SIO206: ContraPoints and Cancel Culture
Serious Inquiries Only
Thomas Smith
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2019
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What could turn a left-tube favorite into the IDW's poster child overnight? Just ask ContraPoints. Well actually you can't, because she deleted her Twitter after a run-in with some folks who have accused her of saying things that are offensive to non-binary people. To get more info, Tris Mamone has a good explainer here that I would recommend. I'd also recommend this video by another non-binary YouTuber, and this video by trans YouTuber Kat Blaque. So Jamie and I are here, not to adjudicate the trans questions involved but to talk about so-called "cancel culture." Was ContraPoints canceled? What does that mean exactly? Is it true that the left is a circle firing squad cancel machine? How ought we deal with tough criticism online? And since Jamie is a smart philosopher person, what insights does philosophy offer us on these questions? I think this was a really valuable discussion that will help put a lot of these issues into the proper perspective.
If you are a smart philosopher person like Jamie, here is some reading she recommends:
Rachel McKinnon: Allies Behaving Badly; Talia Mae Bettcher: Trapped in the Wrong Theory; Robin Dembroff: Beyond the Binary; Katie Dotson: Tracking Epistemic Violence.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to serious inquiries only. Oh, Hello and welcome to serious inquiries only this is Thomas that over there's Jamie how you doing Jamie I'm alright how are you doing I'm so excited to be back not only that not only excited to be back with you, I'm excited to announce, this is great, that we will be doing a little recording right after the debates tomorrow. |
| 0:49.0 | I don't know why I said debates, we only have to do one. We only have to sit through one, |
| 0:53.1 | Jamie. It's amazing. I know they finally need all the down to 10. So that's going to be |
| 0:59.0 | awesome. We both looked at our schedules and realized that we could we could pull off a late night |
| 1:04.5 | recording tomorrow and get a little rapid response going I cannot wait to |
| 1:09.7 | finally see all the candidates that I am fond of and the candidate that I really don't like, |
| 1:16.0 | well actually there's a couple I don't like, on the same stage and see how they fare in that context. So I'm excited. What do you think? I am so |
| 1:26.1 | excited for tomorrow. I am especially hopeful to see Bernie and Elizabeth |
| 1:30.3 | Warren kind of tag team Joe Biden. That is, that's really what I'm looking forward to. |
| 1:36.3 | I kind of feel like a kid on Christmas Eve and like tomorrow's the day. |
| 1:41.1 | And my presence are going to get delivered so I'm very excited. |
| 1:44.4 | That would be nice because yeah Elizabeth Warren not a big fan of Joe Biden, not a huge fan |
| 1:49.8 | throughout the lab history so So that could be cool. |
| 1:53.7 | All right, well that said, that's gonna be exciting, |
| 1:55.4 | so look for that. |
| 1:56.0 | If you wanna, you know, if you're dying for that late night content, |
| 1:59.0 | stay up. |
| 1:59.5 | We'll try to do like one of those unedited, |
| 2:02.0 | livey type things so I can get it right up or you know catch it in the morning either way |
| 2:06.2 | But for today we wanted to talk about quote unquote I don't know if it should be in scare quotes or not |
| 2:16.8 | cancel culture because of several things that have happened, but the most recent that put it on my radar I guess was Contra points who I've referenced on the show. I'm a big fan of Contra Points. |
| 2:25.5 | Natalie Wynne is her name and I think her videos are really cool and she |
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