So yesterday I had a strange conversation, of sorts, with blabby FeMRA videoblogger Karen Straughan, aka GirlWritesWhat, via private message on Reddit.
Given that, in the recent WoolyBumblebee controversy, she put herself in the position of defending Men Going Their Own Way against WBB’s mostly accurate attacks on them, I found myself wondering what she might think of my post yesterday on the MGTOWers who felt it was appropriate to let a four-year-old-girl drown because she might grow up to be the next Betty Friedan or even the next — gasp! — Amanda Marcotte.
I was especially interested in what she might have to say about MGTOW elder Zed, the friend and mentor of her A Voice for Men boss, Paul Elam; in the MGTOWforums discussion, you may recall, he was firmly in the “don’t rescue little girls” camp.
So I asked her about that, and asked why she was defending MGTOWers when so many of them don’t even think women should be part of the Men’s Rights movement at all.
Here’s some of what she wrote back:
You seem to be deliberately trying to evoke an outrage in me. First, Zed, “Paul E’s mentor and idol” would not save a child he doesn’t know. Then “MGTOWers…don’t actually think women should be part of the MR movement…”
Do you think I should be expected to die to save a boy I don’t know? Speaking as someone who almost died once to save my son and my nephew, why should I be expected to potentially leave my children orphans to save someone else’s kid? And the truth is, I wouldn’t be expected to do that. In reality, no one would have blamed me if I had chosen not to nearly drown to save my own kid and my sister’s kid. I like your quote mine: Men shouldn’t rescue 4 year old girls… Not what it actually is: Men shouldn’t sacrifice their lives or health to save 4 year old girls they don’t know or have reason to care about…
It’s an interesting way she’s chosen to, well, reframe the issue. Zed didn’t say he was only talking about situations where the rescuers life would be at risk. He said, simply and categorically:
When a female is in trouble, if I don’t know her, I don’t see her.
After demanding that I denounce a random radical feminist who said something terrible, she moved on to my second question, though not without accusing me of “needling” her by pointing out that MGTOWers hate women. Or, as she prefers to look at it, they don’t “trust” women.
Do I have to list every single psychological lever you’ve attempted to apply in this message? Do you really think I’m going to react like a typical woman? “OMG, those MGTOWs don’t trust women!!! And that means they don’t trust me! I am a herd animal! I am incapable of ignoring naysayers! I can’t stand the fact that perhaps somewhere, someone doesn’t appreciate me!!! How dare they express themselves if it will hurt a woman’s feelings???????”
Woah, there. I think that might have been a bit more revealing than you intended it to be.
So your definition of “typical woman” is “herd animal?” I’ll take “internalized misogyny” for $1000, Alex.
Instead of me asking, “Why would I need anyone’s permission to make videos and assist a movement I believe in? Why would I take it as a personal failing that a man would not risk his life to save my child when I would not potentially orphan my kids to save the kids of some random person? Why would David Futrelle think my outrage over what a handful of MGTOW say about women in the movement should outweigh my own principles?”
Uh, you don’t need anyone’s permission to make your videos. Jewish people don’t need anyone’s permission to start making videos glorifying Adolph Hitler. Black people don’t need anyone’s permission to make videos on behalf of the Klan.
The question is why do you want to? Not just: why are you willing to make videos on behalf of a Men’s Rights movement driven by misogyny. But why are you willing to defend and make excuses for MGTOWers who not only hate women in general but hate you personally?
Why are you willing to lie — apparently even to yourself — and pretend that they don’t really hate women — that, really, it’s just that they don’t “trust” women because some awful woman has hurt them, or because some mean feminist said something insulting about their favorite video game, or whatever the excuse is.
And if you have any doubt that most MGTOWers really and truly hate women — hate hate HATE them — I invite you to read through the archives here. I suggest you start with MGTOWer extraordinaire Christopher in Oregon, and then move on to the posts dealing with MGTOWers in general.
And if you doubt that MGTOWers hate you, you personally, just go down to MGTOWforums, the biggest MGTOW hangout around, and take a look at the threads devoted to AVFM. A lot of the guys there hate AVFM with a passion — and they hate it largely because Paul give a platform to you and other women.
For someone so obsessed with me, you sure don’t know a lot about me.
Huh, wouldn’t that sort of suggest that maybe I’m not actually that obsessed with you?
From what I do know about Straughan (not much) this seems to be a standard ploy she pulls whenever someone calls her on her shit — to try to throw them off-balance and put them on the defensive by declaring them “stalkers” or “obsessed,” as she did with spermjack_attack, a Redditor who’s done some amazing takedowns of GWW posts and videos in recent days, like this one.
I responded by pointing out that
I often write about MRAs. You’re a prominent MRA, so sometimes I write about you. I should probably write more, given that you’re kind of a big fish in your tiny pond, but your videos are so fucking tedious and slow I can’t bear to watch them.
Which is true. That’s why, despite all the attention she gets from her MRA fanboys, I’ve written only three posts about her — compared with seven about the comparatively less important but much more entertaining Christopher in Oregon, mentioned above. Well, this will make it four posts about her.
Anyway, I also called her out on her evasive answer about Zed, so she tried again, this time with a new evasion:
Zed said categorically, “When a female is in trouble, if I don’t know her, I don’t see her.” Let’s parse that. He would not intervene. Why should he be expected to? Do you have any idea how small the burden is on women to intervene? If a woman were being assaulted and a female witness didn’t intervene, would this be shameful? How about if a man were being assaulted?
That’s an odd way of “parsing” it, since in context it was abundantly clear that he wasn’t just talking about adult women being assaulted. He was specifically talking about little girls. The whole point of his argument, which he repeated several times, was that he didn’t want to help little girls because, as he put it, they might “grow … up to be another Amanda Marcunt, or Jessica Valenti, or Betty Friedan.”
Karen, you can pretend he was talking only about adult women, but he wasn’t.
You can pretend that MGTOWers don’t hate women, but they do.
You can pretend whatever you want about the movement you’ve attached yourself to, but guess what — everyone outside of that movement can see it for what it is.
Most of the rest of her comment was devoted to trying to prove how “obsessed” I am with her.
If you are curious about me and why I might involve myself in a movement you believe hates women, you might concede I’d be curious about you and why you involve yourself in a movement that I believe hates men (or masculinity, take your pick). And yet how many times have I initiated contact with you? How often do I devote entire blog posts or videos to you?
Perhaps I’m measuring you by my own yardstick. Because as curious as I am as to why you would ally yourself with a movement whose foundational ideology is hostile to men (no matter how mainstream or seemingly benign), as much as I might lie awake wondering what motivates you, I am simply not obsessed enough by the question to PM you and ask. Or to read your blog (even when you’re talking about me). Or to devote entire blog posts to you.
If I messaged you over anything regarding that, I would consider myself obsessed with the psychological dysfunction represented by you. So you messaging me indicates (to me) a level of obsession on par with that. If you are the type of person to initiate private contact with people you consider opponents on a regular basis, then I’ve misjudged you.
Yes, I confess, sometimes I ask questions of my ideological opponents, publicly or privately, in hopes of getting an interesting response. I certainly got some revealing answers, and even more revealing non-answers, from Straughan.
And it was definitely more interesting than watching one of her videos.
Oh, and for some reason, before she closed up the debate, she decided she wanted to talk about Mary Daly, of all people, whom she seems to think has never been criticized by any feminists ever except for one by the name of, uh … Dr. Mindbeam? No, that’s really what she thinks. Apparently, in GirlWritesWhat-land, it was one big feminist love-fest for Mary Daly up until Dr. Mindbeam came along in 2011 and wrote a blog post.
Mary Daly’s body was long cold before some random internet feminist named Dr Mindbeam finally excommunicated her on “no seriously, what about teh menz?” I haven’t seen any feminists who write under their real names do so.
Maybe you could educate me.
I mentioned Audre Lorde’s open letter to Daly calling her out for racism back in 1979. I suggested she Google “Mary Daly” and “transphobe” and read through some of the results. Might take a while, as there are 5000 of them.
But I’m not sure how one can “educate” someone like her, someone who has declared herself a “gender theorist” and who makes endless half-hour or even hour-long videos on feminism, without bothering to learn even the rudiments of feminist history first. (Lesson One: Feminists often disagree with each other.)
It would be like someone declaring themselves an astrophysics theorist, then declaring “the moon is a potato! I’ve seen no evidence indicating otherwise. If you think you know better, educate me!”
Her understanding of feminism seems stuck at the “moon is a potato” level, and I just don’t think there’s anything any of us can do about it.
God… This lady is so fucking unaware it burns.
Didn’t she accuse WBB of “NAWALTing” during that whole scandal? Her entire life in the MRM is pretty much “I’m better than those herd animals”.
Ick. Misogyny, hypocrisy, borderline abuse apologia in this case, could she get any worse? (Actually I’m not sure if I’d like to know.)
So GWW’s response to “Why do you hang out with assholes?” is “Because I’m an asshole too, and I’m way more assholish than some dumb WOMAN could ever hope to be, so there!” I am…not surprised.
June 17: Paul Elam announces that a film company is working on a documentary about MRAs, and this will be the perfect opportunity for the manosphere to win the mainstream over to the rightness and morality of its cause.
June 29: MRA discussion about how female children should be allowed to die so they don’t grow up into monsters like Betty Frieden.
Yes, this seems to be progressing according to plan.
The moon is a potato! That’s how I’ll argue with MRAs if I ever need to.
P.S. Check my comment on “The faked screenshot… and its implications.” It’s potentially important.
So ya, I am not willing to write off the humanity of MRAs just because they are willing to do so to other people. I think a number of them are probably capable of quality work in their day jobs, Compartmentalization is pretty powerful.
When PElam finds it less convenient to have her around, she will be (N)AWALTzed out of the clubhouse. Maybe he will have a “come to Jesus” moment and try to get the MGTOWs back by kicking her out.
She might be forced to realize that MRAs are herd animals, too, if she ever does anything unwomanly like disagree with them too openly. Eventually she’ll realize she’s not an “honorary man”, she’s a token whom they like to keep around only insofar as she makes them look legit. I will almost feel sorry for her when that happens. Not if, when.
^ex-post… redundant… should read all comments before submitting…
First, contrasting “rational selfishness” to “selfless altruism,” which is a standard no one has proposed or defended for at least a hundred years, is a false dichotomy.
Second, the incessantly-lauded protagonist of The Fountainhead literally tells his friend that if his friend were drowning, the protagonist would not save him unless he enjoyed his company. This is presented as a good thing. So, yeah, Rand was ALL ABOUT letting people die unless you, personally, don’t care about them.
Third, lololol MRAs are socialists, okay duder
Are there any MRAs with education in biology or zoology? Because they always seem to pick up the same boring and often wrong animal analogies. How about we elaborate?
Humans are much like many other mammals. Similar to wolves, they often live in groups with one mating pair and their juvenile offspring.
As great apes like the bonobo and chimpanzee, humans do not form monogamous bonds.
Humans evolved as pack hunters in Africa. Much like the spotted hyena from the same region, human infants will attack their siblings shortly after birth.
We can learn a great deal about human behavior by studying other omnivores. Like the cassowary, females leave all child-rearing (including incubation) to the males they mate with.
Are you sure that wasn’t in Atlas Shrugged? I read The Fountainhead and I don’t remember that. Not that it isn’t a fucked up book, mind.
GirlWritesWhat has fired a shot directly into the exhaust port of the flying potato that is David Futrelle… No, Manboobz, you don’t avoid GirlWritesWhat because she’s “boring.” You avoid her because she’s a difficult target.
As usual what seems to be happening is that an MRA has seen something discussed in social justice circles and attempted to appropriate it for their own cause. Being able to step back and say “if they’re not talking about me personally then I shouldn’t take it so personally” is actually a vital skill when intersectional stuff is being discussed! The thing is, in this case the MGTOW who’re pissy about there being women bloggers at AVFM actually are talking about GWW.
So gww completely ignores the fact that Zed specifically said he wouldn’t intervene to help a female child? He didn’t say he wouldn’t help “a person he didn’t know”, he said he wouldn’t help a female.
This is what Zed actually said, but she pretends he said something else entirely, despite the fact that the post where Zed said these things is there for all to see? I guess it’s easy to be regarded as one of the great intellectuals of the “men’s rights movement” when all you need is a youtube account, an awful lot of words, an a complete willingness to regurgitate to people all the things they want to hear, regardless of if those things match up to history, reality, science, facts, etc.
@Tulgey, I think it is in The Fountainhead. That and Anthem are the only books of hers that I read all the way through, and I distinctly remember my growing horror as I read The Fountainhead. Letting people drown, women falling in love with their rapists, rapists being lauded as heroes for taking what they want…yeah.
I did read a good chunk of Atlas Shrugged at one point, though, so there is a possibility that I’m conflating the two.
No, Atlas Shrugged is the one where the protagonists get together and let basically everyone in the country who isn’t a wealthy industrialist die.
Oh, Atlas Shrugged. I read that all the way through, including the goes-on-forever “Your minds! Your stupid, stupid minds!” speech. It did unpleasant things to my mind. I have since referred to it as the Necronomicon of political fiction, as well as the best selling science fiction novel that SF fans do not consider science fiction.
I’m agreeing that the ‘sure, I’d let you drown, if I thought you were a drag’ scene was in Fountainhead. It sounds like a Roarkism.
I said this when I first came here, but may as well again: for someone who prides themself on being intelligent – she really isn’t. She’s just pretentious. The 30-60 minute videos don’t help her case, either.
It’s bad enough she assumes the Titanic was an example of “male disposability” (it wasn’t) or her description of what makes up “obsession” is nonsensical. Does she assume every journalist who interviews someone does so out of that? With how she acted – that seems to be the case.
The defensiveness is pretty indicative, if anything. A question like “why do you do what you do?” seems pretty benign and inoffensive regardless of who it comes from. Yet, if it comes from the “wrong” person (David, in this case) then suddenly there’s ulterior motives and attempts to pretty buttons and etc. Either she doesn’t do well with interviews at all or she simply expects said interviewer to just pander for the sake of her comportment. You don’t exactly convince other people outside your group acting that way. In fact, it likely just proves their points about them further…
I’d also argue that an MRA calling him/herself a “gender theorist” is a lot like a political reactionary in the U.S. calling themselves “Constitutional scholars” – it’s a way to sound like they know what they are talking about and objective about it, when in reality they are incredibly bias and pushing their personal views without much research.
Well, they live in the world, and except for a handful of MGTOWers living off the grid in the wilds somewhere they must interact with actual women and girls sometimes. I’ve no doubt some of their viciousness causes real damage. (Gotta wonder what percentage of these dudes are rapists.)
Though I don’t suppose they’re all truly vicious (or irredeemable.) I sincerely hope the ones who are simply damaged and floundering people get the help and support they need. They ain’t going to find it in that hateful, dysfunctional movement.
You apparently missed the part where he was speaking specifically of female children.
You also missed the part where, as Dave points out in the OP, “Zed didn’t say he was only talking about situations where the rescuers life would be at risk.”
Re GWW–dumb, or dishonest? Or some special, special blend of both?
Her attempt to reframe Dave’s questions was so obvious, it’s hard to believe it was the result of dishonesty. Surely a liar would be more skilled at the art of tossing red herrings? I suspect the way she argues is the way she thinks. Girl doesn’t brain so good.
“On another note I am incredible sad to have missed the vote last week, and am eager to see the results.”
Well, I’m done enough to make some guesses — you’re a cis woman, between the ages of 20 and 29, living in an urban environment, have a college degree and are middle class (or not, THAT question needs an enite salt shaker), are employed or a student, probably heterosexual and monogamous, either in a monogamous relationship or single and open to the possibility, probably not disabled, but if you are it’s a mental disability, politics lean liberal and religion towards non-religious // secular beliefs (and Flying Spaghetti Monster), also, you like cats.
Unless you stray drastically from that, on more than a few variables, you fit the average and don’t have to worry about missing the survey 🙂
Of 1,640 people who replied, 801 are in urban areas; 384 are 20-24 and 413 are 25-29; 825 are colleg degrees (but nothing higher, 319 have graduate degrees); 935 are employed but not students, 525 are students but not employed, 111 are both; 971 cis women; 402 no responses to the relationship status question, but 488 people in monogamous relationships and 323 single and open to the possibility; 917 heterosexual sexual people, and 570 monogamous people; 1045 not disabled, 375 people with mental disablities, ablut half that with physical or other disabilities — mostly invisible disabilities…and that’s as far as I’ve gotten officially, unofficially — lots of non-religious people and cat lovers; about half the people who replied to freeze peach said “oh no, my freeze peach!!”
Also, around 200 people are David — he’s only 1/8th of us!
Oh and we are mostly white, but calculating what I’d expect to see considering how many people are in fairly white countries, that’s today’s project.
Sorry, that was off topic. My brain is one topic currently, but I’ll be sharing soon enough!
I thought this was interesting:
“If you are curious about me and why I might involve myself in a movement you believe hates women, you might concede I’d be curious about you and why you involve yourself in a movement that I believe hates men (or masculinity, take your pick)”
So her comparison is that feminism hates men AND/OR masculinity, and the MRA hates WOMEN. Not women AND/OR femininity. Which is bullshit, and she knows it.
That’s where she sees herself getting in from. She’s a female MRA, so they can’t “hate women,” it’s just everything ABOUT women that they hate, and she is definitely included in that. She talks about femininity being bad news all the time. I remember in her second ever video, I think it was, she says how she’s decided to not wear makeup in her videos anymore because it’s a scientific fact that she won’t be taken as seriously. She’s also said that “femininity leads to feminism,” and as an anti-feminist that says a lot.
BTW: Isn’t she supposed to be interviewed by Joe Rogan? I’ve heard that rumour going around for a while now. Not a huge Rogan fan, but I’m really curious to see how that turns out. I really know what kind of guy he is, I hope he actually asks real questions and doesn’t let her get away with crazy nonsense.
I DON’T really know what kind of guy he is, I mean!
I thought feminism was all about “masculinizing women”. Now she’s saying femininity leads to feminism? Ummmm there are a TON of “anti-feminists” who are very traditionally feminine and wear dresses all the time. And I thought one of the MRA talking points was damn those bitches and their careers. Presumably because a woman who can make her own money and feed her own damn self doesn’t need him to provide for her, so he can’t treat her like shit because she could just leave. (To me this is where the real boner rage of their movement seems to be coming from. Because in the 50’s a man could just abuse the shit out of women and most of them just had to take it.) They need to make up their mind about which thing is “feminist”, “being feminine” or “being masculine”. I’m starting to think being feminist means “having a vagina” (no offense meant to any trans women.)