By Jeremiah Ancheta
Last week, Cloud Dancers released the first of a two-part piece concerning Dave Chappelle’s “The Closer.” The first piece covers what exactly Dave Chappelle said that is considered transphobic. This piece is about the communicative harm that the special has on the transgender community.
By communicative harm, I refer to the sort of harm that occurs due to certain information being conveyed and accepted about a marginalized community, which leads to thinking about that community in a harmful way, ultimately perpetuating the oppressive social conditions of that community. In particular, “The Closer” contributes to a false perception about the transgender community, which gets in their way of successfully conveying the social injustices they face.
This post will analyze the background conditions that allow for the harm to take place, how the harm manifests, and what it ultimately results in. My analysis will draw upon empirical evidence and literature put forth by academic philosophers.
The Background Conditions in Place
Chappelle as an Authority Figure
Dave Chappelle has been a comedian for over 20 years, considered one of the best comedians of all time by magazines such as Rolling Stone and Billboard. Chappelle’s place as a renowned celebrity makes him, in the eyes of the general public, an authority figure whose words have credence, especially concerning political issues. For instance, a research study by Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore focusing on the effects of celebrity endorsement in politics found that “[Oprah] Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately 1,000,000 additional votes for Obama.” Insofar as transgender issues are also politically divided issues, as evidenced by a 2017 Pew Research Center article, then Chappelle’s position as a celebrity plays a partial role in the public opinion of transgender issues.
Furthermore, what adds to his power as an authority in this case is the fact that much of his comedy performances involve social commentary on issues concerning identity and oppression. For instance, a paper by Andrew Fishman of Trinity College notes how Chappelle’s Show “captured both the absurdities and difficulties of navigating race and racism in our so-called post-racial America.”
As such, Chappelle’s status as a famous comedian known for his social commentary on issues concerning identity and oppression gives him a perceived authority to speak on other social issues such as transgender issues. So Chappelle’s transphobic attitudes and beliefs he expresses throughout “The Closer” have the power to influence his audience’s beliefs about the transgender community.
“The Closer” as a Comedy
The context in which Chappelle’s transphobic comments occur is in a comedy special performed by the well-liked comedian Dave Chappelle. As such, Chappelle’s utterances are perceived as merely making jokes that can’t harm anyone.
The comedy style of “The Closer” blurs the lines between humor and social commentary. However, much of the problematic things that Chappelle says clearly express his genuine beliefs and attitudes about the transgender community. For instance, his explanation of TERF ideology and his declaration of being “Team TERF” are clearly expressed as his beliefs on the matter. Insofar as we can say it is a joke, then it’s not clear what the punchline is in saying such things.
From personal experience, my conversations surrounding the bigotry in “The Closer” have consisted of interlocutors defending Chappelle. In claiming that Chappelle’s remarks were transphobic, my interlocutors responded with “it’s just a joke” and “you just don’t understand Chappelle’s humor.” This goes to show how Chappelle’s remarks being expressed in the context of comedy gets in the way of people understanding the issues at hand.
How Communicative Harm Manifests
Misinformation about the Transgender Community
Just before the 53:00 mark, Chappelle acknowledged that he initially didn’t know what a TERF was, and proceeded to say “but I know that trans people make up words to win arguments.” However, Chappelle does not give a single example of such a case. Such a comment paints the transgender community as being dishonest when, in reality, transgender people are making substantial claims about the discrimination they face.
Furthermore Chappelle makes problematic claims about what it is to be a woman. As noted in our last post, Chappelle makes various remarks to the effect that a ‘real’ woman is someone who has the capacity to give birth, have periods, and have a vagina that was not attained through vaginoplasty or vulvoplasty. We also noted how Chappelle’s views on gender are at odds with various academic and professional fields.
Chappelle’s comments contribute towards anti-trans rhetoric. His claim that the transgender community ‘make up words to win arguments’ paints them as being dishonest and not having anything of substance to say. Furthermore, the expression of his belief that a person is not a woman insofar as they can’t give birth and have periods or have certain genitals may lead some viewers to hold this belief as well, contributing to the denial of a transgender woman’s identity.
Netflix’s Defense of Chappelle
It is also worth noting Ted Sarandos’ comments about “The Closer”, as they also contribute to the communicative harm on the transgender community.
After “The Closer” was requested by transgender people to be removed from Netflix, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos rejected the request, saying “we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm. The strongest evidence to support this is that violence on screens has grown hugely over the last thirty years… and yet violent crime has fallen significantly in many countries. Adults can watch… shocking stand-up comedy – without it causing them to harm others.”
The standard that Sarandos sets for media to be problematic enough to be taken down from Netflix is that it causes physical violence. There are some problems with this.
First, a report by the Human Rights Campaign reveals that 2021 saw “at least 47 transgender and non-conforming people” being killed. This is the highest amount of killings of transgender people since 2013, with 2020 being the second highest. So Sarandos’ point about violent crime significantly decreasing is not representative of the transgender community’s experience. One might argue that Chappelle’s comments about trans people have no role in perpetuating violence against them. This leads me to my second point.
Second, the way we think and talk about a certain group of people can lead to harmful actions towards that group. Lynne Tirrell, a philosopher who has written substantial work on how language affects the social conditions of marginalized groups, gives an example of this phenomenon in her work “Genocidal Language Games.”
In this paper, Tirrel talks about the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. Tirrell argues that prominent slurs used against the Tutsi people were vital to enable certain sorts of genocidal action. For instance, the Tutsi people in power were commonly thought of as ‘inyenzi (cockroaches)’ This way of thinking of the Tutsi reduced them to being thought of as bugs, as non-human creatures with no moral consideration. Tirrell notes how thinking of the Tutsi people as inyenzi lead to “morally prohibited actions like murder, rape, mayhem, and mutilation to be regarded as socially appropriate and even required” (pg. 217). A direct call for genocide was even incited on the radio, when it urged its listeners to “exterminate the cockroaches.”
So the way we think and conceptualize about some group of people can facilitate acting towards such people in a harmful way. To connect this idea with Chappelle’s remarks, Chappelle’s various remarks, in addition to the perceived authority he has, plays a role in promoting anti-trans rhetoric. Such rhetoric involves conceptualizing transgender people in a problematic way. Insofar as “The Closer” plays a role in promoting anti-trans rhetoric, then it also can contribute to the violence that transgender people face.
A commentary by Marianne Mollmann of The Fund for Global Human Rights captures this idea just as well, “By letting trans-exclusionary groups define who gets to call themselves a woman and who doesn’t, we’re accepting that every woman’s appearance—including our makeup, clothing, behavior, and physical attributes—can be policed in the name of “gender purity.” And because the policing of trans and gender queer folks has always been violent, trans-exclusionary rhetoric ultimately justifies misogynist violence.”
The Upshot of Communicative Harm
Discursive Injustice
In their paper “Performative Force, Convention, and Discursive Injustice,” non-binary philosopher Quill Kukla (writing as Rebecca Kukla) describes the phenomena of discursive injustice. For simplicity’s sake, discursive injustice can be understood as the phenomenon where speakers of a marginalized group are unable to use their utterances in characteristic ways, which results in further social disadvantage. An example that Kukla uses to illustrate the phenomena is that of a female boss giving orders to her male employees. The male employees instead interpret her orders to be mere requests, and thus don’t comply with their boss’s orders. This mismatch between what is said and what is interpreted occurs due to the fact that the boss is a woman. The female boss’ orders don’t have the characteristic effect of obligating her employees to do their work, and this perpetuates the social disadvantage that women have in being authority figures in the workplace.
The relevant examples I want to draw upon and which relate to “The Closer” are cases in which marginalized groups attempt to substantially address the social injustices they face, but are interpreted as “whining” or “crying”.
For instance, transgender people make various substantial truth-apt claims regarding the social injustices they face. However, these claims are interpreted by various people not as assertions that address discrimination and oppression, but rather are interpreted as transgender people expressing non-cognitive attitudes such as whining or being offended. This is evidenced by the popular belief that marginalized people are merely “offended” about words, when in fact, they are addressing the social injustices caused by language and communication.
So the discursive injustice that is perpetuated due to “The Closer” involves Chappelle’s remarks and Sarandos’ defense of “The Closer” contributing to the utterances of the transgender community regarding social issues being interpreted as transgender people being offended. Take this comment by a Youtube user for instance, where they state their approval of Netflix’s defense and claim that the transgender community is “offended about nothing.”
Furthermore, Chappelle’s unsubstantiated claim that transgender people ‘make up words to win arguments’ paints them in a dishonest light, which also plays a role in people not accepting the claims made by transgender people that address social issues. Those who come to believe that transgender people are dishonest due to Chappelle’s remarks will be resistant in accepting the former group’s claims about the social injustices they face.
Conclusion
In “The Closer,” Chappelle expresses many false beliefs and problematic attitudes towards and about transgender people. The transgender community is further harmed when these beliefs and attitudes are accepted or reinforced by the general public. Chappelle’s position as a perceived authority on social issues, in addition to his remarks being said in the context of a comedy special, makes people more likely to accept the things that he says, which plays a role in the communicative harm that transgender people face.
Much like other marginalized groups, transgender people are perceived as being merely offended by words or “jokes” and as being dishonest to push a problematic “narrative”. These perceptions get in the way of transgender people being heard when they try to bring awareness to the social injustices they face, and are further reinforced when they are held and expressed by people like Chappelle.
Ironically, at the 53:00 mark Chappelle says “I shouldn’t speak on this because I am not trans.” As a non-trans person, Chappelle has never experienced transphobia and is thus epistemically disadvantaged when it comes to trans issues compared to trans people who have experienced transphobia. In claiming that his jokes are not transphobic and firmly holding this belief in the face of transgender people who claim otherwise, he is implying that he understands what is and isn’t considered transphobic better than trans people themselves.