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Another slightly different view on Gadsby's show. Makes a point that trauma is dealt differently for different people, and that Gadsby should deal with her trauma her own way.

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The second time I tried watching "Nanette," I went in wanting to love it.

I really did.

I'd tried watching once before, a couple weeks ago, and made it only a few minutes in before giving up. It didn't seem unfunny, exactly, but the material felt well-worn: Pride festivities are a bit challenging for introspective types. Conservative rural communities love to hate gay men, but they talk about more about unicorns more than they do lesbians. It's easy to forget to come out to your grandmother.

Not particularly impressed, I'd left "Nanette" sitting unfinished in my queue until yesterday. And somewhere during that time it had apparently become a cultural phenomenon, a special for the #metoo age, a comedic controversy.

Surprised, I went back to watch the rest. From the headlines, "Nanette" should have been right up my alley, and I was ready to become a believer. What had I missed?

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For the first thirty-five minutes of "Nanette," its creator, Hannah Gadsby, adheres to a fairly conventional stand-up format. Her jokes are political and occasionally punchy, their approach and subject matter (with the exception of a very clever bit interweaving sexism, mental health, and art history) not terribly innovative. Lesbians have no sense of humor, the rainbow flag is gaudy, straight men are entitled. There's a sly fisting joke, irritation at a fan's insistence she assume trans identity, an anecdote about her mother's less-than-enthusiastic response to her coming out.

It's not until its midway point that the show transforms into something else entirely, its predictable rhythm giving way to the wholly unexpected. Gadsby departs completely from her conventional comic style, suddenly announces her intention to quit stand-up, and sharply pivots to a renunciation of comedy itself. "Do you know why I'm such a funny fucker?" asks Gadsby. "Back then it wasn't a job, it wasn't even a hobby. It was a survival tactic. I didn't have to invent the tension - I was the tension. And I'm tired of tension. Tension is making me sick. It is time I stopped comedy."

Gadsby wants - needs, she says, with heartbreaking sincerity - to share her story. Stand-up, she argues, is an inadequate medium for this task, hinging as it does on a format she finds fundamentally incapable of carrying a story to completion. "Stories, unlike jokes, need three parts - a beginning, a middle, and an end." Jokes, she declares, can accommodate only two: a beginning (the setup) and a middle (the punchline).

Her rejection of comedy, she shares, stems from a conversation during which her mother had unexpectedly and emotionally explained her reasons for rejecting Gadsby's sexual orientation. "I knew well before you did that your life was going to be so hard," she quotes her mother as saying. "I knew that, and I wanted that more than anything in the world for that not to be the case... and I made it worse. I made it worse because I wanted you to change, because I knew the world wouldn't."

Her mother had evolved and grown beyond that exchange, she realized, while she herself had stayed suspended in a state of perpetual adolescence. "What I had done, with that comedy show about coming out, was I froze an incredibly formative experience at its trauma point, and I sealed it off into jokes." Her comedy had reinforced her initial impressions of the experience, she felt, leaving her unable to heal or understand it more deeply.

Using this realization as a starting point, Gadsby begins to carefully deconstruct much the preceding act, one joke at a time. She transforms each with a frequently heart-wrenching addition of context, identifying and meditating rawly upon a common thread of internalized homophobia that runs through these now-complete stories. It wasn't really that she'd forgotten to come out to her grandmother; shame had kept her silent. An experience of mistaken gender hadn't actually ended after a man at a bus stop apologized for physically threatening her, explaining he had mistaken her for a "faggot" hitting on his girlfriend; the aggressor had subsequently re-classified her as a lesbian and deciding to brutalize her after all. Had she reported it to the police, or gone to hospital to have her serious injuries treated? No. In that moment, she had accepted the darkest lessons of her upbringing, accepted that she deserved to be beaten for having the temerity to exist in a public space as a gender-nonconforming lesbian.

As she dissects her process, a pattern emerges: lopping off the unfunny ends of these stories, leaving out these details of self-hatred, and repeating them over and over again had ultimately erased very experience of self-hatred from her conscious recollection of the events. This act of erasure had rendered her incapable of confronting the self-hatred, and therefore unable to evolve beyond it.

There is incredible power in this portion of her set. Gadsby's storytelling is viscerally evocative. She is unrelenting in her recital of occasions when misogyny and homophobia have imposed violence upon her, structurally, emotionally, and physically. Recalling her original joke about the assault at the bus stop, she remarks matter-of-factly: "it was a very funny story... I'm very good at this job. I actually am pretty good at controlling the tension, and I know how to balance that, to get the laugh at the right place. But in order to balance the tension in the room with that story, I couldn't tell it as it actually happened."

Later, addressing the men in the audience, she declares, "This tension? It's yours. I am not helping you anymore. You need to learn what this feels like, because this, this tension, it's what not-normals carry inside them all the time."

In these moments of vulnerability and defiance, Gadsby excels. She is brilliant in her fierce insistence on having her experiences heard in their totality, expert in her ability to hold the audience in her sway even as she narrates the process by which she creates, escalates, and deploys tension. She may be exiting the field of comedy, but in many ways she exits a master.

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It is Gadsby's comedic virtuosity and obvious narrative talent that render her attempts to apply the lessons of her personal experience to the world beyond herself so deeply disappointing.

I believe, for example, that Gadsby has up until now ensconced herself in a style of comedy that she finds constrictive, too rigid to expand and adapt to the more complex and difficult stories she wants to tell. I understand that humor has functioned as a defense mechanism for her, that her deployment of it has made her feel confined, and that perhaps these stories in their wholeness are simply too hurtful to deliver in comedic form. To dismiss stand-up itself as a vehicle for storytelling, however, is to ignore the fluidity of the art form in its contemporary state. If ever there was a moment where stand-up comedy had the capacity to accommodate the telling of difficult stories, it's now - a truth poignantly illustrated by Tig Notaro in a now-legendary improvisational 2012 set at Largo. "Good evening. Hello. I have cancer," she opened, and continued on for thirty minutes, relating her experience as a oncological patient in detail and with unvarnished honesty. In no way do I think Gadsby should feel obligated to tell her story through the medium of stand-up, but her insistence that stand-up is strictly limited to a setup/punchline format is puzzling.

At other times, Gadsby's inability to see beyond her own experience results in a strange insensitivity to the oppression of others. During a pointed critique of sexism in the arts and in the work of Pablo Picasso in particular, Gadsby makes a concession: the Cubist master did make a significant contribution to the evolution of visual art. "Picasso freed us from slavery, people, he really did," she says, without a trace of irony. "He freed us from the slavery of having to reproduce believable three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface... Picasso said, 'No! Run free! You can have all the perspectives!'"

It is deeply problematic for a white performer from a former British colony repeatedly equate representational art with literal slavery, and it is especially disconcerting to hear it done in service of an argument about the necessity of listening to the stories of the oppressed Other. Gadsby hails from Australia, a country with a tragic history of forced indigenous labor, and her unthinking use of such a clumsy and inappropriate metaphor signals a troubling failure to follow the gospel of inter-identity listening she preaches.

Elsewhere, her ideas about the broader implications of her comedic experience are not so much offensive as they are perplexing. Finishing her takedown of Picasso, she announces, "you won't hear too many extended sets about art history in a comedy show, so, you're welcome. It's bold, I know. Comedy, you're more used to throwaway jokes about priests being pedophiles and Trump grabbin' the pussy. I don't have time for that shit, I don't. Do you know who used to be an easy punchline? Monica Lewinsky. Maybe, if comedians had done their job properly and made fun of the man who abused his power, then perhaps we might have had a middle-aged woman with an appropriate amount of experience in the White House instead of, as we do, a man who openly admitted to sexually assaulting vulnerable young women because he could."

Certainly, the issues of pedophilia and sexual assault shouldn't be used as shortcuts to cheap laughs. Certainly, the public ridicule of Monica Lewinsky was a glaring example of victim-blaming at its most vicious. But how did these sorts of jokes contribute to the election of Donald Trump? Does Gadsby really believe that by holding Bill Clinton accountable and treating Lewinsky with compassion, comedians might ultimately have ensured the election of the former president's wife, a vocal defender of his who once publicly characterized Lewinsky as "a narcissistic Looney Toon"?

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Perhaps the most disheartening moment in Gatsby's special is her closing speech, a manifesto against laughter and anger themselves. "Laughter is not our medicine. Stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine," she polemicizes.

Gadsby may not experience comedy as a viable means of change in her own life, but in dismissing both the transformative power of laughter and the comic's capacity for storytelling, she discounts wholesale a rich historic interplay of stand-up comedy and civil rights.

Laughter is not our medicine? What about Dick Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge, and their peers, who used stand-up to destroy the popular racist institution of minstrelsy, leveraged their popularity against practices of censorship and segregation, and ultimately exposed white audiences to critical black thought in unprecedented ways? What about Eddie Murphy lampooning red-lining in "White Like Me," or Dave Chappelle highlighting the absurdity of racial profiling in his early specials?

Laughter is not our medicine? What about black female comedians from Moms Mabley to Jessica Williams, women whose very presence on a stage constitutes an act of rebellion against invisibility, a refusal to bow to the politics of misogynoir?

For that matter, what about comics like Eddie Izzard, Ellen Degeneres, Wanda Sykes, Tig Notaro, and all the other queer performers who paved the way for the Hannah Gadsbys of today?

These are questions she leaves unasked and unanswered.

Gadsby has few kind words for laughter, but she is harshest in her condemnation of anger: "I am angry - I believe I have every right to be angry. But what I don't have a right to do is to spread anger. Because anger, much like laughter, can connect a room full of strangers like nothing else. But anger, even if it's connected to laughter, will not relieve tension, because anger is a tension. It is a toxic, infectious tension, and it knows no other purpose but to spread blind hatred, and I want no part of it. Just because I can position myself as a victim does not make my anger constructive. It never is constructive."

This is the moment where Gadsby's myopia is most fully on display. The notion that anger is unproductive and distasteful is a favorite canard of civility discourse, an underhanded form of critique that has long functioned as a means to invalidate the expression of outrage by the oppressed, and in particular the expression of outrage by people of color. Martin Luther King, Jr., the organizers of #blacklivesmatter, the women of #metoo - all had this discourse used against them, endured the accusations of being too angry, too rude, too demanding.

What Gadsby misses is that anger is not only constructive, but necessary. It is the only correct response to injustice, and the driving impetus to its correction. Gadsby may feel that anger is no longer a helpful emotion in her personal psychological journey, but to assume that what is toxic for one is poison for all is a terrible error of logic, especially when it comes to matters of liberation.

Overeating is destructive, but food is necessary.

Compulsive sex is destructive, but human affection is necessary.

Dehabilitating fury is destructive, but anger is necessary, at least as long as injustice exists in this world. Anger is a powerful catalyst for positive social change; to disown it and demonize it without exception is to commit an act that reeks of privilege, denial, or both.

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The Netflix release of "Nanette" coincided almost exactly with the Great Civility Debate of 2018. The special debuted only three days before white liberals on Twitter began comparing Sarah Huckabee Sanders' Red Hen eviction to whites-only water fountains. "Nanette" arrived less than a week prior to Chuck Schumer taking to the floor of the Senate to condemn Rep. Maxine Waters for urging constituents to take every opportunity to confront administration officials over family separation at the border, a horror that quite literally constitutes an act of genocide.

Schumer's callow attention-grab demonstrated two things: one, that the Democratic establishment was more than willing to use civility discourse to silence black women, and two, that it felt no obligation to deploy the same discourse against black women's attackers (in this case, the authors of the death threats still deluging Rep. Waters even as Schumer issued his attack against her). These are the dynamics that make the politics of "civility" so dangerous, and it is troubling to see "Nanette" replicate them so neatly.

"This is bigger than homosexuality; this is about how we conduct debate in public about sensitive things... it's toxic, it's juvenile, it's distractive," complains Gadsby, echoing the endless, "civility"-minded tone-policing of the current moment - a discursive tactic that is itself a time-tested means of distraction, a method of dishonestly silencing those with legitimate claims to anger.

I don't believe that Gadsby intends to reproduce or affirm the regressive politics of civility discourse; certainly, she couldn't have predicted her special arriving just as underhanded demands for "civility" reached a fevered pitch at a national level within the United States. Nevertheless, it is impact that ultimately matters. "Nanette" comes to us at a moment where it is tempting to slide into a worldview where personal feelings take precedence over accountability, and it encourages its audience to succumb to that damaging impulse. Judging from the overwhelmingly positive response to her message, it seems her viewers have welcomed that invitation with open arms.

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When we prioritize the delivery of the message over the content of the message itself, we cede the upper hand to those who have always had it. It's easy to be polite, 'rational,' and 'civil' when you're already privileged. When you have more than enough, the status quo feels like the most rational solution, even if others have far too little. It's easy to condemn anger when others have cause to be angry at you. It's easy to demand calm when you have no reason to be agitated. Being told to fuck off by a rape survivor because you've invalidated her experience can be unpleasant, but that discomfort is nothing compared to the pain a survivor feels when her story is treated as irrelevant or unimportant.

"I have every right to be angry," says Hannah Gadsby to the world, and she is right. Gadsby is herself a survivor; she has experienced harsh abuse and terrible violence, and the lingering impact of trauma is palpable in her moving story of self. She has a right to anger, a right to tell her story, a right to quit comedy, and a right to seek closure and healing. What she does not have is the right to pathologize the practice of anger or laughter for anyone other than herself.

"Like it or not, your story is my story, and my story is your story," says Hannah Gadsby to the world, but she is wrong. In her story, anger and laughter are liabilities, reinforcers of trauma, and of no use to humanity. My story is not her story. In my story and the stories of many others, anger and laughter are useful blessings that support our healing. They are valuable gifts that grant us the energy and resilience we need to do the work of building a better world, a world where our trauma will not be revisited upon others.

If we can't have laughter, it's not my revolution. And if we can't have anger, there will be no revolution at all.

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The second time I tried watching "Nanette," I went in wanting to love it. I really did. I'd tried watching once before, a couple weeks ago, and made it only a few minutes in before giving up. It didn't seem unfunny, exactly, but the material felt well-worn: Pride festivities are a bit challenging for introspective types.

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Gives insight on the other side of the argument by people who did not enjoy the show. It may help with understanding viewpoints by people who could not relate to Gadsby.

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It took me a while to write a critique of Nanette, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby's universally praised one-woman Netflix special that premiered in June, because I couldn't quite figure out what I hated about it.

But when my cis, straight, liberal parents told me how much they loved it, the reason for my dislike coalesced: In order to make straight, cis viewers feel comfortably woke, Gadsby shits on an entire language of comedy developed over decades largely by Jews and queers. The greatest trick Gadsby pulls is convincing those who have little interest in actual gender, sexuality, or political radicalism - and apparently little knowledge of comedy - that they are watching something new and radical.

The "remarkable" ( Washington Post), "soul-affirming" ( The New York Times), "groundbreaking" ( Vice), premise of Nanette is that comedy cannot tell the full truth, that the full truth is too difficult for audiences to handle. Gadsby spends the first half hour of the show telling milquetoast jokes about being a lesbian, and then dives into a dissection of men (they're loud and abusive and overly sensitive to critique), art (Picasso was bad and a child predator (true)), and comedy itself.

Comedy, Gadsby says, cannot hold her trauma - and so she spends the last half of her show explicating her trauma, saying that she actually cut off a true story at the halfway point earlier in the set, because in truth it ended with her being beaten up for being gay, and that no one would laugh at that.

In order to make straight, cis viewers feel comfortably woke, Gadsby shits on an entire language of comedy developed over decades largely by Jews and queers.

Gadsby is good at relaying these powerful and heartbreaking stories of trauma. They're important to tell. As a nonbinary person with trans and queer friends who have been harassed and assaulted for who they are, they resonated with me. But it's in her analysis of comedy that Gadsby lost me.

Gadsby says that turning her trauma into jokes would allow the audience to leave unchallenged, without hearing the full truth. "I don't want to unite you with laughter or anger," she says. "I just need my story heard."

"That reluctance to 'unite' her audience may be the most radical thing about Gadsby's act," Andrew Kahn wrote in a glowing review for Slate.

But, as made obvious by the universal praise she has received, that's exactly what Gadsby has done. She doesn't use comedy to do it, instead opting for tragedy, but that doesn't make her show any more radical. The audience is not challenged in any meaningful way to act.

All of this reminds me of R.L. Stephens' 2017 critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates. The former Atlantic writer and MacArthur winner's 2015 book Between the World and Me sketches a convincing narrative of how racism sits at the heart of the American experience, but its universal popularity among the media (and white people) shows that it failed to actually challenge our material world. The book portrays racism as an abstract concept, not one based in centuries of empire and capitalism, and therefore something that cannot be completely understood. It allows white people to think "I understand racism as a deep and complicated process I've been complicit in," without implicating them, pointing blame at our current structures, or identifying a way forward (if the book did, say, call for armed struggle or a working-class overthrow of capitalism, it no doubt would be less-praised).

Nanette does the same thing for queerness. It locates the problem not in exploitative structures that might implicate Gadsby's audience, but within ourselves. If only we could respect each other, then things would change. If only we could be more civil in our public debates.

"This is bigger than homosexuality," Gadsby says after discussing why a man felt it was okay to assault her. "It's about how we conduct debate in public about sensitive things, it's toxic, it's juvenile, it's destructive. We think it's more important to be right than to appeal to the humanity of those who disagree with us. Ignorance will always walk amongst us because we will never know all of the things."

Nanette locates the problem not in exploitative structures that would implicate her audience, but within ourselves - if only we could respect each other, then things would change.

Nice sentiments, sure, but this makes for boring, trite, and even dangerous art: in order to convey her trauma, Gadsby dismisses all of comedy, the uses of queer anger, and the entire premise of self-deprecation as inadequate.

It's true that popular comedy has become staid and perhaps insufficient for our troubled times (nearly every Netflix special released in the last two years has been terrible), but saying that all comedy is problematic or unable to express trauma is like listening to Macklemore and deciding that all rap is boring, or watching Taken and deciding all movies contain a lot of racism and star Liam Neeson.

Comedy can be radical; it's just that when it is, it's not typically on Netflix. Queer and trans people have been performing comedy that transgresses how we traditionally think of the form: sets without easy punchlines that are weird and often unreadable unless you've been deep into the lexicon of queerness for years. There's new, fresh, and interesting queer comedy being performed in basements and clubs in New York and elsewhere (see: here and here ) - but it's comedy that is written and performed in a self-referential vernacular built over years that makes it mostly accessible only to fellow queers (and less-covered by the mainstream media).
Listen to clips from 'Nanette' and an extended interview with Peter on the current state of comedy on The Outline World Dispatch.
There's comedy that holds power to account, but instead of getting praised by the media, it's often ignored, or actively punished. When comedian Jake Flores joked on Twitter earlier this year that white people were allowed to culturally appropriate Cinco de Mayo if they killed an ICE agent, he was visited by several agents from Homeland Security.

But even popular comedy has gone where Gadsby says it hasn't: Richard Pryor used self-deprecating humor to relay his trauma about crack addiction in the 1970s while also using his stand-up to call attention to white supremacy. Dave Chappelle used comedy to create a conversation about race on his Comedy Central show; when he decided white people weren't getting the joke was about them, not him, he walked away from comedy for a decade, and it was decided that he was a mentally ill drug addict, not a radical, for doing so - but still did not dismiss the entirety of comedy as he left the stage.

There's comedy that holds power to account, but instead of getting praised by the media, it's often ignored, or actively punished.

Even uncontroversial, mainstream comedy is able to take jabs at race and patriarchy. 30 Rock, for all its transphobic and racist failings, successfully highlights the sexist and racist assumptions most of us harbor, and allows us to laugh at them so that we can accept them, and hopefully change them.

That's what comedy does best, and why I like it - even the problematic stuff - so much. It allows me, and I think a lot of others, to excise what's deepest in us, what we can't express politely. The worst comedy (often performed by conservatives) puts these hidden fears and prejudices on display in order to amplify them (e.g., Dennis Miller taps into our hidden racism and tells us it's actually good). The best comedy does this so that we can acknowledge, process and heal our darkest thoughts.

When Larry David called Mel Brooks a "little Jew bastard" at an awards dinner in 2013, I don't think he was using self-deprecating humor about Jews to make the audience comfortable - he was acknowledging that somewhere in him is a nagging feeling that he, too, and by extension all self-hating Jews, myself included, are "little Jew bastards." When Sarah Silverman says in her 2005 comedy special Jesus is Magic something like, "Jewish girls can be sexy, we just put on a little red negligee and....yoidle doidle doidle," going from a sultry voice to an exaggerated and loud Yiddish-American accent, she identified something so deep in my core about anxieties about my body, and my perceived inability to be sexy as a queer Jew (I'm too hairy, too nebbish, too unserious), that it struck me as deeply funny, and has stayed with me as an invisible, supportive friend to my self-consciousness, allowing me to laugh when I look in the mirror and feel better about myself.

I think that's why comedy has been a uniquely Jewish art form in America - it allows us to feel okay about ourselves in a world that often hates us. I come from a family of Holocaust survivors, and I joke about the Holocaust a lot, not because I think the Holocaust is funny, or because I want those around me to trivialize it, but because the weight of my family's past is so crushing and comedy helps alleviate the pain. Comedy helps me understand my relationship to trauma.

Freud proposed that Jews used comedy to cope with trauma, which explains why Jewish comedy boomed in the U.S. after the Holocaust. By 1978, TIME Magazine estimated that 80 percent of comedians were Jews.

Gadsby's claim that self-deprecation is counterproductive is weighted, whether or not she realizes it, with judgement. There is no "right" way to experience and process trauma. Coming from someone who didn't grow up Jewish, Gadsby getting praise for bad-mouthing self-deprecation strikes me as an erasure of its Jewish roots. It feels, well, disrespectful - maybe even uncivil.

"I built a career out of self-deprecation, and I don't want to do that anymore," Gadsby says. "Because you do understand what self-deprecation means from somebody who already exists in the margins? It's not humility. It's humiliation."

Yet I don't see how reliving your trauma on a stage is any different than "humiliating" yourself for comedy: both are exploiting personal tragedy for an audience. Whether the audience "gets" what you're doing - whether they're laughing with you or at you - is not the fault of the form, anymore than it is the world in which we live.

Comedy helps me understand my relationship to trauma.

So then why is Nanette considered so radical, transformative and groundbreaking by the mainstream media? Our answer, I think, comes at the very end of the show.

"I am angry and I believe I have every right to be angry, but what I don't have every right to do is to spread anger," Gadsby says. "Because anger, much like laughter, can connect a room like nothing else. But anger will not relieve tension - because anger is a tension. It is a toxic, infectious tension and it knows no other purpose than to spread blind hatred and I want no part of it because I take my freedom of speech seriously, and just because I can position myself as a victim does not make my anger constructive."

In a few lines, Gadsby completely lets her audience off the hook, transforming justified queer rage (whether it comes in the form of outward anger or inwardly facing self-deprecating humor) that is often ignored by the mainstream press and the rest of society because it can be so challenging to power structures, into a fault within herself, and by extension all of us.

As a queer person, I want my anger to be heard. I believe my anger constructive, even if it's self-deprecating, and even if you don't get it. By telling us we need to challenge our anger, sublimate it into love and understanding lest we destroy the world, Gadsby is not challenging her audience, she's challenging her fellow queers to be more respectful, more civil, to display our pain in ways that cis, straight people can appreciate, in ways that get us called groundbreaking by those who have broken no ground, and have no interest in listening to us when we speak in ways that are unreadable. Gadsby hasn't changed comedy, she's just let cis and straight people in on the joke. And there's nothing radical about that.

Peter Moskowitz is a freelance writer in Philadelphia. They last wrote for The Outline about racism and free speech at Evergreen State College.

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It took me a while to write a critique of Nanette, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby's universally praised one-woman Netflix special that premiered in June, because I couldn't quite figure out what I hated about it.

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The reviews will be used to get an idea about what other viewers thought about it. Perhaps some people could relate to it more than others. Mainly looking for how the film emotionally affected people.

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Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets

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Information about the life of Hannah Gadsby. Not to be used as a main source, but rather to fact check and give ideas for more credible sources.

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Hannah Gadsby (born 12 January 1978) is an Australian comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. She rose to prominence after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006 and since toured internationally as well as on television and radio.

In 2018, the release by Netflix of a film version of Gadsby's stand-up show, , expanded her international audience.

Starting in 2019, she is touring the US and Australia with her new show Douglas.

Gadsby was born and grew up in Smithton, a small town on the remote north-west coast of Tasmania, the youngest of five children.

She attended Smithton High School from 1990 to 1995, then moved to Launceston College in year 12, where she suffered a nervous breakdown.

She began tertiary studies at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, but moved to the mainland to attend the Australian National University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Curatorship in 2003.

After this she worked in bookshops in Canberra and became a projectionist at an outdoor cinema in Darwin for a while. She then spent two years picking vegetables and planting trees along the east coast of Australia, before she found herself homeless (which she later attributed partly to her ADHD) and ill enough to require hospitalisation.

It was on a visit to her sister in Adelaide in 2006 when Gadsby entered Raw Comedy in 2006, progressing through the heats to win the national prize. As the winner, she was sent to the So You Think You're Funny competition at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where she won second prize. From that point on, she performed numerous stand-up shows at festivals around Australia, such as the Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Comedy Festival.

Gadsby created the stand-up show she named Nanette partly as a response to the uncivil public debate which took place in Australia before the law was changed to allow same-sex marriage, and also after her diagnosis of ADHD and autism, in a performance described as ground-breaking. In 2018, Netflix released the film version of Nanette, which brought her to the attention of international audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, Nanette received an approval rating of 100% based on reviews from 44 critics.

In March 2019 Gadsby previewed her new show, Douglas, in Adelaide, before touring the US and Australia, where many shows were sold out in advance. In the show, she explores new personal revelations "with empathy, wit and some extremely relatable metaphor", and creates something "bigger than comedy" according to one reviewer of the preview show. Gadsby says that she doesn't care what people call the show, aiming at men who complained on social media that Nanette was "not comedy but a lecture". In May 2019, Gadsby announced that Douglas will be released on Netflix in 2020.

Gadsby co-wrote and co-starred in the Australian ABC television TV show Adam Hills Tonight through three seasons from February 2011 to July 2013. She had regular segments called 'On This Day' and 'Hannah Has A Go' and also featured on the couch, contributing as host Adam Hills interviewed his guests.

She co-wrote (with Matthew Bate) and presented a three-part series on ABC TV, Hannah Gadsby's Oz, which aired in March 2014. Produced by Closer Productions, this series set out to "debunk the myths of the Australian identity perpetuated by [its] national art".

She co-wrote 20 episodes of fellow comedian Josh Thomas's series Please Like Me (2014-2016) and featured as Hannah, a fictional version of herself.

Guest appearances

Gadsby has appeared as a guest on numerous TV shows in Australia and elsewhere, including (2009), Spicks and Specks (2010), (2012-2014), (2018), The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (2018), and New Zealand TV 3's game show, . She was a presenter at the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2019, presenting the award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.

Gadsby was also a guest on Conan O'Brien's podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend in 2019.

Between 2009 and 2013, Gadsby presented comedy art tours in conjunction with the National Gallery of Victoria, with themes such as paintings of the Holy Virgin, Dadaism, Modernism, Impressionism and the nude in art. She has given talks on art and opened exhibitions.

Gadsby has written and presented two documentary specials for the Artscape program on ABC TV: Hannah Gadsby Goes Domestic (2010) and The NGV Story (2011.)

Hannah Gadsby's Oz (see above) was art-related.

In 2015 she wrote and performed Hannah Gadsby: Arts Clown, a series for BBC Radio 4 based on her comedy art shows.

Gadsby is openly lesbian and often refers to her sexuality in her stand-up routines.

She was diagnosed with ADHD and autism in 2017. She refers to her autism in her 2019 show Douglas in a way aimed to help people understand neurodiversity as part of a normal variation of the human condition.

Gadsby is an active supporter of various charities. Organisations she has assisted include Big Brothers Big Sisters of Melbourne, Edmund Rice Camps of Victoria and the Sacred Heart Mission. She has twice performed in The Breast Darn Show in Town.

2007: Hannah Gadsby is Wrong and Broken, Adelaide Fringe Festival

2008: Meat, The Musical with Amelia Jane Hunter. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Enmore Theatre

2009: Kiss Me Quick, I'm Full Of Jubes (solo show). Melbourne International Comedy Festival, New Zealand International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival

2009, 2010, 2011: The History of the National Gallery of Victoria (art history lecture). NGV, during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

2010: The Cliff Young Shuffle (solo show). Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Sydney Comedy Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, New Zealand International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival,

2011: Mary. Contrary (solo show). Edinburgh Fringe Festival

2011: Mrs Chuckles (solo show). Belvoir St Theatre, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Wild West Comedy Fest (Perth), New Zealand Comedy Festival, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Soho Theatre (London).

2012: Mary. Contrary (art lecture). National Gallery of Victoria during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

2012: Hannah Wants A Wife (solo show). Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Perth International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

2013: Mary.Contrary (art lecture). Ten Days on the Island Festival, Kings Place London

2013: Nakedy Nudes (art lecture). National Gallery of Victoria during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Art Space Mackay

2013: Happiness is a Bed Side Table (solo show). Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Perth Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Canberra Theatre Centre, Soho Theatre London, Brighton Comedy Festival, Sydney Comedy Store

2014: Nakedy Nudes/ Mary.Contrary/ Australian Art (art lecture). NGV Art Lecture Series, Melbourne

2014: The Exhibitionist (solo show). Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Ten Days Spiegeltent Hobart, Canberra Comedy Festival, Perth International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Soho Theatre (London)

2015: Hannah Gadsby Live (solo show). Comedy Store Sydney

2015: Art Lite (art lecture). Adelaide Cabaret Festival

2015: Donkey (solo show). Brisbane Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Perth Comedy Festival, Darwin Festival

2016: Dogmatic (solo show). Adelaide Fringe Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Canberra Comedy Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Perth Comedy Festival, Belvoir Theatre, Wagga Wagga, Soho Theatre London

2017-2018: Nanette (solo show). Perth Fringe Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, International Women's Day - Sydney Opera House, Ten Days On The Island - Hobart, Brisbane Comedy Festival, Canberra Comedy Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Wollongong, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Soho Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Sydney Opera House, Soho Theatre - Return Run, New York Soho Playhouse

2019: Douglas (solo show). Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide; Arts Centre, Melbourne; numerous venues in the US; back to Australia in December

Filmography (TV)

2011: Hannah Gadsby: Kiss Me Quick, I'm Full of Jubes (series 1, ep. 1 of Warehouse Comedy Festival series of live stand-up performances)

2012-2013: Adam Hills Tonight (series - co-writer and presenter in 22 episodes)

2013: Hannah Gadsby: Mrs Chuckles (series 2, ep. 9 of Warehouse Comedy Festival series)

2014: Hannah Gadsby's Oz (documentary mini-series)

2014-2016: Please Like Me (sitcom series - co-writer and actor in 22 episodes)

2015: Hannah Gadsby: Renaissance Woman (documentary mini-series) - also producer

2018: Hannah Gadsby's Nakedy Nudes (documentary mini-series)

2018: Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (film of live stand-up)

2009-2010: The Librarians (TV series) - as Carmel (2 episodes)

2013: Underbelly - as Charlie (3 episodes)

2014-2016: Please Like Me (TV series) - as Hannah (22 episodes)

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Hannah Gadsby (born 12 January 1978) is an Australian comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. She rose to prominence after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006 and since toured internationally as well as on television and radio.

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Statistic on how many people are actually still in the closet. This is to be used to show how many are afraid of coming out to a society that may or may not accept them. To be used for the logos part of an argument.

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In 2018, it may seem that coming out has become a natural process for many LGBTQ people. But many are struggling to face their truth.

A new Australian study released by ABC found that nearly half of LGBTQ millennials have not come out. The survey found that of 11,000 Australians between 18 and 29, 47 percent have come out to themselves but not to others. A similar study by the HRC recently found that 46 percent of LGBTQ people in the US hide their sexuality at their place of employment.

The ABC study also found that lesbians are most likely to come out, with 86 percent having done so. Gay men followed close behind, with 83 percent having come out. And bisexual men are least likely to come out, with only 40 percent, just behind bisexual women, with 48 percent.

Given Australia's recent progress with marriage equality, these statistics will hopefully grow as the country faces more social progress.

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Nearly Half of Queer Millennials Are Still in the Closet

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In 2018, it may seem that coming out has become a natural process for many LGBTQ people. But many are struggling to face their truth. A new Australian study released by ABC found that nearly half of LGBTQ millennials have not come out.

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Hannah Gadsby reveals the anatomy of a joke, about building up tension and then releasing it with a punchline. She uses this to her advantage in order to get a greater reaction from the audience.

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If you want to impress somebody, make them laugh. If you want to connect with someone new, make them laugh. If you want to get a raise from your boss, make him laugh. If you want to take yourself out of a completely miserable situation, make yourself laugh. And if you want to change the world, make the world laugh. What's the easiest way to make someone laugh? Tell a joke.

Some people are good at telling jokes, but have no idea how the jokes come out of their mouths. These people are naturally funny. But if you are not one of these people or have always had a problem with being funny, don't sweat. Understand that all jokes have a formula behind them that makes them funny; otherwise, it's not funny and that's not a joke. Here are the ingredients to tell a joke. I'll walk you through it step-by-step.

The Anatomy of a Joke and Its Formula

1. Target. Every joke begins with a target, and it can be targeting anything - people, places, ideas, etc. The most important thing to remember here is to relate the target to the person or people you're telling the joke to, so they won't be offended. For example, if you were telling a joke to your friends about your wife, you're friends are going to laugh with you because they can relate. But if you were to tell that same joke to your wife, she's not going to crack a smile. She'll just slowly stare you down while you slowly tiptoe out of the room.

2. Hostility. I know some people are going to cringe at this, but the truth is jokes aren't always "nice". The essence of a joke is usually going against an idea or a type of person, but because the joke is funny ( if you can pull it off the right way), it usually loosens the tension and eradicates all hostile feelings at the end. If you don't get this, ask yourself if you have ever heard of a joke that was between two perfectly happy people? Take a look at these examples and see if you can pinpoint the target and who the joke is making fun of.

"Artificial hearts are nothing new. Politicians have had them for years." -Mack McGinnis

"My wife said that her wildest sexual fantasy would be if I got my own apartment. -Rodney Dangerfield

3. Realism. Jokes aren't funny unless there is some truth in them. You can't just go in and start telling something ridiculous because first of all, the audience won't be able to relate to it and secondly, you won't get a chance to surprise them. Humor is a paradox. It's funny because you're juxtaposing the reasonable next to the unreasonable. If you don't understand this, just remember that the more you can start a joke in a serious, casual way, the higher the payoff will be towards the end. For example, imagine if somebody with a straight face walked up to you and said:

"If you think the world is normal, why do hot dogs come in packages of ten and hot dog buns come in packages of eight?"

"You know, it was pretty hot yesterday. I saw a dog chasing after a cat, and they were both walking."

4. Exaggeration. If you have a realistic setup from the previous step, then the next step is to exaggerate the second part of the joke. You want to make it "just a little bit more" out there than what human beings expect. The more you can exaggerate it but not completely ruin it by not saying something that's completely unrelated or random at the end, the funnier it will be. In essence, could you exaggerate the joke as far as you can and yet make it still believable at the same time?

5. Emotion. Why do human beings laugh? Biologically speaking, it is because there is a release in our emotions. That's why this step is so crucial. For any joke to be hilarious -
I mean out-of-this-room hilarious - you to learn how build up anticipation. You want to person or group of people you're telling the joke to feel like what's coming next? You want to keep them guessing, on their toes, biting their nails, and leaning over their seat waiting for an answer that they will expect to hear. Here are some ways to create anticipation.

"Take my wife - please!" -Henny Youngman

"Okay class. Calm down. Who wants to hear the latest dope?"

Scroll down to continue reading article

"Well, well, well... Here I am."

6. Surprise. Alright so we've come to the last step of the joke and perhaps the most vital one and that is the surprise. No surprise, no joke. When you go through steps 1 through 5, your audience or whoever you're telling the joke to is going to expect something. So what do you do? Give them the unexpected. Imagine if a pitcher threw a ball and right before the batter hits it, it curves, and then flies out of the ball park. It's sort of like that. The more anticipation and the greater the surprise, the funnier the joke, and the greater the laugh.

"He may not be able to sing, but he can act pretty well."

"He may not be able to sing, and he sure can't dance either."

So let's review again.

Every joke begins with a target. The target can be anything from dogs and cats to lawyers or bosses. Just remember to cater the joke to the right audience. The joke is usually going to be hostile in some way, shape, or form. It's going to make fun or someone or something, but usually the end result will not even make the joke seem hostile at all. And if you happen to find yourself to be in the position of where you are one of the nicest or kindest people on earth, like me, then you can always slim down the hostility. It's okay.

After this, the joke needs to start off real - something that people can relate to and tell themselves that what you're telling them about is real and there's nothing to worry about. From there you can build up a story through anticipation or tension, and then give them an exaggerated response that has a surprise ending the blows them away. You choose how you want to go about doing this.

"A man and a woman who have never met before find themselves in the same sleeping carriage of a train. After the initial embarrassment, they both manage to get to sleep; the woman on the top bunk, the man on the lower.

In the middle of the night the woman leans over and says, "I'm sorry to bother you but I'm awfully cold and I was wondering if you could possibly pass me another blanket."

The man leans out, with a glint in his eye, says, "I've got a better idea... let's pretend we're married."

"Why not?" giggles the woman.

"Good," he replies, "Get your own blanket."

- Pass me another blanket.

Final Thoughts
"Laugh at yourself for a man is most comical when he takes himself too seriously." -Og Mandino
I'm not even going to begin listing the positive traits that humor gives us which include relieving stress, living longer, feeling healthier, and feeling better about your day. If you can master telling a joke, people will like you and you'll be able to make connections easily. If anything, life will be a lot less seriously and a lot more fun. Opportunities will come to you if you can be funny and people will be attracted to you as well. So now that I have given you the magical formula for being a jokester, do you have any jokes up your sleeve? Why not share one in the comment section below?

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"The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter." -Mark Twain If you want to impress somebody, make them laugh. If you want to connect with someone new, make them laugh. If you want to get a raise from your boss, make him laugh.

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Even with the rise of progressive attitude towards the LGBT community, many teens are still afraid of coming out. This could be due to their family being religious, being openly anti-LGBT, or fear of rejection. Some people feel they have no choice but to stay in until they become independent and mature enough to come out.

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Lately, I have received a lot of questions from youth asking whether or not they should come out. Sometimes, they are really asking, "Is it ok NOT to come out?" In short, depending on the circumstances, the answer is sometimes yes.

There are a lot of good reasons to come out to your parents. You might be tired of hiding your sexuality and you're feeling a lot of stress and anxiety keeping this information from them. There is some research to suggest that LGBT youth who come out to their parents and who are supported by them are less likely to have mental health problems or engage in unsafe sex than their counterparts who are not out, or who are out to disapproving or rejecting parents. Sure, it's a no brainer--if you are out to your parents and they are ok with it, life is indeed less stressful. Further, with all the gay and trans stuff now in the news, coming out to one's parents might appear to be a good idea and in fact, might even seem mandatory. HOWEVER, it is NOT a requirement. You can still be a happy healthy LGBT person if you chose not to come out to your parents. Yes, you heard right; it's true, and as a matter of fact, there are some good reasons not to come out to them. Here are a few:

1) Your parents practice a fundamentalist and LGBT rejecting religion, such as fundamental Islam, strict Evangelical or Southern Baptist Christianity, or Orthodox Judaism. That is not to say that all who practice these religions are homophobic. However, many of them use incorrect or highly selective readings of the Bible and the Quran to justify the condemnation of homosexuality. If your parents practice one of these religious traditions, chances are they will have a lot of trouble with you being gay or transgender, so you will want to proceed with caution.

2) Your parents have said some openly anti-gay and anti-trans things in your presence. Thanks to Caitlyn Jenner and the recent Supreme Court rulings recognizing same-sex marriage, there are many opportunities to comment on and discuss these issues. When your parents talk about these topics, are their comments positive or negative? If they are negative, there's a good chance they may not react well to your coming out. Have they ever said anything to you like: "We hope you are not gay" or "If you ever told me you were gay we would (beat, reject, throw you out of the house." If they've ever uttered one of these warnings or something similar, then you really need to consider not coming out to them for now.

3) As you think about coming out to your parents, what is the worst reaction they could have? Are you prepared for it? Might they reject you or ask you to leave your home? If they throw you out, do you have a safe place to go? If they don't reject you but still have a hard time with it, do you have friends, teachers. or other people around you who can support you through the process until your parents come around?

I recently advised a youth whose parents told him if he didn't "change back" and "become straight" that they would take him to a religious leader to be "converted" and if he refused, he would be thrown out of the house. This youth had no place to go so in a way he was a hostage. In hostage situations, people have to go into survival mode and do what it takes to stay safe--until they can get away. However, the hostage needs to always understand that being a hostage is not their fault and they need to find ways to maintain their self-esteem during the process (and sometimes even after). I advised him that it was ok to go back into the closet and stay there until he was old enough to leave home safely, and/or his parents had a change of opinion.

If points 1), 2), or 3) or the hostage situation applies to you, then it is ok to stay IN the closet temporarily until you are mature and independent enough to support yourself financially or emotionally. However, in the meantime what is also important is that you find friends, teachers, counselors who know that it is indeed wonderful that you are realizing that you are growing into a fabulous gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person and who can keep reminding you of this. See videos at www.itgetsbetter.org for encouragement from celebrities as well as LGBT adults who were in your shoes at one time. Also, check out the website of Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbian and Gays (and Bisexual and Transgender persons) ( www.pflag.org). What is important is that you get the support you need on your journey toward self-love and self-acceptance, even while you are in the closet, so you can become the strong, proud LGBT person you were always meant to be. .

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Lately, I have received a lot of questions from youth asking whether or not they should come out. Sometimes, they are really asking, "Is it ok NOT to come out?" In short, depending on the circumstances, the answer is sometimes yes. There are a lot of good reasons to come out to your parents.

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The article looks at cases of homophobic assault to find the roots of homophobia. It claims that the assaults happen to prove to young men that they are heterosexual, or that they are purging homosexual desires. It also suggests that among other social factors, the idea that it is normal to hate is one of the primary reasons assaults happen.

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A forensic psychologist, Karen Franklin's dual interests in psychology and the law brought her to question the roots of anti-gay hate crimes. Her interviews with perpetrators and with San Francisco Bay Area college students provide badly needed empirical data on the nature and extent of negative reactions to gays.

Other than their assaults, Andrew, Brian, and Eric have little in common. They span the spectrum of opinion toward homosexuality and, indeed, contemporary lifestyles more generally. Brian is a young White man with a college education; a self-described liberal, he has gay friends and argues against homophobia with family members. Andrew is an African American man in his mid-30s with a postcollege education who also espouses progressive politics and is "down with gay rights"; he resigned from the military after witnessing a brutal gay bashing by fellow soldiers, but he also expressed personal revulsion for male-male sex acts, saying he would rather "lick my dog's butt" than kiss a man. Eric is an economically and politically marginalized biracial (Native American and White) man who professes hatred of "faggots" and a litany of other groups, including both Jews and "rednecks," but denies committing assaults based on sexuality per se:

Although their assaults fall within most legal definitions of hate crime, Brian, Andrew, and Eric--like the rest of the informants I interviewed-- all insisted that their assaults were not motivated by hatred of homosexuals. To reconcile the apparent contradiction between the socially normative attitudes often held by assailants and the viciousness and brutality of their behavior toward gay men and lesbians, during the course of my research I came to conceptualize the violence not in terms of individual hatred but as an extreme expression of American cultural stereotypes and expectations regarding male and female behavior.

From this perspective, assaults on homosexuals and other individuals who deviate from sex role norms are viewed as a learned form of social control of deviance rather than a defensive response to personal threat. Thus, heterosexism is not just a personal value system, it is a tool in the maintenance of gender dichotomy. In other words, through heterosexism, any male who refuses to accept the dominant culture's assignment of appropriate masculine behavior is labeled early on as a "sissy" or "fag" and then subjected to bullying. Similarly, any woman who opposes male dominance and control can be labeled a lesbian and attacked. The potential of being ostracized as homosexual, regardless of actual sexual attractions and behaviors, puts pressure on all people to conform to a narrow standard of appropriate gender behavior, thereby maintaining and reinforcing our society's hierarchical gender structure.

Eric exemplifies how heterosexual males, once they have incorporated a heterosexist ideology, appoint themselves as agents for the control of sexual deviance. In describing the three assaults on gay men that he committed while alone, Eric used shorthand explanations that assumed a shared cultural belief that his victims had violated unwritten codes of appropriate behavior and thus deserved punishment. In the first instance, Eric inflicted punishment for the gender-inappropriate act of cross-dressing; the fact that he offered no justification for this assault other than to repeatedly describe his transvestite victim's physical appearance (makeup, female clothing, and long braided hair) suggests that he believed the gender-norm beliefs upon which he acted are universally shared.

In the case of the man who had stolen his cousin's jacket, Eric inflicted punishment primarily for thievery; the man's identity as a "fag" merely provided additional justification for a beating that would have ensued anyway. In Eric's mind, "thief" and "fag" were equivalent concepts, as both entail violations of social norms shared by his peer group and society at large. Finally, in assaulting his relative's gay friend, Eric distinguished his victim's sexual inclinations, which were not problematic, from his refusal to be invisible. Thus, Eric was punishing the man not for homosexual acts but for so-called flaunting, that is, refusal to be shamed of deviance. In each case, Eric was enforcing gender norms that he understood to be mandatory in our culture.

The enforcement of gender norms also explains Brian's calculated assaults on men whom he labeled "weak," and explains why he exhibited only shallow and unconvincing remorse. Indeed, Brian seemed driven by a visceral contempt for men he perceived as lacking in physical strength. More than once during our discussion, he nodded toward certain men walking by--men with slim builds and studious demeanors-- as "pathetic" examples of prime candidates for assault. Brian's scorn was ironic in that he considered himself socially progressive and claimed to despise the fraternity ethos of "tribal," chest-thumping masculinity. Because Brian has a small build and has experienced male rape attempts, one explanation for his revulsion is defensive displacement of weakness. However, contempt for "weak," or insufficiently masculine, men is a central characteristic not just of Brian but of our entire culture. Thus, cultural norms of masculinity help explain Brian's self- righteousness and lack of remorse, despite his professed support for gay rights and social tolerance.

Eric's and Brian's commitment to the enforcement of masculine norms stems from the nature of masculinity as an achieved, rather than ascribed, status. Masculinity and its converse, femininity, are relatively recent constructs of Western culture. Connell (1995) has argued that there is not one but many masculinities within contemporary Western society, with the dominant ideal--or hegemonic masculinity-- operating more as a cultural standard than as an achievable status for the majority of men. Although hegemonic masculinity is somewhat elastic--its features change depending upon the labor needs of the state in a particular era--it generally connotes dominance, competitiveness, occupational achievement, and heterosexuality. McCarthy (1994) has traced these role prescriptions to a medieval warrior ethos concerning physical courage, strength, and honor that was repopularized during the 19th century in the service of American and European colonial expansionism.

Notably, all three assailants committed assaults either with or in front of friends, pointing to another social dimension of antigay violence. Brian and Eric in particular characterized their actions as assisting their friends. Brian saw himself as helping a friend who needed money and a calling card; Eric saw himself as protecting his young and hotheaded friend Mike. The peer group is especially influential for young men like Eric, who are alienated from institutions of society such as the school, the family, the workplace, religion, and politics. Pinderhughes (1991) has explored how marginalized young males establish their identity and self-worth by proving through toughness and hatred of the appropriate enemies that they are "down with the program".

In youthful peer groups, socially prohibited acts serve several instrumental functions. One of these is the garnering of social status by individuals who are often cut off from other methods of achieving it. A second function is to reduce intragroup competition by displacing it onto an external object--a surrogate victim scapegoated as deserving the abuse. A third function is to increase group solidarity and cohesion; this in turn bolsters interpersonal support in networks typically characterized by low cohesion and stability. Interviewing men convicted of robbery, for example, Cordilia (1986) identified a pattern in which social factors overrode monetary gain as a motive. In this pattern, the robbery was not planned until after the men began drinking together, and the crime served to solidify a disconnected group by providing it with a cooperative enterprise.

The phenomenon of group escalation, in which people engage in more extreme behaviors as part of a crowd than they would if alone, has been extensively documented and has been shown to be particularly powerful among teenagers and young adults. Research into juvenile delinquency has largely adopted this explanation of crime as the outcome of group processes. Individuals may participate in criminal acts without fully intending to do so and without necessarily possessing values that condone crime:

During the course of conversation, or while exchanging banter, someone may jokingly propose doing something delinquent. As the discussion continues, a situation of "pluralistic ignorance' develops in which each person believes that the others are more committed to carrying out the act than they really are. Rationalizing their behavior in various ways, they perform the deed in a state of "shared misunderstanding." (Mawson, 1987, p. 52)

Eric's feeling that he was compelled to join in the altercation once it was underway is thus explained by the dynamics of collective action, in which the group--often under the leadership of its most impulsive member--takes on a life of its own . Even when motives are consciously formulated, in such situations there is often a large gap between the original plan and the extent of actual destruction, with participants later expressing that things went further than they intended. The role of rationalization thus becomes important both to enable collective criminality in the first place and to reduce subsequent guilt. Rationalizations identified by Sykes and Matza (1957) include denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim (e.g., the victim "asked for it"), condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties. Eric used several of these rationalizations in reframing the incident as self-defense (the man struck him first), claiming he was provoked (by being stared at), condemning his condemners as homosexuals with "special rights," and invoking peer loyalty.

The peer influences described by Eric and Brian are consistent with my survey results, in which peer group dynamics--including the desire to feel closer to friends, to live up to friends' expectations, and to prove both toughness and heterosexuality to friends--were the primary motivation for a distinguishable group of assailants. Peer dynamics was the only motivational factor in my survey that was significantly more endorsed by male than by female assailants, suggesting its particular relevance in male group contexts.

Because it offers direct--rather than secondhand--evidence, group violence against homosexuals is an ideal way for men to demonstrate their masculinity to their peers. Not only is there the stereotype, mentioned by Brian, that homosexual men are unlikely to fight back, but in addition they are fairly easy to locate in urban areas and are less likely than others to report assaults to police . Thus, in group assaults the homosexual victim can be seen as fundamentally a dramatic prop, a vehicle for a ritualized conquest through which assailants demonstrate their commitment to heterosexual masculinity and male gender norms while simultaneously engaging in homosocial bonding with eachother. ...

For Brian, a primary motive in committing assaults was to "have fun." He and his friends launched their adventures with excited anticipation and high energy. They prepared like athletes before a game, stretching their limbs, rehearsing their moves, avoiding alcohol and drugs. Brian explained:

It wasn't because we had something against gays, but because we could get some money and have some fun. It was a rush. A serious rush. Massive rush. Danger, fight-or-flight syndrome, pumps up the adrenaline. And when we get over on someone, it really heightens the rush.... It was nothing at all against gays. They're just an easy target. Gays have a reputation that they can't fight. It's a stereotype, it's not always true.... Women are easy targets, too, but that's cowardly. That's lame. I've never hit a woman. But if someone's male, and an adult, and the sizes are reasonable, then he's fair game. At least that was my attitude at the time.

This sporting tenor is not unusual. Consider this account by a man who was invited on a gay-hunting expedition at a college party by some young men who did not realize that he himself was openly gay:

Nothing could better illustrate the casualness with which antigay violence is perpetrated than their casual invitation, the absence of . . . hostility or rancor motivating it. It was more like they were bored and looking for something interesting to do, to liven up the evening.... They were inviting me to join them in what was essentially a social activity. Our great grandfathers who grew up in rural areas used to go out and hunt rabbits and squirrels for fun. Nowadays, in urban areas, they hunt gays and Latinos. (Varnell, 1991, p.4)

Factor analysis of survey respondents' motivations identified this thrill-seeking motivation as primary for a distinguishable group of assailants. Thrill seekers included both men and women who assaulted out of boredom, the desire for excitement and fun, and the wish to feel strong. A comparison of the survey accounts of thrill seekers and peer-driven assailants revealed both commonalities and differences. Both types of assailants exhibited only minimal animosity toward homosexuals. However, peer-driven assailants tended to recognize the harm to victims while downplaying their own roles and freedom of choice, whereas thrill seekers typically minimized the impact on victims by depicting incidents as harmless and amusing. This was certainly true of Brian who jokingly described how funny his victims looked as they desperately tried to avoid being beaten and robbed.

In contemporary American society, young people--from the poor to the upper middle classes--are systematically neglected and devalued. Lacking access to meaningful, challenging experiences, and sensing a declining potential for success in today's increasingly service-oriented economy, they are often frustrated, discouraged, and socially alienated . Young White males in particular face the contradiction of being taught to expect hegemonic masculine power while being denied any real access to it. This contradiction fosters "power- seeking, adventurist recreational activities at the expense of others who also lack power within the social order," such as women, racial minorities, and homosexuals. Trapped in a temporal vortex between devalued adolescence and adult male privilege, teenage males are given tacit permission to engage in a certain degree of rowdiness and aggression, under the auspices of "boys will be boys." This is particularly true for young men from more privileged strata, such as the fraternity boys discussed earlier, for whom peer group dynamics and thrill seeking often lead to exaggerated displays of masculinity regarding which society largely looks the other way.

However, if violence becomes a pervasive way of life and endures into adulthood, the scale tilts from socially excused to maladaptive. Eric's aggression, which led to 3 years behind bars and cost him an education, is illustrative of a violent lifestyle that falls outside the ideals of hegemonic masculinity. Describing how he drank and fought his way through adolescence, Eric said, "I used to beat people up, just to beat them up. When I ran out of people I didn't like, l'd beat up people my brother didn't like." Of his assault on the businessman, he commented, "I got satisfaction out of kicking the guy."

Eric's masculinity has the exaggerated quality of masculine protest , in which violence is employed as an overcompensation for perceived weakness. Connell (1995) views this protest masculinity as a social, rather than individual, practice. In what he labels marginalized masculinity, economically and socially disempowered men like Eric "claim the potency that European culture attaches to masculinity" through a facade of power when their actual circumstances provide "no real resources for power". In other words, males who incorporate the gender-norm expectations of hegemonic masculinity yet cannot realize these expectations due to their economic or racial status may act out in extreme manners, often with homosexuals as their targets.

This is by no means to imply that the majority of men from lower-class or racial minority backgrounds respond to poverty and oppression with hypermasculinity and violence, even in the most compelling of peer group situations. In most cases, a predisposition is engendered through childhood socialization involving not only poverty and social oppression but also violent victimization and exposure to violence . Eric, for example, experienced not only childhood violence but also parental abandonment, alcoholism, and death. And when Andrew was a child, his sadistic father routinely beat him with weapons while verbally deriding him. Andrew said it had taken him many years to learn to control the violent impulses engendered by this paternal abuse.

One of the hallmarks of the marginalized masculinity that may develop out of childhood poverty and violence is a preoccupation with a masculine front, or the protection of reputation and pride. Recall Eric's explanation that his relative's gay friend deserved punishment for disrespecting him. And although the businessmen whom Eric and his friends assaulted "didn't even know it was coming," among Eric's peers the assault was far from surprising. For them, the men's eye contact, laughing derision, and profanity were provocative challenges requiring physical response. Indeed, cognitive research has identified sets of norms, rules, and expectations that are shared within subcultures and lead to this type of predictable, even ritualized, social aggression.

Analyzing assailants' self-disclosed motivations illustrates how a combination of primarily social factors, rather than a simple and singular psychological element such as hatred or repressed homosexuality, explains antigay violence. The mutually reinforcing melding of hierarchical gender norms, peer dynamics, youthful thrill seeking, and economic and social disempowerment explains how individuals as divergent as Brian, Andrew, and Eric ended up on such parallel missions. In a nation that glorifies violence and abhors sexual diversity, a minority perceived to violate gender norms functions as an ideal dramatic prop for young men to use in demonstrating their masculinity, garnering social approval, and alleviating boredom. This becomes more true as heterosexuality increasingly becomes a primary measure of masculinity and as gay men and lesbians become increasingly visible in the media and popular culture. Furthermore, for members of economically and socially marginalized groups, gay men in particular are ideal targets because of their symbolic identification with upper-class privilege.

The three cases presented in this chapter illustrate how antigay violence can be seen primarily as an extreme manifestation of pervasive cultural norms rather than as a manifestation of individual hatred. This distinction explains why assailants typically express little remorse despite the fact that their expressions of cultural hostility are experienced by gay men and lesbians as vicious terrorism. This distinction is also critical if we hope to reach assailants and potential assailants at the clinical and educational levels, because people who have assaulted homosexuals typically do not recognize themselves in the stereotyped image of the hate-filled extremist.

Excerpted with permission from Unassuming Motivations: Contextualizing the Narratives of Antigay Assailants in Gregory M. Herek, Ed., Stigma and Sexual Orientation: Understanding Prejudice Against Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998), pp. 1-20.

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The Roots Of Homophobia - Inside The Mind Of People Who Hate Gays | Assault On Gay America | FRONTLINE | PBS

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A forensic psychologist, Karen Franklin's dual interests in psychology and the law brought her to question the roots of anti-gay hate crimes. Her interviews with perpetrators and with San Francisco Bay Area college students provide badly needed empirical data on the nature and extent of negative reactions to gays.

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When we are just children, there is no concept of male or female or anything in between: children are just children. It was not until they grow up that they are taught the differences in gender. The article makes a good point that gender is established by a society rather than instinctive thought.

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There are two children playing. Not a boy and a girl. Two children. Let's imagine no one tells the little boy that the little girl is his girlfriend. Imagine there is no grown-up smiling a grown-up smile and asking if he likes her, if he loooves her. No one tells the little girl that since her closest friend is a boy, he must be her boyfriend. Aww, is she going to marry him? Let's imagine no one does that. Imagine that when the little girl says she'd like a sleepover, and the little boy jumps up and down and says, "Yes, yes, can I sleep with her, Daddy?," their grown-ups don't melt into a puddle of laughter. The boy's father doesn't say, "That's my son, third base at four!" And the girl's father doesn't say, "Not with my girl, you don't, young man!" That the fathers don't laugh at each other's jokes, while the kids stand there confused, wondering if the sleepover is on or off and why their dads think they want to play baseball.

What if we didn't see this as harmless fun, but saw it for what it was: a handing over of adult perceptions of gender to children who had till then been unaware of anything but their excitement about sleepovers or the immediacy of their game of dragons and unicorns. Because the truth is, before we told a toddler that his friend was his girlfriend, and that he was going on his first date and had to be a man and treat her like a lady, he was doing much better. He was treating her like a friend, a playmate, a two-headed monster. And the little girl, she was doing what two-headed monsters do-pinning the boy to the floor, sitting on top of him and eating him for dinner.

That was until someone told them to get a room. They didn't know what that meant, but everyone laughed and made them feel awkward. They didn't pin each other down like that again. What did it mean, "go get a room?" Why did the grown-ups laugh funny? They don't laugh when a boy sits on top of another boy. They don't say, "Aww, look at the lovebirds!" when two girls hug.

Even when these questions are not articulated, they're there. Through these questions, the children's world is being figured out. They're making mental notes of what we say, reactions we make, and slowly segregating gender into its stereotypes.

An innocuous start: A little boy makes a new friend at preschool. Let's give them names: Ben and Maya. They're not yet four. When Ben comes home, his mother asks him if he's made any new friends. He tells her about Maya. "That's a lovely name! Is she pretty?" his mother asks. She hadn't asked Ben if his other friend, Tom, was handsome. His brain registers this difference. If his mother had asked him if Maya was fun/nice/friendly, it would've been easier for him to answer. But she's asked him if Maya is pretty. This is more difficult; Ben hasn't thought about it, but he thinks about it now. There was nothing wrong with Maya-her eyes and nose and hair were all in the right place. He looks up at his mother and nods, yes. "Aww," his mother says.

A few days later, when Ben's mother meets Maya's mother, they talk.

"Ben adores Maya. He thinks she's v ery pretty!"

"Oh, sweet Ben! They're so cute together."

Over the next few months, things progress. The fathers meet, the two families hit it off. Ben and Maya are now called The Cutest Couple in the World. They turn four.

"Look at them! So adorable holding hands."

"See how she takes care of him?"

"His eyes light up when she walks in!"

The father posts a photo of Ben and Maya on Facebook. Caption: My son and his future wife. Comments pour in, along with red hearts:
Lucky girl, what a catch! Score at four! Go Ben! I die! They'll be showing this to their grandchildren. Your son's game is stronger than mine, haha!
Oh my heart. Look at how he's holding her! (This comment gets lots of likes.)

Like all photographs, this too has cropped out the moment that preceded it. Like the part where Ben's mother put his little hand on Maya's waist, then shuffled back to take the picture. Often, it's the seemingly harmless, innocuous, good-natured things that are a child's introduction to sexism.

Many of the problems we're fighting today, issues we have hashtagged #gendergap, #metoo, #equalpay, #domesticviolence, #campusrape, are not gender clashes that suddenly cropped up between adults in the adult world. The seeds were sown in our childhoods. The seeds of how we see people. It's in the childhood of every adult who undermines a woman's brain, who thinks men and women cannot be just friends, who misreads friendliness for flirting, who looks at their friend or classmate or colleague as a body first and a person later. All of it can be traced back to how a little boy or girl was made to see not just another gender, but also made to see themselves in relation to another gender.

What if we didn't give children our version of role-playing-this is how boys are, this is how girls are, this is how boys and girls are together-but allowed them to interpret each other in their own time? What if we kept our teasing insinuations to ourselves while they played, and let them get on with seeing each other as a Person first, instead of a Girl or a Boy? So that when they're adults, they have those eyes to see each other with, and those friendships as foundations. Till then, there are far more exciting things for little girls to be than someone's girlfriend, and far more interesting things for a little boy to do than act like a man. There's time enough for that. This is their time, precious little time, to be blissfully ignorant of the neat and faulty boxes we adults have created for ourselves.

***
Rumpus original art by Dara Herman Zierlein.
Pia Ghosh-Roy grew up in India, and now lives in Cambridge (UK). She is the winner of the 2017 Hamlin Garland Award. Her work has been placed in, and short- and longlisted for, several other prizes including the Aestas Fabula Press Competition, Bath Short Story Award, Brighton Prize, Berlin Writing Prize, Fish Short Story Competition, and Hourglass Literary Magazine Short Story Contest. Pia is working on her first novel and a collection of short stories. More from this author →

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There are two children playing. Not a boy and a girl. Two children. Let's imagine no one tells the little boy that the little girl is his girlfriend. Imagine there is no grown-up smiling a grown-up smile and asking if he likes her, if he loooves her.

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Of course, the first source has to be the movie itself, available through Netflix. The comedian Hannah Gadsby is a lesbian telling mostly funny stories about her life, involving LGBT community and a homophobic society. However, she reveals the darker side of being a non-binary person, involving harassment, hate, and shame.

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Hannah Gadsby: Nanette | Netflix Official Site

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She's serious about leaving comedy -- but first she's taking aim at toxic culture and the concept of self-deprecating humor. Watch trailers & learn more.

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This article talks about what place gender in general has in current society. The rise in the LGBT community promotes the idea that gender is simply a social construct. Additionally, it introduces the idea of "performativity", or how people would perform based on their gender rather than being true to themselves.

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Gender is burdened by a lot of adjectives these days. It's non-binary, it's fluid, it's 'over'. According to the American rapper Young Thug, an artist at the helm of hip-hop who is known to occasionally wear dresses, 'there's no such thing as gender' at all.

These descriptions share the common assumption that gender is mutable, not fixed. Most contemporary public conversations about what it means to be men and women will engage with some version of this thesis - a development that's due, in large part, to the work of the American philosopher Judith Butler. Her theory of 'performativity' upended ideas about gender by shedding light on the many processes that produce it, and the theory's far-reaching consequences are still widely misunderstood.

It's unfortunate that popular culture often reduces performativity to the idea that 'gender is a social construct'. This catchphrase sets the 'social' against the 'natural', and implies that gender is merely an artificial layer, encrusted by choice onto the supposedly more fundamental reality of sex. But Butler was careful to avoid arguing for a simple split between nature and culture, or sex and gender. For her, gender wasn't predetermined by nature or biology, nor was it simply 'made up' by culture. Rather, Butler insisted that gender resides in repeated words and actions, words and actions that both shape and are shaped by the bodies of real, flesh-and-blood human beings. And crucially, such repetitions are rarely performed freely.

What's at stake in performativity stretches into the minutiae of the everyday. I was recently on a road trip with a group of friends, and one woman observed that she always lets her partner, a man, drive her car instead of doing so herself. Such an acquiescence feels feminine, she said. The question Butler would want us to ask is: does my friend do this because she is a woman, or does the act itself contribute to making her so?

Although Butler is its most famous advocate, the concept of performativity is rooted in earlier observations about how language works. In the mid-1950s, the English philosopher J L Austin pointed out that language is often a way of accomplishing things in the world, not only a means of describing it. To make a promise, for example, is to do the promising, not just to say something about it. In How to Do Things with Words (1962), Austin described these types of statements, which entailed performing actions, as (you guessed it) 'performatives'. This focus on the functionality of statements, not their truth or falsity, proved to be revolutionary, and the interdisciplinary enterprise of 'speech act theory' was born in its wake. In a wonderful way, the neologism did exactly what it was describing - it made things happen in the world.

Roughly 30 years later, Butler linked performativity to gender, making explicit reference to the American philosopher John Searle's work on speech act theory. Butler was interested in Searle's analysis of the way that performatives don't simply do things, they also commit the people involved to future actions. For example, when a judge declares a case closed, she's not simply ending the trial, she's setting off a chain of events - plaintiffs will be acquitted or indicted, and the courtroom adjourned. What Searle noted is that, in order for a performative (the judge's proclamation) to have any impact on the future, it has to adhere to certain conventions that have already been established. Society needs to accept the authority of the judge and the form of her declaration. A performative, then, is as much a repetition or re-creation of what's expected as it is an act of individual agency.

It's against this background that Butler provides her definition in Gender Trouble (1990): 'gender proves to be performative - that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be'. The basic idea is that gender is created by the very words and actions that appear, superficially, to be simply describing it after the fact. Earlier, in a 1988 essay, Butler had likened gender to 'an act [in a play] which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualised and reproduced as reality once again'. Gender is not a thing so much as a process by which patterns of language and action come to repeat themselves.

Embedded within Butler's concept are two key expansions upon 'performative' as Austin or Searle used it. For one, gender does not occur with language only: it's very much about bodies doing things, such as shaking hands or wearing clothes. Secondly, performing gender is not something that is done by a pre-existing, unfettered individual. Here Butler is re-appropriating Friedrich Nietzsche's argument in On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), that 'there is no "being" behind doing ... the deed is everything'. That is, gender is not a role that someone simply chooses whether or not to step into, a decision made by a detached, pre-social, conscious mind. Instead, the very identity of the actor is fashioned via the actions themselves - and these actions are often unconscious and at least partly coerced.

Take shaking hands, for example. A 'masculine' handshake between two male-identifying individuals is not really a choice, but rather a compulsion rooted in previous actions - both their physical performances (the firm clasp, the decisive shake) and the way they're spoken or thought about as 'masculine' ('Don't trust a man with a limp handshake'; 'He has a good, assertive grip'). There's an unspoken choreography that moulds the encounter between two men - and indeed, the less it is thought about, the smoother it operates. The moment the performance is brought to the level of awareness is precisely when it comes to feel clunky and unnatural, because this reveals the fact that the sequence could have been executed differently. So, while gender is performed, Butler argues, it is not a truly voluntary performance. Rather, it is made to feel 'natural' by virtue of its banality and repetition. The handshake makes the man, not the other way around.

Butler's claim that performativity precedes identity goes against the grain of Western metaphysics, which clings to the sovereignty of the free, rational individual. This idea is largely due to the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, who conceived of the mind as a stable foundation, an internal space that's ontologically distinct from the body and the world. Butler's conception of gender, however, suggests that we aren't pre-existing Cartesian egos 'constructing' our gender through acts of will; nor do we 'inhabit' some biologically predetermined role. Rather, we're embodied individuals, propagating particular ways of doing gender, often unthinkingly.

Intriguingly, there's now the potential for performativity to be taken up in a modified form by cognitive scientists - especially those concerned with how the body and society affect the way we think. Take the relationship between poverty and brain plasticity, for example. The stress of living in poverty can alter physical brain structures in significant ways, such as shrinking the hippocampus. This can affect memory, emotion and other qualities that one might be otherwise tempted to attribute to individual 'identity'. By adopting a more performative perspective, however, we can see how these neural, bodily structures at once produce and are produced by certain social and circumstantial scripts. Much like performativity does for gender, this approach suggests that the mind is not a pre-existing thing, but an ongoing achievement of an embodied organism, mutable and moulded by a broader context.

Performativity has become a catchword in the humanities, the social sciences and popular culture. In 2016, New York magazine went so far as to declare: 'It's Judith Butler's World'. But while performativity has been developed in the context of gender, it has much deeper implications. It's a way of making strange that which feels intuitive, of challenging us to take a second look at what appears self-evident. Performativity encourages us not only to see the world differently, but to imagine how we might do it differently. As the philosopher Alva Nöe puts it in Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (2015): 'it is our nature to acquire second natures'.

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Gender is dead, long live gender: just what is 'performativity'? - Will Fraker | Aeon Ideas

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Gender is burdened by a lot of adjectives these days. It's non-binary, it's fluid, it's 'over'. According to the American rapper Young Thug, an artist at the helm of hip-hop who is known to occasionally wear dresses, 'there's no such thing as gender' at all.