u/girlwriteswhat, why did you interview this guy?

Throwawayingaccount · 2019-12-26T23:41:06+00:00

Here's my view on interviewing people.

Often, unpopular viewpoints are strawmanned to hell and back. EG: Atheists eat babies. Millennial are destroying the world when they apply avocado to toast. MRAs hate women. That sorta thing.

It is for this reason that I will not condemn someone for their views, without having heard their views from them. If someone's views are abhorrent, then it should quickly become apparent.

AskingToFeminists · 2019-12-27T12:16:47+00:00

Here is the text in the description of the interview :

I am uploading this interview in full.

Please do not assume I agree with everything Christopher says.

I will ignore any comments that insist I should have asked him "tougher" questions. That's not my style (not even at the local slutwalk), and given the current media coverage of Christopher and Charlottesville, I felt he deserves to have his uninterrupted and unedited say somewhere.

Unsub if you must. Ignoring the problem will not fix anything. We need to understand where people like Chris are coming from if we are to head off an inevitable culture-wide clash between race-baiters on the ctrl-left and the alt-right. We need to understand that not everything they say is full of shit, and that they're just people, doing what people do.

It is also fairly dishonest of you to post this video without the following one : https://youtu.be/RYoPIrXb3ik

I remember watching this interview when it came out. iirc, one of the thing the guy said in his I terview is that he would prefer not to believe what he does, as it makes his life harder, but that everytime he tries to discuss it, he has people reacting like "reeeeeee, racist scum, you should burn" unless he finds someone who agrees with him. As such, he never get to hear differing viewpoints and concluded that he was right, since no argument is ever opposed.

I would point to the fact that Steven Pinker pointed precisely that kind of phenomenon out when he argued for openly discussing all those taboo subjects like race, IQ, sex differences, etc ; saying that unless reasonable people actually discuss those subject, the only voice that are ever heard on them are those of wackjobs, and they end up convincing more people than they should because nobody knows the actual answers to their absurd claim.

Also, there is value in not being adversarial but actually letting the person speak. If you are adversarial, the person will not feel at ease, and will be much more careful. Letting someone speak is more likely to get them to expose themselves if there is anything to be exposed.

girlwriteswhat · 2019-12-27T18:32:46+00:00

I had done an interview with Chris about men's issues some time before (maybe 2 years?). At that time, he was an ancap (I think). Prior to that, I believe he was a radical leftist. After our interview, he embraced men's issues for a while, then found race realism and white nationalism (at which point, the MRM mostly disavowed him.

He's not a monster (at least, not yet), but my sense of him is that he's got a temperament that's not so much prone to radicalization, but that he's more a born radical desperately in need of an all-encompassing ideology that offers some form of grand unifying Truth.

He didn't start out a moderate leftist and then get radicalized. He sought out the most radical leftist thought, and squeezed as much juice out of it as he could, and when that stopped gratifying him, or he found an internal inconsistency, he set it aside and went to the exact opposite ideology. Then to the next one, and the next one.

I think he was attracted to men's rights because the media's portrayal of it as controversial led him to believe it was deeply radical. He spent some time among us and discovered that the most radical thing we propose is probably legal paternal surrender, which really isn't that radical, all things considered.

Anyway, a warrant had gone out for his arrest after Charlottesville, and he was planning on turning himself in the next day. For whatever reason, he pinged me on Skype at about 8PM (might have been later) and asked if I'd interview him. I was quite surprised, since we hadn't had any contact with each other since my interview on his podcast. He said I was the only normal person he could think of who he could trust to let him have his say and not chop up the footage to make him look worse than he was.

Within 10 minutes we were recording. A lot of that decision was just curiosity. It took me some time longer to decide whether to upload it. I don't have only one reason for doing so.

First, I didn't want to betray his trust. You can certainly judge me for wanting to be an honorable actor regarding someone you consider anathema, but it's just how I tend to do things. He wanted a chance to explain himself to someone who would be kind and fair with him.

Second, people have reasons to believe things, even if their reasons are nothing more than post hoc rationalization. Pretending those reasons don't exist so you can dismiss the beliefs informed by them by inferring evil intent, is a mistake. In the event that they're a post hoc justification, pretending that presenting counter-evidence will change their minds is a mistake.

As for why I "soft-balled" him, there's a reason the behavioral sciences unit at the FBI used a completely different style of interview with serial killers than the cops who interrogated them to prepare a file for the prosecutor. I wanted to understand how he had gotten to that place. In the end, I had the impression that he's desperate to find an internally consistent movement or belief system through which to indulge his penchant for radicalism. Out of all of them, it was white nationalism that got him in the most hot water. Who knows if he'll stick with it, or whether, if he does, it will be that very thing that convinces him to do so?

Third, I felt the interview would provide a springboard for me to express a reasoned response to it. One can accept everything Chris Cantwell believes about differences between races, or about the inevitability of human tribalism, as 100% true and still oppose the solutions he advocates. That is, in the sociopolitical and economic fields, you can agree with a diagnosis (or parts of a diagnosis), but differ on the course of treatment and the prognosis.

The moment I hit "upload" was the moment I decided I'd be doing a response. I couldn't leave his beliefs and prescriptions unaddressed, but the fact is, there are people out there who believe what he does, they have reasons they believe it, and dismissing them as evil or crazies or monsters is not going to do anything to prevent more of them from being created.

Chris Cantwell is not a monster. He's a human being. THAT'S what ought to scare the fuck out of you. He's also a man. Just FYI.

Not everything he believes is evil, false rubbish. Some of it is true (at least, in my opinion), and those true things need to be addressed. Mainstream society is addressing them by calling them malicious, hateful lies and those who utter them bigoted monsters.

That's not going to work. It won't head off what I fear is coming.

Even that screenshot about the harems. Humans used to do that (in some places, they still do). You think it's impossible that we might someday find ourselves back there, doing things that way? You know, given that every single human atrocity ever committed was committed by humans?

As for RooshV, I find him interesting. I actually invited him to speak at ICMI19 (he had a prior commitment). I would have liked to hear him speak about his transition from a nihilistic appreciator of the "cock carousel" and all the easy fun it offered him, to an avid proponent of traditional sexual norms. I've seen several PUAs make this transition, and it makes sense to me on an intuitive level, but I have a hard time articulating why I feel the about-face is natural and predictable. I'll have to think on it more.

Now you guys may not find any of this interesting, but I do. What makes a Chris Cantwell tick? What makes a RooshV tick? And apparently unlike some of the men here who exist on the "compassionate left" of the political spectrum, I'm capable of seeing even bad men as human beings rather than caricatures and literary archetypes.

Except for George Soros. Although who knows? Maybe one day I'll interview him and he'll turn out to be just another human in a monster suit.

J-Unleashed · 2019-12-26T22:09:40+00:00

I will never understand why interviewing is absurdly conflated with "giving a platform to." She did an interview. Period. Misrepresenting it as giving them a platform is about as obtuse as you can get.

Let her do the interview, ask some questions, and get some answers. Framing it as "giving them a platform" is about the dumbest thing you can do.

Don't like their views? Fine. However, if you want these scum to continue to being able to frame themselves as "misunderstood" then let's take your approach and act all surprised when they actually gain a following.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Quit acting like a child.

Strikester101 · 2019-12-26T20:33:16+00:00

...Ms. Straughan, you need to explain WHY you felt interviewing that guy would help the MRM, when he's clearly advocating for genocidal breeding.

magus678 · 2019-12-26T20:56:21+00:00

Friendly reminder that these guys (or likely, guy) are known for brigading the sub.

/u/5th_Law_of_Robotics made a post about it here.

serpentineeyelash · 2019-12-27T14:20:52+00:00

Firstly, u/girlwriteswhat has clarified in one of her comments here that she is not left-wing, so her views should not be taken as representative of Left Wing Male Advocates.

That said, I very much share your concern about how right-wing MRAs cosy up to far-right and fascist types. Though it sounds like it was Cantwell who reached out to Straughan requesting to be interviewed, it's undeniably part of a broader pattern of friendly interviews with far-rightists. I recently wrote a long post analyzing Honey Badger Radio's interview of another far-rightist, Derrick the incel from the Jubilee debate.

Incidentally, I notice Derrick's arguments are in contradiction with the screenshotted Cantwell quote:

Harems are the path to replenishing the white populace. When the best males take multiple wives and the lesser males have no prospects for reproduction, they’ll venture off to conquer savages, kill their males, and form harems of their women.

This is a clear example of a prominent far-rightist expressing open contempt for the lives of the very same incels that Derrick claims would be liberated by far-right ideology. I think that is an interesting contradiction to note.

Regarding the Cantwell interview, I watched part of it and skimmed through the rest to get the general gist (I'll probably go back and watch the whole thing when I have time). From what I've seen, Cantwell did not mention he wants to send men off to war to conquer men of other races, so it's possible Straughan may not be aware of that aspect of his ideology. I would certainly like to hear u/girlwriteswhat condemn that at least.

Cantwell spoke mainly about the supposed racial differences in intelligence, and framed his own white racist ideology as being provoked by the alleged aggressiveness of leftist movements like antifa. Straughan partly agreed with him on both points, as well as talking a lot about how no topic should be taboo. I agree that no topic should be taboo, but it's obvious Cantwell's taboo-breaking has a racist propaganda agenda. Here's a video which conclusively debunks the "race and IQ" claims as pseudoscience based on laughably flawed studies often funded by the eugenicist Pioneer Fund. And though I agree there are problems with the antifa movement, they're definitely not as bad as actual fascists, who would probably kill dissenters if they got into power.

To her credit, Straughan later posted a follow-up video where she countered Cantwell's arguments. Though she continued giving credence to the racial differences in IQ, she rightly pointed out a bunch of relevant factors ignored by Cantwell: the fact that environmental stresses affect how each individual's genome ends up being expressed, the detectable racial and anti-male bias in the criminal justice system, the effect of fatherlessness on child development, the fact that high economic inequality has devastating psychological effects even for those not in absolute material poverty. She also poked a bunch of other holes in Cantwell's argument. I don't agree with every word Straughan said in that video, but her analysis seems considerably more reasonable than Cantwell's.

Oh and by the way, your post was reported as a personal attack on a user, but I am leaving it up because the point you're making is really more about ideas than personality. Also because u/girlwriteswhat is a much more prominent, influential, and public figure than anyone else here, so it is reasonable to allow criticism of how she uses that influence.

Darkseeker_Mau · 2019-12-28T19:38:16+00:00

Have you never heard the argument of "sunlight is the best disinfection".

You probably didn't know who Christopher Cantwell was before girlwriteswhat interviewed him.

And now that you know him, you can attack his ideas!

You can't shoot the mailman just because he brings you bad news that you don't like about bad people.

colombomumbojumbo · 2019-12-26T20:23:56+00:00

Wow, talk about reaching out to anyone. Maybe the MRM should focus on men's rights instead of breeding practices

ur_waifus_prolapse · 2019-12-26T22:34:13+00:00

Reminder that the other 14 words are a gynocentric mantra. Right-wing """allies""" are only interested in the skin colour of your sperm cells.

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