I watched Dave Chapelle’s “The Closer” with my wife two weeks ago and came away with a few thoughts. First of all, I knew immediately that the LGBTQ community would go nuts. Secondly, I thought his show wasn’t that funny. Not because Dave’s jokes were offensive, but rather because some of the jokes just weren’t that good. The most important take however, was that Dave was nevertheless brilliant in this show despite only being moderately funny.
Dave spends the last half an hour or so telling stories about the reactions his past Trans jokes have received, a story about a young trans comedian he supposedly took under his wing who committed suicide after being bullied by the LGBTQ community when she defended Chapelle, and most importantly, the intersectionality of blacks and the LGBTQ community.
Intersectionality is a relatively new term, like a lot of terms that define culture in 2021. Kimberle Williams Crenshaw coined the term in a paper in 1989 to describe when the feminist movement crosses paths with racism and how that moment routinely but wrongly treats gender and race as mutually exclusive which is almost always to the detriment of the black woman. One of Crenshaw’s central points is that every woman’s experience with discrimination is different and thus, one size fits all solutions are not the answer.
Chapelle’s controversial portion of The Closer is about just that, the intersection of Trans oppression with that of his own community’s. In The Closer, Dave is not tearing down trans people. He’s not attacking them at all. Dave is merely pointing out that oftentimes LGBTQ progress has occurred to the detriment of the black community. And here’s the thing, I learned things about the Trans community that I did not know while watching the show.
In the last five years, new terms, pronouns, and words have all been invented. I don’t know where they came from or how they end up in the dictionary, but these new terms coincide with progress within the LGBTQ community. Specifically as these new terms relate to Trans, I honestly don’t quite understand them all. I certainly mean no offense if I misuse a pronoun for example. I simply don’t know.
I do try though, to keep up with the shifting culture but I am also comfortable admitting that I don’t know or understand near enough. I haven’t had to. I have interacted with a Trans person maybe six times in my life, none of which have been remarkable nor occurred for long periods. I have, for example, attended Drag Queen Puppet Bingo in New York City and I attended a Drag Queen Burlesque show in St. Cloud, MN at the request of my sister years ago. I also knew a Trans woman in Jacksonville, NC who often frequented the same night clubs and parties I attended. This was around the turn of the century though so I haven’t even come across a Trans person in more than a decade. I say all of this because I think its probably illustrative of most people in this country. We just don’t have the experience nor the interaction to fully understand Trans issues.
When Dave makes Trans jokes, I recognize that some may be offended but listening to these stories is the only exposure I and many viewers have and as morbid as this may sound, I again do learn good things from his story telling. Please don’t twist these words. I am not suggesting that Dave Chappelle is a good source of information for Trans issues. I am merely pointing out that he’s talking about them in a public forum and that’s more than 99.9% of Americans. I also happen to think that comedy is, again in a morbid way (for 2021’s standards), one litmus test for how far a marginalized community has progressed. What I mean is, there’s sort of this imaginary coordinate plane where one axis is the marginalized group and the other axis being the mob’s tolerance for jokes about that group. The more tolerance, the less marginalized.
In essence I am saying here that comedy can educate the public by helping non-ultra woke folks like myself understand the unique circumstances, terms and issues of that marginalized group. And while that’s happening, I am not allowing the jokes to normalize my behavior in a manner that makes me feel that it’s appropriate to denigrate the group or commit acts of violence. That’s not how good people respond to comedy.
What’s extremely important however about Dave’s show, he wasn’t making jokes about Trans people. He was instead telling stories from the perspective of HIS community as they watch with envy at the progress that the LGBTQ community has experienced. Thus, when you try to cancel Dave, you’re not only depriving the public of his story telling about the Trans community, but you are also further marginalizing a large, marginalized group at the same time.
Dave explicitly makes this point of saying to the LGBTQ community, “If you listen to what I’m saying, I’m not even talking about them. I’m talking about us. And they don’t listen.” Despite only a few dozen people protesting Dave’s show, the story becomes about the protest rather than about the content of Dave’s show that is far more educational than offensive.
And here’s why it matters.
In Loudoun County, VA, two teenage girls were sexually assaulted by a boy wearing a dress/skirt at two different schools. The MSM was slow to report the story and thus the Conservative media pounced on the lack of coverage, ultimately concluding that the lack of coverage was a sign of a very real culture war. That’s utter bullshit nonsense, but more to that in a moment.
Here are the facts as they’ve been revealed so far. A fifteen year old biological boy (see I don’t even know if I’m using the right term here) who considered himself “gender fluid” was invited to the girl’s bathroom by a female classmate. The two teenagers had two prior, consensual sexual encounters. This time, the girl did not consent and the boy, wearing a skirt, sexually sodomized the girl in late May, 2021.
At a school board meeting shortly thereafter, the school board denied the sexual assault occurred. The father of the girl was irate at the school board’s denial, angrily protested as any father would, and was arrested at the school board meeting. The school board meeting where the father was arrested was hearing public comment about a potentially new bathroom policy that would allow Trans kids to use the bathroom that they identify with. It’s worth noting that this policy was not in place at the time of the sexual assault. At some point, the male student was transferred to another school were he very recently allegedly committed sexual assault against a second teenage girl.
So what does Dave Chappelle’s The Closer have to do with this story? Everything.
As a curious person, a lawyer and a father, I have endless questions. Are gender fluid people considered Trans? Are Trans people attracted to people of the same sex, opposite sex or both? Does it vary from person to person? Was this offender in the Loudoun County story really gender fluid or a heterosexual boy?
Perhaps you’re mad at me for not knowing the answers to these questions. My ignorance on these topics though is similar to the vast majority of Americans. And that’s reality. Changing cultural tolerance in this country is similar to turning a giant ship around. It takes time. Even for someone like me who tries to keep up, my personal experiences, or lack thereof, drive my reading and learning priorities.
Because so few people really understand Trans issues, the truly terrible people in this country and some of the truly terrible right wing news sources are using this story to push three truly terrible narratives, all of which are terrible for the Trans community:
- What happened in Loudoun County is proof that the national culture war is real instead of merely holding the school board that lied about the sexual assault accountable for their gross negligence.
- Trans people really will use the pro-Trans bathroom rules to gain access to girls bathrooms and commit sexual crimes despite the fact that the pro-Trans bathroom rules were not in effect in these particular schools.
- Heterosexual boys that wear girls clothes and commit sexual assault against young girls are no different than Trans boys that identify as girls (again forgive me from fumbling the terminology here but my ignorance is meant to be emblematic of the theme here so I am not going to look it up to get it right).
I know this because I am active on Twitter and have tried to have these nuanced discussions with many people who are jumping to these same conclusions. None of the nuance matters here and I am not equipped to defend the Trans community and of course, was quickly overwhelmed by those who had already jumped to certain conclusions. Here’s an example:
Me: How do you know this was a trans person instead of a heterosexual male who disguised himself as a female to do this? I am not saying that’s what happened, I don’t know. But that’s why I’m asking this question. I don’t think thi is as matter of fact as some are making it.
Response from anonymous Twitter account: What’s the difference? No, really – what is the difference here? Self-ID is the norm now, anyone at any time can claim to be transgender and we must respect their identity. To prevent things like this from happening, males need to be barred from female spaces again.
Here’s another:
Second Response from anonymous Twitter account: No it’s about a crossdresser getting access to female spaces for nefarious reasons and succeeded. It’s also a story about rape apologists who for some reason are under the impression that crossdressing imposters are more sympathetic figures than girls whose space is being invaded.
Look, maybe I’m wrong here about everything I have written. I’m not trying to prove a point in this piece, but rather, proclaim my ignorance while also bringing attention to the unintended damage the Chappelle outrage may be doing to LGBTQ progress with a specific emphasis toward the Trans community. We forget that in America, and this is true no matter how much you hate to admit it, but in America, one American’s right to offend is equal to a Trans American’s right to be free of discrimination. Because of a loud, but small online population reflexively tries to cancel as opposed to engagement, the far left’s unrealistic expectations that everyone understands their new, unwritten rules alienates more than it assimilates.
For example, this well-intentioned couple has been dragged for the husband’s tweet even though they’re not being offensive and are demonstrating a willingness to learn and evolve. As a result, most Americans only know Trans issues in the context of culture war issues such as girl’s sports, bathrooms and good people using bad pronouns. Those particular issues are divisive and when pundits focus on these issues, the dialogue about the Trans community is limited to these few things, which I imagine makes building allies difficult to do.
Chappelle recently extended an opportunity to meet with Trans groups to discuss these issues in a more nuanced setting. The Trans community should jump at this opportunity to use Chappelle’s platform to address the topics I have mentioned in this piece. I don’t know if that was Chappelle’s plan all along, but this opportunity is a moment for the Trans community that it cannot shun because of the stupid rules of the 21st Century culture war that prevent them from discussing topics with someone who supposedly said something mean. Unfortunately, the organizer of the small Netflix walk out Ashlee Preston has so far refused to meet with Dave to hash things out. In fact, she admitted two days ago that she had reached out to Chappelle in the past to have a dialogue, but now refuses to after Dave responded that he was willing because Dave offended her by the way he offered. The irony. I think that’s just so unfortunate, and almost akin to other paradoxical things in this world such as the notion that we can’t cure cancer because the treatment is more lucrative than the cure. In this case, the activists apparently stop profiting once there’s not longer a need for activism.
You see, we cannot end all offensive and hurtful language so we must as a civil society, be willing to engage others on relevant modern day topics. One example, be more tolerant of comedy, even if it offends [I do not concede that Dave had any malice toward Trans people in his show, but part of my theme is that whether Dave was offensive is irrelevant]. Comedy is a form of story telling. Sometimes the stories are good. Sometimes not. And sometimes hurtful. If we listen more and talk less, we can learn. Even the most hurtful or offensive stories can teach. Chappelle either on accident or on purpose, has demonstrated that comedy can be a driver of conversation and possibly progress.
The Loudoun County situation reveals that it’s time to have these conversations about Trans issues now because the culture war has apparently arrived. And I’m not sure the Left is ready for it.
The Reasonable Man Standard 