Board 8 > Dave Chappelle's Netflix specials.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Tom Bombadil posted...

I'll walk that point back a bit, then! Still find it hard to give him much benefit of the doubt, coupled with the wrong pronoun and the audience laughter and the everything else.

yeah, tbqh i was on edge for that entire segment- it had the same energy as a "my one black friend" story. and comedians lie all of the time (not like a dead person is going to disagree...)

Tom Bombadil posted...

Yep, but his experience is still that he is a man. For a lot of people, even his experience back at the time was that he was a man forced into a woman's role. Either way the general rule of thumb is to speak of them as if they were always that gender, because that's generally how we see ourselves. Even if we weren't out yet, or hadn't figured ourselves out yet, or were doing a gendered activity.

This is another reason why i think these conversations are so dicey- I can't really have an intelligent conversation about this unless we've decided whether there is a difference between being a man and a woman and what that is. whether it's a role or something inherently magical, like a soul

if "father" is a role... then things would be one way. if "father" is not a role but an identity, or a conjugation of "parent", then it is another way

i have some complicated situations in my family that are just a complete mouthful to explain, and we just kind of use abbreviations for the sake of brevity

again, and i'm losing steam a bit, in practical everyday interactions i don't have any issues with any of the above. when someone cares about something, you allow them that and leave it alone

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I believe it's the difference in "father" vs "fathered".

You're making a statement referencing gender vs sex, respectively.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

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kevwaffles posted...

There's "implicitly" and then there's just making up whatever you want. It's pretty ridiculous to accuse someone of deadnaming when names, dead or otherwise, didn't even come up.

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Tom Bombadil posted...

MoogleKupo141 posted...

its not impossible that Chapelles friend would have referred to herself as the father of her children. that specific word choice may not have been intentionally misgendering

I'll walk that point back a bit, then! Still find it hard to give him much benefit of the doubt, coupled with the wrong pronoun and the audience laughter and the everything else.

In my opinion, even if it's really the case that Chappelle's friend doesn't prefer retrospective pronouns for herself, it's still best practice to use them in front of an audience of millions who don't know that because that is the most frequent practice when speaking of trans people. This is up for debate, but I think it's the safest course of action. Bear in mind, I basically know nothing about her besides the snippets from this special I've heard, but I think that's kind of the case for most people, too - it's probably best for us not to make any really bold assumptions about her wishes. The problem is, the way Dave Chappelle speaks about her, I'm not especially convinced that he knew her really well, either, and he doesn't seem to particularly care too much about the particular landmines one has to think about when talking about a dead trans person. It's callous at best - even if his friend wouldn't have cared about this, it doesn't even matter due to how touchy a subject this is for everyone it impacts.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I believe it's the difference in "father" vs "fathered".

You're making a statement referencing gender vs sex, respectively.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'd say it's just really, really for the better to avoid the word "father" OR "fathered" when speaking about a trans woman, even if it requires you to phrase what you're saying in a different, awkward way that avoids it. Again, I know it's kind of a pain in the ass to take the long way around here in order to protect sensibilities that seem really minor on the face of it, but it actually means more than you might think. Again, not every transgender person will feel this way, but most do. Even the word 'sired' is better, imo, even if it makes us sound like horses.

Legit question - how do trans people feel about the notion that gender of any type is purely performative for political purposes and otherwise meaningless outside of the social norms that are thrust upon us? That was the hip thinking in the gender philosophy circles when I was going through college but all of this dialogue on today's scale came years later so I don't know how more recent thinking fits into that kind of framework, if at all.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

Even the word 'sired' is better, imo, even if it makes us sound like horses.

Personally that word always makes me think of vampires.
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Oh I agree, but I meant more in regards to how it would be taken if given the benefit of the doubt.

It's not like the term "fathered" is even in active use amongst the average American's dialect in the first place nowadays.


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NFUN posted...

the ones where you implicitly acted like it was impossible or too inconvenient to acknowledge that one parent raised you as a father while being respectful of their current status

i sort of touched this on my other long-winded post, but yeah i think it's a bit overbearing to demand that every time you tell a story about your childhood you have to explain the deep backstory of your parents

a story about your baseball team where your mom is the coach is different from a story about your baseball team where your dad is the coach, and sometimes the story isn't about them, it's about some kid who threw an orange at the other team

it really depends on whether "mother" and "father" are roles or... spirits, i guess

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banananor posted...

i sort of touched this on my other long-winded post, but yeah i think it's a bit overbearing to demand that every time you tell a story about your childhood you have to explain the deep backstory of your parents

a story about your baseball team where your mom is the coach is different from a story about your baseball team where your dad is the coach, and sometimes the story isn't about them, it's about some kid who threw an orange at the other team

but then just say "parent"! your point was that you had to mention your "fathers" explicitly because of the social implications!

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Not to mention the safety issue. Sometimes people think it's super fun and no big deal to talk about how someone is trans but that is info that 1] could be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, and 2] the person should be at liberty to share or not. Someone's whole life story is not your news to tell. That's basic human decency.

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Para said pretty much everything I was gonna say, but better, so cheers!

banananor posted...

yeah, tbqh i was on edge for that entire segment- it had the same energy as a "my one black friend" story. and comedians lie all of the time (not like a dead person is going to disagree...)

Yeah! Like. If it was JUST that line, this is kinda in "roll your eyes and move on" territory. That was actually my kneejerk reaction- I saw a bunch of people saying "Did you actually watch it? Did you watch to the end?" so I held off on saying much anywhere until after I had read the ending. The line that initially stuck out to me was the one about being done making jokes about us until we could laugh together about him. You show me JUST the Daphne part, and I see a guy who has some kinda dumb ideas and poor taste but his heart's in the right place. The "because I'm a transphobe" joke seems pretty clearly a joke, maybe not the classiest one ever but meh. Some people were mad that he spent so much time on how bad she bombed, but I'm willing to count that as serving the greater story of her resilience.

But, you put it into context of the part where he goes on about being a terf, and hits a ton of the standard issue transphobe talking points, (and, as I understand it, most of his career to date and especially his comeback) and that last line about Daphne feels less like a clumsy tribute (or like he did indeed find the rare trans woman who would be cool with being spoken of like that) and more like a parting shot right before he started talking about burying the hatchet. The TERF part is the part I'm *actually* upset about, mostly, but I keep seeing people (here and elsewhere) bringing up the Daphne part as some kinda redemption arc that makes everything else better, and I think that's a stretch when he couldn't even use her dang pronouns at the end.

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NFUN posted...

but then just say "parent"! your point was that you had to mention your "fathers" explicitly because of the social implications!

i agree. i mean, i'm pretty practiced with this stuff, having 3 or 4 parents growing up. the words "parent" and "partner" are pretty useful

but then again, "my dad's girlfriend of 30 years" doesn't really care if i refer to her as "stepmom" or "mom" in my story for the sake of brevity. and if i'm not around her at the time she doesn't know and it couldn't affect her at all

i would be extremely frustrated and annoyed if she was super hawkish about it. i hate the idea of being canceled for something like that. my older friends have expressed worry, because their memories are just bad- they forget names and genders more than they want to (which would be 0)

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Xiahou Shake posted...

Legit question - how do trans people feel about the notion that gender of any type is purely performative for political purposes and otherwise meaningless outside of the social norms that are thrust upon us? That was the hip thinking in the gender philosophy circles when I was going through college but all of this dialogue on today's scale came years later so I don't know how more recent thinking fits into that kind of framework, if at all.

So not to get at you specifically here, but a thing I sometimes notice about people asking questions about trans things is that they're totally unaware that they're about to walk face-first into something that's the source of decades of frought discourse within the trans community with no easy answer. To your question, basically no one person has the same answer here - some people believe that gender is mostly a performance, some people don't, and they tend to get mad at each other.

Xiahou Shake posted...

Legit question - how do trans people feel about the notion that gender of any type is purely performative for political purposes and otherwise meaningless outside of the social norms that are thrust upon us? That was the hip thinking in the gender philosophy circles when I was going through college but all of this dialogue on today's scale came years later so I don't know how more recent thinking fits into that kind of framework, if at all.

Its pretty much agreed biology has something to do with it. I


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banananor posted...

i agree. i mean, i'm pretty practiced with this stuff, having 3 or 4 parents growing up. the words "parent" and "partner" are pretty useful

but then again, "my dad's girlfriend of 30 years" probably doesn't really care if i refer to her as "stepmom" or "mom" in my story for the sake of brevity. and if i'm not around her at the time she doesn't know and it couldn't affect her at all

...and you don't see a difference between this scenario and the one you gave?

and now he's literally saying it's too inconvenient to acknowledge that one parent raised you as a father while being respectful of their current status, kev.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

So not to get at you specifically here, but a thing I sometimes notice about people asking questions about trans things is that they're totally unaware that they're about to walk face-first into something that's the source of decades of frought discourse within the trans community with no easy answer. To your question, basically no one person has the same answer here - some people believe that gender is mostly a performance, some people don't, and they tend to get mad at each other.

Appreciate it! As I said I'm basically totally clueless about the direction of the discourse has taken since I last engaged with it in any capacity, so the context is very helpful.

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Xiahou Shake posted...

Appreciate it! As I said I'm basically totally clueless about the direction of the discourse has taken since I last engaged with it in any capacity, so the context is very helpful.

To add to that question - I think the answer most transgender people would give you about whether or not gender is "purely performative for political reasons" is "oh my god, I have absolutely no idea where to even begin thinking about that." It's certainly mine! That's not a criticism of the question, it's just a really hard one.

what are your pronouns, para?

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Tom Bombadil posted...

The TERF part is the part I'm *actually* upset about, mostly

This one out of context I get, but tbf it was an awkward take on how he talked about how he found out he was a feminist earlier, combined with him being a transphobe. It was a pants on head stupid thing to say but I honestly don't think he realized everything that really implied.
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Paratroopa1 posted...

I think the answer most transgender people would give you about whether or not gender is "purely performative for political reasons" is "oh my god, I have absolutely no idea where to even begin thinking about that." It's certainly mine! That's not a criticism of the question, it's just a really hard one.

once again para has ninjad me while I rewrote a response twenty times

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

what are your pronouns, para?

'it's deeply complicated' but to skip the hours-long explanation, she/her is preferable, he/him is also acceptable and doesn't need to be corrected, may change my mind in the future

Paratroopa1 posted...

'it's deeply complicated' but to skip the hours-long explanation, she/her is preferable, he/him is also acceptable and doesn't need to be corrected, may change my mind in the future

good to know!

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Tom Bombadil posted...

The TERF part is the part I'm *actually* upset about, mostly, but I keep seeing people (here and elsewhere) bringing up the Daphne part as some kinda redemption arc that makes everything else better, and I think that's a stretch when he couldn't even use her dang pronouns at the end.

terfs are insidious. they lure people in with the breadcrumb trail of "hey, maybe mike tyson (or whoever his modern equivalent is) shouldn't box against XX chromosome humans" and find some unprepared activist to disagree with them, which makes the average bystander want to take the terf's side without realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes.

that part was irresponsible. not sure if he was too lazy to do the research or did the research and didn't care. probably the latter

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to put it another way I'm still in the 30-day-trial of gender and I haven't signed up for a full subscription

kevwaffles posted...

It was a pants on head stupid thing to say but I honestly don't think he realized everything that really implied.

I have a pretty hard time swallowing that once he makes the blackface analogy.

Also it COULD be a coincidence or carelessness or whatever but I have seen enough terfs (and straight up open transphobes) lead with "gender is a fact" that I have a very very hard time seeing it as an innocent thing to just happen to say oopsiedoo we're cool right. Even when it's not in the middle of calling yourself a terf, making fun of our genitals, and comparing us to blackface.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

To add to that question - I think the answer most transgender people would give you about whether or not gender is "purely performative for political reasons" is "oh my god, I have absolutely no idea where to even begin thinking about that." It's certainly mine! That's not a criticism of the question, it's just a really hard one.

Tom Bombadil posted...

once again para has ninjad me while I rewrote a response twenty times

See, this is absolutely bewildering to me. This is a question i outlined earlier in the topic, and one I've never found anyone able to answer.

How can someone decide they need to change their gender when they can't even articulate what gender even is?

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NFUN posted...

...and you don't see a difference between this scenario and the one you gave?

and now he's literally saying it's too inconvenient to acknowledge that one parent raised you as a father while being respectful of their current status, kev.

do you understand metaphor and simile? this is getting a little too difficult.

you're going really heavy with the socratic method, and i really just want to have a normal human conversation. i guess it's my fault for having the discussion in an open forum- i even said it was a bad place for it at the start

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"Gender is a crazy mishmash of social implications, some that make sense, some that don't" is the only answer I can even think of. If you've never been gender-questioning then there's like hundreds of things that probably don't occur to you on the first analysis of the subject

Paratroopa1 posted...

"Gender is a crazy mishmash of social implications, some that make sense, some that don't" is the only answer I can even think of. If you've never been gender-questioning then there's like hundreds of things that probably don't occur to you on the first analysis of the subject

so i guess you could say the important thing is that you want to be treated a certain way by other people, which i think is how most people look at it (?)

if i could get people to treat me the way i wanted to be treated, i absolutely would go for it. it just makes sense

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banananor posted...

not sure if he was too lazy to do the research or did the research and didn't care. probably the latter

Nah. "terf" gets people up in arms no matter what, and that's the goal with this style of comedy.

The example I give is that one coffeehouse that has dueling tip jars, e.g. Star Trek vs Star Wars. The coffeehouse keeps all the money while we keep stuffing the jars with cash arguing over who's winning. Dave is the coffeehouse in this example, and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

"Gender is a crazy mishmash of social implications, some that make sense, some that don't" is the only answer I can even think of. If you've never been gender-questioning then there's like hundreds of things that probably don't occur to you on the first analysis of the subject

This, and I'll add that dysphoria is pretty powerful. If you don't feel comfy in your body, you just don't, and no amount of "can't you just be a man that wears dresses" will really work to fix it. Other folks have other reasons, but that's what mine boils down to, I think.

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Llarian posted...

Dave is the coffeehouse in this example, and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

one could say we are
literally obsessed

also I am PRETTY sure that at least somebody somewhere is enjoying (and likely exacerbating) this whole scenario's devolution into "trans people vs. black people"

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Llarian posted...

Nah. "terf" gets people up in arms no matter what, and that's the goal with this style of comedy.

The example I give is that one coffeehouse that has dueling tip jars, e.g. Star Trek vs Star Wars. The coffeehouse keeps all the money while we keep stuffing the jars with cash arguing over who's winning. Dave is the coffeehouse in this example, and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

i would still put this in the "doesn't care" category- he knows what he's doing, he's earning money, and he doesn't care about whatever social collateral damage ensues. historically, comedians tend to have a certain degree of immunity to do that- i know it's waned in the past couple of decades

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Tom Bombadil posted...

This, and I'll add that dysphoria is pretty powerful. If you don't feel comfy in your body, you just don't, and no amount of "can't you just be a man that wears dresses" will really work to fix it. Other folks have other reasons, but that's what mine boils down to, I think.

that sounds rough, and i'm glad there are solutions to it in the modern era

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banananor posted...

do you understand metaphor and simile? this is getting a little too difficult.

you're going really heavy with the socratic method, and i really just want to have a normal human conversation. i guess it's my fault for having the discussion in an open forum- i even said it was a bad place for it at the start

this isn't me being socratic. this is me trying to give you second chances and avoid directly saying you're an ass, you ass

you can use metaphor and simile to draw comparisons between situations that are, y'know, comparable. when the entire conversation is about how misgendering and deadnaming and associated phenomena are bad (which you acknowledge is "extremely rude"), it's kind of obviously fucking disingenuous to say "well in the situation where i lazily refer to my effective-but-not-literal stepmom as 'stepmom', she wouldn't mind!" as a metaphor. your lesser point in that analogy was that it's much more convenient to use the shorthand, which is exactly what i originally pointed out as being objectionable when objecting to your earlier scenarios.

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Gender being a thing isn't the problem as it is assigning gender roles based on your sex, and that's perfectly in-line with being trans or non-binary. There's nothing wrong with being a girly girl or masculine man if that's just what you like, or indeed to ignore those roles as we all should be free to. However it's important to know that being particularly feminine as a guy or masculine as a girl does not mean you must be trans and that's something difficult to explain to cis individuals who don't understand the feeling of euphoria to be identified as the gender that matches your own. And likewise, not all trans men and women have to squeeze into stereotypical boxes of what it means to be one either.

banananor posted...

that part was irresponsible. not sure if he was too lazy to do the research or did the research and didn't care. probably the latter

I believe Chappelle says in the bit he looked TERF up online to see what the commotion was about soooo yeah =/

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banananor posted...

i would still put this in the "doesn't care" category- he knows what he's doing, he's earning money, and he doesn't care about whatever social collateral damage ensues. historically, comedians tend to have a certain degree of immunity to do that- i know it's waned in the past couple of decades

"did the research" is giving too much credit. All you have to do as a rile-'em-up comedian is hear extremely hateful screaming from 10 miles off, pick out an identity label, say "I'm ____" and profit once the free publicity gets you more views than you can even imagine.

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Tom Bombadil posted...

I have seen enough terfs (and straight up open transphobes) lead with "gender is a fact" that I have a very very hard time seeing it as an innocent thing to just happen to say oopsiedoo we're cool right.

Even before trans awareness and terminology made the progress that they have, I was always under the impression that sex and gender were different terms for this reason. So even as someone who doesn't personally deal with these issues, this always struck me as an unbelievably dumb hardline stance to make.
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Credit to banananor for doing more to smooth things over than the subject of this thread ever did.

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GuessMyUserName posted...

I believe Chappelle says in the bit he looked TERF up online to see what the commotion was about soooo yeah =/

At which point he just spells out the acronym and is like "I guess that's what I am." It struck me like a virgin looking up what incel means and saying they're one without looking any deeper into it.
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banananor posted...

so i guess you could say the important thing is that you want to be treated a certain way by other people, which i think is how most people look at it (?)

if i could get people to treat me the way i wanted to be treated, i absolutely would go for it. it just makes sense

Yeah that is a decent way of looking at it, there are other angles to it but this is probably the most important one for most people

kevwaffles posted...

It struck me like a virgin looking up what incel means and saying they're one without looking any deeper into it.

He segues in by talking about JKR getting yeeted. He spells out their beliefs. He parrots their favorite lines. He compares us to blackface. He segues out making fun of our genitals. I guess it's conceivable he didn't know the implications of ANY of that but I don't think that reading does well against Occam's Razor.

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"Gender is real / a fact" or more commonly "biology is real / a fact" is bizarrely a very common strawman among TERFs - the ones saying gender quite obviously don't even know what gender is, and the ones say biology... huh? Trans folk are most certainly aware of their biology, it just doesn't assign our gender: how we outwardly wish to present ourselves. Like yeah Chappelle, a trans woman who opted for SRS is well aware of the surgery they endured, you're not pointing out something new here.

It's incredibly frustrating when people blatantly lie and claim that simple fact is what the transes are mad about - most notably in reference to JKR... when no, what she did is use this dumb strawman while also arguing against our healthcare (HRT, literally the basic treatment of transitioning) and supporting the right for bigots to misgender and deadname us (to which JK Rowling in turn downplayed the issue of Maya Forstater's case to be "stating that sex is real"... again no, that wasn't it).

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Tom Bombadil posted...

He segues in by talking about JKR getting yeeted.

He just brings up "sports" in regards to her, which again strikes me as someone who looks at the first headline Google spits out and nothing else instead of someone actually on her side in any meaningful capacity.

It's one thing to laundry list these things. It's another to hear someone who just sounds like they're putting their foot in their mouth for 2 minutes of a 90 minute special (or however long it was).
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This is what people don't get about punching up vs punching down in comedy. Those who say "a good joke is a good joke" regardless of which direction it's punching.

But you literally can't make a good joke when you're punching down. When people will listen to you after 5 minutes of weak-willed "research", there's no motivation to actually craft a good joke or a strong message. There's no reason to be true or vulnerable.

You can almost perfectly split Chappelle's good and bad bits down the line of punching up vs down because of this.

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Llarian posted...

Credit to banananor for doing more to smooth things over than the subject of this thread ever did.

if only i could find a way to make people laugh instead of rambling on an internet forum

i think i miss pre-covid


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banananor posted...

i think i miss pre-covid

Truly the hottest take in the topic yet.

/S
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Confused how someone could specifically express confusion about why the crowd laughed at Chapelle misgendering a dead trans woman and then also insist he wasnt being transphobic.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Confused how someone could specifically express confusion about why the crowd laughed at Chapelle misgendering a dead trans woman and then also insist he wasnt being transphobic.

Since when is transphobia not rooted in ignorance?
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