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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.
To state a truism, words gain meaning through usage, rather than through some sort of application of logic on first principles. "Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means. In practice, the people who use the term "transphobia" - and hence the people who most get to define what it means - use it in such a way as to describe people who refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women" and more generally just disagrees with self-proclaimed trans rights activists on anything trans-related. Obviously that's an imprecise definition, but words tend to have imprecise definitions, and I think, based on observations of self-proclaimed trans rights activists, refusing to acknowledge that "trans women are women" is solidly in the "transphobia" camp.
This looks like the fallacy of gray to me. Yes, (just about) everyone carves out an exception to free speech when advocating for literal murder is involved, but the advocating for literal murder is one of those things that's close to black and white, with many mostly well understood and mostly agreed-upon boundaries. And for things like the kind of things that fall under the "transphobia" umbrella, it's quite clear which side of those boundaries they lie on. This, I believe, is why so many self-proclaimed TRAs claim they're fighting against "trans genocide," in a way to evoke the affect of crossing that boundary, even as each individual specific example of such "genocide" clearly falls on the other side when examined closely. Self-proclaimed TRAs aren't unique or even unusual in this, though.
In other words, they are being intellectually dishonest in order to delegitimize their outgroup and/or views with which they disagree. How is that ok?
Why was it ok for "homophobia"? I mean, you're not wrong, but the argument applies equally well to things that we've already allowed to become completely ubiquitous, doesn't it?
Homophobia refers to an actual phenomenon --discomfort with or dislike of gays (whether it is aptly deemed a "phobia" is another question). It does not refer to a set of policy beliefs.
Your logic continues to baffle me, sir.
If homophobia is not an actual phobia, what possible purpose is achieved by calling it one? And the claim that it is not used to refer to a set of policy beliefs is beyond credence. I am confident that I can find you an arbitrary number of examples of prominent progressives referring to laws, policies, rules, and so on as "homophobic". Certainly I have not seen a time in my own life where the term was applied narrowly to an actual phobic condition, rather than broadly to anyone skeptical of the LGBT social agenda.
"Homophobia", from its introduction to the public vernacular, has been used to label people who refused to validate homosexual behavior and lifestyles, in precisely the same way that "Transphobia", from its inception, has been used to label people who refuse to validate transgender behavior and lifestyles. Ditto for Islamophobia, for good measure. The entire [thing_we_like]phobia family has, from the very moment these terms were coined, been a weaponization of language, an attempt to frame dissent from Progressive values as mental defect. Such framing is never applied to fears or dislikes or even hatreds that Progressives approve of, only to those of their opponents.
Indeed, the best attempt their opponents have made to do the same thing is "hoplophobia" (fear of weapons), and of course it has not caught on generally, because the progressives control the culture.
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You are confusing the noun and the adjective. I am sure that you agree that some people, and almost certainly most people in the not-too-distant past, had a visceral aversion to / disgust with gay people. That aversion/disgust was labeled "homophobia." The claim that a law or policy is "homophobic" is simply a claim that said law or policy is rooted in homophobia. Just as a practice of refusing to hire Catholic teachers can be labeled "prejudiced" if it is rooted in prejudice.
Now, look at what the OP said. OP did not say, "transphobia" is an aversion to or disgust with trans people, and these laws are transphobic because they are rooted n that aversion or disgust; rather, OP said the exact opposite:
Sure, in exactly the same way that a whole lot of people currently have a visceral aversion/disgust reaction to Trans people. On the other hand, I don't agree that all or even most opposition to the normalization of homosexuality or was reducible to that visceral aversion/disgust, as opposed to more serious social, philosophical, religious or political objections. In the same way, the fact that a lot of people find transsexuals gross doesn't mean that grossness is their only or even main objection to the various demands of the trans movement.
All objections to homosexuality were and are rounded to "homophobia" without distinction, and this was done because it was correctly perceived to be effective. "Transphobia" is being deployed in exactly the same way now, again to great effect. It's the same shit it always was: pretend the only sources of disagreement are stupidity, insanity, or irrational hatred, ignore the legitimate concerns, shout down anyone who objects. And again, this only goes one way; there are no culturally-recognized *phobias for anything Progressives don't like, no matter how irrational, bigoted or divorced from reality their dislike of those things may be.
I did. They're describing exactly what I laid out above: the term is constructed to imply "irrational, unhealthy fear/hatred", and then applied overwhelmingly in situations that do not involve irrational or unhealthy fear or hate. It's exactly the same thing that was done with Homophobia: abusing language to smear the opposition. They're claiming "what it actually means" is based on the objective reality of who it's used on, not on the implication meant by the user and drawn by the listener. This has no impact on "what it actually means", in the sense of the intended message and the received message.
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Yes, it does. The phrase "internalized homophobia" is typically used specifically to equate homophobia-as-in-active-opposition-to-homosexual-coexistence and homophobia-as-not-privileging-homosexuality-above-heterosexuality.
The latter, of course, is what progressive political policy seeks to establish (the best example being plastering the Pride flag everywhere; if all sexualities are as equal as all religions, the State should not be [doing what equates to] plastering symbols of Islam everywhere).
No, "internalized homophobia" is homophobia by gay people: "Among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, internalized sexual stigma (also called internalized homophobia) refers to the personal acceptance and endorsement of sexual stigma as part of the individual's value system and self-concept. It is the counterpart to sexual prejudice among heterosexuals (Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 2009)."
And see here
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