At the risk of saying something negative - no.

I watched the last one twice just to be sure there was subtext and it was pretty astounding the disconnect between article writers, commenters, and the actual comedy.

Did he say “I’m team terf”? He did. Yeah he did say that and that was fucked up. Agreed. (In whatever way context could be added, he was discussing the idea that one specific set of internal organs was currently capable of gestating a human. He said the terfs were saying that and he agreed with them on that point but he also discussed NC’s bathroom bill and talked at length about how it’s a bad law. He also defended trans rights at some length. But the “Dave hates trans” article writers don’t include those points)

But the other 99.99% of the special was objectively pro-trans. Including “All trans people deserve love and respect”. The main point is you can’t get what he’s doing from text. Standup has a bunch of moving parts: voice, inflection, setup, arc, theme, silliness, parody, jokes-within-jokes, and many other aspects that aren’t available in a text-only format like a comment or an article.

It seemed to me that he was making several really good points about being in a marginalized, oppressed minority, and the way the larger society talks about it. He used language to do that that wasn’t straight-on, direct, and clear because he’s a comedian who tells jokes and so his way of doing it is building an elaborate framework around a topic or topics, and by talking about them he’s getting across a larger message. It’s densely layered discussion underneath simple stories. He’s really good at it, fwiw, but that’s often immediately ignored and intentionally misrepresented to light him up for whatever the author wants to project.

I’m just saying if you watch his specials with an open mind, he’s not anti-trans at all. And whenever it gets down to it, the people accusing him of it haven’t understood his show; often they haven’t watched it at all.

Now Ricky Gervais? Fuck. That guy’s seriously anti-trans, ignorant and malicious, and putting Chappelle in with him is just wrong. Thank you for coming to my TEDx talk.

Dave Chappelle had the option to live a quiet, wealthy, incredibly comfortable life as essentially the lord of a small Ohio city. He would have been, at the very least, a name that comes up in greatest of all time comedian discussions. Instead he chose this. Dumbass.

Remember when he was funny?