‘This is how you do it’: Stand-up comic applauded for properly ‘cracking jokes’ about LGBT+ community
‘Living proof that you can joke about marginalized groups without being hateful & without punching down,’ one person wrote
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Your support makes all the difference.Brooklyn-based comedian Eva Evans is being praised for making “hilarious” yet respectful jokes about the LGBT+ community during a recent show.
A clip from Evans’s set, posted on Instagram by comedy company Don’t Tell Comedy, has gone viral, with people applauding her for cracking tasteful jokes about trans people.
In the set, titled “Dating a Trans Man,” Evans begins by recalling her first date with a trans man.
“I didn’t know he was trans from his profile,” she admits. “But, you know, in person, I figured it out. But I didn’t give a f***. I’m too poor to have a phobia.
“As long as you identify as a man who’s payin’ this check at the end of this motherf***in meal. That’s all I care about,” Evans quips. “As long as your pronouns are Zelle and Cash App, I don’t give a f*** about what else you got goin’ on.”
She continues, assuring: “And it was a good date! You know what I’m sayin’? The conversation was good; the vibe was good. It went south when the bill came, and his card declined.
“I was like, ‘Oooh,’ and he was like, ‘Oh, don’t worry, one of my six roommates are gonna send me some money,’ I was like, ‘Where the f*** you live at? jail n****? What the f***?’ Six roommates?
“So, long story short, he pays the bill and says, ‘Eva, I had a great time. I would love to take you out again,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely the f*** not.’ He got offended. He’s like, ‘Oh I thought we had a great time. Don’t tell me your transphobic,’” she adds.
“I said, ‘No baby. I don’t date the poor!’ I’m poor, what the f*** we gonna do together? Wish upon a star n****? I need help!” she says.
“I said, ‘First of all that’s poor planning on your end! Why didn’t you transition into a rich man?” she concludes. “So your transactions can go through!”
The footage has been watched by millions on X with viewers commending Evans for her humor and wordplay.
“Yes, you can crack jokes about LGBTQ+ and this is how you do it,” one tweeted. “I literally laughed MORE than once.”
“As a broke trans man myself I still thought it was funny,” a second wrote, with a third agreeing: “This s*** was hilarious coming from a Trans man this is comedy.”
Another replied: “This is how you do it. People act like comedians can’t make jokes anymore when they just want to spread hate.”
In recent years, the argument of what’s appropriate to joke about has become a hot-button topic in the comedy world. Many big-name comedians, including Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, have faced a social reckoning over comedy specials that have been deemed “transphobic” and “ignorant.”
More recently, Jerry Seinfeld rallied against the apparent death of TV comedy, blaming “the extreme left [and] PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
“When you write a script, and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups, ‘Here’s our thought about this joke,’ well, that’s the end of your comedy,’” he told The New Yorker.
The Independent’s Adam White wholeheartedly disagrees with Seinfeld, writing: “For funny people of a certain age, raging against the phantom comedy-killer has become the equivalent of retirees buying a sports car – a reactionary inevitability, fuelled less by society and more by sheer panic over not being as good and/or as relevant as you once were.
“It exposes nothing but a deep lack of curiosity about the world, about new voices and new ideas.”