On Tuesday, Netflix dropped Pete Davidson’s latest stand-up comedy special, “Alive From New York,” which features the popular “Saturday Night Live” funnyman riffing on gay men.
But not everyone is laughing.
When the show’s trailer was released two weeks ago, Davidson sparked a debate with a joke accusing some gay men of being in fact not “gay at all” based on how handsy they get with women.
“It’s that gay dude that’ll run up on your girlfriend and squeeze her boobs and slap her ass and be like, ‘Damn, girl, you look great!’ ” Davidson, 26, jokes at the Gramercy Theatre to a packed audience.
“I don’t find that f–king funny. Like, at all. I’m sorry. Like, I’m all for the gayness, you know, it doesn’t mean I’m against gayness. It’s just like, you get to slap ass on a technicality? That’s not f–king fair at all.”
At first, LGBTQ activists blasted Davidson’s jokes as homophobic, misogynistic and dated. In a viral thread on Twitter, writer Jill Gutowitz called the joke “extremely damaging.”
“Did straight men literally invent this stereotype of gay men with grab hands?” she asks.
But in hundreds of replies, many women — of all sexual orientations — defended the premise, saying they had been touched and looked at inappropriately by gay men.
“When I was younger, there would be situations where gay men would grab my breasts,” Annie Malamet, a Brooklyn-based educator and podcast host, tells The Post. “I had a roommate in college and she had a friend who was a gay man, and he would make comments about my body if I changed in the room, or would, like, touch me while I was changing.”
On another more recent occasion, Malamet, who identifies as lesbian, was out partying with a friend in San Francisco when a group of gay men began commenting on her body and outfit.
“All night these gay men just kept, like, coming up to us … Lingering too much, staring at us too much, commenting on our blouses,” she says. “I think that they felt like [it] was appropriate, but it’s actually really violating.”
Malamet explains that even though gay men have no sexual interest in women, unwanted touching from men, regardless of their sexual orientation, is still sexual harassment.
“It just takes a different shape with gay men because they don’t want to have sex with us,” she says.
Brian Downey, president of the Gay Officers Action League’s New York City chapter, declined to discuss Davidson’s joke specifically. But he says, “It’s not acceptable to touch any woman inappropriately, whether you’re straight or gay, without permission or consent from that individual.”
Or, as Davidson more earthily puts it at the end of his bit: “I wouldn’t, like, walk up to his boyfriend and like tug his d–k and be like, ‘Nice, Gary! Not for me, but cool!’”