Why It’s More Than Just Jokes

A look at why comedy is not above criticism and how anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric can lead to real-world harm.

Photo: Google

You’re trash if you’re still defending Dave Chappelle.

Sit with that.

I have.

He was more or less my favorite comedian for nearly 20 years, ever since I watched 2000’s Dave Chappelle: Killin’ Them Softly. I even found things to laugh at in the first two Netflix specials, before he completely stepped into his obsessively transphobic bag. But this, at its core, has nothing to do with comedy.

Before we get fully into it, let me make it absolutely clear that what he said isn’t the actual problem. An uneducated person saying uneducated shit is nothing new, and Dave Chappelle is very much uneducated on this subject. And willfully so, at that. The problem is the intellectual dishonesty, logical acrobatics and outright irresponsibility being displayed by both him and the people caping for him, i.e. Y’all.

And that “Y’all” encompasses any and every member of the Dave Chappelle Dick Riders Collective. This whole discussion has been a study in watching people talk around the point and miss it on purpose. Claiming that it’s “just jokes” might be a semi-valid argument except:

a. He didn’t actually tell any jokes. I’m not being facetious, it really was just a long-ass monologue of him being wrong about LGBTQ+ people in almost every way possible.

b. It’s only a joke if you’re joking. He wasn’t. That’s really how he feels about trans and queer people

From a personal standpoint, I don’t think that anything is off-limits when it comes to comedy, and I genuinely believe that anything can be funny with the right delivery and intent. In this case, Dave—as brilliant though he may be—simply lacks both of those things. Claiming that any criticism is evidence of over-sensitivity because they’re “just jokes” is a lazy, hand-waving attempt at shutting down an important conversation. Dave takes on the role abusive partner here. He can do better, yet he simply refuses to and will attempt to gaslight you into thinking that you brought this treatment on yourself.

Aside from being toxic, it’s also hypocritical. What Chappelle and his defenders won’t address is that they don’t practice what they preach. In 2006, he walked away from Chappelle’s Show and $50 million dollars because he (rightfully, by the way) thought white people were laughing just a little too hard at his sketches that dealt with race. By his own admission, he was doing material that he felt was “socially irresponsible.” See, Dave Chappelle is a Black man who absolutely understands when audiences are laughing for the wrong reasons, but he only cares when it personally affects him.

Why is this so heavy on my mind right now? Besides the fact that he recently pulled another stunt in an attempt to transfer responsibility, November 20th was Transgender Day of Remembrance. With at least 47 trans and gender non-conforming people losing their lives to violence, 2021 was the deadliest year on record since 2013, when the Human Rights Campaign began tracking these crimes.

Their lives were taken by people who hold the same dangerously and stubbornly uninformed views that Dave Chappelle (and Y’all) do: that gender and sex are the same thing, that trans women aren’t women, and that trans and LGBTQ+ people somehow receive “special” treatment from society and are protected from offense. It’s also implied that we’re not the most reliable narrators of our own experiences.

I’m a queer Black woman and that’s the kind of shit that makes me want to punch people dead in the throat. I couldn’t even get married in all states until 2015, while trans people are continuously categorized as mentally ill and/or pedophiles, while also having to validate their very existence on a daily basis. So, I’m just trying to figure out where all these oppressed cisgender heteros think the special treatment comes in. And if you consider marginalized groups being listened to and treated like human beings to be “special treatment,” take a minute to evaluate your own humanity...or conspicuous lack thereof.

Speaking of that: it’s crazy to me how other marginalized people can understand the ways that racism or sexism can manifest themselves, but refuse to see the issue with Dave or confront their own latent homophobia or transphobia. The Dave Hive goes so hard for him because it’s not really so much him that they’re defending: it’s their own bigotry. But admitting that would involve a level of self-evaluation that they’re either not willing or not able to engage in.

Meanwhile, this man has twisted a false narrative about a trans woman he knew into a shield against criticism (and Y’all are eating that shit right up), while trying to place the blame for her suicide on those same critics. Which is Big, Big Sociopath Energy.

First off, “friendship” is a dubious description in this instance. His affinity for Daphne Dorman began because she attended a show and laughed the hardest at his jokes, “especially my trans jokes.” He tellingly points out that she never mentioned pronouns, which would have made him uncomfortable. Dave sees her much as racist white people see their “Black friend”: a prop, an archetype, an accessory that coddles and affirms rather than challenges them. According to her own sister and others close to her, Dorman’s suicide was the result of depression and PTSD. Even the harassment that supposedly caused it was non-existent. She also committed suicide six months after she Tweeted her support for him, not six days, as Chappelle claimed. Kat Blaque addresses that briefly here, and elaborates upon it here. F.D. Signifier also does a really good deep dive here.

I’m not about to feel bad that a famous, heterosexual, male multimillionaire got (rightfully) chastised a few times. He gets to go on being just that: a famous, heterosexual, male multimillionaire. There are too many trans people who can’t even safely be themselves, so I don’t want to hear shit about Dave Chappelle not punching down.

I’ll leave you with a few thoughts:

Women of color and Black women especially, are disproportionately represented when it comes to being victims of anti-trans violence. According to the HRC, 91% of those murdered in 2019 were Black trans women and 81% of those women were under the age of 30. In its report Epidemic of Violence 2021 , the Campaign shows an even bleaker picture. Since 2013:

- 85% of those killed have been trans women

- 77% have been trans women of color

- 66% have been Black trans women

Black/POC trans and queer people are conspicuously absent from Dave’s stand-up and I do think this is deliberate. While he’s right about the privilege that white LGBTQ+ people enjoy, this omission allows him to sidestep dealing with the intersecting identities of those like myself and the fact that we do not enjoy those privileges. It’s worth noting that 67% of trans people murdered since 2013 were murdered by an acquaintance, friend, family member, or intimate partner, meaning that many of the perpetrators (as Kat Blaque also points out) look like Dave Chappelle.