DEBATE: Why Do Gen Z Women Hate Men So Much?

0:00 Did you read this New Statesman article?

0:02 I did.

0:03 Okay.

0:03 What did you think of that?

0:05 I thought it was fascinating.

0:06 I thought it was concerning but also a little bit

0:10 predictable that women are well there was a lot in there.

0:15 There was, you know, women are have a bleak outlook on life

0:19 and that they are also spending a lot of time

0:22 online which is making everything worse and that they

0:25 dislike men um so strongly more than men dislike women.

0:32 Um I I think that this is to be predicted by an evolutionary framework.

0:38 Throughout human history,

0:39 women were very vulnerable because they are targets of sexual abuse.

0:45 They because they're reproductively valuable.

0:47 They're smaller on average and they needed assistance

0:50 getting the calories for themselves and for their children.

0:52 And the data suggests women's foraging isn't enough to sustain even themselves.

0:58 So women who signaled their vulnerability through um looking kind

1:04 of pitiable would have been favored but also any display beyond that.

1:10 So communicating sadness, communicating need would have been favored.

1:14 So I think this kind of tendency towards a bleak outlook on life makes

1:21 sense and in fact women perceive themselves around the globe to be less happy

1:26 less healthy than men both mentally and physically and so this is a common

1:30 pattern and there also seems to be like um social contagion effect to it.

1:36 So if you look at women's interactions um

1:40 when they are sad their partners whoever they're

1:43 interacting with becomes more sad their depression spreads

1:46 through networks in a way that men's doesn't.

1:49 So there's also like a social contagion effect.

1:52 So I I think a lot of this makes sense.

1:55 And then if you look at like the men hating,

1:57 it also makes sense that if women needed to signal their loyalty to one another,

2:04 so if they were often in these patrolo

2:06 environments where they weren't around their family or kin,

2:10 then one way to communicate to other women, you can trust me,

2:13 is by being loyal, a really good friend, but also probably being a girl's girl.

2:19 Um, and one way to signal you're a girl is by hating men.

2:23 Hannah Bradshaw has some cool research showing that women who

2:27 are guys girls tend to be not trusted by other women.

2:31 So if you have more guy friends, they they don't trust you.

2:34 They think you're more provocative.

2:37 Um and so I think some of this is also related to that.

2:41 I think there's a lot going on.

2:43 Is that inroup loyalty thing around the guys girl stuff?

2:46 I think so.

2:47 So she didn't test it in that framework.

2:49 Um, she tested it as like just what do you think of a girl

2:52 who only has guy friendss or a girl who has girls friends?

2:55 Um, and women like the girl with girlfriends more and trust her more.

3:00 Um, but in some of our data where we looked

3:03 at kind of this asymmetry and concern for men versus women,

3:07 women showed the bias to a stronger degree than men did.

3:10 So, I think if you put those two together,

3:13 I think women might be like advocating for women

3:16 to signal to one another, I'm on your team.

3:19 Yeah.

3:19 Yeah.

3:19 I think that's exactly right, Tanya.

3:21 And to add a few more evolutionary perspectives to that, I

3:24 was listening to the podcast from the journalists who did

3:27 the research and I was just banging my head against

3:30 the wall thinking there's so much evolutionary psychology at play here,

3:33 but you you can't see it.

3:34 Um, there's also an error management perspective.

3:37 So everything in evolution is a trade-off and between costs and benefits.

3:41 And for most of our revolutionary history,

3:44 women were making the tradeoff that they were benefiting by selecting men who

3:48 would be able to provision them with resources and be able to protect them.

3:52 Now, those are no longer as salient as benefits

3:55 to modern women who are earning their own money,

3:58 achieving their own status, and living in a pretty safe world,

4:02 even if they they don't always feel it's all that safe.

4:05 So, those are no longer really key benefits that men can provide.

4:09 So they're looking for men to provide other benefits

4:12 that they're just not stepping up to the plate to do.

4:14 So if you think about it from an error management perspective,

4:18 the costs of selecting a bad mate still are exactly

4:22 the same as the worth throughout ancestral history for women,

4:25 but the benefits just so the basically the juice

4:27 is not worth the squeeze for modern women.

4:29 So like I read the article and our lab

4:32 focuses on sexual conflict and one of the solutions

4:35 to sexual conflict that we always kind of promote

4:38 is uh to try and encourage cross-ex well imagine how

4:48 it would feel to suddenly be asked to provide

4:51 value in ways that you don't really know how

4:54 that your status you're being outpaced in status and you

4:57 can no longer add value in those dom domains.

5:00 Um, but now I'm trying to put the the cross- sex

5:03 mind readading hat on and imagine it from the woman's side.

5:07 And from a trade-off perspective in terms of mating,

5:11 they're living up to their side of the bargain.

5:14 Men value physical attractiveness far more than women.

5:17 And that was one of the key benefits that women provide as a mate.

5:20 Modern women look better than ever, right?

5:23 And they're bringing more to the table.

5:25 They're actually contributing resources and status as well.

5:28 And it's not like men hated those things and only liked physical attractiveness.

5:33 They just didn't it just wasn't as key a benefit as it is to women.

5:37 So men are getting more and more from women.

5:40 Uh whereas women are getting less

5:41 and less and they're looking for different things.

5:44 And that was the key thing that came through is that the traditional benefits

5:47 that men were providing were no longer ones that modern women were looking for.

5:52 They were looking for things like political uh shared political ideals.

5:57 Um emotional intelligence, uh things like that, even humor and stuff.

6:02 And I think that modern men are just a little bit lost,

6:04 but there is uh there is a way back for them to provide value in different ways.

6:11 Um but it's just the case that modern women are

6:14 happier to choose singlehood than risk choosing a costly mate.

6:18 And if you look at modern relationships,

6:21 there's this pathway towards a a long-term

6:24 committed relationship that has to go through

6:26 this ambiguity that goes through this kind

6:29 of uncertainty of dealing with[ __] boys,

6:32 going on these dates, getting spurned by men.

6:35 Uh cuz because the modern mating market allows for deceptive

6:39 men to pursue a deceptive strategy in at unprecedented rates.

6:44 It's incredible.

6:44 like you have unprecedented levels of anonymity,

6:48 access to millions of potential mates.

6:52 So, for the first time in history,

6:54 you can actually pursue a purely short-term deceptive mating strategy uh without

7:00 uh weathering many of the the classic costs that you would have.

7:05 Her kin and her friends are no longer really going to take revenge

7:09 on you because you live in a city millions of miles away from them.

7:13 and they don't know who you are and you just move city

7:16 and you know a lot of men are pursuing this strategy.

7:19 So women are thinking if that's the pathway towards a committed relationship

7:24 I'd rather not because they're get they're not getting the benefits.

7:28 Oh, so the pathway to get to a relationship is laid

7:31 with all of these different trip wires that you can kick and women

7:34 are worried about kicking one or many of them or maybe have

7:36 in the past and have gone actually I I can support myself financially,

7:41 so economically without this but I guess this the rubber is going

7:45 to meet the road eventually because unless you're going to do IVF sperm donor,

7:50 you need to have a partner eventually if you ever want to have a family.

7:54 Yeah.

7:54 But it's just the case that uh women's

7:56 status seeking goals have become very important to them.

7:59 They've been crushing it in socioeconomic arena and it's a fact that get

8:05 with a long-term male partner is a massive hindrance to a woman's career.

8:10 He's not really going to want her to be

8:12 around other high status mates and rivals at work.

8:15 He's not too crazy about that idea often.

8:18 Um he often wants her to stay home and be the caregiver.

8:22 that's often what she wants when she gets into a long-term relationship.

8:25 So, if you culturally lionize uh I know it's

8:29 a bit trit to say like the girl boss culture,

8:31 but that does clash with uh relationship formation.

8:36 It takes time to pursue a career and it's

8:38 just it's at those two things are at odds.

8:41 Uh my mother famously said actually women can have

8:44 it all but just not at the same time.

8:46 So, that's a bit of modern wisdom from mommy.

8:49 Yeah.

8:49 Yeah.

8:50 Yeah.

8:50 One in four young women say that their partner having a different

8:53 political view to them would be a red flag in a relationship.

8:56 However, on political particular political issues,

8:59 women's stance is more hardlined.

9:00 6 in 10 say they would find it difficult to date someone who disagreed

9:04 with them on the Palestine Israel conflict

9:05 or did not share their views on Donald Trump.

9:08 74% say they'd find it difficult to be in a relationship

9:11 with someone who did not share their views about social justice.

9:13 Young women are also more likely than young men to say they

9:16 would not have a relationship with someone

9:18 who disagreed with them over immigration.

9:20 I mean, that's so interesting to me because I feel

9:22 like my generation's view of morality is basically these um,

9:28 you know, farway conflicts in the Middle East.

9:30 It's things that aren't happening to our lives directly.

9:34 But we seem to have this thing where we will

9:37 treat how men behave as their sort of personal preference.

9:41 It's it's their subjective judgment on things.

9:45 So it's like a morally relative culture.

9:48 And so the only way we can judge a man

9:50 by his morality is is he posting about Palestine?

9:54 How does he feel about immigration?

9:56 Because you can't say this is right

9:57 and wrong because we're not as religious anymore.

9:59 We can't really say that there is morally good and morally bad.

10:03 And so we have to use these really easy kind of signifiers of morality.

10:08 M it's the film finger waving on social media

10:12 right of what can be easily identified what can be easily advertised.

10:17 I thought it was funny when I was listening to the podcast

10:19 uh that these women uh their activism is very important

10:23 to them and they were very frustrated at what to me

10:26 sounded like classically male typical status driving even in these circles.

10:30 So there are some men who are going

10:32 to identify this as an opportunity to woke fishing.

10:35 Woke fishing that's a nice term for it.

10:37 Um but they the women were complaining that the patterns of behavior

10:42 they were engaging in they were very interested in giving the speeches,

10:45 running for positions of leadership and I was like

10:49 it's all just a different type of status game.

10:51 Uh and the same frustrations with men

10:54 will exist in these domains as anywhere else.

10:57 Why do you think it is there's this sort

10:58 of lean to the left when it comes to women?

11:01 what's in a female disposition, predisposition that seems to have this sort

11:08 of progressive list at the moment being very compelling.

11:13 I think it might have to do with if if women evolved to evoke care

11:18 then you know and signal their vulnerability then

11:22 it would make sense from a niche construction

11:24 perspective that you should design a world

11:26 that gives aid to the vulnerable you know so

11:29 like it's in your interest to design

11:31 a social world that transfers resources to the vulnerable

11:35 because you're going to see yourself as vulnerable you

11:38 yeah and so it can be but I also think

11:40 it it functions twofold it's both beneficial for them but It's

11:43 also a signal of their kindness and other women really

11:46 dislike unkind women um or any signs of cruelty, competitiveness.

11:51 And so what I kind of wonder is like

11:54 is this all a a competition to display to other

11:57 women I am so pro-social and kind and then

12:00 maybe your romantic partner is a reflection of you.

12:02 So it's a stronger signal that I'm

12:04 committed to these causes if my romantic partner also is or if I don't have one

12:10 altogether because they're not good enough, you know?

12:12 also like

12:13 I'm willing to pay the honest signal of I'm foregoing a romantic

12:16 partner because there are none who meet my standards on this measures.

12:20 And with kindness, usually there's target specificity

12:24 that women usually prefer a partner who's really

12:26 kind to them and they're less so keen on a partner who's kind to others.

12:30 ex except if there's a massive status associated with someone who's

12:35 kind to others and that is in this arena in this political

12:38 arena signaling your kindness to others is the high status kind

12:41 of encouraging a bit of domestication as well of everyone around you.

12:45 It's interesting that a lot of men's behavior

12:48 a men's portrayal of emotions are actually quite antisocial.

12:52 You think about uh frustration, agitation, uh anger, rage, aggression.

12:58 Um they're very antisocial.

13:00 There's Joe Hudson's daughter was crying in the bath when she was nine

13:04 and it kept happening over and over and he came in and he said,

13:07 "You know, when you're crying, you sound like pretty agitated.

13:11 Are you sad or are you pissed off?" She said, "I'm pissed off." It's like,

13:14 "Well, if you're pissed off, why are you crying?" I said,

13:16 "Well, cuz when I cry, my sister comes and gives me a hug,

13:18 but when I'm angry, she runs away." M

13:21 the antisocial element of anger or of sort of more male typical emotions

13:28 at least women when they get angry sometimes they cry sometimes men cry too but

13:32 less so and this was a frustration that the women

13:35 had about the men in these activism circles they said

13:38 that their solutions to the problems of seeing a sad

13:42 story coming out of Palestine was to mobilize some logistic health

13:47 and the women said that they wanted an outpouring sit in the emotion.

13:51 Sit in the emotion.

13:52 One of them said, "The guy was trying to organize the protest for tomorrow,

13:55 but I just want you to sort of get on with the crying."

13:58 The business of crying, not the business of activism.

14:01 I think that explains why we have

14:03 a proclivity toward progressive politics because, as you said,

14:06 the social contagions that spread online and online,

14:10 you're encouraged to ruminate and overthink and dwell on these issues.

14:15 And so if your if your reaction to something is anger and a practical solution,

14:19 that's not going to spread as quickly online as all

14:21 of these girls coming together and saying, "Isn't it so bad?

14:23 Isn't it so awful?" And then one uping each other

14:26 is who is the most emotionally affected by the issue.

14:29 I said this before when I'm in a room

14:31 with uh guys that are big into conspiracy theories that there

14:34 is this sort of race to the bottom of the iceberg

14:36 for who can have the most insane conspiracy theory.

14:39 So it's like, "Oh, dude, you think that there's an ice wall about Antarctica?

14:42 Let me tell you about the woolly mammoths." Oh,

14:44 do you think there's woolly mammoth, dude?

14:46 Let me tell you about And it just keeps

14:48 on going and keeps on escalating in that way.

14:51 Weird.

14:52 Sorry.

14:53 Sorry.

14:54 __] Miss Andre in the corner.

14:56 Um, it's just I mean, you must have been around this same thing, too.

14:59 It it's it is a weird sort of like

15:01 entropy toward insanity or toward the most extreme position.

15:06 And uh this is kind of the same, but it's entropy toward empathy.

15:10 pushing as hard as possible into the mo I am I couldn't even

15:14 leave the house because of how distraught I was about this particular issue

15:18 and then intersectionality which is like oh you think

15:21 this issue is bad I've looked into it from this angle

15:23 and I know this you you're just black I'm

15:26 black and a lesbian I'm black and a lesbian

15:29 you're a feminist but you don't think about trans women

15:32 there's always another way you can make it more neurotic

15:35 and compete over that

15:37 what do you think you know you were saying previous ways that men were able

15:41 to add value and advertise their mate value to women has sort of fallen away.

15:45 What do you make of the Lux macking movement?

15:48 I kind of wonder if it's a reflection of so there's this general trend towards

15:53 um the gender egalitarian paradox where

15:56 as the world treats men and women more equally, the sexes diverge more.

16:01 So they do it on personality, they do it on

16:04 Yes.

16:05 men actually get taller and more um equal.

16:09 Like it's hard to say that's socially

16:10 constructed although people do say that they

16:12 say oh parents just feed the boys more and that's but the only reason

16:16 more egalitarian that it's but anyway but anyway

16:21 so like you see this pattern in both men and women men get more like risk-taking

16:25 women get more anxious and depressed so what I

16:28 think is going on is in this like

16:30 I think maybe gender egalitarianism is just like

16:32 a proxy for social competitiveness so as the world

16:35 gets more competitive our sex specific adaptations get activated.

16:39 And so if it's the case that, you know,

16:43 women are more prone to like anxiety or depression,

16:46 that's going to become amplified.

16:48 If men are more prone to risk-taking or maybe conspiracy theory,

16:53 um that might get activated.

16:54 And then where does look maxing come in?

16:56 Looks max I mean men and women have incentives

16:58 to both enhance their appearance to the extent that they could.

17:01 It's just through different techniques.

17:02 So men might have a drive for muscularity.

17:05 So, you know, it that would allow them

17:07 to be competitive in a really competitive world,

17:10 especially if the mating market is

17:12 becoming at first more short-term mating oriented.

17:15 If there's this first pass of kind of somewhat

17:18 short-term mating oriented relationship that becomes a long-term one,

17:22 then physical attractiveness,

17:24 which we know is massively overindexed in online

17:26 dating and kind of the media saturated world.

17:30 We even have data I know you spoke mackan about this about just uh

17:35 people are prioritizing physical attractiveness both men

17:37 and women are prioritizing it more and more.

17:39 Why do you think that is?

17:40 Uh because probably they're not able to add value in those other ways.

17:44 the the short-term mating kind of attributes become more enhanced and especially

17:49 if you have a the kind of the visually saturated world

17:53 online dating that's the first gateway to jump through then you

17:57 need to meet the minimum threshold on physical attractiveness so it makes

18:01 sense that men will increasingly engage in looks maxing now there's

18:05 some predictable effects that we might see there and I think we

18:08 are seeing them is that men tend to be a little

18:10 extreme with their status driving with any pursuit to get sexually sex

18:15 sharing and run away everywhere.

18:17 They're going to go to extreme lengths.

18:19 Um, and that's what we're seeing, right?

18:21 You're seeing like the looks max the high-profile looks maxer.

18:24 Now, by the way, I don't think looks maxing is that bad.

18:27 I think that micro dosing looks maxing is probably good for everyone.

18:31 Going to the gym is for a guy getting a haircut.

18:33 Mark Manson's models came out in what 2014?

18:36 Yeah.

18:37 Have you ever read that book?

18:38 Probably not.

18:38 So Mark Manson before he did the subtle art, he wrote Models.

18:41 And Models was like a sanitized pickup book.

18:44 It's the best way to put it.

18:45 And then Jeffrey Miller and Tucker Max did Mate.

18:48 So the twocar garage for guys.

18:50 It gets a bit old.

18:51 It's kind of showing my age weirdly cuz

18:52 they're both written in the teens or the tens.

18:54 Uh Mate by Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller.

18:57 And then Models by Mark Mson.

18:58 But in Models, it's like you should get a t-shirt that fits nicely.

19:03 Pick grays and navies and blacks.

19:06 And you should get a pair of jeans that don't hang off you.

19:08 You need a nice belt.

19:09 It's like the most basic.

19:10 But that's to a guy in 2010.

19:14 That's looks maxing.

19:15 Yeah.

19:15 And men can move the needle on their image pretty quick.

19:18 Like good haircut, get in good shape, and wear fitted little bit of stubble,

19:22 you're going to kill it.

19:23 Like that's a massive improvement.

19:24 But I think what happens is men given their tendency to go to extremes.

19:28 And from an error management perspective, they go too far with the muscularity

19:33 and things like that because and there's lots

19:36 of data to show that there's they go too far and it's not what women like.

19:40 They men reliably overestimate the muscularity that women want.

19:44 But I I think of that from an error management perspective as well

19:46 because simultaneously we do have lots of data that women do like muscularity.

19:51 So if you're going to make an error on one side,

19:54 would you rather be more muscular than less muscular?

19:57 Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

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21:11 What was that poll that you did about clavvicular?

21:16 Oh, yeah.

21:16 I asked whether and I chose I've really enjoyed

21:19 at x bringing in the pictures with the poles now.

21:23 It's really a a nice little addition to the polls, which I'm an afficionado of.

21:28 Well, you need to[ __] get off Blue Sky, dude.

21:30 Yeah, I'll get My main piece of advice to you is to leave the[ __] away

21:34 or do the polls on both and compare the results.

21:37 I have no following on Blue Sky.

21:39 It's just a You go on the dozens of people that are there,

21:42 they have no interest.

21:42 You go on there as a form of self harm.

21:44 Yes, I think you're right.

21:45 Yeah, I do try and reach like both sides of the academic kind of world,

21:50 but they hate you.

21:50 I know, but they actively hate you.

21:53 All that happens in our group chat is he posts like

21:56 he he basically comes in for kind of like emotional support.

22:00 Where his emotional support group chat show their emotions.

22:05 That's true.

22:05 That's not You're not showing your emotions.

22:06 You're showing how you're being repeatedly

22:08 beaten by the same social media platform.

22:10 It's insanity.

22:11 Why do you get attacked?

22:12 Cuz just cuz you're into evolutionary psychology.

22:15 Uh yeah, more kind of narcissism

22:17 with small differences about evolutionary psychology, I'd say.

22:20 Yeah, it's a But anyway, the polls on X are my uh my fund.

22:25 I love them.

22:25 Yeah.

22:26 Uh the whole Ali M situation went viral for that.

22:29 But one I've done recently, I posted a picture of Clvicular,

22:33 who's the most high-profile looks maxer, and I think a pretty handsome guy.

22:36 He's one of the only Looks maxers that I think looks pretty good,

22:40 but I think he looked pretty good to begin with.

22:42 So, I think he was going to be handsome anyway.

22:44 But anyway, he's the most high-profile Looksmaxer.

22:47 And I posted a picture of I can't even think of his name,

22:50 but he's a popular K-pop singer that's a bit of a heartthrob in that arena.

22:56 And reliable sex difference.

22:58 The men thought Clavvicular was more handsome.

23:00 The women thought that the K-pop star was more handsome.

23:03 So there is a somewhat of a mismatch in cross-

23:06 sex mind readading happening between men and women around attractiveness.

23:10 What do you think about the guys that say,

23:11 "Well, that's just stated versus revealed preferences.

23:14 women actually do want the gigachad face.

23:18 They they don't want to go with that soy way

23:19 that's just what they think is popular to say online.

23:21 I think it's massive cope for people to respond to all my polls with, oh,

23:26 you can't trust anything women say that they just lie all the time.

23:30 Like that must be such a a comforting world to live in to be like, oh,

23:33 I don't have to worry about any of their criticism

23:35 because it's just lies and I know how they really behave.

23:39 This is often said by just basement dwellers who never

23:41 people who don't go off the internet.

23:43 Yeah, exactly.

23:44 So, I would say that the K-pop star does pretty okay with women,

23:49 I imagine, if he is so inclined.

23:51 I think he would be fine.

23:53 Um, but uh but yeah,

23:54 the key point is I think men overdo it with their looks maxing.

23:58 They could hit a sweet spot because the signaling effect that they're

24:02 giving by being too into looks maxing is kind of negative to women.

24:06 I'd love your opinion on this, but I think

24:08 it signals that they're active in the mating market.

24:11 They're looking for other mates.

24:12 They're selfobsessed.

24:14 They're going to be not willing to have

24:16 a takeaway on the couch with me on a weekend.

24:18 It's the dad of four who's still in shape somehow.

24:21 Yeah.

24:21 It's a bit sus, isn't it?

24:22 And even it it is a a sign of infidelity.

24:25 It predicts infidelity if a guy is suddenly getting back in shape.

24:28 Yep.

24:28 It's like he's trying to re-engage with the mating market.

24:31 Ladies, I also think it's feminine coded.

24:34 And so it's it looks to me like the male

24:38 symptom of social media addiction where you see girls editing themselves,

24:42 getting cosmetic surgery, obsessing over aging.

24:44 Have you seen these girls when they go to bed

24:45 and they have like a sheet mask on and then I've seen the red light thing.

24:50 Yeah.

24:50 But they have like a hundred different things going on.

24:52 There's a a post maybe in Slate or Wired

24:56 about this girl who had a 100 step beauty regime.

25:00 I spray the magnesium on my face before I think they she

25:03 was sitting under a lamp that's meant to keep bird eggs alive.

25:08 She was like putting her face under a lamp like a[ __]

25:10 heater that you would put food on a hot plate under.

25:13 Yeah.

25:13 But I think if you see that,

25:15 you'd think she's very neurotic and maybe not a good

25:18 partner if she's like obsessed with how she's coming,

25:21 but because the baseline for men is supposed to be lower.

25:23 Even if a man doesn't have a hundred step thing, if he's got a 10step thing,

25:27 that's still quite a lot.

25:28 Yeah.

25:28 And it just looks like, as we were saying before,

25:32 it looks like teenage girls on Instagram,

25:34 but then applied to is how young men are reacting to the incentives.

25:38 Like you said,

25:39 on dating profiles, they've got to advertise themselves like a product.

25:42 But I think it's also just social media in general

25:44 because when you like match with someone on a dating app,

25:48 the first thing you do is look up their Instagram.

25:50 And that Instagram has to show,

25:53 like we were just saying, that they're a good person.

25:55 You've got to see evidence of that.

25:56 You've got to see all the holidays that they've been on.

25:58 Are they social?

25:59 And all of these things have to be marketed immediately.

26:03 And so I think that is where a lot of the looks Maxine comes from.

26:06 So I was at dinner with, you know, Signal from X trends all the time.

26:11 __] sick guy.

26:12 I went to dinner with him last night.

26:13 I didn't know who he was.

26:13 Just this like a non I could have been abducted last night.

26:16 We turned out to be really interesting guy and now we're friends.

26:19 And I was going through my little bit

26:21 about what I think is happening with Luxmaxing,

26:24 that uh guys have a failure of cross-

26:27 sex mind reading about what other women find attractive.

26:30 And what they're doing is they're basically

26:31 coding for other men's formidability and respect, not for female attractiveness.

26:36 Cuz there's evidence that suggests that women prefer a slightly feminized face,

26:40 a neutral or a slightly feminized face with a masculineized body.

26:44 But when you look at some of the lengths

26:45 that the guys are going to with the jaw surgery, it's going to get comical.

26:49 hasn't yet for clvicular, but I think he's having jaw surgery today.

26:52 Oh, no.

26:53 So, like this week overdose two days ago.

26:57 Yeah, that's Well, maybe that might be you could just build

26:59 the overdose into the jaw surgery and just steam straight through it.

27:02 I don't know.

27:03 Um, but after a while,

27:04 the guys are kind of overshooting overshooting the androgyny

27:08 like the really intense cheekbones and the huge jaw.

27:12 And again, you can say, well, women don't really know what they want.

27:14 They do want the giga chat.

27:15 I something tells me not across all of the different studies

27:18 that have been done about what is preferred by men and women.

27:20 You know what would be an awesome thing to do?

27:22 You should do this.

27:23 One of your polls should be take clvicular face now.

27:27 Run it through coves take it to m or whatever.

27:30 Get them to feminize it a little.

27:32 Get them to masculineize it a little.

27:33 Get them to masculineize it more and say

27:35 of these and don't say which one is his,

27:39 right?

27:38 Because that would kind of blind it a little.

27:40 Anyway, so I'm explaining this.

27:42 like guys because they maybe haven't been

27:44 around women and because they're not women, they're just what would women want?

27:48 Well, they would want what I would

27:49 think is attractive or respect worthy or whatever.

27:53 So, I'm just going to like optimize for the androgyny thing.

27:55 And to men, the ultimate reward is short-term mating success.

27:59 They hate being told, "Oh, you're the guy I would marry, but

28:02 not the guy I would have a one night stand with." That was a massive

28:05 bingo[ __] bingo, dude.

28:07 Error.

28:07 So, men are optimizing.

28:08 Well, if women like Chad at all, they want him for short term.

28:12 Yeah.

28:13 And that's true.

28:14 There's some evidence that women prefer

28:16 masculineized just specifically in the short-term context.

28:19 So given that that's the ultimate reward for men,

28:21 they're thinking I can pursue that optimized for.

28:24 So signals thing his point was he thinks because all

28:29 women are basically scrutinized in group chats and living on Instagram.

28:35 And if you go on a date with someone,

28:37 all of the people in the group chat are going to ask, "What is Instagram?" Yeah.

28:41 Guys are optimizing to be as presentable as possible.

28:45 So the self beautifification that men are going

28:47 through right now is basically them future proofing themselves

28:52 from the girl they're going to go

28:54 on a date with group chat scrutiny of his Instagram.

28:58 Yeah.

28:58 Yeah.

28:59 Does that make sense?

29:00 Yeah.

29:00 Yeah.

29:00 I think that is true.

29:01 Well, it's like the app, you know, the tea app.

29:04 Yes.

29:04 the same guy is that but you can like literally rate and review

29:07 men based off pictures of themselves and and like

29:10 rate them a green flag and a red flag but that is happening in group chats and I

29:13 think a lot of young men think even

29:16 before they've met someone all of their memories have

29:19 to be marketed in a way for a future

29:21 partner who's going to be scrolling through their life.

29:23 So it's like

29:25 yeah when you go on holiday capturing images not for the memories

29:28 but for this future woman who's going to be scrolling through your profiles.

29:32 M and that's a nice segue into the mate copying of Nikki Glazer.

29:36 You heard about that?

29:37 What was this?

29:38 The call her daddy thing.

29:39 Yeah.

29:39 What what happened?

29:40 So she had an interview where she kind of revealed

29:42 her I wouldn't describe it as a cook fetish,

29:45 but she kind of told this is it not called monopoly?

29:48 It's monopoly.

29:49 What?

29:49 Okay.

29:49 That's a cool term, but monopoly.

29:51 Yeah.

29:52 So she basically described that she enjoys

29:54 seeing her male partner[ __] other women.

29:57 Now she's not into being with other men.

29:59 And this is this very kind of salacious story.

30:02 And I think there's a number of things happening there is there

30:06 there is some evidence of mate copying that's much stronger in women.

30:10 The social proofing of other women's opinion of a guy pre-selection

30:13 is way more important to them than it is for men.

30:16 So let's say I was going out with someone that I was

30:18 head over heels with in love with and you said, "Oh, no,

30:21 she's not that beautiful." It would have less of an effect on me

30:24 than it would for a girl having all her girlfriends to say,

30:27 "No, he's not the one." It is is trash.

30:30 And it makes sense because women's mate value is more observable.

30:33 Like so you you can only do so much.

30:35 You know, you have eyes.

30:37 It's like I don't care.

30:38 I can see.

30:39 Yeah.

30:39 Whereas men's mate value is less observable.

30:42 So you have to use these indirect cues um like

30:46 goes through into a club and he's surrounded by four women.

30:50 Some women are looking at that saying there must be something.

30:52 Or if he's doesn't look that good, but he has a really beautiful partner.

30:56 They're thinking there must be something.

30:58 He must have something going for him, right?

31:00 Yeah.

31:00 There's a I was talking to Coleman Hughes and he was telling me

31:04 about when he first started dating his fiance maybe in New York somewhere

31:09 and he'd be sat down at a table and some guy that read

31:11 his book or listen to his podcast or whatever would come over and be like,

31:14 "Colleman, I just just wanted to let you know

31:15 I'm such a huge fan of the podcast or whatever.

31:17 Sorry.

31:17 Sorry for interrupting you and I hope you have a wonderful night or whatever.

31:19 Would you mind taking a photo?" And Coleman was like,

31:22 "There is no better wingman.

31:24 I've just recruited some guy that I don't know that is a fan

31:28 of my work and I'm really glad to have as a fan, but I'm

31:31 even more glad that you spotted me in this steakhouse with this girl.

31:35 And yeah, there is this that's why I think the black pill ruling of LMS.

31:40 Yes.

31:41 L if you get the if you don't hit the minimum level of looks,

31:47 you are going to be at a serious

31:48 disadvantage that maybe doesn't get to enter the party.

31:51 But beyond that, I don't think it's M next.

31:53 I think status counts for so[ __] much.

31:58 Yeah.

31:57 Like it's just it's able to wipe away cuz we How long have we had money?

32:02 How long have we had status?

32:04 Yeah.

32:04 Absolutely.

32:04 And especially when too much physical attractiveness

32:07 can actually be off-putting to a female partner.

32:09 They're like, "Oh, I don't want to have to mate guard him that hard

32:12 and he's too obsessed with himself and too

32:14 many women like him." It can be offputting.

32:16 Is that right?

32:17 I don't speak.

32:18 I get stressed out about men who are too attractive or too extroverted.

32:22 don't trust it.

32:24 Fine.

32:24 I just know they'll have so many

32:25 alternatives and they're more likely to encounter them.

32:28 It's like it's a numbers game.

32:30 Even if you're really desirable at some point, I mean, they people habituate.

32:35 So, it's just Yeah.

32:37 It's risky.

32:38 There's a a relationship between infidelity and extraversion, right?

32:43 Yeah.

32:43 And I kind of wonder if that might play a role into like why women show

32:47 some of these traits is like there was

32:49 an incentive from men to not be super extroverted,

32:53 high confidence because if that's a cue of sexual

32:59 well no for women if women are too

33:00 extroverted other men might infer she will cheat.

33:04 And if men have the concern over paternity certainty and cuckoldry,

33:08 then they might have preferred women who

33:10 were slightly more insecure, more humble, right?

33:13 And so women might have encountered mate preferences

33:17 that selected them to be slightly more insecure.

33:21 It's it's less threatening from a mating perspective.

33:23 Yeah.

33:24 It is interesting though because I feel like at the moment

33:27 my generation of young women are on average very insecure

33:32 about how they look and they're very anxious but they also

33:34 seem to be louder than ever in terms of I'm empowered,

33:37 I'm strong, I'm independent.

33:39 And so you have women who are really trying to portray

33:42 that they never get jealous and they never get insecure.

33:44 But then they seem to have this deep risk aversion and anxiety.

33:47 And I don't know where that comes from.

33:49 There are some studies where women who are really agentic and assertive,

33:54 if they're negotiating, they experience backlash where people don't like them,

33:57 but not if they're ne uh negotiating on behalf of someone else.

34:01 So, I kind of wonder if it's like the only way women are allowed to be

34:04 like tough and agentic is to be an advocate

34:06 for some moral cause for someone more vulnerable.

34:09 It's like the only way you're allowed to be

34:11 because it seems like that's the domain where you

34:13 see women all of a sudden be very hostile

34:16 when you don't get that hostility in any other context.

34:19 And so maybe that's the one domain where people allow it.

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35:29 That's join.woop.com/modernwisdom.

35:33 How do you think about the hidden nature

35:36 of female intraexual competition with the need for assertiveness,

35:39 independence, freedom, modern world stuff?

35:41 Because I would think I'm I'm surprised by how well women

35:46 have acclimatized to the sort

35:49 of modern career fast-paced capitalist society thing.

35:52 I think they're really not only are they outperforming,

35:54 I think they're outperforming what my expectations would have been of that.

35:57 I don't know whether that makes sense,

35:59 but given what you know about women's disposition,

36:03 predisposition, selection pressures,

36:06 is it surprising that they're doing as well as they are?

36:09 I don't know.

36:09 I think in a lot of ways like the modern

36:10 world is more conducive to women's traits than men's.

36:13 Like we're not allowed to be aggressive.

36:15 The only way they can be aggressive is very subtly, which women are experts at.

36:21 Yeah.

36:21 And and so and now in a workforce,

36:24 you probably are rewarded for being the egalitarian boss

36:27 or the one who checks in with their employees.

36:29 So like over time as we move to like a prestige-based competition system,

36:33 that's more conducive to a lot

36:34 of women's traits than a dominance-based competition system.

36:38 But I see your point that at the same time you

36:39 also have to be like agentic and assertive in the workforce.

36:43 So it'd be really interesting to see how women navigate that in practice.

36:47 But there are some data showing that more

36:49 agentic women are particularly disliked by their female colleagues.

36:53 And so I think that might lead to um women's using these egalitarian strategies

36:58 as a way of like simultaneously being competitive

37:01 and assertive while looking kind along the way.

37:04 And I think you could say for good reason the modern world

37:07 or workplace is kind of designed to neuter men's most aggressive tendencies.

37:13 You can't exactly get into a physical

37:15 fight to settle something anymore in the workplace.

37:17 It's just not acceptable.

37:19 But you can spread gossip and that is kind of rewarded.

37:22 So in that style of aggression, women will far succeed.

37:26 Have you ever done any uh bless his heart stuff?

37:30 Men do gossip too, right?

37:31 It's not like just a female thing.

37:33 Yeah, we try.

37:34 So we manipulated whether a man said it about another man or a woman said it.

37:38 Can you do you're going to have to just

37:40 give a 30,000 foot view of the blesser heart effect.

37:42 Okay.

37:42 Basically, if women phrase their negative gossip with concern,

37:45 people didn't register it as gossip.

37:47 They were more likely to believe um that she was a good person.

37:51 And so, it seems like you get these benefits by believing

37:54 you're concerned about your gossip target or maybe doing it consciously.

37:58 Um and then there was a different study where we did look

38:01 at men and women where we looked at women's use of like complaining,

38:06 venting about their friends,

38:07 like complaining about how their friends treated them.

38:09 like, "Oh, you know, Susie always says these weird comments to me and they hurt

38:14 my feelings." If men did that, other people didn't care as much.

38:17 So, it just doesn't work.

38:21 In terms Yeah, it is.

38:23 It is.

38:24 It's It's non-agentic in a way, right?

38:26 Yeah.

38:26 They don't have the same sympathy in terms of bless his heart.

38:30 Maybe it would work for men because you're just seeming compassionate.

38:34 I I don't know if we did.

38:35 It would be interesting.

38:36 It has.

38:36 There's a a substack called men are good.

38:38 Have you come across those?

38:40 It's like it's sounds controversial.

38:43 It's really well it's really well written.

38:44 I mean, look, it's it gets a bit men's

38:46 rightsy um but some of the insights are[ __] money.

38:49 Like really really good.

38:50 Tom Golden, I think he's called.

38:52 Good name rings a bell.

38:54 Really good substack.

38:55 Anyway, he had this one bit where he talked about how

38:59 men are told that they should open up more about their emotions,

39:03 but every single incentive pretty much pushes against it,

39:06 including that of other men.

39:08 That men don't like to see men who are opening up

39:11 about their emotions as a kind of ick and an aversion.

39:14 Like, you look like an unreliable ally.

39:16 You're not maybe thinking this consciously,

39:18 but two things are true that men are trying to do at the moment.

39:22 It's like men's mental health is a really big issue, but okay,

39:25 if you see a guy that's crying on social media,

39:28 will you give him sympathy or will you laugh at him?

39:31 Almost every guy is going to go, "Suck, soy boy, you're an idiot.

39:34 This is lame.

39:35 You need to man up." It's like, okay, so which is it?

39:38 And you we spent 2 hours talking about

39:41 some of the paradoxes of sort of modern female

39:43 culture and capitalism versus independence and freedom versus

39:47 motherhood and just a moment and all this stuff.

39:49 But I think it's important to call out the ones

39:50 where guys you you do not get to say men need to open up more.

39:56 Men need we need to have more services for mental health.

39:59 Let's say that men don't believe that because a lot

40:00 of men might say men don't need to open up more.

40:02 They need to man up more.

40:03 And you go, okay, do you think

40:04 that suicide prevention is something that's important?

40:06 Okay.

40:07 How do you respond when you see a guy

40:08 that's incredibly depressed on social media and really struggling?

40:11 Because what is it?

40:12 95% of men that took their own lives had sought mental

40:16 health advice from the exact services that they're supposed to in advance.

40:19 Presumably, if you're remotely online and young,

40:23 you've maybe tweeted or posted something that's a bit sad at some point.

40:27 Have you checked in on your bro?

40:29 Like if you were at dinner and one of your friends started crying,

40:32 how comfortable would you be at sitting in that?

40:34 Especially if you're British,

40:35 it's like it's just not it's not a conducive environment.

40:39 So men want room for their struggles to be acknowledged,

40:44 but when other men are struggling, they don't acknowledge their struggles.

40:49 Does that make sense?

40:50 This is where I think the insight from our ancestral history

40:53 and the selection pressure is men and women faced is so informative.

40:57 William, you[ __] put a billboard above

40:58 your head that says evolutionary psychology is real.

41:00 It's coming, right?

41:01 Okay.

41:02 But no, the specific pressure.

41:03 So men have this deep ancestral history of coalitional value to each other.

41:08 So to express vulnerability is a massive liability

41:11 and risk to you and to your allies.

41:14 Uh so the message that I think struggling men that would be more effective than

41:19 oh you can come cry on my shoulder is we need you actually and you're valuable,

41:24 you're useful and we need you to be stronger.

41:27 So whatever you need to do to get back on your feet and I know you can do it.

41:30 You just got to rally like that's we've all kind of been there.

41:33 That I feel will resonate

41:35 much more compelling.

41:36 Do you know what's a good example of that?

41:38 um New York divorce lawyer uh was on the show a couple of couple of months ago,

41:45 James.

41:44 Yeah, James Sexton.

41:45 And he was he was saying to me,

41:46 he told me this story about uh he was in a relationship

41:49 with uh two different women uh one after the other.

41:54 And as a divorce lawyer, that would be a high risk strategy.

41:57 Uh yeah,[ __] no.

41:58 It would have been safe.

41:59 Um so both women didn't like the fact that on a weekend he doesn't shave.

42:05 He has to shave every single day before he

42:07 goes into court because he doesn't want to look stubbly.

42:09 And then on a Friday or Thursday night,

42:11 he would shave and he wouldn't shave again maybe until a Monday morning.

42:15 So by the time it gets to a Sunday, he was real scratchy.

42:17 And the first relationship he was in, the woman said,

42:21 "I it irritates me so much.

42:23 It makes my face red.

42:24 It makes me break out in in in spots,

42:26 and I I really don't like it, and I wish that you'd shave.

42:28 Like, it's it doesn't make me feel very good." That relationship didn't work.

42:32 Next woman had the exact same preference, but instead she said, "You know what?

42:35 It is so sexy when I go clean shaven.

42:38 I think that it's just the hottest thing in the world." Immediate.

42:42 I'm doing it right now.

42:43 I love to have my hair buzz cut, short, the fade for about 15 years.

42:47 I'm doing the bro flow now cuz my misses just is insistent upon it.

42:51 So,

42:51 but she's in she hasn't said I hate you with short hair.

42:53 She said you're hot.

42:54 Not quite.

42:56 No, she said that you're hotter with long hair.

42:57 Yeah, she prefers the long hair.

42:59 Yeah, but it prefers the long hair as opposed to doesn't like the short hair.

43:03 You know what I mean?

43:04 Oh, okay.

43:04 Well,[ __] I feel like Do we need to do an intervention?

43:06 She's quite a doineering woman.

43:08 Yeah.

43:08 Yeah.

43:09 I've met her.

43:09 She wears a lot of leather.

43:10 Um Yeah.

43:12 But I like that about like I I think men

43:14 do respond to encouragement and I love that about male friendships.

43:18 Like if you ever see men in the gym,

43:19 they'll be honestly giving each other feedback

43:21 on how to improve whereas women will

43:23 be like not commenting on each other's

43:25 form and just chitchatting about their lives.

43:28 And so it seems like men really want each other

43:30 to be better because if that's your like brother in arms,

43:33 you need him to be the best soldier he can be.

43:36 And so it's so funny because if you listen to like maledirected podcasts,

43:40 they're always like how to maximize productivity.

43:43 And you know, and then female directed podcasts are like the exact opposite.

43:48 They're like, "You're a queen no matter what you do.

43:50 If he doesn't recognize it,

43:52 leave him." And so then it makes me wonder

43:54 like if we're receiving this feedback from our samesex peers,

43:58 what is that going to do to men and women over time?

44:00 Men are going to go into looks maxing, finance maxing,

44:04 and then women will just go into like wallowing.

44:06 Like it Yeah.

44:07 I feel like women don't wouldn't call each other out either.

44:10 So, if like a young woman posted on social

44:12 media that she had this horrible experience with a man

44:15 and it was kind of unfair toward the man, the comments are all going to be

44:18 in support of her because if she's say crying or she's upset on camera,

44:22 we're all going to co-uminate together and then also confirm her

44:27 maybe neurotic assumptions of what's happened.

44:29 Whereas, I feel like with men,

44:31 as you said, it doesn't engender the same empathy.

44:34 And so, maybe they would have a load of comments.

44:36 Men prefer the tough love.

44:37 So, there's this new trend I've got where I

44:39 retweet kind of these random masculinity behaviors as tonic masculinity.

44:44 And one is this guy, he was morbidly obese and he was going to die.

44:48 Like, he was really that that severe.

44:50 And his friend text him every day, you fat[ __] pig.

44:58 And the guy loves this friend.

45:00 He's like, he saved my life.

45:01 He's literally like just doing that, checking

45:03 in with me every day, saying, you fat

45:05 checking in with me.

45:05 Well, like it worked.

45:06 Like he said, "If he cares enough about me, he needs me to be better."

45:11 Yeah.

45:10 Like that was it.

45:11 It was whereas women would be like, "You look better than ever."

45:15 Queen, what does it engender for women

45:18 as you look at sort of the next generation?

45:20 The best thing about this, you know, Critical Drinker,

45:24 he had this[ __] awesome take.

45:25 So he compares the first Mulan movie, which was the Disney animated one,

45:31 to the live action one that came out maybe five, six, seven years ago.

45:34 And in the first one, uh,

45:36 the protagonist is smaller and weaker than all of the men,

45:39 and she needs to disguise herself,

45:41 and she has to use like feminine guile and agility and speed,

45:44 and she has to work even harder.

45:46 And eventually, after doing that, she's able to become the hero,

45:49 and it's kind of a female story of self-empowerment through

45:53 determination and agency and working hard and stuff like that.

45:57 Roll the clock forward by two decades.

45:59 The protagonist is immediately better than all of the men.

46:03 She doesn't need to work at it.

46:04 The only the only restriction that she encounters is

46:07 the fact that the world doesn't believe in her enough.

46:11 She's a Mary Sue.

46:12 Yeah.

46:12 She's got some like what's that?

46:13 A Mary Sue.

46:14 Some character who's just already perfect.

46:16 Okay.

46:17 Yeah, that's like um uh Wonder Woman one.

46:19 No, not Wonder Woman.

46:21 The Skywalker film.

46:22 No.

46:22 What's the one in Avengers that can like fix everything?

46:25 Wonder Woman.

46:26 No, not Wonder Woman.

46:27 Uh Miss Marvel or Captain Marvel.

46:29 Captain Marvel.

46:29 Captain Marvel is like she's like off saving other[ __] in the universe.

46:33 You're like, "Hey, hey, hey, Thanos just killed 50% of everyone.

46:35 It's like no, there's other problems elsewhere." And she's

46:37 like the most powerful of all the superheroes.

46:40 Anyway, second Mulan movie.

46:42 She's got this magical estrogen chi, whatever it is.

46:45 She's got like some super feminine thing that she's

46:46 able to just use and she's immediately better.

46:49 And you go, well, when I think about if I have a daughter,

46:52 which I I hope to, what role model do I want her to have?

46:58 Do I want her to believe the worldview

47:00 that the only time that you encounter obstacles

47:03 is because of something systemic that's out

47:05 of your control because the world doesn't believe in you?

47:08 Or do I want her to believe that you can

47:10 overcome stuff just the same way that the men can?

47:14 And that if you do encounter obstacles, that's part of the course.

47:17 There's no entitlement.

47:18 There's no This isn't something that's wrong.

47:20 The world is filled with problems.

47:22 You just need to work out a way to solve them.

47:25 And you can.

47:26 Not that they're a bug, but they're a feature.

47:28 And it's also quite sexist because they lionize the male default.

47:32 So if a woman shows male typical behaviors, that's how she shows she's kick ass.

47:36 If she shows feminine gile, like you said, that's not the same.

47:40 They don't want to promote those gender typical behaviors.

47:42 I came up with a name for it.

47:43 The soft bigotry of male expectations.

47:46 And you remember when there was that hunter gatherer paper that came out,

47:49 example of it.

47:50 Can you explain what that was when it was reanalyzed and then reanalyzed again?

47:53 So they tried to present data to show that oh the man

47:56 the hunter uh is a basically a myth and that loads of cultures

48:00 have women as the hunters in the society but they were really coding

48:04 their data where any society that a woman did any hunting at all.

48:10 A rabbit one rabbit killed that is coded as woman was

48:14 hunting as well even if men were by and large responsible for

48:18 364 days of the year they were doing it.

48:20 Yeah.

48:20 And what's really annoying is there's actually a really

48:22 cool story if you look at our huntergatherer past

48:24 is that women contributed as many if not more

48:27 calories uh to the society uh through their gathering.

48:31 And that's cool, but it's sex specific, but it's it's just as good.

48:35 It you don't have to be just the same as the men

48:38 to be as good or good in a different way.

48:41 It's like it's it's actually really sexist because

48:44 if they think you have to be like it's

48:45 a kind of it's a[ __] massive amount of bigotry

48:48 that devalues what would have been whatever femalecoded behavior.

48:52 And this is the line from Andrew Schultz where

48:54 his wife who used to work at Google had

48:57 their first kid and would then be walking around

48:59 the supermarket near where her excomployees and colleagues would walk around.

49:03 They said, "What are you doing now?" And she'd say,

49:05 "I'm just a mom." And he said it was the just

49:08 that killed him.

49:09 that there's something about doing something that was

49:12 inherently female coded that was seen as less valuable.

49:16 You go, how is this not sexist?

49:19 Is this not[ __] sexist to say the thing that came to you naturally,

49:23 the gathering as opposed to the hunting?

49:25 Well, women can do it just as much as men and maybe sometimes even better.

49:29 And you go, well, yeah,

49:30 but that implicitly devalues the thing that they were doing more of.

49:36 It's like it's very I know.

49:37 It feels like bigotry to me.

49:38 Is there something going on whereby uh like feminine guile is meant to be kept

49:44 mysterious and you don't want it said out

49:45 loud the way you do things or something?

49:48 I don't know.

49:48 I just think like maybe it's like an assumption that like women are a block,

49:53 a monolith when in reality women have competing interests.

49:57 So like feminism isn't operating on behalf of all women.

50:02 It's really good for hyperagentic women.

50:05 it might be penalizing the women who are more female typical,

50:08 who are more nurturing, who want these things.

50:11 And so it's kind of tragic that like as a result of championing these women,

50:15 we have to also like denigrate these women.

50:18 And it it seems like like if you really wanted to be pro- women,

50:22 support them in whichever direction they take.

50:25 For a community that's trying to be very inclusive, it's highly exclusionary.

50:30 Yes.

50:30 Yes.

50:31 to critique some women for wanting like love and babies.

50:34 It's like that's beautiful.

50:36 Support all types.

50:38 Yeah.

50:38 I also think it's because we we have a somewhat therapeutic culture now where

50:43 the ultimate goal for women is like self-actualization.

50:45 So, it's becoming their authentic selves.

50:48 And that's why you see these story lines in movies where

50:52 the woman is basically trying to you find her authentic self and then

50:57 everyone else is a distraction and an obstacle.

50:59 The men then become obstacles.

51:00 And this goes back to the beginning

51:02 of the conversation with marriage and women having a negative

51:06 view of men and the risk aversion because

51:09 they will be an obstacle to their self-actualization.

51:11 And that is now the ultimate mission.

51:13 There's a a moment in the second Doctor Strange Marvel movie

51:19 where a zombie version of Benedict Cumberbatch goes back

51:22 in time to tell the female protagonist who is

51:26 a Latina daughter of a lesbian couple called America

51:32 Chavez that she just needs to believe in herself.

51:36 like that's where she's the most power she was born as the most powerful person

51:41 in the world and she's got this thing

51:43 but she just didn't believe in herself enough.

51:44 And that kind of goes to the podcast thing which again like it just

51:47 to me it feels really patronizing to tell women that you're perfect as you are.

51:53 Like you are immutable and the world is mutable.

51:57 You don't need to change yourself.

51:58 The world should bend around you.

51:59 Whereas male podcasts say the world doesn't give a single[ __] about you.

52:03 You need to do everything you can to try and counteract this entropy locally.

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53:26 On the topic of sexism, Freya,

53:28 I'd like to put you on the spot a bit at the moment.

53:31 I would include you.

53:34 Well, we'll see.

53:35 I want to ask you a few questions where

53:37 you've been described as the voice of Gen Z women.

53:40 Uh, so this will be very interesting uh to get your opinion on these questions.

53:43 So, I'm going to read them out to you.

53:44 So, Tanya, I already know what you

53:46 think because we're we're working on this together.

53:48 So is it closer to sexist towards men or women to believe the following things?

53:54 One, women have a superior moral sensibility.

53:59 Uh sexist toward men, I would say.

54:02 Okay.

54:02 Women have a quality of purity few men possess.

54:07 Sexist toward men.

54:08 Women have a more refined sense of culture and taste.

54:12 Sexist toward men.

54:13 Okay, full house.

54:13 Sexist towards men.

54:15 Next set of questions.

54:16 We're almost done.

54:18 Do you think it would be a good or bad thing

54:19 if men mostly agreed with the sentiment of the following statements?

54:23 A good woman should be set on a pedestal.

54:29 Uh, good.

54:30 Okay.

54:31 Women should be cherished and protected by men.

54:35 Good.

54:35 Men should sacrifice to provide for women.

54:39 Good.

54:38 In a disaster, women need to be rescued first.

54:42 Good.

54:42 Every man ought to have a woman he adores.

54:46 Good.

54:45 Men are complete without women.

54:48 Are men are incomplete without women?

54:50 Yeah.

54:50 Good.

54:51 Despite accomplishment, men are incomplete without women.

54:54 So, same thing.

54:55 Yeah.

54:55 Good.

54:56 And people are often happy without romance.

55:02 Bad.

55:01 Okay.

55:02 You are a massive benevolent sexist.

55:05 Those are the items on the benevolent sexism scale.

55:09 And I pled all my followers on this and they like you

55:13 believed that the statements were either sexist to men or a good thing.

55:18 Right?

55:18 So it it kind of begs this question of what is the scale measuring.

55:22 So this is an idea that Tanya and I and some other

55:24 colleagues are working on uh that we call the mismeasurement of men.

55:29 Now that title is strategic because there was

55:32 a famous book called the mismeasure of men

55:34 by uh Steven Jay Gould who was very critical

55:36 of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary approaches to human behavior

55:40 and we think it's the precise opposite that's happening

55:43 in scale development in psychology now that a a lack

55:47 of insight into evolutionary psychology and just science

55:50 in general is uh creating these crazy problematic scales.

55:55 So you've got scales that are measuring toxic masculinity, benevolent sexism,

56:00 and uh male sexual entitlement that are actually problematic in so many ways,

56:06 but one of the ways is they're measuring awareness of facts about the world.

56:11 So one of the items is women are often attracted

56:14 to muscularity and dominance and that's taken as evidence of toxic masculinity.

56:20 And there's no attitude added on to that inference.

56:24 It's just do you know that that's sometimes

56:26 the case and it is sometimes the case.

56:28 Um these scales they're like the what I call the Kathy Newman of scales.

56:34 They require an extra inference about

56:38 the implication of agreeing with the statement.

56:40 So you believe that women deserve to be protected.

56:43 Oh, so what you're really saying is they should have

56:46 their autonomy limited to keep them safe for their own good.

56:49 And it's like that's not measured.

56:51 So it's a total mismeasurement of men.

56:53 And uh it also pathizes women's own preferences.

56:56 So women have strong preferences for protection and provisioning yet

57:00 and men care about being seen as attractive to women.

57:03 So they're going to prioritize that over being seen as sexist.

57:06 So it's uh a huge problem we see.

57:09 But yeah, sorry to tell you if you're a man.

57:10 So is that the same as internal internalized misogyny?

57:13 Same concept.

57:14 Not quite the same.

57:15 So benevolent sexism uh is one end

57:17 of the scale of what's called ambivalent sexism.

57:20 On one end of the scale, they have hostile sexism,

57:22 which is like direct antipathy towards uh women to be like, "Oh,

57:27 women are trash." Basically, like really direct and obvious,

57:29 whereas benevolent sexism is this more

57:31 subtle putting kind of infantilizing of women.

57:35 And um which I believe could be a real concept,

57:38 but when I looked under the hood at these items that were used to measure it,

57:42 I couldn't believe it.

57:43 I just thought that they're absurd.

57:46 Well, that reminds me of the New Statesman piece because

57:49 the New Statesman piece basically concluded that liberal women are

57:52 unhappy and then everybody was basically we spoke about this.

57:56 They were saying that this is no one's

57:58 spoken about what's going on with liberal women.

58:00 This is new.

58:01 Like the new statesmen are the first to have the balls to say.

58:08 No, but the interesting thing is is that I sort

58:12 of get viewed with the internal misogyny thing because I will say

58:15 the same thing which is liberal women are unhappy.

58:18 But I'll also say it's because they have these unmet needs.

58:21 It's because they want to belong.

58:22 And it's it's like a compassionate worldview

58:24 that I think women want to be protected.

58:27 They want to feel like they're safe and stable and all of these things.

58:31 But then I get the that's a sexist point of view.

58:34 But the new statesman can present it and say young women

58:37 are unhappy and draw different conclusions and then it's not a

58:40 sexually your female privilege has been revoked.

58:44 Yeah.

58:44 You don't have the female privilege that you once thought you did

58:46 because I'm white or because you're white because you're right of center.

58:50 Yeah.

58:52 Yeah.

58:50 Yeah.

58:50 I'm I then don't get treated as a woman at all.

58:54 No.

58:55 You're an honorary man.

58:56 Congratulations.

58:57 It's three on one.

58:58 So, so in the literature there's this kind of confusion about oh

59:02 women are perplexingly attracted to benevolent

59:05 sexism and this is like a problem.

59:07 It's a inconvenient finding but when you look

59:10 at the way the items are written it's

59:11 needless because I think women are attracted to men

59:14 who believe women should be protected but I

59:17 don't think they're attracted to men who would

59:19 add on the extra inference and would say

59:21 oh because women need to be protected they

59:24 need to have their rights for their own good.

59:26 So if you had the item written in a proper

59:28 way and the scale designed in a proper way,

59:30 you would actually have no problematic attraction to benevolent sexism.

59:33 Do you remember that video of the two travelers

59:37 in Thailand and a guy pulls out a knife?

59:40 It's CCTV footage.

59:42 Yeah, it went super super viral.

59:44 And all of the replies and all of the uh quote tweets of it were, "Girl,

59:48 he's trash." So this guy pulls out a knife and he's trying to steal

59:50 the woman's bag and she fights him off and the guy hides behind a[ __] pillar.

59:54 The dude hids behind a pillar.

59:55 So, there's two things that are sort of Yeah.

59:57 icky, right?

59:58 And we all have this sense that you should protect.

1:00:01 Dude, what was that[ __] thing that I said?

1:00:03 I put this in the group chat 6 months ago and I[ __] called it and I

1:00:07 was right about the fact that women would be

1:00:11 less there would be more Oh, here it is.

1:00:13 Look at this.

1:00:14 Oh, no.

1:00:16 So, that guy's got a knife.

1:00:19 Oh my god.

1:00:20 Homeboy hides.

1:00:21 Homeboy hides behind the pillar while she is fighting him.

1:00:24 And there's another dude that just comes over and maybe he's with the guy.

1:00:28 And then this guy with the[ __] benevolently sexist man over

1:00:33 and thinks the woman cannot defend herself.

1:00:35 And what a sexist son of a pig.

1:00:36 I know.

1:00:37 What a pig.

1:00:38 Yeah.

1:00:38 What an absolute pig.

1:00:38 Is it the dude on the bike?

1:00:40 I think it's a He comes in with a helmet.

1:00:42 Yeah.

1:00:43 Good, dude.

1:00:43 A helmet to the head.

1:00:45 Commute to the helmet.

1:00:47 Yeah.

1:00:47 Um, so almost everybody was Universal in this.

1:00:51 That guy that's hiding behind the pillar is what are you doing, dude?

1:00:55 Come on.

1:00:55 Like, yeah, it's a knife and[ __] scary or whatever, but like do something.

1:00:59 Women's preference for protection is seriously strong.

1:01:02 So, I ran a poll asking which would have a stronger effect.

1:01:06 This was my idea.

1:01:06 Don't[ __] say I I would run a poll.

1:01:09 This is my idea, dude.

1:01:10 Okay.

1:01:11 I was even surprised by the results.

1:01:13 Uh, women said it would have a stronger effect

1:01:15 on their attractiveness to a man if he if they found

1:01:19 out he was unwilling to protect them than it would

1:01:21 be if he cheated on her in a one night stand.

1:01:24 Yeah, that really strong.

1:01:26 I kind of wonder if like maybe that's one factor in like why women

1:01:29 aren't interested in men nowadays is like

1:01:31 men don't get to display those abilities.

1:01:34 Everyone's coming back from war.

1:01:35 Yeah.

1:01:35 If we're not seeing men defending our groups or hunting,

1:01:39 like you don't get to see the value of male formidability or the display of it.

1:01:43 I what I'm starting to wonder is like

1:01:46 if women even realize how much stronger men are.

1:01:49 When I ask my students like I I present the sex

1:01:51 difference in upper body strength and they're surprised and I'm like what?

1:01:56 Yeah, there's this viral trend on Tik Tok apparently now

1:01:59 where uh it's like asking couples to ask the guy

1:02:03 to go into the challenge of putting her in handcuffs

1:02:05 in 30 seconds and they're like it's the greatest foreplay ever.

1:02:08 It's like women get so turned on by realizing the strength difference is crazy.

1:02:15 Yeah.

1:02:15 Well, I mean that's the the thing that Andrew Thomas was talking about.

1:02:17 Does Andrew do crav magar or some[ __] He does some kind of some

1:02:23 martial artsy thing, right?

1:02:24 and he's saying that uh the ability to turn

1:02:28 on and turn off aggression is really rare.

1:02:31 Like most guys, the aggression sort of bleeds out

1:02:34 in the same way as your level of obsession

1:02:37 and how much you pay attention to patterns

1:02:39 is great when you're trying to write new piece, but is not so great when you're

1:02:42 dealing with your intimate relationship or whatever.

1:02:45 Guys that are aggressive, uh, good.

1:02:48 If if homeboy comes along with the knife, forget running away.

1:02:51 He's licking his lips.

1:02:52 the guy's like, "Oh,

1:02:53 wait my entire life." And it just pulls

1:02:54 out an armory of things to kill him with.

1:02:56 You're like, "Okay, it's like everyone's like

1:02:57 Tim Kennedy." But very few people have learned,

1:03:00 very few men have learned to turn that off.

1:03:02 And I think what women,

1:03:04 what's got crossed over a little bit here is that women love the idea

1:03:08 of a man who is able to be aggressive, but never to them.

1:03:13 Mhm.

1:03:13 Mhm.

1:03:14 And unfortunately the guys I mean how many you

1:03:17 MMA fighters have had like awful abuse domestic abuse situations

1:03:23 that you've you've selected for a guy who is

1:03:26 he is going to really really stand up for me.

1:03:29 Well, yeah, but maybe that's also that's not to say

1:03:31 that all[ __] MMA fighters are going to be,

1:03:33 you know, home abusers, but this has happened a bunch of times.

1:03:35 You go, it's hard to turn that aggression off.

1:03:37 And the protector thing is great, but the just raw aggression thing carries on.

1:03:43 It's a trade-off women have to make and it's you predictable

1:03:46 the ecologies in which they'll actually select a really formidable mate.

1:03:50 And it's a predictable based on the individual differences in that woman's size.

1:03:54 Smaller women in those dangerous ecologies tend

1:03:57 to have a stronger preference for really strong aggressive.

1:04:00 What would a dangerous ecology in the modern world be like?

1:04:03 So, I mean, there's rough areas of I used to live in Birmingham.

1:04:06 There was rough areas of it.

1:04:08 This is as rough as it gets.

1:04:09 Yeah.

1:04:09 We did a study where we tried to see

1:04:11 this like we tried to prime women to think about.

1:04:13 So we had them learn about like your imagine

1:04:16 your friend Sarah tells you about an experience with her boyfriend

1:04:18 and in one condition the boyfriend and her are in a fight

1:04:22 and he gets so mad that he punches a wall

1:04:24 and then in the other condition the boyfriend defends

1:04:27 her against this guy coming trying to rob her.

1:04:29 Um, and we thought it was going to make when we primed

1:04:33 women to think of like the man as the aggressor punching the wall,

1:04:36 we thought women were going to dislike the formidable men,

1:04:39 but they had the same preferences as normal

1:04:41 where they were totally fine with the formidable guy.

1:04:44 But we did find when we primed them with the protector condition,

1:04:46 they liked all men more.

1:04:48 So like all men and so I but to your point like

1:04:52 I think like maybe women aren't aware of those tradeoffs totally because

1:04:56 because those two men are likely to be the same person.

1:04:59 Yeah.

1:04:59 Yeah, the guy that's really really competent and prepared to go for it

1:05:02 in the protection thing maybe is going to punch a wall as well.

1:05:07 And they weren't registering it as like, well,

1:05:09 maybe I should use cues of formidability as a predictor

1:05:12 of like which men would be likely to be violent.

1:05:14 Um, and so it it was odd that they didn't show that aversion.

1:05:18 And so I'm not sure if that link is like as explicit in women's minds.

1:05:22 Isn't it strange as well that there's a especially among young girls,

1:05:26 the sort of Gen Z girls or I guess maybe more like Gen Alpha now,

1:05:30 if you look at the phronology of the guys that they're trying

1:05:33 to go for, guys are almost signaling like anime character levels of cuteness,

1:05:40 the tously hair, the very sort of thin body.

1:05:43 Certainly there's the luxing teens that are going

1:05:45 in the other direction are basically trying to speedrun manhood.

1:05:48 The soft boy.

1:05:50 Yeah.

1:05:50 Yeah.

1:05:50 Yeah.

1:05:51 Is that what the the aesthetic is?

1:05:52 Yeah.

1:05:52 And I think that's because it's less threatening.

1:05:55 Exactly.

1:05:55 Bingo.

1:05:55 Bingo.

1:05:56 Post me too world.

1:05:57 This guy he he couldn't even force himself on me if he wanted.

1:06:01 Like there's no reason.

1:06:01 He's basically like a cuddly teddy bear best friend

1:06:03 that I get to be in a relationship with.

1:06:07 Yeah.

1:06:06 But when you think about like what is that pushing toward?

1:06:11 Well, at some point those women are probably going to diverge away.

1:06:16 what Jordan Peterson used to say about you don't want to dominate your partner.

1:06:20 So, it's not a good long-term strategy to have a partner

1:06:23 that you're not that you don't find threatening at all

1:06:25 and would never protect you and that you can dominate because

1:06:28 you don't want to be in a relationship where you're controlling.

1:06:30 You see them as a child eventually.

1:06:33 Yeah.

1:06:32 Well, this was the uh um who's the uh

1:06:35 blonde researcher lady that did the come on face?

1:06:38 Uh Katherine Salmon.

1:06:39 Katherine Salmon.

1:06:41 __]

1:06:41 research on the come on face.

1:06:43 Shout out Katherine Salmon, dude.

1:06:44 she[ __] rules.

1:06:45 But she was talking about how after Fifty Shades of Gray came

1:06:48 out and the dark romance genre really started to pick up steam,

1:06:52 which obviously I contributed to, and there

1:06:55 was a world where this was politically inconvenient,

1:06:59 especially for the sort of feminist side of the the aisle because all

1:07:03 of the guys that were being chosen to be the protagonists were highly dominant,

1:07:07 highly assertive, tall, strong, masculine, millionaire, billionaire CEO people.

1:07:13 So they tried to put more pliable,

1:07:16 they were called golden retriever husbands or cinnamon

1:07:19 roll husbands and they tried to put

1:07:21 sort of a more soft pliable guy on the cover and also the story throughout

1:07:27 shock horror they didn't sell well and this is

1:07:31 short-term mating and fantasy the same way as what a man watches in porn.

1:07:37 the porn that I watch I might be great porn

1:07:40 or the sex dolls might not want to might not want to be in a marriage

1:07:43 with her right tell me about sex dolls your specialist subject

1:07:46 yeah I was glad to make the shift from incel researcher

1:07:49 now to sex doll researcher so I've got the full gamu

1:07:52 and they actually kind of connect in a way they're the main

1:07:56 consumer base of sex dolls so I came across this amazing

1:07:59 that's a unfortunate way to open the sentence

1:08:01 let me rephrase that I happened upon this amazing data set that was publicly

1:08:05 available that at all the body specifications

1:08:09 of sex dolls that are on the market.

1:08:12 And this study that was published was very descriptive in nature and it was

1:08:15 just describing the the dimensions rather than

1:08:18 saying why they might be that way.

1:08:20 So I did a kind of my own analysis on it and showed

1:08:23 that they reveal um all the kind of classically predicted male mate preferences.

1:08:28 And it's interesting because these artificial

1:08:30 depictions of female uh sexual beings

1:08:33 are like a undiluted window into men's mate preferences because these dolls,

1:08:38 they can take on any form.

1:08:39 They're not limited by nature.

1:08:41 They're just literally whatever the consumer wants them to be like.

1:08:44 And there's this it's not just that the creators of sex

1:08:48 dolls make them that way and the consumers have no choice.

1:08:51 There's this co-evolution of the market uh with the consumer and the producer.

1:08:55 A good example is they wouldn't buy something they didn't want.

1:08:57 Exactly right.

1:08:58 There's no market for really obese sex doll.

1:09:01 Well, there's a smaller market, let's say.

1:09:04 Yeah.

1:09:04 Yeah.

1:09:04 There's a niche for everything.

1:09:06 But but but the dolls typified

1:09:08 all the classic evolutionary predicted mate preferences,

1:09:11 but except they did so in an extremely supernormal stimuli way.

1:09:16 So, have you got images of Can we pull this image up?

1:09:18 I do have an image.

1:09:19 I did I did send through my image.

1:09:21 Here's something that you prepared earlier from your armory of sex dolls.

1:09:25 It reminds me there there are these beetles

1:09:27 that will try to mate with beer bottles.

1:09:30 Yeah.

1:09:30 And I would show it to my class

1:09:32 and I'm like anyone who watches porn, that's also you.

1:09:35 Like it's the same thing.

1:09:37 Easily con convinced.

1:09:39 I'm going to[ __] I'm going to say it.

1:09:40 I think that romantic is for women what porn is for men.

1:09:44 Yeah.

1:09:45 Yeah.

1:09:45 You know, there's a a great video of this dude and the woman's saying um she's

1:09:50 comparing Disney movies to real life and she's

1:09:53 like uh the dad's gone, the dad's gone,

1:09:56 she's alone and the dad's gone and d like all

1:09:58 of the problems that Disney princesses had to go through

1:10:00 and the dude does it with like a court of thorns

1:10:03 and roses and it's like he's got a big thing,

1:10:04 he's got a big thing, he's got a big thing and something in his eye.

1:10:07 He's got a big thing and he can fly as well.

1:10:09 like the there's another one that I saw of a a girl talking about what I read

1:10:15 in my uh romanty novel and it's I would wait until the death of a thousand sons

1:10:20 just to get to touch your cheek one more time and then it cuts to what she's

1:10:24 got in her real life and it's like

1:10:26 the trash is smelling again right from her partner.

1:10:29 Um but unrealistic expectations for what are the key

1:10:32 triggers for romance and attraction and stuff like that.

1:10:37 Supernormal stimuli is everywhere, dude.

1:10:39 even in romantic.

1:10:40 Yeah.

1:10:40 And one of the kind of the white pills on it is that it's

1:10:43 still really low status for the guy to be a sex dolly hav.

1:10:47 I mean, it's very embarrassing when

1:10:48 you start talking about your collection, Chris.

1:10:50 It kind of does lower your stat.

1:10:51 My collection is just Deborah.

1:10:53 So, I just have one and it's Deborah.

1:10:55 So, oh my god.

1:10:57 Yeah.

1:10:57 But yeah, but for now it's low status to have sex dolls,

1:11:00 but maybe that'll change in a while.

1:11:02 I I don't think it's going to change because there's no selection.

1:11:04 It's the same reason that guys can't flex

1:11:06 the amount of Only Fans that they subscribe to, right?

1:11:08 If you can get something that everybody else has,

1:11:12 especially in a market where getting something

1:11:15 that no one else can get is highly valued, it's seen as desperate.

1:11:20 If if I can see you naked for the price of a cheeseburger per month,

1:11:24 that's not going to be high value.

1:11:26 It's going to suggest, oh, I can't get this really,

1:11:28 so I'm going to have to get it privately.

1:11:29 But maybe a subset of men will say,

1:11:31 "Ah, ultimately, I don't care about the status now.

1:11:34 I'll just compete.

1:11:35 I'll this will satisfy my sexual urges more

1:11:37 and more convincingly when you integrate AI into the system.

1:11:41 Uh maybe they'll just retreat into that world

1:11:43 and video games will be their other status game.

1:11:47 They will internet male sedation dude.

1:11:48 Male sedation turn up to 11.

1:11:50 Jared, I want to see these sex dolls.

1:11:51 Where are they?

1:11:52 While while he's searching for that, I'll tell you

1:11:53 an interesting story that I learned when writing this paper.

1:11:56 Uh is it's actually confusing from one level

1:12:00 of analysis why women have smaller feet than men.

1:12:03 But it's a sexually selected feature because

1:12:06 adult human women are the only species,

1:12:09 the only mammal that carries a pregnancy on two feet.

1:12:12 And it's really dangerous to have falls.

1:12:14 It might terminate the pregnancy.

1:12:15 So you'd actually expect them from a biomechanical perspective to have

1:12:19 evolved really big feet for stability and all that, but they don't.

1:12:22 They have really small feet and men have a preference for small feet.

1:12:26 And it is a sign of femininity because with each age and pregnancy,

1:12:30 women's feet get bigger and bigger.

1:12:32 You're[ __] kidding me.

1:12:34 Yeah.

1:12:34 So, they have small feet.

1:12:35 Okay.

1:12:35 So, if you're a slightly older woman who's who's had a ton of kids, big feet.

1:12:40 Yeah.

1:12:42 The same is true for women's faces.

1:12:44 So, men's preferences.

1:12:45 Well, actually, like what we view as attractive

1:12:47 in a female face is like neotony.

1:12:50 Looking like a child.

1:12:51 And if you amp up those features,

1:12:53 they're the same features that make people want to take care of babies

1:12:56 also make women more attractive and people want to help women more.

1:13:00 So, they're like just selected to be neotenous.

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1:14:05 That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom.

1:14:10 One other bit from the New Statesman article I thought was really interesting.

1:14:14 Women feel much more negatively towards young

1:14:16 men than young men feel about them.

1:14:18 50% of women have a neutral or negative view of men.

1:14:21 72% of men have a positive view of women.

1:14:25 For all of the talk about manosphere inspired misogyny,

1:14:28 three times more women hold a negative view of men than men hold of women.

1:14:32 Only 21% of women have an actively negative view of men,

1:14:35 but only 7% of men feel the same.

1:14:38 Men are told that they're the problem,

1:14:40 but then you look at the data and young women

1:14:41 are significantly more negative toward men than men are toward women.

1:14:45 men get dragged in the media, but it's still showing up more optimistically

1:14:49 about women than the other way round.

1:14:51 But women are fulfilling their part of the bargain.

1:14:54 Like if if you looked at it from a trade-off perspective,

1:14:56 like women are here's my beauty.

1:14:58 I'm contributing bringing more to the table financially and everything.

1:15:02 The women, if you asked them, I bet they'd say, "Yeah,

1:15:05 well, we're right, they're wrong." Or, "We're right, and they're right."

1:15:08 But why would you why would you hold an actively negative view of men?

1:15:12 Well, because they see only the risks.

1:15:14 They see the but this is not an act this is not a view of relationships.

1:15:18 This is an actively negative view of men.

1:15:20 This seems to be much more judgmental.

1:15:22 Men are bad in and of themsel.

1:15:24 Men are bad over there or they're bad when they're trying to get with me.

1:15:28 Yeah.

1:15:27 Do you I would think that was something to do with porn because

1:15:32 and I also think that explains, you know,

1:15:33 you say that women are attracted to sort of feminine looking anime men.

1:15:39 I think because maybe they've grown up

1:15:40 watching very hyper masculine like porn stars

1:15:44 being really rough and violent with women and then they go

1:15:47 for the non-threatening mate and then also they develop this view of men

1:15:53 based off maybe the most brutal videos and seeing it from such a young age

1:15:58 that then you develop you generalize that to all men.

1:16:02 Don't understand why you'd be actively negative.

1:16:04 21% actively negative.

1:16:07 I wonder if it's that signal to other women that I'm team women.

1:16:11 Although my my student Michaela, she's designing a scale of opposite sex hatred.

1:16:15 And what's amazing, speaking of scales,

1:16:17 no scale exists to measure sexism in both sexes.

1:16:21 So you can never, no one has ever compared whether men or women are more sexist.

1:16:27 Guess which one is more sexist.

1:16:29 Which one?

1:16:30 Women.

1:16:30 Women hate men more than men hate women.

1:16:33 Totally in line with makes sense from error management perspective as well.

1:16:36 But yeah, I also think something I've noticed is that young

1:16:39 women are often again because self-actualization is the ultimate goal,

1:16:44 they're often deterred from committing and relationships

1:16:48 now more so than young men.

1:16:49 So if young men say that they're going to get engaged young, for example,

1:16:54 other young men are usually happy for them, you know,

1:16:56 like they've got out of the dating game and the dating market.

1:16:58 If women Yeah.

1:17:00 But if women commit early, other women express this fear for them like,

1:17:05 "Oh, you're going to give up some of your potential." Um,

1:17:09 and I think that's because we think that women had more to be liberated from.

1:17:14 And so now if women close down their options,

1:17:18 we see that as suspect and we worry for them.

1:17:20 Well, also it depends.

1:17:21 If you get Danny Silicowski pilled,

1:17:25 it would be there's an eligible man that's prepared

1:17:28 to protect and provide and he's now off the market.

1:17:31 And it throws into harsh contrast the I mean

1:17:34 that was the whole variety piece about uh having a boyfriend

1:17:38 is cringe now that girls didn't want to post about

1:17:41 their relationship online because it made their single friends feel bad.

1:17:44 If the single friends feel bad,

1:17:45 that presumably is going to show up at some point in the push back online

1:17:49 and they're going to feel triggered by the fact that[ __] like it is tough.

1:17:53 The dating world is tough, especially for young people at the moment,

1:17:55 especially for young girls at the moment, right?

1:17:57 They're trying to navigate this thing.

1:17:59 We talk about the problems of the dating environment for men and thereby

1:18:01 kind of miss the problems that women are facing in the dating market,

1:18:05 including ones that are not self-imposed, but they're at least like intrinsic.

1:18:10 you know, their uh uncertainty, their fear,

1:18:12 their their social anxiety, their, you know,

1:18:15 the the worries about letting go of their freedom and their independence.

1:18:18 Like, these are real things whether they're

1:18:21 manipulated or manufactured by a modern environment,

1:18:24 they're still things that you have to navigate.

1:18:25 And that[ __] sucks for women.

1:18:27 And I think the forensic kind of stalking

1:18:31 that groups of women do on a potential new mate, I mean, even my girlfriend,

1:18:35 she tells me about the deep dive she did on my years old tweets.

1:18:39 Lucky to come out of it alive.

1:18:41 Really?

1:18:41 Like Yeah.

1:18:41 Yeah.

1:18:42 Glad that she didn't go on your blue sky.

1:18:44 Like I know.

1:18:44 Yeah.

1:18:44 No one does.

1:18:47 You're so bitter about blue sky.

1:18:49 No.

1:18:49 Anyway, no engagement apart from people that hate you.

1:18:52 Dude, get off there.

1:18:53 Self harm torture porn.

1:18:54 But no, they really do this kind of collective collective condemnation.

1:18:59 Deep dive.

1:18:59 And everyone is a little bit cringe in some way.

1:19:02 And you can find how they're cringe.

1:19:04 So in some level, you have to almost accept

1:19:06 that your new boyfriend is a little bit cringe.

1:19:08 And that's what I told my girlfriend and we're very happy together.

1:19:13 Embrace the cringe.

1:19:15 Yeah.

1:19:15 Tanya, what do you reckon about?

1:19:17 Have you looked at Have you done any research on icks and stuff like that?

1:19:20 No, but it there does like anecdotally there seems to be a sex

1:19:23 difference where like women get the ick and then men do not.

1:19:27 Um, yeah.

1:19:28 I wonder if it's like a absence of a sufficient like you need at some threshold

1:19:33 of masculinity and if you don't cross it

1:19:36 then or if you indicate anything that violates it.

1:19:40 I don't know Frey you'd probably know what's the stronger predictor.

1:19:42 Well, I'm not obviously an evolutionary psychologist but I

1:19:44 see it from a cultural perspective that you have

1:19:46 so many messages coming at young women to be

1:19:48 on guard constantly on guard like looking for problems.

1:19:51 And so you have a feminist message that, you know, you have to be independent.

1:19:54 You can't let a man get in the way of your goals.

1:19:56 But then you also have a therapeutic message which

1:19:58 is like be on guard for any red flags,

1:20:01 any signs that someone is not good enough or you're incompatible.

1:20:05 And so I think young women might feel something like an ick.

1:20:08 And then they're encouraged, especially by social media,

1:20:11 to take that feeling really seriously,

1:20:13 which is like if you feel some negative emotion toward your partner,

1:20:17 you're incompatible or there's something wrong.

1:20:19 And so I think we're just way more we're

1:20:21 bracing all the time to see the red flags

1:20:24 and it also kind of announces like you said kind of allegiance

1:20:28 to the sisterhood alliance but also elevates their own mate value.

1:20:32 It's like oh there's just a total scarcity of guys

1:20:34 in my standards are so high things are so difficult.

1:20:38 Yeah.

1:20:38 I have a refined palette.

1:20:39 I couldn't eat I wouldn't be able to eat at uh at at[ __] IHOP this evening.

1:20:44 I always feel like that about men who say they have types.

1:20:46 I'm like I just don't buy it.

1:20:48 like, "Oh, I I only like __] this was the, you know,

1:20:51 of all of the things that I went through on Love Island,

1:20:53 this was one of the weirdest ones,

1:20:54 which is that you turn up and one of the first questions that the press

1:20:57 during your lockdown week and you're doing interviews

1:21:00 and all of the interviews for the show,

1:21:01 one of the first things is what's your type?

1:21:04 What is you looking for?

1:21:05 What's your but not what are you looking for?

1:21:06 It's who are you looking for?" And maybe that would have

1:21:09 changed because it 10 years ago when I was on In fact,

1:21:12 it was more than 10 years ago when I was on Love Island now, right?

1:21:15 What's your type?

1:21:16 What do you mean?

1:21:17 Like, who is like, "Oh, yeah, it's um it's ginger girls with blue.

1:21:22 They have to have blue eyes.

1:21:23 They can't be too blue, but like if they're a little I'm" I'm like,

1:21:25 "Who the[ __] has these weird autistic preferences

1:21:29 for a partner?" Because they're only talking about it physically.

1:21:32 They're never saying, "Oh,

1:21:33 I want someone I want someone who is really in touch with their emotions.

1:21:36 I want someone who is" They wouldn't have even said,

1:21:39 "I want someone who has these interests." Like,

1:21:42 physically, what are you looking for?

1:21:44 Yeah.

1:21:45 I think it's just a way from for in guys anyway,

1:21:47 I think it's a way of just posturing like,

1:21:49 oh, I can be so specific and narrow my choice

1:21:51 parameters so much because I have so many options.

1:21:54 Yeah.

1:21:55 And I've been always a little bit so so that I've never bought it.

1:21:58 Yeah.

1:21:58 Uh some of the new polling done, the New Statesman suggests that privileged

1:22:03 women are the most pessimistic of all.

1:22:04 Women in middle class professions are less likely to say they feel

1:22:07 valued by society and less likely to believe that if they work hard,

1:22:10 they will succeed in life when compared to their workingclass counterparts.

1:22:14 Young men are now more likely to be unemployed than young women.

1:22:17 Yet, young women are far more financially cynical.

1:22:20 21 points less likely than young men

1:22:22 to believe they will ever out earn their parents.

1:22:25 White women are more likely to feel the country

1:22:27 is racist than their nonwhite women middlecl class partners.

1:22:32 You white women are awful.

1:22:35 Yeah.

1:22:35 I I wonder how much of that is like related to that finding where

1:22:38 the only way that women could be agentic was like on behalf of someone else.

1:22:43 So like the more successful that you are

1:22:46 or the more that you have going in your favor,

1:22:48 the only like way that you can be agentic is to like be so deeply caring.

1:22:54 Um there are some ethnographies on adolescent girls and the only

1:22:59 ones that were allowed to be popular were if they were super

1:23:03 super nice and so they had to like kind of overd

1:23:06 deliver on like kindness in order to be allowed to be popular.

1:23:10 And so it feels a little bit like that same pattern that like perhaps women

1:23:14 do this so the the envy or resentment of other women won't bring them down.

1:23:19 Um Joyce Beninson has this um hero friend of the show.

1:23:23 Oh, she's the best.

1:23:23 I'm obsessed with her.

1:23:24 Um she has this paper on leveling showing that like women are

1:23:28 more likely to use a leveling strategy where they say like, "Oh,

1:23:31 we should all be equal when someone is surpassing them." And so I

1:23:35 wonder if like once you have all of these things operating in your favor,

1:23:39 you kind of have to be like a martyr in order to like continue on.

1:23:44 Otherwise, people might Where do you get your victimhood points from?

1:23:47 I I won't say who said it in our group chat,

1:23:49 but someone replied to Rob Henderson bringing

1:23:52 this up and said middle class hay fever, Rob.

1:23:54 When there's no high load of parasites,

1:23:57 people's immune system gets bored and starts looking for things

1:24:00 to react to and you get allergies to dust and pollen.

1:24:03 When the middle class has no threats,

1:24:04 their threat system gets bored and starts looking

1:24:06 for trivial things to blow out of proportion.

1:24:08 White privilege, gender identity, ultrarocessed foods, it's all pollen.

1:24:12 You don't have oat milk.

1:24:13 You're traumatizing me.

1:24:15 No explicit segregation and blatant racism.

1:24:17 Sensitivity to microaggressions increases.

1:24:19 That's what I was going to say is I think

1:24:21 it's more time to introspect and ruminate because you have

1:24:24 girls and young women not just picking up on icks

1:24:27 in their partner and like scrutinizing them and looking for flaws,

1:24:30 but then doing that to themselves.

1:24:32 So, constantly pathizing, diagnosing themselves,

1:24:35 wondering what's wrong with them, overanalyzing their personality traits.

1:24:39 And so I do think it's just more time

1:24:41 and less bigger problems like say having children where you

1:24:45 put your neuroticism you funnel it into something productive

1:24:49 and instead it then turns inwards or also against your partner.

1:24:53 But there is status afforded to women doing that in that ecosystem

1:24:56 in that social system of higher education where women are dominating now.

1:25:02 They're rewarded for espousing views like that.

1:25:04 So, you know, they're showing that they know

1:25:06 the ideology of the leading status people in their world.

1:25:11 This is me showing feelalty to the cause.

1:25:13 I understand this thing.

1:25:15 What's the data around men and women being demonized and seen as victims?

1:25:22 So we have some studies showing that like

1:25:25 we have this like kind of cognitive heristic

1:25:27 of victim and perpetrator and when men and women

1:25:31 are like involved in any instance of harm,

1:25:34 we're more likely to see women in the victim

1:25:36 role and men in the perpetrator role.

1:25:38 We more likely to blame men um and more likely to have sympathy for women.

1:25:42 Um, and so it would suggest like perhaps some of the reason we don't see

1:25:46 a lot of sympathy for men is it's

1:25:48 like cognitively harder to see them as victims.

1:25:51 And then for women, the same it's

1:25:53 just cognitively easier to see them as victims.

1:25:56 And so we feel that sympathy.

1:25:58 But this is it kind of sucks for both sexes.

1:26:01 So in the domain of harm, men are disadvantaged and they're not seen as victims.

1:26:05 But for women in the domain in other domains

1:26:08 where you'd want to be the agentic person like

1:26:11 a is if you're deciding on a CEO or a president

1:26:14 women aren't seen as as agentic and as capable.

1:26:18 So it's not like one sex is clearly doing better than the other.

1:26:22 They're both facing these like

1:26:23 one doesn't get sympathy and one doesn't get belief.

1:26:26 Yeah.

1:26:26 I I guess that's one of the challenges I think that women face when they

1:26:29 go into the workplace that they feel like

1:26:30 if they need to be assertive and dominant,

1:26:32 they have to temper the throttle of it a little bit for fear of being[ __]

1:26:37 They don't want to be a[ __] right?

1:26:38 Or a diva.

1:26:39 Yeah.

1:26:39 I feel like there's like an agency warmth continuum and women

1:26:43 are expected to be here and if they go farther along agency,

1:26:47 they're seen as low in warmth,[ __] But the same is true for men.

1:26:50 They're higher on the agency side.

1:26:51 And so if they show warmth by crying, they're not seen as as competent.

1:26:55 So like we're both encouraged to stay in our lanes.

1:26:58 If but if women show too much warmth,

1:27:00 they're seen as pliable and not competent because it's seen that people

1:27:04 that are a little bit more brusque as seen as higher competence.

1:27:08 Right?

1:27:08 Warmth is negatively associated with competence, I think.

1:27:11 And and I just think this uh kind of protectiveness that we

1:27:15 have about women uh it just gets repackaged as oppression in a way.

1:27:20 And I get that you could be paternalistic and overly and a lot

1:27:23 of kind of you know abuse of women does occur under

1:27:26 the guise of for their own good and protection but it is astounding

1:27:31 the extent to which we are more protective of uh women than men.

1:27:35 You have to really contort yourself into a lot of knots you know

1:27:38 to see the women a wonderful effect and think of it as oppression toward women.

1:27:45 Like can you can do you know much of the stats around the women

1:27:48 are wonderful effect like all of the different

1:27:50 ways that people prefer women to men.

1:27:52 I know one study that looked at this kind of where

1:27:54 they looked at um job hiring discrimination and it's gone down

1:27:59 against women but people overestimate its presence and so they assume

1:28:03 it's still there even though the data suggests clearly it's not.

1:28:06 So it's like we're almost like just sensitized

1:28:09 to detect it even if it's not there.

1:28:11 M and even when you learn about some discrepancy,

1:28:15 if it's against women, people are up in arms about it.

1:28:18 But if it's against men, it's like no biggie.

1:28:20 Is is attractiveness under acknowledged as a kind of privilege?

1:28:24 Oh, I think so.

1:28:25 Yeah.

1:28:25 So, on both ends of the spectrum.

1:28:27 So, the pretty privilege, which also has its costs.

1:28:30 There's costs associated with being seen as pretty.

1:28:33 Other women in particular see you as more promiscuous and things like that.

1:28:36 But there are enormous benefits across

1:28:38 the board to being attractive, male or female.

1:28:41 But then at the other end of the spectrum,

1:28:43 there's enormous cost to being unattractive.

1:28:45 And there is new research that shows that we're

1:28:48 not readily able to recognize this form of privilege.

1:28:52 We acknowledge other forms of privilege, but attractiveness,

1:28:55 we're reluctant to acknowledge that it even exists.

1:28:58 And we also have evidence that women are far more attractive than men.

1:29:02 It's not just one okaycid study.

1:29:05 Loads of data unpublished from our lab finds this attractiveness discrepancy.

1:29:09 There's tons of data.

1:29:11 Women are just more attractive.

1:29:12 So, arguably a feminine advantage in the domain of attractiveness

1:29:16 when that can be uh translated into so many resources.

1:29:20 There are studies to show that beauty is status for women.

1:29:23 Women defer to more beautiful women in the way

1:29:26 that men defer to more formidable uh men.

1:29:29 So, this is an advantage.

1:29:31 And it could be another thing that's actually a less acknowledged point about

1:29:34 what's putting women off having children is that they hear these horror stories.

1:29:40 They literally have to take a massive beauty

1:29:41 hit and that's just there's no way around that.

1:29:43 It's less than they've ever had to take, but it's still there.

1:29:46 It's so funny that um having kids would impact your beauty,

1:29:52 but the effect of pretty privilege is denied and hidden.

1:29:55 Yeah.

1:29:56 It's like well you if that is playing into it

1:29:59 you have to admit the fact that it's there you know.

1:30:01 Yeah.

1:30:01 Yeah.

1:30:02 I don't I think people would acknowledge at face value that's one

1:30:05 of the reason well you do see them sometimes women are like

1:30:07 I'm not sacrificing my body for that and you know it we

1:30:11 have new data come out that shows that relationships having being a parent

1:30:16 uh similar levels of happiness to not being a parent greater levels

1:30:20 of meaning to for the parents especially for women but lower relationship

1:30:25 satisfaction for the parents so it does take a toll on the relationship

1:30:29 but certainly on the woman's mate value thereafter after having the kids,

1:30:32 the toll it takes on her beauty.

1:30:34 So, you can kind of see why women,

1:30:36 if there's all these benefits they can translate their beauty,

1:30:39 which is their status, into, they'd be reluctant to to sacrifice all that.

1:30:44 Yeah.

1:30:44 I mean, this is kind of what we were talking about before,

1:30:45 which is that I think social media platforms

1:30:48 have incentivized women to see themselves less as human

1:30:51 and less and more as products and so

1:30:53 their life becomes about marketing themselves and optimizing themselves.

1:30:57 And so I think yeah, having a child disrupts being the perfect pristine product,

1:31:03 but then we're in this really weird scenario where don't you want to look

1:31:07 good in order to reproduce and have children at base level, but now

1:31:11 Instagram comes along and Instagram it gives women so much

1:31:15 dopamine and status that then that becomes their higher priority.

1:31:20 Yeah.

1:31:20 Because it's a misconception about evolutionary psychology

1:31:22 that we have these fitness optimizing mechanisms.

1:31:25 we actually have we're adaptation executioners.

1:31:28 So it's not like it's just that behaviors that over evolutionary

1:31:32 time would have resulted in more offspring uh are passed on.

1:31:36 So women still have the desire to have sex for the most part.

1:31:40 People don't come into the world with oh

1:31:42 I I really want to increase my reproductive success.

1:31:45 I want to have offspring but they do want to be

1:31:48 seen as a high mate value to others have sexual urges.

1:31:52 And over time those things would have resulted in reproductive success.

1:31:55 So now it's a bit of a a mismatch.

1:31:59 Yeah.

1:31:59 Joyce Beninson, she has this like crosscultural

1:32:01 study where she shows like among young people,

1:32:04 one of their primary goals is finding a romantic partner,

1:32:07 but one of their lowest goals is having kids.

1:32:10 And so she makes this argument that like

1:32:12 we probably evolved a desire to attract a mate,

1:32:15 but we didn't need to evolve the desire to have

1:32:18 kids because so long as you were having sex, you were having kids.

1:32:21 didn't have reliable contraception.

1:32:22 Yeah, it's a hugely evolutionary novel technology that's really

1:32:26 just thrown the whole thing up in the air.

1:32:28 I think also with young women,

1:32:29 sometimes the relationship becomes an accessory to display online.

1:32:34 What was your line about that in the episode that we did a couple years ago?

1:32:37 It was uh relationships are just brand partnerships now.

1:32:41 Yeah.

1:32:41 Yeah.

1:32:41 It's it's something to display and so the characteristics that maybe you would

1:32:46 select for before social media are very different.

1:32:48 Now it's presenting it to other women and how other women will react.

1:32:53 Seeing your Yeah.

1:32:54 your launch of a partner online.

1:32:56 Yeah.

1:32:56 The soft launch.

1:32:58 Learn all about this stuff.

1:32:59 Uh 60% of romantic relationships begin as friendships.

1:33:03 This making the world harder to date in.

1:33:06 Well, given that there's fewer and fewer cross- sex friendships,

1:33:09 I think it it should be um celebrated

1:33:12 that this is an avenue towards relationship formation.

1:33:15 And you know the age-old question of can men and women ever just be friends?

1:33:19 We've just got a new paper accepted that shows

1:33:22 that uh we call it courtship and cross-sex

1:33:25 friendship where men uh provision financially to their cross-ex

1:33:29 friendships that they're interested in mating with.

1:33:32 50% of people say they have romantic interest in a cross-ex friend.

1:33:36 Uh the same number have had sex with at least one, particularly young people.

1:33:41 So I do think it's a good pathway to relationships.

1:33:44 And if you formed more cross- sex friendships, you it would be a direct route

1:33:49 to relationships because attraction grows over time.

1:33:53 You get uh you know proximity breeds intimacy,

1:33:56 but also you get to display a lot of the same qualities

1:33:59 that make for a good mate make for a good friend too.

1:34:01 And men and women select friends uh who have

1:34:04 the same qualities that they want in a mate.

1:34:06 So protection, uh physical attractiveness, resources.

1:34:10 So it's a good pathway.

1:34:11 But the secondary route is it broadens your networks

1:34:14 and it also helps you learn about cross- sex mind readading.

1:34:18 So it's very hard to actually you know come to the boneheaded

1:34:21 beliefs of some of the red pill black pill world

1:34:24 online if you actually have in real life female friends that you

1:34:29 know kind of disprove a lot of what what you hear.

1:34:32 I'm gonna quote you back to you here.

1:34:33 William Costello pulled 527 heterosexual and bisexual people.

1:34:38 Are opposite sex friendships ever truly platonic?

1:34:41 81% of women said yes.

1:34:44 Only 58% of men said yes.

1:34:46 Women were three times more likely than

1:34:48 men to say their friendship was purely platonic.

1:34:51 So I think it's a little women hear that and they sometimes

1:34:53 get very upset that to learn that their male friends see them as

1:34:58 nearly half of your guy friendss are trying to sleep with you would.

1:35:00 Well, not necessarily.

1:35:01 It's just that they kind of would.

1:35:03 So, uh, and this is the kind of the misconception

1:35:06 that women maybe hear that and they think,

1:35:08 "Oh, so he only wants to sleep with me." And it's not quite the case.

1:35:10 It's just that he probably would.

1:35:12 Yeah.

1:35:12 In fact, when people hear about this for the first time and they doubt it,

1:35:16 I I always say, "Just try it.

1:35:19 Just try when you're out for a few drinks the next time."

1:35:21 Do you remember that one in The Economist?

1:35:23 A study of Americans finds that in platonic couples,

1:35:25 men are far more likely than the woman to find their friends

1:35:28 sexy and far more likely to think that she finds them attractive, too.

1:35:31 Indeed, a man's assessment of how much his female friend fancies him matches

1:35:35 how much he fancies her and is entirely unrelated to how she really feels.

1:35:40 Clearly, men are prone to wishful thinking.

1:35:42 Yeah.

1:35:42 Yeah.

1:35:43 Well, men need to kind of pluck up the courage somewhere.

1:35:45 And if everyone wants to be asked out more, that was your thing.

1:35:48 That's true.

1:35:48 Also, so you know, on the one hand, women want to be approached more,

1:35:52 but then are kind of unhappy to learn

1:35:54 that their opposite sex friends are interested in them.

1:35:57 But uh I do think women keep some opposite sex friends as backup mates too.

1:36:01 And oh there you've got loads of data around backup mates.

1:36:04 Come on.

1:36:05 But yeah, I just think ultimately uh we should celebrate and try and cultivate

1:36:09 more opposite sex friendships cuz it it

1:36:11 could be a pathway to to proper relation.

1:36:14 I wonder if on social media that uh disincentivizes

1:36:17 opposite sex friendships because you live in different worlds completely.

1:36:21 So we were talking earlier and you hadn't

1:36:23 heard of influences that like shaped my childhood.

1:36:26 How did I not know Moella?

1:36:29 Zoella.

1:36:28 Whatever.

1:36:29 Zoella.

1:36:30 Do you know Zoella?

1:36:31 I've heard of you.

1:36:33 You're sorry.

1:36:33 You're an avid subscriber of Zoella.

1:36:35 The program.

1:36:36 You get ready.

1:36:36 Did you get ready for today with Zoella?

1:36:38 No, I didn't.

1:36:39 A new try on haul from Jim.

1:36:40 Get But it's like Zoella, but also Facetune.

1:36:44 Facetune is a huge app among young women where they can edit themselves.

1:36:48 I I hadn't heard of it either.

1:36:49 So, I think I one of the statistics in my book is like

1:36:52 70 or 80% of young women wouldn't

1:36:54 post on Instagram without facetuning themselves first.

1:36:57 It makes me so relieved to hear this.

1:37:00 Like every photo should have that attached to it,

1:37:03 but it's it's been downloaded like hundreds of millions of times.

1:37:06 It's a core memory from my childhood.

1:37:08 But then, so I write this whole book about social media,

1:37:12 the experience for young women, but then for young men,

1:37:15 they have a completely different childhood.

1:37:17 So it can be a young man that grew up near Runescape.

1:37:20 Playing Runescape.

1:37:21 Playing manager.

1:37:22 You played Runescape.

1:37:23 You said that you're a bit more of a I'm a bit more masculine.

1:37:26 Yeah.

1:37:26 But so yeah, they will not even recognize

1:37:30 things that were huge influences on young women.

1:37:32 And so I wonder if we try and be friends with the opposite sex,

1:37:35 it's like a whole different world because algorithms are suggesting

1:37:38 you already didn't have that much in common and now you've got even less.

1:37:41 Interesting.

1:37:41 Yeah, that's a good idea.

1:37:42 What else are you brandishing some graph?

1:37:45 I can see that you've got on your phone there.

1:37:46 Did you find that sex doll yet?

1:37:50 I had a question about the opposite sex friends.

1:37:54 Is there a sex difference in the degree

1:37:56 to which our opposite sex friends match our mate preferences?

1:38:00 Because if there's not, if both men and women are like designing their opposite

1:38:04 or selecting opposite sex friends based on their mate preferences,

1:38:08 then when women say, "Oh,

1:38:09 I'm not attracted to my opposite sex friends." Is that true?

1:38:13 I've seen data around this.

1:38:14 I've seen data that shows that the same traits that you look

1:38:19 for in a partner are the ones that you look for in your opposite sex friends.

1:38:23 I've seen this.

1:38:24 So, if men and women do that to the same degree,

1:38:27 then is that really the case when women are saying they can't be so shocked?

1:38:31 Yeah.

1:38:31 Like, what are the odds that

1:38:33 the tall handsome guy that looks exactly the same as my actual boyfriend?

1:38:37 Thought that oops.

1:38:38 Yeah.

1:38:38 But but it's kind of like from a jealousy perspective, you know,

1:38:42 you can see why it would be really jealousyinducing for a man

1:38:45 for his mate to have opposite sex friends or work colleagues who are sharing,

1:38:50 you know, a mission together.

1:38:52 Like you hear of these things of women calling someone their work husband.

1:38:56 I'm like disaster.

1:38:58 Never say this.

1:38:59 This is a bad idea.

1:39:01 So I do think that men are inclined to kind

1:39:03 of pump the brakes on women's careers for a mateguarding perspective.

1:39:07 You know, that's kind of and and an opposite sex friendship perspective as well.

1:39:11 One more thing on the looks max thing.

1:39:13 Uh Chris is I thought it was interesting that uh did

1:39:17 you see the Australian guy who interviewed Clvicular?

1:39:21 I was going to say he's more effortlessly good looking.

1:39:25 Yeah, I think that's true that for men to be handsome,

1:39:27 it needs to be like they didn't try.

1:39:29 Yeah.

1:39:29 Yeah.

1:39:30 Yeah.

1:39:30 Now, I've done a little bit of a deep dive into that guy's Instagram,

1:39:33 and he certainly tries and he certainly knows he's a handsome guy and whatever,

1:39:37 but he's he's definitely pulling off that effortlessness much more.

1:39:41 But it's interesting that the commentary around

1:39:45 him being Clvicular being mogged by this more handsome Australian interviewer.

1:39:49 It's kind of proving Clvicular's philosophy exactly correct.

1:39:53 He's like, you're saying that he's more handsome, so he moss me.

1:39:57 That's my whole philosophy.

1:39:58 I I'm exactly right.

1:40:00 It's all about looks.

1:40:01 Why do you spend time with people like that?

1:40:05 All right.

1:40:05 Have a nice day.

1:40:07 Are you trying to I I assume you want to make this uh political.

1:40:12 Too bad I I didn't have time to to look into you

1:40:15 know anything about potentially uh you know who's who your wife cheated with.

1:40:21 But don't try to go down that line of questioning uh with me.

1:40:26 All right.

1:40:27 cuz I'm not doing any political I'm not married.

1:40:30 But sorry, I was I was simply out of asking because obviously

1:40:33 maybe got maybe you got a look max then so I could uh I

1:40:35 could teach you about looks max and then maybe you could uh switch that up.

1:40:39 But thanks for thanks for the time.

1:40:40 Appreciate the interview.

1:40:42 All right.

1:40:43 Uh I mean look they did light them quite nicely which was good.

1:40:46 It was definitely quite a sultry.

1:40:48 If that turned into gay porn I wouldn't have been surprised.

1:40:51 Yeah.

1:40:52 Like he proves his whole thesis right for people's

1:40:54 reaction to be like he's the more handsome one.

1:40:56 It's like you're lionizing looks.

1:40:59 I thought we weren't judging people based on looks.

1:41:00 I thought the look acting was stupid and it didn't really matter.

1:41:03 Exactly.

1:41:03 Right.

1:41:03 So yeah.

1:41:04 But isn't he more handsome because his demeanor?

1:41:06 He's playful and he's smirking.

1:41:08 I feel like Clvicular just looks so tense and neurotic almost called autism.

1:41:13 Yeah.

1:41:13 I think Clvicular does those things on purpose

1:41:15 like stages the walk out for attention.

1:41:18 Of course he does.

1:41:19 But um but yeah, it is that effortlessness

1:41:21 I do think is more attractive to to women.

1:41:24 Well, the the same thing is true to men as well.

1:41:27 Think about the difference between Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter.

1:41:31 Sabrina Carpenter is a female designed for the female gays

1:41:35 and Sydney Sweeney is a female designed for the male gays.

1:41:38 Our gay male gays.

1:41:39 Yes, correct.

1:41:40 Bingo.

1:41:41 And uh yeah, it's why is it that men love Sydney Sweeney and hate

1:41:44 Sabrina Carpenter and why is it that women

1:41:46 love Sabrina Carpenter and hate Sydney Sweeney?

1:41:48 And there is research to show women hate women

1:41:51 with big breasts as well, but they're really

1:41:54 Well, if you see very small, very dull, very big eyes,

1:41:57 very like, you know, small body, big head, like neiotness.

1:42:02 Sabrina does exactly what you've described, Daniel, though, the for the girls,

1:42:06 whereas you know, Sydney Sweeney is very much for the boys.

1:42:09 even says it in her Instagram post and things.

1:42:11 So, yeah, she's signaling all women's fashion is like that where it's like it's

1:42:16 almost like you could tell immediately who someone is signaling

1:42:18 to because women's will be like the baggiest thing you

1:42:22 could possibly find and that's the trendy look and it's like

1:42:26 no not revealing their body at all.

1:42:28 I'm sure men hate it.

1:42:30 Yeah.

1:42:30 Uh Alex Cooper on Call of Daddy, they're always in big hoodies.

1:42:34 They're always sort of quite slouchy, very cozy.

1:42:37 I do think the pick me insult is really sort of drilled in to women

1:42:41 of my generation where it's like it's not

1:42:44 even if you're saying something that men would approve

1:42:45 of or looking away that men would approve

1:42:47 of but anything like masculine coded like even

1:42:51 me just saying I'm interested in masculine podcasts

1:42:53 rather than feminine podcast that's like a pick me

1:42:56 statement and so I feel like it changes not only how

1:42:59 women women present themselves but their mannerisms

1:43:01 and their actual temperament and personality becomes uh

1:43:05 shaped toward what women expect of them because they don't want to be a pikmi.

1:43:09 Yeah.

1:43:09 Is it a clever form of intraexual competition to be

1:43:12 like don't be seen to be trying to appeal to men.

1:43:15 That's I say the same as like a cuck like men are doing it too.

1:43:19 Simp shaming.

1:43:20 Yeah.

1:43:21 __] shame and simp shame.

1:43:23 Anyone who appeals too directly that's cheating.

1:43:26 Dude, the game theory of[ __] shaming[ __] blows my mind.

1:43:29 I learned this in Mate by Jeffrey and and Tucker.

1:43:32 And uh basically what[ __] shaming does

1:43:35 is it's a price enforcement mechanism to ensure

1:43:37 that the price of sex doesn't drop below

1:43:40 a level that most women would be happy with.

1:43:42 So if William's prepared to give out[ __] on the second date,

1:43:44 but I want to wait until the fifth date, I have to lower confidence.

1:43:49 I know.

1:43:50 I'm sorry.

1:43:51 And uh that means I need to lower my price.

1:43:54 So it's in my interests to raise that up,

1:43:57 especially given I would be able to undercut it.

1:43:59 If I make everybody else wait longer to put out

1:44:02 and then I can come in as like the bargain discount,

1:44:04 that seems like a good deal.

1:44:06 But what is it that's happening?

1:44:07 It's women giving away what is seen by other women

1:44:10 as one of their most valuable re resources for negotiating with men.

1:44:16 Sex giving it away too freely.

1:44:18 So I started thinking about okay what's the equivalent for men?

1:44:21 What do men give away?

1:44:22 And I think it's resources.

1:44:23 So investment women are prepared to give away sex without

1:44:27 commitment and that gets castigated by other women.

1:44:30 Men who are prepared to give away

1:44:32 resources without sex get castigated by other men.

1:44:35 That's why men don't like Only Fans

1:44:38 women because they are extracting from the male

1:44:41 dating pool the thing that if they weren't able to do it through Only Fans,

1:44:46 they might have to go on a date maybe with me

1:44:48 and that would mean that I would be in with a shot.

1:44:50 This is why I get attacked both ways cuz I'll get called an internal

1:44:54 misogynist and then men will come

1:44:55 to my defense and then they'll get called simply.

1:45:00 Exactly right.

1:45:01 That's both things in action.

1:45:02 Yeah, 100%.

1:45:04 Yeah.

1:45:04 Yeah.

1:45:04 Yeah.

1:45:04 Yeah.

1:45:04 Guys, I[ __] love you all.

1:45:05 You're all brilliant.

1:45:06 Uh where's what have you got coming out?

1:45:08 You've got a book.

1:45:09 Yes.

1:45:09 Just a bit of cool girls and my substack freyindia.co.uk.

1:45:13 Tanya, what have you got to push?

1:45:14 Anything?

1:45:15 Um a new paper called the greater female vulnerability hypothesis.

1:45:19 It's still getting published so not yet out.

1:45:22 Okay, William.

1:45:23 My blue sky.

1:45:27 Just follow me on X.

1:45:28 You'll see lots of fire poles and some exciting stuff coming out.

1:45:31 Follow me on Google Scholar to see the academic stuff.

1:45:33 Unreal.

1:45:34 Guys, I appreciate you all.

1:45:35 We've christened uh evolutionary psychology roundt uh getting

1:45:38 in loads of trouble in the new studio.

1:45:40 I appreciate you all.

1:45:40 All right.

1:45:41 Bye, everybody.

1:45:42 This was fun.

1:45:44 Yeah.

1:45:44 Awesome.

1:45:45 I loved it.

1:45:46 Thank you very much for tuning in.

1:45:47 If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you love, it's just here.