"Casual Sex Is Almost Always Dangerous For Women!" This Is What Casual Sex Is Really Doing To Women - Louise Perry

I think Casual Sex is almost always more risky for women than it's worth it. Why? Because, one... The things you're saying, you know that they're unpopular. You're saying them anyway. Yeah. Why? Parents have really worried about their daughters and also their sons and really, really want them to know this stuff. Louise Perry, journalist, author and podcast host. She is renowned for reviews on topics such as sexual politics and the impact of modern feminist movements.

We have a culture that prioritises male preferences for Casual Sex. And you're saying it harms both men and women. I think in different ways. So, for example, a lot of young women, I know go along with it, even if they don't want that. That causes a lot of misery. Because women in particular tend to get emotionally bonded from sex more than men do. Do we know that? Yeah. But there are also other problems that we should talk about. So...

Would it be better for men if we waited longer before we had sex? Wasting till engagement is a better call. The problem is when you don't have the expectation that people wait, there's really nothing stopping those very attracted, high status men from playing the fields and not being forced to commit. And then, low status men just have none.

Women are left to their own devices on dating apps and you can monitor it carefully. This is basically what you see. But in a monogamous system, you have to commit to a woman and remove yourself from the dating pool. So, what is the uncomfortable advice that both men and women need to hear on the subject for their best interests? This is a profound problem and it's partly because I think we don't tell the truth about it, which is...

And governments know this, which is why they're starting to freak out. Louise, in this season of your life, what is your objective and why is that your objective? Well, I just kind of love you guys. I'm in having baby season of my life. It's a really interesting experience being living with the exact social trauma that I self and write and talk about, which is basically the role of women in participating in public life.

And the inherent ways in which the fact that women, their children, comes into conflict with that, which is very much the subject of my first book, this question of like, if you can artificially suspend that, if you can, if the pill arrives in the 1960s and suddenly women can go from being constantly...

I don't want to say at risk of pregnancy because that's all at the right word, like pregnancy is a good thing, but constantly having to negotiate the possibility of pregnancy and then suddenly a new technology comes along. And the first time in the history of the world, which pretty much cuts that out, what does that do to women's public role, the social experience of being a woman?

And my argument is it's had so much more of a profound effect than we tend to acknowledge. Because a fact that it's women who bear children is so, so, so, socially important in terms of our ability to work, our economic vulnerabilities, our ability to participate in politics, all of this. And the pill is just this like an always game changer, where suddenly it's a choice. And I'm in the season of my life where I've chosen it. Anybody that is not watching my video, Louise is six months pregnant.

With my second baby. What is it that you think society at large disagrees with you on as it relates to these issues? I think that most people, well, most people, I think that the kind of dominant narrative is that this has been an unambiguously good thing and there's been no trade-offs.

And I think there is ambiguity and that have been trade-offs. That's basically the disagreement. And I think there pretty much trade-offs with everything, not least, or massively, massively, consequently technology like the pill. Do you think the net impact of the pill is positive and negative? I suppose it depends on which area of your life you're talking about. So I think that one of the things at the pill, another reliable contraception, one of the ways in which it's magical and really good,

is that it allows people to be... it allows people to plan their families. It allows women to have spaces between births, which are healthy. It's really... Like, in a lot of cases, it's really bad for you to be constantly pregnant, right? It has a really, really, deleterious effect on the body. So on that front, fantastic and on a personal level, fantastic. The trade-offs are normally in other areas of life, like...

Well, like we have massively falling birth rates and there are political and economic problems arising from that. That's not just downstream of the pill, but the pill is a really big part of that story. Sexual culture has changed so much and I think that causes a lot of misery particularly for younger women, women who are younger than me. Sexual culture has changed a lot with God. And that I think that it is shifted towards... and you'll be careful here.

Because what I don't want to say is that the sexual revolution has been fabulous for men in general. I think that a lot of men have not done well by it, but I think in general that the really big winners from the sexual revolution have been a small subset of men. So what I write about in the book is the Hugh Heffner's of the Worlds, right? Hugh Heffner who found a Playboy magazine, Mass of Sexual Appetites and are attractive and can basically have as many women as they want.

Don't have to get married to them because Christianity has faded away. Don't have to worry about unwanted pregnancies because of hell, you know. For they've had a ball and I think that what we've seen in the culture is more of a... sort of the centre of gravity has moved more towards their preferences. And some women are okay with that, you know, some women genuinely enjoy the sort of being the playgirl, right?

But most don't. I think that there are some important average differences between many women psychologically, not least. I mean, that's not just what I think, like the data is, I think, unpeachable on this. And not least when it comes to sexuality and a culture that prioritises male preferences when it comes to sexuality is going to be more costly to women.

So who are you, Louise? And what's some... what experiences in your life and what sort of upbringing has informed the way that you see the world? I started off as a very kind of... basically holding the mainstream progressive view. Being very kind of conventional in my thinking. I went to a very, very progressive university, school of oriental and African studies in London.

And when I left university, I worked for charities including working at a rape crisis centre, which was... which had a significant effect on me in the sense that I was very familiar with sort of standard feminist theory. Standard feminist theory says, men and women are basically the same. There aren't any real important differences between us, either physical or psychological,

apart from the baby's bit, whatever, who cares. And that sexual violence rape is not about sexual desire, it's about power. It's a power play thing. It's all sort of understood in political terms. And then I actually went to work with victims. And I noticed things. I sort of could help but notice things about what they'd mean through. That made me think, I don't think that's true. Like you know that the modal victim of sexual violence is 15?

It's really young, right? Really young. And also the age of perpetrators is also skews quite young. Like teens and 20s is the most common age group. And one of the things I noticed, or couldn't help but notice, is that perpetrators, basically the peak age of perpetration for men, young men, is the same as testosterone peak. Oh really? Yeah, it's the same curve. It's also the same curve you see in other kinds of violent crime. There's basically just testosterone rises a lot in your mid teens.

And then drops in your 30s. And it's basically doing that period that's, I mean there's a massive upside to this as well. Like you know testosterone is also the drug of the hormone of being adventurous and risk taking. And like there's a lot of upsides to having that sort of youth hormone energy. The downside is things like rape. And Ditto, the peak age of female victimization is also peak fertility. So what's your conclusion from that?

That it's not about power, it's about biology. Or it's not just you know, if you look at say sexual harassment in the workplace, it's rare for like junior men to sexually harass senior women, right? Yeah. So the clearly is an element of people are sort of making decisions based on social power structures and so on. But I know when it comes down to it, this is a biological phenomenon. It's also not unique to humans.

Other animals, other primates are also sexually aggressive, you know basically for the same reasons. So sort of what we're dealing with is like a is an eternal problem. But how do we? How do we channel male aggression in the right directions? How do we protect young women during these vulnerable years? This is a profound problem and it's a problem that every society faces. And I don't think that we deal with it as well as we could.

Partly because I think we don't tell the truth about it. And not least feminists don't tell the truth about it. Because if you say, oh there are no physical differences to human and women, male and female sexuality is basically the same. Women having as much freedom, sexual freedom as possible is obviously the best possible thing, you know. I think what you end up doing by telling these untruths frankly. I mean people say these things with the best one in the world.

But what you end up doing is actually putting young women at risk. Young women who don't know the truth because how could they, you know, 15 year old girls. And I say this is someone who used to be a 50 year old girl. And there's also spoken to lots of 50 year old girls who've really learnt this the hard way. They don't know, they don't know these realities about, you know, the fact that like men have double the upper body strength that women do on average.

Which means they can punch twice as hard as women can on average. And things like that. I think that we, I think we should be more honest with these young women than that was my motivation for writing the book. And also why I ended up partly as a consequence of working in rape crisis, ended up moving politically and becoming more skeptical of a lot of sort of domino political ideas.

So if we, if we think the understanding of the physical and psychological differences between men and women are central to understanding how we should respond and behave and the advice that we should give to men and women. We should probably talk about what those differences are. You mentioned physical differences between men and women. So strength being one of them.

Are there any other physical differences that are really pertinent to their subjects? So strength sports are the biggest gap between women. Yeah. Sort of sprinting cardio, like short distance. There's also a big gap. And it's funny when you look at the numbers of like the fastest man in the world, the fastest woman in the world. They're not that different. But if women did not have their own reserved sporting categories, there would be no women in a lead sport.

Because like the fastest woman in the world would be like the thousandth fastest man in the world or something like that. Because once you're going to into elite sports levels, that's when these differences become very obvious. And there's this expression that's I think it's the golden ratio in endurance sport where women are always like 85% or something of what men are.

The very most accomplished elite female athlete and very most accomplished email athlete. There's always this gap. So anyway, so the cardio differences are not massive. The strength differences are pretty big. This physical difference. What does this then mean for the subjects we were talking about as it relates to sort of sexuality and society more generally? So it means for instance that I think casual sex is almost always more risky for women than it's worth it for women. Why?

Because being one being alone with a man that you don't know basically is what we're talking about is inherently dangerous for women just because that physical asymmetry. To because women are the ones who get pregnant, like even with the pill, even with the most reliable contraception, you've still got that small chance. And so that either means that you carry a pregnancy to turn with all of its physical risks and emotional risks or it means you have an abortion.

Like basically all of those costs are born by the woman. The man might have no idea. This is even occurred. Right. So there's this kind of essential asymmetry which you can try and get past with technology with contraception technology, but you can't quite. You know, it's still there. The psychological differences between the sexes and terms of sexuality are also important. They're not as massive as say upper body strength.

But on average, they are very, very marked. And one of those differences is that men are basically keen on casual sex and women are men want to jump into bed more quickly than women do.

Do we know that? Looking cross culturally is one big clue because you might say, and some people do say, like there are these studies, they're quite funny, where researchers will go into university campuses and get an attractive woman and attractive man and they go up to members of the opposite sex and basically proposition them and say like, do you want to get about my right now.

And in zero percent of cases to women say yes, zero percent. And this is consistent. Whereas in quite a high portion of cases, men will say yes. Right. And that is consistent across. It's been done in different times, different places. You know, you might say, oh, it's because women are scared of slutshaming or you know that there's like a social penalty for women.

And that's a little bit true. But then when you see, you know, there's been surveys done of like basically every country in the world to my knowledge. And in no country, to women watch more porn than men in no country to women express more of a desire of casual sex and men do in no country to women bisexual and men do like is basically only men who bisexual is very, very rare for women to bisexual.

And you see these gaps absolutely everywhere. I think that's a very strong indication that you're dealing with something innate. That should be that should certainly that's certainly the simplest explanation, isn't it rather than that you, you know, you flip the coin thousand times and it comes up headhead every time. Is that all school?

Is there anything in the animal kingdom that might refute that point? Is there any, you know, certain animals where the woman is the dominant sort of sexual aggressor or the. So yes, but not animals that are similar to us. So like spiders or something like that. In terms of other primates, I mean, there are there is variation with other primates. The nobo is a quite in casual sex, for instance, the nobo is quite different.

Is people do get a little bit triggered? Because you're not saying that women don't enjoy sex at all. You're not saying that they they aren't as horny in certain situations as men, but you're saying on average men are more keen on casual sex than women are. Yes, and they're at there always outliers. Of course. I mean, you talk about overlapping bell curves, right? So the average is different, but the thing with a developing bell curves is it's more of a sort of the tails.

So, for instance, like people who people who buy sex or people who become addicted to porn or something, they're basically entirely male because you're talking about this sort of tippy tippy tail of people who really really desire such a variety. And obviously, I'm not out there most people are somewhere in the middle, but when you're talking about culture, you need to be thinking about the big picture.

You need to be thinking that, okay, what would it, what does a culture of casual sex? How would a culture of casual sex affect men and women differently? And how does it affect women differently? Because if you're saying that it's innate, it's not a sort of social construct. There's something deep within our wiring in men and women that makes us have a different sort of sort of proximity towards sex, casual sex. Why does that have a consequence that's negative for women?

Basically, what women are more likely to want is an ugly, like not necessarily marriage, but certainly signals of commitment. If you think about this in our evolutionary, in terms of our evolutionary history, it makes perfect sense, right? Because having sex is pretty much the most consequential thing a woman can do, right? Because if you get pregnant, you've got nine months of pregnancy, which is risky in itself.

Childbirth, which is very risky in the ancestral environment, less so now, fortunately. And then you've got maybe 15 years or something of having to look after a child until it's capable of being economically self-sufficient. That's an enormous, right thing to happen in your life, whereas, and it also means that women can only, women can only really reproduce once a year, absolute max, right?

Whereas men in theory can reproduce thousands of times a year and can have basically no involvement in raising the children, but take basically no risks whatsoever. So if you look at it in those terms, of course, women would be pickier. Of course, they would. And that is indeed what we see. But I think the reason that young women express so much on happiness at the moment with the sexual culture is that a lot of young women, I need to go along with it.

I know this is kind of surprising to me, right? And I suppose to me, about this, who find this completely amazing, they're like, why would, if you don't want to sex, don't sex. It's fine. Like, what's the big problem? Women are so lucky because they can't step out onto the street without being propositioned. They can have, you know, they have so much choice, like, you know, you girls are so lucky. What are you complaining about? And I think there's this problem that one, okay, two problems.

One is that both sexes are not necessarily very good at understanding what the other sex actually want. And that's partly comes from the fact that I don't think we're honest enough about sex differences. So like men think that the fact that women can get casual sex at any time of any day is amazing. And women are like, but I don't want that. That's like horrible. I don't want to shag some random animal on the street, right?

So there's that gap in sort of, there's that empathy gap. And similarly, I think women have an empathy gap, like they probably don't realize how they don't realize one, how many men basically don't have access to any kind of such relationships and feel incredibly resentful and frustrated about that. They don't realize how scary it is for men to approach a woman, things like that. So there's like a mutual sort of incomprehension.

And I think the other thing is men find it very hard to imagine doing what a lot of young women do, which is basically going along with sex that they don't really want to have because they want to be polite. And because they don't want to scare off a man who maybe they deflancy and because they don't want to be on cool and because they don't want to be weird and they want to be approved.

You know, one of the features of teenage girls psychology, and maybe this is into the 20s as well, but particularly teenage girls. Is teenage girls are so, so concerned about what's normal whenever you have contagious mental illnesses, which like historically are quite common. So something like the sale in which trials. Apparently girls are now giving like getting Tourette's from TikTok because it's like a viral thing on TikTok.

And there's a lot of examples of these right where mental illnesses which are seen to be socially contagious. People catch it from each other, you end up with this mimetic effect. They always start with teenage girls, always. Sometimes they spread out other groups, but teenage girls are always like the first, you know.

I think it's because teenage girls probably for self protective reasons, there must be some adaptive reason here are very, very socially sensitive, they're very slightly constantly aware of their social position, what other people are doing, what's cool, what's not cool. Obsessed, which is also translates to things like fashion and slang, slang, ditto, you know, a lot of slang starts with teenage girls because they're this very,

there's a very mimetic group, right. And that's fine, like that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does sometimes have bad effects. And one of them is, for instance, the idea that being approved is incredibly cringe has taken hold really, really effectively among this group of girls.

And so, you know, I'll talk to girls or read or listen to girls saying like, you know, I went along with the most like degrading upsetting whatever sexual things because like, I don't know why because I wanted him to think I was cool because I didn't, you know,

it's great. And I think that's something that I think that's something that a lot of a lot of people find difficult to empathize with and will say and some men do say in criticism of my position, like, why don't these why don't these girls just sort of get grip.

When you say that, there's young girls and women going along with it. Yeah. Are you talking about both the type and the frequency of sex, or you're just talking about the casual sex and then the different ways people have sex like BDSM and choking and these kinds of things.

Yes. So all of the above, I mean, I think particularly it's the BDSM is a bit of a complicated one. Yeah, we can go on to that. In terms of the casual sex thing, so having sex sex on a first date kind of thing, historically very, very, very rare, like such a weird cultural convention. Right. You think that happened because, because the pill number one, because it means that you can do it without it being without pregnancy being high risk.

And I think it's all ends up being downstream of that that it then changes. Like it basically used to be, you can actually read accounts of women who were, who were in their 20s say at the time when the pill came along. And they'll say, I used to, used to be the case that you go out on a date and the expectation is we will not be having sex. Right. That was the, that was the agreed upon thing, not to say it never happened. Obviously it did. But that was the default.

And then you might have sex on engagement or when you get married or maybe when you're going steady, you're that expression you hear in like old high school films. But that was a way down the track. Right. And then the pill comes along and you read women say like it's suddenly completely changed things. It's suddenly was like the default was not we're not having sex.

The default was we might. And so suddenly it became an negotiation and it became a, there's this evolution psychologist David bus, he specializes in human sexuality. And he writes about this sort of eternal power play basically where women would like to wait longer before they have sex and men would like to have sex sooner. And there's always this sort of volume back and forth like who is going, who's going to, who's going to win basically right.

And the pill massively shifts it in the have sex sooner direction. And so, yeah, you say women who like me know used to be the assumption. I would not have sex. And now I'm having to like, this is so often what what actually is happening in me to kind of cases. I mean, obviously me to cases is a lot of range. You've got straightforward. Really criminal behavior like Harvey Weinstein or whatever. But you also quite often what you what what's going on is it's not even.

It's so much more subtle than that. It's like like the Azizanzari case, do you remember that quite an interesting case because he in terms of the response says he's an Zari, you know, famous actor comedian. He goes on a date with this woman, he's a fan. And it's all going well. And then they go back to his and he wants her to have sex and she doesn't want to basically.

But she also he's like a famous man who she likes like she might want to in the future. She doesn't want to like. She doesn't want to offend him. She doesn't want to mess it up. And so there's this like subtle kind of tussle. And they end up doing some sexual stuff or whatever. She goes home. She feels terrible. She subsequently says to him. You took advantage basically by text he says sorry. And then later she sort of spills the beans in in a magazine article.

And that kind of thing is basically an invention of sexual revolution that kind of conflict where there's that degree of ambiguity. It wasn't that unreasonable for him to think that sex would be like would happen. It wasn't that unreasonable. The problem that she found herself in is that she had to try and as politely as possible saying no without that's a really difficult social game isn't it particularly when everyone's drunk.

And she ended up I guess like they both messed up to some degree like he didn't read her social cues. She didn't communicate clearly like so often that's what's really going on with these me two cases. There's like so much ambiguity in terms of what everyone is supposed to do and you've got this tussle between what men and women prefer and I mean adding alcohol is really bad.

You know there's this bias that men have is like a deep like a deep seated bias where men will tend to see sexual interest where there isn't there more likely to see sexual interest where there is none they kind of overestimate how much women fancy them basically. And alcohol makes it worse. Yeah alcohol exaggerates that effect so if a man's drunk he's more likely to see such a interest when it isn't there and then if she's drunk as well.

She's less able to successfully navigate this difficult social situation. So I mean it just feel like where the lack of social rules just sort of sets everyone up to fail and it's kind of inevitable that you're going to end up with these.

I guess tragedies right people not understanding one another so sex becoming a negotiation out when historically it wasn't such negotiation and therefore sex happening much sooner in the interaction between women men and women often on the first day maybe the second day.

You're kind of a leading to it there but I just want to get clarity on you're saying it harms both men and women in the long term I think in different ways yeah so I think the harm that's done to women is feeling is a much well no there are obviously some situations where the worst possible thing happens you know you go home with a man who turns out to be incredibly dangerous.

More common is women just feeling bad about themselves how do we know that like is there a day to really yeah yeah you just ask women like how do you feel after. Different kinds of sexual encounter like one nice stand yeah and then you ask men the same thing and women feel. Disgusting basically to some degree is sort of the dominant I included this quiz in my book right for men and women like basically.

For people who had had casual sex with some kind of another right who participate in this culture and I sort of pulled the questions from my male and female friends. And one of the questions for women was have you ever had a consensual sexual experience which now makes thinking about it in retrospect makes you feel like kind of physically uncomfortable that gives you a disgust response.

And so many women say yes to that and one of the reasons for that is that women have a much lower disgust threshold than men do so let women feel women feel disgust more easily. The men do it response to all sorts of things but including in response to not non consensual but unwanted sex. You see like the kind of subtle distinction like legal but not really desired sex women are more likely to find that just makes them feel disgusted because.

Probably because this evolutionary thing right where like having sex with a man who you don't. Want to get pregnant by is a bad decision and a big risk and a big risk yeah so you talk about in the book about how.

It's more prevalent amongst yeah yeah yeah it's a really interesting expression isn't it is the women use it to mean when they're like they like man and then suddenly something switches and they get the yoke and all of a sudden they're like no. Yeah I had them I've got a friend who I shot me and who met this really great guy on a dating app and I was looking at you because she was asking me for some advice on her dating prefer whatever.

Not that I could give anyone advice because I've basically never been on it and you're dating at but. She showed me this photo this guy and this guy was like really good looking he looked like he played rugby or something he was just like I was like what a great guy she was like no he's got boxes on the the wardrobe behind him.

I was like this guy is like he's like perfect he's like action figure but because he had boxes cardboard boxes on the wardrobe behind him in the profile picture she was like oh. Interesting. Bazaar I thought you know is that a cultural thing or is that in eight this because there's I know guy that I know that would look at a profile yeah of a stunning woman and go she's got cardboard boxes on the. Although might they do you think or a woman they were like deciding whether to marry to know mean.

Because men do tend to have sort of two there are kind of two tracks like there's the woman I'd have sex with and there's woman I'd marry and they're different different categories and maybe the couple I don't know about couple boxes necessarily maybe what it's showing is you're like messy to organize not very grown up.

Yeah or maybe you don't have maybe you're living in someone else's house maybe yeah don't have much money yeah I guess she's looking for cues of like doing a really long time yeah good bet which goes back to your evolutionary principle exactly yeah that's a sensible thing to be doing really I think it should be listened to generally do you think like our I think our bodies often know.

I think our bodies are often sensitive to slight little keys that we might miss consciously so you think women should listen to their ex yeah. But some of them are getting a little the one that makes me laugh is if a man on a date the day goes really really well and then at the end of the day he pulls out his wallet to pay and he has a felt crew wallet. Right. Is that an ex for you. I know she'll be a personal it but I guess maybe we should respect it as a as an idiosyncratic.

I think in general it's going to men as well I think it's going for people I think it's never the gift of fear the haven't a backer book really great book it was published like 30 years ago something I think I made it quite a big deal. And it's about it's by a. I think he used to be a bodyguard he's like a personal security expert and he tells all these stories it's mostly about women and maybe a supplies to me to where women basically ended up getting.

Attacked by men who they did actually have bad vibes about in some way but they ignored those and it cost them right and his argument is that. The fear is a gift. And that you should listen to your instincts because often again highly of you know very evolved to be very tuned to these instincts right as a reason why we are descended from people who listen to their instincts in this regard.

And often your unconscious will spot things that your conscious brain hasn't spotted and maybe you'll be worried about being in polite or being weird or whatever you know so I can't remember all of the stories but I remember there's one other woman who. And then I offered to help her carry her shopping up to her flat and he was really insistent about it and she was like okay so she let him and then as soon as he was in the flat he shot the door and attacked her and she was lucky to survive.

She said later that it was weird he didn't feel like he was just being nice she got she got bad vibes from him she got the yick whatever there was something like going on but her conscious brain said he's just being nice and so she ignored her instincts and she let him into her flat and that's a sort of example where actually.

I think that our unconscious brains know are actually very wise about a lot of these things women's more than men's not really interesting question I would guess probably yes because particularly in relation to this actual violence threat right which women carry and men don't as much I mean men certainly don't carry it from women.

If men get such a result it will be rather men almost always like again really interestingly if you show women I think this is true for women but not for men as far as I know if you show women a map of their local area and ask them to say which streets they would not want to walk down alone late at night and they you know they highlight those streets they map on perfectly to actual rates of crime.

And these women know nothing about this they're not familiar with like local police statistics or whatever it's just vibes they just feel unsafe in these areas they're actually those vibes are actually really accurate surprisingly so and I guess because yes this evolved thing that like to put it really bluntly rapes a very bad outcome for women evolution really right it's something you really want to avoid and say we have these in built systems.

It's also just that the well there are several costs there's the carrying a bait the rapist baby and all the downsides of that right there's the risk of being ostracized by our community maybe your husband like costs you out there are so many downsides even a side from the physical threat and we've evolved in very good systems to try and protect ourselves against that.

I also think that to some extent you know the you know the 15 year old girls they do have these instincts so they they have some degree of like in the protective instincts but they also they do also laugh lack life experience. Which is I think why we have ought to have social conventions that also protect them. It's interesting as a you know this is called the Darius here podcast and other extreme quite far from business and people tell me that all the time.

My my lens because I run businesses when I'm not doing this is always to think about how a lot of the supplies to business and as you were talking about the way that I heard it is that women have a different sort of radar.

Sort of like then men and are able to spot different things than men and I thought about how useful that is in business and what a great case for diversity that is both in like the hiring process because often and I've this is just an observation from running businesses often the women that run some of my businesses are able to spot something in some candidates that it wasn't abundantly clear to me and often again this is anecdotal.

One candidate who all the men in the interview process a good with fine with all of the women in the interview process have a problem with and a problem they almost can't explain. It's a vibe they're going to get a fire and the men in the interview process often sometimes not always don't have the problem with this individual but then all of the women in my organization have a problem with this person.

And so the time I've learnt that maybe I don't have the radar and maybe you know maybe I need to listen to both sides to make an informed decision and it's plausible when you think about evolution that men and women have a difference sort of sixth sense. Yeah I see it in my partner obviously I can't give an anecdotal example because my partner but it's like she's operating on a different frequency often times to me and that's kind of what makes the relationship work.

My husband says I'm a witch yeah I think my partner's a witch if we're making it a safe space my partner is a witch but she's a white witch she this year but she can just it's like she can see. Yeah yeah yeah I mean there's a great book to be written about like how these sex differences play out in the workplace. Because again I think it's because we because there's a bit of a taboo about talking about it too much and there is obviously a risk I mean I don't.

The reason big reason why feminists don't want to overplay these psychological differences to men and women is because historically they have been used to discriminate against women right the women are too irrational to do expose that you.

And that's a completely reasonable concern but I also think that just pretending they're full that they don't that don't exist doesn't really do anyone any favors because they do and I think we should just be honest and I say be honest but also simultaneously be like you know this doesn't mean that women are in theory is I mean. It's a case of diversity in some places I mean I think there probably is an argument for.

In like the hiring process for example yeah exactly exactly I think there are probably some roles where or indeed things like like in policing for instance. You know to be really direct I don't think the women should be in front of my policing roles because I think that the physical differences are too profound particularly in the UK women don't carry where police officers don't carry guns.

The average woman even a really strong fit woman is going to really struggle in a direct confrontation with the average male. But if I was to to revolt out you know what what happens if you have a crime where involving several women and a man shows up without the empathy or without the ability to sort of resonate or to relate. So yes so this so I think women should be involved in criminal justice but because for instance probably women are better into you.

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised an interrogation you know so there are probably some roles where women are going to out for men again it's you know it's the other big bulk of. There'll be some men who are really good at this whatever but you'd expect there to be a female advantage in that role but there isn't a female advantage in the like. Being out and having physical conversations with people role and I think that's fine I don't think that we should.

This is very frustrating tendency in policing in for fire service as well to for people to notice the fact that there are fewer safe female firefighters and therefore to lower the physical demands to get more female firefighters in. What if the what if the physical demands what if the test was is the test the same for both I if I want to be a frontline police officer I have to pass the same physical test irrespective of gender.

Yes that's true but one of the things that they've done over the years because of pressure like feminist pressure to be blunt is that they've they change the standards so they've say reduce the upper body strength component. All they've made the like in policing and in firefighting all these and military have to bleep tests stuff like that and they blow at the standards necessary.

That's really the issue then yes yeah yeah that's what yeah because there's I mean several women upstairs what my ass in a bleep test they will they like run marathons and stuff all of them in the bloody office that all what my ass. Really the issue is about making sure the standards are sufficient. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah don't know the standards so that you can get more women into these physical roles just accept the fact that.

There will be I mean I do know actually I like one feel firefighter that I know personally from Jiu Jitsu she's so strong she's so fair she passed over a high standard great you know you will get that woman in the thousands. He can any which case fine you know but what I what I don't think is wise at all is like engineering it such that you have 50 50 in every role.

I think that that's a recipe for disaster so but just to be clear on this point because you said you don't think women should be involved in frontline policing. If they can meet the yes the very high standards I think that woman in a thousand yes but I but I. One woman in a thousand yeah you think that's yeah and you it's up because of our body strength you're talking about that's the big one it's also aggression.

Okay let you do need a certain level of you can watch a lot of body cam of police having physical alterations and is quite common for us to see female police hesitate more than male police do. Because I think it depends it depends doesn't it I mean yeah there's also it is yeah policing is a complicated one because also in America say whether they are have guns. Few more police are less likely to shoot the male police are. So you know maybe that's good right like but if it's something like.

There there's a lot of body cam footage you can watch of say a female and a male police. Partnership confronting someone the man goes right in and the woman is like. Because these are quite. He's quite deep seated deep seated instincts to be more to be less physically aggressive and this is a thing I mean we talked about right at the beginning this thing like you know the testosterone curve for men in their teens 20s 30s.

It has its disadvantages it translates into sexual violence and violent crime or whatever but there are also obviously situations where you need that we're actually having physical courage. It's so important if you're running into a burning building or whatever you know so it's this again it's just like a ton problem that societies have to try and solve like we have this youthful male energy.

And we want to put it to the best possible purposes and we don't want it put to dangerous purposes like how do we do that. It's so complicated because I understand and I understand that there's physical differences but policing is so complicated because you're policing both men and women. So women have a different testosterone curve for example. Yes. Would it therefore be better for a woman to show up in that scenario who is going to match that person's.

Maybe although women really don't commit very much violent crime at all so if you're talking about like physical altercations the chances of it being a woman are not high. But if a man shows up then when maybe you would escalate more.

I've had a few conversations about the subject with people and then I remember seeing obviously it's a particular front of mind story what happened in Australia recently with the terrorist attack in the mall and we were in Australia at the time and watching the footage. And then that showed up with a gun shot the terrorist. And there was also that man did you see who like barricaded the escalator. Yes and he was holding. It was just a murder of public.

So that was really interesting because this idea of a rather circle about heroic masculinity in the New York Times written by a woman and it does the article goes to highlight these instances where the man runs in the building 9-11. It was like 98% of the people that died in 9-11, firefighters were men, a couple of women as well.

And then I saw that video of the terrorist attack in Australia and you have the guy on the escalator holding a chair threatening this terrorist that he's going to smash him with a chair if he comes closer. And then the person that ultimately ended the terrorist attack was a woman with a gun. And so it's super nuanced isn't it? Yes, what's really interesting about this physical courage thing is so often people say later that they didn't even think about it.

There was no contrast process, there was no like should I, or should I, they do it. And you don't really know if you're like that I think until you're confronted with a situation like that. And you know when women will definitely do that, that absolutely not thinking is protecting their kids. Yeah. And then you do read amazing accounts of women. And then you do read on their children and taking lifting cars because like their child is to conjure it.

And there's just this like almighty surge of strength like there are. And actually that's an interesting situation where women can be very aggressive in defending their children. And that's true in other species as well that you can have this just the red mist descends in that set of circumstances. So yeah. We're talking about it's I just wanted to hover it off because there's kind of two sides to this argument. There's this I've got this radar which is useful and it's protecting me.

And then there's this other sort of more newer social tick tockification of the IK which is probably causing people not to get in relationships. I've got a friend that she's been on about she goes on about a hundred days a year. And she's she's like I think she's actually starting a dating podcast because she's that unsuccessful at dating. And in my head I go I think this might be part of like a broader social issue that the reason we're coming together we're having less sex.

All these things is because in part because of these X we think everything is a problem because social media told us it was. Yes. And yeah, and I think it's probably true going back to this mimetic thing. Right. There are probably some social status signs which are very mimetic.

Like one of the things that some women will do for instance is they're like say I will only date a man over six foot and actually and just set that cut off and you can be very objective about that on the app because they say how to all you. I mean I'm sure everyone's exaggerating but like they say how to all you. And it's a really silly thing to do actually because you're cutting off like I don't know 80% of men more depending on the group of men.

You're just cutting well and actually if you were to meet this person in real life the fact that they were five nine wouldn't you wouldn't even notice. So sometimes I think that modern technology can encourage a level of pickingness which is actually really counterproductive and probably actually and again it's like. I think so much of mutual sexual attraction is about the about pheromones about vibe about being in person and dating apps don't capture that at all.

So I'm sure that definitely works against yeah there are 100% women who are way too picky definitely definitely. We talked a second ago about how the introduction of the pill and how that caused negotiation in this first sort of encounter. Yeah impacts women. We didn't cover how it impacts men downstream.

I would would it be better for men if there were you know we waited longer before we had sex with the woman you know in your book you talk about waiting three months but then you whispered something to me which I'll let you say just in case you want to say. I think probably actually waiting to engage but it's a better call. So you think we should wait until we are engaged with someone before we have sex.

Yeah but you let me say that you know I'm saying that because there are tradeoffs and I acknowledge them and also it's more difficult to do that in a culture where that's weird.

Yeah. Because what you end up doing is cutting out anyone who for whom that's too weird right like you basically cut out a big chunk of your possible matches by insisting on that and less say you're very religious in which case everyone in your religious community is going to have the same expectation but for most people that's going to be quite

a weird thing to demand which is why I said three months in the book because it seemed like more reasonable and more achievable also because my mom said to me when I was she read the draft she was like if you say this if you say wait till engagement marriage that's the first thing every reviewer is going to notice about the book it's going to be a big deal so you'll be you'll get more of a hearing you know if you're more reasonable.

The thing is we're a really weird culture in this regard like basically every other culture there is obviously variation you know my first to go with anthropology and one of the things about.

Anthropology which is so powerful and interesting when you're interested in contemporary social issues is that there are a lot of differences between cultures of course there are and that's what's interesting for the anthropologists but there are also a lot of similarities and actually there being various efforts over the years to compose lists of human universals which you find in absolutely every culture.

It's called the anthropologist veto if you find a culture that doesn't have this then you can kind of strike it off the universals list but the universals list is pretty long and it includes things like every culture has religion in some fashion every culture has gender roles in some fashion every culture has wages war in some fashion there are things that everyone does.

And everyone has marriage customs of some kind they can look different from ours I mean the most common way in which cultures differ from from our culture released our culture up until recently is permitting polygamous marriage so about 80% of cultures permit polygamous marriage only permitting monogamous marriage is more unusual. I think we're drifting back towards permitting polygamous marriage through polyamory but that we can get onto that.

The thing is I just think the thinking that went for the sort of radicals of the 1960s what happened in the 1960s it was the pill and other tech as well.

And also an ideological thing it was also people wanting to completely reject the old order you know reject religion rejects conservatism whatever and what a lot of people said at the time was why we need to see restricting people why we you know limiting people's freedom in a way that makes them miserable we just got to throw this out the window right and I think that

doesn't work like throwing convention window that's not how humans work we have a tendency to construct in one way or another rules around these things and human reproduction is like the most important it's a very very complex and delicate thing right that you have to get right it's really it's like a it's like a normal coordination problem you've got to find the right person

you've got to find them at the right time you've got to like ensure commitment from them and of course this is whole game about how like men might want to have sex with more people will want to take a man down like it's really complicated game and what society's come up with is ways of regulating it ways of regulating heterosexuality basically right which means restricting women's freedom it does that's what feminists have always noted it also means restricting men's freedom it says there

certain things that men can't do and we had such a system you know we had the like you can't have sex outside of marriage marriage has to be monogamous all these all these rules that you have to ask the bride's father's permission all this stuff we had it all right and we basically throughout the window I mean it lingers a bit that we have very low I mean in London right now half of children will reach age of 15

and then we're going to have a lot of people with that their biological father in the home. There's a very very high figures compared with say a hundred years ago very very high figures so we've seen basically the dissolution of that old order and there are upsides to that there are big times I see and I think every culture has marriage customs as some kind apart from house sort of like what makes us think

that we're not only among people's can just have a free for all can just you know style it out people do whatever they feel like to know I mean I think that I think that the what anthropology tells us is it actually we need structure we need conventions and constraints and and and and templates you know and those will sometimes feel restrictive and there will sometimes be people for

very well. But I think the idea we can just do without them is not true I mean go back to the polyamory thing if you look at dating up data one of the sometimes people exaggerate this effects a little bit right but there is a tendency for basically very attractive men high status man the heath the heathness right to

do really well on dating apps to get a lot of attention from a lot of women and then for the bottom chunk of men in terms of attractiveness to get none to just get no matches whatsoever and so and this is a tendency it's called hypergamy for your hypergamy that women will tend to want to

marry up socially so they'll want to marry a man who is richer than them better educated them more successful than them etc and yeah I mean you this is basically what you see when people left their own devices on dating apps and you can monitor it carefully that is basically what people do.

And the problem you end up with is when you don't have a system of monogamous marriage and you don't have the expectation that people wait and there's really nothing stopping those men from just having loads of girlfriends maybe having the same time like having little harems right you know not calling them that but having basically playing the fields and not being forced to commit because like no one expects them to really and it's

like good for those men it's frustrating for the women because they're like they're they're having relationships with these men in the hope that you'll turn into equipment and then it does and so they end up feeling really better right and it's also frustrating for the less attractive

and who are getting no attention whatsoever and who read me or listen to me say I'm so sure of the issue is good for men and it's like it wasn't good for me is I know I know I know there's a real there's a good inbuilt inequality. So it's a ban that always been an inbuilt inequality in the male experience.

Well this is what's interesting about the monogamy polygamy system right in a monogamous system to some extent that's prevented because these high status men unless you're like a king unless you're like a king you can't you can't have multiple women on the go you have to commit to a woman and basically remove yourself from the dating pool right and so it isn't possible for the really attractive men to sort of a mass a lot of women and so I've

heard it described as sexual socialism monogamous marriage because it does sort of encourage like an equalizing effect. Yeah, whereas in a polygamous system obviously that's completely permissible and you know in extreme circumstances you'll have high status men having you know 100 women or something like that in historical examples.

And then low status men just having none and it's it's quite an unstable one of the downsides of a polygamous system is quite common and it's probably to some extent our species norm is I think it's what people kind of do and left their

social devices that's like the natural way we settle if there are no social restrictions. One downside of it is having a lot of unmarried well like having a lot of sexless men is quite bad for social stability because they're very frustrated they're angry they don't have a lot to lose one of the really interesting things about going back to testosterone when men have children and get married

and they're very level drop. They become less aggressive like in the year after a baby's born men commit less crime. They're less promiscuous like there's a real sort of.

There's having no sleep. I'm sure that's part of it but there is like if you're directly involved in caring for your own child you do as a man you do become less less heighty and that has a sort of taming effect right or it's like always it's channeling male energies in a different direction which is a scale can be really good in terms of having a peaceful stable society and political society is due to be more unstable in that sense.

There's also there's more domestic violence in political society there's more conflict within households that there are quite a lot of bad outcomes that you get from political systems. So even though monogamy is maybe not the norm and the logically it does seem to be a good norm and some of the most successful societies have adopted monogamy is there as their norm and have been successful partly because of that.

If you are to have a daughter in the future and you've got a son already and you've got another boy on the way but if you are to have a daughter in the future that daughter comes up to you at let's say 18 years old and says mum I heard on that podcast you did ages ago 20 years ago. That you said I shouldn't have sex with the guy I'm dating until engagement.

Mum can you just confirm why what would you say to your daughter. There's a few reasons one is because women in particular tend to get emotionally bonded from sex more than me. Do we know that because anecdotally you know in the group chat. In fact yes but is there science to support that idea. I think that you can measure it in terms of things like oxytocin and there's actually over it about this in the book there's this whole like horrible genre of journalistic articles.

Basically advising women on how to have casual sex without being miserable and sort of what can you do to like hack your brain so that you can have casual sex without feeling dreadful afterwards. Public acknowledgement that this is a thing and one of the advice one of the pieces of advice is things like take ecstasy. Well you have insects because it will like dull your emotional bonding response things like that which I just want to say dystopia and like well you could just not.

Well you don't have to like try and buy a hack your brain to endure something you don't really want to do but anyway women get more emotionally bonded from sex to the menu and then you do end up with this kind of asymmetry. Which comes up in the group chat right of like she basically is more into him than he is into her and if there's no commitment not even any necessarily socially acknowledgement of the relationship it might be just a friend to benefits or something that can be really painful.

So it's a good idea to basically hold if you hold off on having sex you hold off on having that effect and it means you commit clear our decisions if you see red flags you're more likely to respond to them properly if you're not like the fuddles folks at osun basically the other thing is it's like.

It's just a really really good demonstration of commitment if you you always risk getting pregnant you always do even if you're on model on reception there's always that risk and do you want a man who is going to ditch you of that happens basically like how how can you how can you find some guarantee that he's not going to do that. A diamond ring is a pretty good one that you think there are other ways you could demonstrate it but that's a really good one and it's a kind of tried and tested one.

It's pretty crazy how significant the shift in attitudes towards casual sex have changed I was reading some research earlier that said 67% of Gen Z think it's justifiable to have casual sex compared to 12% of the pre war generation.

And you know when we talk about the diamond ring being a good way to get commitment yeah but I had a divorce lawyer on the podcast the other day and he said to me that 56% of marriages fail and that one thing that skews that they you know is that people have multiple marriages more like to get divorced. Yes you did say I think 86% of people that get married again yeah after that yeah so there's some but yes I mean the principle is true.

So do you think marriage as a system or a technology is good. But you just think it's because in the book it sounds like you think it's just the best available option.

Yeah because okay so the key reason I think the marriage is good particularly for women right it's good for men too but there's like particular reason why it's good for women and why I think that feminist arguments against it are flawed is that the nature of carrying children is that you have a period of some period of time where you cannot participate in the labor market right where you're too pregnant you've got a newborn whatever I mean I when I have my first baby I'm not going to be a good woman.

I mean I when I had my first baby I I calculated that in the first weeks and months of his life I was spending 40 hours a week just breastfeeding right so you can't. You basically.

And mothers and babies aren't really individuals right in the sense that they're not completely autonomous my friend Mary Harrington who's also an author she said that she this really like she realized this for the first time when she had her daughter and her baby was crying to be fed in the middle of the night and she realized that in a sort of if you if you

looked at their relationship in an individualist way you were like okay you've got one human being who like wants to be fed and another human being who can provide the feeding but there are Thomas agents they can just make their own decisions or she's like no no no I can't just decide now I'm going to ignore her I'm going to go back to that like every every sell in your body is saying I must go for your baby it completely changes you physically psychologically it's like complete transformative experience because you your biological goal becomes keep this baby alive.

And the baby is completely dependent on you there's this that charts like a therapist on a winnacot said there's no such thing as a baby there's only a baby and someone right babies can't survive on their own and normally that someone is the mother and when it comes to things that breastfeeding has to be really I mean we now have formula and so on so we can sort of is that all thing of using technology to take the edge of some of these social realities but

it's still basically the case that moms and babies are like tied together like this emotionally biologically and during those times in your life you need another adult at least one other adult who's going to do that you know getting food paying rent doing all this basic stuff to support you and who that adult is is

something that one connects people have experimented with right like attempts at communal child rearing say or I mean what to some extent you can do is depend on the state right depend on the welfare state depend on say state provided child care services things like that. That all of those solutions kind of work but can't with significant downsides the only solution I think the best solution that we've come up with historically is for the father of the child to play that role basically

on this subject of marriage just to really interrogate this further because I feel like I'm in two minds about it a.k.a. because of the stat show that 56% you know and in marriage of divorce and you've kind of rebuttal that because of the re marriage rate but then even the amount of people that seem to be unhappy marriages seems to be pretty significant this is part of what the divorce loads are to me so you you

know you can say 56% of marriages fail but if you defined failure as one or two people in that marriage being unhappy the number is significantly higher and I know a lot of people again it's anecdotal so it's not worth much but a lot of people that are married you know who I would define as being really just kind of the

divorce part is so uncomfortable and painful that they've just decided to stay together which is not always in the interest of the kids because of that home becomes toxic in any regard the trauma is passed down sufficiently to the

okay I take all of that but I do think that one the divorce rate is to some extent a product of a divorce culture right where it's very permissible and very normal for people to you know really really like tricky bit for people to get through is the first year after a first child is born because everyone's tired everyone's stressed money there are money pressures etc etc there are lots of reasons why that's a difficult time and it's quite common for people to

whether or not they're married but for people to break up during that period and then to regret it because actually it's a temporary period of your life it will get better you will get less stress you will get less tired etc so to some extent a divorce culture will sometimes encourage people to make permanent decisions which they will regret and there is there are

a lot of people who are showing that quite a lot of people do regret getting divorced something like a third people are getting divorced so there's that the other thing is that there is a lot of it's not just it's true yes that the people who have multiple marriages and

more likely to get some people can be kind of serial offenders in this regard right with divorce and it's also you know there's a massive skew with class and education so only about 10% of graduates who get married will get divorced interesting yeah and that's it is interesting isn't it and it does suggest that to some extent marriages becoming a luxury good and there's this there's this phenomenon right where a lot of people who are from those kind of elite graduate

classes will they'll talk the 1960s but walk the 1950s so they'll proclaim all the stuff about freedom and individual choice or whatever but actually they live pretty conventional lives they tend to get married they tend to stay married they tend to have 2.5 children at such a B very actually be very conservative in their own choices even if they don't necessarily promote those choices so so you know there's that and actually I think I think it's probably because

people know that there are massive benefits to their children from staying together there are of course some instances particularly with abuse when it's better for the children if the parents break up that's absolutely true but I think when you're talking about kind of

they unhappiness satisfaction like we've outgrown each other at that level of unhappy marriage I think it's much better for children to stay together and one big reason for that is because the presence of step parents on average isn't good news for children there's a single the Cinderella effect in evolutionary psychology where children who have a step parent in the home are 100 times more risk of child abuse than children who don't have a step

100 times I know and obviously I you have to be careful and not obviously not saying all step parents are abusive by any means we're just talking about risk yeah but it does go by a lot and what was I mean when this was discovered it was taken as proof of the fact that parents having a genetic investment in their children is one of the I mean like children of their trying

okay they wake you up they have to answer whatever if you have a genetic investment in them it carries you through those moments you're like I love you I want the best for you you know you can sort of get over it if you don't have a genetic investment in their children even in fact you potentially have a conflict if say you have children with the new partner and those children in the household and you want those children to sort of be favored and do better

unconsciously right but there will be there will be kind of a playing of favorites game like it's not just in some cases in some cases it's not just like violent abuse it's things like step parents are less likely to put a seat belt on their step children things like that it's like it's like subtle but small ways in which step children are disfavored compared with biological children and of course some people will

some people will smell that and be amazing step parents did her like adoptive parents plenty of people will do a wonderful job but it is a really significant risk thing I had this woman called Katie Faust on my podcast little while ago who is a American campaigner for children's rights and she said try this okay Google my my mom's boyfriend and see what Google suggests it's not pretty

you can go there haven't you yeah what is it suggest it's things like my mom's boyfriend touch me my mom's boyfriend looks me weird my mom's boyfriend makes me uncomfortable things like that is a step parent better than raising a child without a second parent though probably financially yeah in terms of stability and having a role model or something

yeah potentially and obviously some step parents can be really good so it's difficult isn't it but I think the thing that people I think the thing that people should know I think the reason why it's good to know about the Cinderella effect is that if you're it's quite easy as an adult to kid yourself and to be like I'm not very happy with my partner my husband my wife you know sex not as good as it used to be we like he doesn't understand me like that kind of level of

satisfaction if only I was with someone else everything would be so much better I asked that in part because I was just thinking as you're saying about adoption and the implications is is it a doctor child being with a family better than being

I think definitely yeah but I mean this is one of the reasons where adopt adoption agencies are so careful and screens so thoroughly and like the criteria to be an adoptive parent of really really stringent is because they know that there is this issue I mean particularly because also children who

are being adopted are more likely to have their own issues I'd like to be more difficult in some ways so I think there's a recognition that this is a this is more difficult set up is more risky set up as you have to be careful. The things you're saying you know that they're unpopular yes especially in 2024 yeah we're saying them anyway yeah why I think it's true.

Do you care about the consequence of people being annoyed about it yeah although you know what since this book says this book is published two years ago I have had and I really did feel a little bit when I was writing it like oh no have I just completely ruined my life and we're going to just constantly face like I'm going to get constant grief for this is going to be a complete

question and actually I would say that like 95% of the responses have been incredibly positive and I get emails the messages all the time from people saying. Thank you I've been thinking this this whole time the feedback you've gone following the publication of your book how is it surprised you and when I asked that I'm asking in terms of like who is sending you messages and what they're saying.

I would say probably the two most common groups of readers are dads okay who are really worried about their daughters in particular and also their sons and saying like thank you so much for this was a reason I decided to do a young adult edition of the book so in

the next few months there's going to be a young adult version which is basically like edited made sure to simpler whatever because the book has a lot of very adult themes are obviously and I had so many people saying I wish I could give this to my 14 year old and I just kind of

do so but I really really really want them to know this stuff and so we did a lot of audition for exactly that purpose and often it is dads who are feeling mums to but dad's who feeling reacts about this what they worry about they're worried about well they're worried about sexuality of the daughters is probably the key one yeah but they're also worried about say the impact upon on their sons and they're worried about the children being miserable in various ways.

The other group of readers I hear from our women who have lived this and who have had this exact process of thinking I can have sex like a man thinking I can like completely imitate the masculine template and that's that's good for me and have had this deep sense of cognitive

dissonance which they've only belatedly realized was needless like they didn't have to actually put themselves through what they did but they felt that they did you know they they they had this process of conforming to something that was bad for them. I hear from a lot of those women and and you know in many cases like I have had to when many when we recently to say that they are having a baby because of me is amazing.

It's so cool just because they because they have this because the anti mother messaging can be so strong and feel so empowering. And this feeling that this painful feeling that actually that there's something much higher status about the masculine template that there's something lesser there's something worse about doing doing the feminine thing you know being the mother. I think is very baked in and is actually very anti woman I think you know to say that to say that being just a mom.

There's something wrong with that that it would be better to have say a corporate job that it would be better to. Live like a man I think that when we. I think that when we say things like that what we're basically saying is that what women do is worse that there's something worse about women. Something like actually very deeply sexist about that in a way that I don't like at all so a lot of what I try to do in my writing and podcast and everything is actually.

Elevate some of the feminine stuff which is needlessly marginalized you know being a mother it's okay to want to be monogamous it's okay to want to have children it's okay to care more about your children in your career. None of those things about. It's okay to care more about your career than having children. Yes. You said that a little bit more reluctantly.

No it is that is okay I think that it is more common right now in our current cultural moment for women to be pushed towards the masculine role when it doesn't suit them than the other way around.

I think historically it has been the other way around right the women who wanted to do the masculine thing and were really intelligent ambitious or whatever was suppressed and words and would basically confine to the home right that definitely happened historically I think we've kind of flipped that actually. And now it's more common for women to be told that being just a mum is worse.

As a societal level there's been a big decline in birth rates which is quite quite interesting you concerned about the decline in birth rates. I mean I think it is definitely going to cause significant political and economic problems to read some stats by 2050 over three quarters of countries won't have high enough fertility rates to keep their population size growing over time.

The global fertility rate has decreased from 4.84 live births per woman in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021 and is expected to drop to 1.5 by 2.2.00 and the last one I'll read is Japan's population was 124.3 million down 595,000 people from 2022 and the falling rate equals out to almost 100 people an hour are being lost from their population.

Countries are taking drastic measures to get their birth rates back up South Korea for example is considering giving families about 60,000 pounds and cash for each newborn baby that they have. So yeah there's a societal social impact economic impact on the declining birth rates and I've heard you say previously that you think it's one of the biggest evolution new challenges we're facing. I think we're going through an evolutionary bottleneck.

So we're going through a period where any it's partly the pill. The people it's one of those issues that sort of attracts just so stories people will often be quite confident about oh it's this you know it's feminism oh it's capitalism whatever I think that the single factor that actually best explains why you're seeing such mass of drugs and fertility across not just Europe and America but Northeast Asia as you're saying and also actually lots of like the least has quite low birth rates.

Indian some continent has quite low birth rates basically only place in the world that still has high birth rates is sub-Saharan Africa so this is basically global for normal. The single factor which best explains is affluence you cross a certain threshold in terms of GDP per capita and fertility falls a lot and it's not that high threshold it's like $10,000 something like that so the richer you get the last kids you have.

Yeah I know it's funny isn't it because it seems completely counterintuitive yeah because often people will say in an expensive city like London people will say I can't afford our kids.

And they're sort of right I mean it is true that it's harder to afford it's it's harder than it was 50 years ago say to afford a family home and to live on a single income so at the kind of micro level that's true and that probably does disincentivise people from having children will certainly I mean often what people mean is I can't afford to have children at the standard that I would like in terms of the size of my house and you know all of this.

Yeah I mean we're all descended from people who had 10 kids in a two bedroom heart you know like so ancestors of all had children in much more difficult circumstances so we have. And I think that it's a really interesting mystery why does affluence make people less inclined to have children.

One factor probably is it's a bit more but mortality salience when people this seems to be why they're a post war baby booms it's not actually because all the soldiers come home and they're really horny right it's because war reminds people of death and actually people have this

tendency to respond to death by wanting to create new life and you can test this in the lab like if you remind someone of if you remind people of death and then ask how many children they want to have they want to have more I know it's crazy isn't it but it may be that there's something about having very peaceful and.

And comfortable ways of life in affluence society is that actually discourages people from re-reducing which it does seem country to it doesn't it but that's probably quite likely I mean what's probably going to happen there for is that people who really want to have kids will be selected for.

Because historically mother nature didn't really care how brewed you were she just cared how horny you were right because if you had sex and children were a likely result whereas now with reliable contraception that's less a lot less true so probably right now. I mean with we're going to see really massive drops in population is somewhere like South Korea they have the lowest birth rates in the world I think it's like 0.7 or something so that's 0.7 babies per couple or person.

A woman is how it's calculated so in order to have replacement you need 2.1 in a culture of low child mortality and that means that in South Korea they're probably going to lose about 95% of their population in the next century what is going on in South Korea what's not.

They seem to just have like all the problems that we have more it's like hyper version of all the western issues with dating and with like they're also very urbanized and they're like hyper modern in a lot of ways and given that modernity seems to lead to

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I read an interesting study from 2014 from jammer psychiatry journal when they look to 64 adult men who watched hours of porn each week and found that there was a decrease in the amount of gray matter in the area of their brain associated with sexual stimulation.

The percentage of women who consume porn is increasing and by the end of 2019 almost three out of every 10 porn herb users were female the role that porn is playing all of this and what's your view on pornography good thing bad thing net negative thing negative yeah yeah I mean

there are various objections you can have right I mean it's very much not fair trade products I think everyone knows that really deep down right it's the the industry is really horrible and it has a tendency to take people who are already vulnerable and completely destroy them very high suicide rates among poor performers very high drug dependency ratios rates things like that so

you're not consuming something that has been ethically produced and even when some porn claims to be ethically produced it's often like those claims are often actually very shoddy and there's a lot of like it is prostitution is prostitution with the camera at the room so it has the same issues as the sex industry tells in general in terms of

coercion and misery basically so there's that but in terms of the effect on people who use it yeah I mean it does seem to have this death grip syndrome death grip syndrome to be delicate about it is basically when a man must face so much that it like decreases his sensitivity and it makes a half of him to then have proper sex how do they know this is that it's like a color expression no I think you've really emerged on red it

or something right and anecdotally if you stop using porn death grip syndrome tends to alleviate so like you familiar with no fat which is like a movement to not not masturbate yeah yeah and there's various and I don't know if there's been proper studies but there's there's anecdotal evidence that stopping using porn reduces erectile dysfunction and improves sexual health in various ways right I think there's also I coin this term cultural death grip syndrome where I think you end up with

when sexual stimuli are so ever present and it's so easy to access like anything you can imagine at the click of the button with the phone in your pocket there's like this is like high so sexual stimuli and I think it affects people psychologically and I think it I think it actually reduces people's drive to form relationships because it's like sex loses a mistake 100% yeah

100% thinking about lot of scenarios in my own life where I was many many years ago when I was was single I was set to go on a date with somebody but then I might have masturbated and my desire to go on the day just

like that and I know a lot of people can relate so if you're pretending you're somewhat different you're born for it but I can I mean in my friends always used to talk about it that you could be like making plans with somebody and then you masturbate and you desire as a man can often just like that yeah in a way that I don't

think a lot of people understand I think it's also going back to this pre-marital sex thing as well I think it also applies to other areas of life we call it post-nail clarity that was the name was looking for if you if you live in a society where you can't have sex unless you're married or you can't have like sex legitimately you might be able to have sex with prostitute or something but basically your sexual options are massively restricted until you get married

and in order to get married you have to have a job you have to like not commit crime you have to have a house you have to do all these grown up things you are going to be so motivated to do these things it's so motivating and I think one of the problems that does come with allowing pre-marital sex and allowing porn and basically like not inducing any kind of drive in young men is that they are less motivated to do those things like why would I you know

why would I work harder why would I why would I prioritize any of these things when I've got porn up or soon enough sex robots right it kind of kills that natural it kills that natural drive it kills that natural motivating force which is very very compelling for young men

and the production is at the very heart of male motivation well I mean yeah sex is yeah the most then outliers the other so if we solve for that problem using technology then one would then deduce from that that we conclude from that that we then take away human male motivation to like climb and build and be strong and yeah I think so I mean there might be some upsides in terms of one of the arguments that people use in favor of porn is that it reduces sexual violence

I don't really know if that's true it's very hard to measure and I'm skeptical about it because I think that it something like choking is now so so much more common among young people like the proportion of I can't remember off top of my head but the proportion of young women who say they've ever been choked in beds is so much higher than portion of older women and just goes up

it's from your charity right yeah we can send this yeah estimated that two million UK women have experienced unwanted choking by strangling during sex 3.5 million experiencing these and also slapping and spitting and gagging right and this is all being very normalized by porn so I think that the most likely explanation for why this is more of a phenomenon among younger generations is because of porn is because it's become sort of part of the normal sexual script through porn

10 fold increase in rough sex between 96 and 2016 right and I think that and the reason that the reason that we can't consent to this exists is because it it was I mean we've we've we successfully chose the law on this so hopefully this is having much less often than it was in the UK but it is a global phenomenon as well where men will kill their girlfriends or their wives and claim that she died as a result of consensual

rossets when actually we think it's much much more likely that she died as a result of domestic violence to murder yeah or get convicted of mans law should instead of murder things like that so this is you know that's like a specific that's like the extreme end of this phenomenon the other end of this

phenomenon is more like just a sexual script becoming more violent and becoming more aggressive and yeah and a lot of young women in particular having like to absolutely terrifying to be choked out of nowhere by some man you actually don't know very well right that's a really just

dressing experience there are also what people always say to this is that also women who asked for it and there are also women who who like choking I think what's going on there is partly the mnemetic thing it's partly like this is cool and this is what

everyone's doing so I want to do it too so that's part of it I think to some extent one difference between male and female sexualities that women like to be dominated more than men do and that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as it's done in I curse safe way and in a trusting relationship it is a problem though and that's translated into like seeking out risky sex acts with someone who you basically don't know is I think men know that porn is letting them down yeah I say men I know that

there's a significant proportion of women that listen watch porn as well but I have come to learn from doing this podcast and having conversations about dating apps and pornography when I look at the comments section men are very angry at seams or at least the men that are in my YouTube comments that are on YouTube at dating apps and they're very very angry and think the industry of porn again this is the subset of people in my comments they hate it they think it's evil they

are disgusting and I actually looked at Google search data before our conversation today to see what people are searching and one of the most frequently searched terms as it relates to the subject of porn on a tour we use to analyze Google search data was how do I stop watching porn yeah and it almost seems like you think you know that that was one of the most frequently searched terms that people are going to you're going to say how do I stop this yeah there's a certain lack of control

it's a really addictive yeah yeah it's really really addictive so it should be ban it if you were prime minister of the UK would you ban porn you can press a button now ban it yeah there you go because I don't think I mean I just the down the only downside of banning it is basically the it's sort of like during COVID when people were banned from doing things which everyone was doing right ban from socializing ban from seeing their families and people in a lot of

cases kept doing it and just broke the law and I think that that had a sort of destructive effect on attitudes towards the law this also was one of the reasoning this is one one piece of reasoning behind legalizing gambling back in the mid 20th century that there was statistics showing that like an enormous number of people were gambling and so it just seemed ridiculous to ban something that everyone was doing so that's one argument against banning porn that like people would keep doing it it

would be quite hard read it with the internet like realistically and so it would sort of undermine faith in the legal system in general and I take that seriously but I don't think it makes anyone's life better sex workers would have a bigger a bottle to you there and say you know it's a much better career for me than working some horrible job in some there might be a small number of women the whom that's really true

but in general I think and this applies to other areas of sex and street not just porn the people you tend to hear from are the people who are doing best by it and you also tend to hear from them at the point in their lives when they're in the middle of it and they either haven't yet suffered the cost of it or are kind of have a self protective narrative that they're telling themselves and I've spoken to a lot of women who be in the sex

industry including all my podcast who will talk about this exact feeling of like when you're in it it's just you just need to get through the day and telling yourself I'm empowered and this is okay and I'm in charge of this and whatever is a way of getting through the day is quite common for them to compare it to being an abusive relationship when when you're in it like I love him it's fine you know and then it's only afterwards you've left the relationship

and the emotional connection is gone that you can realize how bad it was for you and there are some quite high examples of this like Jenna Jamerson's she was one of the most famous porn stars in the world in the 90s she's now a campaigner against porn industry because she says it's just so it's so exploitative it causes so much psychological harm and physical harm and just things like STDs and injuries during 18 times more likely to be

murdered if you're a female porn star yeah putting to a study by Stuart cutting him at hell yeah and that and that and that danger is even more acute in other areas of the sex industry there might be some people who really don't suffer those psychological effects and who find a way of doing it in the sort of safest possible way and it's okay for them I try I like I've spoken to these people I trust that they exist

but I think they're very unrepresentative and to say that we should basically design the law around those exceptions rather than around what would be better for the the people who are suffering most I think is wrong headed I mean in terms of sex industry in general I would favor what the law as it is in places like Ireland and Sweden and France and quite a lot of other countries were basically buying sex against the

law but selling sex isn't against the law which I know seems kind of counterinsuitive but basically you say that the punters are criminalized and talking about like on street sex work and brothels and stuff the punters are criminalized but the prostitute women are not so they don't have anything to fear from the police and they can get support from social services and they can get help with addiction and they can get you know all the various

issues that are so much more likely to there's so much more likely to confront but the punters are disincentivized from because it's all fueled by demand right if they weren't if they weren't men who wanted to buy sex if they weren't many watching porn and women too if they weren't people watching

porn the industry would collapse like it's all depends on demand this young generation are going to grow up with pornography on their phones since birth yeah you know that they like your your kids are going to be able to access pornography sometimes accidentally if you scroll Twitter and it's terrifying for the minute while their brains are forming yeah and that's the first real generation that I've had pornography from birth

yeah yeah it's really bad I mean this is why smartphones it's why I worry about smartphones I mean there are other reasons there are other problems with smartphones I can tell you things like bullying through social

media whatever but all one is really bad it's very addictive it really damages your real world relationships it affects your sexual taste as well like it's more you're more likely to it's not like porn invents these things like there's something like the choking phenomenon it hasn't like invented

out of the now it's it's feeding on an existing dynamic where women tend to want to be dominated and men tend to want to dominate but it exaggerates it and it like it turns neuropaparase into in your brain into motorways you know because you're constantly reinforcing this stimulant that this positive response to the stimulus with orgasm which is like a very like you're training your brain basically and that

point of choking the other thing that pornography does is it kind of resets your expectations of people's bodies and people should look not just how they should perform in bed etc and the way sex should be but how they should look and obviously there's been this huge rise in plastic

surgery driven by social media but also probably by pornography and expectations of how the body should look yeah which seems to be playing into all of this yeah and seems to be yeah yeah bath or self esteem bath or your sort of realistic sense of so is that funny phenomenon

isn't it where what looks good in teet 2d doesn't necessarily look good in 3d you haven't noticed how sometimes women who have had a lot of work done will look really good in photos and then look a bit weird in person like uncanny valley in person because actually in 3d it looks a bit odd yeah yeah of course so it's like the wrong motivations as well on that subject of attraction though the conversation around attraction itself is quite confused because again there's sort of a political

correctness around what you can't say about attraction what men are attracted to and what women are attracted to I think we can agree from an evolutionary perspective is different and what is that what are we not saying?

I mean there's lots of really interesting little data points about that like perfect waist hip ratio that men like is 0.7 which is just really that doesn't know that they want the waist the waist to be 0.7 is so it's the waist measurement divided by the hip measurement should be 0.7 I think that's right and like men having like up body strength is just straightforwardly like basically the more the better is this interesting thing with women where two masculine is off putting?

Oh interesting women want like eight or nine out of 10 right? Masculinity yeah but they don't want bodybuilder exactly they don't want too much or like the super super square jawed like it intense look and the reason for that is an interesting one it seems to be because women have this balance

using a partner where you want someone who's strong and will protect you and will provide for you and we know like and being masculine is an indication of that which is good but you don't want someone who's so macho that he has like out of control aggression and might hurt you

so the 10 out of 10 is a bit risky you want you eight or nine out of 10 like that's the sweet scar I guess so all scary yeah I don't think men have that in reverse as far as I can tell the more feminine the better like men just really like you know all the signs if I adopt adult the amount of fertility attractive you said that women like upper body strength you didn't say lower body strength is this one men don't you like that?

I mean that's the point where there's the most divergence between the sexes like lower body strength between the sexes is you'll notice I don't at the moment obviously but I normally do powerlifting and the difference between squat for men and women is much less of the difference between bench so maybe that everyone's trying to like exaggerate that dimorphism I think that that I mean and there's also an interesting point around the way our society is less polarized

like we we do the same jobs we men and women are friends with each other like there are lots of ways in which we are much more sexually egalitarian and like mix more with the opposite sex than did our grandparents say and I think to some extent people actually really crave polarity they actually crave such a difference maybe more than what they that's one theory as well as to our BDSM is popular the people are like really drawn towards like hyper macho hyper feminine behaviors

if sex is hierarchical in the sense that if I may high status strong male I'm going to attract more mates isn't it sort of innate then that there's always going to be this group of men at the bottom of that spectrum who are sexless and that are struggling because there is a lot of men that are really really struggling at the moment and the suicidality amongst that group of men is shocking

the in-cell community the you know the purposelessness the addiction the gambling addiction is really almost exclusive amongst men that regard yeah maybe mother nature's a misundress as well but I think there is it's one of the reasons why talking about things like attractiveness is not very

I don't know politically correct is quite what it were but is a bit like awkward and painful because it is quite hard not to just say look it kind of is a hierarchy like there is an extent to which some people are more attractive than others and and look is actually like a massive social inequality that no one ever talks about look is so people who are better looking basically do better in every way people are nicer to them they do better than their careers

there is a study of tipping during covert because during covert people working in restaurants they have to wear masks some extent it hid people's faces and normally better looking way to get more tips and waitresses and then during covert that was just something that's unequalised I know it's kind of horrible I know I know but it's like and that's why I think we don't really talk about it I mean people clearly know this because they work so hard to be good looking

think of the size of the beach industry and like gym culture and whatever like people are desperate to be better looking we kind of know this is important but it seems a bit I don't know a bit horrible to talk about it Mother Nature is unfair yeah

and those trade-offs that go both ways you know I'm not you know him Kardashian is gorgeous but if I was woman I wouldn't necessarily want to be him Kardashian because there are trade-offs that I wouldn't be happy with and I think that's much of what this conversation has really been

it's just highlighting some of those disparities and unfairnesses but also the trade-offs and the opportunities that Mother Nature presents us with in all facets of our lives and these are difficult conversations for all of the reasons you described they're difficult they're painful

but I think it's better to know I think it's better to know I think that you can make an informed choice if you know right I agree yeah a lot of people don't want to know and you learn that as a podcaster yeah there's a lot of things that some people it's fingers in the

ear it's it causes too much dissonance and pain and uncomfortable to look in the mirror at the nature of the way that the world is or is going to be so some people would rather avoid it and you know what fine yeah that's they've they're coping

yeah hope is a very powerful we're all trying to find ways to cope like we're all you are yeah so I have empathy for that yeah thank you so much thank you so much for being willing to have the uncomfortable conversation and willing to say the uncomfortable thing

out loud because a lot of people are willing to say that and you know I think that's how progress happens I think ideas that are opposing sometimes need to collide for us to make progress I think your your book is very much a case of that if anybody hasn't read it I think it's one of the most important books on the subject it's called the case against the sexual revolution a new guide to sex in the 21st century highly highly recommend everyone that I know that's

reddit has absolutely raved about it and passed it around so I'm sure you will do too so I blink it below in the description so you guys can all read the book I have a closing tradition on this podcast with the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for the question that's been there for you is what a question when was the last time you lied to yourself?

this morning I think we do it constantly I mean on the cope thing like I think actually too much truth is probably a little bit too much to bear right yeah all at once yeah yeah yeah we have to lie to get through life I think yeah little life that was cope with the day which is kind of related to what we were just saying yeah thank you so much really appreciate it and congratulations on the small boy on the way and everything goes well and I'll

see you again soon in the future and sure to continue this conversation thank you Louise thank you so much