Talking with Contrapoints - Gender Identity, Judgement, & YouTube

if you don't accept yourself as a trans woman you are placing a value on cis women over trans women oh 100 yeah right and so that's i think the basic problem is that like you are valuing something above yourself that you will never be yeah so welcome and you go by natalie is that right natalie yeah okay so i'm all oak or dr k thank you very much for coming today um nice to meet you i really love your so let's start sorry i'm just fixing my camera which is why so uh do you want to just start because i i know you're predominantly on youtube or exclusively on youtube do you want to just tell us a little bit about who you are natalie and and what kind of work you do uh sure yeah my name is natalie wynn i am the creator of the youtube channel contra points and that is a channel i've been doing for about four years it's changed a lot over the time i've been doing it and it is i would say it's about politics but it's also i guess more generally about internet culture it's more about the internet culture side of politics so when i started on youtube i was kind of well there's a lot of creators who are doing what was called like anti-sjw content uh anti-social justice warrior content ranting about these crazy blue haired student activists who are destroying western civilization and a lot of my early content was aimed at trying to like introduce a more measured discourse around like social justice issues progressive issues because i felt that youtube was a very very right wing things that the world has changed a lot in four years the internet's changed a lot youtube's changed a lot and i have changed a lot um i am in a different way it's a whole different website a whole different world now um you know i'm now just one among a sea of people who's doing sort of what they call a left to the content now and i also have uh you know changed genders in that time because i started uh you know when i started in 2016 i was having like a kind of gender crisis um but i shortly realized that i was a trans woman and i've been transitioning medically and socially since 2017 and all of that's kind of factored into the content that i make on youtube interesting um thank you so much for sharing that so like i think your videos are fantastic and i don't know if you have um experience teaching but like they're very well done i think from a information dissemination standpoint i think you're a phenomenal teacher thank you i am before i did this i was a i was i was getting a phd in philosophy and dropped out but um yeah i did teach a couple classes or at least take tas and classes that actually makes a lot of sense now that i think about it because i think what i really appreciate about your videos is um you know whether you agree or disagree with the content whatever but i think from a craftsmanship standpoint they're very thoughtful very logical i think you form a really good like sequence of explaining context and background before you know arriving at your thesis it doesn't surprise me at all that you formally studied philosophy because i think that's a you know they trained you how to think and construct an argument more than anything else um thank you yeah it turned out to be well and on you like no one expects to get a philosophy drop outside of academia but i found the one thing where it actually i'm sure it's useful for a lot of things but it's pretty surprising actually specifically useful for this yeah um in in some fields like strategic consulting they actually highly prioritize or highly value philosophy degrees because training and philosophy is sometimes training and thinking yeah it teaches you a certain approach to to things like the ability to sort of understand a perspective that you disagree with or to like build up arguments for an argument that you disagree with and then like sort of counter it it's a kind of like i guess i call it like intellectual empathy where you understand like why you try to understand what exactly someone else thinks and why they think it that's maybe the more psychological side is why i was going to say that sounds like my job yeah yes that's definitely definitely more in psychology so natalie i don't know how familiar you are with healthy gamer but if i can just orient you to how we do interviews um so you know we usually don't we'll have guests who may be like you know prominent in a particular field but we don't really talk about the work that they do so it's not like you know we're really here to learn about people yeah sure and and i think so often times i'll i'll ask questions that are like personal so like i want to know about you as a person in your journey as opposed to any particular political views that you may believe in or whatever yeah yeah and you know if if a political view that you have relates to something personal in your life i think that's actually like totally cool um but generally speaking you know we we talk about people and i think a lot of what uh our viewers really appreciate is um seeing themselves in the person that they're talking to so the the discussions tend to be a little bit more personal sure that being said you know if there is anything that um you're welcome to draw whatever boundaries you want around the discussion i'm not here to try to expose anything or anything like that um you know like if there's something that you feel uncomfortable with you're welcome to say hey i just don't want to answer that um and then if i notice you're getting uncomfortable i may actually point it out to you and then ask for permission to proceed okay sounds good i mean i'm a habitual divulger of information about myself so that's probably going to work out fine what does that mean a habitual divulger of information about you well i i it means i enjoy the confession the confessional format i i mean every once every every couple you know twice a year maybe i make a video that's really more about me than about anything else what do you enjoy about divulging information about yourself well i i suppose i'm interested in myself because i around to this person all the time and sometimes i form opinions i i guess i i don't know it's it feels there's also maybe a kind of there's probably some kind of therapeutic thing for me it feels good to sort of speak your truth as it were i don't know i i cannot it can also be sort of i think it can be unhealthy just sometimes when you're kind i don't know if for instance i find it easier sometimes to talk to a million people than to talk to one person in that i think especially online there's a kind of when you're producing you know i'm sure people can relate to this when you're posting anything on social media there's a kind of illusion of of solitude that comes from being alone at your computer um i often are you know alone in front of the camera which is often how i'm filming right and how i'm writing and so i've i'm sort of gotten over this i'm becoming more a professional but there used to be a time when i would um you know the first time that i would see the video i had just spent 100 hours making in the youtube player itself i would have this moment of panic like oh god like other people can actually see this like this is not just my private video diary that i've been working on um but i don't know i guess it feels good to sort of like share what you're going through and oftentimes you know a bunch of other people will find something relevant to themselves about what you've shared and so that to me is very um [Music] well it often it makes you feel less alone you know when you hear that other people have been through something similar and that's actually exactly what we're about we're about you know i think a lot of the it's the reason i started streaming was because what i noticed is i was having the same conversations like over and over and over again and everyone thought that they were alone with their struggles yeah and what it turns out is that everyone is struggling with the same stuff it's just that's not what we advertise right we we put on a mask and we show people something else and so everyone else gets the impression that the world is like a lot of people who are doing fantastic whereas all of us are struggling yeah and so well i think there's a using a leap of faith almost that happens when you put out something very personal because you're you know maybe everyone thinks you're crazy um or maybe and this is a leap of faith the fact that you're going through something in private that's not often discussed it's going to turn it's going to turn out that you know 10 000 other people are going through that same thing and they all connect with you so so you're sort of hoping or even if they're not going through exactly what you're going through it relates in some way to their own experience and so you're hoping they connect on on some level yeah so can you share with us is there has there been a particular leap of faith that you've taken that's surprised you in terms of how people responded to it let's see uh yeah there's been a few um trying to think of a like the best example well i did a video a long time ago on in cells the insult movement and i kind of in the last part of that video related because that you know i spent a lot of time on insult forms like when i part of what i do when i cover a um like an intern you know some facet of internet culture because i would go into the forums and i'll like sort of spend time learning the vocabulary and learning like what are the concerns how you know what are the what are the usual objections that people give to you know to insults that they've heard a hundred times and are just already don't want to hear um you know and so i guess what i found is that like there's something kind of profoundly i guess relatable to me about that like obsessive like self abuse that a lot of like in cells have right this kind of putting themselves down all the time and to the point of like physiologically like anatomically analyzing their defects in great detail and that it reminded me i guess of um a lot of like the uglier trans faces online which in a different you know this kind of different context involve exactly the same thing which is like a kind of an obsessively negative self-harming like analysis of your own anatomy right uh the black pill right the the that's what cells call it the idea that you know because of their you know inferior bone structure that they are doomed by nature to have a lonely life but yeah yeah and and so you said that that you said it sort of resonated with you on on some level or it was it did yeah yeah i found something familiar about it um you know write down it's through some weird weirdly specific parallels are you concerned about the shapes of facial bones and can you do you mind if i ask you a little bit more like personally about what it was that resonated with you or what kinds of thoughts that you've had about yourself i'm assuming you're thinking about yourself absolutely i mean at the time i was actually considering going through like a major facial surgery um to change my appearance which i ended up doing um but it's it's funnily enough it's actually a frequent topic on insult forms too where they'll talk about basically doing all the opposite things of what i did you know augmenting the jaw and to get a stronger more masculine look and uh you know strengthening the brow bone and doing all these things that give them that like chiseled chadley appearance and and so what is it that how does changing your physical appearance how does that relate to the way that you perceive or feel or talk talk to yourself like how do you like you know what what help what motivates you to do that and what does it mean to you to do that well i think it's something that most people do to some extent like i think everyone has everyone with a mirror has some kind of thing about themselves they don't like i think that when you're trans like i am like there's an additional layer of it whereas i mean you like i went through a period where like i mean i was presenting appearing to the world as a as a man and that's how like there's a very that's a very drastic sense of what i'm saying in the mirror is wrong um and i think that you know i think that's not as you know it's a complicated question isn't it like how much of that dysphoria gender dysphoria how much of that is just what it means to be trans as part of who we are has to be respected and how much of it is a kind of negative like internalized hatred because society views trans people with a very cruel gaze and sometimes it's not clear like what is gender dysphoria and what is just me internalizing this kind of ugly way that people have looking at trans people so natalie do you mind if i ask you some questions about like what your sense of like kind of where you grew up i mean not so much in terms of details about where but like what your upbringing was like and and how you learned that you were trans yeah i can talk about that a little bit i mean i had um i guess it was such as an early in my early childhood i had a pretty a pretty normal boyhood in a way like it's actually i don't think like pre-12 years old i actually look back on that time mostly with with positivity i think that you know i i was sort of neither the most i was certainly not the most masculine boy but i was not like i wasn't feminine to the point where it was a major problem um but when i was a teenager i guess i sort of began there was this like discontent beginning to stir the senses something was wrong um in my 20s it just got worse and worse can you explain that feeling um like how would it make i'm just imagining that there's like someone who's 19 who's watching right now and how would they know you know yeah how would you know you're trans that's the question i get a lot um well it gets a lot of trans people will tell you that it's it's easy like oh if you're even questioning at all that means you're trans i don't agree with that i think that a lot of people question their gender for a lot of reasons um and i think that you know whether you're raised as a boy or as a girl like there's a lot of like gendered expectations put on to you there's a lot of um you know there's a kind of image of you know what what you're supposed to be doing a script that you're supposed to be following and it's it's everyone to some extent i think questions that a little bit about themselves like i think this that may be especially true of of women people who are raised girls like that's a very constrict well well it's i think it's true with men in a different way but it's um you know that there's often times like going to be situations where you know even if you are just a you know a regular cis woman like you're going to think like this sucks i don't like being treated like a woman because it sucks right right and there's times when you know when it sucks to be a man like it's absolutely it does um but so to me it's a question of figuring out like not just whether you're responding to those things but in my case it's more a question of you know i just don't i feel like socially i sort of fit a script for women better and physically i'm so i have this kind of this sense of alienation from my body that is making it hard for me to like it's it's you i feel i felt sort of feel like i had to be detached from my body or go outside of my body i didn't feel sort of physically connected to the world and i you know people who are trans women who are sort of not aware that they're trans yet tend to do a lot of things that they can't quite explain to themselves like like an atypical forum for man amount of body shaping and uh or that kind of thing just kind of trying to have a more androgynous look i guess was something that i'd been doing for a long time and then you know i i would kind of like as a joke you know it's halloween well what if i would have fighted it was a girl wasn't that funny you know and that kind of thing and at some point you know you you realize that like it took me a long time honestly there was a lot of denial and excuse making but i think you know youtube in some ways helped me help me figure it out as i was kind of presenting um you know at the time i was it was played off as like a bit where i was like going to be the a degenerate cross-dresser that was just the idea the stick but so it looks like you used a lot of humor and yeah which is um it's kind of what you because you i was sort of aware that like you know like i knew that i didn't look like a woman like i i looked like a man in a dress and people think that's the thing that people find funny so i guess my way of coping with that was to be like well i guess it is kind of funny let's make it funny and so i did that but at some point i kind of realized like this is actually is not funny to me it's like like this is what i want to be and i don't want you know i actually i i feel like i'd rather live as a woman um and that you know when i when i realized that there was a kind of period where i was going back and forth in the meaning now that's because insanity don't do that and then times when i was being like okay but it's what i want and you know through through the warriors through stages like for a while i just identified as a gender queer meaning that i sort of identify with neither gender i thought of myself as just like an androgynous person and so i would wear you know i was i was like freaking biggie was looking like i'd be wearing nail polish and lipstick but like still being like socially like being a man i guess uh using a male name and things but just being a sort of uh i don't know flamboyant or um how what is the word i'm looking for like uh adorned man but i guess um you know i just at a certain point i realized that i wanted to there was like a medical component to this you know i thought that i was uh well i felt that like there was a problem not just it's a certain point it's not just about oh i painted my nails so lots of men paint their nails that's fine right i wore a dress well men wear dresses all the time like but at a certain point i was like but like this is like this is not what i want to be i don't want to be a man on a dress i'm like i think i'm supposed to be a woman and uh that then you know i i it was always it was all very gradual i kind of stumbled into it like something i don't know the different trans people have different stories some trans people that they know from the age of three they just have this strong inner conviction their different gender that's not really my story to me it was it was more just like a series of the gender problems and gender confusion that just kind of settled on this natalie how how has your internal experience or how have your feelings changed or your thoughts changed as you've walked along that journey so i'm imagining i'm trying to envision like when you were 16 years old and you looked in the mirror like how did you feel about yourself and what did you think about yourself um well i think when i was very young like that i kind of like found a way of expressing these feelings through like just being a pretty boy you know and like i was like well that's fine like that's kind of me you know um but i guess that's really hard i think one thing that happened is when i got a bit older like that occupying like that kind of role you know at some point like can you be a 40 year old pretty boy like i don't know maybe maybe you can like i'm sure i'm sure that there's there's there's hollywood actors and stuff out there who i would describe that way but i i guess i kind of realized like you know being a boy was okay but being a man wasn't if that makes sense sure yeah i mean i think you know boys and girls and men and women i think there's more um you know androgyny between boys and girls exactly exactly and so i that's kind of how i see myself like as i can perceive myself kind of becoming a man that really like triggered the sense of dread and feeling of wrongness like no like i'm not supposed to be that um and so i think that i also around this time like you know i was not raised with a knowledge of trans people not in any detail um certainly not in a very positive um you know what have you dread about being a man i guess i sort of felt like i felt that it wasn't an expression of myself and that's if you're i know that's that's kind of fake that i feel like i'm not making it clear it's the kind of feeling that's hard to put into words it's like i just i would just look at women and see like nothing like that's what i should be doing you know like i i sort of it's a matter of um at a certain point kind of like identification like i think that most people get their idea of what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman from other men and women like you sort of form role models i guess you have like sort of a verb i mean trans people and and cis people are are similar in a lot of ways like like we all you know have some way a version of our gender that's like we feel like that's us you know and obviously there's a lot of different ways of being a man there's a lot of different ways of being a woman but um i guess you know and i think when you're an adolescent especially you're kind of experimenting with different options like you might sort of try to be six different people between ages 13 and 18. that's pretty common but um like what happens when you start admiring the you start seeing yourself in women and not in men that's a great way to put it yeah um so i i guess what you identify with or what you strive to be or the kinds of role models you have happen to be not from your gender yeah yeah it reminds me of you know people say um when i was in med school and trying to figure out what i wanted to do what people told me was like you know don't worry about the field like think about the kinds of doctors that feel like role models to you yeah yeah you know and and so i'm kind of curious you know going through surgery um i'm trying to find the right word for it i i feel like drastic is a little bit judgmental so i'm trying to steer clear of that word but um you know let's put it this way it's it's a big step right so basically yeah like drastic is not entirely wrong i i know i have like a little bit of a negative connotation you take things too far but i it is um it's a significant decision to make um especially like you know the the main surgery i've had is facial feminization which is a terrifying surgery like you're changing your face which is a very personal um thing you know um i think and there was a lot of fear about that going into it i thought like am i am i gonna lose myself like am i gonna not look like me anymore um and what happened well as it turns out i i basically just love it like i look more like myself now than i did before interesting in my case it was it was the right decision um i i but it's uh it's certainly not something to do lightly i think it's uh you should it's good to spend a few years honestly thinking about it before you're doing it because it's uh yeah it's an ordeal it's an ordeal to go through it's a lot of pain and difficulty and expense to put yourself through um but i think like to me i mean especially as someone who's on camera all the time like it really was a preoccupation that i had this like you know especially once i knew that knew that was possible i was like i want this is something i need for myself yeah so let me ask you something so i you know i probably am a little bit disrespectful towards in cells more so than i i should be um and but i i sometimes kind of struggle a little bit with like that balance of changing yourself because there's a part of me and i think this like sort of doesn't internally make sense to me there's a part of me that says that you know it's completely fine if you want to change your body but something within me recoils from the idea if i was talking to an incel and they said you know i want a more masculine jawline or i want this kind of facial surgery to make me look more chad-like and i'm really not trying to make fun of them now sometimes i do that i probably shouldn't it's hard not to because they do say some ridiculous things but there are very misogynistic things and and so i'm just trying to understand like you know is that the same or is that different i think it's a complicated question like uh you know there's there's in cells who are talking about plastic surgery who are fixated on plastic surgery within feminism there's discourse about like is this just women trying to meet like oftentimes like racist and patriarchal expectations about female beauty i'm instead of just learning to love themselves as they are um so i would say like would you know i think that even an in-seller or you know cis woman like has a right has a right to get plastic surgery as well of course i think that these desire comes up from a different place though in a different um there's a different kind of justification for it like i think what like i think what's kind of like aching us out about in cell plastic surgery is that oftentimes the explanations they give for why they're doing it are based on things that are kind of false and deranged like the notion that you need this certain jawline for women to be attracted to you and that's going to fix everything like that that doesn't make sense and it's probably not true and it's um it just comes from a fundamentally misguided like idea of like i mean it didn't and again i don't want to say it's always the wrong thing to do like maybe you have an incredibly weak chin and you just genuinely do look a lot better with a stronger jawline and that's going to make you happy like maybe so maybe so but maybe not and i've seen a lot of people posting on insult forms where it's like there's patently nothing wrong with your face and they and they've but they've kind of scapegoated this they say this my physical appearance like that's why i'm lonely like that's the problem i have with women like if i change this like everything's gonna be fixed and that is delusional thinking because i don't think having a stronger jawline is going to suddenly make you you know women magnetized i mean honestly that's so my experience with the insults and part of the reason that i make fun of in cells is that i find that when i talk to a person i have trouble i've been looking for what i call a true insult for a long time and and what my experience has been is that any time you talk to a person who identifies as an incel if you i the more i talk to them the more that i get to know them i can't find an incel in there you know what what i see is just relatively regular level of insecurity or you know concern about their appearance or things like that um but it's you know it's interesting i i just wonder a little bit about some of these because you're sort of mentioning like feminist communities that sort of talk about a particular body type that is essentially the result of the patriarchy and i'm wondering actually if the converse is true and that's what the incels feel that there's sort of this i mean it sounds actually like the same argument where it's like there's a feminine standard of beauty um yeah and and that people are being judged and aligning towards that and i never thought that feminists and in cells would be making the same argument but yeah this is the sparkly uh well i think uh i i think that i guess in cells 10 when we talk about surgery they tend not to be super critical of it like they feel that there's this male standard of beauty um but oftentimes instead of attributing that to say like patriarchy this like social circumstance that could be changed they attribute it to like evolution the nature of the dating market and the nature of like the you know competitive meeting and all this kind of stuff yeah but it seemed to think the female brain is just wired to like this kind of jaw you know whereas i think that the feminist critique is more it is the idea that like oh this is all socially constructed um now i think that with trans surgery it's kind of complicated because there's kind of a little bit of of two different things going on one is like gender dysphoria there's a person's individual internal sense often totally against what a person has been raised to think they should be right like i was raised to think i should be a man why am i not doing that like because there's something individually about me that is like rejected the script i was handed um and so i think that like part of the reason for my wanting to have surgery was really just to my personal desire to see myself as i feel i should be even against society to wanting me to look like that however when you start you know i live as a woman and people judge me as a woman and they judge my parents as they would judge a woman's appearance a lot of the time with some complicating factors because of the fact that people know that i'm trans um but i think that i it's a question i definitely struggled with when i was you know preparing to get surgery it's like who am i doing this for exactly like am i doing this because this is me is this what's going to make me happy like this is what i want to see in the mirror like this is all for me or am i doing it because i think it's gonna make me look more socially acceptable and be more desirable to other people more um easily able to assimilate and to other you know into society and you yeah and answers both yeah it's it's interesting because there's actually i really love that you mentioned that because it's like where does the desire to change come from yeah does it come from wanting something from other people right so if i'm let's say like i want a stronger jawline to attract more women that doesn't feel that feels to me like it's a desire to change yourself to accommodate or have something to do with the outside world whereas what it's all about other people and what they want yeah and what i'm hearing from you is that like the fundamental difference is like i mean not to say that you don't want something from the outside world as well but that there's a difference between wanting to be satisfied with the way that you look for your own sake as opposed to wanting to look a particular way for other people and to get something from other people absolutely like i think that for insults this is all they don't particularly seem to care about looking in the mirror and seeing this whatever they're flawed a jaw or whatever it is except that they think that this is holding them back socially or sexually and like if they could just fix this part of their anatomy then you know this would be a means to the end of attracting women and so natalie as you transitioned um how were you judged what's that been like for you um well it's not easy to especially online like people view i mean people online are just who are just horrible in general are pretty horrible in general they can be anyway they can also be amazing but but there's a lot of like judgment and negative judgment i think women get scrutinized very very heavily based on their appearance and then trans women in particular i find attract as certain like like not from everyone but there's a subset of people who are sort of have this cruel obsession with trans people and sort of analyzing them and deconstructing them and just picking us apart and that's something that i've experienced a lot and i would be lying if i had if i said it didn't get to me can you can you tell us a little bit more about that uh yeah well people when you know you will see sometimes it's youtube comments sometimes it's you know the responses to your tweets or comments on instagram they'll have to say these things for me it mostly isn't that it's mostly what it goes on like in a secluded part of the internet you know there used to be a reddit subreddit called gender critical which is which is like ostensibly like a trans exclusionary radical feminist way of thinking but what you're often kind of what does that mean so there's a cut there's a there's a faction of radical feminists who are like vehemently opposed to trans people because they view trans women they basically don't think that being a trans person is legitimate they view trans women as men who are kind of impinging on female space sort of invaders interesting yeah and they sound like gender appropriation yeah that's often an argument they'll make and then they view transformation as like as like our lost damaged sisters who just are just internally misogynistic and trying to be men to escape um but like oftentimes people will just judge other people for all kinds of stuff oh yeah people but it often just devolve into like simple like like a roasting basically and you know it's not it's not just them it's not just these people there's there's a lot of people on the internet who enjoy this if you ever go to you know 4chan god help you like there's people there's parts of that website where they sort of will obsess over trans people and it's like it's especially bad if you're yeah there's a lot of criticisms to be made for 4chan but oddly enough and hopefully i'm not speaking out of turn i was really surprised recently so i you know sometimes i work with people with autism and it seems like it's actually a pretty supportive place it's it's for people with autism it's kind of strange it's a complicated website i mean there's parts of it that um that are like are pretty pleasant there's there's there's parts of it that have even like kind of like fostered some of the good parts of the internet and people will you know anonymously without any expectation of thanks or reward um like do very nice things for each other i've absolutely seen those how things happen on 4chan but then it can also devolve and it sort of depends on which you know uh which form you're in but it can develop it and just use incredible nastiness and cruelty also yeah and i think that especially that that tends to be within that with with trans people so i don't know it's not it's been a common experience that i'll run across i've gotten better at just avoiding this kind of thing but you run across a forum wherever it is where people are just like you know they're posting pictures of you or videos of you and they're just like tearing you apart like your physical appearance they're misgendering me they're either they're dead naming me that's saying like you know oh look at his giant shoulders look at his like like will anyone ever believe that's a real female voice like of course not and like like this kind of it's just uh it's very mean or they call you a sexual pervert and say that you're just narcissistic and it's uh so a lot of it it's very like cruel i guess and how does that i mean what's it like to be on the receiving end of that well you feel like like a butterfly pinched to a board or like a vivid section in a way it's it's very it um it hurts it does and like and a lot you know i think of myself as a very thick-skinned person like i'm a person who's been arguing on the internet for four four plus years professionally i am acquainted with negative comments and negative feedback but i feel like this style of thing in particular has really hurt my self-image and it has kind of caused me to become like preoccupied with my appearance in a way that i think if i were not online i never would have cared this much and in a way that i feel it sometimes is pathological what what kind of preoccupations well i i feel um i feel like i have to be very prepared to go on camera i i when i look at myself and the um you know i'll glance over here and look at my um the my own monitor basically and i'm just sort of analyzing it i imagine the things that people are going to say about me and i guess you sort of internalize this very negative way of looking at you and the worst part is then you you begin just applying it to yourself and maybe we're still applying it to other trans people what does that mean applying it to yourself well you sort of look at yourself with the owner you're the same judgmental mean kind of gaze other people look at you so so i i find myself in if this is too personal please let me know natalie but i find myself like wanting to know the actual thoughts that go through your head um that when when you see like when and i would imagine that that actually your criticalness of your appearance fluctuates personally i would say i would hypothesize and i'm curious about you know when it's more active what are the actual thoughts that you have about yourself like what thoughts kind of thoughts go through your mind well i will i will sort of i mean if i'm filming a video for example i'll be looking over in the monitor and i'll see like you i look like such a transsexual and i'll say well you are transsexual you idiot of course you look like one and then and i'll you know i'll listen to according to my voice and be like oh god like that does not sound good and you know it sounds like a fake voice it sounds like i'm trying too hard or i will um like i can't watch like my old videos i can't watch videos from two years ago where i was sort of like not as good at this as i am now and those are just horribly painful and when you say horribly painful so i i'm i'm going to share something with you well let me just start off with this so i i'm noticing there's actually two things one is your reaction and the second is your reaction to your reaction and i think a lot of toxicity that people struggle with in terms of the way they view themselves actually comes from that second part right one is like so just to kind of repeat back to you and this is why i'm asking so i want to try to illustrate this point for other people too that you look at yourself and you say oh i look like such a transsexual and then sometimes people you know clip what i say so you know you you you say to yourself oh i look like such a transsexual and then actually i think that's actually okay it to me but i think the really damaging thing that we do to ourselves is we um we say of course you do you're a [ __ ] transsexual right yes and and so like the funny thing is that you can respond to that initial observation in two ways which is like yeah this is just you know i'm i'm never gonna look like a perfect woman because you know somewhere in there there's a y chromosome and that's okay right like i can learn to be like i can be accepting that i'm not gonna look a particular way or whatever but but i think when we really get into those dark places it's like you can make an observation which is fair right and then like but then it's like the thing that we tell ourselves after the observation that's really damaging and what i find is that people try to fix that first thought which is they like try to convince themselves that when i look in the mirror you know i don't want to look like whereas like i think that's actually missing a point which is that it's it's okay to look like that like yeah you know no i agree that like i think that something i sort of i think is an area i've begun to approve and prove a little bit recently is is to say like oh yes i like a transsexual well good being transsexual is good and it's fine it's like you're allowed to be a trans woman like you're allowed to it's allowed it's it's an okay thing to be and if you look like one okay you are one and that's not bad like i think that's like the more the more healthy response yeah and sometimes sometimes i'm like feeling that sometimes i'm able to get to that point of confidence or i'm like well yeah and like that's fine and like that's not something to be ashamed of um and then sometimes i slide back into like the negativity about it yeah yeah so so in a weird way you say and that's fine that's not something to be ashamed of i think like there's even one other layer of compassion here which is that if you're ashamed of it it's okay to be ashamed of it yeah accepting the shame and like yep i guess not blaming myself for it yeah absolutely right so like like it's okay to be ashamed about your appearance like it's almost like saying like okay i get where you're coming from cool man like don't beat yourself up about it um and i use man as a gender-neutral term which i knew i know is going to get me in trouble at some point and i i try to catch myself but it doesn't bother me um so can you can you tell me natalie and and once again if we you know touch how are we doing so far am i asking you questions that feel hurtful or personal no no this is good okay this is i i think it's actually really helpful because i i like hearing your actual thoughts because i think that's something that we all do whether you're trans or cis or whatever we all judge ourselves and then oftentimes beat ourselves up for our own judgment and the wildest one i heard recently which is so common it just really hurts me sometimes to hear that when people make progress instead of being happy about it they beat themselves up for not making progress sooner yeah it's one of the strangest phenomenon but like instead of like moving forward in life as you start to move forward you start beating yourself up more and you kind of say like oh why didn't i do this when i was 20 or it's really strange anyway oh it's well that's definitely how i feel about transitioning like there's a i think this is very common there's a lot of regret for like why didn't i do this earlier like it would have been easier when i was earlier i would have missed out on less time and like it's uh you know i i really started taking hormones when i was 28 so that's on the later side um you know and i feel like oh it would be if i'd done this when i was 19 this would have been so much easier had a better result like i would have wasted less time in this like gender limbo that i spent a lot of my 20s in but i don't know it is like it's it's just what i had to do it's just what i had to go through to realize this to get to where i am so uh i try not to like to dwell on the regret too much and like it could be worse like it you know i i did get it i got it in my 20s and like you know things have gone pretty well for me considering it's not not necessarily something to complain about but it is often you know it's a kind of background regret yeah why not complain about it well i don't know maybe it's fine to complain about it okay sometimes it also accompanies it as kind of i think i think among trans people envy is so common like it's it's one of the things i feel makes my community of trans people sort of difficult for me to be around is that i feel like there's you know we're all sort of under the same pressures and so there's this like like girls who look amazing and who kind of pass easily as women and and just you know are kind of thriving in that way are they often intensely resented by people who haven't made that and the other side of this is that often times like the people who are you know trans women who are super possible who are pretty zoo or whatever like they they can be very contemptuous of people who aren't and i find myself often like in both of those mindsets at various times um where you know sometimes i i will look at the other the trans women and particularly on youtube who thrive and a lot of these people are people who transitioned it you know 16 17 18 another 22 and they're gorgeous and they're perfect and i'm just like oh god like why am i even allowed to be on camera around these people um and then other times like you know i think i will kind of was a terrible part of psychology human psychology where the sort of abusive things that are said about you there's a sick pleasure and reiterating those things that someone else and i like um i'm sorry to say that i'm not a buff at least in my head doing that to other trans women yeah i think sometimes sometimes we forget that hatred is born of hurt in my overwhelming experience yes and and you know not not that this is a conversation about themselves but i think that's just another example of a community where most of these people that i talk to it's usually like there's some hurtful experience that happens to them and then they start to hate the thing that hurt them which unfortunately is part of being human um yeah and and what what do you i mean what is it so it sounds like you're aware that you experience envy and you sort of also have some mean thoughts what's that like to like see someone who's like 16 and has transitioned and and i'm imagining a miss the boat sort of kind of feelings that can it's a very mystical feeling like it's there's this there's this this intense like regret and longing and envy to have gotten what i miss you know what i mean i think that there's definitely an element of that um and i uh you know i try not to dwell on it because i know it's it's totally unproductive i can't go back in time like you know it is much better to look forward and be grateful for what i had you have and accept it but it is also you know it's hard to entirely put it out of your mind yeah so oddly enough um natalie i'd i'd play devil's advocate there for a second and i think part of the reason that those feelings linger is because you may not be dwelling on them enough right so like like i think that this is a really challenging tight rope to walk but the balance between emotional processing and like wallowing in regret whereas yeah you know i i hear this thing a lot and it sounds really positive and i think generally speaking it is but it's not true peace right so if you say like oh like you look at that person and you have thoughts of like you know envy and you have thoughts of regret and then you kind of say well i should be grateful because at least i did it in my 20s and yeah i'm lucky enough to have done xyz and maybe i don't live in you know a country that's less accepting of trans people and and so what happens is you take that negativity and you like like push it down with positivity yeah yeah absolutely and that that's adaptive but i think what i've seen is that like then the negativity keeps cropping up right and and ultimately what you want to do is is actually like accept that you know mourn right as opposed to regret and or even just accept that regret and accept that this is your i i'm going to toss out a word karma or karma like this is just your path in your life and it's not going to be perfect um but it got to be careful because i think a lot of times we try to squash negativity with positivity especially if we're like you know pretty um decent human beings for lack of a better term i've heard only i've heard this term like toxic positivity thrown around to describe this like sort of refusal to engage with the negative to the point where it becomes like almost damaging and or damaging yeah i was gonna say not almost no let's see it becomes damaging and yeah i do think that especially like because i have a i i'm very conscious of the fact that like i can in the grand scheme of things like i am lucky and privileged beyond most trans people and there's a scent with that there's a sense of like i have no entitlement to this petty regretful like moping you know because i'm so lucky to have what i have but it is true that it it does that does not are you that sounds to me like toxic positivity yeah okay maybe so cause because i i think let me let me like if i can just share something with you natalie like so yeah i think this is a really common problem i mean i think it's a problem people disagree with me so i i think that like no amount of privilege or luck it excuses suffering right like so like like would then i think he was right about this sort of said that like human beings suffer it's like part of what we do and no matter how much you have we suffer and somewhere along the way like we started blaming people who were privileged for suffering and i'm not saying that like people who are privileged shouldn't appreciate it right so this is really tricky because people sort of say like if i express suffering and i have some kind of privilege that i'm being ungrateful or you know you you tell yourself that that like i'm feel i'm entitled but i think you're allowed to suffer and i think if you have privilege you should use that privilege for the betterment of the world but your individual suffering like no amount of privilege and we can see this because you know you can see a lot of people who are very successful and have a lot of money and things like that who are clearly like distraught and bent out of shape and things like that celebrities and and you know yeah political candidates figures they're told there is this sense that like once you make it to a certain level like well you've lost your right to complain like or or you cannot possibly be suffering unless there's something sort of wrong with you right like if you're if you if you have money and you have success and you're not happy well like you're ungrateful you're spoiled you're not aware of your privilege and if you just be aware of how lucky you are then you would be happy um but yeah i found that not to be the case at all i mean the last year like this has been one of the hardest years of my life to be honest and it's also uh oh well a lot of things um but but one but certainly not a lack of like you know career success like i'm i mean this is i'm at the peak of this i've never you know i'm i'm doing financially very well like i'm doing the views thank you the views are just pouring in like i can count on a million views per video which is like it's wild it's like it's a lot of views but most people are on this website on this platform are lying to get that money and it's like i don't think i ever would have believed four years ago that having what i have now wouldn't have made me happier it would just be unimaginable to think that oh having all these things i wanted if getting them wouldn't really make me happier but it doesn't and it's like it's it's hard to like i don't know if i can convince anyone of that i feel like it's something you almost deceive for yourself um because i know it's not like no one ever told me it's like it's almost like platitudinous that like money doesn't buy happiness like we all say these things but then when you're when you you don't really believe them until you live them yeah that's like that's kind of where i'm at so so um so many different places to go so i'm going to give you three options that i'd love to talk about let me know if any feel okay to you one is i'm a little bit curious about um what you think and feel when you watch older videos of yourself the reason i feel like that's important is because i i hope natalie that you can actually just be at peace with where you are and i think the way to really get there is by confronting you know what you've stuffed down about the way that you look at yourself or the way that you think about yourself that's one second thing um which maybe is a little bit more philosophical is to think a little bit about you know where does happiness come from right so we do have these plat you know these like platitudes um is that platitude that doesn't feel like is that the right word okay um about you know money doesn't buy happiness and sort of this idea so then like where does happiness come from and what can we understand about the nature of happiness and the third thing that i find myself being curious about is you said that the last year hasn't been easy and i'm i'm curious about what's been challenging for you because it sounds like from a professional standpoint you're doing really well you've cornered what made it yeah and and so what do you what do you think any of those kind of resonate with you or that they're all pretty good i think uh yeah we'll start with um sorry what was the first one the first one was like what do you see when what do you think of what do you think or what happens in your mind when you look at older videos of yourself oh yeah so i just can't stand it like because i see someone you know at a much earlier stage of transition and like a lot of things are wrong with what i'm seeing like i'm seeing like uh you know like oh god like i didn't know how to do makeup properly it looks terrible i what am i wearing like what kind of cringy not understanding how to dress yourself as a woman thing is this like what i i hear my voice which at the time is much worse than it is now i mean when i was you know if you go way back i had like a much deeper much more masculine voice and then there's also a lot of just deeply awkward stages along the way where my voice i'm trying to i'm trying to sound more feminine because i'm more womanly i'm not succeeding you know that's my impression of it it sounds like strained and false you know and it's like there's already this success this like such like negativity around trans women being like men trying to be women or men acting like women that to like go back and see myself basically as that is very painful what hurts about it well it's a i guess it's i'm at a point where i think of myself like i don't think of myself as a man trying to be a woman i think of myself as a woman with a male path um and so to see myself like as almost this like caricature of what i don't want to be of what people like i like to think what people mistakenly think trans people are and i'm like literally seeing myself as that like it's like i just hurts because i see i sort of take the gaze that people maybe see all trans people as and i literally have seen myself that way so interesting yeah so what i'm hearing you say is that like when you look at yourself from a couple of years ago yeah you see the negative stereotype of a trans woman you are the embodiment of what people negatively you're like you're you're uh you're the embodiment of the negative representation of a trans woman yeah that's exactly what it is yeah have you ever seen this subreddit called blunder years no so it's it's it's like a great place where people post like pictures of themselves like usually during teenage years or things like that and yeah and you know i guess to play on wonder years but like the blunder years like before you got to be where you are you know when you were transitioning um you know it's interesting because when i hear you talk about yourself the the closest thing that i can think of is actually like thinking about puberty and just how awkward puberty is i think that i think it has a lot of parallels to puberty i mean sometimes people are trans you know trans world we call it like second adolescence meaning that it's like a a period where similarly your body is changing your identity is changing your social world is changing and so in a lot of ways you act like a teenager acts and you make mistakes that teenagers make but i feel like this additional layer of being undignified by an older person doing it and you know the person who should know better we think right and like that's the second part yeah just just started interrupt but like you know so like you set a standard like so like you're allowed to blunder yeah it's it's when you say that you should know better like you're not allowing yourself to go through a second puberty you know with all that entails including the awkwardness and the incredible yearbook pictures right yeah no i think this is true i think that like i think that would help me a lot more if i could reach a point of compassion of seeing this as like an awkward like sort of pseudo-adolescent period um i guess what is the obstacle to that well part of it is that most people don't transition right so there's not like a widespread cultural awareness and like relatability to like because everyone knows everyone can relate to looking back at your like 16 year old yearbook and being like oh god right because i think most people kind of do but but it's much harder to relate to like i don't know looking back at you at age 28 in your early transition stage making all these terrible faux pas and like and just like not having it together yeah so i can see what you're saying about you know not having it relate to the common experience um but in my experience and there's a butt there right so natalie that i i think that relating to a common mis experience is a common mistake about like growth because i think actually the more you look at your own growth it sounds to me like you've grown immensely and i think most of the growth that you've gone through has nothing to do with the common experience in fact it has been in spite of and separate from the common experience which is your point exactly yeah but what i'm saying is that if you can grow so much without sharing this like you know a common experience with other people that common experience is not a necessity for growth and in my experience it's actually like personal introspection that is the real answer right like i can procrastinate and the rest of the world can procrastinate and i can feel validated and connected to other people because we all procrastinate but ultimately my journey against procrastination is one that i have to walk irrespective of what everyone else is doing and so you know what i'm hearing is like i i just think that you've really got to think about why you judge yourself so harshly right and where does that come from when did that start well i think it's a product of being judged harshly by other people like especially during those times when like like i said people are people who don't pull in punches they're very mean like online and like when you put yourself out there especially on video like there's not a lot of restraint that people have in terms of saying what they think about you and so i feel like it's these series of experiences of like humiliation i guess and we're shaming yeah where do you remember any experiences of like pretty strong humiliation or shame like even before the age of 18 like even before you started to dabble in this kind of stuff um well i yeah i can um i mean i can remember like i yeah i was i was when i was you know early teenage years i had like you know a girlfriend for whatever that meant at the time you know for two years and sorry not to for two months um and like i remember like one of her reasons like for breaking up with me was this sense of like why can't you be normal like why why are you wearing your hair like that why you just advised that you're framing little like to see you know like and and so there was a sense of shame about that there was a period where like i did try to be like more like a normal man um i think that when i was when i was looking around in my early twenties especially i was like i was giving it a real try um so i think all i think that like the first part of the shame was the shame about being like i mean at the time like you know a a male identified person or male 1 i'm just functioning as a man in society but with this like sense of that it was wrong for me and is longing to do something else but a thing that like you're very strongly discouraged from doing as a man right so i i think that like there's a kind of identity fracture at some point in here because now obviously i don't apply the standards of manhood to myself but it was a time when i actually did and i felt that you know so there was this kind of shame around that um and then when i transitioned you know that involved overcoming that shame to to to sort of put myself out there as like no i'm actually a different person than you think i am and like it's just it's a shameful thing that is not except socially acceptable but like here here it is um so there was like this moment i guess of triumph them about of having overcome a kind of shame but i feel that it was replaced in a way with an almost a whole new world of shame where it's like you're you know you go from shame from not being a good enough man to not being a good enough woman as people start judging you by different standards yeah so so natalie this may be you know a touch academic and and you know i'd say that if you're interested i don't know if you you see a therapist or you know have anyone that you can kind of confide or work through things but if you don't i think this is a great kind of thing to work through with someone but um and maybe you already have but i think that you got to be really careful there so my understanding of of the mind comes primarily from like yogic theory and like eastern conceptions of mind and i think that essentially what happens is you've got like this ball of shame which just changed clothing and the tricky thing there and i think this is why things don't get better is because so it totally makes sense that people are toxic towards you on the internet like that's going to leave a mark and that's going to change the way that you talk to yourself completely agree actually after hearing your story i think that there is the the real red herring here is that you did triumph but that there was a piece of it that was left over and like changed clothing and then started to be like but that toxicity actually lingered and i suspect that it actually started way before your transition i think i think it started with the way that you started to talk to yourself as these trans feelings like so your lack of acceptance for who you are doesn't come from youtube i mean i know that youtube comments can be really impactful for people but i think you've been carrying that with you for a long time now i think you're right about that i i think that you know i'm thinking back so i transitioned in 2017 that's when i started medically transitioning but like there was an earlier period where i considered it back in it was in 2014 and that you know i was living in chicago at the time i was kind of experimenting with dressing more androgynously i would go out with nail polish and like you know makeup on and i i was i was sort of moving this direction that that is like sort of difficult of someone who's like moving towards the gender transition but i can remember having experiences of like seeing other trans women who looked like me like out in public like on the subway and having this strong reaction of like you know oh god no i can't be that i do not want to be that i can't look like that this is not acceptable and then like that shame causing me to like nail polish gone make up god get it together like we can't i can't be that you know which is like a really ugly thing to think about someone else right a horrible thing to think about another trans woman but it was not based it was it was it was it was sort of disgust with myself in another person in a way absolutely it was yeah it was seeing like oh god people are going to see me the way they see her and like i can't i can't handle that so i know this sounds bizarre natalie but i i jotted down i've been taking very few notes but one of the things that i jotted down is i wrote down the word someone and it's so interesting because when i actually asked you what do you think when you look at videos of yourself from a couple of years ago it's the first time i heard you use the third person talking about yourself yeah it's it's it's like a tiny thing and then you switched into first person but like it was a strange way because like it's almost like you know the thoughts that you the thoughts that come up when you look at old videos from yourself sound to me exactly like the thoughts that came up when you saw someone who was transitioning absolutely it's absolutely bad it's like it's like i'm seeing like this shameful thing i see in others i see in myself so it's almost like i don't know which came first was it me being sort of judgmental and transphobic towards other people or was it being judgmental and transferred towards myself i don't know so natalie this is a i'm gonna take a shot in the dark it's not transphobia towards other people it's actually envy i think at the root of this is your envy for the ugly person how so because i think that like you saw those people and you saw them doing something that you thought was ugly and i think deep down you wanted to do it too sure yeah and and so i think there's more there than transphobia there's more there than revulsion there's i think as you mentioned right like like i think there's envy wrapped up in that that like i don't have the courage to be the ugly person that maybe i should be i don't have the courage to be ugly yeah i'm afraid i no it is it is that it's like i it is a kind of i guess cowardice like i can't especially at the time like it was like i cannot handle the life this person is living yep right so so i think that self-judgment doesn't come i mean so i think you know if you look at the internet the internet is going to call you many things natalie but coward is not going to be one of them yeah maybe not right so that sense of cowardice doesn't come from the outside it comes from you it comes from your own judgment about not doing this thing and that's like regret is rolled into that too yeah right like what do you regret that you weren't what you weren't courageous you didn't do it earlier you do it earlier yeah right and then you judge yourself for like not being courageous whereas like i mean you know i don't mean this to be demeaning but i think you were like you like literally went through like a second puberty right you went through a coming of age you went through i mean you're a late bloomer and i think this is something that uh i think a lot of our community like on twitch and gamers and whatnot like people who watch youtube like we hold ourselves to a certain standard of time like life is a race and then we're falling behind and it's very biased towards like very young people because that's who's represented on these platforms yeah and and we kind of look at all these people and and we like look at ourselves and we say like oh i'm behind and it's like i i don't know how to stress this to you natalie but because i think you understand this stuff i think the interesting thing about think about the way the mind works is that you activate your mind activates certain programming which is not the natalie that i'm talking to it's like a natalie from a couple of years ago like these feelings are old they're not like current feelings it's kind of weird but you know it's like it's just like like opening up an old picture of yourself like looking at an old picture like that picture retains the age at which it was taken even though you can grow and change you have these things in your mind that are like relics of your past and when those things activate you know i think there's a lot of envy towards people who are more courageous i think there's a lot of lack of acceptance towards yourself which we kind of have been talking about but i think what you've really got to think about or what i would you know encourage you to read about or think about is just to really recognize that like you were supposed to be quote unquote don't even steer clear of that right that was just that's just what happens in puberty like people start getting acne and their voice cracks and like it's just an awkward time that's part of your journey and i think what keeps you from being happy today and now we can maybe transition to happiness but is that like ultimately you know success and stuff is fantastic i i don't think that that doesn't contribute to your happiness it's just that you're carrying these things from the past and as long as you you know view yourself as a coward as long as you um because you're very self-aware incredibly insightful incredibly insightful very aware of your internal process you're really gifted in that way and and um i i i mean i think you have to be to transition right like you've got to really dig in there and see like oh wow this gender is not what i feel like as a person um but i think until you sort of work on that stuff i i think happiness is gonna be around the corner unfortunately which doesn't mean that you can't enjoy things and you can't be happy but that old hurt you're going to carry with you yeah i think well i guess that's the thought i've had i thought before that like if i could be if i could find like some kind of love for that person that i'm like so urgently feel feeling willing to distance myself from um then i think it would i think i would have a more peaceful mind um because it is kind of a burden to feel i mean especially because like as a youtuber like like i'm never gonna to me it feels like a ball and chain like my own path feels like a ball and chain that i'm dragging around because i made that what i think is a ridiculous decision to transition with the camera on and it's like oh why did i do that why would i put myself in this position now where i'm sort of because online it's like time it's it's like frozen it's frozen yes it's like it's like like people perceive you as this like four dimensional like like uh you know ever present person or the past is just as immediate as the present because they can just you know you can watch my video from three years ago and there it is right on your screen you're gonna hear my voice you see my face it's like that person is there still um so so yeah natalie i have a pseudo-meditative exercise for you which i think could be challenging and painful but i think could help you a lot you want to give it a go sure okay so this is what i'm going to ask you to do okay i'm going to walk you through it and then you're allowed to say hey i actually don't want to do that okay okay so so here's so when you look at pictures of yourself or videos of yourself you know you react a particular way totally fine you know you think certain things about yourself and you sort of externalize them like you sort of turn it but you think certain things about yourself i can't believe i was like that whatever so that's a very selfish way of thinking right because when you look at yourself you're thinking like oh i'm so dumb by by selfish maybe self-centered or self-focused is a better way to think about it all of your thoughts are about you and that can be hard to develop compassion when you're just kind of thinking about you so what i like to try to do i've never really done this before but hopefully it'll work maybe it'll help maybe it'll be a complete train wreck is i want you to when as you watch that video what i want you to do is first of all notice those things right and notice that those are thoughts about yourself or maybe someone else is a little bit clear but then i want you to ask yourself one question is you watch that person and that is or maybe you can just tell us not so much about what that person is doing right or wrong but what does that person need right what is that were you calling yourself natalie back then yeah yeah right so like think about like what did that person like need more than anything else in the world like what is that person's experience of life in that moment you know and really try to like put yourself back in those shoes instead of judging it try to be empathetic and just like what like as you look at that that image of yourself and you guys can do this to anyone who's watching right if you regret something or you judge yourself to like go back and and try to think about you know if you could go back in time and actually have a conversation with that person from three years ago what would you say to them and if the hypothetical is enough we can talk about it otherwise i would encourage you to actually pull up an image of yourself and look at it and watch what happens well i think like on the top of my head without even looking i mean i i feel that what i just needed was like i just needed time like i needed time to make those mistakes and time to like work on the things that needed to be worked on worked on and like you know i i know it's gonna things are gonna be okay now but it's like and at the time i just needed the i just needed the experience to to learn how to how to sort of become a more comfortable uh self that's not this kind of like person who's sort of straining to be what i couldn't yet be right so so like if i were to tell you natalie i'm gonna try to pretend to be you from three years ago and i'm gonna say i'm trying this stuff out and i feel really really dumb about myself because when i look at myself in the mirror i'm ugly yeah i don't know who i am but i know it's not this what would you say uh well i'd say look like first of all like you're not that ugly like it's really not worth worrying about it but like also more to the point like you know i understand that you're not happy with who you are and you're trying to be someone else but like the way this works is you have to you can't try to become someone else you have to learn how to become you have to learn how to express yourself and i know sometimes it feels like okay but i'm transitioning so shouldn't i be trying to get away from you know this thing that i used to be that i don't want to be and it's like in a sense that's true but also i think that you know doing it by forcing it is sort of i don't know uh it's making things worse than it would be if you had a more relaxed attitude towards this and like weren't trying to sort of rush it so much because in some ways i thought yeah but if i had started earlier like i went through like a male puberty yeah and so because of the testosterone like my jaw is bigger now i've developed all these secondary characteristics like i i mean you're telling me that i shouldn't force it but like i'm telling you that i should have forced it a long time ago that's so well because if i started this process earlier like i wouldn't be in this situation i wouldn't be awkward now yeah well that's also true that i you know if i had if i had done this you know earlier then i could have sort of gotten myself together faster and i wouldn't have such a long period of the past that i feel is like an alienated from so great so i don't know if you noticed but that's exactly what you should do so i think we just flipped i think we hit the barrier i don't know if twitch chat is going to understand this is just all in my head so like i think you did a fantastic job of talking to yourself the message that you sent to yourself is exactly what you should be thinking and and yeah right like i just go back and like watch this later but like that's not what you say to yourself but it's exactly what you need need to hear and it's exactly how you need to talk to yourself which is not dismissing the negativity it's just saying hey this takes time and you're gonna have to figure it out and it's gonna be a bumpy ride yeah right that's what you told yourself but those aren't the thoughts that you actually have when you look at a picture but now what i want you to do is the next time you look at a picture of yourself from a couple years ago see those two conflicts right just like your philosophy degree where you take the other side and you try to sit in it now you've got both sides of the argument and just swim in those waters i don't know how else to put it to you now just swim in that space i have faith that given your degree of self-understanding given your analytical capability and given your earnestness for lack of a better term if you just give your mind and your brain the opportunity to swim around in those thoughts and feelings you're gonna come out fine and then what happened is i asked you about the regret and then you had trouble talking to yourself in the right way right so like then you started like going back to your standard thought pattern i don't know if that makes sense but i've never heard you talk about the old you in the way that you did during this exercise but i think we hit the border of kind of where your exploration is and like where your compassion is and where your empathy is does that make sense to y'all like i don't know but anyway does that make sense to you i think well i think in a sense yeah because it's like the more compassionate i guess i guess response is like i was doing my best at the time now maybe that's not good enough at my standard now but it's like stop time so so now you're intellectualizing that's not what you were doing earlier right now you can because you're [ __ ] smart natalie so you can come up with logically what the right answer is but logically the right answer is not actually empathy or compassion yeah the way that you were talking to yourself was not a logical conclusion about what this person needs to hear it's an empathic connection it's like a [ __ ] i know what it's like to be there and and friend you just need time right it's not the it's absolutely the right answer but it's coming from once again like you know it's not coming from the outside it's coming from within and so i don't care about what compassionately what you should say to yourself because you can't say that to yourself yet but you i think you clearly i mean at least to me you've made progress today i don't know if that makes sense but i'm sorry i think no i think it's i mean honestly like i think a lot of this has been like more helpful than a lot of actual therapy i've been to like i think that like like i mean i think you're doing good but i think that um uh like we've zeroed in pretty quickly on some things that are like the major problems um i will say like i guess that another i guess maybe something that holds me back somewhat is like because of the public nature of this even if i feel that even if i can sort of form a kind of compassion for that past self i sort of feel the way that i was judged at the time and there's this fear that i'm going to be continuously judged now for the way i was then because of this this like 4d like you know time eternity that we have but natalie okay so now i'm going to talk logically and i'm going to express a little bit of frustration but i'm not frustrated at you i'm frustrated with the part of you that does this to yourself so the reason that you're afraid that the rest of the world will judge you that way is because you judge yourself that way uh well i do but also other people too yeah absolutely right but like the thing is is that like i don't know how else to say this but if it's if you're on the same team with the toxicity of the internet you're gonna [ __ ] lose yeah well you need to be on your team they can say whatever the [ __ ] they want to yeah but the cool thing is just like if natalie three years ago had you as a sister supporting her she would be in a completely different place and i can tell you that your ability to stand against the toxicity of the internet is going to be transformed if you can stand with yourself yeah you're damn right you're right because you're [ __ ] smart and that's half your problem that they will continue to hate on the question is do you want to join them well that is the problem isn't it because like because i feel that so many times i have essentially joined in yes with those people like i take their voice into my own head and it becomes like part of me and it becomes my own perspective yeah so i think you've got to be careful a little bit about where you're giving credit you said you take their voice into your own head which you do but you had that voice before they did that's true yeah right so be careful yeah and so if we're thinking about your agency and empowering you it starts with the acceptance that this voice is not sure they reinforced that they fanned the flames they threw fertilizer on it like call it whatever you want to i'm not saying that that's positive but i think you have way more power up in the way that you look at yourself than the internet does yeah well that's that should be true uh i mean i i guess it is technically true because you know then there's a limit to how powerful the internet can be in effect affecting me but uh yeah it's like as a question is like how where i'm gonna find that compassion um because i i sort of had an awareness for a long time that like this is this this is something that's missing it's it's something that i feel like if i could if i could find this if i could create this i would be much stronger and i would have a lot more fun online frankly yeah because yeah all this all this awfulness commentary dummy i mean it could be sort of just brushed off as the sort of amusing ridiculous nonsense that it is um the like the weird hate obsession that other people have is that that is simply not my problem right um it's a question of like i just can't seem to get to the point where i genuinely don't care and when where there's not still this part of me that's on their side yep so so well said okay so like here's your quarter unquote answer so the first thing is that you did it today i'm pretty sure i heard compassion come out of you that was not there before and i think it's the way that and so i'd say just go back and like evoke those feelings and then just ask yourself pretend that you're oh you're your own older sister yeah right and like how would you talk to your how would you talk to that person who's stuck in time now you're sort of lucky because like that person is still preserved right so you can like actually kind of go back in time and like talk to them i think that literally that exercise towards yourself so like i'd say like another thing you can do is imagine that time that you had you know nail polish on and like you went and you saw someone on the subway who was like one of these ugly transsexuals yeah and and just like you know just just walk yourself through and like listen to the way that you thought about your like you you thought about that person try to explore that feeling and then like talk to yourself now right and and that gets more complicated that's the barrier by the way we hit that barrier and you can see it if you go once again go back and watch the vod there's there was a new thinking and then i saw the old thinking kind of crop up yeah and so you just gotta i mean you gotta work at it right so i'd say like just just learn how to talk to yourself so you're gonna you're gonna figure out you know level one you can talk to yourself from three years ago level two maybe five years ago you just have to practice the second thing oh [ __ ] something else oh yeah the second thing is that i think just in general the more that you can accept that you were a toxic [ __ ] and the more that you can accept that just like all the other toxic [ __ ] on the internet your toxicity actually comes from hurt it doesn't come from you being a bad person and the more because right now what happens you judge yourself for being the [ __ ] right you're like oh i used to be bad like that and i try not to and stuff like that what i want you to do is is follow that pull on that thread back to its source hurt and once you find that source hurt then you can express compassion towards it i think the reason you can't be compassionate towards yourself is because i don't think you've tracked back to the actual wound so follow the thread of hatred back to the wound just like incels right like go back to that rejection and like like then then you can be compassionate if you know like what hurts yeah i think um you don't know how to kiss the boo-boo because you don't know where the boo-boo is yeah i think it's hard to place exactly like where it starts it's more of a damn right it is yes yeah like a couple of things come to mind but i don't know like i don't know what the origin is exactly yeah so but natalie that's what you've got to explore right and this is the thing it doesn't have a origin so if you get a chance to go back and watch if i have a video about some scars you should just go back and watch that but the thing is each of these so that hurt it's that's actually the beautiful answer that makes me more optimistic so the way so i think what's what's going on this is some scar so some scar is a sanskrit word that means a ball of undigested emotion or an emotional trauma and essentially what happens is that we carry around this ball of undigested emotion with us and every experience that we have that sort of relates to it grows the size of that emotional trauma and so when you're saying i don't know where it starts the way that you fix it is by going through each of those the more things that you can think of conversely actually the easier it's going to be to heal because each of those needs to be processed sort of with me i'm going to give you an example in a second yeah yeah so if if we think about like let's say i have a phobia of dogs right like that phobia of dog starts with one dog biting me and then what happens if i get bitten again what happens to my phobia is it confirmed confirmed right yeah and then if i get bitten the third time fourth time fifth time the more experiences i can think of of dogs biting me the greater the emotional trauma is and so interestingly if you can think of a handful of things then you need to go back and talk through each of those right we think like okay that first time that dog bit you it actually didn't bite you the second time this happened the third time this happened and you go back and you process each of those and then natalie you'll feel it you'll do it it's actually i i can't i feel really optimistic for you because if you can already think of a bunch of things that's because each of those things relates to that some scar right why does your mind think of like like if i say the word sushi and your mind thinks about six different kinds of sushi that's because it's all related to that core concept so i'd say if you've done therapy you know go through each of those experiences and really think about what hurt about this where does my anger come from and track them back and then you'll find this ball of like amorphous relatively undigested emotion that sprouts and pokes through the ground in several places but just because you see a lot of different shoots doesn't make your life harder it actually makes your life easier yeah well i i can say yeah i guess you think you could just describe to me like what it would look like to process like an individual one of these incidents sure so give me an example what's one of the things that you thought about um well okay this is like not necessarily one of the earliest but i guess sometime was the first six months or seven months of my transition i can recall like basically like going into a restaurant and like trying to get a table and having them just like straight up laugh at me and be like lol like this like like this is like a crazy cross-dresser like i forgot exactly what they said but it but it was um you know so there's that or they think there's like the time well hold on a second okay sorry keep going keep going sorry like another time i was walking down uh the street and like early on and like some got like it was a guy who was following me and sorry this is like a little bit explicit but he just came up right behind me and said would you mind if i sucked your dick like what is the point of that except to make him make it to he wants me to know that he knows that i'm trans and also he wants me to feel degraded about it okay i don't know why he said that it's a weird thing to say but i completely agree but but like there's a couple experiences like like a bunch of experiences like that where it's like well people like there's sort of people they want me to know that they know that i'm trans they don't want me to get away with thinking that that people see me as a woman and they also like want me to feel bad about it and they succeed at that okay can i think for a second yeah yeah so if people are wondering that's the sump scar so it's this this whole okay so let's just look at something logically for a second okay and i'm i'm gonna try to unpack something but like it's okay you don't have to i'm gonna point out logical inconsistencies i don't want you to defend them because i think that's a sign that we're moving in the right direction so the guy who walks up to you and says do you want me to suck your dick and then you say he wants me to feel dot dot dot dot dot and then like literally is you hypothesized two reasons why he did that and then and then literally in the next sentence you're like i have no idea why someone would say that yeah well i just think it's a weird way of getting those things across well but so that's the thing is i don't know where you get the idea of what he was trying to get across so you may have some insight that i don't have and i'm sure you do right because you've been on the receiving end of a lot of these interactions but i think it when you say they don't want me to get away with it i think that's like natalie do you think you're getting away with it get away with what you tell me what were you referring to well i guess nice dodge but what i feel is that they're trying to do is that they're kind of trying to humiliate me by making sure i know that they are clocking me as like a transgender person you know what i mean like hey like no one sees you you know i don't see you as a woman like just so you know do you see yourself as a woman natalie uh well i kind of go back and forth kind of um there it is yeah right so like i don't think i mean i could be wrong right so you've dealt with more toxicity towards transgender people than i have you know sucks for you and so you probably have a better understanding of what's in their head than i do but i'm gonna go out on limb and say you're really frankly could be projecting a lot of their motivations because when i ask you because like here's here's the crazy thing right that's the [ __ ] sub scar he said they don't want me to get away with it and i ask you natalie are you a woman and the way i'm going to interpret your answer is that i really want to be but i'm not sure that i'm getting away with it yeah i think that well so i i see what you're saying and that i do think that like if i was like 100 confident i know who i am like i know that i'm a woman like nothing anyone else thinks can change that then this would not bother me to the extent that it does right precisely it's the fact that it's picking at what is already an insecurity exam right that's the sum scar so that's why when a random person who you know who knows what the [ __ ] he was thinking because it sounds like a real perv but when when you can take and granted you can assume some things about you know what they're thinking but like i think generally speaking like that behavior is so far outside the norm that i would conclude that you can't actual like your capacity to imagine what that person is thinking is actually quite low maybe could be different for you but but i think what happens is ambiguous ambiguous interactions small interactions short interactions like you walking in and they're them laughing like do you even know that they were laughing at you i know it sounds like a crazy question well sometimes you're not really sure but sometimes but sometimes sometimes like it's they're looking at you in a way that it's like it seems like that they could be laughing at you for some other reason but but like what else would it be exactly right so so i i think so that's the thing is i once again natalie i'm hopeful because you're insightful this is your insecure it's not coming from other people so then the question that now we have to go to the root of it is like like where when did you start to think that you wouldn't get away with it um well i guess what do we mean by getting away with it as in like your language yeah so okay i i guess part of what i'm talking about here is like it's like passing as a woman like having other people see me and then just pick up okay that's a woman you know uh i guess to me well especially the the perfect example like because it's because like sometimes people apart from me just the way that they perform on any woman you know and that doesn't bother me because it's like because it's like well yeah because you're passing right that's what they do but like they do that's all to most of them they're to a lot of women and so it's like okay it's not the greatest thing but it also doesn't really needle me in the same way but it was the way this guy did it specifically as a reference to the fact that i'm trans yeah you know what i mean and so it's part of it i guess in a way like part of the pain is like it's regardless of the fact that regardless of of of what he was trying to do what he said is still revealing that like he got me you know yeah so yeah but so i i think that he can only get you if you don't if you're hiding something yeah right yeah it's true that like it and i think this is an area where i've made some progress like you've made a lot of progress you're allowed i'm allowed to be a trans woman and part of that is i'm allowed to look like a trans woman absolutely um and like but for a while that seemed like so unacceptable it was like no like if i look like a trans woman like this is failure like this is like equivalent to looking like ugly and unlovable blah blah blah blah blah like and so it became this whole painful thing yeah yeah but i mean that's what that's it natalie yeah so like it's like going back in time and like examining those thoughts the thoughts of i feel like a failure right so and i think i think you're right you've come a long way but the problem is that like even though you've learned how to make a really delicious dinner you still have you haven't taken out the trash from the failed attempts before right right and so i think that there's still a lot there about like what you need to accept yourself as and i you know maybe i'm rubbing people the wrong way here but like i think you've got to accept yourself as who you are which is a trans woman which like i mean maybe this is offensive and please let me know if it is but like if you are holding yourself up to a beauty standard that involves two x chromosomes yeah that's just like a battle that's gonna be hard to win and even if you do win it someday which i hope you do and great for you you still can't really it's like just not fair to beat yourself up for like losing all of the attempts until you know someone injects you with a virus that replaces your y chromosome with an x chromosome or something like that and then you're like you know like like i mean you are who you are right yeah and and for a long time and i think that's sort of the antidote to it but i think you still have to take out the trash which is to go back to all those times where you were hunting right you were expressing yourself at first you were hiding a woman in the man's body and you were hiding it being a man right and then your girlfriend dumped you because you weren't masculine enough right and so so like you've been hiding your entire life and i think it just goes back to like each of those experiences and talking those through right processing them and recognizing that i've been trying to hide who i am for way longer than i'm pretending to be a woman i don't mean that offensively but like i think i'm putting myself in your shoes because i think you sometimes still think that you are pretending to be a woman yeah no i i agree that with that or at least that i'm pretending to be like i'm i'm sort of i'm getting this great sense of security from the idea that people are just perceiving me as like a biological woman yeah you know what i mean like the people are not noticing any transness about me is it this great sense of comfort and like i do still have this experience where like okay so here's something that happens time to time like if i meet a new person like and they don't know what i do they don't know anything about me everything seems to be going well and then they ask like oh like what's your what was your job and i'm like i do internet media they want to know okay explicit oh my god i'm a youtuber and they say what's your channel about oh you have to tell me so i can google it right now and then like i'll tell them and then as they google my name i will just like like i can feel my face get like hot with the shame of knowing that what they're about to find out yeah so that's coming from you friend yeah it's not coming i mean as much as those toxic [ __ ] on the internet think that they have power over you like i just don't think i mean sure they can hurt you don't get me wrong but like that's the shame that is like it's the anticipatory shame of them knowing yeah right and you're right because it's security but like this is this it goes back to courage natalie yeah security is about like hiding from them something about yourself because you're afraid like why is that secure for you because you're afraid of what they'll see and how they'll react and like why is that and like that's because it goes i think that goes back to like how you used to react yeah what you see in them is like yeah and and so i think it's like it's like i mean i don't know how to say this but it's all this crap like we can't unfortunately we can't do it all today but i think these are the threads you've got to run down right like your own toxicity towards other people the way that you used to judge them because that's the way you judge yourself yes it's it's about like learning that you're going to be a trans woman for the rest of your life yes and i i don't think yeah no that's like that's something that i recently had like it's kind of because i'm you know i'm with like almost three and a half something like that years into medical and social transition and like i i'm at a point where i've sort of dispelled this illusion i guess from earlier on earlier on it there's there's almost a delusion that takes hold that's like oh i'm going to get to the end of this and i'm just going to be a cis woman but it's like no i'm not like i'm kind of so so here's here's the problem right so like i'm not an expert in political theory or sociology if i say something that's offensive i apologize here's what i see as a problem and you're welcome to think i'm wrong if you don't accept yourself as a trans woman you're placing a value on cis women over trans women oh 100 yeah right and so that's i think the basic problem is that like you are valuing something above yourself that you will never be yeah and impossible and then you're confused why despite your material success you were unhappy yeah right well yeah and and so like natalie like it comes to like accepting who you are and accepting that you know like there are a lot of parts of you that are ugly and you hate yourself and whatever but like i think you've got to go back and and just i mean that's the thing until you accept yourself for who you are right and you can still like want to be more feminine but once again it's like that has to come from you and that has to come from like forward momentum it's like you're like the person who wants to lose 50 pounds and has lost 30 pounds and you're beating yourself up because you still need to lose 20 more like it's going to be a journey yeah and i don't think at least in this life you're ever going to be a cis woman we'll see but the thing is i don't think that there's a problem with that yeah right i think it's like if you think there's a problem with that that's on you but if you think it's a problem with it that's not something that's ever gonna i mean maybe medic who knows right well i feel that it's like i feel that it's something i sort of just i mean there are trends the one who kind of say like oh i'm not even trans anymore i've had all the surgeries like like but i don't know i think that i don't quite agree with that i think that like there's no erasing who where you come from and i guess natalie do you try yeah well sure i do especially i mean like not all the time i don't try all the time and i'm like aware that online like in like come on the game is up people know that i'm trans like but but it's true that that like offline i do try to keep people from knowing okay a lot of the time and like and i guess on some level i i there's also a regret almost at the time on the internet it's like well i might have had a chance to just kind of blend in and just not have to deal with any of this if i hadn't made this so public yeah so the regret is once again about the security it's about the mask your regret is that like you let people know who you are yeah if your regret would have won you would be living a life that is inauthentic and you'd be happy and unhappy anyway that's true yeah it's hard to really but like you've got to just swim in that [ __ ] yeah well i know like for some as trans people like that like it's called on like we call it living stealth which is when you're living you're not out as trans the people around you people just think that you know if you're trans women people just think you're a woman they don't know about your trans history um so i think part of the i think because i've heard from a lot of people who live that way that it actually kind of eats away at them in its own way because they're keeping this major part of them with other people i think part of my issue is that i never have lived like stealth except in these like little isolated incidents where i'm like i'm enjoying the fact that i've just met this person and they don't seem to know yet you know um but like i i think that because i don't have that experience of living as stealth i guess i feel like i don't know i wish i had like at least more of that and maybe if i did have more of that then i would realize that it's not that great and i wouldn't care you know so natalie i you know this may be i don't even know what the statement is gonna do i didn't realize you were a trans woman when i watched your youtube video i don't know how that's going to affect you like how does that make you feel if i tell you that i love it anyway i know i'm not supposed to know and i was supposed to love it but it makes me feel really good okay so so forget about what you're supposed to do yeah like why like i'm telling you to you know so you can look at yourself and like what feels satisfied well it feels like um i guess it feels like you saw me the way i kind of want to be seen okay and now i know you're a trans woman yeah how do you feel uh i mean it's fine most people know but like but i guess it's um it does i feel ch change a little bit i feel like it must change it must change how you see me somewhat look at my face what do you see what do i think about you oh i don't know try i mean you invited me on your show sure couldn't hear me that much but i i didn't know you were trans when we invited you on our show yeah uh well i guess natalie look at my face and tell me what what i think about what do you see in my face um well i i think i think you're interested and and you care what i have to say okay good both true anything else yeah uh i mean okay you don't seem like you don't you don't seem too disgusted what do you think about that um [Music] it's nice yeah so when you say something must have changed what must have changed well i guess it comes from this fear that like if people know that i'm trans they're gonna like re-categorize me as like okay probably like i don't know some kind of abnormal deviant instead of just and we're trying to know like why why do i care so much about people think of an abnormal deviant i haven't had normal deviation like i don't i don't know i don't know yeah so much because because like it comes from you man yeah and hopefully that's not offensive i just don't know i just don't know like i don't know i want you to understand why i have this like conformist streak that comes out about this particular issue when a lot of other ways i'm not really that conformist yeah so like like here's the thing natalie you were a complicated bundle of all kinds of [ __ ] some would be good and some of it bad and i accept all of it whatever there's a part of you that's a toxic castle fine there's a part of you that's brilliant and a good teacher fine there's a part of you that's a trans woman fine there's a part of you that's just a woman without cis without trans without anything else fine but you're you yeah and like every part of you that i've seen i think is great right like you're just you and like you keep on doing you and don't worry about like you know like because when i tell you like when we explore my understanding of whether you're trans or not it like it comes from your head because you've been talking to me the whole time i've known your trans sort of the whole time right but it's like even when i share with you like so you've had a particular impression of people when we start talking about my beliefs about whether you're trans or not this whole other complex arises in your mind do you see that yeah whereas we've been talking for like two hours and like i mean i don't know if it's been there or not but i haven't noticed it until now which is like it's just weird it's a whole separate thing even it's like my preoccupation with like how you're seeing me or yes yes right and i i turned that switch on by telling you i didn't know you were trans yeah guys we've just been two humans talking about [ __ ] for the last two hours and like it's been fun for me hopefully it's been fun for you yeah and then all i have to do is i have to tell you i didn't know you were trans because i really i don't know and then as soon as that like a switch turns on in your mind and this whole complex opens up but like that's just like some weird psychological conditioning or some scar it's not anything to do with reality does that make sense yeah i i mean no it does i think i think that this this question of like whether i'm being perceived as trans or whether i'm being perceived as a woman or whatever having perceived is like i mean it's maybe not as bad as it used to be but for so there was there was years where this was just a constant preoccupation and so it's very easy to like re-enter that state of mind you're damn right it is yeah that is the some scars so each of those moments that you remember right you got to talk those through with someone and i don't know if you i don't know how much emotional processing you've done since you asked me how do i do that but i suspect a little bit so your tools are going to be like going back thinking through that trying to talk to yourself like your older sister you may evoke compassion maybe like a shortcut to find you know what you needed to tell yourself and how to practice self-compassion which i think everyone can do like one tool is just pretend that you're the older version of yourself and i mean you know just going back in time the third thing and i i kid you not natalie is just noticing is enough to transform this is the biggest like misc misunderstanding of the largely western world is that we think that doing something enacts change whereas the yogis in the east say awareness of something is sufficient to change it and so i'd say just notice these thoughts notice notice notice and when you explore why do we say explore why do we say emotionally processed we are bringing things up from your mind for you to notice and that is what emotional processing is it's kind of really bizarre but like you know if you tell someone hey you know i just lost a loved one and that person says to you hey i'm sorry that sucks is that person alive no no that thanks but like but why do you feel better they didn't do anything right all they did is acknowledge yeah they noticed your hurt and that in and of itself is sufficient to reduce it it's crazy but that's how it works so that's my recommendation to you i think that's maybe kind of part of the hope and part of the motivation for making the like the more personal videos that i do is like this this feeling that like oh if i can share if i can make up the other people see the pain that i'm in that will be some it will someone simply relieve part of it yeah so i makes sense to me but i think this goes back to something you said at the very beginning of the interview which is that you're a confession junkie yeah right and i i don't think it's about sharing with the rest of the world i think it's the reason that feels good like why does confession is because you're noticing it right like you're accepting it you're bringing it to the surface you're not hiding it you're not masking it you're not stealthing anything you're just being with it and then it gets easier which is like i think anthropologically like probably one of the reasons that if you look at like a you know how confession and things like that of all that probably has something to do with it questions well i know like um a lot of teenagers are kind of like bullies and then come to like later regret or feel the horrible about having been bullies like i've talked to a lot of people like like they look back on their teenagers and they say like oh i was awful to people but it came from this space of like of being hurt themselves and kind of i don't know preferring to like be on the side of the person doing the hurting or something for once i guess sorry i was going with this was the question you asked me huh what was the question what was the question you asked me i just said do you have any questions oh i guess um i guess i feel like the one thing i haven't mentioned related to any of this stuff is that i do feel that like in a lot of subtle ways that these problems have like been behind some of the like uglier moments in the time that i've been online yeah and i you know i don't know how wary of as you are but like a lot of the like i make a fairly controversial person within trans spaces okay because of like a lot of people are upset about some like borderline transphobic things that i've said in the past and it's i i sort of i i know that those the things that i said that that are contra i didn't say anything too horrible but like it's something that like people kind of pick up on because in a sense when they say that i'm transphobic that they're right like like i feel like if they're exactly they're exact they're exaggerating obviously they say they don't know the mean way or they're trying to vilify me but like they're they like they see the same thing that you're seeing you know and i feel that and i feel that on some level they're right that it has like come out in these ways that are sometimes ugly and i guess i just don't i guess my final thought is like i wonder if there's any way to kind of like undo some of the damage of that sure of course so so i i know it sounds like a simple answer to what sounds like a heavy question but absolutely not so i think it starts with what i'm hearing is that there's a little bully in you that sometimes is a little bit bullying towards trans people which we know because you bully the [ __ ] out of yourself all the time and and that it peaks out and then some people from the trans community blame you for it yeah which i don't think you're transphobic in the way that there's like through transphobic people but i'm not surprised that there are people who are attuned towards some of your negative attitudes that fluctuate and peak out in your content i think it's not actually fair or compassionate for them to like zero in on those moments in the larger scheme of your overall thread right i tend to be a pretty compassionate guy sometimes i can be a dick and i think it's fair for people to sniff that out and like i'd also appreciate it if they could you know look at the scope of my things and judge me for all of it that's what i want to yeah yeah so i mean but that's sort of on them and you ask can i heal from it i think absolutely and i think this goes back to what we're talking about which is that you've got to start with yourself right you've got to start with like stopping the bullying towards yourself this is the crazy thing that is you kind of alluded to is that a lot of bullies are bullies because they're hurting in some way like if you look at kids that are behavioral and like hit other kids it's oftentimes because they were abused and you kind of mentioned you've alluded to this but it's something that i call the cycle of abuse and it's like the cycle of abuse continues like we see it in like medical training where you know you get yelled at in the operating room by a surgeon because i mean it's like my second day and some guy's yelling at me because i don't know how to do surgery i'm like dude if i don't know how to do anything in this room it's [ __ ] your fault like it's not yeah you're the person who's been doing my second day bro and and so so we do that right like we learn a particular way of like interacting and then we adopt those patterns and we propagate them so if you want to make the world a better place and you want to heal the hurt that you've caused and i don't doubt that you've caused hurt and that's not because you're a bad person because we all cause hurt like you know we're new at this thing called life yeah can you fix it i mean can you fix those particular things no i maybe not but i don't think that's relevant i think you've got to start by like trying to make the world a better place that i think you can absolutely start by understanding why you bully yourself that too track that back to your hurt compassion towards that hurt will make the bullying behavior go away and once you become that person i have no doubt in my mind that you will be a force for overall met good in the world if you aren't already and that's what i think you should do in that my friend is your karma this is your journey and you've been given these challenges you've walked this path you've learned how to stumble you've learned how to fall and then you will be in a different kind of place because right now bullying yourself in the trans community is transphobic and no one is going to do it but i would venture that a lot of people are doing exactly what you do but the problem is it's so [ __ ] transphobic no one's allowed to talk about it so no one can ever help each other with it no one else can ever be compassionate towards it well that is the problem is that because on the one hand it's either other people who are like very transphobic will take your side and then the people who are hurt by what you're saying the vilify you for it so it's like the only compassion that is is had for you is well there's no compassion for you right it's either taking your side into an evil way well it's not an ethos of evil but like you know in some way in a mean way a malicious way yeah so there's like you know they're they're seeing you as this villain so natalie this is what i think you need to do you need to help yourself first and foremost and then what you need to do is shine out towards the rest of the world yeah right like once you become like pure and clean and you accept yourself who you are just let broadcast that [ __ ] out there and some people are gonna get pissed at you and some people are gonna glom on and some people are gonna twist your words but it's been my overwhelming experience that when you just try to work on yourself and you become a decent human being and you just let the rest of the world see it tends to work out pretty well yeah so start by fixing the hurt within yourself and then you can talk about being transphobic or bullying yourself or the hateful thoughts and if you use those words right if you use if you say like i used to like look at myself in the mirror and like i'm ashamed of who i see there is no doubt in my mind that like you know lots of trans people out there are going to resonate with that and then when you say this is how i learned how to be different a lot of people are going to resonate with that and then they're gonna stop bullying themselves and then you'll be a a force for good in the world and you will have healed the hurt sound good that sounds very good this is very helpful glad because i never know where this is going to go no this is going very well okay i'm glad i i i i need someone to tell me things every day okay yeah so who can that be um there's a couple of people in my life who like incorrect i think i think okay [Music] who is that i have to tell myself is that damn right yeah yeah right because here's the crazy thing what do you tell yourself every day uh what do i tell myself every day yeah right psy says it all yeah yeah you're right you absolutely need you need to hear these things every day yeah you're damn right you and everyone else is insecure or struggles with something you need to hear this every [ __ ] day and there it's wonderful that you have people in your life i encourage you to recruit them but once again it depends on which side you're on are you on their team natalie are you on the toxic team yeah to work on it i have faith in you you come this far and i think that like it's hard to come this far without you know having a lot of courage a lot of resilience brilliance frankly yeah cool so i i'm kind of done you okay wrapping up no i'm good that's that's sounds great to me yeah um so you know in terms of meditation sometimes i'll teach a formal practice but in this case natalie i really encourage you to like watch what comes up so like go and look at a picture of yourself and like watch what comes up and even like like just watch those thoughts and those feelings and then like try to be your older sister and that's going to take practice yeah you know if you feel ashamed of yourself just look at yourself in the mirror and see what comes up see what you tell yourself right and then try to it would be good to do to be able to do that because i feel like then i could also be an older sister to other trans people which is something that i sort of have not quite gotten to be able to do yeah because you haven't been ready yet yeah so that's your karma right so like it'd be interesting because i think from like a karmic perspective that if you wanted to be an older sister to lots of trans people i would recommend a career like a phd in philosophy where you're doing research in in an academic setting as opposed to having a youtube channel with a million subscribers where you have a platform where you can communicate a message of positivity towards people who need to hear it which one would you pick well i suppose at this point the decision has been made i don't know yeah i feel like i think this can be done either way yep and i think that's your karma right because oh lo and behold you happen to have a platform where you get three million views for videos that you make interesting yeah it's a lot of um well it's it frightens me actually the amount of responsibility that it comes with that good that is the best feeling that you've had all the time today you should be terrified it's terrifying because natalie you have a big burden on your shoulders yeah and the world needs you yeah and so time to you know start treating yourself well get fully aligned with who you are as a person because there are lots of trans women and trans men and cis women and cis men who are insecure about what they see and need something from you and it turns out that you're an incredibly thoughtful person who can tell a very succinct story with lots of context and background and you have a training in philosophy and argument so if you have something to say turns out that you're actually pretty skilled at saying it and helping people understand so if you feel the crushing weight of responsibility on your shoulders i'd say good job grow the [ __ ] up and get to work sounds good all right thank you so much for coming on yeah thank you for having me this has been this one was a little more interesting than i imagined it was going to be for me too no you're a trans woman i don't know but hey natalie it's been delightful it's been great yeah it's been good so you guys just you want to just tell people who are here a little bit later a little bit about what you do and where we can find you uh yeah um so my name is contra points is the name of the channel c-o-n-t-r-a points and uh yeah twitter youtube instagram i would focus on youtube the other stuff you know yeah so she makes really cool videos that are like really well thought out um and and kind of start to finish i think it's like really good it's not just something like snippet it's like really well thought out so check out contra points thanks for coming on and good luck to your friend thank you so much all right bye that was different from what i was expecting but uh yeah that was great man she is awesome

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 599,644

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, contrapoints, transgender girl, male to female, gender identity, lgbtq, toxic positivity, contrapoints dr k, how to stop beating yourself up, how to accept yourself, anxiety of being judged, samskara, transitioning to female, transphobic, being judged by others

Id: cKrxP44Gp_0

Length: 134min 36sec (8076 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rzan12]

This talk was actually amazing

[u/tlozmm]

love natalie and dr k so much and loved this convo.

i like how dr k nailed natalie on her thoughts of other trans people. how, before her transition, she would cringe at people who were obviously trans and be like "oh i cant be that." like revealing that her inner transphobia is actually her self loathing.

this is going to sound so shitty but it really opened my eyes as to why i seem to hate fat people: because (even though i am at a normal bmi now) i still have so much self loathing from when i was overweight myself and i still worry about being fat, even though i am definitely not anymore.

sometimes the things we see and hate about other people are things we hate about ourselves. idk it was just a great convo, and i think it took a lot of guts for natalie to talk about that stuff.

[u/RedErin]

This was super satisfying and therapeutic for me. It had me yelling out loud that I love myself.

[u/Pennykettle_]

As someone struggling to know if I am trans, this helped. I am in my "I am going to try to dress androgynous" phase.

[u/KylesBrother]

So there was a very interesting thought that Dr K began to probe, but then maybe decided it would be too hot to touch. Around 30minutes they are talking about incels, and how one of the things incels might say is "I dont have a masculine enough jawline". Dr K began to kinda compare that to a trans person saying "I feel wrong in this body, I need to have more feminine features (like a jawline)". But I felt they both sort of wrote off what incels say as just being an idea in their head, like with simply some amount of therapy they would not think that anymore. And that may be true. But I thought this was super interesting and wished they talked about it more.

How does an incel know they need a specific jawline without the ability to see themselves in a mirror or photo to compare themselves against someone else? I'm going to assume women aren't telling them they need a different jawline since they probably arent actually talking to women. So without a certain prerequisite technology (a mirror) and a certain idea socially propagated then would these incels still create an idea that their body isnt good enough?

Maybe we can already see where I'm going. So without the prerequisite of being able to observe your own body, compare it to someone else, and someone giving you a conceptual framework of trans-ness, then how does a trans person know they need a specific type of hair, jaw, etc? Dr K asked how would a person know they are trans, and Natalie sorta just responded that you just know there's something wrong. But how exactly is that different from the incel? I really want more information on that, how exactly is it different?

[u/chitoge4ever]

Alright i'm watching this soon as i get time too

[u/weed_and_socialism]

QUEEN. this was the best drk show

[u/BruyceWane]

It was great to see, and I would like Natalie to get out there more.

[u/redback-spider]

She said she "changed her gender", the word Gender is used today sadly in very different ways. Historically it was just another word for sex. No it means either gender identity or gender expression.

Now she probably meant she changed her gender expression, she mentioned at least small gender dysphoria so I would argue that her gender identity never really changed, it's more like a person that learns that they are gay, they didn't became gay, they just did not know what exactly they are.

With the double meaning of gender where it can refer to expression or identity using the word gender alone becomes pretty confusing.

I just don't think that trans people change their (gender) it's more like they align their bodies to their gender, or to the sex of their brain, it can be messy because sex is a spectrum of course so while I am very sceptical about gender fluidity or 3-5000 sexes/genders I think most people prefer to have 2 categories and even if you think you are something else in most cases 99% of people group you in 1 of the 2 in their head no matter what they say.

But I digress, I just don't think you can change your gender, I would be even more comfortable to say you changed your sex, but in my view trans women are cis women, because they were born with female (in the spectrum) brains, the brain is for me more important than other organs or chromosomes, but I don't think you can change your gender, your expression sure but not your gender, you can find your real gender but not change it, a 100% cis person cannot by willpower change their gender, like gays cannot decide to become straight.

I guess in my view a correcter way to say what she tried to say would be I transitioned my body to my gender...