TRIGGERnometry - "Demonising Men Will Make Things Worse" - Nina Power

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Nina Power is a writer and philosopher. Nina's latest book What Do Men Want? An Inquiry Into Love, Sex and Power is now available. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 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

All these forms of resentment and, you know, the idea that if men gain, women lose or if women gain men lose, I'm very critical of that idea. But we've seen all these discussions of, like, toxic masculinity and, you know, these sort of sweeping claims about basically how all men are evil. You know, and I think this is, like, really, really unhelpful for everybody. And it's simply not true. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen.

And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a philosopher, social commentator and the author of What Do Men Want? Nina Powell, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you. It's good to have you on. Look, before we get into the interview itself, we're obviously, we've known you for a long time, and it's been a long time coming you coming on the show. But I've always said to you, when you finish your book, let's get you on.

So we know you very well. But for anyone who doesn't know you, who are you, how are you? you where you are, what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us about this on camera? Well, I got the train. But before that, I was an academic. I taught philosophy at the University of Rohampton for 13 years and various other places. I still teach a bit of philosophy largely to retired adults and also in this brave new world of post or para academia, which people are exploring now. So people are just signing up for courses on anything that interests them.

And I'm very keen to break out of this academic world and do things in that way. So I left academia maybe like three years ago, two and a half years ago. And I write for various publications, including The Telegraph. And I largely spend my time walking about and thinking and reading and writing.

And you are a very thoughtful person. And before we started, I was just, we were chatting about, some of the controversies around your book and things that we'll talk about. And I was just saying that, like, to me, you just like my lovely friend, Nina, that I see every few months, we have a chat about philosophy or something else. But it turns out you're super controversial, and people are trying to cancel your book before they've even read it and stuff. Yeah, no, no. Well, I think this is quite a common experience now, particularly for women,

you know, particularly for women trying to think in the public sphere. And yeah, I mean, it's a crazy, it's a crazy, crazy time. And, you know, I was kind of very involved in leftist and activist politics, particularly around the student fee increase, so 2009, 2010 in particular. And I was very involved in defending people who'd been arrested and prosecuted and I would say persecuted. And at that point, I think the left understood who our enemies were, right? Like it was the state, it was the police, it was the courts. You know, we were fighting for free education for kind of universal access and all of these sorts of things. And then between then and now, something really weird happened. And I mean, I think the left always kind of fragments and turns on itself. But I think it did

that in a kind of turbocharged, really deranged way. And it stopped really being about compassion and discussion and solidarity and disagreement, actually, and all of the things that I remember of the left. And, you know, humour would be a big part of it. And actually, lots of post-Christian virtues or Christian virtues like forgiveness and, you know, all these things seem to have been kind of abandoned in the sort of hyper-internet age. And yeah, so, so, I mean, a few years ago now I said something, I was a member of the Labour Party, not particularly active member, but nevertheless, I posted something on Facebook about how the Labour Party seemed to be treating its female members who were raising questions about proposed changes for the Gender

Recognition Act with total disrespect. know they were being interrogated and kicked out of the party and i was just like what's going on this is like orwellian um and i posted that and i sort of thought oh maybe that'll be a bit controversial um but that's how i felt you know i was just sick of this stuff it's like you know we should be able to discuss everything particularly policy ideas thoughts you know we do disagree like that's the nature of humanity like it's disagreement and we have to negotiate that um and then yeah so i got kind of targeted I suppose by sort of activists and yeah lots of my I lost lots of work I lost loads of friends I like when I give talks sometimes people hire security guards to to

protect me in case anyone wants to attack me yet the book people try to preemptively cancel it without having read it by by emailing the publisher and yeah I mean I like like lots of people now I I routinely get kind of called like a fascist or a Nazi or an anti-semit or a terve or a transphobic or whatever. Welcome home. Yes. I mean, it's like, you know, and it's obviously insane. And actually, it's terribly disrespectful to these words to misuse them. I mean, it's like, you know, these things have a historical specificity and a political reality.

And, you know, I mean, this is like fucking infantile. No, no, you're allowed to swear. Fucking go for it. No, no, it's like, I actually try not to swear in general. I think it like debases language. But yeah, anyway, you know very well, I'm sure, like the kind of guess you haven't. Yeah, so this is where we find ourselves. So, yes, I'm interested in dialogue, you know,

and I think that's the only way we can kind of move forward, whether it's between men and women or left and right or whatever. What do you think the left isn't interested in dialogue anymore? Yeah, I'm not sure. It's, yeah, certainly turned its back on any kind of philosophical aspect. I think it's sort of internalised the idea that it's weak, you know, and far from understanding the fact that it actually controls all of the institutions, culturally at least, it sort of permanently imagines itself to be the underdog,

and therefore it's okay because everyone else is the oppressor. So it doesn't matter if you lie about them, you know, because they're your enemy or this kind of thing. But I don't know. I mean, some people would say it's not really what's going on. is not really the left, you know, that it's something else. Because it certainly isn't the left that most people I know who were or are on the left remember or feel that they're part of. Like it's kind of lost its humanity somehow. It's a really good point because they do love to dehumanize. They do love to use certain words. Just a couple of days ago, a Labor MP was being interviewed

by Julia Hartley-Bruhehr and she was asking him very sensible questions about, about mask wearing. He was saying that he wears a mask. He was like, what studies can you draw from that proves that masks are effective? And he said something along the lines of, well, we're not going to have any of this anti-vax nonsense at the moment. Before saying, I feel the mask works. A sensible approach to wearing masks on public transport and particularly... A sensible approach would involve evidence that they made a difference. Have you ever seen any of that evidence? I haven't.

I feel they've made a difference. You feel they've made... Oh, well, in that case, Jonathan, do you feel? I mean, if that's the way we make decisions about people's freedoms in this country, if Jonathan Reynolds feels they make a difference. I just feel throughout things like this. I know it's not your position, but people like me have followed the scientific and medical advice and voted in time. I'm asking you for, no, no, no.

Someone saying you should do this is not the same as they're producing evidence for that. How it affects my breathing and the transmission of material from mouth. Of course it's had an effect. What do you mean of course it's had an effect? Numerous scientific studies. have been done and none of them has shown any significant effect, if any, at all. Well, I feel it's been all benefits. You feel.

Well, look, I just sort of tedious anti-vax stuff, anti-rescues me. Excuse me, Jonathan Rennel. How dare you? How dare you? I am so fed up and so are my listeners. I'm asking you to produce the scientific basis for you claiming that you feel a policy works when it's a massive infringement of civil liberties. And you've just basically accused me of being,

anti-vax. I am double-vaccinated. I have always encouraged people to get the vaccination. That is an outrageous thing to say. I am so fed up of that. Yeah, okay, but this is just strange. You know, this is religious belief and that's disrespectful to religion, frankly. The thing is, it's like, if you want to convince your enemy or someone you disagree with of your position, you have to be able to argue it. You know, and the idea that you can just kind of like steamroll your way for a conversation by repeating mantras, you know, this is a cult. Like, this is not a rational dialogue between adults, right? This is people who are just kind of, I don't know, being insanely dogmatic, you know, and everybody's capable of reason and thought and discussion. Like, this is what it is

to be alive. Right. And this way of being is extremely unpersuasive. It converts no one. It just reinforces the strength of feeling within your own tribe. And that's one of the things I'm really interested to talk to you about with your book is you're trying to break out of the sort of dynamics and paradigms that men and women have been put into in the modern world. One very quick question before we get into the book, which is you talked a little bit about how you think, and this is something on which I completely agree, by the way, the women like you who speak out against certain dogmas that are now widely accepted on whatever we call this thing that is not the left or whatever. Women are more attacked more. They are treated differently to the men.

And I see this all the time, right? Why do you think that is? I think there's maybe like a deep psychoanalytic explanation, which is to do partly with, I think, the idea that women should be caring and kind and maternal and, you know, any woman who doesn't fulfill that role is somehow some like sort of evil witch or Harriton and, you know, probably should be burnt. But I actually think a lot of people involved in this activism are deeply, deeply unhappy and they kind of hate their lives. And they blame women for having even brought them into the world, you know. So I think on some level it's a kind of deep hatred of life, which then gets projected onto women as the kind of, you know, somehow responsible for

nature and for life. So that's my deep psychoanalytic explanation that these, the people who are really attacking women kind of hate themselves. And I think in some cases actually envy women in another kind of like very creepy and disturbed way. And I think these are the kind of public conversations we need to have about how men and women relate to each other in terms of affection and love, but also the complicated aspects in terms of difference and possible envy in some cases and things like that. Well, let's talk about your book because, you know, it's really, really interesting in some of the stuff you look at. And I do see it as an attempt of synthesis, right? You're trying to bring different points of view together. So first of all, where do you think

we are as a society when it comes to men and women? And where would you like to do? see us move to? Yeah, I think, you know, I think it's always interesting. I think there's something kind of profoundly beautiful and always sort of thrilling about the relationship between men and women, whether it's between individuals or collectively, and it's always kind of shifting. So I think we live in a very mixed world, I describe it as like a heterosocial world, the fact that, you know, work and social life and many aspects, if not all aspects of existence,

in the modern world are basically shared, you know, that men and women do not really have their own domains. There isn't kind of any form of separation, positive or negative. And that might be an issue. It might be that men and women need to spend more time apart, sometimes, you know, for the sake of themselves and also greater harmony. I think, obviously, I talk about after Me Too, you know, whether that was a kind of historical, you know, whether that was always going to happen at some point, you know, whether there was a sort of necessity, but also about the negative aspects of that, like this world of surveillance and technology and how easy it is to kind of defame people and make claims about people. It's very impersonal and inhuman and the kind of technology has sort of

separated us in other ways. And so I think we're in a sort of interesting moment. I think there's the possibility of reconciliation, which is what I talk about, forgiveness and reconciliation. I think that men and women generally enjoy spending time together, whether as partners or friends, although it's often fraught as well. Like that's the reality.

But I think what's being presented in the media or increasingly in the last few years is a very negative story about men. You know, generalisations about men. you could say, well, people always generalised about women before, like this is just correcting the record. But I'm very against this idea of retribution or the zero-sum game. I think this is like everyone loses.

So all these forms of resentment and, you know, the idea that if men gain women lose or if women gain men lose, I'm very critical of that idea. But we've seen all these discussions of like toxic masculinity and, you know, these sort of sweeping claims about basically how all men are evil. You know, and I think this is like really, really unhelpful for everybody. And it's simply not true.

It doesn't accord with the reality of people's lives, like the fact that, you know, men and women are friends, the fact that they love each other, the fact that people care about their families, their fathers, the brothers, the sons, and so on. So I really dislike this kind of idea that there's something kind of fundamentally wrong with all kinds of masculinity, which is the sort of liberal story we've been fed in the last few years. It's a great point because the story that we've been fed is that men are inherently problematic. The moment something happens, like that awful case, like the Sarah Everard case, they sort of framed it like, men did this. And you're like, no, men didn't do this. It was one man.

Can you explain why that's so dangerous to take an extreme case like Sarah Everard and then extrapolate it to be a reflection of all men? Yeah, I mean, I can see the temptation. I can see why people do that. And I think it's, you know, basically what everyone wants to prevent is male violence, right? Like we're all interested in solving this problem. Like men are violent towards each other. They're violent towards themselves. I talk about male suicide in the book. It's a serious problem. And they're violent towards women too, right? So we know that men are responsible for the vast majority of violence. The question is, how do we prevent this? You know, I don't think that demonising all men and saying that they're evil is going to help. I think that's actually going to encourage in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way, particularly when men are seriously alienated and atomized and I talk about in cells and, you know, in a way, try to explain or understand or sympathize with their plight, if you so I mean. Again, these are groups of men who are you're allowed to hate, you know. With these very, very extreme, violent, horrific

cases, right? Of course we have to recognise that's what they are. They are rare. They are something we absolutely want to prevent at all costs. One of my suggestions in the book is that men do need to think of themselves as a class. I think women are very used to being treated as examples of a class, like this kind of woman or, you know, that women in a way, either because of, I don't know, for social, cultural or other reasons, often feel like the, they're members of a class or they're often positioned in that way, in a way that men are often not necessarily, like men maybe think of themselves as individuals first and men second or something like this. And that's fair enough. I mean, we're all individuals too. But so I'm very interested

in those kind of mechanisms of like mentorship and how men can, if you like, deal with other men when they start acting in ways that were, that are problematic. Right. So the man who killed Sarah Everard, had a reputation, right? Other men in the police force gave him names like the rapist, right? They knew that there was something wrong with this guy. And they didn't prevent it because they didn't kind of step in and deal with it, right? If you saw what I mean. Like if there was a more self-conscious way of thinking, this man makes the rest of us look bad or might make the rest of us look bad, then there might be better ways of kind of preventing these kind of horrific acts, if you so I mean. So it's a really complicated question, but I think in the first place, it's like saying

men are good and men can be good, and this is not something that we're generally used to hearing in the past few years. So there has to be like positive masculinity, you know, so that men can improve, like women too, right? We can all be better. You know, this is a, not only a Christian idea, it's a, you know, an idea we should all kind of, I don't know, hope for, right, rather than think that we're kind of doomed and that, you know, men are inherently bad or something like this. So, yeah, so I think, I do think men do need to look out for each other more, and this is part of what patriarchy and responsibility is, actually. You know, patriarchy is not stealing things and telling people what to do.

It's actually taking responsibility in a profoundly deep and human way, whether it's for children, whether it's for other men, whether it's for women. Do you have a website? Do you plan to have a website? Well, if you do, then EasyDNS are the company for you. EasyDNS is the perfect domain name, registrar provider and web host for you. They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be council culture, de-platform attacks, or overzealous government agencies.

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which is of course triggered as well, and you will get 50% off the initial purchase. Sign up for their newsletter, Access of Easy that tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy and censorship. When you see, you know, men being demonised and you see, you know, people saying these things on social media, a lot of the time it comes from women, and you think, but hang on a second, you have a father, you must say brothers, friends, whatever else.

The vast majority of them will be straight women who at the end of it will want a relationship. Can you not see that that is not helping us come together, that's not actually helping society become more cohesive. You're just being divisive. Yeah, and I think it cuts both ways. You know, there are some men I talk about in the book who see in all women, you know, or they, let's say they have a bad experience with one woman and then they kind of generalise, like all women are bitches or whatever, you know, and I think, so we, you know, the difference is Nina, I'm very sorry to interrupt, and this is not like defending that point of view

at all because I hate men like that, but they are a tiny minority. And they don't get column inches, right? You don't get to have an article in The Guardian every week talking about how women are bitches. No. I mean, that would make for great content. Well, that would be one form of equality. Yeah. Do you know what I mean, though? That's the difference. Absolutely, of course. So what I was going to say is, like, you know, you have a small number of men who might say that a small number of women who say generalise about men in the same way, right? But one of the things I say is that like misogyny, true misogyny is actually really rare. You know, just as Missandri is actually really rare. Because in practice, women, largely spend time with men, they feel safe with them, they trust them, they love them, and so on. So, you know, again, it's this kind of like getting away from this resentment and this zero-sum game idea is like, how can we live better together, you know, and acknowledge harm where it's necessary to do so, but not make these kind of systematic generalisations

about all men or all women, you know. And I think me too in some ways was this kind of really unfortunate, one of the aspects of it that was really bad. People were allowed to sort of wreck on previous relationships, right? Probably all of us have had bad relationships where it wasn't particularly anyone's fault. It was just, you know, or it ended badly or, you know, both people behaved stupidly or whatever, you know, but some people wanted to then go back, because some women wanted to go back and say, you know, that guy was an abuser or that guy was like, you know, evil, right? Because that whole victim narrative allows you to do that. It allows you to see the world in black and white. But it's not, right? We're all kind of capable of harm. We're all good and bad. We're all a mixture

of these things, men and women included. And if we position women as pure victims, then we're basically putting them back in the position of being children, right? Which is not what women want either, right? You know, there's something kind of awful about that. So women do have power, right? Women do have meaning and agency and they can make choices and all of those things. And they can also be very, cruel to men, you know, they can destroy men's lives if they want to. You know, so I think we have to acknowledge that both men and women have power. They have different kinds of power, right? But what it means to be an adult is actually navigating and negotiating those things in all of their complexity. And it's too simple to say, you know, either this group of people is good or this people's group

is bad, you know, it doesn't work like that. Well, the last question before you jump in, Constantinus, how much of this do you think is based on the desire for vengeance? I mean, and it's a particularly loaded question. I remember with Me Too, seeing what happened when people were talking about it. And understandably, there was anger and there was rage. But there was also this very unpleasant undercurrent of wanting to tear men down. That I've found really uncomfortable. And it's why I never really got behind the whole Me Too thing, because I knew where it was.

was going to end up, I could see what was happening. I knew what the end game was. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, like psychoanalytically as a society, we haven't really confronted these things, like the desire for revenge or envy or lust or, you know, these things are really hard to deal with, you know, and often these things are kind of like cover stories or eruptions for a deeper conversation. And I think, well, one thing that's really important would be to sort of have a more psychoanalytic discourse in general, you know, and not pretend that we're somehow past all that just because we've got mobile phones, you know.

And one of the aspects of the book is like going back to previous things that our ancestors did and thought, as if, you know, I hate this idea that we're modern and that there's nothing for us to learn from previous ways of thinking or from previous ways of behaving. I mean, there's loads of stuff to learn. In fact, people maybe had better solutions, you know. You see these sort of young women on TikTok, for example, going like,

oh, you know, oh, maybe we should get men to stay around if they, you know, if we have a child with them and, you know, they should take some responsibility and it's like, you've just reinvented marriage, you know? It's like, and this is happening all the time. It's like there were previous solutions to some of the same questions. But yeah, I think maybe there are different ways of acknowledging these sorts of deep currents. Like the Greeks had myth and gods and, you know, there's a way of kind of dealing culturally with psychoanalyticly describable emotions that don't go away, you know, just because we're online, you know. So I think we probably need a better culture in a way that deals with, or a culture that basically acknowledges more explicitly these complex feelings. So it doesn't

turn into a kind of vengeance spiral. Yeah. Yeah, because we do act like every activist is motivated purely by the desire to improve things. Right. Having met activists. Yeah, there's a lot of ego, weird stuff going on. Yeah, there's ego, there's revenge, there's bitterness, there's resentment, there's personal trauma that's built on to make the whole world seem like it's that thing.

Do you think one of the reasons that we are sort of talking about this stuff now increasingly, and one of the reasons I think for the explosion in Jordan Peterson's popularity was the fact that maybe it's this narrative or maybe it's other things, you tell me what you think. But we've kind of got to a position over time where, as Francis talks about, we've demonized men and we've said they're bad. But we've also created increasingly generations of men

who are not living up to that standard of patriarchy, the positive vision of patriarchy described. Increasingly, you see young men taking less responsibility, increasingly not hanging around when they've had a child with someone, you know, abrogating other things that men traditionally are supposed to do in inverted commas. So at the same time as telling men they're bad, we're also seeing men actually not behave like men much anymore. Yeah.

So I do discuss Peterson's popularity in the book. And, you know, I think it's really symptomatic. I think it speaks to a need or a desire for a sort of father figure in the first place. You know, like there's something extremely patrician about Peterson. He dresses in the kind of 1950s dad sort of way. You know, and he's sort of literally telling people to clean their room and stand up straight and all the things that you would associate with a sort of, you know, father figure. And I think his popularity has to partly be diagnosed in that way

that he's providing something which isn't there in the broader culture, amongst other things. And actually, I say that this is good for women. Peterson is actually good for women. Because one thing he says to young men in particular, but not only, but let's stick with the young men, is you need to take responsibility for your own life and not blame women for your situation. And the implication is also like if you sort yourself out, then you might stand more of a chance basically of, you know, being attractive to others,

getting a job and, you know, functioning in the world. And actually that takes the pressure off in that sense, you know, the idea that men deserve a woman or it's women's job to tidy up after men or something like that. You know, Pete's against that, you know, so I think it, you know, whatever he says about women who cares, women are chaos, great, fantastic. He's not wrong, me. I don't mind. I don't mind.

That's all fine. But actually, I do think. on balance, he's actually very positive in that sense. Yeah, I agree. You know, and the, and it's, the stoic virtues, you know, like there's so much stoicism in the kind of masculinist literature, you know, and I think it's really interesting. It's very, very symptomatic and significant, I think. Well, it's the only thing that works for men. This is why, you know, you say for, you know, you empathize with incels. I empathize with them less, actually, but I don't hate them. Yeah. I just think they haven't got the peace that, that helps make your life better, which

is as a man, you've only got really one route. You work hard, you improve your skill set, you get better, you make more money, you raise your status in society. And then all the stuff that you currently not getting because evil women haven't let you have it is going to happen. But for a man, the route to that lies through, taking responsibility, upping your game. That's it for a man, right? You've got to up your game.

And that's it. So being stuck in a community of other people who encourage you to stay where you are, that's my issue with that movement only. I empathise with that. Yeah, I mean, there's a strong class dimension too, which is in Alex Lee Moyer made a very interesting documentary. I don't know if you've seen it, TFW, no-GF, that feeling when no girlfriend,

where she interviews some incels who are big online and all people associated with the movement. And, you know, this is really a story about class. Like these are often young men living in extraordinarily depressed and dispossessed areas who actually, yes, are trying to improve their lives through working out, through, you know, laughing with their friends online and so on. But it's really, really difficult, right?

When there's no jobs, there's like no hope, you're stuck in your, you know, the basement of your mother's house and he's a cliche. But, you know, that is a reality for millions of people. And it's like, I mean, I don't disagree with you that people have to take personal responsibility. And I think one of the problems with a certain leftist or fake leftist discourse is the idea that you can just blame the structures, you know, that you have no moral or individual agency or that anyone who talks about individuals must be right wing.

It's like, no, actually, you know, you can't keep blaming society for your problems. The reason I feel comfortable saying it, because it sounds a little bit judgmental, but look, when I was at 18, I was sleeping in a park, right? So if I can sleep in a park and then still make something of myself, I'm not saying every single person is the same or everyone should be like me or anything like that,

but if you find yourself in a difficult position, all I'm saying is, I'm not saying you will necessarily succeed. I'm just saying the only way out for a man is that. Yeah. There is no other way. I mean, and to put it back in the context of a community or relations,

it's like if you sort yourself out, I mean, I've had issues. I had a massive midlife crisis. I was like totally messed up, right? And I sorted myself out, you know, and I think a lot of people have this experience at some point, right? And it's possible and it's amazing that it's possible. And I think the thing is like once you realize that it's possible to take hold of your own life,

it's actually better for everyone else as well. So it's not selfish to look after yourself. It's actually better for everyone, you know, because then you can help other people if they're in trouble. You know, it becomes this kind of outward looking thing. You know, it's a proper social gesture. You know, it's actually much kinder and more empathetic and thoughtful to not be selfish, not be a, you know, self-indulgent prick, you know. But isn't the problem...

Strong message. there. It's entirely the episode. Don't be a self- an entitled prick. Yeah. But isn't part of the problem that the world that we're living in is more and more feminized? It's celebrating more and more female values. You know, the traditional male values are traditional male jobs are dwindling. So the problem is for men, they're not really getting a chance to be masculine, to celebrate these masculine virtues. And as a result,

they're not progressing in the same way. Yeah, I think this is a really important question, and I think it's one, again, that we all have to collectively work out, right, in the coming years. And there's been lots of interesting articles and pieces about the kind of feminization. Like, I wrote a book in 2009, which was about feminization of work.

So, yeah, I mean, and it was an explicitly political decision, right? So, like, under Thatcher, it was like, we are no longer going to be this industrial nation. We're going to move towards the knowledge economy. This will privilege typically feminine skills like, you know, communication and mediation and words and whatnot. And yes, I think that's absolutely happened, right? So we live in an increasingly feminized world, however we want to see that. And it is a problem, right?

There's this kind of excess of male energy and, you know, all of the ways in which that would have been expressed through physical labor. I mean, those jobs still exist, right? They're not completely disappeared. But you're right, as a tendency. You know, it's like, I don't know, if you go to kind of depressed, like, post-industrial places, a lot of men are working out in the gym, but they're not like working, they're not building things or making things, you know. And I'm pro people going to the gym, obviously, but it's no replacement, if you like,

for actually participating, having a social role, you know, and I think this is one of the things that leads to, you know, sort of high rates of male suicide and drug use and self-harm, you know, because it's this lack of a social role. And I don't really have the solution. It's like, you know, we might need to decide how to live together differently in the future and what we do with all of our different skills and energies. But it has to be a collective decision.

I think both men and women, of course, and children have a stake in this. It's a vicious circle. We had Dr. Tony Sewell on, and the first thing to me we did with him, he made such a profound point. Remember, if you're a boy, you're going to have, you're likely to have

mum at home, her friends, then you're going to school, you're going to have a female teacher and the whole environment. You hardly see a man. Let me give you something that's really interesting. You can go to some primary schools now. And it's happened to me a number of occasions.

You go into the primary school and suddenly all these little boys start running up towards you. It's quite scary. It's almost like your Santa Claus. You go in there. And it's like, oh man, they haven't seen a man. Yeah.

And they secretly think you're going to be their teacher. That's it. But they're disappointing because they're just visiting, you know. You should change them for a while. They're running up to you. They're talking to you. They kind of, because if you sit down with some of those books, they actually do not have any interaction with any male adult authority.

Yeah. None. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean I do talk in the book about the necessity for ritual and mentorship and all of these things that are kind of missing in our culture. You know, I do think, you know, children need both male and female influence. They absolutely do, you know, girls as well. You know, and of course, like we want to celebrate alternative family arrangements and so on.

But at the same time, there's a general social responsibility and I think absolutely, I was speaking to someone today who is saying that there's an Australian researcher who said that young boys, need to fight with older men, like wrestle with them, so that the older man can tell them when to stop, if you so what I mean, so that you learn your limits and what is appropriate and what isn't appropriate

in terms of your use of physical strength. And if you're not getting that, then the violence might go elsewhere, which is, again, what we want to deal with, what we want to confront and prevent. So, yeah, really, those kind of how to direct all of that energy, it's not being done well.

And I think there is a suspicion of men in mentorship roles. Sometimes that's correct. I think we also need to give back power to female intuition, by the way. So when women say there's something not right here with a man, like men have got to listen as well. So I think, you know,

and they've also got to trust their own instincts and what I said before about men looking out and looking after each other, I think, rather than seeing themselves as this kind of first-person shooter individual. You know, it's got to be a kind of horizontal relation to masculinity and to other men as well. So I think we all need to, yeah, participate in this kind of, I don't know,

more harmonious and expansive relation that has more male and female influences. And also older people as well, like the way in which we treat older people as if they're kind of irrelevant, you know. I think this cutting off of the older generation, you know, from grandchildren and from their children is also like, you know, awful. It tells you something terrible about our culture. What you're talking about, I think, is the atomization of society just generally. It's like the size of the family shrinks, the number of connections people have shrinks outside of their phone, et cetera. There's so many things you're bringing up.

So how do we get to the sunny uplands of tomorrow where we're all living in perfect harmony? I don't know about her perfect harmony, but I think just a kind of more honest discussion, you know, in general, like not demonising one sex or the other, taking responsibility for ourselves and each other. I mean, acknowledging harm where it exists, you know, and that's important, but also not thinking of ourselves as kind of holy good or holy bad even. You know, both are extreme positions that are largely not true, you know, for anybody. Do you think we'll ever get past, I mean, you are not the first person to have said this words sitting in that chair. We had Julie Bindle on a few weeks ago.

And she talked about, and I think it's inevitably a fact that all of this conversation, as you've said earlier, is about dealing with the fact that men are violent, right? Do you think we'll ever get past the biological reality that men are what they are and women are different and there's a size difference, there's a strength difference, there's a brain difference, men are violent for a reason, right? young men seek status and in the process of doing that, that's when that happens. Sure. I mean, we're animals with a thin veneer of poetry. Right. You know, and men and women are different. I mean, this is like, I make this point. I know.

I know. Now I can see why they're trying to cancel you, Nina. I know. So my opening line is like, men and women exist, you know. This is my controversial opening statement. No, and it's really important to recognize where that difference is relevant, whether it's biologically in law, in sports, you know, in separate spaces and so on, right? A lot of, you know, discussions about this in recent years, you know, but they are, but we are

different. And the difference I want to say is beautiful. Like it's cosmic, you know, it's a metaphysical difference. And it's, it's what makes life worth living in many ways. And I, you know, I do discuss separatism. That's one possibility, but I don't think that's the solution. It's certainly not the solution for most people who will have a relationship of one kind. I, friendship or, you know, at work or whatever, or a romantic relationship. So it's, I don't know how to put it, like, to recognise the capacity of men in particular towards violence is there are ways of channeling it, like through sport, through activity, through kind of, I don't know, ritual and if we recognise it, rather than, I don't know, just sort of pretend that men can somehow be

completely different and change. It's like, to recognise that reality and to channel it in more positive and beautiful ways. You know. That's the only way. Yeah, completely agree. That is the only way. Hey, Constantine, do you love trigonometry? Of course.

Incredible interviews. Hilarious live streams, hard-hitting satire plus my handsome jawline. Whatever takes away from your hairline. But if you do love trigonometry and you want to support us, there's only one place to do that, and that's on locals. Yes. Locals is a brilliant platform that has been incredibly supportive to our show and other problematic creators. The great thing about locals is that it's a community for people who love trigonometry.

That's right. It's a place for you to hang out with like-minded people, share thoughts, memes and discuss the show. You can enjoy it for free, but it also gives you the option of supporting us for as little as $7 a month. And if you want to give more, you can. We have incredible rewards for our higher tier supporters as well. We've got everything for mugs, monthly group calls and one-on-two chats with me and KK. Get in. Join our community by hitting the link in the description and the pin comment below. See you there, guys. There is the other part of it where there is always, unfortunately, going to be a small minority of men who are sexually violent.

And I see these posts go up all the time after, for instance, there are everyone, but also other awful, awful cases. The last one was the awful case. that primary school teacher who was murdered. And you see women write, you know, why is it that I have to walk down the streets and be scared of men and always looking over my shoulder? And I think to myself,

there's a really small part of me that thinks to myself, unfortunately, there's always going to be that small, very small percentage of men who do that, and they're always going to have a disproportionate effect on society, isn't there? Well, I mean, there are different ways, I think, of preventing, I don't know how to put it. It's not on women to change their behavior, I would say. I completely agree.

You know, and we live in, you know, particular ways. Women have particular freedoms. I don't think people would want to go towards a more segregated or domestic public-private split in which women stay at home or they need a chaperone or whatever. You know, I don't think that's what anybody wants. If they do want that, they can move somewhere else. But it's not about, sorry to interrupt just on that point,

because this is, you know, Francis says I completely agree. I don't completely agree. I agree that women should have the freedom to do what they want, or everyone should. I also don't agree that you are going to get to a place where a man and a woman can walk down the same street at the same time of night and be equally safe. No.

It's not going to happen. And if that is true, that means that, Yes, unfortunately, as a society, we have to be honest and say that is never going to happen because there's a biological difference between men and women, and because men want from women what they don't want from other men, by and large, right, in that sort of environment. And so we're going to have to, you know, yes, we're going to do everything we can to civilize men, and that's an important part of education and upbringing or whatever. There's also a part of civilizing women in the sense of going like, look, you're living in society

and some people in the society are evil and you need to protect yourself. And that may mean that you don't walk around at 3 a.m. even though I can. Yeah, sure. I mean, that's probably the current situation they're in. I mean, I do think there are ways of kind of, we condition ourselves, right? So I'm very against the widespread availability of pornography. I think it's extremely detrimental to men in particular. I think it changes people's brain chemistry. It does terrible things to their thoughts.

I think it kind of destroys imagination. I think it kind of cautions and erodes our capacity to be playful and lighthearted actually and I think, you know, those sort of images are horrific. You know, I think they generate a vision of the world which is, you know, very dangerous actually. And so I side with the kind of anti-pornography, feminism increasingly, you know,

and it's, for me, it's complicated because, you know, I also want to defend experimental cinema and freedom of expression and, you know, but I think we have to look at the material reality. And if it turns out, which I think it does, that pornography is detrimental to the way in which people behave in the world, particularly men, then we might want to have a question about whether it's great to have such widespread availability of hardcore pornography,

particularly for younger people. So that would be one question. You know, the other side of it might be something about how do we change our virtues and our morals and how do we behave in a more civilised way, such that maybe we do go backwards in a certain sense, like towards traditions or modes of social interaction that are more formalised, you know,

so that we don't end up having like a million hookups that are meaningless or something like this. You know, is that really what the endgame of liberalism is, like the freedom to treat everyone like a commodity? You know, I mean, this is like really disturbing, you know, in that way we destroy everything that's like specific about ourselves, you know, and we are these like, you know, I don't know, beautiful individual people, you know, but by treating everyone the same, by treating them as someone to consume, we kind of destroy that specialness.

Yeah, I see what you're saying, but come back to my point about safety on the street because I do think, like, the reason I'm bringing you up is I know it's super controversial and I'm interested in super controversial things and I was just putting an argument to, but to maybe give you a better example, Sophie, our video editor who works with us, you know, she used to come to our previous studio, which was not in a nice area, and every time she stayed late, we'd either get her a taxi, which we wouldn't do for a guy, or one or several us would walk to the tube station. And she always really appreciated both of those things. But there's also an argument, which is sometimes being made when these conversations are brought up, which is like, well, a woman shouldn't

have to be protected, or a woman shouldn't have to take a taxi. And, you know, and, you know, And, look, in principle, I agree. I just don't know, given the sex differences and male violence and all of that that we've talked about, that you're ever going to get to a place where I would teach my daughter, oh, you can just walk around any time, it'd be fine. There's no fucking way I'm teaching my daughter that. Yeah, no, no, sure. Because that's irresponsible parenting, if you ask me, right?

Now, some of the feminist movement would say, well, that's accepting the blah, blah, blah. Well, yeah, I am accepting the reality. I don't want my daughter to put herself in positions where she's going to be assaulted. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, from a realistic, reasonable standpoint, yeah, I mean, this is how we behave, right? You know, we look after people, particularly women, you know, like women are free to go and get drunk and get high. Right.

You would look after somebody who is in that state. You might look after a woman more than you might look after a man, right? There are differences. There are physical differences. There are difference in levels of desire. Some men are not going to adhere to the social rules. I agree with you. I think in this world, as it currently exists,

it makes sense to protect women more in certain situations. But, Nina, don't you think that it's always going to be like that? That's what I mean. There's always going to be that percentage of awful people, of awful men. There's always going to be abuses. There's always going to be rapists. Unfortunately... Oh, man, you're advocating very hard on their behalf here.

The accent doesn't help, I realize that. And that's unfortunately going to be a... constant through society. These crimes have always just as like, there's always going to be murderers. Just so these crimes have always existed and they will always continue to exist as far as humanity goes. Well, how do you think men should deal with that question? With what question specifically? Well, with this kind of inevitability of male violence and of the inevitability of male violence, it's by men protecting women. Right. So, so that ensure that they're not walking around. So for instance, you know,

You've ended that sentence on a very bad, no, mate. To ensure they're not walking around. You know what I mean? Just stay on where you belong. To make sure that they're not walking around at night, you know, 2 o'clock in the morning, to ensure that if you're in a dodgy area, that they're going to be taking a cab, etc., etc. A bit of common sense. And whilst the utopian in me wants to get to that point,

there's a realist to me that goes, these crimes have always existed, they will always continue to exist. we have to protect women from a very small percentage of men. And also to your earlier point, if I may answer the same question as well, about the guy who murdered Sarah Everard and who had a reputation. The problem is, I've never been in that position where I thought, or this person I'm working with is a massive rapist. You've worked in the comedy industry, mate.

That's true. Yeah, good point. I take that back. I've worked in an industry with almost everyone. No. But my point is, what are you supposed to do in that situation as a man beyond protecting the women who may in the immediate environment be affected and going, look, stay away from this guy or, you know, keeping him away from them or whatever. But

beyond that, what is a man supposed to do? You can't report someone because you think they might be a bit dodgy. And we don't live in that society, right? Yet. Yeah. Like, what are you, do you do you see what I'm saying? I don't think every problem in life is solvable in that way. No, I mean, again, I think it's really like a very complicated question And I, you know, I'm not here to say how men should deal with other men I just think that they should think about it Yeah You know, and work it out, you know, I think there might be forms of

Male violence that might be necessary actually between men, you know Absolutely Or something like this Or the threat of it, the threat of it Yeah This is, I've always said this, the threat of violence is a really important behaviour modulator for men The fact that if I behave in a certain way, I'm going to get punched in the face, really affects how I behave. Right. So, you know, I think it's not up to women. And I, you know, I agree. It would be lovely to live in a utopian world in which we didn't have to worry about these things. I think it is always potentially a problem. The trip would be to minimize it to kind of, yeah, I mean, I think we have to be realistic. I don't know if my book is tough enough on men in some ways, right? I think the dark.

of some aspects of male desire is something that maybe men need to talk about more, you know. Like, what is it like to be part of a class that has these members in it for you? You know, I mean, can you put yourself in the mindset of a rapist or a murderer? No, because we interviewed Littos, who is a lawyer who deals with a lot of these particular crimes. and he says that actually he made the point that rape isn't about sex, it's about violence, it's about control. So no, I could never do that. But I unfortunately acknowledge that these men do exist.

And that is a darkness to male sexuality. But I don't see myself as part of a class, Nina. This is a thing. It's like I don't think that just because someone has a penis and I have a penis, we're like the same thing. I treat people based on what they think and how they behave. And there are women and men who are like that. And there's also women and men who I just think are completely alien to me. So I don't see myself as part of the same class.

But a class has differences within it, right? I mean, if we want to say that sex is real, sex exists, you know, there are men and there are women, right? And okay, to the degree in which you identify with that class is kind of up to you. But you are a man. Yeah. Thank you. Last time I checked. No, I am a man, but what I don't understand about that way of thinking is, why does the behavior of a tiny minority of men who are different to me in every way reflect on me?

Well, I mean, if we all... Like there are women who behave in ways that you would disagree with completely think abhorrent and you criticize openly. Is their behavior reflective on you because you're both women? No, but I think there is a way in which, I don't know, maybe this is part of sexual difference. Maybe women do identify with other women, actually, in ways that men don't identify with other men. And I think it's probably true. And I think it's probably not just because women are often treated as a class and women are treated as examples of their class, right?

I mean, this is to Beauvoir's point in the second sex. You know, women are in a way more often treated as members of a sex in relation to men and in relation to each other. whereas men in a way get to be individuals first and foremost. So you can say, I don't relate to these men. I can't understand these men who do these terrible things. I nevertheless admit that they exist and they'll never go away or, you know. So I don't know. I mean, this is maybe the provocation.

It's like as an imaginative exercise, you know, to think about what it is to be a member of a class with people who you do things that you find absolutely abhorrent and can't. But to me, their behaviour rules out their membership of my tribe. So they're not men? No, because my tribe is not men. My tribe is people who behave and think in particular ways. And a lot of them will be men.

But I'm not, I'm not, I'm, the difference between me and you is far smaller than the difference between me and Ian Huntley. Far smaller. The difference between you and I. Far smaller. I can imagine some of the ways of being the way that you are. I can't imagine being in Huntley. So that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. Sure.

Do you see what? So to me, the mailness of that situation is completely, to me, they're a class of their own, people who behave in that way. And 99.99% of men that I know would never in a million years behave in that way or even contemplate it. Yeah, exactly. And I think we have to, like, be very, make this point. Most men don't do these terrible things, right?

This is why it's stupid to generalize about men and say that all masculinity is easy. evil and so on, right? But you asked about how do I feel being part of that class? That's what I'm answered. No, no, no, absolutely. So I think, you know, it's really, I don't know, maybe it's a kind of deeper question about the problem of evil, but we do. You need more theologians on your show. But so, yeah, I mean, evil is ineradicable. You know, we live in a fallen world, you know, Satan is the footprints of this world. You know, we do live in that way. And so, okay, Another preventative way of thinking about it might be, how do we stop these small number of men thinking that it's okay to behave in this way or to treat women in this way, right? You know, is it that they disrespect women?

Is it that they were taught not to kind of treat people in a certain way? Like, what's going on with that? Like, why, I don't know, how is it possible for them to even be in this position that they think it's okay to behave in this way, right? Do you not think that that is a brain thing, like these people are sociopathic, their brain works differently? Because of childhood trauma, because of genetics potentially, because all of us carry rapist DNA in us, by the way, right? Every single human being on earth. So, I mean, I'm not saying every single person who's ever committed sexual violence is like that. But a lot of the people, particularly with the more heinous stuff, I think, I just think their brain works differently.

And there's been a lot of evidence. Like if you look at psychopaths in prison, there's been a lot of studies that show they don't respond to the same incentive structures as quote-unquote normal people. So the reason that they do what they do is they feel entitled to have what they want to have and they don't care about other people. That is the definition of sociopathy. Yeah. Right.

So this is what I find so incredibly, I was going to say offensive, just stupid about the narrative about this issue is like, you. You're not going to educate these people to respect women. This is not an issue of respect for women. These people don't give a shit about any other human being on earth. They care about fulfilling their desires, right? And it is every man's desire to have sex with a woman, right? So they're going to do it.

That's it. And so I don't think it's not an educational issue. No, okay. But let's say those people who aren't sociopaths, right? There's a range of behavior. And a lot of the stuff we're talking about actually is gray area stuff. Right. You know, when people make a mistake or they overstep a mark, I mean, a lot of things that are

often treated as very distinctive forms of behaviour are actually much more complicated. You know, they are people making mistake or being drunk and behaving inappropriately, as we all have at some point, right? Let's be clear. So when we're talking about sociopathy, I think, right, it's extremely difficult, right? How do we treat people who in some ways we don't regard as human in a way that doesn't itself all into the trap of inhumanity, right? Because it's kind of almost unanswerable. You know, you could basically say, like, let's try and identify who these sociopaths are before they do sociopathic things. I've seen that minority report. It's a good movie. Right. It might be possible. You know, pre-crime. You know, I think, you know, we need to talk

about Kevin. The Lionel Schreiber book is sort of about this. It's like, you know, there are ways that I'm sure people are working on, you know, how do you identify? It seems like sociopaths often have a trajectory, like they, when their children, they kill animals or whatever, you know. I don't know enough about it, but it's, you know, what if there was a way of saying, look, there's something sort of wrong from the standpoint of our, you know, normal and empathetic humanity with these people? We shouldn't treat them inhumanely, but maybe there's a way of dealing with this question,

you know, and we know, for example, that seems like some sociopathy is quite useful. Like if you're a brain surgeon or a pilot and you need not to have adrenaline, you need not to be squeamish, you know, you don't want someone freaking out in those situations, right? Right. Or empathising with the brain in front of them. So, and, you know, you might say, well, lots of our leaders are sociopathic. They behave in ways that are completely inhumane and...

And look how great everything is. Right, exactly. So, I mean, again, collectively, you know, it's because we live in such a fragmented atomized way. It's the same with the women walking home at night. If you live somewhere where you knew everybody and everybody's safety was part of a kind of common project or everyone was looking out for each other and you knew who everyone was, it would be a different story. You know, you might be able to identify the person who is like potentially dangerous and deal with it or, you know, I don't know, the village elders might be able to sort of say you're behaving terribly or I don't know. Like,

okay, that's naive. But there are different ways of imagining a social life which would minimize harm, but also not end up in this kind of like pathological pod world where everyone is just on their internet because they're scared of going outside, which is what's been encouraged in the last two years. You know, so there is a kind of, like to be alive is to risk. You know, it's, it's, life doesn't really mean anything if it's just safety and comfort, you know, and you never take any risk at all. Like, that's just not living. But, and that's what in cells do. That's what a lot of men are doing, and it's such a profound point, because they're retreating. They retreat into the world of internet, you know, forums or whatever else, or video games. What is a video game,

but a chance for you to be able to achieve? And that must be so tempting for, you know, a young man who doesn't feel that he has opportunities open to him for whatever reason. He can go into this make-believe world and become something. It's also a very linear reward structure as well, which makes video games. I play video games and enjoy them. The thing with a video game that's very different to life is in a video game, if you work hard, you will instantly be rewarded.

Like if you do the right things, you'll be rewarded. In life, you might have, you will be rewarded, but maybe 20 years from now, if you do the right thing. And you might even be initially punished quite badly, as you found in your own experience. So that's the difference as well. Yeah, I mean, these are bigger questions about the relationship between the real and the virtual

and the kind of world we're heading towards, right? I mean, my book is very critical of technology. It hates it. It's basically like we need to be together. We need to have real experiences, real life. There's a horrible image of the world which says in the near future, only the elites will be able to have real experiences, real sex, real food, real encounters, real conversations. And everyone else would be like, fucking, you know, wired up to these sorts of things, right? And this is terrible, right? We need to break with this thing that's coming, you know, and that will involve men and women talking to. to each other and, you know, being in risky situations.

I mean, even the dating stuff, it's like the idea that you can get the algorithm to choose your date for you rather than have a conversation with a stranger in a bar. Like, the idea of a man going up to a woman now is, like, in work or in a bar is, like, really frowned upon, you know, but that was the reality. Like, when I was growing up, you just go to the pub and get drunk and get off with someone. You know, you wouldn't, like, check out their feelings about the death penalty. Yeah, and it's also as well, you see these hashtags. Like never date a Tory.

Right. And you just go, what? You don't want to talk to people who are different to you. Exactly. But no one does anymore, right? But that's where the magic happens. To go, I think you're wrong. What happened to a bit of sexual tension?

I didn't know you felt that way about me, mate. No, I mean, yeah, totally, totally. I mean, like, I don't want things to be mediated in this way. So how do we get to the sunny uplands, Nina? This is why I want to hear from you. How do we heal all this? Because one of the points you made actually, I totally agree with. Like, my wife has like a card she can pull out at any time.

If she says, my intuition tells me that we shouldn't do this. Like, it doesn't matter what it is. I'll just go, cool. And I'll accept it with that argument because she's been proven right on a hell of a lot of stuff in the past. So intuition, I think, is a huge part of this, actually. And intuitively, men and women know a lot more about the right way to behave with each other than what we're being told by society or whatever. right now. Do you know what I mean? So that's part of it. What else? How do we get to this beautiful

place in the future? I don't know. I don't think, I mean, my book is optimistic. It's not delusional. There is no like, you tell you. All right. We're fucked. No, but I mean, it's, I think it's all of these more delicate things. You know, it is like playful conversation. It is acknowledging the reality that we do have a whole series of, you know, ambivalent and interesting relationships with each other. We have male and female friends, you know. These are not always over-determined. determined by sex or by, you know, that actually we live in a much more sort of complicated network, you know, if we're lucky to have different social interactions. And I think, yeah, to be in a position where those things are real and possible, you know, so that there is more

conversation. There isn't this kind of pushing people to the periphery and the outside and saying, you know, oh no, you want a girlfriend. How horrific. Like you must go and, you know, play your computer games forever. I mean, this is like sort of abyshing. negation of our humanity, you know, or to say to men who are depressed, you know, oh, suck it up. I don't know. Maybe that would work in some cases, right? But looking at the male suicide rates, like something's badly wrong here, right? This should be a matter of concern to all of us. You know, it's not great for women either that men are feeling suicidal, right? It's terrible. You know, and I think this thing about social role, everybody sort of wants to feel,

recognize, they want to feel a certain belonging, they want to have a kind of mixed and interesting life. And it sort of depends on all of us, you know. I think more, more conversation, more listening, I don't know, nice, gentle things. One thing that I find, she's a woman. Nice gentle things. One of the things that I find particularly worrying, and I don't think we talk enough about, is when you look at the younger generations, you know, people in their 20s, they're not having to having sex. And that's really worrying. Really, really worried. Why does it worry you? I mean, I... Yeah, Francis. Why does it worry you? It worries me because it shows that the sexes are further apart than ever before. It shows

that we're not connecting. But I mean, the kind of sexual revolution is, what, like 16 years old now? And I mean, that's also a relatively novel way of behaving with each other. I don't necessarily think having hundreds of sexual partners is good for anybody. But then I also don't think it's good for people to be virgins until they're thirsty. which we're starting to see now. I think it's a very, very complicated question. It's also the question of whether people are going to have children or not, which is also there's increasingly kind of anti-natal narratives.

You know, marriage is relatively unpopular. You know, these are kind of are also things that need to be discussed. I don't know on the sex question. I think, I do think sex is an interesting form of communication. It doesn't have to be with the same person for, you know, forever. forever but I also think at the other end this kind of treating people as as commodities you know there's actually a fear of intimacy at the heart of lots of random sex you know that actually what's not happening there is a kind of real relation with somebody else in their in their uniqueness you know that

actually sex just becomes something like a deliveroo you know so my friend had an asked his his phone asked if he wanted to link up grinder to deliveroo you're like that sounds like a great night This is very disturbing. Yeah, it is. It is. Right? You know, that you just sort of call someone like to your house and, you know, it's like ordering a pizza. I mean, there's something kind of, I don't know, maybe I'm old fashioned, but slightly.

It's ironic that in the world that we, all three, I think, would agree is becoming feminized. Actually, the sexual marketplace is becoming extraordinarily male serving. That is how a man thinks of sex. Press a button, it arrives. that's how a man thinks of sex. Sorry, Nina. No, no, I mean, as far as I understand it on the apps, like it's something like 20% of men get 80% of women, right?

So that actually it's not true that this works out for men. For some men. It works out for some men. But what I mean is the mode of thinking about sex is like that. I don't think most women think about, in the traditional sense, would think about that whole process as being that way. Do you see what I'm saying? No, and again, this may be a difference we need to recognize.

You know, like maybe there's a way that marriage civilized men. I think it does. I think women civilized men. I think men, I don't know, they do. 100%. Civilized women in a strange way. Or maybe they're animalized women. I don't know.

But let's talk about it. It's complicated. You know, marriage was a social technology that served a particular function, right? And that was good for children in general, right? I'm not saying all marriages great. I'm not saying all families are, you know, without problems. There are lots of issues in particular instances. But it did address this problem.

which is men's desire for sex. Okay, yes, you have to have sex with the same woman. Maybe the French solution, you can have a mistress, that's fine. But you know what I mean? Like it kind of, it contains it in a way, you know, and I think this market, the marketization of everything is not the right way to go. You know, the marketization of sex, the commodification of human bodies is anti-human. It's what the elites want, and I don't think it's what most people want. want even even men who say they would like a lot of sex I think in the end it's an empty and hollow process and I talk about Roo Svi in the book who is a pickup artist who has become very religious

and he's absolutely turned his back on this kind of pickup artistry thing because it's completely empty at the end of the day what's the point in tricking women into having sex and having sex with hundreds of women right what does that actually get you you know it's momentary satisfaction it's not real I mean it's it's not meaningful. And it gets you a lot of emptiness too. Right. And I completely agree with all of that, but I think we skip past the point that it's very worrying that young people aren't having sex, because it means they're not having relationships. And I don't know any man who would be happy being a virgin until he was 28. Maybe a small percentage might be. But I think if they're deep down,

I think they wouldn't be happy about it. So many jokes. Well, I don't know. I mean, if you think about kind of more traditional arrangements. It's like until a man got himself a job and had some sort of status, then he wasn't able to kind of ask women to marry him, you know. There's not necessarily anything. But that would also happen much younger as well. Potentially. But lives were shorter, so in proportion to your life, it kind of would have happened at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that just sex for its own sake is good. I think there is a problem with touch. I talk about touch in the book. I think that a world without touch is like a part of the inhuman, you know, technocratic world.

And that's a bad thing. But there are lots of different kinds of touch. And I think if you live in a hypersexualized culture and over-sexualized culture, it's a mistake to think that all touch is necessarily sexual. You know, whereas if you live in a more, you know, a culture that is more into embracing and kissing and stroking and just being affectionate and all these different, hundreds of different meanings of touch, most of which are not sexual, you know, that's a more beautiful world. So it's not against physicality, but I think, you know, I think we need to ask the question

about the sexual revolution as many people are doing. Like, what's this actually liberating? I think it's been disastrous, actually, in loads of ways, particularly for women and children. You know, I think the unleashing of desire, particularly when it hits the political realm, is absolutely horrific. I think this stuff should be privatised, you know, that we shouldn't have this kind of idea that all desires are. good and, you know, the expression of desire is good. Like, repression is useful. Like, we need repression, right? It's, uh, it's important. Otherwise, we wouldn't sort of, I don't know, make beautiful art, apart from anything else. There's so many pieces to that. We, we, we did a great interview with

Mary Eberstadt about this very issue, um, about the sexual revolution, some of the problems that has caused. Mary Harrington. No, Mary Eberstadt. Oh, who's Mary Eberstadt? She is a writer. She wrote a book called The Sexual, what, do you remember the title? Something about the sexual revolution. Oh, okay. She's wonderful. She's very, and her book is brilliant as well. It's about how the sexual revolution created the massive rise in single-parenthood

and all the ensuing consequences all the way through to the shit that we talk about every day, which is, you know, people with pink hair running around, tearing down, everything. Do you know what I mean? But look, we've run out of time. So before we ask our last question, kids, can you please start having sex? Because Francis is very concerned. But, Nina, it's been a real pleasure. I think we barely touch the surface in this conversation, really,

of what are actually very important conversations. You know, one of the things I've always found very strange about the society we live in is somehow we've got to a point where men and women who, through their entire history, have had to work together to survive, barely survive together. And they've had to do everything to work together, to just survive, have enough food for them and their children to pass on their genes. suddenly we've got to a position where these two groups of people who've had to work together,

their entire history is suddenly antagonistic. I just think it's nonsense. Yeah, I agree. I think men and women are fundamentally cooperative. Right. The differences between us are complementary. They're not oppositional in that way. But that's where we are.

These very basic things need to be said. So I'm really glad we've had you on. And it's great that your book is out finally. It's a pleasure having you on the show. And we've just got one more question for you. Which is always, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be. I don't know.

I feel like we've discussed all the questions we shouldn't be talking about. We're not allowed to talk about. Oh, I don't know. I think magic. Tell us more. I think we need to imagine the world re-enchanted. And I think we live in a very disillusioned world

in which we've forgotten all these kind of powers of the spirits and energies. And I think we should be thinking more along those lines. It's a very good point. on that note we've got a couple of questions for our supporters only on locals which will ask you in the second but in the meantime where can people get the book when is it out it'll probably be out by the time this interview goes out yes so it's out on february the third i recorded the audiobook so you can hear me read it um i guess it's available on kindle it's published by penguin um and you really work you need to work on your promotion go to amazon or whatever Right, sure. It's probably on Amazon. Go to a bookseller. Exactly. Great stuff, Nina.

Well done. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. We hope you've enjoyed this fantastic interview. It's such a pleasure to have Nina in the studio. And we will see you very, very soon with another brilliant interview like this one or a Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys.

Is there any empirical evidence for patriarchy in modern Western European society?