I've spent the last few months more like years, living in contradiction
and trying to get out of it.
I am no longer married and not by choice.
Yes, I know I am the girl who basically was the poster child for marriage and
traditionalism, telling everyone if they didn't follow the perfect trad guide that
I had figured out at 20 years old, they'd grow up to be alone or single mothers.
The horror.
I was the queen of the pygmies until I got picked.
Oh boy. How the turntables.
That was Lauren Southern. You might be familiar with her.
She has been a pretty big star in right wing media and had promoted
the so-called Tradwife lifestyle.
But now she's sharing her hellish experience actually living
as an ultra traditional wife and mother.
Lauren Southern is a Canadian right wing star, and she used to regularly champion
the Tradwife kind of domestic lifestyle and mindset.
She gained international notoriety, according to Unherd, for her views on mass
immigration, Islam, racially motivated farm murders in South Africa, and
the supposed harms of liberal feminism.
Content that saw her accused by the radical left wing Southern Poverty
Law Center of, racist dog whistling and even hovering at the precipice
of outright white nationalism.
Now, southern herself has always denied those allegations.
Then, at the age of 22, she became, I can't believe she was 22
when she got married.
Yeah, at 22, she became a full time traditional wife and mom
in her husband's home of Australia.
And that's when things took a turn.
She thought that as long as I put on the high heels and the lipstick
when my husband comes home, as long as I cook the best meal, as long as I'm always
submissive and say, yes, sir, whatever you want, things will go fantastic.
But things didn't go fantastic.
Things were actually pretty awful in her relationship.
And you know, I feel terrible reading about what her experiences were, she says.
If I ever disagreed with him in any capacity,
he just disappear for days at a time.
I remember there were nights where he'd call me worthless and pathetic,
then get in his car and leave.
He'd also threatened to divorce her if she ever challenged him on anything.
I had this delusional view, she says, of relationships, that only women
could be the ones that make or break them, and men can do no wrong.
And she didn't spot some of the red flags, and unfortunately she didn't spot them
even as they were growing more extreme.
She says he'd lock me out of the house.
I remember having to knock on the neighbor's door on rainy nights,
because he'd get upset and drive off without unlocking the house.
It was very strange to go from being this public figure on stage,
with people clapping to the girl crying, knocking on someone's door with no home
to get into, being abandoned with a baby.
He also insisted that she quit working.
So in 2019, she announced that she was leaving media and activism altogether.
As southern tells it, she was trying sincerely to put into practice
the ideology she'd promoted in her videos.
Quote I believed I had a certain role in my relationship, and it was to be
more submissive, the more submissive one that supports my husband's dreams.
Then, thousands of miles from her friends and family, she reports,
becoming the closest thing to a modern day Western slave with no income of her own.
She had to do everything the lawns, the house, the cooking,
the baby care, his university homework.
And I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any support.
Remember, she's in Australia.
At this point I'd be shaking, nervous for fear I'm going to get yelled at.
And then, you know, he would berate her. She just really treated her poorly.
And then in the end, he ended up leaving her with their child.
Yeah.
Pausing here to deliver some honest truth, as we do in our news coverage as well.
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I think this is a super interesting story. And it's got a lot of different sides.
So first, just so you understand who Lauren Southern is or was,
I don't know if she's reformed. These opinions are as well.
Or just the things that affected her personally.
But if you're wondering why people thought she was so outrageous, she has said things
like, Richard Spencer is not a white supremacist, he's a white nationalist.
He believes in a white ethnostate.
He doesn't believe in whites being superior.
So white ethnostate is a okay and doesn't necessarily mean whites are superior.
If you say so, Lauren.
She also said, as the Dutch politician Geert Wilders has repeatedly stressed,
while individual Muslims can no doubt be decent and noble people,
just as tame wolves do exist, the fact is that Islam, the religion,
is by its nature dangerous to the West.
So she said outrageous things like this all the time, and so I.
So again, I don't know if she's reformed on that stuff or not, but and she but part
of the problem is guys on the internet, there's a whole bunch of young people
who've never lived life and they go, and she says this now too, right?
And they have all these theories that they read in Fountainhead
or different Ayn Rand book or some libertarian nonsense or whatever it is.
And they go out there and they judge people and they wag their finger at people
and they spread, you know, hatred and demagoguery, etc.
And then all of a sudden it happens to them.
They're like, whoa, I didn't see that.
But that's what we were trying to tell you, Lauren.
- That's what we were trying to tell you. - I'm not going to listen.
Most people have to experience things in order to change their minds.
As much as I hate to admit it, I'm one of those people.
So living in a glass house and, you know, correcting some of the errors
that I've made in my career, I feel that it's inappropriate for me to go after her,
like about this inappropriate hold on.
Specifically in regard to what she has realized about relationship dynamics and
the importance of having a relationship or a marriage where, you know, you see your
partner or your partner sees you as an equal, not as a freaking house slave that
you know, cooks for you, cleans for you, does your university school work for you?
You know, a partner who respects you and sees that relationship
as as a team, right?
In order to make it work? I don't know what her view like.
I've watched interviews of her in recent months and years, and it does appear that
she has reformed a lot of her beliefs.
I don't know specifically about, you know, immigration or Muslim religion
or anything like that.
But in regard to this, I mean, you should give her credit for realizing
she was wrong and in a very public way, coming out and saying she I know.
Despite all that, if you come to the right place, I'm
very happy to have you in the right place.
And so she now realizes and she's telling other people, yeah, this tradwife thing,
oh, it turns out just giving away your volition and your life
and your freedom to a rando dude is not necessarily the right idea,
because you have no idea who that guy is.
And if he's the one looking for a submissive wife, you're fishing
in the wrong pond to begin with, so your your chances of getting
the wrong guy is enormously high.
So this whole idea of being submissive to someone else and giving away your,
you know, like I said, your freedom to them is outrageous.
But she realizes it now.
The whole point of tight is open hearts, open minds.
So she opened her mind to that. Terrific.
Happy to have her on the right side, at least on that issue.
I just don't know about the other issues.
And, Anna, you drive me crazy when you like.
You have made what you think is microscopic issues.
She, on the other hand, was like, oh my God, you're all whores if you
don't get married and submit to a man.
And feminism is the worst and women shouldn't have these rights,
and Muslims are the worst and white nationalists are not.
These are giant Mount Everest problems compared to what you think.
You got a slight story a little wrong.
Come on, man, it's it's apples and oranges, but it doesn't matter
as long as she gets the right side.
Are you kidding me? I used to be a Republican.
I used to believe in the establishment nonsense
that the Democrats and the media put out.
So it doesn't like I'm good with it. I'm good with it.
As long as she's gotten to the right place and putting out the right message.
Now, do not listen to clowns telling you you should submit to anyone else.
You need an equal, fair partnership where you both grow out of the relationship
and thank God she also agrees.
Now after she's at least lived it.
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