The Netflix leaders are prepared for a protest of employees and a demonstration in Los Angeles on Wednesday, provoked by a recent comedy special that activists consider that it hurts the transgender community.
The Streaming platform has been involved in an intense and public controversy by The Closer, the special of the American comedian Dave Chappelle, in which it says that “gender is a fact” and accuses the LGBTQ community to be “very sensitive”
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“A list of questions” will be presented to the Netflix content head, Ted Sarandos, in the demonstration, which was relocated to a larger place due to the “great demand,” said one of his organizers, Ashlee Marie Preston, this Tuesday
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The organizers did not specify their demands before the demonstration, but Preston said that in the event they will ask for a content that prioritizes “the safety and dignity of all marginalized communities”.
The Transgender employee of Netflix Terra Field exhorted the platform to add a warning to The Closer, and that promotes more “comedians and talents queer and trans”.
“A place can not be a good workplace if someone has to betray their community,” Field wrote on a blog on Monday.
The Closer has been condemned by LGBTQ groups, citing studies that ensure that minorities stereotipage causes damage.
In a text aimed at the company staff, Sarandos wrote that “the content on the screen does not directly translate into aggression in the real world,” and emphasized the importance of defending “artistic freedom”.
Three employees, including Field, were supposedly suspended after interrupting a virtual meeting of executives to discuss the episode, but then they were reincorporated.
Another was fired by filtering internal data on the cost of the Special Chappelle special.
The protest and the demonstration gained support from television celebrities such as Jameela Jamil (The Good Place) and Jonathan Van Ness (Queer Eye), who recorded a video to express “love and support” to the movement.
The acclaimed Hannah Gadsby comedian, who has a special also in Netflix, rated the Streaming Giant last week as a “cult of the amoral algorithm”.
Chappelle has been charged with making fun of transgender in the past, but it is still very popular.
In The Closer, jokes about the LGBTQ community and jokes with threatening to kill a woman and hide her body on her car.
Chappelle, which is black, also argues that white gays “are minorities until they need to be white again”, and that LGBTQ communities have achieved progress in recent years that blacks do not have after decades of struggle.
