Transcripts / The Aesthetic

In color theory the selection of colors used in a design is called a color scheme. Analogous color schemes use the main color plus one or more adjacent colors, while complementary schemes use any two colors directly opposite on the color wheel. 

Tracy: Hi girls! I’m Tracy Mounts, guest host of ContraPoints, the Internet show where we talk about sadness, fascism, sexual deviation, cults. This week we’ll be talking about colors. ✨🌈

Colors, what the fuck are they? In one beaker I have white, in the other brown. Pour them together and well, I don’t know what the kids are calling it. It’s delicious! Now according to some so-called experts, color is really different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. But what about the shadow illusion? Same wavelengths, different colors. Some people say I’m a man dressed as a lady. But I’m actually a lady who used to be a man, dressed as a man dressed as a lady. Explain that, Professor Butler. Illusions! What matters more, the way things are? Or the way things look? Let’s watch an instructional video to learn more.

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Jackie: 🍹 Hi, I’m Jackie Jackson. Host of the Freedom Report uh… It’s too early for this. Today my guests are umm…… Well, who are you people? 

Abigail: I’m Dr. Abigail Cockbane. Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and author of many, many books, most recently my doctoral thesis, Sacred Passage: The Divine Feminine in Flux and Flow. 

Jackie: Oooooooh yes. And uhh, well you look familiar, who are you? 

Tabby: *hissing* 😾

Jackie: Okay. Well. Today my guests will be debating the topic ummm… Well here’s a good one: should it be illegal to use the wrong pronouns for a transgender? What do you think Annabel? 

Abigail: Well Jackie, liberation from the oppressive institution of gender begins with freedom of speech. For instance, this cat person over here is clearly a biological male in some sort of costume wig. Now, I of course support his right to dress however he wishes. But the fact remains that pronouns refer, as they always have referred, to chromosomal sex. But perhaps you disagree, sir. 

Tabby: That’s a human rights violation! I’ll smash your fucking face! *hissing* 😾

Abigail: And here we have a clear illustration of the way that transgender ideology is merely a smokescreen for male violence against women, and mind you this is being taught in our schools, it’s being forced on our children–

Jackie: Security, have this cat removed. 

Abigail: It’s become mandatory in every workplace. Dissenters are being silenced, and something must be done about the encroaching trans agenda, taking away women’s rights, invading women’s spaces, depriving us of what feminism has worked so hard–

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Tracy: I love a kitty queen, but Abigail clocks a cat. Gender’s just like color. Some people see yellow, some people see blue. It’s all a matter of opinion. Or is it? It’s not. Let’s hear the real tea. 

▶️ 📺☕️

Justine: Tabby. Sweetie, baby, princess.

Tabby: I feel ridiculous in this dress. 

Justine: Yeah well you look ridiculous, because you wouldn’t take the goddamn cat ears off. 

Tabby: I think I’m gonna take the dress off. 

Justine: Well don’t do that. I’m trying to help you out girl. If you don’t want to get misgendered it helps to femme it up a little. 

Tabby: I’m gonna take it off. 

Justine: Well don’t leave… You can change in front of me, I’m not a prude. 

Tabby: I’m gonna go behind the curtain. 

Justine: I like looking at naked people. 

Tabby: Why do you always hit on me? I thought you were into men. 

Justine: Well I swing both ways. I like boy dick and girl dick. 

Tabby: That’s not how that works. I hate that. 

Justine: The heart wants what it wants. 

Tabby: Why did you invite me over here anyway? 

Justine: I saw what happened to you on the Freedom Report and girl. Girrrrrl. You cannot be a trans woman on TV threatening people with a bat. 

Tabby: You think it’s morally wrong to stand up to your oppressors? 

Justine: Pfff no. “Morally wrong”– what does that even mean? It was much worse than morally wrong. It was aesthetically wrong. It was unfeminine. 

Tabby: This is all you ever say to me. “It’s bad optics", "it's bad aesthetics”. Well does reality matter at all to you? Because the reality is I am a woman. And maybe a bunch of ignorant people don’t think I look like one, but the way things look isn’t all that matters. 

Justine: Tabby, this is politics. Have you ever had a conversation with the average voter? Reality plays no role in politics. Politics is aesthetics. 

Tabby: “Politics is aesthetics"? That’s literally what fascism is. Have you even read Benjamin? 

Justine: Ugh. 

Tabby: “Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life”. The military parades, the pageantry. And communism responds by politicizing art. 

Justine: This is what I can’t stand about communists, you want to turn art into propaganda. 

Tabby: Well art is already ideology. 

Justine: Ugh. Look instead of ruining art, why don’t we just fight the pageantry of fascism with pageantry of our own. And you know who’s gonna make that happen? 

Tabby: Who? 

Justine: 👏 Well 👏 funded 👏 trans 👏 women. My Patreon’s in the description. 

Tabby: Ew. Stop that. 

Justine: What? I’m just trying to monetize a connected engagement community by strategically leveraging my content creator promotional media brand analytics. Is that so wrong? 📊

Tabby: You’re so bougie. 

Justine: I’m not the one quoting German philosophers from memory. 

Tabby: Revolutionary philosophers.

Justine: Whatever you need to tell yourself. Look, the point I’m trying to make is that the world we live in is not a philosophical world. Think about Instagram. It’s all about transforming your life into an enviable spectacle. If you cry yourself to sleep every night, who cares. No one sees that, they only see the show you’re putting on. 

Tabby: Okay but life is not a show. 

Justine: Mmm– politics is a show. Look around you Tabby, try to understand what’s happening to the world. The president of the United States is a reality TV star. The 21st century is an aesthetic century. In history there are ages of reason and there are ages of spectacle, and it’s important to know which you’re in. Our America, our Internet, is not ancient Athens. It’s Rome. And your problem is you think you’re in the forum, when you’re really in the circus. 

Tabby: I thought you were just criticizing me for being violent, now you’re against reason too? 

Justine: I’m not against reason. Reason is a very powerful aesthetic… if you’re a man. 

Tabby: And what if you’re a woman? 

Justine: Oh don’t be a woman. That’s not a good idea. Do you remember that YouTube debate between Blaire White and that YouTuber with the pink wig, what was her name? I don’t know, she was relevant back in 2017. Anyway this was before she transitioned, and in that debate Blaire looked like she had two X chromosomes, and the other one looked like this awkward dude in an anime wig not looking at the camera. 

Tabby: I vaguely remember. I think I wrote an angry blog post about it. 

Justine: Well, the pink wig lost that debate so bad. It was embarrassing to watch. 

Tabby: Not really. I mean she was right, and her arguments were better. 

Justine: 😆 Tabby. Sweetie, honey, angel, darling, princess, baby. Arguments don’t matter. How pretty you are matters. 

Tabby: Is this really where you’re going with this? 

Justine: Tabby, if you want to be a public figure, sooner or later you're gonna need to take the trans girl blackpill. 

Tabby: Oh boy. 

Justine: If you’re a trans woman in the public eye, what matters is one thing and one thing only. And it’s always been the thing that matters. 

Tabby: What? 

Justine: The realness. Verisimilitude. You have to look like a fucking woman.

Tabby: There it is. 

Justine: "There it is" is right. We don’t say it in public, but we all know it, and we all feel it. 

Tabby: What does it even mean to look like a woman? 

Justine: Oh don’t give me that PC bullshit, I’m trying to have a real conversation here. We all know what it means. 

Tabby: I don’t know what it means. Women have a lot of different looks. There are bald women, bearded women, muscular women, wide-shouldered women– 

Justine: And what is society’s opinion about those bald, bearded, wide-shouldered women? 

Tabby: Is this just about you making me wear the dress again? 

Justine: The dress is the last of my concerns. I mean where do I even start with this? You’re wearing combat boots. You cannot be wearing combat boots. 

Tabby: Why not? A lot of cis women wear them. 

Justine: Cis women? Well they’re hopeless aren’t they, fully clockable. 

Tabby: So you want me to look like a woman without imitating cis women. 

Justine: Yes. Do not under any circumstances imitate cis women. They have no idea what they’re doing. 

Tabby: Well where does your idea of womanhood even come from then? 

Justine: Das Ewig-Weibliche. The archetype of the eternal feminine. 

Tabby: And where does that come from? 

Justine: Poets…… Teenage gay boys on Instagram. The only people with any coherent vision of contemporary womanhood. 

Tabby: That’s insanity. 

Justine: Is it? Tabby, look at my face. Look at this highlight. 🤩Does that look like the product of insanity to you? 

Tabby: I mean yeah, kind of. Who puts on that much makeup to drink tea at home? 

Justine: Good banter, well done. But trans women have to overdo it. You need to be so good at makeup that every cis woman you know comes to you for advice. You need to toss your hair and cross your legs. You need to smile, even at people who hate you. Eliminate every aggressive impulse, you must be a blossom floating along the surface of a stream. Your hands are not tools, they are ornaments on the ends of your arms. 

Tabby: So you literally are what TERFs think trans women are. Literally a man’s idea of a woman. 

Justine: Well, men have the power, men make the rules, and it’s ultimately men who are the judges of womanhood. So, you can’t really blame me for having to deal with that situation. 

Tabby: I can blame you for dealing with it by demanding we all conform to a bunch of ridiculous stereotypes. 

Justine: Not stereotypes. Performances. You like philosophy so much, haven’t you read Judith Butler? Gender is performance. We’re all born naked and the rest is literally drag. Womanhood is not what you are, it’s what you do. And trans women have to be virtuosas of womaning. 

Tabby: So according to you there’s no difference between a trans woman and a drag queen? 

Justine: No, you’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. I don’t mean performance in the sense of pretending to be something you’re not. I mean performance in the sense of everything you do, the way you style yourself, your posture, the way you speak. An authentic performance is just a habitual performance, and nothing more than that. 

Tabby: So trans women just starting their transition are pretending to be women? 

Justine: I mean, isn’t that kind of what it felt like? You transition the same way you get anywhere in life, you fake it till you make it. 

Tabby: So according to you a trans woman is just a full-time drag queen. 

Justine: That’s what any woman is. 

Tabby: What about gender non-conforming cis women. They’re not “doing womanhood” in that way. 

Justine: Well, yeah, that’s why those women are marginalized. They’re going off the grid of what society recognizes as womanhood. And you don’t want to end up like that do you? 

Tabby: And hold on. Are you saying if a cis man dresses like a woman, talks like a woman, takes female hormones, is gendered female by other people, and spends his whole life pretending to be a trans woman, then he’s literally just as much a woman as we are? 

Justine: Yep. 

Tabby: That’s absurd. 

Justine: But it’s absurd because the example is absurd. No cis man would do that. It’s like asking, "is a straight man gay if he only sleeps with men?" Like yeah, pretty much. See this is philosophy at its worst, pointless speculative fiction. And it’s a distraction from what we’re really talking about, which is you getting rid of those combat boots. 

Tabby: I thought we were talking about philosophy. 

Justine: No. We’re talking about shoes. 

Tabby: Why do I always have to justify what I wear to you? You’re apparently fine wearing designer dresses around your communist friends. 

Justine: The left will abide a regal queer. 

Tabby: 🤷‍♀️ Look, your performance theory doesn’t explain why trans people exist in the first place. If gender is just a bunch of learned behaviors, then why did we reject our male upbringings and decide to live as women? What matters is that we identify as women. We can express that identity in different ways, but it’s the identity, not the performance, that makes us women. 

Justine: But you can’t be a woman without performing womanhood. Without action, and without social recognition, the identity is meaningless. If womanhood is nothing to you but a private daydream, then you may as well do what those assholes say and identify as a helicopter. Because unless you’re living womanhood, the identity is literally that meaningless. 

Tabby: That’s very unfair to pre-transition trans people. 

Justine: Well, this isn’t a Tumblr cuddle party girl I’m trying to talk about what’s really true.

Tabby: I didn’t say it was insensitive, I said it was unfair. Identifying as a woman before you transition is a psychological reality that implies a potential to live your inner truth. No one has ever sincerely identified as a helicopter, it’s just a troll example. 

Justine: True. But even if they were sincere there would still be no reality to it, because helicopter is not an actual social role. Whereas you can become a teacher, a doctor, or a woman. But you have to work to get there, and ultimately society has to let you. 

Tabby: What do you mean?

Justine: I can identify as a doctor and go around handing out diagnoses, but if no one recognizes me as a doctor, then I’m not really practicing medicine am I? 

Tabby: But that analogy means that our womanhood can be revoked at any moment. All it takes is being misgendered. 

Justine: It’s scary but isn’t that the situation we’re in? Why did you get so angry when that TERF called you “sir”? Isn’t it because in that situation, she robbed you of your womanhood? 

Tabby: That’s ridiculous. I am a woman. That’s my reality. It doesn’t depend on other people’s opinions. 

Justine: I know you’re a woman. I’m just saying that in that one moment, you effectively had your gender canceled. Another way of looking at it is gender is aesthetic, not rational. Either you’re perceived as a woman, or you aren’t. There’s no reasoning your way into it. 

Tabby: Oh don’t worry about that. I don’t argue I’m a woman. I smash. 

Justine: I know you do. And it’s a bad look. 

Tabby: Is this about the shoes again? 

Justine: Yep. Here, put these on. 

Tabby: Absolutely not, I’m not wearing those. 

Justine: Yes you are bitch. 

Tabby: No. 

Justine: If you put these on I’ll um… scratch you behind the ears later. 

Tabby: Okay fine. 

Justine: Now walk.

♪ 🚷 😾 ♪

Justine: That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. 

Tabby: Well you’re the one who made me do it! 

Justine: Look, don’t stomp around like that. Keep your shoulders back and steady. All the movement comes from your hips, and you wanna put the weight on the balls of your feet. Here I’ll show you. 

♪ 😘 🥰 ♪

Justine: Your turn. Do it right. The category is… catgirls. 😸

♪ 😽 😻♪

Justine: 👏 Yes 👏 bitch. That was flawless, it was iconic. I’m living for this, I’m loving this for you. You’re doing so good for yourself. 

Tabby: I’m never doing that again. 

Justine: Ugh! Why not? 

Tabby: Because it’s not who I am. All your advice is just trying to turn me into you. Well that’s not what aesthetics is. Aesthetics is the expression of an inner truth. And I’ll only ever be a second-rate Justine, but I can be a first-rate Tabby. 

Justine: Well kids this week we learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being yourself–

Tabby: Shut up. Look, I know I’m not cool, okay? I know I’m not pretty. And I know you think you’re too good for me because you mostly pass. And I know you and your friends laugh at me behind my back. People stare at me because I’m a transgender furry and that’s weird. But I’m a fucking queer icon because I’m not like you, because I’m not like anyone but myself, and because I’m willing to stand up to the people who oppress us, and I’m willing to stand up for the girls with beard shadow and deep voices, the girls even other trans women make fun of. And when in the history of the world has anyone but me ever stood up for them? That’s why everyone knows who Tabby is, when was the last time anyone talked about Justine? 

Justine: Wow Tabby, I didn’t know you had that in you. But so what? So male-to-anime Twitter stans you, big deal. 

Tabby: You’re mad, aren’t you? 

Justine: I’ll get over it in a few weeks. Look, you’re right. You have to be yourself. Trying to be someone else is always a bad look. So I guess if combat boots are your aesthetic then wear them well and make it work. But sometimes being yourself is not enough. Sometimes you have to become yourself. And for you, I think that means that the smashing has got to stop. I mean with the Nazis it’s one thing but you cannot be menacing radical feminists with a bat. 

Tabby: I wouldn’t have to smash if literally anyone else were willing to stick up for us. Your delicate notion of femininity is a product of the privilege you share with a lot of thin white cis feminists. 

Justine: Wow, it must be so hard for you out on the streets as a fat woman of color.

Tabby: Shut up.

Justine: I’m just saying, don’t claim a struggle that isn’t yours girl. You could have what I have, you just have to work for it instead of playing this part of the tragic victim. You were raised a white boy, you got to go to college and learn all that philosophy. And yeah it’s hard being a trans woman of any background, but you still stand on a lot of privilege. I look at all the photos of trans women who are murdered in this country, and they don’t look like you or me. Why don’t you use your privilege and use your education to actually do some good in the world instead of this elective revolutionary LARPing. 

Tabby: You make me seem like the self-indulgent one. I’m sorry I’m not hardworking enough to go to brunch dates and cocktail parties with transphobes. 

Justine: I’ve seen minds change and hearts soften before my eyes. You don’t win friends and allies with a bat. 

Tabby: They’re just using you. 

Justine: Well who do you think benefits, and who do you think is hurt when you go out into the world and represent trans women as masculine and violent? 

Tabby: Who do you think benefits when they trot you out to be feminine and meek and acquiescent? 

Justine: I guess we can’t win can we? Wanna just chill out and watch YouTube videos? 

Tabby: Yeah, okay. 

⚡️📺

Ben Shapiro: "Forget about the disrespect. Facts don’t care about your feelings. It turns out that every chromosome, every cell in Caitlyn Jenner’s body is male with the exception of some of 'his' sperm cells." 

Katy Tur: "You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re not educated on genetics."

Ben Shapiro: "Would you like to discuss the genetics? What are your genetics sir?" 

Katy Tur: "You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance." 

Ben Shapiro: "Now that seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion." 

Blaire White: "So I look at that and I feel like on my end it's like I’m always, I feel like I’m always damage-controlling for the trans community which is so frustrating"

Ben Shapiro: "It’s imperative that we actually use terms that refer to something. If you want to talk about gender as distinct from sex, and then talk about you’re a very feminine biological man and you’ve had the surgeries to prove it, then I think that we can talk about what is the appropriate pronoun to use. My problem is the–"

⚡️📺

Justine: Tabby I don’t want to fight with you. We’re surviving in this shit world together, and you’ll always be my sister.

Tabby: Well I’m glad.

Justine: I love you.

Tabby: What?!?!–

⏹📺

Tracy: Love. I was in love once. I was in a smoky roadhouse outside Cincinnati bent over a pool table. The year was 1985. And to this day when the perfume of cheap whiskey hits my nostrils at just the right moment, I can almost feel the beer-stained billiard cloth against my cheek. Uhhh! Let’s watch it all on VHS cassette to learn more.