Natalie Wynn: Quotes about people

“The measure of fame that I have is kind of like micro fame, relative to a certain kind of community of people. It’s awful. It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish fame on my worst enemy.”

Natalie Wynn

ContraPoints Talks Twitter, TERFs, and Tasting the 'Ideal Beer' https://oct.co/essays/natalie-wynn-contrapoints-interview, Interview for October, November 11, 2020
Interviews

People , Communication

“Facts don’t matter to people as much as people think they do. People don’t believe because of facts and evidence—they believe things because it’s a part of a story that they tell themselves. And so, I guess part of what I’m doing is understanding those stories, and understanding psychologically why are these stories being told.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Miscellaneous, Contrapoints Is De-Radicalizing Young, Right-Wing Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k (Vice News, 2019)

Thinking , Understanding , People , Parting

“I’m bringing it up because it’s just an arbitrary example of a cycle that it seems like our culture repeats about once a week: somebody makes a joke, some people are offended by the joke, and other people are indignant about the fact that those people are offended. The cycle usually gets framed as a battle in a culture war that’s supposedly going on between generation snowflake, easily triggered, humorless PC cucks, and badass, edgy, nothing-off-limits free-speech truth tellers. Now if this really is a culture war between two sides, then I am a double agent, because I’m a generation snowflake PC cuck who loves dank edgy memes, and I’ve found myself on both sides of this type of conflict many, many times. So on the one hand, when I see the internet roasting a comedian for some shitty trans joke my inner snowflake wants to watch the bastard burn. But my inner edgelady knows how it feels to be dragged across Twitter over a joke. And as someone who basically writes jokes about controversial topics for a living, I appreciate how difficult it is to maintain the mildly sadomasochistic character of comedy while also keeping your moral compass from getting too jittery.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), The Darkness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtj7LDYaufM (2019)

Time , War , People , Truth

“We tend to pass particularly harsh moral judgment on sadism, but sadistic violence isn’t even necessarily the worst thing that can happen to people. There’s also the quieter structural injustices that lead to millions of people starving, or workers throwing themselves out of windows at the iPhone factory, or the lowkey normalization of sexual assault in supposedly civilized countries, none of which requires so much as a single cackling maniac. So in order to think about this intelligently, we have to weigh the risk that revolutionary violence will spin out of control and lead to sadistic mayhem, against the risk that our complacency with the injustices of the status quo will make us quiet enablers of more subtle but equally unjust forms of violence. And I don’t feel confident enough to say which one I think is the bigger risk.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), Violence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmsoVFCUN3Q (2017)

Confidence , Country , Intelligence , People

“So basically what I think is that in a free society, different people will have lots of different sexual lifestyles. Some people will want to settle down and get married, and that’s fine. Some people will wanna have a fucking baby, and that’s also fine—someone needs to have the fucking babies. But some people won’t want to do that: some people will wanna dip their balls in hot wax and pour wolf’s milk all over a stranger’s face, and that’s fine, too. Some people won’t want to have sex or romantic relationships. Point is, all these things carry emotional risks: you’ve got heartbreak, loneliness, excruciating boredom—this is just the human condition. And no matter what you do, you have to take emotional risks. But as a society, we could make sex less risky for women by ending rape culture and slut-shaming, and instituting all-you-can-eat birth control. Hence, you know, feminism. And there are also things that we can do as individuals to be safer, kinder, and more responsible. If you do choose to have casual sex, things are gonna go a lot better for you and your partners if you try to remain honest, open and communicative about what your intentions are. And for God’s sake, use a condom—do not get pregnant or get anyone else pregnant. That’s a real downer, this… echoing God’s act of creation by bringing new life into the world. It’s disgusting!”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), Is Casual Sex Bad for Your Soul? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKrbvLkbHu8 (2017)

Baby , God , Making love , Loneliness

“So when you reduce bigotry to a caricature of pure hatred you obscure that bigotry is a deeply human problem. Sometimes people criticize me for empathizing with bigots but I believe that understanding bigots is the best defense against becoming one yourself because when you dehumanize the villains you become unable to recognize the villain within.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints

Problem , People , Understanding