Ten Steps to Nanette

by Hannah Gadsby

I just don’t see the point of indulging any fantasy that, in practice, could only ever amount to being a monumental waste of time and energy, because that’s what chasing Hollywood success could only ever be for someone like me, given that for most of my life I have been a financially insecure autistic Australian genderqueer vagina-wielding situation who does not have a bird-like skeletal system.

I was always aware of all the big hitters of American comedy, of course I was, because that’s how aggressive cultural imperialism works,

I don’t imagine there’s a comedian alive who doesn’t have at least one really toxic joke lurking in their back catalogue waiting to come back to haunt them. I’m sure my turn will come. It would be impossible to think, for all the material I’ve pushed out into the world, that there isn’t some bad-taste shit amongst it. I was, after all, born ignorant and steeped in the same bucket of prejudices as everybody else.

I don’t think there is much point in complaining about the fact that humans really do judge books by their covers; what I find so shitty is the way people will always blame a book for being an exception to a rule before they ever stop and think: Hey, maybe my gross generalisation might be wrong!

Once he was done gaslighting me, he went on to explain what a metaphor was.

But apparently I don’t get to choose how I look, which I guess, in a documentary about Western art, is pretty on-brand.

But most of all, I think he hit me because he saw it as his job, as a man, to enforce the rules as he understood them. And at the time, I could only agree with him because I had been raised in the same school of toxic masculinity.

I have never identified with how people see me. I have a great big universe of stuff inside of me. None of it is gendered.

He was sitting slouched in his seat, his arms folded sulkily over his chest, and his legs were spread so wide I could see yesterday’s skid mark.