A note to Simpsons writers, because they have on occasion read these forums:
This joke right here? If you are a writer, don't do this
ever again.
Ever.
I was going to say something last night on this forum, but instead I had a chat with a few members of our club - most are LGBT+ including I - and they have all have said nearly the same thing. It's something that
may seem ridiculous to complain about at first and looks like typical moral authority posturing, but when you realize why
nobody does this type of comedy anymore then it's pretty offensive. Even one of my friends whom is gay showed this to their husband and told me that they
hated the implication of this gag.
For people wondering why this is creating an uproar, the gag seems to implicate one of two things - the first is playing off of Burns' concubine statement earlier in the show which Smithers then mentioned "I'll work myself in." That in itself is innocuous, and not the problem if this is the case (even though Burns never mentioned the gender of the concubines he wanted, so this might not be related to the image above.) The second reason is, however - Smithers wants to change his sex because he is gay and it plays on the old stereotype of "
all gay men secretly want to be trans women" which we know is not true and the reason why this joke makes no sense whatsoever, especially for a character whom never indicated he is trans (and yes, you may bring up that one episode where he asked for estrogen and again that's the point I am trying to make, old stereotype.) This is the type of comedy which people in the LGBT community have educated others over in the past decade in order to eradicate, and a relic left in the wayside of early 80s shows and crappy shock value stock sitcom cartoons like
Brickleberry.
The show never had a good track record when it came to jokes and spoofs about transgender people and the trans community and I hoped the Simpsons would never do this type of thing again (anybody remember Smithers injecting himself with testosterone and screaming about boobies? I wish I didn't,) but sadly they still need to realize there are things best left to the days of Reaganomics and Colgate Beef Lasagna.