Ricky Gervais Mocks Transgender People In Netflix Special

Comedian Ricky Gervais, well-known for playing ignorant blowhards on TV, is, unfortunately, taking too many cues from his most famous and most unpleasant characters, and spending time on his Netflix comedy special mocking transgender people.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Gervais is one of those comedians who consider a show a success if they’ve managed to offend as many different groups as possible, but is still extremely discouraging as transphobic laws are currently sweeping local governments in the U.S.

The comic took aim at trans people when he referred to women as, “The old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs.” He then referred to transgender women as, “The new ones we’ve been seeing lately, the ones with beards and cocks. They’re as good as gold.”

He then went on to describe an interaction between a shrill, social justice warrior type and someone ignorant of trans people. “‘Why shouldn’t they use your toilets?’ ‘For ladies!’ ‘They are ladies – look at their pronouns! What about this person isn’t a lady?’ ‘Well, his penis,’ ‘Her penis, you f––king bigot,'” Gervais said.

Gervais also echoed the dangerous, and untrue, theory that men have posed as trans women to assault women in bathrooms. In the final punchline of the above interaction, Gervais says, “What if he rapes me?” And quickly responds with, “What if SHE rapes you! You f––king TERF whore!”

The comedian later discussed his views by saying, “Full disclosure: In real life of course I support trans rights. I support all human rights and trans rights are human rights. Live your best life. Use your preferred pronouns. Be the gender that you feel you are. But meet me halfway, ladies, lose the c––k. That’s all I’m saying.”

Despite there being some backlash by LGBT rights advocacy groups and some viewers online from Gervais’ comments, most of his fanbase didn’t mind the jokes at all and plenty online were defending the comic as well. He even took to Twitter to reveal that not only was the show such a success on Netflix, it did so well that they already ordered another.

Netflix faced some criticism when they aired the Dave Chappelle special The Closer, which featured similarly lazy and hateful material about trans people from the comedian. It seems like Netflix isn’t budging in standing by this content. In the “Artistic Expression” section of their Jobs, the streamer said, “Not everyone will like–or agree with–everything on our service,” and later added “Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”