His cis, straight, liberal parents
Oh good god.
This is spectacular. pic.twitter.com/rGybFAAva4
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 20, 2018
Staggered by the malevolent stupidity of that opening I rushed to find the source: “The ‘Nanette’ Problem.”
It took me a while to write a critique of Nanette, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby’s universally praised one-woman Netflix special that premiered in June, because I couldn’t quite figure out what I hated about it.
But when my cis, straight, liberal parents told me how much they loved it, the reason for my dislike coalesced: In order to make straight, cis viewers feel comfortably woke, Gadsby shits on an entire language of comedy developed over decades largely by Jews and queers. The greatest trick Gadsby pulls is convincing those who have little interest in actual gender, sexuality, or political radicalism — and apparently little knowledge of comedy — that they are watching something new and radical.
“Little interest in gender,” says a man about a feminist lesbian. I guess this man simply assumes that people he calls “cis” have little interest in gender, because of being “cis” and all? That it’s only people who declare themselves trans or queer or nonbinary who have lotta interest in gender? Needless to say, Peter takes care to let us know he’s nonbinary.
Comedy, Gadsby says, cannot hold her trauma — and so she spends the last half of her show explicating her trauma, saying that she actually cut off a true story at the halfway point earlier in the set, because in truth it ended with her being beaten up for being gay, and that no one would laugh at that.
Gadsby is good at relaying these powerful and heartbreaking stories of trauma. They’re important to tell. As a nonbinary person with trans and queer friends who have been harassed and assaulted for who they are, they resonated with me. But it’s in her analysis of comedy that Gadsby lost me.
So apparently it’s only nonbinary, trans, and queer people who understand about being harassed and assaulted for who they are? Lesbians aren’t good enough? Women aren’t good enough? They’re all way too old hat and wrong wave and “cis” and parent-like?
Comedy can be radical; it’s just that when it is, it’s not typically on Netflix. Queer and trans people have been performing comedy that transgresses how we traditionally think of the form: sets without easy punchlines that are weird and often unreadable unless you’ve been deep into the lexicon of queerness for years. There’s new, fresh, and interesting queer comedy being performed in basements and clubs in New York and elsewhere (see: here and here ) — but it’s comedy that is written and performed in a self-referential vernacular built over years that makes it mostly accessible only to fellow queers (and less-covered by the mainstream media).
In other words, Peter Moskowitz is cooler than any of us can dream of being, and obviously way cooler than that boring lesbian Hannah Gadsby.
In a few lines, Gadsby completely lets her audience off the hook, transforming justified queer rage (whether it comes in the form of outward anger or inwardly facing self-deprecating humor) that is often ignored by the mainstream press and the rest of society because it can be so challenging to power structures, into a fault within herself, and by extension all of us.
As a queer person, I want my anger to be heard. I believe my anger constructive, even if it’s self-deprecating, and even if you don’t get it. By telling us we need to challenge our anger, sublimate it into love and understanding lest we destroy the world, Gadsby is not challenging her audience, she’s challenging her fellow queers to be more respectful, more civil, to display our pain in ways that cis, straight people can appreciate, in ways that get us called groundbreaking by those who have broken no ground, and have no interest in listening to us when we speak in ways that are unreadable. Gadsby hasn’t changed comedy, she’s just let cis and straight people in on the joke. And there’s nothing radical about that.
Seriously. The whole point is to exclude cis and straight people.
‘But why don’t cis people understand us? Even though we have no interest in speaking in ways that they can understand?’
Oh for fuck sake!
Sooooooooo the big issue he has with her is that she does not use the in-group language of trans comedians. Thus, her humour is something non-trans people can understand. And he hates that.
Dear fucking god, what a tiny complaint, and what an unthinking hate.
So a gay/bisexual guy (let’s just call him a guy) mansplains to a gay woman about lesbian humour and feminism. Nothing much changes really does it?
I have to say that I could feel the pain and anger that Gadsby exuded. The thing that stood out for me was that not only did she talk about the pain inflicted by hetero society on her and people like her, but also the increasing expectation from both members of LGBTQ and woke society for her to ‘conform’ by transitioning. I didn’t feel let off the hook, but I did feel included, to the extent that a window into her own experience had been cracked open for us.
What Moskowitz doesn’t like is that some of Gadsby’s anger is directed at a community he strongly identifies with.
Yeah dude, that’s why all the people I know who are uncomfortable with Nanette are straight white guys. They’re angry that ‘Hannah Gadsby completely lets her audience off the hook’ with regard to justified queer rage. And they just won’t be complicit in that, dammit.
Gee, why would people have no interest in hearing strangers say stuff they can’t understand?
I suspect that’s the real reason Peter didn’t like it.
Uh, if he thinks Gadsby “let her audience off the hook”, he didn’t watch until the end. She fucking well says “here, this isn’t my tension any more: it’s yours”
Transitioning from what to what? What is a lesbian supposed to transition into to conform to the expectations of the LGBTQ and woke ‘society’)? Surely they can’t be suggesting that a lesbian woman is really a heterosexual trans-man, because if one of us freaky straight, ‘cis’ people dare suggest that a ‘hetero’ trans-woman is effectively a gay man, or that a ‘cis’ man who has sex with a trans-woman would be either gay or bisexual, we would be accused of trans- and homophobia, and of comitting actual violence – if not actual murder – of LGBTQ people
But, AoS, you don’t get it. Trans people can claim all sorts of gay people as one of them after death, even if they didn’t identify as trans in life. They can insist that people are trans if they are gender non-conforming, because trans people know what that means and cis people don’t.
Cis people do not get to make such decisions about anyone, even themselves, because, well, because they are cis. So there.
So years ago during conversations about how uncomfortable I felt in the roles expected of a woman, my therapist could feel perfectly comfortable asking me if I wanted to be a man (and did). He, however, obviously did not understand how this worked, because when I said no, he accepted that and went on to find out what I really did want, which was to be allowed to do the things I wanted to do and was good at, even though I was a woman. In other words, I wanted to be a woman my way. That is probably the biggest act of violence I have ever committed – I imagine at least three trans identified individuals keeled over dead that day from my violent hatred.
You monster!