For years, FC Sierra consideredDave Chappelleone of comedy’s true greats. The 32-year-old has seen the star of “Chappelle’s Show” perform about a dozen times in the Bay Area, ranging from polished standup sets to longer performances where he’s experimented with new material. A comedian herself, Sierra found Chappelle’s ability to mock the absurdities and imbalances of American society an influence that shaped her view of comedy.

But when Chappelle comes to theChase Centerin San Francisco on Thursday, Nov. 4, for a sold-out screening of his “Untitled” documentary, Sierra has no plans to be in the audience. As a transgender woman, her relationship with Chappelle’s comedy has changed drastically in recent years, as the performer has repeatedly made comments about transgender people that many — including Sierra — have deemed offensive and harmful.

The latest wave of upset stems from the release of Chappelle’s Netflix special, “The Closer,” on Oct. 5. In the performance, Chappelle stated that “gender is a fact” and identified himself as a “T.E.R.F.” or trans exclusionary radical feminist, in defending “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling’s statements denying the validity of transgender identity. Chappelle also claimed to have gotten into a physical altercation with a butch-presenting lesbian and to have nearly had a similar confrontation with a gay man.

Among the most disputed material in the special was Chappelle’s statement that “gay people are minorities until they need to be white again,” which Sierra and others in the Bay Area transgender community say ignores the reality that many people of color are LGBTQ.

“We as trans people, especially trans people of color, are a very at-risk and imperiled community,” says Sierra. “This is something that he’s chosen to ignore in his work.”

Although there are no reported plans for organized protests Thursday night at the Chase Center, Chappelle’s comments have received wide backlash both online and in entertainment media. Notably, Daily Beast critic Marlow Sternwrotethat “Chappelle’s anti-trans jokes have often boiled down to human anatomy, which shows how unnuanced his views are on the subject.”

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On Oct. 20, Netflix employees and their supporters protested the company’s handling of the special at their Los Angeles offices. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and other top executives initially stood by the comedian, and asserted that the company did not believe that the special could inspire violence against trans people.

Netflix, which is headquartered in Los Gatos, also fired B. Pagels-Minor, a Black, non-binary employee the company alleges leaked financial and viewership information about “The Closer” to the media. Sarandos later said that he “should have led with a lot more humanity” in his communication with upset employees.

Chappelle addressed the backlash during a live performance he posted to hisInstagramon Oct. 25.

“I said what I said, and boy, I heard what you said,” he said. “To the transgender community, I am more than willing to give you an audience, but you will not summon me. I am not bending to anybody’s demands.”

A request for comment from Chappelle’s team has not been returned.

Chappelle concluded by saying: “You cannot have this conversation and exclude my voice from it. That is only fair. You have to answer the question: am I canceled or not?”

For many transgender people in the Bay Area like Sierra, jokes like Chappelle’s that mock their identity are nothing new in comedy culture. It’s only with increased transgender media representation in the past decade that there has begun to be more pushback to such content.

“The world has shifted gears and has more consciousness,” saysAria Sa’id,executive director of San Francisco’sTransgender District, one of eight cultural districts designated by the city. “This brand of comedy doesn’t age well.”

Sa’id says that Chappelle’s statements that LGBTQ people are able to benefit from privilege by code switching not only ignores the experience of Black trans women like herself, but also plays into a problem she’s observed in the broader Black community where many don’t see Black LGBTQ people as sharing in their experience.

Jupiter Peraza, director of social justice initiatives for the Transgender District, calls Netflix’s decision to continue to stand by Chappelle “baffling.”

“It’s quite ironic,” says Peraza. “Netflix also has this incredible documentary called ‘Disclosure’ in which it discusses media representation for the LGBT community, most importantly the trans communities.” It’s frustrating, Peraza adds, that the company on one hand claims allyship with the community, yet also acts as an“enabler” of transphobic content.

San Francisco’s Office of Transgender Initiatives released its own statement about Chappelle Tuesday onMedium,noting that in “The Closer,” Chappelle “willfully misgendered and mocked Daphne Dorman, a local trans activist who died by suicide in 2019.” The statement went on to say that “punching down at marginalized people is not ‘edgy’, it’s oppressive.”

For others, the assertion by Netflix that such content does not have an adverse effect on transgender people is equally troubling. Bay Area activist Gwen Smith, co-founder of this month’sTransgender Day of Remembrancememorializing people who have been killed as a result of transphobia, finds Sarandos’ dismissal of the potential for violence inspired by Chappelle’s comments to be “astonishingly out of touch.”

“How can you try to say that this doesn’t help aid a climate of violence when we’ve had dozens of people who have been murdered in potentially anti-transgender killings this year?” Smith asks. “It’s an environment where lawmakers are passing laws across the country against trans people and a time when the (political) right is absolutely demonizing trans people. You are seeing content like that on major outlets and you’re telling me this has no correlation whatsoever?”

In 2020, the LGBTQ advocacy group theHuman Rights Campaigntracked 44 reported murders of trans and gender non-conforming people in the United States, the most since they began monitoring these incidents in 2013. They have so far tracked 43 murders in 2021 and have recorded that in previous years, the majority of those people were Black and Latinx transgender women.

Meanwhile, Chappelle’s claims that he is the victim of so-called “cancel culture” strike author Julia Serano, a trans woman, as an attempt to escalate the outrage for greater visibility.

“There’s definitely a segment of people who … don’t really care if they lose an audience or part of their audience. But they also know that they can get a lot of press for their standup show on Netflix, for example, by purposefully, knowingly going after a particular group,” she says. “As soon as that group speaks up, then you can counter with ‘I’m being canceled by this group.’ ”

Serano说作为边缘组织的成员p that has only recently attained a degree of visibility and acceptance in American life, trans people are still often subject to this kind of culture war baiting.

For former fan Sierra, there is still hope that people like Chappelle and Rowling will take the reactions of the trans community and others to heart, expand their world views and “get back to this idea of bringing people together instead of pushing them apart” with their work.

Until then, she says, “I’ll be on the other side waiting.”

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