ricky gervais has to lean on being transphobic because he literally doesn't have anything funny to say. he cannot come up with jokes to fill up an hour without being a dick
comedians who capitalize on people being happy to laugh at someone who echoes their own bigotry are fucking hacks
it's bullshit that puns are the lowest form of comedy, by the way. the lowest form of comedy is saying something that is both racist/transphobic/sexist/etc and deeply derivative on stage, then attempting to deflect criticism with "it was just a joke" or "i was doing a character"
and i can say with my Actual Working Satirist hat on that this is irresponsible bullshit
part of being an artist is taking responsibility when your work does harm. i think that the reasons that comedians are so unwilling to do this with their bigoted jokes is because they know that they're just derivative trash
as long as they keep the focus on ~humorless feminists~ being ~mean party poopers~ about their bigoted jokes, they can avoid dealing with the fact that their bigoted jokes only barely qualify as jokes at all
they can even use it as fodder for more cheap jokes, and then eventually fall down the pit of doing entire sets that are just repeats of the same lazy stereotypes told to an audience that's only laughing in relief at having their bigotry echoed and not at actual quality
and then they can get real mad that college students don't want to go to their acts when they're basically just doing the transphobic version of jokes about airline food 20 years after they stopped serving meals on airplanes
anyway comedy is mostly full of bitter old men or men who will soon be bitter old men who are sad that they cannot compete with tumblr memes
sorry that this is actually better than you, 99% of dudes in comedy 
