If you’ve been around for longer than the Trump presidency, you will know the name Karen Straughan. She was most peoples entry point into the red pill back in the 2000s. She was part of the first wave of YouTube influencers, like Jenna Marbles, Pewdiepie and others. She had a firm grasp of the facts and statistics, she was a devout advocate for the men’s rights, and often collaborated with anyone and everyone. Her work with Terrence Popp was great. Her work with Paul Elam was, less so.

She did an interview with the Red Pill back in 2015. So for the second episode of the interview series I want to present to you, the Men’s Rights/Red Pill crossover event you probably didn’t know existed.

For subscribers, I’ve added my own input at the end as a special just for you.

Start

Karen: Hey there, everyone. I'm here to hang out for a few hours and answer your questions.

Have at you!. I've been trying to keep up as I can between my normal daily stuff and getting the rub on the back ribs and into the oven, and I just want you guys to know if I don't get to your questions or comments this afternoon, I'll come back to them tonight or tomorrow. I will answer each and ever comment, dammit!

Since getting involved in the Men's Rights Movement, have you felt as though men's interests are gaining ground, or that men's rights is going to be a fruitful cause?

I ask, not because I believe men shouldn't have rights (I'm certainly a supporter), but because sometimes it seems like the equality and egalitarianism that men wish for (such as destroying gender roles) aren't exactly realistic- that is men need to act like men to attract women.

What are your thoughts on this?

Karen: I do think that men's interests are gaining ground. There are plenty of mainstream articles that point to a growing awareness of the problem, and when I talk to random people about what I do, whether I say I'm an anti-feminist or a men's issues advocate, I tend to get a lot of, "yeah, you're right! I always thought that was messed up."

The main obstacle to going fully mainstream, particularly with the issues of boys, since male children still command some small degree of compassion from the wider culture, is feminism, political feminism, and casual gynocentrism.

We often get accused of derailing, but I've never been involved in a conversation about the harms of infant male circumcision without multiple people barging in and saying that it's not comparable to FGM and that making a fuss about it is minimalizing or trivializing ACTUAL genital mutilation blah blah blah.

You talk about male victims of DV, and you'll get lots of people jumping in to inform everyone that while men are a tiny minority of victims, it's women who are the majority of victims, and blah blah blah.

When Obama unveiled "My Brother's Keeper" (I think that's what it was called), an initiative to assist minority boys achieve in school and stay out of gangs, there were women's groups demanding to know why the initiative excluded minority girls, despite a multitude of initiatives already in existence prioritizing all girls' achievement and success.

Destroying gender roles is, IMO, unrealistic. Particularly because feminism has managed to convince most of society that they're trying to destroy gender roles by exploiting gender roles. We're just not rational about this, and I don't expect we can convince society to become rational about it. It would require a constant, conscious effort on the part of all members of society to make it work, and that isn't feasible.

This is why, as much as I'd love to talk about how excluding fathers from families hurts men (men are human), it's more effective to emphasize how it hurts children (men are useful).

It's not all about men needing to act like men to attract women. It's the sad reality that the very concept of equal compassion for men is teflon-coated. You can literally convince someone that men deserve compassion as human beings every bit as much as women do, and fifteen seconds later, the idea just kind of slid off of their brains and you're starting from scratch.

Which is why women are very important in the MRM. It's women who can get sympathy--as mothers or daughters or sisters who are themselves hurt by the harm done to the men in their lives. No one's going to give two shits if my oldest never finds a woman worth his time and effort. But they'll care if my daughter finds herself at age 30, unmarried and wanting a child, and simply unable to find a man who can help provide a stable home.

If men's interests are gaining ground, it's because ignoring their interests is having a negative impact on women and children. Well, there's also that anger thing. Paul Elam has repeatedly said, "if society won't hear men's pain, it will hear their anger." So there's that, too.

All in all, though, I can't even realistically hope for actual equality before the law. There will always be informal biases that play into things like the sentencing gap. But statutory equality before the law--that might be achievable. There's some hope that "men" or "male" (and "straight", and "cis" and maybe even "white") might one day become a legally recognized category under human rights legislation.

The other day there was an article posted in r/psychology about male suicide. The author of the article was trying to find the cause of the male vs female suicide rate discrepancy. The comments were full of people saying,

"well, women actually attempt suicide more than men". I don't think they were trying to downplay the fact that more men actually kill themselves, but they were willing to basically ignore the main point of the article to paint women as the main victims. People who brought up the fact that women attempting suicide wasn't the point of the article were also upvoted, but people thought the sub was being brigaded because those comments received upvotes.

Pretty fucked up if you ask me.

Karen: One of the most interesting things about that particular stat is that it's, as far as I can tell, a woozle. You can go from paper to paper to paper and find it cited, but linking to papers that have no raw data--just citations to other articles that cite still other articles that also don't have raw data but are citing other articles without raw data.

The closest thing to raw data I've been able to find is a survey of people reporting suicidal thoughts, attempts and self-harm behaviors combined. In those surveys, women outnumber men about 5 to 4.

But included in these surveys are people who've thought about killing themselves but never attempted it, and people who engage in cutting and other self-harm. And the discrepancy isn't that big. And it's only asking people who aren't dead (that is, it doesn't include successful suicide attempts--only failed ones).

Which do you suspect this is - cultural or innate?

Karen: Definitely innate. It exists across such a broad spread of species that it can't be anything but innate. The only species that treat females as as disposable as males are traditional monogamous social species--wolves, marmosets, etc. In those species, only the dominant female is allowed to mate/reproduce, and all other females are reproductively useless in and of themselves--their value is the same as the value of subordinate males, as helpers.

So when you have two packs of wolves going at each other, you'll see the females of the losing pack sometimes get slaughtered along with the males. Why not? Those females aren't wombs--they're just potential problems. And they'll risk their subordinate females in the hunt or in skirmishes, for the same reason.

But in species where all females generally reproduce, the females are protected. Both males and females will team up to protect females, but no one protects males (dominant or subordinate).

I found your choice of example very interesting because wolves have litters with multiple progeny so less females are needed to propagate the species. This maybe part of the reason for female disposability in wolfpacks and/or marmosets.

Karen: Or maybe multiple progeny is a result of the disposability of subordinate females? So many of these things are kind of chicken and egg reinforcing cycles.

About the only thing I CAN be sure of is that humans were bipedal before we grew our big brains. But IMO, bipedalism, a switch to more hunter and less gatherer (big game in particular), having one's hands free, gendered division of labor, and the necessity of two invested parents once our bipedalism caused the obstetric crisis, are responsible for what we have become. All of those things kind of happened simultaneously, and caused biological changes and changes in our social organization.

Without advanced medicine women face something like a 50% chance of dying from their first pregnancy in addition to 9 months of varying incapacitation. Some theories say our enhanced sexual dimorphism especially with regard to putting women first and making men disposable is how we beat out the other hominid races.

Karen: Definitely, there was a "crisis of obstetrics" that occurred when we became bipedal and our pelvises changed. Mothers are more at risk, and babies ended up being born prematurely compared to other mammals simply in order to fit through the different pelvises.

I would speculate that father-investment (a more cooperative mating strategy/egalitarian monogamy) was already a trend when that happened.

There are dead branches of bipedalism on the hominid tree. Though I don't think this was a cause of our sexual dimorphism--baboons, gorillas and other harem species are more dimorphic than we are.

And in fact, we're less dimorphic than them in a lot of interesting ways. Human males are more cooperative with each other than males of almost any other species, really. The phenomenon of guys trying to get other guys laid just isn't a thing in chimpanzee society.

In other words, we're very unusual, in a lot of different ways. But yes, we do put women first.

Nice. Switching to a more legal question. What do you think needs to change (law / contract wise) so that marriage makes sense for RP men?

Karen: Right now, marriage isn't a contract between two parties. It's a legally binding blank piece of paper, the terms of which will be decided by a third party (the court/state) upon dissolution.

I would marry my current bf if that was not the case. I mean, I know I won't fuck him over, but when I dissolved my marriage with my ex the court wouldn't let me treat him as fairly as I would have liked. I wanted to formally waive child support, but no judge would sign off on that. All I can do is refuse to take measures to collect it, and try my damnedest to stay off welfare or anything similar, since they'll collect it for me whether I want it or not.

Marriage needs to be an agreement between two people, yes, enforceable by an authority, but the terms of which are spelled out and agreed on by both parties to the contract. Prenups kind of do that--stipulate the rights and entitlements and responsibilities of both parties, and who's entitled to what if things go Pete Tong, depending on who's at fault, etc.

But right now, all marriages are 'boilerplate', and all boilerplate marriage contracts are subject to executive fiat. Prenups can be thrown out on the whim of judges, and essentially most marriages are to the state.

And like a judge ruled here in Canada 100 years ago when denying a man a settlement over a broken engagement--you're not entitled to anything, because men aren't expected to advance or gain economically through marriage. Women are.

For the future then, do you think that intersexual relations will improve, or get worse in the next 10, 20 years? Why is that?

Karen: Hard to say. If they get worse, they'll get much worse. If they get better, they'll get marginally better. I know that sounds pessimistic, but it's just how I see things.

Every time conditions have gotten better for women, we have a small contingent of women declaring that things are worse for women than ever. I watched an interview with Gloria Steinem from 2010 or something, and she was asked if women in the west were still oppressed. She said, no joke, "they're more oppressed than ever". And her reasons? "They feel like they have to have it all, they struggle to manage career and family, etc." In other words, women are more oppressed than they were before feminism BY the outcomes of feminism, and in order to deal with this oppression, we need more feminism. And the interviewer just nodded.

We humans are programmed for certain baseline behaviors. "If it bleeds it leads" is part of that. We've never had a less violent society--even including all the wars of the 20th century, we were less likely to die by violence than in the previous centuries. Rape is down, domestic violence is down, all these things are down.

And what are we doing? Maintaining a baseline level of threat awareness by redefining rape and domestic violence to include huge swaths of behaviors that weren't included before. When we run out of actual things that threaten women, we think up other dangers women are subject to, or upgrade things no one in previous generations would have considered to be dangerous (like yelling or using sexist language).

And for the most part, society goes along with it.

If we're going to see a massive correction, the correction will be due to a huge collapse that forces us to put things in perspective, and to respect the roles of men to protect and provide.

What do you think the effects poorer intersexual relations have on society and civilization as a whole?

Karen: Decoupling childrearing from the voluntary investment of fathers is a huge mistake, IMO. You look at other primates, you don't see much fatherhood, and you also don't see a whole lot of male/male cooperation. Where m/m cooperation does exist (like in chimpanzees), it's less stable, and almost always involves related males (that is, the females leave at maturity and attach to other groups, while the males in the group are all brothers and cousins and uncles and stuff).

It's been suggested by some researchers that these two phenomena played a major role in us becoming what we are--big brained, neotenous, sentient, intensely social animals capable of building civilizations, etc. And we've taken a meat hammer to one (voluntary invested fatherhood), and are assaulting the other by discouraging men and boys from operating within male-only environments that they may well need to reinforce cooperative behaviors. Boys seem to need this form of socialization so deeply, that when they can't get that from adult men at home or at school, they will seek it from their same-age peers and even turn to gangs.

We have no idea what the long term effects are going to be.

What do you think the best unintuitive piece of dating advice for men is?

Karen: Respect yourself, and enforce your boundaries. Also, don't spend a lot of money on her.

In what ways do you think The Red Pill could be improved?

Karen: If you mean this subreddit, I don't know it well enough to say.

[After a bunch of conversation around what the audiences thoughts are for the improvement of the subreddit (which is funny considering its current state) we move onto celebrities ]

I'd like to know what your opinions are on people like: Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham and Emma Sulkowicz. Schumer has admitted to what can be construed as rape, Dunham has owned up to doing things I'd rather not speak of to her little sister, while Sulkowicz has been proven to have lied about sexual assault and destroyed the reputation of Nungesser in the process.

Despite the information however, most feminists still support these individuals and blindly look past their faults, instead treating them as champions for the cause. My question is why, despite the evidence, do you think this is so? I can understand wanting to push forward their cause, but surely they could do it with people who's reputations aren't so publicly questionable?

Karen: All three women became feminist celebrities before the iffy shit was made public. Sulkowicz in particular was rocketed to fame based solely on the narrative rather than talent or achievement. Say what you will about "Girls" or Schumer's comedy, at least they put out a product.

By the time all the icky details came out, in all three cases, feminists had invested a huge amount in terms of emotional attachment and PR effort. They're not just going to turn around and say, "woops! We were wrong" They're going to double down and wait for the entire thing to blow over.

They're banking on the understanding that people will forget Nungesser before they forget "mattress girl". That people will forget one guy whose reputation was ruined before they forget that iconic image of a rape victim lugging her mattress all over campus.

They don't realize that the public is becoming increasingly jaded about this stuff, and that every time they defend it, they're taking a tire iron to their own credibility.

I hope they keep it up.

Known as mattress girl, she carried around the mattress she alleged she was raped on campus. Later for a piece of performance art she re enacted her rape by filming a friend having sex with her in order to come to terms with her trauma as she puts it

Going off of stories such as the Amy Schumer story where feminists are trying to convince each other that she was raped even though by facts she raped him, and off of the increasing number of emotional logic-less responses we are seeing everywhere, how long do you think it will be before someone (read: a significant number of people in positions of power) stands up and says no more? Do you think it will be a slow subtle movement, or a large scale push back?

Karen: If it's going to happen, it will happen like a crescendo. Like that transition in Beethoven's 9th, where it goes from quiet and the tension builds over a few bars, and then BAM! It will accelerate slowly, but exponentially.

Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to ever go back to base line.

I'm sure you recall the Satanic daycare scandals of the 80s? I watched these stories play out on the news as a teenager, and I was flabbergasted, much the same way I'm currently flabbergasted regarding the rape culture narrative. Eventually, the world kind of woke up and realized it had been in the throes of a mass hysteria, but at the same time, society never went back to that state it was in before the scandals. Prior to the scandals (and others, like the Catholic alter boy thing), no one would bat an eyelash at a middle aged man ruffling a young kid's hair and saying hello on the sidewalk. But now, we have men taking pictures of their own kids at the mall being approached by security because someone thought they were predators.

There will be a large scale correction, IMO, but it won't put us back where we were. Because I believe female nature or gynocentrism (or whatever you want to call it) is not a pendulum but an engine, we'll be revisiting this moment over and over. There will be a correction, then things will start to creep back, then another correction and then again things will creep back.

From some of the comments from new followers in here, I get the impression you've received a fair amount of static from the MRA crowd over doing this at all. How much of that was there? Did it make you hesitate at all? Has there been support as well?

How much of the recent wave of attention that the MRM has directing towards TRP do you think is a reaction to the /r/TheRedPill surpassing /r/MensRights in readership?

Where do you see the interaction between the two going in the future?

Karen: As much as some members of MRA dislike you guys, I've never been shy about my opinion when the topic comes up. I usually get a little bit of flak but it doesn't bother me much. I've had the odd person kind of hint that they'd unsubscribe or whatever, which I'm willing to accept.

On the other hand, there is some overlap and there are people involved in MR that have no opinion one way or the other.

I uploaded a video of my comments that got stickied here, along with some commentary, and the "like bar" looks healthy, even though a lot of the comments were very negative. One commenter expressed a wish that I'd learn to speak more wisely and circumspectly on topics like RooshV's suggestion to make rape legal on private property (all I said was that however stupid or unfeasible or offensive his idea was, his stated intention was to prevent rape, so I wasn't going to call him a bad person for it).

I can't really guess how much of the attention the mainstream is directing to the red pill due to your growth. There seems to be a certain admiration for the competence of some red pillers here and on YouTube as far as message delivery, and I think most would be surprised at how a lot of the animosity is generated by readers rather than leaders, if you will. I know AVFM is interested in a cautious approach toward including PUA perspectives on the website. That doesn't surprise me, given Paul Elam is a libertarian and he's been willing to publish articles by communists.

I don't think they're going for an assimilation or co-opting of other groups the way feminists have done with LGBT and other interest groups. It's more about providing a wider range of masculine perspectives. They're in a difficult position in trying to do so. They have right wingers like Bernard Chapin calling them a bunch of lefties, and they have progressives accusing them of promoting traditionalism, and they have MGTOW accusing them of advocating a return to the yoke for men and allowing women too big a role, and they have other MRAs advising them that they'll never attract young men into the fold if there are no women under the umbrella. Seems like no matter what they do, they're going to get a bunch of people telling them they're fucking it all up.

As far as what the interaction will be, I can't say. Personally, I'd be happy with a ceasefire. Criticism of ideas is all well and good, but there is that tribalistic component that comes into play, and I'd like to see more of a "live and let live, and let's promote this or that article if it's worthwhile without getting worried about accusations that we're panderers or collaborators because we agreed with Roissy

on this one issue," kind of thing.

I don't think the "manosphere" can all be united under one umbrella, but there's enough overlap that if they set aside some of that tribalism they could achieve more on an issue-by-issue basis. That's what I hope will happen.

Common complaints against TRP include but are not limited to the following:

• It's sexist

• It's misogynistic

• It's full of virgin neckbeards

• It's full of rapists

What are your thoughts on this? Are any or all of these complaints valid? Why or why not?

Karen: Of course the red pill is sexist. Pretty much everything and everyone is sexist. You know, if sexism means acknowledging that men and women are different.

No, it's not misogynistic. Some of the rhetoric here is very angry, and very generalized. A lot of that is from a sense of betrayal — I was taught women are wonderful and believed it, and then the shit hit the fan — There's a point, though, if the journey isn't suppressed through punishment and shaming, where these men tend to realize it's the false paradigm they're angry with, not women.

That they hate being lied to, not the people they were lied to about. The degree of the anger seems to be correlated with the degree of hurt, and the degree of hurt to the impact of the betrayal once it's realized, and the impact of the betrayal to how deeply they'd bought into the myth that women are more than human (or at least more human than men). If these men didn't love women in the first place, they wouldn't be able to be hurt by their failure to live up to the unrealistic expectations society has encouraged them to have.

At some point, I think, men arrive at an understanding that women piss and shit and fart and do shitty things and aren't perfect, just like men, and that's okay. It's the ubiquity, immensity and the extremity of the lie that women are wonderful that makes the pill hard to swallow and generates all this angry, bitter rhetoric. Men need to be allowed the space to vent and work through that, and for some, spaces like this are going to be more useful than a men's rights space.

If it's full of virgin neckbeards, it's full of virgin neckbeards being encouraged to hit the gym, groom their beards, get presentable and maybe get laid.

This one always makes me wonder. Though I suppose it's part and parcel of Dworkin's line:

But when you look at male on female violence, a lot of it is rooted in a sense of male powerlessness. Men who have confidence and mastery over themselves and their situations don't need to resort to violence to get what they want from women (whether it's sex or cooperation or respect or whatever), and they're less wanting of these things in general because they're more fulfilled in themselves, more self-sufficient. A rapist is a very damaged man (usually damaged by women) or a man who really really really wants sex but can't convince a woman to willingly lie down with him.

TRP isn't any of those things. It's about teaching men how to convince women they want to lie down with them, and about convincing men that sex with women isn't some lofty, pristine goal that must be achieved at any cost. A lot of feminists seem to think that teaching a man what makes women's panties wet is some crime against all womankind. They want it to remain a mystery, so only men with "natural game" can crack the enigma. A man who has to learn how to attract women is a fraud pulling one over on those women, etc. And I suppose if you consider that rape, then yes, it’s is full of rapists. But I personally don't.

What I've always hated about this notion, often used to shame or silence men, is that it's not only untrue, completely hypocritical —the women would basically dismiss MRA's as "neckbeards" would be the first to protest against the notion that all feminists are just fat ugly dykes, — circular reasoning — "neckbeards are unattractive to women, therefore they are of lower value; Neckbeards are of lower value, therefore unattractive to women; because they are of lower value and unattractive to women, treating them like shit is justified — and because it's often used to justify a lot of the hatred, disdain and misandry thrown at men, as well as dismiss their experiences, views and arguments, but also because the name is often used in absolute disregard for many of the very social issues that still plague western culture …

When women disregard men, or any kind of men's rights arguments, because they are just "virgin losers complaining", they are not just showing how little regard they actually have for men in general but they are also blatantly flaunting their own power and privilege to their faces, bullying men on factors that are only relevant because women say so and shaming men on qualities and expectations that they themselves would never have to be subjected to because they are women. The women who call men neckbeards, or shame them for not having any luck with women, do so from a position of absolute privilege. They can hold whatever views they want, and don't really need to be all that fit or well groomed, and they will always have suitors available to them. They are judging men for social expectations they are exempt from themselves.

Karen: Have you guys seen David Futrelle? Or "Angry Aussie"? Or any number of other hipster douchebag male feminists who are fat, have neckbeards, wear fedoras, have difficulty getting laid, etc?

A lot of the men I've met in my travels through the MRM are awkward or otherwise don't remind women of Matthew McConaughey. But a lot of them are quite presentable. Confident, attractive, fit, and definitely not virgins. When my boyfriend reintroduced me to the movement [Mens rights advocacy] when we were first dating, he was also dating two other women — a burlesque performer and a nursing student slash model — A lot of these guys have lots of options re sex with women. They just don't see a lot of options regarding stable relationships with solid, reasonable women.

As far as fat women, or unattractive women, I can certainly imagine people dismissing what they say based on that. Not dismissing their rights, but dismissing their complaints. Wasn't it Rush Limbaugh who said feminism was a way for ugly women to gain access to the mainstream? Last I checked, he still had a job.

Truth be told, there probably is some truth to the idea that low sexual value leads to a desire for the politicization of one's personal issues. I'm sure there are some MRAs who are in this mainly because they can't get laid and are simply not willing or able to do what it takes to get laid. I'm sure the same is true for some feminists. But they aren't the majority in either case, in my opinion.

This reminds me of something I read the other day that you may be interested is this quote:

That sums up perfectly the #1 reason this is seen as anti-women. It's largely the same reason MRAs and anti-feminists are seen as being a bunch of "misogynists". People are just so accustomed to women's preferential treatment that anything that threatens that status quo is viewed in a negative light.

Karen: Neoteny. It's important. The cuter someone is, the nicer we assume they are. For women, that cuteness is also associated with attractiveness to the opposite sex. So everyone thinks cute women are automatically nice, and men also find them sexually appealing. Here, this is a very enlightening paper on the subject.

Interestingly, Amy Yeung, the author of that article, has a Woman's Studies minor. That she published a paper like this is rather uncharacteristic.

Karen: She also recently hosted a feminist event on how to deal with those dastardly MRAs. I was quite disappointed, given her conclusions in this paper.

Jumping back to your point on game being a fraud and pulling one over on women; It’s funny considering a woman who dons make up, has had plastic surgery etc. isn't considered a fraud, pulling one over men, but a woman empowered. I guess it all goes back to society's unrealistic portrayal of women, but the cognitive dissonance is significant to say the least.

Karen: I recall an article by someone trying to make "rape by deception" a thing, and he took great pains to explain how make-up and breast implants and the like were "just different". Heh.

A lot of handwaving the exceptions as unimportant, for sure. I've conversed with a few people on the left that view the human mind as a blank slate at birth. They straight up denied sexual dimorphism. From this, it follows that all gender roles are arbitrary and oppressive because it forces people to adopt lifestyles and behaviors that are determined by irrelevant physical characteristics instead of their own free will.

These few people I've talked to laughed at the suggestion that men and women are different.

By the way, these were moderates, not even your SJW tumblr stereotype.

Karen: Even if we were blank slates with only physical characteristics different, we'd see sex differences in outcomes. Men are stronger and have differences in stamina, women have babies and lactate, etc.

I agree with this. Women have been and pumped up with so much false compliments, entitlement, and specialsnowflakery for so long (even before the self-esteem movement, which has undoubtedly made it worse) that even civil disagreement and/or constructive criticism results in a toddleresque tantrum of epic proportions.

Karen: I think even if the environment was completely neutral, women would generally trend toward seeing disagreement and criticism as an attack. At least more than men do.

That is, you don't need to train women into special snowflakery--you have to train them out of it.

[the conversation devolved into some in group signalling and out group mockery until catching it’s breath and moving onto the concepts of patriarchy]

Women absolutely LOVE the Patriarchy; they either just don't know it or don't want to admit it to anyone. Every stable and successful civilization throughout history has been patriarchal.

In terms of raw strength, Patriarchy>Anarchy>Matriarchy. In other words, the only thing that keeps savage, anarchical hoards at the city gates is a strong patriarchy defending it's women, children, and territory. Remove the patriarchy tomorrow, and all of the strong, masculine defense that goes with it, return society to "survival of the fittest", and women will quickly become reacquainted with what "rape" and "abuse" really is.

Attilla the Hun nor Alexander the Great, in their expeditions in conquering Europe and the Far East, didn't come across a Matriarchal society and say "whoops, nothing to see here, boys, let's just move along."

Karen: The few "matriarchies" out there, which are not matriarchies in the sense of a reversal of gender roles, but which grant women superior status and do not reward men for their disposability are generally poor, have no technology that they weren't gifted by their neighbors, have nothing anyone thinks is worth stealing (including their land), and still compel men into disposable roles. The Mosuo is the big one. On the border between China and Tibet, I believe.

You appear to support the MRA in their efforts while also recognising that the ball is now mainly in the women's court for changing the current problems in society. Unfortunately the men aren't very succesful in their pursuits; people are not willing to listen to us. Undoubtedly this is also partly where your succes stems from. In your view, how can we, the men facing these injustices- better make our voices heard? What can we do to really stand a fighting chance in all of this?

Karen: As horrible as it is, I think the negative effects on women and children of neglecting and marginalizing men are what will get people's attention. In that sense, MGTOW and PUA form a vise, squeezing from both sides. People don't like PUAs because they "take advantage of women without giving women what they want". People don't like MGTOW because they "ignore women without giving women what they want." Best thing you can do there is make sure people know why these groups of men are doing what they're doing, the system is rigged, so some opt not to play, and others have decided to play the system and "cheat" women out of sex without giving them what sex has historically gotten for them.

Children are also coming out of the woodwork now as teens and adults, speaking out against family courts that unjustly deprived them of fathers. The internet has no gatekeepers, so it's very easy now for a 16 year old to do that. Best thing you can do is share those testimonials far and wide.

If I had my way, there would be men filing sexual misconduct complaints against women willy nilly in universities, too, but I doubt that's going to happen. 43% of college aged men have been sexually assaulted according to the criteria that are applied to women victims. Things won't change until the impact on women and children is felt, and properly attributed.

What say you of the scientific assertions of this sub, such as women's hypergamous and solipsistic nature? If you aren't convinced, how does this affect your view of us as a community? Is there any particular assertion with which you take issue?

Karen: As far as assertions of the scientific nature, re female hypergamy and solipsism, I don't take issue with them. Even if I didn't believe them, I wouldn't necessarily find them offensive. I tend to find such things more interesting than offensive, and I'll try to figure out why people believe them, rather than condemn people for believing them. The only time I'll really take someone to task for believing such things is if they're in a position of influence and they believe them despite ample evidence right in front of them to the contrary.

As such, I don't take issue with any assertion made about women in TRP. I just examine the assertion, try to figure out if there's anything to it, and go from there.

Hypergamy is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and there's plenty of evidence for it, and plenty of evidence that it's not some "dire flaw" in female nature, but a result of the higher biological risk/caloric investment in offspring on the part of women. There's no moral judgment that can be applied to the reality that women risk and invest more, physically, in producing offspring and keeping them fed for the first bit, so there's no moral judgment that should be applied to the idea that women might have evolved to prefer mates who can compensate for, or maximize, that investment, either practically or genetically. Hypergamy makes sense, and there's plenty of evidence for it.

Solipsism is a little more complicated, but it's again just a product of the conditions women evolved in. I've witnessed myself the whole "women are like monkeys--they don't let go of one branch until the other branch is in their hand". Women evolved to seek stability, and a lot of that stability was provided by men. It's likely why girls reach menarche earlier if they have no father in their home--if you have no man in your home, the best strategy is to sexually mature as quickly as possible and attach yourself to a man as a stabilizing influence. Likewise, the tendency for some women to end relationships and want to cut all ties, even if there are children involved. Much of the female experience during our past might have involved an invading tribe killing or enslaving all the men, and the women being taken as wives or concubines. The woman who could not transition to her new situation was not as likely to survive and keep her offspring alive.

It's just how things were. And what we are is a product of how things were.

If there were some evidence that refuted these assertions, I'd take a deeper look at them, but for now, with the evidence I have, they make sense. And they don't make me feel offended or anything. I don't think any of these assertions, even if they're 100% correct, mean that women are flawed, or bad people. How they are (like how men are) might not be the best fit for modernity and the completely different reality of what our lives are like now, but there's a reason why.

How do you think the widening social acceptance of overt female promiscuity has affected the Sexual (or Marriage) Marketplace?

Karen: Price of sex is way down, price of marriage is way up.

Most women aren't panicking about this because they have government supports/subsidies, alimony and child support, as well as employment equity. They might WANT marriage, but they don't need it the way they used to.

Porn also drives the price of sex down. Women can't demand commitment in return for sex because a man who can get sex can get it from that other girl just as easily as (maybe more easily than) he can from her. And men aren't as willing to provide commitment in return for sex. Even men who can't get sex with real women have porn, and while it might not be great, from a cost/benefit analysis it isn't that bad, either.

The main problem arising from this state of affairs is not necessarily the effect on men and women that the sexes are drifting apart, but that children are being increasingly raised without the benefit of two parents--particularly that they are being raised without fathers, and with little to no compensatory influence from adult men in their early years, or positive adult male role models in media and pop culture. The child of a single mother might go the first 13 years of his/her life before having a solid, decent, responsible man in his/her daily experience (middle school math teacher, for instance).

Children are at highest risk of abuse when living with their biological mother and a non-related adult male (the boyfriend). I believe this might be the case because these mothers enable or turn a blind eye to such abuse--they feel they have to in order to maintain a relationship with a man who is not their children's father, who can leave at any time, and who is already putting up with some other guy's kids.

Without a steady, reliable, accepting role model among adult men, boys tend to seek them out from same age peers (they become more vulnerable to gang activity, etc). Without a father in the home, girls reach menarche earlier and are more likely to become teen parents and have children outside of solid relationships.

Many women somehow feel as if they can do it on their own just as well as they can with an invested male partner, because society provides them with the tangibles (money, assistance with care/supervision, etc). I'm sure there are cases where going it alone is the "least worst" option. But this breakdown in the relationship between the sexes has serious repercussions for future generations.

Have you participated on the CC (cock carousel) in your life and if you did, do you have regrets?

Karen: CC? Never mind, just got it.

Yes, sort of. I was quite promiscuous whenever I wasn't in a relationship. Mainly with guy friends who I liked and appreciated and could trust. My current relationship began as a fling, too--he's quite a bit younger than me, and we went into it thinking it would just be casual sex.

I don't regret the experience, probably because most of the time it emerged out of genuine fondness and affection. I've had (consensual) sexual experiences I didn't enjoy much, for sure, and that I might not do again if I could have a do-over, but I can't say I regret those either.

As far as the negative effects of promiscuity on women, I don't have any problems with fidelity, forming long term bonds, etc. And the only relationship I've ever been the one to end, it was a year before I started dating again--I know most women have a "back burner" guy ready when they break up with someone, but that's never been me. When I'm with someone, other men are pretty much off my radar.

I don't fully reject it. I've seen it too often to reject it. I've seen my friends do it, and seen men who are friends deal with it. I don't personally feel I'm broken, but I can't say that this isn't the case for a large cohort or even a majority of other women.

I mean look. Some women cheat. Sometimes when there's no valid reason to (that is, they have a good, devoted man at home who is focussed on their happiness). I don't and never have. Some women cheat when they're feeling "dissatisfied" with their relationship. I don't, and essentially dealt with about 5 years of being very unhappy, and another full year after breaking the relationship, before I even started dating again.

I've never cheated. I've never tried to horn in on some other woman's relationship. And I was never into riding an "alpha cock carousel" either. Most of the men I had casual sex with were just ordinary, average guys I liked as friends who I thought could handle something more without getting all weird about it.

Hooking up with a guy I barely knew was pretty rare, and those are, almost without exception, the times I might choose not to do over again if given the chance. Usually, there was a bond of affection there prior. Most of the time, I wasn't looking for a partner, or even a lay.

From what I've seen of women, I can't say that TRP is wrong about these things. Perhaps they're not as blanket as TRP claims, but as far as general trends, as I said, I see it happening, even among women I like as friends.

I don't fully reject it. I just don't think it's me. Maybe that's self-delusion, but there's nothing in my history that would reasonably indicate that.

There's a feeling a woman gets in her gut when she's flirting with someone and she means it. When it's either consciously or subconsciously "a possibility". When I'm with someone, I just don't get that feeling. I've had so much opportunity to cheat (and honestly, I doubt doing so and getting caught would break my current relationship because he's in the negative integers as far as jealousy goes), but it's never even occurred to me. Other men are just off my radar, sexually.

But that isn't the way it is for most women. It's just not.

What would you think if a guy refused to marry you because of your past promiscuous behavior?

Karen: Slut shaming is mostly a female relational aggression thing, a form of intrasexual competition designed to drag higher status women down, or keep lower status women down.

Roy Baumeister coauthored a very interesting paper demonstrating that it's a predominantly female behavior, but he contended that it's a group strategy on the part of women to keep the market price of female sexuality inflated. He may be talking about a slightly different phenomenon, though There's the bitchy "OMG, what a slut!" that some women do to each other often for no reason other than "that girl's prettier than me", and sometimes perpetrated by sluts themselves. This type seems to be more targeted--"I feel threatened by that woman, so my girlfriends and I are going to talk about what a slut she is, even if we have no idea whether she's even had sex."

Then there's actual general social disapproval of promiscuity, which would be, in my mind, more of a female sexual cartel. Like yelling "SCAB!!" at strike-breakers. It's this general social disapproval that gives the above "bitchy slut shaming" a lot of its power. It's also led to all kinds of movements (anti-pornography, increasing the age of consent, maintaining legal bans on prostitution, etc) where women have been active politically through history.

The level of disapproval of promiscuity has been shown to be correlated to the perceptions of individuals as to the financial dependency of women on men. That makes perfect sense--if you're supporting a wife and her kids, you want to know they're your kids and not the milkman's, and when women are financially dependent on their men, they're more protective of the fidelity of their husbands.

I don't really place a moral judgment on slut shaming. It's an interesting phenomenon that I've never been on the receiving end of, for whatever reason. I was promiscuous and never bothered to hide it, but I never cheated on anyone I was with, and I never messed with anyone who was attached.

As far as what I'd think if a guy refused to marry me? I'd be disappointed, for sure. But there are rational reasons to consider promiscuous women an unsafe bet--they're more likely to cheat, more likely to go from one short term relationship to another, often have unstable personalities, etc. I'd hope that a guy could look at my entire character and not simply that one aspect of it. But if he couldn't, we wouldn't be a good fit together.

With your knowledge of the manosphere and men's lives, how are you raising your sons?

Karen: My sons are red pill in the sense that they see what's going on. My oldest came by it naturally (natural MGTOW). He managed to go through his entire school career without being bullied or hassled by anyone, I think because he gave off a vibe that he just didn't care about anyone else's opinion of him.

My youngest is a little more interested in a robust social life, fitting in and the rest, but he's still quite aware of how things actually work. Sometimes I have to explain it, sometimes I don't. Because he values being liked, he's more likely than his brother to end up on the wrong side of a bully. I remember when he came home late one day in grade 3, and announced, all excited, that he had detention. "I got into a brawl!" A friend was being bullied by a group of older boys, and he jumped in and started swinging. We had to fill out an incident report together, "what did you do wrong, why was it wrong, what will you differently in the future, etc?" I told him the answers he needed to give, then told him I was proud of him for defending his friend and that if he ever got detention over something like that again, he wouldn't be in trouble with me.

Mostly, I'm about "figure out what's important to you, and then figure out a way to do it on your own." Helicopter parenting is not my thing.

I also managed to raise kids who are not materialistic at all. None of them have ever wanted designer clothes or anything like that. On the other hand, they do like some high ticket items--my son spent his first earned $1000 on a Cintiq drawing tablet, and the next several hundred on a video card he wanted. The older two (son and daughter) work and live with us but pay rent, and are saving for post-secondary.

I suppose I've tried to instil in them the idea of valuing what's actually important, rather than flashy consumerism or getting a boyfriend/girlfriend, and being willing to do what's necessary to have a stable life.

Assuming he wants those for digital art, I'd say they are very good purchases. They are definitely worth the price, and digital art in general is a very good creative outlet. I can confirm, even if he doesn't use it a lot, assuming he is into 3D and Digital Painting he will come around to it and start using it a lot, I used mine at the beginning not that much but then I got more into drawing and 3D such as sculpting in zbrush, it came right off the shelf.

Karen: It's always shocked me how bad his penmanship is, how shitty he generally is when he's working on paper, but the moment he's on that tablet he's pro-level as far as what he can produce.

My daughter also has a tablet that he bought her for her birthday, but it doesn't have a built-in display. I have no idea how she uses that thing, but she manages somehow to be able to lift the stylus and know exactly where to put it back down.

What about your significant other? Could you describe him, and your relationship dynamic with him?

Karen: He's large, hairy, barrel-chested. His head is gigantic, so you don't necessarily realize how big he is until he's standing next to you. His neckbeard is wild and woolly and glorious.

His eyes are like Jesus when he's happy, and like Damien from The Omen when he's annoyed. Very soft spoken, even when he's mad (which scares people sometimes). Almost never raises his voice. "Walk softly and carry a big stick."

He's sexually very dominant, so we get along very well in that regard. Very affectionate, too, which is nice. He goes over the top with teasing and ribbing in a way that makes me laugh all the time. We'll smack talk each other in front of the cashier at the store, which usually ends in me saying, "no jury in the world would convict me, you know," and him looking at the cashier and saying, "you see how abusive she is? It ain't right..." and the cashier just stands there kind of bemused watching it.

We both contribute what we can to the household finances. When we first moved in together, I was covering 100% because he was finishing his degree. For a while, it was about 50/50, and now he's in a really good job and it's probably the first time in my life I haven't had to squeeze every single dime out of a paycheck. I'm working less outside the house than before, but I have income from multiple sources so I'm still contributing, but less of a share.

I take care of the budget, the bills, etc, pretty much all the housework, most of the yardwork, all the renovations and maintenance, and all the cooking. He works. A lot. When he's not working, he's usually teaching himself to code, or doing other things that will help him advance at work. On the surface, it might look like a traditional relationship, and in some ways it is.

When we have a problem with each other, we're very direct. He'll come right out and criticize me, or I will him, and it doesn't tend to lead to arguments — just productive discussions. Sometimes the result of the productive discussion is that things are just going to stay as they are, and we'll have to get used to it. I'm never going to keep a spotless house. He's never going to take out the trash unless asked, probably repeatedly. That kind of thing. What makes it work so well is that neither of us takes an accusatory tone, so you don't get the defensiveness that tends to go along with these kinds of conflicts.

He used to get an urge to white knight me when, say, he'd notice people talking shit about me on Reddit, but I managed to convince him that it would be counterproductive.

It's just generally a very easy partnership. We enjoy each other's company to the point where sometimes we have to force ourselves to maintain connections with other people. It has it's not great moments, for sure, but we're so well suited for each other in certain ways that the annoyances aren't very annoying.

Where were you in life at 21? And is there any advice you would offer yourself, or that you could offer younger guys about — well, growing up I guess.

Karen: Where was I at 21? I was working as a first cook in a 5 star hotel, having worked my way up from the bottom. I'd just met the man I would end up marrying. I was a little less than a year away from becoming pregnant with my first son.

After I had my first kid at 23, I taught myself how to sew, how to upholster, restore and refinish furniture, how to do home repair and renovation. I was staying home with the kids, so I figured I had to cut costs wherever possible. I'd been writing fiction since age 15, and picked that up again, and got serious about it when we got our first computer (second hand) in 1995, but it was over 10 years before I landed a contract with a publisher.

So yeah, at age 21 I was ready to get serious, get married, have kids, make a home and family, and work my ass off.

A lot of people who have kids at that age (before 25) say they'd tell their younger selves not to do it. But I wouldn't. I'm glad I had my kids when I did, even though I was young. I'm glad I married the man who fathered them, even though the marriage ended after 15 years.

I think maybe what I'm getting at is that there's very little out there right now kind of pushing kids to get serious about their lives. I was 18 when I moved out of my parents' house (even though my parents were and are awesome). That's kind of odd these days, for a kid to move out just because they want to stretch their wings, or make their own nest. My own kids are like that--my oldest boy is almost 21, and his sister is 19, and they're happy living here and working and contributing to the household and saving money. I'd have been going stir crazy, but that was me and they're not me.

I have no doubt that if I gave them the boot they'd be able to make their way. If they lost me tomorrow, they'd be able to look after themselves and their little brother. And maybe that's what a lot of kids need these days--just to be booted out of the nest and left to meet the challenges of adulthood.

Growing up used to be a date on a calendar and a set of expectations. You turned 13 as a Jewish kid, and all of a sudden you're a man, not a boy. You got passed through the crotch of a tree in some forest, and you were considered an adult. You passed some milestone, and that was it, now you're expected to take care of yourself, and you'd better get on with it.

That doesn't happen these days. My bf's aunt and uncle are throwing some huge expensive catered party for his cousin because she got her bachelor's degree, but she's still living at home, and she's probably going to go for a masters after this, and still live at home. Her mom still talks to her like she's 12.

I guess growing up is being able to take care of yourself without leaning on other people unless absolutely necessary? It's leaving the nest and landing where you land and making the most of it.

Last question. Your main topic is feminism in society but I have not heard you speak about the effect of feminism on marriages. What do you see as the primary differences between Marriage 1.0 and Marriage 2.0?

Karen: Unrestrained hypergamy became a major problem with the equalizing of political, legal and economic status between men and women, and particularly tilting the penalties of divorce such that women suffered less and men suffered more.

Prior to that, a woman who married a man "of her station" was still marrying a man who had higher status than her in significant areas. Higher status by law, in areas to which she could not aspire. He was, at least on the surface, her superior (all of her greater power was social and sexual--less codified). And if she just up and left because she was "unhaaaaappy", she left without the kids or financial support.

One of the first changes that threw a wrench in the works was alterations to marital property laws. These changes did not equalize marital property rights--they gave women special rights. This was the introduction of "what's mine is mine and what's yours is ours, honey". This placed a married woman with income or property above her husband economically and legally. He was forced to share his income equitably with her, even if she had more income than him. She could keep every penny of her own for herself and still be legally entitled to be provided for by him.

Next, the Tender Years Doctrine, which meant that even if she was at fault for the marital breakup, he was duty-bound to continue supporting her, as she was the head of the household of his minor children and he retained full financial responsibility for them. This put her above him again. The moment she became de jure head of household in the event of divorce or separation, she became de facto head of household within the marriage. Her legal and economic status was now even higher compared to his.

So at that point in history, even if she secured an engagement that fulfilled her hypergamous instincts, the moment the marriage took place, all of a sudden he was of lower status on a number of important metrics than she was. She was promoted above him, and him demoted below her, by the very nature of the deal.

Is it any wonder that once the doctrine came in, divorce rates rose 15-fold in 50 years?

[By this time she had polished off a bottle of wine and signed off. No pithy thank yous and goodbyes]

Analysis