I'm Not Mad at Dave Chappelle, Just Disappointed

"Gender is a fact," Dave Chappelle sagely intones, like a world-weary voice of reason, in his latest comedy special on Netflix, The Closer. I considered spending half of this article discoursing on why this statement is wrong, but I've decided simply to treat it as self-evidently wrong, because this is 2021 and there's no excuse not to know better. If you're still confusing sex and gender—as Chappelle seemingly is—I suggest Googling the difference. I think we're beyond the point in the transgender discourse when everyone should be responsible for educating themselves about the social scientific consensus on gender before opining on the topic in front of an audience of millions.

This is why I'm disappointed in Chappelle. Not that I had any particular expectation that he would be a stalwart of trans rights, but he's a clearly intelligent and thoughtful man who is capable of grasping the difference between sex and gender, one of which is a biological "fact" and the other is a social construct. That is to say, gender is whatever we agree it is. We can only speculate as to his reasons for conflating the two.

The most charitable explanation is that he's simply ignorant. Either that, or he is wilfully rejecting the modern sociological consensus on gender because he has a world view that is fundamentally trans exclusionary. (He does identify as "team TERF," after all—seemingly not in jest.) Neither explanation is very satisfactory, though. Chappelle doesn't strike me as a malign actor here. Yes, he treats transgender folks irreverently in his stand-up, but no more irreverently than he treats anyone else. It's certainly true that the trans community has a tendency to be self-serious and allergic to comedy, and it would be easy to dismiss the outrage over The Closer as mere hysteria or "cancel culture" (a subject I've written about multiple times in the past.)

"Those who would say dismissively that 'he's just a comedian' underestimate the force of gravity that someone like Chappelle—with his millions of fans—exerts on the cultural conversation."

But that would be too easy. The trans community has every right to be angry at Chappelle. Those who would say dismissively that "he's just a comedian" underestimate the force of gravity that someone like Chappelle—with his millions of fans—exerts on the cultural conversation. To be sure, Chappelle has a right to his views, however ignorant they may be. Education is always preferable to "cancellation," in my view. And I'm skeptical of the overzealously asserted claim that Chappelle's undeniably ignorant and arguably transphobic remarks may result in some ethereal "harm" to the transgender community. If our goal is to combat stereotypes about transgender people, the last thing we should do is make heavy-handed and censorious demands that Netflix remove The Closer from its catalogue and play into the right-wing "cancel culture" narrative—a narrative that Chappelle has already reveled in this week, saying, "If this is what it's like to be canceled, I love it."

So what is Dave Chappelle's problem, and what is to be done about it? Out of respect for the man and his body of work, the kindest thing I can say is that he simply doesn't know what he's talking about, and he made no appreciable effort to enlighten himself before he propagated deleterious misconceptions about sex and gender to his audience. He strongly appears to have consulted TERF websites and made no further, balanced effort to understand trans people. And his genuinely offensive comparison of transgender women to "blackface" was particularly egregious. Chappelle is smart enough to know how hurtful and provocative this comparison is, yet he expressed sympathy for it regardless. This can't be dismissed as mere comedy, played for laughs—clearly, it is intended as social commentary. I am an even-tempered trans woman who prides herself on her magnanimity and always strives to give people the benefit of the doubt, and even I found this comparison transphobic.

Yet, I'm not angry because, as I said, I don't see Chappelle as a malign actor. In The Closer, he candidly admits to his difficulty in relating to the transgender experience, but regardless, he expresses a seemingly earnest desire for fraternity with trans people. This is perhaps the heart of the contention between Chappelle and the trans community, and between the trans community and reactionary elements of society at-large—whereas trans people demand to be embraced, understood, and accepted, Chappelle offers only arms-length tolerance.

It would be nice to have our identity acknowledged and validated, and research has shown this leads to better mental health outcomes for trans people. But we may have to be pragmatic and content ourselves for now with mere co-existence, quietly confident that Chappelle is on the wrong side of history and science, and that his retrograde views are on the wane. But that doesn't mean, in the interim, that we shouldn't expect and demand that Dave Chappelle, please, do better.