Nobody ever criticizes South Park.

No, really. On the surface, this sounds like an outrageous, even factually incorrect statement. Since South Park’s inception in 1997, showrunners Matt Stone and Trey Parker have drawn the ire of countless conservative watchdogs. They’ve contended with zealous parents frantic at the thought of foul language and toilet humour sullying their children’s fragile minds. Famously, the show’s 200th episode drew terror threats from a fringe group furious at the show’s depiction of Muhammad.

And yet, none of this is, at heart, criticism. It’s censorship — or, at least, effort in that direction. South Park may be chastised, but it is never criticized. Despite having been on the air for twenty years, despite being regarded as an American institution, despite Trey Parker being one Oscar shy of an EGOT, nobody devotes even an iota of mental energy to parsing South Park’s messaging on a regular basis.

Last Monday, when South Park Studios released a press release for “The Cissy,” indicating that the episode would explore discrimination against transgender children, horrified reaction from the trans blogosphere was swift. Backlash from South Park fans who couldn’t care less about trans welfare was even swifter.

The most popular retort to any trans person who expressed concern about the episode’s content?

“It’s South Park.”

Three words, loaded with paragraphs of condescension.

It’s South Park — of course it’s supposed to be offensive. It’s South Park — if you expected sensitivity, you’ve come to the wrong place. It’s South Park, and by virtue of being South Park, it is somehow impervious to criticism.

Perhaps even worse was what followed in the wake of “The Cissy.”

Reaction to the episode from the trans press was nearly universally positive. Reviewing the episode for Slate, trans activist Christin Milloy deemed the episode “great,” argued that it handled the issue of transphobic hysteria surrounding gendered bathrooms “brilliantly,” and ended her article with, “Well done, South Park.” In a YouTube video posted a few days after the episode aired, trans vlogger Kat Blaque spoke at length about the show’s transphobic and transmisogynistic history, and said that she was “very happy” with the episode’s more progressive messaging, stating, “I think that’s growth. I think that’s progress. Kudos to the writers.”

Tonight’s episode of South Park featured a trans woman raping a handicapped eight-year-old boy in a men’s washroom.

“The Cissy,” despite being widely praised, was ambiguous enough in its satirical approach that some fans interpreted it as an outright condemnation of trans existence. The episode that followed, this week’s “Handicar,” abandoned ambiguity altogether; a woman asks, in a deep, masculine voice, “Do you want to see [my penis?]” Smash cut to an eight-year-old boy stumbling out of a men’s bathroom, looking visibly disheveled. “And I thought the shark was bad,” he mumbles — a reference to an earlier episode, in which this character was sexually assaulted onscreen by a megalodon.

How a joke this vile could follow an episode singularly devoted to dispelling the transmisogynistic lie of trans women as predatory, abusive bathroom-lurkers is beyond me.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that South Park is determined to have its politically correct, trans-positive cake, and all the while maintain a steady supply of violently transphobic rape jokes.

I’m profoundly disturbed by the idea that, owing to the positive reaction to “The Cissy,” Matt Stone and Trey Parker might be heralded as brave voices for positive trans representation, even as they continue to pepper less high-profile episodes with vicious transphobia. Stone and Parker have described themselves as “equal-opportunity offenders,” but continuously punching down at people who are already constantly and consistently treated as punchlines isn’t exactly equitable. Depicting trans women as pedophilic rapists isn’t upholding some bold satirical tradition. It’s violent bigotry.

When I first began watching South Park at 15, I actually regarded it as an escape from violent bigotry. Sneaking onto the Comedy Central website after bedtime, I was introduced to ideas that would have made my devoutly Anglican mother’s head spin. Hell, my head was spinning; for the first time in my life, every tradition I’d been raised in — from staunch conservatism to virulent homophobia — was being called into serious question.

As an older, more educated person, I’m able to look back and identify the many occasions on which South Park missed the mark, or where its humour did far more harm than good. But I’m not able to throw up my hands at every bigoted gag and say, “Oh, well. It’s South Park. What do you expect?”

I expect better.