434
Oh no, it's one of those episodes, again!
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
434 points (100.0% liked)
traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns
2807 readers
9 users here now
Rules
1.) No bigotry of any kind, and don't be a jerk either
• Bigotry includes but is not limited to: ableism, casteism, homophobia, lookism, queerphobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia. Bigotry towards non-binary people is transphobia. Truscum rhetoric is also bigotry. You getting punished for your hateful opinion, however, is not bigotry.
2.) No Spam
• This includes both advertising and breaking your or my Lemmy instance's rules, such as vote manipulation or brigading.
3.) Posts must have something to do with being trans, or about trans experiences
• Try to stay away from negative political events too. You can joke about it, but bringing attention to something bad happening in the world might take someone out of their comfort zone— this is an escape from the constant news cycle for some.
4.) No Selfies or Character Creations
• Selfies are not memes! This is not a community for selfies. Picrews and other character creations such as Sims and Mii's are considered bandwagoning, and perhaps can be a part of a different community.
5.) SFW-only
• This is an all ages community, so we prefer it if you take the NSFW stuff to one of the more adult oriented communities. Note: nudity is not allowed, we want everybody to be comfortable here.
6.) Submissions must be a meme or they will be removed
7.) Swearing is fine, but slurs are not
• We want everybody to feel safe and comfortable here, so even if you want to reclaim a pejorative word that applies to you— we ask that you don't, as this is a light-hearted community and others stumbling across your post might feel unsafe.
8.) Embedded submissions should only link to trusted image sharing sites, no IP grabbers or link shorteners
9.) Use but don't misuse the report button
• If something breaks these rules, or this Lemmy instance's rules, please report it.
10.) Please do not link to any terf, racist, or any other hate communities or forums
• Bigots like those do not deserve any attention. Any post or comment linking to a hate community or forum will be removed
11.) Don't be a jerk nor a troll
• Be nice, and don't create social chaos. That's it. Pretty simple, huh?
Some notes:
1.) We highly encourage you to use alt text in your posts, so everybody can enjoy this community
2.) It would be really nice if you flaired your posts accordingly in the title
• For example, a meme about the non-binary experience could have a title like this: "[NB] Story of my life!" This will make searching for content much easier.
3.) Don't break the law
• This includes the country you live in as well as the country your instance is hosted in
Sibling forums:
!egg_irl
• Trans memes specifically about being closeted, unaware or in denial
!196
• Ordinary memes, but the community is very trans-accepting— and it only has one rule: when you encounter the page you must post a meme from your camera roll
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The character is an asshole AND that episode is transphobic. More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF. I don't really want to pollute this space with his toxicity, but search if you're curious.
Can you tell me what's transphobic about it?
When I first saw it I would have thought it was trans-supporting, other than the detail that (IIRC) the trans woman was played by a cisgender woman.
The entire point of it is that the only thing that is stopping Douglas from being genuinely, incredibly happy, becoming a better person and living an actually fulfilling life in the end is his inability to accept a historical detail that had made absolutely no difference to his relationship. And, since Douglas might be the worst person in the world, we see him destroy that because of his own weird machismo values. Just when we think he's completely changed as a character, his shittiness on this one thing, emblematic of his incredibly toxic masculinity, comes crashing down on him. This is, darkly, funny. We are abruptly reminded that Douglas is an actual monster, to the point of fist-fighting with the person he loves. "Character is briefly happy but previous behaviour and/or shittiness of their character ruins it for themselves" is like at like 30% of Linehan's sitcom plotlines.
If there's something I missed - and it's been a few years, and thoroughly agree that Linehan's subsequent behaviour justifies examining his previous work for ulterior motives - I would like to know it. Genuinely.
Nah I don't think so. Episode kinda got me a bit attracted to the female character ngl and I'm a hetero guy.
well sad to see/hear. But I'm still not convinced that the episode in its entirety is transphobic.
It's the b-plot from what I recall, it's not the main focus of the episode.
It was written long before his TERF days and so it's not exactly hateful, just ignorant and it's comparable to a lot of other ways comedy treated trans characters from the era - The League Of Gentleman was much, much worse than the IT Crowd imo, and that was a recurring character in every episode.
It's rather the issue that while Matt Berry has distanced himself from the episode Linehan actually still defends it as pro-trans.
Probably not, but Graham Linehan is by now just one of the most rabid transphobes you can imagine. He threw away everything he had to be a bigger TER“F”