Karen Straughan, the soporific, pseudoscientific YouTube antifeminist, doesn’t seem on the surface much like a “Red Pill Woman.” She’s a single mother with short hair, well past “the wall,” who makes a point of not wearing makeup in her videos.
But she’s got one quality that apparently makes up for all of her other defects as a Red Pill gal: she tells the Red Pill guys exactly what they want to hear, defending their noxious views, feeding their sense of victimhood, and hand-waving away their blatant misogyny.
So it’s hardly a surprise that she got a warm welcome when she showed up yesterday in the Red Pill subreddit to do an “ask me anything.” Today, I girded my loins and popped a caffeine pill and read through her answers. Well, skimmed them, anyway; I’m no masochist.
I learned a lot. Unfortunately, most of what I learned was not true.
So let me present the Top Ten Completely Untrue Things I Learned from GirlWritesWhat’s Red Pill AMA, and One Thing That Might Possibly Be True.
All quotes are straight from Straughan’s AMA. I’ve bolded some of the most-untrue bits.
1) Roosh V isn’t a bad person for wanting to legalize rape
“One commenter expressed a wish that I’d learn to speak more wisely and circumspectly on topics like RooshV’s suggestion to make rape legal on private property (all I said was that however stupid or unfeasible or offensive his idea was, his stated intention was to prevent rape, so I wasn’t going to call him a bad person for it).”
2) Red Pill dudes only say terrible things about women because they love them so much
“It’s not misogynistic. Some of the rhetoric here is very angry, and very generalized. A lot of that is from a sense of betrayal–I was taught women are wonderful and believed it, and then the shit hit the fan. There’s a point, though, if the journey isn’t suppressed through punishment and shaming, where these men tend to realize it’s the false paradigm they’re angry with, not women. … If these men didn’t love women in the first place, they wouldn’t be able to be hurt by their failure to live up to the unrealistic expectations society has encouraged them to have.”
3) When men rape women, it’s probably some woman’s fault, if you think about it
“A rapist is a very damaged man (usually damaged by women) or a man who really really really wants sex but can’t convince a woman to willingly lie down with him.”
4) Women might look cute, but GWW can see the total-not-cuteness of their souls
“Neoteny. It’s important. The cuter someone is, the nicer we assume they are. For women, that cuteness is also associated with attractiveness to the opposite sex. So everyone thinks cute women are automatically nice, and men also find them sexually appealing.”
5) I’m a fatty who might possibly be wearing a fedora. No, really, for some reason my weight and possible hat choices came up
“Have you guys seen David Futrelle? Or “Angry Aussie”? Or any number of other hipster douchebag male feminists who are fat, have neckbeards, wear fedoras, have difficulty getting laid, etc?
A lot of the men I’ve met in my travels through the MRM are awkward or otherwise don’t remind women of Matthew McConaughey. But a lot of them are quite presentable. Confident, attractive, fit, and definitely not virgins.”
NOTE: I have doublechecked and I am definitely not wearing a fedora.
6) “Most feminists” probably have Borderline Personality Disorder or something similar
7) Red Pillers are the Malcolm X to the Men’s Rights Movement’s Martin Luther King
“If you rebelled without disseminating a message, you’d be a hindrance. But doing what you’re doing, you’re helping, even if you’re just presenting a Malcolm X for MRAs to juxtapose against MLK.“
8) Black activists only protested the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in order to get white people mad and make money for themselves, probably
“When you try to cast blame over all whites for perpetuating a racist culture in a Martin or Brown case, whites don’t like that. They get pissed. It gets the animosity stirred up on both sides of the racial divide much more effectively than if the shooting was 100% unjustifiable. And it stirs up white resentment of blacks.
It’s like these particular people (activist leaders) are invested in racism, and they (maybe subconsciously) go out of their way to perpetuate the conditions that keep them in paychecks and justify their existence.
If racism ended, they’d be out of a job. The last three generations are the least racist, sexist, homophobic in history. Where’s the money and status in that, for your average Sharpton?”
9) There’s no epidemic of rape in India because half of all rape cases there are total bullshit
“[T]here’s significant evidence that about half of rape reports in India derive from consensual sex between unmarried persons, but which fall under statutory definitions of rape that are being questioned within the system as to their moral basis in a changing social landscape.”
10) Women are less stable than men because science?
“A woman has to be more emotionally stable than 85% of women to be as emotionally stable as the average man. A man has to be more sensitive than 85% of men to be as sensitive as the average woman.”
11) Chimp dudes don’t have wingmen. (Wing-chimps?)
“Human males are more cooperative with each other than males of almost any other species, really. The phenomenon of guys trying to get other guys laid just isn’t a thing in chimpanzee society.“
That last one might be true, I guess. What the hell do I know about chimps?
EDIT: I have been informed that chimp dudes sort of do have wingmen, but in a horrible way.
Dang, the blog seems to have eaten my close-italics tag. The only word that should have been italic-ed was ‘other’.
@Road to Servitude
I second Policy of Madness in that the road of understand is much longer for men, since we cannot know how it feels to live as a woman in this society. For me, there were a HUGE number of issues that I was blissfully unaware of until I started reading feminist literature, talking with friends and lurking on this blog. (An example: The accusation that women get of “being bossy” for doing things that are not inherently ‘bossy’. I never knew that).
Also, GWW (like many misogynists) manages to be offensive enough that she propagates unhealthy stereotypes about men, which I can identify pretty easily:
A ‘healthy’ reminder that a man’s worth is determined by his sexual experience with women specifically.
Because (bullshit evo psych a.k.a.) ‘biology’ dictates that men are less sensitive, any men displaying sensitivity will have their manly membership to the manly house of manliness permanently revoked.
Of course, these are a mere fraction compared to the number of unhealthy ‘facts’ that GWW says about women.
Well it’s a good thing this isn’t a joke as it isn’t funny, but you’re either exaggerating or you don’t consider suicide, pedophilia and serial rape serious topics.
I think ktrantingredhead’s post should be removed. The lack of humanity itself is bad, wishing death on a person who said terrible things and viewing them as violent criminals is a dual failure of empathy and critical thinking.
The true terribleness lies in the shitty passive aggressive sea lioning form of “go kill yourself” which is both cowardly and out of bounds for blog commentary section moderated by a decent person for decent people. Take that shit elsewhere.
@Penny Psmith,
It’s definitely possible that that’s what she’s doing. I’ve noticed that a lot of other fallen FeMRAs or FeMRAs at AVFM who’ve been attacked by certain MRAs and MGTOWs have been attacked for using their femininity and sexuality to infiltrate the movement and seduce the men into giving them what they want. GWW might very well be downplaying her femaleness and looks on purpose to avoid such accusations. It’s also possible that she recognizes on some level that they’ll take her less seriously if she looks conventionally feminine and attractive.
WTF is up FeMRAs’ hangup with neoteny? (Incidentally, Firefox spell check doesn’t even recognize neoteny as a real word.) Is this some bizarre, subtle way for them to justify grown men pursuing teenage girls because teenage girls are allegedly indistinguishable from adult women because teenage girls and women are both so neotenous?
That sounds reasonable, yeah. But again, when feminists are the one with that look, it seems they just prefer calling them ‘unwomanly’ (or mysoginistic/homophobic slurs to that effect), so I don’t really know how the whole thing works.
Maybe it’s just that as long as you agree with them, they’ll find some way that the ‘rules’ don’t apply to you.
On the subject of KS’s physical appearance: what is immediately clear is that if she had a channel that was not virulently anti feminist her short haired, unadorned appearance (a ‘safe lesbian’ look if you like) would attract vicious abuse from the manosphere.
I would love to do a feminist channel on youtube, there are virtually none, but the abuse about my appearance coupled with all the rape and death threats, and perhaps some more ‘creative’ abuse is offputting. I know that this is the intention, but my mental health comes first!
@Ellesar
There’s actually many feminist channels that are very small and don’t receive much harassment at all.
For instant Push to Smart has been operating for a year and, admitedly, I haven’t seen all their videos, but their video critic games and have less than a 1000 views each.
They may or may not have received harassment, but it seems harassment only compounds into Sarkeesian/Queen/Wu territory if you bring up the fact that you’ve been harassed. :/
I’d say you should go for it, but I wouldn’t expect to make it big. Just be careful with the tags and titles and you should be good.
Wow, I did not proof read that well.
@Ellesar
You don’t have to appear on camera to do a youtube channel. I’ve honestly never understood the appeal of youtube vids that are just someone sitting in front of a webcam talking. I can’t deal with them, because watching them is boring, and listening to them and doing something else is just distracting. Put something else on the screen and do voiceovers instead.
I’m going to disagree. First, David is a journalist so he is reporting on what was actually said in an AMA in forum that was posted a major hub of misogynistic men. GWW isn’t even talking to women or trying to provide a “women’s perspective”, she’s saying factually incorrect things in order to suck up to one of the worst sections of her asshole male fanbase. He can critique women’s false statements posing as “hard truths”, GWW is a pseudo-intellectual polemicist associated with AVfM and a public figure of note, according to MRAs. In fact, David is only placing her, uh, worldview in the context of the prominently male manosphere.
Second, I very much appreciate David’s journalistic approach because he stays away from personal commentary that privileges his personal experience over women’s experiences. Unlike an endless number of male commentators, when David discussed Elliot Rodger he never subjected us to a lengthy testimonial about his personal teen dating woes and sexual history.
An endless number of annoying male “allies” wrote at length about how they didn’t date in High School, were frustrated, grew angry at girls so much that they were misogynistic or at least sympathized, but grew up and learned women were people too (Hurray!). Their excuse, I think, at first was to explain Rodgers, but it quickly turned into an annoying “explaining frustrated nerds” genre that littered the internet. These guys assumed that their experiences were completely unique to boys (they weren’t) and their sense of entitlement made them believe people wanted to here about their teenage sexual frustration (I didn’t).
The moment David starts dragging this blog down with narcissistic personal commentaries that turn misogyny into a element of an online persona schick, I’m gone. Luckily he’s a real journalist. When he references his personal life it’s limited, and he uses it to explain his blog schedule, or to offer sympathy or empathy in a way that highlights the other person’s experience.
I feel it’s drifted to condescension because it ignores that feminism has influenced a body of scholarly work that can stand the among any and be discussed, well or badly, by people of any gender.
Pandapool and POM – I am tech useless, I wouldn’t be able to do anything but talk – obviously that could be really boring, I did want to just be very specific and review old feminist ‘classics’ as there is so much misinformation about what a specific writer said – but there are other reasons that I just would never get round to doing it, I have to admit!
@Ellesar
Lol.
Well, if you ever really want to do it, Windows Movie Maker is a pretty easy thing to learn (and it’s free). Audacity is also a really good free audio program to record with, and many professional use it.
All you need to do is record your voice and slap a picture into Movie Maker and make it the length of the video. If you want to make it any more fancy, there’s ton of tutorials out there to look at.
You don’t need to be fancy when you start out.
@Ellesar
Do you play any video games?
As far as I can tell, the idea was to redefine what rape is, so there would “technically” be less rape? It wasn’t intended to help rape victims as far as I can tell, PUAs think rapists who get locked up are victims, so it was meant to help those “victims”.
@Kellen,
Roosh’s argument was that if you made rape legal on private property, women would be more careful about being alone with men. Oddly enough, even Jordan Owen could see the problems with this argument.
The rationale was that if rape is legal on private property, women will be more careful about going into private property with men with whom they don’t intend to have sex. Because the problem is that women just aren’t careful enough!
The thought process behind it, though, is really easy to see: Roosh doesn’t want to fuck around with consent. He wants any female body on the premises to be legally his to do with as he pleases, no questions asked. Consent is really hard for rapists like Roosh, and he just doesn’t want to have to think about it at all.
Love this anti marriage equality rant by an Australian right winger, yes marriage is good …just don’t enjoy it…..
“Marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman, for the core purpose of procreating and rearing children. It exists to tame the base sexual instincts of men and women, to harness a mother and father to monogamy and the optimal upbringing of their children. It is not a vehicle to validate adult romantic interests. ”
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/prime_minister_tony_abbott_cant_have_his_cake_and_eat_it_too/
Just wanted to say that there are a lot of helpful further comments on my original comment. Thanks for these, and I will reflect on them. Jonathan (Wallace Runnymede)
Curious how the argument that marriage is for procreation is only used against gay couples. I’ve yet to see a movement on the right to make it a requirement that straight couples must have children or to deny straight couples that are too old to procreate or have an infertile member of the couple the right to marry.
Well, I assume the idea is that god could bless a couple with 1 or 2 infertile partners?
@Ellesar
Go for it, I started making a channel on youtube where I review stories in video games
I’m sure GWW had lots and lots of reputable citations for her many assertions-right? I’ll be waiting over in the corner holding my breath waiting to see them.
Tony,
Noooooooooooo!
If you have not been to see the AVFM post trying to spin their failure to organize another craptacular conference, you should. Hilarious.