Modern Wisdom - #429 - Nina Power - The Crisis Of Modern Masculinity

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Nina Power is a social theorist, philosopher and an author. Between incels and toxic masculinity, manspreading, mansplaining, MeToo, MGTOW, Red Pill and Mens Rights, working out what men want from life is a question that both men and women are struggling with. Nina is trying to work out whether men have a firm place to stand in the modern world any more, and why masculinity is under attack. Expect to learn Nina's post-mortem on men's role in society, how masculinity's crisis hurts women and their future prospects, why Nina disagrees with modern feminism as a long-standing Second Wave Feminist philosopher, how we got to the stage where fear and mistrust of men is widespread, why NoFap ended up being called a hate group, whether the sexual revolution was a good thing and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Invest in The Weight film project at https://bit.ly/filmwisdom   Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy What Do Men Want - https://amzn.to/3KNk4Bt Check out Nina's website - https://ninapower.net/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Nina Power. She's a social theorist, philosopher and an author. Between in-sales and toxic masculinity, man spreading, man explaining, me too, migtow, red pill and men's rights, working out what men want from life, is a question that both men and women are struggling with. Nina is trying to work out whether men have a firm place to stand in the modern world anymore, and why masculinity is under attack. Expect to learn, Nina's post-mortem on men's role in society, how masculinity's crisis hurts women and their future prospects, too. Why Nina disagrees with modern feminism as a long-standing second-wave feminist philosopher, how we got to the stage where fear and mistrust

of men is so widespread. Why nofap ended up becoming called a hate group, whether the sexual revolution was a good thing and much more. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. I'm aware that having a woman talk about the problems that men face is kind of like a red flag to some unreasonable

people. But Nina has thought about this very deeply. She's a feminist philosopher who is now being very empathetic and sensible around her views for men. And there's a question to do with women as well. What does it mean to be a woman in 2022? Women are becoming more masculinized and men are becoming more feminized and no one really understands what their role is anymore. And it's only by having conversations like this that we actually get to hear another side. We actually get to work out that it's possible to have a conversation about this which is subtle and nuanced and understanding. Yeah, I really hope that you enjoy this one. But now please give it up for Nina Power.

Did people try to cancel your book before it was even released? Yes they did. What happened then? Well I won't go into detail but there's a small number of very strange people who get their their kicks from from doing this and we live in this bizarre cancel culture age and so yes I have I have these people who think that talking about sexual differences tantamount to somehow being Hitler and they kind of run around, you know, emailing people and trying to get me cancelled. And sometimes when I give a talk, people hire security guards to protect me.

And yeah, I mean, lots of women are in this bizarre position. I mean, I'm sort of joking about it, but on some level it's actually deeply horrible and you know, who are these people? You're very dangerous looking woman. I know. I'm terrifying. Okay, so do you think that there's a crisis with masculinity right now? Well, I think we're always supposed to say that. It's one of these sorts of clichés, like masculinity is always in crisis. Like ever since ever since you know I remember reading things sort of 20 years ago masculinity was in crisis then and I think in the 1890s it was in crisis and so on and so forth but yeah I mean

I do think there are sort of a series of things that have kind of come together to make masculinity and being a man seriously difficult and a big problem both for men and for women. And I wanted to try and think about ways in which men and women could get along better and that we could also start to talk again about what it is to be a good man. You know, because this idea that all masculinity is bad and men are somehow inherently evil and is incredibly stupid, it's not true, right? most women have very lovely relationships with men and friends who are men and brothers and fathers and they're men in the lives who they really really love and you know

don't want to see demonized by this very very generalizing and stupid rhetoric about men, which we've seen a lot of in the last kind of five, 10 years, I think. So toxic masculinity, the idea that all men are somehow got power and that they're all sort of predatory, they're all just kind of unpleasant underneath. So yeah, I think there's a crisis in that sense.

There's also a kind of bigger crisis in terms of the economy and the types of jobs that people are getting. You know, the economy was deliberately explicitly made into this kind of knowledge economy under that chair, all of the kind of manual labor and industrial jobs, which were typically done by men, have been eradicated. So there is a kind of crisis in that sense as well. What role do men have? In the serious aspect of this would be to do with things like depression and suicide. Like suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 45 in the UK. It's insane. There's a real problem here with you know, with men not knowing what their role is and not feeling that they've got responsibility and they've got a place, you know, and I think in terms of our collective humanity, we should all care about that, you know, this is a question for all of us. So yeah, there's lots of different ways of looking at a kind of crisis, but yeah,

I would say we're definitely in the middle of one and we need to kind of work out together how to sort of resolve resolve things. Is there a problem with you as a woman writing about masculinity? Well, I do I do make a joke about it in the book. I do say obviously I don't really know what men want. It in the first place. It's a kind of jive about Freud because Freud famously says, you know What does woman want and he doesn't know either? So I think if Freud could have a girl. I famously says, you know, what does woman want? And he doesn't know either. So I think if Freud could have a go, I thought, well, you know, I can as well. You can have a crack in even the scales. Yeah, so I do provide a handy list at the beginning because I did ask a lot of my male friends what it

was they wanted. So I actually do give a list and it was things like a beer and a shed and pussy and Nigella Lawson and you know these sorts of things. Was it one of them just to be left alone as well? Yes, I know who that was. But yeah, I mean there is something kind of like cheeky about this book, right? Of course, it's like ridiculous on some level, but I think there's also a way in which we live in an era in which there's more and more transparency, right?

Men are writing about their lives online and anyone could look at it, right? So even if they think they're talking to each other or to themselves or not to women, we can still read it all, right? So part of my kind of dark mission was to go and find out what men say to each other when they think the women aren't listening and then sort of report back. Is it right to say that

men have more power than women? Do you think? It really depends what we mean by power, you know. So I talk about status in the book and actually how difficult it is. All of this language you know of alpha, beta, sigma, you know, simp, in cell cook, side boy. There's all this language which circulates in the so-called manosphere, or either kind of bit of the internet that focuses on men. And, you know, what is an alpha men, a man in

our society, right? Is it the strongest man, a lot of them are in prison, right? Is it the richest man, a lot of them are nerds, right? The question of status is like not obvious, right? The question of what power is, is power succeeding on the terms of this world? Well, maybe, but there are other kind of values, right? There are spiritual values, there's the value of being a good father, there's the value of being just a kind person. Do you not know me? Like there are many different ways to be successful if you like or to be good.

And we often have a very narrow materialist conception that it's just about money or recognition. And actually none of those things really make anyone happy. They don't really make men happy. They don't really make women happy either. So, you know, I've got a big problem with liberal feminism as well. The idea that women getting jobs as CEOs or making money is somehow like the be all and end all of feminism. Like no, it isn't.

I think it's a very narrow image of freedom and all of those sorts of things. And also women definitely have power in the sense that they also have power over men, which is to say the power to kind of manipulate and give affection or withhold affection. And lots of the things that men do are in relation to women, right, not everything. But it's very obvious that men care about women. They care about what women think. They care about whether women like them. They care about, you know, looking after them. And if we don't say that women have power, then we're reducing them back to the aside of children, you know. And we're not, you know, adult women and adult men both have power.

They might have slightly different kinds of power, but they definitely both do. Well, ultimately women have the ability to gatekeep whether or not that man's genetic lineage gets to continue, which is about as fundamental as you're going to get. Between survival and reproduction, you've got 50%. One of the interesting things that I've been thinking about a lot recently is that seems to me that there is an inherently masculine frame that is being put forward as the admirable, appropriate, achievable goal that women are supposed to try and attain.

And that is, you should be a boss bitch, clap back, you should not settle for less, you should get over your last boyfriend by getting under the next one. You know, it's a very sort of masculine frame that this is being given to, that you should pursue education, employment, status, prestige, and exactly the same way that men have typically done for a long time. But what that seems to me is to take a lot of power away from women that fundamentally want to have a family, or who take their sense of purpose and belonging from being a part of a community, or doing things with people as opposed to things. Men typically have leaned towards things, but it seems like we're saying to women,

no, no, no, the way for you to take your power back within this society is to forget the thing that you're naturally, but you may have a predisposition to. And if you do choose to do that, then you've just been, you've fallen for the tradwife fucking conspiracy. And actually what you should be doing is working a law firm Yeah, I think you know whilst on the one hand we would love to there to be kind of equal value valuation of all different modes of life You know so that whatever people choose to do we would respect it You know unless it's sort of I don't know being an arm-stealer or murder or something

But whatever you know within a sort of, we would be like encouraging, you know, hopefully, and we would value precisely motherhoods and fatherhoods, as well as like getting a PhD or whatever, right? So, but I agree with you that the tendency in the kind of modern, the current situation we're in is to push women into those sorts of roles and those kind of, yeah, sort of, like you say, previously quite masculine positions of being like having sex with lots of people, being successful on the terms of this world and all of those sorts of things. I think there isn't enough discussion, enough realistic discussion for women about fertility, which does fall off a cliff at a certain point. And actually, the longer you delay it, the harder it is.

I don't have children myself, but I think that should, by necessity, be a rare position and not one that is the mainstream idea. And it's a very complicated decision for women to have children or not. And there are lots of some women can't have children, some women want children, but leave it too late because of economic situations, you know, so I Think yeah, part of this is about re-valuing what it is to be a mother and a father because I think the the culture genuinely Is very down on that and it's making it very difficult for people to start families, particularly younger people than me, particularly millennials who are struggling to get access to those adult things like

property and, you know, even renting and getting a job and all of that. So, yeah, I, given that I'm also kind of anti-capitalist and I'm anti-consumerism and I'm anti-this kind of system, I don't see there's any advantage to women behaving like men in this system because the system itself is inhuman and makes us turn against our fellow feeling. And it turns us all into competitors. So like in the book, I talk about the way in which men and women are encouraged to be more like brother and sister, you know, almost like rivals, rather than as in some other kinds of

relationship, which would be equal but different and those differences would be kind of celebrated. How have we got to the point where there's so much fear and mistrust of men, do you think? I think it's a combination of things. I think, you know, there's a kind of pendulum swing where about 60 years after the sexual revolution, and I think a lot of people are currently re-valuing whether that was actually a good thing or not for either men or women, right? It seems to encourage forms of irresponsible, you know, behavior. it turns sex into another kind of commodity rather than a form of intimacy and bonding, which it actually is. It shouldn't be treated in my opinion as something casual necessarily. I think the more people have casual sex,

the more it erodes their love of individual people. And if you start treating everybody the same, you don't see the unique beauty of individual people. And you don't necessarily feel any loyalty to any particular person. So I think there's the sexual revolution has pushed us in that direction. And it might be beneficial for like 20% of men who can have their peak of 80% of women right which seems to be had the data skews roughly. But it's not really beneficial for the average man or woman to have this very very unequal competitive driven by desire sort of sexual economy is awful actually.

So I think, you know, obviously there are very high profile cases where some men do terrible things like Sarah Everard case would be a recent case in point, which brings up questions of what do we do with male violence? And I think everybody wants an answer to that question, right? Men are violent towards each other, they're violent against themselves, and they're violent against women. Men are unaccruically responsible for like 95%

of all human violence, right? We know this, possibly even more, but it is an issue. So I don't think that demonizing men and saying that they're all evil is a good solution. I think it's a terrible solution. I think it makes it pushes men into a state of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you not mean? Okay, well if I'm evil, then I'm evil. Whereas I think if we say on the other hand that men can be good and that we can all be better and that one of the other things I suggest is that men need to think, start thinking of themselves a little bit more as part of a class.

Class of people called men rather than, or not only also as individuals, right? Of course we're all individuals, but we're also part of a sex. You know, I'm a woman, you're a man. You know, it's not to say that you're responsible, therefore, for all other behaviour that men commit or things that men do. But if we had more of a sense of looking after each other in a certain way, we might be able to prevent some of these things happening. So like if you had a male friend, for example, who was starting acting out and I don't know, getting really all over the place, like maybe something bad had happened to him. You know, maybe he was really depressed for upset

and he was starting to behave in a bad way. Tough love, like real love, would be to say, mate, sort it out, like I'll help you. Let's get help for you, whatever. And that's what everybody needs at some point. Some people might not need that, but quite a lot of people run into trouble in their life. I certainly you know, I think it's really common. So you know, it's that kind of thing How do people take responsibility for each other care about each other more often in them? Maybe a stricter way?

I think the problem is that it's very difficult to be proud of your masculinity at the moment when masculinity itself is pretty difficult to define. When everything in popular culture is saying that masculinity in the typical ways that you used to define it is toxic or somehow perverse or wrong, you've got companies like Gillette and who else has it that's gone work like even, well, nice to do with race, I suppose. But specifically Gillette, you know, they were a company which is built on masculinity and men undermining principles of masculinity.

And then from a personal standpoint, you know, when the Sarah Everard thing, like we need to be protected from all men. And then if men say, well, it's not all men, that's somehow seen as the same as saying, like all lives matter against black lives matter. It's the same kickback that you get, which makes it difficult to not feel resentment for the entire movement at heart. And that's, you know, it's a juvenile thing to feel, but it's true.

You know, if I get lumped in with a psychopathic police rapist killer, I think, well, I have, I have more in common than a woman than I do with that person. And then when I hear that, I think, right, okay, well, fuck you. And I go, okay, no, swallow it. This, this is an emotional reaction that's coming from a group of people that are in a, having a bad situation, so on and so forth. But it's not easy. It doesn't co-opt me into that movement. And David Bus, the evolutionary psychologist, he had a look at the stats around sexual assault from men, and there are a very small number of men that conduct a massive number of sexual assaults. So it is not all men. Absolutely. and one of the points of the book is to actually to look at these forms of

resentment, both from women towards men and from some men towards women, right? So I look at the extreme kind of resentment positions and say this isn't the way to proceed, actually. It doesn't make sense to blame an entire sex for your failings or to generalize in this way. So I agree with you. Again, the question for everybody is how do we prevent these terrible things from happening? You know, is it how do we identify these tendencies in this very small number of men in particular?

And I don't know the answer to that. I mean, that seems to me a question for criminologists and psychologists and also in the way that we think about community and how we live together. Like if we were living in a smaller community and we all knew each other, we might have more of a sense of when someone was behaving awfully or if there was somebody who needed

protecting from themselves or from others, you know, rather than this kind of more atomised way that we do live in which we walk around a city and we don't know people, that we are surrounded by strangers, because I don't think it's very healthy to live in constant fear. We've also had two years of a kind of fear narrative being promoted by the government which explicitly admitted. And I think this encouraging of encouraging feelings of fear doesn't benefit people at all, it doesn't benefit us. It does benefit, you know, I don't know, businesses who make

money of people ordering offline and, you know, off the internet. And, you know, a general sense that people are isolated and lonely and atomised, you know, and none of that is good. So, I think there needs to be more open discussions, you know, and none of that is good. So I think there needs to be more open discussions, more conversations, more listening, more understanding of both men and women, you know, and if men or women get angry at certain point about how they think they've been treated or something bad, then there has to be stages after that, you know, that can't just be the, you know, the only move. Why is it that we've got this very low resolution view

at the moment of people? What is it about the current world that's meaning that it's all men, all women, all police, all black people, all disabled people, all intergender people? Yeah, I think it's a divisive logic of the media in many ways. We've You know, we've seen people demonized or characterized in this way in terms of groups. Like it's very, very useful for the

powers that be if people feel divided among themselves. Like, you know, I remember Raive, right, in the 90s, and this was great because there was this kind of collective experience, you know, not everyone went to Raive, I was a little bit young, but it was like an atmosphere where you would meet people who were different and difference was cool, you know, and it was nice to meet people who were different. You didn't think, oh, I'm different from that person, therefore, they're evil and bad and I must hate them, you know, it was a kind of recognition of difference that wasn't divisive. And I think, you know, what do the media want to do? They want to sell papers and they want to sell things.

So the more polemical and the more generalizing, the more polemical mean. Oh, sort of taking one side in a very fierce way. So like a polemic is like a kind of, you know, an angry, screen written against. So I could have written a book that was like a polemic against men, you know, I could have written, I hate men, or whatever. But it's not true, right? a polemic against men, you know, I could have written I hate men or whatever, but it's not true, right?

It would have been a lie, you know, there are many men I love, so it would have been ridiculous. But, you know, it's a form of writing if you want to say something in a kind of over the top sort of way. And I think, you know, the media thrives on these kind of generalizations and these kind of like claims because they precisely because people will click on them and they'll be irritated and you know. So I think the more we step away from those things and we think about what's real in our own lives, like the people we know, our friends, our partners, our families, you know, the better. And I think a lot of this is also about turning people away from their families and dividing them in that way. So I think the family should be much more, I don't know,

prominent and celebrated as a form of, even as a form of resistance against the state and against the incursions of a world that makes you want to think that we're all enemies. What about the patriarchy? Well, there's a chapter in my book which discusses this and I say that I think the way in which it's generally used in the casual way today is completely meaningless, if not sort of actively unhelpful. It doesn't really take into account questions of class. There are many men who don't have power, however we define that. There are many men like I talk about the opioid crisis in America, which is overwhelmingly affects poor working class men in their suites, and we

know about that for a few years, and the suicide rates and so on. So there is this kind of question about, well, if the patriarch exists, where does it exist? Does it exist in the bodies of individual men? Are you a patriarch? Are you oppressing me right now? But also, I go back and look at the original meaning of it. So if you look in the Bible,

you have these patriarchs like Abraham. And actually, what a patriarch is, is someone who takes responsibility You know and looks after his family is someone who is actually the adult in the room and Actually, we have a culture that encourages both men and women to behave like children and infantile demanding toddlers for as long as possible. You know, that's what consumer culture is so and actually nobody really wants to take responsibility because taking responsibility for yourself might mean, you know, getting fit and looking after

yourself and not acting like a dick and taking responsibility for other people would involve things like telling people to stop, you know, like you've had enough or let's go home now or whatever. And a lot of people don't want to take that role either. So actually, with there's a sort of lack of patriarchy in the old sense, which is people taking responsibility, as well as there being a lack of actual fathers, you know, why do we live in a culture in which it's okay for fathers to abandon their children? Right, it shouldn't be okay at all. Why is it that this problem that we are seeing to do with masculinity and this sort of man hating? Why is that accelerated so much within what? The last maybe 10 to 5 years?

Is it me too? Was me too the sort of match that ignited this? Well, I think it was happening before that. I mean, I remember a long time ago, there were all these discussion about whether men were over. Do we still need men? Why don't we just have a sperm bank or something? And, you know, that was the real radical feminist approach, right? Wasn't it the 1970s or something that every, even the non-lesbian feminist were turning lesbian

because they didn't, they wanted to prove that they didn't need men? There was always a very small minority. And I do talk about separatism in the book, but there's also forms of male separatism like men going their own way. And you know, this is also a small movement, but it's interesting to compare them. Yeah, and it's weird actually,

because I think the stereotype of the second wave feminist as this kind of angry man hating woman was never actually true, but now it is true. So like if you're second wave feminist, this is kind of angry man hating woman, was never actually true, but now it is true. So like if you're a liberal feminist, like you are, you do hate that. You become a cliche of yourself. Yeah, and actually, I don't think the second wave really did hate men because actually a lot of it was about getting rid of gender expectations and that was also for boys and for men. It was like saying, you know, we should all be able to express ourselves more and that gender is harmful, gender as in social expectation is bad for both men and women

and boys and girls, right? So it wasn't just, oh women need to do better, it was like actually, if we change the framework, it'll be better for everyone, men included. So I think, like I say, I think the media has encouraged this kind of, you know, divisive hatred, which isn't real, but does have real effects, you know, in terms of how people think. And I was just looking at some videos of women who are upset about how they're treated on dates or something, and by the dating apps, and you know, they're sort of outraged that these acts somehow have permitted these men to behave in ways that like a quite caddish and it's like you're literally on like a hook-up app like what do you expect? So I don't know it's

very very weird but they're sort of they're sort of like a permission given to to I don't know, be outraged about male behaviour, even in a culture in which that's obviously encouraged. So it strikes me, if you really wanted to meet like a nice man, and you didn't want to have to go through all of this like rigmarole of the dating apps and whatnot, like you'd be better off like going to church or like joining a gardening organisation or taking a whole be... You know, like something in the real world, near where you live, in which you would meet people in a more random way, you know, not through the art,

not through mediation, not through the computer, which has all your data, you know, but rather in real life, like people used to do. That's obviously quite a radical thing to say that you shouldn't just meet people online, but I think a big part of that is we've nerfed the potential or most of the potential for the pain of rejection by using social media and Tinder and Bumble and stuff like that. Because getting ghosted on a dating app is painful, but it's not as painful as walking

up to somebody in a bar and then rebuffing your advances, especially as a guy, remembering that 86% of women say that they want the man to be the one that makes the first move. Now if you wait until the man does that in real life, the terror that goes through a guy's head before he has to walk up to a girl in a bar and say, hi, what's your name? Would you like me to buy you a drink? That is a kin to like jumping out of an aeroplane. And that selects for a very particular type of man as well. There is a subsection of men that are the ones that go up and do most of the asking. And there

is a huge swat of them that just stand on the far side of the bar making shifty eye movement, desperately hoping that you're going to catch the right at the same time so that they can sort of, I don't know, like motion you over or something? No, sure. And I do talk about the changing fortunes of the pick-up artists, the fact that it's moved from real life to online. And the riskiness of the early days, where it was, as you described, but also things like people used to meet their future spouses at work and now this is all these edicts about

flirting or you know asking your co-workers out, right? And do people even work in offices anymore? Or do they just sit at home, you know, on the computer? So the possibilities for meeting men and women, you know, men and women meeting have become more difficult as well. They become more restricted, they become more paranoid, they become more anxious and sensitive. So, yeah, I mean, I obviously, I'm not saying, you know, people who use apps are wrong, but I just mean it's definitely changed in some very negative ways. And I think on some level, we have to admit the life is risk. Life is, you know, it does involve pain and rejection. You know, everyone's been rejected. It's, of course, it's horrible, right? But it's also something that makes you

stronger and, you know, and if you, I think if people make themselves interesting and they have, you know, like, they read books and they have hobbies and they, you know, they look after themselves and they're good, they're vis and they look after themselves and they're visibly good with their friends and family, that's really attractive. But I also would say that women are being encouraged too often to think that they must find the perfect man. And this is also really dangerous and destructive, whereas actually if what you want is a life and possibly a family with somebody who is stable, you know, kind, you know, it's not going to be the

fantasy of an alpha. It's going to be a nice, normal man who has all of these social ties and these forms of security and is thoughtful and loves you for who you are. So I think there might be a kind of pragmatic need for people to just think, well what do I want? What do I actually want from my life, you know, instead of fantasising that they're going to marry a prince or whatever. What did you learn about the Manusphere and Red Pill? Well, yeah, so it's quite a lot. All these different stages that there are. I looked, I was quite interested in this story of Rooosh, who's this pickup artist who's converted to Christianity and has kind of turned his back on

this life of anonymous in discriminate sex and it opens up the question of whether what was he looking for when he was doing that, What is actually going on in that kind of thing? I mean, it seems a bit... Imagine an awkward conversation where you've managed to pull someone and they've put out, and then you're like, oh, actually, I like you. I want to have a probability of relationship. I should probably let you know I use these tricks.

I read in a book to get you to... Like, that's awkward, right? And Neil strives obviously to expect this as well, you know, it's sex for its own sake is like a bit banal actually. And so yeah, so I think there are all these different kinds of pills, obviously, like blue pill, red pill, purple pill, pill black pill black pill is pretty good god pill god pill the god pill white pill clear pill courtesy of it so yeah I don't know I mean I think I was interested in what the forms of resentment actually were like whether there was actually material basis for the kinds of resentments that we would associate with the men's rights activists, right? So I was prepared to sort

of take these grievances seriously and some of them are kind of correct, you know, men do dominate the most dangerous jobs, for example, right? If we're talking about equality in the workplace, do we really want more women to, you know, workers tree surgeons or on oil rigs or whatever. Like, you know, there are obvious limits when we talk about equality, you know, in the workplace, another areas of life. You know, I think to go deep into male resentment is interesting.

You do end up with like McDow, you know, on the one hand, like these kind of neo monks who are like men who are sort of like not religious necessarily, but basically saying, I don't want any part of this. I don't want to go down the dating room, I can't be bothered. I think that women are gold diggers, you know, they point out that lots of men don't reproduce and lots of famous men don't have children, and they kind of celebrate this form of like, I don't know, Volsau, you know, voluntary celibacy. You're now part of an illustrious group that stretches back through history. Yeah. Why did you find that most men joined MeekTow or whether some common trends that you discovered for that? I think some of them were definitely upset by a particular

relationship going south and that this had kind of colored their impression of women as a whole. You know and I think you know like I say at the extremes there are a very small number of women who do hate men and they maybe. And and a very small number of men who who do hate women and they may think that they have good reason for doing so. I mean obviously if you're a woman who's been hurt all her life by her family or by men that she's met You might have some ground for grievance, right? So I'm not denying that there is harm I'm not denying that people are upset and you know with good reason and sometimes There is justified resentment and hatred But I actually think that's not the vast majority of people. I think those positions are very extreme.

And the same would go for MIGTOW. This is a very small group of men. Some of whom are just not interested in women. That's also fine. And obviously the book focuses on heterosexuality and heterosociality. So I explicitly say I'm not talking about gay men or gay women.

But I think the comparison with humorous separatism is quite interesting. You know, is it possible to live in a given that we live in a very mixed world, to live separately? You know, what does it mean to try to live whilst minimizing your contact with your opposite sex? Is there a difference with how the women's separatists of whatever the 1970s are framed versus the mig towers of the 2020s? I mean, I think they're both maybe looked upon with some bemusements by the vast majority of people.

I think they're very interesting ideas. I think they're always temptations or tendencies in human thought. And I'm sure at some point everyone has thought, God, I wish I could live without the opposite sex or something. And I mean, one of the interesting things I suppose I found out was, so sometimes men, if they start to sort of work on themselves as it were, they get fit and they go to the gym. And like initially for some of those men, it's about becoming more attractive to women

but actually the further they go down that route the more they're just interested in looking after themselves for its own sake or hanging out with their bros or you know being part of a kind of masculine or male group and it stops becoming about women actually which paradoxically would probably make them more attractive if you're reserving. But yeah, so I think, you know, there are different kind of stages and phases, but I think most people know and want to live in a mixed world. But I do think we might need to have a collective conversation about whether there should be more sex segregated spaces and whether it's actually better sometimes for men to spend time with men alone

and women to spend time with women alone. That brings up some bad histories there, right, of men having holding seats of power, not permitting women into men's working clubs, were important and commanding conversations were taking place. Yes, absolutely. I don't think there's a simple solution to this question at all. I think women have sort of been in politics in the UK, or at least having representation at the highest level, for only about 100 years. So it's not been long, and I think it's not been an easy ride, either. I think they're very, very complicated,

metaphysical, legal, political and philosophical conversations about what it means to live in a world where both men and women want to speak about their own position at the highest levels and want to have their needs and differences recognised and treated fairly in law. There's a very ongoing contemporary conversation about what even the words men, man and woman mean, which is further complicating things. So, but I wonder if there's a way which we could maybe revisit some of those questions and say, well, you know, maybe some of these places that we made into mixed things, maybe it was maybe there it's better if they we move back to

segregated time. I just think I think just enabling it, you know, without without being given the label of whatever awful version of this from the past, that there's a big difference between having a high class Westminster post house of Lord's bar that only the guys can go into and saying I want to have a snooker club in the West end of Newcastle where I can go with my mates and we can talk about guy stuff. There is in many gyms now there are women only sections where girls can go and train and that's because they presumably feel more comfortable just being around the women and you think okay well that's that's cool but if you were to open a male only gym I think that that might get a little bit more kick back. Can i just get you to flick your light on for me, Nina? Oh sure. Lovely. Thank you. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a complicated conversation, right? And it's got to be a collective one. But I also think there's a role for like

tacit agreements, you know, like if we, if we, if a place is basically male dominated, you know, we don't, you don't need to officially make it so, but if it is in practice more or less like that, then I think it should be left alone and the same would go for women's places. Obviously, people can privately associate with who they like. That's one of our great freedoms. It's freedom of association. I just think it's really important because otherwise we end up all the time with in a mixed world and that can be quite difficult as well. And I think men and women both

need time to themselves as well. What do you learn about in cells? Yeah, so I again, I try to sort of think about it sympathetically. Again, this is a group of men who are demonised everywhere you look in the media, you know, that these sort of few high-profile, so-called in-cell murders are often used to demonise the whole group and to say that anyone who reads in-cell forums or posts on these forums is therefore guilty by association, you know, and this is a common political tactic that we see all the time now. It's like, well, you know this person who knows this person or you read this therefore, you're sort of tainted.

And it's a very bad political and rhetorical gesture. But so I basically say, well, in a way, what are the in cells one? Right? They want a girlfriend. Like, is that so awful? I mean, you know, and actually people like Jordan Peterson, you know, who are very popular, very hated by the left in general. Actually, I think are actually good for women

because they're saying to young men, stop blaming your mother, stop blaming the fact that you don't have girlfriend on women in general, sort yourself out, tidy room in all of those basic things that like a father might say. And actually this is much better, it gives people the sense of freedom and autonomy, it means that they're not reliant on other people for their happiness, and again paradoxically, that would be make it more likely for them to meet someone and have a, you know, that kind of life. So, um, yeah, I think the in cells actually are very sympathetic in the main, you know, I think.

And there's a very good documentary called TFW Node.gf by Alex Liamoyer. So that feeling when no girlfriend, wish in set in America, where she interviews a lot of these young men who post on Intel forums and make memes and actually really funny and really clever and inventive. And they live in like terrible places, like they live in really impoverished working class towns where all of the industry is gone, you know, and it's really a question of class in a lot of ways. You know, you've got these liberal elites having a go at men living in deprived, dispossessed areas. You can't afford to move out of their mom's basement and you know, going, ha ha, you know, look at these sad young men, right?

And it's actually like, no, these men are like not sad in that way. You know, they've already suffering and struggling, you know, like, I don't know, this idea that you're sort of permitted to laugh at them is just kind of... Well, there's something fundamental about that, right, that what you're laughing at is that as a man, one of the primary things that you should be able to do is attract women. That's why the insult of calling somebody an in-sell is supposed to sting, right? Primarily, one of your functions as a man is to be able to attract women.

And if you can't, that somehow makes you less of a man, it makes you kind of this sort of subgroup. Interesting what you say is well about Jordan Peterson. So recently he went on a podcast and they asked him about what does he think about the modern dating market, some question to do with that, right? And typically, as I'm sure that you've become familiar with on Red Pill and Manusphere places,

the typical answer that you would get or want to hear on those channels is, we're all about hypogamy, women are setting their sights too high, they are overeducated, they are overemployed, they're earning too much, they need to raise themselves back down, they need to lower their standards, basically. And Jordan said exactly the opposite thing.

He said about men, you know, if you are consistently entering into interactions with women and all of the women have a problem, the problem isn't the women, the problem is you. Like you are the common denominator between all of those different situations, you're the thread that runs between them all, not the women. And that's a really unpopular thing to hear. And yet, this is a guy that only three years ago was being lambasted as the darling of the manosphere who was going to co-opt people into migtow and in cell and objectifying women and so on.

And you think, you can't have it both ways. Like the guys either making man-beteraries, making man worse. And from what I see, he says things that are uncomfortable for people to hear, which is take some fucking personal responsibility for your outcomes in life. Yeah, exactly, which is why I say that he's good for women. That there is a kind of feminist defense

of Jordan Peterson, you know, and I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, but he's also kind of tapping into a kind of Christian tradition and, you know, a tradition of kind of morality and virtue. Monogamy. So, huh? And monogamy. And monogamy, yeah, which is also kind of eroded by the current culture, you know, which

is consumerist and hedonistic. And, you know, so I think a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that there is something wrong with liberalism, you know, we all need to sort of look at what's happened and where we're at and how we treat each other. And maybe revise some of these fantasies of freedom that we've been sold. Do you think that the sort of dominant liberal culture makes women unhappy? I think in some cases yes I think it's it's not obvious that the apex of female existence involves being kind of like well-paid and lonely and you know I mean for anybody because because we're human beings we're social beings. And so obviously I'm against this system in general,

and I'm against it for men, and I'm against it for women. And I think it's, yeah, it's sad when we're not more sympathetic to each other, and we're not more in touch with each other, and we think that success is like getting a well-paid job in the city. That's the peak of what you're supposed to achieve in the modern era. Yeah, I mean it's just rubbish and most people have a breakdown at some point in your way because they realise that it's rubbish. I had Greg McEwan on the show author ofism, and he's been paid to work with these huge company, Disney executives, Nike executives, you know, the peak of the peak of the peak in terms

of people that have been hard charging, type A, go getters. He said he was working with this one executive who had said to him that he'd been, he'd finally got the position that he wanted, board member at some huge company. And This guy had been doing, you know, 80 hour weeks for 20 years, and Greg sits down and they're gonna have this conversation. And he said, my son won't talk to me. And Greg was like, well, I thought, I'm having this conversation,

you've just made your board member thing. He said, yeah, but my son's left, the house. My son won't talk to me. He's like, okay, what's the problem with this? How can we move forward? So, well, it turns out that for the last 20 years, all I've been doing is working, and I've had my ladder leaned up against the wall

that I really thought that I wanted to climb, and now it turns out that my ladder's leaning up against the wrong wall, and I now don't have a relationship with my son and this guy broke down and said, well, I would give it all back if I could have this relationship with my child, but you've missed it and that child's now 20 years old or something and that's gone. You don't get to have that relationship anymore. Yeah, no exactly. And I think a lot of people are realising what's important in life, and it isn't work. It's your family and your friends and looking after yourself and enjoying nature and being outside. I don't think we need more people to do more things. We need more people to do fewer things. To sort of cheer out, of course, there's always economic

pressures. And that's another side of it. We need to think about ways in which people can live and live well and have families if they want to have them, you know, without this kind of endless struggle and churn and, you know, just night there. Why is it that any male movement seems to get associated with the far right? Yeah, this is an interesting question. I don't directly talk about the political dimension in the book, but I do that for a good reason, which is to say, I didn't want to go down this whole route of discussing this supposed association, but I think it reaches absolutely of third levels. I don't think it's true, by the way.

I think this is a kind of left liberal smear. I mean, women who say that women exist are now called far right for God's sake. You know, I mean, this is like the use of the words Nazi and fascist and far right are so removed from reality and actually offensive historically. You know, the idea that anyone who disagrees with this very specific left liberal position, which was invented five minutes ago, is like somehow a member of the BNP or whatever, I mean, it's insane. There are so many people who now are so politically dispossessed, including a lot of women, and the whole of Mumsnet, for example, are hardly members of stormfront or whatever. It's mental. There's a kind of

general political problem with the rhetoric, but even something like no fab, like this movement for men who want to stop masturbating and watching porn, which I talk about in the book briefly, and I think it's a great idea, and it seems really supportive. That's been now designated a hate group. You are kidding me. No, no, and you're like, this is absolutely mental, No, no, and you're like this is this is absolutely mental, you know this you know No, far no far has been designated a hate group a bunch of men that are focusing on not touching the penis all day are a hate group. What do they hate other than their own penis? Well, I suppose the implication might be that they they use some of the same forums or that they you know I don't know that they but they must hate women because if you don't want to masturbate to horrible images of women on drugs, you know, being filmed, like, then for there's something wrong

with you and you're some sort of misogynist. I don't know, it's mental, you know. I think the other thing is like, people need to, these groups, these sort of anti-hate group groups, which are actually themselves hateful, and they need to create Nazis, right? They need to say, you know, more and more people are Nazis, because that's just what they do. Like, they need there to be all of these apparently hate-filled people that they're on. In fact, you know, there are just people who disagree, which is reality, you know.

So, yeah, you have this kind of like hatred, production, industrial, complex, you know, where these, all these people are running round going, like, these people hate, and, you know, and you're allowed to hate the people who hate. That's the other paradox of this. So is it a case that calling someone far right is now just a easy to accuse difficult to get off you piece of slime that can be thrown at basically anybody that you seem to have a viewpoint, which you're not very happy with. Yes.

Right, okay, and that's why men that decide to not engage with women, men that decide to do semen retention, that gym culture as well, I've seen, is associated with a slide like a gateway to the alt-right, going to the gym. And you think, fucking hell, so you, I heard you talk, it's not in the book, but I heard you talk about the purest spiral on another show. Can you explain that? Because I was really interested. Yeah, I mean, it's not my idea. It's obviously been around for a long time. I mean, there are the people. But it's the first time that I heard it. So not obviously to me, which is why I need you to tell me. I just want to make it clear that it's like,

I, you know, I didn't come up with it. But yeah, so I suppose it's this idea that in like every group or every movement, there comes a point at which participation is somehow improved by becoming better at being part of that group, right? So let me put it this way. So like a week group, if you want to prove your credentials in a group, let's say a religious group, you're part of a religious movement and there are rules and principles in the movement. Those people who really want to do well would be very strict about those rules, right? They would be like, I'm following these rules, I'm a better ex than you, you know, I'm a better cult member than you because I'm more adhering to the rules and to demonstrate my loyalty to these principles or these rules, I'm going to start

expelling the people who are not living up to these standards, right? So you create the outgroup, you're like you're in the in group and you start to create the group, you make the group stronger by becoming purer and purer, right? So you expel all of the members that have, you know, transgressed or they're not following the laws of a letter, but only the spirit. So, so a lot of people have suggested that parts of the contemporary letter become like this, you know, that actually people was dead in determination to adhere to the rules, whatever the rules are, these new mantras that were all

supposed to agree with, we're not supposed to question them, you just have to repeat them. This idea that there are, you know, some groups are more oppressed than others and we must kind of, you know, focus on our attention on the most oppressed and here's the list of who are the most oppressed people. And so some people get really fanatical about doing that, you know, like I want to be the best leftist activist, you know, I want to prove my credentials and in order to do that then it will involve things like expelling people, you know, hounding people who disagree, you know, manifesting your loyalty to the group and so on and so forth. But it becomes like a kind of spiral because it sort it starts eating itself.

And some of these groups become circular firing squads, where it's like who will be left standing? Because everyone gets taken out. There's an interesting insight from a guy that I had on the show where he said that an absurd ideological belief is less about the belief and a lot more about signalling to your in-group that you are compliant and signalling to your out-group that you are someone to be contended with, that people don't have ideas, ideas have people. Yes, I think that's a very, you know, useful way of looking at it.

And I think it was Rob Henderson who came up with his luxury belief, I think. Shout out Rob Henderson, that's the Rob Henderson bell for today. Everybody loves that guy at the moment. He's so hot right now. Oh, I just want to cite him, you know, because if people come up with a good concept, you know, it's good to try and remember who said it, you know what I mean? Because like all these things circulate. Shout out Rob. I told him about your book today. Oh, really?

I sent him a photo of your book and I said, you need to read this and he said, looks great, gonna read it. So. That's kind of you. Well, there you go, you know. So I think he was the one who popularized it, so I do luxury beliefs, which is kind of what you're talking about, you know, so it's like who can afford to say things

that are manifestly absurd as a demonstration of loyalty, like as you put it, to the end group. And yeah, so we need less of that, and more nuanced discussion, more recognition of the complexity of life actually. And yeah. Is asking men what they want a bit of a unique question? It seems to me that women don't really think about that mostly because for the most part women are protagonists sexually in terms of relationships.

And even if you look at the manosphere a lot of the time, they're not really that concerned with the focus on raising up or understanding men that are concerned with women's biases and foibles and kind of pointing that out and making sure that they know about it. Yeah, I mean, I think in the end, what's maybe more realistic where we're looking at it is that what men want and what women want is our deep, tied together. It's not that men and women necessarily always want exactly the same thing, because they're not exactly the same.

But none of us would be here if there wasn't some kind of cooperation, and at least some of the time, some form of coming and at least some of the time, you know, some form of coming together and some cooperation and some compatibility. However, short-lived, right? Like we're all the product of, you know, those kinds of encounters, you know, and hopefully it'd be better to encourage situations where people remained loyal, you know, looked after their children and all of those sorts of traditional things. I don't think anything is gained by further eroding the family structure. I think we do get on. I think it's a complicated game. I tried to talk about it in a lighthearted way. I think there are lots of different games

that men and women play all the time. To reduce them just to the mating game or whatever play all the time. And to reduce them just to the mating game or whatever is, isn't true, either. It's not realistic. It's not like what are the games? Well, just linguistic games, conversations between friends, not all of the time we spend with members of the opposite sex has anything to do with sex. We might be in situations where we're at work and we have to get along with people that we, you know, we might not otherwise spend time with, but we still have to have some form of, you know, playful interaction, you know, and I suppose I'm interested in a world that is, recognizes more of these ambiguities and these kind of complex and often poetic situations and makes them like hearted, right? Because men and women might be seen as the solution

to each of the sexist problems, right? We might think that our quest for meaning will culminate in meeting the appropriate member of the opposite sex, but neither men or women hold the secret to the solution of the universe, right? It's not like one party knows what's going on and the other doesn't. Like neither men or women really know what's going on. It's like a collective process of trying to work out together.

So in that sense, like it is kind of absurd and it is kind of cosmic and it can be really nice and fun and playful. It doesn't have to be grim and suspicious and, you know, as if you're trying to crack some kind of medieval code, you know. It's interesting. I really don't know sort of what, I don't know what situation has occurred where so much humor has been lost from society in like such a short amount of time. And it's not even if you take it out of, you're talking about play and games and stuff, even if you take it out of non-mating and put it back into mating, stuff like flirting

as a function, a really important function for young guys and young girls to learn how to effectively and attractively communicate with the opposite sex. You know, if you're in a place of work, now that's a no-no, and there's a lot of articles that I've read online talking about why men should basically never approach women. I've spoken to guys, this was a real eye-opener to me. I spoke to a guy 18 months ago who was 20 years old and we ran a bar and I was a real eye-opener to me. I spoke to a guy 18 months ago who was 20 years old, and we ran a bar, and I was saying,

hey man, like the two good-looking girls over there, should we go up and speak to them? And he honestly looked like I'd suggested that we go and murder them. He was like, no, no, no, no, no way. No way. Like, what'd you mean? It was just they're not fucking Medusa.

It's just, there's two girls. And he couldn't believe he's like, no man, I've been told, I've been told like, do not, do not approach a woman if she doesn't make the first move. And I thought, well, I mean, there's a lot of different reasons about why the population crisis may be occurring and that this may be the time on the planet with the most number of people that there's ever going to be. And maybe it's all because of that. Maybe it's just because men of shedding themselves and not going up to speak to

women anymore. Yeah, maybe. I think yeah, I think we all have to ask ourselves, like who benefits from a world in which men and women are too afraid to speak to each other, right? It's not us, it's not men and women who benefit from that. It's other people who are going to make money off your anxiety, so you're going to be able to control you, who are going to be able to feed you, media narratives that tell you that this sex is horrible, and this sex is horrible, and this group is horrible. Do you know what I mean? It's a way of controlling, I I think interaction as such, you know. Like for example with touch, there are loads of different ways of touching people. Some cultures are really tactile. You know, Britain is not

a very tactile country, but if you have, even on top of that, if you have a kind of suspicion or a paranoia about how touch might be perceived, like, oh, what if that person perceives it as a sexual thing when it's not, you know what if that person perceives it as a sexual thing when it's not, you know, and so basically you end up with a world in which everyone is too afraid to do anything, right? But this is a terrible world, right? Imagine the most afraid person, hypothetical person, the person who wants the most safety, who never wants to be in any risk, that they've never taken, never confront danger, like that is a bad world, right? And we don't want the world to be modelled risk that they've never taken, never confront danger, like that is a bad world, right?

And we don't want the world to be modeled on the fear of this hypothetical person, right? So there has to be this kind of gray area, which is open yet, and misunderstanding, people making mistakes. You know, that's why Christian culture makes more sense because it's like saying, look, everybody's flawed, everybody's broken, right?

No one's perfect. People make mistakes, right? We're all capable of transgressing. But at the same time, we can also forgive each other. We can also ask for forgiveness from each other, from God. We can atone for our sins. We can become better people.

This is why I talk about goodness in the book. Like it has to be possible for men to be good. Ideally, we all want a world in which we are all better people, you know, and it is possible to improve in loads of different ways, right? Rather than simply saying, oh no, this entire category of people is just doomed to be, you know, awful. It's like an original sin, pure, technical approach. Yeah, exactly, but again, without the forgiveness and atonement and all of those things that are possible so it's like it's all full it's like the worst bits of Christianity with none of the good bits and these people

don't even understand that they're sort of acting in this fanatical way you know so I think we just have to get on with it and I think a lot of it is going to be breaking away from the internet you know I think there's going to be a third summer in love people are going to be breaking away from the internet. I think there's going to be a third summer in love. People are going to come together. Maybe this year, after two years of this pandemic nonsense, we will have big party. One of my friends, Morgan, tweeted at the start of this year,

where 20% of the way into the 20s, can we start roaring yet? Because that's what we were told, right? To the back end of 2019. Oh, it's kind of been all sort of withheld and puritanical and everybody's been making judgments of each other, but the 20s are coming back, you know, we're getting, and then, you know, I don't think that COVID has made that much of an impact when it's come to the identity stuff. It's given people more opportunity to be online and on the internet, which has maybe made them more neurotic, but like this is just the path that everything was going on in any

case. I know, I mean, I really naively thought when the sort of pandemic stuff started when it was March 20. 20. Yeah. That people would put all that stuff to one side and go, oh, actually, you know, we've been fighting over stupid stuff. Oh, Nina, you idiot. Did you think that a global pandemic was going to remind us of our common humanity? What are you some sort of fucking simpleton? Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Apparently, yes. But yes, you're right. It did turn out to be some kind of like, you know, continuation of the same, but worse. No, to catalyst, it's a catalyst. We don't come together in times of crisis. Two. We split apart.

Let's talk about the, is the retention, right, between what women want from a man in a relationship and then what it's sort of, it what's encouraged to be signaled publicly and popular views of masculinity? Yeah, I mean, as I say, I don't think what men and women want is necessarily that different in the end, right? I think everybody wants to be good, to be, you know, recognised, to help their friends

and family, you know, to make enough money to live and so on and have a family if that's what they want and that's this kind of thing, right? I think so what humanity wants is more or less the same. What men and women want might be slightly different in some ways, but it's compatible. I mean, from a female's perspective, that it seems quite invoked at the moment to shit on men. And yet, these are women who ostensibly need to find a man that they can love, that they can live in the same fucking house as, that they are attracted to a lot of the time, the sorts of men that they are criticizing heavily online.

Yeah, I mean, I just, this I have to admit, I do find slightly flamuxing, like I don't understand what is going on where these women are running around, like hating, actively hating men or particular male behaviors, but they themselves are participating in that culture. Like I say, if you want to find a good man, they do exist, they just don't exist on city dating apps, because the kinds of men you're going to find on there that you might be attracted to are going to be playing the field. They're not necessarily going to be wanting to settle down with you. And surely there has to be playing the field, right? They're not necessarily going to be wanting to, you know, settle down with you, right?

And surely there has to be more understanding of that, like the reality of that, it's naive. I mean, I've been naive before, but it's naive to think that you can go on these dating apps and be like, right, well, I want a husband, that's what I want, so that's what I'll get. It's like, no, you won't. It feels like the world's been made sort of increasingly

pure and malleable to the stage where everyone has unrealistic expectations about what life can deliver them now. So women want men to avoid a toxic gaze, but also 86% of women say that they want a man to make the first move or men are told that they shouldn't objectify women, meanwhile, 50 shades of gray and only fans

makes millions off the exact same dynamic. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things we have to think about in the internet age is this question of attention, right? So it's like, where can you get your attention from? It should ideally be enough if we want a monogamous culture for one person to give you their attention. I'm not saying that one person will be sufficient for all your needs. You might need friends to talk to about certain things you might need of a family, you know, there's lots of different ways in which you people spend their time. It doesn't all have to be with this one person who can fulfill all their needs and in fact, that kind of expectation is part of the problem. The idea that you're

going to find like the one, you know, it's like no, you might find someone who's like good enough and then you build a life and it would be in the building of the life that the love is real. If you say it, I mean, it's not like all at once. That's why it's wrong to think about it in this consumerist way as if you're buying a product. You know, people are not products, you know, they're complicated, flawed, difficult, brilliant things, you know, and it's more about the decision about the mutual project. Like if you find somebody wants to do the same thing as you for the next 40 years. Fantastic. That's presuming that there's something sacred in the relationship though. But there is, I mean, there should be, you know, a relationship with someone is,

is not a product, it's with everybody as unique, it would be with that specific person that you've encountered, however you've met them, and that you've both come to this kind of agreement, you know, so it's've both come to this kind of agreement. So it's both pragmatic and magic at the same time. Do you know what I mean? And it might be really difficult. That's the other thing. You can't bail at the first sign of difficulty.

That you can't return your mobile phone. This is what I meant when I said earlier on that women are being encouraged to adopt typically masculine traits in order to deal with difficulties in life because that sort of shielded, walled-off approach, get over your last boyfriend by getting under the next one, be a boss bitch, clap back, don't settle for less, men are trash, where all the good guys are like, you know, they're just, it's just a, this perpetual fucking meme farm of things that tell women not to settle because the disneyfication of relationships has presumed

that any minor inconvenience means that there's something wrong with this, you have an international, a global dating market where you can, with a £30 per year Tinder Gold membership, deposit yourself anywhere on the planet and decide to start matching with the people that are in that region. Meanwhile, the relationships that I see most of the young guys and girl, I run nightclubs for 18 to 21 year olds. Most of the relationships that I see those people having, they're masturbating with somebody else's body and neither of them know it. That's what's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't disagree. And to actually have an intimate sexual relationship with somebody, to actually have an intimate sexual relationship with somebody, you know, it can't be done quickly necessarily, right?

It's a complex thing and it's like awkward and difficult and potentially amazing and you know, this kind of fast culture mitigates against those sorts of forms of intimacy and at the same time, everyone's afraid of being intimate, you know. I mean, I was speaking to younger people about dating apps and this young guy who's very successful on them actually was telling me like, the one rule is that don't catch feelings. You know, like, that actually starting to care

about someone is like the worst thing you can do. And I was like, that's terrible. What, so you go out with somebody and you really like them and you find like them and you, you know, you find them attractive and, but, but to express that or to say, oh, I actually, I really like you, that's somehow weakness. Well, that's a, a byproduct of,

a liberal sexual society, because inevitably you're going to have lots and lots of sexual partners, multiple sexual partners throughout your dating time. And if that's the case, you're going to end up just using the person transactionally, and then inevitably you're going to move on. So the protection against being ghosted and the pain of feeling rejection is to never allow yourself to care. And then, you know, even with... But that's like training everyone to be a psychopath.

Correct. You know, I mean, this is like, this is very dangerous. This is all for me. I mean, while asking where's all of the empathy gone in the world. Yeah, I mean, we should care about each other. I mean, like, that's, that's what being human is, you know, if we regard everything transactionally, then we're just machines. And we're not machines. Like, they might want you to be machines, but we're not actually. Your left-leaning background comes through with this sort of stuff, because I don't know how much, how, when you talk about the sort of the capitalist machine that is profiting from your inherent atomization

and the individual nature and the fact that you feel alone and bored and required to open me. How much of that do you think is coordinated? Because does this line from don't look up in Netflix, which I thought was amazing? And one of the guys says, the scariest part is they're not even clever enough to coordinate the conspiracies that you think.

So how much do you think that companies and the people that are running the show are aware of the impact of this? And how much do you think that they're just sort of along for the ride on top of appropriate trends that have happened to occur? Sure. I know I think this is a perennial question that anyone thinks about what's going on. Well, it always end up with, it's like, are they malevolent or are they stupid, right?

It's like, you know, everybody ends up in it and it depends on how paranoid you're feeling as to how far you want to take it in each direction. But, you know, so I don't have some grand conspiracy theory about what's going on, but I think one of the better ways of asking this question is to say, well, what difference would it make? Given the material reality, given what we're talking about, for example, the encouragement of psychopathy, you know, this is a real material thing that's happening, right, between men and women, between human beings. We are being encouraged, whether by design or just by accident to regard each other in this way. So in a sense it doesn't matter whether people are doing it in some evil malevolence

sitting around a table, how can we program them? I mean, yeah, at the same time we do know that the elites meet up and discuss what to do. So, you know, not everything is some kind of like delirious weed fantasy, you know, like there is sort of reality to this, you know, and we must be careful about looking at who's got the money, who's got the power, who's telling governments what to do, you know, that stuff is real and you can find out about it. So at the same time, it's like in a way that question, in our experience of our own lives, we can look at our own lives and go, which tools are working for us, you know, how is this thing making me feel?

You know, am I feeling more or less alienated when I use these apps? You know, how does watching porn change how I feel about women in general? And so on, right? So I think this thing about beginning from yourself, it's like to even think for yourself in the first place, it sounds so simple,

but it's actually so difficult to think for yourself. To actually say, what do I really feel about this issue? And it might be completely different from what your friend's think or what's being said online, to actually give yourself the space and the time to think something through properly. This is really, really important. And it might mean that you decide to do something different from other people, or it might even put you at odds with other people. But everybody has to do it.

Everybody's life matters. We're not just cogs in the machine. We're not just puppets. We're not just people going along with whatever anyone else does. We're all important. And everything that we think is important and everything we do is important because it contributes to the whole, you know, which we're apart of. So I think, yeah, we have to start with ourselves and the way that

we're living. And I've had to do this, you know, I've done this in relation to alcohol, you know, destroying my life, for example, you know, lots of people struggle with addiction at some point, whether to load different things, you know, lots of people struggle with addiction at some point, whether to load different things, you know, we live in a world that also pushes things that are really bad for you, like all the time, you know, and people have to be realistic and they have to confront that and they have to be strong, and just because everybody else does something, if it's really bad for you, you shouldn't be doing it, you know, and that's also taking responsibility. bad for you, you shouldn't be doing it, you know, and that's also taking responsibility. Is that become a more difficult path to walk? Do you think recently?

I don't know, I mean, I think because a lot of people have struggled with addiction of one kind or another, once people are getting to grips with that, however difficult it is, you start to recognize it in other people, I think, you know,, I think you have a lot more respect for other people and for yourself, actually. However difficult it is, and I'm not saying it's easy, it's hard to take your life in hand, to take charge of it. You know, it's much easier just to be passive and consumerist and go along with whatever is easy. It's hard to take a stand, you know? Yeah, talking about Jordan Peterson, when I saw him live in Manchester a few years ago, someone asked him a question that was basically

the depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. Is it a blessing or a curse to feel everything so deeply? And I really, really thought, I like it's one guy's tweet from four and a half years ago. And it's still stuck with me because it's a question I think that I've asked myself a lot as well that you think, well, regressing to some lower resolution form of viewing the world, caring less,

thinking less, paying less attention, that would make life easier. It would make relationships easier, not catching feelings. You know, not catching feelings about life, would make relationships easier in not catching feelings. You know, not catching feelings about life would make life easier. And is ignorance bliss? Like that's, you know, that's a genuine question to ask. I think suffering is unavoidable.

I think life involves suffering no matter what you do. And even if you try to avoid it, or especially if you try to avoid it, there will still be suffering, right? You're never going to be able to not confront suffering in your life, in everybody's life. There is going to be at least a moment, if not several moments, of severe suffering. And I think the more we understand that, as a, you know, that life is in some ways tragic, but it's also beautiful because it's tragic, you know, and that if we understand that suffering is something that we all share and it's not apportioned out to particular groups and some groups suffer and others don't, we all

suffer. You know, it's human to suffer. And I think that's a better starting point. I actually think that's paradoxically a more optimistic starting point, you know, than saying, oh, we can avoid suffering. And we should protect ourselves because you can't. Isn't that part of the conversation between men and women as well that men suffering a lot of the time is kind of pointed at as well, but it's not as bad as the whatever, choose

your intersectional protected group that black, lesbian, disabled person that's allergic to other car does like whatever it might be like they's be a disabled person that's allergic to avocados like whatever it might be like they're they're having a really bad day. No exactly and I think there's something extremely dangerous as if there's a finite amount of suffering to go around and some people suffering matters and other people suffering doesn't right that's just not true. You know it's like suffering is suffering right and it's shared by humanity that's what I mean it's like saying women should care about the male suicide rate, because they're suffering also affects women.

It affects all of us. Well, that's a father, brother or son. Exactly. And even collectively, apart from the intimate relations and all of the pain that it causes, it's also a sorry indictment of us as a species, you know. If you've got vast quantities of unhappy people, whether they're women or men or whatever, you know, it says something about us as a whole. We should be trying to think about the reality of suffering,

you know, and then how do we collectively deal with it and mitigate it where we can, you know, but we can't avoid it. We can't fully eliminate suffering. This is where you end up with horrible dystopias where like computers are telling us what to do and you know, you all have to stay indoors and eat bugs and live in a pod and you know, then you're safe. But finally, that's not life. What are the masculine traits that you think that should be retained then? Yeah, okay. So I mean, I say, look, just because we're modern,

it doesn't mean that everything our ancestors thought was nonsense. In fact, they were like really onto something. So I talk about things like courage and loyalty, and even the very idea of virtue. You know, virtue as a word is actually tied to the word for man, like via the same word, the root word that we get verility from. So morality or virtue and masculinity are deeply tied together historically. And the idea of what it means to be a good man like for the Greeks

would be to be aware of your own strength, but not to deploy it recklessly, right? It would be knowing, having the judgment to know when to be strong. Like, that's what it would be to be a good man. It would be to be courageous but also exercise judgment. You know, not just to be like some kind of crazy warrior or something like that. Um, so it would be things to do with, you know, older virtues, but also a kind of fusion maybe of like the Christian virtues and the classical virtues, or even, frankly, any discussion of virtue whatsoever. It just to even begin that discussion and say, well, what virtues should we all be, you know, encouraged to practice, you know, and virtue is a practice. It's not just saying, I'm a good person because I think this and that,

it's a way of behaving, you know, that you have to work on. And, you know, people can change their lives, people can say, I was acting badly or I was misguided, I had the wrong idea, I was an addict, whatever, and they can go actually, no, I'm not that anymore, I'm going to make a concerted effort to do this better, I'm going to be a better father, I'm going to look after my health. I'm going to try and be kind every day, whatever it is. Everybody can make positive changes. I think the UK has a particular problem with this. I think the UK has a particular problem with high agency, high sovereignty, behaviour. It seems to me to be a very non-player character thinking behavior. It seems to me to be a very non-player character thinking community, at least in less cosmopolitan places. So in London, perhaps, less so. But you know, you go to a Newcastle

of Liverpool, a Birmingham, you know, and you've got a million people, one and a half million people or something, and no one news coming in, no one news going out, the people are born, live, and die there, and the thinking patterns follow that as well. And it's my least favorite part about the UK. My least favorite thing is the fact that it encourages other, it discourages other people from doing new things, from changing their modes of thinking and from striking out on their own. But I mean, you know, maybe to play devil's advocate, I mean, if those ways of thinking are good and kind and you know involve

loyalty and fidelity and friendship and was taking responsibility then you wouldn't necessarily need or want to change them if you thought I mean. But there's nothing good about the city or you know all London or I know honestly like in and of itself right or doing random new things right just for their own sake. You can you can lead a highly frivolous and hedonistic life, you know, I mean, it's, it's, there are lots of different ways of living for sure, and there are more ways of doing that in the city. But if you want to stay where you, somewhere that you love, with people that you love, and, you know, even within that situation, you can, if you're drinking too much, or if you're staying away from your family too much,

you can even make those changes, you can make shifts and alterations in your behavior. However small your... My point there is that I think people who would, let's say that they were drinking too much, if that's what the norm is, and in the UK we have a huge binge drinking culture, which my industry

contributes to. If as soon as you start to peel off from this and I saw this I did a thousand days sober, I did six months sober as a productivity tool and I saw first hand the way that people respond they look at you alcohol is the only drug where if you don't do it people assume that you have a problem. Like the only reason that you wouldn't be drinking is because of a dependency. And that is like a microcosm for pick whatever it is that you want to do. I want to start a business. I want to travel the world. I want to do whatever. There is a small town mentality that I think has become extrapolated across a lot of the UK. And it's stopping people from enacting what they guttually intuitively know to be true and instead making them more prone to just the race at the bottom of the brainstem, whatever the path of least

resistance is, to do what everybody else does. And that hive mind thinking, like, you know, there are people out there who would be able to make changes and be positive influences downstream on the people around them, that are terrified of doing it because of the culture that would isolate them for being the person that decides to do something differently. And when I've been in America, it is not like that at all. It is really, really not like that based on my experience. I mean, you say that, but I was recently in New York and Boston, and people were extremely conformist on the mask front and all of the COVID stuff

in a way that people in Britain are not. That's interesting, yeah. I can see that. And so that kind of shocked me too and I know it's even more politicized over there, you know, in terms of red and blue states and whatnot. So I don't know, I think it may be also in the question of age, you know, I think if people, like people do copy each other, we copy, we're very mimetic, right? We follow what other people do, if someone likes something, we're interested in it because they like it, you know, like we're because we're social creatures, you know. But I think at certain points, like if someone is going down a path that's bad for them, if it doesn't go too badly wrong and they manage to survive they They just come like crisis points and people's lives even if they're doing what everyone else does and even if they're sort of behaving in a normal way

I think at some point Everyone will have an experience with a with a crisis or something bad will happen You know their parents will die or you know some some tragedy will happen that will cause them to sort of maybe think about their life, you know, fundamentally. And that often brings about great change, you know. So, I don't know, I think I'm kind of optimistic, even on the basis of this tragic world for you, like I think I would put it that way. What about the future of masculinity? You optimistic for that? Well like I say I think you know I mean I wrote a book a book is just a book right it will be read by

ten people that's fine so I mean you know what as much as we can do I think the vast majority of things that we do that matter are in real life. It's our real life interactions with people. It's not arguing online. It's not anonymous encounters. It's who we are and how we behave to the people around us. You know, and that's real life. Like it's about that. And I think it's about having more sympathy, not buying into these media narratives of

resentment, not giving into these feelings of generalization and sweeping statement. And being reminded, the clickbait is just clickbait. It's not real. And the feelings that you have towards your father and your brother or your friend or your partner are real. Like those are the real things. As people spend increasing time online, that becomes life though. You know, screen time can outweigh real lifetime. No, exactly. Everybody has, you know, anyone who spends any time online struggles with this question, you know, especially if you're lively, who just

tied up with it and whatnot, or you have to promote stuff or whatever. I mean, I don't disagree, but if you have to sit down, if everybody had to sit down and make a list of all the things they valued, right? In the end, I doubt that very many people would put YouTube. Instagram, yeah. My father, you know what I mean? Like, you know, I think that would be very weird if people did do that. And I think, so we need to, and it is a dangerous time. I think we're heading into a more virtual world. And I think we need to be very, very careful

and critical about that. For all of its advantages and benefits and delights and shiny bubbles, like we're still human. We're still the same in many ways as people from 2000 years ago. We didn't have the fucking internet, you know, like, it's like, we've got to remember our ancestors, you know, because they weren't wrong about everything. Nina Power, ladies and gentlemen, what do men want?

Masculinity and its discontent will be linked in the show notes below. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the other stuff that you do? Oh, I don't know. I have a weird soft stack where I write... Poetry. I looked at it today. It's cool. Yes, but I think more mainstream-wise, I have a Facebook writers page. I don't know. There's just various videos on YouTube and stuff, but I don't have a Twitter or a Instagram or I don't know

I'm like Gen X, I'm sort of like between the boomers and the... Good for you. I don't know, we're a bit in the middle, we're a bit weird. I appreciate you Nina, I really, really like this book, I think it's a cool message and yeah, I think it'll have some good impact, I genuinely do, so well done with it. Oh well thanks Chris, it was lovely to talk to you.