TRIGGERnometry - Bridget Phetasy: I Regret Being a Sl*t

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Bridget Phetasy is an American writer, podcast host, and political commentator. She is a contributing editor for The Spectator and has written for The Federalist, Playboy, Tablet, Quillette, The Atlantic, and other outlets. She is the host of the Weekly Dumpster Fire on YouTube and the Walk-Ins Welcome podcast. SPONSORED BY: ExpressVPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger/ and get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package! Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms apply. We live in a culture that seems very averse to even having any regrets. I blame myself for drinking. I blame myself for being friendly with the guy, and I didn't want to tell my mom because I felt like she would be ashamed. If you see the way that they talk about women being sexually assaulted, imagine if you're a man who's gone through that and how hard it would be for you to come forward. It's a weird thing that social media.

has done where everyone is pretending to be empathetic, but actually everyone's a fucking psychopath. Hey guys, Trigonometry needs your help. We took a big risk creating the show. And for us to keep doing the incredible work that you all love, we need your support. That's the only way we're going to stay independent and create content that you won't be able to find anywhere else. There is no other podcast where you'll hear interviews with Nigel Farage one week and the next week you've got Aaron Bustan the founder of Left Wing Show Navarra Media on the same platform. You know the mainstream media aren't honest. You know they've been caught lying again and again.

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We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear. Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. Bridget, so awesome to have you back on the show. So great to be back. We love you. You're one of the funniest people online and offline, frankly. You're one of the funniest people, is what I'm trying to say.

Thank you. But you're also a brilliant writer and a very, very serious writer. You wrote this article that absolutely destroyed the internet as far as I could tell, which was called why I regret or was it I regret? I regret being a slow. There's no why. There's no why. Because everybody knows.

Why did you write it? Tell everybody what the core of it is, why you wrote it and we'll talk about it. Yeah, I wrote it. I'd been trying to write it for a long time. So it's a piece, I think, since 2018 that I had been wrestling with. And I could never really thread the needle

in a way that felt like I wasn't slut-shaming everyone. I had to really make it about me because I don't care what other people do and who they sleep with and whatever, I was only trying to talk about my own experience, just how I felt I had been kind of lied to by the culture, and internalized so many of those lies myself. Like, basically, can I swear?

Of course you fucking can. So the idea that I could fuck my way to empowerment, this idea that, you know, you can sleep your way to feeling like a girl boss or feeling confident. And coming from trauma and, having addiction, that generally wasn't the case, but I kept doubling down because I think I was trying to cope with feelings of shame and worthlessness. And it was complicated, too, because I had so much stuff around sex being raised Catholic. So the messaging I was raised with was very

guilt-infused around sexuality and feeling guilty about having sex or even thinking about sex sometimes and kind of rebelling against that and then really embracing that this very modern idea of just and the reaction to a lot of this kind of religious puritanical ideas of just being a proud slut and I was I don't know how much of it I actually believed in my quiet moments alone. And then when I got sober, I really had to look a lot of the damage I caused to kind of my soul and spirit directly in the face as uncomfortable as that was. And that led me to kind of wanting to write this piece because I saw so many women on just dating and online. And it seems like they might not feel like they want to sleep around, but there's this kind of pressure to just be

like, I'm okay with just having sex, you know, with whomever. And maybe they, they aren't. And wondering if, I don't know, they're making, they're making decisions maybe for the, for reasons that they're not totally in touch with, which is what was the case for me. So I could, again, only kind of speak for myself. But, yeah, it was a, it was something I really, people, when I wrote it, were like, oh, you wrote this because you're married,

and everyone feels differently after they have a kid. And I was writing this before I ever got married, was in a relationship or had a child. So these feelings were surfacing way before any of that. And the cultural lie you talk about is the idea that sex with casual sex with lots of people is empowering and liberating for a woman. Yes. Yeah.

Which for some people that might be true. true. You know, there's many people who they, they feel confident in that and they love it. And there were probably times where I did. I'm not saying that all of my, my casual sex was horrible and regretful. It's just that I think, for me, I came from, I was trying to kind of heal trauma using sex, which is not something I recommend to people who might be in a similar position. I think that there was a lot of shame after I was raped when I was 18, and I didn't really know how to cope with it. And some people respond to sexual assault by being hyper promiscuous. And some people go the other way. And I happen to

to kind of lean into alcoholism, addictive. I mean, I don't think it's an accident that I ended up in rehab a year after that happened to me. And I still ended, but there was also just this desire to feel like I had some kind of power and control. And I think as a woman, you do have a lot of power, particularly in those super hot years of your late 19th to like 25. when you're, I look at pictures of myself then, I'm like, I had no idea how hot I was.

I mean, I knew I had sexual power, but I didn't, it's like you get this Corvette and you're, you don't know how to drive it. That's the weirdest thing about becoming, coming into your sexuality for me as a woman was, I could not, I literally could not wear the color red when I was in those eight. It was like too, too powerful of. a color for me to wear with that much sexual energy and appeal. Yeah.

Yeah. And I didn't know how to wield it at all. We're like having a lightsaber that I was like, I don't know what to do with this. And I did whatever I wanted, but I don't think I always felt great about it. If I was really, because there's this question, am I just rewriting, is this just historical revisionism? Am I just looking back

and now feeling that way. But at the time, I was like, hell yeah. And I think at the time I was like, hell yeah, but I don't know that I believed that 100%, because I know there were mornings, many, many mornings, of feeling shame. And, I mean, I remember one time I had to wake up and drop a pin to figure out where I was.

You know, that's, and a lot of it is addiction, too, which I think complicates this somewhat, What is that I don't know that I would have been as promiscuous had I also not been a crazy alcoholic. So there's that piece, too, that I couldn't, you know, delve into in the piece I wrote. But that's a big part of it. And so looking back, I know there was, I just had so many mornings of feeling ashamed and feeling used, that feeling of being discarded. I just see, I have so many girlfriends now dating and I see what they go through

and I see how much it hurts them to not hear from someone if they sleep with them or, I don't know, it's tough out there. Yeah, it is tough. Here's another way of looking at it. William Blake had a saying that the Palace of Wisdom is reached through the gates of excess. and actually maybe a way of looking at it and reframing it might be the fact that, okay, you had

all these experiences which you look back on, but maybe you shouldn't regret it and maybe it's given you a deeper understanding not only of who you are, but what you want from life. I mean, that's true. What was interesting to me to is this default, the reaction to the piece was really interesting. I still get emails from men, women, gay men. I heard from a lot of gay men. And one of the more interesting things that I wasn't expecting was people's resistance to my use of the word regret.

We live in a culture that seems very averse to even having any regrets. You know, this kind of like, yolo. And I don't know if this is a cultural thing, but I feel okay with having regrets. I think it's part of life. I do think you learn from them. I don't think you should let them hold you hostage, and I don't live in regret.

But looking back, there's many reasons I regret this, too. It's not just because of what I feel it did to my own spirit and soul at the time and having to doing more damage to myself than was already done. I also regret that some of these guys can say they had sex with me. Like it's from a purely egotistical point of view. I don't like that the first. the first time I ever went on Rogan, I got so many text messages, and I was like, ugh.

Like, it was probably the beginning of me thinking about writing this piece because someone texted me and they said it was a man I'd had like a fling with. That wasn't even a one night's stand. I think it was in another country too. And he texted me. He was Australian. Of course. And he texted me and he was like,

I'm super happy to be able to say I was in somebody who is on Rogan. And I was like, and that's why you should never date in Australia. And that's, I do stand up about this. I don't ever want to hear from women if they're dating rock stars, comedians, and Australians. You lose the right to, like, cry to me. No, but that, that was, you know, and there were many of those.

There was, not hundreds, but there were, There were enough that it made me feel disgusting and also just like, shit, I don't want that guy to be able to say that. Just point to his buddies and be like, I shagged her. Great use of a British word. I'm only using shagg because I'm with you guys. But I do love that word. It is a great word.

It is a great word and somehow not as offensive. Exactly. And slightly more playful. Like, if you say fuck, you're like, oh. Like, that's a little harsh. Yeah. That's kind of nice. Takes the edge off.

It does. I was trying to take the edge off because. But it's so interesting to hear you talk about this because we live in a culture where promiscuity is celebrated. Yeah. You know, where we say there's no difference between women and men, we can all go out and enjoy casual sex. And to be brutally honest with me, I never, I've had a few one-night stands. I've always found them lonely and dispiriting experiences. I don't think enough people.

realize that even if you know males and females are wired differently and men are able to sleep with more people have less social cost have I see even in all the emails I've received from men they have a cost too it doesn't always like you said it doesn't always feel good for them either even even getting sober the difference in male and female meetings when you kind of, there's still a difference. What's the difference? You looked at me like, there's a, there's a different, no, I'm just kidding. They, the difference, I think, women have a lot of shame about what has been, what they've done,

what's been done to them in many instances. Men seem to have a lot of shame about what they've done, they've done. To, not, not necessarily what's happened to them, what they've done to other women, how they've treated other women. So it seems very different to me. And that's just what I've gathered from talking to men about the different, why they love going to men's recovery meetings is just because they can talk about different things in a way that they can't when there are women around in the same way that women can share about stuff that is very specific to the female experience, particularly when you are doing drugs and drinking, that maybe men can't relate to.

or are part of their, you know, problem and trauma and whatever. So, yeah, I think it's been, that piece is still going. I just did, and I did, I had a podcast with the Ask a Jew podcast hosts, and they were saying one of the women, women, Haya Leo, was telling me that she gives it to her students. And I've had so many parents reach out to me who have young, you know, 20-something, something college age women, and they're saying, they send it to them and say they have their daughter read it.

I have people with young, you know, teenage girls, and they reach out to me and ask me, they're like, I don't know if my daughter should read this. And it's very interesting having a daughter now and having that out there because I don't know if my daughter should read it either. But she will eventually. Well, she's only, what, 16 months, 17 months? She's pretty much 16 years old, though. I mean, A, she's really quite, got quite a mind of her own, but also I think it's, you know, it's crazy how fast it goes.

She's going to be 16, and it is in a blink. In a blink. And I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to talk to her about these things, but those are going to be interesting conversations. Oh, for sure. I found, you know, when we're talking about this and, when the Russell brand allegations broke and look firstly just to clarify

you know it's nobody knows about apart from Russell we were just talking about motherhood Russell Brand and Russell but not necessarily the allegations but the reaction to the allegations I found even more

interesting you know how people were just like you know he's guilty and other other people who many of whom never even knew about Russell or about the allegations and may not even have read immediately were just like, oh, you know, it's the women and blaming the women. Yeah. And I just found that so interesting. And there was kind of a subcurrent, which is actually what I want to talk about, is these women were promiscuous, therefore they kind of deserved it. I mean, that's a very

90s, late 90s mid-aughts, when you look at Pamela Lee Anderson and why the judge, basically threw out the, they said that essentially because she was in Playboy and it already showed her body when that tape got released, she, the judge said, oh, well, you're already out there. So it's not violating at all, which is insane and crazy to me. But that, that idea of, you know, she's asking for it is not, that's the other funny thing about the weird, modern, Like whatever the discourse is right now, it's insane. And it feels very extreme. But there does seem like there's this rise of misogyny.

There's a lot of body count talking going on. And I don't think it's very weird. But like all these guys who are doing this are acting like they invented slut shaming. I'm like, you guys, like, this has been around. You aren't inventing some new thing. This is like the old. oldest tale of time around women. And the stuff, I reacted very strongly to the way that particularly people with large platforms

automatically came out and just defended Russell Brand before they'd even heard the allegation. Right. That was so weird. It's like you haven't even seen what he's being alleged. You don't even know. Yeah. And I have, and then when I came out and said, you know, I pushed back against this, I got kind of piled on. and people act like I didn't extensively write about this is the downside of believe all women.

We're going to pay a cost for this in the future. And here we are. The chickens have come home to roost. And now it's just there's no such thing as no allegations are to believe. Well, this is what I said about me too. Everyone seems to, not everyone, but the vast majority of people want everything to be black and white. And it's like what happened to Aziz Ansari was an abomination. Yeah.

What happened to Harvey Weinstein? Who's against that? Right. Who regrets that that happened? Right. Who are the people that think that was a bad thing that happened? Harvey Weinstein's accountant, right? Right?

Apart from him. Yeah. Do you see what I mean? No, definitely. We have lost the ability to have that nuance. And it's something that we lost during me too, which was why women like myself, who were coming from the left, It was one of the things that pushed me, you know,

sent more center saying, okay, well, do process as necessary. We can't have these witch hunts. They're going to backfire. The Kavanaugh stuff drove me insane because the Democrats, I'm like, you guys have gone from using women to now using sexual assault you're weaponizing. So I came of age around Monica Lewinsky.

And that was the first time that I really was like, wow, neither party gives a shit about women. I remember I was five years younger than her, so I was close in age to her, and I remember all the adults in the room were talking about the politics of it and how this whatever side they might have been on, how this played out.

I was like, what about this poor girl? She's being piled on by, you have the, you know, Hillary Clinton basically throwing her under the bus, and you have all the right wing using, her own mom had to testify against, like, they called her mom to testify. That is insane to me. It was heartbreaking from a person.

I remember that was a very specific moment, and it was shortly after I had been sexually assaulted that I really checked out of politics and was like, no one's coming, I don't care. And I think everyone's gross. I actually have been thinking so much about this because I really believe that was the beginning of that internal sense of politically homeless that drives everyone crazy, but

I'm like, I can't help how I feel. This is just how I feel. And then the Kavanaugh stuff drove me crazy because it reminded me so much of that, but then I felt like they were weaponizing sexual assault. And it got more and more

ridiculous. You had that douchebag, whatever that lawyer was, Avametti. Coming out and saying he was gang, but it just, it was so undermining to the whole entire process and it made people not and again you had kind of people on the right wing talking about you know being like defaulting to rape apologists immediately because they're fighting against this ridiculous kind of idea that you need to believe all women and I was like this is not going to be good in the long run and now here we are and you have. And you

have huge people with lots of followers just coming out. And I mean, I think Elon even came out in defense of him. I'm like, you are the richest man in the world. You are the owner of the platform that this discourse is taking place on. You didn't need to say anything, but you said, I stand with Russell. And then you wonder why women don't come out and report. and they don't come forward because lots of women still don't.

And it's just, it feels like we're going backwards. Hey, Constantine, when you go to the bathroom, do you always close the door? This is possibly the worst way anyone has ever opened a conversation in the history of the universe. It's not my fault. What do you mean it's not your fault? You just said it. No, it's ExpressVPN's fault.

What? It's how they asked us to start the advert. ExpressVPN are the VPN that we use at trigonometry. They're so smart that they've created a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so your online activity can't be seen by anyone. And you expect me to believe this. Give me the script. Fuck me, you're right.

They're much better at creating VPNs than writing ad copy. I think they're trying to use a toilet thing as a metaphor. What? What they're saying is using the internet without a VPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door. Because your internet service provider knows every website you visit. And this means that they can sell this information to add companies and tech giants who then use your data to target you. That's terrible. All they have to say is it works on phones, laptops, even routers, so everyone who shares your Wi-Fi is protected. Just fire up the ExpressVPN app and click one button.

Agreed. It is terrible. Leave out the bit in the script about closing the bathroom door. Couldn't agree more. Get an extra three months of ExpressVPN free by going to ExpressVPN.com slash trigger. That's expressvpn.com slash trigger for three extra mums free. ExpressVPN.com slash trigger. The one thing that I wanted to touch on as well, the thing that I found most depressing and dispiriting about the whole thing was just, then there was the narrative would always been bubbling under. If you're promiscuous, you deserve it. And then it became overt. And then what people started saying is, you know, you can't settle down. with a woman who has been promiscuous because she has this, she is unable to, in their term, pair bond. And you're going, mate, you're a dickhead with Twitter followers. Are you a psychiatrist?

Have you done people with certain? But then they all start sharing it. And I go, and some of these people, I know, and I used to respect. And I think to myself, what is going on? I went into a very dark depression after all of this. It was really upsetting to me because perhaps being, I think being rejected by the left as we talked about on the last podcast and that we did and really coming, feeling like I was triveless, maybe there was some sense that the right post-COVID, maybe they were opening up their tent, they were kind of okay with gay marriage, perhaps they were allowing for more people. to come in that had felt alienated by them in the past. And maybe I'm just, you know, working this out as we're talking,

I perhaps felt like there was some kind of place that I could go where I felt like women were respected and protected. Because the other thing that I get online, when I talk about the right wing has a problem with women, is all of people on the left going, oh, the leopard's eating your face. I'm like, fucking, I don't want to hear shit from you. You can't even define what a woman is.

You guys erased women. Don't give me shit about, like, the leopards eating my face on the right. That is ridiculous. You guys, you have systematically reduced me to the sum of my parts in all of your rhetoric. And so, like, I'm not hearing any of that shit

from the people who are now like, oh, that's right. you get for cozying up with the right wing, but then you do see the leopard eating your face. And it's such a great point, because just to finish on this, the, I was thinking and with brand, and I thought it was so interesting. And if you look at what's happened kind of from 2014, but it really hit an acceleration point at 206. we saw the dark side of the left, the kind of the shadow side of the left. It's been coming more and more to the fore with trans, with, you know, talking about equity, wanting to punish. But recently, we've seen the mask slip from the right as well. Well, I've seen people on the

right. I'm like, oh, God, you're actually awful. This is the problem. I have a friend, It's actually someone who's been a subscriber in my locals community, but we've become friends, as you know you do, with people who are very active in the community. And he says the default ideology in America is but the right. It's really just like, but the right, but the right. But then when you see some of the stuff that comes bubbling up under the surface, you're like, but this is what people are afraid of.

You know, and people are saying, and again, I think what I think what I, really landed on post brand and watching the discourse around it was that no one gives a shit about women. I'll vote for whatever party cares about women, but I don't see it coming. I certainly

don't see it in the rhetoric on the right and I don't see it at all from the left, whether they want to say that's true or not. I disagree. So, yeah, I feel actually more, as we sit here today feel more politically homeless than ever before. And it's interesting because when we spoke last,

I was hearing from, because I occupy this very strange, you know, wasteland of the center, it was a lot of women on the left saying, thank you for saying this, I can't say this, thank you for speaking out lately, particularly when I tweeted about, you know, the right has a a woman problem. And it went, and then someone quote tweeted me and said, maybe we don't want someone who slept with a hundred dudes

voting for the, I'm like, you're, yeah, why weren't these slut-hole bitches vote for us? Yeah, we don't want your whore vote. Okay, so you're only made, yeah, what exactly is the number, too? Is it 25 and then I can vote for the right way?

I mean, where's... You're supposed to be a virgin until marriage. Yeah. And I, and I, say this, by the way, as someone who I think probably on family stuff, I am actually quite socially conservative. I do think in an ideal world, that is the best way for people to get together. It's what I've done and it's been great for me is all I'm saying. Right. But I don't think that attacking women for not doing what you think is going to be politically a very wise move. But,

Bridget, I want to come back a little bit because there's something that happened when the brand allegations broke. Oh, wait. I want to finish my point, though. Oh, sorry. So, now I hear from conservative women thanking me saying they can't say. So that's been an interesting shift is that it was women on the left saying, oh, I can't say that. And now it's women on the right going, yeah, we do have a problem. I can't say it. I'll get piled on. Thank you for saying it. And so that that's been a weird dynamic just anecdotally in my DMs, which is always very interesting to me. Well, very much on that point, I apologize for interrupting earlier. No, it's okay.

One of the things that happened when those allegations broke was a lot of people said something which on the surface sounds correct, which is if you have allegations against somebody, go to the police. And these women didn't go to the police. And it's been 15 years. What do you want? What do you want us to do about it? Right.

And I've, I, that's a mind field that I don't really know how to navigate exactly. Yeah. Because if, if you're talking about criminal prosecution, the only way criminal prosecution happens is if you go to the police. Right. Right. On the other hand, having spoken to not just you, but other people who've been raped, that isn't how that works. Yeah. Right.

So how do we, how do we, how do we solve that? I mean, and you look at like the number of cases that actually get probably. prosecuted when they do go to the police and the way that police often treat victims. And it's not great. I have no idea how you solve that. I think about this a lot because at the age that I was at, I felt that it was my fault. So I think you often feel in the moment, you know what's really interesting is that I was, because of all this talk about, the brand stuff and then they were talking about the journal and I was like did I write about this I feel like I did and I have a journal from it's like the darkest time in my life all through it's it's a crazy person's journal and I did write about being sexually assaulted right after it happened and it was it was it was painful to read because I put so much blame on myself and that's why I don't fault women

for 10 years later when they're older and more mature and have some hindsight to say, I was a child. And I can look at that girl and say I was a young girl who I blame myself for drinking. I blame myself for being friendly with the guy. And I didn't want to tell my mom because I felt like she would be ashamed.

And I have a different perspective on that than I had at that exact like having the ability to re-look at what I was thinking at that age is so eye-opening for me and for people going well why didn't you just report like you cannot know unless it's happened to you how disruptive something like that is and and how confused you are and how betrayed and how ashamed or like the the uh it's I And this guy was older, he was powerful, and I felt like no one would believe me, you know? Or they'd say that it was my fault. And I didn't want to have to put myself through that.

And I didn't want to have to expose myself that way. So I don't, I mean, that's why I thought Me Too was so good. Like, it was the good thing about Me Too because I felt like my daughter was, I would never want her to feel that way about me. but I felt like she was coming into a world where there was more insight into that and compassion. So I felt like she was coming into just a place where we had come to somewhat more understanding of what that does to a woman, a man. I mean, if you see the way that they talk about women being sexually assaulted, imagine if you're a man, who's gone through that. And how hard it would be for you to come forward.

People don't talk enough about that either. It's not like only women experience this. Men are violated and molested and all kinds of things. And if you're a man and you see the way that people are speaking about this as if it's their fault or whatever, the chances that you're ever going to come forward are even less than if you're a woman. And so I felt like that was changing and I actually thought that was a good thing. People were having this conversation.

They were seeing how many of their sisters, mothers, friends have experienced this. And then now it feels like we're regressing again. You know, it feels like we're going back into the time where women, again, when you see this discourse occurring and everyone from, I think, Jordan Peterson even came out, people that you kind of look to and respect on some level, perhaps, particularly if you're independent or right-wing because everything's freaking partisan now, you see that and you're like,

I don't, you know, suddenly you start asking yourself if it is your faults or if it is something that you should be ashamed of or if you, it is because you are promiscuous and that's never an excuse, you know? You can, that's just never an excuse. You can't use that, no matter how many people someone slept with.

And I don't know how you fix that because it seems like it's getting actually worse now. So I'm not sure. You know, I would encourage, I can only say that, and I've talked about this before on Rogan, I was kind of able to help someone through this when they went through with themselves around exactly the same circumstances and age that I was

and we went and got a rape kit done and all that stuff. And she didn't have to press charges right away, but she could have and she didn't want to. She didn't know how to talk. Same thing. But I encouraged her to talk to her mom about it, which she eventually did. And she did something that I didn't do,

which was just taking the step to even go get a rape kit done. And I don't know. It's something that looking back, should I have done that? Yeah, I should have. But at the time, could I have, did I feel like I had anyone who would take me or I didn't? So, and if a bunch of women came out and, you know, came, were saying that this person did something to them, I would absolutely come forward, even if it meant all the stuff that comes along with that, however many years later, I, I would. I would definitely bring my journal and stand behind those women because I know that it happened to me. But, you know, there's a lot of women who will say that it was selfish of me not to do something

because they could have gone on to rape other women. And I have to, again, I live with that now looking back, but at the time, that wasn't even like a consideration. I wasn't even, I was like, how do I get through the next day? How do I just, I started drinking alcoholically almost immediately and then doing her drug. It was like, I wasn't thinking about like anything other than, other than the pain that I was in. And surviving it, yeah. And moving through it.

And so, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's a weird thing that social media has done where everyone is pretending to be empathetic but actually everyone's a fucking psychopath, right? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

There's a distinct lack of empathy in the idea that, you know, well, if a woman was raped then if she has to go to the police, otherwise it didn't happen. Right. Like if that was your daughter, you think that, you really think that if your daughter came to you and said that

and she didn't, do you know what? You wouldn't be like that with your daughter. You wouldn't say that about her. If you're 40 years old, you have a 20-year-old daughter and she comes to you and says, actually, when this thing happened five years ago, whatever, you wouldn't be like, when you go to the police do? And now imagine that it's a huge star, and you know that if your daughter comes forward, it's going to be the entire right-wing ecosystem is coming after this person now.

And that's the other thing that was bothering me about all of this, is that I felt like the women who came forward were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. If they came forward, they would be like riding Russell's coattails and trying to get famous. If they remained anonymous, they're just hiding in the shadows and they're liars. And so there's no way for these people to win in this situation.

And I don't know whether it's true or not. It might not be. But I still feel like in, we cannot deny him, due process any more than we should still at least give some benefit of the doubt to people who are making these allegations and in fact people

say oh it's because he's moved over to the you know he's like whatever confronting the matrix or whatever the fuck they say like he this guy is a threat to you know everyone the whatever they're saying well wouldn't that make it even

more dangerous for these people to come forward then? Wouldn't it make it more? They have now this whole ecosystem coming after them as opposed to when he was just famous and then the other weird thing that was such a paradox was they're like, well, he was

protected by his tribe. I'm like, but now you're doing the same thing. So he was protected by the establishment and he was protected by these people and nobody came after him and they buried all this stuff. and that all might be true, but now can you see that you're potentially doing exactly the same thing? It's, that was, it was weird.

It's like, oh, they were protecting him when he was their dude. I'm like, and now he's your dude. And now you're protecting him. Like, I see no difference. When did we become so judgmental? Because the whole, one of the main, one of the main sort of ethoses of the left was don't judge other people. You know, everybody, we're liberals, everybody's free to live the life that they want. Then the left became super judgmental.

The right are very, very Christian, the majority of them, you know, super Christian. What did Jesus say? Judge not, let's ye be judged. Yeah. But then they're like, yeah, let's judge them. And you go, hang on, are you not turning your back on your own ways of being? Do you understand? Yeah.

that it's weird to watch what's happening on the right is interesting to me right now. Because the algorithm, it's like they're being red-filled. And for lack of a better word, it just feels like the incentives are kind of pulling them to the, in the same way that we saw on the left, the extreme faction that did not represent most people pulled the distance. pulled the discourse to the left and left a lot of people adrift or that idea like, I didn't leave the left, left me behind.

I see the right kind of, it's like this negative feedback loop that's just pulling them to the right because you're seeing people who like to talk about, you know, the Matrix shirtless. like making millions of dollars and really capturing this young male audience that everybody wants

and so I can't help but this think that this new weird like in kind of conservat con discourse about body count and stuff I'm like you guys had so much goodwill post-COVID and post-wokism so much goodwill and you cannot win you just you're determined to just like you're going to start now policing women being like obsessed with who women are sleeping with it's it's it's freaking creepy and weird guys like now you're going back to the right that I remember I'm like oh there you are

that's right yeah I remember except now you have no God to your point now you have now you're like a godless version of the moral majority which is basically what the left became It's creepy. It is. Do you remember James Orr, who we had on? Yeah. I don't think it's his own line.

He quoted someone. He said, if you fear the religious right, just wait until you meet the post-religious, right? We're meeting that. Yeah. And we're seeing them. And the thing that I find terrifying is the right were one of the main, particularly in this country, pushing back against the extremes of trans ideology, you know, which everyone in this room, I'm sure is just absolutely

finds absolutely a horror the medicalization of children is disgusting. Yeah. Your prime minister came out pretty... Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the UK, we're actually winning the argument. Turf Island. Yeah.

We're winning the argument. And then you see certain people coming out on the American right, and they've always been pushing back on it, and I've been like, that's good. And then you start to go, how long will it be until you come after the gays? Because when you win this fight, as the fight will be won, because it's so awful what they're doing,

how soon until you're like, you know what, you know gay marriage? It wasn't slippery slow. Well, they're already talking about gay marriage, but it seems to me like if that is taken to its logical conclusion, you say the right that I remember, the right that I remember is the one that Carlin and Hicks were pushing against, right? They're going to be censoring people's speech before long. They're like, they spent 20 years shouting about free speech. Right. And before you know it, we're going to be like, you can't say this, you can't joke about that.

Yeah. That's coming. Yeah, it does seem like anyone who has power wants to censor people. And everyone seems to think that they're immune to that. You know, they're like, oh, wow, the censorship is coming. And it is. And that is where I have a, where I feel very conflicted because the institutional power lies on the left. And there is no doubt that you have big tech in cahoots with the government, in cahoots with academia and the media and Hollywood and entertainment and all of these huge institutions, school, everything, working to be pro-censorship and all this weird flip-flopping that we've seen and you guys have discussed ad nauseum.

So I understand the kind of, oh, and you guys are why the right is becoming more extreme. And they're like, well, these centrist like ourselves are freaking useless. In some ways, we are. They're right. They're not entirely wrong in saying in this fight, you have to, if you, so they're talking about women being sluts and body count, but they're sterilizing children, like, don't you eventually have to take a stand and say, this one's worse than this one?

And I wrestle with this. You know, I've been, it's probably the biggest criticism that I receive that I don't think is entirely wrong. But then when I get piled on by the right and see that other side of them where it's unsettling, and it just feels like misogyny is everywhere. I hate to use that term, but it does feel like there's this misogynistic impulse

that wants to tell me what to do with my body and what I can and shame me for my past. But is that, do they have any power? Do they have any actual power? See, I disagree with you about us being useless because I think... I'm glad. Look, countries are different and America's politics is very different.

Right. But the reason we've been successful on the trans issue in the UK is actually because more moderate people have been speaking up about it. Right. Right. So when J.K. Rowling comes forward. But Douglas Murray, sorry to interrupt you, will argue that it's because we don't have somebody like Oprah coming forward and speaking out on this that doesn't give people permission in the States to even. push back who are moderate and might feel like they do in the UK. But that's exactly what I'm saying.

But people like us who are clearly not on the right strongly or on the left strongly, providing a space for that conversation to be heard and people with much bigger platforms like a J.K. Rowling, there's a left-wing Labour MP who we mentioned on Rogan, Rosie Duffield. You know, you have people speaking out who are immune as much as it's possible to the the isms and the phobias and the whatever, that's very important because most normal people, they don't want to side with the people who are on the extreme edges shouting the loudest.

They want to see a position they believe in reflected in moderate, sensible conversation, and then they feel more empowered to be like, oh yeah, I'm against this ideology as well. So I don't think we're useless actually at all. I think the reason you say that is it's not the most pleasant place to be. the center is always the place of greatest tension.

I agree, but I do think at a certain point, there's, I would have to choose a side in terms, I don't think the reasonable moderate center feels represented. So in absence of having any political representation, you are forced to kind of choose lesser of two evils, and I think many people, the argument would be that people of the IDW or the classical liberals or whatever, whatever space we occupy the center, default to voting for the left. I don't know that that's actually true in practice. I don't anymore.

Yeah, I don't either. But when it comes to choosing a president, which I actually, there's not. many options. You know, I guess I could vote third party just out of, out of some sense of my morality, but as these fights become more, I was joking on dumpster fire just this week, I was like, if Gavin Newsom becomes, against the election, I might have to vote for Trump, which is like something, and I don't even know if that's, if I could hold my nose and vote for him because I find him so just reprehensible as a person. But, And I think character matters.

But then when it comes down to these kinds of fights, like pushing back against sterilizing kids, what do you do? Well, I'll tell you my answer, which is there are some things that... You're like, I live in the UK. I mean, that's part of it. But there are some things that are so abominable that they are just more important. And therefore, I will hold my nose with both hands if I have to, is the truth. And I will vote for whoever is going to oppose that. That's actually one of the dangers in what this is doing

because it forces a lot of people to vote for parties that they don't actually want to vote for. Right. And the more the left pushes the extremes into the mainstream, the more you're going to, people are going to be like, oh, you know what? You know, I don't care about women's rights. Fuck it. Right.

You know, this is more important. The border is being invaded. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, but that if, if the left wing parties refuse to, have borders, want to sterilize children, et cetera. I'm sorry, I will vote for Donald Trump

if I lived in this country, I'll vote for a right-wing party in the UK, without any hesitation. I will not hesitate for a second because it's fucking evil. Yeah. It's evil. Yeah, and there's a lot of people who would say that the stuff that's happening, I mean, January 6th, we're touching all the buttons today.

And now we're talking about January 6th. People would argue that the stuff that's happening on the right is a constitutional crisis and that if he got power, he would never leave and that there's, you know, fascism. And so, and whether or not you can... But that isn't true, though, Bridget. He's not a fascist. Yeah, no. Right.

So we have... This is where the thing comes in is like the reason I will, I will, as someone who is in our kind of politically homeless space, vote for somebody on the right is because the things they say about the right are not true. Right. Right. Whereas the things that people say about the left are true. So for example, in the UK, they call Suella Braverman, who's a descendant of immigrants, racist and xenophobic, for wanting to prevent people from getting into boats illegally and coming into the country, in a country which now spends about $10 million a day on hotels for illegal immigrants.

Yeah. Now, that's true. Is it, does that make her a fascist? I don't think so. Does thinking that there are men and there are women and you can't change sex by incantation, is that making you a fascist? No. Right. So in my opinion, you have to go down the list of the issues and go, is what is being said about the right truth? Is what is being said about the left true?

And in my opinion right now, when I look at that, I mean, the American right, yeah, is going loopy, as we've talked about. But they're not actually fascist. They're not actually going to suspend democracy. They're not actually going to do any of the things. January of the 6th was not an insurrection. It was bad. It's bad that that happened. It's not a good thing.

But it wasn't an attempt to seize power. Right. So just because the left says certain things about the right doesn't mean it's true. Just because the right says certain things about the left doesn't mean it's true. We have to actually look at what they're saying and they go, is this true? Yes. Is this true? No. And play issue by issue.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then I start thinking about. like Breitbart's whole politics are downstream of culture, which the right has really embraced and why they're trying to be more culturally persuasive. And if that is actually true, why they would engage in all this silly discourse around, like my Instagram feed, there was

one last night that I was showing my cousin and my, and we were dying laughing. And it's a woman and she has like a craft mac and cheese bag and she flicks it and it's like when you're a suburban mom but you have a questionable pass like you used to flick like a baggie and i was like my whole instagram feed is suburban moms who joke about how they used to be party girls and now their moms living their best life that is the entirety granted it's all being targeted at me because that's also me but that but that is also just the suburbs and kind of where we are why would you why would you even risk alienating these people who you could potentially bring over to your side because I think they're worried about their children, which ultimately I think will win out.

But I don't even know why you would risk it with like a silly body count discourse and all this like slut shaming and the weird stuff we're seeing kind of popping up. But do you think, and I thought about this a lot, do you think it's about disgust? Because when you get to the extremes of the political spectrum, the extreme left are disgusted by the right.

These people are racist, they're bids, they're disgusting, they're fascists, they're Nazis. And you can hear when they talk about them, they really feel, they almost taste the emotions. And then when you get to the right, you know, they're transing the kids. Yeah, they're disgusting, they're communists. They want to abolish.

our country, you know, all of the, that's what we're getting from both sides. It's like visceral disgust. And yet, it's not what I experience. I think the best thing that's happened to me being, living in the suburbs and being weirdly one foot very in the discourse and one foot not is that most people have no idea what we're talking about. they're not, they might if it's invading their schools. I think this is why you're seeing a lot of people leaving, New York, L.A.,

and going to states that are more purple or red. But otherwise, it's like they talk about how the pool is down in the HOA, you know, Facebook group and what their kids are going to be for Halloween. And this is, again, only my experience. I don't think normal people are, I think they are more in the center. They're just naturally, people have different ideological beliefs and they are still neighbors and friends

and go to barbecues together. So I'm not, this is something that I've been really fascinated with lately too is observing how it seems like the very online people and that discourse is getting away from the people who are not very online and living very much in the world. In kind of an accelerated way, it seems like the realities are splitting completely. Like the language that people use who are very online and the things that they talk about. If I walked around my suburb and knocked on every door,

how many people do you think would have ever heard of Bronze Age Pervert? I don't think I've had a point of time. Exactly. You guys are very online. And this is a person who's very online, who's had a number 33 on Amazon for a minute at least best-selling book that and people talk about this. Like it's an argument. That's my point is I think we're arguing about things online and they'll feel like they have to like push back against his arguments or somehow contend with this. And it's like no one's ever heard of this person.

Other than people online, people who are very online. And that separation is really interesting to me because I'm not sure what that looks like even in a year as we enter into the, because the things that I do hear about in the suburbs from people who are now choosing to homeschool their kids and pulling them out is the gender stuff. And as Helen Joyce was just on Walkins Welcome, our podcast, and she's like, this breaks. everything. It was so eye open, you know, the way she's so clear and brilliant, and just saying how it's breaking everything. It's just, it really does, it's the tip of the sphere, which is why everyone spends so much time talking about it. And it breaks democracies, it breaks norms, it breaks families apart, and you see people wrestling with not wanting their children exposed to this crap and how if the minute that it happens in a school, they're pulling their kid out of school

and starting a homeschooling pod. And even people on the left are libertarians are starting their own little preschools because they don't want their kids exposed to this. So that is the one area where I actually feel like it's, it's really bled into reality. But you know, what you've just said really gives me hope, Bridget. Yeah. Because it really, really does. Because there's always going to be these people who are very online like all of us are. But the fact that there's the majority who are just living their lives, raising their families,

having their careers, having relationships. That's what life really is about. To me, there is nothing more wonderful than when I go for a meal with a friend or I go for a drink. And they don't want to talk about this. and I'm like, oh, that's amazing. You know, we all talk about the cost of food. Yeah.

That's what everyone talks about, everywhere, how expensive food is, every single city-state that I go in. When I was back east with my family, when I was on the West Coast with all my family out there, recently when I... It's like everywhere I go, that's what everyone's talking about is how expensive food has got and gas.

Because it's really important. And yet we're being gas-lit and told, like, oh, everything's great. Bidenomics is amazing. And like, you guys are just imagining that you're poor. You know, it's a weird, that's what real people are talking about. But I disagree with you guys, though. The elite discourse is always separated from the ordinary person and always has been.

And yet, that is what determines reality. I mean, I don't know if you saw this post-BLM, the top 100 standard and poor corporations. Did you see this? No. They made 300,000 new hires. six percent of them were why? 300,000. New hires, six percent of them were why, right?

So once this ideology becomes embedded in institutions, in corporations, and schools, etc., the fact that Joe blogs down the road is doing, is barbecuing and not paying attention to any of it, does not mean that Joe's blog, Joe blocks down the road is not getting hired for a job on merit, his children aren't being taught trans ideology in school. etc. This elite discord, this is always the way the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority. Right. Right. But they were motivated. They were united. They were driven. They were passionate. They had a strong ideology. This is why I've always opposed wokenness because look at what it's done. Yeah. Look at what it's done. And so the fact that ordinary people aren't paying attention, good for their mental health, I guess. Yeah. Right. But it's not

protecting them from being affected by it in real life. And it's not just the trans issue. The re-racialization of society is a big problem. Yeah. It's a big problem. I don't know if you saw, there was this amazing piece about how the title, I think, was complex systems won't survive the competency crisis, the competence crisis. It's about how artificial diversity essentially is causing airplane accidents and all of this other stuff because people aren't being hired because they're good at the job. They're being hired because they tick boxes. These things affect real world stuff.

It's the only reason I care about it. You know, I've never been interested in having online fights about things that don't matter, but this stuff affects reality. It really does. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm not saying it doesn't, but I don't know. Then, yeah, I think that is why people are increasingly becoming radicalized. Because if you are pushing back against this reorganization of the world in reality,

and you are, you know, it's gone pretty extreme. You, and it's all about power, then the argument that a lot of people on the right make is they have to play, these are the new rules. But then that feels like... That's an abdication of responsibility in my... Well, it feels very like, okay, so now, yeah, you abdicate all your principles too, for power. No. And now nobody, and now people are looking around,

and there's, sure, there's people fighting for power, but there's no real leadership. Who's leading? It was nice to hear your prime minister. We were saying on a Dunsterfire, I'm like, finally, an adult in the room. And we shouldn't get, bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can't. A man is a man

and a woman is a woman. That's just common sense. Like the one world leader who's willing to come out and say boys and girls are different and we shouldn't be bullied into believing otherwise, which is insane that it's even got to this point. And he's being called a transphob, a big ed, a fascist, etc. And I think it's, but that's leadership to me. You know, So I don't see very much leadership. I do see a lot of people jockeying for power. And I think the incentive structures online around the discourse are generally, you know, get attention and get clicks. It's not necessarily what's good for America.

No. No. We all joke what's bad for society is good for us. Which is not good. You know, it's hard for me to, I don't, I try very hard not to. lean into a lot of that outrage cycles and clicks and whatnot because I don't want to, I don't want to be a part of the problem. And so do we.

We try to do that. On that happy note, Bridget, we're going to go to locals in a second. Okay. And ask questions from our supporters. Before we do, we always end with the same questions, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Nothing. We all need to shut up.

Except us, obviously. Subscribe. Yeah. We should all take one of those vipassana meditations where you don't talk for 10 days. Imagine if the world just did that. And everybody just went for 10 days and just didn't. And silent. We'd either come out better or just significant.

Or insane. Insane. Yeah. Totally out of our minds. Yeah. So nothing would change then. Yeah, exactly. We'd stay insane. Yeah.

All right, guys, head on over to locals where we continue the conversation, including your questions. He will shame. and sociopathically lie to continue to gain power. He's a very disciplined psychopath. He's a politician. He's much better than him.