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.
@Lea Where can I find that? I love watching hamsters spin their wheels
@WWTH – I remember Andrew Sullivan’s once telling Pat Buchanan that he (AS) *could* make that argument about his (PB’s) marriage but wouldn’t.
nevermind! And lulz at them criticizing The Dark Lord for not having an immediate response XD. I mean hey, they have to come up with SOME sort of insult!
They’l be so relieved that David noticed them.
“hipster douchebag male feminists who are fat, have neckbeards, wear fedoras, have difficulty getting laid, etc?”
Wasn’t what she described as a “hipster male feminist” actually what the stereotype for MRAs was or am I missing something here?
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs:
On top of what Pandapool, Rabid Rabbit, and kirbywarp said above: look up the concept of an ‘affinity scam’ (Or Affinity Fraud on Wikipedia). The real weakness here is in tribal thinking, the assumption that everybody is either ‘one of us’ or ‘other’, and we must rally around us. Church groups tend to be particularly vulnerable to being scammed from the inside, and being unwilling to report the scam to the outside afterwards. There’s a reason why affinity scams are so big in Utah, where most of the population are Mormons.
GWW is an extremely unpleasant person, but she has talked about her appearance and marital status. She used to wear makeup in her videos, and I believe her hair was longer. Some of her viewers complained that she was manipulating them with her sexy sexiness, and so she stopped (really). Neotany is a favorite dead horse of hers, so I think she also wanted to demonstrate that she was eschewing typical womanly wiles.
As for her being a single mom, she’s gone into some detail about that, which I don’t remember particularly well. I believe the father abandoned them, and she eventually filed for a divorce in absentia. She left open visiting rights and never applied for child support. Whatever she did, it was enough to appease all the bitter deadbeat dad MRAs in her audience.
I also read that she had at least one daughter in addition to her sons. Unlike the other stuff, I haven’t seen her acknowledge that directly, so I mightily hope it isn’t true.
Also, isn’t she supposed to be against shaming men for being virgins, for their bodies, for their looks, etc.?
Oh, so she basically has to downplay her appearance on purpose to avoid catching shit. But the MRM isn’t filled with misogynists are anything. Nosiree.
So, basically, he was so completely in the wrong, and she did absolutely to impose on him or his parental rights after the divorce, in spite of the fact that he’d abandoned them, so she’s all right by them.
Oh, and thankyou to Panda, Kirby, Rabid and Jenora for answering my question. ^__^; I just don’t understand the right-wing mindset, so it’s genuinely interesting to learn about. Also, sorry for not responding sooner, got distracted by the trolls and other annoyances (again, lots of distracting annoyances in this thread).
Thank mrkfoster, F!
I wouldn´t compare PUAs to any ape specie, that would be cruel to the apes.
“It’s like these particular people (activist leaders) are invested in [MRA], and they (maybe subconsciously) go out of their way to perpetuate the conditions that keep them in paychecks and justify their existence.
“If [MRA] 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 [Paul Elam]”
Just sayin…
Oh boy! Somebody mentioned chimpanzees, so I get to dust off my old anthropology classes!
Although I don’t think chimp males directly help one another get with chicks, they do help indirectly. Chimpanzees have this really weird mating pattern where, when the female chimp is in estrus, she mates with every available male she can find. She does this because, if she fails to mate with one of the males, that male will know any kids she has aren’t his, and then murder the child (this is one of the many reasons why chimpanzees are assholes). So, by enthusiastically practicing infanticide, chimpanzees do indeed help one another get laid.
I love how, on the one hand, men are the “stable”, level-headed gender; and on the other, men can’t help assaulting women because feelings or something. Consistency!!
Okay, this is a horrible wordsalad, but I think it’s an attempt to make a dig at David along the same lines as Road to Servitude’s, only with less coherence or willingness to consider the other side.
Anyway, nunya, if that’s the case, then you’re full of reading comprehension fail. David isn’t ‘blaming’ GWW for sexism; he’s pointing out that she, herself, is being sexist. The black cop who stood by and watched while a white cop placed a taser next to a dead black man’s body, and said nothing about it, was being racist. There’s always a small subsection of out-group individuals who will curry favor with the dominant group (the source of the cultural biases) by selling out their own disadvantaged group. Pointing out their failings (while being careful to not indulge in the same thing–note the lack of gendered slurs in David’s post, as opposed to, say, Bill Maher’s comments about Ann Coulter) is not sexist.
I thought that nunya was calling out Karen Straughan for saying that it’s women’s fault that men rape them and hate them and black people’s fault that white prior are still racist, not David for criticizing Karen Straughan’s sexism.
Just a heads up: People from actual tribes do not like being compared to people who can’t think for themselves.
GWW is, by her own admission a doormat.
You don’t say?
Well, I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvrnx15o7h1qbnfqao9_250.gif
Darth Conans,
Maybe. Or maybe she mates with all the males because chimps are two hump chumps and it takes a whole troop to satisfy her needs.
Since I think I’m the only one who used ‘tribal thinking’ before…
do you have a better term than ‘tribalism’ to refer to the way many people actively band together into self-selected cultural groups and define ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ based on that group? It’s not really a reference to existing tribes, so much as a reference to the basic human thinking that leads to the formation of such.
I’m not being sarcastic; most of the other places I’ve been that discuss matters like this use ‘tribal’ to refer to this sort of strong in/out-group thinking and the gatekeeping involved in maintaining the cultural conformity. If there’s a better word to use, let me know.
@Jenora, you yourself just used the term in/out-group thinking, which seems like it may be serviceable.
And infrahumanisation is the process by which an in-group comes to consider it’s own members more human and out-group members less human, I think.
Hmm, good point.
I think this is at least in part because ‘tribe’ tends to have different definitions in sociological, anthropological, and layman contexts.
I’ll try to be more careful about the wording in the future, though.
Looking back, i think I put too much emphasis on timing. Nunya, I seem to have misread your post, and extend a heartfelt apology for doing so.
Really all most of these men want is a woman who validates them and is completely submissive. It doesn’t matter if a woman has short hair, is slightly older, is fat, has tattoos, swears, smokes, has missing teeth, lives on welfare, isn’t traditionally feminine, is in a male dominated career, is a single Mother ect. The manosphere say they dislike these things because they want to make women feel insecure. If they make women feel insecure by insulting women and by comparing them to other women the women they insult are more likely to do as they say and be submissive.
“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.”
Not! lol. Karen Straughan’s attacks on women’s claims are almost always anecdotal.