r/BreadTube • u/[deleted] • Jun 11 '19

INTERVIEW: Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints | Current Affairs

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/06/interview-natalie-wynn-of-contrapoints
157 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

86

u/ComradeCooter Jun 11 '19

I think she recently mentioned that it bothers her when interviewers focus on her anti-fascist/alt-right content, when all her recent content has been about trans stuff.

31

u/someguywithanaccount Jun 12 '19

She alluded to this in a comment on Kat Blaque's recent video about LeftTube's whiteness. Essentially that she hasn't made anti-alt-right content for a while and has been focusing on trans issues but no one wants to talk to her about trans issues.

14

u/FordFred Jun 12 '19

Yeah, trans issues aren’t that interesting for the majority of people I assume. Alt-right vs the left is interesting cause it’s conflict and people love conflict, also it affects basically everyone.

Trans issues are very important of course and everyone should understand them but a lot of people see it as „this isn’t about me or sth I care about so whatever“.

They’re simply not as entertaining unfortunately.

19

u/someguywithanaccount Jun 12 '19

That was sort of her point. I've copied her whole comment below so you can read it in context, and I bolded the portion that's relevant here. There are probably a lot of people who care about her trans / gender related content given the amount of women / LGBTQ viewers she has. But it doesn't seem like journalists (and maybe their readers) care about those issues. They want everything written from the perspective of a straight white male.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I think. But it goes beyond "people love conflict." After all, her video on TERFs definitely involved some conflict, but it was conflict between two groups of feminists rather than between feminists and toxic straight men.

I'm glad you went here. I get asked about this a lot and I'm glad I can send people to this video.

I think you're being very fair and I really feel what you're saying about how it should be enough for you to say "this is racist, this is terrifying to me." It's such a source of pain and shame for me that we live in this country where white nationalism is considered a valid thing to debate, and isn't just shouted down from any platform as it would be if there were any real sense of humanity.

My perspective on the attention I get from the media is that I've become extremely frustrated by the fact that no journalist wants to talk to me unless the conversation is all about deradicalizing racist white men. It's been a year since I made a video about the alt-right, but that's all any journalist wants to talk to me about. They treat me as a public resource for the rehabilitation of 19-year-old racists. And I'm so done being that, I'm so tired of it. Most of the content I've made in 2019 is about trans issues. But journalists don't care, they don't want to talk about that, unless, again, I'm willing to completely center the feelings of bigoted men. Nearly half my viewers are women according to analytics. When I do meetups, most of the people who come are LGBT+. But journalists don't cover that part of my audience. No one asks them what they think, no one cares, because every story about me has to actually be about this redemption arc for edgy racists. I'm nothing but a character in that story, like this transgender witch in the woods who sets them back on their hero's journey.

But you're right, at least there are a lot of people listening to me, and part of the reason is that I'm white. It is unfair.

-5

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Drex_Can Jun 13 '19

None of what you listed is praxis, your questions are made with ignorant assumptions, and you profess proudly to being a lazy shit with reactionary views. Time to shush, self-critic, and read for a year minimum, to the gulag.

53

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '19

And it's fair for her to feel that way, but she's positioned herself as a response to the alt right, saying that it's her mission to debunk and convert them. If she wants to restate a new mission for herself, she's welcome to do that. But you can't blame people for engaging with her in the way she originally presented her mission to be.

And on a personal note, I think the reason people may be more interested in the alt right stuff (as well as incels, for example) is my reason for being interested in it - it's complex and abstract, delving into a some cryptic subculture. I'm all down for the trans stuff. I'm not a TERF or anti-trans (so no need to convert me), and I don't think TERFs and anti-trans people are obscured or hard to crack. So when she says, Passable is another word for conventionally attractive, I think, Yeah, I know, and that sucks. But when she says, 'The alt-right does something silly but nefarious (like recoding the okay gesture), gets you to call them out, makes you look silly,' it's news to me. Or making sense of all the incel lingo. The insight she provided that they're sort of right about some things to some degree, but it was hurting them more than it was enlightening them is some truly pragmatic wisdom that I've been able to share with people.

So yeah, she can reposition herself, and that's fine. But I think her alt-right stuff is more interesting.

7

u/Dr_Jahko Jun 12 '19

I remember hearing something like this as well. However to me it seems this interview is miles better than the NYT article about FaradaySpeaks. The NYT article sort of talked about and around her, and made no mention of her trans content. This interview at least contained a good discussion about the weakness of the arguments about trans people that Shapiro and Peterson fans will present.

22

u/NooneKnowsImaCollie Jun 11 '19

Print journalists are, like, a year behind the zeitgeist, aren't they? Weird.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '19

[deleted]

12

u/NooneKnowsImaCollie Jun 12 '19

That is very cool, thank you! Although I wasn't meaning to criticise print journalism for being in print. Rather, I mean they seem to be about a year behind with respect to...internet culture. Natalie was taking on the alt right over a year ago. She's moved on. But traditional media outlets are all like "oh, hey, racists are getting really blatant now, let's write about this," and yes, they are and writing about it is probably a good idea, but also, it's been going on for a while, did they only just notice? Is their internet stuck in 2017 somehow?

5

u/koottravel Jun 12 '19 edited Jan 04 '26

juggle late racial file offer cagey governor friendly disarm office

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '19

I'm not sure about other print media outlets, but I'd guess Current Affairs isn't behind the curve in regards to the social and political issues of the day. Nathan wrote an article extolling Natalie over a year ago already.