In recent years, anti-trans rhetoric has been at the forefront of politics. Throughout the course of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, for example, Republicans spent nearly US$215 million on network TV ads targeting trans people — and won.
In comedy, figures like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais have sparked controversy for transphobic material, which continues to be platformed by Netflix. In Toronto, trans comics are also feeling the impact of this marginalization.
Bee Bertrand has been performing comedy in Toronto since 2017 and came out publicly as a transgender man in 2021. “I would never shy away from my transness and I want to be trans,” Bertrand says, “but sometimes it feels like I want to be a comic and not a ‘trans comic.’”
For a lot of transgender comics, our identity is seen as an elephant in the room to be addressed. Several comics I spoke to for this article feel an obligation to comment on being trans before anything else onstage, because people otherwise get hung up on it.
“Anytime I go onstage, I have to acknowledge [my identity] upfront and then move on,” says a former comic who we’ll call Jane. “It became this weird thing in my head. It became a weird complex about how I feel about my own transness.”
This affected how Jane was treated in comedy circles. “You’re never quite sure if your fellow comedians actually like and respect you, or if they just want you as a token so they can claim to have diverse lineups,” Jane says.
Ava Val is a comedian whose material touches on coming out as a trans woman. As a touring headliner, she’s acutely aware of how societal ignorance around trans people affects her comedy. “I wish people would understand just how much math and how much mental flexibility and adaptation I have to do over the course of a set to acclimate audiences,” Val says. “Every audience, I’m kind of figuring out what their comfort levels with trans people are.”
Jane agrees. “I would find myself doing shows, and then having to be the avatar for everyone else’s opinions on transness after the show.”
Val has seen how transphobic jokes can even find their way into seemingly progressive circles. “It is so annoying how many comics have an ‘I identify as’ joke.” This joke format traces back to the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” meme from 2014, intended to mock trans and queer identities.
“What’s equally frustrating about that: these jokes work! They always get a big laugh from my experience … It reminds me everywhere I go that we are so politicized and ‘trendy’ right now as a topic.”
Trans comedian Chanty Marostica was once a figurehead of queer Toronto comedy spaces with his comedy showcase Queer & Present Danger. In 2019, allegations of abuse surfaced against Marostica on Toronto Stand-Up Community, or TSUC, a now-defunct Facebook group. Marostica responded with a statement apologizing for his “narcissistic abuse of power,” promising to step away from Toronto comedy entirely.
That “gave the worst kinds of comics license to be openly transphobic,” Val says. “Whenever a trans person gets outed for
any wrongdoing, for something that they seriously did wrong, people will attack the thing, but it also invites them to attack their transness.”
A divide between cishet (cisgender heterosexual) comics and queer comics only heightened animosity in the TSUC group. “I think [the group] just invited people to be as transphobic as they wanted and get away with it” because of the allegations against Marostica, Val says.
Comedy clubs have been making efforts to create more inclusive environments for queer comics. Danton Lamar, owner of Toronto- based comedy club Comedy Lab in the Annex, says threats have been lobbed against him for not giving the stage to offensive comedians. “We run the only Black and queer-owned comedy club in all of Canada,” Lamar says. “We are at the forefront of battling all the issues.”
Lamar says when they first opened, “we butted heads with a lot of people on that other side of the scene, who wanted to come in and be able to say whatever they wanted to say, and it’s like, ‘Nah, I don’t even have to let you on my stage.’”
Lamar is glad his decisions anger the right people. “We started having Black-focused shows and then we started doing [a trans, non-binary, and woman-focused] mic monthly, and then that started getting backlash.” Critics would ask why this event mattered. Lamar’s response: “Now it’s weekly.”
While Val can be frustrated with explaining her identity, she takes pride knowing many have learned from her, something people often tell her after shows. “It transcends just being funny into doing something that just helps our community. I don’t want to become a Chanty, I don’t want to develop any sort of martyrdom complex, but I can’t help but feel like my comedy means something more when somebody comes up to me and says something like that.”
“I am on a bit of a crusade, in terms of helping our trans PR,” Val says. “One comedy show at a time.”
This article appeared in the 2024 Dec - 2025 Jan issue.