PicoBlog

Hoo boy, the internet has a way of bringing me the craziest articles. Recently, I saw a name in the headlines that I haven’t seen in a minute: Lauren Southern. 

For those not in the know, Lauren Southern was a darling of the alt-right. More specifically, she was a fairly open white nationalist who also espoused tradwife values.

During her heyday, she was on FOX, had a bunch of films, and was a rather popular social media darling. She stopped being a social media personality at 22 when she married. 

And then she went dark. 

She recently came out of the woodwork again, and according to UnHerd, she had to tell people about the abusive marriage that left her bereft. She has regrets over how things went. 

As it turns out, us evil feminists were right: submitting to men does not make relationships better. In fact, the very advice that she was peddling does little to attract decent men around you. 

It does, however, put you open to abuse and poverty. 

The article describes how she quit her career at the behest of her husband, how he would lock her outside of her own house, and how he ended up filing for divorce when she finally stood up for herself. 

She also described having to go from a stately home to a cabin in the woods infested with mice. More importantly, she discussed how she became a member of an online support group for tradwife influencers stuck in abusive marriages:

“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.””—UnHerd

Well, isn’t that surprisingly…feminist? What happened to her just telling women to suck it up and be better wives? It’s almost as if they know what they are practicing and preaching is hurtful to women. 

She calls the tradwife and conservative movements “a fallen world.” Others in the support group she runs note that these movements attract “wayward, antisocial, disagreeable and very, very misogynistic” men. 

I mean, yeah. When you tell people that an entire gender is superior and that they should get gold stars for existing, you’re going to have a lot of fucked up people buy into that ideology. 

Callous as it is, I don’t have much sympathy for Lauren Southern. She practiced what she preached, which I have to give her credit for. She may have been young, so to a point, I could excuse her shit beliefs back in the day.

However, she did immense damage to impressionable young women who should have been warned about men who hate women. I don’t see an apology from her for the content she made. 

Moreover, throughout the article, I also didn’t see an apology for any of the other toxic rhetoric she’s famous for. I saw no apologies for her white nationalist views, her anti-immigration stances, or any of the other stuff that earned her nicknames like “Nazi Barbie.”

In fact, it’s a privilege that she and her tradwife cohorts often fight against. If conservatives had their way, there would be no way for her to divorce her man—even if he left her locked out to die in the icy Canadian cold.

Moreover, if the “trad” crowd had their way, there would also be no social safety nets for single mothers. She would not have had a cabin to go home to. She would have to wonder where the fuck her next meal is coming from. 

She is also privileged that she’s white. White women are far more frequently believed when they claim abuse than women of color—even in Canada. That alone brings social protections that most people grossly underestimate until you’re in those shoes.

Lauren Southern has a privilege many women in the world don’t have: the privilege of being able to escape from an abuser and actually do some character development. She has the ability to get the fuck away, live her own life, earn a paycheck, and ruminate over what happened. 

“Post-divorce, after becoming a single mother, my mental health started to improve. I started to repair all these really important friendships. And I’m living a much happier, much healthier life than I was before…

Some of the most miserable people I’ve met—in fact, absolutely the most miserable people I’ve met—have been stuck in this weird, larpy trad dynamic.”—Lauren Southern

A lot of women in her shoes aren’t that lucky. 

I know of so many women who literally can’t escape their abusers because they don’t have the safety net they need to get out. They are stuck with their tormentors until they die. This isn't just a Saudi Arabia thing, either. It’s stateside, too.

In the United States, you can’t usually get shelter if you earn a normal wage—even if you’re in dire need of it. And in some states? They can sue women for aborting a fetus of their abusers. Some states also bar divorce for pregnant women. 

And yet, she spent a whole lifetime advocating for policies that make it harder for women to experience the relief of walking from an abuser. How has she not publicly apologized for the damage she’s done? 

Lauren Southern is one of many, many trad influencers who only seem to love feminism when it benefits them. She’s one of many women who don’t realize the need for egalitarianism until she’s the one being locked out by an awful man. 

If she wants to truly atone, it’s time that she openly admit where she was wrong…and where feminism saved her despite her rallying against it. 

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