Wednesday, June 19, 2019

The BreadPill Trap: How ContraPoints and BreadTube are Changing the LGBT Community | BreadBusting



Welcome to the first ever episode of BreadBusting, where we attempt to examine the problematic ideas that come out of BreadTube, what I call Breadism. Basically, it's like Myth Busting, but for Breadism. TransTella Mag has become BreadBusting, because the world around us is changing. When this project started last year, my intention was to provide an alternative LGBT voice to counter the growing dominance of radical discourse. In the past few years I had been increasingly concerned about the change in the LGBT community. Gone are the days when practical and realistic goals like gay marriage were the focus. Instead, I think the community has turned to escapism, with the help of postmodernism, itself born of historical escapism of a different kind.

And then, there is the rise of the Lobster Queen herself, ContraPoints, aka Natalie Wynn. Don't get me wrong, I love watching her content, it's quite entertaining. But like all infotainment, ContraPoints, and the rest of BreadTube, are here to spread ideas, and somewhere in all the fun and games, there are certain ideas that I just can't agree with. I first became concerned when Natalie's views on gender and trans issues began to become mainstreamed in certain sections of the LGBT community, at the expense of our more traditional, and more realistic, narrative. You can watch my other videos to see where we disagree. Basically, I can't accept the idea that gender is a social construct, or that it is performative. Even Judith Butler herself has said that she didn't understand trans issues well when she wrote Gender Trouble. But on a deeper level, it is the supplantation of one worldview by another altogether. Let's get directly to the point. I am concerned that the ideas of BreadTube, which Jordan Peterson seems to have a controversial name for, but I will just call Breadism, will lead us to a place where we believe that everything is socially constructed, and that we are the victim of such social construction. Somehow, we don't have much individual agency anymore. And, somehow, everything is also linked to capitalism too, which is so large and so powerful that we may as well be completely powerless. My first concern is, I don't think this worldview is either realistic or healthy, especially for LGBT people and other minorities who already stuggle to stay afloat, living in the here and now. My other concern is, adopting this worldview has led the LGBT community to abandon its successful strategy of gradual reform, which culminated in the legalization of gay marriage among other things, and instead regressing to the hopeless nihilism that characterized the gay community of the 1970s.

Let's put it this way. Breadism sometimes sounds like escapism, but with real world consequences. I mean, I watch a lot of political videos, which focus on real world news events. They talk about real world issues like health care and free speech. On the other hand, BreadTube is often more like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, or perhaps Game of Thrones. It likes to focus on a particular version of history, particular intellectual theories, and uses language that is only understood by people who are fans, essentially. It's very similar to a fandom, in other words.

My point is, BreadTube is, on some levels, escapism, and I think people are taking the Bread Pill to escape from a reality that they don't like. Which would explain the high proportion of LGBT people in BreadTube Land. But the thing is, BreadTube is a mind-altering drug, and people who take the Bread Pill too much will develop an altered sense of reality, which has real world consequences. And I have seen some of these real world consequences in the LGBT community recently. I won't sugercoat it. Ever since 2015 or so, there has been a great increase in victim mentality justified by critical theory, there has been a focus on fantasy-world theory and fantasy-world issues like Marxist gender theory rather than practical issues like helping other countries legalize gay marriage, and there has been an inability to debate people who disagree with us, which stems from a loss of faith in free speech. The LGBT community has been in a downward spiral, and frankly I'm sick and tired of it. That's why I started this channel to provide an alternative LGBT commentary. But then, I have come to realize that the recent developments are the result of the spread of Breadism, and if we want to reverse course, we need to confront Breadism itself. Furthermore, Breadism is also spreading in non-LGBT spaces, so it's not just an LGBT problem. Hence, from now on, I will critique Breadism broadly. I will show you why an ideology based on postmodernism is no less than Opium of the Mind, because it drains individual agency. I will show you how Breadism promises impossible utopia to its followers, in turn making them unnecessarily angry at the status quo. I will show you how Breadism, by developing and enforcing oppressor and oppressed binaries and hierarchies of privilege, essentially end up enforcing this privilege as a self-fulfilling prophecy. All this will be explored in the coming weeks and months.

My intention is to use this space to voice my disagreements with Breadism. Don't get me wrong, I like watching BreadTube, I am subcribed to most BreadTubers, but there are certain concerns I have. And, by the way, I will not use BreadTube style lighting and aesthetics, because I'm talking about something serious, and I don't want any distractions.

That's all for today. I hope you subscribe if you are interested. See you next time!