Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
They are fighting for their rights to exist which sucks that they have to do that. But they are also fighting for their right to alter children forever and that’s fucking crazy.
Puberty changes you forever. Letting a kid who, out of their own initiative, says “I don’t want to be a man/woman” take hormone blockers in order to delay their puberty so that they can choose what they want to be once they’re an adult is not altering them, but enabling them to make their own choices once they’re capable.
Enabling a child to make a life altering decision before they’re brain is fully developed is child abuse.
Hormone blockers are the opposite of a ‘life altering decision’, because you can stop taking them and whatever would have happened earlier will take place right next. Letting puberty actually happen is ‘life altering’, far costlier to undo and never by a complete degree.
I just reread what you said and I’ve never heard that take. Your saying the drugs they’re giving them doesn’t actually alter them forever? I don’t see how missing puberty while your body is growing wouldn’t effect you forever. When boys go through puberty they get physically larger and stronger, when girls go through it, they’re body changes in physical ways as well. If they didn’t get puberty until they’re body stops growing wouldn’t that just keep them stuck with a child’s body for the rest of their life?
If a person with female genetics starts taking hormone blockers since they’re 11 until they’re 20, then stops any kind of hormone treatment, they will still grow breasts. If a person with male genetics starts taking hormone blockers since they’re 11 until they’re 20, then stops any kind of hormone treatment, they will still develop more muscle mass than someone without testosterone (provided they do phisical exercise). Note that taking hormone blockers is not the same as taking testosterone or estrogen.
So you’re saying if we had a set of identical twins and only one of them was on hormone blockers until they were 20, their body would grow to look exactly the same as the twin who wasn’t on the blockers?
Obviously not the same, but very close. And you’re still choosing to ignore the fact that you’re taking away the choice from the kid who’s telling you that they’re not or don’t want to be a girl or boy, therefore imposing your own choice on them.
You’ve changed my opinion enough for me to believe that in rare circumstances hormone blockers could be okay. But I don’t think it should be the child or the parents decision. It should be a psychological professional that decides. If the kid goes to therapy every month/week from the time they decide they are in the wrong body until they would need the drugs and the medical professionals decides it’s more than consistent and not just a kid saying stupid shit then fine. But I’m just imagining me as a kid saying something like that then the adults in my life changing me forever even though I didn’t really understand what I was saying. I said/believed a lot of stupid shit as a kid so the idea of my body changing forever because I said something, really scares me.
Mainly because they’re a child. When I was a young kid I thought I was and acted like a dog. If my mom then got me a collar and only let me potty outside that would also be child abuse.
That being said you have opened my mind more and I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as I initially thought. I still don’t think it’s great though. I also think choosing not to give your kid hormone blockers definitely isn’t imposing a choice on them. It’s literally just letting their body do what is was always going to do.