No. I haven't! This is what's so frustrating! 90% off the time when I disagree with trans people they accuse me of having made up my mind without ever trying to show me where thy think I'm going wrong. Don't refer me to somebody else's opinion, tell me what you think. Make your arguments in your own words. Show me that you have, at least, thought about it yourself instead of simply being told that somebody is bad and repeating it. Because whatever you think about me, I have at least done that.
I watched Contrapoints' video the day after it came out. In fact, I've watched the whole thing numerous times. I very nearly wrote an article about (but jeez, imagine if I hadn't. you think asking somebody to watch a 90 minute video in a comment section is reasonable?).
Contrapoints' video is great in parts, but also rests on a few shaky foundations. First, the assumption that because some people argue in bad faith, all disagreement is in bad faith. The way she frames her arguments, nobody can have "CoNcErNs" ever, about anything without you being able to dismiss their feelings as bigotry. This is sophistry at its finest and is pretty much ubiquitous on trans issues.
Second, she conflates man/woman with male/female thought the video. This is the curse of trans discourse in general. But in. his case, she either realises she's doing it and is being dishonest, or doesn't realise she's doing it and is being imprecise. I prefer the second interpretation. Because I'm actually a big fan of Contrapoints. I think she's extremely smart. And there are some really insightful moments, but this was far from her best work.
Third, and most damning, is the way she selectively takes unrelated parts from the article, adds a little clever editing, and comes up with something that is subtly inaccurate.
I can actually quote from the article that never quite made the light of day for one example of this:
"...later (1:15:00) Natalie highlights a section of Rowling's letter where she mentions a lesbian named Magdalen Berns who she follows on Twitter and then jump-cuts to another, completely separate part of the letter where Rowling mentions that she knows gender critical women who are "hugely sympathetic" towards trans adults.
It's a subtle sleight of hand which pays off extremely effectively when a horribly transphobic tweet from Magdalen is revealed. The problem being that there's no evidence that Rowling was even aware of the tweet (which is truly awful, regardless of context), but even if she was, Rowling wasn't claiming that Magdalen was one of the women who was "hugely sympathetic" towards trans adults."
Contrapoints doesn't criticise the substance of what Rowling is saying. The video is full of assigning worst case interpretations to her intentions in writing it. It's brimming full of "oh, she says this, but what she really means is this." Backed up by nothing expect a knowing tone of voice or something a Nazi did 50 years ago.
