Laughing at Transgender Comedy
Rae Drew and friends joke, rap and talk about gender during a special one night stand at GayFest
Posted by Natalie Hope McDonald on 8/9/2012 at 9:34AM
http://blogs.phillymag.com/gphilly/2012/08/09/laughing-transgender-comedy/Leading the performers is Rae Drew, a standup transgender comic in Philly who started an online campaign – 7000 People Project – in part, to help finance transgender surgery and to shed a little lights on Drew's own artistic express and search of self. The insightful twentysomething talks to us about why transgender comedy can be taboo, but why we all need to laugh at ourselves sometimes.
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There have been some controversies along the way when straight comics make jokes about the transgender experience. But what can transgender comics bring to the table?
I think transgender comics have an opportunity to bring a living, breathing human experience to the stage to combat the myriad of jokes that ignorant (in the true sense of the world) comedians – and the world at large – are constantly making at the expense of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Laughter is the best medicine and transgender comics truly have a chance to cure some of the nasty stigma and misunderstanding by way of funny jokes and stories about our lives. You have to have some sort of sense of humor to be trans, I think. At least every trans person I know has a funny story about being trans.
