Conservative YouTuber Kangmin Lee has criticized British actress Emma Watson after she described the societal pressure to get married as “a violence” against young people in her recent interview on On Purpose with Jay Shetty.
Watson, best known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, joined the podcast to talk about her personal growth, love, and views on marriage. During the nearly three-hour discussion, she said that social expectations around marriage can harm young people’s self-worth—especially women—by making them feel incomplete without a partner.
“I think it’s such a violence and it’s such a cruelty on people—and especially young people, and especially women—to make them feel like they have no worth, or like they haven’t succeeded yet in life, because they haven’t forced to its culmination something that I just don’t think can or should ever be forced,” Watson said.
Watson added that she believes marriage should come naturally and not from pressure, describing it as “the least romantic thing I can possibly think of.” She shared that if she had married earlier in life, it “would have been carnage,” admitting that she wasn’t yet ready or self-aware enough to commit to a lifelong partnership.
Lee, who is based in the United States and known for his conservative Christian commentaries online, reacted strongly to Watson’s remarks through a post on X (formerly Twitter). He argued that redefining social expectations as “violence” can justify real-world aggression.
“There is a very distinct reason they call normal human behavior and beliefs ‘violence,’” Lee wrote. “It gives them a reason to feel justified in retaliating with real violence. This is intentional and by design.”
Lee also referred to the recent killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, suggesting that the attackers viewed Kirk’s opinions as harmful and therefore justified violence against him. “This is why they killed Charlie Kirk and felt it was justified because his ‘words were violence,’” Lee said.
He continued, “Words are not violence. Encouraging young people to get married is not violence. Stop this nonsense rhetoric or else more innocent people will be killed.”
Lee further accused left-leaning groups of hypocrisy for, in his view, inflaming tensions while accusing others of the same. “The left refuses to turn down the temperature as they finger wag at the right to turn down the temperature. Every accusation is projection,” he added.
As of this writing, Emma Watson has not responded to Lee’s comments.
