This show was one of a three-part deal negotiated with the streamer. “I feel like making fun of Netflix on Netflix is important. Part of their defence is they don’t want to editorialise comedians: I’ll push that until I find the line,” they say.
Netflix featuring a show like this “[is] more damage control than anything else ... The marginalised community, during times of economic and geopolitical unrest, become scapegoats.”
Jes Tom in Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda.Credit: Matt Crossick/Netflix
New York-based comic Jes Tom, who is part of the lineup, agrees. People tend to want to think of progress as a straight line, they say, but that’s not how it works: legalising same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination legislation, and access to medication is great, but there’s been a backlash.
Tom says they are “gleefully providing the trans, queer, Asian American, millennial twink perspective that everyone never knew they wanted”; their work often deals with identity. “But it’s also just about, this is me, and this is my life, this is what I’m going through right now, in the same way, that a straight white guy’s is also like that,” adding theirs is more fun because it’s just more interesting.
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The biggest issue on Tom’s mind currently is what’s happening in Gaza. “I and many of my peers in the queer community in New York are very, very vocal that there should be a ceasefire,” they say. “The ethos of queerness is freedom and justice for everybody in the world at every level.”
Is it more difficult to make funny material when times are tough? “I think the curse of being a comedian is that you can always make comedy,” Tom says. “Even like the worst thing happening in your life, you can always make comedy about that.”
Public discourse is very agitated and reactive, angry and surface level, according to Gadsby. “Comedy does have an ability to cut through that and create a little space to talk about things differently.”
Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda is on Netflix now.









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