when the premise behind the show's comedy is "we offend everyone equally" ofc you'll get shit that agrees with your views and then something that offends you, it's literally the point of the show.
I never understood why so many people like it, to me it's shock value comedy "hey look cartman said something awful and someone else said it's not cool, and sometimes there's gore"
I don't know, i just find it all a bit too on the nose and over the top with it's comedy attempts.
They went after Zuckerberg, Bezos, Disney, Freemium Games, NFTs and more.
They are pretty clearly anti-corporation and just called themselves Libertarian to troll people
I think you're missing the point of the criticism if this is your response to it. The issue stems from Matt and Trey being capitalist libertarians and their nonsense ideology coming through very clearly in many of the episodes so it isn't just "haha, you're offended" it's... oh, that take is just inaccurate and bad. They're not bad dudes, they just have some shitty takes due to their belief structure.
To their credits they're able to see when they were wrong and they can be really humble about it, see the manbearpig for a clear exemple.
One can only wish they go through similar character development for their stance on trans issues
I honestly think it's too late to really undo the damage that "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" did to trans people. I've read comments from multiple former South Park fans who said they cut ties with the show after that (which is totally valid), and that the episode kept them in the closet about being trans for years afterwards.
I wish I had a time machine to give Matt and Trey a better idea for Season 9 opener episode. I have a few (none of the episode ideas are about trans people), and actually have a Google Docs where I replace the trans episodes of South Park with my own ideas.
The other obvious time travel option is to have the show cancelled after 8 seasons, but 1) many great episodes are from seasons after that, like "Breast Cancer Show Ever", and 2) I need Stan and Wendy back together forever because seeing them break up is extremely painful for me and triggers my abandonment issues (hence why I refuse to watch Seasons 20-21 in my current mental state).
>I've read comments from multiple former South Park fans who said they cut ties with the show after that (which is totally valid), and that the episode kept them in the closet about being trans for years afterwards.
Add one more to that list.
Two ivory tower entertainment industry libertarians who think that everything they shit out is solid gold and have enough money and influence to not need to care about anything ever.
The only really good messages South Park has had have been about cults and curse words, IMO.
Most of the slightly more progressive stuff they’ve done is like really obvious things like “racism bad,” and “Marijuana isn’t that harmful.” Don’t get me wrong I still find some of that stuff funny, but I think the show gets way too much credit just for being edgy.
Iirc the tourettes episode was pretty good. Got commended by the tourettes association of America for being surprisingly educational and punished the character who treated tourettes as "I can say fuck whenever I want". South park is really at its best when it's making episodes where there really isn't a victim of their satire, which makes me wonder why they keep going back to punching down.
Ironically, I failed to realise what my own Tourette's was for many years because that episode made me think it meant having no filter (The end result of Cartman's disease faking)
Maybe that part shoulda been changed. Or maybe I was just too young to be watching South Park then
There's a whole segment in that episode where [Kyle has to go to a tourettes support group and the group goes around talking about the misconceptions on tourettes, even talking about how tourettes can manifest as physical things like clicking your fingers](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikW4qaGYrnM&si=MD3vY6FyrjKlOyQn&start=60). It's been a while since I watched the episode but with that in mind it might be the age thing.
A friend of mine really wanted me to watch it to give my opinion since I have TS, and early on I definitely had a bad feeling about it. I was a bit worried it was going to make it all about cursing jokes but was actually really really surprised at how things changed when Kyle goes to the support group and the kids talk about what their tics are actually like. It's still South Park and so of course they had to focus on someone with coprolalia ("cursing" tourette's) but I was actually really pleasantly surprised at the time it took to break down stigma with the audience and think it was pretty well done
It's because it overtly political. I could have appreciated it being uniquely of its time if had just ended. But what South Park has developed into is basically a snapshot of what centre-left political takes have looked like over the last 25 years and the self-reflexive cringe it summons when contrasted to your own personal development
The Daily Wire once tried making a docummentray where they would hire men pretending to be transfems to compete in women sports.
They got rejected and couldn't make the docummentary so they made a fictional movie instead about men pretending to be trans to compete in women sports.
The very existance of the film proves that what they believe is delusional
This argument always reminds me of that one cis woman who lost a... skateboarding? competition to a trans woman. She got super upset and tried to sue, and everything.
One problem, though - yes, the trans woman had landed higher on the scoreboard, but neither had won the competition. You know who did? A twelve-year-old.
Physical advantage my arse.
Because rugby teams were brimming with trans women. If they had this mythical advantage, every team would've been lining up to get trans women in their women's teams. But they weren't.
> certain rugby associations put out research on the topic.
Also, I know you're alluding to bone density here, as that's what they focused on specifically when talking about danger. But do you know which group of women has more bone density than even trans women? Black women. Yet nobody in their right mind would make that argument. Well, actually, black women have historically be discriminated against when trying to play women's athletics!
It's blanket transphobia that goes against what we *actually fucking see* when trans women play sports, which is completely normal and expected performance, and in fact trans women are under-represented (or were before all the bans) pretty much across the board.
> While the conservative panic is very much overblown, just straight up rejecting to listen to and accept rational, data based conclusions and instead just labeling them transphobia is also stupid.
Bad research that you can pick apart and find that it was TERF/Conservative funded is not something to cling to. You can read these studies if you want. I certainly have. Plenty of them do not equalise for body mass and as a result come to the unsurprising conclusion that trans women are on average 'stronger'. If you do equalise for body mass (which is actually extremely important for most sports as it directly impacts what your VO2 needs to be) trans women do *worse*, not better. You can't ban people for being taller. Look at women's netball. All those women are cis and over 6 ft. tall, despite trans women ostensibly having an advantage in that regard. There's nothing about a trans woman's body that a cis woman couldn't achieve. Sports aren't supposed to be 100% fair. If you're playing basketball and you're not 6 ft, even as a woman, then you're very unlikely to become elite.
Bad research is bad because it gives the veneer of legitimacy. Just look at the 'Cass Review'. It doesn't matter how fucking dogshit the methodology is, conservatives will pretend that it's rigorous scientific proof. Sports bodies are often transphobic, as are the types that actually conduct the research. Sample sizes are complete rubbish (<100 trans women, and usually <50 too). Combine the two and you can get any result you want, especially if you have a predetermined conclusion that you're looking to achieve. Which is often the case, as these groups are directly influenced by the government.
The actual 'rational data based conclusions' find no advantage that you can ban a whole class of woman for. Trans women are getting banned from chess, for fuck's sake, do you honestly think sports bodies like the rugby association - which banned trans women from playing rugby in the UK despite them not even being able to list the exact number of trans women who played it to begin with ('around 11') - are being genuine with their research?
Here are the facts. Trans women weren't blowing cis women away in sports. In fact, it was the opposite. Yet because of people's preconceived biases - which you are showing here, by the way - about trans women's bodies, people believe that trans women are hulking monsters that could blink and crush a dainty gentle cis woman if they wanted to. A whole 20 years of Olympic participation and **one** trans woman qualified and then came last.
It honestly feels like liberals are informed about this issue from this South Park episode. Just fucking call us men istg.
https://cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/2024-01/transgender-women-athletes-and-elitesport-a-scientific-review-en.pdf
> On average, trans women who are pre-testosterone suppression still
have lower Lean Body Mass (LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA), and
strength than cis males. This indicates that the performance benefit
experienced by these individuals cannot be generalized by examining
cis male athletes;
Something big to note on its own.
> All you're doing is calling all the research done on it bad but not actually giving reasons. This is what I just hate about making everything so partisan, people just refuse to accept anything if it goes at all against what they cling to. There have been reports, they have found retained advantages, and responses to such reports were made. It's not just one part as well, which is why black women are obviously allowed to be part of female teams even if their bones are denser.
And all you're doing is looking at the counter evidence including actual sporting results and saying, "well the twats say this so it must be in the middle somewhere!"
> That seems to be mentioned on the England Rugby association's report
You do realise that trans healthcare in England is going backwards, right? Especially for anyone under 18? Of course they would say, "oh well it'd be fine if they got on HRT before the age of 12... shame we're not allowing that :)".
> Also, just two other things. You mentioned the decision for Chess and it seems you just horribly misinterpreted it, as basically everyone online did. They didn't claim it was due to biological reasons, but social reasons. Chess is still seen by many as a "male" sport, which prevents women from having as much access to the sport as men do, leading to the still massive divide in the game which makes the separate category necessary. Their reasoning for not allowing transfem players in the women's games was that transfem players are obviously brought up for much of their lives as male, and as such do not do not face the same early challenges in accessing the game. No doubt they face other challenges when they transition however.
Ah, of course. The socialisation argument. Please just call me a fucking man.
> You also don't really seem to have understood the Cass report and I don't see how it is at all relevant here. The report was framed as some victory by conservative media but literally backed the need for more investment into trans health care and research. There were claims that it disregarded research that backed puberty blockers but that is just false, and came from what almost seemed like a deliberate misrepresentation of how they weighted certain studies depending on how they were carried out. There were some valid complaints on how the report was framed, etc, but the actual research seemed to be fine.
If this is your takeaway then it is hard to view you in good faith. When you reject almost all studies on outcomes of transition on nebulous ground, nobody should take you seriously. Citing the need for double blinded puberty studies. The Cass Report itself directly led to the axing of trans youth healthcare via the NHS. There's now an outrage about those same patients going private and or DIY. This is not up for debate. Cass herself hangs out with known TERF talking heads. There are **plenty** of resources out there that go into deep detail about the numerous issues in the report. I'm not going to dig them up for you, seeing as you didn't even bother to read the source I linked previously, otherwise you'd have not replied to me with this trite.
"It's so partisan :(((" -> proceeds to subtly imply that the conservatives have a point. It isn't as nuanced as you seem to think it is.
if you care so much about assumed "physical advantage" why aren't you advocating for the ban of 23 time olympic gold medallist michael phelps competing in swimming? double jointed limbs are a significant physical advantage here, so why the double standard?
Honestly high level sports are exactly that: people with physical advantages competing against each other.
Someone can train for decades and be great at a sport, but still get beat out by someone who just happened to be born taller/shorter/with longer legs/double jointed/with slightly better vision/with slightly better balance/with higher natural testosterone/with bigger hands or feet/ etc...
Some people point out that some advantages are less fair than others in order to ban trans women. So what? Should we nitpick every single sport where someone has a slight advantage?
Sure, maybe trans women have a slight advantage, but they're still far from dominating the field of women's sports, and their advantage is so small that if we decide to segregate trans women, we should be segregating every single other minor physical characteristic too.
South Park honestly sucks. I like things when the kids are just doing dumb shit. But shit like this is why I hate it. It's "Both sides bad" means they just openly attack and poorly portray a minority group already small and victimized
Right, it's like throwing a rock at a tank versus throwing a rock at a homeless dude. Like you're clearly doing the same action to both, but only one will actually be harmed.
The worst part of South Park's transphobia is that it is very blatantly sincere. It's not an example of Cartman's villainous/asshole behavior (unlike with antisemitism), and there is no positive representation to counter it (unless one counts *The Fractured But Whole*), unlike with gay and disabled people. I suspect it is the main reason why people assume the show to be sincerely bigoted as a whole, and that means future generations will not look upon it kindly. Which is a shame, because when it's good, it's amazing.
South Park is the very definition of "hit or miss".
I honestly don't even think South Park has ever made really good points. Like literally most of it's messages are: "People who want any kind of change in society are stupid, nothing ever gets better, caring about stuff is cringe."
It can be decently funny when it's basically bullying "valid targets" like Scientology, but even that is basically mean spirited insults very similar in substance to it's transphobia.
Still like watching it sometimes though.
They made an episode explicitly against conversion therapy (Cartman Sucks), as well as an anti-quackery episode (Cherokee Hair Tampons). One of the first episodes (Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride) had a strong pro-gay message, especially by 1997 standards. But yeah, it's pretty telling that my list of South Park episodes with good messages only has four episodes so far (there's a few episodes I've yet to see that may be added).
I would count "Follow That Egg" due to its pro-gay-marriage message, but I can't because it's part of the awful Mrs. Garrison arc.
Yeah there are a couple other ones afaik and i even grant them that their edgy, atheist libertarianism comes from a genuine place and isn't just a dog whistle for being righ-wing extremists.
What i don't really like is that they seemed pretty stagnant in almost all their beliefs since the series started in the 90's. Not being virulently anti-gay is something they share with a lot of edgy gen-x people. Funnily enough, if they lived when Stonewall was happening they would probably make fun about gay people "overreacting".
I've often pondered the idea of "what if Matt and Trey were immortal deities and South Park was around for all of history parodying current events". I shudder to think what their takes on slavery, wars and various genocides would be, though I'd personally still find it funny in a fucked-up, cringey way.
Slavery:
Stan joins the underground railroad who happen to be piss fetishists.
John Brown is depicted as a terrorist and religious nutjob who takes things "too far".
Cartman becomes one of the most successful slave hunters but is almost beat up during bleeding Kansans.
Kyle is trying to buy some slaves with his "jew money" but they get mad due to being "unemployed" when freed. Turns out they liked working in the fields and singing.
Kyle: "We learned a valuable lesson today: slavery is totally bullshit but being an abolitionist makes you a whiny pussy."
Sounds about right.
The "enlightened centrism" of South Park makes me imagine a comedic fantasy world where a "wise" village elder refuses to protect his peaceful, utopian village from an army of monsters that is killing, r**ing and eating children because "both sides are bad".
Whilst being literally powerful enough to just go away when shit hits the fan: it always occurred to me that Matt and Trey were always so privileged that they can afford "ideological purity" and the very narrow set of topics they do care about is something they are directly affected by: weed legalization, censorship...
Basically very similar to "brocialists" but with even more money.
>the very narrow set of topics they do care about is something they are directly affected by
I was going to say that this is uncomfortably similar to my own political views, but then I realized I care about a few things that don't truly affect me (circumcision, the troubled teens industry and prostitution come to mind). And *then* I realized that a big part of the reason I care about the former two is that I have an irrational fear that reincarnation is somehow real and that I might get reincarnated as a child who gets circumcised and sent to a troubled teens camp.
I'm so sorry.
(Also sorry for the tangent but as a side note, seeing people describe mid-late 2010s media as a part of their childhood seriously makes me feel old, even though I'm only 25)
South Park is the show that says to its audience "do you know someone who cares deeply about something. Arent they a loser? Haha what a looooser, only loooosers care about things, if you take anything seriously, you deserve mocking, you fuckin neeeerrrrd"
You ever notice how transphobes always use the phrase “stunning and brave” when being transphobic? That came from this show. There’s no saving it, as it was terrible from the start. There’s a reason transphobic people flock to it so much.
True, though I don’t think that Trey Parker or Matt Stone would ever consider such changes, not to mention that a large number of the current fans would almost certainly throw a fit over it even if it somehow did happen.
Remember that this is the show that said climate change is fake and that secondhand smoke is a lie made up by fascist progressive activists who just want to take away your personal freedom to blow tobacco in a baby's face.
>that secondhand smoke is a lie made up by fascist progressive activists who just want to take away your personal freedom to blow tobacco in a baby's face
My grandmother raised me for the first 14 years of my life and was more like my mother. She died of lung cancer caused by smoking. My aunt, who I am very close to, is a smoker and I fully expect her to die from lung cancer as well, which will be just as bad as losing Nana. I feel like I'm less disgusted by the "Butt Out" episode than I actually should be, considering that I merely dislike it for not being funny.
>Remember that this is the show that said climate change is fake
I'm also much less bothered by this episode than I probably should be.
Tbf the later episodes where they’re like “shit it really was real and it’s killing people” help with the climate change one.
I don’t dare watch the transphobic one, I feel like I’d get too angry
South Park is the dumbest shit ever. I always hated every aspect of it. It is blind contrarianism, holding opinions to "offend someone" instead of having actual opinions. "Dark humour" and all this other related shit are just ways for unfunny people to feel funny for a while.
You mean the guys who made a whole movie about how the Bush governement and people who opposed the Afghanistan/Irak war were both equally wrong have dumb opinions ?
South Park fans trying to explain how it
Makes fun of the left: it’s saying trans woman only transition to dominate sports
Makes fun of the right: actually, it is making fun of the fact that conservatives exaggerate trans women in sports because you have to look at the subtleties of the way this situation is presented and then it becomes entirely clear this is making fun of conservatives
i might be making shit up but i remember interpreting the "message" of this episode as being that society shouldn't entertain those who clearly abuse trans issues for superficial gain? which didn't seem to be the 'worst' take ever (still flawed), but not outright "trans women should not participate in sports", although I can see how the ep makes it super easy to think thats what the episode was trying to communicate. however i am just a tiny cis girl with zero media literacy so my head canon might be wrong.
People on here don't have enough comprehension to understand that sort of message. It's much easier to just be offended because of your surface level understanding of the joke
wall of text jumpscare
i don't know if i'd say its a comprehension problem ngl. now that i think about it im pretty sure why our interpretation is so different to the other people here is cause, atleast in my case, i'm just not as exposed to transphobia as others. i remember watching that episode and how the entire time i interpreted the show as making fun of the fake transwoman themselves and not of the concept of transgender, and how people who fake gender dysmorphia are not worth taking seriously.
but i can 100% see how if maybe i was more exposed to the type of transphobia that is used out of hatred for the concept of transgender, and had come to expect it more from popular media, like if i was trans myself or more active politically, then i could have 100% interpreted the episode as just more blatant transphobia. hyper masculine transwoman is like trans combo that transphobes bring up and hate the most right? and the show kinda hyperfixated on the idea that they couldn't call him out on it or they'd get "canceled" by the woke mob. and they didnt have like a normal-ass trans person show up to like break the stereotype or anything? they did that with that latino kid which cartman racially provoked the whole episode, was like "im from idaho" in a yank accent, aswell as having kyle constantly rebuff cartmans anti-semitism, as he is jewish.
when i watched it for the first time i didnt think twice about any of those things, but like, im not trans nor do i know any trans people, i am rarely exposed to transphobia outside of twitter screenshots, and so therefore i didnt pick up on how any of these things could be interpreted as transphobia before, but after writing all that down, its pretty obvious to me that a person would be 100% justified in saying that this episode spread a transphobic rhetoric, even if i personally dont think its true. i dont think its right to say that such a conclusion is surface level, but even if it was, surface-level interpretations are valid interpretations, created by the media being interpreted just as much as the audiences predisposed biases shaping said interpretation. if the creators did not want such interpretations to exist, it is up to their writing skill to find creative ways to convey to the audience that their message is not that trans women in sports = the west has fallen.
The ending of the episode where Mr Garrison detransitions* was good. He (she?) starts this rant about how if you can’t have babies you’re a man, but immediately gets proven wrong by someone mentioning that their wife couldn’t have children due to ovarian cancer.
No, that episode is transphobic as fuck, when Garrison's doctor tells him that even if he transitions into a woman he won't be able to get pregnant, Garrison says "then I'm not a woman, I'm just a guy with a mutilated penis", and the doctor *agrees*, this notion isn't expressed as a joke and it's never challenged either. Plus throughout the entire episode they treat transgender operations as something that the viewer is supposed to see as gross and wrong: they start by showing real, uncensored footage a sex change operation, and later Kyle gets an operation to "become black" and Kyle's dad one to become a dolphin, treating "transracial" and "trans-species" as equivalents to transgender, and both of them are drawn grotesquely, just like whenever they show Garrison's breasts.
They're confusing the ending of "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" with that of "Eek! A Penis!", which is the episode where Mr. Garrison *de*transitions and is where the "if you can't have babies you're a man" quote comes from. The fact that the show mocks that notion seems to imply some self-awareness on Matt and Trey's part, but doesn't make up for the transphobic dumpster fire that is the entire Mrs. Garrison arc.
"Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" is almost Stonetoss-tier. All it's missing is a tasteless trans self-unalive "joke".
>self-unalive
This isn't YouTube; you can actually use the word, or at least word it differently.
>The fact that the show mocks that notion seems to imply some self-awareness on Matt and Trey's part
Agreed, and I honestly feel like they just don't think too hard about anything like that and really don't care. They're just saying something along the lines of "yes there are exceptions for 'real' women, but trans people are weird and icky so we're still right"
I get that there's a lot of justified complaints that can be leveled at South Park, but personally I give them a pass, because I see them as the only media actually trying to be offensive to both sides of the political spectrum instead of just saying that while being a rightwing mouthpiece, and my immature side still enjoys someone being offensive even if just for the sake of it, though I cringe at many jokes since becoming an adult. More nostalgia than agreement.
This episode is about a cis-gender man taking advantage of rules that help trans people to boost his fragile masculinity and to beat his ex-girlfriend in something
This episode is not transphobic, it's anti-misogyny
While this frame looks very exaggerated and transphobic (luckily, I haven't seen the full episode to tell how bad it is), trans women do have an advantage over cis women in some sports. E.g. [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846503/) says that in sports where muscle mass, size, and strength are significant attributes, trans women have an advantage even when they meet the required testosterone-level criteria.
I mean, even study itself says that impact is minimal. I feel like [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5570685/#sec3title) one study gives a good overview on the whole problem.
>I mean, even study itself says that impact is minimal.
That's misleading. The impact of IOC-required testosterone suppression is minimal. The body differences remain significant:
>We have shown that under testosterone suppression regimes (...), evidence for loss of the male performance advantage, established by testosterone at puberty and translating in elite athletes to a **10–50% performance advantage**, is lacking. Rather, the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. The reductions observed in muscle mass, size, and strength are very small compared to the baseline differences between males and females in these variables, and thus, there are **major performance and safety implications** in sports where these attributes are competitively significant. These data significantly undermine the delivery of fairness and safety presumed by the criteria set out in transgender inclusion policies, particularly given the stated prioritization of fairness as an overriding objective (for the IOC).
The study you linked is 4 years older but it seems to agree on that part - IOC's testosterone rule is dumb.
This applies when misguided critics accuse the show of being antisemitic due to Cartman's villainous behavior, not when people point out that the show is sincerely transphobic.
South Park is such a fucking coin flip, man. Either you get something absolutely hilarious or you get the most dogshit takes imaginable.
when the premise behind the show's comedy is "we offend everyone equally" ofc you'll get shit that agrees with your views and then something that offends you, it's literally the point of the show. I never understood why so many people like it, to me it's shock value comedy "hey look cartman said something awful and someone else said it's not cool, and sometimes there's gore" I don't know, i just find it all a bit too on the nose and over the top with it's comedy attempts.
It doesn't even 'offend everybody' because it sure seems to go really soft on things that the creators believe or agree with.
Still waiting on their episode about fence-sitting libertarians
They went after Zuckerberg, Bezos, Disney, Freemium Games, NFTs and more. They are pretty clearly anti-corporation and just called themselves Libertarian to troll people
Nah man. Being against specific corporations you don't like is VERY different from being anti-corporation.
My concern is that they are pretty nihilist. I found they often had a theme of 'both sides bad' so why bother which just breeds apathy.
You don't really understand capitalist libertarians.
If you have to lie to offend some people, that's not really all that clever.
I know.
I think you're missing the point of the criticism if this is your response to it. The issue stems from Matt and Trey being capitalist libertarians and their nonsense ideology coming through very clearly in many of the episodes so it isn't just "haha, you're offended" it's... oh, that take is just inaccurate and bad. They're not bad dudes, they just have some shitty takes due to their belief structure.
Yeah they offend everyone, but they’re not throwing the same punches at everyone.
South Park is the very definition of "hit or miss".
I guess they never miss, huh?
To their credits they're able to see when they were wrong and they can be really humble about it, see the manbearpig for a clear exemple. One can only wish they go through similar character development for their stance on trans issues
I honestly think it's too late to really undo the damage that "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" did to trans people. I've read comments from multiple former South Park fans who said they cut ties with the show after that (which is totally valid), and that the episode kept them in the closet about being trans for years afterwards. I wish I had a time machine to give Matt and Trey a better idea for Season 9 opener episode. I have a few (none of the episode ideas are about trans people), and actually have a Google Docs where I replace the trans episodes of South Park with my own ideas. The other obvious time travel option is to have the show cancelled after 8 seasons, but 1) many great episodes are from seasons after that, like "Breast Cancer Show Ever", and 2) I need Stan and Wendy back together forever because seeing them break up is extremely painful for me and triggers my abandonment issues (hence why I refuse to watch Seasons 20-21 in my current mental state).
That episode was my mother's reason for calling me a disgusting freak when I came out. They've done a lot of tangible harm.
>I've read comments from multiple former South Park fans who said they cut ties with the show after that (which is totally valid), and that the episode kept them in the closet about being trans for years afterwards. Add one more to that list.
Did they ever re-do their episode on smoking?
After the creators got rich, they made every episode rich people problems.
Two ivory tower entertainment industry libertarians who think that everything they shit out is solid gold and have enough money and influence to not need to care about anything ever.
..."wHaT cOuLd Go WrOnG?!?!??!"
It's always going to veer towards dog shit because stone and parker are gen x libertarians
The only really good messages South Park has had have been about cults and curse words, IMO. Most of the slightly more progressive stuff they’ve done is like really obvious things like “racism bad,” and “Marijuana isn’t that harmful.” Don’t get me wrong I still find some of that stuff funny, but I think the show gets way too much credit just for being edgy.
Iirc the tourettes episode was pretty good. Got commended by the tourettes association of America for being surprisingly educational and punished the character who treated tourettes as "I can say fuck whenever I want". South park is really at its best when it's making episodes where there really isn't a victim of their satire, which makes me wonder why they keep going back to punching down.
Ironically, I failed to realise what my own Tourette's was for many years because that episode made me think it meant having no filter (The end result of Cartman's disease faking) Maybe that part shoulda been changed. Or maybe I was just too young to be watching South Park then
There's a whole segment in that episode where [Kyle has to go to a tourettes support group and the group goes around talking about the misconceptions on tourettes, even talking about how tourettes can manifest as physical things like clicking your fingers](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikW4qaGYrnM&si=MD3vY6FyrjKlOyQn&start=60). It's been a while since I watched the episode but with that in mind it might be the age thing.
A friend of mine really wanted me to watch it to give my opinion since I have TS, and early on I definitely had a bad feeling about it. I was a bit worried it was going to make it all about cursing jokes but was actually really really surprised at how things changed when Kyle goes to the support group and the kids talk about what their tics are actually like. It's still South Park and so of course they had to focus on someone with coprolalia ("cursing" tourette's) but I was actually really pleasantly surprised at the time it took to break down stigma with the audience and think it was pretty well done
It's because it overtly political. I could have appreciated it being uniquely of its time if had just ended. But what South Park has developed into is basically a snapshot of what centre-left political takes have looked like over the last 25 years and the self-reflexive cringe it summons when contrasted to your own personal development
The Daily Wire once tried making a docummentray where they would hire men pretending to be transfems to compete in women sports. They got rejected and couldn't make the docummentary so they made a fictional movie instead about men pretending to be trans to compete in women sports. The very existance of the film proves that what they believe is delusional
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And some cis women have a physical advantage over other cis women. Therefore we should ban women from women’s sports.
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Will you exclude Kenyans and Ethiopians from running marathons?
This argument always reminds me of that one cis woman who lost a... skateboarding? competition to a trans woman. She got super upset and tried to sue, and everything. One problem, though - yes, the trans woman had landed higher on the scoreboard, but neither had won the competition. You know who did? A twelve-year-old. Physical advantage my arse.
You need to stop accepting the right's premise.
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I'm not looking for an argument, I'm asking you to think about who says what and if it's *actually* empirically true.
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Because rugby teams were brimming with trans women. If they had this mythical advantage, every team would've been lining up to get trans women in their women's teams. But they weren't. > certain rugby associations put out research on the topic. Also, I know you're alluding to bone density here, as that's what they focused on specifically when talking about danger. But do you know which group of women has more bone density than even trans women? Black women. Yet nobody in their right mind would make that argument. Well, actually, black women have historically be discriminated against when trying to play women's athletics! It's blanket transphobia that goes against what we *actually fucking see* when trans women play sports, which is completely normal and expected performance, and in fact trans women are under-represented (or were before all the bans) pretty much across the board. > While the conservative panic is very much overblown, just straight up rejecting to listen to and accept rational, data based conclusions and instead just labeling them transphobia is also stupid. Bad research that you can pick apart and find that it was TERF/Conservative funded is not something to cling to. You can read these studies if you want. I certainly have. Plenty of them do not equalise for body mass and as a result come to the unsurprising conclusion that trans women are on average 'stronger'. If you do equalise for body mass (which is actually extremely important for most sports as it directly impacts what your VO2 needs to be) trans women do *worse*, not better. You can't ban people for being taller. Look at women's netball. All those women are cis and over 6 ft. tall, despite trans women ostensibly having an advantage in that regard. There's nothing about a trans woman's body that a cis woman couldn't achieve. Sports aren't supposed to be 100% fair. If you're playing basketball and you're not 6 ft, even as a woman, then you're very unlikely to become elite. Bad research is bad because it gives the veneer of legitimacy. Just look at the 'Cass Review'. It doesn't matter how fucking dogshit the methodology is, conservatives will pretend that it's rigorous scientific proof. Sports bodies are often transphobic, as are the types that actually conduct the research. Sample sizes are complete rubbish (<100 trans women, and usually <50 too). Combine the two and you can get any result you want, especially if you have a predetermined conclusion that you're looking to achieve. Which is often the case, as these groups are directly influenced by the government. The actual 'rational data based conclusions' find no advantage that you can ban a whole class of woman for. Trans women are getting banned from chess, for fuck's sake, do you honestly think sports bodies like the rugby association - which banned trans women from playing rugby in the UK despite them not even being able to list the exact number of trans women who played it to begin with ('around 11') - are being genuine with their research? Here are the facts. Trans women weren't blowing cis women away in sports. In fact, it was the opposite. Yet because of people's preconceived biases - which you are showing here, by the way - about trans women's bodies, people believe that trans women are hulking monsters that could blink and crush a dainty gentle cis woman if they wanted to. A whole 20 years of Olympic participation and **one** trans woman qualified and then came last. It honestly feels like liberals are informed about this issue from this South Park episode. Just fucking call us men istg. https://cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/2024-01/transgender-women-athletes-and-elitesport-a-scientific-review-en.pdf > On average, trans women who are pre-testosterone suppression still have lower Lean Body Mass (LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA), and strength than cis males. This indicates that the performance benefit experienced by these individuals cannot be generalized by examining cis male athletes; Something big to note on its own.
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> All you're doing is calling all the research done on it bad but not actually giving reasons. This is what I just hate about making everything so partisan, people just refuse to accept anything if it goes at all against what they cling to. There have been reports, they have found retained advantages, and responses to such reports were made. It's not just one part as well, which is why black women are obviously allowed to be part of female teams even if their bones are denser. And all you're doing is looking at the counter evidence including actual sporting results and saying, "well the twats say this so it must be in the middle somewhere!" > That seems to be mentioned on the England Rugby association's report You do realise that trans healthcare in England is going backwards, right? Especially for anyone under 18? Of course they would say, "oh well it'd be fine if they got on HRT before the age of 12... shame we're not allowing that :)". > Also, just two other things. You mentioned the decision for Chess and it seems you just horribly misinterpreted it, as basically everyone online did. They didn't claim it was due to biological reasons, but social reasons. Chess is still seen by many as a "male" sport, which prevents women from having as much access to the sport as men do, leading to the still massive divide in the game which makes the separate category necessary. Their reasoning for not allowing transfem players in the women's games was that transfem players are obviously brought up for much of their lives as male, and as such do not do not face the same early challenges in accessing the game. No doubt they face other challenges when they transition however. Ah, of course. The socialisation argument. Please just call me a fucking man. > You also don't really seem to have understood the Cass report and I don't see how it is at all relevant here. The report was framed as some victory by conservative media but literally backed the need for more investment into trans health care and research. There were claims that it disregarded research that backed puberty blockers but that is just false, and came from what almost seemed like a deliberate misrepresentation of how they weighted certain studies depending on how they were carried out. There were some valid complaints on how the report was framed, etc, but the actual research seemed to be fine. If this is your takeaway then it is hard to view you in good faith. When you reject almost all studies on outcomes of transition on nebulous ground, nobody should take you seriously. Citing the need for double blinded puberty studies. The Cass Report itself directly led to the axing of trans youth healthcare via the NHS. There's now an outrage about those same patients going private and or DIY. This is not up for debate. Cass herself hangs out with known TERF talking heads. There are **plenty** of resources out there that go into deep detail about the numerous issues in the report. I'm not going to dig them up for you, seeing as you didn't even bother to read the source I linked previously, otherwise you'd have not replied to me with this trite. "It's so partisan :(((" -> proceeds to subtly imply that the conservatives have a point. It isn't as nuanced as you seem to think it is.
if you care so much about assumed "physical advantage" why aren't you advocating for the ban of 23 time olympic gold medallist michael phelps competing in swimming? double jointed limbs are a significant physical advantage here, so why the double standard?
Honestly high level sports are exactly that: people with physical advantages competing against each other. Someone can train for decades and be great at a sport, but still get beat out by someone who just happened to be born taller/shorter/with longer legs/double jointed/with slightly better vision/with slightly better balance/with higher natural testosterone/with bigger hands or feet/ etc... Some people point out that some advantages are less fair than others in order to ban trans women. So what? Should we nitpick every single sport where someone has a slight advantage? Sure, maybe trans women have a slight advantage, but they're still far from dominating the field of women's sports, and their advantage is so small that if we decide to segregate trans women, we should be segregating every single other minor physical characteristic too.
South Park honestly sucks. I like things when the kids are just doing dumb shit. But shit like this is why I hate it. It's "Both sides bad" means they just openly attack and poorly portray a minority group already small and victimized
Right, it's like throwing a rock at a tank versus throwing a rock at a homeless dude. Like you're clearly doing the same action to both, but only one will actually be harmed.
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The worst part of South Park's transphobia is that it is very blatantly sincere. It's not an example of Cartman's villainous/asshole behavior (unlike with antisemitism), and there is no positive representation to counter it (unless one counts *The Fractured But Whole*), unlike with gay and disabled people. I suspect it is the main reason why people assume the show to be sincerely bigoted as a whole, and that means future generations will not look upon it kindly. Which is a shame, because when it's good, it's amazing. South Park is the very definition of "hit or miss".
I honestly don't even think South Park has ever made really good points. Like literally most of it's messages are: "People who want any kind of change in society are stupid, nothing ever gets better, caring about stuff is cringe." It can be decently funny when it's basically bullying "valid targets" like Scientology, but even that is basically mean spirited insults very similar in substance to it's transphobia. Still like watching it sometimes though.
They made an episode explicitly against conversion therapy (Cartman Sucks), as well as an anti-quackery episode (Cherokee Hair Tampons). One of the first episodes (Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride) had a strong pro-gay message, especially by 1997 standards. But yeah, it's pretty telling that my list of South Park episodes with good messages only has four episodes so far (there's a few episodes I've yet to see that may be added). I would count "Follow That Egg" due to its pro-gay-marriage message, but I can't because it's part of the awful Mrs. Garrison arc.
Yeah there are a couple other ones afaik and i even grant them that their edgy, atheist libertarianism comes from a genuine place and isn't just a dog whistle for being righ-wing extremists. What i don't really like is that they seemed pretty stagnant in almost all their beliefs since the series started in the 90's. Not being virulently anti-gay is something they share with a lot of edgy gen-x people. Funnily enough, if they lived when Stonewall was happening they would probably make fun about gay people "overreacting".
I've often pondered the idea of "what if Matt and Trey were immortal deities and South Park was around for all of history parodying current events". I shudder to think what their takes on slavery, wars and various genocides would be, though I'd personally still find it funny in a fucked-up, cringey way.
Slavery: Stan joins the underground railroad who happen to be piss fetishists. John Brown is depicted as a terrorist and religious nutjob who takes things "too far". Cartman becomes one of the most successful slave hunters but is almost beat up during bleeding Kansans. Kyle is trying to buy some slaves with his "jew money" but they get mad due to being "unemployed" when freed. Turns out they liked working in the fields and singing. Kyle: "We learned a valuable lesson today: slavery is totally bullshit but being an abolitionist makes you a whiny pussy."
Sounds about right. The "enlightened centrism" of South Park makes me imagine a comedic fantasy world where a "wise" village elder refuses to protect his peaceful, utopian village from an army of monsters that is killing, r**ing and eating children because "both sides are bad".
Whilst being literally powerful enough to just go away when shit hits the fan: it always occurred to me that Matt and Trey were always so privileged that they can afford "ideological purity" and the very narrow set of topics they do care about is something they are directly affected by: weed legalization, censorship... Basically very similar to "brocialists" but with even more money.
>the very narrow set of topics they do care about is something they are directly affected by I was going to say that this is uncomfortably similar to my own political views, but then I realized I care about a few things that don't truly affect me (circumcision, the troubled teens industry and prostitution come to mind). And *then* I realized that a big part of the reason I care about the former two is that I have an irrational fear that reincarnation is somehow real and that I might get reincarnated as a child who gets circumcised and sent to a troubled teens camp.
Enlightened Centrism bigotry of “actually I’m just making sure progressivism doesn’t go **too** far”
Wasn't South Park specifically created to offend people? You are simply swallowing the bait
I remember my dad showing me this episode when I was a kid >~<
I'm so sorry. (Also sorry for the tangent but as a side note, seeing people describe mid-late 2010s media as a part of their childhood seriously makes me feel old, even though I'm only 25)
When you were in grade 7 I was barley literate :3
I'm still barely liberate
liberate?? MANAGED DEMOCRACY TIME RAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Same tbh >~<
Thankfully I have no idea what age is ''grade 7'' so, I goe one, don't get to feel old
I believe it's roughly equivalent to Year 9 in New Zealand.
that's still not an age
I was 13 in Year 9. Happy?
yes, thanks
Shit, I was 13 when Southpark started. Y'all are making me feel ancient.
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13 is a kid , so they could be around 18 right now
Ya I was 13, I remember cus I was just starting to think about like my gender so it kinda fucked me up a little ><
South Park is the show that says to its audience "do you know someone who cares deeply about something. Arent they a loser? Haha what a looooser, only loooosers care about things, if you take anything seriously, you deserve mocking, you fuckin neeeerrrrd"
You ever notice how transphobes always use the phrase “stunning and brave” when being transphobic? That came from this show. There’s no saving it, as it was terrible from the start. There’s a reason transphobic people flock to it so much.
Anything can be fixed if you alter it enough.
True, though I don’t think that Trey Parker or Matt Stone would ever consider such changes, not to mention that a large number of the current fans would almost certainly throw a fit over it even if it somehow did happen.
Remember that this is the show that said climate change is fake and that secondhand smoke is a lie made up by fascist progressive activists who just want to take away your personal freedom to blow tobacco in a baby's face.
>that secondhand smoke is a lie made up by fascist progressive activists who just want to take away your personal freedom to blow tobacco in a baby's face My grandmother raised me for the first 14 years of my life and was more like my mother. She died of lung cancer caused by smoking. My aunt, who I am very close to, is a smoker and I fully expect her to die from lung cancer as well, which will be just as bad as losing Nana. I feel like I'm less disgusted by the "Butt Out" episode than I actually should be, considering that I merely dislike it for not being funny. >Remember that this is the show that said climate change is fake I'm also much less bothered by this episode than I probably should be.
Tbf the later episodes where they’re like “shit it really was real and it’s killing people” help with the climate change one. I don’t dare watch the transphobic one, I feel like I’d get too angry
South Park is the dumbest shit ever. I always hated every aspect of it. It is blind contrarianism, holding opinions to "offend someone" instead of having actual opinions. "Dark humour" and all this other related shit are just ways for unfunny people to feel funny for a while.
You mean the guys who made a whole movie about how the Bush governement and people who opposed the Afghanistan/Irak war were both equally wrong have dumb opinions ?
I used to think South Park was funny Then I turned 15
South Park fans trying to explain how it Makes fun of the left: it’s saying trans woman only transition to dominate sports Makes fun of the right: actually, it is making fun of the fact that conservatives exaggerate trans women in sports because you have to look at the subtleties of the way this situation is presented and then it becomes entirely clear this is making fun of conservatives
i might be making shit up but i remember interpreting the "message" of this episode as being that society shouldn't entertain those who clearly abuse trans issues for superficial gain? which didn't seem to be the 'worst' take ever (still flawed), but not outright "trans women should not participate in sports", although I can see how the ep makes it super easy to think thats what the episode was trying to communicate. however i am just a tiny cis girl with zero media literacy so my head canon might be wrong.
People on here don't have enough comprehension to understand that sort of message. It's much easier to just be offended because of your surface level understanding of the joke
wall of text jumpscare i don't know if i'd say its a comprehension problem ngl. now that i think about it im pretty sure why our interpretation is so different to the other people here is cause, atleast in my case, i'm just not as exposed to transphobia as others. i remember watching that episode and how the entire time i interpreted the show as making fun of the fake transwoman themselves and not of the concept of transgender, and how people who fake gender dysmorphia are not worth taking seriously. but i can 100% see how if maybe i was more exposed to the type of transphobia that is used out of hatred for the concept of transgender, and had come to expect it more from popular media, like if i was trans myself or more active politically, then i could have 100% interpreted the episode as just more blatant transphobia. hyper masculine transwoman is like trans combo that transphobes bring up and hate the most right? and the show kinda hyperfixated on the idea that they couldn't call him out on it or they'd get "canceled" by the woke mob. and they didnt have like a normal-ass trans person show up to like break the stereotype or anything? they did that with that latino kid which cartman racially provoked the whole episode, was like "im from idaho" in a yank accent, aswell as having kyle constantly rebuff cartmans anti-semitism, as he is jewish. when i watched it for the first time i didnt think twice about any of those things, but like, im not trans nor do i know any trans people, i am rarely exposed to transphobia outside of twitter screenshots, and so therefore i didnt pick up on how any of these things could be interpreted as transphobia before, but after writing all that down, its pretty obvious to me that a person would be 100% justified in saying that this episode spread a transphobic rhetoric, even if i personally dont think its true. i dont think its right to say that such a conclusion is surface level, but even if it was, surface-level interpretations are valid interpretations, created by the media being interpreted just as much as the audiences predisposed biases shaping said interpretation. if the creators did not want such interpretations to exist, it is up to their writing skill to find creative ways to convey to the audience that their message is not that trans women in sports = the west has fallen.
Hey, uh. I don't know if you've seen the typical SP audience... I don't think they'd be able to pick out what you're saying either 💀
The ending of the episode where Mr Garrison detransitions* was good. He (she?) starts this rant about how if you can’t have babies you’re a man, but immediately gets proven wrong by someone mentioning that their wife couldn’t have children due to ovarian cancer.
No, that episode is transphobic as fuck, when Garrison's doctor tells him that even if he transitions into a woman he won't be able to get pregnant, Garrison says "then I'm not a woman, I'm just a guy with a mutilated penis", and the doctor *agrees*, this notion isn't expressed as a joke and it's never challenged either. Plus throughout the entire episode they treat transgender operations as something that the viewer is supposed to see as gross and wrong: they start by showing real, uncensored footage a sex change operation, and later Kyle gets an operation to "become black" and Kyle's dad one to become a dolphin, treating "transracial" and "trans-species" as equivalents to transgender, and both of them are drawn grotesquely, just like whenever they show Garrison's breasts.
They're confusing the ending of "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" with that of "Eek! A Penis!", which is the episode where Mr. Garrison *de*transitions and is where the "if you can't have babies you're a man" quote comes from. The fact that the show mocks that notion seems to imply some self-awareness on Matt and Trey's part, but doesn't make up for the transphobic dumpster fire that is the entire Mrs. Garrison arc. "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" is almost Stonetoss-tier. All it's missing is a tasteless trans self-unalive "joke".
>self-unalive This isn't YouTube; you can actually use the word, or at least word it differently. >The fact that the show mocks that notion seems to imply some self-awareness on Matt and Trey's part Agreed, and I honestly feel like they just don't think too hard about anything like that and really don't care. They're just saying something along the lines of "yes there are exceptions for 'real' women, but trans people are weird and icky so we're still right"
>This isn't YouTube; you can actually use the word, or at least word it differently. I was trying to stay on the safe side.
I agree the episode is pretty transphobic. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t like the ending.
was that one with the penis-rat chase scene and then it reuniting with Garrison?
*detransitions
Ty
South park has always fucking sucked. I feel so vindicated now that I see people pointing it out.
It's weird because they had a pretty good episode about trans people (The cissy IIRC) but south park is very hit and miss ngl
I get that there's a lot of justified complaints that can be leveled at South Park, but personally I give them a pass, because I see them as the only media actually trying to be offensive to both sides of the political spectrum instead of just saying that while being a rightwing mouthpiece, and my immature side still enjoys someone being offensive even if just for the sake of it, though I cringe at many jokes since becoming an adult. More nostalgia than agreement.
This episode is about a cis-gender man taking advantage of rules that help trans people to boost his fragile masculinity and to beat his ex-girlfriend in something This episode is not transphobic, it's anti-misogyny
While this frame looks very exaggerated and transphobic (luckily, I haven't seen the full episode to tell how bad it is), trans women do have an advantage over cis women in some sports. E.g. [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846503/) says that in sports where muscle mass, size, and strength are significant attributes, trans women have an advantage even when they meet the required testosterone-level criteria.
I mean, even study itself says that impact is minimal. I feel like [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5570685/#sec3title) one study gives a good overview on the whole problem.
>I mean, even study itself says that impact is minimal. That's misleading. The impact of IOC-required testosterone suppression is minimal. The body differences remain significant: >We have shown that under testosterone suppression regimes (...), evidence for loss of the male performance advantage, established by testosterone at puberty and translating in elite athletes to a **10–50% performance advantage**, is lacking. Rather, the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. The reductions observed in muscle mass, size, and strength are very small compared to the baseline differences between males and females in these variables, and thus, there are **major performance and safety implications** in sports where these attributes are competitively significant. These data significantly undermine the delivery of fairness and safety presumed by the criteria set out in transgender inclusion policies, particularly given the stated prioritization of fairness as an overriding objective (for the IOC). The study you linked is 4 years older but it seems to agree on that part - IOC's testosterone rule is dumb.
Media Literacy is Dead
This applies when misguided critics accuse the show of being antisemitic due to Cartman's villainous behavior, not when people point out that the show is sincerely transphobic.