12 votes

Topic deleted by author

16 comments

  1. [3]
    patience_limited
    Link
    I've somehow utterly missed this "scandal", but the essay is worth reading. It's not surprising that there's a reactionary fringe unhappy with ContraPoints' very measured commentary on appropriate...

    I've somehow utterly missed this "scandal", but the essay is worth reading.

    It's not surprising that there's a reactionary fringe unhappy with ContraPoints' very measured commentary on appropriate norms for gendered pronouns.

    Natalie Wynn has been painstaking and courageous in relating her experience, without, as far as I can determine, an oppressive insistence that there's a single "right" way to respect gender-non-binary or trans identities. She merely related that she was comfortable with the way she automatically received female gender recognition in a mainstream that still defaults to binary gender identity, and got pounced on by people demanding recognition and acceptance of all identities everywhere right now.

    I'm still wrestling with this, and I've actively avoided communities where the minute parsing of gender and the arguments for appropriate cultural change are taking place. There have been putatively "feminist" critiques of ContraPoints for failing to articulate a consistent gender narrative.

    For myself and most of the gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, and trans people I've known, pronouns have not been at the top of the list of our practical concerns. It's painful to be misgendered, but we're mostly still working on getting family acceptance, fair employment and education policies, non-discriminatory housing, and appropriate medical care, as well as avoiding assault. Under these circumstances, I can't see a satisfactory ethical reason for increasingly particularized, absolutist, and ideologically theoretical divisions to override the need for pragmatic solidarity.

    10 votes
    1. Macil
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      I felt that some of her videos where she plays multiple characters did a really good job at showing that not everyone has the same opinions on the subjects. I was just thinking a few weeks ago...

      Natalie Wynn has been painstaking and courageous in relating her experience, without, as far as I can determine, an oppressive insistence that there's a single "right" way to respect gender-non-binary or trans identities.

      I felt that some of her videos where she plays multiple characters did a really good job at showing that not everyone has the same opinions on the subjects. I was just thinking a few weeks ago about how unusual of a quality it was. Most videos seem to try to push a single correct position instead of arguing the sides of multiple points and leaving it so open. (Not to say that all videos should be like that! It just works well for personal subjects that don't have established answers.)

      5 votes
    2. Grzmot
      Link Parent
      It's because most of these gender theories come from academia, which is wholly unconcerned with being pragmatic, or even practical.

      Under these circumstances, I can't see a satisfactory ethical reason for increasingly particularized, absolutist, and ideologically theoretical divisions to override the need for pragmatic solidarity.

      It's because most of these gender theories come from academia, which is wholly unconcerned with being pragmatic, or even practical.

  2. [2]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. Gaywallet
      Link Parent
      I entirely understand this particular flavor of impostor syndrome, but you are not a cis male and you shouldn't feel like you should ever have to apologize for being read as a cis male. Out of...

      I feel weird going into that space as an AMAB person, as I'm probably read as a cis male, and that space is specifically meant as a respite from cis males.

      I entirely understand this particular flavor of impostor syndrome, but you are not a cis male and you shouldn't feel like you should ever have to apologize for being read as a cis male.

      Out of curiosity, is there a website, or a phone number, or someone you can email? Perhaps merely speaking with someone who does regularly go to this space can help to allay your fears of making anyone else uncomfortable.

      All trans individuals, to some extent, are going to suffer under the gender binary simply because there is a pressure to align the internal gender with the externally presented one.

      By not separating gender expression and gender identity, her words leave me feeling stuck, because right now those two things definitely aren't aligned for me.

      Until the gender binary does not exist, there will always be people who will associate the two. To me, people who are stuck on this idea and cannot see past gender to observe the human are not people I want to associate with in the first place.

      I don't envy the visibility Natalie has. If I were confronted with the collective emotion and opinions of the entire enby/trans sphere on Twitter, I'd probably hide and talk it over with people I trust in privacy too. Even thinking about this exhausts me... bleh. It makes it hard to get mad at her even if I am the kind of person who's the target of her tweets.

      Ain't that the fuckin truth. I can't even imagine the kind of hate mail she regularly gets, let alone being attacked by people who were previously on her side.

      3 votes
  3. Gaywallet
    Link
    One thing I haven't noticed anyone talking about... Natalie has gone from identifying as a cross-dresser to gender fluid to non-binary and eventually to trans female. Given that there was a...

    One thing I haven't noticed anyone talking about... Natalie has gone from identifying as a cross-dresser to gender fluid to non-binary and eventually to trans female. Given that there was a significant period of time during which she identified as non-binary, why are people so hasty to jump to the conclusion that she's trying to be exclusionary to non-binary individuals?

    5 votes
  4. [11]
    alexandria
    (edited )
    Link
    That's not the case, however. It is the case that she consistently puts forward the same takes and ideas that truscums do, and she never apologises for those takes, or how they harm people in the...

    It's not surprising that there's a reactionary fringe unhappy with ContraPoints' very measured commentary on appropriate norms for gendered pronouns.

    That's not the case, however. It is the case that she consistently puts forward the same takes and ideas that truscums do, and she never apologises for those takes, or how they harm people in the community. Among those takes she espouses, she implied very heavily that a trans woman who wears a jeans and a tshirt is not a woman. She also says in another tweet that "I look like a man and yet I am not a man" is not a good case for non-binary trans people.

    In short, she has a history of equating gender presentation with innate gender in a deeply problematic way, that is emblematic of a set of ideologies that gatekeepers and blanchardites have used to mistreat trans people for decades. These are, quite literally, the excuses that truscums use to deny trans people and non-binary people gender-affirming healthcare.

    The latest take of "it’s good for people who use they/them and want gender neutral language [and is hard for slightly-passing trans people]" just reeks of someone who enters a space that is specifically catering to people who do not present as their gender very well (or not at all), and assuming that they should inherently cater to her.

    The latest "outrage" is notable that even people who regularly defend her have explicitly stated multiple times that they cannot, in this case and in good faith, stand by here through this one. Most notably, I saw people who were her age and transitioned at the same time speaking out about her strange idea that she is the "last of the old trans women"

    Something I find interesting is that the fallback of her defenders on reddit and twitter is to say that she is saying these things ironically, or that they are jokes. This is -- curiously enough -- straight out of the alt-right playbook. Now personally, I do not think that Wynn or her followers are doing this intentionally, but it is a dangerous trend.

    Finally, I find myself most agreeing with this thread from @sega_slut:

    Contrapoints acts like nonbinary people and trans women who refuse to comply with the cis's perception of how trans women should be bullied her off Twitter. This ain't it chief.
    Girl spouted some bullshit, she didn't check herself, and then she wrecked herself.

    Idk where y'all have been, but Natalie has always been a problem. I can't understand how leftist trans people continue to stan her, not only by portraying nonbinary people and trans radicals who are rightly pissed off by our treatment by society in a stereottpical and harmful way, but has also said your womanhood is hypothetical basically until you totally pass and kiss cis ass.

    First of all, to claim that your womanhood is false lest you conform to Eurocentric beauty standards is racist, classist, and ableist. Racist because not only does it suggest only white features and standards are seen as beautiful, but black and brown people, cis or trans, are less feminine and more masculine.

    Also, black and brown folks have harder time getting better jobs and equal pay as a white person due to systemically enforced racism. It's classist because not everyone can afford all the surgeries like FFS, SRS, and whatever else to conform. And ableist because many people who are disabled are impoverished af due to being limited in what jobs they can handle, or not being able to work at all.

    Moreso, let's not forget she not only continues to sell antisemitic merchandise with lizard people on it, and in case you weren't aware, "lizard people" is an antisemitic dogwhistle for Jewish people.
    And she's even been told this, and still sells it.
    [...]

    And this thread from @NightinGem:

    did contrapoints really delete twitter because people weren't falling for her backhanded apologies and damage control this time.
    literally all she had to do was actually say sorry and acknowledge she was being irresponsible wirh her platform. but i guess that's too much to ask.

    ah, here comes the contra stans to tell me why i’m overreacting and being irrational and performatively woke. “why don’t these hysterical trans people realize she’s working in their best interest” isn’t a great look buddy.

    How Many Times Does It Need To Be Explained That Platforms Mean You Have Responsibility

    [...] criticism is not cancellation, and we can care about more than one thing. Intercommunity strife sucks but if we can't make our own community safe, what can we do?

    4 votes
    1. Algernon_Asimov
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      I'm about to be pedantic, but there is a point to my pedantry. Natalie Wynn did not write that "she is 'the last of the old trans women'". According to the archived tweets you linked to, she...

      I'm about to be pedantic, but there is a point to my pedantry.

      Natalie Wynn did not write that "she is 'the last of the old trans women'". According to the archived tweets you linked to, she actually wrote "I sometimes feel like the last of the old-school transsexuals."

      Note the phrase "feel like" in that sentence. Not "is": "feel like".

      It's useful to know that "I sometimes feel like the last of the old-school X" is not meant to be a literal statement that the person speaking is actually the last of their kind from a previous generation before a new generation. I've seen this phrasing before, and it's a non-literal statement, expressing an emotional feeling with overtones of self-deprecatory humour... rather than a literal statement of fact. It's like an older person saying "I feel like a dinosaur" when feeling out of their depth with modern technology - again, these people are not literally saying they are members of the clade Dinosauria.

      In a sea of people with more modern opinions about transgender issues (possibly including people older than her), Ms Wynn feels old school, out of date, and out of step. She feels like the last of the old-school trans women. It's an expression of her emotional state, not a literal statement of fact.

      Why am I being pedantic? Because this one episode points out a common problem in political discussions on the internet. Quite often, people disagree with a misinterpretation of another person's statements, rather than with what the person is actually saying. Sometimes for innocent reasons and sometimes for malicious reasons, people argue against what they believe they read rather than against what was actually written.

      This becomes especially problematic when the discussion involves nuanced statements.

      I've only seen a couple of Ms Wynn's videos (via links here on Tildes) but, in my opinion, she seems to have her head screwed on right. She's not dogmatic, she's not stupid, she's not irrational, she's not inflammatory. She's informed, educated, intelligent, and nuanced. And, reading her comments described in this essay, as well as the ones you linked via an archive, I don't see her being inflammatory here, either. Importantly, she is not saying that non-binary people should pick a gender, she's not dismissing the experience of being genderfluid or non-binary. She's just pointing out that there is a tension between transgender people who want to explicitly announce their pronouns and transgender people who want to implicitly have their pronouns assumed. She's not saying either side is wrong or right. She's merely pointing out that difference.

      But this nuance is being lost on the internet. People are arguing against what they think she said rather than what she actually wrote.

      EDIT: Typo.

      9 votes
    2. [6]
      patience_limited
      Link Parent
      Umm... thanks for reminding me why I don't use Twitter? This isn't exactly a measured conversation. Yes, the specific statements represent an offensive point of view, yes, they're hurtful to a lot...

      Umm... thanks for reminding me why I don't use Twitter? This isn't exactly a measured conversation. Yes, the specific statements represent an offensive point of view, yes, they're hurtful to a lot of people (myself included), and no, even if they were intended ironically, it's not an adequate defense. And yet the discussion is reaching so hard to equate this behavior with the worst actors, extending no effort whatsoever to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who may be at least a partial ally, that I despair of the whole group.

      I'm not an unrelenting ContraPoints fan - I was particularly put off by the "Beauty" video, which revels in gender normative compliance (and yes, I can see the class issues of cosmetic surgery, and more than a hint of expressly Eurocentric beauty standards there).

      But I could have gone my entire life without seeing "-scum" as the suffix on an epithet for someone who holds to antique, invalid, damaging dogmas about what "trans" is. It's possible to offer valid criticisms of bad behavior and demand redress, without being as dehumanizing as, or worse than, the person you're attacking.

      @Sega_Slut seems determined to grant Natalie Wynn powers that no mere commentator will ever have - the ability to atone for every historical error; to be correct 100% of the time; and to see the world through the eyes of every potentially wounded person who is not her. The "lizard people" thing, as far as I can tell, is such an extreme, deliberate failure to understand satire that I think I'm getting a whiff of Russian troll.

      I don't know what "backhanded apologies and damage control" @Nightingem is referring to, but I have to wonder what would be a satisfactory recantation.

      8 votes
      1. [5]
        mftrhu
        Link Parent
        They are more than happy to use that term for themselves - see /r/truscum - and it's, in any case, very appropriate. Truscum are barely one step above TERfs, sometimes not even that. They don't...

        But I could have gone my entire life without seeing "-scum" as the suffix on an epithet for someone who holds to antique, invalid, damaging dogmas about what "trans" is. It's possible to offer valid criticisms of bad behavior and demand redress, without being as dehumanizing as, or worse than, the person you're attacking.

        They are more than happy to use that term for themselves - see /r/truscum - and it's, in any case, very appropriate.

        Truscum are barely one step above TERfs, sometimes not even that. They don't just hold antique, invalid, damaging ideas about what trans people are supposed to be. They actively try to spread those ideas against the "invasion of the tucutes", peddling pseudoscience like Blanchard's "they are all fetishists" and Littman's "it's just a social contagion", ranting about non-passing or gender non-conforming trans people, and holding TERs' salient exemplars - e.g. Yaniv, Karen White - as example of what "TRA tucute ideology" will "allow".

        I have no problem whatsoever with calling people who do this scum, or garbage, and I'm not worried about somehow being "worse than" them for calling them names.

        1. [2]
          patience_limited
          Link Parent
          And I'm backing away from the whole thing; I regret bringing it to Tildes, and will request deletion of this topic. Reddit and Twitter are not the universe. Spending energy feeding the Internet...

          And I'm backing away from the whole thing; I regret bringing it to Tildes, and will request deletion of this topic.

          Reddit and Twitter are not the universe. Spending energy feeding the Internet tribal rage cycle isn't productive, either personally or ideologically. I'd rather work on what's achievable in the world, with people as they exist and behave in it, not the distorted caricatures that inevitably result from imputed intent, selective reading, trauma-fueled projection, and malevolent trolls.

          2 votes
          1. mftrhu
            Link Parent
            You don't see anything wrong with saying "people as they exist and behave [in the world]", while writing off part of the world - and the people who exist and act within it - as just "distorted...

            You don't see anything wrong with saying "people as they exist and behave [in the world]", while writing off part of the world - and the people who exist and act within it - as just "distorted caricatures" created by "imputed intent, selective reading, [...] projection", and thus "obviously" not real?

            I wish they could be ignored as just "trolls" and "projection".

        2. [2]
          Gaywallet
          Link Parent
          To be clear, are you arguing that Natalie is a truscum? Because she has a 45 minute long video which she spends attacking Blanchard and others and it's not her only video attacking people who...

          They actively try to spread those ideas against the "invasion of the tucutes", peddling pseudoscience like Blanchard's "they are all fetishists" and Littman's "it's just a social contagion", ranting about non-passing or gender non-conforming trans people, and holding TERs' salient exemplars - e.g. Yaniv, Karen White - as example of what "TRA tucute ideology" will "allow".

          To be clear, are you arguing that Natalie is a truscum? Because she has a 45 minute long video which she spends attacking Blanchard and others and it's not her only video attacking people who minimize trans to tropes and dehumanize them.

          1 vote
          1. mftrhu
            Link Parent
            While replying to patience_limited, I quoted a single paragraph, which does not mention Natalie. I am not talking about Natalie at all. I am talking about truscum as a group, and about why they...

            While replying to patience_limited, I quoted a single paragraph, which does not mention Natalie.

            I am not talking about Natalie at all.

            I am talking about truscum as a group, and about why they deserve the suffix -scum.

            1 vote
    3. Gaywallet
      Link Parent
      I wonder, have you ever watched her videos? Because it seems to me like you're picking tweets which coincide with your idea of who she is, and in some cases either taking things out of context, or...

      I wonder, have you ever watched her videos? Because it seems to me like you're picking tweets which coincide with your idea of who she is, and in some cases either taking things out of context, or affording her no benefit of the doubt.

      Yet many of the tweets and examples you've pointed out are in direct opposition to what she's stated in her own videos about gender. She's also careful to point out the difference between how things should be and how things actually are. This applies both to how the world treats her, and how she reacts, emotionally, to the world.

      It seems really weird to me for people to be jumping down her throat when she is simply voicing how certain spaces make her feel. Why are her feelings invalid just because there are others with feelings that run in opposition to hers? If anything this is a perfect example of something she does, quite often, in her videos - display contrasting view points that are all valid.

      7 votes
    4. cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      I think you accidentally made a new top-level comment instead of replying to @patience_limited.

      I think you accidentally made a new top-level comment instead of replying to @patience_limited.

      2 votes
    5. Macil
      Link Parent
      I thought Contra's point in that was just to say that she's part of one group (who want to transition and then have that gender's standard expression and experience), and she's not familiar with...

      Most notably, I saw people who were her age and transitioned at the same time speaking out about her strange idea that she is the "last of the old trans women"

      I thought Contra's point in that was just to say that she's part of one group (who want to transition and then have that gender's standard expression and experience), and she's not familiar with the other group (who want to carve out some new gender expression and standard) and their goals. Maybe she described her group as old-school because she mistakenly thought it was older, or maybe she called it old-school because the group wants the old-school kind of gender expression for themselves. It feels really uncharitable for so many people to dunk on her whole point just for the phrase old-school here, even if she was using it in a mistaken way.

      2 votes