Comedian Sam Morril calls out his friend’s ‘bulls**t’ transphobia: ‘This outrage rings insincere’
"I said 'I call bulls**t'."
Words: Alastair James; picture: Comedy Central
A comedian has shared how he brilliantly called out his friend’s transphobia during a conversation about trans athletes.
Sam Morril, who has a new comedy special debuting on Netflix called Same Time Tomorrow, posted a clip of the special on his Twitter account on Friday (2 September)
In the clip, Sam can be seen telling his audience about an exchange he had with a friend of his about a trans person they both know.
He recounts his friend as saying, “I fully support it. I mean I’ll play along,” to which Sam replied: “I don’t think that’s what they’re going for,” as the audience laughs.
Continuing Sam explains that his friend, “was mad about the trans swimmer Lia Thomas who kept winning races. He said ‘this is messed up, man. There needs to be an asterisk next to those wins’.”
“I said ‘I call bulls**t’. He goes ‘exactly’. I said ‘No, that you care about women’s swimming. I’ve known you for quite some time I’ve never heard you mention it. This outrage rings insincere’.”
His friend then apparently went on to suppose if he had a daughter, to which Sam cut him off saying that the reason being his friend is 55 and has a roommate”.
His friend wasn’t so happy about this, according to Sam, and then admitted to not wearing condoms during sex.
Sam then says in the clip, “I said, ‘you never wear condoms and you don’t have a kid? It’s too bad your sperm isn’t a trans woman, it would know how to swim’,” which leads to a round of applause.
Trans joke from my new special Same Time Tomorrow streaming on Netflix now. Captions fixed. pic.twitter.com/NMaGQX7Yhd
— Sam Morril (@sammorril) September 2, 2022
It’s refreshing to see a comedian make fun of the people taking aim at the trans community rather trans people. Comedian Dave Chappelle got into hot water when he included some anti-trans jokes in his Netflix special, Closer, which debuted on the streaming service last year.
He also said: “I’m team TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist]” adding that “Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. This is a fact.”
This led to global criticism, and a walkout at Netflix by employees who are trans and their allies. At least 1,000 employees took part in the protests last October.
His disappointing response to the controversy included him telling trans people, “To the transgender community, I am more than willing to give you an audience. But you will not summon me. I am not bending to anybody’s demands.”
Morril’s joke touches on the ongoing and toxic discussion around trans athletes around the world. In the US, Lia Thomas became a flashpoint after she became the first transgender woman in history to win the United States’ highest national college swimming title, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
She follows New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard, who was subjected to horrendous abuse and was the subject of discussions around trans-participation in sports ahead of and during the Tokyo Olympics.
Here, in the UK, cyclist Emily Bridges, who was recently awarded an Attitude Pride Award was at the centre of similar discussions after she was banned from competing in national and international events in March.
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Since then swimming’s world governing body, FINA, has announced that it would effectively ban some trans athletes from competing in categories that match their gender identity in a move described as “discriminatory”.
The Rugby Football Union is now facing legal action after choosing to “only permit players in the female category if the sex originally recorded at birth is female”, as reported by the BBC.
The Rugby Football League announced a similar ban in July.
The Attitude September/October issue is out now.
