Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
You’re either transphobic or ok with going along with someone who’s transphobic. They don’t care the difference. Or you think he’s not transphobic, and I’d say you’re naive. He’s made it very clear he’s not poking fun or exaggerating anything. He doesn’t acknowledge trans women as women. These are statements not bits. Mind boggling all the more that his grandparents would have been subject to the same kind of hatred based on their race being inferior to whites in many of the same ways Trans people are being discriminated today.