjective and as long as one person laughs, anything can be argued as being comedy. Some people like to go into “joke structure” to define what a joke is, but that isn’t necessary for criticizing this special. Comedy intends to provoke laughter. You can cause harm with your attempt at making others laugh, and if your harm has a real, tangible effect on others, it’s probably not a good joke, but that shouldn’t be part of your criticism of the Closer if you’re trying to argue against the harm Dave Chappelle’s LGBTQ jokes cause. That is a separate argument, separate from the philosophical definition of comedy and more fit for a review and not a commentary on LGBTQ discourse.
The Hypocrisy
The first point from the special I want to tackle is the so-called “hypocrisy” of the LGBTQ community that Dave insinuates. Early in the special, he tells a story about the popular music artist, DaBaby. He talks about how DaBaby literally killed someone but is getting more hate for being openly bigoted towards LGBTQ people. Dave’s point is that DaBaby didn’t face public backlash for killing someone but that there is more public outcry for him being bigoted. This is all optics though, and the first example in the special of how Dave views these issues. Optically, the outrage might be louder for his bigoted comments, it’s in bad faith to assume that the LGBTQ community cares more about bigotry than the loss of human life. If anything, that’s why they care so much about bigotry.
Dave brings up another point to support this hypocrisy idea. He says that “Gay people are minorities until they need to be white again.” Now, this is an easy thing to dismiss. There are LGBTQ people of color. Dave himself would have to acknowledge this, but for the sake of making sense of the whole special, it seems like what he wants to imply is that nearly every LGBTQ person is some white person who is just living life the way they do for various reasons only affluent white people can make sense of. This is a huge theme Dave keeps bringing up and I can only assume it all comes from his perspective as a black man. Dave has been fighting for black issues for years and feels like black people haven’t made enough social progress versus the progress he’s seen in the LGBTQ community. He says as much in the special. He says he’s jealous of the LGBTQ commnity for the progress they’ve made, and I see why he thinks this. Recently, LGBTQ issues and community members are becoming more prominent in mainstream culture. Dave brings up Caitlyn Jenner, saying “She got named woman of the year her first year of being a woman”. It’s obvious that she is Dave’s prime example of a transgender person. Well, Caitlyn Jenner isn’t the average trans person. The average trans person suffers way more than the rich, white and affluent Caitlyn Jenner. That’s not to say Caitlyn Jenner doesn’t suffer, but it’s easy to dismiss the pain of the community as a whole when your prime examples are rich celebrities.
Dave somehow connects his frustration with the lack of progress on black issues to LGBTQ issues. If I had to guess, this is because he has a level of homophobia and transphobia ingrained in him, and that makes it harder to accept that these issues are getting the tolerance that they are now getting. Homophobia and transphobia are not OK, but these things are very prevalent in society and specifically in disenfranchised communities like the black community. Dave is a black man, born in the 70s in Washington DC. His level of tolerance and acceptance is very good compared to many other people from his demographic. Given all that, he still has an obligation as an influential member of society to not spread misinformation and hate towards the LGBTQ community.
Punching Down
So Dave’s hypocrisy argument doesn’t work and it directly feeds into the next point of his I’d like to tackle. Dave explains how one of the criticisms he hates hearing the most about his LGBTQ comedy is that he’s punching down. Now given that he believes most LGBTQ people are rich white people, it’s easy for Dave to justify to himself that he’s punching up, but these are not the people that he should be worried about. He should be worried about the disenfranchised members of the LGBTQ community. They are the ones suffering.
How are they suffering from what Dave says? When Dave makes a joke at their expense when they’re already dehumanized by large parts of society, he helps reinforce a culture that leads to harm for people in the LGBTQ community. Dave has a large widespread audience. He’s one of the most beloved black comedians by white audiences, so his work reaches millions. Dave Chappelle is certainly introducing ideas about LGBTQ community to people who don’t have many concepts about the community already. Dave isn’t trying to be a voice on trans issues, but he is. It’s obvious that he stumbled into this. Whether Dave likes it or not, he is one of the biggest voices speaking about transgender issues to the mainstream public. I feel like Dave himself doesn’t see himself that way, and if he knew he was causing actual harm, I’m sure he would change how he approaches the topic.
Dave later in the special says “Punching down on someone requires you to think less of them.” Many who are critical of Dave will assume that he’s just saying this to avoid scrutiny, but I truly believe him. Dave has shown a precedent in the past for not allowing others to punch down on the black community, so I know he sticks by this concept. The problem is, he truly believes the LGBTQ community is in a better place than the black community. Now it would be impossible to say for sure where LGBTQ issues are compared to black issues, and it’s irrelevant because as Dave said himself, “Gay people are a minority”. This is a marginalized group that does not have a ton of social power and they suffer from jokes at their expense. It’s also not a group that Dave himself is a part of, so making jokes about them is dangerous. He doesn’t know what stereotypes he could be reinforcing and therefore, should be extremely careful when speaking about the community or avoid it.
Team TERF
What convinced me to talk about the special in the first place is what Dave had to say about TERFS. It’s the best example of Dave’s misrepresentation of LGBTQ issues that stem from a lack of knowledge on the topic. Dave says “I’m team TERF. I agree. Gender is a fact.” Sex and gender are not the same and Dave is not aware of this. Sex is a fact. You can’t change your sex. Nobody in good faith is going to argue against you on that. Gender is the way you present socially. This can be changed and people have been doing it in various cultures for years.
With transgender issues 99 out of the way, we can now look into what a TERF is. TERFs are “trans exclusionary radical feminists”. They are a group that works to exclude trans women from various places in society all under the guides of feminism. They perpetuate the idea that trans women are predators/sick perverts who get kicks from invading women’s spaces. They’re wrong of course, but they love to brand themselves by saying things like “We believe gender is a fact.” They convinced Dave with that branding. He looked up the acronym after hearing about the JK Rowling controversy and that’s what he found. It’s easy to see the pipeline set up here. People will hear about TERFS from this special, see that Dave Chappelle apparently sides with them, and then get looped into the TERF world where they’re fed more misinformation on how trans women are predators and dangerous. Earlier in the special, he specifically talks about how horrible transgendered bathroom bills are and came out against them. Those bathroom bills are exactly what TERFs fight for. So which is it Dave? That helps convince me that Dave doesn’t intend to harm anyone with his endorsement of TERFs, he simply didn’t do any research past a quick google search.
I haven’t talked about the response to Dave’s special yet, but I think now is the best time to bring it up. The majority of criticism coming at Dave is understandable. There are reasons to be critical, but people aren’t discussing this productively. A lot of the outrage has been just simple outrage. A lot of people fully condemn Dave, saying he shouldn’t say the things he says. They don’t acknowledge the context. A lot of critics believe Dave fully knows what he’s talking about. They don’t understand that someone might not understand these issues as well as themselves. Well, Dave doesn’t have the same information. Dave doesn’t know who TERFs really are. Dave isn’t fully enveloped in trans issues and we shouldn’t expect him to be or pretend that he is. That just pushes uninformed people away when we should try to educate them on the topic and hopefully, change their minds.
Daphney
Dave ends the special with a story about his transgender comedian friend, Daphney. He explains when he first met her and how she bombed on stage before him. After the show, she had everyone dying laughing and Dave recognised how funny she actually was and offered to help her with her stand up. He told her she could open for him whenever he was in town. When Dave started getting hate for his Sticks and Stones Netflix special, Daphney defended Dave on Twitter. She immediately got a bunch of hate herself and a few days after defending Dave on Twitter, she committed suicide.
There are a few things I want to address here. I think Dave did truly care about Daphney. I don’t think this is a disingenuous story, but I think it does have elements of “I have a black friend”. I think Dave is using it to show that he isn’t transphobic, but I don’t think it’s malicious. I think he’s trying to illustrate that there is a problem within the online trans community and cancel culture. He talks about how the trans community dragged her on Twitter before her death and while he doesn’t blame that specifically on her death, he does say it probably didn’t help. I agree.
Cancel culture is one of the most discussed topics in our culture today and nobody can agree on what it really means. Some on the left will say cancel culture doesn’t exist at all, while some people on the right will say that cancel culture is ruining things like Dr. Suess books or Mr. Potato Head. I take an opinion in the middle. Cancel culture is real, but celebrities being held accountable for their actions or words is not it. I believe famous, powerful people can be affected by cancel culture, but that’s not where cancel culture does real damage. You should never harass people, but harassment of famous people will always happen. Cancel culture is the most harmful when aimed at someone who is already disenfranchised. When it causes someone to lose their job or when someone is subjected to vast amounts of online hate, that is where the real damage and evil of cancel culture can be seen.
I’m sure what Daphney was going through was horrible. Getting harassed by your own community must be horrible. I do believe there are problems with the left’s online culture. There’s ironically an intolerance for not being tolerant enough. I don’t believe we can help change minds through dog-piling people and harassing them. Doing that is feeding into the best argument the right has when trying to discredit the left. The image of the left being this unreasonable mob that sets standards too high for even themselves, is an effective tool against the left. It’s also not entirely untrue. I don’t think it is fair to paint the entire left like this, but it’s a problem.
Dave uses this Daphney story to show his compassion for trans people. He talked about when Daphney was going back and forth with him while he’s performing at one of his shows and she is explaining her experience as a trans woman to Dave. Dave says to her that he still doesn’t understand her and she responds to him with “I don’t need you to understand, I need you to believe that I’m having a human experience.” Dave responded seriously with “I believe you bitch, because it takes one to know one”, which is huge to me! Dave might not understand trans issues still, but he does recognize trans people as people going through it like all of us. I think remembering this had a huge impact on how Dave ends the special.
Closing the Closer
Dave wraps up the special by saying empathy must go both ways. I truly believe he wants to understand the LGBTQ community, and he wants them to understand him. As stated before, Dave has a warped view of the LGBTQ community. He thinks they are in a position of power compared to the black community, and he believes that the LGBTQ community is punching down on the black community somehow. We know Dave is wrong about them having a lot of social power, but he doesn’t see it that way. He also mentions how he won’t tell any more LGBTQ jokes until he is sure that the community knows he is laughing with them and not at them. I think that’s the best course of action and an acknowledgment that he isn’t capable of talking about these issues in an informed way. Again, many Americans don’t know much about the LGBTQ community, and a lot of the concepts and ideas that Dave brings up are going to be many Americans’ first exposure to LGBTQ concepts. Dave shouldn’t be the loudest voice in this discussion and it seems like he knows that somewhat. I think it shows a real level of caring and empathy to walk away from the topic and Dave should be commended for that.
I think Dave is willing to learn about these issues. I think he needs to be approached with civility and kindness, but he will listen. He’s not trying to be this hateful bigot many believe he is after hearing all the discourse surrounding the special. This is a great example of how not to handle arguments like these. When we assume the worst of others when they may not even know the basics of what they’re commenting on, we end up in a situation where nobody even has a chance to grow. Dave is not being convinced by the people condemning him, and the people condemning him are being seen as unreasonable people who just get angry about everything. Truly, both sides aren’t even playing on the same field. The online left needs to meet Dave where he is and start with explaining these issues to him and why what he’s saying is harmful. Dave on the other hand really needs to do more research and know more about what he’s talking about before putting information about a marginalized community into a comedy special that will introduce to millions to the idea of TERFs in a positive way.
Bernard Lamar Rice 