Karen Straughan is a self-styled “anti-feminist” and spokesperson for the group Men’s Rights Edmonton. She has a popular blog (http://owningyourshit.blogspot.com) and YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat) where she talks about a range of gender-related issues, in particular fathers’ rights and domestic violence against men.
Watch the interview to see whether she and Cenk Uygur agree or disagree over issues like:
– “Excessive” alimony and child support judgments against wealthy men in divorce proceedings.
– Whether early feminists were more interested in gaining more privileges at the expense of men rather than true equality.
– If circumcision of boys is equally bad as female genital mutilation.
– If suffragettes were true heroes or if they were fighting for rights that they would have soon been granted anyway.
Find out Karen Straughan’s thoughts on all the above topics and much, much more in this installment of TYT Interviews.
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Comments
I just came here to read the comments, but I refuse to listen to this woman. Apparently Cenk wasn’t good at interviewing her from the comments I’ve read, so I guess this should have been titled as a debate…? I don’t know, but still, I’ve seen a couple her videos and I cannot take her seriously. Sorry, that’s just how I feel about it. I’m happy she has the freedom to speak her mind and that she has her own little community to help her feel validated – if that makes her happy, then cheers. However, I don’t want this woman to go out in the world and actually try to change things to fit her perspective (for the most part) because I feel like it would be disastrous toward the progress we’ve made. So Karen, you should stick to your group and don’t try to play with politics – the world doesn’t need it right now.
Cenk is lousy at interviews. I remember the Reza Aslan one where he was almost sucking up to him and then the Sam Harris one where Cenk stated he agreed with most of what Harris had written and then continued to argue for the rest of the interview.
It is the same here. She was making interesting points about how the history of events have been distorted and instead of probing further, he just tried to make her acknowledged the grandeur of the suffragettes (which in her opinion was not so grand).
Shame on you Cenk! You’re a horrible interviewer. Go back to making what your good at: editorial comments. And leave the interview part to someone who can do it properly.
We have millionaires in congress, and in every government around the world for that matter, because in nature there exists weak individuals and strong individuals. In our species the strong, whether mentally(scientists) or physically(athletes) will always have more money because abundance of physical wealth is a result of power and thus a symbol of alpha status. The strongest male is more powerful will get the meat after a fight. He will also get the sexiest female around as a result of him having that meat. People in congress have proven themselves to be strong through their individual achievements and thus proven their power over the rest of the population. How could they not be rich??? The fight is for meat right??? Nature hurts. Stop complaining and accept yourself for who you are, whether or not you’re an alpha. If you’re an alpha nature itself will guide you to the top through social success, If you’re not an alpha you shouldn’t be in a position of leadership anyway. That’s not my opinion, it’s natures opinion.
I disagree. Since the invention of weapons the “Alpha” (as you like to say) might be the one willing to kill for the meat aka the one with the biggest balls. No one can eat bullets or cold steel no matter how big they are. There are also those who are devious or manipulative and can get your meat by other methods, like paying someone else to get it for them, poisoning you, killing you in your sleep, bomb you from a mile away for your meat, etc.. In these cases who is the “Alpha”? The person who gives the order or the person who performs the act? I’m not the biggest guy so this “Alpha” mentality (superiority complex I’d argue) has forced me to thump a few bigger guys a few times in my life due to me not “knowing my place”. If there were weapons around it could have landed me in jail all because some idiot follows this ideology. I’d like to think (as a fairly enlightened person) that since some of us are no longer barbarians, the “Alpha” is the man/women who is kind, considerate, honest and righteous and will stick up for others even when they have something to lose. This is much harder than what you propose BTW, believe me. Also, the “big is better than small” ideology would also make us white folks superior than others since we’re bigger on average. Exceptionalism at it’s finest! Guess we should just take over the world then since we’re so special. LOL.
I shared Cenk’s frustration. When she admitted that she doesn’t care about having the right to vote she shows that she’s a crackpot.
Straughan was ridiculous on several things. If she could find a couple examples of women owning property she takes it as evidence that women were just as able to own property as men.
Personally i thought that woman was a feminist. And that she was for general fairness and the likes.
But this interview paints her in a new light. At the beginning I agree with all the small issues she brought up. Then when going along the big picture of the past, she decided to narrow her scope. “Well this lady was able to do this stuff” while ignoring the main issue.
She seems to be nick picking and trivializing the issue…. and when she talks about feminists, she goes broad and blanket all of them with that tag.
But generally she’s for equal rights… so yeah, that’s all that really matters.
i keep forgetting, she’s UK. In the states our history is a lil different
Canada, not the UK, Edmonton is in Canada not in the UK.
Actually she’s an american. … She’s living in Alberta, Canada currently. She just uses UK examples because they were the onez she found that support her point.
and also Cenk was a bit of a jerk, but she was holding her tongue on giving any gratitude to feminist for the result they produced that she generally agree with..
It’s like me as an American to have an issue with the founding fathers for revolving, and focus on what I dislike and ignore everything else.. When she’s being interview she’s trying her best to avoid giving feminist any credit which helps to paint them as generally bad.
Cenk noticed that and that’s why he went the way he did. I don’t think it’s exactly right, but I understand why it happened. She was leaning towards a bias and refuse to consider anything that discredit her view.
There is one thing she did say that might ring true, women might have been able to get the vote in another way.. that might be true, but we don’t really know.. and she’s doens’t really know that either.. so it’s a moot point.
Cenk was quite right to dispatch this self-loathing creature.
To be fair to her, she’s not self loathing. She seems to have a strong prejudice against what she recognize as feminism. She doesn’t take the time to parse through the good kind and bad kind and just lump them together.
And with her being in her own circle, she’s not used to giving an ounce of credit to feminists. She’s used to bagging on them and finding trivia to discredit the movement as a whole.
She’s not nuts, but doesn’t realize she can be viewed as nuts the way she went on historic trivia.
Cenk wan’t perfect, but he did give her a chance to give the normal sanity caveat. (Do you believe there’s any value to feminism, around 14:00) .. She said yes and no.. then a long explanation of no. For Cenk that put the entire interview into view and he stop acknowledging what she’s saying and made a decision she’s nuts… much like how we stop acknowledging republican clowns. .
She already did a good job showing her position is rational and reasonable, she just had to give some consideration to Cenk’s thoughts when she answer his question and it would have been a good interview. But she double down, tried to explain something that might require 50 pages and the interview fell apart there.
I am not surprised the first comments are painting this interview – or rather, the single angle which is there to go after – as ’embarassing’.
To feel passionate about liberty and the rights human beings should have, and not only the ‘MANkind’, as opposed to the inconsistent theories saying that eventually, the female half of us would (graciously) have been granted the rights they did not WANT, as Straughan told us, is absolutzely understandable. I would say that people who do NOT feel passionate about this should check back with their country’s founding principles.
Are you guys US citizens? I am german, but isn’t there something about ‘Land of the Free’ in your national anthem?
I have had the pleasure to live among many strong, free women,. and to mandate that their rights are just too much, they should be taken away, at least in part, is an offense to me, too.
Straughan goes the way of picking some extreme cases in which laws get bent too far and demands putting her fellow females into place. Dear Karen – thank you, but NO, thank you. I like to live in a free society, which we are far away from, still. If you want to do something positive with your life, make sure that women don’t just have the same weigh-in at the voting-box, but at the pay check and in management.
Can you do that?
Worst interview ever. I hope Cenk get it together next time because he embarrassed himself ranting and raving incoherently towards the end of the interview. Shameful display.
I agree. It’s embarrassing to see Cenk lose his cool like that. We the members/viewers deserve better. The only thing worse than this interview was the one with Pastor Manning.
I also agree, what is the point on an interview, if you just try to push her in a corner to get that the thank you for the right to vote?
Why interview a mens right activist and then push her vs womens right activist?
Can you not see that are different issue? Can you give me a thank you for pointing that out? Can you not be resonable?
Sry i agree, that they are connected, but why not asking about the things she is working on and why and then maybe ask where mens need more rights and you can also ask where women need more rights, but that were just 20mins of my life I dont get back.
You might be a great host, but you are not a good interviewer, I think the “At the bar segment” would fit Cenk more.