Stand-up comedian Lil Duval is
defending transphobic comments he made last week.
Appearing last week on the New York
City-based radio show The Breakfast Club, Duval was asked how
he would respond if he discovered he was sleeping with a transgender
woman.
“This might sound messed up and I
don't care. She dying,” Duval answered.
Duval's comments on the show led to a
Twitter hashtag campaign to boycott the popular morning show.
Appearing on TMZ on Monday, Duval
refused to apologize.
“I said that because [the hosts] were
saying, taking away someone’s power of choice, and that’s what
you did,” Duval
said. “When you take away somebody’s power of choice, it
should be criminal.”
He added that he doesn't have a problem
with the LGBT community.
“I don’t got no problem with
transgender, I ain’t got no problem with gay people. I got a
problem with somebody trying to take something from me. That’s
psychological damage,” Duval said.
Transgender activist Janet Mock, who
earlier had appeared on the show to promote her book, expressed her
outrage in an Allure op-ed.
During his appearance on The
Breakfast Club, the show's hosts asked Duval if he thought Mock
was attractive.
“Nope. That ni**a doing his thing,”
Duval responded. “Ain't finna get me.”
“Duval purposefully misgendered me
(as the hosts laugh, thereby cosigning) in an attempt to put me in my
place and erase my womanhood. Their fragile masculinity would not
allow them to recognize a simple truth: I am an accomplished,
beautiful black trans woman. Your willful ignorance will not stop me
from being exactly who I am. My sisters and I are here and we exist,
and you will not diminish our light and our brilliance,” Mock
wrote.