Why I Didn’t Need Hannah Gadsby

I’ve wanted to write about Hannah Gadsby for years. Yesterday, I told myself today is the day I do it. The only problem: I hadn’t watched Gadsby’s latest Netflix special, and couldn’t recall if I’d seen Douglas, their follow-up to Nanette, the “anti-comedy” special that bored its way into the zeitgeist in 2018 like a trepanning drill: intent, presumably, on exposing the rotten core of comedy, letting disinfecting sunlight shine upon an industry that had fed off of Gadsby’s pains for far too long. Not only was comedy to blame, Gadsby took aim at the cause it was a symptom of: misogyny. Homophobia. Wouldn’t I, a gay woman, relate? Wouldn’t it be a powerful testament to my personhood, to the personhoods of all who are not cisgender, straight, white, male, thin, able-bodied, etc etc etc? After all, we were two years into Trump, two years of “you can do anything you want, grab ’em by the pussy,” when #MeToo was still a powerful tool to wield against powerful, horrible men. <a href="https://parksandcontradiction.medium.com/why-i-didnt-need-hannah-gadsby-a57a370871ec">Read More</a>