Comedian Dave Chappelle, known for his controversial social commentary, is coming under fire for telling transphobic jokes in his recent stand-up show.
The 43-year-old D.C. native kicked off a 16-show run at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Jesse David Fox of Vulture wrote a report of the show and said Chappelle began his show with 20-minutes of transgender jokes.
“He started by talking about how he was ‘shocked!’ by Trump’s ban on transgender officers in the military, because he didn’t realize there were any trans people in the military. ‘Sounds like a secret weapon to me,’ he continued. ‘If I was in ISIS in the trenches fighting against the United States and all of the sudden I see a man with a beard and big D-cups titties just rushing my foxhole and shit, I’d be horrified,’” Fox writes.
Fox went on that Chappelle appeared to show some remorse for his jokes but only continued to make more transphobic jokes.
“Later, he told a story about receiving a fan letter that derided his trans jokes, to which he replied, ‘A weird thing happened to me in this moment — it honestly made me feel bad that I made somebody else feel bad.’ That was, however, just misdirection for another series of trans jokes,” Fox continued.
Chappelle also opted for a Caitlyn Jenner joke, making fun of the former Olympian appearing in Sports Illustrated.
“‘I read in the paper that Caitlyn Jenner was contemplating posing nude in an upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated. And I knew it was politically incorrect to say, so I figured I’d just say it for everybody — yuck. Fuck, man, I just want to read some stats, like why are you cramming man-pu*sy in the middle of the sports page like that?’” Fox writes.
Chappelle also joked that the only reason transgender issues have come to the forefront is because of race.
“He then tried to make a fairly complicated point about his own frustration with ‘all this talk about how they feel inside,’ because ‘since when has America given a fuck about how anyone feels inside?’ He ended by arguing that sometimes he thinks ‘the only reason all of us are talking about transgenders is because white men want to do it. If it was just blacks and Mexican like, ‘Hey, y’all, we feel like girls inside.’ They’d be like, ‘Shut up, nigger, no one asked how you felt,’” Fox writes.
Chappelle’s latest stand-up shows have been heavily saturated with transgender jokes. In one of his Netflix specials, Chappelle also made controversial LGBT jokes and called out LGBT activists for slamming his shows.
