other than you, who in this thread is asking for discussion on lindsay ellis to be banned? you're literally fabricating an outrage that doesn't even exist.
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Lindsay Ellis' transphobic jokes
- Thread starter Messofanego
- Start date
No, I'm saying it's a transphobic joke.
Which is why I said it was a transphobic joke.
I'm also saying that there's other reasons for the sentiment than just this joke.
Criticism doesn't equal cancellation.
Yes it does. That's basically the state of discussion on this forum and at large.
See below.
So some hold this moral high ground.
Almost every person in this thread, including the most vocal trans voices, aren't asking for Lindsay to be set on fire or erased from the internet. They're asking for accountability and understanding of a mistake.
Right, but the problem is we do have the context:
-Gervais is getting called out for the format being lazy.
-He responds to Ellis using his wealth as justification that his humor is funny.
-She responds back using his format, which again she has called out already, essentially meaning she wishes she could get rich off of lazy joke writing.
You don't have to find it funny and no one is saying you can't take offense at either what she said or how she said it, but to incredulously claim you have no idea what she was going for is ridiculous. It is pretty obvious what she was trying to go for, whether or not is successful is a different story.
User Banned (2 Week): Dismissing Concerns of Transphobia
I'm talking about the joke, not other points which I have not read up on. Stop moving goalposts.
Also opinion is not fact. You are welcome to feel like her joke is transphobic. I disagree. Intent actually matters, the butt of the joke is Ricky Gervais and how he actually sounds.
And any community on twitter really is never satisfied, trans,cis or otherwise as twitter/online is just an outrage machine. This is being proven in this thread, right now.
It's easier to argue against strawmen than empathetically engage in discussion with the people who have harmed
We all know what she's going for. The problem is that repeating a joke without adding any commentary just repeats the joke. She's not saying anything meaningful, there's no point of view beyond "Ricky Gervais is an idiot". That's not comedy. It's just a shitty insult clothed in a hateful meme.
Giving you the context to why people are expressing the sentiment they are, when you're largely hand-waving it, isn't moving the goalposts.
You thinking this - a thread of people just posting their thoughts - emblematic of an "outrage machine" is pathetic.
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It's funny how as soon as someone from the left gets even the tiniest amount of criticism some of y'all turn into Republicans with the whole "Shut up and get in line!" Bullshit.
At the same time this can both be true and people can criticize Lindsay. People, for the most part, know that Lindsay is just a human being, but part of her fortune is having her voice carry farther than others, and that position denotes a distinct responsibility that she has accepted however wittingly or unwittingly. The issue isn't even that she has done this imo it's more whether her ego can tolerate the well intentioned criticism from the people who were presumably hurt by this.
There's nothing to expand on really, I see it for what it is. To me it's pretty clear who it's meant for and why. She's getting a lot of flak because of Natalie I imagine.
If Lindsey Ellis said the word tranny as part of a joke, would it not be transphobic because she didn't intend for it to be? Intent is valuable, but so is the result. It may well and good be that you intended to make a boat, but if you end up with a car, that's what you made.
At the risk of some not understanding this reference, I'll attempt this explanation:
Imagine if I made fun of Trump by pretending to be him answering a question posed to him by a reporter about the Ukraine call, giving a dumb answer like "I don't remember" in sort of a "duh"-toned voice.
Now imagine if I did that, but in a manner where I was mimicking Trump mocking the reporter during the presidential campaign (Trump mocked a reporter with a disability using unflattering physical body-shaking movements).
If you knew about what Trump did and had seen it, you'd recognize that I was doing the same thing. Ha ha?
No.
Mocking Trump is a completely separate discipline and focus from Trump mocking someone else for who they are and what they can't control. There is no logical transitive property that connects these two and makes those body gestures Trump used okay somehow for someone else to use. We're not talking about reflexive hand gestures or basic word patterns here that most people use to make fun of Trump.
And that applies for this as well. Ellis mocking Gervais using such language and expression, is hijacking a demeaning use of an important form of expression, just to call someone else dumb.
Imagine if I made fun of Trump by pretending to be him answering a question posed to him by a reporter about the Ukraine call, giving a dumb answer like "I don't remember" in sort of a "duh"-toned voice.
Now imagine if I did that, but in a manner where I was mimicking Trump mocking the reporter during the presidential campaign (Trump mocked a reporter with a disability using unflattering physical body-shaking movements).
If you knew about what Trump did and had seen it, you'd recognize that I was doing the same thing. Ha ha?
No.
Mocking Trump is a completely separate discipline and focus from Trump mocking someone else for who they are and what they can't control. There is no logical transitive property that connects these two and makes those body gestures Trump used okay somehow for someone else to use. We're not talking about reflexive hand gestures or basic word patterns here that most people use to make fun of Trump.
And that applies for this as well. Ellis mocking Gervais using such language and expression, is hijacking a demeaning use of an important form of expression, just to call someone else dumb.
She's getting flak because of her own words and actions, and not because of Contrapoints and the things that she's done. Linday Ellis is the one who compared trans and non-binary people who were upset with platforming a transmedicalist as well as continually throwing nonbinary people under the bus to Gamergate 2.0. She is the one who made these jokes that are largely the equivalent of attack helicopter jokes, and she chose to do all of this. Don't pretend that these are bad faith attacks through some guilty by association when we're actually just bothered by the things that she personally has done
The only thing that needs to be cancelled are those who are saying we are canceling Lindsey. Making mistakes is one thing but one needs to learn from them. And the only way to let someone know of the mistake is to let them know or to discuss it to make sure others don't make the same.
You have got to be kidding/trolling. Many, many people have defended James Gunn and currently pointed out that a) Disney's decision was cowardly, b) the whole episode was pretty much orchestrated by alt-right shitheads out for blood. Are you gonna find people who still, to this day, hate James Gunn for the horrible shit he said years ago? Er, yeah, sure, I guess? But that doesn't change the fact that most people haven't 'canceled' him. On ERA in particular, many people actually defended him - rightfully so, I might add. He made amends and hasn't behaved shittily since, so that's the end of that.
And again with this episode: people are not out to "cancel" anyone. In a sense, it's a shame that Lindsay deleted the "I identify" joke, because if you'd read that Twitter thread, you'd have noticed that 90+% of people leveled fair criticism at Lindsay, expressing mere disappointment (rather than outrage), while still acknowledging that the intent of her joke wasn't transphobic. Basically, they just told her "we get your joke, but it's a bad joke that reinforces stereotypes anyway, please don't do that, you can do better than that". If that's "cancel culture" to you, then I guess you're the thin-skinned, overly defensive party there.
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THIS.
Please kindly fuck off with this ''NOW YOU WANT TO CANCEL HER TOO HUH?!'' bullshit.
Yeah, intent matters. Lindsay made a whole video about this. Lindsey missed the mark with the joke, but it's clear what her intent was. It's clear what she believes in.
Honestly everybody who keeps bringing up people getting "cancelled" need to sit the fuck down. The only person who was ever successfully cancelled off the internet is Milo and even then he's still clinging on like a tumour that won't go away
Here's an example
Note that the comparison is not 1:1, the people involved are not equal
One time Lindsey Graham (it's a coincidence i swear) made a joke about how he wouldn't be able to walk a mile in Caitlyn Jenner's shoes, and users of Raw Story made a fair few jokes suggesting that Jenner is more masculine than Graham and mocking Graham by calling him trans or a woman or pointing out that his name is Lindsey. I called out someone, and their response was to defend their intent, to argue that the point was to mock the target, and to use their status as a liberal in order to suggest they cannot be bigoted.
Lindsey didn't do something as bad as that, but the defenses are all the same. She's liberal, she didn't intend to be transphobic, the joke was meant to mock an asshole. I (and most people, I must note) do not think she should be "cancelled," but she still fucked up. Intent is irrelevant if the outcome is hurtful.
Note that the comparison is not 1:1, the people involved are not equal
One time Lindsey Graham (it's a coincidence i swear) made a joke about how he wouldn't be able to walk a mile in Caitlyn Jenner's shoes, and users of Raw Story made a fair few jokes suggesting that Jenner is more masculine than Graham and mocking Graham by calling him trans or a woman or pointing out that his name is Lindsey. I called out someone, and their response was to defend their intent, to argue that the point was to mock the target, and to use their status as a liberal in order to suggest they cannot be bigoted.
Lindsey didn't do something as bad as that, but the defenses are all the same. She's liberal, she didn't intend to be transphobic, the joke was meant to mock an asshole. I (and most people, I must note) do not think she should be "cancelled," but she still fucked up. Intent is irrelevant if the outcome is hurtful.
You just proved my point. Whether her beliefs or Natalie's, you're using this tweet as a thin argument that she's being transphobic, when the problem lies elsewhere, respectively in a different discussion altogether.
User Banned (1 Week): Dismissing Concerns of Transphobia
Sorry I was so dismissive. Trans community has my full support.
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Intent matters, but it doesn't erase the pain caused when a comedian chooses to make a cheap joke at the expense of a marginalized community.
Again, there is a difference between using the rhetoric of hate to explain the ways that said rhetoric hurts people and...just using the exact same rhetoric to insult someone. Like if her joke explored anything people would be more forgiving and understanding. It didn't. It was just the shitty attack helicopter meme with one word changed.
If somebody's joke is to punch someone else in the face, and I then punch that same someone else in the face "ironically" to make fun of the first person, I didn't actually mock them, I just hurt someone else while feeling smug about it.
Came into this thread to see people proactively complaining about Lindsey being cancelled when hardly anyone is saying that. Was not dissapointed.
You can both like someone and also think that something they said was bad. That doesn't mean you despise that person or think they should be cancelled.
Its called "having a human brain" and the ability to think more than one thing about something.
It's like the Joker movie. I see more people on Era complaining about people being cancelled and almost no one actually calling for someone to be cancelled. Sure you can pick one example out of a thousand posts but that meaningless outside of pathetic attempts at "gotcha".
You can both like someone and also think that something they said was bad. That doesn't mean you despise that person or think they should be cancelled.
Its called "having a human brain" and the ability to think more than one thing about something.
It's like the Joker movie. I see more people on Era complaining about people being cancelled and almost no one actually calling for someone to be cancelled. Sure you can pick one example out of a thousand posts but that meaningless outside of pathetic attempts at "gotcha".
The jokes on their own are transphobic, yes. I've been very clear about that the whole thread
I mean you are technically right that if this wasn't the only "joke" that conservative dipshits were capable of making that people wouldn't care as much that she repeated the format verbatim with no other commentary
if only we had as much power as the internet makes it sound like. based on this thread you would think trans people had the ability to instantly banish someone to the shadow realm. i just think the joke is bad, i don't want lindsay ellis to stop making videos and i certainly don't think she's a bad person. i've been disappointed with her reaction to the contrapoints stuff but it's not like i think she deserves to go away because of it.
Another moth to the flame.
I want her to acknowledge that when those with a platform fuck up like this and vulnerable people close to them are hurt and tell them why, they are exposed to a torrent of abuse and gaslighting with her own words used a bludgeon.
It's more than just 'making a mistake' or 'apologizing and moving on'. That is assuming the platform holder doesn't pull an about face and say 'fuck it' to join the chuds' shitting on her vulnerable 'fans'. My benefit of the doubt bag is just about empty these days but I would like to assume Lindsay doesn't do that.
I want her to acknowledge that when those with a platform fuck up like this and vulnerable people close to them are hurt and tell them why, they are exposed to a torrent of abuse and gaslighting with her own words used a bludgeon.
It's more than just 'making a mistake' or 'apologizing and moving on'. That is assuming the platform holder doesn't pull an about face and say 'fuck it' to join the chuds' shitting on her vulnerable 'fans'. My benefit of the doubt bag is just about empty these days but I would like to assume Lindsay doesn't do that.
No one is 'canceling' Lindsay. People just want her to apologize for making the transphobic jokes. It's not hard to understand.
seriously!
Man, this is embarrassing. All you have to do in life is not be racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc, which you'd think would be really easy. But apparently it's incredibly difficult for some.
You know, there's this saying about the one who can't see the forest from the trees..
I'm out.
I don't think it's cool to downplay concerns among trans people. Nobody *wants* to feel hurt, if there's a reason someone feels that way it has to be coming from somewhere.
You haven't actually made an argument in this thread beyond accusing people of acting in bad faith due to some guilt by association with Contrapoints. If you want people to understand your point of view on these jokes or her history, you have to actually state them
No, because I consider most of the reactions either weird or some bordering on trollish. I can't imagine the shit trans people have to endure, because I'm a white guy, but I genuinely can't imagine Ellis being a transphobe. The "joke" wasn't good, and she should absolutely regret using it.
But at the same time, I don't think she's wrong in the earlier quote about what's the point of saying your sorry when people won't listen?
What could she say to make you (using you as an example) go "Yeah, good. You've learned from your mistake."
Actually addressing the situation and acknowledging she fucked up would be a good start.
You are saying as if she has commented on this in any way besides deleting one of the tweets.