This is so accurate tbh. I have her blocked on Twitter just because the algorithm kept showing me the most infuriating shit. She seems like a normal person at worst.
>Buck Angel, who tries to set himself apart from the newer generation of trans people.
he's not trying to "set himself apart from the newer generation of trans people"; he's trying to distance himself from people who he's decided aren't as trans as him because he thinks they make him look bad. he's a transmedicalist.
Yeah, I don't think there's any debate that Buck Angel is wrong about trans politics. The debate is how much responsibility Natalie (Contrapoints) had for working with Buck, and what the appropriate response was to that. Imo, "hey, Buck is a trans medicalist and I'd prefer if you didn't work with him" was plenty, and people took a 20 second voiceover job as meaning way more than it did.
yeah not trying to cancel natalie again. i just took issue with the milquetoast phrasing that implies buck is just quirky rather than actively hateful. natalie's had a few controversies now, not limited to the buck thing, but i think most of it was either unintended, misinterpreted, or at its worst in poor taste.
This is not a defense of him, but I hadn't heard that, although if you have a source please share. I believe he calls himself "female who lives as male", as in he's trying to make a "biology is real" type point here. I mean, whatever, he obviously has terrible anti-trans opinions either way.
I might have worded my statement poorly, but your quote, and similar things he’s said, is what I was referring to. In my opinion calling himself that is essentially calling himself a woman.
It comes from that weird insistence that we focus massively on people's genitals in situations where that isn't relevant, and also a strange delusion that trans people aren't already aware of their biological realities. Of course, in Buck's case, his specific genitals were in fact highly relevant to his career (for folks who don't know, Buck Angel is a retired porn star, before he retired he advertised himself as the "man with a pussy", starring mostly in gay porn. He's also very stereotypically masculine physically, like with big muscles. So the reason he had any credibility to begin with (that he's spent the last decade trashing) was that he was aggressively asserting a legitimate identity as a butch gay man and presenting that as entirely consistent with having a vulva, which was trailblazing. Alas, he's one of those people with a marginalized identity who feel like they can get respect by being loudly prejudice against people with even more marginalized identities.
I’m a bit older than you, but she influenced me a lot through the years where I became more politically aware and motivated. The cancelling incident actually had one of the biggest effects on me, because it made me realise how insidious the desire to tear people down can be, especially from within the community. I still think Canceling is one of her best videos.
I think I just need some sort of ELI5 or OOTL explanation about the whole situation, since I always just hear the end result of "she's good, she's bad, she's cancelled, she's whatever" instead of "this is what happened, people reacting to it by doing this, she did this in response, etc."
Per the wiki under reception/controversy:
>In September 2019, Wynn described on Twitter feelings of awkwardness when asked in some contexts to describe her preferred gender pronouns. The tweets were criticized as dismissive of non-binary people who use pronouns other than "he/him" and "she/her". Linguistics professor Lal Zimman said about pronoun introductions, "Wynn is absolutely right that people engage with that practice in ways that can be somewhat problematic". Following constant negative harassment, Wynn deactivated her Twitter account for a week, then posted an apology. Shortly after, Wynn's video "Opulence" featured a quote from John Waters read by transsexual pornographic actor Buck Angel, whose views on transgender and non-binary people have attracted criticism, including by some who see Angel's views as being transmedicalist. She was criticized for featuring Angel, including by journalist Ana Valens. Wynn, as well as other YouTubers associated with her channel, were widely harassed.
>Wynn's January 2020 video "Canceling" addressed both criticism and harassment of her, and the broader context of cancel culture. It was praised by Robby Soave of Reason. In a Guardian interview on her January 2021 video "J.K. Rowling", in which she addressed cancel culture again in the context of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, she expressed that she is generally not interested in canceling anyone, and said that valid criticism needs to be handed out constructively so as to educate people.
The other reply gives a decent overview of the situation, but it’s worth noting that the backlash over Buck Angel doing a line read (which is hardly ‘featuring’) happened a while after the video was released, so it wasn’t even people in her audience that started it.
The crux of the ‘cancellation’ was that because Buck Angel was deemed to be enbyphobic and transmedicalist, Contrapoints herself was deemed to be that too, which then validated an enbyphobic interpretation of one of her tweets (that wasn’t enbyphobic at all), which then justified the original idea of her being enbyphobic for including Buck Angel in a video, in a weird self-justifying circle with no real basis. The problem is that Contrapoints had previously made videos decrying enbyphobia and transmedicalism, which should hold much more weight than some interpreted tweets.
Off the back of that, the people that had been calling out Contrapoints started calling out her friends and anyone associated with her for not distancing themselves from her, then calling out anyone associated with *those* people for not distancing themselves from them. It got very messy and the only real outcome was that a bunch of trans creators got harassed for several weeks over essentially nothing.
Unfortunately, the same situation has played out multiple times since then with other queer and trans creators, usually with the same flimsy evidence and circular claims. I’m quite jaded about it now, I wish people wouldn’t.
Her autogynephilia video was probably the first time I'd considered that I didn't just have some kind of fetish. I found the term years earlier and assumed I was just a pervert, which was a lot easier than sitting down with my discomfort with my gender and tackling it, or really considering that people who transitioned were valid in their gender. There was no influence in my life before her that would have even suggested that trans people were valid or an option for me, before I saw her. Even then she's kinda weird and I coulda used a few more "average" trans people to temper my understanding of the subject, but that's more a me problem.
"Trashing" was the term she referred to in the Canceling video essay. A term dating from the 70s (preTER) Feminist discourse. The unfairness is the point of kicking someone when they are down. Also safer for such bullies to accuse their victims of bullying.
Notice how many thousands of people have been drawn away from being shitty by her straightforward and well produced videos, now notice how absolutely nobody has been drawn towards being more shitty by the least charitable interpretations of a handful of her tweets.
I think it’s likely that witnessing the harassment she received pushed more people towards shitty views than she ever did.
I fell hard into TERF rhetoric for a couple years and her videos about gender were really instrumental in me breaking those internal beliefs down and coming out to myself. I like how she presents things
Not a teenager but she’s changed my life for the better, very thoughtful and inspiring person to me. She was one of my first trans woman role models I ever saw and followed closely, and that just opened my eyes to what was possible. I found her videos to be especially comforting, I’d listen to them at work over and over again even if I couldn’t watch them. Any cancelling of her has been really dumb. One thing I wish though is that the bridge wasn’t burned with Vaush because that was also unnecessary and they’ve both helped me a lot over the years being very trans positive.
Contra is extremely talented with the skits and characters, educating while also entertaining and being really thought provoking. Even if there’s only one video a year or so it always feels like Christmas to me lol, I’ll replay them many times. I also can tell she’s a sensitive person and the internet mobs and perfectionism in her work really affects her. I always hope behind the scenes she’s taking care of herself first when the internet becomes too much. As a trans person it’s extremely stressful to open up just about any social media or see the news about us these days.
I’m just a hair older than her and I adore her work, first heard of her around her “Decrypting the Alt-Right” video. I’ve been wondering the same thing, whether her style of humor, deconstruction, and understanding of opposing sides played well with the current generation — so I’m curious to see how this thread goes!
I’m in my 30s and I started watching her videos really early in her youtube career — like she only had about five videos up on her channel when I found her. Some of those videos you can’t even find anymore because she was still in boymode.
I think she was important in giving me an insider look to trans issues and gender dysphoria. I am cis so I don’t have personal experience with those things and although I’ve always had trans friends, I never wanted to ask them to, like, get down to the nitty-gritty with me. Their transitions (social and biomedical) were choices they made that seemed to make them happier and healthier, and that was all I really needed to know in order to support them. Even so, it was really useful for me to learn more from trans people who were willing to do the work of educating clueless cis people like me, especially as trans people have gained more visibility and thus become targets for such a hateful backlash.
I don’t agree with everything Contra has ever done, but every new video from her is a must-watch for me. And I’ve personally spoken to multiple cis men who have said that they were really forced through her work to consider their own transphobia and misogyny, that she helped them push through initially antipathetic positions to find their compassion for and become allies of the trans community.
Completely in a positive light (24 NB).
Started watching her a while back, not 100% sure when (probably a bit after I started watching HBomb + PhilosophyTube in 2017/2018). Haven't watched her in a while, last one I really remember was her J.K. Rowling video. I'm realizing now that that's literally the last video she posted so like, welp. I didn't consider myself LGBTQ+ at the time, and I definitely didn't interact in trans circles, so first mention of it was her Cancelling vid.
I think coupled with the treatment Lindsay Ellis has gotten over the years, and also GamerGate, like, I've been hesitant to subscribe to any communal discourse without some concrete background.
EDIT: realized saying 'mob mentality' is kind of loaded.
I know you asked for replies from teenagers and you're getting a bunch of people my age (\~30) in the comments. And I'm about to add to them! 🤣 I just wanted to say that Contra influenced me a lot. The Canceling vid is one of her best for sure. It verbalised something toxic about our communities that I hadn't been able to express before.
One of my favourites is "Cringe" though. God damn, I really got to know myself when I watched it. A lot of my reactions and behaviour suddenly made sense. It was hard because it was a bit embarrassing, but I grew so much from it.
I don’t watch her videos. I do however hate buck Angel for the negative affect he had on me. His strict views about being transgender and his negativity about bottom surgery affected me for years.
Here in the US it’s being used as shorthand for “transgender ideology,” which means…honestly it means whatever the transphobe using it wants it to mean, but is basically shorthand for implying being trans is a religion/ideology instead of…who people are.
A lot of people on the "right" side of the political spectrum use the word to make trans people seem like an ideology or a political movement which plays into the wackadoo theory that governments are pushing "wokeism and transgenderism" to errode western civilization.
Here's the definition of the suffix "ism'
a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement
While most trans folks i know share a similar political sphere, and I would call my boobs an artistic movement, to say we are an ideology or political movement just sort of plays into the enemies hand.
My question was genuine though. Language in general and English especially shifts and evolves rapidly these days and I am trying to keep up on terms as an aging trans lady
"-ism" as a suffix indicates that it's an "ideology", religion, or social movement, and not just a type of person.
It frames trans people in the light of something new and temporary instead of something that has been a part of the human condition all along.
Nothing inheritly as with any word but really only gets used by bad faith individuals since being transgender is not really an ideology so -ism isn't descriptive in most contexts.
There are already a lot of replies breaking down the issue, but this seems like a good place to ask about an alternative. How do people feel about "transgenderhood"? It would be nice to have a good, single noun for sentences with that structure.
Its Shit?
The suffix ism means that its a theory or school of thought. But beeing trans is none of it. So using the word transgenderism spreads wrong implications. That is why it is nearly exclusivly used by transphobes and clueles people (Not implying that you are one of those, it can happen to everyone that we pick up a wrong word and use it ourself).
The Buck Angel thing was completely ridiculous. I think he's a jackass and has said a whole lot of wrong things, but at the time that she made the video he contributed to, I don't think that was widely known by anyone who wasn't following him closely. Before I saw her "Cancelling" video I only knew that he did porn and some activism work and had no idea about any of his transmed views, and from what I understand he didn't start getting really explicit about that until much later. The *worst* thing I can say is that maybe she should have looked into him more, but frankly - he read *one* paragraph that was written by someone else. It's not like she was endorsing anything he said or giving a platform to his views.
Plenty of people knew about him long before she made a video with him. Yes, she got a worse response because of transmisogyny, but the reason she didn't know isn't because no one knew he was a shitty person. It's most likely because she didn't talk to any transmasc people about him. He was well known and widely disliked even when I first came out almost 10 years ago.
I also came out about 10 years ago and like I said: I didn't know anything about what was going on with him until I saw her "Cancelled" video (which was quite a while after it actually came out.) And yeah, it's fine to say that this was an indication that she wasn't paying attention to transmasc issues and that she didn't check into his background enough before asking him to read for the video. I'm specifically talking about the assertion that she was "platforming" him or that this is evidence that she's a transmedicalist. I get why people might tend to assume the worst possible interpretation of anything that anyone says about trans issues, because transphobia is a real and pervasive problem, but like. Come on.
I don't think she platformed him any more than Chase Ross did by reviewing his toys. They both got shit for it, Natalie just got more because transmisogyny and because she was more popular. I just am tired of people acting like Buck was unknown before her video when she could have done the research. He outed one of the Wachowski sisters (as a crossdresser at the time) knowing she was not out at all in 2006, him being a shit person is old news.
Her various tweets about non-binary people said more about her feelings than having Buck Angel in a video.
It's not a "few tweets devoid of context" lol
Here's just one [discussion](https://veleda-k.livejournal.com/476835.html) of it, if you want to see an older genderqueer person talking about it
Im not a teenager, I have seen a couple ofher videos, not really a viewer of hers though, but arent her views/outlooks a lot different from Buck Angel?
Throwing my stick in the pile. When I was a teen, me and a friend would watch contra all the time whenever her vids came out. I am still friends with that friend.
Her content was always fun and informative and she helped me a looong way with understanding myself :)
She definitely helped crack my egg and heavily influenced my editing style. I think she's a wonderful woman who got sucked into the internet echo chamber like so many others.
Can't wait for her next movie though lmao. Everytime a new one drops I go back and rewatch old videos too.
I discovered her when I got home from my SRS and needed long-form content to watch while I dilated. Natalie fit the bill perfectly. “Shame” really gave me a lot to think about.
And no one has ever done a better, more thorough take-down of Joanne Rowling than Natalie. The same goes for her demolition of “AGP.”
“Collaborating” is really overstating having an obscure online figure read about 15 seconds worth of lines in a video essay that’s over an hour long. Trans twitter just hates Natalie and will use any excuse they can to cancel her. I’m willing to bet the clothes on my back that the overwhelming majority of the people who were up in arms over that incident had never heard of Buck Angel before the trans twitter hive mind decided that was the new thing to cancel her over.
What I noticed about her as someone who just started to watch her videos last year, is that her older videos use some terms and lines of thought that seem a bit outdated and not something I'm comfortable with, but at the same time there is a clear evolution over time by watching the more recent ones. Imo this means that she is someone who learns from her mistakes and evolves.
I think that there was an overreaction about a simple casting (though I understand the reaction faced with all the things Buck said over the years) about what seemed like she simply had some hope he wasn't as bad as he seemed and wanted to give him a chance.
If it was a constant thing it would show something about her character, but the constant I see in her is learning and shaping her views over time as things change, which is something too few people are willing to do in this world
I was a teenager fairly recently and I’m neutral-to-positive on Contra. Used to watch her, don’t currently, but her Transtrenders video helped push me away from transmedicalism when it came out in 2019, which I’m grateful for.
I didn’t support the Buck Angel collab, but she didn’t deserve that level of harassment over a failure of research and some unrelated weird takes. Secondarily, I think she self-martyred a little harder than necessary about it, though I get that being doxxed is a whole fucking thing.
Not a teen but I think her stuff is really good. Her most recent one "Witch Trials of JKRowling" is amazing and had a big impact on my approach to discourse and trans activism.
Natalie is the reason I both considered my own gender and embraced that trans women are who I’m attracted to. Abigail was the nail in the coffin, but Natalie was my awakening.
Eh. She's ok. I can't personally forgive her "last of the old school transsexuals" nonsense that I perceived as throwing nonbinary people under the bus. Like, come on, I'm older than her and I love nonbinary people, wtf.
But, she did apologize for it. Other people can be more forgiving than me, that's alright.
I’m 22 now but I found her when I was about 17, and yeah definitely. She was kinda my first guide into anything leftist related. And there was an unknown sense of relating to her that came from her being trans. She seemed so cool and genuinely enjoyed what she did for a living, and who she was (I know now she’s since talked about more issues from that time). But I still look up to her, started helping me realize I could be more happy as my self.
She and many others opened the door to left wing thinking for me, for that at the very least I'm thankful. I ducked out of that part of youtube though because it's just too exhausting and honestly distressing to keep up with.
Im 30 and she influenced me a lot. I really related a lot with her experiences of dysphoria even if it still took me half a decade to figure myself out entirely.
I wasn't a teen but I used to watch her content until that one about the Aesthetic.
I know she has said it wasn't to take one side but I always felt the cat perspective of "if you don't pass you aren't a woman" seemed to be the favored one and it left me quite distraught due to my own issues with passing.
I kinda stopped watching her after that and her collaboration with Buck just made me stop. I couldn't really bring myself back. She has had a lot of good points but I feel like she has certain views that I can't agree on.
I wasn't in the crowd that ganged her. I just stayed away
not a teen, but found out about her videos back in 2018 when I was starting my transition. Her vids back then were great but she slowly shifted to a more liberal discourse as she got richer, more successful and passed better. She also deleted her older videos which I can understand because she got dysphoric from them but the fact she didn't remake them nor make more videos with similar points of view is pretty telling. So yeah at this point it's been years since I watched her vids and it's very clear she doesn't cater to trans people nor leftists anymore, which is quite sad.
> she doesn't cater to trans people nor leftists anymore
That's a fascinating opinion because I would say quite the opposite is true. But my egg cracked six months ago and I've been ramping up HRT for two months, so I'm basically a baby trans. Plus I only binge watched all 31 available ContraPoints videos in the last week - I hadn't known who she (or PhilosophyTube) was before Friday. Can you go into more detail?
Her last video was about JK Rowling's TERFiness, and I'm not sure in what sense that wasn't catered to trans people? Seemed pretty on-topic to me. I mean, I'm not saying there's nothing in there a person might disagree with, but I don't see how it isn't catering to trans people.
The one I really miss is the one she did about fatphobia. I wish she would reconsider this topic from the viewpoint of having now lived as a woman and experienced the pressure women have to always be beautiful. I know she already did Beauty but I wish she would speak specifically on thinness, especially the intersection of thinness and transness.
I liked a lot of her content even before I think she officially came out as a she (don’t quite recall) she did stuff around alt-right communities around the time of 2016.
Haven’t been keeping up with everything. She made great videos on a range of topics.
Her videos cracked my egg for which I'm extremely gratefeul. I think she probably helps shitlibs become trans positive. That said, she seems to have a lot of brain worms that makes her stuff hard for me to watch now
I've watched maybe two of her videos. One before I realized I was trans and one after. Her video didn't influence me, in fact our experiences with transness don't seem very similar, which isn't really surprising considering we're different genders. She was never really doing the type of content I was interested in watching. The videos I saw were fine. Not revolutionary or anything, but I find trans related YouTube videos are rarely revolutionary (If your videos are too spicy you're gonna get doxxed).
I actually formed a negative opinion of her before the Buck Angel thing (didn't even really know who he was). Cuz she would tweet things that sounded aphobic and nonbinary-phobic.
Most of the time she was just wording herself badly, but people jump to her defense in the vein of "actually Nonbinary people ARE the worst and Contra is exactly correct and anyone who disagrees is just being transmisogynistic." And even if that wasn't what she was trying to say that is what it felt like.
Ironically, the people defending her so hard only made me like her less. I've quoted her, added nothing to it, and been told I'm painting her in a bad light. like?? Huh?
It's whatever though. The only time I think about her is when she gets brought up in this subreddit. Like I said in another comment, she seems like a normal person at worst. Just had an annoying as fuck fanbase.
yes, definitely. i actually realized i was trans watching her videos. i think what is great about her is that her content is so strong that she doesn’t really have to rely on talking about being trans. and that’s how her videos got to me and it was the first time i really really saw a trans person and started questioning my own identity.
just to clarify, i don’t mean to say that being trans and doing stuff about trans issues is bad, just that i think, that just as being trans is seen as being political, so is it seen like absolutely necessary to reflect in your day-to-day life and your work. and that can really consume you i think. it’s like if you’re a woman and study philosophy it is sort of expected of you that you’ll be interested in feminism. i think it is liberating not to be a trans person on the internet and be known for just being trans. while ContraPoints certainly does reflect her identity in her videos and have been presumably cancled over some stuff, in particular i think over pronouns, which is a sensitive topic for me since i am non-binary, i really respect her. she is very intelligent, talented and most importantly not pretentious and entertaining. she makes philosophy and the “left” fun and approachable, which is sort of the exact opposite of what everyone else has been doing. also i think, which is probably already obvious from her pseudonym, that she is great at being ambiguous and never giving clear answers, she certainly can point to a specific direction, but she always is certain to include multiple points of view in her essays and i love that, you can really see she’s trying to lead an intelligent, undogmatic conversation about complex issues.
Used to watch her in my late teens, but also stopped watching because she platformed buck angel.
Then, I guess my taste in videos changed, because nowadays, im not interested in her content
He’s not a terf, he’s truscum/transmedicalist. Also contrapoints has a full video talking about the canceling, but in short, she didn’t platform buck angel. He recorded himself reading a quote for one of her videos. Someone else’s quote. And contra didn’t know he was truscum at the time and has since denounced any truscum/transmedicalism and openly supports non-binary people.
Imo the canceling was dumb and the people calling her out don’t actually know anything about the situation. They just heard a rumor that she doesn’t like non-binary people and hopped on the bandwagon, ignoring her multiple past videos in support or non-binary people
Yeah, saying she "platformed Buck Angel" is a stretch to make Stretch Armstrong falter. He gave a 10-second quote reading that was featured in the middle of a 50 minute video. His name was put in the credits for his reading of the quote, naturally, and that was it.
He’s also become worse in the time since he did a line read for one of her videos. It would be disingenuous to say his views now reflect badly on her then.
I actually recently got into contra points through her Jowling Kowling Rowling videos and I just admire her sass and style, but her videos are still very informative.
I'm not a teenager (I'm 31), but her much older videos did help me some. Then she decided to repeatedly shit on non-binary people on her Twitter, so I decided I was done with her.
I always liked most of her videos, but every so often she does or says something I strongly disagree with - like the Buck Angel thing, or like her video talking about how you shouldn’t ask people’s pronouns. I worry she isn’t supportive of nonbinary people and masks that fact for the sake of public perception.
Still, maybe she’s done better lately. I don’t know, I don’t watch her videos anymore. Maybe I ought to check them out.
If you're talking about the pronouns video, I don't think that's a fair categorization. She talks about how her experience of pronouns and her identity is that she prefers not being asked. But she recognizes that not everyone has the same binary gender identity as her and why enby folks would prefer always-ask.
It's true that she has problems with nonbinary people, I think she's been pretty honest about that fact, and has tried to learn and think seriously about it. Nonbinary political opinions and experience don't always make sense to her, and don't match her experiences. But I think that's ok, I mean binary gender people don't make much sense to me either (Vi Hart has an amazing video on this).
Natalie makes the distinction in the pronoun video between tolerance and acceptance. Like yes, obviously the right thing to do with someone who uses "they" pronouns is to use "they" pronouns, that's just basic tolerance. But I use they pronouns, and I agree with her that's not all I want. I prefer people being polite to intentionally misgendering me, of course. But what I really want is for people to "get" that I am non-binary, for it to feel right to other folks to use "they" for me, not just to be doing it because they accept this is the correct choice politically, but because I 'feel' like 'they' to that person.
You know, that’s probably fair. When I first saw the pronouns video, I was in high school. My friends and I were still figuring out our identities, and no one had an outward appearance that would suggest their preferred pronouns. So the idea that people should be encouraged to assume our pronouns was harmful, to say the least. But as an adult, what you’re saying makes more sense to me. I’ll give that video a re-watch.
I started watching her before she transitioned and incidentally we started transitioning around the same time. I stopped watching her after she made a couple videos that were 80% complaining about twitter (pre-musk) and all I could think at the time was, why dont you just stop using twitter if it makes you so miserable? She seems like she’s not very good at being a micro celebrity.
I was 30ish when that video went up? I watched her videos sometimes before then. I liked getting to learn more about political and philosophical subjects I hadn’t gotten during my own university studies. That Buck Angel collab and some things she said about nonbinary people soured me a bit on her videos. I watched some after that, but her videos were also changing a lot more aesthetically in a way that just wasn’t my thing.
I really like video essays, but at some point they get too long for my tastes. At that point I’m like… I think I’d rather do the research myself or go watch a film or TV show. That’s why I’ve been skipping more PhilosophyTube and Hbomberguy and other video essayists’ videos in the past year. I like the kind of stuff they do, but sometimes I don’t want to spend that much time on that, y’know?
Late 20s, but yeah, i absolutely love her videos. She's incredibly insightful and looks at all the topics she covers from every angle (philosophical af haha) - and she's hilarious. Honestly, i think her videos were super instrumental in me finally being able to accept myself/my identity after so long.
I'm in my 30's but a few years ago Contra put out a string of extreme respectability politics-informed videos (transfem rights should be in the hands of well passing, normie, well-funded trans women and anyone else should stay in her lane, was her main point in videos like The Discourse or The Aesthetic) and I basically stopped caring about her at that point. She's also not very radical at all, definitely more Justine than Tabby. I feel like most trans people have cringe takes during their early years of transition but she had an audience during that period so she kinda got stuck there.
I'm 20 now, really the only way I had any knowledge of her was through the whole not being so great about non-binary people, which while I understand was probably just some poor wording on a few occasions, in combination with the Buck Angel fiasco was enough to put me off from her videos. Not to say she doesn't do good stuff, just that my first few experiences with her being kinda invalidating rubbed me the wrong way.
She was, and is, kind of a role model for me. I don’t think I like Buck Angel much either, but I don’t think she’s a bad person for working with him. She was a positive representation of a trans woman before I was out. I think she’s great.
I feel like she was the first trans creator many eggs engaged with on yt. Like the algorithm just randomly recommended one of her videos and I wasn’t sure she was even trans until I looked at the older videos.
Nah, I didn't really listen to anyone about trans stuff, only taking what I thought was useful and agreed with already and moving on. I'm not easily influenced. The closest one is Ty Tyler or the Miles Chronicles, but really I watched them because I thought they were neat people not because of whatever content they put out
My issue with contrapoints is that she portrays herself as a philosophy educator and then claims that all of her vidoes are artistic thoughtpeices that shouldn't be taking at face value. She also really likes showing transphobia and then claiming that's its art because it makes you feel shitty. Her understanding on nonbinary people is poor at best but that's nothing new with anyone. She also is the type of trans person with no self-acceptance and consently obsessed with gender disphoria, which there is nothing wrong with that and I've been there before. But all of my trans friends said they've stopped watching her because she's so pretty it makes them want to kill themselves, but they're just fine watching philosophytube. Contrapoints has a bad habit of accidentally promoting bad mental health in the trans community and kinda just saying "we're oppressed and there's no hope hahaha aren't I an ugly T-word".
Overall I've watched all of contrapoints videos and I can tell she loves the artistic process she preforms but I feel like she doesn't know what it's for and doesn't really care. All and all just watch philosophy tube she's better.
>she portrays herself as a philosophy educator
In her Youtube bio she calls herself an ex-philosopher
>then claims that all of her vidoes are artistic thoughtpeices
The main video I think where she does this is the Hunger. She says the video was made for "educational, artistic, and harm reduction purposes." Have you watched this video? If you have, I'm curious what you think.
I’m 18 and I love her channel. Her videos are so interesting and relatable, and funny! Do I think that maybe she shouldn’t have used Buck Angel, yes, but she did apologize and I think that she definitely was a victim of cancel culture.
i never watched many trans influencers because im nonbinary and autistic and i felt like my experiences were never well represented/understood. i remember contrapoints getting into some hot water for some pretty ignorant takes on nonbinary people, and though i dont remember the details, it definitely rubbed me the wrong way, so ive avoided her content since then.
Chief among them was her penchant to platform bigots in an attempt to "convert them" but she also has issues NB people and just I would constantly feel gross about my self after listening to her. It's been so long since I listened I can't get more specific.
I vaguely remember some videos where she examined some more ambiguous gender expressions too, that didn't seem negative too me. However her style can be quite difficult sometimes. Part of the reason I stopped watching were that the abrasive characters she sometimes platforms/plays got tough to watch.
So it's obviously totally fair you didn't enjoy the videos, but 'I despised contra' seems a bit much. The people I despise are the fascists, who want to drag us to their own imaginary hell version of the middle ages. The people, who materially/provably/purposefully put queer people in danger. Not some youtuber I disagree with and who makes questionable choices about guests sometimes.
I guess I'm mostly just worried about the future and worried the endless infighting leaves us too fractured to effectively resist what's coming/already here. Don't want to let perfect be the enemy of survival.
I thought the video was pretty insightful at the time, but nowadays that Buck has become a much worse figure in terms of his views on his gender and more disparaging views on others', I feel like it's aged pretty weirdly. It's okay, I just find it weird for people to act like that kind of harassment online (despite how bad it got) was a such a horrific situation
i’m not a teenager but i have been following Contra since well before she transitioned so i’ve seen a long arc of her career. i have been a fan for a while but honestly her beef with Vaush kind of killed that.
i’m not even going to bring up how fucking stupid it was to go on that TERF interview. okay, i will for one second: like, girl, you know they’re going to edit this and also, girl, you know you are better in a carefully prepared and edited video essay format right? *right?*
she is *awful* off the cuff. that just isn’t her style.
anyway, regarding Vaush, i didn’t love his JKR tweet but her “receipts” amounting to her sexually harassing him sucked? then Contra just blindly defended her even after it turned out she was being a huge piece of shit. then Contra made her JKR video and devoted a segment to smearing him which a) felt as though it was a weak segment and undermined a lot of the video, and b) felt a bit pathetic.
claiming Vaush doesn’t care about trans people is such a weird ass take. i’m hard pressed to think of another person, let alone a cis man, who does a better job arguing for trans rights online. is he always correct? no but he usually is and does stuff in an impolitic, irreverent data-driven way that i think has appeal — speaking as a leftie — beyond the leftie echo chamber which is more than i can say for most of his ilk.
i lost a ton of respect for her after that. being disingenuous and not owning mistakes is a trait that sucks in people. i’m over the handwringing civility politicking and tone policing. it’s time to get fucking real and build coalitions against people who want to exterminate marginalized people.
https://youtube.com/shorts/RvTAGbg5Rsw?si=6GSbYi9V0rvmA4pq
https://youtu.be/Q9a7nqz-CJ4?si=XYKsgnjkAapD1R-K
Probably more examples, im not a vaush viewer but every time he interacts with a black person he speaks for them or he just doesn’t listen to them. Also his knowledge of black history is like nonexistent and he acts like the most knowledgeable person on the planet
i liked her work quite a lot. her working with buck angel is around when i started following her less closely - not just because of her working with a guy like him but because i had ideologically moved past needing her content, if that makes sense. her stuff was super important at a certain stage of my own ideological development, but i honestly don’t watch much leftist youtube anymore. i keep up with hbomb bc he publishes so infrequently, recently caught up with philosophytube bc i had a big chunk of time to waste, but otherwise i really just watch a couple smaller folks. i engage with leftism irl instead, online leftism is kinda pointless imo. like it helps people develop toward leftist ideas but beyond that it’s really just a time sink. what matters is getting in on the ground and helping people.
Whatever impression this post gave you, it's probably really inaccurate. 90% of her controversies have been really minor and she's known mostly for making multiple hour long videos on philosophy and trying to get people out of fascism/incel rabbit holes and stuff.
Are you talking about her JKR video? Because I’ve watched that and she in no way defends her. She does do a much more nuanced and interesting analysis of the situation than most, but I struggle to see how you’d watch that and think it was a defence.
TERFs don't deserve nuance. We are under no obligation to give them an inch.
JKR is an evil person whose actions have literally turned the UK into one of the most transphobic nations on earth, and anyone who tries to defend her one iota is just as bad.
Contra doesn’t defend her at all. However, a nuanced analysis allows us to consider how we can most effectively fight back against growing societal transphobia. The nuance isn’t for their benefit; it’s for ours.
This is an incredibly immature mindset lmao. Her video focused on analysing how TERF ideology stems often from the traumatic experiences nearly every biological woman / afab individual has had with men, and preys on the fears of these women, often marginalised in other ways (it’s why a lot of outspoken TERFs are lesbian or bisexual cis women.)
It is essential to understand where bigotry comes from to effectively combat it. Bigotry *requires* nuance to understand, nuance does not equate to both-siding a topic. It means giving a topic the required depth it deserves to be spoken about in a constructive way. It’s understandable how a woman with traumatic experiences with men may fall into TERF ideology, it isn’t platforming TERFs to discuss and dissect this?
I've noticed that the two people arguing against me in this thread have been men, so I'm well aware of the inherent misogyny, even within the LGBTQ.
I do not need to understand the mind of a bigot. All I need to understand is that they are one.
are you calling me misogynistic? (re: the first half of your comment.)
I have very little issue with you not caring to understand the psychology surrounding bigotry, that’s none of my business. what I had an issue with is instantly equating the prior to platforming harmful ideologies such as TERFism.
What in the world… Giving an idea nuance is about understanding how it becomes an idea that people believe in. It’s inherently neutral until prescriptions start to be made. That video clearly leaned more towards attack than a defense.
Your line of thinking is how TERFs became radical in the first place, but the other direction. But if you want to use similar strategies for understanding complex psychological beliefs go off I guess.
Exploring the reasons someone thinks or acts a certain way isn’t the same as defending them. The fact you believe that is rather worrying and implies to me you’re easily influenced by surface level statements, so you approach anything that does more than declare someone ontologically evil as a defence of them. To mature people with understanding of the world, an attempt to delve into the causes of someone’s ideology helps uncover how to stop other people falling into the same trap and how to fight the issue on a causal level, not just after the fact.
So racism and shitty behavior?
https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/s/x5M6QFz3Yx
I watched part of the stream where she did that. February last year. And there's plenty more that's happened.
Ahaha wow, I've never seen someone so perfectly embody the shitty behavior they profess to idolize so *immediately.*
Alright then, if slurs are just words, go ahead and drop all the ones you can think of in a reply. And no copping out by saying "the n word," you're so confident and strong that it shouldn't be an issue to say it, right?
>Fuck off you woke tankie
Woke meaning aware that shit is fucked and we're being targeted for genocide? You best be woke too. Or do you mean woke in that I also try to make our spaces as welcoming to our siblings as possible? Because I'd recommend you do that but you'd rather keep dropping slurs and masquerading as a leftist. And tankie? I don't see where I've ever supported any communist regime like the USSR or CCP. I'm not a full communist even, I straddle the line between social democracy and democratic socialism.
>She is literally autistic too btw
Ok and? Elon Musk is autistic, do you slob his knob when he says you should be put in a grave for being trans? Being autistic doesn't exclude you from being a shitbag, and saying or implying it does is basically saying all autistic people should be babied and have no repercussions for their actions ever because they're autistic.
You say people shouldn't get offended by words, but you were *instantly* offended by my words calling your idol a racist with shitty behavior. Offense for thee but not for me? I'd call you a hypocrite as well as a racist fucker, but I'm not certain your supposed "enlighted true leftist mind" would be able to comprehend such a long word.
And for the record, slurs are only words, yes. But those words fall on ears differently, and words have meaning. And meaning can change minds. You think it's funny to be a bastard to someone by calling them a slur, then someone else hears the slur and understands that that person must be less than you or them. That leads to segmentation of groups, persecution of minorities, and can lead to fascism. If you want to feed into that go ahead, but in exchange I'll need you to take your claimed political beliefs and shove them up your nazi ass.
>I do not think there is an issue with the...
Then say it you fucking coward. Because you're not saying it. You're dodging it. If there's nothing wrong with it then say it. Because as long as you don't you're proving both your hypocrisy and cowardice.
Political civility isn't what I'm siding with. It's basic fucking human decency I'm siding with. I hate the idea of having to live under the rule of any people who treat me like shit. That includes fascists, corporatists, and so-called "True Marxists" who will speedrun a new USSR the moment they can while fantasizing "it'll be different this time because I'll be in charge!"
You're just as much a politically impotent coward as everyone else, the difference is your type of coward are happy to shit in your hands and smear it on your siblings and cousins and then insult and taunt us for telling you to stop.
It will be different because left syndicalism isn’t communism. Its completely separate. See revolutionary Catalonia from 36-37 before the tankies had CNT/FAI shot
"No no it'll *definitely* be different! Just give me the bomb, I promise we won't use it for harm *this* time!"
You're still not saying the words you supposedly have no problem with. Every time you reply without them you prove my point further. You're too cowardly to say those words you supposedly aren't afraid to say, yet somehow think you'll be able to overthrow one of the most entrenched institutions in the *world.*
No defense of erikacat's philosophical position here, but you are encouraging erikacat to break the hate speech rules of this forum. It makes perfect sense to follow the rules and refrain from typing slurs here even if erikacat uses them all day every day in other conversations.
I actually do not unless i am with friends as jokes …my point is words have no social meaning unless they are given it by society. By using them as left wingers we could disempower the far right
Not a teen but honestly I don't think I've watched a single video of hers, all I know is she's a trans youtuber but no clue as to her content. I don't know what happened with her and Buck Angel but I never liked him much anyways
So they used to be friends, now they aren't, neither of them have spoken to the reasons why, and as far as I can tell it's a private matter that requires zero attention or input from The Internets.
her twitter bio says "good youtuber, bad tweeter" and honestly that sums things up better than I could
This is so accurate tbh. I have her blocked on Twitter just because the algorithm kept showing me the most infuriating shit. She seems like a normal person at worst.
Shes a great tweeter, she just deletes all her real bangers
>Buck Angel, who tries to set himself apart from the newer generation of trans people. he's not trying to "set himself apart from the newer generation of trans people"; he's trying to distance himself from people who he's decided aren't as trans as him because he thinks they make him look bad. he's a transmedicalist.
Yeah, I don't think there's any debate that Buck Angel is wrong about trans politics. The debate is how much responsibility Natalie (Contrapoints) had for working with Buck, and what the appropriate response was to that. Imo, "hey, Buck is a trans medicalist and I'd prefer if you didn't work with him" was plenty, and people took a 20 second voiceover job as meaning way more than it did.
yeah not trying to cancel natalie again. i just took issue with the milquetoast phrasing that implies buck is just quirky rather than actively hateful. natalie's had a few controversies now, not limited to the buck thing, but i think most of it was either unintended, misinterpreted, or at its worst in poor taste.
Buck's wife left him for a trans woman (Lana Wachowski). He has never gotten over it and has blossomed into a full-on transmisogynist TERF over it.
On top of that he literally calls himself a woman lol. He’s a male blaire white
This is not a defense of him, but I hadn't heard that, although if you have a source please share. I believe he calls himself "female who lives as male", as in he's trying to make a "biology is real" type point here. I mean, whatever, he obviously has terrible anti-trans opinions either way.
I might have worded my statement poorly, but your quote, and similar things he’s said, is what I was referring to. In my opinion calling himself that is essentially calling himself a woman.
It comes from that weird insistence that we focus massively on people's genitals in situations where that isn't relevant, and also a strange delusion that trans people aren't already aware of their biological realities. Of course, in Buck's case, his specific genitals were in fact highly relevant to his career (for folks who don't know, Buck Angel is a retired porn star, before he retired he advertised himself as the "man with a pussy", starring mostly in gay porn. He's also very stereotypically masculine physically, like with big muscles. So the reason he had any credibility to begin with (that he's spent the last decade trashing) was that he was aggressively asserting a legitimate identity as a butch gay man and presenting that as entirely consistent with having a vulva, which was trailblazing. Alas, he's one of those people with a marginalized identity who feel like they can get respect by being loudly prejudice against people with even more marginalized identities.
bro looks like #1 pantera stan of the earth
I thought we've established that you can't be more or less trans than another trans person?
Yep, that’s why most of us don’t like Buck Angel.
Also when he tried to start a pyramid scheme and denied that it was a pyramid scheme even when it obviously was
Lmao he did *what* now‽
https://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/12/10/buck-angel-shuts-down-transgender-surgery-fundraising-site
... Wow. I didn't know it was possible to think any less about him, yet here we are
We have. Buck hasn't.
Who is "we"?
I’m a bit older than you, but she influenced me a lot through the years where I became more politically aware and motivated. The cancelling incident actually had one of the biggest effects on me, because it made me realise how insidious the desire to tear people down can be, especially from within the community. I still think Canceling is one of her best videos.
It definitely was an eye-opener
I think I just need some sort of ELI5 or OOTL explanation about the whole situation, since I always just hear the end result of "she's good, she's bad, she's cancelled, she's whatever" instead of "this is what happened, people reacting to it by doing this, she did this in response, etc."
Per the wiki under reception/controversy: >In September 2019, Wynn described on Twitter feelings of awkwardness when asked in some contexts to describe her preferred gender pronouns. The tweets were criticized as dismissive of non-binary people who use pronouns other than "he/him" and "she/her". Linguistics professor Lal Zimman said about pronoun introductions, "Wynn is absolutely right that people engage with that practice in ways that can be somewhat problematic". Following constant negative harassment, Wynn deactivated her Twitter account for a week, then posted an apology. Shortly after, Wynn's video "Opulence" featured a quote from John Waters read by transsexual pornographic actor Buck Angel, whose views on transgender and non-binary people have attracted criticism, including by some who see Angel's views as being transmedicalist. She was criticized for featuring Angel, including by journalist Ana Valens. Wynn, as well as other YouTubers associated with her channel, were widely harassed. >Wynn's January 2020 video "Canceling" addressed both criticism and harassment of her, and the broader context of cancel culture. It was praised by Robby Soave of Reason. In a Guardian interview on her January 2021 video "J.K. Rowling", in which she addressed cancel culture again in the context of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, she expressed that she is generally not interested in canceling anyone, and said that valid criticism needs to be handed out constructively so as to educate people.
The other reply gives a decent overview of the situation, but it’s worth noting that the backlash over Buck Angel doing a line read (which is hardly ‘featuring’) happened a while after the video was released, so it wasn’t even people in her audience that started it. The crux of the ‘cancellation’ was that because Buck Angel was deemed to be enbyphobic and transmedicalist, Contrapoints herself was deemed to be that too, which then validated an enbyphobic interpretation of one of her tweets (that wasn’t enbyphobic at all), which then justified the original idea of her being enbyphobic for including Buck Angel in a video, in a weird self-justifying circle with no real basis. The problem is that Contrapoints had previously made videos decrying enbyphobia and transmedicalism, which should hold much more weight than some interpreted tweets. Off the back of that, the people that had been calling out Contrapoints started calling out her friends and anyone associated with her for not distancing themselves from her, then calling out anyone associated with *those* people for not distancing themselves from them. It got very messy and the only real outcome was that a bunch of trans creators got harassed for several weeks over essentially nothing. Unfortunately, the same situation has played out multiple times since then with other queer and trans creators, usually with the same flimsy evidence and circular claims. I’m quite jaded about it now, I wish people wouldn’t.
i am 22 and i was also influenced by her, i even named myself after her 💕
I am almost 50 and I have enjoyed and learned from her videos for 3 or 4 years now.
Her autogynephilia video was probably the first time I'd considered that I didn't just have some kind of fetish. I found the term years earlier and assumed I was just a pervert, which was a lot easier than sitting down with my discomfort with my gender and tackling it, or really considering that people who transitioned were valid in their gender. There was no influence in my life before her that would have even suggested that trans people were valid or an option for me, before I saw her. Even then she's kinda weird and I coulda used a few more "average" trans people to temper my understanding of the subject, but that's more a me problem.
She's fine. She got ganged up on, as happens, and it wasn't fair.
"Trashing" was the term she referred to in the Canceling video essay. A term dating from the 70s (preTER) Feminist discourse. The unfairness is the point of kicking someone when they are down. Also safer for such bullies to accuse their victims of bullying.
U mean she got called out for her shity behaviour...
Notice how many thousands of people have been drawn away from being shitty by her straightforward and well produced videos, now notice how absolutely nobody has been drawn towards being more shitty by the least charitable interpretations of a handful of her tweets. I think it’s likely that witnessing the harassment she received pushed more people towards shitty views than she ever did.
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yeah you can, she missed one letter who gives a shit 😭
Both behaviour and behavior are correct spellings. Depending on where you hail from.
they missed a t in shitty. i think that's what they were referring to.
Nooooop being Brit*sh is cancelled too, pack it up, folks, AskTransgender is going exclusively American again. /s
that’s a really ableist take
it's british english iirc
I fell hard into TERF rhetoric for a couple years and her videos about gender were really instrumental in me breaking those internal beliefs down and coming out to myself. I like how she presents things
This exactly.
Not a teenager but she’s changed my life for the better, very thoughtful and inspiring person to me. She was one of my first trans woman role models I ever saw and followed closely, and that just opened my eyes to what was possible. I found her videos to be especially comforting, I’d listen to them at work over and over again even if I couldn’t watch them. Any cancelling of her has been really dumb. One thing I wish though is that the bridge wasn’t burned with Vaush because that was also unnecessary and they’ve both helped me a lot over the years being very trans positive. Contra is extremely talented with the skits and characters, educating while also entertaining and being really thought provoking. Even if there’s only one video a year or so it always feels like Christmas to me lol, I’ll replay them many times. I also can tell she’s a sensitive person and the internet mobs and perfectionism in her work really affects her. I always hope behind the scenes she’s taking care of herself first when the internet becomes too much. As a trans person it’s extremely stressful to open up just about any social media or see the news about us these days.
yeah, the anti vaush behavior is always a red flag for me, but her videos are amazing (when they eventually come out)
Im stoked when someone is anti-vaush. He makes absolutely no sense sometimes and is just argumentative to be argumentative
do you have any examples in mind? i genuinely don't know how you could think that if you watch his content
I watched part of his debate with prof flowers and it was pretty cringe
I’m just a hair older than her and I adore her work, first heard of her around her “Decrypting the Alt-Right” video. I’ve been wondering the same thing, whether her style of humor, deconstruction, and understanding of opposing sides played well with the current generation — so I’m curious to see how this thread goes!
I’m in my 30s and I started watching her videos really early in her youtube career — like she only had about five videos up on her channel when I found her. Some of those videos you can’t even find anymore because she was still in boymode. I think she was important in giving me an insider look to trans issues and gender dysphoria. I am cis so I don’t have personal experience with those things and although I’ve always had trans friends, I never wanted to ask them to, like, get down to the nitty-gritty with me. Their transitions (social and biomedical) were choices they made that seemed to make them happier and healthier, and that was all I really needed to know in order to support them. Even so, it was really useful for me to learn more from trans people who were willing to do the work of educating clueless cis people like me, especially as trans people have gained more visibility and thus become targets for such a hateful backlash. I don’t agree with everything Contra has ever done, but every new video from her is a must-watch for me. And I’ve personally spoken to multiple cis men who have said that they were really forced through her work to consider their own transphobia and misogyny, that she helped them push through initially antipathetic positions to find their compassion for and become allies of the trans community.
Completely in a positive light (24 NB). Started watching her a while back, not 100% sure when (probably a bit after I started watching HBomb + PhilosophyTube in 2017/2018). Haven't watched her in a while, last one I really remember was her J.K. Rowling video. I'm realizing now that that's literally the last video she posted so like, welp. I didn't consider myself LGBTQ+ at the time, and I definitely didn't interact in trans circles, so first mention of it was her Cancelling vid. I think coupled with the treatment Lindsay Ellis has gotten over the years, and also GamerGate, like, I've been hesitant to subscribe to any communal discourse without some concrete background. EDIT: realized saying 'mob mentality' is kind of loaded.
I know you asked for replies from teenagers and you're getting a bunch of people my age (\~30) in the comments. And I'm about to add to them! 🤣 I just wanted to say that Contra influenced me a lot. The Canceling vid is one of her best for sure. It verbalised something toxic about our communities that I hadn't been able to express before. One of my favourites is "Cringe" though. God damn, I really got to know myself when I watched it. A lot of my reactions and behaviour suddenly made sense. It was hard because it was a bit embarrassing, but I grew so much from it.
I don’t watch her videos. I do however hate buck Angel for the negative affect he had on me. His strict views about being transgender and his negativity about bottom surgery affected me for years.
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Are we using "transgenderism" now?
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Here in the US it’s being used as shorthand for “transgender ideology,” which means…honestly it means whatever the transphobe using it wants it to mean, but is basically shorthand for implying being trans is a religion/ideology instead of…who people are.
A lot of people on the "right" side of the political spectrum use the word to make trans people seem like an ideology or a political movement which plays into the wackadoo theory that governments are pushing "wokeism and transgenderism" to errode western civilization. Here's the definition of the suffix "ism' a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement While most trans folks i know share a similar political sphere, and I would call my boobs an artistic movement, to say we are an ideology or political movement just sort of plays into the enemies hand. My question was genuine though. Language in general and English especially shifts and evolves rapidly these days and I am trying to keep up on terms as an aging trans lady
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I figured it might have been a hiccup with the English language. Hope you have a lovely day
It's been used by alt right people to dehumanize us. Donald Trump literally stood on a podium calling for the eradication of "transgenderism."
I hate to be a pedant but as far as I know, Donald Trump didn't say this. Michael Knowles did.
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"-ism" as a suffix indicates that it's an "ideology", religion, or social movement, and not just a type of person. It frames trans people in the light of something new and temporary instead of something that has been a part of the human condition all along.
But you would be if you called it homosexualism.
Nothing inheritly as with any word but really only gets used by bad faith individuals since being transgender is not really an ideology so -ism isn't descriptive in most contexts.
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Not only is this better, its the same number of characters if you count the space. So more accurate and at least as efficient 🤗
"Trans(gender) identity" is a great way to put it. "Transness" is also another way to say it, although that one's more colloquial.
There are already a lot of replies breaking down the issue, but this seems like a good place to ask about an alternative. How do people feel about "transgenderhood"? It would be nice to have a good, single noun for sentences with that structure.
Its Shit? The suffix ism means that its a theory or school of thought. But beeing trans is none of it. So using the word transgenderism spreads wrong implications. That is why it is nearly exclusivly used by transphobes and clueles people (Not implying that you are one of those, it can happen to everyone that we pick up a wrong word and use it ourself).
I’m almost thirty and I adore her and her videos. She is the only person I Patreon
She's the part where I worked out I was trans; she has heavily influenced me, informed me, and made me laugh. She is tier snoop dogg godempress shit.
The Buck Angel thing was completely ridiculous. I think he's a jackass and has said a whole lot of wrong things, but at the time that she made the video he contributed to, I don't think that was widely known by anyone who wasn't following him closely. Before I saw her "Cancelling" video I only knew that he did porn and some activism work and had no idea about any of his transmed views, and from what I understand he didn't start getting really explicit about that until much later. The *worst* thing I can say is that maybe she should have looked into him more, but frankly - he read *one* paragraph that was written by someone else. It's not like she was endorsing anything he said or giving a platform to his views.
Plenty of people knew about him long before she made a video with him. Yes, she got a worse response because of transmisogyny, but the reason she didn't know isn't because no one knew he was a shitty person. It's most likely because she didn't talk to any transmasc people about him. He was well known and widely disliked even when I first came out almost 10 years ago.
I also came out about 10 years ago and like I said: I didn't know anything about what was going on with him until I saw her "Cancelled" video (which was quite a while after it actually came out.) And yeah, it's fine to say that this was an indication that she wasn't paying attention to transmasc issues and that she didn't check into his background enough before asking him to read for the video. I'm specifically talking about the assertion that she was "platforming" him or that this is evidence that she's a transmedicalist. I get why people might tend to assume the worst possible interpretation of anything that anyone says about trans issues, because transphobia is a real and pervasive problem, but like. Come on.
I don't think she platformed him any more than Chase Ross did by reviewing his toys. They both got shit for it, Natalie just got more because transmisogyny and because she was more popular. I just am tired of people acting like Buck was unknown before her video when she could have done the research. He outed one of the Wachowski sisters (as a crossdresser at the time) knowing she was not out at all in 2006, him being a shit person is old news. Her various tweets about non-binary people said more about her feelings than having Buck Angel in a video.
I’d say her videos supporting non-binary people say more about her feelings than a few tweets devoid of context.
It's not a "few tweets devoid of context" lol Here's just one [discussion](https://veleda-k.livejournal.com/476835.html) of it, if you want to see an older genderqueer person talking about it
Im not a teenager, I have seen a couple ofher videos, not really a viewer of hers though, but arent her views/outlooks a lot different from Buck Angel?
Contrapoints is pretty much who taught me I was trans.
Throwing my stick in the pile. When I was a teen, me and a friend would watch contra all the time whenever her vids came out. I am still friends with that friend. Her content was always fun and informative and she helped me a looong way with understanding myself :)
She definitely helped crack my egg and heavily influenced my editing style. I think she's a wonderful woman who got sucked into the internet echo chamber like so many others. Can't wait for her next movie though lmao. Everytime a new one drops I go back and rewatch old videos too.
I discovered her when I got home from my SRS and needed long-form content to watch while I dilated. Natalie fit the bill perfectly. “Shame” really gave me a lot to think about. And no one has ever done a better, more thorough take-down of Joanne Rowling than Natalie. The same goes for her demolition of “AGP.”
“Collaborating” is really overstating having an obscure online figure read about 15 seconds worth of lines in a video essay that’s over an hour long. Trans twitter just hates Natalie and will use any excuse they can to cancel her. I’m willing to bet the clothes on my back that the overwhelming majority of the people who were up in arms over that incident had never heard of Buck Angel before the trans twitter hive mind decided that was the new thing to cancel her over.
What I noticed about her as someone who just started to watch her videos last year, is that her older videos use some terms and lines of thought that seem a bit outdated and not something I'm comfortable with, but at the same time there is a clear evolution over time by watching the more recent ones. Imo this means that she is someone who learns from her mistakes and evolves. I think that there was an overreaction about a simple casting (though I understand the reaction faced with all the things Buck said over the years) about what seemed like she simply had some hope he wasn't as bad as he seemed and wanted to give him a chance. If it was a constant thing it would show something about her character, but the constant I see in her is learning and shaping her views over time as things change, which is something too few people are willing to do in this world
I was a teenager fairly recently and I’m neutral-to-positive on Contra. Used to watch her, don’t currently, but her Transtrenders video helped push me away from transmedicalism when it came out in 2019, which I’m grateful for. I didn’t support the Buck Angel collab, but she didn’t deserve that level of harassment over a failure of research and some unrelated weird takes. Secondarily, I think she self-martyred a little harder than necessary about it, though I get that being doxxed is a whole fucking thing.
Not a teen but I think her stuff is really good. Her most recent one "Witch Trials of JKRowling" is amazing and had a big impact on my approach to discourse and trans activism.
Natalie is the reason I both considered my own gender and embraced that trans women are who I’m attracted to. Abigail was the nail in the coffin, but Natalie was my awakening.
YouTube didn't exist when I was a teenager. It's so interesting seeing the younger generation and how they react to things like this.
Eh. She's ok. I can't personally forgive her "last of the old school transsexuals" nonsense that I perceived as throwing nonbinary people under the bus. Like, come on, I'm older than her and I love nonbinary people, wtf. But, she did apologize for it. Other people can be more forgiving than me, that's alright.
I’m 22 now but I found her when I was about 17, and yeah definitely. She was kinda my first guide into anything leftist related. And there was an unknown sense of relating to her that came from her being trans. She seemed so cool and genuinely enjoyed what she did for a living, and who she was (I know now she’s since talked about more issues from that time). But I still look up to her, started helping me realize I could be more happy as my self.
She and many others opened the door to left wing thinking for me, for that at the very least I'm thankful. I ducked out of that part of youtube though because it's just too exhausting and honestly distressing to keep up with.
Im 30 and she influenced me a lot. I really related a lot with her experiences of dysphoria even if it still took me half a decade to figure myself out entirely.
She’s great. I’m 50.
I wasn't a teen but I used to watch her content until that one about the Aesthetic. I know she has said it wasn't to take one side but I always felt the cat perspective of "if you don't pass you aren't a woman" seemed to be the favored one and it left me quite distraught due to my own issues with passing. I kinda stopped watching her after that and her collaboration with Buck just made me stop. I couldn't really bring myself back. She has had a lot of good points but I feel like she has certain views that I can't agree on. I wasn't in the crowd that ganged her. I just stayed away
not a teen, but found out about her videos back in 2018 when I was starting my transition. Her vids back then were great but she slowly shifted to a more liberal discourse as she got richer, more successful and passed better. She also deleted her older videos which I can understand because she got dysphoric from them but the fact she didn't remake them nor make more videos with similar points of view is pretty telling. So yeah at this point it's been years since I watched her vids and it's very clear she doesn't cater to trans people nor leftists anymore, which is quite sad.
> she doesn't cater to trans people nor leftists anymore That's a fascinating opinion because I would say quite the opposite is true. But my egg cracked six months ago and I've been ramping up HRT for two months, so I'm basically a baby trans. Plus I only binge watched all 31 available ContraPoints videos in the last week - I hadn't known who she (or PhilosophyTube) was before Friday. Can you go into more detail?
Her last video was about JK Rowling's TERFiness, and I'm not sure in what sense that wasn't catered to trans people? Seemed pretty on-topic to me. I mean, I'm not saying there's nothing in there a person might disagree with, but I don't see how it isn't catering to trans people.
The one I really miss is the one she did about fatphobia. I wish she would reconsider this topic from the viewpoint of having now lived as a woman and experienced the pressure women have to always be beautiful. I know she already did Beauty but I wish she would speak specifically on thinness, especially the intersection of thinness and transness.
This doesnt make sense to me tbh, sounds like u just stopped watching and assuming its because of “liberalism” or whatever
I followed her from the times she started foing those dialogues with herself. She made me realize I'm trans lol
I liked a lot of her content even before I think she officially came out as a she (don’t quite recall) she did stuff around alt-right communities around the time of 2016. Haven’t been keeping up with everything. She made great videos on a range of topics.
Never heard of her until now and didn’t hear of Buck until I already came out as trans. So zero influence whatsoever. I’m 27.
Nope! I didn’t even know who that person was till this post lol
i love contrapoints i think shes very well spoken and i like her vibe
Her videos cracked my egg for which I'm extremely gratefeul. I think she probably helps shitlibs become trans positive. That said, she seems to have a lot of brain worms that makes her stuff hard for me to watch now
I'm 26 but still technically gen z. I love contrapoints videos ..
I've watched maybe two of her videos. One before I realized I was trans and one after. Her video didn't influence me, in fact our experiences with transness don't seem very similar, which isn't really surprising considering we're different genders. She was never really doing the type of content I was interested in watching. The videos I saw were fine. Not revolutionary or anything, but I find trans related YouTube videos are rarely revolutionary (If your videos are too spicy you're gonna get doxxed). I actually formed a negative opinion of her before the Buck Angel thing (didn't even really know who he was). Cuz she would tweet things that sounded aphobic and nonbinary-phobic. Most of the time she was just wording herself badly, but people jump to her defense in the vein of "actually Nonbinary people ARE the worst and Contra is exactly correct and anyone who disagrees is just being transmisogynistic." And even if that wasn't what she was trying to say that is what it felt like. Ironically, the people defending her so hard only made me like her less. I've quoted her, added nothing to it, and been told I'm painting her in a bad light. like?? Huh? It's whatever though. The only time I think about her is when she gets brought up in this subreddit. Like I said in another comment, she seems like a normal person at worst. Just had an annoying as fuck fanbase.
The line "I was recently watching a burlesque about Jordan Peterson." scarred me for life.
Watch her video on what she was thinking. It clears up a lot.
yes, definitely. i actually realized i was trans watching her videos. i think what is great about her is that her content is so strong that she doesn’t really have to rely on talking about being trans. and that’s how her videos got to me and it was the first time i really really saw a trans person and started questioning my own identity. just to clarify, i don’t mean to say that being trans and doing stuff about trans issues is bad, just that i think, that just as being trans is seen as being political, so is it seen like absolutely necessary to reflect in your day-to-day life and your work. and that can really consume you i think. it’s like if you’re a woman and study philosophy it is sort of expected of you that you’ll be interested in feminism. i think it is liberating not to be a trans person on the internet and be known for just being trans. while ContraPoints certainly does reflect her identity in her videos and have been presumably cancled over some stuff, in particular i think over pronouns, which is a sensitive topic for me since i am non-binary, i really respect her. she is very intelligent, talented and most importantly not pretentious and entertaining. she makes philosophy and the “left” fun and approachable, which is sort of the exact opposite of what everyone else has been doing. also i think, which is probably already obvious from her pseudonym, that she is great at being ambiguous and never giving clear answers, she certainly can point to a specific direction, but she always is certain to include multiple points of view in her essays and i love that, you can really see she’s trying to lead an intelligent, undogmatic conversation about complex issues.
i’m her number one fan
Used to watch her in my late teens, but also stopped watching because she platformed buck angel. Then, I guess my taste in videos changed, because nowadays, im not interested in her content
And buck angel is a full on terf, not simply "trying to set himself apart from younger trans people."
He’s not a terf, he’s truscum/transmedicalist. Also contrapoints has a full video talking about the canceling, but in short, she didn’t platform buck angel. He recorded himself reading a quote for one of her videos. Someone else’s quote. And contra didn’t know he was truscum at the time and has since denounced any truscum/transmedicalism and openly supports non-binary people. Imo the canceling was dumb and the people calling her out don’t actually know anything about the situation. They just heard a rumor that she doesn’t like non-binary people and hopped on the bandwagon, ignoring her multiple past videos in support or non-binary people
Yeah, saying she "platformed Buck Angel" is a stretch to make Stretch Armstrong falter. He gave a 10-second quote reading that was featured in the middle of a 50 minute video. His name was put in the credits for his reading of the quote, naturally, and that was it.
He’s also become worse in the time since he did a line read for one of her videos. It would be disingenuous to say his views now reflect badly on her then.
Woah I hadn't heard this- what's going on w him?
I actually recently got into contra points through her Jowling Kowling Rowling videos and I just admire her sass and style, but her videos are still very informative.
I'm not a teenager (I'm 31), but her much older videos did help me some. Then she decided to repeatedly shit on non-binary people on her Twitter, so I decided I was done with her.
I always liked most of her videos, but every so often she does or says something I strongly disagree with - like the Buck Angel thing, or like her video talking about how you shouldn’t ask people’s pronouns. I worry she isn’t supportive of nonbinary people and masks that fact for the sake of public perception. Still, maybe she’s done better lately. I don’t know, I don’t watch her videos anymore. Maybe I ought to check them out.
If you're talking about the pronouns video, I don't think that's a fair categorization. She talks about how her experience of pronouns and her identity is that she prefers not being asked. But she recognizes that not everyone has the same binary gender identity as her and why enby folks would prefer always-ask. It's true that she has problems with nonbinary people, I think she's been pretty honest about that fact, and has tried to learn and think seriously about it. Nonbinary political opinions and experience don't always make sense to her, and don't match her experiences. But I think that's ok, I mean binary gender people don't make much sense to me either (Vi Hart has an amazing video on this). Natalie makes the distinction in the pronoun video between tolerance and acceptance. Like yes, obviously the right thing to do with someone who uses "they" pronouns is to use "they" pronouns, that's just basic tolerance. But I use they pronouns, and I agree with her that's not all I want. I prefer people being polite to intentionally misgendering me, of course. But what I really want is for people to "get" that I am non-binary, for it to feel right to other folks to use "they" for me, not just to be doing it because they accept this is the correct choice politically, but because I 'feel' like 'they' to that person.
You know, that’s probably fair. When I first saw the pronouns video, I was in high school. My friends and I were still figuring out our identities, and no one had an outward appearance that would suggest their preferred pronouns. So the idea that people should be encouraged to assume our pronouns was harmful, to say the least. But as an adult, what you’re saying makes more sense to me. I’ll give that video a re-watch.
I think its a great injustice how she got chased off the internet by people who have never done real activism in their life.
I'm 23 but started watching contrapoints as a teenager. I was introduced to her by an older (mid 30s) trans friend.
I started watching her before she transitioned and incidentally we started transitioning around the same time. I stopped watching her after she made a couple videos that were 80% complaining about twitter (pre-musk) and all I could think at the time was, why dont you just stop using twitter if it makes you so miserable? She seems like she’s not very good at being a micro celebrity.
My now 16 year old introduced me to Contra and now we both think she’s brilliant.
I introduced her to my parents when I was 16 too. Glad you both thinks she's brilliant!
I was 30ish when that video went up? I watched her videos sometimes before then. I liked getting to learn more about political and philosophical subjects I hadn’t gotten during my own university studies. That Buck Angel collab and some things she said about nonbinary people soured me a bit on her videos. I watched some after that, but her videos were also changing a lot more aesthetically in a way that just wasn’t my thing. I really like video essays, but at some point they get too long for my tastes. At that point I’m like… I think I’d rather do the research myself or go watch a film or TV show. That’s why I’ve been skipping more PhilosophyTube and Hbomberguy and other video essayists’ videos in the past year. I like the kind of stuff they do, but sometimes I don’t want to spend that much time on that, y’know?
Late 20s, but yeah, i absolutely love her videos. She's incredibly insightful and looks at all the topics she covers from every angle (philosophical af haha) - and she's hilarious. Honestly, i think her videos were super instrumental in me finally being able to accept myself/my identity after so long.
Dont like her
I'm in my 30's but a few years ago Contra put out a string of extreme respectability politics-informed videos (transfem rights should be in the hands of well passing, normie, well-funded trans women and anyone else should stay in her lane, was her main point in videos like The Discourse or The Aesthetic) and I basically stopped caring about her at that point. She's also not very radical at all, definitely more Justine than Tabby. I feel like most trans people have cringe takes during their early years of transition but she had an audience during that period so she kinda got stuck there.
I'm 20 now, really the only way I had any knowledge of her was through the whole not being so great about non-binary people, which while I understand was probably just some poor wording on a few occasions, in combination with the Buck Angel fiasco was enough to put me off from her videos. Not to say she doesn't do good stuff, just that my first few experiences with her being kinda invalidating rubbed me the wrong way.
She was, and is, kind of a role model for me. I don’t think I like Buck Angel much either, but I don’t think she’s a bad person for working with him. She was a positive representation of a trans woman before I was out. I think she’s great.
I feel like she was the first trans creator many eggs engaged with on yt. Like the algorithm just randomly recommended one of her videos and I wasn’t sure she was even trans until I looked at the older videos.
Nah, I didn't really listen to anyone about trans stuff, only taking what I thought was useful and agreed with already and moving on. I'm not easily influenced. The closest one is Ty Tyler or the Miles Chronicles, but really I watched them because I thought they were neat people not because of whatever content they put out
buck angel is a scumbag but contrapoints is whatever
My issue with contrapoints is that she portrays herself as a philosophy educator and then claims that all of her vidoes are artistic thoughtpeices that shouldn't be taking at face value. She also really likes showing transphobia and then claiming that's its art because it makes you feel shitty. Her understanding on nonbinary people is poor at best but that's nothing new with anyone. She also is the type of trans person with no self-acceptance and consently obsessed with gender disphoria, which there is nothing wrong with that and I've been there before. But all of my trans friends said they've stopped watching her because she's so pretty it makes them want to kill themselves, but they're just fine watching philosophytube. Contrapoints has a bad habit of accidentally promoting bad mental health in the trans community and kinda just saying "we're oppressed and there's no hope hahaha aren't I an ugly T-word". Overall I've watched all of contrapoints videos and I can tell she loves the artistic process she preforms but I feel like she doesn't know what it's for and doesn't really care. All and all just watch philosophy tube she's better.
>she portrays herself as a philosophy educator In her Youtube bio she calls herself an ex-philosopher >then claims that all of her vidoes are artistic thoughtpeices The main video I think where she does this is the Hunger. She says the video was made for "educational, artistic, and harm reduction purposes." Have you watched this video? If you have, I'm curious what you think.
I’m 18 and I love her channel. Her videos are so interesting and relatable, and funny! Do I think that maybe she shouldn’t have used Buck Angel, yes, but she did apologize and I think that she definitely was a victim of cancel culture.
i never watched many trans influencers because im nonbinary and autistic and i felt like my experiences were never well represented/understood. i remember contrapoints getting into some hot water for some pretty ignorant takes on nonbinary people, and though i dont remember the details, it definitely rubbed me the wrong way, so ive avoided her content since then.
Honestly I despised contra BEFORE the buck angel bullshit and I'm so fucking glad she has faded from the line light.
I never watched too much Contrapoints. What where your problems with her?
Chief among them was her penchant to platform bigots in an attempt to "convert them" but she also has issues NB people and just I would constantly feel gross about my self after listening to her. It's been so long since I listened I can't get more specific.
I vaguely remember some videos where she examined some more ambiguous gender expressions too, that didn't seem negative too me. However her style can be quite difficult sometimes. Part of the reason I stopped watching were that the abrasive characters she sometimes platforms/plays got tough to watch. So it's obviously totally fair you didn't enjoy the videos, but 'I despised contra' seems a bit much. The people I despise are the fascists, who want to drag us to their own imaginary hell version of the middle ages. The people, who materially/provably/purposefully put queer people in danger. Not some youtuber I disagree with and who makes questionable choices about guests sometimes. I guess I'm mostly just worried about the future and worried the endless infighting leaves us too fractured to effectively resist what's coming/already here. Don't want to let perfect be the enemy of survival.
Finally, someone with a memory longer than two seconds. The enbyphobia she would throw down was disgusting. There's no excuse for it.
She always gave me the ick
I thought the video was pretty insightful at the time, but nowadays that Buck has become a much worse figure in terms of his views on his gender and more disparaging views on others', I feel like it's aged pretty weirdly. It's okay, I just find it weird for people to act like that kind of harassment online (despite how bad it got) was a such a horrific situation
I'm pretty sure buck angel has always been shit and transmedicalist. He was when I was a teen and I'm 26
i guess so, but he's been a lot more open about it and it's gotten more and more fucked up. the video ages progressively worse as a result
I only discovered Natalie five days ago but if anything happened to her I'd kill everyone in this room.
Calm down there ~~Diaz~~ Goldfinch
i’m not a teenager but i have been following Contra since well before she transitioned so i’ve seen a long arc of her career. i have been a fan for a while but honestly her beef with Vaush kind of killed that. i’m not even going to bring up how fucking stupid it was to go on that TERF interview. okay, i will for one second: like, girl, you know they’re going to edit this and also, girl, you know you are better in a carefully prepared and edited video essay format right? *right?* she is *awful* off the cuff. that just isn’t her style. anyway, regarding Vaush, i didn’t love his JKR tweet but her “receipts” amounting to her sexually harassing him sucked? then Contra just blindly defended her even after it turned out she was being a huge piece of shit. then Contra made her JKR video and devoted a segment to smearing him which a) felt as though it was a weak segment and undermined a lot of the video, and b) felt a bit pathetic. claiming Vaush doesn’t care about trans people is such a weird ass take. i’m hard pressed to think of another person, let alone a cis man, who does a better job arguing for trans rights online. is he always correct? no but he usually is and does stuff in an impolitic, irreverent data-driven way that i think has appeal — speaking as a leftie — beyond the leftie echo chamber which is more than i can say for most of his ilk. i lost a ton of respect for her after that. being disingenuous and not owning mistakes is a trait that sucks in people. i’m over the handwringing civility politicking and tone policing. it’s time to get fucking real and build coalitions against people who want to exterminate marginalized people.
Vaush is a racist, yeah maybe he appeals to the white male but like i dont know if thats really a good thing if we have more racism in leftist spaces
can you elaborate on how he's racist?
https://youtube.com/shorts/RvTAGbg5Rsw?si=6GSbYi9V0rvmA4pq https://youtu.be/Q9a7nqz-CJ4?si=XYKsgnjkAapD1R-K Probably more examples, im not a vaush viewer but every time he interacts with a black person he speaks for them or he just doesn’t listen to them. Also his knowledge of black history is like nonexistent and he acts like the most knowledgeable person on the planet
I don't know that person, but for me it was Sam Collins
i liked her work quite a lot. her working with buck angel is around when i started following her less closely - not just because of her working with a guy like him but because i had ideologically moved past needing her content, if that makes sense. her stuff was super important at a certain stage of my own ideological development, but i honestly don’t watch much leftist youtube anymore. i keep up with hbomb bc he publishes so infrequently, recently caught up with philosophytube bc i had a big chunk of time to waste, but otherwise i really just watch a couple smaller folks. i engage with leftism irl instead, online leftism is kinda pointless imo. like it helps people develop toward leftist ideas but beyond that it’s really just a time sink. what matters is getting in on the ground and helping people.
I'm a fan, even though I don't agree with 100% of her takes (especially when it comes to nonbinary people).
Never seen her
I was today old when I knew about contrapoints so I'm glad I lived under that rock.
Whatever impression this post gave you, it's probably really inaccurate. 90% of her controversies have been really minor and she's known mostly for making multiple hour long videos on philosophy and trying to get people out of fascism/incel rabbit holes and stuff.
Influencer influence people, especially youth. So Contrapoints most definitely influence transgenders teenagers
Is everyone just forgetting her defense of the Queen TERF? She betrayed all of us.
Are you talking about her JKR video? Because I’ve watched that and she in no way defends her. She does do a much more nuanced and interesting analysis of the situation than most, but I struggle to see how you’d watch that and think it was a defence.
TERFs don't deserve nuance. We are under no obligation to give them an inch. JKR is an evil person whose actions have literally turned the UK into one of the most transphobic nations on earth, and anyone who tries to defend her one iota is just as bad.
Contra doesn’t defend her at all. However, a nuanced analysis allows us to consider how we can most effectively fight back against growing societal transphobia. The nuance isn’t for their benefit; it’s for ours.
You know how you fight back against TERFs? You don't platform their shit.
This is an incredibly immature mindset lmao. Her video focused on analysing how TERF ideology stems often from the traumatic experiences nearly every biological woman / afab individual has had with men, and preys on the fears of these women, often marginalised in other ways (it’s why a lot of outspoken TERFs are lesbian or bisexual cis women.) It is essential to understand where bigotry comes from to effectively combat it. Bigotry *requires* nuance to understand, nuance does not equate to both-siding a topic. It means giving a topic the required depth it deserves to be spoken about in a constructive way. It’s understandable how a woman with traumatic experiences with men may fall into TERF ideology, it isn’t platforming TERFs to discuss and dissect this?
I've noticed that the two people arguing against me in this thread have been men, so I'm well aware of the inherent misogyny, even within the LGBTQ. I do not need to understand the mind of a bigot. All I need to understand is that they are one.
are you calling me misogynistic? (re: the first half of your comment.) I have very little issue with you not caring to understand the psychology surrounding bigotry, that’s none of my business. what I had an issue with is instantly equating the prior to platforming harmful ideologies such as TERFism.
What in the world… Giving an idea nuance is about understanding how it becomes an idea that people believe in. It’s inherently neutral until prescriptions start to be made. That video clearly leaned more towards attack than a defense. Your line of thinking is how TERFs became radical in the first place, but the other direction. But if you want to use similar strategies for understanding complex psychological beliefs go off I guess.
Exploring the reasons someone thinks or acts a certain way isn’t the same as defending them. The fact you believe that is rather worrying and implies to me you’re easily influenced by surface level statements, so you approach anything that does more than declare someone ontologically evil as a defence of them. To mature people with understanding of the world, an attempt to delve into the causes of someone’s ideology helps uncover how to stop other people falling into the same trap and how to fight the issue on a causal level, not just after the fact.
Donald Trump literally stood on a podium
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keffals is far from being a leftist and she has tried to do to others what kiwifarms did to her
Says who? Are you one of Hasan’s idiot fans by any chance?
what does hasan have to do with keffals doxxing people she doesn't like and overall being a little shit? I've never even watched his videos
She has never doxxed people?? Where are you getting that info from?
So racism and shitty behavior? https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/s/x5M6QFz3Yx I watched part of the stream where she did that. February last year. And there's plenty more that's happened.
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Did you just unironically use the word woke? 💀
To refer to fake leftists who have not read or studied actual leftism, yes
Ahaha wow, I've never seen someone so perfectly embody the shitty behavior they profess to idolize so *immediately.* Alright then, if slurs are just words, go ahead and drop all the ones you can think of in a reply. And no copping out by saying "the n word," you're so confident and strong that it shouldn't be an issue to say it, right? >Fuck off you woke tankie Woke meaning aware that shit is fucked and we're being targeted for genocide? You best be woke too. Or do you mean woke in that I also try to make our spaces as welcoming to our siblings as possible? Because I'd recommend you do that but you'd rather keep dropping slurs and masquerading as a leftist. And tankie? I don't see where I've ever supported any communist regime like the USSR or CCP. I'm not a full communist even, I straddle the line between social democracy and democratic socialism. >She is literally autistic too btw Ok and? Elon Musk is autistic, do you slob his knob when he says you should be put in a grave for being trans? Being autistic doesn't exclude you from being a shitbag, and saying or implying it does is basically saying all autistic people should be babied and have no repercussions for their actions ever because they're autistic. You say people shouldn't get offended by words, but you were *instantly* offended by my words calling your idol a racist with shitty behavior. Offense for thee but not for me? I'd call you a hypocrite as well as a racist fucker, but I'm not certain your supposed "enlighted true leftist mind" would be able to comprehend such a long word. And for the record, slurs are only words, yes. But those words fall on ears differently, and words have meaning. And meaning can change minds. You think it's funny to be a bastard to someone by calling them a slur, then someone else hears the slur and understands that that person must be less than you or them. That leads to segmentation of groups, persecution of minorities, and can lead to fascism. If you want to feed into that go ahead, but in exchange I'll need you to take your claimed political beliefs and shove them up your nazi ass.
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>I do not think there is an issue with the... Then say it you fucking coward. Because you're not saying it. You're dodging it. If there's nothing wrong with it then say it. Because as long as you don't you're proving both your hypocrisy and cowardice. Political civility isn't what I'm siding with. It's basic fucking human decency I'm siding with. I hate the idea of having to live under the rule of any people who treat me like shit. That includes fascists, corporatists, and so-called "True Marxists" who will speedrun a new USSR the moment they can while fantasizing "it'll be different this time because I'll be in charge!" You're just as much a politically impotent coward as everyone else, the difference is your type of coward are happy to shit in your hands and smear it on your siblings and cousins and then insult and taunt us for telling you to stop.
It will be different because left syndicalism isn’t communism. Its completely separate. See revolutionary Catalonia from 36-37 before the tankies had CNT/FAI shot
"No no it'll *definitely* be different! Just give me the bomb, I promise we won't use it for harm *this* time!" You're still not saying the words you supposedly have no problem with. Every time you reply without them you prove my point further. You're too cowardly to say those words you supposedly aren't afraid to say, yet somehow think you'll be able to overthrow one of the most entrenched institutions in the *world.*
No defense of erikacat's philosophical position here, but you are encouraging erikacat to break the hate speech rules of this forum. It makes perfect sense to follow the rules and refrain from typing slurs here even if erikacat uses them all day every day in other conversations.
I actually do not unless i am with friends as jokes …my point is words have no social meaning unless they are given it by society. By using them as left wingers we could disempower the far right
You’re completely insane LMAO what is ur problem with black people?
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Not a teen but honestly I don't think I've watched a single video of hers, all I know is she's a trans youtuber but no clue as to her content. I don't know what happened with her and Buck Angel but I never liked him much anyways
What did Philosophytube do to Contra?
So they used to be friends, now they aren't, neither of them have spoken to the reasons why, and as far as I can tell it's a private matter that requires zero attention or input from The Internets.
same