THE FEMINISM DEBATE: Is Feminism Betraying Women? The Hidden Risk Of Casual Sex!

0:00 The feminism movement didn't unite women, it split women. I feel totally Wait, listen, fifty percent of young women don't want to have children. They're really preoccupied with making money and materialism. But we're still looking at a society that is increasingly telling women where they could be better. But sometimes feminism expects women to be prioritized in both sexes. Want the privileges without the responsibilities. Can I just add we are producing women and men who are p and I'll tell you what I mean by that. It'll be an interesting discussion. We're joined by three leading and outspoken voices in female societal issues with very different opinions. To unpack the choices and consequences women face in modern society. The sexual revolution gave women freedom, but things like the washing machine, women entering the labor force, the pill had enormous social changes. For instance, it gave the illusion That sex was consequence free. But the second wave of the feminist movement was every woman should want free sex, and yet eighty-two percent of young women are depressed and anxious after casual sexual encounters. Or every woman should want to go out to work and leave their children in daycare. But we are doing terrible damage to our children by putting them in daycare.

1:07 This strain of feminism has basically aspired as much as possible to make women like men. And now gender roles are changing. And we've gone so far, so we have women dominating men. How are we dominating men though? Oh my goodness. Sixty percent of college students are women. Men No Let me finish. Young men are afraid of women and the power they have over them. Oh God, to blame feminism for those things? I mean it's insane that there are solutions. I'm just gonna jump in there and talk about a report that came out in twenty twenty five. And this was really shocking. What are your thoughts about this? Okay, w so first of all Quick one before we get back to this episode. Just give me thirty seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.

2:02 And if you enjoy what we do here. Please join the twenty four percent of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode.

2:26 Uh Let's start with some introductions. Louise, what is your professional background and what do I need to understand and know about your experiences that feed into your perspective on this subject? So my professional background I'm a journalist, um I

2:44 Right about ideas for living. I don't have like a political agenda. I'm just I just Right and say things that I think true in terms of how I arrived at some of my views on what we're gonna talk about today, sexual revolution. I think I was raised with a lot of the assumptions around

3:01 The sex revolution. which are sort of like the water that we swim in now culturally. And it wasn't until I got to university that I started gradually unpicking them. After I was it I left university, I worked in a remote crisis center, which was quite formative for me, and that I saw

3:19 some of the ways in which some of the feminist theory that I had learnt at university didn't quite map onto reality. And then I After leaving that job. I became a journalist. Again, I kept thinking about these things, and I guess I've reached a point where

3:36 I Take a very Mixed view of this history. I think there are good things, I think there are bad things that have come out of the sexual revolution. Can you define for me what you mean by sexual revolution for anybody that doesn't know? Because it's gonna be quite important today. Right. So I think that there are two things really

3:53 the ideological events really of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. So this was a a period of not just in relation to sexual relationships, but all sorts of things, a period of really questioning and challenging traditional ideas and particularly traditional Christian ideas about How? What sex relationships

4:13 I think actually the the point that we've reached in terms of progressive culture is the assumption that those traditional ideas are necessarily

4:22 questionable unnecessarily uh fit to be challenged. I think that's the ideological thing that we're talking about. But there's this other thing that happens at the same time, which is partially connected, which is the material change. So you have The introduction of the Pell. The Advent of

4:38 safe abortion. Remember historically abortion is not safe. So you have the idea of safe abortion and of course it's decriminalization. You have things like The washing machine. And central heating and all sorts of other domestic appliances, domestic technologies, which actually have been enormously important in changing sexual relationships, because all of a sudden it means that that basically takes less time. to run a home and so it becomes more possible for women to enter the workforce. So then you see this wave of not only changing marriage rates and

5:09 birth rates but also women entering the labour force en masse. And really some enormous social changes like so enormous that it can be a little bit hard In twenty twenty five. to realise how enormous they were as we've become used to them. We'll talk about one of that today. Going clockwise then, Erica. Same question to you about your background and ha the work that's fed into the perspective you have.

5:31 I'm a psychoanalyst in private practice. I'm an author. I write books about parenting and the book I'm probably most well known for is My book being there, and it's basically about the neuroscience of attachment or the importance of mothers in the first three years of a child's life. To create emotional security, which lays down the foundation for mental health in the future. And so from my perspective, I guess the conversation we're gonna have, I should say right off the bat, um I consider myself a feminist. Um but I consider myself a term that I like better and that my community uses the people that I work with, and which is I consider myself a maternal feminist. Basically, there was a a school of thought called maternal feminism, which really elevated women in their work as mothers and really talked about it as very important work. Um, and so I'm not an anti feminist and um certainly for

6:27 women to have choice. So it's uh It'll be an interesting discussion. I guess you could say I'm more of a centrist on this topic, as Louise said. Um There are parts of feminism that I think really helped women and there are parts that really did a lot of harm to children. And lastly, Deborah.

6:44 Yes. Same question to you. So I am best known as the host of the Guilty Feminist Podcast. And I started that podcast to learn about feminism.

6:56 And I have since Researched a lot. I wrote a book called The Guilty Feminist. I've just written a book called Six Conversations We're Scared to Have, which does also challenge some of the directions. that we've gone, but more in a in about how combative we've become. as progressive people to each other and how difficult it is to talk to people on the right now, and how we need to get back in rooms and we need to be having difficult discussions like this.

7:19 So It's interesting what Louise says about being raised in a progressive household, but then being disillusioned. I'm thinking that there was s there's some ways in which life was better before the sexual revolution. Um because I'm effectively a time traveller. I did live before the sexual revolution.

7:38 Because when I was fourteen, just coming into my puberty my family joined A religious cult. I didn't have any normal sexual development. And I didn't get out, I didn't escape that patriarchal cult till I was in my mid

7:56 twenties. So I know what it is. And I Do not believe women want it. I know what it is. To not have autonomy, to not have agency, and to not have emotional freedom. And those are the three big things that I think the sexual revolution gave women.

8:15 First of all, agency I think it's just agency is so important. So agency is just the ability to go around and choose what you do moment to moment. And Autonomy is can I Can I decide what my life looks like, the shape of my life? What what choices do I have?

8:36 And emotional freedom is the third one, and I don't think the sexual revolution did f did give us emotional freedom, because I think we're still sitting in a lot of guilt. as women as to like If I'm at work. I should be at home with my children. If I'm at home with my children, I'm am I providing for them financially well enough? Or am I am I going to have a career when I go back to work? Um, if I'm doing both of those things very well, am I a good enough daughter, friend, am I running a half marathon for charity? Like we are in a stage of such guilt. That's why my show and my one of my books is called The Guilty Feminist, because I felt that feminism had become another thing to feel guilty about. And so

9:12 Anything to me that Engenders More shame in women or more guilt in women. Oh takes their autonomy away.

9:22 even emotionally for me I would like to move. far away from that. Because in my life, every year I've been away from that cult. And I have had more autonomy and more emotional freedom.

9:36 I have Felt more spaciousness. And I have become A better person, a better partner. I have maternal roles in my life.

9:47 It makes me so much better. In those roles, if I'm filled up, if I'm creatively fulfilled. And It also makes me a better person in my community in every way. So that's For me, what feminism is.

10:01 So autonomy, emotional freedom and agency. I also want to touch on the word guilt as well, because I remember that being permanent to our conversation, but if If I reflect on those three words, Louise, autonomy, emotional freedom and agency as the the byproduct of the sexual revolution. Would you agree with that? Yes and no. So I think that

10:21 Can I give an example that is like Quite dark, but I think throws us immediately into like some of these really difficult questions about freedom and who's freedom, right? There's this line from Matthew Arnold that I really like. Freedom is a really good horse to ride.

10:36 But to ride somewhere. Like. Freedom is ought to have a purpose, right? And So an example from my professional life which I think highlights some of the issues about sexual Revolution promoting freedom.

10:49 The law around BDSM. I won't go into the details'cause it's boring, but there's like complicated law around BDSM basically. Like this so this is um bondage, domination, sedomasochism. So people basically doing um consensually violent or abusive things. in sex, so stuff that would be illegal if they weren't consent, pretty much. And

11:11 The law around it was complicated. The law basically says that you can consent up to a certain level of harm. And then above that level of harm, you're criminally liable and if something goes wrong. Like you're done for it. And there's been ongoing campaigns by proponents of sexual freedom to loosen these laws. And to make it so that you can consent to more

11:29 than what you legally can at the moment. So consent to like serious body modifications as a sex thing or consent to quite serious violence as a sex thing. Like if something goes wrong at the moment. you might be criminally liable. So me and a bunch of other feminists set up a group called We Can't Consent to This. The reason we did this is because there were an increasing number of cases in the UK, this isn't unique to the UK, of women who had died. During sex.

11:56 And their partners claimed that they had consented to the violence that killed them. So this was normally strangulation, but there were other Like horrible ways in which these women died. And These men were getting away with this, in the sense that they were successfully claiming no no no, this was all just a sex game.

12:12 And they were successfully avoiding a murder prosecution and sometimes getting very light sentences for manslaughter. And I think this is a really, really good example of. Freedom for who and freedom for what? Because you can completely see why s some campaigners would want the law on BDSM to be much more liberal. And they would say, and they do say, you know.

12:34 I'm a consenting adult. Who are you to tell me? that I can't do XYZ in the bedroom. Who are you to tell me that the law ought to step in and try and criminalise what? adults do in the privacy of their own homes. And you can see their argument. But then I say, Okay, but the problem is we're all connected to one another.

12:53 And your freedom's impact on mine. And this all you know, a society is greater than the sum of its parts. And if you're going to say that sexual freedom Is the preeminent value. then I don't know what we do in these cases, these concrete cases where

13:11 It seems to me that a terrible wrong has been done. to this woman and if we don't have illiberal laws, at least partially illiberal laws. Then men who make this defence are gonna get away with it.

13:24 And so I I know I'm sorry this is a dark example to like kick off the conversation with, but I just think it's a pertinent example of how freedom is difficult and agency is difficult and choice is difficult. And we can say that these things Uh Are good generally. I think they are good generally, but they are virtues that need to be balanced against other virtues. And that's the challenge. Freedom is a wonderful thing. No one would want to take freedom away from human beings, but excessive freedom without structure. Is not good for human beings. So I'll just I'll use the example because

13:56 I talk about children a lot. If you raise your children with Respect for their will. that is a good thing, right? You don't wanna raise you don't wanna quash There will. You want

14:09 To support their individuality. And support their choices. And and even when raising children, you're gonna give them choices. Do you want eggs or waffles for breakfast? Do you wanna wear your green pants or your blue pants? No more than that with small children. But if you don't provide Any structure for them.

14:28 They don't feel loved. They don't feel секую, домфілста. And so what I'm afraid of Is that We went too far. It's not that

14:38 Freedom isn't a good thing. It's that excessive freedom without any structure at all. Can also make us feel Untethered, unbound. without connections to the people that we're most intimate with. And that's my concern. So it's not that sexual freedom isn't a good thing. It's that in my mind it may

15:00 Have gone too far. Just to add to that before you jump in there. Despite the general decline in sex, especially amongst younger people, societal acceptance of casual sex has grown quite rapidly. In the UK approval of casual sex rose from just ten percent in nineteen ninety nine to forty two percent. In two thousand twenty.

15:22 Yeah. So when you say rules and structure, Erica, I'm really interested in that turn of phrase. Because of course children need rules and structure, but women aren't children. Well, we're all children. Men are children too. From a psychoanalyst perspective, there's a child in everyone. Of course, but I think when we're talking about rules

15:45 And grown women? We are really, really in dangerous water because we are Looking at s society that is increasingly closing down on women and telling women where They could Do better, be better.

16:04 If we're looking at an extreme example We're looking at Iran in nineteen seventies and women in parliament and women walking around part of the sexual revolution in mini skirts and having a wonderful time. And then you're looking at women in Iran now you're walking looking at women in Afghanistan now. Women in Afghanistan now have rules and they have structure. They can't stand near a window. They can't leave the house without a man.

16:30 They can't. uh to raise they can't use their voice in public. They can't sing. Like anything that says rules to me, I'm immediately like, firstly, our society has plenty of structure. We have a lot of structure. We all have to work to make a living. We

16:47 Are all encouraged into monogamous relationships, and there's a feel that you're successful if you find the one and get married and have 2.4 children. There's a so much structure in our lives, there's very little time for relaxation or even considering what we really might want to do. I would be very intrigued to know what you mean by Women should have rules. Yeah, what do you mean? So first of all, I don't agree with you. If I can just uh say that I don't agree that we

17:16 are encouraging monogamy. I think we're encouraging polygamy. Um I don't mean marriage polygamy, I mean multiple partners. Young people are hooking up I wrote an article for the Institute for Family Studies on why uh the statistics on the hookup culture and what it's doing to young people in terms of their mental health.

17:35 It's causing them to feel um more depressed, more anxious, more embarrassed, having more regrets, self esteem issues. It's got some major implications and we're talking the statistics say seventy two to eighty two percent, seventy two percent of young men and eighty two percent of women, uh young women are feeling depressed and anxious after these casual sexual encounters. Tinder. has a an ad that says Meet the love of your night Um

18:07 Yeah. It what it does is it takes something so sacred and intimate, and it turns it into something Um not just casual, but it turns it into something. irrelevant, unimportant, and dangerous, if you ask me, um emotionally dangerous. And it can be physically dangerous. If you're having casual sex, you could get a sexually transmitted disease. AIDS is still around. I think in a way

18:33 What we've taught our kids and what I Encourage the young people that I work with. Is that um Experiment with sex. care about the people that you're experimenting with find people who care about you

18:48 Ангую каба, со да структур. Can I just counter about this sort of idyllic option of monogamy. In the United Kingdom, the police receive a domestic abuse related call every thirty seconds. Yet it's estimated that less that less than twenty four percent of domestic abuse crime is reported to the police.

19:09 One in four Women in England and Wales will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime. On average, nearly two women are killed a week in this country. And I know that America has a similar story, but probably worse because there's gums. That is this is around the world, it's the same in Australia. It is not

19:29 An either or. It's not that women were so happy and fulfilled in the nineteen fifties because their husbands would go to work. And I mean watch Mad Men, which is a you know, it's a sort of uh researched idea of how things often were for women then and men. And how You know, Don Draper would go off into the city would have a full fulfilling career, then he would sleep with any number of women and come home to his wife, who knew he was having affairs, who could sense it, who could vibe it, who could smell the perfume.

19:58 And had to just put up with it until she couldn't any longer. And she was at risk of Of STDs. Because he was going out and doing whatever he wanted. The idea that

20:12 I've sort monogamy is this utopia. And since we've gone into a more hook up culture, I still think there's a hell of a lot of pressure for people to find the right one. Yes, people hook up before they find the right one. But There is pressure to have the rom com ending. Most people, if they're hooking up, are hooking up To have sexual satisfaction.

20:34 While they are looking For a longer term relationship. Or they're not, and they're really happy single, and they're finding fulfillment. And that is the spaciousness. And the freedom and the autonomy to do that. I love that women can choose that now. I love that women Can say

20:52 I'm really happy single. This settling for someone who's not good enough for me or I doesn't suit me or it doesn't fit me. Doesn't have to happen for me anymore. I can live my full self and maybe my career is more important to me or fulfilling or my friendships or my desire for travel. I love that we have

21:11 Options. I want The women watching this To appreciate All the options that they have.

21:21 All the options that they have. If they want to be single And they want to hook up if they're looking, but in the t meantime having that that that sexual freedom I want them to have it all. But if the what they want is this monogamy that you're talking about, find the love of their life and settle down and have two children or whatever they want. I want them to have that too.

21:39 Deborah, can I ask, do do you think that there is a cost to hook up culture and casual sex? In regards to the implications it has on women. As Erica was implying psychologically. And is that more adverse in women than men?

21:52 I think human beings can suffer from too much choice. Like we know that if you put eight hundred varieties of jam out on a supermarket shelf. People will buy less jam than if you put out eight.

22:05 Because they get confused and they just think, Oh God, I d I don't know uh none of it then. And they walk away. The fact that we have young people sitting in a bar on a on a hinge date And while the that person goes to the bar They're like

22:20 What else is out there? I think That's bad for human beings. I think That is bad for women, for men, for non binary people, that's bad for everybody.

22:31 But there's sort of sacredness. Erica was alluding to a sacredness of sex itself. Yes, I think that is uh not a thing that we are somehow finding women find sex more sacred than men. I Yeah.

22:44 But I didn't say that women Yeah. I think it's sacred for men and women. But Yeah. So you were speaking to sort sort of sacredness to it. And I know, Louise, in your work you've you've talked about how there's different implications for men and women as it relates to casual sex. So I think that hook up culture basically is better suit to the average preferences of men than of women. So the av the average preferences of men are more likely to be uh towards the having lots of partners, jumping into bed really quickly.

23:13 into the spectrum, basically. And this is what um psychologists call um sociosexuality. So men are t generally more unrestricted in their sociosexuality than are women and hook up culture. favours the highly sociosexual. And actually you can see this if you look at campus dating cultures and sexual cultures, which are interesting because in a way university campuses are almost a closed environment. You've got all these young horny people hanging out, not very much to do, and Like interacting with one another. And

23:42 On campuses which have More men than women, so the women are the scarcer resource. Basically, assuming everyone's heterosexual, right? Um they tend to have more uh

23:55 more conservative sexual cultures, so more monogamy, less hooking up, people wait longer to have sex, et cetera. On campuses where there are fewer men and more women, which increasingly is true of all universities, actually because exactly you have the opposite. You have more hookup culture because basically the men are the scarce resource and they can set the terms. And men prefer more hookup culture. There are obviously exceptions, you know, this is all true, but at the population level, I think that's really good evidence that actually women On mass.

24:25 don't like hookup culture and are actually engaging with it because they sort of have to. What you're talking about there. It's Very young women. Who have just left home. It's their first exploration into sex.

24:40 Now if you ask a thirty two year old woman in London who knows her body, who knows her preferences, who knows what kind of man turns her on who can talk about these things and communicate, and you ask her Do you regret that hookup? She'll be like, No, I was look you know, I worked really hard this week. I was literally looking forward to it. And it was wonderful. If you ask that same woman Do you regret any of the hookups you had when you were a fresher? She'll be like, Oh my God, I didn't know myself. I didn't know how to ask what I wanted. The boys were terrible at it because they didn't know themselves.

25:12 I don't think universities are a great place to get this information because that is when you are literally just exploring and going, Is this anything? And we're all too embarrassed to say what we want or to say how that we're we like. So Yeah. You've got to put into that mix. Boys are told. You gotta get laid.

25:33 You gotta get late otherwise you're not cool. Women that young women are told. You don't want too high body count. You you're gonna get slot shamed. Um, so you're talking about eighteen year olds don't know themselves yet.

25:45 And you're saying when there's when the men are scarce a resource, it's one way, women another way. That is exactly what I expect to see. You're talking about eighteen year olds that don't know themselves yet. what we are currently experiencing in our sexual culture where Yes, there's some structure, yes, there are some rules, but we are much, much more sexual sexually not just liberal, but even libertine.

26:08 Then say the the sexual culture of our grandparents or whatever. I think everyone everyone ought to be able to agree on that. There clearly is a change now in the sexual culture from previous generations. And it and it's mostly to do with the pill, as I argue. But um The expectation Is Kind of is you say that

26:26 you just have to figure it out. Like there isn't a very clear. Yes, maybe there isn't I think that I think that Deborah, you're actually right that most people do in the end aspire to monogamy and having children and everything. But there's also an expectation that you're supposed to um experiment a bit in the meantime and it's kind of actually weird to be a virgin on your wedding night. And I think that yes, I mean girls have to tread this really difficult type right where on the one hand they are at risk of slot shaving, but they're also at risk of being called frigid if there's I mean They they are much, much more at risk actually of being called frigid than in previous generations. And that is I mean, the the idea that we can escape from

27:02 social judgment around our sexual choices is probably not realistic. I think that basically that's what humans are like. We do just tend to be judgmental about this. But anyway, I don't think it's very wise to Subject girls to this experience is how I would put it.

27:19 to say that you have to Go through the hook up culture. I know people who are opting out. I know young people who are absolutely opting out. I'm gonna agree with her and say freedom has become a pressure. There's become a societal pressure to be free. So I know many young people who are opting out of the apps. Okay, I'm a therapy. I'm a therapist and I see so many young people and I give lectures and people come up to me so I can say and I write books about adolescence, and I'm gonna say that mostly the term hookup culture is used between 15 and 30.

27:52 So you're correct in saying a 32 year old woman should have the right to have sex with whoever the hell she wants to have sex with, and I'm right there with you, she should have choice, whatever. But young women Young men who are developing emotionally, mentally should not have arrived. No, no. No, let me can I finish? Okay. Sorry. So you interrupted so I didn't get to finish. Okay. So They're more vulnerable.

28:18 They are more vulnerable emotionally to what the hookup culture does to them. There's a lot of research to say that it causes loneliness to Depression, anxiety, the Tons of regret, embarrassment, shame, self esteem issues. Um, and so Of course we want freedom. In fact, I'm probably more in agreement with you on most things than you think. But

28:42 In this, I say that freedom can become its own prison. So if you think about the early feminists. The really early feminist Mary Wallstonecraft Uh Mary Shelley. Those women were fighting patriarchy. They were fighting a system.

29:02 that said they had to be a certain way. So of course I don't. accept what Iran does to women. I mean that, you know But What's happened is if the pendulum swings too far You have a different kind of patriarchy on the other side. You know, we say the extreme left and the extreme right actually meet in the middle.

29:23 And so have we just Not we never want to take choice away. The idea of taking choice away from women to have sex with whoever they want to have sex with. That's not the point of this. It's have we created a society Which pressures young women in its own way to To be promiscuous, to have lots of experiences. It's not all glorious freedom. There it is glorious, but it's also not all glorious. And it can be a it can be a

29:53 Pressure on young people. to get rid of the virginity, to have lots of sexual experiences, and it's not all it's cracked up to be for them. It really isn't in terms of their mental health again They are more, um, we say Nine to twenty five, really twenty seven in young men is the second critical period of brain development.

30:14 Where they are very susceptible to their relational experiences and their environment. And so in that period of development, which is mostly what we use the the term hook up culture for. It's in that very young developmental period. It's not just in college, it's throughout their twenties, you know, until that woman becomes thirty two. That's a very vulnerable brain. And so we have created a culture that confuses that brain that Offers too many choices that pressures them into having multiple partners and many experiences and leaves them feeling empty. And lonely.

30:49 Can I just say though, again to the time traveller piece. I did not You recommend, Louise,'cause I I heard you talking on this podcast before, that people don't have sex till they're engaged. But if you're engaged.

31:05 The next step is marriage. So presumably you're gonna marry that person, are you you gonna sleep with The first person you sleep with, if you take that advice Is your partner. So you gotta have one sexual partner for life. I do not recommend that.

31:21 Ideally. Because I Came from a religion where that was

31:28 The only option. And because I didn't meet anybody. I Atrophied. I had no intimacy.

31:37 I felt so lonely. Now, you're saying sometimes people have a hook up and then they feel lonely afterwards. Totally, of course. That's happened to everyone who's ever had casual sex in in any quantity. where you feel a bit like, oh, that didn't fill me up. It's like, you know, when they say you go and have a Chinese meal and you feel hungry half an hour later and you were wanting more. There is no utopia here.

31:58 There's only options. And what happened to me because I had no option. I had no autonomy. I became more and more atrophied, more and more lonely, more and more empty, more and more disconnected from myself. To this day. I struggle with that. I struggle with intimacy, with a with with because we were in such a culture of you can't have sex before you get married that you didn't really make eye contact with people. You know, normal teenagers will sit on each other's laps and just

32:25 experiment a little bit, or they might have a little kiss or whatever. If you don't have anything like that. You can't really look at people properly. Because you know, oh it might lead to something. It took me so long to heal, guys, and however old you think I was when I lost my virginity, I was older. And it was tough.

32:45 Because if you're losing your virginity very late The person you're losing it with Has had a more regular Healthy, in my opinion, sexual development.

32:57 They've had their first girlfriend or boyfriend. They've They've Experienced a few things. It's Still hard for me.

33:06 To say what I want. So I don't recommend the other thing either, which is don't have sex with anyone until you're ready to prepared at least to marry them. I've got a graph here that's somewhat dovetails into this conversation about when You should have sex and also marriage as a subject.

33:24 It shows that from the nineteen sevent in nineteen seventies, roughly women would get married at about Twenty one years old? And now this graph will be on the screen. It's about thirty. Men used to get married at around twenty three years old, and now it's just over thirty, which is a pretty crazy climb. So it feels to me if the sexual revolution took place in around this era where we see this rapid climb, maybe the two are somewhat interlinked.

33:50 I the age in which we'd be getting married or having sex under Louise's You know. Potential advice that it's worth the pill. That's why that happened. It's because it used to be that if you were having sex with someone you were risking pregnancy.

34:04 And now that's not I mean, it is still true because actually all contraception fails and something like half of women in this country get pregnant didn't mean to, or whatever. So the the idea that it's foolproof is not true. But What The pill did. when it arrived on the scene in the late sixties was it gave the illusion that sex was consequence free. And it

34:26 Isn't on a physical level. Not really. It's less it's less consequential than it was because of the pill. But the physical the physical consequences are still there. But I think just as importantly it became no less emotionally consequential. Just because you're on the pill?

34:41 Or using condoms or whatever. your mind and thinking particularly of women who as we talked about bond more quickly. Your mind still thinks this person could well become the father of my child. You are still.

34:56 experiencing sex as In the way that all of our ancestors did for all of human history up until five minutes ago, until we invented this new technology. And I think that's why it has to I mean the reason that women have evolved to be picky about who they have sex with is because

35:14 getting pregnant is an extraordinarily consequential thing for women. It's dangerous, it's difficult, it's a huge, you know, investment. Of there.

35:25 and you don't want to get pregnant by some bozo. Right. That's why women tend to be very selective about who they're willing to have sex with and feel really bad. And I mean I've got to say I'm I Leaving aside words like sacred. because they're obviously difficult'cause the religious implications.

35:40 I think that we should As feminists describe sex as at least special, like having some kind of special status. It's not like other kinds of socialising. It's not like having a conversation with someone or playing tennis with someone. And we can tell that it's been doing it wrong. Well but we can tell. Well it's we could call it one of the most intimate experiences you can have as a human being. And that's why rape is so bad. Right. That's why feminists bastardizes the most intimate experience by making it into butt by turning it into bot.

36:14 For instance. Or race rape is worth Than assault. Like non sexual assault. And law re and the law recognises that. And we all socially recognize that, because there is something uniquely intimate and therefore uniquely violating about having sex without consent. And I think that it's really hard actually to hold those two things simultaneously in mind and say Sex is unimportant, it's basically just like a skill set that you can practice on other people, that it's a leisure activity, all this kind of trivialized right. And then also say, Ah, but consent is extraordinarily important. Like why?

36:48 D do you not see the contradiction in that? Autonomy. If I want it. If I want somebody especially penetrative sex, you're talking about rape that you're talking about penetrative sex, there's nothing worse than somebody Inside your body violating

37:05 Your Actual insides. Nothing worse than that. That does not mean

37:13 Women do not have sexual urges. I think it's a very good thing. I'm finished in it. That was a lot of trouble. That women don't have sexual urges that are just about attraction and a moment and fun and play.

37:28 Play is so important to human beings. When I left that cult, it took me a long time and a number of different sexual experiences. to find out what kind of sexuality I even had. you can't necessarily find it with the first person you meet. They may not be sexually compatible with you.

37:48 And you may not know how to communicate well with them and end up having a life of very boring missionary position sex. If you encourage young people just to have sex with the first person they meet and stay with that person Which I'm not saying you're saying, but I am saying if you don't have sex before you're engaged, well engagement leads to marriage. You may end up With

38:11 Very little sexual fulfillment. Compared to what you could have had. You might not, you might get lucky. The first person you meet might just be amazing in bed with you and you find your space together and it might be wonderful. But I would say that is unlikely. А вот цей дан

38:27 That the pill changed how much sex women had and with with what variety of partners is because it gave them autonomy. It gave them agency. Suddenly I can and guess what? When I can, I choose to try.

38:43 When you give women the choice, which the pill did To have some experience. We see That most women want some experience, want to find themselves sexually, want to feel Oh this or not that or yeah or oh oh my God this one.

38:58 This is amazing. I could be with this guy forever. We hit it off, he's great in bed, we're you know, we're we're working together. Oh, we've got a little problem now, but we'll work through it together'cause we love each other. Most people Do some version of that. And maybe if they hit a point in that monogamy where this relationship isn't working anymore.

39:16 Something terrible happens. And they Have another go at that. That's that's a a large pattern. Now how much of that is because that's what society expects, I don't know.

39:25 But that is what most people tend to do. So for me Saying that because one night at a music festival I had a really passionate, exciting encounter with somebody who I never saw again. That I am somehow minimizing rape.

39:42 Is very disturbing. Can I just interject and just say that um You're you're right in turning to me and saying I didn't mean that you have to marry your first partner. Um But There's something very important about the emotional connection.

39:59 And that's coming from maybe me being a therapist and knowing and seeing the pain that the young people who come to me are in when there's no emotional connection and they give their bodies over. By the way, young men too. I think young men I think it's shifting, actually. It's interesting what I'm seeing in my practice. Young men are more vulnerable than women. Now.

40:21 Women have taken on the role that young men used to have emotionally. And so You know Women have all these choices and now they're leaving young men in the dust, and the young men are feeling lonely and you know, they they have sex with a girl and they want to date her, and she says, No, I'm dating f I'm sleeping with five guys at the same time. And these are kids in their twenties. But

40:45 Sex is Better with emotional connection. It doesn't mean you have to marry the first guy that you have sex with. I also want to say that there is something called neurotic repetition.

40:57 A lot of the early feminists had a lot of trauma. You had trauma. Lotta people have had trauma. And What happens with trauma is it tends to be like PTSD. Yeah.

41:09 If we have disconnection early on or abuse. Or violence against us, um Attachment disorders, as I've talked about in your other podcasts when you're very young, it gets reenacted and repeated throughout your life over.

41:27 And over and over and over again. So interestingly, the early feminists were mostly traumatized women. If you look at the histories of them, they had physically abusive fathers, alcoholic fathers, they had um Uncles who raped them, they had I mean terrible, even their mothers too. I mean, just really abusive parents, but mostly the men in their life were horrible. And so a lot of this whole experience depends on where you come from and what you had. If you've had good models, I mean it's why I sort of talk about I'm writing a book about divorce. Why am I writing a book about divorce if I believe in relationships

42:03 Because divorce is gonna happen and we need to help. parents to know how to raise healthy children in spite of it. But relationships matter they matter in the raising of children so when we have A disconnected society where we say relationships don't matter, just sex matters. Sex, sex, sex. Of course sex matters. But what I say to young people is sex is a very small part of a relationship.

42:29 It really is, because in the beginning it's hot, hot, hot. And then as you get to know each other and you have the daily comings and goings of life, it's the friendship, it's the connection, it's the companionship, it's the relationship. But if you've had a lot of trauma Then you are not gonna turn towards relationships and you are not going to turn towards men. If men traumatized you and you saw a man abuse your mother, of course you're not gonna want men in your life. So a lot of it I think I think the feminist movement does something which It it's first of all, I'm gonna say

43:03 It's done a lot of good. I wouldn't be here. None of us would be here without it. Those women that took the risks. We have to be grateful.

43:12 But I mean what it also did is it It distorted. A lot of The importance

43:20 of relationships and how important male and female relationships are. I'll stop there'cause I've talked too much, but Can I say something about agency? Because this work came up earlier and I've been thinking about a lot about it. Recently and I just find it

43:36 Interesting as a subject. So I I think that actually A better way of thinking about agency Then is this binary thing that you know humans have agency, et cetera. Is um is it's kind of more of a personality trait. I think that some people are very agentic.

43:54 Some people are able to Set their minds on doing something and they just make it happen. Those people are very well suited to making their own decisions. Those people hate. the idea of any kind of limits on their freedom. But they are unusual people. Most people actually they go with the flow, they kinda do what other people around them are doing, they

44:19 drift a little bit, they're a little bit passive, they kind of make decisions based on what seems normal, they follow the template as it appears to them in their moment. But you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that those people are more vulnerable to Bad scripts. Mm-hmm. Liberation narrative.

44:39 is it assumes that everyone is highly agentic. It assumes that everyone is capable of being faced with all these various choices and saying, I'm gonna choose this one and that one and making it happen. rather than what I think is more realistic, and particularly when you're talking about young people, and I think even more talking about young women, I think young women are particularly mimetic. And particularly I mean there there are studies showing this that women are for instance more likely to like imitate other people's body language. They're more likely to they pick up slang more quickly than men do. Like young women are very

45:09 Uh Socially attuned. Like more than any other group. They're very uh alive to what's high status and low status and like keen to imitator. You also see this with fashion, all sorts of things, right?

45:20 I think to just say to those young women good news, you can choose anything you want, you can do anything you want. Obviously if you are highly agentic I think you mentioned ever p young people who are just like, No, I'm not into this, off the app to not doing it. They're highly agentic.

45:35 That's very impressive, but it's rare. Like most people actually are basically gonna do what their peers do. And so that's why I think just saying everyone give everyone choice. And kind of close the close the lid and say Good luck. I think that doesn't work. I think that actually we need to be a bit more Prescriptive.

45:53 Women were less agenti. Before the sexual revolution. Overall, as a population, we are more agentic now. We have more agency and we flex that agency more frequently. If you are worried that young women seem to you to be mimetic, i. e.

46:11 In influenced by their peer group. Then we need education. For what what's happening in that peer group? I don't disagree with you that thinking about intimacy, thinking about do I really want to do this with my body, do I wanna let this boy touch me here or there, or this girl g you know do this or that with me or whatever. Of course.

46:29 But that's education, so they can have agency, and that's the discussions that the parents have, ideally the schools are having. We desperately need that. That's what we're doing here, right? Yeah. But rather than saying they need rules. I would say they need to be further attuned to their own desires, their own body, their own environments. relationships, you know, how long does it feel right to me listening to my own body, listening to my own mind having uh confidants that they can talk to who are older and more responsible if they don't feel comfortable talking to their parents, because some kids, of course, teenagers don't necessarily go, Mom, I had this urge. Do you provide other people in their community who they might have that conversation with?

47:13 There are all sorts of ways that we can make sure our girls and our boys have agency and listen to themselves. But when I hear rules, when I hear it's just better for them not to until they're engaged and then Just stick with that person for life ideally. I fear that is going taking us back generations

47:37 And women A hundred percent were not happier then. They put us put up with more. I I do want to separate um Young people from what you were talking about adult women. I I want to separate them because they're not the same species. Um there's so much development going on in adolescence, and adolescence, as I said, goes on till twenty five. So by the time you're an adult woman, you are

48:00 For the most part developed. By the time you get to thirty two. you know, y there's gonna be stuff going on, but the major part of your personality and character development is is pretty much set. And so That developing period is really more my concern. It's not that I'm not concerned about my older patients who come to me and talk about how free sex and, you know, multiple partners makes them feel good. I would say great, it's your choice. You know, if that makes you feel good, wonderful. But in young people where they're developing, I agree with you that we need more education. Um

48:34 I I'm all for more education, but I'm for educ so we have so much sex education. right now in schools. too much sex education, if you ask me. We're teaching nine year olds about anal sex. We're teaching them about genital warts. That's not something a nine year old needs to know, you know, in school. So But I think we're not teaching them about

48:58 emotional connection about relationships, about family, about About The arc of a life. That if you want to be single and you want to have multiple partners and you want to be free. That's your choice. I have no problem with that. But we're not teaching

49:13 About the importance of connection and emotional connection and building Families. And so what do we have? We have a bunch of young people out there who are having sex but feeling empty and lonely and depressed and anxious. And and not knowing why. Because we're we are teaching sex, but we're not teaching about connection. Can I also say and I don't know that it's true that in the UK that we're t teaching nine year olds about angle, by the way.

49:40 But the thing that's lacking in sex education often here is pleasure. They do not talk. About how pl how pleasura how pleasurable it can be or

49:53 That goal should be when they have their first sexual experience Ideally as young women. That's not girls, but of course they should be young women, they should be of age.

50:04 That Their pleasure matters. There's so many young women who at the first just go, I guess I have to do this and h he has to Find pleasure in it.

50:15 But Makes your own body. Feel pleasure is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Knowing that it it It can give you great intimacy and it can be a

50:27 Lifelong relationship partner will be a little bit more than that. So that's a nineteen fifties idea. The nineteen fifties were a time I mean, nobody wants to go back to the nineteen fifties. You know, when I the books that I write, people come up to me and they say, You want women to go back to being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen. I'm like, What? No, we don't want to go back to the fifties because women didn't have choice and women didn't know about orgasm and they didn't know about, you know, that sex could be pleasurable. And um so we don't want to go back. We wanna move forward. We wanna take the best of the highlights of the past and not leave all of the good parts of the past behind and You know, take the good parts of the feminist movement too, but there's a lot of it that's not so good. And I'm gonna ag agree with Louise that There are so many

51:12 Young women and older women, but let's just say young women. No no no, I'm old too. Older. I over thirty two. I'll admit to over thirty two, Erica, and that's all I can do. That's all we're doing. That's all we're doing. You're ol older than Twenty five. There are so many young women who um Are looking

51:33 To understand the secret sauce. I think our young people are so very unhappy. They have never been so unhappy. The statistics on mental illness and unhappiness and loneliness are we have all the sexual freedom We have all of these feminist ideals, and є. Young women are so very unhappy.

52:01 I think we've got a causation correlation problem there. I think the world Is not well. We are We are really looking down the barrel of climate change, land wars.

52:13 cost of living is out of control. Young people will never own a home unless their parents give them an enormous amount of money. There are so many factors feeding into the unhappiness of people of all ages and young people look at this long future and go, what is this going to be for me? I think to blame feminism for that Uh is

52:35 Misguided. It's a piece of the puzzle, and remember that my lens is a lens of seeing patients who come to me for relational issues. So therefore you're you've got a biased set of information. The people that are unhappy with their relationships come to you. Yes, everything's a piece of the puzzle, but if it wasn't this, it would be that. And what that was was, you know, oh, I'm stuck with this person now that I'm we're not having sex and it's a miserable time and he doesn't talk to me and I don't talk to him, but I can't really get out of it. Human beings find ways to be dissatisfied with their lot in life. Somebody who we look at and go, My God, they're so fortunate, they've got everything they want. is probably one of the unhappiest people you know because they're going, Is this all there is? You know, that's why often you'll see like a

53:21 a a rock star or a movie star get absolutely everything they want and they have to go up a mountain to talk to a guru because they're like Well, I was hoping that I'd be super successful and wealthy and you know have all this choice, and now I've got that and I'm still not happy. And Yeah.

53:38 The idea that we can look at unhappiness with What is here And then say If this wasn't here, but that was here, those same people would be ha blissfully happy is

53:50 Doesn't bear out with history. So I actually think what does bear out is that human beings universally From birth. Crave security. We know that they crav safety and security and stability from birth. And

54:05 We don't teach that we say just be impulsive, be in the moment and I think that's a lot of what's causing the unhappiness is that we don't help educate And strategized what a good life means to you. Now maybe for you a good life is just being free and you know having a great career, and I have no problem with that. I'm I'm the first one to say. The women's movement gave women choice. to have the life they want to have.

54:32 Absolutely. I think there's a lot of women Who feel bullied. by this narrative of freedom. They feel bullied by it. And I listen, I I hear it in my practice. I see it online on my uh, you know, uh my Instagram following and people writing and You're right. I have a particular lens, so people may come to me because of that. But what I will say is that there is Okay.

54:58 The feminist movement, at least the second wave of the feminist movement was A little bit of a cabal in a sense that it was a small group of women saying every woman should feel this way. Every woman should want to go out to work and leave their children in daycare. Every woman should want free sex. And the bottom line is A lot of women don't. A lot of women want the choice to be respected, to have intimate and loving and marital relationships and monogamy, and they want to be able to stay home with their children and have society say, You are amazing and admire them for it. And and what I know is that there's a lot of young women and adult women who are feeling um Pressured.

55:41 to live a life that isn't making them happy, that is without relationships, that's without having one intimate partner, that is Um you know freedom without any limits. If women feel bullied by freedom I feel like they should try the alternative. I

55:58 I I still feel the predominant narrative is the rom com one. The predominant narrative is You should be married by thirty. with a white dress, everyone should stand around and say, You've done it now.

56:12 You should have babies. That to me is still the predominant narrative that you are successful if you have achieved these things. Now it is true that um many women feel also they should have some kind of career. That is very true, but I feel like U the main thing that women are asked to aspire to, if you really look around. It is still Find the one

56:36 Have the rom com ending. And I do not see this idea that women are told the whole time we should be out on the town sleeping with everyone in town. Far from it. And I I know this isn't true because I I went to a school that's a very, very good girls' school, it's a state school, but a very, very high end one in London in twenty eighteen when we were all out marching in the street, the women's march.

56:59 Recently I went back and all those girls are talking about being a high value woman, which is from the manosphere and not too high having having not too high a body count. These are obviously different girls. The ones twenty eighteen went off to university. That's in seven years. They were saying, you know, n it tw in twenty tw in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, around that time. They were saying no slut shaming, listen to your body. They weren't saying run around and have sex with everybody or I've got to have a lot of lovers. They were saying I ha I m I make my own decisions. I don't

57:31 l you know, listen to patriarchal ideas about how I need to live my life. I am going to go to university, I'm going to meet people and make meaningful relationships, and some of those will be friendships. They are now ha talking Manosphere talk. I made the biggest investment I've ever made in a company because of my girlfriend. I came home one night and my lovely girlfriend was up at one a.m. in the morning pulling her hair out as she tried to piece together her own online store for her business. And in that moment, I remembered an email I'd had from a guy called John.

58:03 The founder of Stan Store. Our new sponsor and a company I've invested heavily in. And Stan still helps creators to sell digital products, courses, coaching, and memberships all through a simple customizable link in bio system. And it handles everything: payments, bookings, emails, community engagement, and even links with Shopify. And I believe in it so much that Then I'm going to launch A stan. Challenge.

58:27 And as part of this challenge, I'm gonna give away one hundred thousand dollars to one of you. If you want to take part in this challenge, if you want to monetize the knowledge that you have, visit Stephen Bartlett. Dot stan dot store to sign up. And you'll also get an extended thirty day free trial of Stan Store if you use that link. Your next move. Could quite frankly change everything. Because I talked about ketosis on this podcast and ketones, a brand called Ketone IQ sent me their little product here.

58:54 It was on my desk when I got to the office. I picked it up, it sat on my desk for a couple of weeks, then one day I tried it. And honestly, I have not looked back ever since. I now have this everywhere I go. When I travel around the world, it's in my hotel room, my team will put it there. Before I did the podcast recording today that I've just finished. I had a shot of ketone IQ. And as is always the case when I fall in love with a product, I called the CEO and asked if I could invest a couple of million quid into their company. So I'm now an investor in the company, as well as them being a brand sponsor.

59:24 I find it so easy to drop into deep focus work when I've had one of these. I would love you to try one and see the impact it has on you, your focus, your productivity, and your endurance. So if you want to try it today, visit ketone.com slash Steven for thirty percent off your subscription. Plus, you'll receive a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone. dot com slash Steven I'm excited for you. I am. Mannersphere talk.

59:49 Um, I was I found this graph as well, which just shows the sort of explosion in people searching Trad wife, which means traditional wife. Yeah. And it seems from Two thousand and twenty four. There's been this real explosion of people searching for this trend. And uh you you said something a second ago, Erica, about young boys in particular being More vulnerable, I think were your words, than the young

1:00:12 Girls that you're seeing. Yeah. So how do these ideas come together to to and also link in and parley into this word manosphere? Because this subject of Manosphere has been At the very forefront of conversation. It's everything's a little out of balance. Everything's a little out of whack. So it was out of whack in the fifties. And so we fixed it and now it's out of whack in a different way. Uh we went from the patriarchy of men dominating women to now we have the patriarchy of women dominating men. I mean, what we need to do is not go back, but come to the middle. We need to just make common sense. How are we dominating men though? Oh my goodness. Um

1:00:47 B sixty percent of college students are women. And graduate students. No. Let me finish. Let me finish. Young men are afraid of women and the power they have over them to accuse. No, it's true in universities, it's a real thing. I know because I have two sons and um, you know, uh there is Again. The correction was necessary. We needed to course correct in society, absolutely. But we've gone so far. So we took so. The men were powerful and the women weren't. So the women said, Give us some power. So now the women took the power, and now the men feel powerless.

1:01:26 You need a society that's balanced. It needs to be balanced. And the idea was that where where we wanted to go, and and the truth is that all movements. often go to extremes. The women's movement those women had to go to extremes because to change society you have to do that. Right. So should some women not go to university? Is that what you're saying? No, but actually I think there needs to be a balance in society of men and women.

1:01:52 If we say that we are going to be like Amaz Amazon women and not need men anymore, the truth is that the way it works is that by the research is that um Women will marry at their educational level or above and men will marry at their educational level or below, that means that because we have fewer men in college and graduate school, women are not finding partners. I'm just gonna jump in there and talk about a report that came out in twenty twenty five, which um sent shockwaves across the UK. It was called the Lost Boys Report. I think we've we might have talked about this uh in a previous episode, but it was a report by the Center of Social Justice, which highlighted how many young men are now struggling in school, facing increased mental health problems and lacking positive role models, leaving them lost and isolated. And as a result, they said they suggested that many of them are turning to what we call the manosphere. And to give a definition to the manosphere, because I didn't actually know what it was, the definition I have from Cambridge

1:02:46 Dictionary is Man of Fear includes websites and discussion groups focused on men's rights, which often oppose feminism in some way. I mean just to give a a sort of a a top line Look at some of the stats around this. By age five, twenty five percent of boys in the UK are falling behind in language communication skills compared to just fourteen percent of women. At GCSE level boys' results are on average half a grade lower than girls. The same applies for mental health and well being. Obviously we know about the suicide rates in young men.

1:03:14 Um with nearly three and a half. They're nearly three and a half times higher than those of young women. Eating disorders have risen as well in young men. And from an employment perspective, as of late twenty twenty four. fifteen point one percent of men age sixteen, twenty four were not in education. um compared to eleven percent of women, which equates in the UK to about five hundred and fifty thousand men. And lastly, um, young women are between the age of sixteen and twenty four now earn nearly ten percent more than their male peers, reversing the traditional gender pay gap in this age group.

1:03:45 And I could go on and on and on. Specifically the things that I've kind of not talked about are just how f family dynamics have changed and By by age fourteen, nearly half of first born children do not live with both natural parents compared to Nineteen seventy. And this was this was really shocking and I think it really rose an argument which I saw play out in uh I saw the Sunday Times do a big piece about it. I saw it on LinkedIn, which is what is going on here? And is this a clue as to why we now have this term manosphere? It's a reaction. Manosphere is a reaction to the the pendulum swinging too far. The pendulum needed to swing, for sure.

1:04:20 I slightly disagree. Mm-hmm. So I think I spoke at the beginning about the sexual revolution being two things. So one is the ideological thing, which we've spoken about quite a lot, and the other is material. changes which no one designed really. Like this wasn't coordinated by anyone, this just happened. This is just how technology goes. And I think in general that history should best be understood as technology with everything else kind of running along in its wake, including ideology.

1:04:45 I actually think a massive thing that It's not actually feminism. That has mess them up. It's actually

1:04:56 technology and economics. So it's that One of the the most consequential things of the twentieth century and before this is really industrial revolution onwards is male strength became less important economically. blue collar work is less valuable than it used to be, it's less available than it used to be.

1:05:16 It turns out America was saying that girls um predominate at universities Girls actually tend to be better suited to a lot of work which has flourished in this era, to say service sector work or um. uh working in education and things like that. There's basically been A boom in

1:05:34 Um Are of life which are better suited to women. Professionally. And the opposite has happened with men. And I really think that a lot of what's going on with men say turning to the manosphere.

1:05:46 Is this feeling of being Economically devalued. And There are feminists who chair that on. But that's not basically that's a that pretty much has actually nothing to do with ideology. It's actually to do with just m m much bigger changes in the world.

1:06:03 And we should expect, by the way, I mean is if AI continues a pace, we should expect to see the same sort of social effects happening. when you change how people earn their money. And particularly when we're talking about people matching up. Like women tend to want to marry a man who I think being a provider is not quite Right. I think what women really want though is a man who provides excellent, a man who when you've just had a baby and you can't work, or you're ill, or you want to spend more time homemade children, whatever, you want a man who can step up and can look after your family. And unfortunately the nature of the economy means that there actually aren't that many of those men. And That that m makes men feel really bad.

1:06:43 And it makes women feel resentful? And it creates a lot of dysfunction and it's not really anyone's fault. It's just what's happened. I want a partner. I want someone that When Things are going badly for them. I'm there.

1:06:56 When things are going badly for me The Th they're there for me. Like I want a partner. I don't want this biological essentialism of he's got to step up and be the provider and the protector. I don't want that.

1:07:10 Yeah, but can I ask to that point then on that partnership? Um As a man, I still kind of assume that A woman is more likely to choose me if I have more money than her and I can pay the bills. And I take care of her. And so I looked into some of the research around that. And there's still an expectation amongst women that their their male partner will earn much more than them. And when they did, they did this. This big uh I think it's about seventy percent. I'll put the right start on the screen. When they did this big analysis of

1:07:34 dating behavior where they looked at 1.8 million online dating profiles across twenty different countries. If you earned more, so if you had higher income, you are two hundred and fifty five percent more likely to get an indication of interest on these applications. And so I I would love to live in a world where

1:07:51 That wasn't the case, but it seems that Women are still choosing men that earn much more money. And then expectation of therefore being the provider. is so inherent in reproductive success as a man. W there's a reason for that though. So what we haven't talked about, can we talk about children now?

1:08:09 If you want to raise children and be the primary attachment figure for your children, and it's usually the mother, sometimes it's the father now, but it's still usually the mother. Children need a primary attachment figure as present as possible in the first three years if they are going to be mentally healthy in the future. All of the research shows that. If you're gonna be as physic as possible, unless you've saved a lot of money as a woman, you need to depend on your partner, on your team member. My husband and I were a team. Before we had children, we both earned a lot and worked really hard and spent our money equally, but then we decided it was a strategy. We were gonna have children, and I was gonna work as little as possible. So I could be there for them. And he did the bulk of the earning. And now the joke is

1:08:56 I'm out in the world and I'm gonna be taking over and he's gonna be sitting by the pool, you know, and I'd be fine with that. But that's what teamwork is. But the idea that I could lean on my husband financially in those years and not have to earn money and be able to be present for my children. There is a very good reason why that is critical for children, and we don't talk about children. We're sitting here, this is the first time we talked about children. We're talking about adults. Uh and w and individuals and no, children are dependent on us. If you you don't have to have children to be happy, but if you are gonna bring children into this world, you have a responsibility to those children and it surpasses any individual desire you may have. And you're saying the mother should be there in those opening, yes. The primary attachment figure who's usually the mother. Daycare is terrible for children.

1:09:45 Let's define daycare. Daycare is anything under the age of three. Otherwise, we call it preschool. We used to call it nursery school, three to five before kindergarten. Okay. So anything under the age of three where you put your child in group care is daycare. And what it really is their day orphanages. You separate a baby who needs skin to skin contact, the sound of their mother's voice, her eyes, her physical and emotional presence to soot that baby when they're in distress from moment to moment to help to regulate their emotions. So two things mothers do they buffer children from stress, which is so important because the part of their brain that regulates stress Is meant to remain offline for the first year and very quietly slowly come online for the next two years. So what are we doing? We're throwing babies into these institutional orphanages. It's over stimulating, it's stressful. If you walk into any daycare, you are going to hear many, many children crying. Children are not meant to cry.

1:10:43 Much in the first year. They're meant to be held by their mothers and and held against their mothers' bodies. So they buffer children from stress and they regulate their emotions. So what we're seeing as a mental health crisis is a crisis of emotional regulation issues in children, adolescents, and adults. Depression, anxiety, ADHD, these are all emotional regulation issues. That means people cannot regulate their emotions. And so We're just giving them pills. We're not saying Where does emotional regulation come from? What's the origin of it? And the origin of it is in the very early days of your life. If you had a mother who soothed you when you were in distress from moment to moment, it regulates your emotions. So

1:11:26 It's only after three eighty five percent of the right brain is developed by three. It's only after three that you internalize the start to internalize the ability to regulate your own emotions or to deal with stress and adversity in the future. So does that mean that if I'm not home as a mother for those early three years you think there's And so we have made social changes that are about narcissism and self orientation and mi mi mi and don't involve An understanding of children's irreducible developmental needs. And if we did

1:12:06 then maybe more women wouldn't have children, and that would be fine. I have no problem. I'm not a pronatalist. You don't have to have children to be happy. You can You know, build businesses, build houses, have loving, intimate relationships, not have children. But if you're gonna have children, you need to know that drop dropping and running, putting them in daycare or no. Let's talk about very poor women. 'Cause this is always gonna come back at me. What about very poor women?

1:12:33 There are so many solutions. For very poor women that do not involve daycare. And I hate when people say poor women have to rely on daycare. Why should they have to rely on daycare when rich women don't have to rely on daycare? And the truth is there are other solutions. Poor women can live together and support one another and form communities. They can share care of a caregiver. It's far better to have a single surrogate attachment figure, a babysitter who is a full time babysitter, than putting a child in daycare. So if you can't be there and you're poor and you have to work. Then it's far better to have first kinship bonds. someone who's related to you because it's gonna be a more similar investment in that child than anyone else. Secondly, a single surrogate caregiver, a babysitter, a nanny, if you can't afford it, share the care.

1:13:22 with another mother because that's still gonna be better for that child than uh than putting them into an institutional group environment. Because what you're doing is you're basically putting uh usually no less than five children with one care giver. under the age of three. In in some cases it's under the age of one. And if you've ever had a baby crying You know that that baby is gonna get the other babies crying, and now you have five babies crying. There's no way you can soothe them in just when they're in distress. There's no way you can regulate all those babies' emotions. We are doing terrible damage to our children by putting them in daycare. And now, daycare was the feminist agenda. It was about the the second wave of feminism. They said, put your babies in daycare. It's the only way you're gonna go back.

1:14:08 back to work and work, work, work and and they didn't talk about children. The first wave of feminist they talked about children. Um Mary Shelley. And Mary Wallstonecraft they believed that mothering was powerful work. It was work, it was a career, it was admired, it was elevated. They also believed in fighting the patriarchy, they believed in equality, but they didn't forget about mothering. The second wave of feminists, I think it was Betty Friedan said that, um

1:14:38 Staying at home with your children was she called it a concentration camp with comforts. That was the beginning of the tide. That's when the tide turned for women where the narrative changed. So women felt Women who were loving being mothers and loving raising children suddenly were told that they were in a concentration camp. And that they were prisoners and oppressed. And some of them were

1:15:03 And some of them probably shouldn't have had children. Many of them weren't. And even today Me we people write me every day and say thank you for saying what you say because society's narrative is so

1:15:17 Uh much about we have no value unless we go out into the workforce. So can I ask you genuinely want to know what Baby boomers tended to be raised by stay at home mothers because financial world was totally different then. Like you know, when we're not when you talk about very poor women I have university educated friends who cannot afford to buy a property anywhere, that they don't have parents that can give them money. They're never gonna be able to save that much money. And they move out of a rented property probably once a year because the landlord moves them on and then the boil is not working, and so on and so on and so on. And I have

1:15:55 I local food bank that I donate food to and I often get chatting to people, there are nurses Full time nurses who live in London, who have two children at home Who Uh the p the hospital cannot have any more nurses leave because there is n there are not enough nurses. It's a real problem that the NHS is so understaffed. Various reasons for that.

1:16:17 can't give up their job because their children would have nothing to eat. They are at food banks with a full time nursing job. So we're not talking about v, you know, I don't really know what you mean by very poor women. I there are women with professional roles who will never own own their own home, who are struggling to keep the lights on, struggling to put food on the table. Now, when I heard you talk on Steven's podcast before, you said, Well look, you know, people don't want to downscale and when When my children were young, we did without things like second homes and vacations. And Erica.

1:16:51 There is no hope for a second home now for anyone. And I understand that's different. Your generation was different. No, but that's why I said women who are working class and must work. There are solutions for those women that don't involve putting their children in daycare. And we're not discussing those solutions. But do you see listen I would love if the government of every government would say, Here's the option to stay home for three years, here's the well And great. There are some And that is amazing. And I think lots of parents and for me I don't Think it has to be

1:17:27 The mother and I've got friends who are same sex parents and who have the most incredible uh relationships with their children. I don't think it has to be a mother, but I I feel like there's lots and lots of parents who would love to stay home for three years with their children and be able to afford that and to be able to afford to get and and that That corporations would then go You know, there's a lot of evidence that if you take three years off to raise your child, when you come back, you've got a whole new skill set. Yeah.

1:17:54 Yeah, there's books written about that. Oh my god, you go back into the financial district, you've negotiated with a toddler for three years, step inside. And yet often that is not recognized. Women are pushed out of the workforce. So I am a hundred percent with you that attachment is important. And that Many parents would love to take three years off. And this is not being made possible by unregulated capitalism, by governments who do not care. And

1:18:20 I'm from America where we don't have any paid leave at all. Absolutely. For this. I mean, I've been advocating for a decade for paid leave, and I don't seem to be getting anywhere, but I'm trying. Mothers and motherhood. And someone in the trenches. So we I mean I should say I partly as a consequence of reading Erica's work and also having you on my podcast. Um

1:18:46 We have moved heaven and earth to not put our children in daycare. Which has involved quite a lot of like creative thinking. And we are poorer than we would otherwise have been. You know, and and people look at us like we're crazy sometimes and think, Why have why have you made your life so complicated? And it's because um me and my husband both have this really strong feeling that we don't want to put them in institutional childcare. And that is weird. And one of the things that I

1:19:09 Really don't like in the UK policy space, and I this is true in other countries like the US too, is that governments at about the time of the millennium. seem to have cottoned on to the fact that they can use women to boost GDP. Yeah.

1:19:26 And um David Goodhart, who's a a friend author, he wrote a book recently called The Care Dilemma and he described this this Uh historical event as a one time boost to GDP. It's not replicable. But in really the nineteen nineties, obviously sex revolution

1:19:42 predates this, but really the nineteen nineties is when you see this massive surge of Working mothers. this idea that you should be out of the house forty hours a week. Children decade. That's pretty new and Governments like this because governments like women paying taxes. And I think that to some extent some

1:20:02 Should we say non maternal feminism has been a little bit naive about this and thinking that If we can get Take care.

1:20:13 based initiatives that that's good for women. There's so much research on this showing that actually most women find it really, really hard and it's a it's a very common thing in moms groups and on social media and w and so on women thinking, I do not want to leave my sixty six percent of women in UK wanna stay home if they very well. Right, or want to work stay home more. Yeah and What I object to is the current arrangement that we have in the UK and elsewhere where the government does Nothing for you if you're a stay at home mother. The government actually punishes families in the tax system. If you're a single earner family, you will earn you will pay more tax. And if you earn the same amount, but across two incomes.

1:20:51 You are directly punished, this was uh deliberately established as a quote unquote feminist. policy. So that it would so that it would channel women back into the workforce after they'd had children. I also don't like the fact that the only setup that's available in terms of getting any kind of funding from the government is for daycare.

1:21:09 You can't put money towards a nanny, you can't put money towards having your a a grandparent or an aunt or something helping the part. Yeah, the only way that you can get any kind of subsidy is through daycare. And I think that I mean talking about choice, that's removing choices from women. And most women don't want to take that choice and they're doing it because they're being channeled in that direction by economic forces, which I object to. But I don't think that's That's to call it a feminist policy, it feels like guilting women twice. What I said at the top about relieving women from this emotional burden of guilt.

1:21:40 I feel like if that's a that's a cap an unregulated capitalist policy. That is not a feminist policy. I I think which she which what if I heard her correctly, she said that they were using feminism in a way they used it um as a as a banner, but it's actually the government wanting the GDP I mean that's what I heard. I don't know what I mean. No, so it's a policy the thing is that women disagree on stuff, right? So in including you know Present company included. Some women I mean this is kind of the whole story of the second wave. There are some women who for temperamental or

1:22:14 Life circumstance reasons. have benefited from this. For instance. Pushing Take care.

1:22:22 As one example, I could I could list loads. There are some women who are more temperamentally inclined. to work full time, who don't like being stay at home mums. You find it. Boring, frustrating, whatever it is.

1:22:36 Can I ask you a question, Stephen? Go ahead. Would you take a three year career break, would you be able to do that? Would I be able to take a three of them? Emotionally, mentally. So I would be It's possible. But my

1:22:50 Would that be my choice now? It's obviously possible because I have the means to, so I'm a different person like I'm I'm a slightly more privileged person to ask. But would I want to take three years off my career? stop doing this, um, to solely raise children, I would I would not want to. You would struggle. And and the thing is

1:23:09 Men aren't expected to. So we have different nurturing hormones. We have a biology that's really different. I I think we just need to take into account That No one is judging Steven for saying that. But if I said

1:23:26 Just couldn't do it. People would be like And that societal expectation and that societal guilt needs to be acknowledged. But men and women are different. Can they aren't. Stephen could say other things which would have people's jaws on the floor, like I don't want to financially support my wife and child. I think people would be quite shocked by that. I mean we just have different expectations from other people. No, no, I wanna give some evidence of that. So there's hormonal research to show that Men and women respond to nurturing differently. We have different hormones, different amounts of hormones, they come it comes from different parts of our brain. Uh women produce when they give birth, when they breastfeed, when they nurture their young, they produce a ton of oxytocin, if they're healthy.

1:24:09 Oxytocin helps you to attach to your baby and it also is is inversely connected to cortisol. So it lowers the baby's stress, it lowers your stress, and it raises the well being of the baby and the well being in you. And so what we know is that oxytocin is passed back and forth between babies and mothers, right brain to right brain connection. Oxytocin makes mothers sensitive empathic nurturers. It makes them very attuned to the distress of their babies. When fathers produce oxytocin, when they stay home, it comes from a different part of their brain and it makes them more playful tactile stimulators of babies. They tickle the babies, they throw them up in the air, they chase them around, they encourage uh risk taking, they encourage exploration. They're great with uh with separation. But in terms of providing that emotional security and that emotional regulation in those early days, mothers do it differently. Fathers produce a lot of vasopressin. It's called the protective aggressive hormone. There was a study that was done where fathers and mothers lay in bed together. was done in the UK and when the baby cried

1:25:13 Almost nearly every time the mother woke up in the middle of the night to the baby's cries and the father slept through it. But when there was wait listen, when there was a rustling of leaves outside the window, the father's woke up and the mother slept through it. Because of the predatory threat. We are wired. We are mammals. We are not better than mammals. We are mammals. And mammals have been doing this for Thousand for millennium. And evolutionarily there's there's a reason why we have different responses, different nurturing behaviors that are correlated with our hormones. We are not the same. We are equal in so many ways, but we are not the same in terms of our nurturing behaviors. That doesn't mean a father can't learn. It doesn't mean a father who wants to be the stay at home dad can't learn to be a sensitive empathy nurturer, but if we can't acknowledge that we're different, then we can't teach what we need to teach. You said we need education. We need all kinds of education, but you can't educate a father that he's different than a mother if you're not admitting that he's different than a mother.

1:26:13 We are different. With exceptions. We're we're equal. It's it's not men from different it's not men are from Mars, women from Venus, it's overlapping bellcars. Yeah. So there are outliers, but but at the population level, which is what we're talking about. You have to acknowledge that There are differences. Did you say that six would what was that number you cited? Sixty six percent of women would like the opportunity to be able to stay at home. That's a UK figure. Sixty percent in America, sixty six percent in the UK. I don't know the numbers on men, but I would guess that it's

1:26:40 really low. And that I know that there are other statistics around When fathers aren't earning that can cause I mean, it's kind of difficult to because there are obviously confounding factors. Maybe fathers aren't earning because they are very depressed or because they're uh have poor health or something like that. But when fathers aren't earning that tends to be bad for relationships. bad for men's self esteem. Like I think Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I think the truth is that

1:27:07 Most people aspire to something like kind of traditional gender roles with some flexibility. And I don't think that we should consider that to be like some inconvenient problem. I think that if that's what human beings are like, then our politics ought to accept that and allow people to flourish.

1:27:27 and allow people to have the things that they want while trying to amelior the trade offs. So you're you're agreeing with me that we need agency and autonomy and people need to choose because Men are taller than women. Right? That's an observable fact. Overall.

1:27:44 It doesn't give you any information at all about me and Tom Cruise. So We're talking about trends. We're not talking about the first time Stephen holds his baby and nurtures it and thinks bloody hell, I'm gonna take a year off because I can't afford to. And wants to do that. It it

1:28:01 The All we can ever talk about is trends. We cannot talk in absolutes because we don't have any information about what I as a m if I were a mother, what I should do or what Stephen should do as a father. But what about policy? So like the example I gave, right? The fact that at the moment you basically will not get any money from the British government. unless you put your child in daycare. They will not give you money for being a stay home parent, et cetera. That's a policy choice and we can't be neutral about that. We have to decide are we going to incentivise one thing or another? In practice it's fantastical to say we just need to Give people as many choices as possible. It's not how humans work and it's not how societies work, because societies are greater than the sum of their parts. So another example. Elizabeth Warren

1:28:41 Of all people. Wrote a book. Call the two income trap. I forget when, the nineties, I think. This was before she became a really prominent American politician. Where she argued that One of the really important things in boosting house prices

1:28:56 in America, and this is true elsewhere. There are other factors too, like mortgage interest rates and stuff, but one of the reasons why house prices have rocketed and have made it more difficult to be a single earner family or to be a nurse and future children, you know, as we were talking about. Is because Banks started giving mortgages based on two incomes. And it became possible to this this crucial legal change in the in Britain happened in the nineteen nineties, similar elsewhere.

1:29:22 Basically instead of just borrowing against the father's income, you're borrowing against both incomes. And then all of a sudden Has prices go up? Because people have more money to spend. And it becomes disastrous for family who are

1:29:37 paying their mortgage based on and of course rent, because rent is all just downstream at property prices. paying their mortgage on the expectation that they have two incomes. This is a really good example of why you can't just think at the individual level. It would be really easy to say, well just give women choices everything fine. The problem is when it becomes the norm And when it becomes public policy For a certain choice to be made, suddenly everyone has to make that choice or they suffer serious consequences. And of course, people can be weird. And there are people I know them who. look at the property price problem and say no, I wanna be a stay at home mother, I'm gonna move house

1:30:12 I'm going to like take up some cottage industry job at home, like You can do it, but you have to be agentic. But also can you can you live on an Etsy shop and to have a slightly smaller house? That's not what I know. I I people are really struggling, guys. We need these governments to step up and allow this, and we need corporations to say You know, you can have a three year break and come back.

1:30:36 If this is the ideal thing. What I would also say is I think it's extremely important for whichever parent s decides to be the primary carer to have windows outside where they get fed

1:30:50 emotionally, intellectually, creative creatively. If What floats their boat. Is early childhood development and that's enough for them. That's great.

1:31:00 That's that's autonomy. That's Awesome. But that is not most people's experience. A lot of my friends tell me that effectively having a child is becoming an unpaid Uber driver for someone who doesn't want to go to karate and hates you anyway. And it's hard, hard work.

1:31:16 But that's that is a narrative that I'm gonna push back on, which is part of the problem, which is that it's the narrative of misery which has been promoted. And It's not s miserable to have children. It's joyful. It's the most incredible love you'll ever experience in your life, but it's also really hard. And I think we have a bunch of Pussy. Actually.

1:31:38 Right, a uh we are producing we are producing women and men who are pussies, and I'll tell you what I mean by that. They cannot deal with discomfort, they cannot deal with frustration, they cannot deal with sacrifice or hardship or responsibility. They want it to be easy. Who said raising children was easy? You don't get the good stuff unless you put in the work. And it's the same if you're out in the world, of course it's easier to go to a job than it is to stay home with a child, because a child demands more of you, but it also gives back more. And I'm gonna say this is not a binary equation here. So sixty six percent may want to stay home, but they may want to stay home and have part time work or do some work from home. It may not be as binary as as you're making it out to be. It's not like you have to stay home for three years, and it's not an elitist idea. So Can I just answer the guilt question? Because I didn't get to answer that because you said you're making a lot of w women feel guilty.

1:32:34 So Guilt is actually quite a healthy emotion. In small supply guilt is a very healthy it means that your ego is functioning. So if we're not just preoccupied as women on our own needs and desires and self orientation and narcissistic uh sort of wishes, then listen, listen, listen.

1:32:57 Then we have to no, you I mean, if we're not just concerned with ourselves, then when we leave our very, very, very young children We should feel badly. Because We those children need us. If we stop feeling badly for our children when we leave them. You break the bond.

1:33:16 You can't turn off attachment. So A little bit of guilt means your ego is functioning. It's a good sign. Now. The response to that may not be that you can stay home with your children, even part time.

1:33:29 But at least it informs you. So whatever time you have with your children you spend it. Wisely. I mean I think it was um It was Penelope Leach who said well before me.

1:33:42 Yeah. Don't have children if you don't want to care for them. 'Cause you can have a very productive and creative life without having children. But if you're gonna have children You need to care for them.

1:33:53 And they're your responsibility. Can I push back on the word narcissistic? Because I'm thinking of those nurses that I met down at the food bank. One of them had a I think a nine year old and the other's had the other had two small ones. The idea that that woman is narcissistic in any way. I just you've used it a couple of times. And that she should feel guilty when she drops that child off. I I feel so sad.

1:34:18 That it's another layer of Oh, it's this healthy guilt. Women feel so much guilt. All the time. Nobody is worried that women aren't feeling guilty enough. They are trying so hard.

1:34:31 And this world is becoming more and more and more and more and more fraught with inequality. That nurse is running around desperately trying to give people one of them said to me uh at one point, I wanna give s people even a good death. I don't wanna leave them. I have to go over here and throw medicine at this person. This person is dying. I wanna sit with them and hold their hand because they don't have any family or they're not here. We're talking about this the most Empathetic person. I think we're asking too much of women.

1:35:02 What? Evidently, but to say that that she used the word narcissistic because she's going to do her job as a call that woman narcissistic. I said there's a tremendous amount of narcissism out there in women and in men. That they do not think about their children first. They think about them s now. That doesn't mean that nurse, that nurse may be the exception. And there's a lot of exceptions, but the truth is we have a very narcissistically oriented society. We do, that's why we have all these narcissistic disorders. What do you think addictions are, eating disorders, alcoholism, drug addiction, these are all narcissistic disorders. So why are they on the rise? Because Narcissism doesn't make you a bad person. A narcissistic d disorder means you were neglected as a child and you form defenses to help you to cope with that neglect and that abandonment. And we are neglecting and abandoning our children on a very fundamental level in the years that they need us most, and they are developing as a result. Narcissistic disorders in

1:36:00 Childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Bring you into this for a second, because I know y you're a mother of two two young boys. There was a comment made earlier about many women consider parenthood and I don't want to mischaracter anything you said, Deborah, but to be why would they want to be an unpaid Uber driver? I I was saying that like that's sometimes the experience. It's not just all roses and happiness and joy. For some more So therefore, you need something outside for your headspace. That's what I mean. I don't mean you can't be a full time parent. I do mean A lot of people don't just find it a s a singular joy. And they just need a little something outside, even if they can afford to stay home, which most people can't.

1:36:38 That's what I mean. So to that point and then also to the point about narcissism. And individualism. What are your thoughts here? I'm primarily angry with politicians. Okay.

1:36:48 in terms of making the life of, say, this nurse really difficult, unnecessarily so. The thing that I also wanna draw attention to is the extent to which Branches of feminism have made a mistake. Like there have been feminism is very complex. It's also very old. It didn't start in the nineteen sixties. But um you know, Eric is talking about maternal feminism. I would also call myself a maternal feminist. And I think that feminism has had a

1:37:15 a really difficult relationship with motherhood. Certainly since the sixties because motherhood is really difficult because it it particularly if you're got if you're ideologically committed to the idea of Gender sameness. underplaying the differences, the biological differences between men and women, sometimes called biological determinism.

1:37:33 Then Motherhood is a real problem for you because it really highlights those differences. I think that there are a lot of Just facts about men and women that we don't actually know. widely and a lot of young people certainly don't know. One of the things that a lot of women

1:37:49 don't know is how much they're gonna want to be with their babies because we don't really talk about this. And it is a difficult fact for the idea of men and women being basically the same with different different like bits and bulbs. And that is partly because we're not properly educating women about what the experiences like, but it's also because Unfortunately, there has been this this strain of feminism, it's not all feminism at all, which has basically aspired as much as possible to make women like men.

1:38:17 And that includes. women being like men professionally, women having sex like men, that's the expression they use in sex in the city, having sex like a man, right? Basically enjoying hookups without any real emotional connection. And I think that's a real trap for feminism is to assume that Women should want to be l as much like men as possible. Even women's bodies even if you look at teenage girls' bodies, they all aspire to be like adolescent boys, you know, they don't want breasts, they don't want hips, they want to be right. So so it is. It's almost as if we elevated

1:38:49 In a funny way, feminists were trying to reject patriarchy, but they ended up idolizing it. And wanting to be it and then rejecting everything feminine. And that's a problem. And it's certainly a problem for motherhood. And I think what maternal feminism says is Actually maybe women are all right. And maybe actually this feminine stuff is good. And maybe motherhood is actually just as valuable as your professional life. And We should Aspire to feminist ideas, policy education, whatever.

1:39:19 Which Prizes that. And how how much do you see women elevated who are mothers? I mean, do you uh you go to a cocktail party and you ask a woman what she does and she says, I'm a stay at home mom and I'm raising my children. The back will turn on her, whether it's a woman or a man. And so that means that we've denigrated and not just deprioritize, we've deprioritized, we've denigrated it, we've dismissed it, we've turned it into something less than. And so

1:39:49 Women to feel valuable in society was the admiration for them. Feminism has to get to a place where it says you have choice and We admire your choice to stay home with your children and admire our choice not to have children. Um, you know, but The idea that The second wave of feminism, it was about it's all drudgery and it's disgusting and boring, and it made it into this. And now you have these websites which are frightening to me, the the scary mommy websites, where you have women saying, I hate breastfeeding and I hate pregnancy and I hate my children.

1:40:26 And it's so disturbing to me because what have we done to those women? What have we done to society that we have those websites? It's okay to feel frustrated, to feel bored, to have many feelings about mothering, but the hostility towards mothering, the hostility towards children, the hostility towards raising children. If we don't admire Mothers again. There will be no mothers in the future. I feel totally the opposite. That's so interesting. Because I'm not a mother, I had uh Guilty Feminist Podcast episode where Susan Calman, who's a um a comedian, came on and we said, What do you want to talk about? And she said, I want to talk about the fact that I've never wanted to be a mother. I said, I've tried to have children, couldn't, but I have lots of nurturing relationships, love children.

1:41:11 I have never had more Fury in my inbox, like we were monsters because we weren't mothers. So what you're saying is true that sometimes someone will you're a stay at home mom and I despise it. Be staying being a stay home parent is a Job of work. women to be celebrated for staying home with their children. I want men to be celebrated.

1:41:34 Uh, men tend to be celebrated more if they do that work. I want women to be celebrated. I want all parents of any gender to be celebrated for we agree on that. It links to the th next thing I wanted to talk about, which is if we don't correct this in some way, we're not gonna have mothers. When we look at the birth rates and the fertility rates, this is fifty percent of young women don't want to have children. So You know, again, I'm all for choice and I'm I think women have to come together. So uh in a way, the feminism movement didn't unite women, it split women in many ways, the second wave of feminism. Минвор Хісторикли

1:42:10 For millennium. The caretakers of a community, the community leaders, they would check on the elderly, they would feed the poor, they would take care of the children, right? So What happened is that we Took them out. of their caretaking roles and it was like taking a keystone species out of the environment.

1:42:31 Much of the environment degraded and shriveled up. That's why we're seeing fifty percent. That's why we're seeing, in my opinion, that's why we're seeing such a rise in mental illness. Women aren't going to check on their neighbors anymore. They're not feeding the poor at their local church. They're really preoccupied with making money and materialism and the GDP and and a world in which they are no longer caretakers. No, not everybody's meant to be a caretaker. But

1:42:59 The point is Once we lose that That Lynch pin.

1:43:05 The s the society degrades. It it it degrades. Is it our job to Be down at the soup kitchen and checking on the elderly neighbour. Surely that's the community's job. We should raise our sons and daughters to do that. All children should be raised to check on it's not women's job. I work in a writer's room at the moment and I Love it. And I am not less good in the room than any man. I get so much joy from it. It's so exciting.

1:43:31 If we Say, Oh, feminism took away my key linchpin role where I have to like go to a soup kitchen and then check on a neighbor and check on the graph. While men still get to go into the writer's room and create an animated feature film like it was in the fifties or the sixties or even the seventies or the eighties, or the damn nineties, let's be honest. I don't get to do that. The film gets to be more male. It tells the story to the next generation and the boys get to make that film and the stories go on and on and on, but my role is checking on the elderly neighbor, and uh the man's role is to go and write the exciting movie and create a stuff. That's not the counterpart. Men do pro social things too. They don't just write TV shows. They fight fires, they earn money, they chop wood, they I mean I'm being I'm being really starting to talk about what Erica was saying about the unpaid labour of checking. So can I say I think that one of the problems we have in the contemporary world and this applies just as much to men as to women, we talked about the manosphere earlier.

1:44:24 Is that Gender roles contain both privileges and responsibilities. Both of them. So men do other pro social things, right? And I think that genuinely one of the problems that we have in Contemporary culture having rejected so much of traditional

1:44:39 gender ideas is that Gender roles traditionally contain both privileges and responsibilities. So for men, the privileges are kind of obvious, like feminists have drawn a lot of attention to these, but men also have counterpart responsibilities, which includes things like dying for their country or for their family, which includes doing backbreaking labor. uh, you know, there are all sorts of hard things that men are expected to do in exchange. I think this is the unwritten.

1:45:04 agreement in exchange for those responsibilities. Those privileges, rather. Women have that too. So women have Some privileges. you get to uh the women and children first principle when it comes to saving lives. Women are often the beneficiaries of what's called benign sexism, so men being kind of uh deferential to women and like n nice gentlemanly men being

1:45:26 deferential to women. There's this a cognitive bias called the Women Are Wonderful principle where where people will actually if you ask someone to if uh do you want to save a s uh a a a woman that you don't know or a man that you don't know from drowning, people will overwhelmingly choose to save the woman. So there are those privileges. There are also responsibilities and they include things like caring work, which is hard. And the danger and difficulty of

1:45:50 Childbearing, which is really hard. And I think that one of the problems, and maybe this is narcissistic, I don't know, this is a this is a touchy word, but maybe this is narcissistic. is that both sexes want the privileges without the responsibilities. And you see that within the manosphere as well. That's what the manosphere wants. They want all the privileges of masculinity without any of the responsibilities. They don't want to have to be the breadwinner for their families or to do difficult work or to risk their Safety doing anything. And I'm afraid sometimes feminism is like this as well. That we expect. Women to be given

1:46:20 To be deferred to. But we say I don't have time to do all this stuff for other people. That's ridiculous. I should be like writing TV shows. I mean that that's not the counterpart, right? Like writing TV shows is great, but it's not like essential work to society, whereas Raising children and protecting your community really is, and we do need people to do that of both sexes.

1:46:40 Price on on it. And that's the problem is that we can't put a price on how important it is to raise children. There's a there it's unpaid Work. And because we focus so much in society on paid work, we can't put a price on how elevated. women's work should be, meaning how elevated nurturing children should be in society. You know, I mean, my kids always say again, I'm gonna get a lot of hell for this too, but my kids always say it's not fair.

1:47:07 That people in finance are earning all that money, and doctors and nurses, and social workers, and teachers. earn so little. And they used to say that when they were little and had a hard time explaining to them why that was. And all I could say was the world is not a fair place. That's not a very good response. And so you know I think the idea that we have shifted this narrative towards working out in the world and paid labor and and accomplishments out in the world and achievements out in the world as opposed to What's right in front of you, the accomplishment

1:47:42 Which is maybe the greatest accomplishment of raising emotionally, mentally, physically healthy children that you put out into the world for the next generation. I mean we have to survive as a species. And so that's every all that paid work is also important and you should have the choice to do that. Or nurture or some of both, but If I were gonna say my one goal out of this podcast would be to

1:48:07 To help people understand that we have denigrated maybe one of the most important work you can do instead of elevating it, instead of admiring women for staying home and dealing with the boring moments and dealing with the hardships and dealing with the sleeplessness and the frustration. It's much easier to go to work. It is much easier to leave your children in daycare or with a nanny, not the women that have to. Believe me. But it is much easier if you have a choice. to go to work because being out of the house is

1:48:37 It's harder work staying home. So why aren't we admiring the women who are staying home and doing that hard work and having those boring moments? I I agree that parenting is difficult work. I agree the raising of the next generation is extremely valuable. I agree that the people who do it, whoever they are Should be

1:48:58 Uh respected. And should be it. P paid in in the way that we live in a capitalist society, and if we don't put a value on it, or we don't create tax breaks around it or you know, have child endowment around it.

1:49:13 we then say it's not important. So I I absolutely agree with all of that. I do not agree that women we pull feminism pulled a linchpin out when it said women women shouldn't have to be the ones that visit the neighbour and do the do all the unpaid labour around in the community. I think that should be unpaid labour in the community is important, but that's what why they call it community and not

1:49:40 women's work. It's a community effort. So I should do it. But I should also get to go to work t in the writer's room. And my husband should do it and he should go and get to do his job. So I don't think I think A lot of times today. I don't know. I think maybe I don't know, maybe without meaning to

1:49:59 I've heard from both of you, even though we agree on many things. feminism really did a number on us all. Feminism pulled a lynch finger, it's feminism's fault. Without feminism, none of us would be around this table because Stephen wouldn't value our voices. Absolutely. In the nicest possible way, if you were in a man in the fifties, would you invite three women on effectively like a T V radio show, whatever media that was available? A hundred percent.

1:50:30 and so that that's me saying I I respect The women that came before us that created Uh a paradigm allows us to work out in the world, to have a voice, to have choices, to have control. But why is it feminism not going too far and capitalism not accommodating and our governments not accommodating? the new world that we live in that is obviously better for women. We none of us could get a credit card. a couple of dec a few decades ago, conjugal rape was still legal in this country till like the what I don't know, you would know better than me, the like the nineties.

1:51:02 Something like naughty technically in case law. You know, I it just Uh. We wouldn't have been able to go and get a mortgage or a bank account on our own. We couldn't have anything. So instead of blaming feminism, which has got us around this table so frequently. I feel we should look at okay, feminism got us here.

1:51:21 And now what would we like next? Feminism has got us this far, so what can how can we encourage instead of Damning feminism, encouraged feminism. To make sure We

1:51:34 admire and respect and pay properly the women in our workplaces Ансо admire and respect and pay properly or make sure that women are in safety and security when they parent. How can we do both? I know I I agree with that. I feel when you keep saying, Well feminism did this, feminism did this, at this time this is this is we gotta meet this moment, women. We have to meet this moment, and do you know what this moment is? This moment is a moment. Where Roe versus Wade has been overturned.

1:52:03 Where far right Christian nacionalists are rising up. to take away our rights there are people in America right now saying there should be one vote per household And that should go to the man. I have seen Paula White, who is the faithsar of at the White House, saying it's God's arrangement that women be in subjection to men. I have lived that. I will not go back. You are both professional women.

1:52:27 Intelligent women you have written books. Please come with me. And say feminism has got us this far, and feminism can take us further. If you keep saying feminism's to blame, the manosphere are watching and they take those clips, they take those clips, they go see women are saying feminism to blame. So I think the the idea is I believe in maternal feminism, where all women are respected. Whether they work at home or they work outside the home. Louis.

1:52:54 So I think the that is exactly why we need to be thinking about maternal feminism. Because if Basically, if feminism cannot reproduce itself, literally If it bo if it if it is the case that a feminist society Is it is a very, very low fertility society, which has no which does not respect motherhood, which discourages women from having children because it's limits your freedom, et cetera, then feminism dies out, feminist societies die out, they wither and die. And conservative

1:53:23 very conservative, not the kind of conservative I'm okay with, like the very conservative societies that they if they are the only ones that can accommodate Children. Then they win. At the moment the best predictors Of

1:53:37 Within within low fertility societies like ours, the best predictors of how many children you have is basically how religious you are and how conservative you are. It used to be up until relatively recently. that Democrats and Republicans have basically the same birth rate. Now Republicans are massively outstripping Democrats. And the thing is that all of this stuff is is at least to some extent heritable. People are to some extent

1:53:59 they they adopt the politics and the world views of their parents. Not always, obviously people rebel, but in general you imitate the culture you were raised in. And also some of this stuff is actually heritable. Like there are personality traits which Make you more religious or make you inclined to certain politics which are heritable partially. So Basically current the current trajectory, while we're kind of

1:54:22 arguing about the rights and wrongs of this stuff, the current trajectory is for a society to become much more conservative. And that's what the birth rate's phenomenon. spells for everyone. And I I mean I and I genuinely think as someone who likes being able to have my own bank account and vote and whatever. I actually choices Yeah, right. Like I I'm a centrist here, okay? And I actually think that if we

1:54:43 care about any of that stuff. Then we have to find a way of having a feminism that is fertile. Deborah, we need a fertile feminism, Gordon. I'm as barren as fuck, Steve, so I can't help with this. However Um I'm fine about it, don't worry. Uh uh that uh I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I I uh I have a

1:55:04 an amazing life and in the end think this was probably the better thing for me. But Um All the femin I don't think we need to call it maternal feminism. All the feminists I know Either have children.

1:55:17 or really supports the mothers in their community. Including me. I Uh I don't n I don't recognize this guy. I don't recognize it. I feel like Mm.

1:55:29 I go on marches Feminist marches in London. There's children everywhere. Secular progressive people are so, so below replacement. Just on the data. How do you respond to that we're gonna run out of these people if they don't start having kids?

1:55:44 I mean makes uh it it I I there's probably reasons for it, like If you're more progressive, you're more aware of climate change, you're more you're less you're more likely to pay your taxes, you're less likely to have Um excess wealth to raise the next generation, you're gonna be more aware of like what am I bringing the children into.

1:56:03 If you have a vision of the world that God's going to save everything and you, you know, you're just gonna vote this way and everything is gonna be great. Maybe you pump out more children if you think that You know, your God or whoever that is is going to save the day. I don't know. Do we need to be having more children though? My my concern about it is Is what are we having them for?

1:56:25 If the world is getting more difficult to live in. If it's if people can't afford a home, even like a nice rented property that feels quite stable, if they can't afford a home, if they're working millions of hours and not being able to balance parenthood and feeling very stressed and you know, the the f manosphere is rising and it's it's boys are so depressed and girls feel like this and all of that. What are we having it? What are we doing it for? Unless we're gonna create conditions

1:56:56 that people want to live in that make us happy or at least, you know, no one can be happy all the time, but it what are we what are we doing it for? Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting ten thousand of you to come even deeper into the diary of a sea. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that we've never ever released. And so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have.

1:57:42 But remember for now we're only inviting the first ten thousand people that joined before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to DOACCircle.com I will speak to you then. The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid. But what if you had the right question to start them with? Every single guest on the Dire of a CO has left behind a question. In this

1:58:07 diary. And it's a question designed to challenge, to connect and to go deeper with the next guest. And these are all the questions that I have here. In my hand. On one side you've got the question that was asked. The name of the person who wrote it. And on the other side, if you scan that

1:58:23 You can watch the person who came after. You answered it. Fifty one questions split across three different levels, the warm up level, the open up level, and the deep level. So you decide how deep the conversation goes. And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms, alone at night. And on first dates. And everywhere in between.

1:58:43 I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below, and you can get yours at thediary.com. I want to talk about one last subject, um, which is the subject of pornography. Yeah, I just um I'm I'm interested to see how you all think that the impacts and implications of pornography impact everything we've talked about today, whether it's men, it's women, it's children, et cetera, and also how that ties into feminism. I would say there is

1:59:12 There is increasing evidence that everything we do alone on our phone excessively Is causing us to disassociate, is causing us to get some kind of addiction property from it, is causing us to. disregulate is causing the breakdown of regular communication in society. So do you think porn is a net Negative for society?

1:59:36 I I think it's it's a moot point because it's always been there and it's always gonna be there. But I would like to But if you could press a button and get rid of it and pressing that button. Would that cause society to be better or worse? In terms of happiness if we use that as a metric and uh any of the metrics that one would use. Honestly, it's like

1:59:57 Saying Can you press a button and get rid of human sexuality? I I don't know what sh what the world would look like. If people were seeking it out. But w where there is no before we had porn, people always drew things through the water. When you had When boys had a Playboy magazine under their bed or they stole their father's Playboy magazine, that was actually less harmful than the the the movies and the video because um it two dimensional isn't as powerful as the

2:00:26 I guess video video. I mean I'm saying films. Yeah. Modern porn is a super stimulus. Yeah. It's a completely different it's not like Okay. Real action is like sourcing murals in Pompeii, right. It's It's designed to be

2:00:41 incredibly stimulating, like in in And it's very clever, actually, like the way that the the the porn platforms work. It's really it's a clever product. And like we're talking about unre unregulated capitalism, like this is the preeminent example. It's designed to tap in to our most profound desires. uh I mean particularly for men using it, it's like hypervisual, everything's exaggerated, it's I mean one of the reasons why it's a bad idea to use porn in general, aside from it being super unethical as an industry is um it will make the rest of your sex life worse generally.

2:01:14 because it will mean that real sex will not measure up. If you've trained your brain to enjoy the super stimulus, the normal stimulus becomes less exciting. Like how if you eat junk food, then it becomes less attractive to eat vegetables or whatever. Like it's It's not like Playboy. Of the fifties. There's no I mean it's it's so explicit that it leaves no room for fantasy, even your own fantasy. And is it harming men as well, Louise? Yeah, absolutely. I mean not least one of the things that is uh Certainly anecdotally a massive problem with compulsive porn use is erectile dysfunction when you actually try and have sex with a real human being because You've trained your brain and you've also trained the rest of your body to only respond to this sp particular stimulus and to masturbation. If I put the button in front of you, like I said to Deborah would would you press it too much, I wouldn't porn friends.

2:02:08 even just on that basis, in the same way that I would ban some hideously unethical industry that had nothing to do with sex. Because people I mean like the suicide rate among poor performers is appalling. Or Like I can't remember her name, but the the most The most promiscuous women in Australia, the only fans model, who last just last week had sex with five hundred and eighty three men in one day and was hospitalized subsequently, right? This is what we're talking about in practice. This is like a hideous industry. It is so bad for women. I cannot I cannot understand how feminists could endorse it. I just can't. It's one of my strongest opinions. Would you ban saucy murals in Pompeii? I can't.

2:02:47 No you can't ban anything, so d would you? But but there's the button, saucy murals in Pompeii. Which by the way is number five. They're two dimensional. I don't mind two dimensional. It's funny. I don't mind two dimensional. Um it's when it it's live action and they actually with video games, the uh they did studies to show that um the more realistic the video games, the more harmful they were to Yeah. And so there's something about so the murals were two dimensional and maybe they would be considered art. So you would press the button to end the three dimensional point, but you wouldn't press the button. I mean

2:03:23 I I just think the buttons right there, what'd you do? You can press it, no one's watching it. That whole the wholesome couple who were really into each other I thought This is modelling something that I think is very healthy. People uh doing violent things to women and uh hentai porn, which I discovered in my research, um, which is animated porn with like Lolita style girls that look really young and violent stuff.

2:03:47 I We obviously We need regulation and we need discussion. I am not the person to lead it. But

2:03:56 You know If if you would press the button to get rid of the saucy murals in Pompeii then it's kind of erasing human sexuality, I think. And I don't know, w w would you or not? Would you leave those up as a sort of Little racy artifact. I wouldn't put it up in a schoolroom. I mean like I think everyone accepts that Even that really mild stuff needs to be like limited if not if not

2:04:21 It needs to be limited, if not legally, then socially. What about just the naked form? No. I would not ban that. But I think that this is a rhetorical trick to avoid the fact that this is the least feminist industry

2:04:36 We can conceptualize, and a lot of feminists have really dropped the ball on this and have actually decided to prioritize their own. Their own status. and their own commitment to sexual liberalism over actual real women who have been sexually torture within this industry. And it makes me really angry. And I think that I mean this is true in all all sorts of areas of feminism. I mean what we're doing here is an intra feminist argument, right? Like we're all basically starting from the same position, which is we think that women's interests ought to be protected, that women's flourishing ought to be promoted, children's to what we're arguing about is over how to do that. And that's an argument that's gonna go on forever and has gone on forever, and I think it's good. We should have these arguments.

2:05:16 But if we can't start from the premise that like the sexual torture of women for profit is bad, then what are we doing? Why does it make you angry? And and what part of it makes you angry? It's possibly as partly from having work with victims. I think but

2:05:29 I guess it's the I guess it's the dishonesty I just don't like. I'm not accusing of being dishonest, but I just think that this ideology is just so riven with contradictions. Where did where did feminism drop the ball? in prioritising the interests of a small unrepresentative group of women over the interests of other women. And I don't just mean in terms of like class or wealth, although that is a factor. I mean a lot of it is to do with personality. We've talked about agency, we've talked about some people are more maternal than others, you know. I think that one of the

2:06:04 One of the perennial problems with feminism is that the women who tend to sort of rise to the top and get media careers, I do realize I'm in this category. are not representative of other women and will often have preferences that are very different, which are just not shared by everyone else. I want to ask you a little question just for me, which is something that I contend with now that the world has shifted and changed and definitions have shifted, which is about masculinity. And what it is to be a good man. I aspire to be a good man. Um and I'd like you all to tell me one by one.

2:06:34 What what masculinity now means to you? And how all of the the men that have gotten to this point in the podcast and and also the mothers of men and fathers of men should be raising their young boys To be good. Men. And how does that sort of contradict or how is that in harmony with our evolutionary nature?

2:06:52 So starting with Luis. I think that the key task that every society has to set itself. is how to is young men in particular have this incredible energy That can be put to good things into bad.

2:07:09 Like the the the greatest discoveries in the world have overwhelmingly been made by young men, and young men also commit the vast majority of violence, right? It's it this this particular group is Contains the most incredible opportunity and also the most incredible danger. And every society faces this problem, like what do we do about these guys? Like how do we how do we correct correctly channel that? In a way that's Pro social or anti social.

2:07:33 And I don't think our society is doing an especially good job of that. I mean, to some extent we do pacify men with porn and video games, so they're less dangerous. than they have been in previous areas. But at the same time I don't think that we're deploying male talents as well as we could. And I don't think that we are Um

2:07:50 Encouraging men to become good husbands and fathers. What about the provider, protector, procreator narrative Scott Galloway's talked about that men should aspire to be providers, protectors, procreators. Is that accurate? Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah. I mean I I've written about Cad and Dad mode as well. Like how do we encourage men to Reject CAD mode and embrace dad mode. What is CAD mode? I like that. A CAD? You know he's a car. A full sweep in on a motorbike or a court. Yes, I wasn't going to say that. So is that okay, so just to make sure I've completed your my perspective of how you think about masculinity. So should I be holding the door open?

2:08:33 For my partner. And should I be ch Paying the bill on the first date. I think chivalry is great. I think that rejecting chivalry was a mistake. Yeah. Um, but I also it's not the most important masculine virtue. I mean

2:08:44 I most of the Most of the virtues which should be Demonstrated by both sexes. Yeah. You know. honesty or whatever, but there are some which I think maybe men need to focus on more and women need to focus on more. And I certainly with raising my boys who are very little at the moment, but we've we've me and my husband have talked a lot and thought a lot about how do we encourage specifically masculine virtues. And sometimes that means

2:09:06 Parenting boys slightly different from girls? In what way? Give me an example of a masculine virtue you're trying to bring out. Like this question about h what to do about young male aggression. I think a tried and tested way of doing that. which we're certainly gonna try with our kids is um combat sports or sports in general, or basically teaching young men how to Sublimates and regulate and six and channel effectively those feelings of aggression in a way that is constructive and not destructive. Yeah, bro.

2:09:32 How do you agree or disagree with that? That's uh not at all my world view. I think we should be Teaching our children to find their humanity and their empathy.

2:09:46 No matter their gender. When I Research my book, Six Conversations where you We're scared to have. I thought that it was going to show me that the internet Especially social media made us less and less empathetic. You know, we think about keyboard warriors and they can't see your face and all that.

2:10:01 But what I discovered is in fact every single day Social media. Ask us. To be more and more empathetic. To fewer and fewer people.

2:10:11 That is a cult. I was in a cult. You have to be very empathetic to the people in it, and the second someone steps outside, they're dead to us. And that is what I see on the internet. I see it in I think we're all in a big series of cults. So I ska I see now this rise of young men being told Women are

2:10:29 dreadful women have Taken our place. Which is just It is not for girls not to go to university to make things more fair for boys. It is for us to nurture our boys to make sure if they're feeling lost or they're feeling that they they can't compete or they're out in the world and they've they're flailing around. We need to build them up. We do not need to tell girl to step back. That is we've We haven't got equality yet. We're nowhere near it, much less pulling ourselves back to make more space for boys at this point. We

2:11:00 desperately need to invest in our brothers in our in the boys in our community in any way we can. I went into a school and chatted to the boys about gender norms and how they felt about it and what impositions they felt or what random things were weird and I said to them, What what would be weird if a boy did it For no reason. Like there's not and one of them said knitting. He said, If I brought my knitt it knitting to school he said you know not that he knitted, he said everyone would laugh at me. And why? There's no reason for it. And another boy just went, I'd bring knitting in.

2:11:31 I wouldn't care. Are are boys and girls fundamentally biologically, physiologically, neurologically? Different. a different approach. They're hormonally different. We kind of understand that. We all agree with that from birth. So do they need to be raised differently to Hater to that. Difference. I wouldn't exacerbate it. I would say we all should be I as I said, I want a partner. And I think we should be raising both of our girl both our girls and our boys and

2:11:58 Any children that feel that then either. to aspire to their humanity, to their empathy, to look out for each other, I think exacerbating roles and telling Boys, you're like this and girls are like that. is pushing us further away and it's it's it's pushing us back. Decades and generations. Should a man, a young boy, be a provider, a procreator.

2:12:20 A protector. Should should we Instill those values in young boys. No. Why?

2:12:27 because this there's this heavy imposition on boys and there's a heavy imposition on girls that their life should look a certain way. And we've got to a point where men can stay home and raise the children, where women can go out and explore new territory, where We see that

2:12:46 Women are as clever as men, as talented as men. As able to debate as men Wh why would we push this back and go, Well, girls it's really more feminine if you do this and boys, girls will fancy you more if you do this. So what does a a young man What should his virtues be? It's you said empathy and those kinds of things. And then on the chivalry side of things, should I be holding the door open for every woman that walks through one? Should I be paying that bill on the first day? I think

2:13:14 It's lovely when all human beings hold doors open behind them for other human beings. I I really disagree that we should Not the th when we essued chivalry. What was going on was that There was a period of time where it was like She's more gentle. She needs help.

2:13:30 And it stopped people seeing us as people who could be entrepreneurial CEOs. So so women said, Look, could you just not do that? Because if you're not holding the door open for any of the guys, then you hold it open for me. They see me as somehow less than sweet, sexualized. So we said no. Now I think, look, honestly, if a man holds a door open for me, very that's very nice, whatever. I don't think people see me that way anymore. I don't think it's a big deal anymore. I don't like the idea that you have to pay on the first date. I I think, you know, if I've invited you out, I'll pay. If you've invited me out, you'll pay. I mean, you're much richer than me, so probably you should pay, but that's nothing to do with gender, Steve. Is there not something evolutionary in that th if we look back through our ancestry that The the qualities of fertility are

2:14:15 more attractive to men and the qualities of being a provider are more attractive to women. So If I If I don't sort of invest in becoming a provider as a young man. I'm actually gonna do much worse when I get older. According to the the some of the data we referenced earlier, two hundred and fifty percent less women are gonna opt for me.

2:14:34 So if I if I don't sort of build a base and become s a provider, am I not am I gonna be a disadvantage as a man in the society that we live in, but also if we look back through our evolutionary history, is that not hard coded into us? Makes me feel so sad. Yeah. Poise Feel this huge responsibility when we are now at a point when it is it is evident

2:14:55 That you do Dragonstein, you sit next to Deborah Meaden, who's every bit as good an entrepreneur as you so why is it Your responsibility. Why is it men's responsibility? We can both raise children. We can both we've sho we've demonstrated we can both raise children. I've got friends. But we let's reshape it. Evolutionary survival of the fittest. natural selection, pick a good partner so that you can reproduce past and you know, I you see this in women where I'm watching this dating show called Pop the Bloom, which I love, which has just gone to Netflix. And it's so crazy that when so basically Pop the Bloom is Ten men stand in a line with a balloon.

2:15:37 Um or ten women stand a line with a balloon. And then a man or woman walks out. So when a woman walks out and she looks at the lineup. She will go down the line up. And pop every balloon of a man that's below six feet tall. Just like that. It's crazy. Everything and just they'll say, Why did you pop his bloom?

2:15:51 Small. Short. Why do you probably being short, short, short, short, short? This is just part of No destructive though. Look, we can talk about evolution, but I've seen David Attenborough shows w where our shared ancestors who are primates um are ripping each other apart. They a chim comes up and they rip the chim chimp limb from limb. Вон бings в дан і вовд.

2:16:16 To be better when we are. When we war, we are not better, but we know our better nature and our better self doesn't do that. Are we fighting against I I remember hearing someone in the podcast tell me that across across cultures, men and women typically go for the same thing. So like men are going for a certain hip ratio or whatever, and women are going for a sh certain like Shoulder ratio. Are these things not like fundamentally evolutionary. It's a status symbol. And status is an evolutionary desire. It it is, but we can be better than that, can't we? Can't we teach our girls and boys and non binary young people that that

2:16:51 Yeah. Th these are not these superficial things aren't what we should be like aspiring to. We should be aspiring to get past them. The idea like a lot of it is we know this because Different cultures have different beauty standards, different times in hear s in history have had different beauty standards, and men tend to go for The beauty standard of the time they're in, or the location they're in. And therefore it is social. It's hey, that one means that you're a successful guy. In no way evolutionary in your mind.

2:17:22 I think if it is evolutionary, get over it, get past it, get beyond it. Good luck. What do you think I'm gonna say? I don't know. I have no idea. I disagree with almost everything she said. Um So boys are neurologically more fragile.

2:17:38 Than girls, uh more uh Boys are born in the world and more girls survive. They don't survive because Uh, boys don't survive uh as much because they are incredibly neurologically fragile. Emotionally fragile too. What that means is they're more prone to aggression, behavioral problems, ADHD like behaviors, which is distractability. They're more sensitive to stress from a very young age. They are not the same as girls. They don't learn the same way as girls. They need lots of physical.

2:18:10 expression during the day if they don't get it and they're forced to sit in circle time like little girls can sit in circle time. Little boys go off the rails and then they're labeled as having attentional issues. And so we are educating little boys today like little girls, which is why they can't keep up. So if you ask me, we should separate little boys and little girls. So In terms of the neurological fragility, they need that attachment figure even more than the little girls. When it comes to going to school, maybe we should separate little boys and little girls when they're little So we can cater to their individual needs and it and it is different. Um and in terms of going forward, men and women are not exactly the same. And even if we try to thousands of years of evolution are not gonna be turned around in fifty years. So we may make some of these changes, but that's not realistic. What's realistic is that we functioned in a way that is based on survival for thousands millennia. And and we're gonna keep functioning that way to a certain extent. There may be some people who branch off and try to do it differently. You know, the other thing is that young men today are not they're they're at a disadvantage when it comes to school, and I'm gonna say

2:19:22 We need quotas. And this may sound radical, but when it comes to college, it should be fifty fifty. So my kids went to a school and when it came to nursery school, they balanced the class. That means if you go to any preschool, they have half girls and half boys. That's just the way they do it. They balance it in other ways too. Alpha girls and beta girls and alpha boys and they you can't have all the same kind of kid. But the idea that we have to balance the odds otherwise we're gonna marriage is also gonna come to an end because of that statistic that women are only gonna marry at their educational level or above. So we're gonna marriage will end too. So which girls shouldn't go, though?

2:19:59 It's not which girls shouldn't go. It's giving boys advantage to succeed, and it's saying, you know what. We have uh fifty percent girls and fifty percent boys in this college in this class. So in America we have a lot of universities. I don't know the UK system, it's not my country, but in America there's a lot of different places you can go. But the idea that All it's like funneling the all the kids are being funneled in this way. And what I will say is that if we don't balance the odds, so girls boys have uh equity in college and graduate school, we are going to have a huge social dilemma. Because nobody's marrying and we have single parents, then women are going, I can't find a man and they're having children on their own. And that's causing a social problem because now we have little boys and little girls that don't have fathers. So all I'm saying is we need to

2:20:50 Balance the odds. That's it. When you have to make more spaces. Because if sixty percent maybe that's the solution. If sixty percent'cause otherwise what you're saying is Boys who are less academic get the places of the ten percent of girls that now can't go in. So is America going to create more spaces? There's less funding. I don't mind a hundred and twenty.

2:21:17 Thank you all so much for being here. I just want to give you an opportunity just to summarise your thoughts on the sexual revolution in two sentences, if you can. I'm gonna repeat the insight of a great friend of mine, Mary Harrington, who's also an author. She wrote this amazing book called Feminism Against Progress. She says that Feminism kind of bubbles up at moments of Big societal change.

2:21:40 when things have really changed materially and there's like a reassessment of gender relations. And I think that's the reason why we're seeing this right now, is because we it's because of the digital revolution. So So much has changed. so much as in flux, we're having this like renegotiation of how men and women are supposed to relate to one another and This always happens and I think that it's It's good to talk about it.

2:22:02 And one way or another men and women are gonna have to learn to get along. 'Cause otherwise we won't reproduce the species. Okay.

2:22:11 So I believe in Freedom of choice. Um but not if that choice is to do harm to children. So I believe that children should always come first in our lives. Our family should always come first. Freud said you need

2:22:27 Love and meaningful work, but your love should always come first. If it's your children, if it's your spouse, if it's your Parents if it's your Next door neighbors who are your best friends, uh, love always has to come first. And so we b have become a world where we put Work first. And so what I would say is I believe in choice of all kind. I don't believe in demeaning or diminishing someone else's choice. If they make that choice, I'm fine with it, but don't demean or diminish my choice. Yeah, right.

2:22:58 I think the sexual revolution has has given women In Spain. Agency, autonomy, and emotional freedom. We don't yet have enough emotional freedom. There are many women around the world who have less agency.

2:23:12 and autonomy than they did a hundred years ago. We must fight for them, but And I think everything is better when women are free. I think we can create our own structure.

2:23:24 And we need to be uh desperately need to be our own guiding line. So any women watching this? Take everything we've said on board. And then decide for yourself. Do you want that spaciousness in your life or do you want rules? And

2:23:41 I believe Yeah. Feminism. All feminism should be maternal feminism. I don't think we need the word maternal in it. And I really, really, really

2:23:51 Want All of us around this table. Who believe that feminism has given us the right to sit at it. To say that feminism has given us a lot. And

2:24:03 unregulated capitalism has taken. And the the next stage Із торчо. Because if we divide As women.

2:24:13 And as feminists. There is No hope. There is so much coming our way from the far right Christian nationalists. We must stand together.

2:24:23 Thank you so much. Um I wanna just Appreciate all of you for being here because I think Progress starts with these kinds of conversations. And I think all too often in society these conversations happen in little silos and echo chambers. So everyone's belief just ends up being reinforced. You you just confirmation bias just doubles down on whatever you think. And it it's it's not easy to step into these environments when There's going to be people watching this that sit on different sides of this table in terms of their perspective. So I applaud you for doing the thing that I think is most most sort of conducive with progress, which is having the conversation and being respectful in the ways that you disagree about that. So thank you so much. You all have incredible books. There's I mean there's so many that I can't even

2:25:01 I can't even put them all on on the table or hold them all. But I'm gonna link all of the books below. So if you want to hear more from all of these wonderful people at the table, Erica, Louise, and Deborah about what they think on these subjects, please do go and buy their books. Um I'm gonna link all of them below for you. And Where else can we find you, Lebeeze? Where's the best place to hear more from you about what you think? So I have a podcast called Medman Matriarch, um, M M M.

2:25:25 You can find it on YouTube or the other bus podcast platforms. I've had Erica on before. Maybe Deborah, any time, you're very welcome. Um I talk about sexual politics, but also I mean I say that the things that I'm mostly interested in are um birth, sex, violence and death. So that's what the podcast is about. And religion. Uh www.comisar K O M I S A R. Um you can find everything I do on there. You can make an appointment with me because I do virtual appointments. Um and I also started a nonprofit called Detachment Circles, which Is an educational platform, but a community building platform, so please you know, go to attachment circles and

2:26:06 Join and if you feel generous, donate'cause we need the resources to get the community building going. I'll link all of that blow as well, then, Deborah. I do the podcast The Guilty Feminist, so if everyone could um subscribe. And uh do all those things, that would be great. But I'm also starting a a new grassroots movement called The Road to Gilead, because there are moves in this country.

2:26:30 from far right American Christian nationalists to take our abortion rights and to take our LGBTQ plus rights. And I'm really scared about it. And I've been talking about it uh round the country on the book tour and I've discovered other academics and people who are very worried are also talking about it. So if you would like to hear more about Road to Gilead, you could sign up to the mailing list at guiltyfeminist dot com and you will get the occasional email about uh the shows we're doing, but also Road to Gilead, grassroots. Um uh projects coming up.

2:27:01 I shall link all of that below, too. Thank you so much. This is a very long conversation, but it's exactly what I was hoping it would be. And I I found my opinion shifting and changing throughout. So that's success for me.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.