# Appendix: Contra Fiora on Contra

This is an appendixpost for Why I Transitioned: A Response.

In [Why I Transitioned: A Case Study](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gEETjfjm3eCkJKesz/why-i-transitioned-a-case-study), Fiora Sunshine claims:

> Famously, trans people tend not to have great introspective clarity into their own motivations for transition. Intuitively, they tend to be quite aware of what they do and don't like about inhabiting their chosen bodies and gender roles. But when it comes to explaining the origins and intensity of those preferences, they almost universally to come up short. I've even seen several smart, thoughtful trans people, such as Natalie Wynn, making [statements](https://youtu.be/OjMPJVmXxV8?t=2833) to the effect that it's impossible to develop a satisfying theory of aberrant gender identities. (She may have been exaggerating for effect, but it was clear she'd given up on solving the puzzle herself.)

The evidence most strongly suggests that Natalie did not give up-- she was bullied into silence.

This misreading matters because it illustrates one half of the Trans Double Bind. Natalie's words in *Canceling* were chosen under extreme social pressure from the online/Twitter/leftist contingent of the trans community. This social pressure existed because the community felt they were enforcing norms necessary to ensure respect and acceptance for enbys[^2s4ofpdx4zo].

The linked video, *Canceling*, is Natalie defending against accusations of transmedicalism[^phxmb64ogfl] due to using a voice-over from transmedicalist Buck Angel in her previous video.

And in the linked section specifically, she is defending and attempting to recontextualize one of her tweets:

![](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/db7cb094b974f9489a34530fdea8820d018c8a2ce7e565fa.jpg)

One of the most important facts about Natalie is that despite what her on-screen persona suggests-- she is sensitive and suffers greatly from hate comments online, especially from within the trans community[^qvn32j7t309].

This video reply to being canceled was high-stakes because it had major long-term implications not just for her Patreon livelihood and career but her dignity, physical safety, and social acceptance.

As far as I can tell, Natalie is not lying in Canceling. But she is defending her record in part through omission and vagueness.

I can't tell you what her genuine beliefs are. In part because of this controversy she deliberately moved away from making comments or videos directly about trans issues, and has expressed general despair about the situation.

I do not believe Natalie is a transmedicalist, secretly or otherwise. There is a lot of theory-space between "all genders/transitions are valid no matter what" and transmedicalism.

But her blanket retraction ("I no longer believe there can be any rational justification of gender identity") is not credible because:

A. The context of Canceling highly incentivized her to make her commentary on her tweet as politically defensible as possible (If you disavow reason then it is impossible to exclude anyone).

B. The evidence suggests her real views are more nuanced.

She has made multiple extremely personal, searching videos about her dysphoria and motivations to transition, most notably [Autogynephilia](https://youtu.be/6czRFLs5JQo?si=n3T9ZdOw6SLEr7iI). [Beauty](https://youtu.be/n9mspMJTNEY) is surprisingly critical of the usage and concept of gender dysphoria (and motivations for pursuing medical transition). [Transtrenders](https://youtu.be/EdvM_pRfuFM) deals with all these topics in skit form, and was also heavily scrutinized online.

Prior to *Canceling,* Natalie stated on multiple occasions that she transitioned because of gender dysphoria. This illustrates the Double Bind because the online trans community took as implication that she believed dysphoria was an important part of justifying transition-- which would exclude people who do not report dysphoria, and threaten to reduce their acceptance in their identified gender.

The other side of the Double Bind is weak here because, in the 2010s as a binary trans woman with substantial income, Natalie's access to HRT and surgery was not conditional on endorsing transmedicalism.

I think her comments in her AMAs are more interesting and revealing. I can't link to these videos directly (paywall) and I don't know if anyone here cares to read long transcripts. But I will end this post by including some here because they are both interesting and relevant.

**August 2018 Patron AMA stream**

> QUESTION (19:25): Becoming more the person you are was the thought that came to mind. It reminded me of something Schopenhauer said about the empirical character as a manifestation of the intelligible character. That what we appear to be outwardly is just an imperfect expression of our true immutable inmost nature. Does that resonate at all? Do you think it is a useful way of thinking about gender transition? Are you an expression of transcendental freedom? Could a cranky sexist 19th century philosopher be invoked against reductive shit lord rationalizing?
> 
> NATALIE: I think I actually take the opposite view. I take more of the Wittgenstein pragmatic view which is that the self is like invented instead of discovered. More trans people do actually think of it the way you're suggesting that by transitioning they're actually realizing this inherent like essence or singularity that's always there. That their exterior appearance is kind of finally becoming like their insides finally matching outside. It's like sort of not that's not really the sense I have to be quite honest like I kind of want to pretend that it is because it's a more attractive thing to say about yourself right? I think people might be more attracted to me if I was expressing the true feminine essence of my being but the truth is that I designed this, femininity is something I've worked on and it's a it's an invention it's a creation of mine as much as it is a discovery.

**November 2018 Patron AMA stream**

> Question (2:24): How did you find out you were transgender?
> 
> Natalie: ...I started taking hormones before I was 100% sure I identified as a woman, to be honest, because I wanted the effects of the hormones... once I had started hormones... I'm like, I'm not non-binary, I just want to be a woman, and so it was like one step at a time...
> 
> When you discover that, you like taking female hormones, and it makes you feel better about yourself, and you like the physical changes, you just look at your life, and you're like, well, this is just going to be easier if I just be a woman, like, that sounds very pragmatic, but that to me is kind of thinking, if I went into it, honestly, there was sort of a pragmatic reasoning behind it, like, my life is going to be better if I just live as a woman. And so that's when I decided, like, fuck it, like, let's just go all in on this.

  
**September 2019 Patron AMA stream**

> QUESTION (54:02): Do you think dysphoria is externally or internally generated? That is if we lived in a world without transphobia where trans identities were immediately 100% accepted by all people, would dysphoria still exist?
> 
> NATALIE: ...it's hard for me to imagine like what that would even look like because I think there's a difference between transphobia and some trans identities not being accepted immediately, because I think that part of what gender is is the assumption that there's two categories of people that in terms of all the senses present in a different way and if we just completely dropped the idea that gender is something that you identify based on the way someone looks and instead started thinking of gender as a purely psychological phenomenon it's a little bit hard for me to imagine like what being trans even would mean in that situation...
> 
> i just sort of don't get like i don't get what people are talking about when they talk about hypotheticals like this...
> 
> ...what does it mean to identify as a woman when all woman means is a psychological state?
> 
> ...i don't know how to talk about like i'm so used to the idea that like i just can't talk about this that like i i i sort of don't know how much i should say...
> 
> ...there's trans people right who present totally within the normal range of what is expected of someone who's assigned their gender at birth and i'm not saying they're not valid i'm just saying that like i sort of don't recognize it as what being trans is to me
> 
> ...my own trans identity it's so connected to this desire to socially fit in as a woman \[and look female\] and... so when someone identifies as trans without either of those components... i don't understand it yet.
> 
>   
> QUESTION (02:55:25): are there any videos you would like to make but feel like you can't because they're too different or frivolious or inflammatory?
> 
> NATALIE: ...one I don't think I'll ever do would be a follow up to the Autogynephilia video... I kind of feel like that video in particular is kind of weak. Despite its length, I don't think it really deals with this the subject matter and well, and I think that the video I have in mind would be about a lot of the difficult questions about why trans women transition and how in my opinion like there is anthropological truth to Blanchardism like clearly he's observing real trends, right?
> 
> ...if you read Magnus Hirschfeld's work from the 30s... it comes to the same conclusions as Blanchard and those things have troubled me throughout my transition and and in some ways have troubled me more as I've met more and more trans women, and feel that you know there really are these kinds of two stark clusters of trans women with very different backstories, and... if I were to make a theory about trans women I would do a kind of post Blanchardism that starts with a lot of those observations and then it tries to come up with a more nuanced way of talking about them than what Blanchard offers.
> 
> My Autogynephilia video has a million views and that's unusual. It's the only video of mine that's that old that has that many views. Why does that many video have so many views? A lot of people are googling this topic. And if you look at the more sinister parts of trans internet it's kind of an obsessive topic and I think that part of the reason for that is that a lot of mainstream trans discourse is very euphemistic about things. There's a heavily ideologically loaded concept of trans woman and you're supposed to believe all these things, like you're supposed to say I was always a woman and that I was a woman born in a man's body and like the fact of the matter is that this just does not line up with a very large number of people's experiences...
> 
> And then on the other side you have Blanchard who talks about, there's this group of trans women who before transition they live as feminine gay men and... the fundamental problem of their life is femininity and often that it's you know, they're bullied for and the it's just like this issue throughout their childhood adolescence and in early adulthood. On the other hand, you have a whole second group of trans women who basically seem to pass as normal men and until you know, they come out as trans and shock everyone and like it's just that these are two very different experiences so it's like such a deeply taboo topic...
> 
> The problem I have with my Autogynephilia video is that in a way I was pushing too hard against some of Blanchard's things, right, because it's a very threatening theory to trans women because is saying is that you are men. I want to try to make sense of Blanchard's observations without reaching his conclusion that these are just either male homosexuals or male fetishests because I don't believe that.
> 
> I've met hundreds of trans women at this point and um it's pretty hard not to notice that the two type typology is based on something that that's real, right? I'm not saying that the typology is theoretically good. I'm just saying that it's based on something that is quite clearly real, and so far as I'm aware there's simply no way of talking about that except Blanchardism and that's not superfucking great is it...
> 
> I hate the way a lot of people summarize my video like they'll just summarize it as oh, I said there's no such thing as autogynephilia, no one has that those feelings; that's clearly not true. I think it's actually quite common for men to um like yeah, you know like a straight guy who likes taking pictures of his butt in women's yoga pants, like sending them to his friends or something? it's a feeling, I don't think this is what what causes people to transition but I think it's a dimension to a lot of people's sexuality that I don't particularly see the point in denying. Nor do I think that Blanchardism is a good theory. 

[^2s4ofpdx4zo]: By the mid 2010s the lines of battle had shifted so much that binary trans people were no longer perceived to be under threat, and the focus shifted towards nonbinary issues. These were more politically salient (nonbinary => overthrowing the binary => overthrowing patriarchy) which made them more conducive to a social media positive feedback loop, and were also subject to more social opposition in everyday interactions. 

[^phxmb64ogfl]: The view that trans people are only valid if they experience gender dysphoria 

[^qvn32j7t309]: See for example the 17 minutes at the beginning of her October 2019 patron AMA stream, right after the start of the controversy, where she is upset to the point of altering her speaking cadence, and at one point on the verge of tears.