Their jokes about assigning gender to babies and to being transgender, dressing in drag, like all of it was a send-up.
Sure, they did punch down if you were a person who were in those groups, but the fact that it was large enough social event to be relevant enough to be a comedy skit on a television show or a movie seen by millions implies that there were some serious things going on back then that they could see and wanted to address.
What the hell was going on that put all of those things in their mind?
Check the history of comedy.
Mel Brooks ‘The Producers’ movie had two gay men. Bugs Bunny was in drag in the 1940’s. “Some Like It Hot” came out in the 1950s. Heck, pretty much any Hollywood movie made before the Hays Code would have had gay gags.
Milton Berle was the King of Comedy and he did drag for years.
The Pythons didn’t invent anything
This is it exactly. Before magnetic tape, Comedians told the same jokes For generations.
Modern comedians act like they’re the first people to come up with jokes because of the first people to record them.
Sometimes I wonder about how many songs the average person would know throughout history. An ancient Roman would be exposed to songs from the entire Empire, while a 1000 AD English farmer might only hear a few dozen in their whole life time.