Natalie Wynn is Tired of Debating

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One artist that looms large over my own brand is filmmaker and political commentator Natalie Wynn, aka ContraPoints. If you’re a trans woman who makes a certain type of political content on the Internet, you will inevitably be compared to her, probably because you were directly inspired by her.

Having risen to online prominence for her videos about the alt-right, Ms. Points is mostly known for her uncanny ability to detangle conservative thinking with a sharp combination of wit, humor, and most importantly, empathy. By scrutinizing (for example) incel ideology while also finding some level of understanding of where incels are coming from, she’s able to connect with an audience and give a well-rounded understanding of how hate movements form. Wynn explains bigotry from a birds-eye view; even when covering individual figures like J.K. Rowling or Jordan Peterson, she uses them as case studies to explore the nature of bigotry in general, ascending above the average political commentator by deriving modern hatred from first principles rather than their superficial qualities. As a chemical engineer and academic who tries to think of the world in the same way—via systems-thinking and first principles—I’m obviously a huge fan.

At least, that’s what the ContraPoints story has been for much of the past five years. Much has been written about Wynn’s ability to “deradicalize the alt-right”, something that she used to be quite proud of. Recently, however, she’s begun to question that role through her work, and this is worth unpacking (at least for other trans political commentators such as myself).

My own content has been compared to hers, especially ones where I unpack TERF talking points in a way that’s accessible to an audience who’s susceptible to them. Wynn gives her videos titles such as “Are Traps Gay?” for the same reason that I open my TikToks with inflammatory phrases such as “Here’s what I have to say to cis lesbians who don’t want to date trans women!!”—namely, as a kind of lure for those expecting something spiteful and emotional, something they can Duet/Stitch/hold up as something to say “aha, look at this perverted man who just wants to sleep with women”, only to bait-and-switch them with something far more reasonable, defensible, and difficult to soundbyte into a TERF cringe compilation. The ContraPoints style can be hard to emulate, but if you can get it right, it’s incredibly impactful.

Those who know their deep Anna Marie lore know that it goes deeper than that, though. I’ll spare you the exact timeline of events, but suffice it to say, 2017 was a big year for the both me and Natalie. I had been watching ContraPoints since at least 2016, back when she had not yet came out as a trans woman, opting instead for a “vague non-binary mess” persona. By the following summer, I had become a Patreon supporter of hers, sending her a portion of my measly grad student paycheck because I simply loved her work that much. In one private Patreon livestream (I want to say August 2017?), she shared that after some time experimenting with genderfuckery, she was starting hormone replacement therapy. This revelation was one of several factors that led to me, finally, acknowledging my own gender trouble. I started looking into HRT myself, wondering if it was right for me, and in Natalie, I had a model for a trans woman in her 20s going through these early stages of transition for the first time, whereas most trans women of the time appeared on the Internet fully-formed. And here I am now, nearly six years later, a trans lesbian content creator who makes online videos about systemic oppression and bigotry—like mother like daughter.

So yeah, ContraPoints inspired me to transition. How’s that for a parasocial relationship?

I’ve been a Patreon supporter of hers on and off over the years, depending on how much spare change I had and how cancelled she was at any given time. Once she had ascended to a certain level of financial support, I decided that she was fine without my money, and started giving my hard-earned money to smaller, more diverse creators. I remain a fan and always anticipate her new releases, despite the growing distance between uploads.

I’m more than aware of the criticisms of her and her work—that her perspective is limited by her whiteness, that her political aspirations aren’t radical enough, that “deradicalizing the alt-right” means displacing recent neo-Nazis into diverse leftist communities which might be causing harm, that she should probably stop tweeting—many of which I agree with. I’ll even add this: in an increasingly diverse and collaborative leftist YouTube ecosystem—where the voices of F.D. Signifier, Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, CJ the X, Anansi’s Library, Tee Noir, Fab Socialism, Shanspeare, and others are constantly appearing in each others videos, either to provide voice work or to share perspectives—Natalie Wynn stands as a singular figure, collaborating with almost no one aside from Zoë Blade (who provides music) and her own small suite of recurring voice actors. This makes sense as someone who has been hurt too many times via cancellation-by-association (and, apparently, literal sexual assault) to want to risk having her name attached to another creator. As an artist, I can also understand the desire to have total control over your work. Wynn does support more diverse creators monetarily—viewers of amazing channels like Intelexual Media will notice that Ms. Points appears in the Patreon credits of her videos. But while I admire her “going solo” style—clearly, my own videos are deeply inspired by hers—there is something to be said about how the only mention of “Corn Bread Tube” on her entire channel is a small clip of an F.D. Signifier video, itself a clip of a Vaush stream where F.D. doesn’t even appear. This is not to claim that “Natalie is a racist”—her videos are explicitly anti-racist and she supports many creators monetarily, if silently—but more so to say that I understand why some say her style of content is outdated. Much of the more virulent critique about Natalie Wynn, the human person, emerges from transmisogyny and the deep trauma within the trans community, and should be held up to scrutiny. She’s not a flawless goddess either, but with all the other amazing leaders on the Left (both in the online content space and in IRL activism), I don’t really need her to be.

Anyway, let’s talk about her new video!