A one hour and forty minute video! As always, Contrapoints is engaging, intelligent, and dynamic, but whoa, this one will take you while to sit through, and probably would have been more effective at half the length. She has a lot to say about “cancel culture” and the reign of terror.
I liked it and thought she made some good points, which I think means I now have another target painted on my back.
I am still watching it on and off. So far, it has taken a span of three hours.
Cool! Something to distract me on the car ride home.
I know what I’m watching while working in the lab alone tonight.
Also also I am jealous of Contra. She makes at least 20,000 per month on patreon.
A hundred minutes of jump cuts? No thanks.
She
makesearns at least 20,000 per month on patreon.Fixed that for you.
PZ:
Actually, as with your own videos, it can be sped up significantly without loss of comprehension — and at least YT lets you control the playback speed in 5% increments.
(Or: it doesn’t need to take that long)
John Morales @ #6…Ah yes, “speed watching.” I’ve done it myself.
Wow I made it all the way through in one try. Tried 1.5X at first, but she speaks fast to begin with so dropped to 1.25 and turned on captions, which don’t always do well with converting speaking to text. Probably need to rewatch again to process it better.
I feel on the outside looking in on her debacle. I did try to engage it a bit when it first occurred, but she provided more context here than I realized was there before.
Outside the specific controversy surrounding her, I think some of the way she approached the structure of canceling interesting. The move from abstraction to essentialism was one point and how someone expressing themselves wrongly can get turned into something stable about their character or a means to label them as a something or other (ie- as a bad person).
Hopefully the bottles were props used for dramatic effect and she’s not drinking that much liquor. I had liked her previous videos and hope she can get past this unfortunate episode and make more content. She had a funny manner of conveying her own trans experiences that helped me as a cis person feel more engaged, but some of the stuff she’s done has upset people greatly. I really don’t know how to process all that conflict between her and others over NB issues and the fallout on twitter. Way outside my wheelhouse.
Is there a transcript anywhere? I hate watching videos with a passion.
Ooh, the increasingly-long running times are a major part of what got me to unsubscribe from her, gonna have to pass on that.
Well, I guess that’s what I’m doing for tonight…
I usually watch most videos at 1.5x or even 2x, but I usually watch her videos at normal speed, I find her quite amusing.
I watched it all the way through at regular speed. I really liked it, it’s excellent.
Well, now that I’ve watched it I can say … I think that it seems that way to you, PZ, because a lot of it was simply things Natalie needed to say for Natalie, not for you.
A video making general points about how she defined cancel culture and what’s bad about it would certainly have taken less time, but then she’d still be left with the need to analyze the feedback she’s been given and make her argument for sticking by her original statements where that’s true and the need to apologize for past statements where she feels that’s appropriate and the further need of simply articulating what all has been happening for her and to her because… shit hurts. And she wanted to say it.
I think – and I don’t know Natalie in any way shape or form, so I’m just guessing in a way only barely could be considered informed and only because I’ve watched some of her videos and been the target of some nasty tactics by some nasty trans* people my own self – that she wanted to include it all in one video because she felt like merely doing those last three things wouldn’t be enough to motivate a large number of people to watch, and for various reasons she wanted as much of her audience to witness those last three things as possible.
But no, I don’t think she wanted that (if indeed she wanted that, as I hypothesize) for the benefit of her audience. No, the general educational parts are for the benefit of her audience, but the rest strikes me as being for herself.
Note that I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that, if anyone thought there might be an implicit criticism there.
…separately, I just want to note this:
As I understand it, she pays the people that work on her videos who are not her. She also sometimes rents filming locations and always either pays for studio time or pays for the equipment necessary to do editing and other work. I’ve rented event lighting and sound equipment on behalf of groups that I’ve been part of. It’s not cheap. And if she’s purchased studio lights, etc., that’s not cheap either.
If she makes a good income off this, I don’t begrudge her a bit of it, but I just didn’t want it uncritically articulated that whatever she takes in from patrons == take home income.
I watched it. There were like 20 minutes of talking about “cancel culture” in general, and the rest talking about her twitter dramas.
I remain unconvinced that “cancel culture” is a useful description of the problems with internet social justice. It is extremely vulnerable to being adopted by the baddies, and does not produce much insight beyond “twitter bad”. It was better when it was called “callout culture” because that at least put the focus on harassment over overblown mistakes, whereas “cancel culture” seems to put the focus on popular creators losing business. I hate every moment that Natalie jokes about being “cancelled”.
But it is true enough that some people get disproportionate harassment in online social justice settings for rather tenuous reasons, and that seems to apply to Natalie’s twitter dramas. And I think Natalie makes a few insightful observations–for example talking about the idea that each person is good or bad, and when someone makes a mistake it’s like their mask slipped and we need to uncover them for what they are.
I always thought she seemed too moderate, like politics was a game to her instead of the real shit it is for the poor and disabled and such in this country. Then she did a little overreacting herself on some drama or another, and I’m done with her. Lo, I committed the sin of a cancellation. But I’m not interested to watch her follow Laci Green and many others into the fuckbro camp because too many people had legit criticism of her and she couldn’t stand it. Y’all can have fun with that.
@15: Not following someone is not the same as cancellation.
I’m done with Contra because of her casual dismissal of the needs of nonbinary people. She wasn’t “cancelled”, she wasn’t harassed, she was facing the consequences of her chosen actions. She doesn’t get to complain about being a “victim” when she was the one in the wrong.
I see she does not mention the fact that a number of her more passionate defenders took it upon themselves to harrass individuals who had tweeted negatively about her, even non-abusive good faith criticism…I also see that she has capped genuinely abusive tweets, making them searchable on Twitter.
Surely this is some oversight?
I mean, she couldn’t possibly want to risk perpetuating the harrassment?
It’s not like there are hardcore fans of hers namesearching and coming down hard on any critical result right now, is it?
Oooooh. ….
Damn it, woman! I used to love you, I really did…
I can see my usual tactic of ignoring an internet culture phenom until they flame out by themselves has once again paid off. I’m morbidly curious about what she did, but I’m disappointed that it wasn’t that she was perpetuating the stereotype of the crass, vulgar and camp transwoman. Seriously, I live for the day where we can be prominent people and not have to behave like we’re in a ’70s drag cabaret.
@Susan Montgomery : Oh, sweet summer child….
@20 May I ask you to elaborate?
70’s dragon cabaret is Natalie’s usuals persona (e) . She dressed WAS down for this Video.
All #casual and #relateable , like.
Very calculated.
Her usual Brand is exactly the crass/vulgar/camp thing you resent so much.
I actually go for that sort of thing,
like I said, I used to be a Fan. ..rather heartbroken now…
@17 “I’m done with Contra because of her casual dismissal of the needs of nonbinary people.”
How’d she do that?
@22 What I resent is that, in 2020, any transperson feels the need to behave that way to be “relatable”.
@23 I, for one, couldn’t say. When it comes to substance, Wynn always comes across as a kind of Schrodingers Douchebag. That is, someone who airs a bunch of often contradictory statements on a topic and then decides which ones they meant and which ones were “ironic” or “satire” based on who and how many get upset by what. I have seen several of her vids and have never had a clue about where, exactly, she stood on the subjects in question. I would very much like to think that I have a reasonably capable intellect so I don’t think the failing is on my part.
@17 By “her casual dismissal of the needs of nonbinary people” do you mean her using Buck Angel to do a 10 sec voice acting imitation of John Waters in a 40 minute video and her failing to immediately (or ever) denounce him when called out on it or is there some other transgression that was much much worse? Also, I don’t see how “facing the consequences of her chosen actions” and being cancelled and/or harassed are mutually exclusive… In fact, isn’t being harassed and/or cancelled the consequences you feel she deserves to face?
BTW, I don’t post often on this platform, so you might not be aware that I am a nonbinary person myself with a nonbinary daughter who is dating a nonbinary man… My biggest claim to fame is I was the main proponent of the “non-op transsexual” identity in the usenet trans wars in the mid to late 90s… The people on the other side of that skirmish were what would today be called truscum. And some of them are still my friends.
I mean she puts her need to pass above other trans people’s need to be accurately gendered. She complained that stating one’s preferred pronouns makes trans people like her vulnerable. (But screw the enbies.)
@26
Did you watch the video? Pretty sure she explicitly addressed that. It’s around the 50 minute mark.
If you’re talking about some context other than the tweets she mentions there, please clarify, but otherwise it doesn’t really seem to me that the position you’re ascribing to her – particularly the parenthetical – is an accurate paraphrase.
@24, Susan Montgomery
This is an important point of discussion.
I think her videos often aren’t meant to clarify what she personally believes at that moment of her life. Maybe she should (she did a bit in this video), but I don’t think that was her motivation for making those past videos.
The point (I think) is to (hopefully) help resolve disagreement and conflict in the world at large. And the only way to rationally resolve disagreement is with a side-by-side comparison of the available views, and their view of each other. She could do that in essay form, but she takes an entertainment route instead, probably in the hope of reaching audiences that need to be reached but who wouldn’t read “boring” stuff.
Another reason she might have for not including a statement of “this is what I personally believe”: there is no escaping the fact that people have to make up their own minds, she literally can’t control them.
Do I personally think that’s the best way to go? I dunno, I personally like clarity. But maybe her approach is effective, and not wrong. I certainly don’t like feeling mislead, or toyed with, but I haven’t felt that way from her. She certainly doesn’t seem to be maliciously inflicting confusion upon her audience.
And I do think she genuinely cares deeply, she isn’t just a psychopathic edgelord or whatever.
A lot of this is the meta disagreement: how should disagreement and conflict be handled? And some people don’t like her approach, and this meta disagreement actually has very little to do with the specific topics of her videos, just the approach of her videos and stuff.
But if her approach was wrong, that would of course have consequences for the specific topics she approaches that way, even if she personally had the correct conclusion about those topics. And we should even hope that people who currently aren’t “on our side”, of some issue, are at least using the right approach, one that will take them and others closer and closer to the truth.
@28 “And the only way to rationally resolve disagreement is with a side-by-side comparison of the available views, and their view of each other.”
Are you saying that you could be rationally persuaded into going along with genocide? Would you offer decimation as a compromise because “both sides are kinda wrong”? Or have you fallen for the “liberals are just like Nazis because they want to tell you, like, what to do and stuff” claptrap that’s been popular in Alt-Right circles?
It would help us all tremendously if we could advocate our ideals with a sense of conviction and certainty as opposed to the squishy bothsidesim we now project – and that Wynn indulges in at less than five minutes in to the above video.
I find CP discourse quite distressing. The way I saw the n-b stuff was that one of her iffy characters (Justine IIRC) who is a centrist who hangs out with Dave Rubin types made some shitty comments about passing. A “liberal” making shitty comments on anything is not a surprising thing IMO. Somehow a significant part of twitter concluded that Natalie essentially is Justine and therefore Natalie herself is n-b-phobic. I think that was an unfair leap since Natalie, in live streams where she’s not playing a character, has always emphasized the psychological aspect of gender and has always supported us non-binary people. So the discourse has seemed to me that some misread a character and unfairly claimed that Natalie herself believes that and that somehow became twitter truth. But even as an n-b, supposedly hated by Natalie, I just cannot read her videos like that. I mean she has so many videos and live streams where she is fully supportive of us. Surely one sentence played by an already iffy character should not nullify all that?
@Susan Montgomery #19 and #24,
I am so over people complaining about camp aesthetics because it “perpetuates a stereotype”. Are you sure some of us don’t also adopt aesthetics that offend your sensibilities? Must we all submit photos to you before you hear anyone out?
It’s okay to just not like Contrapoints. I initially found her videos really offputting, and I still feel that way about some of her colleagues. If you didn’t like her before, then a 100 minute video mostly about drama is probably a bad introduction.
Susan @29
Honestly confused about where you see that. AFAICT, the first 10 or 15 minutes is all about defining the objectionable form of ‘cancel culture’ she’s talking about, illustrated mainly by an account of the James Charles pile on thing. It seems pretty clear that she’s taking issue with the phenomenon.
If I had a criticism, it’s that I wish she’d been a bit more careful about drawing out the distinction between “legitimate” cancellation (Harvey Weinstein or Louis CK, say) — which she skips over pretty quickly, and the more gossipy, vicious-game-of-twitter-telephone form I think she’s talking about. But her views on both still seem pretty clear. What exactly is being bothsidered?
I’m also a bit surprised about your general point. I don’t think I’ve ever been confused about where Wynn stands on stuff in the videos I’ve watched. I mean, the in-character-devils-advocate bits can be a bit dizzying at times, but the overall message is usually crystal clear IMO. (Like, could someone come away from the Jordan Peterson episode thinking that she thinks he’s a smart, a-OK dude? I sure hope not.)
Are there genuine criticisms about Contra and NB? Yes. Just there could be serious criticisms about ethics in gaming journalism but it was still used in a way to harrass people. The same tactics on twitter. Taking some legitimate and using it to harass ppl to make themselves feel better. I like to call them twitscum and they are the gamergate of woke spaces.
@29, Susan Montgomery
huh? No, I’m not saying any of that. Where are you getting that idea???
@31 I’m sorry but someone who claims to speak for transwomen with such a high-profile has to be mindful of how they present themselves. Because they’re representing all of us. Whether or not you like it or think it’s stupid or whatever, how she represents us matters.
@32 Because her entire discussion validates the label “cancel culture” as does trying to talk about what is legitimate or not. I don’t think anyone who supports MeToo thinks of what they do as “cancelling” just as no one who is genuinely politically correct actually refers to themselves as such. “Cancel culture” is a term used by conservatives to confuse the issue. Again, just like how they label anything they don’t like “political correctness”. And she’s accepting and validating that framing by equating her own personal problems with MeToo – and it doesn’t matter whether she’s doing it maliciously or not.
@Susan Montgomery #35,
Okay, then let me register my belief that I don’t like it, and it is stupid. Trans women aren’t the only ones to deal with politics of camp among public figures, and you’re just repeating mistakes made by other groups.
As I said upthread, I think it’s a terrible idea to reclaim “cancel culture”, and I entirely disagree with Natalie on that point. However, I note that when “cancel culture” went under that other name, “callout culture”, it had a long tenure as a social justice topic. So I just think of this like, “sigh, more of that genre”, rather than an issue particular to Natalie.
@34 I’m trying to clarify the statement I’ve quoted. It seems that you are implying that any two views – regardless of how irrational or immoral one may be – have equal value.
@32 To clarify: “Cancel culture” is a term used by conservatives to conflate using social media to exclude otherwise unaccountable malicious persons with ordinary, everyday discernment and critique of people and ideas. They are two separate ideas, not points on a continuum.
As with “political correctness” the goal is not to convince but to confuse, and this is the framing Wynn is using and legitimizing.
@36 Something tells me that you never got a sex manual as an Xmas gift because your co-workers “thought you liked things like that”. Have that happen to you a few times and then get back to me about how image doesn’t matter.
Apart from that, your views on “culture” are sounding a lot like “ignore the problem and it will go away on it’s own”. Perhaps you might enlighten me further about what you mean?
@35:
That makes sense. Not quite what I’d call ‘both-siderism’ myself, but I see where you’re coming from. Like I said, I wish she’d been a little more careful about keeping those two very different phenomena distinct too. And while I didn’t pick up on it as such, yeah, borrowing the ‘cancel culture’ label probably isn’t great either.
I’m not sure I’m as convinced that merely trying to talk about when and what outrage is legitimate or not is out of bounds. Whatever we call it, I think the sort of collective-crying-of-wolf she’s calling out is genuinely harmful in important ways, both to the people targeted, and to the cause. If we want to keep using social censure as an effective tool of social justice, we have a pretty high collective responsibility to do our best to apply it justly. It’s right there in the name.
As such, talking, especially internally, about where to draw that line and how to recognize the difference between the two, as well as working out the protocols around giving people a chance to fuck up and then set the record straight and/or sincerely apologize in good order, all seems pretty important. (Which I think, modulo airing out some butthurt, was what CP was trying to do here.)
From what I could ascertain from watching Natalie’s video some of the stuff she’s expressed has been negatively impactful on others in various trans networks. That is somewhat educational for me in that I was unaware of the nuances involved. There is still some consideration for what I see as positive benefit in having seen some of her videos before the recent controversy. I don’t meet many trans people in my day to day life. It’s uncommon. I realize there are many trans posters here so get introduced to various issues, especially on threads such as this. The benefit of having watched her videos to me is having some one-way noninteractive experience with someone who happens to be trans giving voice to various ideas.
Paralleling to being unfamiliar with people of other ethnicities someone with limited interaction with members of other groups has limited frame of reference. Due to various factors, including negative depictions in media or implicit bias, people carry baggage that distorts perceptions of members of groups with which they have limited interaction. Stereotypes gleaned uncritically from media and implicit biases can translate to an individual awkwardness or aloofness that isn’t necessarily intended racism or transphobia just ignorance and inexperience. So Natalie’s videos, and those of other trans content creators could be seen as outreach to nontrans (or cis) people even if unintended. In this limited framing I see the Contrapoints videos as providing some benefit, though there are perhaps downsides given imperfect people have flaws or blindspots.
@35:
That makes sense. Not quite what I’d call ‘both-siderism’ myself, but I see where you’re coming from. Like I said, I wish she’d been a little more careful about keeping these two very different phenomena distinct too. And while I didn’t pick up on it as such, yeah, borrowing the ‘cancel culture’ label probably isn’t great either.
I’m not sure I’m as convinced that merely trying to talk about when and what outrage is legitimate or not is out of bounds. Whatever we call it, I think the sort of irresponsible rumor mongering she’s — ahem — calling out is genuinely harmful in important ways, both to the people targeted, and to the cause. If we want to keep using criticism and social censure as an effective tool of social justice, we have a pretty high collective responsibility to do our best to apply it justly. It’s right there in the name.
As such, talking, especially internally, about where to draw those lines and how to recognize the difference between all the things, as well as working out the protocols around giving people a chance to fuck up and then set the record straight and/or sincerely apologize in good order, all seems pretty important. (Which I think, modulo airing out some butthurt, was what CP was trying to do here.)
@32 Oh, and when a libertarian writes approvingly of something, maybe it’s a good idea to think about how this is coming off.
“Wynn, a transwoman who has herself been “canceled” by some social media zealots in the trans activist community because she made comments they interpreted as heretical, spends the second half of the video patiently explaining the emotional harm she suffered as a result of being barraged by unfair attacks. These attacks largely centered around her perceived friendship with Buck Angel, a transgender man who is seen by some in the trans community as being dismissive of non-binary trans-ness. In the video, Wynn notes that a Twitter mob expected her to denounce Angel; when she failed to do so, the mob branded Wynn transphobic and urged all other leftist trans YouTubers to disassociate from her. Some lost followers and subscribers for failing to take an anti-Wynn position.”
https://reason.com/2020/01/02/contrapoints-cancel-culture-youtube-left/
@Susan #38,
I’m gay and ace, so no, that experience doesn’t sound alien to me. I think what you’re missing is that people with camp or vulgar aesthetics–either deliberately or because it comes naturally–are likely victim to the same aggressions, and are not any happier about it than you are.
As far as cancel culture goes, I did not mean to express disagreement with what you were saying about it. Complain away, I will do the same.
@37, Susan Montgomery
No, I didn’t mean anything like that.
It’s because of their difference in value that people need to examine both. To see which is irrational, which is immoral. That’s the point, of course.
If they were equally good, everyone could just stick with whatever one they have, and stay ignorant of the other, because there would be no difference.
But there is a difference. So people have to evaluate them. Which requires exactly what I said: comparing them. And you can’t compare or evaluate two views if you only know one of them. In the sentence you quoted, I wasn’t trying to say anything much more than that simple fact.
Some of it’s good so far; but there’s a saying that maybe she’s heard somewhere before: “You’re not wrong, Nat, you’re just an @sshole.”
@41 This has “agree to disagree or face the mighty banhammer of King Arachnicon” written all over it, so I’ll do just that. Perhaps we may pick it up again at a more appropriate time. As for your second point, I’m sorry for missing your point.
@42 Okay, I understand now. :)
And here I was, unconsciously cancelling her the whole time, by refusing to watch her spout cold centrist takes over unbearably garish and overproduced visuals. The shitty hot takes on NB people is just proof that I made a good call steering clear of her.
WMDKitty — Survivor @26
If we’re talking about the same thing, that doesn’t seem like what she was doing at all. She was relating an experience and how it plays out for her. Which is quite in keeping with her illustrating the complexities of these things in a way people maybe haven’t thought about before.
@Brian Pansky
This was particularly well said.
@Muz — You’re talking about something completely different. She directly stated that her want is more important that nonbinary people’s needs.
@48,
In my reading, she said the opposite–if we’re even talking about the same tweets. First she stated her personal distress about pronoun circles. Then,
meaning that pronoun circles are still justified despite her own personal distress. Then,
which reiterates her distress, while reframing it as a “minor expense”, implying that her needs are not more important than the needs of others. Also, “super fucking hard for us” is one of her sarcastic catchphrases, and after hearing her say it a dozen times in video it’s pretty clear it means that it’s not actually that hard it’s just a minor inconvenience.
I think her statements were really clumsy, and had potential to harm; and her followups were even worse. But I do not think she was saying her needs were more important than NBs’, rather the opposite. She directly confirms my interpretation in the 100 min video, not that I’d expect anyone to watch the thing.
” I did try to engage it a bit when it first occurred, but she provided more context here than I realized was there before.”
Everything is always more complicated than social media would have us believe.
@Siggy — how many times have we all seen horrible things justified as “just a joke”? And why is it now suddenly okay when it’s someone you like?
@51
Except what she said is not a “horrible thing”. It was the most mild thing ever. Not exactly “identify as a helicopter” type of joke we are talking about here.
Also to reiterate what i said above, those twitter woke users remind me of gamer-gate. Same tactics, same twisting of facts, same sensitivity, same penchant for harassment and abuse.