Dave Cunningham
Terra Field, Netflix’s transgender senior software engineer, turned in his resignation on Monday 22nd November in protest of Dave Chappelle’s transphobic jokes on the controversial stand-up Special, The Closer.
The 48-year-old self-acclaimed stand-up comedian can’t resist letting anti-transgender jokes fly. Since The Closer made its debut on October 1st, it has stirred uproar from the LGBTQ+ community. However, it managed to gain millions of views and a whopping $ 24.1 million, which is surprisingly a cash load for content that quickly escalated into public relations horror for Netflix.
Netflix employees, including Field, organized a walkout protest, prompting the streaming giant’s CEO, Ted Sarandos, to release an apology for his initial defense of the Special.
Funny enough, before recently landing on hot water, Chappelle bowed to lay low on controversial LGBTQ+ jokes until he and the latter community could all laugh together. He said this in acknowledgement of his late trans friend Daphne Dorman who publicly defended him when he got into trouble over similar transphobic jokes in Netflix’s special Sticks & Stones back in 2019.
But on Monday night, Chappelle reverted to his old habit with yet another inappropriate LGBTQ+ joke that stroke a raw nerve only a few seconds later. Chappelle joked that his promise to stop transphobic material was only based on the fact that we would be recorded on set, but everyone in the 20,000-seater arena have kept their phones away in their Yondr purses.
Talk about willingly tossing himself in fire from a hot frying pan!
