Sometimes the subtext is much more interesting than the text. On the surface, blabby FeMRA videoblogger Girl Writes What’s recent 3,635 word blog post on the l’affaire TheWoolyBumblebee is a nasty, brutish, but not-at-all-short attack on her former FeMRA comrade at men’s rights hate site A Voice for Men, recently kicked out of the clubhouse for telling off libertarians and Men Going Their Own Way. (See here and here for more details on it all.)
But if you read a little more carefully you can see signs that Girl Writes What’s anger and frustration may really be directed at AVFM’s founder and grand pooh-bah Paul Elam.
Oh, GWW — real name Karen Straughan — is plenty angry at TheWoolybumblebee — real name Kristina Hansen. Here’s one relatively restrained passage from Straughan’s rambling diatribe, which ironically, with only a few changes in details, could also describe AVFM’s Elam to a T:
WBB seems to thrive on attention (both negative and positive), has very sloppy impulse control, is emotionally unstable …. She takes up causes she thinks will get her admiration (such as the A Voice for Boys site, which she started and quickly abandoned–the URL now redirects to her personal website), and it’s probably at least as much about external validation as anything else. I have watched her repeatedly engage in several of the tactics of abusive women–DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender), especially–when people take issue with her attitudes or behavior. Witness the quote-mining she engages in, while simultaneously castigating her opponents for their “intellectual dishonesty” and “lies”.
Oh, but it gets worse, much worse.
[D]espite 10 years of state-subsidized education and four degrees, Kristina Hansen’s accomplishments include 1) following her hind-brain into the weeds to her own self-destruction, 2) being a rabid joiner with little follow-through, as evidenced by A Voice for Boys, 3) whining about people who she claims “do nothing” a month after they handed her $5000, 4) alienating three quarters of the people she claimed she was serving, 5) squeezing out babies, 6) collecting child support and social welfare despite having milked the system for god knows how many degrees between her and her husband, and 7) throwing public temper tantrums because no one appreciates her.
Money well spent, by all measures. Let’s pay people to get educated so we can pay them to sit on their asses and generate more burdens on society. Again, I’m so glad to know I helped pay for those four degrees she’s using to sit in a lawn chair and gestate a fifth fetus with. A fifth child who makes me weep for the future of humanity, because regardless of whether you’re a biological determinist/reductionist or whether you think it’s all environment, you have to admit those are five fucked up kids about to be unleashed on the world.
Yeah, that’s right. She attacked the woman’s children. Classy.
And then Straughan gets all Mean Girls (pretentious antifeminist version) on her:
And whatever your actual motivations, I can tell you what it looks like to outsiders and disinterested parties: it looks like you’re the misfit attacking the popular girl for getting more attention than you. It looks like you’re grinding a man (AVFM) into the dirt because you were scorned by him. You’re living up to every single goddamn negative stereotype of women out there, which is all the more ironic considering your constant NAFALTing to MGTOWs.
You are the female nature that drives feminism, even if you’re not a feminist … .
So what was this I was saying about Straughan’s real rage being directed at Elam? Well, it’s clear from a number of remarks she makes throughout the piece that she’s livid with him for having put Hansen on the masthead in the first place. Not only that, but she feels a certain contempt at him for being so easily won over by the younger woman.
Elam put Hansen on the masthead, she writes,
despite several glaring red flags in videos she’d uploaded to her previous YT channel (TruthandOblivion, which got flagged down), where she used terms like, “you’re the man, you have to be the adult” to a male DV victim, etc. ….
Apparently Paul wasn’t aware of the red flags (he doesn’t even have time to watch all MY videos, pfft :P), or ignored any tingling of his spider senses (or perhaps intentionally ignored the flags because he is constantly juggling multiple priorities). He promoted her (way too early for ANYONE, really, who was so new to the MRM) to senior news director for Canada.
So Elam promoted this fresh new face to Senior News Director for Canada — and somehow can’t find the time to even watch Girl Writes What’s videos. And Straughan just stewed quietly about it for months, as she makes clear in a part of her post that is ostensibly addressed directly to Hansen, even though it’s clear the real target is Elam:
Kristina, I just want to say, I avoided raising my concerns with Paul primarily because it might have been construed as me being catty–me being one of those women only concerned with monopolizing male attention and being top dogette. Given how quickly he promoted you, I figured he was smitten and would be even more prone to draw that conclusion if a shopworn old bird like me raised concerns. And I wasn’t interested in turning anything into a cat-fight over market share over this movement’s mostly male cheerleaders.
And however much power you seem to think I have over AVFM (given your statements to that effect), and how much practical power I might actually have (given my reach), I choose not to involve myself in the inner workings of AVFM, and always have. Paul has actually made more decisions based on your counsel than on mine, because I would never think to tell someone how to run their own goddamn website. Even when they hire sociopathic, toxic, abusive people like you.
Wow. If she thinks so poorly of Paul Elam’s judgement, why on earth does she stick around?
Will Girl Writes What be the next out the door?
… wow. If she knows how childish, mercurial, and judgmental they are, why —
you know what, never mind
Mmmmm, schadenfreude, it’s what’s for lunch.
@inurashii Because feminists are even worse, probably.
To GWW’s mind, I mean.
Wow. She waited until now to tear into her rival, because she didn’t want to appear to be one of those old, shopworn, jealous women. Stay classy, “girl”.
hahahahahaha….GWW…a jealous, catty woman. I knew there would be something from her because she is just all about getting up into the middle of other people’s business and she wasn’t getting any attention. Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!
Girlwriteswhat is a mother, too, so why would she criticize WBB for “squeezing out babies”?
When she said
If more people in a society are educated, it makes it more likely that the society will progress and prosper. Most people want to contribute to society in some way, either through doing a job, volunteering, raising children, caring for others, or just making other people happier. If they can go to school longer, it will be easier for them to do so.
That’s interesting that GWW says she was NAFLTing, because the MGTOW said she was NAWALTing. I bet GWW changed it because she is a woman. It’s easier for her to defend NAFALT than NAWALT. Either one is a shitty “argument” though. So they abbreviated a valid point into an acronym? So what? That doesn’t change the fact that “Not all women are like that” and “Not all feminists are like that” are true statements.
It’s amazing. These people are terrible at figuring out very basic things about society and the world, but are really great at telling the truth about each other (albeit heavily refracted by their misogynist prisms).
I get real angry real fast and I swear to god I got a hatespasm the minute she not-so tacitly implied that the Wooly Bumblebee’s alienating of racists, homophobes, libertarians, and [lol]misogynists[/lol] was out of line. Hey, Männërbünd Liberties’ Movementists, how the fuck can you call yourself a fucking legitimate goddam social movement when its pissing core are the sorts of middle-class scum who’d find themselves comfortable in committing fucking hate crimes? Jesus Christ, fuck MRAs forever.
Oh and reading her account gives me the impression that she really doesn’t stray that far from her computer chair in her life. But that’s really just another thing she has in common with her fellow MRApists, besides hating women with a passion
Woah. Wait, these are adults, right?
What an asshole move bringing WBB’s kids into it.
They are all nasty characters who can’t even get along with each other, and I’m glad I don’t know them personally, and I’m even gladder that they spend most of their time fighting for dominance with each other rather than inflicting themselves on the “real world.”
Jesus Christ these people are like crabs in a bucket.
I personally like how she recognizes Elam’s hatred toward women.
“because it might have been construed as me being catty–me being one of those women only concerned with monopolizing male attention and being top dogette”
It’s pretty obvious that she was tip toeing around her apparent “misgivings” about WBB because she was afraid of being lumped in with “those feminist types”*.
*I almost said those catty feminist types, and then that made me think of brain bleach and I laughed at the word play.
Person X leaves group, Person Y says “I knew X was dodgy all the time!” It’s a tale of group cohesion maintenance as old as time.
Takes one to know one, Karen Straughan.
Hate group schisms are always good for a laugh. If they MUST exist (I believe they do not) they can at least provide us with amusement.
“Mmmmm, schadenfreude, it’s what’s for lunch.”
Ah, yes.
I cannot believe they went after her kids, and for having kids- oh wait, YES. I can believe it. Thats totally wrong though.
I would feel for WBB, but then I remind myself that if she hadnt been kicked out of AVFM, she would still be spouting hate as a part of the group- she didn’t leave on purpose. I do hope she gets far away from the MRA/femRAs, and does some good for the world.
The whole femRA things just baffles me.
Hi, SittieKitty! Have you posted before? If not, please accept one welcome package!
Hi Kittehserf! I have not posted here before. I’ve been lurking a while though, figured I’d start commenting since y’all seem pretty cool. Thanks for the welcome package 🙂 I think I figured out the avatar thing, and my blockquotes didn’t totally break the first time either, so that’s a bonus, since I hear rumours of a monster running around causing mass quote destruction.
Your catvatar is so cute. 😀
Getting past the blockquote monster first go is good, but beware – it’s just waiting to put you off your guard, and then …
“has very sloppy impulse control, is emotionally unstable”
Those are the things I noticed about GWW.
I have been reading about so much Drama at the avfm… it’s like watching a bad 80’s teen soup opera…
… I need popcorn.