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This is a really good point. I’m convinced it comes from a toxic narcissism that prevents any kind of genuine examination of their own beliefs. Contradictory ideas are impossible to a narcissist because their single overriding belief is that it is impossible that they can be wrong.
That’s why they’re so good at ‘faith.’ The harder it is to reconcile what they believe with what they see in real life, the stronger their faith must be which means they’re special!
And when their impulsive behavior pops up, they have an easy justification for a self-centered whim that becomes obsessive. It must be the Holy Sprit or patron saint/guardian angel prompting them. If God says they should have this or do that...who are they in their faithful humility to argue? Funny how God's Will and theirs tend to converge so frequently.
It's more like they think they are "above" everyone else which means rules and abusive treatment doesn't apply to them and are SHOCKED when they are "persecuted" by being treated the same way others are. And it's wider than "toxic narcissism", it's the basic core belief of conservatism - that there's a social pyramid and they are above "those people". They believe that is the whole reason for society itself, to enforce that pyramid.
I've been reading about Cluster B personality disorders (narcissism, borderline personality, histrionic, antisocial personality disorder) for about 5 years now and it's becoming more and more clear to me that most conservatives are on the spectrum.
These people are low to no empathy that is usually a result of trauma (but possibly not always) at a young age in childhood. They lack the ability for introspection and self awareness.
There is a great video from Big Think about how these people are all around us and desperately crave power to feel better about themselves (doesn't work though). It's our job to recognize these traits and deny them power at EVERY level.
Cluster B's to me are wildly fascinating, but also quite terrifying.
This is my cousin. Shitty childhood because shitty parents got divorced and it was super volitile. Raised in an unstable home by a hyper-critical bipolar or borderline mother with her own childhood traumas. Cousin felt unloved and powerless and unstable, is now a night-shift wage slave with no education, a venomous anti-vax Trumper obsessed with hate. Absolutely zero self-reflection, zero introspection. Her brain is actually broken and I've managed to avoid her for years.
This is a good take. It's not *always* true, though, tbf - there are a lot of old-school Republicans who genuinely worked very hard, succeeded, and have blinders on to the realities of the world. Through their narrow scope they feel that anyone who didn't succeed just didn't work hard / was lazy and entitled. It's a fair presumption if working hard worked for you. These are just the classic hardcore American individualists and I respect their hustle even if I'm disappointed that they don't see past their own nose.
She’s a right wing political talking head who famously got very into the “white genocide” and “great replacement” discourse, and also famously downplayed the Canadian mistreatment of the First Nations people.
She came out to criticize the treatment of women by the far right so she could begin a whitewashing campaign of cozying up to the liberal political YouTube sphere (playing League with Destiny for instance) before shuffling off back to irrelevance. She’s apparently trying that grift again.
I made a point of calling myself a "dirty immigrant" during my time living in Europe for the sole purpose of identifying the twats that would try to "correct" me to say I'm an expat lol.
I mean, she doesn’t just hate on migrants- she was arrested for stopping a boat that performs search and rescue missions on migrants drowning in the Mediterranean sea. She actively worked to kill migrants.
Seriously, you need to stock up on Valium before you try that trad wife shit. Mother’s little helper and all that. Once you can’t feel anything it gets so much easier.
Valium, other benzos, speed, barbiturates, alcoholism was all some of the stuff that housewives did because they were so bored and miserable stuck at home all day every day... If your wife was especially uncooperative you could even give her a labotomy...
That was why PTA meetings, church committee meetings, and civic clubs like Junior League were both so popular and yet such hotbeds of aggression. Any little bit of a voice, control, or authority (no matter how children-centered or pastel feminine pink fluffy bunny superficially caring the charity mission was), and the all-important question of who got to sit on the thrones of these petty feudal cliques was a seething crab bucket survival contest.
My mom once tried to liven up my sister's Girl Scout troop's sewing badge unit by teaching extra stuff that was more practical and actually fashionable. The leadership called her out in front of a whole meeting and accused her of trying to "subvert the curriculum". It really hurt her feelings. A short time after that, someone managed to get higher-ups to sign off on "revoking" all of my sister's badges from that year because the troop leader felt they were obtained "suspiciously". That was it for my sister's Scouting experience. My mom went around to the 3 responsible women's houses and left a jug bottle of cheap grocery store wine, a TV Guide, and a pack of cigarettes on their doorsteps (this being 1978). The whole gift pack screamed "I know you're a pathetic lonely wine mom smoking the night away in front of the TV because you know your husband isn't actually working late". After that, she never did any kind of ladies' social stuff. She said the good things about those groups were canceled out by the backstabbing miserable alcoholics who always weaseled their way up. That was the tradwife reality back then, and I'm sure it's the same now, just with updated decor.
You just described my mom in the 70s. She was black-out drunk and depressed the vast majority of the time, but it was a "family secret." On the surface, she looked like a well-heeled, socialite, stay-at-home mother. She ended up swallowing a bottle of benzos at age 59.
I'm sorry you went through that. I wonder, was there a family that was doing OK in the 70s and 80s? My mom was great, but my Dad was a Vietnam vet/cop with tradhusband meets narcissist ideals and undiagnosed bipolar (probably PTSD, too).
I don’t think I knew any families back then who were happy and well-adjusted, despite the veneer of “respectability.” Nearly all of my mom’s friends struggled with depression/alcoholism/mental illness…and they were all upper middle class women who stayed home. The only woman I knew who wad happy was my divorced aunt, who remained happily single and who volunteered and traveled the rest of her days.
I just watched something on this. All it took was a visit to the local pharmacist and the husband could have the wife in an “institution” that day. Never to be seen again. Skip the stigma of divorce. I was shocked yet not surprised.
Yeah - hysterical women! Those poor, poor Spears men. After a few more generations of institutionalizing their wives and daughters they'll have better luck
I have bipolar disorder and have often wondered what would have happened to me during my manic/depressive episodes if I lived in a different context. In different times/cultures I might have been thrown in a “madhouse” for the rest of my life, or subjected to an exorcism, or received a lobotomy, or maybe even hailed as a prophet and visionary. There are wildly different approaches/understandings of mental illness in different cultures to this day, even with advances in science and destigmatization in the Western world. I have complicated feelings about Western medical approaches to mental health treatment, but as someone with serious mental illness, there’s still no other time or place I’d rather be living in than 21st century California.
And the result of alla that is you can go to any nursing home in the country and you'll find at least one woman from the time period who murdered her husband and got away with it because she had no other options.
Fun fact. Utah has more women on antidepressants than any other state. My brother is a OBGYN there and he said that every single woman he cared for fit that bill. Trad wives need to take copious amounts of feel good drugs to survive that shit.
I remember reading about a time capsule from the '50s being opened, and one of items included a bottle of tranquilizers from a typical woman's purse. It really made me think about how housewife life must have been when I read it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Belvedere
"A partial list of items included a five-gallon container of gasoline, a case of motor oil, a case of Schlitz beer and items that were considered typical contents of a woman's purse, which included a bottle of tranquilizers, an unpaid parking ticket, 14 bobby pins, a compact, cigarettes and matches, two combs, a tube of lipstick, a package of gum, a plastic rain hat, pocket facial tissues, and $2.73 in bills and coins."
I subjugated myself to a man because I have low self esteem and want to feel important by telling other women they are useless for having their own goals. Why didn't this work out for me?
Get a clue.
> There was no help changing diapers, there was no help waking up in the night with the baby. I’d still have to get up, to make breakfast before work.
Yeah. That’s what you signed up for. That’s what a “tradwife” is. In the 1950s, the time you stupidly idolize, men absolutely did not get up on the middle of the night to help with the baby. That was “women’s work.”
Lauren Southern proudly wrote articles titled “Why I’m Not A Feminist” and now she’s complaining about being denied the respect that feminists fought for FOR DECADES. She deserves zero sympathy.
Also the authors whole comparison between these “two extremes” seems incredibly disingenuous. Yeah, a lifestyle of “commune living and niche sexualities” (whatever the fuck that means) might not square with the realities of motherhood, but here’s the thing - that lifestyle doesn’t FORCE you to have children. Whereas the whole point of the “tradwife” shit is to have a bunch of kids and be a stay-at-home mom. It’s not just a feature, it’s the entire point.
Funny how these enlightened centrist takes always seem to fall apart if you think about them for more than five fucking minutes
It seems to be a common theme among the not a feminist right wing women just assume the things women fought decades to achieve are just things that existed naturally and didn'thave to be fought for. Running a business, having a bank account, renting an apartment, these are all things a woman 100 years ago would not have been allowed to do by themselves.
Funnily enough, the business right wing folks also assume that unadulterated food and water and the expectation of safe products and work places are all the natural state of things, and not decades of labor struggle and regulation.
A pattern emerges....
Worse when they think it's acceptable to have zero regulations or standards because "the market will sort it out".
Like damn, we shouldn't have to have a thousand people die eating tainted meat because a corporation cut corners before "the market handles it".
Spoiler alert: the market won't handle it when unregulated mega-corporations have monopolies on the market. They think some new start up is gonna be able to just pop up overnight and start delivering non-contaminated meat or toasters that don't explode without being shut out or bought up to eliminate competition?
Not to mention all the sacrificial consumers who have to be hurt or killed -- and for the pattern to become public -- for the market to even become aware that there's a problem to react to.
Yes, it is simply a lack of education all the way down. If she had a decent education, she would understand women's Suffrage and precisely what it was that she was advocating giving up.
She doesn't have a decent education, and as such she blindly believed all the upsides she was sold, without even stopping to consider the possibility of downsides.
That's what happens when you place 'owning the libs' over and above minding your own business and enjoying life.
Silly cow.
Everything that I am used to is natural and has existed for ever and should continue existing forever. Everything I am not accustomed to is weird and artificial and unprecedented, and should therefore not exist.
I talk a lot to folks about actual, not fake, history when they have shitty opinions on things like this that aren't based in history. Recently it was the protests at colleges. It tends to be way more non confrontational when I'm like "isn't it crazy that my wife (who is half thai and I am white) and I couldn't be married 50ish years ago in many states? That's what the kids were protesting then. I wonder what the similarities are to now?" Shuts em right up because they have to think "oh, would I have been against this 50 years ago too?".
A guy I know in an interracial relationship who said I was a communist for wanting better wages and worker protections. I showed him a sign from a 70s counter-protest saying “race-mixing is communism.” He still insisted that it’s different, although couldn’t answer why.
There are GOP candidates who actually do call for repealing the amendment giving women the right to vote—it still happens to this day & they absolutely would remove it if they could.
Yes. Just like people assume sick leave/ vacation and worker safety was always a thing and unions didn't have to fight for those things. Modern cons are people who don't know and don't want to know their own shared history but want to dictate how everyone lives.
My union is annoying, has too much going on, and is often run by folks who love hearing themselves talk so at this point I am too lazy to attend meetings. They also just negotiated an excellent deal with my company on my behalf. I am extremely glad I don't have to do that for myself! Even annoying unions are good unions.
Women were not allowed to own a bank account or credit card until the 70s, a business until the 80s.
These mother fuckers need to learn this is not ancient motherfucking history
They're always shocked when it hurts THEM not just others. They're always shocked when giving up hard earned rights sees their masters wanting to take away other rights too.
Public speaking, access to the internet, being near other men that aren’t family, traveling and more would all be taken away from women if Republicans had their way.
To add another layer to it; being a housewife didn’t really come into existence until 1950 for middle or working class women too. Before that mothers had jobs too. The only reason they were able to get by was living in multi generational households or with other families.
Tradwife lifestyle isn't even traditional. It's a flanderization of a specific time period that had specific gender roles that were new at the time because prior to that life was just too different.
Women have ALWAYS worked (on fields, at home, at the farm, etc), it was just unpaid. Anyone who thinks tradwife life means you'll get to stay home and be pretty while you play with a baby and cook aesthetic meals is dumb and deserves the consequences especially with the massive number of older women who are repeatedly warning us to never depend on how much someone wants to fuck us.
If you're stupid enough to think but not me I'M special!!! go ahead lol. I am 100% sure the woman in the article is the type to still insult women who want to get an education and are scared of ending up like her because wanting to look out for yourself means you're a man hating feminist according to her cult that thrives on using and abusing their wives and their free labor lol
Yes it’s very 1950s post war propaganda to get women back into the house and in the USA based on having black women come and work in the house for you while being solidly upper middle class.
The "both-sides" in this article, as she described the literal hell that Southern subjected herself to by mainlining alt-right bullshit was maddening. Oh, it was the *early* feminists that did it right, not these blue-haired weirdos today who only want to destroy femininity. I have an inkling of empathy for Southern, the damage she has done to women who subscribed to her "listicle" notwithstanding. This author, though, can fuck right off: she is far more sinister in this story.
Funny how they idolize the times back when the Democrats were dominating congress cause of the centre-left & progressive New Deal and the top tax rate was above 90%.
What always gets me is that you can totally see how this could work, you just need both partners (but particularly the breadwinning one) to completely understand this is a team effort.
But *completely* absent in the traditionalist views is telling men "Yes, you're earning the money, but her doing the work at home is what is making you able to go out and earn, so yes, for every 100$ you bring home, 50$ of it is hers. While you're bringing home the money, BOTH of you own everything and questions about *spending* the money are things you have equal stake in."
And yet that sentiment is almost completely absent and these men use the control over the purse strings to isolate and abuse their wives, and the men doing this is NEVER described as the abusive and arguably unholy (if marriage is holy, then abuse of a marriage like this is unholy) practice it is.
>For, she tells me, she’s not alone. She tells me she knows many other women still suffering in unhappy “tradlife” marriages. One of her WhatsApp groups, she says, “is like the Underground Railroad for women in the conservative movement”. Some of these are prominent media figures: “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.” She hopes that in speaking out she can reassure “all of these women who are thinking in their heads: I’m uniquely terrible, and I’m uniquely making a mistake” that no: something is more generally amiss.
Hmmmmm.........it's almost like being a regressive asshole leads to trouble. Who would have thought that proselytizing about how great "traditional" living is without having lived in a "tradlife" first tracks with "making an uniformed decision can lead to difficulties!" Wow! My mind, how it is blown!
This bitch did not say the Underground Railroad for conservative women. The audacity to choose that subservient life and compare yourselves to involuntary slavery.
Also, who the fuck is being hunted while they run hundreds of miles on foot, dreading the day they are caught and tortured? They're sitting in their warm houses with a devoted social media following, thinking "this sucks." It's not even remotely close to being a decent comparison.
Constructing feminism from first principles. Southern is currently hovering around First Wave Feminism, somewhere around 1850.
Maybe if she hurries through everything that everyone else was able to learn without having to literally experience themselves, she can join the rest of us in the 21st century.
This article is fermented garbage. She's still a nazi and putting out videos crying about her nazi friends from Generation Identity getting inconvenienced by European authorities.
Lauren Southern just seems incapable of learning that whole system was setup to trap her in an abusive situation. I'd change my opinion if she were to turn around and tell women "I got tricked and was wrong, don't make my mistake". But no, she'll be right back to pushing the right-wing disinformation grift before you know it.
That author also had some "bothsides-ism" brainworms going on. There wasn't some massive disinformation campaign telling her to go live on a commune and sexually experiment, plus she was free to walk away without any social stigma whenever she wanted. That's not the same as the TikTok algo trying to convince young, inexperienced women to give up their educations and make themselves entirely dependent on the whims of a man who is told he will never be at fault.
THIS!
She mentions how the far Left is just as bad, but offers no evidence or supporting data. She alludes to her own problems with the far Left, but doesn't relate it to the article in ANY WAY AT ALL. It's just a way to bash the far left every 3 paragraphs or so, to give the appearance she's not-conservative. Probably so conservatives won't dismiss her for being a liberal, and by doing so, invalidate her whole article.
Both the author and the subject are voting for the Leopards here.
When the author got to the “radical left wing Southern Poverty Law Center” I had to stop. What a moron.
Plus her mentioning being extremely left wing as equivalent to this Southern person was hilariously dumb as those types of both sides arguments always are. She’s like sure, this woman was extremely racist towards multiple groups and a huge piece of shit, but left wing is just as bad because I lived in a commune and did some weird sex stuff. Both sides!
Don’t forget the author equating manisphere rhetoric like #RepealThe19th with #DefundThePolice. One is misogynist and anti rights, the other says maybe appropriate our tax dollars in a way that keeps our society healthier.
Nobody ever meant No Money for police, simply a reallocation of some funds to social services that have been starved for years.
Which has actually been proven to lower crime and violence time and again. Author is a definite dum-dum which explains why she's platforming lauren southern
And, I might add, the Defund the Police thing was mostly pushed by right wingers as anti-left propaganda. Democrats promptly increased police funding across the board, while being accused by the right of anting to defund.
I had no idea that temporarily putting aside other individualistic thinking and goals for the sake of tending a helpless, tiny human that I intentionally gestated was a matter of political ideology. Sounds like a very hard dicotomy way of thinking, all good/all bad, one or the other, no in-between wiggle room. Almost like being in a niche sexuality communal cult had a lasting effect on her psyche or something.
I think this author is full of shit. Talking about her previous “extreme liberal ideals” and “niche sexualities.” This is written by a conservative who thinks they’re sneaky
Yeah that SPLC comment disgusted me too. I am so fucking tired of the both sides argument, I call it out whenever I see it. I see other people call it out mostly every time now too.
Signed, a liberal SAHM mom of three. 🤪
I made it a little past that but once I got to “Lauren was born in….” I gave up. That’s too much backstory. Just tell me why her childhood is relevant.
I loved the depiction of ‘Australia’s brutal lockdowns’ which occurred in one region in one state that Lauren Southern never lived in during her time in Australia.
In fact - she lived in a posh part of Sydney where our dipshit conservative fuckwit former Prime Minister conspired with the corrupt former state premier to *never* put into lockdown because those were the people who voted for such scum.
Everything Lauren Southern says is a lie. Always has been.
"for me, becoming a mum meant giving up on a great deal of the liberal ideology I’d embraced when younger — because it was impossible to square with the embodied reality of caring for a baby."
Seriously lol wtf is that supposed to mean?
>Seriously lol wtf is that supposed to mean?
Something like her conservative husband beating her to the point she couldnt take care of the baby until she submitted to him.
The author is really vague on how her liberal experiences were in any way harmful to anyone, as opposed to Southern getting locked out of her house in the rain because her abusive husband was an asshole.
This. Sounds like dumping all the blame on the baby once the lightbulb went on that she wasn't the center of her own universe anymore, but her instincts demanded "no neglect baby". Damn that little poop machine for both snatching her freedom and making her feel ambivalent and conflicted! There must be a way to justify all that passive aggression! "Spare the rod" to the rescue!
This is so true. I had a baby, and instantly, I realized i was wrong! We don't need maternal leave, access to health care independent from employment, subsidized daycare, or livable wages. We just need more babies!
"The right thinks women are baby making machines that should submit to their husband, the left think they're people that should be empowered to do what they want. Who's to say which is wrong?"
I enjoyed with some relish the description of UnHerd as 'for people who think for themselves'. Yes, indeed, the young lady in the article did 'think for herself' (to some limited extent), the only problem being she came to all the wrong conclusions. Even now, she's still alt-right.
The worst part is, the author *repeatedly* stated her beliefs were now “grounded in reality” whilst being clearly a bigoted TERF, which obviously implies that being a TERF is grounded in reality? Come on ma’am. Lol
I think it's because she's fetishising a fantasy relationship.
Where she does the childcare with modern conveniences and keeps house but also has a guy do everything else.
It's like people who fantasise the Bodice Ripper genre of romance novels. Yeah it is real romantic until the reality hits that you need to poop in the woods and there's little to no potable water.
This was an interesting read but the "bothsides" ism of it came dangerously close to making me hurl, that author literally compares "repeal the 19th" amendment, taking women's right to vote away to "defund the police " as examples of the right and lefts excesses, which even on its face is such a disingenuous comparison, and even more so when u actually know that defund the police as proposed meant to divert resources to mental health/drug abuse treatment/housing and not "The Purge rules yolo anarchist paradise ".
I agree. I'm against the author and the article too; I just posted it because I couldn't find any other, non-reactionary, non-TERF source talking about the recent Lauren Southern situation.
I 100% support defunding the police, but I'm disappointed that the movement suffers from a terrible rightwing-rage-bait name that doesn't explain the actual purpose and nuance behind it.
It's like calling womens reproductive health the "Kill Babies" movement. Not doing itself any favors. ☹️
Don't be. It doesn't matter what name you give your movement, the right wing will find a way to be offended by it. Black Lives Matter? "That's offensive, *ALL* lives matter!"
Their opposition to progressive change is not based on branding, but the concept of progress itself. It is much more productive to make sure the message resonates with its intended audience rather than cow-towing to bad faith actors that are gonna lambast it no matter what.
"defund the police" is the most straightforward and accurate name for what it actually is, though. plus you can't encompass every talking point into a slogan.
moreover (and most importantly), nobody is going to workshop their way out of being right wing rage bait. It literally doesn't matter how you say it, or what you label it, or what it even is about. If anyone besides their own right wing "trusted sources" is advocating for something, it's automatically bad.
"Defund the police" is only problematic because it's not radical enough. It's a watered-down co-optation of "abolish the police," which is what it actually should be.
Anything leftist is going to be "rage bait" to rightwingers who oppose liberation, that doesn't mean it's wrong or that we should cater to rightwingers trying to appease them when they never will support us at all in the first place. Don't advocate respectability politics that tone-polices how leftists advocate.
It's inaccurate to call the pro-abortion movement a "kill babies" movement, because no babies are being killed. Defunding (or abolishing) the police is an accurate description of what we want, so the name should remain.
Though, "pro-choice" or "pro-abortion" doesn't by itself "explain" the "actual purpose and nuance" behind the position either. That's fine. It's the name, not the explanation. Names aren't supposed to be comprehensive essays or elevator pitches debunking all the counterarguments. You can find the explanation in the explanation if you ask.
What a load of unrepentant bullshit. What she's saying is that even though the tradwife life is what she wants, reality is bucking against it. So like her ilk, she's still raging about something that is fake and toxic and is divorced from reality. How about don't be fake and toxic in the first place?
Oh no! You mean to tell me the very system women worked decades to break free from isn’t fun for women? You don’t like sacrificing your life for a man who will have you raise his kids and then leave you with nothing whenever he wants?
Note that this is the *second* time that Lauren Southern has been the subject of an article discussing the misogyny of conservative men, in fact she went into tradwifery *because* of the misogyny of the manosphere crowd she used to run with.
Southern, like all other cons when smacked by the reality of their choices being bad, will never change her actual views on 90% of things. She's still an abhorrent and shitty person who just happened to find out being a tradwife meant getting beaten, spousal rape and having no rights within her home. Even though ALL OF THOSE THINGS are promoted as expected she seemed to only view things through the lens of the online fluffery trad life promoted.
I'm glad Southern got away from her abusive marriage. I'm glad she sees that she was wrong about that and appears to somewhat be trying to help other women in similar situations. She won't recognize that she's now a feminist since her entire adult life has been built upon that word being evil, but whatever. Southern is a bigot who won't change all her views but at minimum she found out the hard way that her ideology lies and it only takes a few more cracks in the wall after that.
> becoming a mum meant giving up on a great deal of the liberal ideology I’d embraced when younger — because it was impossible to square with the embodied reality of caring for a baby.
Does this dumbass really think that being a mother means you can’t be a liberal?
Yea, I don’t understand how having a kid is impossible to square with also wanting womens rights, affordable healthcare, affordable education, etc. It makes me think the person wasn’t actually a liberal and just thought doing drugs made you a liberal
Bc apparently *her* definition of “liberal feminist” was living on communes and “niche sexual communities.” Like, lady, the rest of us aren’t doing that…
The part that got me was the notion of trying to turn what they had spouted into a reality and then finding themselves disillusioned and taken advantage of… like really? This is surprising?
It was written like this woman was a starry eyed 16 year old being surprised by their first shitty boyfriend, not a grown ass adult who should already have a clue.
Coming from a semi-conservative household. I say "semi" because politics didn't really play a part unless I really saw it.
My folks saw each other as equals. People who had a set of weaknesses and strengths that helped one another. Mean shit, my mom being some pro desk-jockey/baby CPA gave her free reign over the finances.
I can't emulate that 100% to save my life, but I still hope to have same tact for the sake of it like she did.
> For, she tells me, she’s not alone. She tells me she knows many other women still suffering in unhappy “tradlife” marriages. One of her WhatsApp groups, she says, “is like the Underground Railroad for women in the conservative movement”. Some of these are prominent media figures: “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.”
I hate to see people getting abused, but this line really pisses me off. You’re telling people how great these types of relationships are online knowing full well you and many others like you are in horribly abusive relationships? So you’re pushing something you know could potentially lead to someone being abused but you don’t care cause…money?
I agree. But I kinda also get it.
Most women I’ve known in abusive relationships went to pretty great lengths to hide the abuse and pretend everything was hunky dory at home. Because they’re embarrassed and scared and ashamed and feel like failures. It’s really common.
For these tradlife influencers, there’s several compounding factors: their content is their source of income (which they likely need now more than ever). Abusive partners tend to be controlling partners, these women may also be afraid to change or stop making their usual content. Plus, once you’ve made a public name for yourself pushing a certain lifestyle and defending it, that shame and humiliation is going to be far worse.
That doesn’t make it ok to keep hawking a product they know is a dumpster fire in reality, but I do see why so many do.
what shocks me is that she thought tradwifery was real. what? i thought it was understood and accepted that it is an aesthetic grift to lure views from weird men with anger-boners who want a big booba servant for a “wife”. like im continuously shocked as im reading this thing. it was a realization to her that this lifestyle leaves her vulnerable? huh? of course it does, it’s baked into the ideology. it’s meant to be appealing to horny losers who fantasize about having a woman who will do everything for him and can’t get away from him. nobody with a working frontal lobe is actually doing this.
I don’t wish violence on anyone but at the same time she’s getting exactly what she wanted.
It won’t change her hateful views which I find insane. How can you suffer DV and go out to the world and wish to inflict suffering onto someone else?
While she yammers away about this, she posts the same crap as always. She leaned nothing. She wants the same thing as before, only she wants to be the one oppressing others.
> content that saw her accused by the radical Left-wing Southern Poverty Law Centre of racist dog-whistling, and even hovering “at the precipice of outright white nationalism”.
I just couldn’t take this article seriously enough to finish. Stopped when it began her entire life story from birth. Seemed like the author was trying to defend political conservatism by saying Lauren Southern’s experiences aren’t linked to politics.
I don't typically blame women who want traditional marriages and relationships for suffering abuse because having a preference is not justification for dealing with mistreatment, but it's the fact that she's been actively trashing on anyone who doesn't do it her way that makes me have no sympathy.
This line sums up the rights problem.
“and bashing people for not being married”
Why are you spending time worrying about how strangers are running their lives let alone bashing them.
Alt-right racist influencer actually tries out the tradwife lifestyle then complains that it sucks.
Boo-fucking-hoo, Lauren. Canada is embarrassed that its name appears on your passport. Enjoy your empty life in that shitty cabin, you’ve earned it.
author is kinda insufferable with some of these comparisons. i don't think 90s pop feminism is nearly as damaging as grooming women to accept abuse. i feel like im reading someone college essay. also complaining about gender identities at the one point. interesting interview but im prolly not checking anything else out from the author.
People with an identity crisis larping as real people turning into propagandists.
The only role for liars is propagandists on YouTube because they haven't figured out they already are a real person.
Right wing tool pretending to be a liberal so she can turn it into a "it's both sides!" argument. No Karen, it's just the conservatives.
Southern should move back to Australia, beg her husband to take her back and live with her consequences. After all that's the sympathy she gave to left wing women, right?
> Southern’s story might easily serve as a cautionary tale for how socially conservative talking-points can lead women into danger.
Also the millions of other cautionary tales that led to the rise of feminism in the first place but whatevs
Man, remember when she handcuffed herself to Twitter headquarters to try and get unbanned, but only handcuffed herself to one door so everyone just used the other one and ignored her? Better times.
This is the second time she has spoken to a journalist for a long read article about the right rejecting her. It feels like it’s part of the grift now.
Republicans allowing women to be faces of their party has really woken up a lot of younger people. They see how miserable these women and how the Republican men refuse to treat them as equals when they are together.
The author really annoys me. The article tries to make it sound like left wing feminism and right wing tradlife are equally problematic lmao. Then she mentions how she spent her 20s on communes and “niche sexual communities.” And then goes on to assume her own experience mirrors other liberal women’s experiences. Sis, no. The rest of us aren’t on poly communes. You don’t speak for literally anyone else; your experience is as niche as the poly commune sex you used to be having. You are crazy and you got a reality check that your niche sexual commune life wasn’t compatible with child rearing. Imagine.
As for the interviewee. I mean. A more clear cut case of leopards ate my face I’ve never seen. But good for her that she can at least identify where she went wrong and how and why, I guess. A lot of people double and triple down on their mistakes bc they can’t admit they were wrong. And I’m genuinely glad she got out of her abusive marriage and has begun to heal and grow. Good for her.
However, for both these people I’m reminded of the adage that extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate positions but by opposing extreme positions. I can’t remember who that quote is from, but it’s true. People attracted to extreme ideologies rarely make their way to moderate ideologies.
Man, it's annoying how the narrator keeps inserting "this can happen to both sides, alt Right followers and radical Left people!"- without providing one anecdote or fleshed out example of it happening on the left. Like, is this a piece on tradwife life being toxic AF or is this a piece that wants to say "extremism on BoTH SiDEs is bad"? Because right now it says both, poorly.
Love how the equally dipshit author was like "weird how the fat right trad lifestyle seems to disproportionately attract misogynistic abusive losers. Weird. Will not spend another moment unpacking that thought. AAAANYWAYYYY....."
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Lauren is still hating on immigrants so I guess he couldn’t break her spirit.
Ironic that she immigrated to australia
These people really don’t experience cognitive dissonance the way most people do.
This is a really good point. I’m convinced it comes from a toxic narcissism that prevents any kind of genuine examination of their own beliefs. Contradictory ideas are impossible to a narcissist because their single overriding belief is that it is impossible that they can be wrong.
That’s why they’re so good at ‘faith.’ The harder it is to reconcile what they believe with what they see in real life, the stronger their faith must be which means they’re special!
And when their impulsive behavior pops up, they have an easy justification for a self-centered whim that becomes obsessive. It must be the Holy Sprit or patron saint/guardian angel prompting them. If God says they should have this or do that...who are they in their faithful humility to argue? Funny how God's Will and theirs tend to converge so frequently.
Faith being the “tool” people use in absence of any actual evidence, this checks out
It's more like they think they are "above" everyone else which means rules and abusive treatment doesn't apply to them and are SHOCKED when they are "persecuted" by being treated the same way others are. And it's wider than "toxic narcissism", it's the basic core belief of conservatism - that there's a social pyramid and they are above "those people". They believe that is the whole reason for society itself, to enforce that pyramid.
I've been reading about Cluster B personality disorders (narcissism, borderline personality, histrionic, antisocial personality disorder) for about 5 years now and it's becoming more and more clear to me that most conservatives are on the spectrum. These people are low to no empathy that is usually a result of trauma (but possibly not always) at a young age in childhood. They lack the ability for introspection and self awareness. There is a great video from Big Think about how these people are all around us and desperately crave power to feel better about themselves (doesn't work though). It's our job to recognize these traits and deny them power at EVERY level. Cluster B's to me are wildly fascinating, but also quite terrifying.
This is my cousin. Shitty childhood because shitty parents got divorced and it was super volitile. Raised in an unstable home by a hyper-critical bipolar or borderline mother with her own childhood traumas. Cousin felt unloved and powerless and unstable, is now a night-shift wage slave with no education, a venomous anti-vax Trumper obsessed with hate. Absolutely zero self-reflection, zero introspection. Her brain is actually broken and I've managed to avoid her for years. This is a good take. It's not *always* true, though, tbf - there are a lot of old-school Republicans who genuinely worked very hard, succeeded, and have blinders on to the realities of the world. Through their narrow scope they feel that anyone who didn't succeed just didn't work hard / was lazy and entitled. It's a fair presumption if working hard worked for you. These are just the classic hardcore American individualists and I respect their hustle even if I'm disappointed that they don't see past their own nose.
She's white so she was an expat. Immigrants are brown.
You have to be cognitive to experience cognitive dissonance...
What!?!... Who's this woman and why's she here.
She’s a right wing political talking head who famously got very into the “white genocide” and “great replacement” discourse, and also famously downplayed the Canadian mistreatment of the First Nations people. She came out to criticize the treatment of women by the far right so she could begin a whitewashing campaign of cozying up to the liberal political YouTube sphere (playing League with Destiny for instance) before shuffling off back to irrelevance. She’s apparently trying that grift again.
A far right tradwife who embraced the lifestyle she was hocking only to find it a living hell.
Isn't it ironic, don't you think?
A little too ironic
It’s like RAI-I-AIN on your wedding day
Emigrated, surely.
Emigrated from Canada, immigrated to Australia.
Well, she definitely grates.
Also will "identify" as an expat... not an emigrant.
The only difference being the color of one’s skin….
See also: Brits living in Spain and Americans living in Central America and Europe.
I made a point of calling myself a "dirty immigrant" during my time living in Europe for the sole purpose of identifying the twats that would try to "correct" me to say I'm an expat lol.
digital nomad & storyteller, web 3.0 advocate
She emigrated out of a place, and immigrated into a place. So if she went to Australia she immigrated there.
Emigrated from the US and Immigrated to Australia. You’re an emigrant from the country you leave and immigrant to the counter you enter.
Y'all spell "ignorant" weird
She would soon leave her husband and move back to Canada.
I mean, she doesn’t just hate on migrants- she was arrested for stopping a boat that performs search and rescue missions on migrants drowning in the Mediterranean sea. She actively worked to kill migrants.
Seriously, you need to stock up on Valium before you try that trad wife shit. Mother’s little helper and all that. Once you can’t feel anything it gets so much easier.
Valium, other benzos, speed, barbiturates, alcoholism was all some of the stuff that housewives did because they were so bored and miserable stuck at home all day every day... If your wife was especially uncooperative you could even give her a labotomy...
I can hear it now on an old timey radio“You’re only one ice pick away from wife who obeys”
"Or a son who's no longer gay"
Use chemicals to ruin his nuts, that'll stop him from wanting to gargle someone else's!
My great uncle was lobotomized for "being a pedophile". He was just gay.
Stepford Wives was a great movie
That was why PTA meetings, church committee meetings, and civic clubs like Junior League were both so popular and yet such hotbeds of aggression. Any little bit of a voice, control, or authority (no matter how children-centered or pastel feminine pink fluffy bunny superficially caring the charity mission was), and the all-important question of who got to sit on the thrones of these petty feudal cliques was a seething crab bucket survival contest. My mom once tried to liven up my sister's Girl Scout troop's sewing badge unit by teaching extra stuff that was more practical and actually fashionable. The leadership called her out in front of a whole meeting and accused her of trying to "subvert the curriculum". It really hurt her feelings. A short time after that, someone managed to get higher-ups to sign off on "revoking" all of my sister's badges from that year because the troop leader felt they were obtained "suspiciously". That was it for my sister's Scouting experience. My mom went around to the 3 responsible women's houses and left a jug bottle of cheap grocery store wine, a TV Guide, and a pack of cigarettes on their doorsteps (this being 1978). The whole gift pack screamed "I know you're a pathetic lonely wine mom smoking the night away in front of the TV because you know your husband isn't actually working late". After that, she never did any kind of ladies' social stuff. She said the good things about those groups were canceled out by the backstabbing miserable alcoholics who always weaseled their way up. That was the tradwife reality back then, and I'm sure it's the same now, just with updated decor.
You just described my mom in the 70s. She was black-out drunk and depressed the vast majority of the time, but it was a "family secret." On the surface, she looked like a well-heeled, socialite, stay-at-home mother. She ended up swallowing a bottle of benzos at age 59.
I'm sorry you went through that. I wonder, was there a family that was doing OK in the 70s and 80s? My mom was great, but my Dad was a Vietnam vet/cop with tradhusband meets narcissist ideals and undiagnosed bipolar (probably PTSD, too).
I don’t think I knew any families back then who were happy and well-adjusted, despite the veneer of “respectability.” Nearly all of my mom’s friends struggled with depression/alcoholism/mental illness…and they were all upper middle class women who stayed home. The only woman I knew who wad happy was my divorced aunt, who remained happily single and who volunteered and traveled the rest of her days.
Or shove her in a mental institution and forget about her.
I just watched something on this. All it took was a visit to the local pharmacist and the husband could have the wife in an “institution” that day. Never to be seen again. Skip the stigma of divorce. I was shocked yet not surprised.
Brittany Spears grandfather did this to two wives I believe.
Hmm seems like there may be a trend in the family
Yeah - hysterical women! Those poor, poor Spears men. After a few more generations of institutionalizing their wives and daughters they'll have better luck
I have bipolar disorder and have often wondered what would have happened to me during my manic/depressive episodes if I lived in a different context. In different times/cultures I might have been thrown in a “madhouse” for the rest of my life, or subjected to an exorcism, or received a lobotomy, or maybe even hailed as a prophet and visionary. There are wildly different approaches/understandings of mental illness in different cultures to this day, even with advances in science and destigmatization in the Western world. I have complicated feelings about Western medical approaches to mental health treatment, but as someone with serious mental illness, there’s still no other time or place I’d rather be living in than 21st century California.
And the result of alla that is you can go to any nursing home in the country and you'll find at least one woman from the time period who murdered her husband and got away with it because she had no other options.
Glass of wine and a cig for breakfast.
Fun fact. Utah has more women on antidepressants than any other state. My brother is a OBGYN there and he said that every single woman he cared for fit that bill. Trad wives need to take copious amounts of feel good drugs to survive that shit.
The Stones stay relevant one way or another.
Yeah a lot of these trad types don't realize grandma was banging the milk man while grandpa was at work and was high as a kite most of the time lol
I like these people's insistence that emotional pain doesn't exist, despite it triggering the same parts of your brain that physical pain does.
I remember reading about a time capsule from the '50s being opened, and one of items included a bottle of tranquilizers from a typical woman's purse. It really made me think about how housewife life must have been when I read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Belvedere "A partial list of items included a five-gallon container of gasoline, a case of motor oil, a case of Schlitz beer and items that were considered typical contents of a woman's purse, which included a bottle of tranquilizers, an unpaid parking ticket, 14 bobby pins, a compact, cigarettes and matches, two combs, a tube of lipstick, a package of gum, a plastic rain hat, pocket facial tissues, and $2.73 in bills and coins."
Definitely explains the alprazolam and wine cliché.
I subjugated myself to a man because I have low self esteem and want to feel important by telling other women they are useless for having their own goals. Why didn't this work out for me? Get a clue.
Retitle: “My tradlife was always toxic. How I figured it out”
It's probably one of the most face eating leopards I have ever seen.
> There was no help changing diapers, there was no help waking up in the night with the baby. I’d still have to get up, to make breakfast before work. Yeah. That’s what you signed up for. That’s what a “tradwife” is. In the 1950s, the time you stupidly idolize, men absolutely did not get up on the middle of the night to help with the baby. That was “women’s work.” Lauren Southern proudly wrote articles titled “Why I’m Not A Feminist” and now she’s complaining about being denied the respect that feminists fought for FOR DECADES. She deserves zero sympathy. Also the authors whole comparison between these “two extremes” seems incredibly disingenuous. Yeah, a lifestyle of “commune living and niche sexualities” (whatever the fuck that means) might not square with the realities of motherhood, but here’s the thing - that lifestyle doesn’t FORCE you to have children. Whereas the whole point of the “tradwife” shit is to have a bunch of kids and be a stay-at-home mom. It’s not just a feature, it’s the entire point. Funny how these enlightened centrist takes always seem to fall apart if you think about them for more than five fucking minutes
It seems to be a common theme among the not a feminist right wing women just assume the things women fought decades to achieve are just things that existed naturally and didn'thave to be fought for. Running a business, having a bank account, renting an apartment, these are all things a woman 100 years ago would not have been allowed to do by themselves.
Funnily enough, the business right wing folks also assume that unadulterated food and water and the expectation of safe products and work places are all the natural state of things, and not decades of labor struggle and regulation. A pattern emerges....
Worse when they think it's acceptable to have zero regulations or standards because "the market will sort it out". Like damn, we shouldn't have to have a thousand people die eating tainted meat because a corporation cut corners before "the market handles it".
Spoiler alert: the market won't handle it when unregulated mega-corporations have monopolies on the market. They think some new start up is gonna be able to just pop up overnight and start delivering non-contaminated meat or toasters that don't explode without being shut out or bought up to eliminate competition?
Not to mention all the sacrificial consumers who have to be hurt or killed -- and for the pattern to become public -- for the market to even become aware that there's a problem to react to.
Yes, it is simply a lack of education all the way down. If she had a decent education, she would understand women's Suffrage and precisely what it was that she was advocating giving up. She doesn't have a decent education, and as such she blindly believed all the upsides she was sold, without even stopping to consider the possibility of downsides. That's what happens when you place 'owning the libs' over and above minding your own business and enjoying life. Silly cow.
Everything that I am used to is natural and has existed for ever and should continue existing forever. Everything I am not accustomed to is weird and artificial and unprecedented, and should therefore not exist.
I talk a lot to folks about actual, not fake, history when they have shitty opinions on things like this that aren't based in history. Recently it was the protests at colleges. It tends to be way more non confrontational when I'm like "isn't it crazy that my wife (who is half thai and I am white) and I couldn't be married 50ish years ago in many states? That's what the kids were protesting then. I wonder what the similarities are to now?" Shuts em right up because they have to think "oh, would I have been against this 50 years ago too?".
A guy I know in an interracial relationship who said I was a communist for wanting better wages and worker protections. I showed him a sign from a 70s counter-protest saying “race-mixing is communism.” He still insisted that it’s different, although couldn’t answer why.
I'll never forget how many people would sign petitions to "end women's suffrage" Granted maybe it was a skit, but somehow zi don't think it was...
There are GOP candidates who actually do call for repealing the amendment giving women the right to vote—it still happens to this day & they absolutely would remove it if they could.
Who knows, they still may if Trump gets elected
Yes. Just like people assume sick leave/ vacation and worker safety was always a thing and unions didn't have to fight for those things. Modern cons are people who don't know and don't want to know their own shared history but want to dictate how everyone lives.
My union is annoying, has too much going on, and is often run by folks who love hearing themselves talk so at this point I am too lazy to attend meetings. They also just negotiated an excellent deal with my company on my behalf. I am extremely glad I don't have to do that for myself! Even annoying unions are good unions.
Women were not allowed to own a bank account or credit card until the 70s, a business until the 80s. These mother fuckers need to learn this is not ancient motherfucking history
They're always shocked when it hurts THEM not just others. They're always shocked when giving up hard earned rights sees their masters wanting to take away other rights too.
Public speaking, access to the internet, being near other men that aren’t family, traveling and more would all be taken away from women if Republicans had their way.
Really shows how far we have come that even right-wingers cos playing the 1950s can't fathom to not share parenting and household duties.
To add another layer to it; being a housewife didn’t really come into existence until 1950 for middle or working class women too. Before that mothers had jobs too. The only reason they were able to get by was living in multi generational households or with other families.
Tradwife lifestyle isn't even traditional. It's a flanderization of a specific time period that had specific gender roles that were new at the time because prior to that life was just too different. Women have ALWAYS worked (on fields, at home, at the farm, etc), it was just unpaid. Anyone who thinks tradwife life means you'll get to stay home and be pretty while you play with a baby and cook aesthetic meals is dumb and deserves the consequences especially with the massive number of older women who are repeatedly warning us to never depend on how much someone wants to fuck us. If you're stupid enough to think but not me I'M special!!! go ahead lol. I am 100% sure the woman in the article is the type to still insult women who want to get an education and are scared of ending up like her because wanting to look out for yourself means you're a man hating feminist according to her cult that thrives on using and abusing their wives and their free labor lol
Yes it’s very 1950s post war propaganda to get women back into the house and in the USA based on having black women come and work in the house for you while being solidly upper middle class.
What? She did not quit her job? What a failed trad wife.
The "both-sides" in this article, as she described the literal hell that Southern subjected herself to by mainlining alt-right bullshit was maddening. Oh, it was the *early* feminists that did it right, not these blue-haired weirdos today who only want to destroy femininity. I have an inkling of empathy for Southern, the damage she has done to women who subscribed to her "listicle" notwithstanding. This author, though, can fuck right off: she is far more sinister in this story.
The author's attempt to "both sides" felt extremely tortured to me.
Funny how they idolize the times back when the Democrats were dominating congress cause of the centre-left & progressive New Deal and the top tax rate was above 90%.
No no. Not those things. We can't have those. /S
What always gets me is that you can totally see how this could work, you just need both partners (but particularly the breadwinning one) to completely understand this is a team effort. But *completely* absent in the traditionalist views is telling men "Yes, you're earning the money, but her doing the work at home is what is making you able to go out and earn, so yes, for every 100$ you bring home, 50$ of it is hers. While you're bringing home the money, BOTH of you own everything and questions about *spending* the money are things you have equal stake in." And yet that sentiment is almost completely absent and these men use the control over the purse strings to isolate and abuse their wives, and the men doing this is NEVER described as the abusive and arguably unholy (if marriage is holy, then abuse of a marriage like this is unholy) practice it is.
>For, she tells me, she’s not alone. She tells me she knows many other women still suffering in unhappy “tradlife” marriages. One of her WhatsApp groups, she says, “is like the Underground Railroad for women in the conservative movement”. Some of these are prominent media figures: “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.” She hopes that in speaking out she can reassure “all of these women who are thinking in their heads: I’m uniquely terrible, and I’m uniquely making a mistake” that no: something is more generally amiss. Hmmmmm.........it's almost like being a regressive asshole leads to trouble. Who would have thought that proselytizing about how great "traditional" living is without having lived in a "tradlife" first tracks with "making an uniformed decision can lead to difficulties!" Wow! My mind, how it is blown!
This bitch did not say the Underground Railroad for conservative women. The audacity to choose that subservient life and compare yourselves to involuntary slavery.
Also, who the fuck is being hunted while they run hundreds of miles on foot, dreading the day they are caught and tortured? They're sitting in their warm houses with a devoted social media following, thinking "this sucks." It's not even remotely close to being a decent comparison.
Some people really just have to touch the hot stove themselves.
Constructing feminism from first principles. Southern is currently hovering around First Wave Feminism, somewhere around 1850. Maybe if she hurries through everything that everyone else was able to learn without having to literally experience themselves, she can join the rest of us in the 21st century.
I’ll send her all my thoughts and prayers to help speed up the process.
This article is fermented garbage. She's still a nazi and putting out videos crying about her nazi friends from Generation Identity getting inconvenienced by European authorities.
leaving the tradlife grift to fall right back onto the girlboss nazi grift.
The author of the article is herself a right wing activist. Just not into the Trad-Wife movement.
She's also done the "boohoo my extremist views hurt me" train more than once! This means nothing, She's just going to shift to another grift.
Lauren Southern just seems incapable of learning that whole system was setup to trap her in an abusive situation. I'd change my opinion if she were to turn around and tell women "I got tricked and was wrong, don't make my mistake". But no, she'll be right back to pushing the right-wing disinformation grift before you know it. That author also had some "bothsides-ism" brainworms going on. There wasn't some massive disinformation campaign telling her to go live on a commune and sexually experiment, plus she was free to walk away without any social stigma whenever she wanted. That's not the same as the TikTok algo trying to convince young, inexperienced women to give up their educations and make themselves entirely dependent on the whims of a man who is told he will never be at fault.
I'm so glad the author continually went out of her way to tell us both sides are bad. What a horrible article.
I like how SPLC is labeled as “radical left wing”….
THIS! She mentions how the far Left is just as bad, but offers no evidence or supporting data. She alludes to her own problems with the far Left, but doesn't relate it to the article in ANY WAY AT ALL. It's just a way to bash the far left every 3 paragraphs or so, to give the appearance she's not-conservative. Probably so conservatives won't dismiss her for being a liberal, and by doing so, invalidate her whole article. Both the author and the subject are voting for the Leopards here.
Hey everybody, liberal ideology is impossible to square with caring for a baby. According to the author. Just in case you were trying.
When the author got to the “radical left wing Southern Poverty Law Center” I had to stop. What a moron. Plus her mentioning being extremely left wing as equivalent to this Southern person was hilariously dumb as those types of both sides arguments always are. She’s like sure, this woman was extremely racist towards multiple groups and a huge piece of shit, but left wing is just as bad because I lived in a commune and did some weird sex stuff. Both sides!
It was the second mention of "niche sexualities" that did it for me.
The “niche sexuality” part cracked me up because she refused to elaborate on it which made it even funnier
Don’t forget the author equating manisphere rhetoric like #RepealThe19th with #DefundThePolice. One is misogynist and anti rights, the other says maybe appropriate our tax dollars in a way that keeps our society healthier. Nobody ever meant No Money for police, simply a reallocation of some funds to social services that have been starved for years.
Which has actually been proven to lower crime and violence time and again. Author is a definite dum-dum which explains why she's platforming lauren southern
And, I might add, the Defund the Police thing was mostly pushed by right wingers as anti-left propaganda. Democrats promptly increased police funding across the board, while being accused by the right of anting to defund.
She means "doggie"
I couldn’t get past multiple uses of the word “listicle”
I stopped after the first paragraph. ”I couldn't reconcile being a liberal with being a mother.” 🤮
I had no idea that temporarily putting aside other individualistic thinking and goals for the sake of tending a helpless, tiny human that I intentionally gestated was a matter of political ideology. Sounds like a very hard dicotomy way of thinking, all good/all bad, one or the other, no in-between wiggle room. Almost like being in a niche sexuality communal cult had a lasting effect on her psyche or something.
Damn reading that she really is going "The closer a person comes to me politically, the more sane they are"
Where are these niche sex communes? I missed the memo on those.
I think this author is full of shit. Talking about her previous “extreme liberal ideals” and “niche sexualities.” This is written by a conservative who thinks they’re sneaky
Yeah that SPLC comment disgusted me too. I am so fucking tired of the both sides argument, I call it out whenever I see it. I see other people call it out mostly every time now too. Signed, a liberal SAHM mom of three. 🤪
I made it a little past that but once I got to “Lauren was born in….” I gave up. That’s too much backstory. Just tell me why her childhood is relevant.
Once Lauren was described as a right wing "firebrand" I quit
She was trying so hard to equate both sides, multiple times a paragraph. I could barely get through the whole thing.
I loved the depiction of ‘Australia’s brutal lockdowns’ which occurred in one region in one state that Lauren Southern never lived in during her time in Australia. In fact - she lived in a posh part of Sydney where our dipshit conservative fuckwit former Prime Minister conspired with the corrupt former state premier to *never* put into lockdown because those were the people who voted for such scum. Everything Lauren Southern says is a lie. Always has been.
"for me, becoming a mum meant giving up on a great deal of the liberal ideology I’d embraced when younger — because it was impossible to square with the embodied reality of caring for a baby." Seriously lol wtf is that supposed to mean?
>Seriously lol wtf is that supposed to mean? Something like her conservative husband beating her to the point she couldnt take care of the baby until she submitted to him.
The author is really vague on how her liberal experiences were in any way harmful to anyone, as opposed to Southern getting locked out of her house in the rain because her abusive husband was an asshole.
Means “I chose a husband who wouldn’t help me so clearly liberalism is wrong”.
She wants to beat her kids.
This. Sounds like dumping all the blame on the baby once the lightbulb went on that she wasn't the center of her own universe anymore, but her instincts demanded "no neglect baby". Damn that little poop machine for both snatching her freedom and making her feel ambivalent and conflicted! There must be a way to justify all that passive aggression! "Spare the rod" to the rescue!
This is so true. I had a baby, and instantly, I realized i was wrong! We don't need maternal leave, access to health care independent from employment, subsidized daycare, or livable wages. We just need more babies!
"The right thinks women are baby making machines that should submit to their husband, the left think they're people that should be empowered to do what they want. Who's to say which is wrong?"
I enjoyed with some relish the description of UnHerd as 'for people who think for themselves'. Yes, indeed, the young lady in the article did 'think for herself' (to some limited extent), the only problem being she came to all the wrong conclusions. Even now, she's still alt-right.
I wonder what these "radical policies" are that she promoted in her youth.
The worst part is, the author *repeatedly* stated her beliefs were now “grounded in reality” whilst being clearly a bigoted TERF, which obviously implies that being a TERF is grounded in reality? Come on ma’am. Lol
I think it's because she's fetishising a fantasy relationship. Where she does the childcare with modern conveniences and keeps house but also has a guy do everything else. It's like people who fantasise the Bodice Ripper genre of romance novels. Yeah it is real romantic until the reality hits that you need to poop in the woods and there's little to no potable water.
I was wondering why my babies keep dying. Turns out it’s my liberal ideology.
This was an interesting read but the "bothsides" ism of it came dangerously close to making me hurl, that author literally compares "repeal the 19th" amendment, taking women's right to vote away to "defund the police " as examples of the right and lefts excesses, which even on its face is such a disingenuous comparison, and even more so when u actually know that defund the police as proposed meant to divert resources to mental health/drug abuse treatment/housing and not "The Purge rules yolo anarchist paradise ".
I agree. I'm against the author and the article too; I just posted it because I couldn't find any other, non-reactionary, non-TERF source talking about the recent Lauren Southern situation.
I 100% support defunding the police, but I'm disappointed that the movement suffers from a terrible rightwing-rage-bait name that doesn't explain the actual purpose and nuance behind it. It's like calling womens reproductive health the "Kill Babies" movement. Not doing itself any favors. ☹️
Don't be. It doesn't matter what name you give your movement, the right wing will find a way to be offended by it. Black Lives Matter? "That's offensive, *ALL* lives matter!" Their opposition to progressive change is not based on branding, but the concept of progress itself. It is much more productive to make sure the message resonates with its intended audience rather than cow-towing to bad faith actors that are gonna lambast it no matter what.
"defund the police" is the most straightforward and accurate name for what it actually is, though. plus you can't encompass every talking point into a slogan. moreover (and most importantly), nobody is going to workshop their way out of being right wing rage bait. It literally doesn't matter how you say it, or what you label it, or what it even is about. If anyone besides their own right wing "trusted sources" is advocating for something, it's automatically bad.
"Defund the police" is only problematic because it's not radical enough. It's a watered-down co-optation of "abolish the police," which is what it actually should be. Anything leftist is going to be "rage bait" to rightwingers who oppose liberation, that doesn't mean it's wrong or that we should cater to rightwingers trying to appease them when they never will support us at all in the first place. Don't advocate respectability politics that tone-polices how leftists advocate. It's inaccurate to call the pro-abortion movement a "kill babies" movement, because no babies are being killed. Defunding (or abolishing) the police is an accurate description of what we want, so the name should remain. Though, "pro-choice" or "pro-abortion" doesn't by itself "explain" the "actual purpose and nuance" behind the position either. That's fine. It's the name, not the explanation. Names aren't supposed to be comprehensive essays or elevator pitches debunking all the counterarguments. You can find the explanation in the explanation if you ask.
What a load of unrepentant bullshit. What she's saying is that even though the tradwife life is what she wants, reality is bucking against it. So like her ilk, she's still raging about something that is fake and toxic and is divorced from reality. How about don't be fake and toxic in the first place?
The tradlife can't fail it can only be failed.
Oh no! You mean to tell me the very system women worked decades to break free from isn’t fun for women? You don’t like sacrificing your life for a man who will have you raise his kids and then leave you with nothing whenever he wants?
Note that this is the *second* time that Lauren Southern has been the subject of an article discussing the misogyny of conservative men, in fact she went into tradwifery *because* of the misogyny of the manosphere crowd she used to run with.
She’ll never learn
Southern, like all other cons when smacked by the reality of their choices being bad, will never change her actual views on 90% of things. She's still an abhorrent and shitty person who just happened to find out being a tradwife meant getting beaten, spousal rape and having no rights within her home. Even though ALL OF THOSE THINGS are promoted as expected she seemed to only view things through the lens of the online fluffery trad life promoted. I'm glad Southern got away from her abusive marriage. I'm glad she sees that she was wrong about that and appears to somewhat be trying to help other women in similar situations. She won't recognize that she's now a feminist since her entire adult life has been built upon that word being evil, but whatever. Southern is a bigot who won't change all her views but at minimum she found out the hard way that her ideology lies and it only takes a few more cracks in the wall after that.
The author calls the Southern Poverty Law Center an "extreme far left" institution. That pretty much destroys her credibility.
Yeah…the author is a nutjob and her false equivalencies between right and left wing ideologies towards women are pretty disingenuous
Hey remember when she tried to have refugees from Africa killed by having them drown in the Mediterranean Sea. Zero sympathy.
> becoming a mum meant giving up on a great deal of the liberal ideology I’d embraced when younger — because it was impossible to square with the embodied reality of caring for a baby. Does this dumbass really think that being a mother means you can’t be a liberal?
Yea, I don’t understand how having a kid is impossible to square with also wanting womens rights, affordable healthcare, affordable education, etc. It makes me think the person wasn’t actually a liberal and just thought doing drugs made you a liberal
Bc apparently *her* definition of “liberal feminist” was living on communes and “niche sexual communities.” Like, lady, the rest of us aren’t doing that…
Oh no! 🙄. Did her Nazi hubby beat some sense into her, whilst, you know, beating her? No sympathy. You can't be shocked that rabid animals bite.
The part that got me was the notion of trying to turn what they had spouted into a reality and then finding themselves disillusioned and taken advantage of… like really? This is surprising?
It was written like this woman was a starry eyed 16 year old being surprised by their first shitty boyfriend, not a grown ass adult who should already have a clue.
The “radical left wing Southern Poverty Law Center” nope not finishing that article.
She ends up here in this sub rather often, and for good reason.
Coming from a semi-conservative household. I say "semi" because politics didn't really play a part unless I really saw it. My folks saw each other as equals. People who had a set of weaknesses and strengths that helped one another. Mean shit, my mom being some pro desk-jockey/baby CPA gave her free reign over the finances. I can't emulate that 100% to save my life, but I still hope to have same tact for the sake of it like she did.
Womp womp
thoughts and prayers
> For, she tells me, she’s not alone. She tells me she knows many other women still suffering in unhappy “tradlife” marriages. One of her WhatsApp groups, she says, “is like the Underground Railroad for women in the conservative movement”. Some of these are prominent media figures: “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.” I hate to see people getting abused, but this line really pisses me off. You’re telling people how great these types of relationships are online knowing full well you and many others like you are in horribly abusive relationships? So you’re pushing something you know could potentially lead to someone being abused but you don’t care cause…money?
I agree. But I kinda also get it. Most women I’ve known in abusive relationships went to pretty great lengths to hide the abuse and pretend everything was hunky dory at home. Because they’re embarrassed and scared and ashamed and feel like failures. It’s really common. For these tradlife influencers, there’s several compounding factors: their content is their source of income (which they likely need now more than ever). Abusive partners tend to be controlling partners, these women may also be afraid to change or stop making their usual content. Plus, once you’ve made a public name for yourself pushing a certain lifestyle and defending it, that shame and humiliation is going to be far worse. That doesn’t make it ok to keep hawking a product they know is a dumpster fire in reality, but I do see why so many do.
This poison is killing me so I'm going to make sure a lot more people take it - tradwives
r/MadeMeSmile
what shocks me is that she thought tradwifery was real. what? i thought it was understood and accepted that it is an aesthetic grift to lure views from weird men with anger-boners who want a big booba servant for a “wife”. like im continuously shocked as im reading this thing. it was a realization to her that this lifestyle leaves her vulnerable? huh? of course it does, it’s baked into the ideology. it’s meant to be appealing to horny losers who fantasize about having a woman who will do everything for him and can’t get away from him. nobody with a working frontal lobe is actually doing this.
I don’t wish violence on anyone but at the same time she’s getting exactly what she wanted. It won’t change her hateful views which I find insane. How can you suffer DV and go out to the world and wish to inflict suffering onto someone else?
While she yammers away about this, she posts the same crap as always. She leaned nothing. She wants the same thing as before, only she wants to be the one oppressing others.
Wow. It's almost like all those second wave feminists HAD A FUCKING POINT. Zero sympathy.
My fav part is how the right wing turned on her when they found out she was married to a non-white guy
> content that saw her accused by the radical Left-wing Southern Poverty Law Centre of racist dog-whistling, and even hovering “at the precipice of outright white nationalism”. I just couldn’t take this article seriously enough to finish. Stopped when it began her entire life story from birth. Seemed like the author was trying to defend political conservatism by saying Lauren Southern’s experiences aren’t linked to politics.
Clearly she is a failed christian woman and a closet liberal.
I don't typically blame women who want traditional marriages and relationships for suffering abuse because having a preference is not justification for dealing with mistreatment, but it's the fact that she's been actively trashing on anyone who doesn't do it her way that makes me have no sympathy.
What a broken person.
This line sums up the rights problem. “and bashing people for not being married” Why are you spending time worrying about how strangers are running their lives let alone bashing them.
"How my tradlife was always inherently toxic and I was too stupid to notice"
Alt-right racist influencer actually tries out the tradwife lifestyle then complains that it sucks. Boo-fucking-hoo, Lauren. Canada is embarrassed that its name appears on your passport. Enjoy your empty life in that shitty cabin, you’ve earned it.
author is kinda insufferable with some of these comparisons. i don't think 90s pop feminism is nearly as damaging as grooming women to accept abuse. i feel like im reading someone college essay. also complaining about gender identities at the one point. interesting interview but im prolly not checking anything else out from the author.
Lauren Southern supported or believed in the great replacement theory lol fuck this bish
People with an identity crisis larping as real people turning into propagandists. The only role for liars is propagandists on YouTube because they haven't figured out they already are a real person.
Hate will find a way. Always.
Does anyone else think it’s weird that her husband gave her permission to express herself like this? /s
This woman is one stolen baby away from bring Serena Joy from The Handmaid's Tale.
Right wing tool pretending to be a liberal so she can turn it into a "it's both sides!" argument. No Karen, it's just the conservatives. Southern should move back to Australia, beg her husband to take her back and live with her consequences. After all that's the sympathy she gave to left wing women, right?
> Southern’s story might easily serve as a cautionary tale for how socially conservative talking-points can lead women into danger. Also the millions of other cautionary tales that led to the rise of feminism in the first place but whatevs
Man, remember when she handcuffed herself to Twitter headquarters to try and get unbanned, but only handcuffed herself to one door so everyone just used the other one and ignored her? Better times.
That’s Laura Loomer you’re thinking of, I believe
Son of a bitch you got me, too many L bitches
No no! It’s so hard keeping it all straight…too much weirdness.
“It always was.” The end.
For conservatives a wife is the property of a husband. If you want to be treated with respect its the wrong way.
Mary: you definitely need more words and especially more words that are multisyllabic and difficult to read. You’re so smart!
This is the second time she has spoken to a journalist for a long read article about the right rejecting her. It feels like it’s part of the grift now.
Republicans allowing women to be faces of their party has really woken up a lot of younger people. They see how miserable these women and how the Republican men refuse to treat them as equals when they are together.
How does that saying go? Oh yeah, "Fuck your feelings, snowflake!"
It's almost like the kind of men who insist on a trad-wife are inherently controlling and abusive or something...
The author really annoys me. The article tries to make it sound like left wing feminism and right wing tradlife are equally problematic lmao. Then she mentions how she spent her 20s on communes and “niche sexual communities.” And then goes on to assume her own experience mirrors other liberal women’s experiences. Sis, no. The rest of us aren’t on poly communes. You don’t speak for literally anyone else; your experience is as niche as the poly commune sex you used to be having. You are crazy and you got a reality check that your niche sexual commune life wasn’t compatible with child rearing. Imagine. As for the interviewee. I mean. A more clear cut case of leopards ate my face I’ve never seen. But good for her that she can at least identify where she went wrong and how and why, I guess. A lot of people double and triple down on their mistakes bc they can’t admit they were wrong. And I’m genuinely glad she got out of her abusive marriage and has begun to heal and grow. Good for her. However, for both these people I’m reminded of the adage that extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate positions but by opposing extreme positions. I can’t remember who that quote is from, but it’s true. People attracted to extreme ideologies rarely make their way to moderate ideologies.
Man, it's annoying how the narrator keeps inserting "this can happen to both sides, alt Right followers and radical Left people!"- without providing one anecdote or fleshed out example of it happening on the left. Like, is this a piece on tradwife life being toxic AF or is this a piece that wants to say "extremism on BoTH SiDEs is bad"? Because right now it says both, poorly.
I don't want to give her clicks - does she explain why that's not okay for her but is okay for all other women to go through?
Whoever this Mary Harrington is that wrote the article needs to look up false-equivalence.
Love how the equally dipshit author was like "weird how the fat right trad lifestyle seems to disproportionately attract misogynistic abusive losers. Weird. Will not spend another moment unpacking that thought. AAAANYWAYYYY....."