No, It’s Not Dave Chappelle’s Fault That a Transgender Comedian Committed Suicide

Transgender comedian Daphne Dorman sadly committed suicide after posting a goodbye note to Facebook on Friday. Dorman was recently in the media when mentioned by Dave Chappelle during his most recent comedy special as a friend, but the media has now run with this mention by Chappelle as the reason behind Dorman’s suicide.

During Chappelle’s recent standup special “Sticks and Stones,” Chappelle actually pokes fun at transgendered people, which is one of the primary reasons the left reacted so negatively to Chappelle’s standup special in the first place.

(READ: Dave Chappelle’s Audience Reviews Are In, And The People Made It Clear That The Critics Are Very Wrong)

Members of the left have been pointing to Chappelle’s routine as the reason Dorman committed suicide.

This includes the New York Daily News which released an article titled “Transgender actress, activist and comedienne Daphne Dorman, referenced in Dave Chappelle’s ‘transphobic’ Netflix special, commits suicide.”

This was picked up by Ernest Owens, who wrote a long, multi-tweet Twitter screed about how “jokes” shouldn’t be made about trans people.

“It’s just jokes,” they said.

Dave Chappelle made a “joke” about a transgender actress, activist, and comedian named Daphne Dorman in his Netflix special.

She recently died to suicide.

Trans people are not a joke.

Enough is enough.
https://t.co/B1mAZdSgjR

— Ernest Owens (@MrErnestOwens) October 13, 2019

Transgender people are not a joke.

Even if Daphne herself appeared to condone it, the transphobia doesn’t automatically get dismissed because Dave’s “jokes” impact a larger community given its worldwide distribution.

Also, this is one of many transphobic “jokes” Dave has made.

— Ernest Owens (@MrErnestOwens) October 14, 2019

The response to Owens’ remarks was a mixed bag of agreement and disagreement. While I agree that Dormand’s suicide is tragic, Owens and the NYDN are foolish for making this about Chappelle.

More accurately, they’re foolish for making this about jokes.

The suicide rate for those suffering from gender dysphoria is abnormally high. Especially for teenagers. The mental illness carries with it a 41 percent suicide rate, making someone who is practicing transgenderism far more likely to kill themselves.

The chances that Dorman was going to commit suicide were already high as he clearly suffered from the maddening depression many people with that mental illness suffer from.

Now, comedians make jokes about groups all the time, and while suicide rates have gone up overall, none of them even come close to striking distance of the suicide rates from gender dysphoria. Even groups that have been persecuted directly by the state haven’t had suicide rates this high.

In short, it’s not the jokes, it’s the disorder.

Yet the left doesn’t want to point to the disorder in any way. They want to pretend that being transgender is the purest expression of the self and that it’s a brave stance against the societal restraints of old.

It’s not. It’s a deadly disorder, and those trying to blame a death on anything but it is only encouraging more death. They are the most dangerous thing to the transgender community.

Furthermore, making it about the joke encourages the idea that people should restrain and restrict comedy to only approved subjects. This is more dangerous than many people realize.

Comedy is the greatest societal disinfectant. Everything — and I mean everything — becomes ridiculous when it’s taken far too seriously. It needs to have its ridiculousness exposed so that it stays grounded in reality. When we are forced to stop making jokes about things, we create sacred cows, and around those cows grow lies, misinformation, and decay.

Humor is how we deal with the darkness, and if we’re not allowed to laugh at the dark, then it will grow.

Chappelle is not to blame for the suicide of Dorman. The thing to blame is the sickness that we’re not allowed to talk about honestly in the mainstream. It’ll kill more people until we can finally look at it from a realistic perspective.

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