I mean, I just googled "trans jokes" and the first hit was "18 trans jokes by actual trans people" that weren't funny. I was hoping for some raunchy limericks or something. Instead I got pages of results just saying how so-and-so shouldn't make trans jokes.
Having that powerful of a chokehold on media and search results is the opposite of "persecuted" and "disenfranchised". On the contrary, that's a terrifying amount of political clout and power to steer discourse.
> I was hoping for some raunchy limericks or something.
Yay because being trans is all about being raunchy hey ho!
OK, here's my own joke. I'm trans and this is a trans joke taken from, like, life, dude.
There's this guy sitting with four ladies and another
guy and he starts saying how he knows a tranny when he sees one.
"I mean, they all have like, what, size-7 feet? I mean come on, it's so
obvious!"
"I got size 7 feet" says one of the ladies.
The guy blinks once, then goes on:
"And their hands! Have you seen their hands? They're like two times the size of
my hands!"
The second lady holds up her hands. "My hands are bigger than your hands".
The guy pauses for a mere second and goes on.
"But the dead give-away is their voices. They have loud, booming, bass
voices..."
"I can sing in the entire baritone vocal range" says the third lady.
The guy stops, clears his throat, looks around, then leans in conspiratorially.
"You know what's the real way to tell a trannie apart? They can explain the
offside rule in soccer".
"That's easy" says the fourth lady. "A player is in an offside position if any
of their body parts, except the hands and arms, are in the opponents' half of
the pitch, and closer to the opponents' goal line than both the ball and the
second-last opponent".
The guy is now sweeating bricks. He turns to look at each of them carefully.
"OK" he says. "Was even a single one of you born female"?
> Yay because being trans is all about being raunchy hey ho
To be fair, while that is a common attitude toward trans identity, it’s also a common attitude toward humor (that is, lots of people equate good jokes with raunchy ones.) It’s hard to tell which consideration is in play.
> "That's easy" says the fourth lady. "A player is in an offside position if any of their body parts, except the hands and arms, are in the opponents' half of the pitch, and closer to the opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent".
<ex-ref>
But that is just explaining offside position, which is only part of the offside rule.
</ex-ref>
> On the contrary, that's a terrifying amount of political clout and power to steer discourse.
This one reminds me of the old joke about Jews controlling the media. One jewish man asks another why he's reading all those tabloids that are full of antisemitic lies. The othere one replies that no matter how bad things are in real life, the newspapers always make him feel great because according to them the Jews control the banks, the media, the world governments and everything else.
Look, I'm willing to judge a joke on its on merits but there's some territory that's trickier than others: when the subject is a member of the underclass.
Trans people are literally being legislated today and actively demonized by the right. Do you remember the trans bathroom laws that were all the rage? Do you remember all the attacks by trans people that precipitated them? No, because it's manufactured fear.
You finding pages of individuals speaking out against that and that's terrifying? More manufactured fear.
I'm not sure what iteration of Chappelle's jokes they are addressing in the indiewire piece, but here's what I could find, and it seems very different in tone https://youtu.be/r_EXb8_8xlM
First joke aside (which I'd guess is older material than the rest) if you stick with him and don't cherrypick quotes, it's almost entirely self-deprecating. Even in the Caitlyn Jenner joke, the punchline rests on him acknowledging his own failure to resist his impulses. Don't forget the layer where he is acting out the role of a horrible, insensitive person throughout this so the audience can laugh at his oversimplification and ignorance. That's a big part of comedy and it does not translate over to quotations in prose.
Hopefully I didn't kill the frog, but he's absolutely not punching down from what I could find.
Having that powerful of a chokehold on media and search results is the opposite of "persecuted" and "disenfranchised". On the contrary, that's a terrifying amount of political clout and power to steer discourse.