The discarding of Lauren Southern by the alt-right demonstrates that the modern conservative ideal of masculinity was never about protection.
www.msnbc.com
Former right-wing commentator Lauren Southern
says she’s not a white nationalist. Self-described misogynist
Andrew Tate says he’s not a rapist. Despite this, white nationalists sure were fans of Southern’s work, and people with questionable views about coercive sex
feel the same way about Tate’s.
This past week,
Southern accused Tate of raping her. Tate denies this. The accusations came via
excerpts from Southern’s forthcoming self-published memoir, which she released for free on her Substack, she says, to avoid accusations that she is trying to profit off the story.
...
In addition to Southern’s racist and xenophobic oeuvre — her most well-known work includes perpetuating the myth of South African “white genocide” and writing “F--- Islam” on her face with lipstick during a “makeup tutorial video” — Southern has long made hay mocking the idea of rape culture. One of her early viral videos from around 2015 featured her telegenically declaring that she was not a feminist, because feminism ignored how often men are raped (she leaves out the fact that
men are still the ones doing just about all of the rape). She’s claimed that the real victims of rape culture are men who are falsely accused. She pulled up to
an anti-rape demonstration for survivors in Vancouver in 2015 with a sign that read “There is no rape culture in the West,” and encouraged marchers who wanted to encounter “real rape culture” to check out Africa.
...
In her memoir, Southern shows the sort of self-awareness that modern conservatives only exhibit when something bad happens to them personally. She reflects on how the encounter with Tate messed with her head, how she tried to remain on good terms with him even after he’d allegedly brutalized her. She still doesn’t hate him, she claims, writing: “I have forgiven him, truly. But that doesn’t mean he should be free to keep hurting, tormenting, and scamming others.”
...
In that same response, Southern depicts her own actions as valiant: Despite bullying and pressure from mainstream news media, her virtue — let men do whatever and just, like, be cool with it — remained intact.
