Pearl - April 15, 2026


Laura Southern Is Just Another Feminist Now


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

186.80713

Word count

3,387

Sentence count

169


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 then just eat the L. Do you know what I mean? Just eat it. Oh my God. Now file, file charges
00:00:04.960 are shut up. So we're going to, we're going to react to her article. Yeah. You see, there's
00:00:08.720 men in the chat saying they'll fix you. Okay. I helped to look at, this is her now. This was
00:00:13.100 her then. Still would for most of you, I'm sure. I helped build the manosphere. Then it destroyed
00:00:18.460 me. The influencer and activist Lauren Southern on abandoning the alt-right, her claims about
00:00:23.160 her encounter with Tate and thriving in the offline world. You are not all, you cannot
00:00:28.240 be doing articles for the times and say you're in the offline world lauren southern released a
00:00:34.260 highly anticipated memoir then did the unthinkable she signed off the internet bruh hold on hold on
00:00:42.320 okay you signed off the internet for a few months women are incredible okay okay i signed off the
00:00:48.060 internet but i'm still doing articles i mean this is just getting sad while most authors with
00:00:53.100 millions of followers are expected to drum up publicity on social media last july southern
00:00:57.740 mutant all notifications on her phone and retreated to the anonymity of her life in
00:01:02.420 remote Western Canada. Her decision is not so surprising when you consider the decade-long
00:01:06.820 journey she went on to write the book, from an alt-right provocateur to a mother warning
00:01:11.700 that online communities are warping young minds, the internet said. She loved the idea
00:01:16.920 of this blonde Nazi chick, she told the Times in her first mainstream interview. Since the
00:01:21.560 release of her book, This Is Not Real Life, I was basically the hardest drug you could
00:01:26.420 get at the time, but it wasn't real. Yeah, the internet isn't real. Southern was 19 in 2015 when
00:01:32.660 she rose to notoriety as a telegenic YouTuber promoting hateful opinions on immigration,
00:01:39.600 feminism, and the Islamification of the West. At the time, Trump was entering the political scene,
00:01:45.180 and these ideas were beginning to gain traction. Look at it. She got to meet some of the highest
00:01:49.060 status people. She befriended the far-right extremist Tommy Robinson known for stirring
00:01:53.940 anti-Muslim feeling and became the female face for the Manosphere, producing the viral hit video
00:01:59.480 Why I Am Not a Feminist. In early 2018, Southern distributed flyers in Robinson's hometown of Luton
00:02:06.180 calling Allah gay as parts of what she said was a social experiment. This earned her a ban from the
00:02:11.940 UK on the grounds of her presence in the country was not conducive to the public good. Southern
00:02:16.860 continued to fall in a dark online world, exploiting it before it eventually began exploiting her.
00:02:21.860 She wrote in her book last summer, expressing regret for the role she had played, but only now
00:02:27.200 feels ready to talk about it. I had no understanding of the world or how it worked, Southern said in
00:02:31.840 Zoom from her living room, still sporting the trademark red lipstick and dark mascara,
00:02:37.260 which she built her brand. There was no notion that I would ever become famous or even travel
00:02:42.740 or anything like that. Do you understand how dumb you sound, Lauren? You had no notion that you would
00:02:47.500 become famous while chasing fame. I mean, this is just, she grew up middle-class, evangelical
00:02:53.120 Protestant family in Surrey, British Columbia, a multicultural city not far from the border of
00:02:58.240 Washington state. She was raised, she said, on a steady diet of conservative American television,
00:03:03.840 shock jock radio, and the Bible. She ran an unsuccessful campaign to win as a libertarian
00:03:08.900 party candidate. Oh my God. She ran for office. Oh my God. This delusion was taken too far.
00:03:15.320 in Canada's 2015 federal election. At the time, she was also studying political science at the
00:03:20.500 University of Fraser Valley, where she was one of the few right-wing voices on campus.
00:03:24.580 She admits she enjoyed being a contrarian, once interrupting an anti-rape march with a sign,
00:03:30.560 there is no rape culture in the West. Do you see this? She went from there is no rape culture to
00:03:35.520 accusing everyone of rape. Midway through her degree, Southern dropped out when she was offered
00:03:39.680 a chance to be the face of rebel news. Canada's answer to Breitbart. Soon after, she released her
00:03:45.280 why I'm not a feminist video in which she claims that feminists unintentionally created a reverse
00:03:50.160 world of sexism which garnered more than 30 million. Jesus Christ that has so many views
00:03:55.860 on one video. I don't think I've ever gotten that many views on a video. Reflecting on the time
00:04:00.580 Southern now 30 says the healthy community bubble she grew up in distorted her understanding of the
00:04:05.960 dangers men could pose. I think I projected the men in my life onto every other man in the world
00:04:11.580 she said i assumed other women were just making it up when they talked about all these toxic men
00:04:15.740 because i had never encountered them bruh you had never encountered a toxic man translation i said
00:04:22.320 what i needed to to get famous like do you not think lauren do you not think people see through
00:04:26.360 this you gotta stop you gotta and i say this with love you have to stop after her first viral video
00:04:32.740 she started making longer form documentaries including one produced in south africa that
00:04:37.080 focused on the alleged persecution of white farmers then at the height of the migrant crisis
00:04:41.340 she joined the organization Defend Europe as it tried to block the non-governmental organization's
00:04:47.240 votes rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean. She connected with Robinson, the former leader of the
00:04:52.860 English Defense League, as he was fermenting Islamophobia in the wake of Britain's grooming
00:04:57.560 gang scandal. They shared the belief that there is a generational crusade to save the West.
00:05:03.720 All the while, Southern said her persona was being created online and she revealed it.
00:05:07.420 a lot of those very far right communities are creating a lure around the southern side it was
00:05:12.760 like okay you want me to be that fine I'll play your villain I'll have fun with it I'll trigger
00:05:16.520 you and wear the it's okay to be white shirt so again no accountability for the choices she made
00:05:21.500 this is why we it's kind of the men's fault to a degree because they keep giving women these things
00:05:26.320 like they keep giving women positions over nothing so it's like what do you the algorithm
00:05:30.900 rhythmic nature of the internet meant she was rewarded for her most shocking and comments
00:05:35.660 and moments. Every time someone would partake in a new kind of low behavior, whether it be making
00:05:40.360 up a story or creating a clickbait headline that was dishonest, everyone would look and say, well,
00:05:44.860 the only way I can survive in this environment is if I acquies, she said. In 2016, Trump was elected
00:05:53.640 president and he reposted some of Southern's content, helping boost her profile. Each video
00:05:58.820 attracted more and more attention than the last. The media dubbed her the original MAGA dream girl,
00:06:03.740 the alt-right's most famous woman, and the first soldier in the online culture war. The same year,
00:06:09.480 Southern self-published her first book, Barbarians, how the baby boomers, immigration, and Islam
00:06:14.720 screwed my generation, and which she argued that Western civilization was in decline due to the
00:06:19.920 spread of left-wing ideologies. The last time she spoke to the Times in 2019, she was denied being a
00:06:26.020 racist to the far right. She finished the interview by predicting a race war and quoting Enoch Powell.
00:06:32.520 i know i said the name wrong you know how i am guys i bad with names can't help it uh the woman
00:06:39.380 flying the flag for the generation okay now with the now she's changed her mind shocking
00:06:45.380 so what i mean all the women that are supposed to you know prove the red pill wrong are just
00:06:50.860 becoming examples of it now with the benefit of distance southern said she has been a young and
00:06:55.740 angry engagement addict who is looking to the internet for approval it was all about keeping
00:07:01.340 the excitement and the chaos, but I had a short lifespan because there's no depth to it. It was
00:07:05.840 an ideological lap dance, she said. People aren't really looking for politics. They're not looking
00:07:10.740 for a worldview. They just want someone that's pretty and hot to affirm what they already feel
00:07:15.820 and think and believe. Translation, I got my job because I was hot. It was easy money. I said what
00:07:20.840 I had to say. The week I talked to Southern, the online account of a blonde all-American army girl
00:07:25.240 called Jessica Foster was in the news. One photo showed Foster sporting a short-skimmed army uniform
00:07:31.260 and giving a speech with President Trump in attendance.
00:07:34.340 Another showed her smiling and posing proudly alongside Trump and President Putin of Russia.
00:07:40.920 Foster hit 1 million followers on Instagram before the mainstream media exposed her as an AI-generated scam.
00:07:47.920 While the MAGA movement once harassed the appeal of pretty young women like Southern to amplify their views,
00:07:53.800 now anyone can generate a political avatar with an AI code.
00:07:57.840 late last year elon musk's ex introduced a location feature that revealed many maga and
00:08:03.580 right-wing influencers who present themselves as patriotic americans were actually operating
00:08:08.280 outside the u.s including russia nigeria and india in the early days when i was getting started
00:08:13.440 everything was real southern said everything was curated by real people everything getting posted
00:08:18.680 was real now it's just bots and algorithms she warned was a sinister development now you don't
00:08:23.640 know who's running it. If it's from a foreign government, someone with a bunch of bots or
00:08:27.560 paid to have their video boosted, it's a real concern. Southern said it was in early 2018 that
00:08:33.700 Robinson, whose real name is Steven, I'm not saying that, mentioned it to her that he had been
00:08:39.760 in contact with some wealthy crypto investors in Europe who might be interested in sponsoring a
00:08:44.120 large media project if they could all build it together. The investors turned out to be Andrew
00:08:48.600 Tate and his brother Tristan who are beginning an establishment just beginning to establish a
00:08:53.960 more online presence that would later form the foundations the Manosphere now again the Manosphere
00:08:59.480 is not Tate it's not me um it's really more like Rolo Tomasi Royce um these people I guess maybe
00:09:09.420 say we're a part of it but it's not the original Manosphere was in forums Donovan okay the Tates
00:09:14.980 booked southern on a flight to okay so she got flewed out by by tate okay to do business in her
00:09:21.800 memoir published last july she details her vision of that night andrew she wrote revealed he was a
00:09:27.100 fan of her work and alleged allegedly asked southern if she was interested in starting a
00:09:31.500 family it's how we rebuild western civilization he told her she had one or two drinks drinks in
00:09:36.780 the club and felt surprisingly intoxicated okay i got drunk i wanted to bang him because he was
00:09:42.440 rich hot and famous just say that just say that lauren she went home with with tate who invited
00:09:48.160 her into bed i kissed him briefly and then told him i wanted to sleep i said no many times and
00:09:53.280 tried to pull his hand off of me she alleged in the memoir he put his arm around my neck and began
00:09:58.520 strangling me unconscious i tried to fight back he repeatedly strangled me every time i regained
00:10:03.700 some enough consciousness to pull out his arms i prefer not to share the rest it's pretty obvious
00:10:08.700 southern did not go public with her allegations until the eve of the book this is not real life
00:10:13.780 when she posted two chapters from the book on substack tate responded on x that she made claims
00:10:18.840 to get attention so she could sell her memoirs of promiscuity coincidence i'm sure tate's lawyer
00:10:24.480 said in a statement in july that southern was lying through her teeth accusing her of textbook
00:10:29.760 extortion it's like lauren if you're not going to press charges just eat the l like seriously
00:10:35.560 shut up eat the out thank you for those super chats uh oh my god you're making me pronounce
00:10:42.680 this this why are you doing this to me acquiesce acquiesce i can't read thanks for your videos
00:10:49.540 oh my god okay um no such okay okay okay he said she was weaponizing her previous consensual
00:10:58.940 encounters for financial gain uh mcbride said his client would sue southern for defamation
00:11:04.700 Andrew's going to lean into this for the truth.
00:11:06.940 He's got nothing to hide.
00:11:08.200 If there was an encounter, it was consensual.
00:11:10.280 No such filing has been made.
00:11:12.060 Yeah, he's not going to file.
00:11:13.300 He's done with court.
00:11:14.280 There's no way.
00:11:14.860 Okay, Tate is facing lawsuits.
00:11:17.600 Okay, we know that.
00:11:18.420 We know that.
00:11:19.120 Why didn't she come back with her allegations in 2018?
00:11:23.080 Southern State Center Memora wouldn't be helpful to the cause or my career for me to become
00:11:30.160 exactly what I criticized, a victim.
00:11:32.820 Bruh.
00:11:33.520 Lauren.
00:11:33.900 then just eat the L. Do you know what I mean? Just eat it. Oh my God. Now file, file charges are
00:11:39.400 shut up. It's just incredible. These women, her private pain, which she tried to ease with drugs
00:11:44.700 and alcohol, let it turn to unplugging from the internet in 2019. Probably cause she caught herpes
00:11:49.840 if we're going to be for real. I mean, cause that's the rumor with him. Uh, the train I was
00:11:54.300 on was going faster and faster, but by the time I realized it was going at speeds that might kill
00:11:58.820 me the idea of jumping off seemed impossible. She posted a new chapter on our website about
00:12:04.400 her decision to take some time off and focus on her soul. She has fallen in love. She had
00:12:08.980 fallen in love and married an Australian man who coincidentally was also an abuser. It's
00:12:14.020 like her hiatus didn't last long. She had a son. Okay. She had a son in 2020, married
00:12:19.000 a guy in Australia, a guy that can't talk a guy in Australia. The same year her son
00:12:24.280 was born she reinvented herself as a trad wife which she suspects played into a christian need
00:12:29.860 for redemption she posted photos of a curated life that showed her exercising and baking in
00:12:35.160 the couple's home in australia i figured if i followed the manual of look pretty quit my job
00:12:39.760 have babies serve my husband that i should have a happy life that i crave but southern claimed her
00:12:44.460 husband became controlling and whenever she tried to assert any amount of independence
00:12:48.260 she alleges he would lock her out of the house calling her a worthless dead weight well were
00:12:52.680 you worthless deadweight? Were you a worthless deadweight? Really? You were just perfect. In
00:12:57.760 all these situations, you were just perfect and tricked. Look, this is how I would have did it,
00:13:04.700 Lauren. I would have came out and I would have said, look, guys, whoring was more fun than I
00:13:10.480 thought. Being married, not that fun. Sorry about all the stuff I said. I'm going to stay on the
00:13:16.040 internet because I'd rather do that than watch my kids. Let's move on. See that? You could always
00:13:21.200 just say, I did it. I knew it was wrong. Let's move on. Sorry to the people I hurt. Southern
00:13:27.300 said her husband left her and their son and she went against his wishes by visiting her family
00:13:34.220 in Canada. She filed a protective order and the couple would end up officially separating.
00:13:39.220 A cardinal sin in the traditionalist movement, the backlash was swift. Commentators called her
00:13:44.540 a whore and wished her damnation. Her estranged husband was unreachable for comment. Southern
00:13:49.700 has been the darling of the online right until she failed to meet oh my god the online rights
00:13:56.900 impossible expectations lauren i'm i'm sorry the expect the expectations were not impossible
00:14:04.940 women get married young and have kids all the time it's just you didn't want to do it eat that
00:14:09.820 oh eat it you got to eat it all right you know it's not like we said be a billionaire they just
00:14:14.360 said, you know, marry young, have kids, get off the internet. It's like, bruh. Okay. It's a
00:14:19.460 systemic, um, it's a system in which you're guaranteed to fail as a woman because you cannot
00:14:25.320 survive, survive its contact with reality. She said, these men want to have sex with women.
00:14:31.920 They also want them to stay virgins. There was this app that came out called Digin if AI that
00:14:38.920 allowed men to clothe OnlyFans girls so they were more modest. Those same men were undressing the
00:14:45.140 women. Southern now finds herself in the uncomfortable intersection of victim and
00:14:51.100 beneficiary of the manosphere, which has worked to dehumanize women and normalize violence against
00:14:57.420 them. My life is a punchline to go to a girl that's holding up a sign about rape culture,
00:15:02.100 to help and create the manosphere, to having Tate assault me. Look, Lauren, you've got to just eat
00:15:08.520 this L this is sad this is so sad this is pathetic say hey I thought I wasn't a whore turns out I was
00:15:16.960 I can't read the oh my god okay I guess there's a little bit left I'll read I briefly wonder
00:15:21.460 whether Southern's apparent contrition is part of her decade-long grift for attention
00:15:27.560 but unlike her pivot in 2020 this seems less performative as a mother she clearly feels a
00:15:33.000 heavy responsibility to create a healthier online environment. So basically women's burden
00:15:40.580 of performance is in our 20s. Occasionally a woman wins in her 30s. And the burden of performance is
00:15:47.980 to get a hot guy to commit. And the women that don't win, that are losers, they are trying to
00:15:52.880 rationalize their loser-ness as not being a defect of their personality or choices. So they are just
00:15:59.520 going to blame it on the abuse of men as usual. Okay. Um, I can't read the rest of this. I can't,
00:16:06.000 I'm sorry. I don't care. I don't, I, there's only two paragraphs left and I just, I don't care.
00:16:11.740 You're a loser. Okay. So my question, and we're going to have a call in is could a woman like
00:16:18.560 that be redeemed? And, um, what would she have to do to be redeemed? Now, when I say redeemed,
00:16:25.940 i don't mean that she's gonna have the high status she had when she was young i'm not even
00:16:32.360 saying um that she necessarily like is revered in any way but like the way she is now i put her in
00:16:42.440 the way back of the church um and she's just an absolute loser now if christians would just hand
00:16:48.700 her a microphone and say get on stage convert tomorrow but it's not me so anyways um i think
00:16:55.420 you know, whores do have a path to redemption. And here will be my game plan to her. Return your
00:17:00.580 kid to the dad. You have a son. Sons need their father. Call the father. Apologize. Give him
00:17:08.260 custody. Number two, drop the conservative act. You have not lived the life of a conservative
00:17:13.960 woman. You shot for the moon and you missed. You shot for the stars, you missed. Eat the L.
00:17:20.380 Embrace being a whore.
00:17:21.960 You have a scarlet letter now.
00:17:24.000 And instead of fighting people, instead of fighting people about the fact that like trying to gaslight us into the fact you were not a whore, just eat it.
00:17:33.100 Embrace it.
00:17:33.640 Maybe start an OnlyFans.
00:17:34.800 High-end escorting.
00:17:36.040 You know, it's a service.
00:17:37.600 Be prepared to pay for yourself for a lifetime.
00:17:41.060 And come in with some humility if a man is, if you are so lucky to have a man take care of you.
00:17:48.540 bring humility to your next relationship men do forgive a lot for some humility
00:17:53.540 stop talking forever and you know what if you want to stay on the internet because this is
00:17:58.820 your job to some degree I will actually give you a compromise you can do the job but then
00:18:04.160 never talk about yourself again and stop talking about your personal life