00:00:00What's the current status of the feminism movement?
00:00:04How do you think of it
00:00:04when you come to think about its factions?
00:00:06- It's very hard for me to answer that
00:00:07because I see it through the lens that I approach.
00:00:09And I am at quite a lot of meetings and conferences stuff now,
00:00:13which would be described as feminist meetings.
00:00:16And I would say that slowly but surely,
00:00:19the women's movement or feminist movement
00:00:21is coming to realize that demonizing or dismissing men
00:00:26is not a good strategy.
00:00:29It's happening patchily and slowly but surely,
00:00:31but it is happening.
00:00:32I'm seeing a lot of leaders in those spaces saying,
00:00:36okay, we have got to do better about the boys and the men.
00:00:39Now, you might say, well, they're only doing it
00:00:41for tactical reasons or political reasons.
00:00:42And they will very often say,
00:00:43because it's good for women, right?
00:00:45And so I have this interesting disagreement with them
00:00:46and I'm very open about this.
00:00:47They say we should care about boys and men
00:00:49because we care about women.
00:00:50And I'm saying, we should care about boys and men.
00:00:52I just end the sentence earlier than you, right?
00:00:55In the same way that we don't say we should care about women
00:00:58because it's good for the economy or good for men, right?
00:01:00I think we should care about boys and men more generally.
00:01:03- I've had to do that too.
00:01:04I heard this piece about zero-sum empathy
00:01:08and I tried to legitimize the reason.
00:01:13There was a lot of things and it wasn't just this,
00:01:15but I remember I sort of tossed this coin into the pool
00:01:18that I knew would be effective,
00:01:19which was if you don't care about boys and men falling behind
00:01:26and also whine about there being no good men to date,
00:01:29that is the equivalent of sort of mating logic seppuku,
00:01:33that you are creating the precise dearth
00:01:34of eligible partners that you say that you and your daughters
00:01:38and your friends and your sisters are looking for.
00:01:40Like if you're not prepared to help boys and men,
00:01:43you can't go, "Where are all the good men at?"
00:01:46Because that's precisely what is causing
00:01:48the lack of eligible partners that you're talking about.
00:01:50But I didn't want to have to couch good men are good
00:01:54in as much as they can be of service to you as a woman.
00:01:58It's just that we should care about
00:02:00the falling behind of any group.
00:02:02- We should care about human flourishing.
00:02:04And if there's a group in society that aren't doing well,
00:02:06then we should care about them.
00:02:07I just think that's just, for me,
00:02:09that's just a straightforward moral proposition.
00:02:11Now I'm also obviously different groups
00:02:14of different agendas, right?
00:02:16And so if you care about this group or that issue,
00:02:20because it affects the other issue, I'm fine with that.
00:02:22So people kind of say like Melinda French Gates
00:02:25has supported me and Gary Barker
00:02:28because it's part of a gender equality thing, right?
00:02:30And she's very clear.
00:02:31She says it's not good for women and girls
00:02:32if boys and men are struggling, right?
00:02:35Now you might say, "Oh, okay."
00:02:37So this is where the kind of, again,
00:02:38the reactionaries will be like,
00:02:39"Oh, of course she has to couch it as that."
00:02:42I'm like, "Guys, for the love of God,
00:02:43"she is a global feminist.
00:02:44"What do you want?"
00:02:45And she's supporting my work.
00:02:47She's supporting boys and men's work.
00:02:49No, no, no, they're the purists.
00:02:51The other ones are saying, "No, no, no,
00:02:52"she has to completely come over to our side."
00:02:54I'm like, "Guys, take a win."
00:02:55Of course, as a feminist, she says
00:02:57she's going to couch it that way, right?
00:02:59That's okay.
00:03:00Do you find yourself doing the same thing?
00:03:04Couching it that way?
00:03:04No.
00:03:05No, I don't do it openly.
00:03:07With Melinda and with others,
00:03:09I was at a Reykjavik forum with some leading women.
00:03:12I'm just like, no, my position
00:03:14and the position of the American Institute
00:03:15for Boys and Men is just very straightforward.
00:03:17We care about boys and men doing better and flourishing.
00:03:20We just care about that, period.
00:03:21Now, is that also good for the economy?
00:03:23Is it good for families?
00:03:24Is it good for women?
00:03:25Is it good for...
00:03:26Yes, yes, of course, yes.
00:03:29In the same way that the Women's Services
00:03:30Prevention Initiative, their tagline is,
00:03:32"When women are healthy, communities thrive."
00:03:34I'm like, true.
00:03:35Also true that when men are healthy, communities thrive.
00:03:38But you don't have to condition it.
00:03:40And I honestly think there's a deeper point there,
00:03:41which is that men in particular,
00:03:44they kind of see the conditioning coming.
00:03:48You see it like, oh, well, if there's something bad happens,
00:03:52like men do bad thing, A.
00:03:54Oh, now we should care about boys and men.
00:03:57And they see that conditionality.
00:03:58They see, oh, you only care about me if X,
00:04:01if I do something bad or something bad happens.
00:04:03And what they actually need to hear is,
00:04:04no, dude, we just care about you.
00:04:06Yeah.
00:04:07What do you make of the current state of mating and dating?
00:04:11Well, as a 56-year-old man who's been married
00:04:13for almost my entire adult life, my...
00:04:15Your expert subject.
00:04:17(laughing)
00:04:18Fortunately, I have three sons in their 20s
00:04:20at various stages, that helps.
00:04:21And a bunch of younger friends.
00:04:24I mean, it comes back to bits of this politicization point,
00:04:29which is, I worry that the message that young women
00:04:34are getting from the left is,
00:04:37life's really tough for women now.
00:04:39And it's the fault of all those men and the patriarchy.
00:04:43And the message that young men are getting from the right is,
00:04:46life's pretty tough for young men right now.
00:04:48And it's the fault of all those woke feminists
00:04:49and those women.
00:04:51So they're being encouraged, respectively,
00:04:53to blame each other for their real problems.
00:04:56That is a colossal waste of political energy and not true.
00:05:01It's also creating some difficulties, I think,
00:05:02around dating, mating, et cetera,
00:05:04because we do see now that that political polarization
00:05:07is affecting dating and mating.
00:05:09I worry a lot, and Dan Cox has written for us on this,
00:05:12that you see this decline in dating in high school
00:05:15and among kind of young adults, and that's a huge problem,
00:05:18because that's where you develop the relational skills,
00:05:20the ability to endure and deliver rejection gracefully,
00:05:23et cetera.
00:05:24I worry a lot about that.
00:05:26But I also worry that,
00:05:28and maybe there's something we could talk about,
00:05:30that there's something about the marketplace
00:05:33mate value evo psych stuff
00:05:36that I know you're very interested in.
00:05:38I've revised my, Paul Eastwick has a book out
00:05:40called "Bonded by Evolution."
00:05:41Do you know his stuff?
00:05:42- Yeah, I had him on the show.
00:05:43- Oh, you did?
00:05:44- "Bonded by Evolution."
00:05:45- Right.
00:05:46And I'm not going full Eastwick on you here.
00:05:48- Please don't.
00:05:48- But I do find that something,
00:05:51here's the bit I do like about it,
00:05:52is that if we're serious about thinking about
00:05:54kind of ancestral mating patterns,
00:05:56we do have to take seriously the fact
00:05:57that we didn't live in cities of 10 million people
00:05:59with a phone, right?
00:06:02That wasn't the marketplace we faced.
00:06:03We were in smaller groups.
00:06:04So maybe you've done this with him, smaller groups,
00:06:06and we kind of would know these people,
00:06:08and they'd kind of come with us.
00:06:09And the whole idea of kind of mate value
00:06:11doesn't, does shift a little bit over time.
00:06:14And so my middle ground here is that it's clearly insane
00:06:18not to suggest that there isn't something,
00:06:19you know, quasi market or mate value thing going on.
00:06:23But there's also something quite interesting
00:06:25about this idea that kind of knowing somebody
00:06:27or someone being known by the people among you
00:06:29that coming socially sanctioned,
00:06:31like someone you meet through the workplace,
00:06:33friend of a friend, et cetera,
00:06:35that that's very powerful as opposed to someone
00:06:37you just algorithmically got attached to on an app
00:06:39on the other side of New York, right?
00:06:41That's not how we evolved.
00:06:43- I agree. - Right.
00:06:44- It's a very sexy argument.
00:06:45And the argument is mate value,
00:06:48he thinks mate value simply doesn't exist.
00:06:50That there are no, there is no way
00:06:53that beyond the first look,
00:06:55anybody is more or less preferable than somebody else.
00:06:58That revealed bonded preferences over time
00:07:00end up flattening the mating dynamic down,
00:07:03that tens could get with threes,
00:07:05and that threes could get with tens.
00:07:06- That wasn't how I read him.
00:07:07I didn't read him that way.
00:07:10I think that's an exaggeration,
00:07:11but maybe I'm wrong about that.
00:07:13I think he just, it just gets flatter.
00:07:15Not that it flattens completely.
00:07:16- He said there is no, there is no such thing
00:07:18after a couple of meetings.
00:07:20There is literally no such thing as mate value.
00:07:23There is no such thing as a disparity.
00:07:25- So, well, he's more of the expert on his work than I am,
00:07:27but I read it as like mate value is a more complicated idea.
00:07:29- I would agree with that.
00:07:30I would agree with mate value is a more complicated idea.
00:07:33What makes me sort of bristle a little bit
00:07:37or what makes me concerned is
00:07:40if you've got this world that basically flattens,
00:07:45it makes egalitarian the mating market
00:07:48is one way that you could read it, right?
00:07:51- No one's hot.
00:07:52- Yeah, no one's hot and no one's ugly.
00:07:53- Yeah, what's the Kurt Vonnegut short story?
00:07:56Harry Bergeron, someone could check this,
00:08:00where the minister, do you know this story?
00:08:02- No.
00:08:03- The Ministry for Equality levels everybody out, right?
00:08:07And so it's satire.
00:08:09So it's like, if you're a really good dancer,
00:08:10you have to go wear weights around your feet.
00:08:12If you're beautiful,
00:08:14you have to have plastic surgery to make you less so.
00:08:16And if you're ugly, have plastic surgery to make you more so.
00:08:18But one, it really like the main character story is like,
00:08:21if you're intelligent, if you're high IQ.
00:08:23- That's right.
00:08:26- Yeah, Harrison Bergeron.
00:08:29If you're intelligent, they put a thing in your ear
00:08:31that's just making a noise all the time to distract you.
00:08:33- It distracts you, yeah.
00:08:34- Yeah, and it's obviously like a kind of
00:08:36a flattening type thing.
00:08:37So look, if the idea is like,
00:08:40there is just no difference
00:08:41in how attractive someone is as a mate to anybody else,
00:08:46I think that's not, I think that's batshit crazy.
00:08:49But over time, even with the revealed preferences,
00:08:54the revealed value that occurs
00:09:00as you get to know somebody a little bit better,
00:09:02that this is how beautiful elements of someone's personality
00:09:08and the way they hold themselves and their poise
00:09:10and their patience and their regulation
00:09:11and all the rest of it, sort of appear over time,
00:09:15I think that denying the fact
00:09:17that there are more and less preferable mates,
00:09:20and this isn't just idiosyncratic,
00:09:21that if you were to take a big broad survey,
00:09:24that many people would rank as more preferable,
00:09:28even if you knew them for four years,
00:09:30and other people would rank less preferable
00:09:33even if you know them for four years.
00:09:34- Yeah, my understanding of it, and again,
00:09:35like I'm talking about, we're talking about his work now,
00:09:37but is that over time, you learn more about someone,
00:09:40and so more of their kind of different,
00:09:42the different elements of mate value come to the fore.
00:09:45So if I just, if you just see me, you don't hear me speak,
00:09:49you just see me, maybe I'm mewing, so I look great.
00:09:52- Yes, you do. - Right, like, ah, right.
00:09:54But then, or I don't, I look, I don't look great,
00:09:57but then we talk for a while,
00:09:58and let's say I'm kind or funny,
00:10:00or let's say I'm an asshole, right?
00:10:03That's gonna change very significantly,
00:10:05and then you see me doing something hard for somebody else.
00:10:07Right, you see me taking care of my mom,
00:10:08you see me, no, you see me working hard at them, right?
00:10:10All these things are adding up.
00:10:12- Right, revealed over time. - Yeah.
00:10:13- That was the best, that was the best bit of what Paul said.
00:10:16I really, I really thought it was a nice twist
00:10:20on the very shallow, sort of typical understood,
00:10:25and this is the internet interpretation of mate value, right?
00:10:29And what's interesting about this is it's almost exclusively
00:10:31for short-term mating.
00:10:33- Absolutely. - Almost everything,
00:10:34all of the mating advice is for short-term mating as well.
00:10:36- It's not like, so actually I got into this argument
00:10:39with Shadi Hamid for a piece of the post where he said,
00:10:42"Are you telling me to settle?"
00:10:43'Cause I said, we're talking about marriage,
00:10:44and I think the problem with the marketplace idea
00:10:47is that it sort of suggests that it's over once you've mated.
00:10:52But of course, that's just the beginning,
00:10:55and the story you tell about your relationship,
00:10:59and the way that the relationship evolves over time
00:11:02within that story you're telling,
00:11:04and the way you treat each other
00:11:05as you become different people over the decades,
00:11:08that's the job.
00:11:09And so the other problem with the marketplace
00:11:11is it doesn't capture that it's about maximizing,
00:11:13and you match, and so on.
00:11:14- Then you cash out. - Yeah, it's like,
00:11:16and you've made a great match, and that's the solution.
00:11:18No, no, no.
00:11:19And I said this to Shadi, and I said to others too,
00:11:21I said, sure, you obviously, if you're lucky,
00:11:23you'll fall head over heels in love,
00:11:24and it will just be obvious, and you'll find somebody,
00:11:27but it is much less about the wife you choose
00:11:30than it is about the husband you become.
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