Netflix is trying to have it "all ways" with Ricky Gervais' transphobic jokes and celebrating trans actor Elliot Page

https://variety.com/2022/tv/columns/ricky-gervais-netflix-trans-1235276166/

"In his new comedy special on Netflix, Ricky Gervais mocks 'the new women […] with beards and cocks'; he urges trans women to 'lose the cock' towards the end of a long tirade about trans people’s anatomy," says Daniel D'Addario. "It’d be easy to call this shocking. But after a moment of thought, there seems little startling at all about a comedian trying to score points off of a marginalized group of people, or a streaming service desperately trying to prove its bona fides as being all things to any potential viewership. Gervais’ schtick is as predictable as it gets — and serves as further proof to an audience that Netflix has approached with simpering, condescending appeals that the streamer is not on anyone’s side but its own. This special, entitled SuperNature, represents a collision between two malign forces." Gervais, as D'Addario points out, "has lived his life in public as an escalating series of bids for attention." Meanwhile, Netflix, in wake of the Dave Chappelle trans controversy, "is repositioning itself as a place where free speech means the streamer financing, distributing, and promoting hateful speech." Yet, Netflix has a "perverse way of celebrating difference" with the release next month of The Umbrella Academy's third season, which features Elliot Page's character coming out as trans, like the actor did in real life.