Read on Twitter
Okay I guess I'm going to watch this ContraPoints video about JK Rowling, because she spent however much time it takes to shoot and edit a fucking feature-length youtube video essay about her Rowling takes solely to give me the angriest ninety minutes of my life
As an aside I am kind of tired of watching people film themselves drinking alcohol
Unsubstantiated but not disproven. https://twitter.com/eigenvectrix/status/1354254590380711936
"I know what it's like to be the target of a Twitter mob"
So, of course, right out of the gate she's still doing the Bari Weiss thing of characterizing anybody criticizing her ideas contemporaneous with 4chan/KF ops existing as a "mob", as if she's Zoe Quinn in 2014 or something
So, of course, right out of the gate she's still doing the Bari Weiss thing of characterizing anybody criticizing her ideas contemporaneous with 4chan/KF ops existing as a "mob", as if she's Zoe Quinn in 2014 or something
If I challenge the premises of your arguments during the same week that some chucklefuck with a zero follower account vaingloriously threatens to "cancel" your brunch buddy for not denouncing you when you shit the bed then I GUESS WE ARE EXACTLY THE SAME???
Psst
There will always be opportunistic channer/fashbot ops going on at any given time and you can't just cherry-pick their presence during any mass upwelling of a sentiment to delegitimize that sentiment
I mean, unless you want to be a cop
There will always be opportunistic channer/fashbot ops going on at any given time and you can't just cherry-pick their presence during any mass upwelling of a sentiment to delegitimize that sentiment
I mean, unless you want to be a cop
anyway I kind of feel like Kareem Carr was truly "the target of a mob" in a way that Contra never came close to being
Though I guess for any trans woman to dramatize is hardly a remarkable occurrence
Though I guess for any trans woman to dramatize is hardly a remarkable occurrence
(I got splashed with some of that too, since Jimmy the Swordnerd decided to target me)
I don't think that even during the worst of Contra's "infamy", that there were accounts with over half a million *extremely politically regressive and harassment-happy* followers targeting her but hey I could be wrong
Anyway it seems Contra is going with the same "JKR is lonely from fame" hypothesis that Devin Lytle also suggested
Which I think in both cases is projecting the unique isolation of being an online celebrity upon the very different dynamic of being a normal celebrity
Which I think in both cases is projecting the unique isolation of being an online celebrity upon the very different dynamic of being a normal celebrity
Yes, if you're popular online you're going to be lonely, because you disappeared into the internet because you WERE lonely, and now you've become significantly important to the ecosystem that your one escape has become a place where you suddenly have responsibility
"I want to take JKR's pain seriously and treat her like a human being" god fuck off you don't know what it's like to be a billionaire any more than any of the rest of us
There's a P GOOD FUCKING ARGUMENT ACTUALLY that if you have a billion dollars that you have significantly less humanity than basically anyone
If you can't envision what would whelm someone with a castle to spend $600,000 on treehouses, good luck psychoanalyzing anything else
If you can't envision what would whelm someone with a castle to spend $600,000 on treehouses, good luck psychoanalyzing anything else
This is such a bullshit faulty premise from jump
You can't simply interrogate Rowling as another user on Twitter
You have to begin from a foundation of how obscenely powerful and influential she is, how she sips tea with noblewomen who facilitated the war in Iraq
You can't simply interrogate Rowling as another user on Twitter
You have to begin from a foundation of how obscenely powerful and influential she is, how she sips tea with noblewomen who facilitated the war in Iraq
Are we seriously gonna pretend this is just about her tweets
Are we not even going to talk about the *meta*context of her tweets, which is that the bulk of them were tweeted during a period in which BLM protests were forming everywhere, something she gave all of zero shits about
Are we not even going to talk about the *meta*context of her tweets, which is that the bulk of them were tweeted during a period in which BLM protests were forming everywhere, something she gave all of zero shits about
For all that JKR claims to be gung-ho about "protecting [cis] women", she certainly didn't give a fuck about Sarah Grossman
She wasn't appalled by a career photojournalist losing an eye
She wasn't appalled by a career photojournalist losing an eye
"I don't want this to be just a drama video, or a video saying 'Cancel Harry Potter! Drag her!' Like I want to try to do something a little more meaningful than that."
Actually Wynn, your saying "disengage Harry Potter" to your massive cis audience would be plenty meaningful
Actually Wynn, your saying "disengage Harry Potter" to your massive cis audience would be plenty meaningful
I am five minutes into this video.
"I want to learn something about what bigotry is, how does it work, and how do otherwise good people get drawn into it?"
JESUS FUCK FVDS;LNNFJ,.SVDDBHKLFVDSNKJKNJDVF Rowling is not an "otherwise good person"
You have no basis to begin from the premise that she is wtf
JESUS FUCK FVDS;LNNFJ,.SVDDBHKLFVDSNKJKNJDVF Rowling is not an "otherwise good person"
You have no basis to begin from the premise that she is wtf
I can't imagine why any person with leftist sympathies would just treat it as a priori that JKR was an "otherwise good person" unless they're just hypnotized by the privilege of any well-groomed white lady
Fuck this shit, you *don't get to do that*! You don't get to go "well, we all know Rowling is a good person, other than the fact that she's a raging TERF."
Cite your goddamn sources
What, did she buy ice cream for your softball team? WHY is Rowling a good person, Wynn
Cite your goddamn sources
What, did she buy ice cream for your softball team? WHY is Rowling a good person, Wynn
She strikes Rowling following Magdalen Berns from the record because she "doesn't want to do guilt by association". Oh my, how shocking of her
What about Rowling liking a tweet erasing my friend's Blackness and calling her a man? Are you going to get to that one, Wynn?
What about Rowling liking a tweet erasing my friend's Blackness and calling her a man? Are you going to get to that one, Wynn?
She cites the Maya tweet from 2019 where JKR uses very explicit weasel language to imply that she personally thinks trans women are unlovable and unfuckable and of course she just glosses over that bit
As I said before https://twitter.com/Nymphomachy/status/1208114949979029505
Contra is at the very least pointing out that JKR is a craven animal who finds the sleaziest, most oblique ways to express utterly horrid things because she's obsessed with giving herself plausible deniability if people start to think less of her for it
She's also rightly acknowledging that the 2019 tweet was, in keeping with this stratagem, belittling trans women's identities by reducing it to a matter of name and costume
When she actually bothers to unpack obvious dogwhistles, she's very good at it
When she actually bothers to unpack obvious dogwhistles, she's very good at it
I am weary of this dead horse meme where every time a trans person gets mad online they become a prepubescent Marxist-Leninist
I am amused that Wynn is as tired of explaining what TERFs are as I am
In the interest of giving credit as well as spewing vitriol I will concede that at the very least there is probably some cis person who will watch this video and go "oh, so THAT'S why JKR's tweets were terrible"
This section of the video is actually somewhat useful, since she's discussing the sophistry of polite bigotry—the treacherous way that people like Rowling say "I know and love [marginalization] people, BUT" and then immediately get exonerated no matter how they end the sentence
She could have just focused the thesis on that—on how statements like Rowling's exemplify the polite, wounded bigotry of the white liberal middle-to-upper class—and had a much tighter, more efficacious and less invidious essay
Wynn is basically citing Nietzsche's "He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster" maxim to defend why she insists upon empathizing with and understanding bigots, which, uggghhh
Fine, I'm a monster
The kind that gets portrayed by Doug Jones
Fine, I'm a monster
The kind that gets portrayed by Doug Jones
Oh okay she did call attention to the "who'll have you" clause of the 2019 tweet *very* briefly
Props for using the imagery of Taylor Swift's "You Need To Calm Down" as a model for the way very privileged people tend to flatten the dynamic of bigotry into something that vividly excludes themselves because as much as I want to make out with Katy Perry, fuck that video
Twenty, but I took a break to warm up my soup https://twitter.com/HenryWHall/status/1354286998136254465
okay this part is good
not like breathtakingly insightful or anything, but helpful and anodyne
not like breathtakingly insightful or anything, but helpful and anodyne
If the rest of the video is like THIS—and we'll see if it is—then it'll be like pretty much most of the content she released in 2020, a relatively cogent and insightful video that's just needlessly and inexplicably frontloaded with a lot of weird aggravating garbage
One thing Contra excels at is unflattering impersonations of other people, even though I don't always love where she targets it
Since I know she'd hate this, I just want to point out that in another life she'd be a formidable and utterly ball-annihilating MTI at Lackland AFB
Since I know she'd hate this, I just want to point out that in another life she'd be a formidable and utterly ball-annihilating MTI at Lackland AFB
This, too, is perfectly fine
I don't love Contra's criticisms of the "trans women are women" slogan but honestly a disagreement of this nature is too reasonable for the scope of this thread
Kinda feel like she's erasing transmisogyny a little but honestly I would be completely at peace if she just never discusses transmisogyny ever
honestly respect the power move of just filming yourself in a bathtub
And at last we're FINALLY talking about the fucking essay
I say finally but I'm the one who's been watching this video for like three hours
Pointing out that female bathrooms are policed according to femininity and not according to genitals/chromosomes, yeah, pretty inoffensive trans 101 stuff
Contra rightfully addressing a point that I don't think gets labored enough, which is that "Reasons For Speaking Out" isn't some finely outlined manifesto—it's a circuitous, karenizing screed, drowning in reassurances and rationalizations
There's no "craftsmanship" present
There's no "craftsmanship" present
It probably wouldn't have been harmful for her to go into the intelligence-insulting methodology Amol Rajan used in giving JKR an award, since she mentioned it earlier, but bleh, not germane to the topic, fine
(I talked about this) https://www.patreon.com/posts/45660374
The math she's doing here to disprove the boogeyman of ROGD—pointing out that the largest escalation of treatment happened after the poorly-named "transgender tipping point" is fine
Since she goes pretty far to demonstrate that JKR is concern-trolling about only 0.03% of girls in the UK—a number smaller than the number of twitter followers *I* have—it would be kind of helpful if Wynn reiterated that Jo's, y'know, a billionaire with international influence
nothing to do with Contra, but looking at the Rowling excerpts she has a friend VO for, I'm struck again by how obsessively and obnoxiously Jo exudes smug "not like other girls" energy
okay I snorted
"It's a limitation of human empathy that sometimes when we're trying to understand what someone else is feeling, the best we can do is project our feelings onto them."
Holy shit is this going to lead to a moment of self-awareness?
Holy shit is this going to lead to a moment of self-awareness?
Okay I really am kind of uncomfortable with the extent to which Contra is dismissing the degree to which JKR is first and foremost a transmisogynist but whatever
Contra is placing great emphasis on the fact that "Reasons for Speaking Out" dedicates more wordcount to talking about trans mascs than trans women and she's not seeing the forest for the trees
if a craze is "seducing our daughters", who, specifically, is doing the seducing?
if a craze is "seducing our daughters", who, specifically, is doing the seducing?
The Mumsnet party line this entire time has been that trans men are a second-order effect, that they're victims of predatory grooming and brainwashing by (((powerful trans women with an agenda)))
You can't elide trans women's positioning in this particular fever dream
You can't elide trans women's positioning in this particular fever dream
all you need to do is take one look at the bullshit Daniel Lavery gets from his family to see this dynamic in action, it's not really some incredibly recondite secret
okay that Samwise joke was fire
lmao oh okay she actually read all of TROUBLED BLOOD
rip
rip
Say what you will about ContraPoints, she most certainly does not have ADHD
I keep reflexively getting stressed out that she's going to drop her massive copy of TROUBLED BLOOD into the bathwater and then I'm suddenly like "wait why do I give a fuck"
"Now this is such a cliché that you'd kind of expect a seasoned writer like JK Rowling to subvert it somehow."
I would? The author who cut her professional teeth just novelizing the first THE WORST WITCH movie and then claiming she'd never been influenced by any other authors?
I would? The author who cut her professional teeth just novelizing the first THE WORST WITCH movie and then claiming she'd never been influenced by any other authors?
I'm an hour in and I think I need either more caffeine or less caffeine but the only option available to me at this point is more
I don't have the energy to go into this whole discussion of JKR's sexual assault again other than to say that A) people who develop triggers that cause them to behave in bigoted ways can and do get over that and B) I don't get why Tara Reide isn't believable, but JKR is
Okay good she's actually unpacking how much of a piece of shit Magdalen Berns was
"Now I think if Joanne Rowling was in the room with me right now, she'd say 'I'm so sorry you've been treated that way, but I, too, have been cruelly victimized online by the trans activists.'
And you know what? I'm sure that's true."
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST NATALIE SHUT UPPPPP
And you know what? I'm sure that's true."
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST NATALIE SHUT UPPPPP
You have not been treated "the same way" as J.K. Rowling
If you had been treated "the same way" as J.K. Rowling, then NPR would have given you an award last year for your Cancellation video, and Bari Weiss and Jeet Heer would have signed a letter condemning your "mistreatment"
If you had been treated "the same way" as J.K. Rowling, then NPR would have given you an award last year for your Cancellation video, and Bari Weiss and Jeet Heer would have signed a letter condemning your "mistreatment"
Whatever I think of Wynn's decision to normalize Buck Angel, she's a Millennial trans woman maybe worth a hundred thousand dollars and when she steps out of the house nobody fucking knows who she is
Rowling is a cis boomer billionaire who can sway Scottish independence votes
Rowling is a cis boomer billionaire who can sway Scottish independence votes
Fuck the idea that any trans woman was cruel, or even capable of being cruel, to JK Rowling
Rowling could literally order the assassination of trans women and never see a day in court
Rowling could literally order the assassination of trans women and never see a day in court
Whatever happened to "limitation of human empathy", Contra
Are you fucking serious
Are you fucking serious
She cites tweets like this and to be clear I'm not comfortable with people saying this about any trans woman (unless they vote Trump) but this is a perfectly valid timbre of sentiment to express about any billionaire, especially one who interferes in the healthcare of POOR PEOPLE
& while I'm here I have to say that, while I don't have much sympathy for the twitter user in this case, because when you use direct language like that you're pretty much asking to lose your account, Contra quoting people who dislike her has often been more cruel than these posts
(And to be clear, I have mutuals who are friends with her, I don't care if she sees *my* tweets
If, for whatever crazy reason, she wanted to engage me, I would converse
I don't have antipathy towards her specifically and if I did you know I would be honest about it)
If, for whatever crazy reason, she wanted to engage me, I would converse
I don't have antipathy towards her specifically and if I did you know I would be honest about it)
I'd also add that, while I do think the temperature of the rhetoric about Contra from trans people on twitter is needlessly high (from MOST people—there's a handful of people who have a legitimate axe to grind) it kind of sucks that she's saying it in a video targeted to cis ppl
Like I do think most of her audience is cis, but even aside from that, from sitting through this video it's readily apparent that the audience she's addressing in this video IS cis
And so... it's kind of uncomfortable to hear her tell them how awful and nasty we can be?
And so... it's kind of uncomfortable to hear her tell them how awful and nasty we can be?
oof and here it is
"Tweets like this ARE abusive"
Oh, really? Because I heard you like to quote a book called CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE
Jesus fuck, Wynn. Calling Harry Potter "neoliberal garbage" is abusive? What the hell kind of month-old Chipotle barbecoa are you eating
Oh, really? Because I heard you like to quote a book called CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE
Jesus fuck, Wynn. Calling Harry Potter "neoliberal garbage" is abusive? What the hell kind of month-old Chipotle barbecoa are you eating
To be clear those tweets I screencapped and wrote on in MS Paint are hypothetical ones Wynn came up with as ones which would be "abusive" to Rowling
None of them even tag her account
None of them even do a good job of being hyperbolic
And none of them could hurt a billionaire
None of them even tag her account
None of them even do a good job of being hyperbolic
And none of them could hurt a billionaire
Like I'm sorry you think saying that somebody "doesn't deserve our empathy" is abusive
I think it's abusive to influence entire votes that affect the fate of millions of people to vindicate your nationalist views, and deprive young children of necessary healthcare, but that's me
I think it's abusive to influence entire votes that affect the fate of millions of people to vindicate your nationalist views, and deprive young children of necessary healthcare, but that's me
If "it's not okay" to speak truth to power about a famous billionaire who hijacked an enormous portion of a news cycle that rightfully belonged to Black people to weigh in against the rights and dignity of a group smaller in totality than her entire Twitter following—what IS okay
"I agree there really is an element of misogyny to this"
God fuck off
I've been EXCEEDINGLY nice in this thread but she is lying through her fucking teeth at this point
God fuck off
I've been EXCEEDINGLY nice in this thread but she is lying through her fucking teeth at this point
"Angry twitter mobs are more vicious to women"
God, shut up
The whole opening of your Cancellation video was devoted to talking about how nasty people were being to poor widdle James Charles
God, shut up
The whole opening of your Cancellation video was devoted to talking about how nasty people were being to poor widdle James Charles
"There is a witch hunt impulse that's still alive in our culture"
Ah right yes the witch hunt impulse for state media apparatuses to honor women for vomiting out histrionic blog posts based on some CYA methodology about how syllable counts and simple words make her timeless
Ah right yes the witch hunt impulse for state media apparatuses to honor women for vomiting out histrionic blog posts based on some CYA methodology about how syllable counts and simple words make her timeless
Why is Wynn talking about weight-shaming now
She tries to split the difference by explaining that abuse isn't as bad as bigotry
I mean, debatable, unless by "abuse" you mean "calling a children's book series neoliberal", in which case it's certainly not as bad as bigotry
I mean, debatable, unless by "abuse" you mean "calling a children's book series neoliberal", in which case it's certainly not as bad as bigotry
"While being canceled on Twitter may be a form of abuse, it's not a form of oppression"
Okay there's a lot here
The one person I know who could legitimately be said to have been "canceled" absolutely did have it happen as an extension of systems of oppression
But it's not Wynn
Okay there's a lot here
The one person I know who could legitimately be said to have been "canceled" absolutely did have it happen as an extension of systems of oppression
But it's not Wynn
The kind of "cancellation" Wynn disdains—the kind she claims to have been the target of, and the kind that Bari Weiss, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jeet Heer, Jesse Singal et al signed that open letter in Harper's to denounce—is neither oppression, nor abuse
It is in fact not even real
It is in fact not even real
Protesting Condi Rice giving a speech at your university is _not fucking abuse_ and it's certainly not oppression
Seriously I don't know how you could be so intellectually dishonest as to suggest it is
Abu Ghraib was abuse
Seriously I don't know how you could be so intellectually dishonest as to suggest it is
Abu Ghraib was abuse
"And I say this as someone, at this point, most known for complaining about cancel culture."
Me sowing, me reaping, etc etc
Me sowing, me reaping, etc etc
She is just going to spend this whole video pretending that Rowling is just a YouTuber like her, and not somebody who could literally buy up every shelter for queer people in America and raze it to the ground
No, she didn't
We're just completely glossing over her litigious bullying, her literally silencing people speaking out against her with her piles and piles of money https://twitter.com/ramendik/status/1354282855434776576
We're just completely glossing over her litigious bullying, her literally silencing people speaking out against her with her piles and piles of money https://twitter.com/ramendik/status/1354282855434776576
I tend to think sending people legal threats for calling you transphobic is more abusive than having your oeuvre called neoliberal
Hey maybe platforming guys who are literally TERFs who believe in conversion therapy and have forcibly outed trans women is kind of abusive? Idk?
"Why are so many trans people on Twitter so easily driven to extremes of rage and aggression?"
Perfectly normal thing to say, not even remotely invidious or incendiary question
Perfectly normal thing to say, not even remotely invidious or incendiary question
You can't keep quoting CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE and *continue calling every fucking thing abuse* oh my gooooddddd
Yeah so for the record, ideas like those quoted here are reconciliation-porn claptrap
"And for some of those trans people, canceling celebrities on Twitter is the one kind of power they have."
No, it isn't, because that's not a real power
Unless you think trans people can just give a Hugo Award to whoever the fuck they want
No, it isn't, because that's not a real power
Unless you think trans people can just give a Hugo Award to whoever the fuck they want
"Plus a lot of extremely online trans people really don't have a strong sense of conviction in their own identity, which is why they need constant external validation."
If you really thought this was an okay thing to say, you wouldn't have leaned conspiratorially to the camera
If you really thought this was an okay thing to say, you wouldn't have leaned conspiratorially to the camera
Oh finally we're talking about how much money JKR is worth
Though she's understating it
Rowling isn't worth "hundreds of millions", she's worth a billion
Though she's understating it
Rowling isn't worth "hundreds of millions", she's worth a billion
Why is a sincere acknowledgement of JKR's power and influence—and Wynn's own, for that matter—only coming in as a footnote in the last five minutes of a ninety minute video
Like it is at the very least a good thing that she's acknowledging that a lot of the trans people she's characterizing as abusive "have nothing" and that she's in a rarefied position herself as a trans woman who has "a lot going for her" but like
come on
come on
She argues (rhetorically to JKR) that she should understand feeling abused and abandoned, because she wrote a book about a little boy who's locked in a closet
Which, uh, was an immensely unrealistic depiction of abandonment
Because JKR was never in that position herself
Which, uh, was an immensely unrealistic depiction of abandonment
Because JKR was never in that position herself
This demands a deep dive in and of itself, but the thing about HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE is that it's very clearly written as a cartoon
Harry's abuse is presented with a wry comic timing and repartee
At one point in the book, he literally jumps 10 ft high
Harry's abuse is presented with a wry comic timing and repartee
At one point in the book, he literally jumps 10 ft high
We remember the first book as being more dark and raw than it actually was because we're transposing the YA genre-esque tone of the later books onto the earlier ones
The first book has no gravitas whatsoever, it's downright farcical
Dudley is presented as a force of nature
The first book has no gravitas whatsoever, it's downright farcical
Dudley is presented as a force of nature
So I kind of hate the revisionist history that JK Rowling is a woman who has established a precedent of taking child abuse seriously
If you listen to @shriekcast's earlier episodes, they remark themselves about how surprising they found it that the Dursleys are funny as hell
If you listen to @shriekcast's earlier episodes, they remark themselves about how surprising they found it that the Dursleys are funny as hell
Harry takes his own abuse in stride and he's surrounded by these tremendously ridiculous cartoon characters
It's... a joke. The Dursley chapters are dry British humor
It's... a joke. The Dursley chapters are dry British humor
Wynn closes the video by joking about how she'll buy Rowling a drink to "apologize for the twitter mob"
come the fuck on
buy me a drink for my prodigious-by-my-standards level of patience in this thread
come the fuck on
buy me a drink for my prodigious-by-my-standards level of patience in this thread
Rowling was evidently pretty offended that Steven Spielberg wanted to adapt the first three HP books into a single animated movie, with Potter voiced by Harry Joel Osment
Despite having written exactly the blueprint for such a movie in those books https://twitter.com/benjanun_s/status/1354359751962882051
Despite having written exactly the blueprint for such a movie in those books https://twitter.com/benjanun_s/status/1354359751962882051
oh lol Wynn says Prisoner of Azkaban "got her through fifth grade", and so much is revealed in one single aside joke
this is why the zoomers make fun of us
this is why the zoomers make fun of us
Well, that's it
I got through the whole thing
Only took me until almost three in the morning ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I got through the whole thing
Only took me until almost three in the morning ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I was getting ready to say "well, other than the beginning, this video wasn't as bad as I thought", but then Wynn rallied so fucking hard in the last twenty minutes that it was genuinely dizzying
lmao I gained a bunch of followers tonight? didn't mean to draw a crowd lol
I have a Ko-Fi if you'd like to incentivize my poor decisions https://ko-fi.com/nymphomachy
