Wynn:
I'm not happy about things, not at all. I guess I want to start by talking about the whole Buck Angel thing because- you know -people ask about it so let's get this out of the way upfront.
So for those of you who are not familiar with the situation- who are not very online -the situation is this; a couple of weeks ago I uploaded a video called Opulence and in that video there was a 12 second voice over of a quote from John Waters that was voiced by Buck Angel.
Buck Angel is a trans man which- for people who are very new here -is someone who is assigned female at birth and is a man. And he- you know -basically here's my tale with Buck Angel. Buck Angel is the first transgender man I ever knew-- sorry. Transexual man. He doesn't like the word transgender. He's the first trans man I ever knew existed. Like I found out about him back in 2012 and he made a big impact on me. Like he has this history; he was like the first porn superstar and he's- like -a trans man.
And he's very striking to look it. Because he looks.... he looks like a cis man and it's very interesting to people who aren't very familiar with trans people, right? Because when you grow up, at least for me- I don't know -my idea of what a trans person was was like a a man who grows his hair out and cuts his dick off like a bunch of fucking crazies [Wynn sits back in her chair to laugh] But like, when I saw Buck Angel it kinda like- something in my mind changed. Like this person has two X chromosomes presumably and was assigned female at birth but like... sweaty, that's a man. And so, I don't know, he was like a celebrity to me.
Fast forward to present day. I basically included him in this video because he has a voice sort of like John Waters and Theryn suggested him. She didn't know about the problematic stuff.
Let's talk about the problematic stuff. So Buck Angel is 57 years old (not that excuses anything) but he's a trans activist from a previous generation and he's tweeted a bunch of things that I don't agree with and some of those things would be categorised by what we call 'transmedicalism'; that is this idea that the most enthusiastic proponents of on YouTube are not very nice people in their videos at least.
I'm someone who's not very inclined to judge someone who's just a bad person but it's hurtful to a lot of trans people because transmedicalism is basically the idea that what being trans is is a medical phenomenon, you understand it as a medical phenomenon, that means in order to establish that someone is trans you need a diagnosis and that diagnosis is gender dysphoria. And on YouTube this is used as a kind of like a way to [quick aside about the music] it's basically used as a way to create drama by fucking telling people they're not really trans, blah blah blah.
So I don't endorse this but with Buck I think he's very hurt by the fact that he feels like the current generation doesn't appreciate all that he's done and people on Twitter are extremely abrasive and extremely aggressive and so is Buck Angel. He has that same personality. So there's this clashing that happens. I have this conflict where on one hand there seems there are a lot of non-binary who genuinely feel uncomfortable with the fact I featured Buck Angel in this video because of the dispute between Buck Angel and a lot of nonbinary people. That I do feel bad about
And I think that I did not sort of understand when I included him the extent to which a lot of nonbinary people and a lot of trans people in general kind of view Buck Angel as this kind of like supervillain. And so I think knowing the extent of that now, I don't know that I would have made this choice again. But I'm also now in this situation where, as I see it, the criticism of me has become very hyperbolic and it has kind of crossed a line to the point where not only are people calling Buck Angel a transmedicalist, they're calling me a transmedicalist, they're calling me truscum, they're calling me a TERF. They are harassing me, they're harassing my friends, they're demanding that everyone I've ever worked with disowns me publicly
And I feel like the only way I can clear myself is to publicly disown Buck Angel but I don't particularly want to disown him. Here's the thing, show me his problematic tweets- I don't agree with that tweet -but I don't agree with my own tweets and I don't want to participate in this same culture that has done me so much harm, you know? I'm used to being presented as a collage of problematic tweets as if that's who I am. Every time I work with someone new, that person gets harassed for working with me because I'm a "TERF" and so when I see people doing the same thing to Buck Angel there's part of me that's so used to being the target of this that I don't believe Twitter, you know what I mean? And I don't believe the way to deal with these problems is to disown someone.
I don't believe that someone who is a trans activist who, for his part did many good things for the community should be completely excommunicated because of his bad opinions, you know what I mean? Like if other people don't want to talk to him or don't ever want to work with him or don't feel like they can trust him I understand that. I'm not expecting anyone else to talk to him. But that's just kind of not how I work, and that's kind of not how I've ever worked. I've always been someone who's collabing, who is talking to- is working with people I don't agree with.
And I understand that there's some line that has to be drawn, right, because you don't want to work with Richard Spencer. But like, Buck Angel is not Richard Spencer. In my experience, so many of the trans people I know who are my age and older- I'm 31 -are basically truscum, you know what I mean? That was the paradigm that existed for them when they were transitioning and also in my experience, it's very easy to open their minds on this topic if you have a conversation with them. I don't like to brag, but one of the things in life I'm very very good at is convincing people that nonbinary gender identities are valid. It's one of the topics I've been most persuasive on. I think it's one of the topics that I've covered the most often on my YouTube channel. I've covered it since 2016, I've done at least 5 videos that are largely about nonbinary gender identities and I know at least five major youtubers who have changed their mind about nonbinary people because of conversations I've had with them and that's not the same thing as saying you should be working with people as long as they're actively nonbinary exclusive.
I understand why people would be uncomfortable with me working with people who are not inclusive of nonbinary people, I really do understand that. That's absolutely something I'm going to think long and hard before allowing that to happen again. But at the same time, I don't know what to do, because I'm so demoralised by what's happened that I feel paralyzed, like I can't post anything on Twitter, I can't post anything anywhere because I feel like anything I say will just be used against me or will somehow be twisted to paint me as a psychopath who's like manipulating people and so I have just kind of shut down. Because on the one hand, nonbinary people are part of the trans community, period, full stop. But I don't know how to say that without seeming like I'm just trying to get out of trouble because I don't want to play this game of "to exonerate myself I have to condemn others".
I'll tell anyone who wants to hear it that I don't agree with Buck Angel's tweets, sure. I don't agree with them. But I also don't know if the solution to 'someone tweeted a bad thing' is to excommunicate them. I don't believe in doing that. I just don't believe in that and so I'm not going to do that and some people are going to feel like that's me choosing truscum over nonbinary people which I don't think I am because that's not how I feel at all. But to a lot of people on Twitter especially, they want you to show your support through this endless virtue signalling.
There's certain leftist cis boys on Twitter who are extremely popular in the trans community because they tweet these virtue signals where they tweet "trans rights!", "Donkey Kong said Trans Rights", like "nonbinary is valid", blah blah blah. Here's the thing, it takes seven seconds to tweet that. Anyone can tweet that, it'd take no effort, it takes no actual understanding and I'm someone who makes mistakes- of course I do make mistakes -most of the things I've ever tweeted have been a mistake but it's like- I'm a trans person and I identified as nonbinary two years ago and I still have questions of "am I a binary trans woman, am I nonbinary, I don't feel like a lot of a woman a lot of the time, does that mean I'm nonbinary or does that mean I'm internally transphobic?" I actively engage in the struggle. But I feel like people on twitter don't actually have time for a trans person who's actually trying to struggle through this. They just want a video game character to say "trans rights".
I don't know. I don't know what to do, guys. I feel very demoralised because of this. And this is obviously a half-baked emotional version of my view of this thing because I don't really know what to say. I'm just trying to figure out what to do. I'm gonna do the best I can to do all the things people want me to do, but I just think a lot of people want me to be this thing that I'm just never gonna be, you know? Like I'm never gonna be this SJW golden calf that- People want this channel to be this safe space. This is a problem we've had on Patreon for a long time, like who's allowed into the discord server back when we had that. I don't know. It's weird to me that people expect this channel to be like this exclusively leftist safe space because this channel has always been oriented towards like consensus centrists and mainstream people and edge lords. Why do they think I'm suddenly going to become this person who like- I don't know.
I understand that people come from a place of hurt and they've been betrayed before so they don't trust me, but it's just hard to be the centre of such a level of distrust and I've kinda been going through this again and again for two years, but I just feel hated. And I feel like there's a lot of people now who've just written me off as a horrible person and so I have this sense of futility about trying to repair that because it's like... everything I say will be interpreted in the least charitable way.
Those are my thoughts. Like, Comment and Subscribe.