When navigating issues surrounding identity politics and gender, conservatives can inadvertently sound boring and even bigoted. However, under the guise of humor, comedians can offer some obvious truths.
Ricky Gervais masters this in his new Netflix special, Ricky Gervais: SuperNature.
“Oh, women!” Gervais says. “Not all women, I mean the old-fashioned ones. The old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs. Those f***ing dinosaurs. I love the new women. They’re great, aren’t they? The new ones we’ve been seeing lately. The ones with beards and [penises]. They’re as good as gold. I love them.”
“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].'”
Gervais exposes the irony of some men who live as women. Those who demand respect from biological women because of their choice and pronouns, even as they purposely invade women’s spaces and attack those who deny them access as bigots.
Even if often vile — Gervais’s routine includes abundant profanity and descriptions of male genitalia — he has a clear point. Gervais is crass because, well, the lens through which women view sharing their spaces with biological males is shockingly obscene.
To suggest that a female should, in a public restroom, observe a person’s pronouns and disregard the presence of a penis is equally silly. And sad.
The Left is not happy. “Does Netflix even care that Ricky Gervais’s SuperNature is rife with transphobic TERF ideology?” a writer at Vox moaned. Gervais seems unbothered by the backlash as well he should be. He defended this sketch. “My target wasn’t trans folk, but trans activist ideology. I’ve always confronted dogma that oppresses people and limits freedom of expression.”
Gervais’s commitment to free speech matches Netflix’s. Days before his special came out, updated employee culture guidelines showed a new backbone for truth-telling, even if it’s offensive or uncomfortable. “As employees, we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter our own personal values. Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you,” the culture statement said. Free speech may be comedy’s last frontier.
The writer George Saunders said, “Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.” If that’s the case, Gervais is not only hilarious but one of the most important truth-tellers of our time.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
