Chelsea Handler and Jimmy Kimmel are feeling the heat on social media this weekend after separately cracking jokes that many have deemed homophobic.
On Friday, Handler joked that Attorney General Jeff Sessions preferred to be on the receiving end of gay sex.
The tweet had drawn over 4,000 replies as of Sunday afternoon, with many arguing that Handler had missed the mark with her joke.
Handler, who incensed members of the LGBTQ community earlier this year with a gay sex-referencing tweet aimed at Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), responded to the outcry later on Friday.
Retweeting one critic of her original tweet, she quipped that she, too, was “proud” to identify as a “bottom.”
Kimmel, meanwhile, also came under fire from many LGBTQ rights advocates Friday when he used similar allusions to gay sex in tweets directed at Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The two media personalities had been involved in a war of words for much of the previous week, after Hannity blasted Kimmel as an “assclown” and a “despicable disgrace” for mocking first lady Melania Trump’s accent in a segment that aired Wednesday.
But, once again, many weren’t laughing at Kimmel’s retorts.
Both Handler and Kimmel have expressed support for LGBTQ causes throughout their careers, which is perhaps the biggest reason their bottom-referencing jokes have landed with such a thud.
Acknowledging that many straight comedians opted to “employ bottom-shaming jokes to show that they ‘get’ gay culture,” The Daily Beast’s Ira Madison III nonetheless said Handler and Kimmel should re-examine the tone of their language if they wanted to be truly seen as queer rights supporters.
“If they actually cared about gay people,” Madison wrote, “they wouldn’t resort to clichéd jokes that imply being on the receiving end during anal sex is somehow a shameful, cringeworthy act.”
UPDATE April 8: Kimmel responded to the controversy in a lengthy note posted on Twitter.
