ContraPoints | Canceling

[Enduin]

That sounds disappointing.

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It's hard to put into words. It's a complex topic, outside of her specific stuff, which is a large point of her video and really important in these discussions. Things are messy and not always the simply black and white we wish them to be. Though much of it is definitely framed in specific way to support her claims and point of view which felt a bit forced at times, especially given how so much time is dedicated to her own "cancelling," but I can't fully hold that against her. It's not an apology video at all, though she does apologize and talk about some things she regrets saying and doing. And I think that human element is often lost in this stuff, which is again a major point of hers. But that's also why I think it's a mistake that she doesn't go deeper into why people feel the need to act this way beyond the basic schadenfreude she describes early on.

the fact the video is so fucking long and she didn't cover why people "cancel" makes me very concerned about how she actually filled the time in this vid, like that seems like a very important part of a deep dive into the concept if you're going to cover it. I want to watch to know what she says but I'm so concerned its just gonna make me mad

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It's not non-existent but it's not the focus. It will likely not be a fun watch for you, but it's probably still worth watching. A huge focus of the piece is how Cancel culture relies on reductionist statements and people consuming information that other people have processed for them, rather than actually seeing the primary sources. So in that regard I think it's best to actually watch her video than rely on me or anyone else to provide you with what's said or try to encapsulate her points or intent. I think the fact that it is so extremely long is a potentially conscious choice on her part because how can someone summarize such a long ass video. Many will and already have but it's kind of asinine. Whether the rest of the content therein is worthwhile is up for debate.

 

[Dream Machine]

i am not familiar with this james charles person. how does one trick a straight man into thinking he's gay?

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I didn't keep up with that at all, but it seemed to basically be pressuring them into sex with a power dynamic in play

 

[residentgrigo]

I listened to the video like a podcast. I don´t really know what to say about this and the last one (that one kinda lacked a deeper point aside of the drama) but I do like the way Contra dissed K farms. Are they reading this right now? Um, hello Nazis?
She has a point that digging up things you weren't part of from over a decade ago from frankly an outdated society is very unhealthy and very alt-right-y but none of this needed to be feature movie length.

PS: I like The Danish Girl. Or what that diss not about the film, hm.

 

[LeonSPBR]

i am not familiar with this james charles person. how does one trick a straight man into thinking he's gay?

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[Bradford]

i am not familiar with this james charles person. how does one trick a straight man into thinking he's gay?

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I didn't keep up with that at all, but it seemed to basically be pressuring them into sex with a power dynamic in play

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This video directly addresses this controversy.

 

[Deleted member 21411]

No better time to talk about cancel culture after you yourself have become cancelled..... I'll be watch the video this evening but I'm not holding my breath. The fact she choose to choose cancel culture rather then non binary people feels very.... a choice. I'll hear her out but I'm pretty pessimistic, especially when I see some non responses in this thread that are entirely "she's great and I have no point to make beyond she's great"

 

[PennyStonks]

This video directly addresses this controversy.

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I'm only like 30 minutes in but her response is pretty much lol not sexually deviant behavior. Her points about all the telephone game that goes on are good.

 

[tsampikos]

i am not familiar with this james charles person. how does one trick a straight man into thinking he's gay?

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This is such a long story... you really should dive in before you start reacting to thing like this

As for the topic at hand its p long and I havent finished it so ill keep my mouth shut for now

 

[PtM]

Will watch.

Spoiler

this thread :3

 

[Amnixia]

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Thanks for linking this, will watch this before I watch the contra video!

 

[crienne]

28 minutes in and all I keep comparing this to is Some More News's video about cancel culture:


Most notably the parts about how people that get "cancelled" end up either just as fine as—if not better than—before the cancelling started. Now, maybe Natalie will hit on this a bit as the video goes on, but so far I'm not feeling it.

 

[Stellar]

edit- ^^^ aaah right on cue. lmao

That was a great video. One of the funniest moments in 2019 was liberals pretending cancel culture actually isn't real. The gaslighting was real lol.

 

[Deleted member 203]

Contra still has over 9k Patreon subscribers. That's how "canceled" she is.

This is straight up a grift.

She literally could have just put out a very simple apology statement after the Buck Angel thing came to light, but she didn't. Don't fall for this stupid shit.

Meanwhile she's screencapping tweets of randos that don't even @ her and framing it as harassment. She can really fuck off.

 

[Dyle]

How dare she spell cancelling with one l

Will watch this later, I'm morbidly curious to see how she handles this particular topic given her recent history. I am open to hearing her out but not expecting my opinion of the matter to change.

 

[NameUser]

i am not familiar with this james charles person. how does one trick a straight man into thinking he's gay?

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Just by being gross and not respecting their boundaries. It'd be like a rich guy being super persistent trying to sleep with a lesbian and using mind games and old sayings like, "How do you know if you never tried?"

It's gross and calling him a predator was the right call.

 

[Xaszatm]

edit- ^^^ aaah right on cue. lmao

That was a great video. One of the funniest moments in 2019 was liberals pretending cancel culture actually isn't real. The gaslighting was real lol.

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nonbinary people that were still heavily insulted and hurt by her actions in multiple instances = gaslighting apparently

 

[crienne]

edit- ^^^ aaah right on cue. lmao

That was a great video. One of the funniest moments in 2019 was liberals pretending cancel culture actually isn't real. The gaslighting was real lol.

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Okay, sure, the culture part (people yelling into social media to cancel people) *is* a real thing, as is emotional trauma that the cancelled person may endure during the period. It's the actual cancellation that isn't. Yes, yes, people have been successfully cancelled (some deserved, some not) but most of the videos that come out about this (like Natalie's) are just long defenses of their behavior.

Also I missed your pre-edit message, but I'm just going to assume it was something like: "In before some 'woke' liberal posts that stupid 'Cancel Culture Isn't Real' video!" Bravo. You got me.

 

[Manu]

Mixed on the video really. The whole apology for her own actions part is a mixed bag and I think in this particular case the humor/levity didn't help. It's not gonna change anyone's mind about her.

The rest of the video about how internet mobs operate is spot on, though.

 

[hachikoma]

I'm 5 minutes in and referring to herself as a biological female rubs me all kinds of weird. Definitely will have my energy completely drained by this video.

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I don't think it's weird. It's a pretty common way to get people to think about the fact that identity dictates biological interpretation, not the other way 'round.

Also, y'all, not everybody who gets the cancel treatment is a social media celeb rolling in money.

 

[crienne]

I don't think it's weird. It's a pretty common way to get people to think about the fact that identity dictates biological interpretation, not the other way 'round.

Also, y'all, not everybody who gets the cancel treatment is a social media celeb rolling in money.

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And yet they're barely brought up in these types of videos, or articles like them. I absolutely feel for smaller people that actually do get cancelled (if undeserved), but every time someone big talks about cancel culture it's always the bigger, unaffected people that they defend.

 

[Deleted member 60096]

Okay so only listening to the parts where she addresses previous discourse first for now might watch the rest later, and she already left out the fact her tweet after Opulence thanking him and talking about how inconic his inclusion was and thus introducing her twitter audience, which is full of cis people who view her as The Trans, to Buck in a friendly way. And her wording at points suggests she thinks people are claiming Buck is a bad person because they want an excuse to think she is a bad person, rather than him actually being a bad person which is just bad.

And the whole Lana stuff was disgusting to listen to her act like the mere act of googling about the situation for 1 minute, which is all it took for me to figure out what the situation was with the Lana outing, makes us like fascists. Like fuck off Contra. Pretends everyone who had a problem with her tweets only ever address them out of context, which isn't the case, slimy asf. Pretends Justine didn't blatantly win the debate The Aesthetic while she was parroting the beliefs that Contra even admitted she believed at the time. Also pretends other trans people can't understand what they're upset about. She finally apologised for something so thats nice. Pretends people upset with her don't watch her videos and don't understand sarcasm, again blaming everyone else. This has been my play by play overall of the addressing of the discourse overall not impressed, lots of points that felt incredibly disingenous.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

lol she really made a 100 minute cry video about how poor little natalie is just receiving so much criticism for being unapologetic about working with truscum

fuck off nat

also remember how her last cry video was patreon exclusive? lol. she really out here monetizing her fuck ups and trying to spin the hell out of them

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This is exactly what I was afraid she'd do. Damn it, Natalie.

 

[Bakercat]

Watched about 30 minutes before I saved rest for a coming car trip. I enjoyed what I heard so far.

 

[Manu]

This is exactly what I was afraid she'd do. Damn it, Natalie.

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That's not really a fair summary of the video though.

 

[Deleted member 8166]

Another great video by her.
Spice8Rack and her are like the only People worthwhile on YouTube

 

[Slayven]

I see we are in the white liberal figurehead part of the cycle where they pivot into lowkey rightwing bullet points. Would be sad if it wasn't predictable. Instead of taking critque they go on the offensive

 

[Deleted member 4532]

Watching now, wanted to swing by and make sure there was a thread up though!

 

[John Rabbit]

Her explanation of the Buck Angel thing fucking SUCKS.

 

[Syril]

Contra still has over 9k Patreon subscribers. That's how "canceled" she is.

This is straight up a grift.

She literally could have just put out a very simple apology statement after the Buck Angel thing came to light, but she didn't. Don't fall for this stupid shit.

Meanwhile she's screencapping tweets of randos that don't even @ her and framing it as harassment. She can really fuck off.

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Is she even obscuring their names?

 

[crienne]

I'm at the barrage of anti-Contrapoints tweets section, and I'm not sure I see the point. Yes, you got attacked a lot and I sympathize (and empathize because it's happened to me before) but what does showing a bunch of angry tweets do except serve as some sort of appeal to emotion?

Is she even obscuring their names?

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Names yes, avatars no. Of which some are pictures of the actual person. So that's not great.

 

[Deleted member 60096]

I see we are in the white liberal figurehead part of the cycle where they pivot into lowkey rightwing bullet points. Would be sad if it wasn't predictable. Instead of taking critque they go on the offensive

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This is the problem with an at her leftest points socdem and most of the time more of a lib being the possibly biggest figurehead of the online left community.

Her explanation of the Buck Angel thing fucking SUCKS.

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Her explanation for most of the previous discourse is shit not just the Buck Angel stuff, though that was the worse since it includes when she said people who cared about the Lana outing looked like fascists

 

[Deleted member 60096]

I'm at the barrage of anti-Contrapoints tweets section, and I'm not sure I see the point. Yes, you got attacked a lot and I sympathize (and empathize because it's happened to me before) but what does showing a bunch of angry tweets do except serve as some sort of appeal to emotion?



Names yes, avatars no. Of which some are pictures of the actual person. So that's not great.

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Cause the AtE is working at least on Reddit and Youtube

 

[Dirtyshubb]

Haven't watched the video yet so maybe it's not applicable but the thumbnail and setting is really off-putting.

She is sitting their drinking, surrounded by rubbish bags and empty bottles ect. And it just give the impression of someone down on their luck and for me at least, makes it look like she has been ravaged by the valid criticism she got for her repeated comments and actions and tries to paint her as a victim.

Again, maybe it's not applicable in the video but after hearing how she handles the main criticisms against her in the video, it doesn't give me much hope that she has really listened and understands what the problems are.

 

[spam musubi]

28 minutes in and all I keep comparing this to is Some More News's video about cancel culture:


Most notably the parts about how people that get "cancelled" end up either just as fine as—if not better than—before the cancelling started. Now, maybe Natalie will hit on this a bit as the video goes on, but so far I'm not feeling it.

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Her "cancellation" is of a different nature than someone like, say, Dave Chapelle. Her argument that, as a marginalized person, the way cancellation hurts her is not necessarily in her ability to earn a livelihood, but in alienating her from her support network a person who needs one to help her deal with the general challenges she faces in life as a trans person.

I'm at the barrage of anti-Contrapoints tweets section, and I'm not sure I see the point. Yes, you got attacked a lot and I sympathize (and empathize because it's happened to me before) but what does showing a bunch of angry tweets do except serve as some sort of appeal to emotion?



Names yes, avatars no. Of which some are pictures of the actual person. So that's not great.

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I watched past that point, and I think it's to demonstrate the effect it has on her mental health and ability to react calmly to the cancellation. I'd recommend finishing the video before reacting to it (I think there's a lot to criticize in the video, but the least one could do is let her complete her argument and not respond to partial statements)

 

[John Rabbit]

This is the problem with an at her leftest points socdem and most of the time more of a lib being the possibly biggest figurehead of the online left community.

Her explanation for most of the previous discourse is shit not just the Buck Angel stuff, though that was the worse since it includes when she said people who cared about the Lana outing looked like fascists

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I only skipped to that part because that was essentially what I was waiting for with the next video. Completely embarrassing response.

 

[Deleted member 4532]

Contra still has over 9k Patreon subscribers. That's how "canceled" she is.

This is straight up a grift.

She literally could have just put out a very simple apology statement after the Buck Angel thing came to light, but she didn't. Don't fall for this stupid shit.

Meanwhile she's screencapping tweets of randos that don't even @ her and framing it as harassment. She can really fuck off.

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Yikes, I didn't know anything about the Buck Angel scandel or this until today. Fucking hell...

 

[Deleted member 46489]

Wait, so as I understand from all the material I could find online, her offenses boil down to two things -
1. Hosting some guy named James Charles in a YouTube video.
2. A very poorly-worded series of tweets about being asked to specify her pronouns in progressive spaces, that unintentionally dissed trans folks who do not pass and non binary folks.

The second one I understand as being problematic, as I believe I've had a discussion about it here on Era. I think she apologized for the tweets.

The first one I don't get. So apparently this James guy was friends with this woman named Tati, but then promoted a rival brand to the one she ran. She was hurt, he apologized, she didn't consider it enough. She made a long video accusing him of being a predator, with some screenshots as evidence. Some guy on Twitter named Jeffries agreed. Then James released a video refuting the charges and posting his own screenshots as counter evidence. Tati and Jeffries deleted their video and tweets.

How do we know who's culpable in this mess?

I'm sure I'm just massively ignorant about the whole thing, so if an Era member could help me out here, that would be great.

 

[Sloth Guevara]

Awesome video imo.

 

[SweetVermouth]

Contra still has over 9k Patreon subscribers. That's how "canceled" she is.

This is straight up a grift.

She literally could have just put out a very simple apology statement after the Buck Angel thing came to light, but she didn't. Don't fall for this stupid shit.

Meanwhile she's screencapping tweets of randos that don't even @ her and framing it as harassment. She can really fuck off.

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She addresses why she didn't make a simple apology in the video.

Honestly watching the whole video should be required if you are gonna talk about it.

 

[jeelybeans]

Really excited to take a listen and hear her perspective since she said on one of her streams she would be doing a video on this. I really enjoy her content so I hope it's a good breakdown...

 

[Richietto]

Can't wait to watch! But daaaaaamn its nearly 2 hours.

 

[Glitchesarecool]

She addresses why she didn't make a simple apology in the video.

Honestly watching the whole video should be required if you are gonna talk about it.

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That's a big ask of Era.

 

[Deleted member 60096]

Wait, so as I understand from all the material I could find online, her offenses boil down to two things -
1. Hosting some guy named James Charles in a YouTube video.
2. A very poorly-worded series of tweets about being asked to specify her pronouns in progressive spaces, that unintentionally dissed trans folks who do not pass.

The second one I understand as being problematic, as I believe I've had a discussion about it here on Era. I think she apologized for the tweets.

The first one I don't get. So apparently this James guy was friends with this woman named Tati, but then promoted a rival brand to the one she ran. She was hurt, he apologized, she didn't consider it enough. She made a long video accusing him of being a predator, with some screenshots as evidence. Some guy on Twitter manged Jeffries agreed. Then James released a video refuting the charges and posting his own screenshots as counter evidence. Tati and Jeffries deleted their video and tweets.

How do we know who's culpable in this mess?

I'm sure I'm just massively ignorant about the whole thing, so if an Era member could help me out here, that would be great.

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She hosted Buck Angel not James Charles in a video which was also I believe the only video she's done with credits at the end for the voices she included. There was actually multiple incidents of bad tweets that were insensitive toward other trans people, in particular non binary people. She also has made a video called The Aesthetic, that was hurtful for many enbies and non passing trans people in general. Her previous responses to the controversy of her inclusion of Buck Angel, who is a transmed who years ago outed Lana Wachowski as trans because she slept with his wife, were paywalled behind her patreon and one included a drunk stream that was mostly her being sad and then talking about how hot Buck was. And now we're here at this video.

And if you're interested in the James Charles controversy I believe The Right Opinion did a video about it that was linked somewhere in the thread

 

[Deleted member 60096]

She addresses why she didn't make a simple apology in the video.

Honestly watching the whole video should be required if you are gonna talk about it.

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After seeing her talk disingenuosly about her previous discourse I'm not going through the rest. What is this reason that makes it all better?

 

[Manu]

I know some people rightfully don't want to give her the benefit of doubt, but the section where she speaks about her shitty tweets and goes through them one by one I thought was pretty good.

The Buck thing on the other hand, eeeeeeh...

 

[Midramble]

Just finished. That was a very human video.

 

[collige]

Her "cancellation" is of a different nature than someone like, say, Dave Chapelle. Her argument that, as a marginalized person, the way cancellation hurts her is not necessarily in her ability to earn a livelihood, but in alienating her from her support network a person who needs one to help her deal with the general challenges she faces in life as a trans person.

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But Dave Chappelle is also a marginalized person? I know you're just repackaging what she said, but this seems like an incredibly weak defense.

Wait, so as I understand from all the material I could find online, her offenses boil down to two things -
1. Hosting some guy named James Charles in a YouTube video.
2. A very poorly-worded series of tweets about being asked to specify her pronouns in progressive spaces, that unintentionally dissed trans folks who do not pass.

The second one I understand as being problematic, as I believe I've had a discussion about it here on Era. I think she apologized for the tweets.

The first one I don't get. So apparently this James guy was friends with this woman named Tati, but then promoted a rival brand to the one she ran. She was hurt, he apologized, she didn't consider it enough. She made a long video accusing him of being a predator, with some screenshots as evidence. Some guy on Twitter manged Jeffries agreed. Then James released a video refuting the charges and posting his own screenshots as counter evidence. Tati and Jeffries deleted their video and tweets.

How do we know who's culpable in this mess?

I'm sure I'm just massively ignorant about the whole thing, so if an Era member could help me out here, that would be great.

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1. Incorrect, she hosted a guy named Buck Angel in one of her videos. This is a completely separate person and the reason people are upset at him is because he both has said a bunch of transmedicalist* things and contributed to other trans people being outed (notably Matrix co-director Lana Wachowski, I'm not sure if there's other incidents).
2. This is mostly true, with the caveat that the most controversial part of said tweets was a different part of it where she talks about how all the young non-binary kids are making her scared.
3. She also tweeted some commentary from one of her videos the year before in which she described the accounts of some trans people as "pretty weak". This incident didn't get a lot of traction because she wasn't as well known as the time and deleted the entire thread pretty fast, but didn't ackowledge or apologize for what people took offense to.

You'll note that all three of these incidents involve trans people who are non-binary or otherwise don't meet traditional gender expectations.

*if you're not familiar with this concept, that's something that can't really be covered in one post. The tl;dr version is that it means that someone generally supports trans people, but with a narrow definition that requires people to be actively desiring specific medical procedures.

 

[Capra]

That's a big ask of Era.

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I mean, 100 minutes is a big ask of anyone honestly. Especially when she's said some legitimately upsetting and hurtful things and hasn't adequately responded to the well-founded criticism of her until this video specifically about "cancel culture."

 

[Deleted member 60096]

I know some people rightfully don't want to give her the benefit of doubt, but the section where she speaks about her shitty tweets and goes through them one by one I thought was pretty good.

The Buck thing on the other hand, eeeeeeh...

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The part where she apologised for some of them was great and honestly shook me as I'd gotten to the point where I thought she was too prideful to admit she was ever wrong, but she was also extreme disingenous about people's reasoning for being upset with her about them and basically straight up lying when she started talking about The Aesthetic

 

[jeelybeans]

She hosted Buck Angel not James Charles in a video which was also I believe the only video she's done with credits at the end for the voices she included. There was actually multiple incidents of bad tweets that were insensitive toward other trans people, in particular non binary people. She also has made a video called The Aesthetic, that was hurtful for many enbies and non passing trans people in general. Her previous responses to the controversy of her inclusion of Buck Angel, who is a transmed who years ago outed Lana Wachowski as trans because she slept with his wife, were paywalled behind her patreon and one included a drunk stream that was mostly her being sad and then talking about how hot Buck was. And now we're here at this video.

And if you're interested in the James Charles controversy I believe The Right Opinion did a video about it that was linked somewhere in the thread

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The aesthetic is one of my favorite videos because it applies to so much in life. Want to get treated more seriously in an office? Dress more professionally. That doesn't mean that that's RIGHT. and contra never said its right, but it is the way society functions. What I got out of it was she feels like a woman because people treat her like a woman. And for people to treat her like a woman, there's almost a "performance" that has to be done. And we do this performance with so many aspects of our lives. She has had to clarify what she was trying to get across in that video through several videos after, and I'm glad she did, particularly in regards to criticisms from NB folks.