No Funny Business Here: Hannah Gadsby’s New Special Endlessly Bashes Whites, Christians, and the ‘Cisgendered’ - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
No Funny Business Here: Hannah Gadsby’s New Special Endlessly Bashes Whites, Christians, and the ‘Cisgendered’
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Hannah Gadsby in “Gender Agenda” (Netflix/YouTube)

Six years have passed since Hannah Gadsby, the plus-sized lesbian stand-up from Tasmania, became world famous. Her debut Netflix special, Nanette, had the critics salivating. The premise was brilliant — not comically brilliant, mind you, but politically brilliant. After serving up 20 minutes or so of self-deprecating humor, Gadsby made a sharp U-turn, announcing suddenly that she wasn’t going to mock herself anymore — because such material, you see, is rooted in self-hatred and internalized homophobia. She proceeded to go on, at excruciating length (and very unamusingly), about occasions on which she’d been insulted and/or assaulted by men. The males of the species, she made clear, are born predators. And she’d suffered mightily at their hands. Indeed, unless you were a woman (or, perhaps, unless you were a hefty, unattractive lesbian), you could never imagine exactly how much she’d suffered. Men? They never suffer. (War? Coal mining? Not on her radar.) By the end of the show, she was screaming at the audience, the very embodiment of irrational feminist rage.

In short, the whole ridiculous, dishonest display was as PC as could be. And the critics hailed it as revolutionary. But while Nanette’s critical score on the Rotten Tomatoes website was 100 — meaning that every single review was positive — the audience score was only a 26, meaning that just a bit over one out of four actual Netflix subscribers found the thing worthwhile. Nanette was followed by Douglas (2020), a more conventional piece of stand-up. It wasn’t funny, but Nanette had won Gadsby a loyal following among people who shared her politics — and who weren’t necessarily comedy fans. They cheered — not at the lame material, but at the feminist heroine who was delivering it.

Then, in 2021, Netflix did the unthinkable. It aired The Closer, a special by a truly funny and popular comedian, Dave Chappelle. The Closer contained some very PC material, including an anti-Zionist jest and a gag based on the dangerous lie that white cops are gunning down innocent black people. But Chappelle also pointed out the absurdity of Caitlyn Jenner winning a “Woman of the Year” award. He defended J.K. Rowling’s refusal to accept “trans women” as women. And he ended the show with a story about a “trans woman” he’d known who’d ended up committing suicide. Chappelle didn’t play this story for laughs — it was entirely sympathetic and was plainly meant to smooth over whatever feathers had been ruffled by his rather mild trans jokes.

Alas, it wasn’t enough. The so-called LGBTQ+ community savaged Chappelle — and condemned Netflix for giving him airtime. When Netflix exec Ted Sarandos replied to the outrage by stating that Netflix believed in “diversity,” citing Gadsby as an example, Gadsby shot back at him, calling Netflix an “amoral algorithm cult,” accusing Chappelle of having an “emotionally stunted partial worldview,” and telling Sarandos to keep her name out of his controversy.

But Gadsby and Netflix made up. Last year Netflix ran a new Gadsby hour, Something Special, which I described at the time as “inoffensive, toothless, even good-natured.” Oh, and not at all funny. In an interview, Gadsby defended her continued association with Netflix by maintaining that the company had reformed.

Gadsby’s newest offering is apparently meant as proof of this reform. Gender Agenda, with Gadsby serving as host, consists of routines by seven comics. How were they selected? Well, definitely not on the basis of talent. The best 10 or 20 or 30 stand-ups in the English-speaking world could never get anywhere near the stage of a Netflix comedy special because, by definition, they use their wit to ridicule establishment orthodoxy, not affirm it. That wasn’t what was going on here. Not in the slightest.

No, the comics being showcased in Gender Agenda were, as Gadsby gushed in her introductory remarks, “fabulous and diverse genderqueer performers.” Gadsby (who, more than ever, looks, walks, and dresses like a stevedore) kicked off the proceedings by reviewing the Chappelle dustup, although without mentioning Chappelle’s name. Her take was as follows: “Netflix released an incredibly transphobic comedy special,” and she’d been disappointed. You see, “Netflix is like a family,” but, “like most families, they don’t really like their queer kids.”

It’s remarkable. Not only did the bosses at Netflix keep Gadsby in their stable after she bashed them publicly; they green-lit this special that began with her bashing them some more. How many people on earth have the power to push Netflix around like this? And yet Gadsby still acts as if she’s a victim. Apropos of Netflix’s willingness to broadcast this parade of “genderqueer” entertainers, she was quick to emphasize that this one show “won’t fix” the terrible problem of anti-queer bigotry. “It’s not enough!” she proclaimed.

Of course it’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough or will ever be enough. That’s how this stuff works.

Anyway, on to the comedians. Not only were they chosen because they’re “genderqueer”; virtually all of their material was about being “genderqueer.” Jes Tom, a skinny little Asian American F-to-M, opened her routine by saying: “I’m trans, can you tell? Don’t answer that!” That was meant as a joke. Tom described herself as a “DTF”: “dyke-to-fag.” That was meant as a joke, too. Oddly, after saying she was a dude, she called herself “non-binary.”

I was confused. But the audience lapped it all up uncritically.

Next up was Chloe Petts, a forbiddingly huge British woman in an ill-fitting denim outfit and ski cap. Her website describes her as a “six-foot lesbian from Kent who is often mistaken for a man.” And thank goodness for that, because otherwise she’d have no material whatsoever. “I’m a masculine lesbian,” she said, and explained that this means she enjoys “male privilege,” since so many people think she’s a bloke. Funny, huh? Most of her routine was about how, when she attends straight weddings dressed like a guy, she’s an attention magnet. In a way, this was what this whole special was about: illegitimate attention-seeking, which at times during this hour felt pathological in its intensity.

Petts was followed by another massive female, a black American named Asha Ward. I looked her up. She holds the distinction of being the youngest person ever to be on Saturday Night Live’s writing staff. (Given what the once hilarious SNL has become, this isn’t exactly a feather in her cap.) Her routine, which was mostly about getting high and, more generally, being a lazy misfit, was full of cultural references that went right by me.

After two plus-sized women (this show was starting to look like a convention of linebackers), it was time for another scrawny one. At first glance I pegged DeAnne Smith as one of those lesbians who try their best to look like teenage skater boys. But Smith, who’s American, identifies as an F-to-M. She used to have huge breasts (“a sick rack”) but had them removed. She shared a curious detail: “I opted for no nipples…. I stand before you nipless.” Much of her routine was about her lack of nipples — and the fact that she hasn’t had “bottom surgery,” meaning that her nether parts are intact. “‘Weird little guy’ is my gender identity,” she joked.

Fifth up was “Mx. Dahlia Belle,” a black American M-to-F who, like many “trans women,” plainly has it in for biological females. Real women who dislike the term “cisgender”? According to Belle, they’re “whiny little bitches.” He jested that since he’ll never get pregnant or have a period, he has a “vagina with none of the obstacles or inconveniences.” (If so, he’s one rare M-to-F: Typically, men with fake vaginas — that is, surgically created wounds that need to be kept from healing by being constantly dilated — experience a wide and rather horrifying range of “obstacles and inconveniences,” from intense pain and bleeding to infection and necrosis.) After an unfunny joke about Jesus, Belle said that the joke might offend Christians but added, “I don’t care.” This utterly predictable line got one of the evening’s biggest ovations.

Krishna Istha is an F-to-M. Of all the comics, she was the only one without a hostile edge. Her declaration that she’d “been on testosterone for 10 years” got cheers. So did the half-in-jest way in which she spelled out her identity: “an Indian-American kind-of-Australian person living in Britain who’s a trans masculine nonbinary bisexual polyamorous dyslexic performance artist.”

The closing act was ALOK, described by Gadsby as “not just gender non-conforming” but “genre non-confirming.” Gadsby used the pronoun “they” to describe ALOK but then called him “the one and only ALOK.” A they who’s a “one-and-only”? It was the funniest line in the show, even though it wasn’t meant as a joke. ALOK turned out to be a guy with a six-day beard who was wearing a party dress and who immediately started in on those sensible souls among us who refuse to be bullied into using absurd trans pronouns. Much of his act wasn’t really meant to be funny. He ranted about books that had been “banned” from Texas schools, including his own Beyond the Gender Binary. I looked ALOK up. He went to Stanford, is the “LGBTQ+ Scholar in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania,” and is a nephew of the late activist Urvashi Vaid, during whose years as director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force the goal of the gay-rights movement wasn’t equality but socialist revolution. I have the feeling that the loathsome Vaid (who died in 2022) would be proud of ALOK.

Bottom line? Well, for one thing, what’s the deal with this umbrella label, “genderqueer”? In 2018, when Gadsby first became an international celebrity, she called herself a lesbian, full stop. Back then, being a lesbian was quite enough: It was still cool. Today, however, it’s passé to be a plain old homosexual, especially a white one from an Anglosphere background. So Gadsby has moved on. Now she says that her pronouns are “they” and “them” and that she’s been flirting with the label “non-binary.” Whatever. Petts and Ward also seem to be good old-fashioned dykes. What, I ask, does that have to do with being “genderqueer”? For years now, ordinary gay men and lesbians who thought all the tsuris was behind them have been expected to accept the ridiculous LGBTQ+ label and to consider themselves part of a “community” dominated by mischievous, malicious misfits who’ve undergone surgical mutilation to mimic the opposite sex and who insist, angrily and often violently, on being accepted as something that they aren’t. Are gays now supposed to call themselves “genderqueer”? If so, I suppose gay men are lucky not to have been represented by even one performer in Gender Agenda — which is no surprise, given that these days the progressive commissars who decide who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor tend to place gay white men in the latter category.

What to say about the claim that this was a comedy special? In the entire show, there were maybe three lines that I considered amusing or clever: Krishna’s observation that the difference between standup comedy and performance art is that the former seeks to make you laugh while the latter seeks to make you never laugh again; Tom’s statement that “I still prefer to use the women’s restroom, because I’m not an animal”; and Gadsby’s admission that she has a problem with the term “non-binary” because “to identify yourself by something that you are not is the cornerstone of binary thinking.”

Yes, the live audience kept laughing and cheering and applauding hysterically. No surprise there: They’d bought tickets to this thing because a mixture of nauseating, non-stop self-celebration and ideologically lockstep agitprop was exactly what they’d bargained for. But I didn’t laugh once. I did get bored. And angry. The bashing of whites, Christians, and biological men and women (i.e., the “cisgendered”) seemed never to end. I admit to being impressed by the ability of these performers to fill a whole hour with ceaseless references to their pronouns, identity labels, hormone treatments, surgeries, and gloriously, triumphantly butchered body parts. But, oh, the self-delusion! They see themselves as brave rebels who are leading us all into a brave new world — and they regard as fools and fossils those sane individuals who, unwilling to ditch so quickly the norms by which the whole human race lived until, oh, about 2015, refuse to march in obedient lockstep behind them. On its website, Netflix describes Gender Agenda as “irreverent.” On the contrary, you could describe it as something very much akin to a religious ceremony — a gathering of true believers in a cult whose passionate article of faith is the manifestly bogus claim that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man.

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