Natalie Wynn (IEE): Personality type analysis

The purpose of this typing is to give a better sense of how the individual elements and functions come together in one single sociotype. As most of my previous articles have been focused on the elements, in-depth explanations of how a function works will be provided as the arguments are presented, with an attempt at relating how Model B2 functions are similar to specific Model A functions, as well as their differences. In this case, I will focus on the conflicts between the strong elements of the IEE: N- against N+, as well as F+ against F-. For this, I have selected transgender youtuber Natalie Wynn, host and owner of the channel Contrapoints.

9. Dialoguing F+

Perhaps Wynn is best known for her elaborate costumes and set design, which at first glance suggests the presence of F-, that is, the crafting of a message to be more appealing and shocking, with the purpose of conveying one's inner dispositions towards certain ideas or people. However, that relates to the means of her work, not its purpose, which seems to be the better understanding of different emotional perspectives, especially of those she disagrees with, as has been shown in her videos Incels, Cringe and J. K. Rowling. This is more in line with F+, which refers to emotional consideration independent of such F- glamour, a topic which has also been discussed in her videos The Aesthetic and Opulence, both of which adress the issue of how external appeal can be used to shift the frame of reference and ignore the real experiences of different groups of people, suggesting this is an issue of relevance within the context of the topic of her videos.

In particular, she is interested about how comedy can influence actual moral beliefs, as she mentioned in The Darkness, referring to the topic of jokes about transgender people. That is, the role of humour as F-, a framing that implicitly contains a belief system about the world, its purpose being the designation of a specific aspect of reality as irrelevant, thus promoting such designation independently from the logical acceptance of the belief system behind the joke. However, she also points at the value of dark comedy to better withstand one's own life. The same recontextualization can be used to reject the importance of tragic events and preserve the idea of oneself that seems most appropriate. As she mentioned in Cringe, taking oneself in the serious manner that F- usually demands is the source of unhappiness, insofar as there is a contradiction between actual reality and self-perception. This is the source of her discomfort with some aspects of PC culture which have led to her being cancelled in more than one occasion, as pretending to make certain topics immune to comedy -those usually being centered around trans and non binary people- is itself a source of comedy in the lack of acceptance of the irony of life. Instead, one should recognize such irony and detatch their sense of self from undignified events to be able to endure the pain of life without self-deceipt. This is possible because accepting objective reality does not require adscribing any specific meaning to it, in which case dark humour can be a liberating experience. For this reason, it is important that PC culture leaves room for comedy to be funny, allowing, as she mentioned in The Darkness, "a safe space for her edginess".

In this, F- is an aesthetic tool that can be used for good or for ill, and should be judged according to its role in framing one's inner experience in a more bearable manner. For this, it can be assigned to the Deconstructing function (15), which is in this way similar to the Demonstrative role of supporting the Creative. It is however different in that it is perceived in a more personal manner, the type being interested in exploring how they can adjust it to different situations, needing to actively receive a space in which it can fullfil its purpose without interferring with other agendas, in a manner similar to the costume design so prevalent in Contrapoints' videos, or her aforementioned discussion on humour. This is not the case with the Demonstrative, which is seldom an aspect that the type reflects upon, rather being some sort of automatic response that doesn't require a specific space to function or to be developed. This is more akin to the role of the Dialoguing function (9), fulfilled by F+, which despite being valued doesn't partake in the identity-defining process. Notice how Natalie rarely discusses her motivation for understanding different points of view: is it empathy, scientific curiosity, or a mixture of both? This is much more of a gut reaction, her default response to incoming information which is later processed by other functions. What makes the Dialoguing different from the Leading function is its lack of an inner expectation as to the content to which the output should adjust, as the purpose is to process incoming incoming informations in a way useful for other functions.

10. Absorted N-

The other aspect discussed in Contrapoints' videos is regarding the phenomenological nature of reality: "What matters more? The way things are, or the way things look?", as she pondered in The Aesthetic, her first video to create controversy among the trans community. In it, she extends the performative theory of gender to the realm of politics in a manner akin to the F+ emphasis discussed earlier. Together with The Left and What's Wrong with Capitalism, it expresses a disappointment with the way theory fails to refer to the lived reality of modern society. She attributes the failures of different leftist movements to the unncessary use of theory, that being when it no longer serves to better represent the political landscape.

This shows a preoccupation with N-, the scrutiny of ideas according to different scenarios rather than an absolute N+ metaphysical reality. This is her strongest criticism regarding radical feminism and the biological conception of womanhood, as there is evidence supporting a shared social condition regarding transgender and cisgender women. This criticism goes both ways, as in The Aesthetic she mentions that one's inner gender self-perception isn't enough either, not because it's not real, but because the social sphere needs not abide by the same rules of how one identifies themself. Even regarding neuroscience research regarding gender dysphoria, she is skeptical about narrowing gender to such evidence, as in Transtrenders she points out how it can also be used to exclude different sorts of people from certain categories. To her, science shouldn't be necessary to determine gender, whether it is chromosomes or brain patterns, as society doesn't need to have scientific evidence of such characteristics to assign a gender to different indiviuals. Instead, one should stop expecting to have such perfect scientific accounts for gender and simply be aware that this is a complex facet of society that can't be narrowed down to such a degree. However, she doesn't mention that such scientific efforts are useless, only that they should be considered as ways to better understand different phenomena, rather than truths by themselves. This is also visible in Autogynephilia, where she criticizes the eponymous theory by the lengths it goes to create nonsensical explanations once it encounters contradicting evidence which could be better explained without the need for such theory.

This suggests N- in the Absorted function (10), which is the focus of attention insofar as the psyche wants to determine how to better understand, in this case, the ways in which theory can explain different phenomena, not according to whether it's a true representation, but rather an useful simplification. This is similar to the Leading in its central position as the goal of the psyche, but also incorporates the Mobilizing aspect of experimentation with different "flavors" of it, seeking to develop a sort of identity from the produced output. When theory aiding in understanding the world, however, and starts creating more propositions without tangible evidence, but only through its own logic, it becomes N+, the Projecting function (16), as she has shown towards different theories regarding gender identity, including the gendered essence, as they presupose a metaphysical reality to gender which, even if true, would explain very little about how society actually works. This is similar to the Ignoring function, which does reject the content of the element, but in a more external way, not limited to the inner realm of the psyche's functioning, but rather being extended towards withdrawing the presence of the element from the outside environment. This is also visible, as Natalie often points out the social problems N+ ideas might pose, and how such devotion might be problematic, as in her criticism of gender abolitionism in Gender Critical.