Netflix fires organizer of trans employee walkout
theverge.com
theverge.com
Then I saw Twitter. Wow.
I just don't understand how people can be that mad about something that _they've clearly not watched_. It's beyond me. Perhaps I lack some fundamental cultural context.
- someone gets offended from clips, or watches the whole thing but dislikes bits they feel can taken out of context
- they say it is hateful
- everyone who listens to them takes the judgement and runs with it. No need to subject yourself to hateful content when you already know it is
- the judgement spreads, and people wanting to feel important add their own (uninformed) thoughts, which are just exaggerations of the original
- enough people say it that it becomes a foregone conclusion, and anyone who speaks up in opposition obviously only does so because they are anti-X, bigoted and hateful themselves, and so their opinions dont matter
It is basically how all stereotypes spread, with an added hint of malice thrown on top to be extra divisive. In a world of things like "anti-racism" where you must parrot the orthodoxy loudly and often, this is the natural course of things.
Culturally, I think "celebrification" is to blame for the intensity. We have spent so long worshipping celebrities, and celebrity status, that social media gave us the added shot of each of us being our own mini-celebrities. Being liked and mentioned has become a form of self fulfillment for some people, and the easiest way to do that is parrot every bandwagon you can find.
However, there's a minority of folks who are engaged in this "outrage porn" to score points on social media. They need something to rail against every, single, day.
They don't care about what was actually said. If you take 90 mins to watch the special you might miss the wave of hate you're trying to ride.
It happens on the right and the left (which in the USA are really both pretty right).
There is a very simple explanation for this type of outrage: many religious people get offended when what they consider to be sacred gets criticised or denied. This is even more true for new converts who often fail to see the nuances in their religion and take religious dogma as absolute truth. Religious extremism is incompatible with rational discourse, as is proven time and time again - it does not matter whether the extremists follow a theistic religion like Islam or Christianity or a secular one like "Wokeness", the "new religion of the left" or whatever name you want to give it. Now add this this a faith without atonement or salvation and the seeds have been sown for a life of outrage.
A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the employees’ dismissal. “We have let go of an employee for sharing confidential, commercially sensitive information outside the company,” they said.Whilst Netflix did resist a full take-down, they still took a knee. Don't bow to the unreasonables, just publish and don't explain anything. And indeed, fire the anti-employees, whom sabotage your business.
You're offended? So what? Grow up. Meanwhile hit show "Squid Games" depicts hundreds of people executed, and there's nothing but love and praise.
This minor insult has led to a disproportionate amount of outrage. Which is a very strong signal to other comedians to only engage in jokes deemed "safe". That's a regression.
I'm glad Reed Hastings fully supports this, he is a major donor to the DNC, they are fighting their own.
Dave spends the last 15 minutes of the show telling a heartbreaking story of how he made friends with a transgender woman, and invited her to open his show for him, she sucked but then when she was being herself during the show and afterwards backstage she had everyone howling with laughter because she was so naturally funny but she needed to work on her show to get that side out.
She defended Chapelle on Twitter and got dogpiled for it and killed herself (not 100% if there was a correlation but sure it didn’t help).
Dave got to the point that he didn’t like her or find her funny because she was transgender but because she was a person. She was another human. Not someone who hid behind a label or an identity, but someone who was a human going through the same shit we all go through.
That’s what identity politics and extreme politicalisation denies people, humanity. How people watched that show and got that he’s a transphobe from it just blows my mind.
On net, the people calling Chapelle out are more correct than his defenders. He really did spend an hour making unfunny jokes at trans people's expense. Was the whole thing as bad as many who didn't watch it are assuming based on a few cherry picked quotes? No, but it was still pretty bad.
Should Netflix remove it? I wouldn't say so, but I think much of the criticism is well deserved if lacking nuance.
Almost all jokes are at someone’s expense.
Nothing illegal was said, so if you don’t like it, just don’t watch it, it’s really that simple. I get tired of the tyranny of the minority telling me what I’m allowed to do.
No, it's not that simple. I hate this term but Chapelle is by all means a THOUGHT LEADER, meaning he has a megaphone into the minds of huge swaths of the population esp with a platform like Netflix. Everyone must fight for the world they want to live in.
>I get tired of the tyranny of the minority telling me what I’m allowed to do
Get over yourself. YOU are the one who's tired?
I’ve already seen posts from anti-trans folks praising him, and “i’m team terf” memes. I don’t think the material was funny or provocative enough to warrant the validation it’s creating amongst bigots (even if they’re missing the point).
He seemingly saw this coming and seemed to be preemptively playing defense the entire special.
I’m not going to “cancel” him or whatever, but the whole thing seems lazy on multiple fronts. He intentionally stirred a very divisive pot so people would talk about him, and he tried to set himself up as the smart guy for “seeing” obvious backlash coming.
Of course he did, the reaction he received was exactly the punchline he wanted out of the whole special. He basically dared people to try and cancel him, and when they dutifully fell in line and created the uproar he predicted would happen, it underscored his entire point about hurting LGBQT+ feelings generating much more societal outrage than committing violence against black folks.
There have been over 600 murders in Chicago and over 2700 shootings in 2021 alone, with 75% of those folks being black.
Yet…it’s a national news story for two weeks that Dave Chappelle told some jokes that offended a tiny percentage of people.
That was the point of the whole special.
If his stance is "sometimes this (about me) gets more attention than that (about them)" then it's even more absurd. Especially considering that intersectional violence is particularly bad for black trans women.
Roxane Gay had a decent opinion piece in the NY Times if you want an opinion from a black feminist. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opinion/dave-chappelle-ne...
Perhaps that has to do with the fact that there were 44 reported cases of fatal violence against trans people and 9900 against black people in 2020.
Edit: fixed my stat
But yeah, two weeks and dozens of national news stories and demands to cancel and remove his show is probably just a few people “mad” at him for comparing trans genitalia to fake hamburger and not a living example of disproportionate outrage at all.
Yeah, funny how the whole "lived experience" thing is only for one side of the culture war.
Who can keep up any more? The rules change faster than slang and fashion.
But that's not good enough for people bc now you're expected to walk a linguistic minefield due to all the pedantic asshole on the internet who won't listen in good faith, then accuse you of speaking in bad faith
A good example is this thread. Chappelle was trying to use anecdotes to meet people halfway, and he did it in his language of comedy.
People accuse him of punching down... But comedy that concerns itself with punching up or lunching down is comedy + something else. Its not comedy. Just like atheism+. And so Chappell is coming from a different perspective and no one wants to see and listen to what he's trying to say.
Comedians say all kinds of fucked up shit to each other. That's their language. He extended the olive branch and for that.... There's firings and walkout and internet arguments.
Golden rule can't apply on the global stage when there's 20% of the left SEEKING offense wherever they can find it and constantly demanding others change on their behalf.
The Golden rule never took cry-bullies who cry foul for power games into consideration
And I think (or maybe hope) that it's a lot less than 20%. The problem is that much of the internet is a broadcast or oratorical medium, and those seeking offense will find you. They find offense everywhere. It must be a miserable way to live.
He sides with JK Rowling. That doesn't make him bad.. that makes him sane!
It's not accurate to say they're asking to be treated like women. They're asking for expansive accommodations above what anyone else would receive.
Then there's the issue of trans activists lying about the safety of hormone blocker use in children, which is NOT reversible nor is it safe. There is an established link between the use of those products and irreversible bone density loss.
If you mention any of this, you get viciously attacked on a personal level.
This is very different from your word games. Having a right to do something everyone else does, like buy a house, get credit in my name, etc is different from demanding I act out your identity under punishment of arrest.
If you are drowning, I am not obligated to save you, yet somehow I’m responsible for your feelings?
Some people saying yes and some people saying no is literally what a “sides” thing is.
That's how you could interpret the TERF joke, but then you did ignore the rest of the show where he basically says the opposite.
By this argument, blacks are dehumanizing by not accepting whites who want to be black, even though any biologist can tell you “race” doesn’t exist in any meaningful way. In fact the left successfully used this argument to defeat the popularity of far-right white supremacy groups.
If a Netflix show makes a group feel threatened and reacts by trying to censor him, that community should just stop watching him.
By the reviews from actual people, not people paid to write reviews, I’d say there are a lot more people who enjoyed the show.
He also compared transwomen genitalia to vegetarian meat substitutes (Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger)
In fact, he warned against the use of the surgeries at all because of the questionable results. [1]
There's thousands of pieces of anecdotes in various trans subreddits focused around surgeries, but I won't link them because they're very disturbing. They're easy to find if you wish.
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/transgender-doctors-warn-against-sex-...
No. She said blocking puberty at the 1st visible signs had drawbacks for vaginoplasty later.[1] This isn't news to people in the field. Not blocking puberty has drawbacks too. Doctors, patients, and parents have to weigh the pros and cons.
[1] https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/top-trans-doctors-blow-the-...
You risk permanent bone damage for the minority of cases where it has some advantages? The "advantages" are apparently easier transgender surgery, which in its current form is essentially a disaster. The operation is brutal and the results are rarely good. The majority of the time there are serious, life-changing consequences. All this risk for something that I think even transgender people would agree isn't there yet in terms of utility nor aesthetics.
After all that, the suicidality of transgender people post-operation is virtually the same as pre-operation.
For those reasons, I find it extremely hard to support the use of risky drugs and a very rocky pathway for children who have GD. The fact transgender people tend to ignore these risks, paper over them and encourage questioning people onto this path isn't a good look.
The drugs are dangerous, irreversible and have a very questionable upside. Full stop.
Puberty blockers have been prescribed for early onset puberty for over 30 years. Their primary effects reverse naturally after treatment stops. Studies found they affect bone density temporarily when used for early onset puberty. And not dangerously. Trans patients tend to take them longer though. At least 1 study found their bones don't recover as quickly. It wasn't set up to prove or disprove a permanent residual effect.[2] But even during treatment the effect doesn't reach dangerous levels for most patients. And the risk is easy to mitigate with monitoring, supplements, and exercise.
The advantages of puberty blockers are avoiding various surgeries and their risks, better results in some ways, and avoiding a distressing transformation the patient isn't allowed to do anything else about. That distress breaks some people.
"After adjustment for sociodemographic factors and exposure to other types of gender-affirming care, undergoing 1 or more types of gender-affirming surgery was associated with lower past-month psychological distress (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.58; 95% CI, 0.50-0.67; P < .001), past-year smoking (aOR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.57-0.75; P < .001), and past-year suicidal ideation (aOR, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.50-0.64; P < .001)."[3]
Trans people would like better surgical options of course. You don't speak for them in calling present surgeries a disaster.
What does any of this have to do with Dave Chappelle making jokes at trans people's expense?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27757484
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5290172/
[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...
Absolute fabrication, and a dangerous one at that. Bone density loss is permanent, and there are numerous documented cases of fracturing, broken bones and otherwise -- including from pro-transgender clinics. [1]
This is what I mean when I criticize the community for papering over serious dangers. Your words are reckless and dangerous.
>That distress breaks some people
Given the suicidality evidence, there's precisely zero proof that transgender surgeries benefit people at all, considering the rate of suicide post-operation is substantially higher than a normal person, and virtually unchanged from pre-operation.
This means that those surgeries offer no benefits for suicidal behavior whatsoever. The other "benefits" appear to be subjective? How are they "not broken" if they're dead from suicide? Serious question, because nobody ever seems to be able to tell me why these surgeries are a benefit given the grim statistics.
>You don't speak for them in calling present surgeries a disaster.
I never put words in their mouths, I simply read the mountains of evidence in their own communities, and from their own advocacy groups. [2]
Have you seen the results first hand enough to say that I'm wrong? Some of these surgeries are legitimately disasters. I mean permanent damage and zero functional use, with lifelong ramifications (daily upkeep, multiple corrective surgeries, serious problems with basic functions etc).
>What does any of this have to do with Dave Chappelle making jokes at trans people's expense?
If you watched his show, you would've noted that he was making jokes about them because they cannot take a joke like most people can. They cannot even take reasonable debate.
J.K. Rowling posts an opinion they don't like and thousands of them bombard her with death threats, hateful vitriol and otherwise.
Why can't they take a joke? Gay people can take a joke. Black people can take a joke. White people can take a joke. That's his point.
[1] https://segm.org/the_effect_of_puberty_blockers_on_the_accru...
Your bone density argument is particularly stupid, and you don't appear to realise that you're waving a big red flag. Anyone with any knowledge about this knows the study you're referring to (but that you haven't read and haven't linked to), and knows the more recent studies that overturn those results (and you don't even know those studies exist, because you're getting your information from very selective sources).
Correlation isn't causation, and that's important for PBs and bone density because we know trans teens can have lower bone density even when they've never had PBs.
See also J.K Rowling and her book publisher.
I'll confess I don't know anything about anything- I certainly don't have any insight into what evidence Netflix has to support the assertion that this employee was the leak; I doubt we'll ever see it.
I guess I'm just grousing about the title implying the employee was fired for organizing the walkout, yet the article doesn't expound upon the employee referenced by the title, the titular planned walkout, or the evidence for or against the title's implication. Instead, it mentions a show, some private metrics that were leaked to Bloomberg, 3 employees (at least one of whom is a trans software engineer) who were suspended for attending a high-level meeting they weren't allowed to listen in on and then reinstated after public pressure. So why imply that Netflix would fire an employee (who happens to be both black and pregnant) for organizing a walkout in the name of activism that hasn't even taken place yet in order to protest the show referenced by the leaked metrics if the only time they're going to bother even asserting the title's implication is when quoting an employee about discrimination?
Is discrimination the reason she was fired? Is it retaliation for a walkout that has yet to take place? Is there a smoking gun indicating that she was the one leaking private company data? I honestly don't have a clue and we probably won't ever know for sure. But for once I'd like to read an article where the experience at least begins in good faith instead of implying a conclusion without ever actually going into detail about it. [/rant]
Customers have more power than employees. If you don't like what Netflix is doing, stop paying them.
This is more akin to a vegan employee leaking how much McDonalds pays for beef, revealing that it is a loss leader. That jeopardizes the relationship and puts the beef company in a difficult position when negotiating with other companies. The vegan feels justified because meat is murder and causes unnecessary suffering.
It's interesting that Netflix may be putting subjective artistic quality ahead of profit. How will investors interpret that?
Some of those eyeballs will start a Netflix subscription just to see it, or continue to subscribe, or rethink about cancelling...
Streaming services like Netflix survive by having content people want to see. How many of us cancel HBO or whatever once the show we're watching is off-season? That's a lot of money to miss out on... making things like Chapelle's special worth while, even if it costs a ton up front.
In a weird way, all this hullabaloo surrounding this particular special is actually increasing it's awareness and therefore viewership. These employees are defeating themselves, really...
The employee may unaware that a rival burger chain could use that information to renegotiate with the supplier. This would potentially hurt the relationship between the employer and the supplier.
Sadly, the employee that leaked/whistleblew is suffering from a mental illness, and they delusionally thought their coworkers were farting on the burgers.