People literally supplied you with screencaps of contra being racist and shit, are you intentionally ignoring it to scream at anons cuz you know you can't disprove it or what
i actually wasn’t going to respond because when that reblog happened i was crying in the bathroom at work so like. just straight up did not have time.
but for realsies, i literally cannot see how any of the screenshots in that reblog prove that she is Undeniably Antisemitic, Racist, and Transphobic. i think they’re insensitive and brash, but i don’t think natalie is A Racist because she pointed out that it’s weird an old racist statement was trending.
in none of my posts am i saying that this ^ stuff isn’t uncomfortable or insensitive. i take issue with so many people’s need to permanently vilify someone for stuff that she probably thought about for maybe 30 seconds before tweeting two years ago. also, she’s not being racist here? a native person responded to her tweet, but nowhere in natalie’s original tweet does she say (or even imply) anything about race. at all?
next:
if you were to actually watch her videos and listen to what she has to say now, not in june of 2018 when this tweet was sent, she acknowledges that she held this perspective at one point and she regrets it. she talks about this in two of the videos in my original reblog AND in her one titled “beauty.” yes, she thought like this at one point. she recognizes it was harmful now, and has apologized. even if she hadn’t apologized in “canceling,” if she had just shown her change in perspective through her actions, would i hate her to the extent that so many people on the internet do?
no. because it’s just not that deep.
when i first realized i might be nonbinary, i was fucking terrified. i had a million different tmed arguments swirling around in my head, and i spent months arguing with myself about it because of it. i’m absolutely positive some of my fears came through in my conversations with people, and i definitely said damaging, tmed-adjacent things because i was scared to be One of Those Nonbinary People. the only difference is my conversations were verbal and impermanent, and a year later no one was combing through all my social media posts to find evidence to damn me for it.
okay, lastly. the lizard people thing.
1) she’s stopped using the lizard people characters since the growth in power of far right movements in the US
2) originally, she used them as kind of a joke about capitalism, and later learned their antisemitic origin and aftet that clarified every time she used those characters that she does not condone antisemitism and that she knows about the dogwhistle and is not, and would never, use it to that end.
3) i know tons of people irl who have no idea the “lizard people control the world” conspiracy is linked to antisemitism, so it’s not that hard for me to believe natalie didn’t when she started youtube either. the important part is that she has acknowledged their implications and, believe it or not, she was actually the first person who taught me that conspiracy was antisemitic.
conclusion -
in “cringe,” natalie made a lot of really interesting points that had me thinking for months. specifically, she analyzed trans man kalvin garrah’s visible hatred of “transtrenders” and compared it to her own difficulty accepting catgirl trans women. note that here she was admitting to a bias she’s aware of within herself and outwardly working to improve it.
she basically talked about how the feeling of intense “cringe” that leads to the kind of content garrah makes comes from a fear that the people you’re cringing at are similar to you. have you ever not told someone you have a tumblr, or loudly lambasted cringey tumblr blogs because you don’t want them to think you’re one of those tumblr users? it’s kind of the same deal, but on a more damaging scale. garrah sees gnc trans men as making him look bad because he’s a Real Man; natalie cringes at catgirl trans women because she feels like they infantilize themselves. she acknowledges in the video that this is unfounded and wrong, but she was using self-analysis to create discussion.
i bring this up for two reasons - one, to point out that natalie is a self-reflective person who admits to her own faults and grows; and two, because i think the cringey thing is part of the reason the hate for natalie is so intense, and why i see it mostly coming from trans women, rather than nonbinary people, jewish people, or poc.
TL;DR
do i think the screenshots above mean she’s antisemitic, racist, and transphobic? no. it’s not that deep. there are so many better things you could be putting your energy towards, so many more worthy people you could hate, than sending anonymous messages to a dan and phil blog about an educational leftist youtuber.
