Sarah Silverman Video: A Painful but Teachable Moment

Sometimes attempts at humor can go horribly wrong.

Last week, as part of its pay equity campaign, the National Women’s Law Center released a video featuring Sarah Silverman. Part of the video relied on a painful and misinformed “joke” that Silverman would choose to have surgery to “become a dude” in order to get better pay. But gender-confirming surgery is difficult and no joking matter, and transgender people face terrible employment discrimination.

We think this video should not be used for this or any other campaign.

We understand the point that Silverman and the NWLC were trying to make about gender discrimination and the pay gap. But the point was made by making light of a deeply serious decision and an expensive and sometimes risky surgical procedure, and also by suggesting the false outcome that surgery would lead to higher pay. Not funny, not correct and not acceptable.

The creators of this video no doubt believed that it would be seen as satire and that everyone would get the joke. We believe that harm was not intended and that they now regret the harm that was caused. But some populations are so vulnerable and some matters so difficult that jokes about those communities by those outside of it should simply not be made. There is a 41% attempted suicide rate in the transgender population. Transgender workers report unemployment at twice the rate of the population as a whole (14% vs. 7% at the time the workers were surveyed). Transgender workers are also nearly four times more likely than the population as a whole to have a household income under $10,000[1].

The content of the video with respect to the surgery and the foolishness about rubber penises is also painfully misleading. Since gender-confirming surgery is already so badly misunderstood with harmful consequences, adding misinformation in the name of comedy is a very bad idea.

We respect the National Women’s Law Center’s long-standing work for women’s equality. We have worked together with NWLC on access to health care, employment rights and other civil rights matters, and they have fought for LGBT rights in all these areas. We will continue to be part of the fight for pay equity – for all women, including lesbian, gender non-conforming and transgender women. We are partners – and sometimes partners disagree.

We met with our colleagues at the NWLC yesterday and had an honest, productive discussion. We called on them to do all they can to take the video down and to redouble their work with us and others to address stereotypes and employment discrimination against transgender people. We are optimistic that we will make progress together. This is the way forward.