My Crowder Encounter

Some loose thoughts on Steven Crowder

With news of the impending divorce of right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder all over the Twitter, I thought I might reminisce about the two times I appeared on his show. I had been paying moderate attention to Crowder for a while before he asked me to come on, and knew him mostly as a very conservative Christian who liked to rile up the libs by cross-dressing and doing West Side Story parodies.

What occasioned his interest in me was my response to his oft-repeated declaration that “rape culture wasn’t real.” I honestly don’t remember what I tweeted at him but it was probably something along the lines of “Yes, it is.”

He then asked me to come on and debate the issue. I initially declined because I figured I was going to be set up as a stooge and because I didn’t feel comfortable speaking about women’s experiences without being, you know, a woman. Over the course of a few days, I went back-and-forth with a Twitter friend of mine who had experienced rape about whether I should do the show. She encouraged me. So I did.

It did not go well.

The blame for that lies with both of us, but probably more with me than him. I was overly combative and sarcastic in an attempt to offset his tendency to be combative and sarcastic. The appearance was dumb. I was dumb. And I left the whole thing feeling terribly about myself because I felt like I had let my friend down.

I then asked if I could come back on and have a more civil conversation, to which he agreed. I went back on and that was fine, although neither of us convinced the other of anything. Not that I was expecting any other ending but I thought maybe somebody watching might find what I had to say compelling enough to at least have himself (his audience, I think, is almost exclusively male) a good think on the topic.

After those two appearances I basically stopped paying attention to Crowder at all until the news of his divorce set his detractors into a tizzy for a couple reasons. The first, initial, reason was his weird focus on his wife’s right to divorce him because Texas is a no-fault divorce state. In other words, he seems upset that she is allowed to file for divorce without his consent. The second, much-worse reason was this Substack article put out by Yashar Ali, in which he released video footage of Crowder being verbally abusive to his then eight-months-pregnant wife.

(You can watch the video in the link)

Among everything else that emerged in that video was the odd revelation that the Crowders only have one car. Why would a multi-millionaire who was offered $50,000,000 by the Daily Caller only have one car? The obvious, and most insidious answer is, control. With one car, Crowder can exert tremendous control over his wife’s whereabouts. Which is, I’m sorry, fucking creepy as hell.

The equally reprehensible Candace Owens devoted sixteen minutes of her own show eviscerating Crowder, ending her tirade by repeatedly calling him a monster. Safe to say, that is the longest amount of time I have ever spent watching Candace Owens, and I do not foresee such an event ever taking place again.

But seeing his behavior definitely brought me back to my own appearance and his insistence that “rape culture” does not exist. One of the things we got hung up on in our discussion was the definition of “rape culture,” a term I take to mean a broad cultural acquiescence towards the abuse of women. Crowder denied that the culture does abuse women with any regularity. When I pointed out that nearly every woman I know (and I have asked this question of many women) has experienced some form of sexual harassment or worse, Crowder asked two women who work on his show whether they had ever experienced anything like that. They denied they had. Sure, Jan.

So much political debate is people talking past each other. That was definitely the case with us, but what I saw on that video is abuse. It’s not rape. It’s not even physical. But it’s abuse. And it’s hard for me to believe that was an isolated incident. His wife said as much in the statement she released.

Nobody knows what goes on in anybody else’s marriage. Not really. And I’m not here to jump on Steven’s surgically-enhanced chest. But I do think it’s important to recognize that the debate I had with him was, in a very direct way, Steven Crowder defending Steven Crowder. I hope he works out his anger and I hope he finds peace but, until then, fuck that guy.