Is misogyny punk rock?
Let’s learn F E M I N I N I T Y
with Caitlin Ann Hubber
Hello, dear reader.
Today I decided to go for a different type of post, in a different language. Yes, I do speak English, and no, I don’t do it very well. So please excuse my grammar, my wording and my everything. I know. And I’m sorry. But whatcha gonna do.
In this post I want to cover a Youtube and Instagram personality, Caitlin Ann Hubber, or Mrs Midwest. She has an up and coming channel I find quite concerning but lots of people adore. Mrs Midwest, from now on MM, is a young housewife sharing about feminine issues, and is very punk rock (not even kidding: 12:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMyeVvx3viY). She and her Husbear (Grant Hubber) live an “alternative” life in Michigan.
Apparently, traditional is the new revolutionary.
On my usual Youtube commenting spree, I stumbled across a very fair question: what’s not to like about her?
I mean, she puts up wholesome useful content, does she?
At first glance it really, really seems she talks to women about all things makeup, fashion, homemaking, being traditional and the like.
However after a while watching her videos, something starts smelling fishy…there’s something about her choice of words, the topics she covers, her patronizing tone, the girly laughs and air quotes placed in certain moments...
Something is going on that we don’t know about, but it peeks through subtle (and not so subtle if you know where to look) hints.
It is not uncommon to find the typical “I disagree with x point you made, but love the channel” comment. Despite comments being heavily moderated by Husbear, video after video a handful of viewers express their concern about some aspect of her narrative. By analyzing the individual piece of information one may think, of course I can’t agree with ALL of it, some small thing I don’t like, but like it as a whole.
Yet, if we look at the context of all her body of work and persona, through her blog and public social media presence, we can form a much more accurate opinion and then come back to the videos and see them through a different, more contextualized lense.
Some words are most definitely unusual. Feminine women attracting masculine men, is not a strictly traditional concept I may have heard elsewhere, for example in fundie families. Didn’t take long until Youtube related video suggestions showed me exactly what she means.
This video poped up: “The Art of Femininity, with With Feminine Homemaker Caitlin Ann Huber | MSGA #7” by youtuber YogiOabs.
This is a 50 minute long video interview posted jan 19 of 2019. The language is incredibly cringe. Roosh V’s Return of kings, red pill, reddit, men being beta, Chad, “the hurting hearts of mgtow people!” Big yikes. MM is a red piller.
Or something of the like. Red pill, along with Incel, PUA, MGTOW and others, is a subset of the “manosphere”: an assortment of online forums, blogs, communities centered around the idea that men are oppressed by modern women and feminism caused it to happen. Each subset has their own perspective of reality, but they share a common terminology. (More info: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-red-pill-reddit-2013-8 ).
It looks like red pill has a female version, and MM is part of it. Go figure.
In the interview, Caitlin tells her buddy YogiOabs about her life as a stay at home wife, how women are genetically inclined to do housework and all the wholesome accounts she follows on IG (hold that thought).
The manosphere men not only talk about how “feminist” women belittle them, but also discuss what the ideal woman is, according to them. In contrast with the rebellious independent career-having modern woman, they fantasize with beautiful, submissive wives dedicated solely to tending to their home and families.
MM also shares how she found out about the red pill ideology online and how that impacts her social media presence. I find this section in the end to be incredibly telling, it’s about her goals for 2019:
Minute 50:11 “I was trying pretty hard to grow my IG to try to reach women. Because my message can be kind of intense for some people. The things I believe, I like to pad it with skincare and like how I clean my house, to attract a female audience. I heard other male youtubers say some of these female youtubers, their whole audience is male so what’s the point. [...] I feel directionless with like how to send this message but in 2019 I think I’m just gonna kinda like ride the train and keep writing the blogs and reach out to people [...] it’s not really about money or anything, I just think it is a very important message I wish I heard when I was 17, and I was pretty traditional so I think there’s a lot of girls who could benefit so I don't know, we’ll see what happens.”
There is a lot to unpack here. First, we learn what her goal with her social media presence is: reaching women and girls and presenting the red pill ideology to them. She understands many women are put off by her beliefs, leaving mostly men as recipients for this “message”, and red pill youtubers are well aware of this. To overcome this obstacle, she intends to use a marketing strategy: sprinkling other topics, such as beauty, shopping, housekeeping, crafts and the like to sugarcoat her ideology in the hopes to make it more palatable. She finally makes a distinction between being traditional and the message she wants to communicate. They are not the same and she wants to make it clear.
With this in mind, we can see her goal translate to her Youtube channel. We can clearly see 2 types of videos: commentary videos and “feminine” advice videos.
For her advice or “tips” videos, she goes through the basics of beauty: basic skincare, basic haircare, general fashion advice. Many of her tips are on things most sophisticated people would find obvious: budgeting, basic housekeeping, personal hygiene. She even has a blog on how she takes a shower. Looking at her content closely, there isn’t much substance to it. One could easily find more detailed information on any of the topics she covers elsewhere. She absolutely presents a lovely show, but how useful can it be for an adult to be reminded to regularly brush their teeth? Many times I’ve wondered why some of her videos appear to be so shallow on their content or increasingly inconsequential. The answer is, they are not her main focus or area of expertise. She quickly covers the more obvious areas and starts running out of things to talk about. This is when she starts focusing on Q&A videos, day in the life vlogs and talking about Disney princesses (for some reason).
But all that is a way to attract and retain female attention. Her “feminine” content is a buffer meant to showcase the happiness caused by her ideology and to show the results of applying her “philosophy”. Because along with the “feminine” videos, there are the commentary videos. She will ramble on and on about how women are to be feminine and men are to be masculine. A defense of strict gender roles on the basis of nothing. Shaming women out of making choices for their own sexuality on the grounds of nothing. Shaming women who dare to define beauty on their own terms. Telling us how punk rock she is for conforming to a traditional role. Painting a scary picture of how society lies to us, telling us “they” hide the information and the statistics of how modernity is destroying families and society.
But the truth is that the information is not hidden by some secret agenda. It is out there. The manosphere ideology is out there for everyone to see. And yet no one cares. Because no one gives credit to it, and with good reason.
Take the incels, resentful men who form an identity around being inexperienced with relationships yet theorize about things they have not the slightest idea about.
Or the MGTOW people, and our buddy YogiOabs. Trying to convince his audience of how “masculine” he is and that he is “going his own way”, while making a career out of talking about women, relationships and his feelings.
Let’s take a look at some titles on his channel to see how masculine he is. YogiOabs, an expert on relationships and masculinity, gives us gems such as:
Is This Why Women Should Be Men's Property Again? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLx1AM6ZevQ)
Feminist Fashion Trends That REPEL Attractive Men (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29VBqlVtIIA)
Why Men Think Women Are Stupid
How Old Is Too Old?
How Tinder DESTROYS Women's Brains and Hearts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE5KDai2bFk)
So masculine. I’m shook.
I believe MM was a viewer of his channel before she even had one and that is how they met. In a Youtube comment he takes credit for the growth of MM’s channel. He might have given her advice and promote her with his following, probably painting her as an example of the “ideal woman”.
The reason they attract only men to this ideology, is because of it’s misogynistic nature: why would any woman choose to partake in it?
It doesn’t matter how much effort MM puts into fitting the perfect mold these men lay out for her, they will still hate her. Manosphere is an ideology of hatred, and it shows. Looking at the comments under the YogiOabs video is so sad. There she is, giving the manosphere men all they dream about, and yet there are such nasty, vile comments. Saying women like her will still eventually abandon their husbands and take them for all their worth. Discussing whether she is a “unicorn” or just another “tradthot”. Calling her “hypergamous”. Wondering why she doesn’t have kids yet.
It is a bit hard to feel bad for her. In the end, she does put herself in that position. And I’m willing to bet she gets validation from pleasing those men (just look at how she poses on the thumbnails of her more recent videos). She targets young girls who could do so much better than listening to her nonsense, by putting up a deceitful show. Her questionable associations are not limited to Youtube. Oh, no. We shall proceed to look at her IG account. You know, the place where she looks at “wholesome” edifying content.
Here she is supporting The Transformed Wife (TTW):
This is a lovely post in which both MM and TTW were tagged by “stoic barbarian” Unapologetic Masculinity, under the hashtag #patriarchy:
This one is great, TTW citing Stefan Molyneux, liked by MM. Nothing like community, and shaming working mothers:
I wonder, since MM is so counter cultural punk rock, if she uses her platform to push for change, maybe advocate for women’s right to paid maternity leave, decent wages for women, access to childcare or anything to support a woman’s right to be a mother. No? Ok...
This is MM liking Real trad dad’s post about ”uncontrolled immigration”:
This is MM supporting a post against universal suffrage, God only knows why:
This is the account Real trad dad discriminating against people:
This one is equally funny and troublesome:
Who on their right mind would choose to like a picture like this, of children wearing heavy makeup and posing in such way.
But please notice the use of the word “degeneracy”. This account MM supports is run by a member of the Incel community, probably a teenager (he is talking about prom), fussing about the “future” of a “nation”.
This is an account MM follows:
Now moving into speculation territory, there are several clues in MM’s IG account that seem to suggest she holds certain beliefs. I mean, she supports and even contributes to this type of accounts. It might as well be because she supports this ideology, or maybe she doesn’t and is just in for the pretty pictures. Of blonde haired and blue eyed people.
This is an account MM follows. Please note the hashtags:
This is a picture of MM featured in an IG account named “european people”:
This is MM and Husbear, featured in “european couples” page, under the hashtag #whitepeople
She even left a heart emoji. *Barf*
This is the same account suggesting a “european partner” is “real love”:
And if this wasn’t concerning enough, this is another account MM used to follow. It has luckily been deleted, I imagine for promoting pure trash, and isn’t on IG anymore. But since I’ve intended to write this post for a while, I managed to hold on to a few screenshots:
This is a picture MM liked. We don’t know if she agrees with the caption or if she even knows what it means.
I you are unaware of the meaning of that number, please feel free to Google for yourself.
Now if we go to her Twitter account with this in mind, things can to get suggestive:
I am not the first person to notice this.
Apparently, she felt the need to adress this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt-right.html
In this tweet:
Of course all this could be a BIG misunderstanding. I mean, she has black friends.
Maybe MM doesn’t support the red pill community and what they stand for. Maybe she simply used her connection to someone with a larger following to grow her own brand.
Maybe she doesn’t intend to scare women out of college and a career, and she is simply supporting those who already feel as she does. Her connection to TTW could be simply because of shared faith, not shared ideology.
Perhaps society and “they” really are out to get her. “They” hide the information. “They” bully her for her traditional path. “They” lie to women.
It’s up to us who we believe the liar is.