Hannah Gadsby’s presents The Gender Agenda

Hannah Gadsby curates a show of the ‘best queer talent’ she could find.

Introduction

When I booked, it looked to me that I had the final ticket, but I couldn’t have been more wrong as a good third of the theatre was empty. A fact which became even more apparent when Gadsby’s floor manager begged people to move forward to fill the space at the front. Netflix were filming, see, and they didn’t want it to look like Gadsby was a billy-no-mates. After a considerable amount of cajoling (more than thirty minutes worth) the show finally began.

The warm up

Gadsby didn’t have a warm up man and she really could have done with one. Instead she had to do her own warm up, which involved giving us housekeeping rules (no electronic devices because they were filming, no trips to the toilet, no wrapper rustling, etc) and a special plea to give a standing ovation at the end (dutifully fulfilled and utterly undeserved).

When she came back out on stage to do her own ten minute spot, she opined that most comedians had such a simplistic understanding of gender, they weren’t really funny on the topic. On the other hand, people like her (non-binary and autistic identified) had so much more knowledge to impart on the subject. She even drew a parallel to the ancient practice of circumcision, and that of the chemical castration of children (which she supports).

On the subject of sport, Gadsby, now considerably fat, told us she didn’t give a shit about women’s sports and that in 2012 a horse had been voted as Sportswoman of the Year in Australia. So, that’s alright then. If they’re giving women’s awards to horses, why should they worry if the award goes to a man?

We learned that Gadsby put this show together, because she was angry about Netflix’s ‘transphobic’ output and wanted to give the world’s most invisible people a platform. She had written Netflix an open letter, posted on her Instagram (she won’t do Twitter anymore because of Elon Musk’s stance on trans issues) and this had landed her the opportunity to do another Netflix special. Some of the performers she had found are already regulars on the comedy circuit, but some weren’t, and that was brave. She promised us that the performers would have a diverse and interesting perspective on gender, but guess what? They didn’t.

The performers

The first act – Jes Tom

‘I’m about to hit four years on testosterone,’ Jes Tom told us, the very first line of her spot. Despite that, her voice still hadn’t dropped at all, and she has zero facial hair, though did her best to sound like the sassy gay man she clearly isn’t. In fact, the only result she has had from testosterone was a massively increased libido, which also turned out to Jes’s main joke: previously lesbian, she is now a gay man. Hence, she felt qualified to make jokes about the sexual subculture of gay men, that she clearly hadn’t a clue about.

Jes wanted to know how many gay men were in the house and tellingly just three hands went up (hands that I suspect really belonged to women). It was difficult to be ‘gay man hot’ she told us, much harder than it was to be ‘lesbian hot’ (a jibe which solely relied on stereotype). Reminding us she really liked dick now, she went on to make jokes about the difference between the sexes when ‘sexting’. It was a fairly good gag but I couldn’t be the only person left wondering how this was any different way to the usual jokes about the differences between the sexes? Certainly the mainly queer audience, usually so sensitive to any kind of aspersion, were receptive to jokes which, had they been told by a white straight man, would simply be beyond the pale.

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Some funny moments c/o Chloe Petts

Petts is an accomplished performer, clearly having experience of working an audience, so the cringe factor was dialled down whilst she was on stage. She was by far the cleverest and funniest performer of the evening. However, it was notable that she felt the need to explain to us that she sometimes didn’t identify as a woman (‘it’s complicated’), in an obvious act of fealty.

A sleep study from Asha Ward

Perhaps the worst turn of the evening, certainly in terms of delivery, was Asha Ward. I say ‘perhaps’ because I have literally no idea what she said. That’s the thing about contriving a dull monotone as a comic affect, it’s rather likely to have a soporific effect on the audience. Next!

Ready for the skin crawl with Krishna Istha?

There is just no way Krishna Istha would get platformed unless she were trans. Deeply, deeply unfunny. And offensive. If you can even watch beyond the first minute of the clip above please see a psychiatrist. As it was, I was stuck in a theatre with nowhere to go. Like Jes, Krishna was a lesbian up until she started taking testosterone and now identifies as bisexual. She has been on testosterone for ten years but has to come off it soon as she wants to have a baby. Babies smell wonderful, just like poppers. And like poppers they give you a headache and a loose anus. Krishna doesn’t want to shit on her baby’s head when it’s born so she is having a C-section instead. Makes you long for the days of Bernard Manning really.

A brazen AGP with Dahlia Belle

Dahlia perceives himself as doing a favour to women because he is prepared to take off the men from us who want to humiliate and infantalise us during sex. In case you think this was some kind of clever self-deprecating joke about the kinds of things people say about trans-identified males, Dahlia made it clear that is really what he likes doing and really does believe he is performing some sort civic service. Again, makes you long for the days of Bernard Manning.

RIP to DeAnne Smith’s sick rack

DeAnne Smith did an ‘edgy’ set all about the fact that she once had boobs, a ‘sick rack’ no less, now surgically removed. She doesn’t think she’s a man or anything and has no plans on ‘transitioning’ further. To further eek out comedy value from having healthy body parts removed for the dumbest reason ever, DeAnne found humour in the fact that her nipples had not been reattached. It sounded like this might not have been her decision as she protested slightly too much that she preferred to be ‘nip-less’. Looking at her topless now was a similar experience to looking at someone with shaved eyebrows, something was wrong, but you quite couldn’t place it.

On Alok …

… I will say precisely nothing, having taken up too much of my attention on several previous occasions, except to say that he did a solid turn.

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Post script

The special was finally released six months later to practically zero fanfare. So I rewatched it. It’s surprisingly a much easier on the senses watching on the small screen, probably knowing you can leave the room anytime helps. Interesting to note that the rushes taken of the audience show a lot of stony faces, that Chloe Petts was dressed like Benny from Crossroads and that Asha Ward really was the worst turn. I don’t think they cut too much out – I really thought they would. Of note, Istha’s jokes about pregnancy, poppers and loose anuses did not make it. Too much even for the wokesters at Netflix.

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