Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - The Trad Wife Trend Is A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing | Lauren Southern

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Is your favorite conservative commentator trapped in a nightmare trad-marriage? According to investigative journalist and YouTube creator Lauren Southern, they just might be. After all, this is what happened to her. In this episode, she warns that even the most “conservative” relationship trends can be harmful without a solid biblical framework.Thank you to our sponsors!Taylor Dukes⁠ | Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% OFFZebra⁠ | Use code “ALEX" for 10% OFFGarnuu⁠ | Use code “ALEX” for 15% OFF Aleavia⁠ | Use code “ALEX15” for 15% OFF Lauren SouthernInstagram | @laurencheriieX (Twitter) | @Lauren_SouthernResourcesReThink Project with Lauren Southern + Hilary Crowder Alex Clark Instagram | ⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠Instagram | ⁠⁠@poplitics⁠⁠Facebook | ⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠X (Twitter) | ⁠⁠@yoalexrapz⁠⁠YouTube | ⁠⁠@RealAlexClark⁠⁠Spotify | ⁠⁠@Culture Apothecary⁠⁠Apple Podcasts | ⁠⁠@Culture Apothecary⁠'Culture Apothecary' ⁠Merch OUT NOW!⁠ Glass tumblers, weekly wellness planners, hats, crewnecks and more. Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% OFFJoin the ⁠Cuteservatives Facebook group⁠ to connect with likeminded friends who love America and all things health and wellness!Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.This show is made possible with generous donations from listeners who believe in our mission to heal a sick culture. You can support our show by leaving a ⁠tax deductible donation⁠, or by subscribing to @RealAlexClark YouTube for FREE!

I think the majority of women in the tradwife space are having massive problems in their relationship that they will never talk about publicly. Are we talking about online influencers in the trad wife space? Yes, yes. Conservative space? Yes. Some have speculated that your ex was a Romeo spy. Is there any possibility that that could be true? I don't like crying on the internet, but my son's going to grow up and he's going to watch this.

And I want him to know that I loved his dad very much. I think the one reason I don't remain tortured by this relationship is because I gave it everything. Within a thousand times of him saying, I'm going to divorce you, a thousand times I said, I'm not giving up on you. Lauren Southern was at the height of her career in the 2010s, making viral documentaries and working as one of the Internet's most controversial citizen journalists of the millennial generation. Abruptly, in 2019, she announced her retirement. She was going to become a trad wife and find fulfillment in being a wife and a mom in a more private capacity. A few years of isolation later, she was back, revealing that she had separated from her husband in 2023. Now she claims becoming a trad wife or heavily promoting being a subservient wife and mother within some right-wing circles

was one of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes of her life. She believes that social media is warping people's perception of what tradition actually looks like, and that the obsession with fulfilling the ideal image of marriage and family lacks the nuance and complexity of real life. That is the story of what happened to her. A tradwife fairy tale turned into a nightmare. This interview is a beautiful multi-camera shot episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel that is made possible through generous donations from listeners like you who support our mission to heal a sick culture physically, mentally, and spiritually with this content.

You can find a link in the description to make a tax. deductible donation, or if it's not a good time, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify at no cost to you. Today, you'll hear from Lauren Southern, a Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, YouTube firebrand, author, mother, and survivor. This is culture apothecary with Alex Clark. Lauren Southern, you've had one of the most compelling careers in the conservative media space, but are the rumors true that you're a feminist now? If I call myself that I will have accusations made against me that do not apply and expectations I cannot fulfill. So I'm going to avoid that one like the plague. I plead the fifth. Well, talk a little bit about the environment that you grew up in,

the belief system that you grew up in and in your family and how you ended up being. I would say that you are one of the first major content creators in the conservative independent media space. Yeah, well, I grew up in Canada. So that's a pretty radicalizing experience. I'd say we're about 10 to 15 years ahead on the kind of left-wing progressive ideology compared to America. And growing up in Vancouver, in particular, where we have mass immigration to the point where I don't even think the local population are the majority anymore, it's mostly immigrants right now, made my lived experience, one in which I had to embrace right-wing ideas. I was watching my culture entirely changed before me. And by the time I was in grade 12, we had progressive

classes being introduced, literally social progress 12 or something, where we were learning about white privilege, male privilege, this kind of stuff. And I grew up in a household that was Christian conservative, which also wasn't necessarily the massive norm in Canada at the time. Well, you're not kidding about being 10 to 15 years ahead on progressive ideals because you and I are almost the same age. We're a couple years apart. I'm a few years older. So if you're saying you grew up with all of the pronoun stuff. I mean, that is very early compared to American culture. And I think this is why there are so many right-wing Canadian commentators. I mean, look at Stephen Crowder, Jordan Peterson. There's so many, Gavin McKinnis even, Ted Cruz, our sleeper

cell over here. Ted Cruz. He's Canadian. He's a secret Canadian. Oh, he is. I think it's because we were inundated with the progressive stuff so early. So when we come out and we talk about, oh my goodness mass immigration, housing costs, this and that. Sometimes Americans will be like, oh, you're exaggerating. And it's like, you just wait. You just wait. Ten years. You'll be here too. So I grew up definitely with that kind of conservative Christian background well in the belly of the Marxist beast, my entire adult life, we've had Justin Trudeau in power nine years now. So that certainly pushed me to start making the videos I made, which began with criticisms of feminism. because the 2015-16 era was the boom of GamerGate.

Did you ever follow GamerGate? No, tell me about it. It was basically when you had Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, who, funny enough, we talk now and are okay with each other. But they were in video games, journalism, and game design, and pushing for companies to have more representation of women, you know, less sexist depictions of women. And a lot of gamers were just like, leave our games alone.

We don't want to have this stuff forced into our games. We just want them to be good games. And do you know this because you just have a large male audience so you're familiar or you're a game or two? I worked at EB Games for like five years. I used to wake up playing League of Legends in the morning. I was big on computers, computer games, all of it before I was really even into politics. So I was kind of in the middle of that zeitgeist as well, watching it sympathizing with a lot of the men in my audience. and I decided to delve into the subject more of the feminist debate. I think my first video that went viral online, it was like overnight was why I'm not a feminist. And it was, I think, a necessary pushback at the time to some more extremist stuff we were seeing.

You know, think back to like the man spreading critiques. Is that really what we need to be talking about as a culture? The, you know, all men are rapists. All men are misogynists. We live in a patriarchy. Rape culture, which I think is fake. Wipe, of course, exists. Do we live in a culture that at the level of government,

education, media, schooling supports rape? No. And the first step to stopping rape is acknowledging that every aspect of our culture actually condemns it, but we aren't necessarily putting the things in place. We need to prevent it because it's still happening. So, yeah, I critiqued rape culture at big protests. I didn't understand a lot. They were doing something.

slut walks at the time. Did you ever? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also you, that's when you had the women's march. That was, you know, a huge thing in response to Trump becoming president, at least in the States. Now the women's march basically is evaporated. We don't really see that or hear of it. At least I haven't in several years. Yeah. Well, believe it or not, putting on little pink pussy hats and running around topless does not stop sexism. I never thought it would. Actually, you know, I look back on it and I'm very frustrated and upset with feminist. at the time because I think there were points that all women needed to hear. There are actually very good feminist thinkers out there, but instead they got completely co-opted by this absurd,

progressive version where run around Topless, why can't we do that? We should be allowed to go get wasted at bars and if we get wronged, then it's the entire culture's fault. No, no, no, we need to be teaching women self-defense. We need to be teaching women to be smart about the decisions they because we do live in a world where bad things happen. Why have we created this cartoon, utopian version of feminism where we have to expect and demand the world change using ridiculous protest methods and accusations against men instead of living in reality and talking about the real things we can do to protect women, the real education we can give them? So would you say at the time that this content was what you would have been best known for?

Like if somebody was like, who is Lauren Southern? It'd be like, oh, the anti-feminist girl? Or what would you say would have been like the number one thing people would associate you with? I was absolutely known as the girl against feminism. That was the number one thing I was getting approached on the street about it. Petitions were created against me to kick me out of the Libertarian Party that I was a part of at the time for being an anti-feminist. Feminism was the name of the game back in the day. That was the big culture topic, which is funny because it's made a bit of a comeback. But now it's like this. male kind of red pill feminism where it's like all women are evil, all women are horrors.

The pendulum is swung. It's this like low IQ. I'm going to blame all of my problems, all of the world's problems on the other gender. And I was against it when it was feminism in 2015 and 16. And I'm against it now when it's the silly red pill stuff that decides to create an archetype of women that is the most absurd extremist version possible that most certainly doesn't apply to every single one. But that isn't the only thing you're known for because, I mean, you, you are one of the youngest, I think most fearless, female documentary filmmakers and journalists on YouTube. You've been banned from the UK due to your unflinching reporting on things like the migrant crisis. Is that why it was so jarring to your audience when you ended up announcing,

hey, I'm at the height of my career, I'm going to step away now from all of this because I'm going to be a wife and a mother. Oh, yes. Well, I didn't tell people that I was becoming a wife and a mother when I stepped away. I just slipped into the sweet night and said goodbye, but that was the reason. But there were also a lot of other things going on in the background that I didn't talk about publicly because it was so complicated. After I did my big documentary farmlands and borderless, I was being massively attacked by large global media corporations, but also intelligence agencies. What were they saying about you? They were saying, Lauren Southern is what? White nationalist was a big accusation. They were saying, you know, anti-feminist, anti-trans, racist. People had also claimed, even in the media, that I had killed immigrants with a flare gun in the Mediterranean, which is always a fun one. That did not happen, but there were a lot of, like, there was a lot of lore created around the identity of Lauren Southern at that time. And, you know, I definitely did cheekier activism than a lot. I spoke about the Great Replacement, uh,

which got me in a lot of trouble. That was a mass cancellation worldwide. But now that's something that Tucker Carlson talks about. You know, that's something that's talked about at CPAC. And explain what that is for somebody who is like, they're not deep into this political stuff like you and I. So they're like, wait, what? The great replacement is the idea that you have one population in the span of a certain amount of time. And then within 10, 15, 50 years, you have another population that's replaced them. So, for example, do you think that we could take the population, of Sweden and put them in Japan and get rid of the Japanese population and Japan would still be the same place. I don't think so. I think that Japan has been a series of families and traditions

and history and shared traumas and shared victories that have created a certain culture that has sprung up. And if you replace that population in quickly enough, you will lose that, right? So when we talk about mass immigration, if we don't have the integration aspect, the melting pot aspect that America certainly advertises. Like you look at Luton in the UK, I did a little pride parade there, which got me banned because it's an entirely Muslim suburb now. If you were dropped in the middle of Luton with no knowledge of the UK, other than the things you had seen on TV, you'd be like, I'm in Oman. I'm in, you know, Afghanistan. I don't know where, like, I'm not in Britain. This is what I like about you is that you, if you're not familiar with Lauren's work,

I mean, you are a provocateur, but a provocateur with a point. So do, you know, hosting a pride parade in a Muslim community, for example, it is drawing, you know, it's helping people make these conclusions that are important. Sometimes you're just too early. So six, seven years ago talking about great replacement. That was so shocking. Came off. Everybody accused you of racism, white nationalism. It's like, no, it completely makes sense. It's a very important thing to bring up. It's a very important question to ask. But sometimes people are not ready. I think about with my audience, before the pandemic, I distinctly, because I launched my first show with Turning Point USA at the end of 2019, so this is a few months before the pandemic started. Within those first few months, there were some members of my audience that were raising questions in our Facebook group for fans of my show asking questions about, like, vaccinating your children in the vaccine schedule. Then it was like, everybody attacked them like, oh, my gosh, this is insane. This is way too radical. Give it a few months. Everybody's like, oh, these are really important questions to be asked. So sometimes there are creators like Lauren who really put their reputation on the line, asking these questions, asking culture to kind of think critically about certain issues politically that people are not ready to hear and then you give it some time and then everybody's like, oh, well, yeah, we all agree with this. And I think you're one of those creators that really gets a, that really has it hard because you always seem to be too early on different ideas.

Well, I think I started so young as well. Like I was 19 when my first video went viral and from there. On, I was like known on the internet. I didn't get to have like a normal adult life before getting into political commentary. And as I've gotten older, I've realized kind of the rhetorical methods that I need to use to explain things to people so it won't trigger them entirely. Like when we talk about the great replacement, everyone just thinks white nationalism, oh my goodness, you're racist, this, that, okay, well, let's talk about the indigenous tribes that were working so hard to preserve their culture. We do land acknowledgments in Canada. We talk about everything that was lost, the language of, that have been lost, the traditions we're trying to revive and the art we're funding. Why are we doing all of that? Right. Well, because something was lost in the process of mass migration. Guess what? When you bring a bunch of people from another country that don't have the same culture, ideas, or vision, and there's more of them than you. Well, the people that are the minority disappear very quick. And that happens time and time again. So you're covering stuff like this, but also the feminism stuff. So when you said I need to take a step back, I mean, what did you say in this

statement. Exactly. Yeah, I believe I said I needed to take a step away from media to focus on my personal life and things going on in my personal life. And it was just I couldn't talk about it publicly because what had happened is I had been banned from multiple countries. I actually, right before I released my film Borderless during the filming of it, I had been arrested in Turkey for journalism, essentially, and was facing five years in prison with my team. And we were very lucky that we had members of the team who I didn't even know at the time had connections with intelligence agencies and were able to get us out of there. And it became one of those situations where it's like, how many times am I going to roll the dice? How many times am I going to survive this game of

Russian roulette where I am being brought in questioned by international governments under the, I was questioned under the Terrorism Act by the UK government for that pride parade thing I did in Luton? and am I going to spend my entire adult life until I turn 35 years old behind bars because of my activism and never get to do the things that I'm doing activism for? I'm doing activism because I want to preserve a country so people can have families that they can raise with freedom, freedom of religion. You know, I want to have that family one day. I want to have kids. I want to be, you know, what I'm fighting for. And if I keep this going, like, I am going to end up behind bars. for sure. I just narrowly escaped going to jail in Turkey, narrowly. And when I got married, my husband

was an Australian, and he was also working for a federal government capacity. And the Australian government told me I wasn't going to be allowed to come to the country, visit family, nothing unless I quit politics. It was literally in their stipulation letter to me. You are banned from the country. You're put on vacuum, which is a list for terrorists, criminal, everything, we will only take you off that list and allow you in if you quit politics. Was it a no-brainer for you? Like, done. Like, I quit. Or was it something that you really thought through and were kind of struggling with? Obviously, it's something I would have preferred not been the case, but it was a no-brainer. Like, I, when I told people, you know, family is my goal,

having kids get, when I decided, you know, before we get into all of this, I want to clarify, I'm not the ideal trad wife. I had a career. I had boyfriends before my. husband. I add like, you know, everything, nothing about my life is normal, right? But when I got married, I was like, this is my primary goal in life to be a mother, a wife, and have kids, and everything else comes secondary. So letting go of my career was absolutely a no-brainer. But I would have preferred to have it and been able to speak publicly and not have a government be oppressive to me because of my ideology for sure. Were you feeling any type of internal pressure like this is the kind of content I talk about and I need to make sure I'm living it out.

People can pretend when they are content creators that they don't feel pressure from their audience, that they don't feel pressure from the comments section. I remember when I was 20, 21 years old, I published a video saying why I'm not married because I was getting so much incessant pressure from my audience saying you should have kids now. You're basically valueless as a woman. You're out here traveling and being a career. And I had to go out there and be like, you shouldn't rush into marriage. You should find someone that's good for you and make sure the test of time goes through. You should, some people aren't going to get married and that's okay. And I really tried to clarify that to my audience.

But I felt like I was almost trying to clarify that to myself because I was feeling the pressure of this ideology. And growing up, you don't really know things until you live them. You don't. That's just how it works. You know, what's that Ann Coulter quote? A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet, I believe, was the quote. So it's like you don't understand. Well, if that's the case, then we should have a lot of people turning red in California this year.

Mass muggings, yeah. So especially in the zeitguise. Like I grew up throughout the whole creation of the Internet. You know, I was born in 95 and I started on like Neopets as a young girl, the forums, Tumblr when it came out, MSN Messenger. Oh, you did Tumblr too. And I had MSN Messenger and AIM both. Yeah, yeah. So all of these, like, more rudimentary beginnings of the internet. And then by the time I was a teenager, like, people started making YouTube content. You start watching that. And unfortunately, what was lost in that transition was you used to be able to get all of your information about relationships and love and what to do from real people around you, where you could really see the fruits of what they were talking about. So if someone was giving you advice on how to structure your relationship, well, you could see if they had success. relationships in their life. They were in your community. Whereas the information we're getting

today is from a lot of people who are creating exciting advice, things that make you feel very confident about the approach you're taking. If you do this, if you follow this list of, then you are going to be happy and healthy. And if you don't do this, you're going to be a miserable wench. But you can't see any of the real struggles they're having because everything is sanitized. What was the path to follow that you thought, if I do this, this and this, this will lead to a successful marriage and happy relationship. It was the whole tradwife stuff was beginning to become very popular on the internet. When I was at the dynamo of my career, you have to, you know, not have your job. You have to quit your job. Make that secondary. Be the stay-at-home wife. Be more

submissive. Follow your husband wherever he goes. Got to be attractive. Skinny. Young. You want to get married young for sure, because if you get married past 25, then you've hit the wall and you're, you know, basically used goods, whatever. There were all of these advice pieces that I thought I had won the lottery. I found a very masculine guy with a masculine career, and I did absolutely love my husband. One of the worst things that you're ingesting on a daily basis that you should switch out immediately is your coffee and creamer. Oftentimes, the first several ingredients listed in creamers are seed oils, thickeners, and fillers, natural or artificial flavors, basically not anything real in there. Coffee can be riddled with mold. It's very important that even organic coffee is

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food ingredients, not chemicals. Taylor Duke's Wellness is your go-to spot for trusted salt, electrolyte mixes, bone broth, protein powders, and very thoroughly sourced vitamins and supplements like magnesium and vitamin D3K2, two, two that I think everyone can benefit from taking. Shop around at shop.com. Tailordukes Wellness.com. Use code Alex Clark for 10% off. That's shop. dot tayloridukswellness.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. Tell us how you met him and what your first impression was. The first time I met him was actually, we weren't dating or anything then, but it was when I was touring Australia. And he was introduced to me as like a government dignitary. So it was.

Very impressive. Very impressive. Very important person. We shook hands, took a picture, and then I had to go and do my speeches. And then I didn't meet him again for a while and we weren't even dating than either. But he actually, in a way, kind of saved me from jail in Turkey. He, I can't get into the details too much because it is like really weird government stuff that was going on. But he wasn't supposed to come and get me if I got arrested. He wasn't supposed to because he might sacrifice his security clearance. He might, you know, get in trouble himself with his government jobs. And I remember after being arrested by the military, they handed us over to the gendarmer. And my security that was with me at that time looked at me and he's like, we're screwed if we get handed over to the gendarmer because they can charge us. The military couldn't charge us, but these people can. They bring us in, you know, at gunpoint in these calls. cars, this little rickety old station with the light swinging in the ceiling, a painting of

Ataturk. And I remember walking in there thinking, wow, I'm probably going to jail for the rest of my 20s. And then seeing he wasn't my husband at the time, but my husband waiting there after he was supposed to cut and run and leave me and thinking, oh my goodness, what an incredible man. And how soon were you married and pregnant? We moved very quick. It was like, we had known each other for like, I guess I had met him. like eight months beforehand, but we only dated for like five months. What did your ex tell you that he was looking for in an ideal relationship? So this is something I think about a lot also, because I spend a lot of time online talking

about what I wanted. So if you wanted to date me, you could go look up exactly the things I would want to hear. You could go look at my Twitter timeline, my YouTube, and he told me everything I wanted to hear. I want to have a family. I want to stay at home wife. I want like two to three kids. I want, you know, to be the supportive, masculine protector husband. I want to reconnect with my faith and go to church with my wife. And just, you know, and it's hard to meet a lot of men when you're like 21, 22 that want to get married at that age. It's not a, it's not a huge thing. I mean, a lot of girls that are dating right now will know. meeting guys on dating apps, whatever, that are actually interested in getting married, not common.

And how much older than you was he? Nine years. Okay. Yeah. So he was quite a bit older saying, this is what I'm looking for. You're the perfect match. Let's do this. Yeah.

And it was like, to me, it was a no-brainer. So there was nothing weird that he said it. I mean, did he come right out and say, I'm looking for a submissive wife? Did he use that language with you? So the only thing that I would look at, and I didn't see it as a red flag then, but I would look at it as a red flag. now that I kind of see the red pill movement coming about is when he was talking about how him and his friends no longer wanted to date Western women. They wanted to go find a woman overseas who was going to be passport bro. We want to find a woman overseas who is going to be more submissive and not a feminist

and going to be, you know, a proper feminine woman. So maybe someone in South America. Now I look at that And, you know, I get it. No one wants to be dating the, like, hardcore feminist. I hate men kind of girl that's going to want to arm wrestle you and never have kids. Like, of course. Like, that doesn't make sense. But in a lot of ways, some of the guys who are saying this literally want like a non-human as their wife, like a non-person. They don't want to have to work on conflict resolution.

Which it doesn't make any sense to me because to me, I mean, maybe there's some aspect of that or truth to that because of a language barrier. But also, I feel like women from other cultures, they are the ones that are the most feisty, like, very, you know, they will talk back. I don't know. This idea of, like, anyone else from a non-American culture, like, they're very submissive.

And I don't know. I don't know that. I don't believe that either. I know. I agree. I agree. From any woman that I know that is from somewhere else, they all seem to be way more, you know, combative, I guess.

Yeah. And then the other thing that, I mean, everyone watching this is going to know is I wouldn't normally date a girl your age, but you're not like other girls. You're not, you're smarter than the other 22-year-old girls, you know? And once again, when you're 22 years old, you're kind of like, of course I am. I'm the smartest 22-year-old that ever existed. Like, that's me. What a compliment. But it's like, no, I'm just a little more naive.

What did he say about his views on working women? Did not like them. didn't think that was a good, which was funny. This has always been a strange thing about my career is I tend to like more conservative men that tend to have these more traditional conservative views, but then I have a massive career where I'm traveling the world and there's a contradiction there. There is a contradiction there. So I'm like, okay, you really like me because of my career. You think it's amazing. But then you also dislike working women. You think it's kind of a feminist thing. Also, do you really dislike working women? I don't think so because when I eventually did get married,

I was constantly lambasted for not earning money, for being useless. Like, why you're not contributing enough? And I'm like, whoa, like, I thought you wanted this. And so having this idea of women in the workforce is bad, but then I quit my job to get married and be a mother. And then suddenly I'm useless and not contributing enough financially to the household. It's like a lot of, I think this is where the trad stuff can have reality and online ideology collide is, is it really practical for one person to be supporting an entire household nowadays? In a lot of cases, not really, and it can be extraordinarily stressful for men to have that burden on their shoulders. And I think when men face the reality of it, they're kind of like, okay, actually, it would be really helpful

if my wife was still working right now. It would be really helpful if you had an income, even if it's just an online job, whatever it is. So it's like kind of trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole where it maybe would have been even more beneficial had I been the main earner and pursued my career. And then he was kind of supportive in the background. That might have worked better. But because there was this ideology in mind of, no, this is what a marriage is supposed to look like. This is what gender rules are supposed to look like. It became presentation over practicality. And that really hurt things, in my opinion. I think every woman a little bit, maybe not every single one, but definitely me. Every woman a little bit wants to be able to be in her

feminine. And that's why you were able to talk yourself out of your own intuition. Yes. I'm like, I need to, I want to be vulnerable. I want to give my whole heart to someone. And part of that means not trying to be the boss babe and question him everywhere, not trying to fight with him, accepting who he is, trying to forgive radical forgiveness. And I had really mentally decided, like, this is my person. I don't want any other man, not interested, this is my person, and I'm going to do my best to love him for who he is. But, you know, a relationship is two people. It's both ways. And both of you have to be looking to improve yourself and grow. And if one person is under the impression that they're perfect, which I find this a lot with maybe other girls, like, men will tell you, we don't change after 30.

We don't change after 30. This is who we're going to be. So you either accept it or we can break up. And that was a thing that was used a lot is whenever there was kind of a problem that arose, he would be like, okay, well, we're going to break up then. And that would create this like abandonment complex in me where I was like, this. thing that I have given up my career for that I am, you know, this is the person I want to marry, this is the person I want to have kids with, or especially when I was already, you know, married and pregnant, I can't lose this. Like, I have to, it got really bad when I was pregnant. The, okay, well, we're going to get divorced. So it went from me psyching myself out and ignoring red flags to him giving me literal anxiety of abandonment if I ever addressed red flags. And it no longer felt like I was even in control of my own destiny or my own ability to confront reality, because confronting reality in some cases of the way he was treating me or the decisions being made meant losing the

entire idea that I had dedicated my entire political existence and ideology to the nuclear family. This is what I want. I want to be a wife. I want to be a mother. I want to have this for my child as well. So if I don't accept the reality that he has given me, he's going to leave me. Did he say that he was a Christian? Catholic, Catholic. Okay. Yeah, which, you know, a lot of debate around there, but that's a whole other podcast. Right. Yes. Okay, because I was just curious about that.

Like, we went to Mass when we were together. Yeah. What were some of the ways that he strategically isolated you from your friends and family when you first got together? Well, it definitely began with like little subtle comments about how everyone in my work sphere was. problematic, how I shouldn't talk to them. And don't get me wrong. Like, there's some accuracy there. There's a lot of problematic people within the political sphere. But it definitely became this thing where I was made to feel like every accomplishment that I had made in my life, my documentaries, all of it was horrible and connected to this horrible sphere of people so I can never be proud of it. I have to kind of leave it behind, never engage with it. And it was really like

the major one came around when I had just given birth. It was a week after I had had my baby, and he accepted a job in Australia. And he had promised one of the things that I was like, wow, this is an amazing man, is he was like, I will move to Canada with you. I don't, because I told him, I can't do a long distance thing, and I'm not moving to Australia. I want to be with my family. I've been away from them for far too long, traveling the world, doing these films. I need to be in Canada with my family. And he's like, fine. I have made all the preparations to move to Canada and to be with you there. And we will live there, grow old, there everything.

And I was like, wow, I've never met a man with such a, like, sacrificial spirit for love. That's incredible. But a week after I gave birth, he accepted a job in Australia without any conversation between us about it and said, I will divorce you if you don't come to Australia with me. And it was somewhere where it wasn't even going to be near his family or anyone we knew. And when you've just had a baby, like, you need support systems. you need people to help you out. It's hard to tell if you have postpartum depression, all these things. There's a lot of factors that mean you need your family and support systems in that space.

Did you share with your friends and family that he was constantly threatening divorce if he didn't do what he wanted? No. I was too nervous to I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed that I was even in that position. And definitely this is another big thing with the kind of trad sphere. And it's just I, I know. know so many people that are living this life where they're posting the family photos, where they're posting the sour bread baking, or the happiest family on earth. And then you'll have these private conversations and like the dead of night where it's all hush-hush. And it's like, he told me I should kill myself again. He told me he hates me. He told me he's seeing another woman. But none of it, it's like everyone is so embarrassed of having these real or the other way around. There are men in

these positions too, right? Where their wife is like doing something horrible to them. And there's so much pressure to keep up appearances because otherwise it's like you've failed you have failed at what your life is supposed to be and now you're just another one of those degenerates was he saying to you that you should kill yourself no no no this is this is other women that I knew what kinds of things would he say to you when you were fighting a lot of your dead weight on my life like you're useless all you are is deadweight to me uh you're pathetic like you know you're i remember like a very specific rant towards me of because everyone's from all I get a bit of confidence and I'd be like, okay, well, like, if you're going to abandon us, then I can't control that. Like, you keep telling me

you're going to abandon us. I guess I got to move on. And there would be like very specific psychological things like, okay, you think you can move on for me. You might find another guy that's better. But in most cases, you might find a guy that's more abusive. He might beat you. He might be horrible to you. Good luck with that. Like I like very like calculated kind of comments to kind of mess me up psychologically. This is stuff that I you know, I can't I can't say where his headspace was. I, he is someone that I still love. He was my husband, right? I still love him. I can't be in contact with him because of the way that he treated me and treated us and also because he abandoned us. But there is still like a big part of me where it's like I don't even recounting these stories.

It's hard for me to recount them or think about them because I try not to like my, you know, my son's going to grow up and he's going to watch this. And I want him to know that I loved his dad very much. Sorry. It's okay. I don't like crying on the internet. But, duh. Thanks. It's okay.

Take your time. And there were good times. Like there were good times. There were lovely, beautiful times. Camping, like going to the zoo. all this kind of stuff. Just, I think people love the way they know how to love. And I think that he grew up in a very difficult life and it's not my place to talk about the type of life he had and the childhood he had, but it wasn't an easy one. And when I recount these stories,

I actually believe that he felt he was doing better than what he grew up with. And so as not very well could be true. Right. As much as some of it is, is like it's not okay. It's not okay to call your wife. It's complex. It's complex to be an abusive relationship. I love this person. I don't love how they treat me. And it's rationalizing that. It's as you get the same thing with kids in foster care is that they are rescued from these horrific situations within their family. And yet they'll still ask things like when do I get to go home? It's it's it's very, very complex. Yeah. So it's like I, I don't know. I don't, you know, I think I've given the idea, like, you don't call your wife worthless. You don't lock her out of the house. You don't tell someone you're going to divorce them if they don't come to another country with you, if you've already had a kid. Like, there are so many things I could recount. There are more detailed things. There are more horrific things. There are beautiful aspects of the relationship that I could recount. But, yeah, I just also have to keep in mind, like, my son's going to grow up and he's going to watch.

this stuff one day and I hope his dad heals. I do like ultimately despite all of this and despite everything that's happened. I hope he heals and I hope he grows as a person and I'll never name him. I'll never docks him. I'll never say who he was because I don't want this to follow him around for the rest of his life. When after he left us, he did try to email tons of people in my work sphere and say that the reason was because we, I cheated on him and I stole his child, all these things that were untrue. So he really did try to destroy my reputation publicly. And he left you. He left us. And I begged him to have shared custody and he rejected it. And I don't know why. It seemed so unnecessarily cruel. I was already trying, I was living with my parents trying to, you know,

just pick up the pieces of my life and create a good life for my child. And I didn't understand why the cruelty, why he would do this to us. How long did the marriage last? It was only, it was only a few years. Yeah, only two years. Does your kids struggle to want to brush their teeth? Are you also worried about questionable ingredients that could be lurking in their personal care products? You need to switch the family to zebra. Zebra is the strictest, non-toxic toothpaste brand that I have found. Nothing sourced from China, made in the USA, only organic or farms doing things right who couldn't afford the organic label. Their toothpaste is also made with xylitol, not fluoride or hydroxyapitite. There is mint or coconut toothpaste or tooth tabs. Kids love how fun those are. You get a little

cube wet and then you chew it and then brush or some people even eat them like a breath mint. Totally up to you. Make brushing teeth fun again. Zebra also has amazing unisex, non-toxic, and organic deodorants. My favorite I've ever used, do not sleep on this brand, especially before you brush your teeth. Go to yayzebra.com. Use code to Alex for 10% off any order. Yayzebra.com for 10% off non-toxic toothpaste, floss, deodorant, and more. Now this is interesting. Some have speculated that your ex was a Romeo spy, that because of your work, because of his line of work, he was sent specifically to get you off the internet, to derail you from your career. Is there any possibility that that could be true?

I'd be lying if I sat here and said I hadn't considered it and, like, deeply thought about it. Because I always wondered, like, why? What was the point of saying these things to me? What was the point of treating me this way? Why did Australia ban me if I didn't quit politics? Why did I have a federal agent and someone who was contracting with the FBI on my borderless store? And there's also aspects that I haven't talked about publicly where I have had contact with intelligence agencies. And the only reason I haven't talked about them is because it would like threats. It would hurt my ability to be able to reenter countries. I've never given intelligence agencies information. I've never done anything like that. Like everything I say publicly, I say privately. You know? But it's just like these, like when I was banned from America for a few years, I couldn't enter here for two years. I didn't talk about it publicly until I was able to get back in because I knew it would hurt my chances of getting back in. So there were a lot of these things that I put together. And I'm like, if that is even like 1% of a possibility, that is like severely sending me for a spin. But then there's aspects of it that I look at. And I'm like, he genuinely did have his career hurt by me, even though he did tell me. at the beginning, like, I'm willing to give up my job for you. I understand that marrying you is going to have a severe consequence for my upward mobility within this apparatus, this government apparatus, like, I'm willing to give that up for you. And both of us kind of did that back and forth.

So I watched him have his security clearance downgraded for marrying me. I watched, I went to work dinners where people put in contact reports about me. And that caused massive chaos within his works fear. So I did watch his work suffer as a result of marrying me. Do you blame yourself for your marriage ending? Yes and no. Yes, because I chose, I chose the man I married. I did. And no one, I can't blame the world for that. Yeah, I can talk about kind of bad advice I got on the internet. I can talk about how I was in a crazy position with feeling like the entire world and security apparatus was against me. But at the end of the day, we have autonomy and it was my own decision. But then on the other hand, I think the one reason I don't remain tortured by this relationship,

and I don't. I'm living a very good, beautiful life right now that I'm proud of, is because I gave it everything. I can truly say within a thousand times of him saying, I'm going to divorce you, a thousand times I said, I'm not giving up on you. So what were the tips and tricks that the Tradwife Internet said, if you do this, your marriage will thrive that you were doing, you were throwing at the wall and nothing was sticking. Well, I definitely, you know, my day looked like the tradwife meme, wake up in the morning, make the eggs and pancakes, iron the clothes, clean the house, Cinderella style, scrubbing on the floor, prep lunches, prep dinners. You know, I paid for a lot of it too. Like I had savings from my

YouTube work and all of my money went into, you know, trying to take a burden off his shoulders. So I paid for all the groceries. I paid for everything for the baby. I paid for anything I needed myself. He did, he, you know, we even split rent for most of our relationship. Like, I just wanted to support him and have his career thrive. And I never even, there was never even a question in my head, you know, you see this debate online about you have to have it to go beg for if things go bad. You have to make sure you have savings in an extra account in case things go bad. That was never a question in my head. So I was just like, why wouldn't I give them all my money? Why wouldn't I give every part of me, give up my career, all of it, because this is forever. This is for life. Yeah. And, you know, there was this, I don't know how I didn't start to like wake up to it, but there were definitely these times where it's like, I'm calling him. He's not coming home from work. It's I've cooked dinner. He's told me to cook dinner. And then it's coming on 7 p.m. 8 p.m.

9 p.m. 10 p.m. And I'm just reheating dinner over and over again. And these were many, many nights, right? It's a very sad, sad depiction. Yeah, it was hard. It was very hard because it's like, I've given everything to this person. There's so much, like, hope and, and love there. And I don't understand why it wouldn't even be a text of, sorry, I'm going to be late. Did you reach out to people in the, you know, self-identifying tradwife community or whatever and say, like, I'm doing all the things that you're telling me to do when nothing is working? What's the deal? Yeah, what happened was they told me they're in the same position. So there are other women. I mean, are we talking about online influencers in the trad wife space?

Yes, yes. Conservative space? Yes. I'd say the majority. I know I probably shouldn't say that, but I think it's the majority. You think the majority of women in the trad wife space, what? I think the majority of women in the tradwife space are having massive problems in their relationship that they will never talk about publicly. What have they shared with you?

It's not my place to share any stories that might be identifiable to the public. So I would be more comfortable sharing stories of people that I know privately. And this is not to bash marriage. This is not to bash traditional relationships at all. I think that's beautiful. But there is a particular problem when you connect public. image with a perfect lifestyle that nobody can achieve. And when your audience will cannibalize you for failing to live up to that. In the real world, this is probably one of the best systems we have is

the nuclear family, you know, marriage kids, kids need to, parents. I believe that more than anyone. That's why I fought so hard for my marriage, despite, you know, my husband trying to leave us so much and, you know, calling me names and all this kind of stuff. But it's imperfect. The application is always imperfect. We're human. And when you have people that are having to live a dual life of look at this perfect life I have and my income is dependent on looking perfect. That causes a lot more problems than I think the average person in these situations. You've made all of this content. I mean, just the most controversial content talking about the dangers of Islam, talking about white farmers being killed in South Africa. And so you're used to get

heat, but when you talked about the dangers of trad ideology with your audience, which is predominantly very right wing, what was the response like for you? Oh, yeah, I was massive hate, but I felt it was so important to talk about regardless. I knew I was going to get hate because what they felt is this was a fundamental rejection of the ideals that they pursue. So marriage, family, kind of traditionalism. And it's not. It's an acknowledgement that it is imperfect. And if we don't acknowledge that it's imperfect, we're actually going to have a lot more horror stories than success stories. A lot of criticism I got was, well, you didn't trad hard enough, Lauren. You didn't do it perfectly. You missed this stuff, that stuff. You were a boss babe. You dated this person or that person. So you were destined to fail. But I have seen girls that have followed it all very well. One of my best friends, you know, met her husband at Bible study, got married super early, 20 years old, three kids, did everything right. didn't have a job because she wanted to be the stay-at-home trad wife. Her husband ended up cheating on her 10 years in. And now she's like, I had to help her and friends have had to help her with her legal bills,

somewhere to stay, all of it, because she didn't have a career. She was in a worse position because she did trad even harder than us. And she doesn't have a career to fall back on. Like she's living with her parents right now with three kids. And she's like beside herself. And what's causing it to be even worse is this like cognitive dissonance of wow I did everything right and I failed when I was told by this specific sect of ideologues that if I did this my life would be happy I would be successful I wouldn't end up like these liberals that live with mom at home and now I'm here in an even worse position with three kids to support this whole ideology must be bunk these people are lying to me which isn't true but because we don't caveat with like the world is imperfect people fail like

life is more complex than this, there are a lot of bitter people. And the other thing I've noticed is ever since I've spoken about this publicly, which I did, I wasn't even ever going to speak about it publicly. I was almost forced to by my husband spreading slander about me on the internet, but I'm glad. I'm glad that happened because everywhere I go in public, I have women pulling me aside that have been part of the right wing movement saying, I am so thankful you spoke about this. This is what I've been experiencing. And I have felt so. so alone, so abandoned. I didn't even know how to begin processing this.

I thought I was uniquely failing at Trad Life. Is there an underground railroad type of movement for women who are in the public conservative movement, who are in these abusive trad marriages, who wouldn't dare say anything publicly, who are enduring it day to day, that communicate with you secretly? Yes. And I would never, you know, give up that confidence that they have so I can't, you know, talk about it too much. But there absolutely is. There's a lot of people. I think this exists in every single sphere of politics that is run by ideologues. I think this exists within left wing spheres, people who are very sick and tired of, you know, the radicalism in left wing spheres that are talking to one another, maybe even that are sick and tired of the, you know, the radicalism and left wing spheres that are talking to one another, maybe even that are sick and tired of the, lack of structure and the lifestyle there and the drugs, that this, this exists in every sphere that's full of idyllogs where they feel like they publicly have to 100% adhere and promote

a certain ideology, but then privately speak with each other about the real complexities of the real world that captured audiences simply won't accept. So is it your opinion that the Tradwife movement is one of the most dangerous movements growing on the internet today? Yes and no. I think that people who are unhealthy and are likely to mistreat their partners exist in every walk of life. I just think this trad ideology, if it's with the right person and you both actually really believe it, and it's not some silly listical thing online that you've discovered and feel the need to adhere to, but it's like something that is like through and through in your veins, you're living it. we have a farm, we love each other, she is, she just happens to be better working at home because I can make more money working at the oil rig, whatever it is. When it's not this trying to force it to happen, it can be a really beautiful thing. But what I think we're seeing more often than not is a lot of young people who unfortunately have grown up in broken homes, they don't have an example of

what a relationship is supposed to look like. They don't know what a family is supposed to be like. And they're getting their advice from the internet from a bunch of people who in some cases are talking about marriage that are pretending to be married publicly. I know multiple people like that in this sphere that are... What do you mean pretending to be married? They are not married. They are divorced and they are pretending to be married while giving people advice on marriage. Like posting videos as a family? Yeah, that's their brand. You are kidding. I am not kidding. And anyway, there are people out there. I know watching this that know people that aren't even conservatives that are family influencers that are doing this. It is more common than not. But, and I've,

I've been privy to the conversations people have about this in the back end. They're like, this is our brand. Like, how are we going to support our kids? How are we going to support our life? How is my career going to continue? We got to keep this up. I did it for two years. I wore my ring for two years publicly saying I was married when I wasn't because I was mortified of, on a personal level, just dealing something I had, I was still going through personally myself. And then, you know, I'm still trying to recreate my, you know, online presence and be able to talk about politics again. and I didn't want this shadow of, oh, you're a divorcee over my head the entire time. Everyone has every motivation in the world to lie about their life being more together than it is.

So is there some kind of overlap between all of this and Red Pill, or is that separate? Oh, red pill's a whole other beast. But there is an overlap because the Red Pill will be the first to criticize you and say, you're a worthless piece of garbage if you're not married with 10 kids by the age of 22 or something, right? Something ridiculous like that. Well, half of them are like the ones making women. unmarriageable by partaking in hookup culture 24-7. Yeah, because they have to be able to sleep around because it's in their nature as men.

This is what they say. But I'm like, well, who are you sleeping with? You're sleeping with these single women and then you're getting on them like, well, you're not married because you're sleeping with people. But then obviously there has to be women to sleep with. I don't know. I mean, I don't understand how they rationalize that. Like, is there supposed to be this group of women, kind of like the handmaids tell it's like, these are the women you sleep with. These are the ones that are the untouchables.

Like, how does that work? A proper hormadonna complex. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what's funny about this is once again, how it all applies to real life. So I married a guy that was older than me. And I've dated a lot of guys that I tend to date guys that are a little older than me, like nine years, usually for some reason. And I have never once felt threatened by like a younger woman, even though I hear the red pill talk about this all the time. It has always been like women that are closer to their age that they just feel like they have more in common. with. Oh, that was another thing I was told all the time. Like, I feel like I'm your parent because you're so much younger than me. You're like my child. He switched and used it against you. Yes, it was used against me all the time. Like, you're just like an ignorant child.

What would you say to somebody that says, okay, you are blaming this entire movement, which is more often than not used for good, when really the blame would lie on the person itself. You just married the wrong person. The ideology itself. isn't rotten. It was the person. Well, I think I based a lot of my beliefs on the world, whether it be my criticisms of mass immigration or, you know, kind of crazy progressive ideology. It's based on my experiences in real life, like day-to-day reality. Have I ever met someone in a marriage that was perfectly adhering to all of these trad stereotypes online? First of all, I've never met someone in that marriage. Never. Because they don't exist. I mean, the closest you can

is someone like Ballerina Farm, but like pretty sure they're the children of like the CEO of JetBlue or something and have millions of dollars to be able to have time to do all this. And that's not a critique of them. Like, you know, more power to you. I think that's amazing. But the average person going out here and trying to bake sourdough bread all day probably can't do it. You probably can't afford it. You probably need a two-income household to live definitely in Canada. I don't know about how America's doing with that these days, but definitely in Canada. So it's not even on a practical level. If you are trying to fit into this ideological confinement, it's going to cause a lot of psychological stress. You know, because you're supposed to be pursuing a relationship and a family

and doing things for the sake of what is practically best for you, what is practically going to create the healthiest relationship, not what other people are going to think of your relationship. And maybe there are situations where men actually will be better as the stay-at-home dad in some cases. But if you're so worried about fitting into TradTM, whatever the advertised Trademark. Tad trademark, then, you know, you'd rather blow up your whole relationship than do the thing that's healthiest. In hindsight, do you feel like Lawrence Southern was too radical politically in her early 20s? It depends what you mean by too radical. I was too naive. Some of the ideas I had that would have been considered radical at the time,

aren't so radical now, because they've been vindicated by reality. And the other ideas, I was too naive. I didn't understand the world well enough. I didn't understand relationships well enough. And I was, I mean, I guess that's where you could say I was too radical. I was way too confident in opinions that I had no business being so confident in. I've gotten almost all the men who work on my show to start using.

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If he wants to leave, let him leave, you're going to be just fine. That's another lie is I thought that my life would be over if my marriage ended. So even if my husband was treating me horrifically saying he was going to abandon me, you know, leaving me for days on end, not financially supporting me fully, I was like, well, the alternative to being called worthless, pathetic scum every day and abandoned every day is my life blowing up and me being the most miserable. unhappy single mother wench. That was a lie. It's so funny because so many people came up to me and were like, I'm so sorry, Lauren, that you're divorced. Like, I'm so sorry that this all happened. But I am so much happier now. And I think humans are extremely adaptable. It took a while to get

on my feet, to process everything. But once I had let go of the idea of what life is supposed to look like and accepted what life is, I could start seeing the beauty in it again. Like, wow, I am around people that build me up. I'm around people that tell me, you know, I'm doing a great job. They criticize me when I need to be criticized. But it's all not with an animosity to it. It's with a genuine love to it. When these women in the conservative movement who are in, you know, unhappy or borderline abusive or are in abusive marriages are talking to you about the problems and they feel like they can't leave? I mean, what do you say to them? I'm very careful to not say like, well, you know, leave his ass, because I think that can be very bad advice too. I think there is

definitely like a modern idea of when things aren't going well, you abandon. And in fact, that's actually one of the problems that I had in my relationship is my husband would see things not going his way. Even if it was like the tiniest little thing, like I'm a little too tired breastfeeding to do X event today, like divorce, divorce. So that was a problem in my relationship. And it can be a problem with anyone. Like divorce shouldn't be the first thing you jump to. But I definitely say the first thing is you have to regain yourself worth. Like in order to even understand the situation you're in to process it, you need to do things for you.

You can't let your brain be completely in this orbit of my life is going to fall apart. What are people going to think? What does he think of me? Especially if it's, or she, if your partner is being abusive, you. You don't want to be getting your opinions of yourself from them. You have to start like rewiring your perception of self. Like you are a child of God. All of us are.

You are here for a reason. You have divinity in you. You are not made to be abused or spoken down to or made to feel like you shouldn't be on this earth. Once you believe those things about yourself, then you can start to really love yourself and your partner and make decisions of what to take next. And if that person doesn't want to be involved with your kids, if they are truly abusive, then maybe the next step is you have to step back. And, you know, I waited for a long time. Like, maybe, maybe I can, I definitely was in this mindset of I can't even move on psychologically because maybe I can still fix this even after he had left us. And eventually I got to a place where it's like, no, this is just life. And if he heals one day, like, I'm happy. And I want that to happen. But, um, This is just my life now, and I'm cool with it. Has your content on YouTube changed since going through this?

It's definitely a lot less black and white. Like, this is the answer. And I don't give advice on relationships very often. And if I do give advice, it's like this. It's not like, all right, if you do A, B, C, D, then you're going to have a successful relationship. I will not give that advice since everyone's relationship is unique and complex. And I can't speak into it unless I've seen it. I see so many people online speaking into my relationship and what happened. And I'm just,

oh my goodness, you couldn't be more wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. So yeah, I have become more nuanced. And that's a really cool blessing that I got from this whole experience as well is I gained an empathy I did not have before. It's just how humans work. Unfortunately, you got to live it. What do you think that empathy is? When I see people with lives that would be perceived publicly as like, you've really fallen apart, like your life is real chaotic or, you know, single mothers, all this kind of stuff. I look at them and I'm like, whoof, the stories they'd have that I've never heard, there's no assumption. The stories they have that I've never heard. Yeah. There's no assumption that, well, they must have chosen wrong. They must have just, because I think that's the main assumption

people have is they look at like a single mother or they look at, you know, a man who's like in his 40s and can't get it together. It isn't married. And they just, they have all these assumptions that go into place of what they must have done wrong. So maybe the message is make conservatism empathetic again. Make conservatism human again. I just, I can't even begin to explain the amount of friends I have right now because I grew up in the political sphere. I grew up with all of my friends, a part of these movements, like very far right movements, far left movements. And I love that quote where it's like, I love the, 3 a.m. version of people. Yeah. That version of people where you're sitting at the bar beside them and they're like just pouring their heart out crying and whether they be like people in far right circles that are like, wow, this is just not translating to real life. Like I am depressed. I am like constantly posting this stuff. None of it is actually what's happening around me or even far left people that I know that are like I would love to have a family white picket fence, all of that. But

you know, I grew up in a broken home and I just don't believe in it. Like, I don't think it's possible for me. I wish it was, but I just don't believe in it. And that's why I'm in this position where I've kind of gone down this road of not even trying to have structure. People are so much more complex than just these archetypes that have been created online. I'm sure you've met people in your own life. You've been criticized yourself for not being married and you have your own story that. All of it. No, I completely relate to everything you're saying, which makes me curious, do you want to get married again? Right now I'm not thinking about it. Like it's not, because this is one thing that I realized caused a lot of problems when I was younger was I have to get

married. I am worthless if I don't get married. And see, I struggle with that. That's my struggle is that I hold myself to that standard and I, you know, that's how my internal dialogue is with me a lot of the times. And then, of course, it's reinforced by reading comments saying the same thing. It's fueling that. I think what you said is very important. for the people listening who are fans of these creators and the conservative movement or otherwise, just public figures and general influencers, whatever. It's just a lie when people are like,

how do you get so confident? How do the comments not bother you? Depends on what the comments are. Are the comments telling me I'm a misogynist, racist, conservative woman who hates herself or whatever? Those types of things never bother me because I know they're not true. But it is true that I'm in my 30s

and I'm not married with kids. So those personal attacks definitely eat at me. I don't know that it is possible to get to a place as a public figure where those things don't hurt at least a little bit. You just have to, you learn to like at least block out some of it, 75% move on. Like I acknowledge it. Yes, it's true. I wish it wasn't, you know, and we move on. It's so important that you can be honest about that, though, because I see people lose their minds off of pretending. None of this affects me. No, not affected. But then it comes out in subconscious ways.

It's a disservice to our audience because our audience who are, these are regular people with regular jobs who are terrified of losing their jobs for posting something conservative and they get one, they get one negative comment

calling them out for being conservative and they're like, oh my gosh, my life is over. They obsess over that one comment for a month or whatever. And they're just like, how do you do this every day? That's why I think it's important

to talk about is that it does affect us. Oh, for sure. You know, so they feel like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be upset by this. You know, Alex and Lauren do this every day. They get this every day. I don't know. Well, one thing I've done is like on Twitter, for example, X, I've taken off notifications for people who haven't verified their phone number or their email. And it's like gotten rid of 90% of the garbage abusive comments because most people in the real world, the things they're saying to you, like, there's no person that's going to come up to you and be like, you eggless harlot, why aren't you married at 31 in real life? because that's not how real humans act.

It's very bitter people that want to hide their identity because they have failed in life and they need you to feel like you've failed in life, even if you don't feel that way yourself. And so they do it behind these anonymous accounts. I have personal notifications turned off for all of my apps, so Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, everything. The only time I see where I'm tagged in things

is if I open the app and I click that notification, the only notifications that I get from X are like, I have breaking news apps like ping me. So I, you know, know what's going on with like the election and stuff like that. But otherwise, personally, when I'm getting tagged and stuff, I have that turned off. Yeah. And you have to let people scream into the void if they are like that. Also, just you can't be on it too much because there's audience capture. We talk so much about the capture of the mainstream media and how they're biased and liberal. And obviously all of this is true. But we don't talk so much about audience capture among right-wing audiences where people or particularly, you know, use. YouTubers that have a very niche audience. And if they lose that audience, they're never going to be able to get a normal job again. They're not going to be able to support themselves. They have no choice but to keep feeding into what their audience want to hear or they'll literally be homeless in some cases.

Yeah, I think, I mean, we could probably both say the same name at the same time. I can totally think of people that have gone, they are so extreme in the content they're producing. There is no way. They would never be able to get a job anywhere. period. And if they alienate the audience they've created, it's over for them. And that's what they're doing. That's why they're saying things. They're captured entirely. Don't date. Don't get married. Stay loyal to me. That you're loyal to the movement because they want them all to be in the same situation. What videos of yours or documentaries of yours do you recommend people watch if they're

just hearing of you for the first time? Yeah, I would definitely recommend you watch my film Farmlands or Borderless. They're my two biggest documentaries. You can find them on my YouTube channel, Lauren Southern. And I'm going to be revamping and doing more videos on my YouTube channel these next few months. So there'll probably be some new content there as well. I think you particularly liked my video on Red Pill. I gave it some silly clickbait name. There is a huge overlap between Red Pill and Islam, which I don't think a lot of people talking about.

They're saying I'm a conservative man, these Red Pill guys, I'm conservative, but they're obsessed with Islam and very welcoming to Islam, which is very interesting. Yes. I think there's definitely an overlap between the mass migration we've seen from countries that are more primed to be sexist towards women and the uptick of content we're seeing in the English-speaking world that is objectively like women shouldn't work, women shouldn't vote, women. And, you know, whatever, you should be free to have these opinions, but to pretend that they have any bearing in reality, it's very acab to me, how the BLM protesters used to run around and be like, disband the police. And it's like, that's not going to be. to happen. You guys are in this weird circle jerk on the internet where you think the 19th Amendment's going to be deleted or the police are going to be deleted. And this is just, this has no bearing on real conversations that real humans are having. And it's so important to get people out of that box because it destroys their real life. Like I have friends of mine that have gone deep into these ideologies that have no bearing on reality. And then they're calling me up like, I'm depressed. My life is falling apart. I can't get a normal job. I can't get normal friends. And I'm like,

you are stuck in an unreality. You are stuck in delusion land. And you're not a bad person. Like there are a lot of good people that just go down the rabbit hole. And this is what I hate about cancel culture. This is what I hate about the mainstream media stuff. People go down a rabbit hole

and then they create no ability for them to exit it. Well, and that's why I wanted to have you on is I knew some of my audience would appreciate finally a different perspective on all the strad stuff that we talk about in sourdough and whatever. They're going to love that. And then some people might be a bit challenged by your story. and the things that you're sharing. And I like having somebody like you on. It's like we have so much in

common, but maybe your take on something that's really big in culture right now is going to challenge the audience in a way. And so, and I thought that was important. Just like, let's hear a little bit of a different perspective and just see what you think. Yeah. And I think it's this, this is like serious stuff. There are stories all the time, both men and women that come out where it's Like they've been trying to talk forever about how their partner was abusing them or they were in a rough situation. And then they end up in a true crime documentary. They end up, I remember when I was in Australia, like the first few weeks or months I was there, there was a horrific story of a footballer there who had locked his wife and his kids in the car and set it on fire and killed them all. And she had been trying to tell people for ages. So even though my story is not that extreme at all, like I'm not out here saying that. If you are under this impression, of like everyone in this situation is exaggerating or these things don't really happen or they're in a trad relationship so they should just be quiet like it might not be you you might have a really healthy relationship and if that's you like I'm so happy for you honestly I don't hate marriage

at all I think it's a beautiful thing it might be your friends though it might be someone you know that's too embarrassed to talk to you about it it might be someone you care about a sibling anything And if we don't create an environment where people feel free to talk about the complexity of life because they feel they have to fit into this square box of I've done everything right and therefore I'm not a failure. You're not a failure if life is complex. That's just what life is. What is your Twitter and Instagram? You can find me at Lauren underscore Southern on Twitter. Lauren Sheree, C-H-E-R-I-I-E on Instagram and just Lauren Southern on YouTube. If you could give us one remedy to heal a sick culture, what would it be?

I think for a conservative audience, the biggest thing that they need to realize, and I had to realize this in my own life, is, well, facts may not care about your feelings. Feelings don't care about your facts. A lot of people are motivated by love, by beauty, by sadness, by pain, by suffering. In fact, I think that's what motivates all of our politics is these underlying feelings. And if you try to separate yourself from emotion and empathy altogether because you think you've become some philosopher, God King that's above feelings, you're going to find yourself missing out on both the most beautiful and the most important aspects of understanding the real world. So don't think that facts and feelings aren't equally important. Embrace empathy, embrace complexity. And that's how we

heal the world. Thank you, Lauren, for coming on Culture Apothecary. Thanks for having you. I think we can all be guilty of getting into an echo chamber at times, even within our own movement. Lauren's story is important to hear for a few reasons. Maybe you or someone you know is in a marriage like this and you're feeling very alone or even confused because of a lot of this deceiving advice presented to you on social media. Some of this content that people are creating may sound like solid Christian biblically founded advice because you're talking about a woman being submissive. But here's my take.

this is why it is so important to be a Berean, okay? That means comparing all earthly wisdom to what scripture actually says about gender roles and marriage. Is what you're reading? God's design for a mutually respectful and edifying relationship? Or is it actually abuse masquerading as truth? That being said, Christian or not, no woman should ever have to go through what Lauren did, ever. If you are currently in an abusive relationship and need help, text begin to 88788, the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Be sure to watch Lauren's documentary's farmland and borderless on her YouTube channel, Lauren's Southern Official. And also, don't forget to subscribe to this show on YouTube at Real Alex Clark. You can leave anonymous five-star reviews for the show.

If this episode touched you, I'd love to know how. Every Monday and Thursday night at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, I'm interviewing different people and experts, offering their own unique remedy to heal a sick culture physically, mentally, and spiritually. This is Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark.