Vicky (not a typo) Gervais: SUPERNATURE
May 24, 2022
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My friend, fellow short woman, and British freelance journalist Jo Bartosch doesn’t think that Ricky Gervais is funny. Fair enough, Jo! (If you’re on Twitter, please give Jo a follow if you haven’t already; her writing is delightful).
Today, Netflix released the long-awaited Supernature and it doesn’t disappoint. In it, Gervais takes aim at pretty much everything, including “trans.” If you don’t have Netflix (or just don’t want to watch it, he doesn’t care), you can catch one of the more controversial clips here, thanks to British poet and outspoken lesbian Aja (please give Aja a follow too if you’d like). In this clip, Gervais mocks the ludicrous notion that some women have penises, an oft-repeated mantra of gender ideologues. He follows it up by making fun of the idea that women who challenge this idiocy are “bigots, “TERFs,” and “whores.”
Predictably, the always humorless Pink News called it “nothing more than an anti-trans garbage fire.” The Independent gave it a two-star review, stating, “As is all too frequent these days, the longest riff is reserved for the humiliation of trans people.” I assume that Gervais doesn’t much care about this either. Madeleine Kearns wrote about it at the National Review. At time of writing, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had even touched on it. Maybe because they know that Gervais has a point but they are too afraid to say so?
Some readers may remember that in October 2021, Netflix released Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, to great acclaim. In it, he defended J.K. Rowling’s statements defending women and girls, and said that he was on “Team TERF.” A bunch of Netflix employees freaked out and staged a walk-out. A man who attended the walk-out holding a sign that read “I LIKE DAVE” was assaulted and treated to maniacal shouts of “REPENT M*THER F*CKER.”
After Supernature came out, someone vandalized a bench that was inspired by Gervais’s show After Life, an extremely touching and funny fictional look at the life of a man who struggles with day-to-day life after his wife dies of cancer and who often contemplates suicide. The bench had been donated by Netflix and a suicide prevention charity.
The movement to protect so-called “trans rights,” which is actually driven by a vicious industry whose purpose is to obliterate the material reality of biological sex and punish anyone who dares speak out about it, is so utterly humorless that its response to comedy specials is to scream “REPENT M*THER F*CKER” at people who actually enjoy comedy and break benches intended to prevent suicide. It would be funny if it weren’t, well, funny. (It’s pathetic and stupid, but it also really is quite funny.)
Later in the show, Gervais does a bit where he imagines himself as “Vicky Gervais” - a man who grows his hair long and has his penis surgically removed. Throughout, he can barely contain himself from laughter, as he mentions several times that the punchline of the joke is “bad, pathetic, even for me.” “Vicky” imagines himself to be a lesbian because he’s into women and goes to a lesbian bar. I won’t spoil anything by sharing the punchline here, but it’s safe to say that I disagree with Gervais here. I thought the punchline was great!
Here’s what I loved most about the special: Those of us who spend our lives fighting the gender wars are exhausted. All over the world (but mostly in the west), women and girls are having to fight like hell to preserve our rights, privacy, safety, dignity and all sorts of other things because our governments are insisting on redefining the word sex to include the vague, amorphous, and nonsensical phrase “gender identity.” Most of us do this for no pay. The matter is, truly, deadly serious. But Gervais gives us permission to laugh our asses off, and that’s important too.
I want to get serious for one brief moment, only to say that Gervais takes great pains to tell us that “in real life,” he’s “for rights for trans people.” I’m not going to make a big deal out of it because now really isn’t the time, but I just want to say that if people are going to be using this phrase “trans people,” we’ve really got to work out what it means. Gervais is British, so he might mean someone with a Gender Recognition Certificate (under the U.K.’s Gender Recognition Act, anyone can legally be classified as the opposite sex after meeting certain conditions and obtaining such a certificate). Or he may mean the category of people I would refer to as “people who don’t conform to sex stereotypes.” If he means that, I completely agree with him.
No one thinks that a comedy special is the place to work all of this out, and it would have been pretty cumbersome for him to undertake such a project while simply trying to make people laugh. But going forward, this might be a good lesson for those of us advancing the movement to protect women’s sex-based rights against the assault of “gender identity.” If people are going to use a phrase like “trans people,” it would be good if they could articulate what they mean by it. As far as I’m concerned, everyone is just either female or male and the rest is irrelevant.
Back to the fun part. The main point that I took from Supernature is that it’s okay to laugh even if we disagree with a point being made by a comedian. While I was watching, my partner was listening in while getting ready for work. My partner is moderately religious and while I don’t want to get into details regarding his religious beliefs, he does have some that are in conflict with Gervais’s beliefs about the nonexistence of God and the afterlife (by “afterlife” here I’m referring to heaven and/or reincarnation, not to Gervais’s Netflix show of the same name, which, in fact, does exist). And here’s the thing: my partner laughed throughout the special even though he takes exception to Gervais’s beliefs on these topics. He was not even a little bit bothered that Gervais denies that God or an afterlife exists. Why would he be? His sense of self, and his religious beliefs do not depend in any way on what Ricky Gervais thinks about anything. And they shouldn’t. And Gervais would probably agree with that statement.
I didn’t love everything about the special, but I liked it enough that I would watch it again and laugh and laugh and laugh. I hope you all do too.
Gender ideologues cannot handle any criticism of the mythology of “gender identity.” None. My partner listened to Gervais deny the existence of God, didn’t care, and laughed throughout the rest. In contrast, when gender ideologues hear any criticism of “gender identity” mythology, they do things like scream “REPENT M*THER F*CKER” and break benches dedicated to suicide prevention. It’s pathetic and ridiculous.
Women are going to keep fighting for our lives while gender ideologues threaten our very existence. It’s hard work. It’s tiring and not even a little bit lucrative. In the meantime, we’re allowed to laugh every now and then. As my partner was leaving for work earlier today, he wished me a great day and then said “I bet you’ll have one.” He was right. Thanks for that, Ricky Gervais. I appreciate it.
To the gender ideologues, I say this: Grow up. Men aren’t women and boys aren’t girls. Everyone knows this, including you. Get a grip. Laugh a little.
To those fighting the gender identity industry, I say this: Chin up, we’re going to win.
Have a great day.
If you haven’t, please consider signing the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. You can find the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International here.
Check out my book The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls.