The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 331. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution | Louise Perry

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Dr Jordan B Peterson and Louise Perry discuss the current state of feminism, the corruption of porn, the gray areas of consent, and the failure of the sexual revolution.  Louise Perry is a journalis...t and author based in London. Her first book, “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution,” was published in 2022. She is the director of The Other Half, a new non-partisan feminist think tank, and the host of Maiden Mother Matriarch, a podcast about sexual politics.

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Starting point is 00:00:25 [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in We'll have an interesting conversation about sexual dynamics and the relative role of women and men. Louise Perry, my guest today, is a UK-based journalist, author and columnist writing on the topics of sexual freedom and the current state of feminism and the feminine. Her recent book is The Case Against the Sexual Revolution revolution published in 2022. So a new book, it notes the emergence of a widespread disillusionment with sex, particularly among the young male and female alike, and discusses the long-term psychological and social error of a life of hedonistic urges in the midst of the upheaval of traditional marital concepts. Louise is also the director of the other half, a new nonpartisan feminist think tank,
Starting point is 00:01:16 the host of Maiden, Mother, Matriarch, a development and progression, a podcast about sexual politics. Hello Louise, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today. You wrote a rather controversial book recently. Let's talk about the book. I'm just going to walk through the chapters and give everybody a preview of where we're heading. So chapter one, sex must be taken seriously. That doesn't sound like much fun. Number two, men and women are different. Well, that'll get you in trouble. That's for sure, too. So, some desires are bad. Loveless sex is not empowering. Loveless sex is not empowering, consent is not enough, of people are not products. I
Starting point is 00:02:25 suppose most people on the left, even the radicals would agree with that statement, but the rest of it pretty much runs counter to I would say the juvenile delusions of our present culture. I was interested today. I was going through your book again and I noticed once again that you started with the story of Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner. And now I was just talking to my wife about that the other day. I think it was probably in a conversation motivated by the fact that this podcast was coming up. And we talked about the emergence of pornography during our lifetime, you know, and when we were both of us around 60 and when we were young,
Starting point is 00:03:13 the standard pornographic recourse, you might say, was playboy. But that soon multiplied like a Hydra and and first of all there was Playboy, and it had some pretensions to something like culture. And there was a certain style associated with it, and a certain, what would you call it, veneer of sophistication. You know, it was all jazz and penthouses and New York and freedom and youth and sexual activity between consenting adults, all free of other entanglements, but completely conscious of what they were doing.
Starting point is 00:03:55 There were high-brow interviews and sort of in jokes. So Playboy was quite effective at generating a kind of late rat pack cool around itself. But then the next iteration of the pornographic Ascent was Penthouse, and it was the harder core version of Playboy. It got a lot more gynecological, let's say. And then Hustler hit after that, and everybody knew at that point, no matter what their attitude was toward Playboy, that we'd stepped into a new sort of swamp of monstrosity. And then, of course, it wasn't long after that 15 years, maybe something like that that porn hit the internet and then away we went. So let's start talking about Marilyn
Starting point is 00:04:54 Monroe and her. I mean, she embodied this feminine archetype of sex kitten, I guess, the femme fatale too, but she's more on the sex kitten end of things. And she's still an icon. And she's an icon that even gave rise to figures such as Madonna. I would say because Madonna played with Marilyn Monroe image a lot and with a fair bit of success. But it's not like Marilyn exactly had a good time with it. So she died very young, by her own hand. And why don't you tell a little bit more of her story?
Starting point is 00:05:31 Yeah, she had a fairly miserable life from start to finish. One of the reasons I decided to open the book by talking about Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner is partly because just through good luck from my perspective as a writer, they were born in the exact same year. Mae'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n my and Heffner for his success for Playboy magazine, that they lived extraordinarily different lives and they experienced sexual liberation, so-called, in completely different ways. Marilyn Monroe grew up in foster homes,
Starting point is 00:06:15 with victims of victim of child sexual abuse and domestic violence as an adult. And as you say, Diabai, here in hand, longstanding substance abuse issues, etc. Heavner didn't suffer in that way. I mean, I do think that actually by the time Hevna grew old, he had lost the glamour that he had as a younger man. I think that he is evidence of the fact that even the most successful playboy has a shelf life,
Starting point is 00:06:44 not as short a shelf life as as the sexually liberated woman does. I mean really in reality with a modern Western lifespan, you're talking maybe a quarter of that, you might be really sexually desirable, which is why I think it's risky to place all of your self-esteem on that value or indeed to best your career, best your life around being sexually desirable because it's really not very long. Well, you know, that's a good place to take a slight detour. A lot of your book makes a moral case, and moral cases aren't particularly popular now, but there are some interesting ways of discussing morality technically that I think might be worth delving into.
Starting point is 00:07:40 So, one of the things that people who are watching and listening might be interested in knowing is that people pursue different mating strategies. So to speak, that's how evolutionary psychologists, or biologists describe it. And you can make the same case in animal kingdom to some degree. And there are short term mating strategies. And that would be associated with an ethos
Starting point is 00:08:04 of the glorification, let's say, or the practice of casual sex, so sex without relationship. And one of the questions that you might ask is, are there pronounced differences between people who tend to pursue short-term mating strategies versus long-term mating strategies. Now long-term mating strategy would be accompanied by the formulation of a relationship of mutual support. That's what makes it sustainable. And the answer is, well, yeah, there are market differences.
Starting point is 00:08:41 One of the hallmarks of anti-social personality, and so that's the personality characteristic set that is associated with criminality, is a proclivity towards short-term mating strategies, and that is associated with early onset of sexual activity and multiple sexual partners, and then in its more pathological form, a predatory or parasitic lifestyle in relationship to sex.
Starting point is 00:09:11 And so that has been elaborated more recently into the analysis of so-called dark tetrad personality characteristics. That's an emerging model of the malevolent and pathological personality. And that involves Machiavellianism, which is manipulative narcissistic, which is virtue-free attention seeking, it's a good way of thinking about it, psychopathy, which is predatory parasitism
Starting point is 00:09:41 and sadism, which is positive delight in harmed other people. And all of those delightful characteristics are associated with a striking proclivity for short term mating. And that brings up the stark realization that it's a form of exploitation. That's a good way of thinking about it. And it's fundamentally the exploitation of women, because here's a good way of defining women since we don't know how to do that in our society anymore. We might as well start with basics and throughout the animal kingdom, and this is true all the way from sperm and egg up to fully embodied being,
Starting point is 00:10:22 the female is almost inevitably the sex that pours more resources into reproduction. So that means that women have a higher, bear a higher cost for sexual reproduction in case. Anyone still too stupid to actually understand that might as well make it explicit. And what that also means is that if there's exploitation going on in a sexual relationship, it's most often, although not always, the male who has less at stake exploiting the female, who has far more at stake. And it's enticing for young women to
Starting point is 00:11:03 believe, I suppose, if they want to pursue hedonic pleasure that they can escape from that reality, but it's very difficult, too. So that's one element. Then the next element with regard to morality is, if you're playing a game that only works in a short term for others, but also for yourself, Then that's not a very good game. And, you know, the point you were making was that Marilyn was playing a particularly short game. And even Hugh, who had less to lose,
Starting point is 00:11:34 and arguably on some dimensions more to gain, he was still pretty damn pathetic by the time he hit, I would say, what, mid-50s? I watched one of his late TV shows where he was touring Europe with his three blonde bimbos who were not the world's, they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Let's put it that way.
Starting point is 00:11:56 And it was Hugh and his three blonde clones traipsing painfully from full glamorous restaurant to full glamorous restaurant through Europe, engaging in conversation so pure oil and painful that anyone with any sense would have run away from the table screaming after five minutes. So he turned into his own parody, and that was quite clear. I mean, anybody with any sense at all, no matter how much they might have been enamored by his young and hypothetically glamourous self, if you had looked at that with a cold eye a few decades later, it was looking, it was looking pretty oldest boy at the
Starting point is 00:12:38 Fratt party. It had that whole stench about it, I would say. So, all right, so back to Marilyn, you said that she had a pretty brutal upbringing and it was exploited pretty early on. You might as well tell the story about her, the famous photographs that launched Playboy. Yes, so Marilyn was the first cover star and also the first naked centrefold in the first issue of Playboy. But the naked photos were acquired without her consent. She'd taken them, well she'd had them taken many years before when she was much younger for very little money just because she was desperate. She'd signed the release with a false name, but somehow Heffner got hold of them and paid the photographer rather than her in order to publish them in Playboy.
Starting point is 00:13:25 And she wasn't even sent a free copy and was apparently very upset about it. Heffner ended up buying the crypt next to hers at the cemetery in Los Angeles, where they're both buried, obviously buried many decades after she was. But they never actually met in real life. So this whole kind of relationship between the two of them was very much initiated by him. And I mean, this is the point that I want to make with them. Talking about Marilyn Monroe, she is very typical
Starting point is 00:13:54 of female sex icons in having this kind of tragic backstory, multiple forms of exploitation by lots of people, most of the men. And yet she is held up as this iconic figure of the sexual revolution, which we're supposed to believe was a good thing. Right. And my argument in the book, it is of course the case against a sexual revolution. My argument is not that it was entirely bad. I don't think you can paint any huge historical event as entirely bad or entirely good. But I think that it was entirely bad. I don't think you can paint any huge historical event as entirely bad or entirely good. But I think that it has been falsely presented mostly
Starting point is 00:14:32 by progressives through rose tinted spectacles. And this is my attempt to counter that. Yeah, well, there's no doubt she was an iconic figure and still is. And part of the reason it's hard to say exactly why. I mean, there's something obviously hyper-attractive about her. And I heard her interviewed once in a radio station where she said she could walk down the street. I believe her, her genuine name was Norma Rae. Is that right? Norma Rae. And she said she could walk down the street as Norma Rae. No would look at her or she could walk down the street as Marilyn and then people would just be attracted
Starting point is 00:15:09 to her like mad. And so I want to run a hypothesis by you. You know, given that, that backstory for female sexual icons and this is often the case for girls who get dragged or who agree to participate in the pornography industry that, you know, they're often abandoned girls who have a history of fractured relationships and abuse. Now, so here's a hypothesis. You know that girls without fathers hit puberty one year earlier, eh? That's a real biological mystery, But here's a hypothesis. So imagine that you're bereft of male companionship and productivity and protection.
Starting point is 00:15:54 And maybe that's because your culture doesn't have enough men. Sometimes that happens after wars, for example, or maybe you're just in an economic niche or social niche where you're unfortunate, you know, so. Now, why would you develop a year early from a puberty perspective? Well, the answer is, one of the ways that women can attract male attention, obviously, and therefore, in principle, companionship, protection, productivity, all of that, and therefore, in principle, companionship, protection, productivity, all of that, that might come along with the real relationship is by being sexually attractive and available.
Starting point is 00:16:32 And so, if there's a dearth of males in the local environment then early puberty could easily be a way of increasing the probability of catching a mate early enough so you don't starve to death, let's say. Okay, so then imagine that there's a psychological equivalent to that, and this is where that wave-like femme fatale archetype might kick in, and so if you're appealingly, vulnerably beautiful and available, and then you have that magic that can go along with that when it's transformed into something truly archetypal, which Marilyn did extraordinarily well. You know, there's a bit of a little girl about her. She had a very girly voice, and that's how
Starting point is 00:17:19 she sang, and she had a kind of innocent naï innocent naive provociveness that was amplified paradoxically by her overt sexuality. She had some of the appeal of a helpless child and some of the appeal of a truly mature woman. That can be a very deadly combination. I think the fact that it's a deadly combination is also a kind of adaptation. So you can imagine that girls who are abused might turn to that pattern of seductive behavior because if they turn on the charm full throttle in that manner, it increases the probability that even in their desperate economic straits,
Starting point is 00:18:05 they might be able to attract a male. And of course, with Marilyn, that was elevated right to the point where she became literally the poster girl for that approach. And then I mentioned Madonna a little earlier. And when Madonna first came on the scene, I thought, she's kind of interesting. She seems to be taking this Maryland-like archetype,
Starting point is 00:18:25 but toying with it consciously. She was a businesswoman, pretty canny. She seemed to be in charge of her own image. I thought maybe she had a grip on the archetype, but it isn't obvious to me at all that she did. Madonna know, Madonna's life has been characterized by a continual pattern of sexual attention seeking. And she's also, I would say, turned into her own parody, even in her, I think she's in her late 60s now, if I remember correctly, she's still doing, essentially, she's still doing photo shoots
Starting point is 00:19:04 that are leveraging pornographic attractiveness. And that, I mean, that requires a lot of maintenance and makeup by the time you're at her stage of life. But it doesn't really look to me like it's aged particularly well. And that's the problem with short-term mating strategy is that it's not a good iterating game. You can't play with other people continually.
Starting point is 00:19:27 You have to have multiple partners. And it's not a good pattern for your whole life course. That's partly what makes it both immoral and unwise. It just doesn't work across the decades that you're going to be alive. So... Yes. Alright, so back to Maryland and Hugh. On that point, I decided to call my podcast Made in Mother
Starting point is 00:19:48 Matrix arc because it's my hypothesis that one of the features of late 20th, early 21st century culture is that the normal life progression that women are supposed to pass through from Made in to Mother togearch has been interrupted. And we now have a very widespread problem of women desperate to remain in maiden mode permanently. And Madonna is a beautiful example of that. She can't.
Starting point is 00:20:15 She can't find it within herself to accept progressing from maiden to magearch. And I think that's a lot of, I think the key cause of that is the fact that we don't attach status to mothers and to to made trucks in the way that we once did. I think that all of the status is loaded onto the maiden role. But it's necessarily, as you say, a role that you can't spend your entire life in. And I think that explains a lot of the psychological dysfunction that women suffer from. Yeah, yeah, well, I think that's right. So what we have is the domination, you basically laid out a three-part archetype.
Starting point is 00:20:55 And it's a archetype of transformation. And I've talked to some pretty bright women on my podcast, and a number of them have commented that as they progress along their careers and they're as they accrue productive status so let's say as mothers and matriarchs they don't necessarily attain a commensurate status particularly among young women Interestingly enough and maybe that's because the women are competing.
Starting point is 00:21:25 I suppose a woman can be attractive as a mother and a matriarch, so the maidens might take exception to that because it's a form of competition. But I do think too that our culture hypervalues, the maiden image, especially when that's allied with, it's not virginal maiden that's exactly held up as an icon. You know, even though people like Madonna will play with the idea of virginity as something attractive, it's only there as a
Starting point is 00:22:00 sexual magnet, and it's only their tongue and cheek in some real sense. And then our culture, because it's a consumer culture, and also because it concentrates on teenagers a lot, because they have disposable income, and it's really the case that our culture can consumerist oriented when teenagers started to develop disposable income. It's not surprising at all that the consumer market tilts towards the made-and-architype because that's where there's spare money to be vacuumed up. So that's sort of a perfect storm in some sense. But yeah, so our developing hypothesis here in the podcast, and obviously you've thought this through to a great degree, is that part of the reason that the sexual revolution claiming absolute sexual freedom is pathological
Starting point is 00:22:50 is because well, it enables the male exploiters, and that's not good at all, but it also isn't a good medium to long-term game. Well I would say either for women or men, I mean, if you develop a long-term partner in a woman and you're a man, you might want a woman who has enough sense to move from maiden to mother to matriarch and to do that in a manner that facilitates the development of the relationship across time. And maybe, I wonder too, if a woman who does that really well is as she progresses across that three-part track also to some degree integrates the previous stages as she moves forward.
Starting point is 00:23:34 Because it might be the case that if you're a successful matriarch, maybe that's at the point where you become a grandmother or something like that, that you've also integrated mother and even maiden and are still capable of playing those roles when that's appropriate, but are no longer only limited to them. And I'm not saying that's an easy thing to pull off because you know, it's not that hard to be, it's not that easy to be, you know, outstandingly sexually attractive, male or female by the time you're in your 60s, let's say it gets to be, you know, outstandingly sexually attractive male or female by the time you're in your 60s, let's say it gets to be, you know, old ages fighting against that pretty hard, but that doesn't mean that that can't be held forward as, you know, an unattainable ideal to
Starting point is 00:24:18 which we all might strive or at least hope might make itself manifest. And I think that's actually, I think that's actually a possibility, that you can move towards something like a full integration. Like Russian dolls, I think, is the perfect image for it. You know, the Russian dolls contains the younger, the smaller counterparts in the whole.
Starting point is 00:24:41 That's what that's the aspiration. I mean, I think part of the reason that we're so focused on the maiden role is partly as you say, because it's a very consumerist kind of product. I mean, the strange paradox, we're on the one hand, I'd say, Western society is increasingly gerontocratic in the power and assets primarily
Starting point is 00:25:01 are disproportionately held by the old. But it's also still a very, very youth-orientated culture in terms of politics, in terms of fashion, beauty, all of this kind of stuff. You have that kind of strange tension where young people are simultaneously incredibly culturally powerful, but not actually very economically powerful, which probably actually exacerbates
Starting point is 00:25:19 the feelings of tension there. I think another reason for it as well is I think that women's lives tend to be more clearly segmented by reproductive stage in a way that maybe men are less so. I think that men's lives change a bit less when they become fathers, when they become grandfathers. And I think that part of the resistance to this natural progression comes, among women, comes from the fact that so much
Starting point is 00:25:46 of feminism of the second wave has been about trying to be more masculine in every way, in a way that I think is ultimately detrimental to women. That's why I called chapter two men and women a different, because I think we have to just start from the premise that men and women are fundamentally different. There is a sexual asymmetry that is never going away. There are psychological, average psychological, but nevertheless, at the population level, they matter. There are these differences between men and women. And actually, I think that any kind of productive form of feminism has to start from that recognition that those fundamental differences aren't going anywhere. Yeah, okay, so let's focus on that now.
Starting point is 00:26:27 So now we're off to chapter two. I'm going to make a countercase for a minute, and then let's hash that out. All right, so we mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that the fundamental biological differentiator, or one of them, because there's a number, is that what makes a creature female, rather than male, is a disproportionate contribution to reproduction.
Starting point is 00:26:55 And so you even see that with the sperm and the egg. The egg is way, way bigger, across the biological universe than the sperm. And that means the egg has more resources than the sperm. And that is echoed at every stage of sexual interaction in animals and human beings. There's a few exceptions. In summary guards, like I think male seahorses care for the young, for example.
Starting point is 00:27:23 They basically have something approximating a pregnancy, but that's enough of an exception so that most people who are biologically informed know about it, it's extraordinarily rare for a male, for the male to take on that role. And so women are the half of the human race that bears disproportionate responsibility for sexual reproduction. Pays a higher cost for it. And that seems to shape everything, including mating strategies.
Starting point is 00:27:58 But here's the killer. And so we could also say that's been true for the entire course of reproductive history after the emergence of sex, which emerged a very long time ago, biologically speaking. But the pill hit, you know, 50 years ago, and was made widespread very rapidly, and what that did in principle, and to some degree in reality, was give females voluntary control of their reproductive function, really for the first time in biological history. And so that opened up a new question, and this is a question. If a woman has full voluntary control over her reproductive function, why isn't she now just a man? That's one question. Or what exactly distinguishes her from a man? Because one thing
Starting point is 00:28:57 that distinguished her was her differential role in reproductive burden, and now that's been differential role in reproductive burden, and now that's been ameliorated arguably to some degree. And then also, if reproductive function is now a matter of voluntary choice, why can't sex just be fun and free? And I would say we've been wrestling with those two questions for 50 years, and longer than that. Insofar as there's been some form of reliable contraception, but it wasn't very damn reliable till the birth control pill kicked in. And so I think it is an open question
Starting point is 00:29:36 to what degree can sex just be, you know, fun and fancy free. And also it's an open question to what degree aren't women just now the same as men. And so, well, any comments on that whole line of inquiry are more than welcome. Well, that's the promise right of the sexual revolution that we, that by introducing this new technology shock, we do erase the differences between the sexes. And I think that to some extent, if you live a very modern life, it's not just the pill, obviously, that's changed in the last 60 years. We also have very different ways of working.
Starting point is 00:30:18 People are much less likely to do manual work, at least in the West than they used to be. We live much more mixed lives. i'n gweithio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgwysio, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, ac yn yw'r sgw, your sex to body for anything, you're just living the life of the mind really, you could believe that those differences are trivial. And I think that's where we've had some very strange political ideas around, for instance, having biological males competing women's sports, you know, is seen to be a completely logical thing from people who do have essentially those lives who probably haven't actually competed in sports. I mean, you'll notice that female athletes tend to be opposed to this ymwch yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod y ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd way and I think are likely to for the foreseeable. I don't think artificial worms are just around the corner, I think actually they're a spectacularly difficult technology to develop. And also because we still have the same brains essentially, the last day in age ancestors did. We spent 95% of our species
Starting point is 00:31:54 history as hunter-gatherers is humanity's first and most successful adaptation. And I think that we can't, no matter how intelligent we are, no matter how desperately we try, I think it's very, very hard to erase those differences at the psychological level. And the response interestingly that I've had to this book since it was published is obviously hugely controversial title, the whole premise is hugely controversial. But interestingly, I haven't had nearly as much criticism as I thought I would. And I've actually had positive reviews even from left leaning outlets and so on.
Starting point is 00:32:27 I got an amazing review in the observery. I think it's because actually an enormous number of women across the political spectrum who have been offered this promise of you can live just like a man. You can have sex just like a man. They're profoundly miserable, and they do recognize that actually deep down, that promise is an empty one.
Starting point is 00:32:49 And I think there's the emotion that I've had most often for readers is just a sense of relief that someone is saying it, and that it seems as if there's now permission to say it, because I think that the effort of trying to pretend that many women are the same is ultimately ruin us to both sexes. Yeah, well, you see this weird phenomenon emerging on the left in particular, and I think it's particularly right in university campuses where you get a combination of compassion and low conscientiousness and high openness,
Starting point is 00:33:28 driving a particular political mindset. And so the compassion means, well, we're going to accept everyone and the low conscientiousness means, well, we're not bound by anything approximating duty. And the high openness means, you know, we're creative and curious about every form of potential self-expression. And then that produces this idea that all sexual drive, you have a chapter in your book called, not something like not all desire is good. And so we'll talk about that a little bit. We have this, there's this absolute clamoring insistence that every form of sexual desire and behavior is to be
Starting point is 00:34:14 valued, celebrated, and promoted, and that if you dare oppose that, you are, there's something immoral about the opposition. So that's merely a consequence, let's say, of your bigotry. But, and so, you know, and you pointed out in your book that you often get artistic types like Andre Gead, let's say, and left wing intellectuals pushing for full sexual freedom. And some of that's high openness and some of that's low conscientiousness, that's for sure. But then there's a kickback that's really interesting to me because it's the same radicals possessed by exactly the same set of ideas who make a very radical counterclaim. And the counterclaim is something like, well, every form of sexual behavior must be celebrated,
Starting point is 00:35:06 and it's nothing but a testament to the ever blossoming range of human freedom. But every form of sexual interaction between particularly young men and young woman is so dangerous right to its core that there's nothing more important than full consent. And that consent has to be documented verbally and maybe even beyond verbally, formally, for even interactions as that were once as casual, let's say, as dancing. And so at Princeton University, for example, there was a push to make men ensure that even when they're dancing with a girl who agreed to dance, that it was incumbent upon them, multiple times during the dance, to ask verbally to ensure that that once established consent was still continuing.
Starting point is 00:36:04 Now, you know, if you weren't being cynical about that, you might say, well, that's a stumbling attempt to something approximating awake politeness, because if you have any sense when you're dancing with someone, one of the things you actually want to know is, do they really want to be doing it? But it's very peculiar to me and illuminating that this insistence on negotiated contract for every step of a potentially sexual interaction is being insisted upon not by Christian apologists for traditional morality, but by the same radicals who are out there dancing three-quarters naked in the street in their dog costumes, and insisting that, you know,
Starting point is 00:36:49 every bit of sexual expression is to be lauded. My suspicion with what's going on there, with this rise of sort of a very bureaucratic attitude to sex, should we say, this idea of asking for consent at every stage and so on. I mean, the funniest example, which I mentioned briefly in the book, is an idea cooked at West University students that you would have a sign of contract
Starting point is 00:37:13 before you had casual sex, and you take a photo of the pair of you with your contracts and so on. And the joke, obviously, is, why not get dressed up in a big white dress? Why not invite all your friends? You know, it's this sort of reinvention of marriage. I think that that's basically what is going on. Right, for the day, that's the one.
Starting point is 00:37:34 I think what's going on with this reintroduction of these new rules, post-MeToo, is that complete sexual freedom is not actually a sustainable system. And what we've had for many centuries, millennia, up until the 1960s, really, is a very complicated tapestry of laws and norms, which regulate sexuality and which particularly regulate heterosexuality. Because what you're dealing with when it comes to heterosexuality is great imbalances of physical strength, the fundamental imbalance of reproductive roles, and also personality differences, and you know, all of this, which make it very, it's just inherently very difficult to deal with mating smoothly. There is a lot of heartache, there is a lot of risk.
Starting point is 00:38:22 There is a lot of heartache, there is a lot of risk. And what we have in most societies is this complex dance of marriage customs and thinking more recently in the West, to shop our own and asking of the father's hand and all of these things, which are supposed to basically control sexuality. I mean, the progressive account of this is that they repress people's sexuality to which I say yes they do but they do that because they have to because that is it completely untrammeled sexual freedom is not possible
Starting point is 00:38:55 because of you can't run a society like that and because you will inevitably have people coming into conflict with one another if that's permitted so you need people to be men and women to be repressed. I think that's what marriage does. But in a good way, you know, as a necessary step towards having productive relationships. And I think there's an attempt to kind reinvent that with this new bureaucracy, but it's not nearly as good. Yeah, yeah, well, okay, so here's the rule is that responsibility abdicated is vacuumed up by tyrants. And so if young men and young women aren't regulating their own sexual behavior, then tyrannical bureaucrats will definitely step in to have fun on that front.
Starting point is 00:39:35 But you brought up two points that we could pursue. And one is an analysis of what actually constitutes consent. And then we could start with that. And then the other one was, let me see if I've exactly got this. Oh yes, inhibition and oppression, let's say, of sexual desire. See, this is something that has to be handled conceptually, very carefully.
Starting point is 00:40:07 So there's different models of socialization that permeate the, let's say, the psychological community. And one of them is an ethos of something like inhibition and repression. And so the Freudians sort of fall into that camp that the super ego inhibits the id and squashes it down, I'd say, and that part of what makes you a social being is your ability to suppress and inhibit desires like aggression and sex.
Starting point is 00:40:43 And I don't think that's true. I only think that's true when it's gone wrong. So here's an alternative viewpoint. This is the viewpoint of people like Jean Piaget, who's great developmental psychologist. He thought of the developmental process as one of the integration. Now, you already put forth a three-stage model
Starting point is 00:41:05 of female development, and you could think about that as a continuing model of complex integration. And so the reason that sex becomes regulated isn't because it's now being inhibited. It's being regulated because it's being integrated into higher-order games. And so it's being integrated, for example, and maybe can even be celebrated
Starting point is 00:41:27 within this confined area of, or regulated area of integration. It's becoming integrated with the more mature realization that sex outside of an iterated relationship is actually a net negative, even for the parties involved, even if they're primarily motivated by their own hedonism and then hypothetically their own will.
Starting point is 00:41:51 And so it isn't inhibition that's regulating sex, and it isn't top-down social control. It's the necessity of integrating sex, which can be just a unibentional desire into a much more sophisticated symphony of social interactions. Now, when that fails, inhibition is necessary, right? So if you have someone who's acting in an anti-social manner, parading their sexuality,
Starting point is 00:42:17 insisting upon the short-term gratification at their own expense and not of others, then compulsion might have to be brought to bear. But that indicates a failure of the proper developmental pathway, rather than a manifestation of a necessarily oppressive patriarchy. And that's a much more positive vision of the regulation of sexual behavior. It's more like ordered freedom, rather than inhibition. And that also opens up another positive idea,
Starting point is 00:42:47 which is that we've thought, coiled with the idea that the birth control pill meant that impulsive hedonism could now rule, and that that would be the highest form of sexual expression. And the idiot artists who jumped on that bandwagon were certainly of that mind. But what we're seeing instead is that young men and women are turning in all ever-greater
Starting point is 00:43:11 numbers to a very casual pornography, especially with regards to the boys, to the abandonment of any relationships whatsoever. And then interestingly enough, it seems to much less sexual activity in general. I think it's 30% now of Japanese, I think it's 30% of Japanese young people under 30 are still virgins, 30% and similar figures in South Korea. And you can see the same proclivity emerging in the West. So what's happening paradoxically is that by removing all the principles from sexual interaction, not the inhibitions, but the principles, we're actually dooming the sexual enterprise rather than facilitating it even for the hedonists.
Starting point is 00:43:58 So anyways, it's very useful to know that there's an integration model rather than an inhibition model, right? Because it also stops those who might oppose the sexual revolution from just being finger-wagging conservative moralists. Because you can say, no, no, you're going to have a way better sex life in every possible way if you actually fall in love with someone and have a long-term relationship and I think the psychological the statistical data on that are pretty clear to. Most single people don't have a lot of sex. The phrase that I use in the book to describe this is that phenomenon where you on the one hand have hypersexual public life. You can walk down any street and see women in lingerie on posters or watch TV and there's very explicit sex scenes etc.
Starting point is 00:44:48 So on the one hand we've had this amazing ramping up of sexuality in public life, but on the other hand exactly as you say we have what's come to some sort of school the sex recession the fact that people are having sex later less frequently. I think what's happening generally is people are having probably more casual sex but they're having sex less frequently. a'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddodd yn ddoddodd On the one hand, we have this astounding availability of sexual stimuli at the click of a button at any moment. Anything that you can imagine is available the internet immediately. And that seems to be demotivating people to actually seek out meaningful sexual relationships, which in the long term are vastly better for us in every possible way. But we have a culture enabled by technology, which is very, very short term in every way. So people channel towards that kind of immediate relief that disincentivizes proper.
Starting point is 00:46:12 Yeah. I think the rule is something like unearned, surphite turns into revulsion. Right. It's too much of a good thing, means that it's no longer a good thing. And that goes along with an idea too, that there's something like optimal deprivation. Right? I mean, look, let's say you've just had a big banquet and someone sits you down and says, well, now you have to eat five pounds of dessert. It's like the first of all, that's not going to be a very attractive proposition. And second of all, it might actually make you ill, is that everything has to be in proper
Starting point is 00:46:49 proportion. And one of the things we really haven't contended with it all in our society is how much desperation is necessary on the sexual front to drive young men and young women together. And the answer is not zero. and the problem with pornography, one of many problems, is that it drives desperation on the male front down to zero. Now, I know perfectly well from my clinical experience that the standard state of most young men, especially under 20, let's say, is pretty much terror in the face of a woman who they're very attracted to. And the reason for that is that, oh, there's all sorts of reasons, but the primary reason is
Starting point is 00:47:32 the probability that any given male, even one who's very attractive, let's say, in multiple ways, is going to be rejected by any given female, especially a high-value female who has a lot of people attracted to her, is extremely high. So, there are classic psychological experiments showing this, you know, if you send attractive undergraduates out to talk to other undergraduates to offer sexual access, say, well, you know, would you be willing to have coffee with me? Would you be willing to give me your phone number?
Starting point is 00:48:04 Would you be willing to come back to my apartment? If the girls offer that, then whoever they're offering that to on the male front will take them up on their offer. But if the boys offer that, even when they're attractive, the probability that their advances will be rejected is extremely high. And so young men face the uncomfortable situation where even if they're competent and will turn eventually into useful men, which isn't the status of most very young men, the probability
Starting point is 00:48:37 that they'll be rejected is extremely high. And then it's also the case that there's little that's more psychologically impactful than such rejection, especially if it's undertaken by someone to whom there's a genuine attraction. So that means that boys are paralyzed into terror. I think that's not too exaggerated to term by the mere fact of attractive women. And so they slough that off and they make derogating jokes and so forth, try
Starting point is 00:49:09 to get over that, but it doesn't change the basic reality. That also means that a certain percentage of males, and it's not low, really, it could easily be like 30% or just paralyzed into utter stasis by the possibility of rejection, especially because they haven't been fortified against it with their dependency inducing upbringing. Unless they're driven forward by a certain amount of desperation, some of which needs to be sexual, they're never going to break through that barrier. And so then they can satisfy themselves momentarily with pornography. And then that turns into that host of problems you already described as, now they're training
Starting point is 00:49:54 themselves, maybe right from puberty, to be impotent, cock-hold-voyers, essentially. So that's not good training. Then they're training themselves to view women as targets of short-term gratification. So that's like training in psychopathy. And then they're also interfering with their ability to establish a relationship and also to perform sexually in a real environment. So all that seems like, you know, like a five-dimensional catastrophe. And that's going to get a lot worse in the next year, by the way, because we haven't seen anything on the pornography front compared to what's going to be coming down with the advent of AI,
Starting point is 00:50:38 because now what's going to happen real soon is that this is already underway. So imagine a sign-up service where you can talk to a very attractive young woman. And she's an AI. So she can be as attractive as you want her to be and tuned exactly to your preferences. Okay, so now there's already a service offering this by the way. So now you have a friend. And that friend can keep track of your conversations. And especially if you're alone, some are isolated. That might be the best friend you've ever had. And certainly the most attractive person you've ever talked to.
Starting point is 00:51:15 Now it's not real, but men are pretty damn visual. So it's got a long ways towards real. And then, you know, for your subscription fee, you can talk to the woman nude and then the whole avenue of sexual display is open to you. And so God only knows what that's going to do. Yes. Sex robots with the next step where you have a... Yeah, yeah. Well, and then the integration of those two things.
Starting point is 00:51:43 Yeah. Yeah, that'll be great. And then you get this going. Even in a situation where young men can feel as if they are winning at life, right, with their sex robot who's been in them all the cues that suggest fitness. But in fact, you know, they don't need to wash, they don't need to have a job, they don't need to do anything productive with their lives, because the sex robot doesn't care.
Starting point is 00:52:07 Only fans, I think, is a step along this path, because what only fans often... Yeah, definitely. ...is not just pornography, it offers a parasocial relationship, it gives the impression to customers that this woman cares about them, remembers his birthday, remembers his children's names, all of this stuff. But it's an old obviously a marriage and it's one that's purchased. And it can be completely the role of the destruction.
Starting point is 00:52:34 And that's... Right, well, and that's narcissistic exploitation on the part of the females with anti-social personality traits. And often, what would you say, aided and embedded by quasi-psychopathic pimps, electronic pimps. And, you know, those only found women that you made a very good point there.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Those are actually androids, right? Because they're not women. Now, you might say, what the hell are you talking about, Dr. Peterson? Obviously, they're women. It's like, no, they're not. They're machine women hybrids. And the machine is the technology that can broadcast
Starting point is 00:53:08 their image to millions of people. So you're not a woman anymore if you're in a million men's bedrooms at the same time. You're a woman machine hybrid. Now, it's virtualized, obviously, because it's too dimensional, and it's not embodied in the form of a robot. But the idea that that's not an Android means
Starting point is 00:53:27 that you're an idiot. That's what it means. It's obviously an Android. And there is definitely that form of parasitism on the female part. You know, these women have embodied capital. That's a good way of thinking about it. So they're young.
Starting point is 00:53:41 They don't have economic resources, but they're young and beautiful. And that's an economic resource. Make no mistake about it. In fact, it's the highest possible form of wealth. And this is another thing that the Marxist types get real wrong with their economic analysis. Because if you took, let's say, a hyper rich 80 year old woman,
Starting point is 00:54:03 and you said, well, you give away 99% of your fortune and now you inhabit the body that you had when you were 20. And then we could add to that the possibility of being stellarly beautiful, the probability that that woman would trade everything she has for that opportunity, assuming she hasn't become disenamored of life is extraordinarily high. So that also means that on the female side, and this is happening continually, female exploitation can take place with regard to men, just like male exploitation takes place with regard to women.
Starting point is 00:54:42 And those women are not doing other women a favor either by monopolizing the marketplace, let's say. No, I think that one of the ways in which women are hurt by the pretence that is widely practiced, that men and women are psychologically the same and that male and female sexuality a sy'n cylodd ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn ymdyn male sexual desire for women, there is the short term and the long term. And they are not at all the same, and that being very highly desired on the short term track does not necessarily translate into being very highly desired on the long term track, in fact, sometimes quite the opposite. And I think that the main error that women are making with thinking that only fans is a quick buck, not only is the fact that only fans is enormously unequal and actually there are
Starting point is 00:55:45 very few people on it who are making any real money and generally the ones who are making lots of money with already famous before they join the platform and so on. It's also the fact that there is the internet is forever and these images are out there and it damages your long term mating prospects to have been on only fans. And actually, I mean, it is clearly the case that female beauty is incredibly valuable resource. But I think maybe the way in which it needs to be understood distinctly from economic power is it is to some extent for Careus. You can acquire enormous power as a beautiful woman
Starting point is 00:56:18 through access to typically male political and economic power. But it doesn't last forever. If you're able to secure a very high status husband for instance and he commits to you for life, you've translated your beauty into real and lasting power. If you're not able to do that, then you will very quickly age 35, age 40, age out of having any access to that kind of power and then you will potentially be paying the cost based down the line. So there are some women who've become very wealthy on only fans, but in general, I would say that it's very, very poor strategy. And, you know, as
Starting point is 00:56:53 ever, it is presented as a kind of short-term boon. Yeah, well, it suffers from the same pre-dow distribution problem as any productive enterprise, creative enterprise, which is a small minority of people will rake in all the money, like a tiny, tiny proportion. It'll be a tenth of 1%, they'll make a spectacular amount of money, and everyone else will strive away in the dirt, scrabble away for virtually nothing. And then, as you said, even those women who have managed to make that successful are dooming themselves in all likelihood, do remaining only attractive to psychopathic and exploitive males, because the rest of them won't be particularly happy with that background. So yeah, it's not a good iterating medium to long-term strategy.
Starting point is 00:57:37 Let's talk about consent a little bit, because that's a tricky issue. And it ties back to this notion we were discussing earlier about the proclivity of the radical left to insist upon something approximating a contract, which I do think is very comical that that's the same as, well, maybe consent means getting married. And actually, I think you can make a case for that. So, you know, what you see that happening on campuses very frequently, and we should delve into the details of this is that a young man and a young woman will sleep together, but it's usually at a party,
Starting point is 00:58:14 and it's usually a drunken party. And so, one of the things that people don't know maybe because they don't want to is that almost all criminal behavior that involves coercion is facilitated by alcohol. So half of people who are murdered are drunk, half of the murderers are drunk. There would be almost no domestic abuse, violent abuse, without alcohol. It's an unbelievable facilitated. This is why the temperance movement was in many ways a feminist movement,
Starting point is 00:58:46 I would argue. That's not how it was normally expressed, but the temperance movement was very much about domestic violence. Right, right, right. Well, in on campuses, date rape, etc. And unwanted social sexual advance and alcohol go hand in hand. but of course you have the liberty and culture on campuses sexually and also behaviorly and so many campuses are simultaneously hot beds of sexual investigation and trouble and drunken Dionysian partying. And I think there's a time and a place for that and that's probably when you're. And hopefully you manage to wind your way through it. But as a basis for stable society, it falls short. But here's one of the problems it really brings up. So now you have women, and hypothetically, they have control of the reproductive function, and they can go out and drink, and then they can find themselves waking up in the morning
Starting point is 00:59:48 and not even remembering, because alcohol really interferes with memory consolidation, not even at relatively minor doses, not even really remembering how the hell they got there. Now, especially if they're women who've been mistreated in the past, and that's not uncommon, there is a real question that emerges about whether or not they consent it.
Starting point is 01:00:11 And it's very complicated because it's certainly one of the strategies that desperate young men use to entice foolish young women into their beds is to get them drunk. And anybody who doesn't know that is a blind fool. And so, now, and so if you have a party and you're a college student and you're male and you invite some women over, including the ones that you might be attracted to, and you serve copious amounts of alcohol, and you know perfectly well that if you get a young woman drunk, you're more likely to get her into bed. Are you manipulating her? Or is she an autonomous entity fully capable of making her own sovereign decisions, who
Starting point is 01:00:52 knows the ground rules of the game when she enters the door and is there for responsible for her own actions? And the answer is a little a column A and a little a column B, and that makes the whole issue of consent extraordinarily complex. If you consent well drunk and you regret it the next day, is that true consent? And of course, that's being fought out in legal minefields all across North America. And I think the reason it's being fought out is because it's actually a complicated question.
Starting point is 01:01:24 What does it mean to give consent? How old do you have to be? Like, if you have three drinks, can you give informed consent? Well, maybe you couldn't for a medical procedure. Could you, if you had one drink? Well, I studied at the effects of alcohol for years on cognitive ability and function. And it's a highly dis-inhibiting drug, which is why people like it, because it removes the regulatory constraint from hedonic behavior,
Starting point is 01:01:58 including aggressive behavior, slots of fun, and it amplifies sociability for many people. It's got an opiate effect that's pain killing and a stimulant effect that's like cocaine, and it's an anxiety reducer. So it's a killer party drug. And so you add some alcohol into the mix, and you think, well, did the young woman give consent? And the answer to that is, well, what the hell is consent?
Starting point is 01:02:27 And then one answer is, well, you have to have a legal document, and then you think, well, you might as well just get married to that, because that's the whole point. But here's an open question. Like, I really wonder, I really think this might be true. Marriage is consent. That's what marriage means. Marriage is consent. That's what marriage means.
Starting point is 01:02:46 Marriage is full informed consent, and it's the only form of full informed consent. All things being equal, given how dangerous sex is, in the most fundamental sense, given how socially destabilizing it is, given how difficult it is to integrate into a full personality across time, given how much is at risk for children and women in particular, that the issue of consent is so important that it basically devolves into something approximating marriage by necessity. I agree. The only provisor I would place on that is that one of the, I would say one of the really profound successors of 20th century feminism was in reconceptualising rape, which in most traditional legal systems is understood as a crime against a woman's male kin, reconceptualising it as a crime against the woman herself, which therefore makes it marital rape explicable in a way that it isn't in the old model.
Starting point is 01:03:47 It clearly is the case that it is possible to be raped within marriage. I think it's also absolutely the case that any... We are forced to draw bright lines when it comes to the law. We're forced to say that the Asia Consent is 16, that ex-amounted alcohol in the bloodstream constitutes about the legal driving limit, et cetera, et cetera. We're forced to draw bright lines. We have to also recognize, and we all know intuitively,
Starting point is 01:04:12 that those bright lines are fallible, and that there is a huge amount of grace base between what is legally permissible and what is good. And I think that the problem with basing any kind of system of sexual ethics on consent as a bare minimum is it it becomes impossible to talk about the gray space. And what you often find actually is women, particularly during me too, women who would talk about distressing sexual experiences, which actually normally didn't meet the legal threshold for being a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r
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Starting point is 01:05:01 gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r sexual interest in them, and it's not the other way around. And that bias is exaggerated by alcohol. So you have men who are very drunk and who really do read signs of sexual interest from women who are in fact not sexually interested in them and who are incapacitated by alcohol, and it all ends up being, we're talking about teenagers who have it raised on porn and have it, you know, it's a complete disaster, like the whole cauldron mix is basically perfectly
Starting point is 01:05:24 designed to produce these scenarios. And often you have women who are coming out of these scenarios feeling really distressed, but they don't have the moral language to talk about it, because they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to use terms like chivalrous. They don't want to talk about gentleman. They don't want to talk even about morality and good and bad. What they have in their vocabulary toolkit is consent.
Starting point is 01:05:44 And so you will say that XYZ encounter wasn't consensual. That's not the best way of describing what went wrong. And trying to just further embed the consent model, which often just what consent workshops are really, is just their attempts at ideological interventions. The idea is that we sit kids down and we tell them in words if one syllable don't rape each other. But of course we know that's not how social interactions work, that's not actually a kind of intervention that's really
Starting point is 01:06:10 going to make a difference because there will be rapists aren't listening for anything. And also because that's the complexity of sexual relationships is just so so too difficult to sum up in that kind of simple message. But that's all we've got. And so this emphasis is just on reiterating and reiterating. If you start talking about unwanted sexual advance as a failure of something like chivalry, you sound like a transplant from the 13th century, but it's definitely the case. It's also definitely the case that unsophisticated males are not very good at reading what would you say.
Starting point is 01:06:48 Anything but explicit signals of no, right? Sophisticated people can tell by a polite glance, let's say, whether or not interest is being manifested. And then they play a very slow incremental game, which is romance, by the way, checking each other out for consent at every stage. And you cannot replace that with a rule-governed system. The attempt to do that is, first of all, going to be intrusive and tyrannical and awkward, and second, it's putting the card before the horse.
Starting point is 01:07:24 The unsophisticated people aren't going to be able to use that system anyways. And then you have like three people. You have a crowd in the bedroom. You have the young man and you have the young woman and you have the whole idiot, the lengths of DEI bureaucrats. They're trying to mediate the social relationship and that's just not going to work at all. And here's another thing I've been thinking about. I talked to my wife, who I know you talked to on her podcast,
Starting point is 01:07:49 about this quite a bit. So here's an interesting idea. So males compete for status and the essential dimension of competition that differentiates them from women, I would say, is something like productive economic generosity. It's something like that. Now, it's not like women aren't productive, and it's not like they're not generous,
Starting point is 01:08:12 but the ground rules are different. Women are looking to equalize the economic disparity that's attendant upon differential cost for reproduction. And so men are evaluated on the basis of their potential for economic reciprocity and generosity. And that gives them status, males. And so women peel from the top of that hierarchy. Basically, they let males compete it out on the economic front and then women select from the top down.
Starting point is 01:08:45 And the higher the status, a woman has, the higher the status of the mate that she can obtain. Now, that brings up a question, which is, what gives women status? And that's a really hard question. Because, first of all, we know that economic viability is not one of those things. So male economic viability and sexual success are correlated insanely highly. It's like 0.6, 0.7, crazily high. One of the most powerful single variable relationships that you can find in all of the social sciences, far higher than the relationship between intelligence and life success, for example.
Starting point is 01:09:24 But the correlation between female economic fiability and sexual attractiveness is lower than zero. So it's actually slightly negative. So it's a massive sexual dimorphism. So then you ask, well, what gives female status? And well, one of the answers is obviously associated with beauty and reproductive capacity and sexual attractiveness. Those things all tangled together extraordinarily tightly. But that's not the only thing I don't think.
Starting point is 01:09:53 And so this I think is really worth thinking about. So imagine that you have an attractive girl and a variety of relatively high status men are chasing her. Now you might ask, well, how do they evaluate her status? And I think they evaluate her status by her ability to say no. So imagine a high status person offers himself or herself to you. And if you're of lower status, you're going to say yes right away. But one marker of higher status is, well, no, I don't need what you're selling. Yeah, but what I'm
Starting point is 01:10:34 selling is great. Yeah, but I have so many offers that I'm not inclined to take your offer, because I have options. And it's no on the part of women that signal, I really believe this is the case. It's voluntary no on the part of women that signals their status. And so I don't think young women know this at all, because they want to know how to compete with men, let's say, in the power game.
Starting point is 01:10:59 And that's a tough question, because women are smaller, and they're not as physically powerful. And economic prowess isn't as attractive to them and it doesn't make them more viable on the marketing, on the mating market. So the whole game that women are playing is way different than the game men is playing. So you might say, well, how do women equalize the battle? And I think a huge part of that is by reserving to themselves the right to say no. And you see this, people are stumbling towards this realization even on the radical leftist front because they
Starting point is 01:11:31 keep saying no means no. And it's like, well, yeah, I wish it was that clear, but at a drunken, frat party, what constitutes no is not self-evident, but a clear no on the part of a woman. And I also think that there's every reason to think and plenty of evidence that that's also one of the things that makes men desirable in the face of, that makes women desirable in the eyes of men, especially if the men might be enticed into pursuing
Starting point is 01:12:00 a long-term mating strategy. You know, they'll push on women and see, well, will you say yes right away? And if the answer is yes, especially true for high status men, if the answer is immediately yes, then the guy assumes, well, you're not, your status really isn't that high.
Starting point is 01:12:17 You can't say no to me. But if the woman says no, even to you, the guy thinks, oh, well, you know, look at that. You can imagine there's some narcissism not, even though I have everything to offer that I have to offer, she's just not falling over, you know. Maybe there's something there that requires further exploration. You know, when you even see this in female pornography. It's so interesting because the classic female pornographic story is, you know, there's this extremely attractive, highly productive man who's got a real capacity for aggression.
Starting point is 01:12:54 He's a pirate or a surgeon or a whirlpool for a vampire or a billionaire. Those are the fundamental female pornographic tropes. And he has women at his disposal. But this woman is shielded off from him, and they dance around each other for a long time, which essentially means that she's saying no, and he's finally enticed into a relationship with her where he sacrifices all, you know, his access to all other women. And then they have hot steamy sex. And so most of female pornography is extended for play. And that's this romantic dance of no followed by a very spectacular consummation.
Starting point is 01:13:35 And that certainly mirrors the optimal female reproductive pathway, obviously, because otherwise it wouldn't be the hardest pornographic fantasy. But it's based in, I really think it's based in reality. And so I don't know how it is that you communicate to young women that, especially if they are of high female statics, but even if they're not, that the most potent art tool they have in their armament with regard to statics, with regard to being taken seriously, is their ability and willingness to say no?
Starting point is 01:14:10 Mm. A question that I've had a lot since the book was published is there a sexual counter revolution underway? My answer to that is a guarded yes a bit. I think what's happened is that we've ended up in this very historical unusual situation where female virginity is not prized, basically every society, hugely praises female virginity and female sexual restraint. The ability to say no for all of these reasons because illegitimate child is a disaster Mae'n gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn gwybod yn g and technological shift, and we now have attempted to reconceptualise women as being sort of
Starting point is 01:15:08 like slightly smaller men who basically have the same sexual drives and preferences and so on. We know that this isn't true, but we've given it a good go. And many of the young women who read my book have been raised with this expectation and have attempted to have sex like men and have invariably found that it actually makes them miserable. But we also get trapped in this painful strategic impasse where when the expectation is that you will have sex very early on in
Starting point is 01:15:35 a relationship and that withholding sex is not socially permissible, it's a weird sign, it's a sign that you're unusual that you're not playing by the normal rules. It puts you at a disadvantage. If you are a young woman who doesn't want to be putting out on a first, second, third date, you're already disadvantaged in the dating market, or really stuff until recently.
Starting point is 01:15:55 But one of the things that I've noticed going and giving talks all over the country is I've often had women come up to me afterwards and say that they they they like my message they agree that they are that they have are implementing this in their own lives that they are not having casual sex that they are not giving into this social pressure. And one of the things I've noticed about these women is they tend to be very beautiful. And I think that that's not coincidental I think it's because they are the women who have the greatest power within this system
Starting point is 01:16:26 and are therefore the ones who can most easily opt out of the current set of expectations and can say no without suffering a penalty for it. So I think those women, many of them are already doing that because they've gotten onto the fact that this is actually a miserable system which causes them harm. And my hope is that that will accelerate as other women imitate them. Well, you know, if it's the beautiful high status women who begin that trend, the rest of the women will fall. Because trends always start in the aristocracy
Starting point is 01:17:01 and trend downwards. Now, okay, so here's another thought. And this has to do with the built-in antagonism, let's say, and hopefully eventual cooperation of the sexes on the sexual front. So women are checking out men all the time, and women have all sorts of tricks for doing that. They might be provocative, for example,
Starting point is 01:17:24 because they want to test a man to see if he can control his temper, and no one likes to for doing that. They might be provocative, for example, because they want to test a man to see if he can control his temper and no one likes to talk about that. But any smart woman is going to do that because she wants to find out if her partner, she wants someone who has the capacity for aggression, but she wants someone who can control it because a man will be provoked by children. And if he can't control his temper, then he's going to be aggressive. And so she has to check that out. And you don't check that out by having a formal conversation. You check that out the same way children check out their parents, which is by harassing them and seeing what happens. And so, and then men check women out. So maybe one of the
Starting point is 01:18:01 things a man wants to do, if he's going to commit to a long-term relationship, is he wants to find out, well, does this woman have what it takes to actually commit to a long-term relationship? And what that means in part is that he has to know that she's capable of controlling her impulsive desires, right? Because otherwise, she's going to stray. And that's actually a worse problem for men than it is for women. And we should return to this idea that rape is a violation of male property rights in a moment because I want to explore that a bit. So you can tell a woman has control over her impulses if she can
Starting point is 01:18:38 say no. Right? I mean, it's a way of testing. So imagine that you're a young guy with plenty to offer and you're a hot young woman and you meet and you're pretty attracted to each other. Now, both of you are going to fall under the sway of short-term temptation, obviously. Now, the question is, are both of you or either of you capable of being mature in your regard for your iterated future self and the potential of a long-term relationship. And the way the man checks that out is by seeing if the girl will say no. And maybe he checks that even harder because he does everything he can to seduce her. And she still says no.
Starting point is 01:19:23 You know, and it works. And he knows she's interested. And she still says no. You know, and it works. And he knows she's interested and she still says no. Well, then he can conclude that she's capable of keeping her pants on, let's say. And that's actually something that you need to conclude if you're going to commit to a long-term partnership, obviously, on the male front because you want to be assured of paternity.
Starting point is 01:19:45 And so, you know, these are very intense games that men and women play with each other, and there are no holds barred games because everything is at stake. But again, it devolves down to this issue of being able to say no, even under intense temptation and provocation. So I don't know how it is that we start teaching young women, or we can just start by not lying to them about absolutely everything, which is what we do now. But I don't know how it is that young women can be taught that the most potent weapon they have is their ability to say no, you know, and that that's actually a weapon of formidable force and that it does
Starting point is 01:20:27 nothing but converse status upon them. You know, and the fact that you said already that what you see is that it's the obviously high status, high desirable women who are figuring this out first is an indication of that because obviously they're the ones that that are going to be able to wield that power in the most effective possible manner. That doesn't mean that it's not useful for women farther down the hierarchy. And you know, you also said something about women are enjoying to believe they have to be sexually accessible to make themselves successful on the dating market. But I don't believe that's true at all. I think that's a myth. I think that if you have nothing else to offer at all, but immediate sexual access, that might be your only gain.
Starting point is 01:21:15 But if you have anything at all to offer and that is what you offer, you're actually going to be thrown out of the mating game really quickly because the guys will just be turned off and they won't call you back. You'll get what do they call that ghosted? I can no-time flat. really quickly because the guys will just be, they'll just be turned off and they won't call you back. You'll get what do they call that? Ghosted?
Starting point is 01:21:27 I can no time flat. You know, and the girls might ask, well, you know, I gave the guy what he wanted. Why didn't he call me? And the answer is, no, you gave his impulsive libido what it wanted. And that's what you established a relationship with. But you completely sacrificed any possibility at all of being attractive to his more mature and potentially long-term productive and sophisticated self.
Starting point is 01:21:56 You make yourself attractive to that by saying, not on your life, Joker, I'm taking myself too seriously for that and my future children and even our future relationship. And all that's signaled by no. And then it's complicated too, A, because you get the prude problem. A Nietzsche observed a century and a half ago that a lot of what passed for morality was nothing but cowardice. People are afraid to do something, afraid to be aggressive, afraid to be sexual, and they passed their fear off as morality.
Starting point is 01:22:33 Proodes are sort of like that. They don't want to have anything to do with sex, but it's not because they've made a moral decision or because they have strength of character, it's just because they're afraid. Because that's true, it's easy to parody women who say no, or men for that matter, as prudes, as old fashioned conservative prudes who are just terrified of sex. And sometimes that is true, but you can be sophisticated as hell and say no. And I don't think there's anything more attractive to a man than a sophisticated woman who knows how to say no Like that's that's top of the stack as far as men are concerned and they'll do any they'll do everything to test the
Starting point is 01:23:15 The what would you call the thickness of that boundary? So I don't know how you tell that to young women. I don't even think men can probably I don't know how you tell that to young women. I don't even think men can probably. It's because the pill disrupts it all, right? Because the pill, it doesn't reduce to zero, but it does massively reduce the risks associated with sex, the physical risks, not the psychological risks. And so with those physical risks were removed,
Starting point is 01:23:39 I mean, I have a fascinating quote from a woman who was in the 1960s, from the Pillaride. Mae'n gwaithio'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r ffasynnaethu'r fasyn And with that no longer available, and what we're dealing with here, of course, is the agreeability gap between men and women. Women find it difficult to be assertive. And if they can't call on that kind of very clear risk as an appeal, then what are they left with? No, I just don't want to have sex with you. And that's a really painful thing to say that it wouldn't hurt feelings. There's also, I think, an element of women being slightly physically frightened.
Starting point is 01:24:23 Right. Well, I boil down the personal rejection then, eh? Yeah. Yeah. Which is a pain for things that have ever... Right, because that's the only excuse you have left. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, here's something else that's worth pondering. You know, you talked about one of the advantages of the sexual revolution was the transformation of the idea that rape was a property crime, let's say,
Starting point is 01:24:44 into a crime against the woman herself. And I would say, look, I have plenty of sympathy for that perspective. And I think it's fundamentally true, but I'm going to push back because, you know, all of this is all very complicated. You know, it isn't obvious to me that that offers women enough defense. You know, and so the counter argument might be if untrammeled sexual access to a young woman is a crime. In order for that to be recognized as a crime properly, it has to be viewed as something that will bring the males on her side to her defense in principle. Now maybe not, right?
Starting point is 01:25:31 Because you could say, well, maybe we could set up a society where merely, quote, transgressing the rights of a woman to say, no, is sufficient. But it's not obvious to me that that's sufficient. Like maybe sufficient means not only do you violate the integrity of the woman in a fundamental sense, but you enrage all of her male protectors. And then that's enough of a barrier because God only knows how much barrier we need. And obviously, well, you just laid out a bunch of problems, especially now that the pill introduces, and we should stress that. The problem that women have in saying no once
Starting point is 01:26:10 they're on the pill is that it's instantly personal. And that means the woman has to deliver a pretty hard blow. And that's especially problematic if she's somewhat potentially interested in the guy. Right? How do I say no without hurting his feelings, alienating and making him into an enemy, looking like a prude? And I mean, when you're 16, how, you don't know the answer to any of those questions, like, you're not sophisticated enough to, and I saw this in my clinical practice all the time, you know, I had lots of women in my clinical practice who were abused serially. And they were generally stunningly unsophisticated in their conduct, and I'm not trying to blame the victim.
Starting point is 01:26:51 I'm just saying that sophisticated women, and those are often those who've been, they've had a lot of good relationships with men, brothers and fathers in particular, sophisticated women, signal to men who are getting a little pushy in no uncertain terms very early in the pushing game that no is the answer, right? And they do that. If you do that really early on in the investigation, you don't have to use much force. But unsophisticated women, they can't do that at all. They don't know how. And then what happens is they run into an unsophisticated guy. He's too dumb to pick up any clues.
Starting point is 01:27:30 And then by the time she really wants to say, no, she's already on the bed, I'll give you an example of this. You know, I had one client who was coerced in her account into a sexual encounter by a door to door salesman. You know, a typical pornographic fantasy setup. So this young guy is going around door to door selling, whatever he's selling. So he's not one of the world's highest status males.
Starting point is 01:27:56 Let's put it that way. And I suppose he's probably got all sorts of fantasies running through his pornography, pornography, adult brain. And so he comes to the door and she's in the house and she's a reasonably attractive young woman. And he's friendly. And well, the first thing she does is invite a man. Now that's stupid.
Starting point is 01:28:18 She's alone. She doesn't know who he is at all. And she invites a man. Well, he thinks, oh my God, what is she, you know, maybe she really likes me, and you already said that men, and this is especially true if they're narcissistic and immature,
Starting point is 01:28:32 radically overestimate the degree to which a woman's attention is signaling sexual availability for obvious reasons. And so he's thinking, oh my God, this is my big chance. And so then he starts to press her and she has no tools that are disposal at all, because she has no idea how to signal no. And let's say she's agreeable and neurotic
Starting point is 01:28:52 with a bit of a history of abuse. And the next thing she knows, she finds herself on the couch, three quarters undressed. And then the question is, well, is that rape? And well, that's the question. That's when the police come in and the lawyers come rape? And well, that's the question. That's when the police come in and the lawyers come in and you spend the next three years trying to figure out whether or not that's rape.
Starting point is 01:29:11 But it's a... So, my point with all that is that it's an open question how much protection women need from the males around them. And then it's an open question exactly how to construe the crime of irresponsible access to a young woman, woman from a psychological and legal and social perspective. Like maybe it's not just a crime against the woman, you know? Maybe it's a crime against the broader community. And I don't, like, it's not like I'm saying I know how to adjudicate that, because I don't, but it's hard to get all the necessary barriers in place. And if that wasn't true, we wouldn't have this huge debate about consent on campuses.
Starting point is 01:29:56 I have a slightly unusual view of the relationship between Christianity and feminism. view of the relationship between Christianity and feminism. In general, feminist modern feminists set themselves up in opposition to Christianity, particularly on the issue of abortion, the Hamids tell kind of neopurit and outfit being the uniform now of American feminists and so on. I am of the view though that actually feminism is an outgrowth of Christianity and that the fundamental idea in Christianity, which is so different from other religious traditions, that weakness is strength, that the first shall be lost, that there is something valuable about being small and vulnerable rather than something despicable about it. I think that feminism completely relies on that idea, which is by no means shared by all cultures, and certainly wasn't shared a'r ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn ffordd yn f vulnerability as something to be despised potentially, and which sees prostituted slave women
Starting point is 01:31:08 as entirely available for male sexual consumption that cannot really conceptualize the idea of a slave woman having been able to be sexually violated. It's just not kind of within the moral system, it's not understandable. Into that comes the Christian idea of sexual equality at least at the spiritual level. And the idea, therefore, that actually even a woman who doesn't have male kin available to defend her against sexual violation, which of course a slave doesn't, she is nevertheless worthy of that protection. It kind of socializes, maybe the wrong word, but it shares that duty of protection among the community. And among women, I think that's basically what feminism is.
Starting point is 01:31:51 And says that actually we should be bestowing on these friendless women the same protection that a woman with high connected male kin has. It's a very difficult system to enforce. To some extent, we try and use police, criminal justice system, whatever to do that job. It's a very difficult system to enforce. To some extent, we try and use police, criminal justice system, whatever to do that job. It's a hard job to do, but that is basically the modern project. And I think it is born out of Christianity. Right, right. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's right is that what you're attempting to do is to replicate the protection that a very well-constituted family and community
Starting point is 01:32:23 system would have for a woman who's highly functioning. You're trying to replicate that in abstraction in the entire social structure. And so that's why you have a legal structure that says, well, women have the right to bodily integrity. You're really trying to replace that protective structure with the force of law. Yeah, and I think that's an entirely laudable exercise. The question that we have to wrestle with is the question that you brought up at the end of that,
Starting point is 01:32:49 which is that if a woman is unfortunate enough not to have, you know, let's say close male associates, brothers, friends, fathers available to her, to what degree is it even possible for the available to her, to what degree is it even possible for the more abstract state and the body of laws to replace that? Might be a goal, but it's very difficult to realize in practical terms. Is there anything else that's rattling around in the back of your mind that you think might be worth making a case for at the moment? I suppose that the, if there's one unifying idea within the book, it's probably summed up in the, in the epilogue, which I called Listen to Your Mother.
Starting point is 01:33:36 I didn't crucially call it a Bayer Mother. I called it Listen to Your Mother. I, you know, give your mother the opportunity to present her a view of things. Because I think that basically everything that's in the book actually is incredibly obvious and ought to be incredibly obvious, and it only isn't because we live in a very strange time, which has constructed some very strange ideas about sexual politics. And actually in order to, I think, to navigate these waters effectively, simply listening to women who've lived it already and who
Starting point is 01:34:05 have your best interests at heart. If there's anyone in the world who's likely to have your best interests at heart, it is probably your mother. Simply listening to that woman is really the only piece of advice that ought to be needed, because all of this is really just about rediscovering some of the, I would say, eternal truths about men and women, which we've... Yeah, well, I'm kind of hoping that the women that you describe as post-madeans, so let's say, mothers and matriarchs, could seize the reins on the social media front and start educating young women who are both motherless and fatherless in the most fundamental sense about some of these truths.
Starting point is 01:34:51 My wife who's been Tammy has been starting to do that with her podcast, inquiring into the nature of the divine feminine, let's say, and speaking to people like Janis Fiamengo, who's a real scholar of bitter and resentful feminism, let's say. But also trying to have an intelligent discussion among older women who have a bit of wisdom, often hard one, about what a viable long-term life path might look like. Like you sketched it out bit, you know, this transition in terms of narrative role, let's
Starting point is 01:35:23 say, from maiden to mother to matriarch, but that's a very vague, this is not a criticism, but a three-word description is very vague, and it isn't obvious at all that our culture's good at providing an image of what does it mean to be a mother in the highest sense? And it's really complicated, because one of the problems a lot of my female clients had was they were very productive economically and very brilliant.
Starting point is 01:35:52 And it's clearly the case that cultures get much richer and children are much more well educated if women have access to educational resources and if society can tap into their broad economic productivity. That seems like a net good, right? But then it puts women in the uncomfortable situation of, well, how do you devote enough attention to your husband and your children, probably in the reverse order, and how do you handle your career, and that needs a lot of discussion. The answer seems to be that most of the women that I've seen who've had viable lives is that
Starting point is 01:36:29 they don't make career advancement their number one goal. And one of the things you see emerging as a consequence of that is that women are pretty likely to start small businesses, but they generally do them part-time. And they're generally not as hyper-successful as a minority of men. But the reason they're doing that is because they're trying to balance marriage and children with economic productivity. And that's challenging and presents lots of opportunity, but it's not straightforward to conceptualize, and women have only been able to do that in some real sense for about
Starting point is 01:37:04 60 years, right, since we had reliable birth control. conceptualize, and women have only been able to do that in some real sense for about 60 years, right, since we had reliable birth control. So it's not surprising that there has to be a discussion. And then so that's on the mother front and then on the matriarch front, well, I think the problem's even worse is like, well, what's it like to be a grandmother who's had a life, you know, family, a relationship, a career who's been productive at that, who's now entering into the final third of life, let's say, what does that look like if it's rich and fulfilling in terms of social role and personal relationship and sexual behavior?
Starting point is 01:37:39 There's an absolute dearth of Conversation on those fronts and you know, you're obviously spearheading What the rectification of that in some real sense, but it would be lovely to see a lot more of that Anyways, the people who are listening Louise Perry's book is the case against the sexual revolution very you know punchy title and One of the things Louise said today that was interesting is that her books actually been met with a lot of positive responses, you know. And so that's pretty interesting, you know. I feel the tide is turning in many ways. This might be a cardinal pivoting year 2023 because a lot of these things, you say your books about the
Starting point is 01:38:24 painfully obvious in some sense It's like well, you know society is pretty unstable when the painfully obvious is now both debatable and even Objected to but your book is definitely Shot in the opposite direction. So thank you very much for talking to me today Thank you so much and to to me today. Thank you so much. And to all of you, bet, you bet. And hopefully we can meet when I come to the UK. That would be good.
Starting point is 01:38:49 That would be fantastic. And to all those who are listening and watching, thank you very much for your time and attention to the Daily Wire Plus crew for facilitating this and the camera people who are here in Austin, Texas is where I am today. Thank you for helping us do this. And well, we'll continue this conversation on the Daily Wire Plus platform. Thanks, Ken Louise.
Starting point is 01:39:13 Hello everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com. dailywireplus.com.

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