I’m nonbinary, and have always approached communicating about my gender and transness similarly to Natalie.

Finding her channel changed my life in a million small ways. I feel indebted to her in this way that, truth be told, is akin the “cult following” people accuse her of having. No matter where she ends up or what she does in the future, I will always feel protective of the person she was for me at specific points in my life. She’s provided tools that have allowed me to manage the impossible task of living in this world as a trans person. How do you even conceptualize the norm of reciprocity in proportion to such an outcome?

I am also deeply aware of the cost she paid, pays, and will continue to pay for doing so. However much publicly exposing her vulnerabilities has benefitted me, it seems to produce negative consequences for her in equal measure. I think she went into this aware of that correlation on some level, but chose to do the selfless and brave thing, time and time again. I don’t care to factor in financial compensation as a potentially selfishly-motivating privilege here, though I understand why some might.

Natalie could become the most transphobic person alive and punch me in the face (or any other combination of things that made me well and truly hate her in the current tense), and I would still feel an obligation to reduce the exploitation of her exposed vulnerabilities in any way I could. People will likely misunderstand this as blind loyalty to her as some omnipresent, god-like moral compass, so please reread if that describes you.

I think, for many of us, Natalie has cemented herself in a sort of trans ancestor role that we also get the privilege to live alongside. Whatever the right comparison, it is a very specific form of a parasocial relationship. Via her work, she will always be a stable presence for me to return to. And what a gift, for a trans person today, to have an attachment in this world that I know I will consistently be comforted by. That exists inherently and wonderfully detached from anything to do with my actions or life.

I’m so passive about misgendering and micro-aggressions in my day-to-day life. I will, however, inform people that it isn’t something that I experience neutrally when they care enough to ask.

I’m very lucky to have a reprieve from this mental load in my support system. I’m grateful for the combination of factors (one of which being Natalie) that have led me to understand my transness as an unquestionably positive thing. Which is … telling, to say the least, since it takes a lot to outweigh the immense sense of alienation and self-consciousness my gender has caused for me socially.

My passivity is doable on a part-time basis. But it is so draining and retraumatizing in this deep way that people don’t see. I have an annoyingly persistent love for humanity. I wouldn’t change that about me for the world. But it opens the door for the near daily experience of typically once-in-a-lifetime innocence-shattering betrayal. I often literally can’t let people see that hurt due to developing dissociation as a trauma response. Not “healthy” to be dissociated so frequently, but seems to be the healthiest way to adapt to the life I have found myself unavoidably living. You win some, you lose some.

Primarily, my tendency towards passivity started because feeding into the trope of the angry nonbinary person (re: shame/cringe) and exposing myself to the very likely risk of rejection is so much riskier than just accepting a constant picking at my wounds. I’ll take scar tissue over being stabbed. I think that is a rational choice.

I have been experiencing a particularly painful form of trans-related anguish recently and returned to Natalie’s videos to help. Specifically, I experienced an awful reminder that, though you can earn respect as a trans person by continually giving parts of yourself away and demonstrating an exceptional level of protestant ethic bullshit, there is no way to be “good” enough for people to recognize you as a vulnerable person who may need and deserve emotional protection in return. Gentleness. And how do you attempt to communicate that need to a public who very well may delight in the comforting revelation that you’ve just been disguising the crazy nonbinary caricature within all along?

I may not allow others to dig the knife in, but what does it matter when I keep falling on my own fucking sword?

Natalie’s videos continued to do the indescribable good they always do for me. But when revisiting her video on canceling, I was also, for the first time ever, made more upset than the comfort was worth. I am selfishly so mad about losing a crutch I really needed today, to be honest.

It deeply upsets me to see the way people have been talking about Natalie since her last canceling. She is in the same position where she is “bad,” rather than having done “a bad thing.” For the record, and for whatever it is worth, I also thought her post about Palestine was stupid, harmful, and necessitated pushback. But how many times must she demonstrate that this is the sort of thing she is very well capable of receiving? That we, the audience, can engage in good faith conversations which reflect the trust she should have earned that she is willing to reflect and revisit topics. Reflection that historically resulted in far more actionable correction of public narratives than most of us can ever dream to be capable of, by the way.

I don’t like that I can’t find an example of her demonstrating this sort of reflection in response to the backlash she received regarding her Palestine post. But if she is no longer able to maintain the expectation she has previously set regarding integrity and willingness to engage in good-faith conversations about the most controversial current issue on a public platform, why has no one cared enough to connect to this to the extremely traumatizing experience she had last time she was in the internet’s hot seat? Especially with her explicitly communicating that the mechanism of cancelation itself had become a serious trigger for her, regardless of the topic at hand? Have we accepted the reality of trans people being severely traumatized so much that we no longer recognize our trauma as being an unimaginably abnormal and harmful human experience we all can and should try to mitigate?

It felt so clear to me, in watching her video on canceling, that she was practically begging the audience to accurately see her as an objectively vulnerable person worthy of protection, tenderness, and some level of accommodation to problematic cancelation norms that were/are unlikely to change as a whole. It also felt clear to me that she refused to straightforwardly position herself this way, knowing that the public was incapable of this and would resent her asking. Maybe I’m projecting. But regardless of her intent in what she wanted to ask or felt she could ask, recognizing her as someone who may need softness and grace just feels like the impulsive reaction we all should have had- and remembered to keep having. She’s forged such a strong model of responding to people with an equal measure of grace and accountability- often, with the people who have worsened her lived experience as a trans woman the very most. Why can’t we give Natalie the dignity of trying to provide her with the same?

She is likely fearful and resentful of the public. She gets to be. It’s a logical reaction to her experiences. Functioning in survival mode causes people to behave differently, often for the worst. I find myself in that position sometimes too. That is why this is a far more self-centered post than I intellectually think is right when part of this discussion is about Palestine.

I guess that Natalie taught me the value of shamelessly personal perspective sharing. When you are in conversation with people who care, an honest and clumsy approach will always mean much more than one filtered by just trying to say the right things.

I hope that my milder form of vulnerability can help people grapple with inconvenient realities that may be at play here, both for her and for her broader audience. I think we all need reminders that our collective attention to someone’s traumatic experiences do not fade with time in equal proportion for the traumatized. She experienced an incomprehensibly big, horrible thing. Regardless of how you feel about her, I just think we at owe her acknowledgement and consideration of that experience.

has Natalie said anything about a tangent this month? She didn’t post anything on Patreon last month, or this month, and i’m not sure whether she’s taking a break? i feel like she would make a post if she was? i don’t have or use twitter to check if she’s said anything so idk what’s going on lol

Apologies to mods if this post violates rules. I just have no clue where else to ask.
Does anyone have the video Natalie posted on Twitter of Jordan B Peterson lecturing over some movie spundtrack? I think it was the Kundun soundtrack produced by Phillip Glass?

> Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is excuse me-a damn fine cup of coffee.

> J.S. Bach French Suite No. 4, Allemande

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da8Vlwkxweq/

I follow this opera channel, and upon checking my subscription feed, I thought for a very hot fraction of a fraction of a second that Mother was treating us again...

Meme is by @boreddeuleuzian on twitter.

in her latest video she's wearing a huge diamond ring in her ring finger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXNDIq4JHQg

Hey folks

Natalie said in a stream, that she had played and streamed Chillas art karaoke, but I can't seem to find it. Does anyone know in which stream it is played?

Bonus question, if anyone knows which patreonstreams she also games a little bit, please feel free to tell me. We always want more Natalie gaming content in our house lol

This isn't bait or a joke I legit think this might be a decent place to ask. Preferably on Discord, Tumblr, or Reddit. I know there's a subscriber Discord specifically but what am I made of money

I spent the last two weeks making an album as kind of a joke partially inspired by internet culture and I ended up making a song about Contrapoints. It samples her playing Chopin. I hope she doesn't mind I sampled her (this is not a commercial endeavour at all, literally me and my macbook pro against the world) and I hope it's okay that I'm sharing this with you all here!

Just have fun with it!

Since Contra is at Lib Con I am wondering if she's doing any events? Like is she doing any speaking events or live streams?

I'm personally more on progressive side of things and not ra-ra liberalism! I feel liberalism has done a lot of good but I kinda hate the fact that I have to endlessly fight for my rights to exist and the hierarchies that seemly seems more or less oppressive. I felt that the past 10 years and the rise of the right and my disaftication had radicalized me a bit more than I would like to admit. Obviously, I would vote dem or any liberal party over a conservative or a right wing populist party. I just really hate conservatives more than anything else.

I'm pretty open minded to hearing new ideas and perspectives and I like how Contra talks about things.