Thank you for starting this topic. You actually have hit a nerve with me here, as I'm a former Nina Paley fan. I happened to have noticed her transphobia as well a while ago, and I was not happy.
Unfortunately, I can without any doubt confirm that Nina Paley is a TERF. Or more precisely, a transphobe. I don't think she is a feminist (the "F" in "TERF"), or at least not a very good feminist, she just doesn't seem to be that outspoken about women's issues in the first place. But I am not here to talk about feminism or fake feminism, I might be wrong here. I think saying "TERF" might be giving too much credit.
I have listened to a longer
video discussion with her about her views in which she explained everything in more detail, and this was very enlightening. If you want to understand Nina's world view, you MUST listen to this video, you will really understand what she's thinking (but be warned: it's pretty dumb).
And it's pretty clear she is talking straight out of her ass, it's the classic transphobe talking points and she also showed a clear lack of understanding of anything gender-related. Anyone who knows a little bit about what "trans" means and gets their information from non-pundit sources should quickly be able to find many problems and holes in her worldview, at least when it's about gender.
Note that I can say with confidence she is full of it since in the last months I have read a LOT about LGBTQ+ topics in the past, including trans, so I was able to recognize common bad talking points and it was painful to listen … But my take away from the video is that her views
sound convincing if you know absolutely nothing, and that's why I believe many people fall for anti-trans narratives in the first place and get sucked into it. Would I have walked into this video as the clueless moron that I was before, I would have totally believed every single word of her … It seems especially this "gender-critical" narrative is very effective, as it looks like they're "just asking questions" while ignoring that these "innocent" questions have been answered in science like a billion times already and there's no real debate.
She swallowed the anti-trans narratives hook, line and sinker. She summarized her anti-trans beliefs with this sentence: "I respect your humanity, not your identity.". There's even a Mimi & Eunice comic about this. So if you want to understand Nina Paley's transphobia, this is a good starting point. She doesn't seem to understand, or is unwilling to accept that disrespecting someone's identity, especially for trans people, can also be incredibly harmful. That's why I also think she's just very stupid whenever she talks about ANYTHING gender or trans-related.
Interestingly, she also vehemently denies that she is a transphobe, and it precisely derives from this sentence. She seems to like the word "gender-critical" but that's just funny, since she is neither using critical thinking nor understands gender. Instead, she just repeats old talking points, that's not what being critical means.
I know exactly what it is like because I've been there, too. And I also noticed a pattern: Supreme smugness. TERFs/transphobes, especially transphobes-in-denial, are always so painfully smug, they act as if they got the ultimate wisdom, are smarter than those "stoopid" gender ideologues, etc. and that they are fighting the good fight. Pathetic. People like these have heard the word "gender" once, and now believe they are experts and everyone else is dumb. She is the best evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Apparently, according to her, it all started when she had "unorthtox" (???) opinions about gender or whatever on Twitter (don't remember), and she was un-invited from some even or whatever because of this, and she sees herself attacked and as a victim. Back then she didn't really care that much about gender and such. But since she was un-invited, this made her VERY mad and then she was like it's everyone else's fault and she did nothing wrong. No self-reflection. And that when her transphobia became stronger and stronger (and most of all, DUMBER). I don't know the exact story nor do I know which comment exactly got her disinvited, she describes it in the video I linked above. But no matter if the disinviting was justified, an overreaction or completely unjustified (Nina's claim) NOW she is 100% on the transphobic side and she doubled and tripled down, and this is just painful to see. Btw, I really don't know about the "origin story" in detail, and I don't know who's claims are to be believed. If her narrative that she was "wronged" is really true or not, I don't really care because the end result is the same: Now she definitely is a transphobe, whether she likes to hear it, or not.
Also an important point to note here: She doesn't seem to have always been a transphobe. At least not such an openly outspoken one. Her big movies came out before her cringe "GeNdEr-CrItIcAl" phase. <EDIT>She claims to have not even heard of "trans stuff" before 2015-2016, but her first film came out in 2008 already. So that supports my theory that Nina became a transphobe rather "recently" and was not always one. From the video it is also clear that she was radicalized by activism and pundits rather than the actual data and science, which explains where she got all the talking points from.</EDIT>
I am actually terrified by this story. To me, this shows that NOBODY is immune to becoming a transphobe, anyone could be the next. I would never have expected this from her, and it took me completely by surprise. I feel like the transphobic talking points can be extremely effective to "convert" people who know nothing or next to nothing about trans issues. Nina Paley is clearly a smart person, just read all the things she wrote about copyright and art, but it's also clear she is NOT an expert in gender AT ALL. Smart people can say dumb things.
And I know, transphobic talking points worked for ME for a long time (yes, I too bought into transphobic narratives), the only reason I got out of it is because a few transphobes (not Nina Paley) I listened to got so extreme that I couldn't take it anymore, some started talking about the Great Replacement ("tHe BlAcKs ArE gOiNg To RePlAcE tHe WhItEs") but I thankfully knew that this is complete BS, so that's when I started to have doubts and actually stated to look up FACTS, not punditry and it turns out that trans-exclusionism and being "gEnDeR-CrItIcAl" is actually super-cringe.
So yeah, I am really, really disappointed in her. I actually care a lot and deeply about this, since I have been a long-time fan of her work. I've read all or almost all of her "Mimi & Eunice" comics. Most of them aren't transphobic or even about being trans at all, it's only the latest ones which spread transphobic nonsense, those comics were all published around the time when she was disinvited. So my theory is that she actually became a transphobic, rather than being a transphobic the whole time. I have also watched her movies Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-Masochism multiple times, I even "advertised" them to people close to me. I think these movies are brilliant and they show a great amount of passion and thinking that went into them.
She is also one of a few semi-known artists who openly speaks out for free culture, she also started questioncopyright.org. Her anti-copyright acitivism is great, we have way too few activists like her. The story about the difficulties of getting the movies to the cinema, and how she constantly clashes with copyright law are worth a read/listen. Note that most of her anti-copyright activism was before her transphobic nonsense, it seems to be rather recent, but I am willing to accept evidence to the contrary. This shit really came out of nowhere. And, I cannot stress this enough, she absolutely has ZERO clue what she is talking about when it comes to trans issues at all, just parrotting old debunked talking points and thinking she is super smart about this. I am no longer a Nina Paley fan btw.
What do I take from all of this?
- Nina Paley is 100% a transphobe, the facts speak for themselves. Sad but true.
- Nina Paley is an intelligent person (a stupid person wouldn't be able to put together 2 animation movies), but she turns into a moron the moment she says anything about gender. Smart people can say dumb things.
- Transphobic talking points are scarily effective towards people who seem to know nothing about gender/trans topics
- Her opinion "I respect your humanity, not your identity" sucks completely, it's still disrespect!
- Smart people are NOT immune from becoming the worst transphobes/TERFs
- The Dunning-Kruger effect has been proven once again
- Nina Paley being a transphobe still doesn't invalidate anti-copyright activism. Copyright sucks even if some activists have shitty opinions on other topics. It would be a mistake to dismiss everything else a person says as false only because the person said something stupid in some other instance. That's just not how people work. Anyway, not defending Nina here, but I am a big fan of nuance and thinking deeply about all sorts of things, rather than jumping on oversimplified worldview.
Nina Paley is a TERF. Nina Paley is a free culture supporter. Therefore, all free culture supporters are TERFs.
Adolf Hitler ate bread. Therefore, everyone who eats bread is literally Hitler.
And I'm not LGBT activist or a feminist, I'm just misandrist.
(…)
Now, if there would be a programming language created by a woman that had implementation's license prohibiting its use by men...
But that's not cool either.
Kinda ironic how Richard Stallman says that "freedom is not about the money" therefore sentencing software developers like me to death by starvation
IIRC, RMS once said he is not against capitalism, and this explains a lot.
In free software, the economic question is completely taken out of the equation, and this is by design. I am actually behind this for complex reasons. The reason for this statement is that a NonCommercial clause in software licenses usually just does more harm than good and just further establishes the notion of infinite copyright and also doesn't really help to defeat capitalism. If you believe you can defeat capitalism with NonCommercial licenses, you are an idiot.
Quite the contrary, there are ironically even some corporations that use a NonCommercial clause. This shows that it's really just about monopolization than anything else. So the reason for the rejection of NonCommercial licenses is complicated but makes sense to me, even from an anti-capitalist perspective.
However, I believe what is missing in FOSS activism completely is intersectionality. It's one thing that "commercial use" is permitted according to the free software definition, but it is another thing if free software activism/advocacy completely ignores capitalism in its analysis, as if capitalism has absolutely no role in creating proprietary software. But isn't it capitalism that gives a reason to go proprietary in the first place (because of legal monopolies, etc.)? You can't really deny the relationship between the two.
I like the free software idea. It is 100% correct to point out that proprietary software is fundamentally evil since it basically gives the owner of a software full control over the users, and we have boatloads of evidence how this power is abused, even legally. I 100% believe that proprietary software is harmful to society at large. Sure, the owner benefits from it, but it comes at a large price for everyone else. That's not a great way to deal with software in a society.
Free software IS a good goal, but the question is, how do get there AND not let people starve? I don't think both goals exclude each other. This is the BIG question to which we still have no answer.
I believe one of the biggest shortcomings is the lack of intersectionalism, failing to connect to other movements. This needs to change. FOSS activism ignores pretty much all leftist movements. Likewise, many leftist circles completely ignore FOSS, it's so bad that many leftist circles are happily using the absolute worst of the worst proprietary spyware garbage without really thinking it through, and I am often very terrified what I see. There is ZERO intersectionalism right now, I think there would be a lot to benefit from it when it started.
And yes, I agree it is cringe that RMS is OK with capitalism, but he's also not an expert on economics anyway. We don't have to listen to RMS in this instance. Simple as that. :P
