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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’m a trans person and I don’t really have the attention span to watch a 2 hour video, but I’m familiar with Contrapoints and willing to engage on a few points you mentioned.
What would refusing to acknowledge that “trans women are women” entail? If you use a trans person’s preferred pronouns, don’t treat them differently than you would a cis person of the same gender, and support their right to the healthcare they need, it’s just a fight over definitions about what a woman is, which is largely fruitless - see many LessWrong and SSC posts i.e. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
However, the terms and arguments you are using would get you quickly lumped in with the transphobic crowd, regardless of your own opinions. Namely - calling gender affirmation surgery “mutilation” and implying that pro-trans right individuals want it done on kids. For most trans people the focus is on hormone replacement therapy, not surgery; allowing trans teenagers access to HRT would actually drastically reduce the need for surgeries for both FtMs and MtFs: FtMs wouldn’t need top surgery (which is almost all what’s done in minors) and MtFs wouldn’t need facial feminisation surgery, tracheal shave, voice feminisation surgery, hair transplants, etc.
You’d also be solving what l think is the crux of the issue that conservatives have with trans women: they find them disturbing to look at and interact with (FtMs, who pass more easily and at worst look like effeminate men, don’t trigger any of that same response as MtFs). People who transition early enough wouldn’t trigger that “uncanny valley” effect and would just pass as their new gender to anyone interacting with them.
Personally it also stems from the fact that I wish I’d transitioned when I was younger, and like many other trans people, would like to spare others from the hell that’s going through the wrong puberty and be stuck with a body you hate that you want to surgically alter.
This is a very reasonable motivation, and the mirror image of this would be people who transitioned when they were young and regret it, knowing that they would have been happier if they had just waited it out and realized that they were cis. I've personally known someone like this, who started transitioning FTM in her late teens only to regret it and try to reverse it in her early 20s, which still left her with many permanent changes that she didn't like. There's also the fact that if I had been a preteen in the current social environment, there's a high chance I personally would have been convinced to transition MTF, which, as an adult now, I know for a fact would have been vastly harmful to my life.
Unfortunately, until we achieve true technological transhumanism, false positives and false negatives will always be with us and cause immense suffering for the people in those groups. I do think it's incumbent on anyone who wants to make life better in the future for children to acknowledge the downsides of both and to seek out better ways to identify and prevent them. This not only means more concern for making sure that kids who believe themselves to be trans have to go through sufficient screening to determine if they truly are trans, but also making sure that kids are provided the resources needed to even know what transness is and whether or not they actually fit it. Which I see both the self-proclaimed trans rights activists and their opponents mostly failing at, respectively.
The base rates also make the mirror image scenario far likelier than you'd think.
Let's assume that about 0.5% of the population would benefit from medical transition and about 20% of gen-Z are drawn to being LGBT / gender-questioning at same point in their lives. Then a 10% false positive rate for gender-affirming care, would mean 4 detransitioners for every real trans person. Those are terrible destructive odds and I was rather generous to the current state of trans care with my the numbers I assumed. My personal intuition is that far more of gen-Z is drawn to gender-questioning ideas, that the base rate of trans-ness is less than 0.5% and that the rates of desistance/de-transitioning are significantly higher than 10%. But, I'll stick to these numbers for now.
This is exactly why doctors do not mass refer people for invasive surgeries early into a rare diagnosis. The odds of you not having the disease and reducing your lifespan due to surgery, are much much higher than the odds of saving a life due to early surgical intervention for said rare disease.
Stepping out from the moral argument, these kinds of statistical and logistical issues with transitioning are a bigger and dangerously ignored problem.
There is no end to the expensive surgeries needed by trans people to feel fully integrated into their new gender. If trans-ness is accepted as a human right, how do we plan to handle this massive new healthcare burden. If it is not covered by insurance, then does this mean that only the top 10% of trans people can actually transition ? If it treats body-dysphoria, then should all superficial surgeries be covered by insurance ?
I sympathize with trans people. They seem to be dealing with the 'big man in a hoodie walking down a dimly lit street' problem. Irrespective of a young woman's moral judgement, she is better off crossing the empty street. It sucks that those who tick more of those boxes are treated unfairly, but rather an accidental bigot than dead.
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