Ricky Gervais has insisted his jokes are “irony” after his new Netflix special was branded anti-trans.
Ricky Gervais has defended his comedy as 'irony'
The comic defended himself after his show ‘SuperNature’ on the streamer was branded “dangerous” by a LGBT rights group.
He told BBC One's ‘The One Show’: “I think that’s what comedy is for, really – to get us through stuff, and I deal in taboo subjects because I want to take the audience to a place it hasn't been before, even for a split second.
“Most offence comes from when people mistake the subject of a joke with the actual target.”
Gervais, 60, also opened his hour-long ‘SuperNature’ with a caveat he is “satirising attitudes”.
He jokes “old-fashioned women... the ones with wombs” are now “f****** dinosaurs” compared with trans people “who have beards and c****”.
Gervais adds on the newly released show: “The worst thing you can say today is, ‘Women don’t have penises’.”
There is also a section where Gervais pretends to have transitioned to being a woman and seduces a lesbian.
Criticism came from LGBT rights groups including America-based Glaad, which claimed the show was “full of graphic, defending dangerous, anti-trans rants masquerading as jokes”.
Robbie de Santos, of UK group Stonewall, added Gervais had chosen to use “his global platform to make fun of trans people”.
'SuperNature', rated 18, comes with a content warning for “language, crude humour, discrimination”.
In October, Netflix staff staged walkouts after US comedian Dave Chappelle, 48, made remarks about transgender people on the streaming giant.
Netflix said the show did “not translate into real-world harm”.
‘After Life’ and ‘The Office’ creator Gervais, who lives in London with his long-term writer partner Jane Fallon, 61, has said: “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 that you are.
"It's mad to think that joking about something means you're anti-it".
The row comes as more than one in 10 young women in the UK now identify as lesbian, bisexual or “other”, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
Tagged in Dave Chappelle Ricky Gervais Jane Fallon