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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33004 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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Contrapoints released her newest video yesterday. As someone who has found a number of her past videos to be well done and interesting (they're generally better the further back you go), this one was disappointing. Some random thoughts:

Contrapoints made a name for herself through actually engaging with the "alt-right" and by being willing to make real arguments in response to conservatives; now it seems like she's totally bought into some of the worst argumentation styles of the woke left. Most annoying to me is the frequency with which Natalie begs the question by referring to "trans rights" as if they're some unobjectionable, neutral thing that only "bigots" could oppose. Interestingly, the only time she actually concretely discusses a supposed "trans right" (males competing in women's sports), she agrees that there is a debate to be had here. Of course, no mention of kids transitioning, males in women's prisons, etc. Just "trans rights" in the abstract. The one thing Contrapoints is clear about is that not acknowledging that "trans women are women" is at the least "transphobic" (if not a violation of "trans rights" in some hard to define way), which is interesting. What does it mean to be "transphobic"? Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"? Because I would like to say that I'm not "transphobic" on the basis that I don't think trans people should be denied rights that we accord to others, or that they should be forcibly prevented from dressing like women, or even (if over 18) allowed to surgically alter themselves to match their desired gender identity (perhaps with some reasonable safeguards).

I think she makes some good arguments about the fact that there are always limits to debate. She talks about how LGBTQ activists essentially "cancelled" an old anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, with the implication that most people nowadays would agree with that cancellation. Of course, I would simply say that there are meaningful differences between gay activism and trans activism (e.g., gay people were fighting against laws that criminalized consensual behavior between adults; trans people often are fighting to allow children to mutilate themselves). Nonetheless, I do take her point: Arguing against "cancellation" or "illiberal" tactics in the abstract is kind of pointless, because almost no one is a true free speech absolutist here. If, say, someone was going around and gathering a following by literally advocating for the murder of Jews, I think a lot of us would agree that public shaming (at the least) would be appropriate. That means that one must always have some object-level discussion about what people are being cancelled for before one can reasonably argue that any given cancellation is unacceptable. It's hardly a groundbreaking observation, but it's true nonetheless that there must be a line somewhere that would make "cancel culture" type tactics acceptable; we're all just debating where that line is.

Finally, I was surprised to see how much more aggressive Rowling has gotten in her anti-trans rhetoric. Not that I necessarily disagree with her, but it looks like I can no longer say that she's being unfairly smeared as an enemy of the trans movement.

Anyways, I would be curious on others thoughts here (assuming anyone is willing to watch a nearly two hour video by someone most would consider an ideological opponent.

I see a lot of dancing around the obvious so far.

Contrapoints, aka Natalie Wynn, is herself a trans woman, i.e. a man. She has spent a large part of her life and her entire career living/identifying/posing as a woman, despite having a Y chromosome and no uterus. When JK Rowling and her buddies over on "TERF Island" say that people with a Y chromosome and no uterus are not women and should not be treated like women, this is a personal affront. It is not taken as an invitation for an academic debate. In an academic debate, a meaningful "yes" requires the possibility of "no". For Natalie, there is no possibility of "no, trans women should not be categorized as women," because accepting that statement would jeopardize her personal identity, her relationships, her career, and her mental well-being.

So why are you calling him 'her'?

My general rule is to use apparent pronouns. Natalie passes, so she gets she/her

I wouldn't call a woman 'he' just because she looks like a dude, though.

It's not just that Contra is a transwoman. She's also proven herself particularly fragile in the face of pushback to even minor criticisms she's made of gender activists. By her own account the trauma she felt when she had a brush with cancelling was....disproportionate (walking around wearing sunglasses cause she thought the real world hated her)

I'd also not trust Lindsay Ellis to give a fair shake for similar reasons.

Thank you for pointing it out. I wanted to bring it up myself but had trouble explaining how her cancelation relates to her argument.

I really wish Lindsay Ellis had quit twitter rather than youtube over that idiocy.

So people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest? I grant that it's true that Natalie is unlikely to be persuaded to the belief that she is a man, but does that mean we should automatically disregard her arguments for why she is a woman? Can we disregard any arguments about the existence of God from religious people? Arguments about why cancel culture is bad from people who have been cancelled?

This seems to be really reaching for things that weren't in the above comment. It's not that people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest, it's that they can't be trusted to do so. That doesn't mean we should automatically disregard her arguments, but it does provide one explanation why her arguments are so bad when judged on its own merits, in this particular context. And it means one should be extra skeptical of their arguments and look out for sleights of hand that allow them to gerrymander the desired results, since the desired results are the only allowable ones that the person is likely to engineer their arguments around.

Can we disregard any arguments about the existence of God from religious people?

Presuming "religious people" refers to people who lack the ability to be convinced of the nonexistence of God, rather than merely people who follow or believe in some religion, we can't automatically disregard such arguments, but certainly it would explain why their arguments are so bad.

Arguments about why cancel culture is bad from people who have been cancelled?

Being "canceled" doesn't automatically imply that one has a dogmatic belief that "cancel culture" is bad. Plenty of people who have been "canceled" believe that their own "cancellation" is bad for the specifics around their own "cancellation" but that the general concept is okay. Heck, I think JK Rowling is one of them, though I'm not sure she's made any specific comments about "cancel culture" in the past. So this analogy doesn't really work.

Sure they can, but it's a big ask. IMO discourse is at its best when everyone just lays out their bias and self-interest in clear terms and stands by it. Being honest about your stake is marginally easier than trying to represent someone else's. And representing everyone's at once, as many demand as the baseline standard for decency, seems outright impossible to me.

So people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest?

I am sure it's possible, but most people really can't. Putting emotion and personal stake aside is a really hard thing to do, especially when your peers have been whipping fervor into you by drumbeating night and day that any opposition to you is tantamount to attempted genocide.

So, no, the vast majority of people are motivated reasoning at all times. This is usually okay if we can pit the two opposing motivated reasoners against each other on equal ground, but this is less and less possible these days thanks to the proliferation of biased platforms and speakers who aren't at all interested in engaging with anything except an echo chamber.

No, my point is that if you see someone who is otherwise intelligent and clear-thinking make uncharacteristic fallacies and bad arguments on a specific topic, and that topic is something that they have a strong vested interest in, and they did not argue themselves into that vested interest, then you should have a strong prior that their vested interest is causing their bad arguments.

I will note that the best religious apologists tend to be converts. This is not a coincidence.

You're obviously right of course. (I've never heard of "A meaningful 'yes' requires the possibility of 'no'". Thanks, that's good.) But I guess psychological arguments aren't something I have much interest in, and indeed they're one of my pet peeves from the Left. In my experience, woke people LOVE to psychologize the "real" reasons their opponents are claiming XYZ, and then using that (hypothesized) "real" motivation as a reason to dismiss their opponents' substantive arguments. I also don't see why someone couldn't have both a very strong psychological reason to believe something and provide good arguments for believing in it, so I'd rather just evaluate someone's arguments on the merits than speculate as to their motivations.

But I guess psychological arguments aren't something I have much interest in

I don't particularly like them either, but in this case it seems like there's a bunch of people sitting around going, "Huh, her other videos are usually pretty good. I wonder why this one sucks?" and once you ask the question like that it becomes clear what happened.

Yeah, nah. Doesn't have any good videos. I'm aware of this person since even before the transition and the arguments then and now weren't that good. They were ok-ish if you already believed all the premises, otherwise not that compelling.

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