Why Nobody is Having Sex Anymore (& why it matters) - Dr Debra Soh

English
CChris Williamson
Mental HealthPregnancyMarriageEnvironmentBeautyInternet Technology

Transcript

00:00:00Is people having less sex a big deal?
00:00:02It is a big deal.
00:00:03Well, ask anyone who's not having sex if it's a big deal.
00:00:06I think they'll tell you, "Yeah, it is a problem."
00:00:08Especially considering that it is young men who are typically in their prime
00:00:13and at the peak of their sexual drive.
00:00:16So, not only is it, I think, quite frustrating for them,
00:00:19but also when you're in a situation like that where you're struggling
00:00:24and it's not just about the sex, it's also about the connection
00:00:27and the emotional intimacy and the larger feeling of connectedness and community.
00:00:31So, sextinction is very much about the sex recession
00:00:35and the fact that young people, millennials and Gen Z in particular,
00:00:39are having less sex than previous generations.
00:00:41And I was skeptical at first.
00:00:43I thought that this talk about the sex recession and sexlessness was overblown.
00:00:47But after I sat down, I got a chance to go through the data myself,
00:00:51look at the media reportage, talk to people.
00:00:54And we see consistently with multiple data sets
00:00:57that one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the past 12 months,
00:01:01which is a large number of people.
00:01:04And so, I was interested with this book, what is taking the place of sex?
00:01:09And what does that say about where we're headed in the future?
00:01:14How different is modern sexual activity to what we understand about the past?
00:01:21Well, in terms of, say, the outlets that we have available.
00:01:23So, one question has been, is sex really on the decline
00:01:26or is it that other outlets are taking the place like porn, muscle masturbation,
00:01:30things like OnlyFans or now AI Companions.
00:01:33So, each of these subjects have a different chapter in the book to themselves
00:01:35and in myself explaining, trying to understand what the trend is about.
00:01:40Is it convincing?
00:01:41I test them out myself, which was a lot of fun in many cases.
00:01:45Going through the scientific research in terms of what we do know about these technologies
00:01:48and then also talking about the evolutionary biology and psychology that is underpinning them.
00:01:52So, what makes these technologies alluring to human beings
00:01:55and why is it that it's potentially dangerous or distracting us from real-life sex?
00:01:59How different is the amount of sex, person-on-person sex,
00:02:04that modern people are having compared with what we understand about the past?
00:02:08Well, everyone across the board is having less sex.
00:02:10So, regardless of whether you are married or in a relationship or single,
00:02:15it's in Eastern countries, Western countries, basically all developed countries,
00:02:19in all age cohorts, but as I mentioned, more specifically among young people.
00:02:24But your question earlier about, you know, is it taking the place of potentially masturbation
00:02:28or other outlets or other sexual outlets?
00:02:31And if you look at studies that are asking about adolescent sexuality.
00:02:35So, this is an understandably uncomfortable subject, right,
00:02:38to think about adolescent sexual awakening, but they had parental consent, so it's a legitimate study.
00:02:43And what they found is even among adolescents, they are having lower rates of masturbation
00:02:49and across the board with everyone less partnered sex, less intercourse, less anal sex,
00:02:55less all types of sex, oral sex, partner masturbation, I said, solo masturbation as well.
00:03:01So, across the board, there's been this decline.
00:03:02So, it's not that people are just preferring masturbation,
00:03:05although I do think that is something that is happening, especially when we look at pornography
00:03:09and girlfriends and boyfriends and that type of thing.
00:03:12But it seems like there's something else, there's a larger phenomenon.
00:03:16And I also speak to the role of endocrine disruptors in one chapter
00:03:19because I think there's something else biologically happening.
00:03:22So, it's not just that the pie of sexual activity has been redistributed
00:03:27from person on person to solo person or person with machine or person with doll or whatever.
00:03:33It's that the overall size of the pie has gotten smaller too.
00:03:36There is less sexual activity happening as an aggregate.
00:03:43Yeah, that seems to be the case.
00:03:46And what I find interesting as you mentioned with dolls and robots,
00:03:48with the technology improving over time, I didn't think this was going to be the case.
00:03:52I always thought people would prefer in-person real-life sex,
00:03:55but I'm beginning to think people are actually preferring these solo methods.
00:03:59And it's potentially dangerous if it comes to the point where we have these surrogates like robots
00:04:04where you can implant an AI and they are no different from real-life person.
00:04:08I really think people are eventually going to, some people will be turning that way,
00:04:10but it's going to be much more popular than I had anticipated.
00:04:13When did the sex recession start in your opinion?
00:04:17It's been documented for probably the last 30 years or so.
00:04:21Like the 90s was when it really started to taper a little bit,
00:04:26but it's been the most, I'd say, prominent in the last 20 years.
00:04:31COVID definitely played a role in making things worse, but it was happening before that.
00:04:36So, the internet I think is a big part of what's happening, smartphones as well, social media.
00:04:40So, sadly, social media was supposed to make us more connected and it's,
00:04:44if anything seems to have made us more divided, even outside of the realm of sexuality,
00:04:49I think in terms of politically, in terms of men and women, in terms of even subcultures on the internet,
00:04:54just everyone seems to be fighting with each other and hating each other.
00:04:58So, I think that's feeding into it as well.
00:05:00There's this larger like political hatred that's happening between men and women
00:05:06that's also fomenting this decline in sex because if you hate the opposite sex,
00:05:10it's going to be very difficult to want to have a relationship with them or to date them.
00:05:13I had some stats I wanted to read out to you.
00:05:16One in eight 26-year-olds are a virgin.
00:05:19Twenty-four percent had no sex in the past year, about double the rate of 2010.
00:05:26Among men from 18 to 24, around one in three report no sexual activity in the past year.
00:05:31Twenty-six percent of U.S. adults reported no sex in 2021.
00:05:35Thirty-seven percent of adults having weekly sex is down from 55% in 1990.
00:05:41Thirty-seven percent weekly, down from 55%.
00:05:43Thirty-seven percent of Gen Z had no sex in the last month versus 19% of millennials.
00:05:49So, even when we're talking millennials, I haven't got it, you know, there's a big jump again.
00:05:52Forty-eight percent of married couples had no sex in the past month.
00:05:56And the Dead Bedroom subreddit is just cranking at the moment.
00:06:01But this is my favorite one, it's my favorite one by far.
00:06:04Survey of Gen Z found 67% would prioritize a good night's sleep over sex.
00:06:10Yeah, I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised.
00:06:12You like a good night's sleep?
00:06:13Well, that too.
00:06:15But the fact that, yeah, this is such a common trend.
00:06:18And it started, I mean, 2016 was when the first really big study came out showing this.
00:06:23And at the time I thought, this is probably a fluke, it's probably a one-time thing.
00:06:26But more and more, just consistently, right?
00:06:28It's like so many, so many data sources are showing the same thing.
00:06:31It's very concerning.
00:06:32I do think mental health is another big part of it, right?
00:06:35When people are, I think people are very exhausted, right, day-to-day life.
00:06:39But it's also lacking prioritization of sex.
00:06:42These other replacements for sex are taking the place because they're easier.
00:06:46And then globally, five percent of people are depressed right now.
00:06:50So if you're depressed or you're anxious, like Gen Z is, half of Gen Z has a diagnosed mental
00:06:54disorder and of them 90% have anxiety.
00:06:57There's a lot of anxious Gen Zers.
00:07:01And so if you're anxious and depressed, the last thing you're going to want to do is go
00:07:04out and meet people, sit down, have a date, potentially face rejection, have to be entertaining,
00:07:09you know, loss of motivation, feeling very self-conscious, all of this stuff.
00:07:13So like it's multifaceted in terms of, I think, all of the factors that are leading people
00:07:16to decide instead, you know, I'd rather just stay at home and swipe on apps, even if I'm
00:07:19not meeting anybody or sleep, yeah, sleep, or sleep, yeah.
00:07:24What's happening with hypergamy?
00:07:27Hypergamy has taken on a life of its own, I think, in internet culture.
00:07:30So it's this, from a research perspective or scientific perspective, it's the idea that
00:07:34women tend to want to date or marry men who are at the same level of success or who are
00:07:39more successful than they are.
00:07:41So women typically marry up.
00:07:43And so, yes, this is true.
00:07:45I think in some ways it's gone a little bit off the rails because, you know, I write in
00:07:48sex tension about three sixes rule.
00:07:50So the idea that women look for men who are six feet or taller, who make six figures or
00:07:56more and who have a six inch penis, can I say penis on your podcast?
00:08:01You can say penis if you'd like.
00:08:02Every other, every other media outlet, I've been like, is it okay if I say this, you can
00:08:05bleep it out.
00:08:06So, or manhood.
00:08:07So basically if a man does not meet those criteria, he's not considered worthy of your time in
00:08:10say, the internet dating culture for women.
00:08:14And I do like, I mean, none of those things really correlate with success in a relationship
00:08:18or marriage.
00:08:19So when you do the calculations, as I have, you know, it comes down to like this tiny,
00:08:23tiny percentage.
00:08:24So you have to also take into account.
00:08:27Is he nice to you?
00:08:28Do you have chemistry?
00:08:29Do you have things in common?
00:08:30Can you have a conversation?
00:08:31Does your conversation last more than like five seconds, you know?
00:08:34So like the more important factors whittle it down even smaller to even smaller percentage.
00:08:39So I think women who are abiding by these criteria may be missing the bigger picture.
00:08:46How many women do you think are abiding by the three sixes rule?
00:08:48So it's interesting because when you look at the internet and what's on social media, this
00:08:52is something that women are really pushing forward.
00:08:54I question, but at the same time, to having talked to a lot of men about what dating is
00:08:58like nowadays, they, from what I've been told, women have really unrealistic standards in
00:09:03terms of what they're looking for.
00:09:05But I would also say, you know, social media has made men want to date like super hot, you
00:09:09know, women who may or may not look like their photos may be super photo, photo edited and
00:09:16really perfect looking, but may or may not look like that in real life or might have a
00:09:19ton of procedures as I have a chapter on plastic surgery.
00:09:21So I think both sexes have very unrealistic expectations of what they want.
00:09:26But like anything, like evolutionary psychology and biology is not prescriptive.
00:09:30It's not saying this is what you should do.
00:09:31It's just basically generalizing or noticing trends in behavior or that explains mating
00:09:37psychology and like anything the internet takes it and just like runs away with it.
00:09:42I don't know.
00:09:43My favorite place for doing mating research is the pool at Soho House here in Austin.
00:09:47And it honestly, it's fucking ground zero for looking at mating dynamics.
00:09:52And a lot of the time, I'd be there with friends and there'd be a group of girls on the bed
00:09:59next to us and they'd be 24 or something and they're paying for Soho House membership and
00:10:05it's a couple of grand a year.
00:10:06So they're probably educated and earning well or whatever.
00:10:09They have never said, oh, it's because of the size of some guy's penis.
00:10:12Now you can say they wouldn't want to publicly state that.
00:10:16That's kind of a bit uncouth.
00:10:17That's going to make them seem a little bit silly.
00:10:20The data that I saw from Mack and Murphy the last time he was sat in that seat suggests
00:10:25that if you're a guy with a six-inch erect penis, you're in like the 97th percentile.
00:10:31So it's bigger than basically any woman has ever seen.
00:10:35So I get the sense that that's not an issue.
00:10:37The six-pack abs, if you switch it out for that, which is a guy that's sort of muscular
00:10:42and in good condition, I could see that a little bit more.
00:10:44I think women actually saw like full six-inch penises more.
00:10:50They would actually be like, I mean, 98th percentile.
00:10:53Well, yeah, because the average penis is five inches.
00:10:56So what's interesting is most women say they want a six-inch penis.
00:11:00Most men think women want a seven-inch penis.
00:11:07Most men think that they have a six-inch penis probably.
00:11:09Most men are actually harder than themselves.
00:11:12They think they have a four-inch penis.
00:11:14They have a five-inch penis.
00:11:17Women want the six-inch penis and men think that women want the seven-inch penis.
00:11:20Fantastic.
00:11:21So that's the thing else with hypergamy.
00:11:22I feel men are really hard.
00:11:23I don't want to say hard on themselves, but difficult.
00:11:25They challenge themselves more than they need to.
00:11:27If you're using the word hard, it's fine.
00:11:29Because they think like women want, again, like I read about looks maxing.
00:11:33Men think that women want this super hot Chad guy that he has a perfect bone structure, that
00:11:38he has to have all these metrics, especially guys are getting penile injections in terms
00:11:42of filler or they're getting like enlargement.
00:11:46And women, I mean, yes, some women do like those things, but by and large, most women
00:11:50care more about resources and protection.
00:11:52And are you a good person?
00:11:54So I think hypergamy has also gone off the rails a bit in that way and that men think
00:11:59that women just keep wanting more and more and more and better and better and better.
00:12:02And to some extent that's true, but I think also like you have to, we have to give love
00:12:06some credit as well.
00:12:07If you're happy with someone, I don't think the other person is going to have a reason
00:12:10to go elsewhere.
00:12:11Yeah.
00:12:12I get this.
00:12:13And the internet, it makes a lot of sense on the internet because it's very easy to put
00:12:16into a spreadsheet.
00:12:17I can put my height, I can put my penis length, which I do all the time.
00:12:21I can put all their objective metrics and it's kind of like that is having a boyfriend cringe
00:12:29now article.
00:12:32Very quickly, if you go outside, you realize that is having a boyfriend cringe is only true
00:12:37on the internet in the same way as the Kardashians made skinny not a fad as cringe.
00:12:44Like it just, it really doesn't exist if you go out into the real world.
00:12:48If you go and sit around Soho house pool, for the most part, the issues that at least I hear
00:12:53from women and I hear at my live shows is guys aren't ready to commit and they're not sufficiently
00:13:01emotionally educated and they don't seem very balanced and they don't really have their life
00:13:04together.
00:13:05They don't have a mission and they don't know where they're going.
00:13:06Now, I think that a lot of that is maybe publicly acceptable ways of putting a more difficult
00:13:15to define sense that there just wasn't chemistry.
00:13:19Something wasn't quite right.
00:13:20Why?
00:13:21Well, if you're a post grad girl trying to date a blue collar guy, there might be a little
00:13:28sense of socioeconomic imbalance going on here.
00:13:31Have you heard me talk about the tall girl problem?
00:13:38Fucking Scott Galloway.
00:13:39Scott Galloway keeps calling it the high heel effect because he's ancient and he's demented.
00:13:47It's the tall girl problem.
00:13:48And then he stole it from me and started talking about it on CNN and misnamed it.
00:13:52And now that anyway, tell me, tell me Chris, what is the tall girl problem?
00:13:55Look, it's exactly what you're talking about, which is if you have women that are socioeconomically
00:13:59more successful, you have an ever increasing group of high-performing women and never decreasing
00:14:03group of ultra high-performing men that are above and across from them.
00:14:06That gives most men this sort of invisibility cloak that means that they're not seen by women
00:14:11as potential protector providers.
00:14:14It creates a large cohort of women that did everything right.
00:14:19I went to university, I got the job, I pursued my career, I've got financial independence,
00:14:24and I'm struggling to find any guys that I'm attracted to.
00:14:27Look, I can't really work out why.
00:14:29And oh, he seems really good, but that guy that's in the rarefied strata at the top has
00:14:35a wealth of options.
00:14:36So they're able to use and discard women.
00:14:38And then that really sort of gnarly outcome is that if you have casual sex with somebody,
00:14:46that skews your own self perspective of your mate value, your self referential mate value
00:14:54perspective gets a little bit tuned up and you think, well, I got it for one night.
00:14:58I should be able to get it.
00:14:59It's like there is a difference between what you can get on rent and what you can buy.
00:15:03And that altogether it doesn't make for a very easy environment because these women don't
00:15:08want to be used and discarded, but they also don't necessarily feel that much resonance
00:15:13with the guys that are in the cohort of men that are socioeconomically below them.
00:15:18Men that are in relationships where they're not the primary breadwinner, 50% more likely
00:15:22to use erectile dysfunction medication.
00:15:25Man loses his job, the likelihood of marriage of divorce doubles.
00:15:29Woman loses her job, no difference in terms of the likelihood of divorce.
00:15:33So all of these things are kind of raw physics of the system.
00:15:35And we can say, well, maybe you can offset hypergamy.
00:15:38Maybe people are not going to, women are going to learn to value other things in this way.
00:15:44And I get the sense that this is more the literal physics of the system, largely unbreakable.
00:15:49And I mean just that for coupling for young people, especially given women out on men by
00:15:56a grand and a half per year up to age 30.
00:15:59One in seven couples now is the woman is the primary breadwinner.
00:16:02Yeah.
00:16:03Yeah.
00:16:04The bottom 40% of male earners and the top 20% of female earners are dating female primary
00:16:10breadwinner.
00:16:11So the top quintile for women and the bottom two quintiles for men are dating in the opposite
00:16:15hypogamous direction, just like don't even need to talk about the endocrine disruptors
00:16:20and the desire for sex and porn and all the rest of it.
00:16:23Just the coupling.
00:16:24Right.
00:16:25Just simply the coupling there.
00:16:26Because I'd be interested to know how much hypergamy plays a role when it comes to a one
00:16:30night stand.
00:16:31Well, okay.
00:16:32So that's a huge thesis of my book.
00:16:35This idea that because women are becoming more educated and more financially successful than
00:16:40men, they have fewer suitable bachelors to choose from.
00:16:45So what you find is that very successful men...
00:16:47Tall girl problem.
00:16:49Well, I need to quote my own term for this.
00:16:51It's fine.
00:16:52And I'll go on CNN and...
00:16:53And then misquoting.
00:16:54Call it something else.
00:16:55Call it something else.
00:16:56And then you and Scott can have a fucking battle to the end of time to work out who can misquote
00:16:59me.
00:17:00It's fine.
00:17:01So what happens, as you're saying, is that there's this smaller pool of very successful
00:17:05men who have their pick of the lot, who are disincentivized in terms of settling down.
00:17:11So if they want, I mean, they can have multiple marriages in a row.
00:17:14You will see this happening.
00:17:15So you can't have polygyny, but what you'll have is multiple marriages in a row.
00:17:19So they'll marry someone, have children, divorce her, have another marriage, have children,
00:17:24divorce her, go on.
00:17:26And then what happens is with men's dual mating strategy is that you have long term choices
00:17:32and short term options.
00:17:34And so the women who fall into the short term bucket may erroneously think that they are
00:17:39one of the long term options, but men very much, when they meet someone or meet a woman,
00:17:43they choose which bucket she's going to go into and there's not much chance of a crossover.
00:17:47Madonna-Hore complex.
00:17:48Yeah.
00:17:49Yeah, exactly.
00:17:50So in terms of hypergamy and how to fix it, I think getting rid of DEI would be one start.
00:17:57So diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives, because that actively penalizes men, punishes
00:18:01men for no good reason.
00:18:03And if you are-
00:18:04Is that true?
00:18:05It actually actively penalizes men as opposed to just lifting up other groups?
00:18:09Yeah.
00:18:10Well, I mean, coming from academia, I can tell you that they actually have job postings.
00:18:13I've seen them myself where they explicitly will say this job is for a minority or a woman,
00:18:19you know, basically ruling out white men.
00:18:22And-
00:18:23I'm an immigrant.
00:18:24So it doesn't affect you.
00:18:25But it's crazy.
00:18:26I mean, I've had so many colleagues tell me this.
00:18:28I'm not in academia anymore, but they will tell me the things that they experience behind
00:18:32basically closed doors, where if they want to apply for something, they'll be discouraged
00:18:35because they'll say this position is for a woman or for a minority.
00:18:39So don't bother applying.
00:18:40So this is just one, you know, fraction of society.
00:18:43My understanding is this happens everywhere.
00:18:45This was very much in like corporations as well, but I think it's been hopefully dialed
00:18:49back a little bit, right?
00:18:51And your goal here is if you enable men to get access socioeconomically, that allows this
00:18:58imbalance that the tallness of women, the men get to grow a little bit taller.
00:19:03Right, right.
00:19:04It lets it be a little bit more of like a organic outcome.
00:19:06Isn't it strange, there's sort of a zero sum perspective of empathy that any support that's
00:19:14given to any group is seen as being taken away from another group, especially one that's more
00:19:19deserving.
00:19:21And that if we support and raise up men, that that means that we're taking away from some
00:19:27minority or somebody else that should deserve it.
00:19:30But if your goal is to live a happy life, if you're not enabling guys, if you're a girl,
00:19:39woman, and a mother, right, you don't even need to be in the dating pool, married mother
00:19:42that's exited the dating pool, presumably you want your daughters to be able to have
00:19:45eligible partners.
00:19:47The very dearth of eligible men is caused by the fact that they're not being given this
00:19:53kind of access.
00:19:54It's an interesting one because I don't know if men are actually that keen about the idea
00:20:01of going to university.
00:20:02I don't know how driven they are about the career thing in quite the same way anymore.
00:20:07Part of it I think is because of the DEI and the feminism and that they sense that they're
00:20:13not going to get a fair chance.
00:20:14You know, if they're being taught all through say the education system, in high school even,
00:20:19girls are getting, I've seen polls where they show like male students say they feel it's
00:20:23unfair, girls get our favorite by teachers.
00:20:26So already they're feeling a bad taste in their mouth and then you go to Pilate University
00:20:29and you, you know, the odds are stacked against you.
00:20:33I do think that, I understand why some people, especially some women or more progressive women
00:20:39may be fearful of allowing men to have a fair chance or to roll back some of the advantages
00:20:45that have been given to women because they fear, is this the start of us not being allowed
00:20:49to work?
00:20:50Regression.
00:20:51Regression, education or own property or things like that.
00:20:54But I do think, I think they have a very misguided idea of what the outcome is going to be because
00:20:59if it continues this way where women are continuing to outperform men in education, they make more
00:21:05money, who are you going to date?
00:21:08You know, they think that the men, because these men have fewer options, that they're
00:21:12all going to be clamoring for these women, but these women, because they're so educated,
00:21:16they're not going to want anything to do with these guys.
00:21:19So they're all fighting for this smaller pool of men and it's going to be vicious.
00:21:23Yeah, it's not good.
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00:22:39How's birth control contributed to this?
00:22:42So birth control has affected mating psychology.
00:22:45I'll start with women.
00:22:48Because birth control halts ovulation, so just write briefly for your audience in case they
00:22:54may not be aware of how birth control works, ovulation is when women are the most fertile
00:22:58in their cycle.
00:22:59So that's when they can become pregnant.
00:23:00So that window is typically around, say, day 11 to 16 of your cycle.
00:23:05So your first day of menstruation is day one, and then it goes into, I'll leave it at that.
00:23:11So basically when you're ovulating, because you can get pregnant, your sexual psychology
00:23:15is, we'll say at its peak.
00:23:17I think it's a very interesting time to be studying in terms of women and their mating
00:23:22decisions because that's when their decisions about sex have the greatest potential consequences.
00:23:27So if you're halting that process in a woman or an entire multiple generations of women,
00:23:32one in 10 women of childbearing age is on the pill.
00:23:38One in 10?
00:23:39Mm-hmm.
00:23:40So you would read more?
00:23:41You would think it's more, but it's 11%.
00:23:42What about in the West?
00:23:43That's in America.
00:23:44No way.
00:23:45It's only 11%.
00:23:46Yeah.
00:23:47According to the CDC.
00:23:48Have you encountered, that's any type of birth control or just the pill?
00:23:52That's just the pill.
00:23:53So you could have the implant, the arm implant thing.
00:23:55You could have the injection.
00:23:56You could have IUD.
00:23:57You could have marina coil.
00:23:59Yeah.
00:24:00In sextinction, I have the statistic regarding like all birth control, or rather all contraception.
00:24:05But in terms of the pill specifically, so what happens is if you're not ovulating, you're
00:24:09basically blunted in terms of that sexual interest and that signaling, because during that time
00:24:15women have been shown in studies to wear more provocative clothing, they're more likely to
00:24:19want to go out to clubs and meet men, to socialize, things like that, right, to meet partners.
00:24:24And also men can tell when women are ovulating.
00:24:27So they can tell in terms of a woman's appearance, they can tell by her scent and men who are
00:24:31in relief.
00:24:32And tell by the way that they walk.
00:24:33You see that study where they did silhouettes of women walking down the street.
00:24:36So good.
00:24:37Yeah, it's wild.
00:24:38And men in relationships will show more mate guarding behaviors when their partner is ovulating
00:24:43if she's not on the pill.
00:24:44I didn't know about that.
00:24:45Yeah.
00:24:46That's cool.
00:24:47So he'll call and check up on her.
00:24:48I don't know that these men are necessarily consciously aware, but they're trying to basically,
00:24:52you know, like C block other guys.
00:24:55So if that's off the table entirely, surely that's doing something as well to men's mating
00:25:01psychology.
00:25:02And so I think if women want to take the pill or not take the pill, that's their choice.
00:25:06But I wish there was more in terms of information for young women, especially considering that
00:25:11many young women get on the pill when they are say teenagers.
00:25:15They're on it for non-sexual purposes, things like regulating their menstrual cycle or say
00:25:19for their skin or whatever reason.
00:25:21And they, I don't think are aware necessarily of this side effect and how this might change
00:25:27their reproductive choices.
00:25:30Because what happens is once you get on the pill, I have a chapter on reproductive technology
00:25:33like egg freezing and IVF.
00:25:35So once you start to delay your fertility, you're going to spend more time later on trying
00:25:39to make up for it.
00:25:40If you decide to have children.
00:25:42And I don't think that young women are necessarily as aware of that either that your biology is
00:25:47something very important to consider as a woman and it's, you know, that's seen as sexist to
00:25:51say that, but that's the reality.
00:25:53And you know, especially if you want a family, it's important to prioritize that because that
00:25:58process is going to affect you in a way that's different for men.
00:26:02I had Sarah Hill completely just took my head off with all of the impact of hormonal birth
00:26:08control.
00:26:09I think that a lot of the modern mental health issues that we're seeing with young women can
00:26:13probably be laid at the feet of at least, I would love to do a cohort analysis between
00:26:19how many of the people that have got anxiety or depression also took hormonal birth control
00:26:25during puberty or are still on it now.
00:26:27I mean, the fact that your mate choices for women change when you're on the pill versus
00:26:32off the pill that you seem to prioritize a little bit more for provisioning when you're
00:26:37on the pill and a little bit more for protection when you're off the pill.
00:26:40These are, you know, small effects, but they're there.
00:26:45How many women that I've heard from who said I was on the pill for ages, then I came off
00:26:50and I wasn't attracted to my partner anymore.
00:26:52Okay.
00:26:53But when is the first time that most women come off the pill if they've been on it since
00:26:56they were teenagers?
00:26:57When they're ready to have kids.
00:26:58But if you're doing it right, you've gone teenagers, twenties, found a partner, stayed with a partner,
00:27:07golden retriever, moved in together, engaged, married, off the pill, ready to have kids.
00:27:13You are deep.
00:27:14And it's a great piece of advice is you need to, if you're thinking about getting the golden
00:27:20retriever, right?
00:27:21Not even thinking about moving in, not even thinking about the engagement thing, you should
00:27:24come off the pill.
00:27:25You should come off the pill.
00:27:26And you're just going to have to be extra careful, protection.
00:27:30You're going to have to, you should come off the pill and work out if you still like your
00:27:32boyfriend, because the likelihood of you not, in some women, it makes them more attracted
00:27:39to them.
00:27:40Right.
00:27:41In women that are in relationships with more masculinized, more formidable, more attractive
00:27:46men, they actually get released out of this hormonal fugue state.
00:27:48And they're like, I'm in a relationship with a Chad.
00:27:51This is great.
00:27:52Let me jump on you.
00:27:53And then in other versions, they've been optimizing for something that a more sort of native physiology
00:27:59or hormonal profile of theirs would not have been too keen on.
00:28:03And then when they, when they reveal that, that mask, they go, oh, I really, I really
00:28:10like you all that much.
00:28:11Yeah.
00:28:12Which is unfortunate for both of them and it's unfortunate for him.
00:28:15I can only imagine as a guy, you know, if your relationship…
00:28:17We were in love.
00:28:18Go back on the pill.
00:28:19Go back on the pill.
00:28:20Bring it back.
00:28:23What was I going to say?
00:28:24I wonder if, because young women are getting on the pill at such a young age, is this partially
00:28:30also why feminism has been so popular and why women really want to feminize men and they
00:28:35see masculinity as toxic?
00:28:38Because if you, while on a pill, your body thinks you're pregnant and you're looking
00:28:42for a nurturing caretaker, is that why there's just been this larger movement socially to
00:28:48encourage men to be much more feminine, not to be risk-taking, not to be dominant.
00:28:55To a degree.
00:28:56To a degree.
00:28:57I think I could imagine so.
00:29:01I would also imagine that #metoo and a lot of the moral panic around the danger of men
00:29:06generally causes women to want a softer kind of man.
00:29:12Now, they only want a softer kind of man kind of in principle, not in practice, you know,
00:29:17in the mid-twenty teens, they tried to put what are called cinnamon roll boyfriends or
00:29:24golden retriever husbands on the front cover of romance books.
00:29:29I say this as somebody that was in that industry for a little while.
00:29:32What's a cinnamon roll?
00:29:34Cinnamon roll husband.
00:29:35Cinnamon roll husband is sort of soft, fluffy, very non-dominant, very pliable.
00:29:40You know, he's got a bit of a gut, but he's the sort of guy who would be able to put up
00:29:45level shelves, but wouldn't exactly ravage you in the backseat of a car, right?
00:29:50Very reliable, consistent husband.
00:29:52And with these romance books, the person on the cover is the protagonist, typically.
00:29:58These books were post Fifty Shades of Grey, so it should have just ripped, right?
00:30:03You're buying Bitcoin at five cent, the market's only going up.
00:30:07Nobody wanted to buy them.
00:30:08Nobody wanted to buy these.
00:30:09Now, it is kind of like female porn.
00:30:12So do you really want to watch, do you want your sexual fantasy to be about some guy that
00:30:17can put up level shelves, but isn't that good in the bedroom no matter how much you try and
00:30:21sort of repurpose it?
00:30:22But the point is, women like the idea of this kind of, they'll proclaim it, right?
00:30:29It's a view that they'll endorse, that men should dial back their dominance and the desire
00:30:33for conquer and aggression and mastery and stuff like that.
00:30:36But it's not one that they will endorse it, but not embody it.
00:30:40And when push comes to shove and you go, oh, yeah, yeah, he should be more soft and more
00:30:45gentle and less concerned with achieving things and stuff.
00:30:48What does your husband do?
00:30:49Oh, he's a hedge fund manager.
00:30:51Oh, fantastic.
00:30:52Very good.
00:30:53I used to do MMA as a young guy.
00:30:55Lovely.
00:30:56But I do think on the birth control thing, you're right, what is it doing to men?
00:31:02I think that there's evidence to suggest that men who are around old women, post-menopausal
00:31:09or young girls, their testosterone drops, their fertility drive drops.
00:31:16So I know that you've got a question around what's the X factor that's contributing to
00:31:20testosterone dip.
00:31:21I think that the artificial suppression of female fertility through birth control and
00:31:27the increasing isolation of men that they're not hanging around with fertile women or any
00:31:31women at all.
00:31:32And of them, more of them are elected infertile through birth control.
00:31:37I think that that is definitely a potential X factor that I don't think anybody has priced
00:31:42in.
00:31:43No one's priced in the fact that male sex drive and their hormone profile is impacted
00:31:48by the fertility of the women in their local ecology.
00:31:51And if you're not around women that are fertile and not around women at all, that is going
00:31:56to drive your sex drive down and it's going to drive your testosterone down.
00:32:01Interesting.
00:32:02I was going to ask you, what was it like shooting for those novels?
00:32:05Um, so the way that I used to do it was I would shoot with a photographer for just my
00:32:12portfolio stuff.
00:32:13So it wasn't, it wasn't purposefully raunchy shit.
00:32:16I guess.
00:32:17I don't know.
00:32:18I just, I just turned it on.
00:32:19Uh, I don't know.
00:32:20I don't know what happened.
00:32:21Anyway, I got picked up the first shoot that I did, got picked up by a really good author
00:32:28and put on the cover of a book called Ricochet.
00:32:30And then I got flown out to go and do some of these like book conventions, I suppose.
00:32:41But the entire thing is like 2000 dark romance readers.
00:32:47So there's me and a couple of the other cover models, and then the husbands of the authors
00:32:52that are there to help them.
00:32:54And that's it.
00:32:55And it's just, apart from that, it's just female, female readers, um, which sounds wonderful
00:33:00in practice, but the, um, I was 27, 28 or something like that.
00:33:06Um, the age profile, I was the youngest person in the room usually by like a factor of two.
00:33:11Um, anyway, it was, it was interesting.
00:33:13It was fun.
00:33:14Um, it's a part of my history, but, um, um, I've aged out, I could be, I might just pivot
00:33:20into cinnamon roll husband.
00:33:21I can't wait for that.
00:33:22Get a go.
00:33:23Chill out.
00:33:24There you go.
00:33:25If this podcast, you know.
00:33:26If it tanks.
00:33:27So we, we, we've, you've already got what's happening with hormonal birth control for women,
00:33:31and then we do have endocrine disruptors for men too.
00:33:33Yeah.
00:33:34Yeah.
00:33:35So definitely, I mean, there was, there've been a number of studies showing this at testosterone
00:33:38levels have been declining for the last, say 40 years.
00:33:41And it's been, you know, pretty severe, I would say in the last 20 years.
00:33:45And researchers have accounted for things like age, diet, you know, weight, exercise, lifestyle
00:33:52choices like alcohol, smoking and cannabis.
00:33:55And still they say, there's something going on here where it is environmental and that
00:34:01it is something specific to this time period.
00:34:05And so they do think that there's something, you know, in terms of the food we're eating
00:34:09potentially or in our water supply.
00:34:12I've read a lot of the animal literature in terms of, uh, drugs in the water and how this
00:34:18affects fish or What are the craziest stories that you learned
00:34:21about that?
00:34:22Um, there was one species of Japanese fish and they tested diazepam.
00:34:29So okay.
00:34:30Well, there was one study that looked at fish that were exposed to pharmaceutical waste.
00:34:35And then also, um, there was, I'm trying to think what the other source was, but basically
00:34:41one part of the water supply, the fish were masculinized.
00:34:45So there are intersects in both directions.
00:34:46Some of the fish were like more masculine and then some of them were feminized.
00:34:50So it's basically saying, you know, this is happening to the fish.
00:34:53Like what do you think it's doing to humans?
00:34:55But with these Japanese fish, they were lethargic and they were basically too knocked out to
00:35:02breed.
00:35:03The courtship behavior was messed up.
00:35:05The female fish, their ovaries were so distended and I felt really bad for the fish looking
00:35:09at these pictures because I thought that doesn't look very healthy or comfortable.
00:35:14So it's basically, you know, these, these drugs are doing something, I think doing something
00:35:19to us and how, you know, if you're not even aware of it, even if you do manage to find
00:35:23a partner and you fall in love and decide you do want to have a family, you may come
00:35:27up across, come up against these issues.
00:35:30And then if you're not even aware that this is what you're ingesting on a daily basis,
00:35:33what do you do then?
00:35:34SSRIs drive, sex drive down, right?
00:35:36Yeah.
00:35:37Yeah.
00:35:38They affect libido.
00:35:39And there's also post SSRI sexual dysfunction.
00:35:40Syndrome.
00:35:41Yes.
00:35:42Yes.
00:35:43Yes.
00:35:44Yes.
00:35:45Yes.
00:35:46ESSSD.
00:35:47Yeah.
00:35:48Yes.
00:35:49Yes.
00:35:50Yes.
00:35:51Yes.
00:35:52Yes.
00:35:53Yes.
00:35:54And in some cases they are being prescribed to kids.
00:35:55So that's very concerning.
00:35:56A quick aside.
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00:35:58They reduce.
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00:37:05Is the issue, do you think, more about a desire for sex or coupling?
00:37:11Hmm.
00:37:13You mean in terms of why people aren't having it?
00:37:15Yeah.
00:37:16Probably both.
00:37:17I think at the core, everybody wants to find someone.
00:37:20Many people may say that they've given up and they're happy on their own, but I do think
00:37:23that's what most people deep down want.
00:37:26And sex is, well, the thing with sex though, I think porn is a big part of this issue in
00:37:32terms of why people are turning away from actual sexual activity.
00:37:35They're getting their needs met through this proxy that simulates real sexual activity because
00:37:42when you're watching porn, the same network of brain regions is activated as when you're
00:37:45actually having sex.
00:37:47So you're having the resulting orgasm and you are getting these feel-good chemicals.
00:37:53It helps to self-soothe and regulate your emotions, help calm down if you're stressed out.
00:37:59And so it makes men, I think, in particular, less likely to want to go out and go through
00:38:03the hassle of having to talk to a woman, having to sit through a date, having to pay for the
00:38:07date, having to follow up and all this stuff.
00:38:09Why bother do that if you can get sexual gratification on a screen?
00:38:13But I think also that leads to potentially an overall sense of lethargy because when you
00:38:19are masturbating and having orgasm, you're going to be sleepy after.
00:38:25So is that also, you can tell me, do you think this is a trend, not for you, but just a trend
00:38:28more generally with young men in terms of does this affect their motivation?
00:38:34Because I'm wondering for guys, this question of why men are falling behind in society, right?
00:38:39And I am very concerned for young men because I imagine, I hear all the time from parents
00:38:44that their daughters are doing really well, excelling academically, but their sons just
00:38:48for whatever reason, they're not enjoying it.
00:38:51They're having mental health issues.
00:38:52I think they're just staying at home and fapping all the time.
00:38:54Yeah, well, maybe not fapping, but they're like, you know, vaping and playing video games
00:38:58or online betting or whatever, and they have no motivation.
00:39:01Do you think porn could be part of that?
00:39:03Because I think if you're exposed to this at such a young age, and this is the thing that
00:39:06you're watching every day, and it's your coping strategy, that potentially, that's the thing
00:39:11you're going to constantly gravitate toward.
00:39:12And it's actually going to, you know, make you really sedated and lethargic more broadly
00:39:16in life.
00:39:17Yeah, I think sedated is a great word.
00:39:19I've got another idea that Scott probably can't wait to fucking misquote, the male sedation
00:39:24hypothesis.
00:39:25Young male syndrome, which I know that you know about historically high volumes of young
00:39:28sexless men tended to cause anarchy and revolutions and push over granny and set stuff on fire.
00:39:34Why is it given that we've seen the highest rates of sexlessness amongst young men in the
00:39:38modern world that we're not seeing the concordant amounts of antisocial behavior?
00:39:43And it's my belief that men are being sedated out of their status seeking and reproductive
00:39:49seeking behavior through screens, video games and porn.
00:39:54And yeah, that's what's happening behaviorally.
00:39:56Maybe the semantic ring disruptors, maybe a lot of weed.
00:39:58I think more people, more young guys smoke weed than drink alcohol now.
00:40:02So yeah, it is a real push toward lethargy.
00:40:07Do I think that you're anesthetizing yourself from your sort of mate seeking behavior by
00:40:14being able to use porn, almost certainly to a degree, I mean, there's even the opposite,
00:40:21which is what was it, masturbate before you evaluate was a tagline at university, which
00:40:26was, do I really want to sleep with that girl?
00:40:29Let me have a wank first and work out if I still do.
00:40:33And for the most part, the guys were like, no, I wasn't that, like, what was it?
00:40:37I didn't like you.
00:40:38I was just horny.
00:40:40And in some ways, you know, that avoids me from making mistakes, but when you do it on
00:40:43mass and when it's very easily available.
00:40:47I mean, look, there's some mixed bag data, Dr. David Lay is very anti-porn panic and Mike
00:40:56Israel is very anti-porn panic too.
00:40:58And then on the other side, there's some people that behaviorally it's not recognized as an
00:41:03addiction properly yet, I don't think.
00:41:06But it seems impossible to me that one of the strongest drivers for humans being given to
00:41:14them freely, they can essentially push a button, like rub a button for a while, and they get
00:41:23to experience this thing that, I mean, you know, it would be fascinating.
00:41:28I would have loved to have seen in hunter gatherer tribes how much masturbation occurs.
00:41:33Probably too busy foraging.
00:41:36Okay, well, that might be true.
00:41:40Just talk to me, the neuroscience of porn news, is there anything distinct about that that's
00:41:44different to what's happening when people have sex?
00:41:46Okay, I was going to mention, I was going to say something.
00:41:49Oh, so what I was going to say, I agree with you in terms of like, if you're, I can see
00:41:54if you're doing it like constantly, and it becomes a lifestyle thing, how this is what
00:41:59my concern is, if it's like a lifestyle thing for guys, because I've had men say to me, when
00:42:04they are not watching porn, if they manage to cut out porn entirely, that they actually
00:42:08have more motivation to go up and talk to a woman.
00:42:11Because I would imagine, if you see a woman that you're attracted to, and you want to go
00:42:14speak to her, and say you're maybe more shy or anxious, you know in the back of your mind
00:42:18that you can go home and masturbate.
00:42:20And that's going to give you a release after.
00:42:22In some ways, would that not make it a little bit easier for younger guys, especially who
00:42:27may not have as much experience with women, and especially post me to where they're already
00:42:31a little bit understandably more scared to talk to women, how it knowing that you have
00:42:36this other option might...
00:42:39That's a good point.
00:42:40That is a good point.
00:42:41I mean, it's the same thing as if the only way that men could get sex was by marrying
00:42:48a woman, asking her father, becoming a pillar of the community, showing his competence.
00:42:53Or if you just need to be in a nightclub at the right time in the right place at two in
00:42:56the morning, like men will meet those standards appropriately, including the standards for
00:43:00themselves in order to get sexual gratification through a screen.
00:43:02I mean, it is...
00:43:03I can't remember who said it to me, but just for a second, think about how stupid the human
00:43:12brain is, and think about how strong our sex drive is, that looking at a seven inch across
00:43:19screen that I am not a part of, of someone else having sex with someone else, can confuse
00:43:26my brain into thinking, "Some sex is going to happen here."
00:43:31That is how strong this drive is, that a two-dimensional, exclusively video and audio representation
00:43:40on a teeny tiny little screen popped up against a pillow is enough to convince your brain
00:43:47there might be some sex on, you should respond appropriately.
00:43:51It is mad.
00:43:52Also think about what it's doing to kids.
00:43:54This is one of the rabbit holes I've been going down more recently, and thinking about
00:43:57how has this affected Gen Z's development.
00:43:59They're exposed to porn at such a young age.
00:44:01But in terms of the difference between, say, what's going on in the brain, it's the same
00:44:06brain network, basically regions that are involved in physiological arousal, penile tumescence,
00:44:12visual regions.
00:44:15This was my dissertation, actually.
00:44:16It takes me back now.
00:44:17I'm trying to remember what other parts of the motor...
00:44:18You did a dissertation on penile tumescence?
00:44:21No, no.
00:44:22Not just penile tumescence.
00:44:23But it was on basically male sexuality and sexual arousal, and I looked at the structure
00:44:28and function of the brain.
00:44:29I used four different types of brain imaging.
00:44:30It was a lot of fun.
00:44:31It was a very expensive study, but I was extremely blessed.
00:44:35Really fun for the men.
00:44:38And so basically, it's the same network.
00:44:41It's not activated as strongly, but it's very much the same regions, and that's why pornography
00:44:47is so compelling and why I think for people who, especially if that is your primary mode
00:44:53of sexual release, you very much become a preference or a stand-in.
00:44:58You're habituating.
00:44:59More than anything, it's just what do you do?
00:45:05Guys that tend to go to the same bar all the time, sit in the same seat, order the same
00:45:10coffee.
00:45:11And it just becomes a part of your daily routine, and there's this weird habituation effect,
00:45:17I think, with porn.
00:45:19Mary Harrington calls it the law of fapentropy, which is whatever you start out wanking to
00:45:22gets progressively more extreme over time.
00:45:25I like her work, but actually that's not exactly accurate.
00:45:29Tell me what is accurate.
00:45:30For guys who end up watching "extreme stuff," that's actually what they liked all along.
00:45:33It just took them a while to admit it to themselves.
00:45:36Oh, God, the algo wasn't delivering them what they needed until it took a bit of time to
00:45:40refine it.
00:45:41Because understandably men who have these unusual sexual preferences, they're a little bit more
00:45:49reluctant to say out loud.
00:45:52Even to themselves.
00:45:53Even to themselves.
00:45:54Oh, that's so interesting.
00:45:55When they're explaining to say their partner or their friends, if they're talking about
00:45:58this.
00:45:59That's so good.
00:46:00I love that.
00:46:01I mean, the law still works, but not for the reason that you think.
00:46:04It's not a progressive habituation to more extreme stuff.
00:46:06It's a progressive revealing to yourself of what you wanted.
00:46:09That's so cool.
00:46:11What about gooning?
00:46:12Let's talk about gooning.
00:46:13Oh boy.
00:46:14Yeah.
00:46:15I mean, you could spend your life masturbating watching porn if you want to.
00:46:18There's enough content out there for sure.
00:46:20So gooning, I'm sure your audience knows what this term is, but it's basically men who, predominantly
00:46:25men who like to masturbate to no end in sight.
00:46:28And basically my understanding, they might have multiple screens open for hours.
00:46:33They don't reach an orgasm.
00:46:35It's like edging, but for a longer period of time and they don't really have any conflict
00:46:40about it.
00:46:41They quite enjoy it.
00:46:42How's porn affected women?
00:46:45I think there are more women struggling with porn issues than people realize.
00:46:49Cause this is predominantly been an issue, like say porn quote addiction.
00:46:53Although, like you said, I don't believe porn is addictive.
00:46:56I think it's a poor coping mechanism for people who have anxiety and who procrastinate.
00:47:00That's really what it's been when I talk to men.
00:47:03Sedating, not addicting.
00:47:04Yeah.
00:47:05Well, because if you say you have anxiety or you lack assertiveness, it's a very easy way
00:47:11to distract yourself and not have to deal with the problems in your life.
00:47:14Which I have a lot of compassion for people who struggle with this, because I think because
00:47:17it's pornography, it's related to sex.
00:47:19It's a lot more stigmatized.
00:47:20So I understand why people want to call it an addiction because there have been studies
00:47:24that claim that it's addiction, but they don't account for other confounding variables.
00:47:30So they don't ask about things like paraphilias, they don't, from what I've seen, they don't
00:47:33ask about anxiety.
00:47:34So you don't know when you're looking at these brain regions that are supposed to be different,
00:47:37that are correlated with addiction.
00:47:39You don't know if what you're seeing in the people with porn problems is due to addiction
00:47:42or is it due to the fact that they're anxious or the fact that they have these unusual sexual
00:47:46interests.
00:47:47So I think that research could be a little bit cleaner if it does happen that new studies
00:47:51come out showing this and I'm fully on board with that, but I'm just not really convinced
00:47:54because when you talk to guys with porn problems, almost always they have anxiety and this is
00:47:59a way for them to avoid talking to their spouse or their girlfriend.
00:48:01So what's different with women?
00:48:03Women I think it's the same thing.
00:48:04We don't know as much about women because this is an issue that I think is only really
00:48:08become more of a problem with the younger generation, maybe even millennial women, like younger millennial
00:48:13women with the accessibility of porn.
00:48:15But I think even, because it's even with studies when they're looking at say the effects of
00:48:19porn on kids, women have only really started to show more negative body image say or body
00:48:25comparison more recently because girls are being exposed to it now.
00:48:28Girls tend to watch porn later than boys and they tend to watch it maybe once or twice out
00:48:32of curiosity.
00:48:33But I do think with like Gen Z, they're being exposed to this even before their first sexual
00:48:37experience, before their first orgasm, they can't make sense of it.
00:48:40And I think that it can be integrated into their life a little bit more.
00:48:44So it's the same thing I think anxiety, usually for anyone with a porn issue, there's a history
00:48:48of some form of sexual trauma, unfortunately.
00:48:50So there it's a way that anyone with a porn issue, most people with a porn issue, there
00:48:55is some history of sexual trauma.
00:48:57Not everyone, but in my experience, many of them have had some issue with, yeah, either
00:49:03with abuse or being exposed to porn at a young age, either accidentally and that was like
00:49:08a traumatic thing.
00:49:09Like when I say trauma, I'm not, the way sometimes people use the word trauma nowadays is very
00:49:12flippant, right?
00:49:13They use it over the-
00:49:14You mean actual-
00:49:15Insignificant thing.
00:49:16No, yeah, I'm referring to something that is actually quite horrific and awful.
00:49:19Or they might've been shown it in the process of grooming.
00:49:22So what do you think's going on?
00:49:24Is it just disinhibition, dysregulation?
00:49:27Is it the same reason that people who maybe had a childhood trauma struggle with gambling
00:49:33or struggle with drugs or alcohol or their emotions rage?
00:49:38Is it just the same, but this, the particular pathway these people have found is porn or
00:49:43is there something specific about the mechanism that porn gives that helps them to sort of
00:49:48alchemize or try and alchemize whatever they went through?
00:49:52It could be partially biological thing because it's like a self-soothing thing.
00:49:55So especially for children, if they're not taught ways to self-regulate, they're looking
00:49:58for ways to feel good when they're stressed out or upset, right?
00:50:01So some people gravitate toward drugs and alcohol.
00:50:03Other people might gravitate toward porn.
00:50:05I think it depends on how old you are probably when you come across it initially, what your
00:50:10experience is when you see it, like is it a pleasurable thing?
00:50:14But I think for the men say, like when I was doing research, who had had these negative
00:50:17experiences in childhood, it was a way of revisiting it to try and make sense of it, I think.
00:50:22But yeah, I really strongly believe like sitting down with a competent therapist and working
00:50:28through that stuff could be very helpful for people.
00:50:30Better than porn.
00:50:31Yeah.
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00:51:39What do you think about the relationship between porn use and the type of sex that people are
00:51:45having?
00:51:46Is it influencing the type of sex?
00:51:47So in terms of say very extreme thing previously, okay, I would start with before the internet.
00:51:53So if, cause there's a concern about does porn make men more violent?
00:51:57Does porn make men entitled and with sex?
00:52:02Previously if a man grew up and had his first sexual experience prior to online porn, I would
00:52:06say porn is not the thing that made him.
00:52:09If he is say violent or likes to degrade his partners or treat them poorly, I wouldn't say
00:52:15that's porn.
00:52:16I would say that's due to the way he was raised.
00:52:18He's probably antisocial, probably has some dark triad personality going on there.
00:52:23Probably doesn't think very highly of women, has a lot of hostility toward women, but those
00:52:27views would have been formed prior to porn.
00:52:28So I don't think porn is the problem.
00:52:29I think he probably was interested in violent porn and violent sex because of other factors
00:52:36in terms of how he was raised potentially.
00:52:39Nowadays with the fact that the fact that kids are being exposed to this so young, I'm really
00:52:43concerned about how this is affecting their sexuality because we do see studies coming
00:52:47out showing that kids who are having problematic sexual behaviors, it's due to being sexualized
00:52:53by porn, like early exposure.
00:52:55This trend of sexual choking that I write about in sextinction, young women, Gen Z women in
00:53:00particular, it's almost ubiquitous.
00:53:03So I think that is being due to them being exposed to this at such a young age and believing
00:53:07that this is what they need to do in order to attract men or to be enticing in the bedroom.
00:53:12And I'll be very clear that you could die from doing this.
00:53:15So it's not safe.
00:53:16There's no safe way to do it.
00:53:18This was Louise Perry's thing that she was helping to prosecute guys that had killed their
00:53:24partners and then used whatever it is, the rough sex excuse thing, which, yeah, I mean,
00:53:31that's fucking horrific.
00:53:34There is a bit of research that I wanted to talk to you about, which I've never spoken
00:53:38about on the show before, you're probably familiar with.
00:53:41A new study interviewed 302 adults of those more women enjoyed aggression in porn, were
00:53:46aroused by portrayals of female pain and reported wanting to see more aggression.
00:53:51And this is a bar chart, which shows women saying double the number of women saying aggression
00:53:59is arousing, triple the number of men, the triple number of women to men hard aggression
00:54:06is arousing, maybe four times the number of women to men would like more aggression in
00:54:11mainstream pornography, maybe 30% more actively seek aggression.
00:54:16The only thing that men are stronger on is aroused by women showing pleasure in response
00:54:20to aggression.
00:54:21And that's maybe 5% aroused by women showing pain in response to aggression, nearly double
00:54:29women to men.
00:54:31This seems to be pretty, this is a small sample size, 302 people, but this is, you can dig
00:54:37deeper and find out kind of the same pattern and it's something that I remember I once read
00:54:42a feminist who wrote about this and she said something along the lines of it's an uncomfortable
00:54:47fact for most modern feminists that women seem to prefer aggressive porn than men do.
00:54:54And misogynists use this as an excuse that like she wanted it made type thing.
00:55:01That to me does suggest that the picture is a little bit more complex than just guys have
00:55:09learned it in porn and now they're doing it to women and women feel the need to perform
00:55:15up to it.
00:55:16That no one's pushing women in that way.
00:55:20It's not the only study of that kind.
00:55:21No, I agree.
00:55:23I'm not one of those people that think that this is entirely like men pushing it on women
00:55:27and women have no choice but to do it.
00:55:28I do think there are some women out there that's a sexual masochism.
00:55:32So it's a sexual arousal at the idea of being hurt, humiliated, degraded by your partner.
00:55:37So that's the only paraphilia that you actually find in women typically.
00:55:40So usually women-
00:55:41Oh, that's so, sorry.
00:55:42That's so interesting.
00:55:43The only paraphilia that's typical in women, paraphilia being odd sexual proclivities is-
00:55:49Masochism.
00:55:50If you do-
00:55:51Self-masochism.
00:55:52Yeah.
00:55:53Masochism is when it's happening to you.
00:55:56Sadism is when you're doing it to someone else.
00:55:58Cool, cool.
00:55:59How much sadism is there in women?
00:56:01So when you do see other paraphilias like sadism, it usually is correlated with personality
00:56:06disorders.
00:56:07Right.
00:56:08There has to be dark triad.
00:56:09There has to be, yeah.
00:56:10Okay.
00:56:11Anyway, so the masochism for women.
00:56:13Yeah.
00:56:14So evolutionarily it could be because women, well, women's bodies, have you heard of the
00:56:20study where women basically are aroused to any type of porn?
00:56:23So it's whether it's-
00:56:24Yes.
00:56:25They're more sexually fluid.
00:56:26Girl on girl, guy on guy, girl on guy.
00:56:27Well, this is why-
00:56:28This is why-
00:56:29Just to be clear, animals having sex, not people having sex with animals.
00:56:33I don't agree with these, Daphne.
00:56:34What's that fucking hockey players, the two hockey players boning.
00:56:39What's that thing?
00:56:40It's that series, Hot Ones, not Hot Ones.
00:56:43That's the wing thing.
00:56:44What the fuck is it?
00:56:45Two hockey players?
00:56:46Two hockey players.
00:56:47It's taken the world by storm.
00:56:49He did rivalry.
00:56:50Fucking Hot Ones.
00:56:51I don't know.
00:56:52He did rivalry.
00:56:53I knew I got there.
00:56:54You're Canadian.
00:56:55You're supposed to know.
00:56:56I don't actually watch porn so that might be why I've never heard of it.
00:56:59He Did Rivalry was a book about these two hockey players on opposing teams and then they fuck
00:57:05each other.
00:57:06Why are you reading this?
00:57:07I'm not reading it.
00:57:08This is a big TV show.
00:57:09I didn't see- I've never seen anything like this.
00:57:13I'm the straightest man in the room.
00:57:17This has broken the internet and you should absolutely have a look at this.
00:57:23I'll do some Googling once I leave the studio.
00:57:24You'd love to look at this.
00:57:25Okay.
00:57:26But it is basically revealing just how flexible women's sexualities are.
00:57:32Yeah.
00:57:33That these two guys, there was a book, Book Super Popular, then pivoted over into this
00:57:36TV series and the TV series is fucking ripped.
00:57:39It's like a Brokeback Mountain on ice, right?
00:57:43But was it actually pornographic or was it just like hinted?
00:57:46Asking the wrong guy.
00:57:47I'm sorry.
00:57:48Okay.
00:57:49I didn't get- I mean, I have to assume that there was either implied or like pretty close
00:57:53to like raunchy shit happening on the screen.
00:57:57Okay.
00:57:58Anyway, that you're quite right.
00:58:01Why is it that you think that women's sexuality is more fluid than men's?
00:58:05Well, the unfortunate reason is rape.
00:58:07So in the past, right, evolutionarily speaking, it protects the woman's body if she can become
00:58:11aroused regardless of what is happening.
00:58:13Which is why sometimes during sexual assault, women can still reach orgasm and then they
00:58:18feel lots of shame afterward because it's fucking horrific.
00:58:20They think, did I want that?
00:58:22Did I want this thing?
00:58:23Did I want that?
00:58:24Am I fucking awful?
00:58:25Am I traumatized?
00:58:27And now my body did a thing to me that I'm traumatized about as well.
00:58:31So brutal.
00:58:33Speaking to those findings though, I would be curious to know how they sample.
00:58:38Do you remember how they sampled for those women?
00:58:42Preferences related to aggression, pleasure, and pain in pornography among male and female
00:58:46interviewees.
00:58:47I've got the- I can send you the journal article.
00:58:50But certainly, even if we don't look at aggression is arousing, heart aggression is arousing,
00:58:56would like more aggression in mainstream pornography actively seek aggression, aroused by women
00:59:00showing pain in response to aggression?
00:59:02Just look at the romantic genre.
00:59:04Well, evolutionarily speaking, in terms of masochism, it would benefit women to show a-
00:59:12Capacity to endure pain?
00:59:13Yeah, or I don't want to say subjugation, but it evokes caretaking behaviors for men, right?
00:59:19If they see that a woman is in need of help or support.
00:59:25I suppose so.
00:59:27To a degree, but there's also a kind of resilience in masochism, right?
00:59:30That I can withstand it.
00:59:32There's almost a anti-fragility, not a fragility.
00:59:36That goes back to the trauma that I talked about in Sexstinction.
00:59:39And the- it's in the porn chapter about how many individuals who are into BDSM and kink
00:59:45actually do have a history, especially of physical abuse in childhood.
00:59:48Well, I imagine that made you very popular.
00:59:52It's still happening now.
00:59:53People are like-
00:59:54Because you were a sex positive-
00:59:55Oh, yeah.
00:59:56Right?
00:59:57Research writer person, right?
00:59:58Yeah.
00:59:59I was a columnist for a well-known men's magazine with nude women in it.
01:00:02And writing this book, I was so grateful to have the chance to sit down and really question
01:00:05a lot of the beliefs I had.
01:00:07And I went through my own data that I collected when I was still in sex research and I found
01:00:10the same thing.
01:00:11And I was amazed.
01:00:12I thought-
01:00:13What do you mean?
01:00:14You went through the data and what did you find?
01:00:15Well, I found that interest in BDSM and kink is more- is correlated with severe physical
01:00:22abuse in childhood.
01:00:23And this is even more so the case for men who are into BDSM and kink as compared to men who
01:00:30are community controls, obviously.
01:00:33Men who have porn problems who are not into BDSM or kink.
01:00:36And also more so the case than men who are convicted of child sex crimes.
01:00:41So there's something with physical abuse.
01:00:43Wow.
01:00:44BDSM and kink.
01:00:45Is a better predictor of male childhood abuse, trauma-
01:00:51Female too.
01:00:52But then the pedophilia is-
01:00:54Victimization.
01:00:55Yeah.
01:00:56Well, convicted sex offenses or pornography.
01:01:00So we don't know how many of those are unreported and stuff like that.
01:01:03Right.
01:01:04But also there are times when men will abuse children and not necessarily be pedophile.
01:01:07That's like fine, you know, very fine details.
01:01:09But overall, yeah.
01:01:10Wow.
01:01:11Yeah.
01:01:12Child sex crimes.
01:01:13Is that what BDSM and kink is doing for people?
01:01:17It's really sad.
01:01:18I want to be clear.
01:01:19I'm not saying this to make judgment about people or to try and shame them.
01:01:22I really hope in bringing awareness to this because BDSM is so commonplace in society,
01:01:27right?
01:01:28It's so normalized almost.
01:01:29It's almost seemed like there is a variation, I think, in terms of people who might partake
01:01:33in sexual activity that is like playful or passionate, right, versus wanting to strangle
01:01:39your partner, wanting to really hurt them, wanting to humiliate them.
01:01:43Or if you enjoy those behaviors done to you, especially for women because physical harm,
01:01:49it wouldn't really make sense for women or men, but why would physical harm be correlated
01:01:53with orgasm?
01:01:54Right.
01:01:55If you can potentially become pregnant from this act, why would it be beneficial to you
01:01:58and your offspring to find physical pain and harm?
01:02:01What do you think?
01:02:02Arousing.
01:02:03Yeah.
01:02:04Why?
01:02:05Why?
01:02:06Because something went wrong with the system.
01:02:07And it's getting wires crossed.
01:02:08Yeah.
01:02:09And that's why I bring attention to this because so many people, I sense, enjoy these things,
01:02:14but don't really know why or they think it's something that they're something, it's something
01:02:17they take pride in.
01:02:18They're using.
01:02:19Maybe it's something that you should look a little more deeply into.
01:02:23They're using the sexual preferences as a way to work through something that maybe should
01:02:30be done with a therapist.
01:02:31Yeah.
01:02:32Interesting.
01:02:33I remember I was talking to a researcher and they were telling me about how this, maybe
01:02:41not uncontacted tribe, but this relatively uncontacted tribe, one of the rites of passage
01:02:49that they had for women was that men would get reeds, thick reeds and sticks, whippy sticks,
01:02:59and they would stand there and they would whip the women across their backs.
01:03:02Every woman in the tribe had huge scars everywhere across their backs.
01:03:08And the goal of the women was to be able to stand there and not flinch, not make noise,
01:03:12not cry, not whimper, not yell, not do anything.
01:03:15And this was supposed to be a presentation of their capacity to endure what would become
01:03:22giving birth, child rearing.
01:03:25And that, when you were talking about, it might engender sympathy from men, which I can completely
01:03:32see, just the power dynamic, subjugation, all of that, that does make sense.
01:03:39Allow me to come and hold you.
01:03:40But if you're able to withstand pain, there's also a kind of resilience in that, which I
01:03:45think would almost work against it.
01:03:48So yeah, kind of interesting.
01:03:49I always think about that example when it comes to female behavior in kink.
01:03:57Is this maybe some kind of demonstration of my capacity, of the woman's capacity to endure
01:04:05hard things physically?
01:04:08Not like lift heavy things, right?
01:04:09That's the guy picking you up and putting you against the wall.
01:04:12That's the ability for him to physically dominate you.
01:04:14But the woman's ability to endure the pain might actually be maybe like a fertility cue
01:04:19of some kind, like my pain tolerance.
01:04:21I don't know.
01:04:22It could be.
01:04:23I could see- Real nascent idea.
01:04:24It's wet clay.
01:04:25All right.
01:04:26So I think that is something that is culturally enforced and it's like a rite of passage.
01:04:29But if you as a woman are intentionally putting yourself in those situations when you don't
01:04:33need to, there are plenty of guys out there who are, I mean, vanilla is seen as a negative
01:04:37thing.
01:04:38I don't think being vanilla is a bad thing.
01:04:39So there are plenty of vanilla guys out there who are not going to want to strangle you during
01:04:42sex and not going to want to degrade you during sex.
01:04:46So if you're intentionally putting yourself through that, even if it is a way to show how
01:04:49strong you are, why would you choose to do that?
01:04:51When you don't need to.
01:04:52When you don't need to.
01:04:53Romanticy.
01:04:54I just sat on the plane flying to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago and there was a lovely
01:05:02woman sat next to me and she had her iPad up and she was reading Court of Thorns and Roses.
01:05:07Now what is that?
01:05:08That is- More porn.
01:05:10That is one of the most popular romanticy books at the moment.
01:05:14You're familiar with romanticy?
01:05:16It's basically like erotica.
01:05:19It is- That's probably- That's a word that you would use.
01:05:24I respect the art form and also the fact that the fan base is fucking massive and I don't
01:05:28want to get lynched by that.
01:05:30No, no, no.
01:05:31It is story- It's female literacy porn wrapped in quite a lot of story.
01:05:41But there are sort of peak dirty moments.
01:05:43Our friend is tapping away and she didn't have her glasses on.
01:05:49The font size was quite large and I had a realization that chicks can basically watch porn on a plane.
01:05:58I guess so.
01:05:59They can basically watch their equivalent of porn on a plane and I'm looking at this.
01:06:05I'm trying not to move my head at all.
01:06:07I'm keeping my head dead straight.
01:06:09I'm going- And I spoke to some friends after it.
01:06:14I've not read the book.
01:06:15I didn't read enough to fully capture what the narrative arc was.
01:06:19But it might be a court of thorns and roses or one of the other books like that.
01:06:24The protagonist is a fairy prince or a fairy king who has the ability to transform himself
01:06:32into this like monstrous beast.
01:06:35And I think that in that sort of shows what it is that one of the sort of archetypal desires
01:06:43that women have this he is dangerous but not around me.
01:06:48And I think I was talking on the way in about that study with a couple of friends.
01:06:52I have a group of evolutionary psychology researchers in a WhatsApp chat and whenever I get confused
01:06:57by stuff I put in and they give me the answer.
01:06:59And Andrew Thomas from Union of Nottingham gave me a fucking fantastic answer for this
01:07:02one.
01:07:03It was the aggression is arousing et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
01:07:07I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
01:07:08He said what women think is I want a man who has the capability to be aggressive because
01:07:16protection, traction, dominance, all that stuff- High testosterone.
01:07:20But he'll never be aggressive with me.
01:07:22And it's a pattern misfiring of the sort of pattern detection which is well most guys that
01:07:31don't have the capacity to be aggressive don't have the regulation to be able to turn it off
01:07:36and create bright lines and contain it in that way.
01:07:42If you have a guy who is just someone bumps into you on the street or you get scared and
01:07:47he beats up all of the guys that are there.
01:07:50How many of them have gone through the full fucking samurai Keanu Reeves training and come
01:07:54out the other side and say hmm?
01:07:56That's not most guys that are great and dangerous physically, just dangerous physically everywhere.
01:08:09It's not compartmentalized.
01:08:13I definitely agree.
01:08:14So that's the allure of I suppose the romance novel where you could have the duality there
01:08:18that doesn't- Fairy King who can become the beast but he's
01:08:21never going to be the beast with you.
01:08:23Yeah, interesting.
01:08:25So we have basically the most sexually permissive culture in history that is also having the
01:08:30least amount of sex.
01:08:31Yeah, which is wild.
01:08:34It's crazy when you think about like I was thinking about social media and even something
01:08:37as subtle as that like everyone's on social media but I do think it even that is changing
01:08:41the way that people view potential partners how they view their own partners.
01:08:46How so?
01:08:47Study that I cited in Sextinction showing that roughly one in 10 men actually loses interest
01:08:52in having sex with his own partner after looking at influencers and that women also feel less
01:08:57sexually desirable after being on social media.
01:09:00One in 10 men lose interest for a brief window of time?
01:09:06They didn't specify.
01:09:08So they're less interested in having real sex with their partner when they've been looking
01:09:15at influences on the internet.
01:09:18So I do remember at uni, this is so fucking bad.
01:09:21That was an English study too actually.
01:09:23Good.
01:09:24It was probably the people that I used to employ, it was probably the lads that used to work
01:09:28for me.
01:09:29I do remember there was two guys that were going to go on first dates with these two chicks
01:09:37two nights in a row.
01:09:38On the first one, he turned up and he ended up going back with her and having sex but he
01:09:44said she looked nothing like her Instagram.
01:09:46It was gutting.
01:09:47She was so hot on the Instagram, kind of like a catfish type thing and he had this joke about
01:09:52he wondered if he could have just sellotaped her Instagram to a forehead so he could have
01:09:55looked at that.
01:09:57And then the next night, the guy went out on one and she was really lovely and great.
01:10:04And then I don't think they'd slept with each other that night.
01:10:07And he came back and looked at her Instagram and got turned off because she wasn't able
01:10:11to present herself in the marketplace of- That's a good thing, no?
01:10:16I said that.
01:10:17That's what I said.
01:10:18That's what I said.
01:10:19I was like, "Dude, you found a barn find.
01:10:21That's a diamond in the rough.
01:10:22You found somebody that's really fantastic, shows up, wonderful in person that the marketplace
01:10:28where most other people are going to be competing with you for her, she's just not- I don't know
01:10:38what it was.
01:10:39I didn't do my research."
01:10:41So what is it he didn't like about the fact that he can't send people to her profile to
01:10:45look at her?
01:10:46No, you just- I think that there was a- it wasn't even as deep as that.
01:10:49Sorry, it was significantly more deep than that.
01:10:52Not that he couldn't show off this girl that could potentially come as girlfriend or whatever
01:10:56to other people on Instagram.
01:10:59I think it- what I believed it to be was he was so conditioned to judging a woman's attractiveness
01:11:10through her social media profile, and especially given that it's the most extreme version of
01:11:15you and for men to write the most extreme wealth or whatever, that he got the ick by her having
01:11:25a bad Instagram account, ickstagram.
01:11:32I don't know.
01:11:35The club promotion industry is a weird and wonderful place, but I'll never forget it.
01:11:38Two nights in a row, one guy saying, "I wish I could have strapped her Instagram to a forehead."
01:11:42And the next night, the guy going, "She was amazing, but I went and looked at her social
01:11:45media profile after we'd been on the date, and it was a turn-off, dude.
01:11:49I got the ick because her Instagram wasn't hot."
01:11:51So he wants a hot Instagram lady who's just as hot in real life?
01:11:56Yes, I think so.
01:11:57Look, these guys were 19.
01:12:00They had no prefrontal cortex.
01:12:01I don't even think that that's that uncommon, though.
01:12:03I think it's that social media has done something like that more subtly, though, to the general
01:12:08population.
01:12:09You think?
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01:13:07So guys are less likely to want to have sex after they looked at influencers, and girls
01:13:17are less likely to feel attractive?
01:13:20Yeah.
01:13:21They feel less attractive.
01:13:22Okay, so it's a comparison game.
01:13:23Yeah.
01:13:24Right.
01:13:25Why?
01:13:26What do you think's going on?
01:13:27What's the mechanism?
01:13:28Well, I wrote a chapter about plastic surgery, and when you look at this trend of, especially
01:13:32really young, in some cases, girls getting procedures done, I do think social media is
01:13:37done something to make them feel that they need to do this to compete and to get a partner
01:13:42or to at least be found attractive, and there has to be something with just constantly being
01:13:46inundated with these images on social media.
01:13:49They have found in, say, adolescent girls that girls who are less popular or girls who tend
01:13:54to do upward comparisons or tend to compare themselves to, say, more attractive women or
01:13:59more popular girls tend to fall prey to this a little bit more.
01:14:03In an attempt to try and clamber up this felt imbalance of a hierarchy that they're comparing
01:14:09themselves to.
01:14:10Okay.
01:14:11Talk to me about what's happened to plastic surgery over time.
01:14:14We've seen increases in it.
01:14:16The types changed.
01:14:18What's the context of people getting different looks?
01:14:21Kardashians did the fucking BBL for a while.
01:14:24Is that still in?
01:14:25Now it is breast augmentation for Gen Z women.
01:14:28So they are actually, boob jobs are very popular among that cohort.
01:14:33Okay.
01:14:34I do think that's influenced by pornography.
01:14:35Also, labiaplasty.
01:14:36I was just looking actually at a study a couple nights ago showing that women, very many young
01:14:41women feel self-conscious about their labia and are actually getting these procedures done,
01:14:46which is also influenced from porn.
01:14:48And it, I mean, it's just crazy to me.
01:14:50It makes me wonder, is that why people are not interested in having sex?
01:14:52Same with guys.
01:14:53Guys are getting filler injections into their penis for even sexting purposes.
01:14:57Like they just want to look better.
01:15:00George, my housemate, used to make this joke every time that we're on a plane.
01:15:07It was the same, you know, someone it's kind of like a dad joke, but he's not yet a dad
01:15:11and you know those teeny tiny 175 mil cans of Diet Coke.
01:15:16Yeah.
01:15:17He would always say, it's like, I keep a hold of one of those and I go back and I take a
01:15:20dick pic with it in the background.
01:15:21So it would make it look, you know, it's like, Oh, that's a 330 or a 355 mil pan, but I've
01:15:26kept the, I've kept the airplane mini and that's, you know, comparatively.
01:15:29I should be doing that instead of getting the filler in their penis.
01:15:32I agree.
01:15:33I agree.
01:15:34Make Diet Coke, mini Diet Coke's great again.
01:15:37So yeah, I mean the labiaplasty in the penis stuff, it seems to be obvious that it would
01:15:43be influenced by porn.
01:15:44But even things like, I see like news reports of women under 30 getting facelifts and getting
01:15:50upper eyelifts, right?
01:15:51And I, in my personal opinion, I don't think women that young need to be getting extensive
01:15:56work done because you do not have the signs of aging yet to justify.
01:16:00What do you think they're trying to do?
01:16:02Well, I think if you look at say when women are the most fertile, it tends to be mid twenties.
01:16:07So my sense is most women are trying to look like they're in their mid twenties.
01:16:10So if you're older than that, you're going to try and look younger.
01:16:12And if you're younger, you're trying to look older.
01:16:15And so you're going to use, you're going to choose the most fertile in the mid twenties,
01:16:19early to mid twenties.
01:16:20Right.
01:16:21Yeah.
01:16:22So I found out some really fucking uncomfortable data around when men are most fertile.
01:16:29Really young.
01:16:30Yeah.
01:16:31It's really young.
01:16:32Like illegal in some states young.
01:16:34And you go, really?
01:16:37Which is just, I don't know.
01:16:38We talk about women's biological clocks.
01:16:41We never really think about, there's so much sperm, right?
01:16:46Speak for yourself.
01:16:47But there's so much sperm and you only need one window though.
01:16:50They also have a larger, like men can still impregnate someone.
01:16:52And later on in life, there are higher rates of chromosomal abnormalities, but the potential
01:16:57whereas for women, it's, it's a little bit more unforgiving.
01:17:01But anyway, so you think, well, I've seen what is buccal, buccal fat, buccal fat removal.
01:17:09Yeah.
01:17:10The cheek, cheek fat thing.
01:17:11Yeah.
01:17:12What's that trying to achieve?
01:17:13Do you think?
01:17:14To look older because you're removing the baby fat essentially in your face.
01:17:17But what happens is as you get older, your face naturally loses fat, right?
01:17:21And so you're going to look more gaunt and you might potentially need to use filler too.
01:17:27Oh, so I used, I got fat removal before I was 24 and then after I was 28, I had to use
01:17:36filler to replace where I got rid of the fat, right?
01:17:40Yeah.
01:17:41I mean, I, so I want to be clear, like I don't want to come down on men and women if they
01:17:43choose to get these procedures because I understand, especially if you have a public facing job,
01:17:48there's a lot of pressure to keep your looks up and to look young.
01:17:51But my concern is more so when it's really young people or I would say even for men who
01:17:56are doing this, you really don't need to.
01:17:58It is brutal.
01:17:59I mean, some of the young girls, it's supposed to be young girls that I've seen videos of
01:18:06on TikTok, there's like 22, 23 year old chicks and they look mid thirties or forties with
01:18:13all of this work that's been done.
01:18:15And I was thinking, I was having a conversation last night about how the sort of ideal female
01:18:24form has changed, even with sort of relatively extreme cosmetic procedures.
01:18:29So Geordie Shore, which was the British equivalent of Jersey Shore, that back in the day was a
01:18:35lot about fake tan.
01:18:38It was big hair.
01:18:39It was almost pin-uppy in a way there was, it was tight suits too, weren't they?
01:18:44That's because of, that's something else.
01:18:46But yes, that was sort of part- Chavs, I learned what chavs was when I was living.
01:18:50Chavs, exactly.
01:18:51Well, look, be careful, right?
01:18:52Those were- Is that offensive?
01:18:53No, those were my customers.
01:18:54It's kind of like calling someone a hick.
01:18:55Oh, okay.
01:18:56I mean it with love.
01:18:57Me too.
01:18:58But those were my customers for a very long time.
01:19:02It was fake tan.
01:19:03It was big boobs, maybe augmented, maybe not- Brows too, very specific eyebrows.
01:19:10Very painted on, sort of aggressive brows.
01:19:12Big hair, tight dress, short dress, right?
01:19:16I love that.
01:19:17Just to be clear, I'm not making fun of it.
01:19:19That aesthetic?
01:19:20Strong aesthetic.
01:19:21Great early 2010s aesthetic.
01:19:22And the guy's equivalent, I think up until probably about five years ago, we were a little
01:19:29bit delayed on the guy's thing, was sort of big muscles, not so concerned with height,
01:19:35fake tan, plunging v-neck neckline, tight jeans, expensive watch thing.
01:19:44Jeans?
01:19:45Yeah, maybe.
01:19:46So what I was trying to do with this conversation I was having last night, which was so interesting,
01:19:50I was trying to work out what was being signaled then and what's being signaled now.
01:19:57And I think what's being signaled now is a more extreme version of that by both men and
01:20:07women.
01:20:08So the male thing, it's all about formidable now.
01:20:11It's the over-exaggerated handsome Squidward cheekbones and the jawline.
01:20:17It's the height, the height.
01:20:20But it's a lot less to do with, I'm not really seeing anyone talk about tan all that much.
01:20:25But even seeing if you look at- Dark brows are really big for guys.
01:20:28The most popular looks maxes aren't that concerned with muscularity, extreme muscularity in the
01:20:34way that it would have been 10 years ago.
01:20:3510 years ago it would have just been get as wide and as muscular as possible.
01:20:39That's not quite the case now.
01:20:40And then with the women, both of them are basically caricatures of the most sexually dimorphic
01:20:46physical traits.
01:20:47Right?
01:20:48The Nigerian runaway, I think it's called, where the stag deer that's got antlers so
01:20:56big that he can't lift his head up and he dies.
01:20:58The peacock that's got such a ridiculous tail that he gets caught with the first second there's
01:21:01a predator around.
01:21:02But he did some great boning on the way out.
01:21:06That seems to be what's happening with men and women now.
01:21:10It's just a more, the next evolution it's more extreme limb lengthening surgery, the brows,
01:21:15the cheekbones, the mandible surgery, all that stuff.
01:21:18For women especially, I think it can also be the equivalent of showing off an expensive
01:21:22handbag.
01:21:23So instead of saying, here's my designer bag, or here's my designer titties, or, you know,
01:21:27that my lips or whatever, like I have a man who will pay for my surgery and make me look
01:21:32like this.
01:21:33It's a good argument for why I've heard about why women have long nails and long hair.
01:21:39It's just fucking impractical.
01:21:42It is itself a status of wealth and luxury that not only can I maintain them, but I have
01:21:51a life that requires so little hard labor that this hair and these nails and this makeup.
01:21:57I mean, the female intra-sexual competition is just like fucking endlessly interesting.
01:22:02Like shoes and bags, exclusively intra-sexual.
01:22:07I do not know the difference between whatever you're wearing and something that was one-tenth
01:22:11the price and something that was a thousand times the price, I have no idea.
01:22:15But women do.
01:22:16Women know.
01:22:17And if you're in a relationship, it's basically a, my man is so invested in me that he spent
01:22:24however much money on this thing.
01:22:27So like, don't even think about going there.
01:22:30Which is why I also think that women tend to go a little bit overboard in some cases with
01:22:34the work done as a way to signal that they have the money and the resources or man that
01:22:38is paying for it, because usually when you think of plastic surgery, men don't like plastic
01:22:42surgery typically.
01:22:43Men, they don't like it in women because it masks their underlying health and fertility,
01:22:49right?
01:22:50So if a woman can turn back the clock in terms of aging, signs of aging, or appear more attractive
01:22:55than she naturally was, or maybe you don't mind so much, but from the conversations I've
01:22:59had with men, men tend to not really like plastic surgery.
01:23:01No, I agree.
01:23:02They prefer natural beauty.
01:23:03I agree.
01:23:04I saw this tweet after the Grammys that fucking ripped.
01:23:09And it was, men love Sydney Sweeney and hate Sabrina Carpenter.
01:23:15Women love Sabrina Carpenter and hate Sydney Sweeney.
01:23:18And the explanation that I saw, I was so fascinated by it, I thought it was, and it seems to be
01:23:23pretty accurate.
01:23:24I don't know that many guys that are like, I love Sabrina Carpenter.
01:23:27And I don't know that many women that love Sydney Sweeney.
01:23:30That's funny.
01:23:31I've seen this.
01:23:32I mean, I think they're both pretty, so I don't know.
01:23:33I guess I'm like one of the odd ones.
01:23:34I need to be more judgmental.
01:23:37The best explanation that I saw was that Sabrina Carpenter, her physical presentation is basically
01:23:45gay and female coded.
01:23:48And Sydney Sweeney is sort of low maintenance, natural male coded beauty.
01:23:57Less sort of curated in that sort of a way and that low maintenance thing sort of seems
01:24:02to come across.
01:24:03But I think the reliable signal of fitness cue that's being sort of hidden by lots of
01:24:15plastic surgery is so true.
01:24:16And I get the sense, I get the sense that the Lux Maxing community for men is doing the
01:24:22same thing.
01:24:23I was going to ask you about that.
01:24:24Like what are your views?
01:24:25Because when I write about this, I get a lot of young men who get upset at me and say like,
01:24:29you don't understand, right?
01:24:30Well, this is the time for the fucking patriarchy to step in, writing as a woman.
01:24:36Sit down.
01:24:37Let me explain to you.
01:24:39What do I think?
01:24:40I think I have a really fucking, I think this is an interesting thing.
01:24:45My advice to guys is just work away, get rich, honestly.
01:24:50Get rich.
01:24:51What is it?
01:24:52Don't worry about all the taking the hormones to make your bone structure.
01:24:54I would say get rich, get popular.
01:24:58Lux are important, but you can make some pretty good changes just by becoming more diligent.
01:25:04What I would say about the Lux Maxing thing is what guys seem to be optimizing for is
01:25:11formidability.
01:25:12So they're optimizing for the sort of things that other men respect, not that women are
01:25:15attracted to.
01:25:17So other men would, if you look at most guys that have Lux Maxed and put them in front of
01:25:23women, I wonder whether women would find them more attractive.
01:25:26So it's intersexual competition again.
01:25:28Or whether men would find them more formidable.
01:25:29I think that more men would find them more formidable than more women would find them
01:25:33more attractive.
01:25:34Because most women are not looking for their guys to be hyper hyper masculine like that.
01:25:38There's even some evidence to suggest that women prefer a slightly feminized face with
01:25:43a masculinized body.
01:25:45And not super jacked either.
01:25:46No, not super jacked.
01:25:48But they want average face or sometimes actually slightly feminized face with masculinized body.
01:25:55So all of the guys are just pushing toward heavier brow, deeper jaw, stronger cheekbones.
01:26:02But you know the David Putz study that he did about when he brought people into the lab and
01:26:07got women to rate attractiveness and men to rate formidability?
01:26:11Remind me.
01:26:12So fucking good.
01:26:13So photos of guys shown to women and men.
01:26:16Women were asked to rank how attractive do you think this man is?
01:26:19Men were asked to rank how likely do you think it is that you could beat this other man in
01:26:23a fight?
01:26:24One year later, they brought the men from the photos into the lab and asked what their sexual
01:26:31success had been over the last year.
01:26:33And the female ratings of attractiveness had basically zero predictive power for the sexual
01:26:38success.
01:26:39But the male ratings of formidability were very predictive.
01:26:43So even though what I think is happening at level one, this is like the Epstein files,
01:26:48at level one, where he didn't kill himself, is Lux Max's are optimizing for formidability
01:26:59because they're disregarding women.
01:27:01And it's intra-sexual competition because I just want to mock other guys.
01:27:04I just want to be better than other men.
01:27:07Level two, Epstein's still alive and playing Fortnite in Israel, is actually by pursuing
01:27:13formidability, they may end up closing their eyes and throwing the dart at the dartboard
01:27:17and hitting the bullseye of women actually finding them more attractive than if they tried
01:27:22to pursue attractiveness as the main outcome.
01:27:24But this is, again, this is working theory at the moment.
01:27:28Yeah, I mean, because I could see that in terms of tattoos, there have been studies to show
01:27:31that men, when they get tattoos, it actually is more so about scaring off their male rivals
01:27:38because women don't, some women like tattoos, but not all do, and some women actually are
01:27:42turned off by tattoos.
01:27:43So it's more, again, like you said, of scaring off and beating your rivals than directly
01:27:48attracting women.
01:27:49But I also wonder if it's that these men are projecting onto women their preferences.
01:27:54So men care more about looks and, you know, youth.
01:27:58So I wonder if when you look at, say, marriage or marital satisfaction, men say, whether men
01:28:05find their wives attractive has a greater correlation with their marital satisfaction than whether
01:28:11women find their husbands attractive.
01:28:13So I wonder if these young guys are projecting onto women thinking that women care so much
01:28:18about looks when it's actually, that's what they care about in their partners.
01:28:21Oh, it's a failure of cross-sex mind reading using their own assessment criteria and saying,
01:28:29you must think the way that I think, I'll do more beautification.
01:28:32Well, Mac and Murphy's got this great idea where he talks about how the increases in male
01:28:38beautification are to try and offset this inability to get hypogamy to work.
01:28:44That men have realized that because they can't win socioeconomically, they might have to turn
01:28:50about this.
01:28:51That's crazy.
01:28:52Yeah.
01:28:53The vanity mirror round in an attempt to out beautify the socioeconomic lack.
01:28:59Yeah.
01:29:00Especially when they're young and they're just starting out in their career and they're thinking,
01:29:02okay, how do I attract women?
01:29:03I don't have the money yet.
01:29:04Don't have the resources.
01:29:05Well, I can just get really hot.
01:29:09There's worse theories.
01:29:10There are worse theories.
01:29:12What about the effects of sexlessness in marriage?
01:29:14Well, I can tell you, when I was in research, I would interview some men who had not had
01:29:20sex in like decades, which is why.
01:29:22In a marriage?
01:29:23Yeah, in a marriage.
01:29:24Married men who'd not had sex in decades.
01:29:25Yeah.
01:29:26I mean, at that point, there's a lot of cheating.
01:29:27Not that that's justified, but I think it can be very damaging to a relationship if you're
01:29:32not married to be sexless, because that's a way to bond with your partner, especially
01:29:36for men.
01:29:37They tend to use sex as a way to have intimacy, like emotional closeness with their partner.
01:29:40One of the few places that they can.
01:29:42Yeah.
01:29:43Yeah.
01:29:44So, I feel for people out there, you know, marriage, I'm assuming marriage is very difficult
01:29:50as is, and I'm not sure what would be useful for your audience, like how to overcome that.
01:29:58Put your phones away, number one.
01:30:00It's crazy, some of the stats I was reading in terms of people using social media during
01:30:05sex right after sex.
01:30:07Fuck off.
01:30:08Yeah, that same study during, I can't remember the status above my head.
01:30:11How?
01:30:12It's in sextinction that I cited it, but it's, I don't know.
01:30:15I was trying to figure that out myself.
01:30:16I'm thinking, how do you excuse yourself to go post something and then come back?
01:30:19You can't be posting.
01:30:21It can't be posting.
01:30:22There's no way that you can do that.
01:30:23I could see scrolling at best.
01:30:24Or if you go to the bathroom, maybe.
01:30:26During sex.
01:30:28Or even right after, that's pretty bad.
01:30:31It's the during that gets me.
01:30:32Maybe it's my friend strapping their Instagram through the forehead.
01:30:35Maybe it's just that.
01:30:36I don't know.
01:30:37Yeah.
01:30:38I got, I found this.
01:30:39Oh, but that's, sorry, I was going to say with the, there's another study that showed the
01:30:43more the people are on their phones and ignoring their partners, they have less sex, which makes
01:30:46sense.
01:30:47Is that called flubbing?
01:30:48Flubbing?
01:30:49Flubbing.
01:30:50Flubbing.
01:30:51You should, they need to rename that.
01:30:52It's a stupid name.
01:30:53Yeah.
01:30:54Arthur Brooks and Matthew Hussey taught me some interesting stuff around this about sort
01:31:03of revitalize, and James Sexton as well, taught me some interesting stuff.
01:31:06Arthur's was more neuro scientifically backed.
01:31:10That one of the problems you have in long-term marriages is that safety turns into consistency,
01:31:22turns into comfort, turns into laziness.
01:31:25And that, that we just go through the same dance.
01:31:27We do it on a Tuesday and it happens in this way.
01:31:31And I don't, there's no, there's no distance.
01:31:33There's no intrigue.
01:31:34Where'd you go today?
01:31:35Are you wearing something new?
01:31:37This is a little bit different.
01:31:38I don't, there's no push and pull, right?
01:31:42And a lot of the chemistry and the reason that I think people are so enlivened and excited
01:31:48at the start of a relationship is there's so much to discover about someone when you feel
01:31:51like there's nothing left to discover, sort of, where am I injecting my fantasy into literally?
01:31:57And what, bringing that back online, Arthur had a pretty interesting sort of few step process,
01:32:05which was to basically flirt.
01:32:07It's like to flirt with your partner throughout the day and to treat them as if they're an
01:32:11object of desire, especially if you're male to female.
01:32:14This is something that Esther Perel, I got wrong.
01:32:18I should have pushed back against when she came on the show and she said something to
01:32:22the effect of what woman has been aroused because she's seen her partner aroused.
01:32:27I'm like, I understand what you mean at sort of the first level, but almost every definition
01:32:32of female arousal includes my partner desires me.
01:32:38Like being desired by their partner.
01:32:40Yeah.
01:32:41And that's the most non-fungible, difficult to fake signal that I desire you is me being
01:32:51aroused.
01:32:52So you go, okay, I think that you probably can do, the unmarried fucking 38 year old guy
01:33:00telling people who are married how to re-invite live in their sex life.
01:33:05I think that there is good legs to, like make flirting great again.
01:33:09That's my, that's my argument.
01:33:12Or I was going to say, if your lady is down for it, to try on a wig.
01:33:16Try on a wig?
01:33:17Me?
01:33:18No, no.
01:33:19Well, I mean, you can, if you want to.
01:33:22To be someone different?
01:33:23Role-play?
01:33:24Yeah.
01:33:25If she is willing to put on a wig, because then it completely changes the way she looks.
01:33:28If you're looking for sexual novelty, then do something nice for her.
01:33:31Get her flowers, obviously.
01:33:33And then get her a wig?
01:33:34If she wants to wear one, yeah.
01:33:36That's interesting.
01:33:37I remember reading, um, Roy Baumeister is doing a fucking awesome series on sexual novelty
01:33:44at the moment.
01:33:45Okay.
01:33:46On his sub stack.
01:33:47It's, it is a travesty.
01:33:48Everyone needs to go and read Roy Baumeister's sub stack, because it's got three likes and
01:33:52they're all me and my friends.
01:33:53And he's the goat, right?
01:33:54He's the guy that did the original marshmallow test.
01:33:57And he's writing about sexual novelty at the moment.
01:33:59And he finds this story of a client that was working with a therapist.
01:34:08And she was saying that, I think this was a long, quite a while ago, um, and she was saying
01:34:14that her husband was struggling to be excited in the bedroom.
01:34:20And this was a long time before, before porn.
01:34:23And the, after a while, you know, weeks and months of this lady coming in, and this was
01:34:27the repeating challenge that was being had.
01:34:29Maybe he's just a bit old and maybe he's whatever.
01:34:32And the, uh, the therapist asked, have you sort of, what is it that you're doing to him?
01:34:40And the client said, sort of explained, and it was, it wasn't particularly intimate.
01:34:46He said, have you considered using your hand?
01:34:48She said, like my, my hand on him?
01:34:53No.
01:34:54And she said, okay, why, why don't you just try and do that?
01:34:59And sure enough went back and this had, you know, the most amazing effect because sexual
01:35:05novelty had been so constrained to one thing for fucking five decades, that simply the act,
01:35:12like second base was enough to blow this guy's mind.
01:35:17This dude in his sixties or seventies, because that was something that he'd never got to experience.
01:35:21I just thought that was so interesting to, you know, whether it's the, um, Coolidge effect
01:35:27or some sort of equivalent, like refractory, what novelty looks like.
01:35:31Um, but this series from Baumeister is fucking sick.
01:35:37He basically makes the, makes the argument that in a relationship, if this is the one,
01:35:43you should titrate the, uh, sort of sexual access and sexual novelty as slowly as possible.
01:35:51And it's going to suck, I mean, it's suck for the women as well, I actually won't suck
01:35:56for a long time.
01:35:57Um, but I, I really think that there's something to it.
01:36:01I really think that he's fucking, I think he's fucking nailed it and he's just, all he's doing
01:36:05is respecting the neurobiology, especially of men.
01:36:07He's going to do a separate treatment on women.
01:36:08He's only done it on men so far, but basically if you're like, this is the chick for me.
01:36:14Okay, move, move as slowly as possible through the different stages of doing things because
01:36:23there is only so much sexual novelty that you can have.
01:36:26Once you've gone to the end or close to the end, it doesn't feel as exciting to sort of
01:36:32skip back.
01:36:33If you know how the story ends, you know how the book, the series finishes, reading the
01:36:37middle bit is just less enlivening.
01:36:39Yeah, sure.
01:36:40I'll give it another read, but it's nowhere near as, so he's yeah, turn one page a week
01:36:43type thing and you know, stretch this book out over a decade or so.
01:36:47I thought it was really interesting.
01:36:48Yeah.
01:36:49I mean, I think that speaks to also why casual sex is not a good thing.
01:36:52I think it's better for both sexes to be less promiscuous, but definitely if you, well, if
01:36:57you have sex on the first date, a man's going to put you in the short term bucket.
01:37:01But even if not, I would say even if you have sex too soon and you're dating somebody at
01:37:06some level there, like you said, it's like shortening that book.
01:37:09How, how does it feel to believe this and say this as a former sexologist writer?
01:37:17I'm probably alienating like 90% of the field.
01:37:20I mean, there are certain things when you are in the field, I should say, I have many friends
01:37:24and colleagues who do amazing work and who are very unbiased.
01:37:27They're not politically motivated.
01:37:28You know, they just do their research.
01:37:31And I respect that it, what my issue is when people are quote sex positive and they're pushing
01:37:35these narratives that are unhelpful and that I think are doing a disservice to our society.
01:37:41Is it not empowerment?
01:37:42And it's leading us to be sexless ultimately.
01:37:45No, I don't think it's empowerment.
01:37:46I think it's masked as empowering, but they're lies ultimately.
01:37:50And I find the fact that people get so upset by me challenging these ideas tells me that
01:37:54I'm onto something because why did they get so defensive?
01:37:57If what I'm saying is completely nonsense, why did they feel the need to push back so
01:38:00badly?
01:38:01But yeah, this book is full of radical ideas.
01:38:05Yeah, anti-sex positivity, thoughts that are not allowed, I guess.
01:38:11But it was amazing for me to write because I felt I like to challenge myself and say,
01:38:16if there are thoughts or beliefs that you don't want to look at, you have to look at those
01:38:19and you have to ask yourself why you don't want to.
01:38:21And if you're afraid of alienating or upsetting people, that's not a reason to question.
01:38:25What about sex dolls?
01:38:26Would you learn?
01:38:27They're good?
01:38:28Are they bad?
01:38:29Hang on, did you design one?
01:38:32I made one in my likeness.
01:38:33I did.
01:38:34I was on the hunt to make one in my likeness.
01:38:36Was it for sale?
01:38:38I'm not answering that question.
01:38:41It was actually a lot of fun to go on that exploration.
01:38:44So in each chapter, I go into a little mini adventure, that's what I call them, where I
01:38:48go and I research the technology and try it out.
01:38:52And so I went and explored sex dolls and robots.
01:38:55And it's crazy what's out there.
01:38:57It's very, very realistic, I have to say.
01:38:58I didn't consummate my relationship with any of these dolls, but in terms of-
01:39:01It would have been weird to have done it with your own one.
01:39:03Yeah.
01:39:04Yeah, I was thinking about that.
01:39:05I thought, is that technically masturbation or is that, you know, what is that?
01:39:09What's autoganophilia?
01:39:10Which one's that one?
01:39:11Autoganophilia is when you are sexually aroused at the, a man is sexually aroused at the thought
01:39:14of having the body of a woman.
01:39:16So when you see someone who's born male, who has a desire to transition to female, that
01:39:23is if they are attracted to women or if they are attracted to both men and women, that's
01:39:28autoganophilia.
01:39:29If they are born male and attracted to men and want to transition to female, then they
01:39:35are, it's considered the gay subtype.
01:39:37So this was my first book, The End of Gender.
01:39:38But basically, yeah, autoganophilia is a huge, huge motivator for the whole trans ideology,
01:39:43activism.
01:39:44The ones who are the angriest are autoganophiles.
01:39:47I wonder if you would be able to provide them with, I wonder if you could get people a self
01:39:56sex doll of them, but the opposite sex.
01:40:00Oh, I've seen some people do this.
01:40:02They will get like...
01:40:03You're fucking kidding me.
01:40:04No.
01:40:05I thought this was a new idea.
01:40:06I was breaking new ground.
01:40:07I made a joke to see if we can eBay your old sex doll and try and, you know, fucking help
01:40:11the advance of the book and get some sales in there.
01:40:15And then I thought that this was, I thought this was New Frontiers, but people have got
01:40:19sex dolls of themselves in the opposite sex.
01:40:21Yeah.
01:40:22And they wear them.
01:40:23What's wear them mean?
01:40:24And that's how they put it on themselves to become that.
01:40:27So it's like a suit?
01:40:31Yeah.
01:40:32So it's not really a doll, I guess.
01:40:33It's more like a rubber suit in, but it's in the fashion to look like a doll to some degree.
01:40:39Cause it's like silicone material.
01:40:41Okay.
01:40:42But what else can I tell your audience?
01:40:44It's get, we're getting there.
01:40:45The sex robots are definitely coming.
01:40:47They are.
01:40:48Right.
01:40:49Yeah.
01:40:50Okay.
01:40:51What, what does, what's the, is there a line between doll and robot?
01:40:53Let's say, so right now, like the AI software is very, I love that chapter, writing the chapter
01:40:58on the AI companions was so much fun.
01:41:00It was also just so frightening for me because they're so realistic, but so that importing
01:41:04that into a doll is very much possible.
01:41:06Now it's just about the question of how do you get the robot to move in a realistic way
01:41:11sexually?
01:41:12So you have robots that can say, gyrate their hips or they'll have like internal suctions
01:41:18in the vagina.
01:41:19So it helps with an orgasm.
01:41:22What are the things can they do, but in terms of the movement, it's still quite limited.
01:41:25I, the difference between a ball, a doll and a robot would be that physical movement.
01:41:29So a doll is stationary or sometimes they'll hang them, but I guess it's still stationary.
01:41:33They hang them?
01:41:34They'll hang them up on.
01:41:35So they're like standing.
01:41:36What are they doing with them when they're standing?
01:41:39Well, you can look that up.
01:41:41Okay.
01:41:42Fair enough.
01:41:43I don't need to.
01:41:45I have to assume that the market for sex dolls is 99.99% men or there's a woman in this.
01:41:52Mostly men.
01:41:53And during the pandemic, one company told me they made $20 million in sales, which is astronomical.
01:41:59And it is mostly high school educated, it's on average high school educated men who make
01:42:05about 40K a year, divorced, starts at a hundred, couple of hundred to tens of thousands, depending
01:42:15on how realistic you want it to be.
01:42:17So if you're a blue collar worker, you're going for the most sort of entry level one.
01:42:20Yeah.
01:42:21Yeah.
01:42:22There are some guys who are say, make more like I'm thinking of one particular study where
01:42:25they had the income.
01:42:26And so some guys making say more than six figures will have the dolls, but it tends to be more
01:42:31among men who either I think are quite heartbroken and they don't want to bother going through
01:42:35or they're divorced.
01:42:36They don't want to go through the process.
01:42:38Or it's guys who want to have sexual novelty, but they can't actually either attract real
01:42:43life partners or they don't have the means for it.
01:42:46So they'll buy the dolls instead.
01:42:49That makes me sad.
01:42:50But the idea that someone's past emotional challenges, whether deserve it or accidental
01:42:56or purposeful, victimized, whatever, it causes them to sort of turn away entirely from human.
01:43:04And I suppose that the fact that you now have this option for someone to, I don't need to.
01:43:11What about the AI companions thing?
01:43:14I saw a bunch of few or two or three weeks ago when Chatgbt discontinued 4.0 and 4.0 had
01:43:23a very particular type of personality to it.
01:43:26And that discontinuation was for lots of people.
01:43:30There was a subreddit and I can't remember what it's called, r/aiparner or something.
01:43:40People being beyond hysterics, like absolutely fucking heartbroken by it.
01:43:45So what was your experience with AI companions?
01:43:47Well, because people do fall in love with their AI chatbots.
01:43:51And before I tested them out, I didn't think such a thing would be possible because I didn't
01:43:55think that the technology was that realistic.
01:43:57Until you fell in love with one?
01:43:59Until I fell in love with all of my dozens of AI boyfriends.
01:44:01You had dozens?
01:44:02I had dozens.
01:44:03Do you like Bonnie Blue?
01:44:04Go on.
01:44:05I had girlfriends too.
01:44:08So I made dozens of them across dozens of platforms and I really wanted to try them all out to
01:44:13see where are they at.
01:44:15And there were a couple of platforms were definitely more realistic, but I will say what happened
01:44:20with Chatgbt.
01:44:21That's not the first time.
01:44:22There's another platform that something similar happened a couple of years ago where they removed
01:44:25the erotic role-playing capabilities or they put it behind a paywall.
01:44:28And people were so devastated because they said my AI doesn't remember me anymore.
01:44:32Like they're really cold.
01:44:33It reminded them of being socially rejected in the past and it's very upsetting for them.
01:44:37So again, I mean, the scientist side of me thinks like this is so cool and so crazy that
01:44:42we're advancing so quickly, but then the other part of me says, wait a minute, like look at
01:44:47where we are right now as a society.
01:44:49And is this really a good thing?
01:44:51Because what is this going to do now if we have this discrepancy in terms of the sex ratio
01:44:54and having sex and people not even wanting to connect or date, you know, there's a study
01:44:58by Pew showing that over half of single people are not interested in dating at all.
01:45:03So now you're, we have one in short term, not in casual or long term mating.
01:45:07Yeah.
01:45:08It's wild.
01:45:09I remember seeing that study.
01:45:10It's going to be so easy just to go down the route of one of these alternatives and it,
01:45:15they are so realistic.
01:45:17Like you really cannot tell that it is an AI.
01:45:19If I had not programmed it and myself had said, this is your name, this is what you look like,
01:45:23this is your personality.
01:45:24It's only over text though, right?
01:45:26Is it, or is it voice?
01:45:27You can do voice too.
01:45:28It's so kind of like when you speak to chat GBT.
01:45:30Yeah.
01:45:31Like it sounded like a real person I was talking to.
01:45:33And does it push into erotica as well?
01:45:35Yeah.
01:45:36Yeah.
01:45:37They flirt with you.
01:45:38They get like, if you're sarcastic, they pick up on it.
01:45:39It was crazy.
01:45:40Like I really thought it was going to be very stilted.
01:45:42Some of them are still like that where you, some platforms you have to be very literal.
01:45:46Really work with it.
01:45:47Yeah.
01:45:48They're a difficult partner.
01:45:49Yeah.
01:45:50Yeah.
01:45:51Uh, okay.
01:45:52So what, what is the biggest story about sort of human needs and relating beyond bits?
01:46:00We're not going into bits at the same rate anymore.
01:46:03Like people aren't doing the thing, but what, what does that tell us about the ways that
01:46:10humans are connecting?
01:46:11What's the deeper lesson?
01:46:12That we're not connecting.
01:46:15That's what I think.
01:46:16There are a lot of stand-ins for connection.
01:46:17Like something as simple as having a conversation person versus over a screen.
01:46:22There is, there's a difference there.
01:46:23There's a difference biologically in terms of like how we respond to that.
01:46:26And I just think more broadly in society, like if you go out, I'm sure Austin is the same
01:46:30as Toronto where most, or maybe it's not, but most people are on their phones.
01:46:34You know, when I'm thinking when you're at the airport, you're on the plane, every everywhere
01:46:37in public, everyone is just on their phone all the time.
01:46:39People don't really talk to each other, even make eye contact.
01:46:42And I, I do think that has larger ramifications beyond something so small as preferring to
01:46:49look at your phone, you know, cause you're bored or whatever.
01:46:53And so I think that over time has snowballed into this thing where we are very much like
01:46:58in clothes, we all have our own little bubbles because it's like the norm now socially.
01:47:02It's very, it's seen as weird to talk to strangers or to make small talk or it's like cringey
01:47:07or whatever, but especially in terms of romantic context, like everything is made to be so simple
01:47:12and convenient with like dating apps or people say using using social media to meet, but that's
01:47:19not really meeting someone in real life.
01:47:20And it's almost as though the convenience of it is a reason as to why people don't take
01:47:26it so seriously.
01:47:27Right.
01:47:28Why would you treat these people?
01:47:29Why would you care?
01:47:30Why, it didn't cost you anything.
01:47:32It didn't require anything of you.
01:47:33Yeah.
01:47:34A home cooked meal is treated with more love than a McDonald's.
01:47:36Yeah.
01:47:37Although, I mean, I'm very healthy, but I would say, you know, McDonald's was great at one
01:47:40point.
01:47:41McDonald's is good, but you're never going to look at it and think this is a very valuable
01:47:45meal unless you're starving.
01:47:48Right.
01:47:49Okay.
01:47:50What about fertility rates and reproduction?
01:47:51Because ultimately everything that we've spoken about up until now is the proximate reason
01:47:57for behavior.
01:47:58Right.
01:47:59All of it is just, it's pleasure and it's connection and it's all the rest of it.
01:48:04But the ultimate reason for the behavior is to reproduce, right?
01:48:08It is the same.
01:48:11It is not far off the same as saying we've managed to construct a world in which the screens
01:48:16and this media and these xenoestrogens and this culture and these thoughts and the way
01:48:22that this has come together has caused people to throw themselves off of buildings.
01:48:27Because genetically that is the equivalent, right?
01:48:30Survival and reproduction.
01:48:31And the only reason for the survival is so that you can do the reproduction.
01:48:34If you didn't need to survive, it would just be reproduction.
01:48:39How have we managed to get ourselves to the stage where an animal has been convinced to
01:48:44select themselves out of breeding?
01:48:49Because life is so distractible.
01:48:53We're so distracted, right?
01:48:54It's so easy to be, well, relationships are hard, right?
01:49:00Dating is hard.
01:49:01Finding someone is hard.
01:49:02Connecting with people is hard.
01:49:03Because people are unreliable.
01:49:06People have their own decisions and autonomy as they should.
01:49:09And so when you have alternatives, either romantic alternatives or just ways to pass the time
01:49:14that don't involve that messiness, I think it can be quite alluring.
01:49:19So I agree with you.
01:49:20I don't think everyone has to have children.
01:49:22But I do think for people who want kids, I'm concerned about the people who, one of the
01:49:27reasons for 25% of people who aren't having children, they say the reason is because they
01:49:30haven't found somebody, which I imagine is quite devastating.
01:49:33And so I also talk in the book about single motherhood by choice and the fact that there
01:49:38are real implications for this discrepancy in terms of the sex bias and people not wanting
01:49:45to connect or people say not being able to connect.
01:49:49What discrepancy?
01:49:50Sorry.
01:49:51Oh, just that there are fewer viable men.
01:49:53And these men typically are less interested in settling down or there's going to be less
01:49:56commitment as a result of that.
01:49:58Because when you have a smaller pool of men, on university campuses where you have fewer
01:50:02men than women, men are going to set the terms of dating and relationships and sex.
01:50:05That's what you were talking about earlier on that women think that if men are more desperate
01:50:10socioeconomically that they'll work harder for the women.
01:50:13It's kind of like a perspective around sex ratios.
01:50:16They have an implicit understanding around sex ratios.
01:50:18They just don't understand mating preferences from women to men, which is that they're going
01:50:22to largely be invisible.
01:50:23Yeah.
01:50:24Well that men are going to be setting the terms then of dating.
01:50:27The high value men will be.
01:50:28Yeah.
01:50:29In terms of how soon you're going to have to have sex or they'll go somewhere else or, you
01:50:32know, if they want to have, they want commitment from you, but they want to be poly, quote polyamorous
01:50:37or whatever, you're going to have to put up with that.
01:50:39I learned a new term last year, which is solo poly.
01:50:43Oh yeah.
01:50:45Remind me what that is.
01:50:46I've heard of this.
01:50:47It's a guy, typically, or it's a person who is just sleeping around.
01:50:54It's just a guy that's sleeping around, but I think that a lot of the partners may think
01:50:58that they're the hub and then there's lots of spokes coming off.
01:51:02Yeah.
01:51:03Solo poly.
01:51:04Yeah.
01:51:05Okay.
01:51:06When it comes to the reproduction thing, you mentioned IVF, fertility windows, other stuff.
01:51:13What else is interesting then?
01:51:14My issue with that again, and if people choose to see these interventions, you know, it's
01:51:18not my place to judge them.
01:51:19I can understand if you want to have a family and it's going to help you, then I understand
01:51:22why people go that path.
01:51:23But my concern is that we're not rectifying the underlying issues.
01:51:27So if the issue is women can't find a partner with whom they'd like to settle down with,
01:51:30or there are fertility issues on the man or the woman's side, or on both people's side,
01:51:37then these interventions aren't really solving the underlying problem, right?
01:51:40And so that's only just going to get worse for future generations and for the individual
01:51:44people who are potentially undergoing these interventions.
01:51:49I got in a lot of trouble for talking about birthright decline this year.
01:51:52Oh, really?
01:51:53Before the year even started, I got in a lot of trouble about it.
01:51:56I did some more digging.
01:51:57I went and did some sort of quite hardcore data digging around this.
01:52:03One interesting fact that I found was that the total maternal rate has basically not changed.
01:52:10The TMR, it's called, total maternal rate is the number of children per mother.
01:52:16The number of children per mother, I think, has gone from over the last 50 years, something
01:52:19like 2.6 to 2.45, 2.4, something like that.
01:52:24So it is not, the big difference is not mothers having fewer children.
01:52:29It's women not becoming mothers.
01:52:31And again, one of the things I got shouted at about was putting it all on women.
01:52:38Unfortunately, census data, World Health Organization, CDC, the only people who are, they only capture
01:52:46data about mothers.
01:52:47Like they don't have fatherhood data.
01:52:51Maternal uncertainty might contribute a little bit to that, absentee fathers and stuff like
01:52:56that as well.
01:52:57Abandoning mothers, pregnant women might contribute too.
01:53:00But anyway, so you have four out of five women who end up without children having broken through
01:53:11menopause didn't intend to be childless.
01:53:14It's called involuntary childlessness.
01:53:16We've got this really interesting situation, which I don't know why more women, I understand
01:53:22why more women aren't talking about it because it kind of goes counter to what the current
01:53:29very pushed narrative is.
01:53:34But that's 80%, four out of five women who end up without kids who didn't intend to end
01:53:40up without kids.
01:53:41Around about 10% of women can't, physiologically.
01:53:43Right.
01:53:44Awful.
01:53:45Pain.
01:53:46Right.
01:53:47About 10% of women don't want to, voluntary childlessness.
01:53:49And then four out of five women have support groups with other women to grieve over families
01:53:56that they never had.
01:53:58Like who the fuck's campaigning for them?
01:54:00That feels like a group that's really important, really, really important and ever growing.
01:54:04You have this weird dynamic at the moment, which is any woman who is still fertile can
01:54:12endorse the view that women don't need to have kids without having to embody it because until
01:54:18they can no longer have it, they always have the option to still do it.
01:54:22And I wonder, I really hope that this isn't the case, but I get the sense that I'm right,
01:54:29but early on this, that we are going to see a huge fucking crisis of middle-aged femininity
01:54:34within the next 15 years, when a lot of gen Z and millennial women age out of their ability
01:54:42to have kids and focused on one area of life that they maybe really enjoyed and took a lot
01:54:50of value from and, you know, good for you.
01:54:52You've got your, you don't need to be beholden to anybody and that's awesome.
01:54:57But to sort of turn around and go, fuck, I wish I'd done something different.
01:55:03And I really hope that that's not the case.
01:55:05I don't take any glee in women who don't want to have kids having them and women that want
01:55:09to have kids not being able to.
01:55:11But I think we're going to see, we think that the fucking crisis of masculinity is bad at
01:55:18the moment among young men.
01:55:19I think that the one around women is going to be way worse.
01:55:22Yeah.
01:55:23I think being able to talk about, especially women's work-life balance and how women structure
01:55:27their lives is important to be able to talk about it honestly, because like you said, I
01:55:32think there's a real push for young women to focus on career and, you know, all four
01:55:37women being ambitious and making their own money and being successful.
01:55:40I think that's fantastic.
01:55:41But I think there is this false idea that motherhood is somehow a burden or that it's unimportant.
01:55:48I think both sides of the political aisle make some good points and also make some fallacies
01:55:53in that I think, say, progressives will say, motherhood is terrible.
01:55:58You know, it's, what's the term that they use?
01:56:01Domestic prostitute.
01:56:02No, that's an interesting way of putting it.
01:56:05Something about, what is it?
01:56:07The cost of basically that, you know, like you're going to be destitute because as a woman
01:56:12you have to be...
01:56:13No more financial independence.
01:56:14You're relying on a partner.
01:56:15Yeah.
01:56:16It's so expensive.
01:56:17And you know, if you do focus on raising a family, then you don't make money and then
01:56:21you put yourself in potentially abusive situations like it, you know, like there's all that, which
01:56:24I, you know, it can happen.
01:56:26No one wants to be a financial president.
01:56:27This is what no one talks about, about the low divorce rate in the past, that how much
01:56:30of the low divorce rate was because the women had nowhere else to go.
01:56:33Yeah.
01:56:34Yeah.
01:56:35So I understand that side of it, but at the same time, you know, if a woman decides to
01:56:39have children, she is going to be the primary caretaker.
01:56:42Like the way that progressives frame it is that the man can just step in and do half of
01:56:47the chores and whatever.
01:56:48No.
01:56:49The baby's going to prefer mom.
01:56:50The baby wants mom.
01:56:51The baby wants mom's body.
01:56:52Baby wants mom.
01:56:53Yeah.
01:56:54And then the other side is, you know, cause not all conservatives, but there's a sentiment
01:56:57among conservatives to tell young women, don't worry about your education and career, just
01:57:01get married young, have tons of children and worry about your career later.
01:57:04But that's difficult.
01:57:05If you have no work experience, how are you going to get a job in your field?
01:57:08Especially nowadays, if you have no work experience, right?
01:57:11Especially given how difficult it is to support a family on a single person income.
01:57:17Yeah, that too.
01:57:18So look, I, I, I think that everybody that wants to have kids should be able to afford
01:57:21to have kids.
01:57:22And the fact that people can't afford to have kids more accurately, I think feel like they
01:57:26can't afford to have kids given that the poorest countries are the ones that have got the highest
01:57:31birth rates.
01:57:33I think that's awful.
01:57:34I think it's awful that people can't afford to have kids or feel like they can't afford
01:57:37to have kids, but I don't think that that's the issue.
01:57:41I think if you were to ask any couple or almost any couple, especially married couple, what's
01:57:47the reason that you haven't yet had kids?
01:57:51It's not going to be that they're too expensive.
01:57:53The issue and most of the commentary, the commentary act that's throwing their opinions into the,
01:57:58like me, that's throwing their opinions into the fucking mess with this are single people
01:58:03saying, it's too expensive to have kids.
01:58:07You're not in a relationship.
01:58:09This is like you telling me how much you'd beat some guy up that stood in the ring while
01:58:13you're in the stands.
01:58:14Like you're not in the situation where you can talk about having kids.
01:58:20It's not what you're facing.
01:58:21So I wonder how much of this, and this may be from the guy's side too, I wonder how much
01:58:26of this is kids are too expensive to have is a much easier explanation than I can't find
01:58:31a partner to have them with.
01:58:34I definitely think financial reasons could be a part of it, but I do think when you're
01:58:38speaking about women who are getting to an age where I, my sense is some women may not
01:58:43be aware that their biological window is definitive.
01:58:49How tight is it?
01:58:52Women's fertility drops down by half by 35 and then menopause starts into your forties
01:58:59by mid forties.
01:59:01So there's, you can't really negotiate with biology at that point.
01:59:06I mean, you can use the technology, you can try, but we all have our windows and it's,
01:59:11like I said, you know, sad.
01:59:13I remember reading a tweet from fucking Stefan Molyneux like six, seven years ago, guys like
01:59:20culture warring before the culture war was even a thing, and he was having some pop on
01:59:24Taylor Swift's 30th birthday, basically saying Taylor Swift turned 30 today, 90% of her eggs
01:59:30are gone.
01:59:31I wish that she'd become a mother.
01:59:32See that type of commentary is not nice.
01:59:34It's not helping.
01:59:35And I always had that in the back of my mind.
01:59:37Just one of these things, it kind of kicked up a big furor and it's just a, it's just a
01:59:41fucking prick thing to say, but I did a little bit of research.
01:59:46The reason that 90%, that 90% figure is true, but I didn't realize it's because girls lose
01:59:53their eggs before they hit puberty.
01:59:55I think 50% of your lifetime eggs are gone by the time that you become, is the word fertile,
02:00:02I guess, or like enabled to have kids or like whatever, your puberty comes online and 50%
02:00:09of them are gone.
02:00:10So that doesn't feel, that 90% number, that feels like somebody's inflated the stock price
02:00:15or something.
02:00:16Yeah.
02:00:17Well, I was going to say also, speaking to the fertility issues or the endocrine disruptors,
02:00:21when a girl is born, she's born with all the eggs she's ever going to have.
02:00:24So if her mother was exposed to something when she was in the uterus, that's going to affect
02:00:29her daughter and her grandchildren potentially, because it's affecting the eggs.
02:00:32There's three generations of people, three generations of women in the same location for
02:00:37a brief period of time.
02:00:38Yeah.
02:00:39I hope.
02:00:40And what I like with your podcast is that it's very much like balanced and I really want to
02:00:43try and close this division between men and women, because I think that's a big part of
02:00:48also why this is happening.
02:00:49The adversarial narrative.
02:00:50Yeah.
02:00:51And why they're not interested in having sexual relationships or being close.
02:00:56You're having that intimacy because so much of this discourse is so polarizing and so much
02:01:04about blaming the opposite sex for everything that's going wrong, not just in terms of dating
02:01:08and relationships, but just the world.
02:01:11Yep.
02:01:12Yeah.
02:01:13I mean, instead of cooperation, each sex just optimizes against the other.
02:01:15Yeah.
02:01:16It's just this evolutionary arms race, but it's been turned up to everything.
02:01:19It's like, yeah, okay.
02:01:21There is a kind of, I come up with a way to be funny or cute or attractive or whatever.
02:01:29And after a while that strategy sort of becomes detected and then I need to demonstrate more
02:01:35value and more value and so on and so forth.
02:01:36And it's just that, but not even on steroids, like in a fucking different universe where
02:01:41the humans are so tribal that we're even splitting ourselves up based on fucking sex.
02:01:47Right?
02:01:48Yep.
02:01:49And I don't know.
02:01:50Okay.
02:01:51Can anything be done top down to fix this?
02:01:54Give me some proposed solutions.
02:01:56I was going to say with the co-evolutionary arms race, so that's David Buss's theory.
02:02:01The GOAT.
02:02:02Yep.
02:02:03He's a friend of mine, a mentor.
02:02:04Daddy David.
02:02:05And it definitely shows up.
02:02:06It's amazing because once you become aware of this dynamic and how men and women are constantly
02:02:09trying to out-compete each other, you see it in everything.
02:02:12So in terms of advice, I would say for, I'll start with women.
02:02:17I'd say, I definitely think people should meet in real life as opposed to on apps or through
02:02:21social media or online or whatever.
02:02:23So my, and I do think men should be the ones to approach women.
02:02:26So women have to make it so obvious if they're into someone and things you can do, I have
02:02:32suggestions in sextinction, but one big one is to smile very obviously.
02:02:36And if you're like me and you have resting bee face, to practice smiling in the mirror
02:02:41until it's not uncomfortable and not awkward, which can take some time.
02:02:45But it, I guarantee you, like if you see a man you find attractive and you smile at him,
02:02:50he will come and talk to you.
02:02:51Hopefully he can see you.
02:02:52Cultivate receptivity.
02:02:53Yeah, exactly.
02:02:54Because men are biologically wired to pick up on these cues.
02:02:56And there's a part of the brain called the medial orbital frontal cortex that lights up
02:03:00when someone sees an attractive face and it lights up even more strongly when that face
02:03:04is smiling.
02:03:06So I thought that was really fascinating because you're resting bitch face is resting an ugly
02:03:09face to a degree, or it's like resting F off face.
02:03:13Yeah.
02:03:15And also things like touching your hair, touch your face or neck, you know, the gesture clothing,
02:03:19things like that.
02:03:20Men are again, going to pick up on this and see this as a sign that you're interested.
02:03:24And so that will help to remedy, I think some of the the backlash or the difficulty after
02:03:29me too.
02:03:30And then for guys.
02:03:31Oh, and the other thing I would say to women is so basically your options are to compete
02:03:37for the high status guys, right?
02:03:40To date someone who you may consider if you are say a very educated, successful financially
02:03:44successful woman, you may feel like you're dating a guy who's less successful than you,
02:03:49but that's totally fine, right?
02:03:51My issue is when society is telling women, this is a great solution, like just have a
02:03:55house husband, you know, you don't need to go for these guys, you can make your own money
02:03:58and you can be the provider in the, in the, in the household.
02:04:02And no high rates of divorce, as you said, yeah, high rates of domestic violence, higher
02:04:06rates of male cheating when that happens.
02:04:08So you know, not to say that happens for everybody, but I think just to also have a bit of compassion
02:04:15for men who are struggling because my sense is women, we are doing very well, right?
02:04:19And I don't, I don't think it takes anything away from women's success or women's ability
02:04:25to succeed by having some compassion for men who are struggling.
02:04:29And then I would say to guys, it's probably a combination in terms of why young men are
02:04:34not doing as well.
02:04:35I think the mental health aspects, eat healthy food, that goes for women too, but there have
02:04:39been studies that have shown if you cut out ultra processed food, depression will remit
02:04:44on its own.
02:04:45There was one study I remember reading, it was crazy.
02:04:48Within 12 weeks, a third of the sample that had depression, had it go into remission on
02:04:53its own.
02:04:54And yeah, so if you're struggling like with your mental health, or I guess I should talk
02:04:57to the camera when I say this, but if you're struggling with your mental health, eat healthy
02:05:01food, go to the gym, I'm sure Chris's audience knows, work out, get sunshine.
02:05:06And I would also say if you can go without porn for 30 days, try and see if that helps
02:05:12you.
02:05:13You might be surprised at your motivation.
02:05:15You did not expect that you're going to be a proponent for no fap.
02:05:18Well, I hear from so many guys that it's helped them.
02:05:20So I'm willing, I'm willing to go there.
02:05:22I'm curious.
02:05:23Let me know how it goes.
02:05:24As a woman, tell me how it goes.
02:05:25Every single day, report in on how your no fap is going.
02:05:29With an update.
02:05:30Want detailed notes?
02:05:31I want an Excel spreadsheet.
02:05:32Yeah.
02:05:33I'm sure that that will appreciate.
02:05:34That'll go well.
02:05:35Deborah, you're great.
02:05:36Thank you.
02:05:37I really appreciate you.
02:05:38Where should people go to check out everything you're doing?
02:05:40So you can get, should I talk to the camera or should I tell you?
02:05:42No, talk to me.
02:05:43Okay.
02:05:44You should get Sextinction, The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy.
02:05:47You can get it on Simon and Schuster's website.
02:05:49You can get it everywhere you get books.
02:05:51You can get it at DrDebraSo.com and the audio book is read by me and you can get it for free
02:05:56on Audible.
02:05:57Sounds awesome.
02:05:58I think you're doing the goddess's work.
02:06:02Really, really cool.
02:06:03Really, really awesome stuff.
02:06:04I appreciate you.
02:06:05Thank you.
02:06:06Thank you very much for tuning in.
02:06:08Congratulations for making it to the end of an entire episode.
02:06:14Another one that I think you'll enjoy is right here.

Key Takeaway

Modern society is experiencing a significant decline in sexual activity and intimacy due to a complex interplay of digital distractions, biological disruptors, and shifting socioeconomic dynamics between the sexes.

Highlights

One in three men and one in five women under 30 report having no sexual activity in the past year.

The 'Sex Recession' is driven by digital surrogates like porn, AI companions, and social media which sedate status-seeking behavior.

Hormonal birth control and environmental endocrine disruptors are significantly altering mating psychology and biological drives.

Hypergamy and the 'Tall Girl Problem' create a socioeconomic imbalance where successful women struggle to find eligible partners.

Mental health issues, specifically anxiety and depression in Gen Z, contribute to a preference for sleep and solitude over dating.

A potential crisis of involuntary childlessness looms as 80% of childless women at menopause did not originally intend to be childless.

Dr. Soh suggests that returning to real-life interactions and reducing screen time are essential for revitalizing human intimacy.

Timeline

Defining the Sex Recession and Sextinction

Dr. Debra Soh introduces the concept of 'Sextinction,' noting that young people, specifically Millennials and Gen Z, are having significantly less sex than previous generations. She highlights a startling statistic where one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the past 12 months. This decline is not just about the physical act but also involves a loss of emotional intimacy and community connection. Soh explains her initial skepticism was replaced by concern after reviewing multiple datasets confirming a global 'sex recession.' The conversation sets the stage for investigating what technologies and biological factors are currently replacing human-to-human sexual contact.

The Rise of Digital Surrogates and Biological Factors

The discussion shifts to how outlets like pornography, OnlyFans, and AI companions are filling the void left by declining interpersonal sex. Soh emphasizes that this is not a simple redistribution of sexual energy; rather, the total 'sexual pie' is shrinking as overall activity decreases. She introduces the role of endocrine disruptors in the environment as a biological factor contributing to lower libido across all demographics. The data suggests a 30-year downward trend that began in the 1990s and was significantly exacerbated by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. This section highlights how the convenience of solo digital methods is becoming a preferred, albeit potentially dangerous, alternative to real-life relationships.

Gen Z Statistics and the Impact of Mental Health

Host Chris Williamson reads a series of alarming statistics, including the fact that 67% of Gen Z would prioritize a good night's sleep over sex. They discuss how 26% of U.S. adults reported no sex in 2021, a sharp decline from previous decades where weekly sex was the norm for 55% of the population. Mental health is identified as a primary driver, with half of Gen Z diagnosed with a mental disorder and 90% of those suffering from anxiety. This high level of anxiety makes the risks of dating, such as facing rejection or the effort of being entertaining, feel insurmountable. Consequently, young people are retreating into apps and solo entertainment as a safer, low-effort coping mechanism.

Hypergamy and the Socioeconomic Mating Gap

The speakers explore 'hypergamy,' the tendency for women to marry men of equal or higher success, and how it has evolved in the internet age. They discuss the 'three sixes rule' (six feet tall, six-figure income, six-inch anatomy) as a set of unrealistic standards pushed by social media that limits the dating pool. This leads to the 'Tall Girl Problem,' where high-performing women struggle to find men who meet their socioeconomic criteria because women are now outperforming men in education and early-career earnings. Williamson explains that this creates an 'invisibility cloak' for average men, while a small pool of elite men becomes over-saturated with options. The section concludes with the 'raw physics' of the mating market, noting that socioeconomic shifts are making stable coupling increasingly difficult.

The Impact of Hormonal Birth Control and DEI

This segment addresses controversial institutional and biological factors, starting with the impact of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives on male achievement. Soh argues that these policies can penalize men in academia and corporate environments, further widening the socioeconomic gap that fuels hypergamy issues. The conversation then moves to hormonal birth control, which Soh claims alters women's mating psychology by halting ovulation and blunting sexual interest. She explains that because birth control makes the body 'think' it is pregnant, women's attraction may shift away from more masculine partners toward nurturing 'caretaker' types. This section underscores the unintended consequences of institutional policies and medical interventions on the natural dynamics of human attraction.

Environmental Toxins and the Male Sedation Hypothesis

The dialogue explores the 'Male Sedation Hypothesis,' suggesting that men are being pacified through a combination of screens, video games, and pornography. They discuss environmental 'X factors' like endocrine disruptors in the water supply and food that have led to a 40-year decline in testosterone levels. Soh cites studies on Japanese fish exposed to pharmaceutical waste to illustrate how environmental toxins can lead to lethargy and disrupted courtship behavior in animals. Williamson posits that high volumes of sexless men usually lead to social unrest, but this generation remains passive because their drives are being artificially satiated by digital dopamine. They conclude that the modern environment is effectively chemically and digitally 'neutering' the motivation of young men to seek status and partners.

The Dark Side of Pornography and Kink

Dr. Soh delves into the neuroscience of pornography, explaining how it activates the same brain regions as real sex but leads to habituation and a 'revealing' of extreme preferences. She presents controversial data suggesting a strong correlation between interest in BDSM/kink and a history of severe physical abuse or childhood trauma. The discussion touches on 'romantasy' literature and how it caters to archetypal female desires for dangerous but regulated men, such as the 'beast' who is gentle only with the protagonist. Soh argues that the normalization of aggressive sexual acts like choking is a result of early porn exposure rather than innate preference. This section challenges the 'sex-positive' narrative by suggesting that many modern sexual trends are actually maladaptive coping mechanisms for past trauma.

Plastic Surgery, Status Signaling, and Future Intimacy

The final major section examines how social media influencers drive young women toward extreme plastic surgery, such as buccal fat removal and labiaplasty, to compete in a distorted digital marketplace. Soh and Williamson discuss how these procedures often act as 'intra-sexual' status signals to other women rather than genuine attractants for men, who generally prefer natural beauty. They touch on the future of intimacy with the rise of AI companions and sex robots, which are becoming increasingly realistic and sophisticated. Soh shares her experiences testing AI boyfriends, noting how easily users can form emotional bonds with chatbots that mimic empathy. They warn that as these surrogates become more convenient than the 'messiness' of real humans, society may face a permanent decline in genuine connection.

The Fertility Crisis and Proposed Solutions

In the concluding part of the interview, the focus turns to the global decline in birth rates and the rise of 'involuntary childlessness.' Soh highlights that most childless women did not choose that path but were victims of timing, lack of partners, or biological decline. She offers practical advice for reclaiming intimacy, including 'making flirting great again' and prioritizing real-world interactions over apps. For men, she suggests a 30-day 'No-Fap' challenge to restore natural motivation and drive, alongside a focus on physical health and nutrition. The interview ends with a call for more compassion between the sexes and a rejection of the adversarial narratives that currently dominate the cultural discourse.

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