This is the transcript for the video essay “Canceling” by Natalie Wynn, originally published on Jan 2, 2020 on the ContraPoints YouTube channel. This transcript is intended as a supplement rather than a substitute for the original video. For references and sources, watch the video here.

I

Okay, let's get started.

This video is about canceling, also known as cancel culture, formerly known as call-out culture. And I know you kids know all about this, but before I dive in, I have to explain the basics to my fellow boomers.

So listen up oldies. In the lingo of these young, avocado-guzzling smartphone addicts who killed Applebee's, canceling is online shaming, vilifying and ostracizing of prominent members of a community by other members of that community.

Like so much internet slang, this use of the word “canceling” started out on black Twitter where a few years ago people, well, mostly women, would tweet "cancel R. Kelly" and things like that. You know, it started out as this vigilante strategy for bringing justice and accountability to powerful people who previously had been immune to any consequences for their actions.

For example, the Me Too movement promised to use social media shaming as a way to topple sexually abusive men in power who couldn't be held accountable in any other way. The promise of canceling was that it was going to give power back to people who had none, and bring justice to prominent abusers. It's, in a way, the 21st century version of the guillotine—the bringer of justice, the people's avenger.

But, also like the guillotine, it can become a sadistic entertainment spectacle. And I wanna make the case that we do have, well, a teensy bit of a Reign of Terror situation on our hands, gorg.

Now there's a version of this conversation that's already been had to death, and it goes like this: On the one side are a bunch of male comedians who constantly bitch about how cancel culture is out of control, you can't joke about anything anymore without these Millennial jackals trying to get you in trouble.

And the other side is mostly progressive think-piece authors who argue that there's no such thing as cancel culture, t's just that powerful people are finally being held accountable for their actions and they can't fucking handle it, so they go around bitching about cancel culture.

Now unfortunately, neither of those viewpoints is quite as correct as some people might hope. So, it's a good thing I'm here to deliver The Truth. Let's start with an example.

The most high-profile YouTube canceling of 2019 was the canceling of James Charles. And again, I know you kids remember this, but *sigh* I have to reheat ancient YouTube tea for the elders. Put the kettle on, Karen!

So James Charles is a 20-year-old beauty guru, which means... Ok Boomers, there's these people who make YouTube videos teaching you how to do makeup. It's worth checking out if you can figure out how to start up Internet Explorer. I certainly can't.

So back in May of this year, James's colleague and ⁠— mother figure? ⁠— fellow YouTube beauty guru, Tati Westbrook, uploaded a 40-minute video accusing James of endorsing a brand of hair vitamins that she... wait... that was a competitor of her brand of hair vitamins. An enthralling plot line, I know.

And this was huge. This was even covered in the New York Times. But while Tati was at it, almost as an afterthought to the hair vitamin dispute, she also accused James of being a “sexual predator”.

Now I actually went back and checked Tati's original deleted video. And she actually never uses the phrase “sexual predator.” It's funny, I remember her calling him that because that became the story on Twitter. But what she actually said was, “Oh my god, you tried to trick a straight man into thinking he's gay, yet again”, which is pretty different from calling him a sexual predator.

But see, this is what cancel culture does, it takes one story and transforms it into a significantly different story. The headline I would write about the James and Tati story might read Tati Westbrook Accuses James Charles of Trying to Trick Straight Men Into Thinking They're Gay. But cancel culture transforms that story into the headline James Charles is a Sexual Predator...

Interesting…

Now I wanna make it clear that my intention here is really not to defend James Charles. I'm not a James Charles stan. I'm a biological female in my 30s. Close to death, I know, please leave a comment before I die.

That said, I do think the statement, "James Charles is a sexual predator", is a stretch, to say the least. At least, based on the information I have in December, 2019.

So, let's analyze how this kind of truth stretching happens.

Cancel culture trope one — and you should be writing this down, class, because this will be on the test.

Cancel culture trope 1: Presumption of Guilt

There's a traditional understanding of justice according to which, before you condemn or punish a person, you hear the accuser's side of the story and the accused's side of the story. You allow both sides to present evidence and only after everyone involved has had a chance to make their case do you pass judgment and punish the convict.

You know in the United States of... *groans* We legally have the presumption of innocence. But canceling does not abide by the law. Canceling is a form of vigilante mob justice. And a lot of times, an accusation is proof enough.

Now that's basically the point of the progressive slogan “believe victims.” It's a norm that was put into place in progressive spaces because out in the world at large, people generally don't believe victims.

But I think it's pretty obvious how “believe victims” is a norm that's easy to abuse. Was Tati really James's victim? No, she's not some powerless woman abused by a prominent man in her industry. She's on top of the industry, and she wasn't victimized by James at all. I see this case more as she weaponized cancel culture against a business rival.

Anyway, before James had even had a chance to respond to Tati's accusation, the story had already gone from “Tati Westbrook accuses James Charles of trying to trick straight men” to “James Charles tried to trick straight men.” And from there, it was generalized into “James Charles is toxic and manipulative,” which brings us to…

Cancel Culture Trope Two: Abstraction

Abstraction replaces the specific, concrete details of a claim with a more generic statement. In the transition from “Tati Westbrook accused James Charles of trying to trick straight men” to “James Charles is toxic and manipulative”, we've lost not only the sense of this being an unverified accusation, but we've also lost all the specific details. “James Charles is toxic and manipulative” is an incredibly vague statement. Itmay as well be “James Charles is bad.”

But even without the presumption of guilt, if someone tells me “James Charles is accused of toxic and manipulative behavior,” I'm gonna think, h, that sounds pretty bad, and I'm gonna start speculating about the specifics. And whatever my imagination comes up with is likely going to be worse than whatever he's actually accused of.

Also, the specific accusation that he “tried to trick straight men into thinking they're gay” is self-evidently kind of questionable. How do you trick straight men into thinking they're gay? If you find out, let me know!

This is not a problem that straight men usually seem to have. At the very least, it requires further explanation. It's the kind of story that sounds like it has more than one side. So I'm immediately gonna feel a little bit skeptical of the accusation, and I'm also gonna side-eye Tati Westbrook because this accusation is setting off my homophobia detection alarm. But I'm not gonna have an opportunity to pick up on the potential homophobia and be skeptical of it, if all I've heard about the situation is “James Charles is toxic and manipulative.”

And I also want to point out a linguistic shift that's happening here. When the claim was “James Charles tried to trick straight men”, the verbs in the sentence were “try” and “trick”. So what we're criticizing here is James's behavior, things he did, allegedly:trying to trick straight men.

But once the claim morphs into “James Charles is toxic and manipulative”, the verb in the sentence is “is”, or “to be”. So these adjectives are characteristics of James, and it's now not his actions we're criticizing, but his personality: his toxicity, and his manipulative-ness. This is what I'll call…

Cancel Culture Trope 3: Essentialism

Essentialism is when we go from criticizing a person's actions to criticizing the person themselves. We're not just saying they did bad things. We’re saying they’re a bad person.

And that's what takes us from “James Charles tried to trick straight men” to “James Charles is a sexual predator.” So here we're targeting James himself, not just his actions, but the type of person he is—a sexual predator.

And we've also really escalated the accusation. Because I don't know about you guys, but when I hear the phrase “sexual predator”, the image that comes to mind is a rapist or a child molester, or maybe an abusive boss, not a teenage twink hung up on wanting to date straight guys. I mean, not that a person like that couldn't be a sexual predator, but I really don't think that “he's a sexual predator” is a fair summary of the accusation.

So this seems to me like a pretty nasty and dishonest twisting of the story, and it happened instantaneously on Twitter. Within a few days it totally dominated the conversation in a community of millions of people for weeks.

James had lost millions of subscribers and who knows what effect it had on his personal life. Not that anyone seemed to care. In fact, most people seemed to be enjoying his downfall. He was a teenage millionaire; a young, beautiful superstar⁠. Easy to envy, easy to resent, hard to relate to, hard to sympathize with.

What was the point of canceling James Charles? Did we want to teach him a lesson? Did we want him to learn from his mistakes and grow as a person? (Imagine actually caring. Imagine wanting a person to grow lol)

My hunch is that the average “BeauTube” viewer was not sincerely outraged and hurt by their sincere belief that James Charles was a sexual predator. In other words, this was not a case of “triggered SJWs”. This was a controversy manufactured from the top by a handful of seemingly vindictive and envious people. I honestly think that most of the “James Charles is a sexual predator” crowd just wanted to bring him down a peg.

Cancel culture trope 4: Pseudo-Moralism or Pseudo-Intellectualism

If you look at the world we live in, would you say that people are usually motivated by a sense of moral integrity and intellectual rigor? No? Maybe not. Let's be real America, we are a bunch of morally impotent meatbags, constantly shitting ourselves out of fear and lust.

For Tati, calling out James… This was really about the hair vitamins… right? I think sis was super salty that this millionaire kid, who she had supported and helped, had betrayed her by endorsing a rival brand. And accusing him of trying to trick straight men was just a twist of the knife.

But moralism or intellectualism provide a phony pretext for the call-out. You can pretend you just want an apology; you can pretend you're just a “concerned citizen” who wants the person to improve. You can pretend you're simply offering up criticism, when what you're really doing is attacking a person's career and reputation out of spite, envy, revenge. It could be any motivation.

Twitter viewed James as an over-privileged, spoiled little brat. And it was fun to wipe the smile off his smug face, at least for a few weeks. It's schadenfreude; this kind of petty sadism. Maybe not the internet's proudest moment, but not its most shameful either.

And that's not to say that everyone canceling James Charles was insincere. But there's a world of difference between “cancel R. Kelly” and “cancel James Charles.” And I'm interested to know how these two things came to look the same.

When James was being canceled, I remember being kind of transfixed by the sight of his life and career falling from the sky⁠, full tailspin, black smoke spewing out. And a lot of my YouTube friends were like, "Did you see James Charles was canceled? L-O-L-O-L-O-L-O-L."

But I looked up at James and I said, “Oh god. That's gonna be me someday. Stay strong sister. Don't let the bastards get you down!”

II

So I was doing a little Twitter archeology when I was looking into the James Charles canceling and I found a bunch of tweets referencing earlier James Charles scandals:

"Y'all forgiving James Charles? He's still a transphobe."

“Y'all are acting like just because James Charles has receipts, he's no longer a racist transphobe, like... "

“James Charles is racist, ableist, transphobic and a sexual predator. A white woman: y'all are being too harsh on him and he's uncanceled."

So according to Twitter, James Charles is not only a sexual predator, he's also a racist and a transphobe. That sounds pretty serious. Let's investigate. We'll start with the transphobia allegation. Cat girls of the jury, exhibit A:

Jeff Wittek: So you're not even full gay? James Charles: I mean, no, there have been girls in the past that I thought were really beautiful. There's also been trans guys in the past too that I was really really into for a moment in time.

And I oop.

As they say on Twitter:

“Yikes.”

“This ain't it chief.”

“Friendly reminder that this isn't a good look.”

“Maybe don't be transphobic?

“Disappointing.”

So James did fuck up here. The problem is he's suggesting that being attracted to trans men makes him less gay. This implies that trans men aren't really men, which is at odds with the way trans men understand themselves.

So this does deserve criticism, no doubt, no doubt. However, what I see when I look at this clip of James is not a dyed-in-the-wool transphobic bigot. I see a very young person who's still working on understanding his own sexuality and is trying to figure out where his attraction to trans men fits into that. And it seems to me that the proportionate response to that situation is for someone to take James aside and explain to him, “Look, here's why what you said is hurtful to trans men, and here are some tips on how to avoid saying that kind of thing in the future.”

You know, ignorance is not the same thing as hatred. Not understanding someone is not the same as wanting them dead. Of course, there are committed bigots who it's just a waste of time to engage with, but sometimes just talking to someone with a little patience and understanding is all it takes. But that's not what cancel culture does. Oh no, we have to immediately escalate every situation to the highest possible level of conflict.

So by abstraction, we get “James Charles made transphobic comments”. And by essentialism, we get “James Charles is a transphobe”. We don't give him a chance to reflect, we don't give him an opportunity to learn, we go straight to branding him a bigot. Nonetheless, that same week, James posted an apology to his Insta story saying:

“Regardless of whatever my intentions were, that came across as me saying I'm not fully gay because I have been with a trans man. And that is absolutely, first of all, not true, like, that doesn't make me not fully gay. But that stereotype and implication is really, really dangerous and I'm very, very sorry. If you are a trans man, you are a man. If you're a trans girl, you are a woman. You are valid in your identity."

Could you ask for a better apology? He not only apologizes for what he said, but he also demonstrates a clear understanding of why it was wrong. So does that mean people stopped calling him a transphobe? Of course not.

Cancel Culture trope 5: No Forgiveness

Cancelers will often dismiss an apology as insincere, no matter how convincingly written or delivered. And of course, an insincere apology is further proof of what a Machiavellian psychopath you really are.

Now sometimes, a good apology will calm things down for a while. But the next time there's a scandal, the original accusation will be raised again as if you never apologized. And that's what happened to James during the Tati scandal when Twitter decided he was a transphobic sexual predator. And that's to say nothing of this racism I've been hearing about. Here are the receipts, exhibit B.

In February, 2017, when James was much less famous than he is now, he tweeted, “‘I can't believe we're going to Africa today. O-M-G, what if we get Ebola?’ ‘James we're fine, we could have gotten it at Chipotle last year.’"

Okay, well that's a little insensitive, maybe. It's not really something an influencer should tweet. And fear of disease associated with Africa… I mean, I can see how it's in the same vague conceptual area as certain racist tropes. But clearly this was intended as a joke about his friend mistaking Ebola for E.coli, right?

And anyway, he did apologize, saying:

"As a white cis male, I recognize my privilege and would never want to take that for granted. But I f*cked up. I feel awful for posting what I said. I understand why what I said was offensive and ignorant."

James hasn't made a habit of making jokes like that ever since. So is this one tweet from two years ago that he apologized for on its own enough evidence for us to justify labeling him a racist? Well, according to cancel culture, absolutely.

Abstraction takes us from, “Two years ago, James Charles made a joke that referenced his fear of getting Ebola in Africa,” to, “James Charles made a racist joke.” And then essentialism takes us to “James Charles is a racist.”

Look, I want to pause to say I really do believe in social justice, at least as much as trash like me believes in anything. And believe me, I am well aware that jokes, irony and even complaints about cancel culture are often used by bigots to cloak their real agenda. The Southern Poverty Law Center even cited my video about how far-right racists use jokes and memes and mockery of SJWs as a way to camouflage their hateful beliefs and make them more palatable to a wider audience.

So I'm coming at this from a place of genuine concern for anti-racism and anti-transphobia, as well as an awareness of the fact that cancel culture is often just a conservative red herring used to shut down any and all complaints about racism or transphobia.

But I've also become very disillusioned with the way these accusations are thrown around so frivolously on social media; by the way they're used to escalate conflict instead of promote understanding; and by the way they're sometimes weaponized to destroy people who have made mistakes, but who really don't deserve to be destroyed.

Now, maybe you're thinking, “Destroyed? What do you mean destroyed? James is a 20-year-old millionaire on his way to owning his own makeup empire.” And you are completely correct.

If you're James Charles, if you're a superstar, then being canceled most likely does not destroy you. The cancelers blend in to the general backdrop of haters. And they can set you back a few million subscribers and a lot of emotional turmoil, but in the long run, they can't really touch your success.

But here's the thing, what if you're not James Charles? What if you're a small creator? What if you can't afford public relations help? What if you belong to a marginalized community and you rely on that community for support? Well in that case, it's a whole different story.

III

So this is the part where I should admit that I'm not just a casual observer here. At the time I'm writing this, sweaty, I'm super canceled.

I try to make videos that are both informative and entertaining. So in this video the information is you get to learn about cancel culture and the entertainment is you get to watch a worm try to wriggle off a hook.

Let's get started. Forgive me father, for I have sinned heyhowareyou... God, I never wanted to be the kind of YouTuber who would resort to making videos about my own drama. But things have gotten to a point where I feel like I can’t continue this channel until I spill some tea. So let's get started.

First, a little backstory, a little mise en scene.

I've never talked about this before so this is a super f*cking vulnerable moment for me but I am, in fact, a transgender woman, which may come as a big shock to many of you since I'm 100% real fish.

But yes, as one of YouTube's leading B-list transgendereds, I am a prime target for cancellation, and I have been canceled many, many times. And we're gonna talk about some of the things I've been canceled for and some of the things I've been criticized for and the difference between criticism and canceling. Because yes, there is a difference.

As we go along, I will admit where I have made mistakes because, despite how I look, I am not a literal goddess. And I will apologize where I believe apologies are due. However, where I believe that criticism of me is excessive or unwarranted, I will not apologize, because here at ContraPoints Industries, we are not in the business of serving bullshit.

So the reason for my current cancellation is, in summary, that in my last video,Opulence, I cast transsexual porn star Buck Angel in the role of John Waters. And yes, it's a much better story than the hair vitamin debacle. So notify the drama channels, put in a good word for me, because sweetie, I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to win.

So basically I'm canceled for collaborating with Buck Angel and a lot of trans people think Buck Angel is a horrible person. And so my collaboration with Buck Angel is evidence that I too am a horrible person.

Cancel Culture Trope 6: The Transitive Property of Cancellation

Cancellation is infectious. If you associate with a canceled person, the cancellation rubs off. It's like gonorrhea, except doxycycline won't save you this time sweetie.

Look, this whole incident hinges, first of all, on whether Buck Angel is in fact a horrible person. So who is Buck Angel? Well, he's a trans man of my parents' generation. He grew up in a world where there was not anything like the visibility and access to information about transition we have today, and where there was a strict medical gatekeeping system in place for people who wanted to transition. In fact, Buck was the first female to male patient his doctor had ever treated.

In the 2000s, he rose to prominence as an adult performer, his gimmick at the time being “the man with a p*ssy”. But he also became an activist. He wanted to create more positive trans representation within the porn world. And from there, he became a more general educator and advocate for trans people.

I first heard about him in the early 2010s when I was doing some googling about some little gender issues I was having myself, although I ended up deciding to remain a female. And Buck was one of the first female-to-male people I'd ever heard about. And he made an impact on me in part because you take one look at him and you think, “Honey, that's a man. But he was born a woman...You can do that?”

It's not that he inspired me to transition or anything, it was just one of many moments along my whole entire gender journey.

So I had positive feelings about Tranpa (that's what he calls himself) from back then, and then a few months ago when I was feeling angry and miserable and despised over another time I was being canceled by trans Twitter (we'll get to that one later) I saw this post from Buck on Instagram:

"Dear beautiful human being, I see your pain. It is okay that you lash out at me. You do this because I am you and you are reflecting your self hate to me. I am strong and will be here for you forever and no matter what. This is my intention as a human being, to help others. Love, Buck Angel."

And then the caption:

"Suffering. That is why the trans community lashes out at each other. I am very aware of the hate towards me by some in the community. They hate on me and others because they are hurt."

And those were exactly the words I needed to hear at that moment. So I commented a heart, and then Buck DMed me and he said, "I love you." And I was like, “Senpai noticed me!” and so I said “I love you” back.

Then when I was working on Opulence, I needed a voice actor to do a line from John Waters' book. And it was my co-director, Theryn, who suggested, "Don't you think Buck Angel sounds kind of like John Waters?" And I said, "Well, he just messaged me on Insta. Let's see if he wants to do it."

I just loved the idea of having “Buck Angel as John Waters” in the video credits. Like, a trans icon playing a gay icon. In my head it was just so, well, iconic. So I got in touch with Buck about the line and he was like yeah, I'd love to do it.

So here it is, the 10 second voiceover clip that ruined a month of my life:

"One must remember, there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste. To understand bad taste, one must have very good taste."

That's it, children. That's why mommy's canceled.

Now I was aware at the time that trans Twitter hated Buck Angel. But my thinking was, “Well, trans Twitter kind of hates every trans celebrity, and they certainly hate me.” So I wasn't gonna let that stop me. Little did I know quite how vicious things were about to get.

Now, so far, I've been telling this story from my point of view. But I do want to give a fair and balanced account. So I want to pause and contextualize why some trans people hate Buck Angel so much, they're willing to cancel anyone who even associates with him.

Basically, it all goes back to this old debate in the trans community known today in Tumblr lingo as truscum versus transtrenders. So truscum are trans people who distinguish between “true” trans people and “fake” trans people who they call “trenders” or “tucutes”.

Usually, truscum think that what it is to be trans is to have a lifelong struggle with dysphoria, to pursue a medical transition involving hormones and surgery, and to socially re-assimilate into your target binary gender; so male or female. Anyone who is not that, according to truscum, must either be a confused teenager, someone just trying to get attention, or someone mistaking their trauma or their fetish for being trans⁠— in a word, a trender.

So that's a vish of transness that usually excludes non-binary people as well as people who don't want to medically transition for whatever reason. And for that reason, this view is sometimes also called transmedicalism, “truscum” obviously being the derogatory term for these people.

Truscum are very hated by a lot of trans people because their viewpoint is that not all trans identities are valid. And Buck Angel is widely perceived to be truscum. So the next question to ask is, “Is this true? Is Buck Angel, in fact, truscum?”

Now my honest answer to that question is that I don't know. He certainly said some things that sound like things truscum say, I'll give you that.

A point he likes to make a lot is that he's transsexual, not transgender. And the difference between those terms is that “transsexual” sometimes implies that you want to pursue medical transition⁠— so hormones and surgery⁠— and “transgender” doesn't imply that.

People often associate this “I'm transsexual, not transgender” thing with truscum because truscum often call themselves transsexuals, and say that anyone who isn't a transsexual isn't really trans. And often those people will be very mean to people they call trenders, especially certain transmedicalist YouTubers like Vanessa LeBlanc (read: Blaire White) and 2CuteSmasher9000 (read: Kalvin Garrah). Roast me back, Kalvin, I dare you.

But I think it's important to keep in mind that the term truscum is a product of the 2014 Tumblr wars, and trying to apply it to trans people of an older generation can sometimes be misleading. When Buck Angel transitioned, the word “transsexual” was just the word for his identity, and he still identifies that way.

So when younger trans people tell him it's wrong to use the word “transsexual”, he feels like these ungrateful Millennials are invalidating his identity. And I do understand where he's coming from with that.

But I also understand why a lot of non-binary people are skeptical about Buck. Beacause he says again and again, “I'm transsexual, not transgender,” as if to say, “Don't mix me up with those people.” And that eagerness to separate himself from transgender people, it comes across as hostility.

I don't think Buck’s ever actually said that non-binary people aren't valid, but I personally don't like that he seems like he wants to distance himself from them. And that's my disagreement with Buck. It's not that he invalidates non-binary identities, because I don't really see him doing that. And if he was doing that, I would have seen it, because for the last two months a lot of people have been doing nothing but sending me problematic Buck Angel tweets.

But as someone who cares a lot about non-binary people and who loves the non-binary people in my life, it does upset me when he does this distancing thing. And I hope he listens to this criticism, because I think it would be cool if he got better about this.

Of course, Buck is technically right that there are different kinds of trans people. And I agree it's important that we can make those distinctions and talk about the differences when they're relevant. But I also think that, as a community, trans people benefit from unity not division.

If you have an employer who discriminates against trans people, they're not gonna care if you're transsexual, transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming. They're gonna discriminate against you regardless. So we're all in this together. And though there's a lot of disagreements among us, and even though we often don't get along so well, politically, I think we should work together as much as possible instead of splitting into little factions. Because we share most of the same interests, and I think the best way to do that is to build bridges instead of burning them.

And that's why I'm willing to work with people like Buck Angel who I have some disagreements with. It creates a connection, and having that connection can lead to communication and build understanding. Also, I need all the connections I can get, gorg, I am very lonely...that’s not a joke I’m really lonely.

I get that some people have views that are so harmful that giving them a platform is potentially dangerous. But in any case, I didn't even give Buck a platform to share his opinions. I gave him a platform to be a John Waters impersonator.

A bunch of people on my subReddit were like, “Why couldn't she just get John Waters to do those lines?” Well first of all, I don't actually know John, but I just have a feeling he would write me off as some kind of tr*nny millennial SJW. I mean, why is Buck Angel canceled but John Waters isn't? Well, because trans Twitter does not know who John Waters is and let's try to keep it that way.

I actually mentioned this to a friend of mine who knows John and he told me that he and John have actually watched Buck Angel's p*rn together. So... plot twist!

Okay, so trans Twitter won't forgive me unless I condemn Buck Angel as truscum and apologize for ever working with him. But I'm not going to do that because I don't think it would be the right thing to do, and doing it just to get myself uncanceled would be cowardly.

I'm happy to tell you that I absolutely disagree with Buck's divisive rhetoric about “transsexual versus transgender”. I wish he would be an ally to the whole transgender umbrella instead of trying to distance himself from the rest. And I'm happy to hear out the perspective of non-binary people who don't trust him because I totally get where they're coming from, and I think that's valid.

But I also respect the decades of good activism Buck Angel has done for trans people and I am grateful to him for that. And in light of that, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about where his heart is and express my criticism in a more measured way than just attacking who he is as a person.

But Twitter needs to establish that he's a horrible person because this is the strategy they've chosen to establish that I am a horrible person. And if the truscum allegation isn't strong enough to prove it, oh, they have other pieces of evidence to fall back on to hold up their conclusion. For example, here's a tweet claiming:

"Natalie's trying so fucking hard to make it sound like the only thing Buck Angel ever did was write a few iffy tweets, and that's just so fucking far from the truth. Dude launched a targeted tabloid harassment campaign outing a trans woman against her will with a specific intent of causing her physical, emotional and professional harm. The shorter way of saying that is that he wanted to make her suffer and she very well could have been killed."

Yikes, this ain't it chief. Friendly reminder that this isn't a good look. Maybe don't try to get trans women killed? Disappointing.

It sounds pretty serious, let's investigate. Here's what I've managed to piece together.

Scene one, the year is 2003, Los Angeles, where the movie world, the porn world and the BDSM scene come together in a tale of heartbreak, betrayal and transsexualism: La La Land!

Dramatis personae: Buck Angel, transsexual porn star; Ilsa Strix, dominatrix, then wife of Buck Angel; Lana Wachowski, wildly successful director of The Matrix, and at the time, not yet out as a transgender woman. The synopsis is that Ilsa Strix and Buck Angel's marriage ended after Ilsa had an affair with Lana Wachowski who was not yet out as trans.

So Buck was understandably upset about the affair and, in what seems like a petty act of revenge, told a series of magazines that this celebrity director, Wachowski, was a cross dresser who had stolen his wife, which, I guess, was the information he had at the time.

So is that outing a trans woman against her will? Well, in retrospect it seems like it, though that may not be what he thought he was doing at the time. But to really get to the bottom of this, we have to do some digging. We have to trawl through the dirty details of trans people's personal histories, which I've noticed is one of the Internet's favorite activities.

So I actually went on eBay and I purchased Rolling Stone issue 991, January 2006, and I'm finally able to reveal…

*drum roll*...

...that the seller canceled the order. Goddammit! But I was finally able to track down and translate a Spanish version of the Rolling Stone article from the Wayback Machine, and I'm finally able to expose the truth.

Stop. Freeze exactly where you are. Take a look at yourself and what all of us have been doing for the last 30 seconds. Who does this behavior remind you of? If your answer is social justice advocates fighting for trans equality, you are incorrect. If your answer is creepy stalkers who hate trans people... ding! ding! ding!

I am very suspicious of anyone whose online behavior prompts me to dig through articles full of dead names and sordid scandals involving trans people from almost two decades ago. This is very similar to techniques used against trans people by internet fascists. So I'm pretty suspicious of anyone pushing this kind of investigation.

How can you tell the difference between a trans-anarcho socialist with an anime avatar and a Nazi pretending to be a trans-anarcho socialist with an anime avatar? Well, you can't. Anonymous is anonymous is anonymous, whether it's on 4chan or Twitter.

So unless Buck Angel, Ilsa Strix or Lana Wachowski gets in touch with me and lets me know that for some unimaginable reason they want me to publicly dig up their 17-year old divorce drama, this is none of my fucking business. And it's none of yours either. So shut up, and go back to Kiwi Farms where you belong.

IV

So setting aside any tabloid drama that may have happened during the Bush administration—I'm saying this is in the cuntiest way, and they deserve it. They fucking deserve the cuntiness.

The main argument against me usually references a collage of Buck Angel's problematic tweets. And this is supposed to be definitive evidence that he is a horrible person, and therefore, that I am a horrible person for collaborating with him.

Well, here's the thing, though: a collage of problematic tweets does not define a person. And I'm very used to being defined that way myself, so I know how unfair it can be. Before I ever collaborated with Buck Angel, a lot of people on Twitter were already calling me truscum. That's been going on for a year and a half now.

And any time my name comes up on Twitter, a bunch of people respond saying, “Natalie is truscum; Natalie's a trans medicalist; Natalie hates non-binary people, and you should really think what kind of message you're sending to your trans and non-binary followers by platforming her.” And if the person defends me or argues back in any way, they say, “I can't believe you're ignoring the valid concerns of marginalized people.”

They're weaponizing their marginalized status as trans people to isolate and attack another trans person. And sometimes this stuff gets to my head too. I start asking myself, “Wait, am I a trans-medicalist? Do I really believe all these awful things they say I believe?” But the answer is no. I just don't. These things they're saying about me are 100% not true.

You know, “believe marginalized people” is a norm that is encouraged in leftist spaces for good reason, much like “believe victims” or “believe women”. And these norms were established to counterbalance the mainstream tendency which is not to listen to marginalized people or to victims or to women. But any norm can be abused.

And the blunt fact of the matter is that sometimes marginalized people are wrong. Sometimes people calling themselves victims are obscuring a more complicated situation. And it's even happened, once or twice, that a woman has lied.

And the accusation that I'm truscum is simply false. I mean first of all, I don't even think of my own transgenderism as a medical disorder, much less everyone else's. I have, of course, collaborated with Dr. Spiegel et al, but I will not have my artistry reduced to mere medicine!

Second, this accusation that I hate non-binary people is just... No! No, no. My thinking about trans identity has always been informed by non-binary people. I used to identify as non-binary myself before I medically transitioned, and some of the closest people to me in my life today are non-binary trans people, some of whom are also transsexuals, incidentally (it's complicated).

I've also made at least five videos on this channel arguing for the validity of non-binary gender identities, going back more than three years. So five out of around 50 videos, or 10% of the content I've made on this channel is about non-binary identity. A few months ago I even made a 30-minute video called Transtrenders, which uses character dialogue to show what I think are the shortcomings of transmedicalism.

But there's still hundreds of people on Twitter saying that I'm a truscum who hates non-binary people. And their main piece of evidence for that is a collage of my problematic tweets. So let's take a look at that. Here are the three tweets that I usually see scrapbooked together as definitive proof that I hate non-binary people.

Tweet I: "I'm sure this is not the experience of many NBs. NB means non-binary people. I leave it to them to articulate what NB existence looks like in a binary world. I do not and I can not speak for them. But surely", (god, I used to write like such a nerd) "an account that begins and ends with ‘I'm not a man because I don't identify as one’ is pretty weak."

This is from September, 2018, and is taken out of context from the rest of the thread, so you can't even see what I'm talking about.

When I wrote the Twitter thread that that tweet has been clipped out of, I was defending myself from accusations that my most recent video at the time, The Aesthetic, was anti non-binary. In that video a character named Justine defends a version of the performativity theory of gender. And basically, I made this video to express some angst I was feeling about the pressures of transitioning in the public eye.

This was a very one-year-on-hormones moment for me and I've already moved on in my thinking. At that time I was very much of the mindset: “My behavior must be perfectly feminine at all times or else I'm not really a woman; my self-esteem is totally based on sleeping with heterosexual men who resemble my father.” And anyone who knows anything about trans women knows that most of us go through a stage like this at some point (and some YouTubers never get out of it).

When I was making The Aesthetic, I wasn't even thinking about non-binary people. And people will say that the fact that not every video I make references non-binary people is itself NB-phobic. Again, one in 10 of my videos is about non-binary identity, but not all of them are, and I feel entitled to make some videos that are just about trans women.

But still, some people on Twitter were saying that the character Justine is a transmedicalist. And because she (maybe?) wins the fictional debate in the video, I, Natalie Wynn, am therefore a transmedicalist.

Here's the thing though: the performativity theory of gender, the one that Justine defends in that video, is conceptually as far away from transmedicalism as it is possible to be. Transmedicalism says that trans identity is biological, it's neurological, it's hormonal, its diagnosable and treatable; whereas performativity says that gender is gesture, it's expression, it's performance, it's a social phenomenon. Performativity makes no reference to gender dysphoria or to any kind of medical concept at all.

So, whereas transmedicalism is a kind of bioessentialism, performativity is a kind of social constructionism. So these are exact opposite theories of gender. Are you following along class? I'm not.

But some trans people felt invalidated by things Justine says in that video. And transmedicalism is another thing that makes them feel invalidated. So they decided that Justine is a transmedicalist and therefore that I am a transmedicalist...This is literally just bad media comprehension. Like, it's a failure to plausibly interpret a video that some people did find genuinely emotionally difficult.

The negative response to that video is just pure emotion. I always hear, “I don't care what you intended, trans people were hurt by that video. You hurt trans people.” But here's the thing: just because you were hurt by content I made, doesn't mean that the content is bad or that I'm victimizing you in some way. I'll give an example.

I did a stream a couple years ago with a BDSM and kink activist. We were talking about various kinks and we got to DDLG which is “daddy dom, little girl,” basically, when consenting adults roleplay age difference and the power dynamic that comes with that.

Me and this kink activist werejust casually discussing what DDLG is and what it isn't when I noticed someone in the chat was starting to totally freak out. They were typing in all caps, “MY ABUSER USED DDLG TO JUSTIFY RAPING ME. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING MY ABUSER? I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D BETRAY ME LIKE THIS. PLEASE STOP TAKING MY ABUSER’S SIDE PLEASE STOP I’M BEGGING YOU

This was actually really fucking upsetting to me because this person was clearly in a lot of pain. They were having a panic attack because they were having a trauma trigger reaction to this conversation. And I kept telling them to leave the stream and take care of themselves but they wouldn't do it. So I had to block them and then later get in touch and make sure they were okay.

Now was their pain very real? Yes. Was it triggered by the content I was streaming? Yes. But does that mean I did anything wrong? No. Is it wrong to talk about kink in context where it's clear you're going to be talking about kink? No.

When you produce content online that's going to be viewed by thousands or millions of people, there's always some people out there who are going to be hurt by it. So if you want to argue that a tweet or a video I made is somehow immoral, I think you need more of an argument than just, “people were hurt.” All right, back to the tweet.

To this day, people quote tweet the sentence, "But surely an account that begins and ends with ‘I'm not a man because I don't identify as one’ is pretty weak." And they claim this as evidence that I'm truscum or that I think people have to prove their identities somehow, which is not at all what I was saying in that thread.

What I was saying is if you're trying to persuade a skeptic that trans identity is valid, simply saying “I'm not a man because I don't identify as one” isn't a very good argument. Which it isn't. I mean, no one has ever been persuaded by that, so far as I'm aware. That said, I do now disagree with the mindset I had when I tweeted this.

Back then I still delusionally believed that it was possible to rationally explain why trans identity is valid. And I was simply looking for a more persuasive argument than, “This is how I identify, you have to believe me, no further questions.” But I no longer believe there can be any rational justification of gender identity, which is another reason I'm not a transmedicalist.

Transmedicalism tries to be a rational theory about why trans identity is valid, and I don't think it succeeds as that— I don't think anything does. My current opinion about this is that “I'm not a man because I don't identify as one” is as good, or rather, as bad, an argument as any.

You know, some things in life just can't be rationally explained. Like love. Why do you love the person you love? Well, because you love them. You could write a poem about it or some gay shit like that, but you can't give any actual arguments.

And why am I a woman? Because I'm a woman. That's it. I mean, I can describe my experiences and my feelings to you to help you understand better, but I can't logically prove anything. And I'm super fucking sorry if you can't handle that mankind was set adrift in an absurd world. That must be super fucking hard for you. Tell me all about it.

Next, please.

Tweet 2 (mid-thread, missing context): "Whereas I've met 20 year olds in full-on boy mode who are like ‘Hi, I'm a trans woman, she-her pronouns.’”

I guess by including this tweet in the “ContraPoints is problematic” collage, people are implying that I don't think it's valid for someone who presents male to identify as a woman and requests she/her pronouns. Well, that's not true. I was surprised when I first experienced this, but I think it's valid.

Next.

Tweet 3 (Mid-thread and missing context, again): "But now you go into these leftist discord/Facebook groups and like 20 to 30% identify as some flavor of trans, most of them are not conventional binary transsexuals. That seems to be the future."

Okay, well, it's true that many leftist discord servers are like this. But reading this back, I don't like the way the phrase “conventional binary transsexuals” is hitting my ear. I can see how it could imply that non-binary identities are somehow newfangled, which isn't true. There's been non-binary people for longer than there's been medical transsexuals, in fact. So we'll call this a bad tweet. I apologize for tweeting it and I apologize to any non-binary people who felt trivialized by it.

Okay, this next tweet is a big one is the big one. It got its own article in the f*cking Guardian. You know, I really wish people would pay less attention to the tweets I spend 30 seconds writing, and a little more attention to the videos that I spend, you know, hundreds of hours making. Anyway, let's look at the tweet.

Tweet 4: This has happened to me before in hyper woke spaces. Like it's me and a bunch of cis women and we all have to go in a circle saying she-her because I'm there. “There's this paradox where I can go to a sports bar in North Carolina and be miss-ma'amed all night, no question. But in self-consciously trans-inclusive spaces, I have to explain my pronouns and watch woke people awkwardly correct themselves every time they say ‘you guys.’ I guess it's good for people who use they-them only and want only gender-neutral language, but it comes at the minor expense of semi-passible transes like me, and that's super f*cking hard for us.

So people interpreted this tweet as me being against the practice of sharing pronouns, which I'm literally just not. I've actually been the person who initiates the pronoun circle many times.

The backstory of this tweet is basically that I once got triggered in a situation where I was with a bunch of cis women and we all had to go around saying our pronouns. And like a typical triggered tr*nny, I tiptoed over to Twitter, to tip-tap-type it out.

But here's the thing: by the end of this thread, I had already talked myself away from the initial frustration I was expressing. If you know my videos and my voice, then you know me saying, "It comes at the minor expense of semi passible transes, and that's super fucking hard for us", is sarcastic. It's a minor expense. It's not actually very hard for us, gorg, it's fine. But people on Twitter don't watch my videos and they don't get sarcasm.

So people flipped out over this and I was getting dragged. I then made the poor decision to try to solve the tweet problem with more tweeting, which 100% of the time is like trying to put out a fire with lighter fluid.

So me and my dumb brain did another short thread trying to clarify what I was saying and defending my right to talk about my own experiences. That didn't make things any better, and in a state of anger and frustration, I tweeted out yet another thread. And this time I said some truly stupid things, including the now-infamous line: "I sometimes feel like the last of "the old-school transsexuals."

I honestly don't know what the fuck I was even trying to say. I don't feel like the last of the old-school transsexuals. I don't even know what that means.

I guess I basically meant that, offline, I don't have any radical aspirations. I want to be inconspicuous, I want to blend in. I want people to assume my pronouns. And that's what I meant by “old school”.

It's funny, because it’s very different from the way I am online, where I'm totally shameless and open. I'm like “sexual confession everybody, sexual confession! I have abnormal urges!” (It's 1:00 a.m. and my neighbors can definitely hear me yelling that. They know I have abnormal urges now. It’s fine, they already knew that)

But offline, I'm an inconspicuous pussy, like a total coward. So this was a rage thread and I apologize for tweeting it.

V

Let's go back to Buck Angel.

I'm kind of a conscientious objector to the practice of condemning someone based on a collage of their worst tweets taken out of context, but I definitely do have anxiety about this. Like, I think I'm doing the right thing by not condemning Buck as truscum and evil but, I mean, I could be wrong.

What if I am basically sacrificing myself for the sake of a person who really is as bad as Twitter says? Maybe tomorrow he'll tweet “fuck non-binary people” and then I'll have fucked up. *sigh* This whole thing is incredibly stressful to me.

But I do believe that by refusing to participate in the anti-Buck Angel pile-on, I am erring on the morally safer side of things. Because even if he is a little truscummy, excommunicating him from the trans community is still probably not the best approach to take.

In my experience, when people accept binary but not non-binary trans people, it usually takes like a 30-minute conversation to win them over to some level of non-binary acceptance. And I'll give you a couple examples.

The first time I was ever canceled, like totally trashed on Twitter, was back in 2017, when I had not yet medically transitioned, and at the time, I identified as non-binary. And at VidCon 2017, I met up with a YouTuber named June who had made some videos where she basically mocked the idea of non-binary people.

I posted a picture of the brunch I had with June (and some other people but let's keep them out of it) and people on Twitter totally dragged me for being a peak liberal boot licker who's best friends with transphobic abusers.

Christ, these fucking people, man. This is so fucking frustrating.

I'm not gonna claim I changed June's mind, because I don't know what her thought process was, but I did talk to her about non-binary identity and she did remove her anti non-binary videos. And I don't have any regrets about that brunch.

Example two came a couple months later when I did a livestream with a conservative trans woman YouTuber named... um, what was her name? Sharon? Was it Sharon? I guess she's just not a very memorable person.

Anyway, she had made some videos saying that non-binary identities aren't real, but I gave her a chance and she surprised me by being super compassionate and thoughtful. By the end of that stream, she was pretty much totally accepting of my identity.

So again, the point is not that I'm some kind of persuasive genius. If I was a persuasive genius, maybe I could talk myself out of being canceled. The point is that sometimes people who seem ignorant or hateful just need to be given a non-judgmental space to learn and grow and think.

And to just condemn them as hopeless bigots actually prevents that growth from happening. And Sharon, despite her totally forgettable personality, turned out to be an incredibly open-minded person. Later on she actually made an apology video to non-binary people and I became good friends with her and we worked together on most of the videos I've made this year. You know, until she ruined my life by recommending a canceled John Waters impersonator.

I guess the moral is to never talk to people you disagree with, because it will only lead to pain.

I do think there's something off with my hormone dose, like... I'm crying three times a day, and I can't cum unless there's vibrators in at least three of my holes. It happens like once a month, and there has to be a full moon. I honestly only still bother because it numbs the pain for a few moments.

What I'm trying to say is I really do believe in conversation, which means hearing out multiple perspectives. I don't want my audience to get all their information about trans people from me, and I think it's important to listen to criticism.

So I encourage my audience to go watch some non-binary YouTubers who have criticized me and criticized Buck Angel. For example, go check out non-binary YouTuber Luxanders's video about me and non-binary YouTuber Korviday's video about Buck Angel.

I think YouTube as a platform is better at producing criticism rather than canceling. And I think that's because, at least in the vlog format, making a video forces you to confront the fact that you're a human being with a face and a name who can be held accountable for the things that you say.

But with people on Twitter, it's a different story. And I think it's time we take a look at what canceling really is.

I've given you enough context now for you to understand what I'm about to show you, which is what I saw on my timeline every day for nearly a month. All these tweets are from the aftermath of my uploading Opulence two months ago, when the Buck Angel scandal first broke. And someone better hold my hand now because this gets ugly.

“Hey, if any of you still support ContraPoints after her bigging up and collaborating with notable TERF favorite and truscum, Buck Angel, you're no friend to gender nonconforming, non-passing and non-binary trans people. Fuck her and fuck her fucking grift. I am absolutely furious right now.”

“Weird how I'm 30 and trans and managed not to be a truscum. Maybe I'm just some kind of anomaly, or maybe ContraPoints is a conniving rat-fucking kapo who could do with a fully wound backhand to the mouth.”

“Since I'm out of Twitter jail for now, I just want to say fuck ContraPoints, her sycophantic stans and all her BreadTube chums who closed ranks to protect her after she throws the rest of the trans community under the bus for profit.”

“Natalie Wynn is a fucking grifter.”

"ContraPoints videos are now just style over substance so that explains why she took to TERF ideology so well.”

“ContraPoints working with truscum now definitively proves that pretty much everyone defending ContraPoints just hates NBs and are also truscum, legit gonna start on following peeps that continue to follow ContraPoints at this point. Do note my wording of pretty much everyone. I know there are some that were probably blindsided by this somehow. So long as you know that ContraPoints is truscum, you're safe and cool.”

“Eat shit, Natalie. For someone who used to identify as gender-queer, we expected more from you. But I guess when your heads this far up your own ass, it's hard to consider others.”

“ContraPoints, more like disappoints.”

Oh, that's a good one. If you're gonna drag me, at least be funny.

“Fuck Buck Angel, fuck ContraPoints, fuck any real transsexual.”

“Fuck your grift.”

“Here's what #ContraPoints stans don't understand. If Natalie refuses to accept that she has an apology to make and continues profiting from it, it will become our responsibility to work on de-platforming her, just like every other racist, sexist, bigoted content creator.”

“No one has actually suggested or attempted to actually cancel her, but the longer this goes on without an apology and commitment to be better, the stronger the case becomes for actively working to de-platform her.”

So in other words, “No one has suggested we cancel her, but we should cancel her” ...Great.

“Can everyone finally agree that ContraPoints belongs directly inside a garbage can.”

Here I am, sweetie.

“ContraPoints collaborating with Angel Buck…”

‘Angel Buck’. Thanks for letting us all know that you had no idea who he even was until Twitter notified you what to be outraged about.

“ContraPoints collaborating with Angel Buck, a transmedicalist who once outed a trans person to try and destroy them, and supporting him because he looks and sounds like a proper man isn't a small itty bitty, tipsy topsy fucking mistake. This is a huge deal.”

“ContraPoints could be literally collaborated with Hitler..."

Ding! ding! We have a Hitler comparison!

“...could be literally collaborating with Hitler today and y'all would be like ‘oh well, she's just a little flawed, you know?’ Fuck off.”

“Can Natalie Wynn stop being a coward and commit to being a trans-med, it's really tiring to watch this happen every week.”

“Natalie Wynn is a spoiled brat who refuses to take accountability.”

“Anyone who supports Natalie Wynn does not support non-binary people.”

“Natalie Wynn is such a terrible person, my god.”

“Every cis and not non-binary person who thought Natalie Wynn wasn't trans-med now owes me and every non-binary person $50.”

“Joe Biden has a better position on the validity of non-binary gender than ContraPoints.”

“My opinion is that ContraPoints really sucks a lot and I don't like her.”

“I hate ContraPoints so goddamn much, it's unbelievable.”

“Buck Angel is a TERF apologizer, boot licker and truscum. Any association with him must be seen as hostile to the trans community as a whole, let alone denial of non-binary existence. That's the line in the sand, folks where do you stand?”

“And here we fucking are dude. Buck-fucking-Angel on ContraPoints. Eat my entire ass!”

Wait… what!? 😂

“Issues that arose with Buck Angel being in Contra's new video: - Her video on terfs makes no sense now. - Her video on transtrenders makes no sense now…”

You know, if your interpretation of why I cast Buck Angel totally contradicts the videos I spent hundreds of hours making, do you think maybe your interpretation could be wrong? Apparently not.

“...- Her apology is completely void- sends a message that she hates non-binary people. - She is reckless with her content. Positives that arose from Buck Angel being in Contra's new video:- she has $400,000 this month from Patreon…”

$400,000?! This number is completely made-up. It is exponentially wrong!

“Hot take: ContraPoints is the leftist PewDiePie. Personally, I like to characterize her as the Blaire White Wolf in leftist sheep's clothing.”

“Reminder that ContraPoints is a piece of sh*t who still has not apologized for platforming truscum and is actively taking their side.”

“Anyway, if you still support ContraPoints, get the hell away from me!”

“Pee pee, poo poo, I'm ContraPoints and I can't stop being a transmedicalist and sh*tting myself in public bwuh."

…Valid criticisms of marginalized people 🥴...

“Fuck ContraPoints, fuck truscum.”

“ContraPoints is a truscum. ContraPoints is a truscum. ContraPoints is a truscum. ContraPoints is a truscum. ContraPoints is a truscum…”

You know, when you repeat the same fucking sentence over and over again, it doesn't actually get more persuasive. In fact, it might get less persuasive, because true things usually only have to be said once.

‘If you still support ContraPoints, unfollow me immediately and never interact with me again.”

“In conclusion, fuck Natalie Wynn and fuck everything she has to say.”

VI

So that was just a sample of hundreds and hundreds of tweets. And all of this, let me remind you, is over a 10-second voice-over clip in a 48 minute video about a completely unrelated topic. I mean, How do you work, how do you create, when a decision so trivial can become the main event for weeks of your life?

And the tweets are just the beginning. After that there's the Reddit threads and the YouTube comments AND the Facebook discourse AND the medium posts, and the Newsweek article.

Opulence is a video me and Theryn spent hundreds of hours carefully piecing together. I think it's my best video. And to have the response to it completely overwhelmed by one minor casting decision is heartbreaking and infuriating to me. And it's left me with much less energy to create new things. But here's the thing, people on Twitter saying mean things about me is not the worst of it—not even close.

I mean, I'm a politically opinionated trans woman who publicly transitioned while making anti-fascist content on a notoriously right-wing platform. Sweaty, I am so used to reading mean things about myself online, most of you probably can't even begin to imagine how used to it I am. And the way you psychologically survive in that situation is you block the people andplatforms who are harassing you, and you pay it no mind.

But there's some things you can't block. And a big one is that you can't block people from going after your friends and colleagues. And that is exactly what people did to me at the height of the Buck Angel incident.

Lindsay Ellis, Olly from Philosophy Tube and Hbomberguy all got inundated with tweets demanding that they publicly disown me, a person they've all been friends with for years or else.

In response to demands that she apologize, Lindsay released a statement where she said:

"I was not involved in Opulence. My name was mentioned in it, but I did not participate in the production. Therefore, with regards to calls for me to apologize, I have to ask, apologize for what? There is only one logical answer: apologize for being friends with Natalie."

And here's a response to her statement:

"I don't need to consider you my fucking friend to disagree with beliefs you knowingly solicit or allow on your platform. Same with Contra, it just means you're willing to allow awful ideas to fester for the sake of financial gain which is fine, but it makes you a piece of shit."

And here's a comment at Hbomberguy:

“I doubt that you were gonna read this, but can you please just tell us your thoughts on that whole situation so we could at least know that you are on our side. We don't want to have to cancel all of y'all and cause BreadTube to go into a schism as a result of this, thank you.”

In other words, “Nice YouTube channel you have there, friend. It would be a shame if someone canceled it.” So fucking sinister.

Olly of PhilosophyTube released his own statement affirming his support of non-binary people, but adding:

“Sadly, I've also been harassed, threatened, doxxed, had my private life speculated on and my loved ones insulted... in recognizing the feelings of those who kindly raised their concerns in a polite way, I do not wish to legitimize the great many people who use their hurt as a cover for unacceptable toxic and abusive behavior.”

And here are some responses to Olly:

“As a non-binary fan of yours, I'm disappointed in this non-apology."

Again, what exactly is he supposed to be apologizing for? Ever having associated with me?

“Things we are going to criticize Olly PhilosophyTube for: - being a sniveling hypocritical piece of sh*t - refusing to listen to trans people - actively, openly and repeatedly mocking the trans people he refuses to listen to.”

"Thanks for the apology, now stop endorsing ContraPoints."

Now keep in mind that what these Twitter people are doing is demanding that cis people publicly condemn a trans woman for loosely associating with another trans person. Does that strike anyone else as wildly inappropriate?

Even Mia Mulder, a trans woman who has never publicly associated with me, got attacked because she tweeted a heart at Olly after he made the post discussing being doxxed and threatened.

And just for that, she gets put on the enemy list:

“I'm sad to say that Mia is on the list of people that have stood by ContraPoints as she had continued to be a bigoted piece of shit.”

To which Mia responds:

“Stood by ContraPoints, Jesus Christ. No matter what I do, people call me out and I'm not even related to the video and I don't even know Natalie!”

The chain of guilt by association is so long and twisted, I can barely even follow it. So they're going after Mia, who tweeted a heart at Olly, who failed to condemn me for my voice-over casting of Buck Angel, who was retweeted by a TERF... We're only missing a couple of degrees of separation before every living person on the planet Earth is canceled over “the Buck Angel situation.”

And several colleagues of mine, by the way— Lindsay, Harry, Olly ⁠— they all took a financial hit over this. They've all lost some Patreon support.

One of Lindsay's former supporters even demanded a $38 lifetime refund, saying:

Dear Lindsay, I'm sorry for being pushy, but I really am going to be needing a refund. I gave money to your operation under the pretense that you wouldn't do anything morally objectionable and supporting ContraPoints and blaming us for taking issue with thought is, in my opinion, amoral. Please respond."

I hope she sent it to them in pennies.

So look, I'm very grateful to my colleagues for sticking by me through all this, but I'm also aware that I'm becoming a burden to anyone who associates with me. I have no collaborators in this video, and I'm working on this totally alone because I'm aware of how radioactive I am right now. And I don't want to contaminate anyone else.

During the height of this most recent canceling, a creator I admire DMd me to let me know, "I cut the shout-out to you in my last video because I was nervous to draw the ire of your detractors, who are getting genuinely scary. But I wouldn't want you to think I was disavowing you, regardless of how many people are asking me to."

Jesus Christ. The situation here is that any cis person who defends me, or even associates with me in any way, will be labeled a transphobe. Any binary trans person who associates with me will be branded an enby-phobe. And any non-binary people who associate with me will be ostracized from their own community.

So on the Internet I find myself increasingly alone. I'm isolated by the harassment. And that is ultimately the point, to exile me from my community and from any community. And it's all because I refuse to participate in doing exactly that to Buck Angel.

My experiences have made me so disillusioned with the idea that social media call-outs can lead to any kind of justice, that I've essentially sworn off participating in them.

There's a fairly prominent figure in leftist politics who I could absolutely #MeToo, but I'm never gonna do it because I have no faith left in the process of callout vigilante justice.

And I'm not saying I'm totally against MeToo-ing people, because I think, in some cases, it totally is the brave and admirable thing to do. But in my case, I feel like I just know too much about the dark side of social media shaming to ever want to participate in it again. I feel like the story would end up being taken out of my control, warped and twisted in all kinds of unpredictable ways. It would end up just haunting both me and the person I'd be accusing, which, in this case, honestly, neither of us deserves. So I'm just not willing to take that risk, except maybe in some very extreme situation which this just isn't. It’s not worth it.

And likewise, when a mob is at my doorstep demanding I condemn Buck Angel to save myself from cancellation... no! I'm just not gonna do that. I'm a conscientious objector. I'm willing to go to Twitter jail for this. Take me away, boys!

VII

If there's one thing I can't stand it's BreadTube videos. “Part Eight and a Half: The Philosophy of Being Fucked In The Ass” 😑*groans* I have done this to YouTube and I'm sorry.

So look, canceling is not criticism. It is not holding someone accountable. It is an attack on a human being. And so far I’ve used the word ‘canceling’ more or less synonymously with what feminist Jo Freeman, author of The BITCH Manifesto, calls trashing.

The BITCH Manifesto was originally published in Ms. Magazine in 1976, but it is a perfect description of what goes on on trans Twitter today:

“It is not disagreement, it is not conflict, it is not opposition. These are perfectly ordinary phenomena which, when engaged in mutually, honestly and not excessively, are necessary to keep an organism or organization healthy and active… Trashing is a particularly vicious form of character assassination which amounts to psychological rape. It is manipulative, dishonest and excessive. It is occasionally disguised by the rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy. Whatever methods are used, trashing involves a violation of one's integrity, a declaration of one's worthlessness, and an impugning of one's motives. In effect, what is attacked is not one's actions, or one's ideas but one's self.”

And that's what distinguishes trashing, bullying or abuse from criticism or holding accountable. Criticism attacks your actions or beliefs. But when people are canceling me, they're not bringing up my problematic tweets because they want me to revise my beliefs. No, what they're doing is accumulating evidence to support the case they've decided to make that I am a horrible person who must be shunned.

The only sense in which I am, as they like to say, “the new Blaire White,” is that I think I actually have now snatched Vanessa's crown as the most hated tran on tran Twitter.

Vanessa, I'm trying to feud with you. Feud with me, goddamnit. You can't have a one-sided feud. I don't want to be one of those trans YouTubers that just drags other trans people all day and they never respond. That would be really pathetic.

“The new Laci Green,” that's the other one. The newest in a series of women you've decided to treat like supervillains. Maybe reflect on that habit a little bit, hmm? And supervillain is the right word, like, I'm the bad guy...Duh!

I'm the enemy. And what do you do with the enemy? Well, you disavow, disown, deplatform and destroy. As that one tweet put it, "That's the line in the sand, folks, where do you stand?" If you adequately demonstrate your searing hatred of Natalie Wynn, then, "You're safe and cool." But if you don't you're on the wrong side of the line, sweaty, and you too are now the enemy.

Cancel culture trope seven: Dualism

Certain ancient religions teach their followers to understand the cosmos as a struggle between light and dark, good and evil. And cancel culture does more or less the same thing. It's binary thinking. People are either good or they're bad.

And to add to that essentialism, if a person says or does a bad thing, we should interpret that as the mask slipping; as a momentary glimpse of their essential wickedness. And anyone who wants to remain good had better be willing to publicly condemn anyone the community has decided is bad.

There really is something dystopian about this. You have to be willing to accuse other people to prove your own innocence. “That's the line in the sand, folks, where do you stand?”

In the most extreme version of this, all bad people are equally bad. So collaborating with truscum means you may as well be a truscum. And, of course, being truscum is tantamount to being a TERF, and on trans Twitter, it is a known fact that TERFs are Nazis.

This implies that Nazis, TERFs, truscum, people who associate with truscum, people who fail to condemn people who associate with truscum, people who offer emotional support to people who fail to condemn people who associate with truscum ⁠— all of them must be treated the same way.

"Deplatform her just like every other racist, sexist, bigoted content creator.” “A fully wound backhand to the mouth."

I recently read a book by Sarah Schulman called Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Basically Schulman's argument is that, in various contexts from romantic relationships to community infighting to international politics, the overstatement of harm is used as a justification for cruelty and for escalating conflict.

So for example (and this is my example, not Schulman's) TERFs fixate on the exaggerated danger that trans women supposedly pose to cis women. And in very classic overstatement of harm, they'll describe everything they don't like as rape. Trans women entering women's spaces is rape. Trans women existing (Janice Raymond) is rape. And then they use that exaggerated harm as a justification to retaliate against them, to doxx, and harass, and shun.

Well the same kind of logic is used to justify abusive behavior within the trans community ⁠— the dualistic thinking, the essentialism, the pseudo-moralism. All of this allows people on Twitter to treat me in an obviously abusive way, all the while feeling like they're doing the right thing because they're attacking the enemy.

And I realize that some people will say that I'm the one who's overstating harm to evade criticism. But look, you've seen the tweets, the furious demands for me to be exiled, the doxxing and threatening and ordering around of my colleagues, the attempts to isolate me from my community, the attacks not on my actions but on who I am as a person. There's not really anything ambiguous about this. It's just abuse.

But I don't think it feels like abuse to the people who are doing it. They feel like they're punching up because I'm a “celebrity” with a platform and lots of Twitter followers. And it's true that I do have more power than any of them individually. But as a collective, they have a terrifying power that they don't seem to be aware of as individuals.

As Jon Ronson, author of a great book on public shaming put it: "I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche."

And that's how you get these situations where you have hundreds of people endlessly bashing someone who's already been knocked to the ground, and feeling all the while like they're punching up.

You know, there's actually a kind of power and safety in anonymity and obscurity. And there are many ways that being a public figure makes you really vulnerable. For example, you're more vulnerable to doxxing, stalking and harassment on a scale that most people probably can't even imagine. You're vulnerable to having your reputation permanently degraded in a way that people who are posting anonymously, or pseudonymously, are pretty much invulnerable to. And a lot of the people who are attacking me aren’t pausing to self-reflect. They're not holding themselves accountable for the consequences of their actions. They're just venting their unfiltered rage.

But in response to these attacks, I, as a powerful person with a platform, am not allowed to react like a human being. I'm not allowed to get angry. I'm not allowed to show pain. I'm not allowed to get defensive, and I'm not allowed to lash out. All I'm allowed to do is go totally numb on the inside as I try to frantically calculate the ideal public relations response that pays due deference to the valid concerns of these poor marginalized people, all the while ignoring the tsunami of verbal abuse that's crashing over me.

People on Twitter don't try to persuade me like I'm a human being. They order me around, they tell me what to believe, they demand that I say exactly what they want me to say, or else. It's extremely objectifying. They don't treat me like a person with my own opinions and feelings. They treat me as this brand of moral commodity to be consumed or denounced. And this is all terribly ironic because of the conflicting demand that creators be authentic all the time.

One thing that always frustrates me about these situations is there's this demand that you apologize instantly. And there's this perception that a fast apology is more sincere than a delayed one. But in fact, the opposite is true. It takes longer than a couple hours to cool down, lower your defenses, listen, learn, grow, and seriously reflect on what you may have done or said that was wrong. That can take days or weeks or months.

I had to do my October AMA stream for Patreon, and at the beginning of the stream, I gave my emotional half-formed reaction to the Buck Angel situation. And some traitor on my Patreon transcribed that part of the stream and disseminated it on Twitter just to instigate another round of canceling.

You're not allowed a chance to think or feel. And because supposedly the best thing to do from a PR perspective is to apologize immediately, canceling produces a lot of insincere bullshit apologies from people who haven't, in fact, learned anything. And I think most people are aware of that.

In fact, I think the demand for an apology itself is often insincere. If you're being canceled, rather than criticized, the line in the sand has been drawn. You and all your kin have been declared the enemy.

“Apologize to Twitter”. At this point, I may as well apologize to 4chan.

Dear 4chan,

I am super f*cking sorry I called you thin-wristed otaku shit weasels who like looking at pictures of little girls. I have been trying to educate myself and learn from my mistakes, and I now realize that's only 70% of you.

Once you're canceled, you can really do no right. If you apologize, the apology will be declared a manipulative attempt to save face. And in fact, it will be used as further evidence of what a Machiavellian psychopath you really are.

If you try to explain or defend yourself, you will almost certainly dig yourself in deeper. And even if you're articulate and correct in your defense, you'll still be seen as unable to take criticism, and as ignoring the hurt of marginalized people.

And if you just go silent, you'll be seen as a coward fleeing accountability, even though there's lots of reasons why you might go silent. Maybe you're taking a few days away from social media to try to cool down and think clearly. Or maybe you're so overwhelmed by the harassment that you've just shut down.

VIII

Let's do shots. Who wants to do a shot with me? Do you want to do a shot with me? Let's do a shot.

The tequila shot is my favorite. I like the whole salt-tequila-lime ritual. It's just very satisfying to me. You feel warm right away. You know that feeling where it's like, “Oh, heyhowareyou, happiness? Heyhowareyou, feeling that life is worth living?” It's a good moment. You're like “Oh, this is okay, this is gonna be okay. I can get through this.” That's how it starts, you have to watch out for that.

So look, I really don't like to represent myself as a victim. That's not really a narrative that I identify with. But for the purposes of communicating what effect canceling has, I feel like I should say something about the pain.

Much of the happiness that you might expect to come along with success has been taken away from me by this constant fury that surrounds me. I mean, try to think about this rationally: I'm a Libra Sun, Pisces Moon. Being canceled is hell for me. I want to be liked by everyone. And I'm starting to think I might be in the wrong career for that.

In a way, leftist Twitter finally accomplished what 4chan, Nazis, stalkers and TERFs have been trying and failing to do to me for years. They've made Twitter into a platform so hostile to my existence that I've decided to leave it forever. And they’ve demoralized me to the point I could barely get out of bed for a month. And I know that sounds really melodramatic, but I'm just trying to be honest with you about what a melodramatic person I am.

I find I have trouble convincing people of the severity of the pain that being canceled causes because I think it's just hard to imagine if you haven't been through it yourself. And I don't know a more succinct way to convey it to you than by telling you that, in the last few years, I've been harassed by Nazis, I've been harassed by TERFs, I've been stalked, I've been doxxed, I've been threatened, I've been sexually assaulted. And the pain of being canceled, of being totally trashed by other trans people online for years, has been more difficult for me to cope with than all the rest of it combined.

Jo Freeman actually describes how I feel better than I think I can describe it myself.

“I was one of the first in the country, perhaps the first in Chicago, to have my character, my commitment, and my very self attacked in such a way by Movement women that it left me torn into little pieces and unable to function. It took me years to recover, and even today, the wounds have not entirely healed. This attack is accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical to the movement, and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist. These feelings are reinforced when you are isolated from your friends as they become convinced that their association with you is similarly inimical to the movement and to themselves. Any support of you will taint them. Eventually all your colleagues join in in a chorus of condemnation which can not be silenced, and you are reduced to a mere parody of your previous self.”

Yeah, that just about sums it up.

Now, as it happens, I am going to survive this because I have very deliberately built a support network that will be there for me regardless of what online trans communities say. And I have very deliberately done that because early in my transition back in 2017, I relied very heavily on the online leftist trans community for all kinds of emotional support.

When you're early in transition, I mean it just sucks. You feel like the whole world is against you. And I talked about this a little bit in my last video, feeling like a freak show walking down the street. And even if you're lucky enough to have a supportive family, usually it still is gonna take them a while to come around.

At first they don't get it, they say things to you like, “Aren't you worried you'll regret this?” And they struggle with your name and pronouns, which is understandable, but at the same time, it makes you feel like you're not being seen for who you are.

So you need a kind of second family that understands how you're feeling and acts happy about your transition, and validates your gender. And for the first couple months of my transition, I found that in this world of online transgender leftism.

Well that didn't last long because, well, I was two months into my transition when, first, I did an interview with the Journalist Jesse Singal, and then I agreed to do a debate with Theryn and Vanessa. In short, I associated with a string of people that trans Twitter considers the enemy. And trans Twitter tore me apart over this and it completely broke my heart, because I was really leaning on emotional support from strangers online, which seems really stupid in retrospect.

And after they turned against me I decided that one, I was never going to rely on this group of people again and two, I was going to have to find acceptance elsewhere. And in retrospect, I think this actually may have been good for me in a roundabout way, because I was kicked out of the safe space, and I dropped that mentality.

I was thrown into the deep end of reality and forced to sink or swim. And I don't know if my transition or my channel would be where they are today if it hadn't been for that trial by fire. (Are we swimming through fire or are we mixing metaphors?)

The point is, I'm more armored against canceling than I was two years ago. And the reason why is that I have acquired a certain level of privilege and security and independence from any one community, sothat if one community cancels me, I still have somewhere else to go.

The people who are most vulnerable to cancel culture are not white guy comedians, they're not James Charles, and they're not me. They are marginalized people who feel like they have nowhere else to go when they're rejected by their community. That means struggling trans people with a few hundred Twitter followers. It means a lot of sex workers. And it means people who totally rely on activist circles for emotional and material support.

I'll quote Jo Freeman one more time:

“I had survived my youth because I had never given anyone or any group the right to judge me. That right I had reserved to myself. But the movement had seduced me by its sweet promise of sisterhood. It claimed to provide a haven from the ravages of a sexist society, a place where one would be understood. It was my very need for feminism and feminists that made me vulnerable. I gave the movement the right to judge me because I trusted it. And when it judged me worthless, I accepted that judgment.”

There's a really irritating point that people on the Left like to make that goes, “Well, canceling doesn't really end anyone's career. Canceled people usually get a new job or keep their platform, so I guess it's not really that bad, huh?”

I think people say this because they're trying to mitigate any sense of guilt they might feel about how they're treating people. Because it's a really stupid argument. There's lots of things that don't end your life that are still terrible. But also, there's cases where canceling has ended someone's life.

On December 5th, 2017, a porn star named August Ames killed herself by hanging in a public park after being canceled on Twitter over a homophobic tweet. On December 3rd she tweeted:

whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews , you’re shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say🤷🏽‍♀️ Do agents really not care about who they’re representing? #ladirect I do my homework.

So I've never worked in porn so I can't really tell you what the norms are around women working with men who have done gay porn. But the tweet certainly sounds homophobic to me and that seems to be the consensus of other industry people on Twitter.

So Twitter did its thing, people in August's community called her a homophobe and lashed out at her. And as always happens, plenty of passers-by jumped in to throw tomatoes at the woman in the stocks. Over the next few days, August tweeted several more times going through the usual stages that you go through when you're being canceled.

First, she defended herself. She claimed most other women in the industry feel the same as her. Then she said she's bisexual and therefore couldn't be homophobic. Then she said, “Fine, I guess I'll be fake and not have opinions then.” Then she started bemoaning how mean twitter is, and she got really defensive about her right to choose who she has sex with. And she lashed out at the people attacking her. And then, in her final tweet, she just said, "F*ck y'all", and went to the park that night and killed herself.

This is all so familiar to me, I feel like I'm able to relive with her each stage of this emotional process. There's that first moment when you realize the outrage is beginning and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach, and then the anger, feeling misunderstood, and then the bargaining, the fear, and finally the shame and the despair.

And here's the thing, I totally agree with her critics that her tweet was bad. Of course she has the right to say no for any reason, but she publicly expressed this in a homophobic way. But she was still a person who deserves to live. And I think there's got to be a better way to deal with these situations than just trashing someone until they kill themselves.

And I know it's never as simple as, “Twitter made her kill herself.” there's always other things going on in the background. But the point I'm making is that canceling is more dangerous to marginalized people because marginalized people generally have more things going on in the background.

Jon Ronsondid an investigative podcast about her death, and it goes into how she was sexually abused as a child and abandoned by her father. She was living with a boyfriend she was kind of emotionally detached from, and a few weeks earlier she'd filmed a scene with a guy who was unnecessarily rough and mean and who mistreated her. So she was kind of traumatized by tha,t and on edge, and really defensive about who she worked with when she was tweeting.

Then the backlash happened, and since she had no other support network, she probably felt like the only community she had had turned against her. And that's a really painful feeling. She must have felt so despised. Which is how I have felt for the last two months. I feel despised and burdensome.

And I can imagine how a person feeling that way could have an impulsive couple hours where they think their best option is suicide. I mean, I can more than imagine it because I've been there myself. And I'm still here, because at those moments, I've been with good friends who took care of me. And by friends, I do mean Xanax.

But I've also survived because there's a lot of people on the internet who'd be very entertained if I killed myself, and I simply refuse to give them the satisfaction. Oh no, bitch. I intend to live as long as possible out of sheer spite. I mean, who needs a guardian angel when you can make it through Christmas after Christmas on the fumes of total contempt? What I'm really trying to say is Merry Christmas, you goddamn assholes!

IX

Have a super fucking happy new year, gorg! 🥂

All right, I need to take a deep breath because, let's be honest, I've about one crack away from attacking my own Twitter followers with an umbrella. I am about one breakdown away from going on a rampage and making a suit out of women's skin.

Just kidding, I would never do that. Though on a bad skin day I've given it serious consideration.

Oh, I'll be fine. I've gotta sober up anyway because I'm having more plastic surgery in a couple days. And plastic surgery— that's about the only thing holding me together at this point.

YouTubing! This is a healthy profession. This is great! Anyone want my job? Step right up! All you have to do is make informative and entertaining videos about extremely controversial topics while, of course, representing the full range of experiences in the LGBTQIAA+ spectrum and being perfectly woke and irreverently funny. Well, go on. I'm waiting to be entertained. Feed me, mother. Oh, don't mind me, I'll just sit back and pour another glass of wine.

Oh, and I will, of course, be obsessively scrutinizing every word you say for any hint of moral transgression, as well as critiquing your look, ya third-rate crossdresser. Zero out of 10, get off my stage!

I do still want to talk about why people cancel and the effect that it's having, but it looks like there's gonna have to be a part two, gorg, because I have hit my limit. So why don't we all cut our losses and try again in 2020, hmm?

I realize that people on Twitter aren't actually gonna read this. They're just gonna make fun of the title and how long it is, which, fair enough. But they're the ones whose accusations against me are so numerous and convoluted that it required an entire dissertation to respond to.

But yeah, they're gonna see the title and they're gonna transcribe quotes out of context and they're gonna say I'm a fascist, I'm a TERF, I'm truscum, I'm the new Blaire White, I'm the new Laci Green, I'm a cis bootlicker, I'm an enlightened centrist, I'm a shit-Lib, I'm alt-right, I'm a heartless grifter raking in millions of dollars over the bodies of dead trans women.

“Mask off. Yikes. This ain't it, chief. Friendly reminder that this isn't a good look. Maybe don't be a cis bootlicker. Disappointing.” But they're saying all those things already, so I'm inoculated.

See, their mistake was completely breaking my spirit. They should have left a little piece intact. But it's good, it's good, because basically, my survival from here on out hinges on my ability to not care at all what people say about me online.

So here's to not giving a f*ck! 🍻 Happy new year, everybody!