Transcript
00:00:00Why has your book got one star on Goodreads?
00:00:04Because I'm being attacked by normally liberal women, I think.
00:00:11So we sent out some galleys, some free copies, to just avid Goodreads readers
00:00:18and women who are not in our sort of sphere thinking about things that we are.
00:00:24And I think also because the book looks like an anti-capitalist Marxist book,
00:00:30there's no indication that I would sort of be skeptical of the mental health industry
00:00:35or talk about cultural trends like family breakdown.
00:00:39And so a lot of the reviews are women warning each other that this is not what you expect
00:00:43and you might be hit with a viewpoint you disagree with.
00:00:47And so it's a lot of girls who've got through the first chapter
00:00:49and then I've said something like about trans and they've just given up
00:00:53and warned each other not to carry on.
00:00:55You're horrendous.
00:00:55Yeah, basically.
00:00:56When did you start writing about women and girls?
00:01:00I started 2021, so it's been a long time.
00:01:05And it was mostly because I felt anxious
00:01:09and I wanted to figure out what was going on.
00:01:12And so I was trying to map it all out
00:01:14and it's taken me sort of five, six years to finally finish the book.
00:01:20So it's not only research that I've done,
00:01:22but it's basically years of my life.
00:01:24I've carried it through different phases and seasons of my life
00:01:26and this is where I've ended up.
00:01:28I was talking to William Costello.
00:01:29You and him wrote an article together in Quillette
00:01:32and I think you were still in sixth form college.
00:01:35It was so long ago.
00:01:36Yeah, yeah.
00:01:37So I've been writing for a really long time.
00:01:40But part of the criticism against me is that I just picked a topic
00:01:45and I'm using it to sort of funnel in my right wing agenda.
00:01:49So it will be Freya just noticed that the mental health crisis was happening
00:01:53and she's using that to spread her sort of fascist ideas.
00:01:57Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:01:57Well, you're in good company here because I'm a fascist as well, apparently.
00:02:00Honest.
00:02:02We often hear about a lost generation of young men,
00:02:04but research shows that young women are more pessimistic across the board.
00:02:08They are less likely to say they feel happy, ambitious, excited or fulfilled
00:02:12and are more pessimistic about the prospect of being happy for their life generally.
00:02:18Yes.
00:02:18What the fuck's going on?
00:02:19So was this the New Statesman piece?
00:02:21Yeah, so there was this huge New Statesman piece,
00:02:23Angry Young Women,
00:02:25which made me an angry young woman.
00:02:28Why did you get pissy about the New Statesman piece?
00:02:30Because they reached a lot of conclusions
00:02:35that a lot of conservative women,
00:02:38conservative people have just been saying for a very long time.
00:02:41So as you said, they were saying that young women feel pessimistic,
00:02:46that they have more negative views of men than men have of them.
00:02:49And all we've heard about for the last few years is the manosphere
00:02:52and how men are getting radicalized.
00:02:55And ultimately, the argument in their piece
00:02:58was that women are getting radicalized by social media
00:03:01and particularly by femosphere influencers.
00:03:04So women warning them of other men and radicalizing them.
00:03:06All of the women reading a book.
00:03:08Yeah, basically.
00:03:10Unhappily.
00:03:10Yeah, so they came to the same observations as me and a lot of other people.
00:03:16But then after my book tour in the UK,
00:03:18I've had to put up with constant accusations of being misogynist,
00:03:22being far-right, conservative,
00:03:24for saying something is happening to liberal young women.
00:03:27They're not happy.
00:03:28Something is happening in their relationships.
00:03:31They feel hopeless about the future.
00:03:33And even in the New Statesman piece,
00:03:35they found that more privileged women felt even more pessimistic.
00:03:40And these are things that I've been trying to argue very carefully
00:03:42and, I hope, with some compassion.
00:03:45But I've had to put up with constant smears and backlash.
00:03:49And so it was very interesting to me
00:03:51that the New Statesman can reach the same conclusions.
00:03:54And it's sort of celebrated and welcomed.
00:03:56I once spoke to Douglas Murray about this and I said,
00:04:00"Have you ever used your gay privilege card?"
00:04:02And he said, "Well, on other gay men, of course."
00:04:07I said, "Well, you know what I mean.
00:04:09You're from a particular protected group.
00:04:12Have you ever been able to cash in your status at some point?"
00:04:16And he said, "Well, the problem is that I'm white and conservative,
00:04:20which makes me essentially an honorary straight guy."
00:04:23Like, white conservative is the straight of the gay community.
00:04:28And you, being white, British, and right-leaning,
00:04:34means that you're essentially –
00:04:36your female privilege is totally dismissed.
00:04:39You don't have it in the same way as the New Statesman writers may do.
00:04:42So, yeah, a lot of the criticism against me is
00:04:45you're a white, cis, heterosexual woman,
00:04:48trying to argue what's happening to women from that perspective.
00:04:52But then I'm like, "If I wrote a piece – a book telling you
00:04:55what black women are feeling, I'd get attacked for that.
00:04:58That would be awful."
00:05:00No, I don't know.
00:05:02And so I feel like, how can you not write a book from your own perspective
00:05:05and say, you know, "I think there's young women who feel this way, too,
00:05:08because I have all the data."
00:05:09What do you mean, like, white, cis, heterosexual woman?
00:05:11Is that not what most women that you're speaking to are?
00:05:14Yeah, well, my book is for women in the Anglosphere
00:05:18who are facing specific problems.
00:05:20So our problems are not stigma around mental health.
00:05:25They're pathologisation and medicalisation of all of our negative emotions.
00:05:30Our issues are not too much pressure to settle down.
00:05:32They're pressure to stay single and self-actualised.
00:05:35So it's unique issues to the Anglosphere
00:05:38and to sort of women growing up in the liberal world, like me.
00:05:42And, but yeah, so the argument is basically the book is just my ranty opinion
00:05:48from my privileged point of view.
00:05:50That is a thin end of the wedge to funnel people into right and far-right conservative beliefs.
00:05:54Yeah, it's full of dog whistles.
00:05:55Yeah, yeah.
00:05:56But then that's why the New Statesman piece is annoying,
00:05:59because it's like, it's the exact same conclusions.
00:06:02And they've gone out and spoken to women and reached the same observations as me.
00:06:07It's the indignation, I think, that sucks.
00:06:09You know, I wrote this piece ages ago.
00:06:13One of the worst feelings in life is being right but early.
00:06:16Yeah.
00:06:17Or being right but the wrong class to talk about it in whatever way it is.
00:06:22Because you see, hang on, you want to scream it from the rooftops.
00:06:25And the problem with this is, as you're having these conversations,
00:06:29you see there's a good way to talk about this would be the climate people, the environmentalists.
00:06:34They believe that this is the most important crisis facing humanity at the moment.
00:06:40And then they don't think that people are listening enough.
00:06:42And then they see the impact of these things happening.
00:06:45They see ice sheets melting, water levels rising, forest fires, et cetera.
00:06:50And they feel emboldened because they go,
00:06:53"Hang on a second, I've been warning you about this and no one's listening."
00:06:56And what happens is, at that moment, you probably should do a sort of soft reminder,
00:07:05"Hey guys, this is really important."
00:07:07But what they do is think, "No one was listening, that means I'm a shout louder."
00:07:11And they shout louder and shout louder.
00:07:12And this is where people that have been campaigning for one issue for a long time
00:07:17feel like they haven't been listened to.
00:07:19You see them and they seem so fucking deranged.
00:07:21Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:07:22Because-
00:07:23Are you saying I'm deranged?
00:07:24Yes, that's the main takeaway.
00:07:28They seem deranged because the incentive has been, "I said this, no one fucking listened,
00:07:33I'm going to say it louder, I'm going to shout more, I'm going to throw soup on a painting,
00:07:37glue myself to the M25, I'm going to do all of these things so that people will finally listen."
00:07:41Because I feel vindicated.
00:07:43You see that there's a problem, I can see that there's a problem.
00:07:45Everyone has admitted that there's a problem.
00:07:48I'm just going to shout louder until they listen.
00:07:50And this is sort of pick your pill from me, it's which way do you want to go?
00:07:57Because you have the option here to just start ranting and raving about it.
00:08:01It's true, I think what-
00:08:02Feeling indignant.
00:08:03Yeah, it was actually the reaction to the piece.
00:08:06I actually think the piece was really good.
00:08:07It's the reaction where people were saying, "This is so unexplored, this is unrecognized."
00:08:11But someone said, "They're the first with the balls to say it."
00:08:17Or someone needs- Tens of thousands of sub-stacked subscribers.
00:08:21And someone needs to, someone says, "Someone needs to think about women's unmet needs and
00:08:26how they got here."
00:08:27Someone should write a book on it.
00:08:28Yeah, they should, they really should.
00:08:30What do you think women actually want in 2026?
00:08:34Well this is sort of the argument in my book is I think women do have unmet needs.
00:08:39I think the reason that more privileged women were more pessimistic in that piece was that
00:08:45they have everything they want and basically nothing they need.
00:08:48So all of the foundations and anchors that help women and people in general feel stable
00:08:56have basically been eroded.
00:08:58And that's the argument in my book that we have had our families break down.
00:09:03We don't know our neighbors, we don't have communities.
00:09:06We are less religious, we're less religious than young men even.
00:09:11So we don't have any of these anchors.
00:09:14And that is why I think when the social media platforms came in, they really destroyed young
00:09:19women because they offered substitutes and simulations of these things that we didn't
00:09:24have in the first place.
00:09:26And that's why you think that women were more susceptible to the impact of social media?
00:09:31Yeah, in a way, and I think social media plays on girls' specific personality traits and
00:09:38vices.
00:09:39So it was very addictive.
00:09:42But the reason it's so bad is because we didn't have any grounding.
00:09:46Because if you look at the mental health crisis, women who grew up in conservative and religious
00:09:52households, young girls are doing way better, and they seem to have had some sort of protective
00:09:58mechanism from that, which is actually why I became interested in it in the first place.
00:10:03It's not that I was conservative or religious.
00:10:07So part of the argument now is that I'm some sort of fundamentalist Christian who's pushing
00:10:12this worldview.
00:10:13But I generally, I was looking at the data and thinking there is a pattern here that liberal
00:10:19women who've raised in liberal households seem to be rootless.
00:10:24They seem to not have anything to hold on to.
00:10:27And that's why they are actually more addicted to social media.
00:10:32So liberal teen girls, it's about 31% say they use it for more than five hours a day, and
00:10:38it's much higher than other groups.
00:10:40And so there is something specifically going on there with liberal girls and having a liberal
00:10:45upbringing that's not happening with conservatives.
00:10:48You said they're getting what they want, but not what they need.
00:10:52What is it you think that they think they want, and what is it you think they need?
00:10:57Well, I think, so the argument of the book is that women are becoming something more like
00:11:02products rather than people.
00:11:05And so I think they're being encouraged to see their lives as the ultimate goal is to
00:11:11optimise yourself for the market.
00:11:13The ultimate goal is not to have a collection of human experiences, and I think this explains
00:11:18a lot of things.
00:11:19So it explains what young women value and what they don't value.
00:11:24So for example, not having children, having more of an aversion to having children someday
00:11:29than young men, I think that's because they think of themselves as a product, not as a
00:11:36human.
00:11:37And so people say things like, "Oh, that's the most human experience.
00:11:40Why would you not want to do that?"
00:11:42But if your goal is to be a perfect, pristine product, then why would you take the risk of
00:11:48motherhood when it could destroy your body?
00:11:51It's unpredictable, it's dangerous, it's scary.
00:11:55It's not really something you can display quickly.
00:11:58It's like a long-term satisfaction.
00:12:01And so I think we often view it from the wrong frame.
00:12:03We're thinking about women, previous generations of women, but I think this generation of women
00:12:08is very different and their values are very different.
00:12:11And so my argument in the book is that you're being encouraged to focus on all the wrong
00:12:14wants rather than what you actually need, which I would argue is what all humans need, basic
00:12:20human connection, dependence on other people.
00:12:23Do you think there's a pressure for women to settle down and have children?
00:12:27I've actually argued that it's the opposite.
00:12:31And in my experience, it's been the opposite, which is that, so Emma Watson was talking
00:12:37about this recently on a podcast, and she was saying that it's a violence and a cruelty against
00:12:42young women, this pressure to settle down, and then it's overwhelming and that she feels
00:12:48in such a rush to do it.
00:12:50And I just couldn't relate to that at all.
00:12:52And thinking about the women in my life, I don't think that is what's happening.
00:12:58I think for the women I'm talking about, there's much more pressure to stay single, to stay
00:13:03unattached, to stay available.
00:13:06And I think what Emma is really describing when she talks about the rush and the hurry
00:13:11is she feels pressure to cram in all her self-actualization before she meets someone.
00:13:17So in the podcast, she's talking about healing herself and fixing her mental health and becoming
00:13:23the best version of herself and becoming whole and healed and enlightened.
00:13:27And I think that's a core message that young women are growing up with, which is that you
00:13:32need to be perfect before you take on a responsibility or commit to someone.
00:13:37And so I don't think there's pressure to settle down, I think there's pressure to be perfect
00:13:41before you meet someone, which often is pressure to stay single.
00:13:44And that's because your self-brand, your product online, you basically need to exit the business
00:13:53of your public profile because post-motherhood, you're not going to be able to go to brunch
00:13:57with the girls or wear cute heels in the same sort of a way and can be flexing, changing
00:14:01nappies on your timeline.
00:14:03Yeah, it's the end of something.
00:14:06It's the end of the thing that is most valued by other people in the community that you are
00:14:12engaging with most, which is the internet.
00:14:15Yeah.
00:14:16And part of the reason I wanted to write the book is to give people a sense of young women's
00:14:20childhood to how long they've been marketing themselves as a product and thinking of themselves
00:14:26in this way.
00:14:27And I think that's really hard to just switch.
00:14:29And so I talk about girls being on Instagram at 10 or 11, that every experience they have,
00:14:36they feel they have to document, market, perform for other people.
00:14:40Everything is done in anticipation of an audience, and then you're asking them to do things that
00:14:45are scary and have a quiet satisfaction and where they would have to give up some part
00:14:51of themselves.
00:14:53And I include myself in this.
00:14:54I was on Instagram at 11 and for me to get off Instagram and then not have the constant
00:15:01nagging feeling of I need to take a picture, I need to document this, I need to prove to
00:15:04people that I exist, it was so hard to switch my mindset, even though I wasn't even that
00:15:10addicted.
00:15:11And so I think people really underestimate what these platforms are doing to not just
00:15:16how young women see themselves, but how they treat other people and what they actually value
00:15:22in their life.
00:15:23Parents are registering their kids' handles on Instagram before they're born?
00:15:28Yes.
00:15:29That's become part of like child content.
00:15:32So you'll plan your baby shower, you'll plan, pack your hospital bag on YouTube, you'll
00:15:38do everything and then you'll select your child's username.
00:15:42Do you know nearly a quarter of five to seven-year-olds in the UK have a smartphone?
00:15:49Quarter of five to seven-year-olds in the UK have got a smartphone?
00:15:52Yeah.
00:15:53So they can see the internet?
00:15:55Yeah.
00:15:56And I think it's 38% are already on social media.
00:16:00And what do you have to be to register for Instagram?
00:16:03I think 13, but I don't think there's any proper, you just put a birthday in.
00:16:07It's not like Pornhub where you do some sort of verification?
00:16:10No, you just put a birthday in.
00:16:12I was with Tony Abbott in Australia.
00:16:16I didn't know much about Tony Abbott before we sat down.
00:16:20Interesting guy.
00:16:22We were with the person who had spearheaded that under 16 social media ban in Australia.
00:16:29They were at the table too.
00:16:30It's this big dinner thing.
00:16:33I wonder whether that's going to get rolled out.
00:16:35I get the sense that the UK is going to feel way too much pressure.
00:16:39It's so tight-knit that I think it's going to really struggle.
00:16:44Brits just don't like dealing with displeasure in that way.
00:16:46They don't like it.
00:16:47We're a complaining country.
00:16:48I'm aware that Americans are very litigious.
00:16:51If you trip over on a curb, someone's getting sued.
00:16:54But the UK have the equivalent skill but at complaining.
00:16:57I think that is a weapon of mass destruction that stops progress from happening sometimes.
00:17:02I also think we are more of a surveillance state as in there's so much messaging scaring
00:17:12the life out of young people for what they post and what they do online.
00:17:16I think that that will end up being its own harm in the UK because we already have the
00:17:22Online Safety Bill where it's age verification, so all adults have to upload ID to view.
00:17:30Half of it is illegal content, so fraud or child abuse, but then another part of it is
00:17:35platforms would have to protect users from bullying or hatred against people, which is
00:17:41my sub-step.
00:17:42But they won't be able to do that.
00:17:44Yeah, it is.
00:17:45But yeah, I think the methods we're going to use in the UK will cause their own problems
00:17:51because Keir Starmer is already saying he wants to double down on age verification.
00:17:56So what's happening with young girls' desire for children?
00:18:01I think that it's very interesting to me when I did the book that young men seem to
00:18:08desire having children someday more than young women.
00:18:11So there was a Pew survey recently which showed that 12th grade girls were less likely to say
00:18:17they wanted to get married someday even than young men.
00:18:21And there were so many statistics about not just children but being open to dating and
00:18:28having a relationship that men seemed much more open to dating.
00:18:32Single young women were actually more likely to say that they felt that marriage was outdated
00:18:36and old-fashioned than men.
00:18:39And so what interests me is why young women seem more averse than young men now.
00:18:45I would think it would be the opposite.
00:18:47And I think part of that is my argument that women are becoming something more like products.
00:18:53I also think as well it's general risk aversion and fear.
00:18:58And I trace some of that back to having your own family break down.
00:19:03I don't think young women have had good models of stable relationships that make them feel
00:19:09safe and that they could invest in someone enough to have children.
00:19:13So you're saying the psychological impact of being in a home that's either unstable
00:19:18or maybe broken causes an imprinting for what you think relationships should be like when
00:19:26you get older?
00:19:27Yeah.
00:19:28And having children is terrifying.
00:19:29So it's so vulnerable for women.
00:19:33And so I think that fear is a huge part of it.
00:19:36And if you think of it's not just maybe you grew up in an unstable household, but you might
00:19:42have also grown up online.
00:19:44So you don't see a happy relationship between your parents and then you learn about relationships
00:19:49from the internet.
00:19:50So you learn from this sort of deranged gender discourse online.
00:19:55So you're hearing wounded adults talk about men and women and generalize and stereotype
00:20:02off the back of their own hurt and heartbreak.
00:20:05But you've got young people reading that before they've had an experience of a relationship.
00:20:10So you have that.
00:20:11And then you also have online porn will be teaching you about relationships and teaching
00:20:16girls that men are sort of brutal and insatiable and predatory.
00:20:21And so I think this is happening for young men as well.
00:20:23I just haven't researched it as much, but it seems to me that all of young women's templates
00:20:30will be very scary and make that commitment even scarier.
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00:21:46What about some of the trends around living a child free life?
00:21:49What are some of the ones that you've been most worried about or that you've seen online?
00:21:53I think the risk aversion.
00:21:55So people often talk about the child free sort of glamorizing their lives.
00:21:59So they'll be like in the Maldives and they'll be able to, you know, they have double income
00:22:04so they can buy all of this meaningless stuff, but that doesn't worry me as much as the general
00:22:11fear.
00:22:13So I'm going to get you into trouble again, but the girl with the list, she lists out all
00:22:19of the terrifying things.
00:22:22I'm going to need one.
00:22:23I can say it cause I'm a woman.
00:22:25It's okay.
00:22:26Go ahead.
00:22:27All of the terrifying things that can happen in childhood.
00:22:29And that to me is way more dangerous for young women now.
00:22:33It's not that I think they're looking at child free lives and thinking it's really glamorous.
00:22:37I think they're just really scared, you know, we're already a risk averse generation.
00:22:42And then, you know, you think of previous generations, they were not able to read through all of the
00:22:48physical risks and analysis and neuroticism about having children that we are.
00:22:53And so I think that really affects anxious young women where they think, why would I do
00:23:00this?
00:23:01And on that side, I think childbirth is so physically and emotionally taxing for women
00:23:11in a way that it just isn't for men.
00:23:14There is a huge asymmetry in terms of what women pay in order to go through childbirth
00:23:18and what men pay in order to go through childbirth.
00:23:21And I think what that leaves is a sense that any man or person, but specifically a man who
00:23:29doesn't fully recognize how big of a risk and sacrifice that is for a woman.
00:23:37If they appear to be flippant or not understanding or not compassionate about it, which can be
00:23:42overly sensitive, but still it appears as a man being callous.
00:23:47And I understand if this is the scariest, biggest thing that you're going to do in your entire
00:23:52female adult life, and some guy comes along and seems to be dismissive of why this is something
00:23:59big and scary.
00:24:00Yeah, fuck you, dude.
00:24:02Like no, you should recognize why this is something that's big and scary to me.
00:24:06But there was a line in the New Statesman when the lady was interviewing a group of girls
00:24:11and said, "It's a much bigger deal for us to become mothers.
00:24:14We have to get rid of our career.
00:24:16I'm not fully against kids.
00:24:18I just really don't want to lose the other things and become just a mother.
00:24:23I still want to be me and I will probably lose that."
00:24:28That's not the same thing that I'm talking about.
00:24:30Yeah.
00:24:31"I just really don't want to lose the other things and become just a mother.
00:24:35I still want to be me and I will probably lose that."
00:24:39Yeah, I think it's a fear of vulnerability and...
00:24:44Dependence.
00:24:45Yeah, I think this gets missed sometimes with the discussions on girl boss feminism and all
00:24:49young women just want to be a girl boss, and for sort of selfish reasons.
00:24:54I think a lot of it deep down is animated by this risk aversion and fear, and it's a way
00:25:01of having control.
00:25:03So you have a career and you have all of these other things that make up you so that if something
00:25:09happens to your relationship, you have something.
00:25:12And there's some truth to that, yeah.
00:25:14But I think that's happening among young women and young men, a fear of vulnerability and
00:25:21chasing things that make people miserable because they're trying to avoid having to depend on
00:25:29someone and take that leap of faith with someone.
00:25:33So you see it with productivity stuff online for men, which is that put everything into
00:25:38your career because a woman will just hurt you.
00:25:41I think it's a similar thing with young women, but yeah, I do think it can get caricatured
00:25:46sometimes, but deep down it's fear most of all.
00:25:50I think that needs compassion, but there's definitely a challenge that women have, and
00:25:54I think this is going to happen more and more as women are socioeconomically more successful.
00:25:59As you've got more women getting careers and entering the workforce, they're going to behave
00:26:04rightly or wrongly, whether they need to or they don't, in a more independent, masculinized
00:26:10way.
00:26:11They're going to be more assertive, they're going to be more dominant, they're going to
00:26:15be more disagreeable.
00:26:17And that very well may be the thing that they need in order to get them through their career
00:26:20and to ascend the rungs of the ladder.
00:26:23I think that this creates a weird sort of ratchet effect where it's hard to ever go back from
00:26:29this level of independence and assertiveness.
00:26:32And unfortunately, when you want to start a family, when you want to get into a relationship,
00:26:37there's a degree of relinquishing that you have to have.
00:26:40When you want to move in together, the same thing happens.
00:26:43You need to compromise more.
00:26:44You need to show up for this person because they need you in a way that isn't just what
00:26:48do you want right now, freedom, freedom, freedom.
00:26:51And then maybe you get married and financially you're tied and increasingly women are going
00:26:56to be the ones that if they don't get a prenup, they're going to be more liable if they're
00:26:59out earning their partner.
00:27:01And then you have kids and the same thing happens times a thousand, that you need to be able
00:27:07to relinquish control.
00:27:08You need to be able to be looked after, you need to have needs and make them known.
00:27:12And it's a strange sort of duality that nobody wants to strip female independence because
00:27:18how many marriages stayed together because women were basically financial prisoners.
00:27:22And at the same time, if you can't let go of your independence, it's going to be really,
00:27:29really difficult for you to have a successful relationship and start a family because you're
00:27:33not supposed to be a solopreneur inside of your relationship.
00:27:37You're supposed to be a partner and then a mother and then a member of the unit, the house
00:27:42unit that gives and takes and doesn't keep score.
00:27:45Yeah.
00:27:46I think you've spoken about this before, that the personality traits that work for your career
00:27:50will not work in your relationship.
00:27:51What you're praised for in public, you pay for in private.
00:27:54Yes.
00:27:55And I actually don't have a problem with women working obviously, but I do think my issue
00:28:02with stuff like lean in feminism and lean into your career fully is, as you say, it's then
00:28:08very difficult to lean back out when you need to.
00:28:11And I think for this generation, the biggest thing we need to learn to do is lean into risk
00:28:18and vulnerability.
00:28:20And I think putting that all into work very often comes at the expense of something, which
00:28:25is that you can't depend on someone or compromise or sacrifice.
00:28:30Do young liberal women hate capitalism or love the idea of an independent career?
00:28:35I know.
00:28:36Because I can't work out which one it is.
00:28:38Yeah, that is very confusing to me because my book is criticized for, they think it's
00:28:46an anti-capitalist book, but I don't call out capitalism because I believe in free markets.
00:28:52And so I'm criticized for not having an anti-capitalist argument, but then I'm also criticized for
00:29:00questioning the motives of girlboss feminism and putting everything into your career.
00:29:06And so I don't understand how the two are compatible at all.
00:29:10And my argument in the book is actually, if you progressive sort of demonize all these
00:29:15other forms of authority, so religion, you don't want to be told what to do by religion.
00:29:23You don't want to be told what to do by your parents.
00:29:26You don't want right and wrong from basically anyone.
00:29:29And my argument in the book is if you undermine all of these forms of authority, the authority
00:29:36will be the market.
00:29:37The market will influence right and wrong.
00:29:39It will be influencers who tell you what right and wrong is.
00:29:42It will be influencers who come in and determine what you value rather than relying on all of
00:29:47these other things.
00:29:49So I often think that progressive sort of want to take down all of these other forms of belonging
00:29:54and meaning, and then all that's left is companies and industries, but then they're anti-capitalist.
00:30:00It's a difficult circle to square.
00:30:03Yeah.
00:30:04What's happening with sex?
00:30:07Well, so that was interesting in the book because I had so much research about how hookup culture
00:30:15was pushed on my generation.
00:30:17So the book goes from 2010 to now and everything that's changed sort of culturally and technologically.
00:30:23And I had all of these examples, like Teen Vogue teaching teenagers how to have anal sex,
00:30:29giving them tips on hookup culture, some crazy stuff.
00:30:33And then I had to sit and listen to these call her daddy episodes to get transcripts of what
00:30:39they were talking about.
00:30:41And this was sort of in the late 2010s and it's all about sleeping around and hookup culture
00:30:47and why it's good and empowering and healthy for young girls.
00:30:53So I had all of this evidence that there was so much influence that that was normalized.
00:30:59Alex Cooper now happily engaged.
00:31:01Yeah.
00:31:02So I had that, but then you look at the statistics and we're not actually having more sex.
00:31:07And so I was thinking that's all going to lead to this huge explosion in hookup culture and
00:31:13it really hasn't.
00:31:15And so there's a paradox there.
00:31:16So many paradoxes in the book between the messaging we were given and what actually happened, the
00:31:22outcome.
00:31:23And that's just one of them.
00:31:24Yeah.
00:31:25It seems strange that Gen Z's hyper-sexualized and having less sex at the same time.
00:31:29Yes.
00:31:30But maybe they're linked, which is that when I was sat listening to the call her daddy episodes
00:31:37and reading these articles, sex sounded horrifying and scary.
00:31:45Is it not advertising sex?
00:31:47I think that's what we think it's doing, but I mean, on call her daddy, they're saying,
00:31:52you know, if you're a five or four out of 10, then you really need to learn these sex tips
00:31:58in order to make up for it.
00:32:00You're just a whole...
00:32:01No, but just genuinely so it's like the sort of stereotypically worst masculine banter coming
00:32:11out of women.
00:32:12And basically they had this guest on, it sounds like something that Louis Theroux would have
00:32:16seen in the manosphere doc.
00:32:18Exactly.
00:32:19Like if you're butters, you'd better learn to cook.
00:32:21Exactly.
00:32:22So they had this guest on called Milf Hunter.
00:32:25Brilliant.
00:32:26Hang on, Milf Hunter for women?
00:32:30This is a guy.
00:32:31Right.
00:32:32Who had slept with a load of older women and was giving them advice basically.
00:32:38And the advice is just horrifying, but then at the end he shouts out, women don't care
00:32:43about you.
00:32:44Oh, sorry.
00:32:45Men don't care about you.
00:32:46And then Alex Cooper and the other host are like, I hope you girls are listening.
00:32:51And even if you're married, you're not safe.
00:32:54He still wants to cheat on you.
00:32:56This is terrifying messaging around sex.
00:32:59And I think that is, I mean, it's the most listened to podcasts by women.
00:33:04And so I really think that would have played a part in why we're now seeing a sex recession
00:33:11is that you had it on both sides.
00:33:13You had this awful messaging from the feminist influencers, the femosphere that the new statesmen
00:33:19now are finally talking about, but then you also have it from the manosphere influencers.
00:33:24Everybody basically saying that investing in the opposite sex or being vulnerable at all
00:33:30is going to get you hurt and you have to put on this defense mechanism bravado.
00:33:35And it's the exact same messaging.
00:33:37What do you think porn's done to expectations around sex and power?
00:33:42I think porn is another thing that terrified young women from my generation because they
00:33:52would have been exposed to it before, likely before they've had a relationship.
00:33:57And so you have, I had to go on this forum in the book of Gen Z adults talking about
00:34:03when they first were exposed to porn.
00:34:06And some of them are like eight, six, and they're talking about accidentally seeing it on these
00:34:12platforms and way before they've even attempted dating anyone or can put that in context.
00:34:20So I think we talk a lot about the impact of porn on young men, but not so much on young
00:34:25women, even if they're not watching it.
00:34:27I think there's constant sort of exposure to it on social media.
00:34:32So a lot of the statistics in the book were accidental exposure.
00:34:37So it's not young people going on to Pornhub.
00:34:41It's very often on Twitter or Instagram and it's accidentally come up and it started an
00:34:46addiction.
00:34:47And so I think that plays into the same thing.
00:34:50It creates a fear around sex and it creates crazy expectations.
00:34:55But I think there's porn-brained women sometimes where the way they speak about women, about
00:35:01themselves is so heartbreaking.
00:35:03Even listening to Call Her Daddy and some of the guests on there, the way they talk about
00:35:07themselves, it sounds like it's straight out of a porn site and that's, they're viewing
00:35:14themselves as nothing but an object, a product.
00:35:16There's another weird paradox going on here, which is porn is both something totally meaningless,
00:35:25transactional, that you can do freely with whoever you want, whenever you want.
00:35:30And also the root of potentially the most traumatic thing in your life, if it's done incorrectly.
00:35:42I don't understand the consistent defense of porn from progressives.
00:35:51But this is part of the controversial part of my book is that I don't caveat.
00:35:56I don't give any disclaimers with that because I was so tired of reading books that constantly
00:36:01caveat.
00:36:03And so with things like porn- The throat-clearing land acknowledgement.
00:36:06Yeah.
00:36:07Well, we must remember that porn can, it does empower women to be able to, if they're disadvantaged,
00:36:11they've got a knife on and a dildo and they can make the money that they want to do.
00:36:15And I do that throughout the book.
00:36:16So another controversial part of the book is to talk about the mental health industry.
00:36:20And I don't do the constant, you know, some medication really helps people and it saves
00:36:26their lives.
00:36:27And therapy is of course life-saving for some people.
00:36:29I do a brief acknowledgement of that at the beginning.
00:36:32And then I go into what I think are the real dangers, because I think we've heard that other
00:36:35side of the story.
00:36:36There are so many books telling you the benefits of mental health awareness and opening up and
00:36:41taking medication.
00:36:43And the point of the book is it's the things that we didn't grow up hearing.
00:36:47And so I give the skeptical side of it.
00:36:50And I think that is very alarming to a lot of progressives.
00:36:54They want the constant disclaimers because they think it's dangerous to not have them.
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00:38:14How do girls think about their emotional lives and struggles?
00:38:18Well in the book, I actually talk about, it starts with the sort of cliche of posting
00:38:24your perfect life online, so highlight reel of everything you're doing.
00:38:29And then I trace the start of influencers being vulnerable online.
00:38:34So I put it, I begin with Zoella who was huge in the UK, you know, the beauty influencer.
00:38:41No, should I?
00:38:42You don't know her.
00:38:43Sorry.
00:38:44The beauty influencer Zoella.
00:38:46Yeah.
00:38:47I should be familiar with her.
00:38:48Okay.
00:38:49Maybe men and women do have different lives.
00:38:51The different echo chambers here.
00:38:52You know what I mean?
00:38:53Yeah.
00:38:54Does she lift?
00:38:55No.
00:38:56Ah, if she lifts, then if she starts lifting, if she does a vlog with Chris Bumstead, I'll
00:39:00watch that.
00:39:01Okay.
00:39:02Okay.
00:39:03But she basically, she was huge for young British women.
00:39:05Okay.
00:39:06British?
00:39:07Yeah.
00:39:08And she was sort of perfect looking and really sort of inspirational if you were 13 and she
00:39:13was in her twenties and she was one of the first beauty influencers.
00:39:16And she did this video where it was so dramatic.
00:39:20She was like, I'm going to reveal a really dark side to myself.
00:39:24You guys might not think about me the same and, but I've just got to say it.
00:39:28And it was literally just, she has anxiety, but at the time it was so, it felt so personal
00:39:34and private that she was revealing this.
00:39:36And so she, she spoke about having panic attacks and it got millions of views because 13 year
00:39:43olds like me at the time were like, gosh, there's this perfect woman admitting to having a struggle.
00:39:50So that to me seems a healthy thing.
00:39:54And then I talk about how that basically became incentivized, a whole industry got built around
00:39:59that and other influencers began to see that opening up would be beneficial in terms of
00:40:04clicks.
00:40:05How's it beneficial?
00:40:06Because it's, it's releasing sort of a private secret, so it's very clickable.
00:40:11So if you say, I have to tell you how damaged I am about my personal trauma, it's like gossip.
00:40:17And so those videos do really well because they're intimate and vulnerable.
00:40:22And basically that was the start of girls like me seeing influencers offer up their deepest
00:40:30feelings to the market, to algorithms.
00:40:34And I think some of it was directly copying influencers.
00:40:38So we're so sick and tired of the filtered perfect lives that we're all going to start
00:40:42showing the vulnerable side of ourselves.
00:40:45But it's still a kind of performance.
00:40:47And yeah.
00:40:48And so my argument in the book is it's became, it became its own performance just as damaging
00:40:52as seeing the perfect lives.
00:40:55Now you scroll through people live streaming their panic attacks, showing their messy depression
00:41:00ends.
00:41:01Well at least the, at least the perfect lives are aspirational.
00:41:03Yeah.
00:41:04Yeah.
00:41:05Yeah.
00:41:06And it's, it's...
00:41:07Objectively, even if they're untrue, objectively if we're able to truthfully get there, that
00:41:11seems like not a bad life to have aspired to.
00:41:13It's harmful to scroll through.
00:41:15And I think it's actually harmful for the young girls themselves to, to tell the internet everything
00:41:21they're feeling and reveal their deepest emotions.
00:41:23And I actually say in the book that companies were explicitly encouraging that all through
00:41:29my childhood.
00:41:30So Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, they're all telling you, open up, share your story.
00:41:35We want you to tell, tell people how you're feeling.
00:41:38Um, and I think it was more about sharing your data with companies than actually opening
00:41:43up.
00:41:44Well if you think about the progress for, let's use Instagram, you go from just being able
00:41:48to post images to being able to post images and videos, to being able to post images, videos,
00:41:55and then stories.
00:41:56And the reason for the story, I remember at the time, the guy that was running Instagram,
00:41:59he said, "Sometimes I do something or take something that I don't think is good enough
00:42:02for my feed, but I do want to share it.
00:42:05So that can go on my story."
00:42:06And then you have close friends.
00:42:09So there's even a, you know, members only, and there's a literal members only, it's like
00:42:12an OnlyFans section of Instagram for people who want to have paid for gate walled members
00:42:19content on there too.
00:42:20But yeah, the only, the close friends, Instagram stories thing can be exactly where you would
00:42:26put this sort of stuff.
00:42:27And then, you know, I've refined my having a breakdown content.
00:42:31Maybe it's fit for public consumption now.
00:42:33And I think you have, one thing I always argue is you don't know who you're going to be at
00:42:4020 or 30, and you have young girls sharing really vulnerable parts of themselves and sort
00:42:47of then categorizing themselves as that thing.
00:42:50So if you're really struggling with social anxiety disorder at 13, you might not be struggling
00:42:55with it at 20, but you're giving the internet everything about that struggle.
00:42:59And so another part of this is, it's the social media platforms and how permanent they are,
00:43:03but then it's the mental health industry that will, you will get categorized, sold to, and
00:43:10then be encouraged to diagnose yourself with a disorder and take it more seriously, whereas
00:43:14you might go out of it.
00:43:15And if you have to do a U-turn on that in future, there is this cemented fossilized record of
00:43:22where you were previously, "Hey, hey, hey, you used to believe this thing.
00:43:26And now you are saying this thing.
00:43:28Why?"
00:43:29So often in the book, I'll talk about influencers and sort of how they've had, they've been called
00:43:34out for something or they've had a breakdown or something has backfired.
00:43:38And it's so interesting that young girls were basically mimicking on a smaller scale, everything
00:43:42that they were doing.
00:43:44And so, for example, I talk about 2020 and all of the influencers getting canceled for
00:43:48not posting the right black square and getting called out.
00:43:51And the same thing is playing out among ordinary girls, turning on each other for not posting
00:43:56the right thing.
00:43:58And it's a similar theme throughout the book is whatever's happening to influencers on a
00:44:02big scale, ordinary girls are mimicking because they also have an audience.
00:44:07It might not be a huge audience that influencers have, but they are performing for their followers
00:44:12and their subscribers.
00:44:14And the argument is that our role models were influencers more than anything else.
00:44:20The normal feelings are being reframed as disorders now?
00:44:23Yes.
00:44:24And so that's a big controversial part of the book.
00:44:26Nearly 30% of teenage American girls aged 14 to 18 seriously considered attempting suicide
00:44:33in 2021.
00:44:3530% of teenage American girls 18 to 14 seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021.
00:44:41See, I think there's two things going on, which is that there is genuine distress.
00:44:49And so I'm not someone who argues that young women are just diagnosing themselves, but they
00:44:54feel fine.
00:44:55I don't actually think they feel fine.
00:44:58I think they feel intense psychological distress for all sorts of reasons.
00:45:03But then part of that distress is a mental health industry that is encouraging them to
00:45:08ruminate, to go more inwards, to focus on it, to diagnose themselves.
00:45:13And so it's a part of it.
00:45:15But I think if young girls say they have an anxiety disorder, they have social anxiety,
00:45:20I think what they're really feeling is actual distress from the world that they're growing
00:45:27up in.
00:45:28And so they have had less practice, they have had less face-to-face interaction.
00:45:32And so they do have this outsize reaction to socializing, but it's not a disorder.
00:45:38And so the problem is you have a lot of young women who typically by their nature will go
00:45:43inwards when they feel distressed, but you have industries encouraging them and telling
00:45:47them the problem is you.
00:45:49Yeah, they're not making it up, but they are being manipulated.
00:45:51Yeah.
00:45:52Yeah.
00:45:53And the point of the book is basically there's nothing wrong with you.
00:45:56Your reactions are human reactions to the world and to a world that's trying to turn you into
00:46:02a product, the fact that you feel unhappy.
00:46:04What's the product bit?
00:46:05Well, I think that all of these things in some way are linked to girls viewing themselves
00:46:12as some kind of object or trying to be perfect.
00:46:14So trying to look perfect, feel perfect, labeling themselves, if they feel anything human or
00:46:21any sort of distress or human reaction to something, they will need to package it up and understand
00:46:27it.
00:46:28I think so much of girls lives is about again, presenting things to the market and understanding
00:46:36labeling and displaying themselves for other people.
00:46:40Something politically.
00:46:42To young women.
00:46:44Well, so this is the interesting thing in that New Statesman piece is they actually admitted
00:46:49that it's young women who have been radicalized.
00:46:52So from the 2010s, it was young women who lurched dramatically to the left.
00:46:58It wasn't that young men lurched to the right.
00:47:00Young men pretty much stayed where they were.
00:47:02It was women.
00:47:03Yeah.
00:47:04The New Statesman said the prevailing narrative is that young men under the influence of the
00:47:07manosphere and Andrew Tate are being politically radicalized faster and in greater numbers than
00:47:11young women.
00:47:12The result is a gulf in political sensibility between British women and men who are now dramatically
00:47:17inclined to the populist right compared with other parts of the population.
00:47:20It's a compelling story, but it isn't completely accurate.
00:47:24Instead it is young women moving to the radical left that is widening the political gender
00:47:28gap among the under thirties.
00:47:30Yeah.
00:47:31And I'll put that down to social media because obviously there's all different spheres of
00:47:37content on social media and every trend basically you can get dragged toward the most deranged
00:47:44and extreme end point of that trend.
00:47:47And so I've been trying to argue for ages that young women are going down their own rabbit
00:47:51holes, whether it's mental health trends, they hover over some content and then end up diagnosing
00:47:58themselves and it becomes their full identity because they're dragged constantly toward more
00:48:02content.
00:48:03And it's the same with progressive politics.
00:48:05You start at a pretty normal place where maybe previous generations of women were, but then
00:48:11you get moved by the algorithm constantly further and further to the left.
00:48:16Why to the left and not to the right?
00:48:17I think because progressive politics naturally plays into women's characteristics, especially
00:48:25the new sort of social justice culture of politics, because it's very much about compassion, empathy,
00:48:33also plays into our vices.
00:48:35So indirect aggression, cancel culture, risk aversion, safetyism, a lot of the vices of
00:48:42young women are sort of indulged by the new social justice movement.
00:48:46So I think that's happening.
00:48:48But then also you combine that with social media platforms and young women are just sucked
00:48:53into it in a way that young men aren't.
00:48:55There was a segment in that New Statesman article.
00:48:58I asked if the women would consider dating a man with different politics.
00:49:02They all immediately said, no, I don't think I'd even be friends with one, said one girl.
00:49:06They don't see you as human.
00:49:07Only one woman, Evelyn, admitted to having male friends, though she was worried.
00:49:11This made her a pick me trying too hard for male attention.
00:49:14Evelyn was concerned about what she, the men that she knew were watching online.
00:49:17The stuff that's being said about women is crazy.
00:49:19They're getting all of these reels talking about like bad stuff about women.
00:49:22And I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men.
00:49:25I try to think not all men are like this, but it's interesting that men get reels talking
00:49:33bad stuff about women.
00:49:35And she knows that she gets reels of women talking bad stuff about men, but that the women
00:49:40talking bad stuff about men is warning her about what the men are watching.
00:49:43And that's true.
00:49:44But that the reels that are telling the men the bad stuff about women, that's actually
00:49:48where the danger is.
00:49:49Yeah, and I think that's where, what the New Statesmen would draw from all this is that
00:49:55women are, have negative views of men because men are bad, rather than why do they have negative
00:50:01views of men?
00:50:02What, what rabbit holes are they going down?
00:50:04When it's young men, it's always a rabbit hole that they've gone down, but young women are
00:50:07reacting to a real issue.
00:50:09Whereas I've seen so many parallels between the sort of extreme manosphere guys and call
00:50:16her daddy.
00:50:17It's the same language.
00:50:18It's the same like thumbnails and titles that would be like, we don't need men and we don't
00:50:23need women, exactly the same.
00:50:25And the way, again, they speak about women is identical.
00:50:30Was 2020 a turning point for Girls Online?
00:50:34I think it was the first time that I remember being called out for not posting something.
00:50:43And so something really changed in terms of you have to join in, the pressure and the fear
00:50:50of your reputation being smeared, especially if you were a teenage girl at the time.
00:50:57So I remember being, I think I was 19 when Black Lives Matter protests were happening.
00:51:03And the sort of, again, you had celebrities and influencers being called out, but then
00:51:08you had ordinary girls coming after each other for not posting stuff.
00:51:12And I give the context in the book that we were basically posting everything online by
00:51:18that point.
00:51:19So every relationship, memory, holiday was updated and compulsively shared with people.
00:51:27And so if you're doing that and then you don't post a black square, it looks really suspect
00:51:31because everything else is shared.
00:51:33And so I think what changed in 2020 is morality became measurable and instantly judged by your
00:51:41Instagram profile.
00:51:44And I think when you're a teenage girl, your life is basically just constant reputation
00:51:50management.
00:51:51And so that really hit young girls, this idea that you're not a good person if you're not
00:51:57joining in and you're not displaying where you stand on things.
00:52:01What was that silence is consent tagline?
00:52:05That was Cara Delevingne.
00:52:07So she had an Instagram story saying silence is consent, which is the worst.
00:52:11It's not great to tell women, is it?
00:52:15Yeah.
00:52:16But yeah, all.
00:52:17So it was young women pressuring each other and then going after each other for not doing
00:52:23it because it became another form of reputation destruction that you have inoffensive and outdated
00:52:29views.
00:52:30And so I think it was even separate from what was happening politically.
00:52:33It just became another form of competition.
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00:53:43The female intra-sexual competition thing is so fascinating to me because it's so hidden.
00:53:48It's so done behind the scenes.
00:53:49It's not out front, I guess.
00:53:52What's happening with how girls see their appearance?
00:53:54How's that changed over time?
00:53:55Yeah.
00:53:56I mean, that's another crazy arms race.
00:54:00I mean, I talk about, um, again, with beauty influencers like Zoella that I grew up with,
00:54:07she would just do like a back to school makeup tutorial and it would be very simple and basic
00:54:14and not, uh, nothing really harmful about teenage girls watching that.
00:54:18But again, the competition, the amount of influencers over the years that now have to compete for
00:54:24clicks and money mean that each beauty influencer also has to up their game and say something
00:54:30slightly more extreme or show something more extreme.
00:54:34So for example, you go from normal beauty tutorials to casual vlogs where you just show you getting
00:54:42a Brazilian butt lift in the middle of the vlog and that becomes part of a standard beauty
00:54:47routine.
00:54:48And you see it with stuff like anti-aging where it's just a simple anti-aging routine then
00:54:54becomes like a 50 step anti-aging routine and you need to do it younger and younger because
00:55:00the thumbnail that says, you know, you need Botox at 17 does way better because people
00:55:05click it and want to know more about it.
00:55:08And so it's in all aspects of life for young women.
00:55:11It's the mental health trends, it's the political trends, it's the beauty trends.
00:55:16Basically social media will drag everything to its inevitable extreme.
00:55:20And then if you're spending most of your waking hours on social media, then that is no longer
00:55:26the extreme.
00:55:27That is where you're getting your information, where you're learning about beauty and relationships
00:55:32and politics.
00:55:34Has Instagram and TikTok changed what we find attractive?
00:55:37Yeah, I think so.
00:55:39I think it's more of a sort of avatar now where you, there's a terror of aging among young
00:55:49women.
00:55:50And so I wrote a piece ages ago about 12 year olds worrying about wrinkles on Reddit forums
00:55:57and obsessively ruminating over pictures where they aged, writing out all of the sun exposure
00:56:05they've had and checking, you know, is this something that could make me look worse in
00:56:09the future, comparing all of their anti-aging routines and their children.
00:56:15You need an aging routine.
00:56:18You need to actively be aging at that point.
00:56:21Yeah, yeah.
00:56:22Well, this is sometimes it's girls worrying about wrinkles before they've got through puberty
00:56:27because they've grown up with watching influencers who are worrying about that and who are having
00:56:32to sort of exaggerate their neuroticism, up their neuroticism to get clicks.
00:56:38But then you have young girls, that's the first they encounter, first sort of young women role
00:56:43models they encounter who are warning them about this.
00:56:48And I think social media in general just makes you ruminate.
00:56:52And so girls already ruminate more than boys, but then they're on all these platforms like
00:56:56Reddit where you all co-ruminate together.
00:56:59The point is you talk about your problems.
00:57:02And there's an escalation on there as well.
00:57:04Yeah.
00:57:05There's always a sense of one-upmanship.
00:57:06I always see this with my friends that are conspiracy minded.
00:57:11And in a room there's always a, it's kind of like an arms race to see who can go deepest
00:57:17down the iceberg.
00:57:18It's like, "Oh, you think that Epstein was just a guy that had an eyelid?
00:57:22Oh, you think he was just Mossad?
00:57:23Oh, you think he was just a reptile person?
00:57:25Dude, let me tell you the, oh, that's cute.
00:57:27Let me tell you the real thing."
00:57:28And it's this, yeah, weird race to the bottom of the iceberg.
00:57:32And it's kind of the same here that there is this ratcheting up in intensity of this stuff.
00:57:38You see that most with the mental health stuff where it will be, "Oh, you think it's bad.
00:57:44You've got ADHD.
00:57:45I've got autism and ADHD."
00:57:48And I've got a gluten intolerance and I've got a club foot and my dad walked out.
00:57:52Yeah, exactly.
00:57:53And I think the platforms, again, they encourage that because you have, all influencers are
00:57:59competing for attention, but then you have influencers whose whole brand now is their
00:58:06mental health diagnosis.
00:58:07They are the ADHD influencer.
00:58:10I think that creates some very bad incentives because then you basically compete over your
00:58:15diagnosis.
00:58:16There has to be a psychological cost of growing up with a front-facing camera 24/7 as well.
00:58:20Yes.
00:58:21Right.
00:58:22What was that?
00:58:23There was a, was it the Zoom face that people had during lockdown?
00:58:25Snapchat dysmorphia as well.
00:58:27Where people want to get surgery and to look like their filter.
00:58:33They don't like seeing themselves without their filter.
00:58:35Yeah.
00:58:36So you have girls who are using, did you know about Facetune?
00:58:39Because I swear no young men even know what it is.
00:58:43You don't know?
00:58:44What's Facetune?
00:58:45See, that's great.
00:58:46So Facetune is like one of the most popular apps where girls would edit themselves to then
00:58:53post on Instagram.
00:58:54Like filters?
00:58:55No, going in and editing each part of your face.
00:58:59So you can slim your jaw, you can enlarge your eyes, you can change your waist, you can tan
00:59:02your skin, you can whiten your teeth, it's everything.
00:59:05But that is what girls were using as teenagers all throughout growing up.
00:59:14And then they've reached their 20s and people say, why are they unhappy with the way they
00:59:17look?
00:59:18Why do they have body dysmorphia?
00:59:19And they're using this app where you change yourself and then there's like an undo button,
00:59:23which if you click it, you look horrifying because then it reverts back to how you actually
00:59:28look.
00:59:29But you had girls doing that during the most formative years of their life and then trying
00:59:35to adjust to how they actually look.
00:59:37How does the self-love messaging co-exist with record levels of body dissatisfaction?
00:59:43Yeah, that's another paradox.
00:59:47I think because it's the marketing strategy.
00:59:51It's much like mental health awareness.
00:59:55A lot of that was a marketing strategy.
00:59:58The self-love campaign was basically ways to sell things like editing apps.
01:00:03So Facetune was marketed as something that can help you feel confident and empowered.
01:00:09And I talk about these influences in the book who are literally, they're literally talking
01:00:14about how they don't have any insecurities anymore and they've overcome it.
01:00:19And they finally reached a stage of self-love while they're literally reshaping their jaw
01:00:23on Facetune, teaching girls how to do it.
01:00:27And none of the comments are calling that out or thinking it's hypocritical.
01:00:31Why?
01:00:33Because I think it's been drilled into us that these things are self-love.
01:00:39And so a lot of the time in the book, I talk about recognizing what are you actually being
01:00:43sold versus what you're being told, because you're constantly being told you feel this
01:00:47way and that this app or technology or trend will make you feel this way, even though it's
01:00:53not.
01:00:54So I don't know any young woman that would Facetune herself and feel good.
01:01:00Feel good doing it rather than feel embarrassed and a bit ashamed and feel worse about themselves
01:01:06after.
01:01:07I think the same thing happened with the pickup artist movement.
01:01:10So what guys that did it learned was just how much they had to contort themselves in order
01:01:17to get laid with a woman.
01:01:20And even if it was effective, what they felt was the delta between who they were normally
01:01:24and who they were when they deployed the game by Neil Strauss.
01:01:27And that gap made them, the normal version of them feel even more disgusting, even more
01:01:33unwanted.
01:01:34Look at how much I've got to disguise and pervert myself in an attempt to try, did you
01:01:39see the midget fight outside?
01:01:40Let's go to three other bars so that I can neurolinguistically program hack the back of
01:01:44your brain into coming to bed with me tonight.
01:01:46You go, I have to jump through all of these hoops.
01:01:50So for the guys that it was successful for, if you don't do too much self-investigation,
01:01:55hooray, you did it thing.
01:01:58But if you do a bit more self-investigation, it can be pretty dark.
01:02:02And for the guys that did it and it didn't work, even with the best tactics in the world,
01:02:08I still can't make myself into someone that woman wants.
01:02:12Yes.
01:02:13Neither of those are good outcomes.
01:02:14Yeah.
01:02:15It's the same.
01:02:16That's so similar to the beauty stuff for women, which is that it can maybe get you what you
01:02:21want superficially.
01:02:23So you face tune yourself and you get 200 likes on your Instagram post, but then it's a momentary
01:02:31bit of dopamine.
01:02:32But then after that, you're now hooked on the app.
01:02:35You need to keep using it.
01:02:36You need the constant.
01:02:37Yeah.
01:02:38And then you develop, which is what happened to me and a lot of girls I know, which was
01:02:42then having an aversion to having your picture taken naturally because you're so used to controlling
01:02:48it.
01:02:49So girls in my friendship group would fight over whose phone the picture would be taken
01:02:52on.
01:02:53So that they could go in and face tune themselves.
01:02:54They've got the control.
01:02:55Wow.
01:02:56And so then.
01:02:57Wow.
01:02:58That is fucking insane.
01:02:59Yeah.
01:03:00So it feels so out of control and then also that explains a lot of, I think, social anxiety
01:03:05because being in the real world is out of control.
01:03:09You can't control your appearance.
01:03:10You can't edit what you're saying or rehearse it.
01:03:13And so I think a lot of these apps actually then stunted us in real life because it feels
01:03:17so.
01:03:18You know what was interesting?
01:03:19I was on Long Island, August of last year, good weather, sunset, and there was a group
01:03:27of young teenage girls that were taking photos and I noticed that if it was really perfectly
01:03:33put together.
01:03:34I mean, they must've taken, I'm not kidding, it must've been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
01:03:37of photos.
01:03:38I get it.
01:03:39You want a nice new profile picture, whatever.
01:03:40Like, is it a bit silly?
01:03:41Yeah, but whatever.
01:03:42It's fine.
01:03:43Yeah.
01:03:44The other thing that was interesting was if they were snapping as they walked, because
01:03:47they'd stayed in the same area that was going to have the best sunset, which is where everybody
01:03:51was, eating ice cream or whatever.
01:03:53And if someone was snapping away more naturally, more candidly, immediately all of their hands
01:03:58went up to their face.
01:03:59Have you seen this trend?
01:04:00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:04:01Where girls do this.
01:04:02So they'll pose with their body but cover their face with their hand.
01:04:07And again, I'm trying to get it.
01:04:10I'm trying to not curmudgeonly point a finger at someone that's 20 years younger than me
01:04:15and go, "These kids, these," I'm like, "Okay, so what is it that they're feeling?
01:04:20Why are they doing this thing?
01:04:21What's the best interpretation of this?"
01:04:23Like it's a cutesy little, but it wasn't a Marilyn Monroe shocked open mouth sort of face.
01:04:31It was, "I just need to do this."
01:04:33It was like the scene out of Four Lions where he's trying to stop the fucking CCTV from watching
01:04:38him.
01:04:39It's another paradox where we're vain and insecure at the same time, but there's context to it
01:04:44because I grew up with the dog ear filter on Snapchat.
01:04:47Please tell me you know what that is.
01:04:49I've seen that one.
01:04:50Do you remember the face mask that was bees?
01:04:54No.
01:04:55So you know like the face mask that you're used to having COVID that very quickly became
01:05:00like an object of oppression or something that didn't work or whatever.
01:05:05I swear there was one, and people can tell me in the comments whether or not I'm fucking
01:05:08hallucinating this, I swear that there was one that was yellow and had bees.
01:05:14Google, "Was there a Snapchat filter of a face mask with bees?"
01:05:21I swear, fucking not hallucinating, but I remember the dog one, and then if you opened your mouth
01:05:24it did a licking thing, right?
01:05:26Yes.
01:05:27But the dog one- Made people want to be dogs.
01:05:31No, but it beautified you as well.
01:05:33So it would like enlarge your eyes and smooth your skin.
01:05:37And so you had 13 year olds using it because it was cute, but then suddenly hating the normal
01:05:42pictures themselves and not knowing why.
01:05:44And it's because it was subtly changing your face.
01:05:47Why do you think social media has feminized us all?
01:05:50Oh, because I think that it has.
01:05:54So because girls use social media more than boys, and they say that they find it harder
01:06:00to give up.
01:06:01And as I said before, these platforms tap into our vulnerabilities and our vices.
01:06:08But then lately I've realized that I think it does that for everyone.
01:06:12So I used to think that social media is particularly bad for girls because it makes you feel insecure.
01:06:18It makes you ruminate.
01:06:20And it encourages this indirect aggression, so reputation, destruction, and going after
01:06:25people online.
01:06:26But now I see grown men online acting like teenage girls.
01:06:31And I think it's because the platform itself encourages these behavior that teenage girls
01:06:36already typically do.
01:06:39And so you see people online of all genders, of all different sides of the political spectrum,
01:06:45all different types of content, thinking like teenage girls.
01:06:49So becoming more ruminative, spending hours and hours on platforms where they have to share
01:06:55how they feel, how their day is, their opinion, encouraged to sort of catastrophize and ruminate
01:07:00over that.
01:07:02Then you have men and all different types of people becoming more insecure.
01:07:08So looking at themselves through a front facing camera, which is bad for girls, but even worse,
01:07:14I think for boys, it's just very unnatural to sort of forensically analyze and inspect
01:07:19your face.
01:07:21And so you have looks maxing and guys getting really obsessed with how they come across and
01:07:26how they appear and also thinking they have to be this perfect product.
01:07:31And then you also have guys using sort of the typical aggressive tactics of teenage girls
01:07:38online.
01:07:39And so Louise Perry and Mary Harrington have spoken about this, that the internet forecloses
01:07:44physical aggression.
01:07:45You can't punch someone on Twitter.
01:07:47And so you have to do things like spread rumors, yeah, gossip and yeah, just destroy their reputation
01:07:56through posting like an unflattering picture of them or forming...
01:07:59There's a lot of catty behavior for men on the internet.
01:08:03You know, I go on X and I just see, because I only log on maybe once every other day.
01:08:10So I see it, you know when you go to a nightclub and strobe lights flash and you don't see someone
01:08:15move, you see them at frames, they're here, then they're here, then they're here.
01:08:19It's kind of like that.
01:08:20So I log on and see this breakdown between two people and then a couple of days later
01:08:26where that war has sort of evolved into.
01:08:30It is so, especially for the most masculine, academically, intellectually, everybody has
01:08:37regressed to the mean of high school dinner table.
01:08:41But it's interesting because ideologically men and women might be further apart, but I
01:08:47think behaviorally that is one place that we're converging is that we're all regressing back
01:08:51to being teenage girls.
01:08:53And I've also argued that it's not that it's the thing about being a teenage girl is it's
01:08:59miserable.
01:09:00Like a lot of women would say they do not want to go back to being 13.
01:09:05It's one of the worst stages of life for a lot of women.
01:09:09And so not only are we acting more catty online, but I think it's bad for our mental health
01:09:15because it traps you in this sort of particularly destructive developmental time.
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01:10:34Do you see influencers as just salespeople pretending to be friends then?
01:10:38Yeah.
01:10:39So that's, that's a big part of all kinds of influencers.
01:10:44So beauty influencers, mental health influencers is that they present themselves as a friend.
01:10:51And I think this happened quite naturally at first.
01:10:55So the original influencers were just, hi girls, here we are today, but now it's a tactic.
01:11:00Now they know that they have to appeal to young girls and make them feel like a friend.
01:11:06And so I talk about these tactics in the book where they will literally say something like
01:11:12that their YouTube title will be let's get ready like we're on FaceTime and they'll do
01:11:16their makeup and talk to you like you're on a FaceTime call and literally simulate friendship
01:11:22with girls.
01:11:23Wow.
01:11:24And I think that is a huge issue because it, it stops girls from getting lonely enough to
01:11:31actually go out and make friends and do something about it because they can simulate all of these
01:11:35things online.
01:11:36That's so good.
01:11:37You've heard my male sedation hypothesis thing, right?
01:11:39Maybe.
01:11:40Which one?
01:11:41I think from throughout history when there's a lot of sexless young men, they tend to cause
01:11:47uprisings and push over granny and set shit on fire.
01:11:50We've got the highest rates of sexlessness among young men that we've ever had.
01:11:54Why is there not the concordant antisocial behavior?
01:11:58It's my belief that it's porn, screens, and video games.
01:12:02Porn giving a titrated dose of sexual satisfaction, screens distracting, and video games giving
01:12:08a simulacrum of goal seeking.
01:12:10So they're being sedated, male sedation hypothesis, they're being sedated.
01:12:12That's why like a study done by William is where are all of the incel killings at?
01:12:19Why are there not more?
01:12:20There should be, if you were to run it by the numbers.
01:12:22That's not a fucking request to the DJ, but where are they?
01:12:26And what's interesting about this is what are some of the young female pathways?
01:12:33What are the nutrients that they want for guys?
01:12:35It might be progress, mastery, a sense of teamwork as they move toward a goal.
01:12:42For girls, belonging, advice, emotional understanding, and it's interesting.
01:12:49I'm going to guess, Jeri, can you chat to GPT what the teenage gender split is for playing
01:12:56video games?
01:12:58Because I'm going to guess that it's way more on the male side.
01:13:02But if you were to look at day in the life vlogs, I bet the split, who the fuck?
01:13:08Get ready with me.
01:13:09It'd take three seconds.
01:13:10It would be called put your pants on with me and it would literally be a 15 second video
01:13:15for a guy.
01:13:16Oh wow, 99% of boys play video games, 94%.
01:13:23What are the games though?
01:13:24Among teens, 39% of boys describe themselves as daily game, as 22% of girls do.
01:13:30As such, do you know what the relative amounts, like a daily play time is?
01:13:37Because it's got to be more.
01:13:38There's no way, 93% of teenage girls playing video games?
01:13:42Yeah, but is it like Sims and Animal Crossing?
01:13:44Yeah, maybe.
01:13:45I guess so.
01:13:46This is where the gender difference becomes more.
01:13:48Boys 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day on average, girls half an hour to one and a half hours.
01:13:53So boys are one and a half to two times as much.
01:13:56First person shooters, sports games, action combat games, strategy and other competitive
01:14:00multiplayer games, boys.
01:14:03Social sandbox games, Roblox, Minecraft, simulation, Sims, Animal Crossing, you nailed it.
01:14:08Candy Crush, Subway, Surface, puzzle games, short sessions, low commitment.
01:14:11Cozy games.
01:14:12Yeah, cozy games.
01:14:16I saw this quote the other day, I'd be interested to know what you think about it.
01:14:18The average woman's misandry comes from online radicalization, not experience.
01:14:23What do you think about that?
01:14:29I think they may have bad experiences.
01:14:34So when I was writing the book, a lot of the complaints from young women were things like
01:14:40situationships where there's no clear commitment.
01:14:44And so I do think there are less incentives for men to formalize a relationship.
01:14:52And also girls have to be super cool with that because sex is supposed to be no strings
01:14:57attached.
01:14:58You should have sex like your brother and work like your father.
01:15:00It's super chill.
01:15:01Yeah.
01:15:02So a lot of the forums are full of women asking each other whether something's okay.
01:15:07Like he, I'm not actually his girlfriend yet.
01:15:11He is dating someone, but we are exclusive, you know, it's like, it gets really muddled
01:15:16and asking each other that is this normal?
01:15:18Should I put up with this?
01:15:19Like a fucking Christopher Nolan movie plot.
01:15:20Yeah.
01:15:21Yeah.
01:15:22I think there will be cases where young women are coming across more men who do act like
01:15:29that depending on the type of young women and who she's going for.
01:15:35But a lot of the time, I do think that online radicalization is at least stopping them from
01:15:43treating those as specific examples.
01:15:47So they then generalize to all men.
01:15:49So I think they might've had a bad experience, but then they go online and people say, this
01:15:52is all men.
01:15:53This is happening to me.
01:15:54This is happening everywhere.
01:15:55And I think similar with women.
01:15:58So sometimes I've read comments that will say things like, you know, like one in two girls
01:16:05are OnlyFans stars or they're all promiscuous and that's just not true.
01:16:10That's just generalized from the internet.
01:16:12And so I think it happens to both sexes, which we're just, again, encouraged to catastrophize
01:16:18and generalize online.
01:16:20The most egregious stories are the ones that go viral, right?
01:16:23Yeah.
01:16:24So you end up, I call this a recursive red pill learning, which is the most ridiculous
01:16:29stories that you can find on the internet.
01:16:31This guy leaves the house for two hours, but he lost his job the day before and he comes
01:16:36back and his wife's in bed with the milkman and the milkman's dog.
01:16:38And then she leaves him and he's broke and he gets addicted to fentanyl.
01:16:43And whether that's true or not, maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
01:16:46That is the story because it's so extreme, that's the one that gets pushed online the
01:16:51most, which means the most people see it, which means the most people learn from it.
01:16:55And that then just feeds this cycle of if you were a training data set for Chatubity, you
01:17:03would be being trained by exposure because you don't see everything because you're not
01:17:08omnipotent.
01:17:09You would be trained on the most extreme stories.
01:17:11So you have the least representative stories because they're the ones that get the most
01:17:15attention online.
01:17:16This guy and his wife had a minor argument and after a couple of hours they came together
01:17:22and had a cup of tea and everything was okay.
01:17:24That is hopefully what most people should be experiencing.
01:17:30But that's not going to generate any clicks online, which means that you're less likely
01:17:33to see it, which means also people are less likely to post it.
01:17:36So it's this bi-directional, tri-directional incentive system.
01:17:40Well, if you look at Reddit in particular, you've seen that study about the advice.
01:17:46Can you Google Reddit relationship advice graph?
01:17:50Yeah.
01:17:51And I think compromise is the least popular response.
01:17:53That's gone down.
01:17:54Yeah.
01:17:55Was it like just talk it out?
01:17:56Go to therapy, ticked up a little bit.
01:17:58Yeah.
01:17:59But it's, you should just break up.
01:18:01Yeah.
01:18:02And the interesting thing is Chatubity, I think some huge proportion of its training data.
01:18:06Is on Reddit.
01:18:07Is on Reddit.
01:18:08Yeah.
01:18:09And I said, I haven't heard many people say, I haven't heard many people say that Chatubity
01:18:17has told them to break up.
01:18:18True.
01:18:19Here it is.
01:18:20So 15 years of relationship advice on Reddit, 1,166,592 comments.
01:18:27End relationship or cut contact has gone from 30% to 50%.
01:18:34Communicate has dropped by like a quarter.
01:18:38Creative space and time has dropped by even more.
01:18:41Seek therapy and counseling ticked up a little bit.
01:18:43What's that yellow one?
01:18:44Set and respect boundaries.
01:18:46So kind of the, I guess, weaponizing of therapy language a little bit there.
01:18:52And then compromise also dropped by probably half.
01:18:55Yeah.
01:18:56I was going to say, because some of the examples in the book I take from Reddit forums where
01:19:03actually I wonder what that advice is for.
01:19:06I'd love to see a breakdown because sometimes it's a young woman presenting a completely
01:19:12valid opinion about her relationship.
01:19:15So she's saying, I feel, let's say her partner's addicted to porn.
01:19:20And there was one example in the book where her partner had said to her that he was addicted
01:19:26to porn and he watches girls that look like her to try and reassure her.
01:19:29So don't worry.
01:19:31It's all right, darling.
01:19:33I only go for blondes.
01:19:34It's fine.
01:19:35It's fine.
01:19:36It's fine.
01:19:37It's fine.
01:19:38It's fine.
01:19:39It's basically me watching you.
01:19:40Well, I think he was saying even worse that like I watch people with average bodies like
01:19:43yours.
01:19:44Like I also watch normal women, but anyway, she wrote this like heartbreaking post on Reddit
01:19:52to say, how do I deal with this?
01:19:54And she kept saying in it constantly, I know that I need to get over this, but you know,
01:19:58it's upsetting me.
01:19:59I can't stop crying about it.
01:20:00I can't have a conversation with him.
01:20:02Literally every single comment was you are the problem.
01:20:05I think you have an anxiety disorder.
01:20:07I think you have an attachment issue because this is completely normal.
01:20:11And so I think there's sort of two things going on.
01:20:12I do think there's also when there's legitimate problems that sort of inward spiral of Reddit
01:20:18can make you overthink it and go too far inwards.
01:20:23I keep seeing this everywhere, and this is another example of it, that for instance, mental
01:20:27health problems are both under-diagnosed and over-diagnosed.
01:20:32So there is a bucket of people who have serious mental health issues that aren't seeking medical
01:20:38attention or advice or treatment for it.
01:20:40And then there's a huge number of people who don't have mental health problems, but have
01:20:44convinced themselves or been convinced by the internet or gaslit themselves into believing
01:20:48that they do.
01:20:49So they're both under-diagnosed and over-diagnosed.
01:20:52It's that relationship advice is both too fragile and too forgiving at the same time.
01:20:59It's too accusatory and too blameless.
01:21:03Well, as you've said before, the people who don't need that advice will take it.
01:21:08Hyper-responders.
01:21:09Yeah.
01:21:10And so you have, if you're a girl that's self-critical and likely to go inward and someone tells you,
01:21:16you are the problem, you're going to take that seriously.
01:21:18And you'll also gravitate toward a community of people who believe that too.
01:21:22Yeah.
01:21:23So you will echo chamber that.
01:21:24I mean, this is the...
01:21:26It's great.
01:21:27I think that guys who take responsibility and girls that take responsibility, dudes that
01:21:31like lock in and fucking get shit done.
01:21:33Great.
01:21:34There is a limit.
01:21:35Yeah.
01:21:36Right.
01:21:37You are not supposed to grit your teeth through your intimate relationship.
01:21:39Yes.
01:21:40You're not supposed to subdue your needs or push simply because that's what's been successful
01:21:49elsewhere in your life.
01:21:50Like your relationship is a place that you're supposed to feel safe and regulated, not another
01:21:55challenge for you to go to war inside of.
01:21:57But I actually think sometimes the therapy language in relationships can obscure the real
01:22:03problem.
01:22:04And so if you're constantly encouraged to communicate and talk it through and see their point of
01:22:08view and understand their boundaries and it's their personal taste and preference, you have
01:22:14a generation who's so articulate in therapy speak, but then find it very hard to see what
01:22:20is the actual problem and react to the actual problem.
01:22:22There's a great Alandabot On video where he says that after a while you need to realize
01:22:28that the late night journaling sessions and the couples counseling and the four hour phone
01:22:35calls are just an indication that this isn't working.
01:22:39Yeah.
01:22:40The fact that we now have the tools to be able to do rupture and repair and to work out our
01:22:46attachment styles and learn our love languages doesn't mean that there isn't a limit to incompatibility.
01:22:53Well, this is what I've spoken about, about girls thinking they're anxiously attached when
01:22:59they're just with a really bad partner.
01:23:02And again, doing that thing where they feel like they can't ever be jealous or insecure.
01:23:06And so instead they think that being securely attached is never being insecure or unhappy
01:23:15or reacting to things.
01:23:16And I think a lot of that is because they're reading relationship advice on TikTok, which
01:23:20has no context and basically is as dramatic and extreme as possible and tells them that
01:23:26they have a problem.
01:23:28Megan Cooper, a British trauma informed holistic therapist has a podcast called Higher Love
01:23:33in which she discusses violence against women, hyper masculinity, and the ecosystem of manufactured
01:23:38male victimhood.
01:23:40On Instagram, Cooper posted about conflicts in Iran, Palestine, Beirut, and Sudan.
01:23:44I don't know about you, but for the past few months, my bones have ached, she wrote in March,
01:23:49the viscerality of the feminine wound.
01:23:51There's an interesting injection of sort of female coded language into global wars and
01:24:02conflicts that I don't, I'm not, I don't, I don't fully see the link there.
01:24:07No, I don't understand that.
01:24:08The only thing I can think is that it becomes, again, another form of signaling.
01:24:15You are a good person.
01:24:17Look at how much I care.
01:24:18Yeah.
01:24:19And these will be the same women who've, again, grown up with believing that what counts as
01:24:25being a good person is what they post.
01:24:28And also empathy, you know, to steel man that this person is, if that's the truth, this person
01:24:35really cares about what's going on in the Middle East and is genuinely pained by it.
01:24:39And that's a kind of investment that's really impressive.
01:24:43Yeah.
01:24:45I don't, I don't know whether, like one of the concerns is that the incentives align on
01:24:53social media for empathy in particular, a very sort of public, a very obvious kind of look
01:25:01at how much I care.
01:25:02This is my, these are my tears for the people of the Sudan.
01:25:07This is my concern.
01:25:08I went, but that's a kind of, it can be deranging and it can actually stop you from doing something
01:25:17that could help or focusing on something that you can have an impact on.
01:25:21It's interesting to me that in the New Statesman article, October 7th was a huge turning point
01:25:27for lots of these women, but not the 7/7 bombing.
01:25:32Yeah.
01:25:33But not issues that are much closer to home, not the grooming gangs crisis that we've got,
01:25:39which is directly affecting women.
01:25:41Like the concern here, the viscerality of the feminine wound, I'm going to guess when we're
01:25:47talking about the Middle East, most of the casualties are probably going to be men because
01:25:51they're the people that are military actors on both sides.
01:25:57Same thing goes for the Ukraine, the same thing goes for Gaza.
01:26:00Yes, women and children are not enemy combatants or combatants at all.
01:26:04That's a huge fucking tragedy, but like it's more men that die in war and the viscerality
01:26:09of the feminine wound seems like a kind of weird injection of gender into something that's
01:26:15just a tragedy.
01:26:16Yes.
01:26:17And the same thing around October 7th, like there are much closer to home issues that could
01:26:23trigger that, but for some reason haven't and didn't.
01:26:26And I wonder whether it's maybe because the grooming gangs in the UK is right coded.
01:26:31Yeah.
01:26:32It's not politically correct.
01:26:35But also it's interesting in that New Statesman piece, did you read what that young woman spoke,
01:26:39what she said about her boyfriend being a Labrador?
01:26:42Yeah.
01:26:43He's a fucking Labrador.
01:26:44He's never endured any discomfort in his life.
01:26:46It's hard for someone who's never faced adversity and has been privately educated to understand
01:26:51this, dot, dot, dot.
01:26:52I actually think I'm the adversity in his life.
01:26:55So where's the empathy for people directly in front of you?
01:27:00That is what concerns me.
01:27:02That's why I am suspicious of it being- Empathy for being in a relationship with you.
01:27:05Yeah.
01:27:06Suspicious of it being actual empathy because it doesn't seem to translate to even more closer
01:27:12to home than the grooming gangs and the 7/7 bombings, your actual family or partner.
01:27:17What's been the response to this by the press?
01:27:21To the New Statesman piece.
01:27:22No, to yours.
01:27:23Oh.
01:27:24What's been the response to this by the New Statesman piece?
01:27:25Well, dangerous, I think, is one of the sort of key themes has been that- Actually, I think
01:27:36more from the press, it's been that it's not genuine empathy, ironically.
01:27:40So that- Should have talked about the Sudan.
01:27:44Yeah.
01:27:45So the Guardian said it was like a bit of a grift to talk about what's happening to girls.
01:27:53The New Statesman said, "I can't possibly save anyone," because their argument was because
01:27:58I'm selling the book.
01:28:00And so, because I talk about consumerism, I can't actually sell the book.
01:28:03I just need to write it and just leave it on the floor.
01:28:06And so- It's interesting for someone who's got a publication
01:28:09that's behind a paywall.
01:28:10Yeah.
01:28:11Well, you have to sell.
01:28:13Who has had so much integrity that they didn't even sell their anti-capitalist book?
01:28:17They just gave it to people.
01:28:19I just don't think that's an argument, but- Yeah.
01:28:22That's also not an anti-capitalist book.
01:28:23Yeah.
01:28:24But I think what's happening is there's been all kinds of criticism from all different directions
01:28:30and some of them cancel each other out.
01:28:32And so, I think the real thing is that I'm just not the politically correct person to
01:28:36say it.
01:28:37And I don't have all the disclaimers.
01:28:39I don't talk about political issues in the Middle East.
01:28:42I don't talk about the patriarchy.
01:28:43I talk about what I genuinely think affected me and is affecting young women that I know.
01:28:50And so, I think they come up with all other angles of criticism rather than saying it's
01:28:55because she reaches conservative conclusions.
01:28:58I don't understand why this isn't seen as progressive.
01:29:00Like surely, saying that these tech companies are abusing and commodifying children for profit-
01:29:05Yeah.
01:29:06Should be the thing that's being called out and pushed back against.
01:29:10No, because they think that we live in a patriarchy and the problem is men and I'm sort of deflecting
01:29:19it onto social media platforms.
01:29:21Also, that social media platforms are where girls can learn about feminist ideas and express
01:29:27themselves and those are good for women.
01:29:30But they also hate billionaires.
01:29:32Yeah.
01:29:33Well, that's an irony with all of these industries.
01:29:36I mean, a lot of these young women define their lives by DSM diagnoses that were basically
01:29:44voted by rich white men.
01:29:47No, the actual pharmaceutical labels.
01:29:49So, all of these industries have the influence of rich white men that they hate.
01:29:56But because I draw different conclusions from them and because I have the cultural stuff
01:30:02in there about divorce and porn, all of these sort of conservative coded concerns, then the
01:30:10whole book has to be dangerous.
01:30:12And so, a lot of it, yeah, is young women warning each other.
01:30:16How is being anti-divorce conservative or how is being pro-divorce progressive?
01:30:24Because divorce is now how women self-actualize.
01:30:30And so, I talk in the book actually about going from the normalization of divorce to the glamorization
01:30:39of divorce and then divorce being a means to self-fulfillment and self-expression.
01:30:45Like divorce parties.
01:30:47Yeah.
01:30:48And basically, I think that women interpret that as me saying women should stay with the
01:30:56absolute worst husbands at all costs.
01:30:59But really, I think that the normalization and glamorization of divorce hurts women as
01:31:05well, hurts wives, and it hurts children.
01:31:08Well, we're already hearing a lot, although it seems to be not fully backed up by the data
01:31:14about the double shift, women coming home from work and then having to clean up around the
01:31:18house.
01:31:19When you add in other types of especially emotional labor and emotional containment that men do,
01:31:24the numbers start to fall away.
01:31:26But if you're worried about the double shift, imagine the fucking double shift, but without
01:31:30the helper, because that's what it is, especially if it's young kids.
01:31:34If it's young kids, Erica Commissar was...
01:31:39She's amazing.
01:31:40That was a great episode.
01:31:41Thank you.
01:31:42Because custody shouldn't be 50/50 at all, because baby doesn't need dad as much as it
01:31:46needs mom.
01:31:47Maybe it needs dad more in later life, but people seem to break up between the ages of
01:31:53like six months and three years because it's really hard and the cracks that were in the
01:31:57relationship before have been really exposed by this additional level of stress.
01:32:03If you break up during that time, you are going to be, as a mom, you're going to be the one
01:32:08that's going to bear more of this burden and you don't have a dual income household anymore.
01:32:12So it's like quadruple burden.
01:32:15I don't know, this sort of theme, the trend that I'm kind of fascinated by and it's good
01:32:23to see us kicking all of the trip wires off are the sort of paradoxes of these hypersexualized,
01:32:30but also having less sex.
01:32:32Sex is something which is really sacred, but also something that if it's done incorrectly
01:32:35can be incredibly traumatic to you.
01:32:40The world is more connected than ever before and yet people feel more isolated.
01:32:45We have independence is what you should strive for and your career is your highest calling
01:32:50and also maternity leave needs to be increased.
01:32:54Billionaires are bad, but working for a company can be where you find your greatest meaning
01:32:58in life.
01:32:59Like freedom is really important, but also it's just, it's a really interesting, when
01:33:06you see these paradoxes and a kind of like cultural hypocrisy in a way, it's usually a
01:33:15suggestion that it's not fully thought out because it should be smoother than that.
01:33:18It should be more easy to deconstruct logically.
01:33:21You know, you've got a number, you do the division of this and the number is 45 characters, there's
01:33:26a ton of decimal points after as you try to sort out what this equation means.
01:33:30Yeah, I think the way I view it is I think some, again, it's overthinking a natural instinct
01:33:38a lot of the time.
01:33:39Like if you think about divorce, a child's parents splitting apart and not living in the
01:33:45same household with the child, that's going to harm the child.
01:33:49I don't really need data sets and research for that to seem true.
01:33:54That feels true.
01:33:56And you see it playing out with people who've had divorced parents where they carry that
01:34:01into relationships.
01:34:02And that's what's interesting is progressives love attachment theory and they love talking
01:34:06about abandonment issues, but they never talk about what's causing those abandonment issues.
01:34:10So it's endless.
01:34:11It's only ever looking backward, never looking forward.
01:34:13Yeah.
01:34:14So if you say all of these young women feel abandoned because they were more likely to
01:34:20have divorced parents, that's not politically correct.
01:34:24But you can talk about all of these young women need to be in therapy and they need to be healing
01:34:29their inner child and they need to be giving money to these industries because they feel
01:34:32a certain way.
01:34:33Like we should be figuring out why they feel a certain way, why they're so dependent on
01:34:36the mental health industry.
01:34:37They're prepared to kind of under the bus, the previous generation and say, well, you
01:34:40know, our parents didn't have the therapeutic tools.
01:34:43Yeah.
01:34:44They didn't understand attachment theory.
01:34:45They weren't able to hold me when I needed it.
01:34:47Yeah.
01:34:48They weren't able to look at it.
01:34:49And all of these things are true.
01:34:50I agree.
01:34:51And I think that a lot of an attachment informed child rearing strategy would make kids' lives
01:34:58and then the adults' lives better.
01:35:00Yeah.
01:35:01But saying they weren't able to hold me as a kid, which is why I need to go to therapy
01:35:04now.
01:35:05But also if me and my partner break up, that's something to be celebrated.
01:35:12How little do you think you're going to be able to hold your kid if it's at your father's,
01:35:15your ex-husband's house?
01:35:17I think they think the reason they have an attachment disorder is that they are disordered.
01:35:23They have an illness.
01:35:24It seems to stop at the label, which is that I have a problem.
01:35:29Whereas what I've tried to do is give some of the context to that because some of the
01:35:33context of that has ended up conservative coded.
01:35:37That's when it becomes an issue.
01:35:39I still can't understand, you know, there's this, there's a bunch of different movements
01:35:43at the moment, resistant unsubscribe, Scott Galloway's thing, I think maybe Netflix is
01:35:49on there.
01:35:50There's a bunch of companies that are on there.
01:35:53I don't know whether there's any social media platforms that are on there, but if you want
01:35:56to look at who are the companies making the most money that have the most influence, politically
01:36:02powerful, every left-leaning Gen Z goal should be deleting their Instagram account.
01:36:12They should be deleting their Instagram account, they should be deleting TikTok because of the
01:36:15abuses to workers in China and they shouldn't ever be using that.
01:36:21Also you shouldn't be on X because Elon Musk's got loads of money and they don't like his
01:36:24politics and how he influenced the American election.
01:36:27I don't know who fucking owns Blue Sky.
01:36:29Maybe that is, as a company is run, that's like as socialist of a capitalist company as
01:36:36you're going to get.
01:36:37But that's where it seems self-serving, or at least it feels a little bit hypocritical
01:36:43where you say, "Well, if you're going to kick up a stink about these companies, but give
01:36:49a pass to the one that you think is cool and that you want to gain status on because everybody
01:36:54else holds it in high esteem, that suggests to me that you're not talking about this in
01:37:00order to move the conversation forward, you're doing it because you want clout, which is why
01:37:04you're not prepared to neuter yourself on the platform where you want the clout to be.
01:37:09Yes.
01:37:10I genuinely get confused by some of the criticism because it does seem to me so progressive to
01:37:19be skeptical at least of these companies and to figure out the need.
01:37:25It's sort of a Marxist idea.
01:37:27What is the need that we have that is then being exploited and sold back to us?
01:37:32Something like better help.
01:37:35Why do so many young people think they need to be in therapy, young women especially?
01:37:40And why are these companies, these online therapy companies marketing themselves in a certain
01:37:46way?
01:37:47So for example, the therapy companies have now shifted to filling the role of almost parents
01:37:53where they'll say, "If you need to talk about dating or how you feel or your crush or exams,
01:38:00you can come to us."
01:38:01It's a fucking friend.
01:38:02Yeah.
01:38:03It's just renting a friend or a parent.
01:38:04Yeah.
01:38:05And a lot of it is like guidance that your parent would give you growing up.
01:38:09What this is like, have you seen those stories of people that pay for cuddlers?
01:38:13Yeah.
01:38:14It is like that.
01:38:15It's the social emotional equivalent of paying someone to come around and hug you because
01:38:21you don't have anyone to do it.
01:38:23Yeah.
01:38:24They have, so better help specifically have these adverts where they have a young woman
01:38:30and her dad, and the dad will say something like, "You should just go for a walk in the
01:38:35sun or something," and it will just come up, "That's unhelpful," and then the better help
01:38:39code.
01:38:40And it does it with friends as well.
01:38:42It's replacing friends and family.
01:38:44I'll fucking advocate for a walk in the sun all day long.
01:38:48I'm not saying that going for a walk in the sun is going to cure all of your problems.
01:38:51No.
01:38:52But there are very few problems that a walk in the sun won't make better.
01:38:56Yeah, but it's just, I'm so suspicious of a company telling you to be less attached to
01:39:04the people that love you and more-
01:39:06Attached to them.
01:39:07... like anxiously attached to experts.
01:39:08It is, I don't know, I mean, it is very deranging.
01:39:13I do feel a little bit sometimes like, "Am I losing my mind?"
01:39:19Yeah, me too.
01:39:20"When I go on the internet," and especially if you're in the middle of a eye of a storm,
01:39:25you are now, I was a couple of months ago, you're like, "Am I the dickhead?"
01:39:30You remember that scene in Mitchell and Webb, where they're dressed as Nazis-
01:39:34Oh, yeah.
01:39:35Are we the baddies?
01:39:36And they're like, "Are we the baddies?"
01:39:37Like, "Am I the dickhead?"
01:39:39Maybe I am.
01:39:40I actually might be because everybody else on the internet seems to have consensus about
01:39:46this thing actually being right.
01:39:49And I'm really trying to work it out and I just can't get there.
01:39:51So maybe I'm just, maybe I am a bad person.
01:39:53I just can't understand.
01:39:54I can't understand how saying the sentence "just a mother" is raising up women.
01:40:03Yes.
01:40:04That "just a mother" thing, it's like, I don't think that working for a company that doesn't
01:40:09care about you and would replace you in a fucking heartbeat if you got hit by a bus is your highest
01:40:15calling.
01:40:16I don't think that independent women are the only ones that are useful and that mothers
01:40:20have been conned by the patriarchy into becoming domestic prostitutes.
01:40:25And think that any woman that supports men is being a pick me.
01:40:28I also don't think that any man that decides to go after his career is being a tyrant or
01:40:33that any man that talks about his emotions is a useless soy boy.
01:40:37How dare you?
01:40:38I know.
01:40:39I know.
01:40:40I know.
01:40:41I know.
01:40:42I know.
01:40:43No, it's true.
01:40:44It's really deranging.
01:40:45My mom read the book recently and she called me and she said, "Oh, you know, I'm so proud
01:40:47of you," and she said, "It was so loving toward girls."
01:40:52And then I'm looking online and it's like, this is a hateful book.
01:40:54She's a misogynist.
01:40:55She hates women.
01:40:56One of the reviews, the title was, "Freya India would prefer a world without women's rights."
01:41:03Can you just Google "Freya India girls' Goodreads," please, Jared?
01:41:07I want to do some highlights of our favorite ones.
01:41:14It is really fucking deranging and I think it's important for you to have people in your
01:41:21life that you can message.
01:41:24I've got my group chat.
01:41:25Yep, there it is.
01:41:263.2.
01:41:273.1.
01:41:283.16.
01:41:2997.
01:41:30Here we go.
01:41:31Let's go down.
01:41:32Let's go on some of the one stars.
01:41:33Handmaid's Tale.
01:41:34Beautiful.
01:41:35What starts off as disappointing through its lack of nuance and depth make contradictory
01:41:38points and statistics that feel cherry picked in order to back up points the author is desperately
01:41:42trying to make.
01:41:43It quickly descends into conservative pearl-clutching before ultimately concluding as a manifesto
01:41:47for girls getting back to family values and baby-making that could be written by Serena
01:41:51Joy of the Handmaid's Tale herself.
01:41:52The premise of this book is interesting and important, the reason I picked it up in the
01:41:55first place, yet somehow it manages to miss the mark entirely.
01:41:59Side note, I have never read the term "age old" so many times in my life.
01:42:04Does no one edit it?
01:42:05Oh, that's painful.
01:42:06Cannot recommend.
01:42:07Absolutely not nuanced in any way.
01:42:09So bad I went on a...
01:42:10Oh, this person's...
01:42:11Click the brand.
01:42:12Click the brand.
01:42:13Oh, it's a blog post.
01:42:14Without social media, trans, whites or women's rights or therapy.
01:42:17Freya India would prefer life without social media or trans rights or women's rights or
01:42:22therapy.
01:42:23Yeah.
01:42:24Wow.
01:42:25I'm glad that it's got no comments.
01:42:26Yeah.
01:42:27It's hard growing up.
01:42:29Yeah.
01:42:30Transphobia and TERF rhetoric.
01:42:32TERF rhetoric.
01:42:33I mean, look, you're in incredibly good company here.
01:42:37But it is strange and that's not to say that we're right about everything, that you're right
01:42:41about everything that I am.
01:42:42But I have this theory around how you can tell if a content creator has your best interests
01:42:50at heart.
01:42:51And it's whether or not the group that they belong to and say that you belong to too are
01:42:58bound together over the mutual love of an in-group or the mutual hatred of an out-group.
01:43:04That is one of the earliest warning signs.
01:43:07Another one is when was the last time they admitted that they were wrong.
01:43:10Another one is when was the last time that they surprised you with one of their takes
01:43:15or when did they bring somebody on that they disagree with not to mock them but to genuinely
01:43:21try and learn from them.
01:43:22So that's four.
01:43:23Someone once asked me, "What do I do to my content diet?"
01:43:25And obviously, I do this horrendously and I follow loads of people that I shouldn't do
01:43:28and it wrecks my nervous system.
01:43:31But when was the last time that you were surprised by this person's take?
01:43:38Is that just a cookie cutter, you know one of their perspectives and from it, you can
01:43:41accurately predict everything else?
01:43:43Yeah.
01:43:44They're obviously not a serious thinker.
01:43:46I also think with my book in particular, because I don't know how to phrase it, but because
01:43:53I have some unpredictable takes as well.
01:43:55So for example, it's mostly about commodification of women, which conservatives don't often talk
01:44:00about.
01:44:01I think that I get more hate as a result of that.
01:44:03Because you're seen as an unreliable ally as opposed to an outright conservative.
01:44:07Yeah.
01:44:08If I was just a right wing political influencer, I don't think I would get this amount of targeted
01:44:13hate.
01:44:14It's because I operate in the middle and I am genuinely figuring things out.
01:44:19And so I think that becomes almost more threatening, but I'm fine.
01:44:24I don't mind people criticizing the book, but there's a tone of criticism that is, "I am
01:44:32evil."
01:44:33Snarky, dismissive, judgmental.
01:44:35Yeah.
01:44:36There's also, I read loads of books I disagree with.
01:44:41I read loads of books with liberal assumptions that are sort of weaved into the book.
01:44:47Every book I read about social media is pretty much like that, but I never feel the urge to
01:44:51go on a 2,000 word run destroying someone else's book.
01:44:55I just put that energy into my own.
01:44:58I think you could kind of see it as a criticism creation balance sheet.
01:45:04If you're criticizing more than you're creating, you're sort of withdrawing from the system
01:45:08more than you're adding.
01:45:11Even if you get close, it should be 10 to one.
01:45:14Some people are critics, whatever.
01:45:16But for the most part, you should be contributing way more than you are.
01:45:20Yes.
01:45:21You know what's a great way to do this?
01:45:22Go on somebody's Twitter and look at how much is original content and how much are quote
01:45:26tweets.
01:45:27Yes.
01:45:28If it's tons of quote tweets and presuming that it's not just, "This is awesome and I
01:45:31really like this," which no one is doing.
01:45:35You're extracting from the system more than you're adding to it.
01:45:38It's always people who have never written a book that say, "This is so badly researched.
01:45:44This is so lazy.
01:45:45This is this way.
01:45:46This is this way."
01:45:47I've noticed when it's really visceral criticism of the book, they tend to have a profile which
01:45:53is criticism of everyone else's attempt to do anything.
01:45:57The loudest shouts come from the cheapest seats.
01:46:00It's the people that are furthest away from doing something that are the ones that criticize
01:46:03the most.
01:46:04One other thing that we haven't talked about that I thought was fucking insane was the reframing
01:46:11of the potential to give mothers in the UK a tax benefit in the same way that mums in
01:46:19Hungary got it as an inverse tax penalty on women who want to be child free.
01:46:27That New Statesman piece said that there was a young woman worried about reform forcing
01:46:32them to have babies and that's how they framed it.
01:46:36They think reform will force them to have children.
01:46:40That's why I laughed at The Handmaid's Tale because it's like they have one story that
01:46:46they just extrapolate onto everything.
01:46:48It's the same with history.
01:46:51Because nobody knows any history except for a tiny bit of Nazi Germany, everybody just
01:46:57defaults to Nazi and Hitler.
01:46:59It's the only piece of history that they know, in the same way as it's the only piece of
01:47:02literature that can be used for this, The Handmaid's Tale.
01:47:08If you offer, what is it, 25% off your income tax for the first kid, 50% for the second one
01:47:17and 100% for the rest of your life if you have three or more, I think that's what it is in
01:47:20Hungary, something like that.
01:47:24How can you say that that's penalizing women who don't have kids?
01:47:28It's just adding to the system.
01:47:29Now, you can say with anchoring bias, no one should ever pay any tax.
01:47:33That's fine.
01:47:34But if you're saying we need to give more money, a lot of the reasons, justifications that are
01:47:39given for why women aren't having more kids is because of economic conditions, it's cost
01:47:43of living crisis, it's a fear of being abandoned by their partner, divorced and then they're
01:47:49not going to be able to afford to keep themselves and the kids alive, et cetera.
01:47:51You're okay.
01:47:52Well, let's incentivize that.
01:47:53If you're persecuting women that don't have kids, the women that don't have kids are being
01:47:58disadvantaged.
01:47:59You go, no, that's not the case.
01:48:01That's where everybody is right now and it's like, we want more money for mothers.
01:48:06You go, okay, well, hang on.
01:48:10That's excluding women that aren't mothers.
01:48:11You go, okay, so do you just want money?
01:48:13Yes, but for women.
01:48:16You go, I fucking, dude, what?
01:48:19You can't exclude.
01:48:21So one of the side effects of everybody only knowing Nazi Germany, that one period of history
01:48:28and then applying it is that anything remotely exclusionary or suggesting closing things down
01:48:36rather than opening up endlessly becomes suspicious.
01:48:40And so any turn back from an overcorrection becomes a slippery slope to fascism.
01:48:46So you can have a perfectly reasonable tax suggestion, but because it starts toward encouraging
01:48:56women to have children, they just envision it careering off into.
01:49:00Yeah, that's interesting, I suppose that let's say that I'm going to give you something that
01:49:06you really want, but it's going to come packaged in a way that you might not be too keen on.
01:49:12You want this new toy, but it's going to be in a box that you don't like, let's say.
01:49:19There is a cost benefit analysis that you're doing here.
01:49:22How much of the thing that I want do I get versus how much of the thing that I don't want
01:49:26sort of comes along for the ride?
01:49:27Let's assume that you've interpreted it correctly and not incorrectly.
01:49:31This is kind of the same across the board with, well, capitalism bad, but social media companies,
01:49:39I quite like those because that's the thing that I'm allowed to get my clout through.
01:49:43So the packaging for this thing is sufficiently okay, I don't really mind what it's sneaking
01:49:49in underneath the- Yeah, yeah.
01:49:51I think as well with a lot of the criticism toward my book and just in general with conservatives
01:49:57who talk about these things is that a lot of these women will not have come across a conservative
01:50:04leaning view ever by accident.
01:50:09So I'm constantly coming across liberal assumptions on things because it is the culture, it's the
01:50:14media and books and most of them are leaning that way if they're talking about something
01:50:18broad like social media.
01:50:21But I don't think there are many books where the person writing it is just leaning toward
01:50:28being more conservative.
01:50:30And so a lot of the time they say there's no warning on the book.
01:50:34Oh, you jump scared them with your conservative beliefs.
01:50:36There's no disclaimer.
01:50:37And they say that.
01:50:38They've said that about my sub stack for years, which is that I have like a, it's like a girly
01:50:42magazine aesthetic, the title.
01:50:46And that is me tricking them because they're locked on.
01:50:49You've honey-potted them into reading conservative propaganda.
01:50:51Yeah.
01:50:52So I need a big disclaimer saying warning.
01:50:54You remember when those mixtapes used to come out, the Marshall Mathers EP, the real Slim
01:50:59Shady and stuff, and it would have that explicit warning at the bottom of the black and white
01:51:03thing.
01:51:04You basically need that, but you're like the cigarettes of, of blogging.
01:51:07You need to come with a health warning on it.
01:51:11Do you think that women's preferences have fundamentally changed or is it just the environment
01:51:16that they're in?
01:51:20I think they're the same, but as I said before, they're sort of being funneled toward a fake
01:51:26simulation of the thing.
01:51:29And so it's kind of a big Ponzi scheme.
01:51:31Yeah, it's like, even as we were talking about with empathy, I feel like a lot of, you know,
01:51:39sometimes conservatives will say young women are radically left wing because they're evil
01:51:46and they want to tear down Western civilization.
01:51:49I think a lot of the time it is well-intentioned as in they want to look compassionate.
01:51:56They want to look good in front of their friends, but it's being funneled in a weird direction.
01:52:01So it's strange that you have all of these young women in Britain caring so much about
01:52:06the Middle East and then talking about their boyfriend with zero empathy at all.
01:52:12And I think it's similar with things that are happening online where again, you have a need
01:52:16for belonging, but you're getting it through YouTube.
01:52:21That's where your family and friends are being simulated somewhat.
01:52:25You have a need to get advice from your parents and you're getting it from a better help influencer.
01:52:32And so I think a lot of the challenges my generation has are not necessarily new, but
01:52:38we have way more simulations than previous generations did.
01:52:42How do we know when the left's gone too far?
01:52:45When they rate my book one star.
01:52:47Ah, there it is.
01:52:49There it is.
01:52:50I think when it...
01:52:51You know what I mean?
01:52:52This is an old Peterson thing that it's obvious when the right goes too far.
01:52:57But we don't have the same sort of rules.
01:53:01The entire New Statesman article is saying the skew of women to the left, the radical
01:53:07left is more aggressive and is, I have to assume, they think is too far, even as something that
01:53:13is left of center.
01:53:14And you go, okay, well, how do we know?
01:53:17Because how does it show up?
01:53:19It's like just obscene amounts of empathy that if you turn empathy up to 11, just becomes
01:53:23a different type of judgmental tribalism.
01:53:25Yeah.
01:53:26Because care for groups has to be constrained to one group and then it means that you're
01:53:30not that group, so you're the oppressor, not the oppressed.
01:53:33Yes.
01:53:34I don't actually think it can go too far.
01:53:39Because I think about being, sometimes people will say, oh, she's had success because she's
01:53:46pandering to the right wingers, but you can, even if you're slightly conservative on one
01:53:53topic and all of your other opinions were very progressive, you're immediately coded as right
01:53:58wing.
01:53:59So there's barely any room to even be moderately conservative or even just curious about the
01:54:07conservative approach.
01:54:09So a lot of my interviews have been guilt by association.
01:54:12It's just people that I speak to and who will listen to me.
01:54:15Then you get coded as too far, too right wing.
01:54:18So there's barely any room on the right, but I think there's so much room on the left.
01:54:24You can say you're a communist and write a book about caring for girls and no one will
01:54:30scrutinize your motives.
01:54:32But if you write a book about caring for girls and a few of your opinions happen to be conservative,
01:54:39then there's no way that you have genuine care for them.
01:54:42You have to just be a political operator.
01:54:44Screw you, Freya India.
01:54:45That's what I say.
01:54:46Yeah.
01:54:47Screw you, Freya India.
01:54:48You're great.
01:54:49Thank you.
01:54:50I think you're so fantastic.
01:54:51Bug's brilliant.
01:54:52Blog's brilliant.
01:54:53Where should people go to check out everything you're doing?
01:54:55Yeah.
01:54:56So just my substack freyaindia.co.uk.
01:54:59I'm not on Instagram or TikTok.
01:55:01I'm excited to see what you do to get in trouble next.
01:55:03Thank you.
01:55:04You do.
01:55:05All right.
01:55:06Bye everyone.
01:55:07Dude, awesome.
01:55:08Amazing.
01:55:09So good.
01:55:10Thank you.
01:55:11Thank you very much for tuning in.
01:55:14If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you love, it's just here.
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