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Netflix Amplifies Media LGBafterthoughT with New Podcast

Phaylen Fairchild
5 min readJan 5, 2022

Many transgender people are tired of being treated like the black sheep of the movement.

It wasn’t a whole year ago that Netflix distributed “The Closer.” The Dave Chappelle lecture postured as comedy that eviscerated transgender people around the world, crutched up anti-trans extremism and set lose the hounds of bigotry on every visible trans person on social media who were left to defend themselves. The 1 hour and 12 minute oration that crawled to the number one spot on Netflix saw Chapelle blaming trans people for “Cancelling” him, asserted his belief that gender was binary and declare himself “Team Terf” as he championed gender critics like JK Rowling. It led to an organization of an employee walkout, firings and a resignation by trans employees and allies alike. It also proved that the myth of cancel culture- more specifically the self-declared victims of it, actually reap tremendous benefits. Chapelle launched a successful tour, signed more multi-million dollar contracts beyond the 24 million that Netflix paid for The Closer, and a High School theater being named in his honor. He was a trending topic on Twitter for over a week, was praised in hundreds of magazines and news articles and became a virtual mascot for gender critical extremists who don’t believe trans people exist or are threatening to society at large.

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Phaylen Fairchild
Phaylen Fairchild

Written by Phaylen Fairchild

Actor, Filmmaker, LGBTQ+ & Women’s Rights Activist All work copyright phaylens@gmail.com

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