Louise Perry: The Case Against the Sexual Revolution

Louise Perry 0:00 The problem I think is when having sex like a man is seen as a default setting because it doesn't suit the interests of most women. If we're saying that something that suits the interests of, let's say, 5% of women should be the norm, that inevitably is going to mean that 95% are nudged by shame, by social pressure.

Ali Abdaal 0:17 Now, this episode is a little bit different from our usual programming because this is an interview between me and Louise Perry, who's the author of the book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

Louise Perry 0:25 The book in general is intended as a critique of liberal feminism, and sometimes criticized by conservatives and Christians for not being conservative and Christian enough.

Ali Abdaal 0:34 Now, before we roll the interview, it's worth sharing a bit of a trigger warning around this, in that we do discuss topics around sex and sexuality in a pretty graphic way, and we also talk about issues including sexual assault and rape and consent. And so hopefully that's fair warning if you'd rather not listen to this episode.

Louise Perry 0:49 I work for a campaign group called We Can't Consent to This. What we do is we document cases where UK women have been killed, and their killers have claimed in court that they consented to the violence which led to their deaths. So like the sex game gone wrong. I think that the focus on consent as the sole framework for determining whether or not sexual behavior is good or bad is completely inadequate. There is so much gray area between good sex and consensual sex.

Ali Abdaal 1:11 At the moment, according to YouTube analytics, 81% of you who are watching this on YouTube have not yet hit the subscribe button. And so if you're, for example, in the now 81% of people who are watching this on YouTube but who are not subscribed to the channel, I would love it if you could do so, and it would be awesome to get that number down to 50%, and it would be cool to get like 50/50 sub/non-sub ratio just,

Ali Abdaal 1:30 just for fun. All right, Louise, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Louise Perry 1:32 Thank you for having me. Hello.

Ali Abdaal 1:33 Um, this is a very interesting book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the Twenty-First Century. How has it been doing, I guess, the, the, the media and publicity tour of the book? Because it's, I guess, a particularly c- sometimes controversial topic.

Louise Perry 1:47 Yeah. It's been better than I thought, you know. I knew while I was writing it that it was controversial. Um, that was kind of the idea. But I would say the response has been 90% to 95% positive.

Ali Abdaal 1:59 Okay.

Louise Perry 2:00 Which was much higher than I thought.

Ali Abdaal 2:02 What's the 5% to 10% like? Like, what, what, what sort of... Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:06 What's interesting is that it comes from every possible angle, which I think, I mean, I think suggests I'm at least being original, even if I'm not right. So I mean, so the book in general is a, is, is intended as a critique of liberal feminism. So obviously liberal feminists, you know, reiterate their point. Fine. That was, that's to be expected. I'm sometimes criticized by, um, conservatives and Christians for not being conservative and Christian enough.

Ali Abdaal 2:31 Okay.

Louise Perry 2:32 Because I have a chapter in there that makes the case for marriage, but then I also have a whole bunch of other chapters that, that they don't like as much. I have been criticized by, um, radical feminists and some other feminists for being too keen on evolutionary psychology. So c- completely different groups all have a problem with the book, which I think is probably a good sign.

Ali Abdaal 2:51 Yeah. Uh, so,

Ali Abdaal 2:52 um, up until I read this, I did not really realize that like, uh, liberal feminists and like radical feminists and sex positive and negative feminint w- was, was like a thing.

Louise Perry 3:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 3:03 Um, what do these kinda terms mean?

Louise Perry 3:06 What's extra confusing is everyone calls themselves different things. Feminism is like an infa- infamously factional movement. Um, I write about liberal feminism in the book. But that's the term I chose to use even though people would probably be more likely to describe themselves as intersectional feminists. I mean, liberal feminism is basically the feminism of like Cosmo, Emma Watson.

Ali Abdaal 3:26 Okay.

Louise Perry 3:27 It's what you'll, you'll, you'll most commonly come across in The Guardian.

Ali Abdaal 3:30 Okay.

Louise Perry 3:31 It's, it's like the, it's like the mainstream position nowadays. The main idea behind liberal feminism is basically that giving women freedom and giving women choice is the most important thing, and that the, what, what was wrong about the past, the pre-feminist age, was that women didn't have their choices constrained, and post-1960s we've seen this sort of explosion of freedom, and that's a great thing, which I disagree with.

Ali Abdaal 3:53 Okay. [laughs]

Louise Perry 3:54 Radical feminism is a, it's faded away a little bit. It was more prominent in the '70s and '80s, and that is, um, as the name suggests, a more radical version of feminism which says that, um, w- women are an oppressed class. Like, it's like a, it's a, it's like a Marxist framework where women and men are different classes and men necessarily oppress women. I used to be much more sympathetic to radical feminism. I've moved away from it somewhat. Um, but yeah, these are, these are factions who are at each other's throats-

Ali Abdaal 4:25 Okay

Louise Perry 4:25 ... a lot, and have been for a long time.

Ali Abdaal 4:27 And sort of sex positive and sex negative, like what do, what does, how does that tie into this?

Louise Perry 4:30 So sex positive, liberal feminists I think are, are pretty much always sex positive.

Ali Abdaal 4:33 Mm-hmm. And what does sex positive mean?

Louise Perry 4:35 So the, the kinda steel man of sex positivism is, is it's the idea that there's nothing inherently shameful about sex, that a lot of particularly Christian ideas about sex are very oppressive and they, they, you know, they make people miserable. Um, and that actually take, having a kind of generally positive regard towards sex and saying that, look, as long as you consent, as long as people are all adults and whatever, then what's the problem?

Ali Abdaal 5:00 Yeah.

Louise Perry 5:01 I think the problem with the sex positive view is it shades very, very easily from that general we should be generally positive stance.

Ali Abdaal 5:08 That sounds, sounds quite reasonable.

Louise Perry 5:09 It sounds lovely, right?

Ali Abdaal 5:09 It sounds very nice, yeah.

Louise Perry 5:10 The problem is that it shades very easily into actually being into these things actually becoming almost compulsory, so that we, we go from saying women should be allowed to have one-night stands. There's nothing wrong necessarily with having one-night stands. Fine. I think that anyone who's brought up in a vaguely liberal environment is gonna agree with that. But then I think that the, the point that we've come to now is that actually not having one-night stands is weird. Going through a period of your life of having one-night stands as a route towards a monogamous relationship, which is what most women say they want, what most men actually also say they want eventually, is almost like running the gauntlet. And I think that what sex positive feminism does in practice, even if not in theory, is it provides, provides cover for a culture that is actually very coercive. Because we are all networked individuals, we all make choices in context. We're influenced by other people, and I think particularly when it comes to sex, because sex necessarily is something you do with other people, so you're gonna be influenced by everyone else. And I think to say that to focus only on the individual-

Ali Abdaal 6:13 Yeah

Louise Perry 6:13 ... and to think only about our own choices in isolation And the idea that we should, you know, regard all those choices positively, I think massively neglects the ways in which our choices are constrained in practice.

Ali Abdaal 6:27 What do you mean by the ways in which our choices are constrained in practice?

Louise Perry 6:31 So one example would be if you pre the pill, right? The standard, uh, route for young women, particularly if you come from a kind of respectable background, let's say, is not to have sex before marriage.

Ali Abdaal 6:46 Sure.

Louise Perry 6:47 That's the default.

Ali Abdaal 6:48 Mm.

Louise Perry 6:48 You know? And it means if you, you know, if you talk to women who grew up in that era, they'll say, you know, yes, of course there were instances where that didn't happen, teenagers being as they are. But equally, it was, it was the assumed thing. And if you, you know, went on a date with a boy or whatever, he knew that that was-- he knew that was a hard limit. You didn't have to negotiate on it.

Ali Abdaal 7:10 Mm.

Louise Perry 7:10 Whereas now I'd say that that has flipped, and now the assumption is that you'll put out, not necessarily on a first date, although increasingly, you know, straight away. And, and the default therefore becomes a yes.

Ali Abdaal 7:25 Okay.

Louise Perry 7:26 And that's the site at which you have to negotiate. And often, you know, it's very difficult because you're doing that within the context of you don't wanna be frigid, you don't wanna be a prude, you don't wanna lose social status. And so I think to say that you have a choice, yeah, you do. Of course, we all have choices. We all have free will. But if you're in a culture that says that putting out on a first date is normal, teenagers in particular care a lot about being normal, and that is the site at which our choices are constrained.

Ali Abdaal 7:52 So, so it sounds like... So, uh, I mean, and please correct me if this is not a fair summary of, um, of, of your position, but it sounds like you're saying that in an, in an absolutely dream world, of course, we would have, uh, we would have, uh, we wouldn't be using the, uh, the weapon of shame against, uh, women or men or, or anyone to constrain their behavior. And people will do what they want in a consensual fashion, and everything is all fine and dandy because actually people are, as you know, uh, Aella was saying in, in the debate you had with her, checking in with themselves in isolation and saying, "How do I personally feel about this?" There are some women who will enjoy having sex with multiple partners, some women who won't, and everything all goes because society's non-judgmental. But it sounds like you're saying in the real world, those kind of, uh, that, that kind of dream world doesn't really exist.

Louise Perry 8:42 Not only that, but I think the war on shame is a complete dead end.

Ali Abdaal 8:46 Okay.

Louise Perry 8:46 I think-- I mean, not just in relation to sex, in relation to everything.

Ali Abdaal 8:48 Yeah.

Louise Perry 8:48 Of course we-- Shame is basically the, the term we use to describe any means of social control that isn't actually implemented through laws and-

Ali Abdaal 8:58 Yes

Louise Perry 8:58 ... police and whatever, right?

Ali Abdaal 8:59 Yeah.

Louise Perry 8:59 Yeah. Um, we are shamed for being dishonest. We are shamed for... You know, there are all sorts of things that we're ashamed about.

Ali Abdaal 9:05 Mm.

Louise Perry 9:05 We don't necessarily use that term because it is very loaded, but I don't know, the shame that people feel about being racist-

Ali Abdaal 9:12 Mm

Louise Perry 9:12 ... is a new f- a, a newer form of shame and a good form of shame. You should feel ashamed of being racist, you know? So I think that the idea of doing away with shame entirely is not only impossible, but also, I think, bad. The, the question, though, is what we should be attaching shame to.

Ali Abdaal 9:27 Mm.

Louise Perry 9:28 And I agree with Aella when she says that we should, um, you know, women should be allowed to, to... If, if, if, if women really sincerely like behaving as men have historically behaved, you know, having sex like a man is the phrase that I use in the book.

Ali Abdaal 9:41 Yeah.

Louise Perry 9:42 Fine. I completely agree. The problem, I think, is when having sex like a man is seen as an ideal and is seen as a, as a default setting because it doesn't suit the interests of most women.

Ali Abdaal 9:53 Mm.

Louise Perry 9:53 If we're saying that something that suits the interests of, let's say, five percent of women should be the norm, that inevitably is going to mean that ninety-five percent are nudged by shame, by social pressure.

Ali Abdaal 10:07 One of the early chap... So it was, it was kind of funny when, when I first got introduced to your book, um, 'cause I have this other podcast that I do with my brother, uh, and we just sort of treat it as a bit of a chit-chat. And he came across your book a few months ago. This was just before I, I DM'd you on Twitter. And we just sort of read the chapter titles. Sex must be taken seriously. Chapter two: Men and women are different. Chapter three: Some desires are bad. Chapter four: Loveless sex is not empowering. Consent is not enough. Violence is not love. People are not products, and marriage is good. And then the conclusion: Listen to your mother. And it was just, like, kind of funny because-

Louise Perry 10:39 Yes

Ali Abdaal 10:39 ... immediately we knew that, wow, this is [laughs] it's, it's really clever in that some people are gonna think it's like, "Oh my God, this is-- You're-- This is, like, hate crime." And some people are gonna think, "This is totally reasonable. Why is there e- wh- why do you need to write a book about it?"

Louise Perry 10:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 10:53 Um, how did... Yeah. How did, how did the naming of the chapters come about?

Louise Perry 10:56 That was scary. It actually went a couple of months before the book was published in the UK. It's not out yet in America. It will be in a few weeks. Um, the contents page. The publisher just uploaded the contents page and the, and the, and the cover to the site, no other, no other details, and it provoked a minor Twitter storm. Well, quite a major Twitter storm, actually, lasting sever- several days because of exactly this. Because some people looked at those chapter titles and thought, "This woman is a fascist," right? And then other people said, "Hang on. What am I missing here?" And that exact kind of clash of opinion-

Ali Abdaal 11:31 Yeah

Louise Perry 11:31 ... was, uh, explosive.

Ali Abdaal 11:33 It's, it's, it's interesting just kind of reading through these because having, having read the book now, I can-- you can-- I can sort of trace the logic of your argument through just the chapter headings-

Louise Perry 11:42 Mm

Ali Abdaal 11:42 ... which is kind of nice. So I wonder if we can start with

Ali Abdaal 11:45 sex must be taken seriously. I guess when I first read that chapter, it reminded me of a thing that I was thinking and saying in conversations at university when, like, all of my friend-- all my female friends would have identified as intersectional feminists.

Louise Perry 11:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 11:58 Um, this was sort of twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen era, and there was a lot of stuff going on that, oh, f- uh, uh, feminism, uh, or sort of white feminism is bad because it doesn't take into account, like, uh, race and class and, uh, the trans debate hadn't quite caught, caught on back in twenty fourteen, but now I'm sure intersectional feminists would include the trans stuff-

Louise Perry 12:17 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 12:17 ... as, as part of their thing. But putting all that aside, um, the way I was thinking about Sort of sex from a, I guess, ethical, moral, philosophical standpoint was the phrase, "Having sex should be just as s- you know, just the same as playing squash with someone." You wouldn't bat an eyelid if you're playing squash with someone. As long as both parties are consenting and it's mutual, then hey, anything goes.

Louise Perry 12:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:39 Why are we all making a big fuss about the sex thing? Religion is a little bit backwards because, like, come on, guys, sex is just like playing squash. Um, and your first chapter, Sex must be taken seriously, you talk about this idea of sexual disenchantment.

Louise Perry 12:50 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 12:50 And I wonder, like, what's, what's going on there?

Louise Perry 12:52 So I've borrowed the sexual disenchantment phrase from, um, uh, an American writer called Aaron Sabaro, who borrowed it from Max Weber, who described the process of disenchantment during the Enlightenment, whereby people used to believe that nature was filled with, you know, spirits, agency. And then post scientific revolution, we, we come to believe that actually it's all just kind of scientific forces and there's no, there's no, there's no specialness, there's no sacredness. It's, it's just kind of like blunt physical forces kind of clashing together. And sexual disenchantment is sort of the same thing. It comes out of the 1960s, and it's the idea that sex used to have a sec- a sacred status. I mean, in all religious traditions pretty much, sex has some sort of special significance. There's some ritual associated with it. In Christian tradition, uh, sex has to take place within marriage, which is a sacrament. And then that all falls away. And now the idea is exactly as you say, that sex shouldn't... It can have special meaning if people wanna give it special meaning, power to them. But in the bare bones, it really is just like playing squash with someone, shaking someone's hand, making coffee-

Ali Abdaal 13:59 Yeah

Louise Perry 13:59 ... whatever kind of neutral social interaction you wanna describe. I think there are two problems with the sexual disenchantment idea. The first is that it's nonsense. No one actually behaves as if that were true, right?

Ali Abdaal 14:09 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 14:09 Like, people don't care if their partners go and play squash with someone else. People care deeply [laughs] if their partners have sex with someone else. And even when they're trying really hard not to feel that way. It's a very common occurrence in the polyamorous community-

Ali Abdaal 14:22 Yeah

Louise Perry 14:22 ... or, you know, any, like, poly platform you wanna go to online. You'll find people who are desperately struggling with jealousy.

Ali Abdaal 14:29 So this is even when it's not just a case of breaking the contract of the marriage-

Louise Perry 14:33 Exactly. It's not-

Ali Abdaal 14:33 ... which is one easy defense. Yeah.

Louise Perry 14:34 Exactly. It's not that your partner is being deceitful or anything like that. It's just that you have this deep visceral response to your partner having sex with someone else in a way that of course you would not have to any of these other kind of-

Ali Abdaal 14:46 Yeah

Louise Perry 14:46 ... neutral interactions.

Ali Abdaal 14:46 So in my relationship contract, if I, if I, if I happen to have a clause saying that, you know, we're only gonna play squash with one another, and then my girlfriend plays squash with someone else, the fact that yes, it's a breaking of the con- like, I wouldn't feel as bad about it.

Louise Perry 14:58 It's, it's a peculiar stipulation-

Ali Abdaal 14:59 Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 15:00 ... but, you know, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:00 But-

Louise Perry 15:00 It clearly has a different kind of-

Ali Abdaal 15:01 Yeah, it's-

Louise Perry 15:01 ... emotional resonance, doesn't it?

Ali Abdaal 15:03 Yeah.

Louise Perry 15:04 Yeah. People don't behave as if sexual disenchantment was true. Similarly, if your boss asks you to do something that's not in your job description, right? If you're asked to, I don't know, make them coffee as the example I give in the book, or you're asked to do overtime or you're asked to do, you know, something that's not, like, strictly listed within your, your duties-

Ali Abdaal 15:22 Mm.

Louise Perry 15:23 Fine. That's normal. Like, we-- I think we've all had experiences like that. If your boss asks you to give him a blowjob, that's completely different. Everyone knows that's completely different. And the feminists who, who are loudest in insisting that sex can be just like playing squash are the first to say that of course your boss shouldn't be asking you to give him a blowjob, right? Because we know that actually this isn't-

Ali Abdaal 15:43 Mm

Louise Perry 15:43 ... like a neutral... There is something, there is something special. We don't-- We might not wanna use the word sacred, but there is something special about sex, which means that people just have a wholly different emotional response to it.

Ali Abdaal 15:53 So on that front, um, you know, if we compare, like, a boss asking you to work overtime versus boss asking you to give him a blowjob, clearly those things are very, very, very different.

Louise Perry 16:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:01 What would the steel man, uh, feminist say in this situation if they weren't trying to use sacredness and specialness of sex as a reason as to why this feels different?

Louise Perry 16:10 So they might say that, um, there's a kind of imbalance between men and women, um, which means that there's a power dynamic at play-

Ali Abdaal 16:19 Oh

Louise Perry 16:19 ... which makes that request more kind of charged-

Ali Abdaal 16:22 Okay

Louise Perry 16:22 ... than it would be, um, than some other interaction would be. I guess in... I, I guess they might compare it to something like the imbalance between someone who's rich and someone's poor, and the sort of inherent tension based on that power differential, differential. Um, you can't really apply that to two men. If a male boss asks his male junior employee to give him a blowjob, that's also really bad.

Ali Abdaal 16:49 Yeah. Okay.

Louise Perry 16:50 So-

Ali Abdaal 16:50 So w- what would the-

Louise Perry 16:51 I think that falls apart on that basis. I think the problem is just that it's very difficult to rationalize.

Ali Abdaal 16:57 Mm.

Louise Perry 16:57 It's, it's not something you can kind of easily line up in a logical argument, but the fact is people feel differently about sex than they do about other things.

Ali Abdaal 17:04 Yeah.

Louise Perry 17:04 And as far as we can tell, people have always felt that way, and that's just a, that's just like a, a component of human life [laughs] that we have to reckon with. And I think the problem with trying to explain it away and say, "Oh, this, you know, whatever. People have these deep visceral feelings, but they are somehow wrong to"-

Ali Abdaal 17:21 Mm

Louise Perry 17:21 ... is that I think that down the line, that's really bad for women. I mean, I think it's bad for everyone, but I think it's particularly bad for women because, um, if you don't think that sex has a special status, it's very hard to explain why rape would have a special status. Why would it have a special status aside from theft, you know, or some other kind of neutral...

Ali Abdaal 17:43 Yeah.

Louise Perry 17:44 You know?

Ali Abdaal 17:44 I mean, you might say that it, it's, it's more like violating of bodily autonomy-

Louise Perry 17:47 Well-

Ali Abdaal 17:47 ... than something like theft is. But I guess if you were then to compare it to, I don't know, getting stabbed or something, like, it-

Louise Perry 17:53 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 17:53 ... it just... And so I-- W- when you, when you first said the blowjob thing on Chris Williamson's podcast, so he's a friend of mine, um, I was-- I found myself trying to run circles around my own brain to figure out, like, there's gotta be a reason why this thing is bad other than saying, "Oh, because sex is just special." Like, 'cause that feels like, A, such an obvious answer-

Louise Perry 18:17 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:17 ... but also feels like the answer that I, I'm almost loathe to concede that point that, like, sh- surely there must be, like, power dynamics. Oh, but-

Louise Perry 18:25 I think because it c-

Ali Abdaal 18:26 Yeah

Louise Perry 18:26 ... I think because it runs very counter to, um, the liberal paradigm, which is all about, um, rationalizing human behavior. I... It's, it's often been observed that, um, radical feminists, so that's feminists who come out of the second wave and, and tend to have this kind of Marxist analysis of the relationships between men and women, reach many of the same cl- conclusions as Catholics-

Ali Abdaal 18:51 Hmm

Louise Perry 18:51 ... and some other religious groups, but Catholics in particular. Catholics, they oppose, um, prostitution, porn, surrogacy, you know, whatever you wanna pick. Like, they are, they are often in agreement, although not entirely, with radical feminists. And, and I've often heard, um, [lip smack] uh, academics and other, um, analysts think, asking why that would be, like what possible... Why would radical feminists have anything in common with Catholics? And it's often used against radical feminists as well as kind of a suggestion that they're somehow, like, secretly really conservative. I think the reason that they reach the same conclusion actually is not because they are unusual, it's because the liberal secular alternative is unusual in that they, they recognize the specialness of sex. They agree that for whatever reason, people have this very, very strong instinct to view sex as special, in the same way that we have a very strong instinct to, like, love our children-

Ali Abdaal 19:46 Hmm

Louise Perry 19:46 ... or any other manner of slightly strange, [chuckles] irrational response, right?

Ali Abdaal 19:50 Yeah.

Louise Perry 19:51 Um, it's just a given. This is just how people feel. And I think if you start with that prior, then you are gonna end up, particularly if you're really concerned about the well-being of women and of children, you're gonna end up opposing things like porn. And I think the reason that people, people's attempts to deny the specialness of sex, why they end up being much more permissive, it comes from that prior. But I think the f- I think the prior is a problem, and I think also that people are really inconsistent on it.

Ali Abdaal 20:17 Hmm.

Louise Perry 20:17 People will say simultaneously that, "Whatever, sex is like playing squash," but then they won't behave as if that's the case.

Ali Abdaal 20:24 Yeah. Yeah. One of the other interesting examples that you talk about in the book is this, this situation, and, uh, I hadn't come across this before, so it just really sort of threw me for one when, when, when you posed it in the book. This idea of, um, essentially sexual favors in return for rent.

Louise Perry 20:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 20:40 Yeah. What's the... Like, what's the, what's the, what's the story here?

Louise Perry 20:44 Um, yeah, it had some media attention during the pandemic because it became-- Uh, landlords started doing it more. Um, it's basically the problem when, when, uh, landlords will advertise, often surreptitiously, um, that they'll offer free or reduced rent in exchange for sexual favors from young attractive tenants, right? And I have-

Ali Abdaal 21:07 Yeah

Louise Perry 21:07 ... I don't think I've ever come across anyone who thinks that's fine-

Ali Abdaal 21:09 Yeah

Louise Perry 21:09 ... aside from the, like, handful of landlords who might propose it themselves. Like, all political parties in the UK are, are, are unanimous that it's terrible.

Ali Abdaal 21:17 It's just, like, so obviously a terrible thing. [chuckles]

Louise Perry 21:19 Right. Yes. But then I-

Ali Abdaal 21:20 Yeah

Louise Perry 21:20 ... and, and I think it's very striking that, say, the liberal Democrats are really opposed to the sex for rent, and there's been various calls to have, like, bespoke offenses criminalizing, um, criminalizing the advertising of it. But they wanna decriminalize the sex industry. And Jeremy Corbyn similarly was opposed to sex for rent, but also has said on the record that he thinks that decriminalizing sex work would be the more civilized option. That was the expression he used.

Ali Abdaal 21:48 Hmm.

Louise Perry 21:49 I'm like, "Lads, this is the same thing. You're just exchanging one form of economic good for another." If you, if you wanna say that a, um, a tenant is far too vulnerable to be exchanging sex in exchange for housing, or if you wanna say that there is just something grubby, and exploitative, and sexist, or whatever about even proposing this as an arrangement, how can you possibly say that it's fine as long as it's cash?

Ali Abdaal 22:21 Yeah.

Louise Perry 22:21 It just doesn't make sense to me.

Ali Abdaal 22:22 I mean, cash can be exchanged for rent, so it's like literally just removing an intermediary.

Louise Perry 22:25 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 22:25 But clearly something about it feels really, really bad.

Louise Perry 22:28 I think it's because it highlights what's going on, and I think it's because, um, I think that we've been sold a bit of a fantasy about what the sex industry looks like.

Ali Abdaal 22:38 Hmm.

Louise Perry 22:39 Um, a lot of people don't have any contact with the sex industry. They've probably never knowingly spoken to-- They will have spoken to sex buyers in their lives because there are enough of them around, but probably they wouldn't know about it, and they probably won't have, have, have spoken to, um, people in prostitution. So a lot of what we think about, what we th- or a lot of what we think about the sex industry comes from fiction. Um, things like Diary of a Call Girl would be a very typical portrayal of the sex industry and a very unrepresentative one. It's not to say that there aren't examples of high-class call girls who have unusual experiences of the industry, but it's absolutely not the norm. Um, I think part of the reason I, um, I take a different view from the standard view of the sex industry is because of actually speaking to women who've been in it at the, at the grim end, right? Not at the, not at the, the high end, at the, at the worst end, where actually most of the women are to be found, right? Um, so I think that's part of the reason why people tend to have a slightly more re- permissive rhetorical stance on it. Whereas I think with sex for rent, it's just so obvious what's going on, particularly in the middle of a housing crisis-

Ali Abdaal 23:47 Hmm

Louise Perry 23:47 ... is that people are desperate, and they're-- and y- y- you can so easily imagine how someone could be coerced into that kind of really explosive and dangerous-

Ali Abdaal 23:56 Hmm

Louise Perry 23:56 ... situation. I also do wonder a bit, like a lot of the reporting on sex for rent is about university cities and about the possibility of students being trapped in this kind of arrangement, because we know, of course, that students are, don't have very much money. And I can't help but think that part of what's going on there is class as well. I think there's that feeling that the women who end up actually in, like, normal prostitution are poor almost always, right? And it doesn't feel as if, like it's something that could realistically happen to middle class- Women. Whereas a landlord making a sleazy request of you does feel like it could happen to middle class women. So I can't help but think that there's an element of, like-

Ali Abdaal 24:35 Oof

Louise Perry 24:35 ... self-interest there.

Ali Abdaal 24:36 Oh, yeah.

Louise Perry 24:37 That's just me being cynical, but there we are.

Ali Abdaal 24:39 All right. We're just gonna take a quick break from the podcast to introduce our sponsor, which is Huel. Now, this is very exciting because I've actually been a paying customer of Huel since 2017. I started eating Huel in my fifth year of medical school, and I've been using Huel regularly ever since because, you know, I like to be productive. I've ... You know, my calendar is filled with a lot of things, and often I don't have the time or don't make the time to have a particularly healthy breakfast or a particularly healthy lunch. And Huel is fantastic for those occasions because it's 400 calories. They've got tons and tons of different flavors. My favorite flavor is salted caramel, because for that you get 400 calories. You also get 40 grams of protein. Super hard to get enough protein in my diet these days, especially with, with trying to get henched and working out. 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Ali Abdaal 28:15 episode. I'm gonna pose a hypothetical here. Let's ... So, um, these days, uh, society at large considers something like OnlyFans to be a totally reasonable form of side hustle for mostly women.

Louise Perry 28:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:26 Um, I don't think there are many men on OnlyFans that-

Louise Perry 28:29 There are some, but they mostly have male clients I think, so yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:31 Sure. Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, but OnlyFans is considered a reasonable side hustle because of course sex work is work.

Louise Perry 28:37 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 28:37 And just like I debase myself on the internet through YouTube videos-

Louise Perry 28:41 Yes. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 28:42 ... uh, you know, what's really the difference between that and OnlyFans? It's all consensual, et cetera, et cetera.

Louise Perry 28:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:46 And then you have people like, uh, Aella who are kind of sort of outspoken about how great a lifestyle this is and how actually being, uh, sort of women having the ability to make money through something like OnlyFans where they have zero risk of violence because it's all through the internet-

Louise Perry 29:01 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 29:01 ... and where the alternative might be working in a really grim factory. So why not allow women this, this opportunity? Let's put that as like on the one hand and then if we sort of add in this sort of, uh, sex for rent situation whereby hypothetically if a landlord were to say, "You know what? I don't want you to have sex with me. I just want to ... I, I just want you to be a sort of webcam girl for me and in return I'll give you discounted rent."

Louise Perry 29:24 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 29:26 That would still feel really weird. [laughs]

Louise Perry 29:28 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 29:28 And the, and s-

Louise Perry 29:29 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 29:29 ... and the, uh, it wou- it, it's still ... There's something about that that still feels really sleazy and not nice and bad-

Louise Perry 29:36 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 29:36 ... compared to if that landlord happened to be a paying client on her OnlyFans account and it's just the relationship was just less obvious even though he's paying her money.

Louise Perry 29:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 29:46 Effectively she's getting a, a discount on rent. Why, what's going on there?

Louise Perry 29:50 Why does it feel bad?

Ali Abdaal 29:50 Yeah. Why does it feel so bad in that situation?

Louise Perry 29:52 Um, maybe it's because it feels much more real and immediate. You know what it also is probably to some extent, things like the diary of, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, that kind of thing. I mean, it's always really interesting whenever you see, um, either fictional portrayals or you see media reports on the sex industry. You know the classic photo they use in the sex industry is like a woman in a short skirt leading into a car. Like, the photos are always of typically sort of headless women, um, in sexy outfits.

Ali Abdaal 30:23 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 30:23 You never see photos of the clients. I can't remember her name now off the top of my head, but there's this, um, German woman who did a, a, a pr- a project where she took photos of ... sex buyers because in Germany it's legal, so they have sort of nothing to fear from being photographed. So she did this series of, of portraits of sex buyers. I mean, partly to demonstrate the fact that they are, you know, old, young, fat, thin, whatever, like the whole range of men. But also, like they're not attractive generally. Kind of by definition, if you're seeking out sex with someone who you have to coerce through payment, like there's a good chance it's because she wouldn't otherwise have sex with you, right? These guys are not attractive, and I think that-- I think it's actually important to remember that, not have it as this kind of fantasy arrangement where you've got like a sexy guy in a dinner suit or whatever that you might see on the TV. Like these are... The, the, the, the line I've, I've heard from, um, Rachel Moran, who is a writer, she wrote this amazing memoir called Paid For about being in prostitution, um, is if you wanna know what it actually feels as a woman to, to like really imagine what it would be like to be in prostitution, go into any bar, cafe, pub, whatever, look around at every man in your vicinity and imagine having sex with all of them, like no choice.

Ali Abdaal 31:43 Hmm.

Louise Perry 31:44 Right? Doesn't matter how much you fancy them.

Ali Abdaal 31:45 Hmm.

Louise Perry 31:46 And I wonder if thinking about having a sex for rent or a nudes for rent avail- um, arrangement or whatever with your landlord is we all think of like our last landlord [chuckles] and we think, "No. No, thank you."

Ali Abdaal 31:57 Yeah. I guess it brings to relief what's actually going on.

Louise Perry 32:00 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 32:00 Whereas-

Louise Perry 32:00 It's like, like a visceral reminder of what it means

Ali Abdaal 32:02 ... with like an anonymous field of like OnlyFans viewers or-

Louise Perry 32:05 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 32:05 ... shoppers and stuff, it, it just sort of separates that out.

Louise Perry 32:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:09 Um-

Louise Perry 32:10 The argument I make in the book for why, um, prostitution invariably causes trauma to women in particular in it is, um, you know, it's partly to do with the fact it's extraordinarily dangerous, and it is, and has very high rates of violence of every kind. Um, but also I think, I think the reason it's invariably experienced as traumatic, with a few exceptions like Ayla, for instance. Although Ayla actually did-- has she stopped doing in-person sex work, right? So she didn't, she didn't like it very much. But anyway, um, is because a very, very deep-seated instinct within women, which has a very obvious and, um, and clear evolutionary background, is that we really care a lot about who we have sex with. Like mate choice is very, very important, which does make sense if you understand the fact that men and women have different mating strategies, and the-- it's very much in women's interest to be picky about who they get pregnant by because pregnancy is extremely demanding on the body, dangerous. Labor is dangerous. You then have a baby to look after for how many, however many years afterwards, which is a burden on you, burden on your community. Um, you don't wanna get pregnant by some bozo who's gonna-- who either has terrible genes or is gonna abandon you. So that, that desire to invest wisely in your sexual partners is very, very deep-seated. And what prostitution does is it violates that choice. You, you, you don't have the opt- you don't have the, the, the mate choice is removed from your power.

Ali Abdaal 33:40 Hmm.

Louise Perry 33:40 And I think that is a big part of the reason why it has this very, very deeply felt emotional response.

Ali Abdaal 33:50 Yeah. So I think like with all these different hypotheticals and scenarios and stuff, I mean, the conclusion of chapter one is essentially sex must be taken seriously because sex is in fact a special good beyond a coffee or a handshake or staying late at work. It's like this special thing.

Louise Perry 34:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:08 And we might not be able to explain exactly why it's a special thing using the liberal moral ideology, but we all just kinda know it is. Like it's, it's something that feels very unfashionable to say out loud, but everyone just knows it. Like no one actually behaves as if sex is as irrelevant as, as getting someone a coffee.

Louise Perry 34:24 Precisely.

Ali Abdaal 34:24 Which segues us nicely into, um,

Ali Abdaal 34:27 you know, uh, chapter two, which is men and women are different. What's, uh, what's going on there? I guess kind of we're thinking physically-

Louise Perry 34:34 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 34:34 ... and also psychologically and like emotionally. Um, physically is pro-- I, I mean even, even that is some-

Louise Perry 34:41 It should be obvious. But yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:43 [chuckles]

Louise Perry 34:43 It isn't necessarily. The obvious thing is just in the sense that women are the ones who get pregnant, um, which means that in any heterosexual encounter, there's that asymmetry. Um, also the fact that women are much smaller and weaker than men, but like a surprising degree. I think people-- I think I think it's become easier to trivialize that difference because we live in a modern world where strength differences aren't as obvious and even you can-- Like if you don't have siblings and you don't go to the gym and you don't do any manual work, you can go like quite a long way without realizing that like your sibling is gonna thrash you in a fight if you're [chuckles] if you're of, uh, if, if, if he's male and you're female, you know. Uh, particularly post-puberty, 'cause different upper body differences, for instance, between men and women are, are wild. I think it's like a factor of two. The male punching strength is twice as forceful as female on average, and it's one of those things that if you look at, if you look at gra- like a scatter graph showing different individuals, like yes, there are some isolated examples. Not as many as you might think, though, and definitely the extreme end, like Olympians, for instance. Like if, if women didn't have a protected category in the Olympics, they just wouldn't even make it anywhere close to actually competing in the games.

Ali Abdaal 36:04 Yeah.

Louise Perry 36:04 Um, 'cause the difference is that stark. Which matters obviously, right? So if you're talking about like going home with the randomer, if, if, if a man, if a man and a woman are alone together, the man just inherently is gonna have a physical advantage. Um, combined with the fact that the woman is the one who risks any pregnancy, who, who suffers the risks associated with things like hormone birth control.

Ali Abdaal 36:26 Hmm.

Louise Perry 36:27 There are just a whole bunch of ways in which women are at a disadvantage in that kind of scenario.

Ali Abdaal 36:30 Yeah. Yeah. Th- th- this, uh, this idea that men and women are different was pretty unfashionable when I was at university, and I'm not, I'm not sure to what extent it still is, having been out of university now for several years. Um, but often- I would find that when I was talking to people about this, I'd be using the, the phrase, uh, uh, I, I, I'd, I'd be using the idea of averages and the idea of a normal distribution with just like-

Louise Perry 36:52 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 36:52 ... an innate understanding of what a normal distribution is.

Louise Perry 36:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 36:55 And yet people would always say, "Oh, but my friend is six foot three and she's, she could take any man in a fight."

Louise Perry 37:01 Yeah, I know.

Ali Abdaal 37:01 And I'd be like, "Okay." [laughs]

Louise Perry 37:03 Smart people can be really dumb about that.

Ali Abdaal 37:04 Yeah. Like, what's, what's going on there? I think, yeah.

Louise Perry 37:06 Even scientists. It's funny, isn't it? Uh, yeah, 'cause people will, will tend to just come up with exceptions.

Ali Abdaal 37:11 Mm.

Louise Perry 37:12 Um, and of course those exceptions exist. Like, th- this completely... I'm completely willing to incorporate exceptions into this whole analysis. Um, it is funny how people tend not to do it about more morally neutral things, like height, for instance.

Ali Abdaal 37:27 Yeah.

Louise Perry 37:28 We're happy to accept that men are taller than women on average, even if there are tall women and there are some short men.

Ali Abdaal 37:34 Yeah.

Louise Perry 37:34 Like, the difference is massive. Um, similarly on other physical differences. And the ps- I mean, the psychological ones is the one that people really get upset about.

Ali Abdaal 37:44 Yeah.

Louise Perry 37:44 And obviously, psychological differences are much more amenable to cultural influence than physical ones.

Ali Abdaal 37:48 Mm.

Louise Perry 37:49 Um, still, there's loads of evidence, and the evidence accumulates more and more because we now have more sophisticated research methods, that makes it clear that these... there are some important differences between men and women on average, and they hold true cross- culturally.

Ali Abdaal 38:04 So I guess, um, you know, we can, we, we can go into the psychological differences in a moment, but I, I guess someone listening to this might be

Ali Abdaal 38:10 thinking, "Okay, fine, but, like, why does on average even matter? Like, why do I personally care about the average? I'm not necessarily the average man or the average woman."

Louise Perry 38:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 38:17 Uh, at one point, a friend of mine gave dating advice to me saying that, you know, uh, on average, women prefer men who, uh, are sort of come across as more masculine, and therefore wear a black T-shirt in your Tinder profile pictures and, like, don't sing those Disney songs and have Harry Potter posters in your house because-

Louise Perry 38:32 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 38:32 ... the average woman will think that, "Uh, mm, it's not particularly masculine, it's not particularly alpha male kind of vibes." And I mentioned this on a podcast, but I'm sort of just in passing, and all the comments were, "Oh my God, I can't... Like, this is such a stupid way of thinking. Like, obviously, you know, you aren't trying to appeal to the average, you're trying to appeal to an in- in-

Louise Perry 38:46 That's true

Ali Abdaal 38:46 ... individual. You should be yourself," et cetera, et cetera.

Louise Perry 38:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 38:48 Where do you see the balance of, like, how much should we care about on average versus actually treating individuals as individuals?

Louise Perry 38:55 So, yeah, and on a, on an individual level, people might make decisions unique to their situation, and that would be fine. The problem is when you're talking about population level and you're talking about like laws, obviously the legal system applies to everyone regardless of where you are on the bell curve. Um, but also applying to, to norms, right? Because my argument in the book is that we used to have quite an elaborate set of norms relating to regulating sexual relationships between men and women, and we've mostly done away with them and left just the consent framework standing, and I don't think the consent framework is good enough. I'm saying that actually things like, you know, if you have a norm that is something like men shouldn't hit women, I mean, the law says that too, but just in terms of what, what's considered to be socially acceptable. There are all sorts of things that are against the law people do anyway, right? Like speeding.

Ali Abdaal 39:47 Mm.

Louise Perry 39:47 People speed all the time, et cetera. If you have a really rock solid norm where you say men hitting women is really bad, but women hitting men, mm, it's not good, but it's not quite as bad. Like, that's asymmetrical, clearly. Um, and there might be examples of a woman who really belts a man and, you know, he's small and frail, and that's, and that's, like, very dangerous. But the reason that you would have that slightly, that slightly, um, different standard is because of recognizing the fact that these average differences exist, and at the population level, a man hitting a woman is much more likely to kill her than a woman hitting a man. Because most men can kill most women with their bare hands, and the reverse is not true, and that matters as a great deal when you're thinking about, um, yeah, relationships between men and women.

Ali Abdaal 40:33 Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was the thing that really struck me with the debate that you had with, uh, Aella on that UnHerd YouTube channel podcast show thing, where it seemed like you were both sort of saying the same thing.

Louise Perry 40:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 40:46 But what she was saying was a lot of kind of, "But let's take the individual into account."

Louise Perry 40:51 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 40:51 And it sounded like you were saying, "Okay, but if we're making laws and deciding norms for a whole society, we can't just take individuals into account. We have to, uh, y- with all of the, all of the co- all of the downsides associated with broad brushstrokes, we've gotta draw broad brushstrokes somewhere." [laughs]

Louise Perry 41:09 Yeah, we have to. It's the thing.

Ali Abdaal 41:10 And so-

Louise Perry 41:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 41:10 ... why not do that in a way that protects women rather than that, I guess, protects the interests of the Hugh Hefners of the world, as, as you, as you say in the book.

Louise Perry 41:17 Yeah. Have you come across Rob Henderson's idea of luxury beliefs?

Ali Abdaal 41:21 Uh, only in the book. I recently followed him on Twitter, so I wanna-

Louise Perry 41:24 He's great

Ali Abdaal 41:24 ... get into more of his, his stuff.

Louise Perry 41:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 41:26 Yeah.

Louise Perry 41:26 Um, so his idea of luxury beliefs is very, it's, it's, it's a fabulous idea. It has so much explanatory power. Is, um, his theory is that, um, as luxury goods have become cheaper, it used to be a way of the, for the elites to signal their wealth would be to own whatever precious item.

Ali Abdaal 41:49 Mm.

Louise Perry 41:49 One of the consequences of globalization is that a lot of these goods have become cheaper, and his theory is that, to some extent, elite, the elite class have pivoted towards other means of demonstrating their elite status that are not just sort of material, and one example of this is luxury beliefs.

Louise Perry 42:09 So a luxury belief is a belief that confers status on h- on elite people, and the costs of it are borne entirely by poor people.

Ali Abdaal 42:19 Oh, okay. So what's an example of-

Louise Perry 42:21 So the example that's most relevant for us is polyamory. So Rob, um, gives the example of, um, being in a university town and setting your Tinder location to, like, a mile radius, and you'll find loads and loads of women at Harvard, Oxford, whatever, um, who will say that they are poly, they're interested in open relationships, they're doing this kind of, you know, bohemian thing, which is increasingly fashionable. Um, and, uh, it's a way of them advertising their sexiness and their rebelliousness and so on in a way that attracts partners and, you know, confers status. But then he describes setting your Tinder radi- ratio, let's say in a city like Oxford, to like 10-mile radius, and then you start seeing women who are single mothers, right? Who are living the li- who are living the consequences of disregarding monogamous marriage as an institution, and, like, suffering for it. Being a single mother is really tough in all sorts of ways, and they don't get any status for that at all, right? Like, living the polyamorous life, if you're poor and you live in a council estate, is not high status at all, and actually causes all sorts of destructive effects in your life.

Ali Abdaal 43:32 Yeah.

Louise Perry 43:33 Whereas if you're rich, you can be poly, and you can basically pick up the pieces if everything goes wrong because you have that kind of buffer around you-

Ali Abdaal 43:40 Mm

Louise Perry 43:41 ... that's conferred by wealth and conferred by status. Um, it's a really, it's a really useful idea. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 43:48 Yeah.

Louise Perry 43:48 Um, and I think that that applies to, I mean, it, it does apply to something like, um, what Aella's talking about in relation to prostitution. So she has an unusual experience of it, not always a good experience, but, you know, better than many, and she describes it as being a lot better than, for instance, working in a terrible factory job that she used to do. And I respect that. I completely recognize the fact that in her individual case that may be true. The problem is that she's experienced the, the, the, like, tippy-toppy end of the best form of prostitution through OnlyFans, and other, you know, camming, whatever. There's much less violence. Um, she earns quite good money. She's not pimped. Like, every possible dimension is better than it might otherwise be. And the problem is that if we're gonna legislate or, or construct norms around Aella's experience, and do as many, you know, intersectional feminists and so on do and talk about sex work being work, which is a luxury belief, right? It's the sort of thing that if you say that in a university common room, it will confer status on you. It will make you look, um, open-minded and liberal and bohemian and all of this stuff, right? Um, it might be good for some women like Aella. It's not gonna be w- good for women at the opposite end of the scale. 'Cause the argument I make around, um, decriminalizing the sex industry, I mean, bearing in mind that all legal models in relation to the sex industry are, like, better and worse trade-offs. It's a difficult... It's just a difficult thing to legislate for inherently. But I think the, the key problem with decriminalizing demand, making it legal to pay for sex, is that there aren't actually enough women like, like Aella or whoever who are willing to meet that demand.

Ali Abdaal 45:24 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 45:24 Most women really, really don't want to be in prostitution. They'll only do it if they're very poor or if they're otherwise coerced. And the problem is that in societies where, um, buying sex is legal, more men do it, obviously.

Ali Abdaal 45:36 Mm.

Louise Perry 45:36 Like, the difference is quite apparent between a country like, like in Thailand, for instance, a, like, amazingly high proportion of men buy sex. Um, in Germany, um, since the legalization of sex industry, the proportion of German men who have bought sex has gone up a lot. And the pro... And it becomes routine that things like stag dos, you'll go to a, you'll go to a brothel, right? Which is not considered normal in countries where it's criminalized. Um, is you need to meet that demand. You need women who can, who can, who can supply the sex that is being demanded, and that's when you get things like increases in trafficking. So legalization is associated with an increase in trafficking because pimps need to find women who can, you know, meet this demand and make money for them.

Ali Abdaal 46:21 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 46:21 And so what sounds like a great open-minded idea which suits the interests of, like, the high-end call girls-

Ali Abdaal 46:28 Yeah

Louise Perry 46:28 ... is a luxury belief because the women who are suffering for it are at the opposite end of the social spectrum.

Ali Abdaal 46:32 Yeah. And I guess, um, you talk about the Nordic model for this. What is, what is that?

Louise Perry 46:37 Yeah. So the Nordic model is when you, uh, decriminalize sellers and criminalize buyers.

Ali Abdaal 46:42 Decriminalize sellers?

Louise Perry 46:44 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:44 Oh, so it's not illegal to be the prostitute.

Louise Perry 46:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:46 But it is illegal to be the person-

Louise Perry 46:48 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 46:48 ... seeking the prostitute.

Louise Perry 46:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:50 And this is good because it d- well, it reduces the demand and criminalizes the powerful people, i.e., the men who buy the thing.

Louise Perry 46:55 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 46:55 But it doesn't criminalize the poor, destitute women who are forced into it.

Louise Perry 46:59 Yes, which has historically often been what's done, that the, that the women are the ones who get locked up and the men go free-

Ali Abdaal 47:05 Mm-hmm

Louise Perry 47:05 ... which is obviously horrendous. So it, it flips that.

Ali Abdaal 47:08 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 47:10 Psychological difference, with the differences between men and women. What is, uh, what's, uh, what's the can of worms here? [laughs]

Louise Perry 47:16 Um.

Ali Abdaal 47:17 And I guess how is it relevant to this, this whole debate?

Louise Perry 47:19 Again, it's that population level thing. Um, I mean, it, the, the, the degree of difference varies quite a lot depending on what trait you're talking about.

Ali Abdaal 47:28 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 47:29 Um, one of the ones that gets the most attention, I think wrongly, is, um, the idea that men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people. Um, do you remember the James Damore Google memo?

Ali Abdaal 47:44 Oh, yes.

Louise Perry 47:45 So I can't remember if it's, like-

Ali Abdaal 47:46 Yeah

Louise Perry 47:46 ... five years ago, maybe a bit longer.

Ali Abdaal 47:49 It was, yeah.

Louise Perry 47:49 Uh, James Damore was a t- um, a technician at Google. It was, um, I can't remember his role at Google. He worked at Google. And he wrote, um, a memo which he circulated among his colleagues explaining the fact that, the fact that there's an underrepresentation of women in certain roles at Google, and an overrepresentation in others. So you see more women in things like human resources, communications kind of roles, which are more people focused, and then you see more men in more, say, the engineering roles. He said that this could be explained by the fact that there are, um, these average differences between what men and women are interested in. And if you're looking at the, the, the very furthest tail on the bell curve in terms of, say, how interested you are in hard sciences, you're gonna expect to see more men at that tail because, because of the gap on average between the two sexes.

Ali Abdaal 48:40 Sure.

Louise Perry 48:41 His argument was completely sound. His research was completely sound. He got fired because it was just, you're not supposed to say this. [laughs] I think you're specifically not supposed to say this if you're a man and you work for Google. Um-

Ali Abdaal 48:53 Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 48:54 Um-

Ali Abdaal 48:55 So as a woman who doesn't work for Google, do you-

Louise Perry 48:56 I can get away with saying it [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 48:58 ... do you buy-

Louise Perry 48:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:58 Do you buy James' reasoning here?

Louise Perry 48:59 Yeah. He's right. Um, I also think that, and he says this himself in the memo, that the difference is, the average difference is not massive, so you will expect to see- Men and women across the whole range of people, things-

Ali Abdaal 49:13 Hmm

Louise Perry 49:13 ... you know, distribution. The same is true of something like agreeableness. Women are a bit more agreeable than men are, but there are still plenty of women who are really disagreeable and plenty of men who are really agreeable.

Ali Abdaal 49:23 Yeah.

Louise Perry 49:23 Neuroticism. Like, there are lots of traits which see a gap, but the gap isn't massive.

Ali Abdaal 49:26 Right.

Louise Perry 49:27 Um, something like aggression, though, the gap is massive.

Ali Abdaal 49:30 Hmm.

Louise Perry 49:31 Like 90-

Ali Abdaal 49:31 Like the average gap, you know?

Louise Perry 49:33 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 49:33 Yeah. Okay.

Louise Perry 49:33 As well as... And, but then obviously that's most apparent-

Ali Abdaal 49:35 And then obviously the extremes

Louise Perry 49:35 ... in the tails. Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 49:36 So like the vast majority of people in prison are men.

Louise Perry 49:38 Yeah, 95% in this country.

Ali Abdaal 49:40 Yeah.

Louise Perry 49:40 Um, because men, uh, partic- and, and there's also an age skew there. So, um, men and women, but it's most striking in men, are by far the most, um, violent when they're in their teens and 20s, and then violent offending falls off a cliff.

Ali Abdaal 49:57 Hmm.

Louise Perry 49:57 Um, which I don't think can be explained except biologically, right?

Ali Abdaal 50:02 Okay.

Louise Perry 50:02 I don't... I think if you, I think if you just want to explain that on the basis of socialization, which is often a, um, uh, a theory that feminists have, have pursued to say that men are, particularly in childhood, are so- are socialized to be aggressive through things like toy guns-

Ali Abdaal 50:19 Yeah

Louise Perry 50:19 ... and that we should be focusing on. You know, I think fine, and clearly there is some truth to that, and clearly, um, there are certain childhood or other environmental experiences that can make violent offending more likely. But then also you look at something like the age distribution in violent offending, you think, hang on, why would a 20-year-old be many, many times more likely than a 40-year-old to commit this kind of offense? Unless what we're kind of talking about here is hormones, which is trivializing a little, which is simplifying it a little bit-

Ali Abdaal 50:49 Hmm

Louise Perry 50:50 ... because clearly there's a lot of, there's a lot going on in terms of our, our biological makeup. But the gap between, um, violence, violent aggression in men and women is massive, and very important if you're trying to, if you're thinking at the population level. And, and the, I mean, the, the, the, the trait that's most relevant to me and that I write about most, in most detail in the book is what psychologists call sociosexuality. So that's your interest in sexual variety. It's not quite the same thing as sex drive.

Ali Abdaal 51:27 Okay.

Louise Perry 51:27 But, um, someone who is high in the trait of s- um, has unrestricted sociosexuality, as psychologists would say, is someone who is really interested in having lots of partners, wants to jump into bed with someone as soon as they've met them, will, um, um... is much more likely to say things like, "Having sex without love is fine." Um, basically someone who's having an absolute ball post sexual revolution, right-

Ali Abdaal 51:52 Yeah

Louise Perry 51:52 ... is someone who is high in sociosexuality. And men, I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear, are higher on average in that trait than are women, and the gap is fairly significant, and at the tails it's the most marked. So that's why sex buyers are almost entirely male.

Ali Abdaal 52:06 Hmm. Would it not be reasonable to say that this is all a result

Ali Abdaal 52:11 of socialization? Like, women have been oppressed throughout history and slut-shamed and stuff, and therefore of course they're gonna be lower in sociosexuality, um, compared to men for whom, like even though we'd like to say the sexual dou- double standard doesn't exist, it still does. Men are conferred higher status by having multiple partners. Um, all of those things surely mean that a- actually maybe the sociosexuality gap doesn't, doesn't, quote, "Doesn't really exist," and it's just a, uh, it's just a relic of, uh, socialization.

Louise Perry 52:42 So that's the argument. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:43 Yeah.

Louise Perry 52:43 That's the alternative to my thesis. The problem with that argument is, um, if, if socialization is responsible for the gap, then the socialization is remarkably consistent across time and place. Like, it seems like every culture decides [laughs] to flip. You know, it's like you flip the coin and, uh, oh, it's just coming up heads every single time.

Ali Abdaal 53:03 Yeah.

Louise Perry 53:03 What are the chances?

Ali Abdaal 53:04 [laughs]

Louise Perry 53:04 Because if you look at... There's s- s- some really great studies done of, um, sociosexuality across cultures. And everyone finds that men are higher in it, on average. And I, I mean, I think to some extent we've done an experiment in the West post sex- post sexual revolution-

Ali Abdaal 53:19 Hmm

Louise Perry 53:19 ... in whether we could socialize it otherwise.

Ali Abdaal 53:22 Yeah.

Louise Perry 53:23 Um, and if women are encouraged, not just permitted, but encouraged to have sex like men, maybe they'll do it. Um, and the, the argument that I make in the book is that, um, a lot of women are trying pretty hard to have sex like men and are being quite strongly encouraged by the culture and by the men in their lives to, to attempt the high sociosexuality kind of way of being. Um, one of the things I examine at one point is, uh, articles in women's mags about how not to catch feelings, like guides to how to have sex without emotion, and they're always framed very carefully in a gender neutral way-

Ali Abdaal 54:04 Hmm

Louise Perry 54:05 ... so that well if y- you know, the person didn't wanna catch feelings from their relationship with another person, how would they do that? But it's very obvious that actually what we're talking about here is women getting emotionally attached to, in these sexual relationships and w- and, and not wanting to. Like thinking, "Oh man, this is dri- this is, like, holding me back because I want to be having this. Um, I want us to be behaving as if I had unrestricted sociosexuality. I want to be, um, like participating in hookup culture like a man, but I have these, like, niggling feelings which keep getting in the way."

Ali Abdaal 54:37 Hmm.

Louise Perry 54:38 Which I think is... I mean, unless you wanna say, I suppose it's socialization, the childhood socialization goes that deep that it can't be undone, maybe. But I think Occam's razor says it's just-

Ali Abdaal 54:48 [laughs]

Louise Perry 54:49 ... there's a difference. There's a difference.

Ali Abdaal 54:50 Yeah.

Louise Perry 54:50 That's like the by far the simplest explanation for what we see across the world.

Ali Abdaal 54:54 This episode is very kindly brought to you by WeWork. Now, this is particularly exciting for me because I have been a full-paying customer of WeWork for the last two years now. I discovered it during, you know, when the pandemic was in the, on the verge of being lifted, and I'd spent, like, the whole year just sort of sitting in my room making YouTube videos. But then I discovered WeWork, and I was a member, me and Angus, my team members, we were members of the WeWork in Cambridge, and they have, like, hundreds of other locations worldwide as well. And it was incredible because we had this fantastic, beautifully designed office space to go to to work, and we found ourselves, like, every day just at 9:00 in the morning just going to WeWork because it was a way nicer experience working from the co-working space than it was just sitting at home working. These days, what me and everyone on my team has is the all-access pass, which means you're not tied to a specific WeWork location, but it means you can use any of their several hundred co-working spaces around London, around the UK, and also around the world. And one of the things I really love about the co-working setup is that it's fantastic as a bit of a change of scenery. So these days I work from home. I've got the studio at home. But if I need to get some focused writing work done and I've been, I'm feeling a bit drained just sitting at my desk all day, I will just pop over to the local WeWork, which is about a 10-minute walk from where I am. I'll take my laptop with me. I'll get some free coffee from there. I'll get a few snacks, and it's just such a great vibe, and you get to meet cool people. I've made a few friends through meeting them at WeWork, and it's just really nice being in an environment almost like a library, but kind of nicer because there's, like, a little bit of soft music in the background, and there's other kind of startup bros and creators and stuff in, in there as well, and it's just my absolute favorite co-working space of all time. It's super easy to book a desk or book a conference room using the app, and it's a great place to meet up with team members if you're gonna collaborate and you all live in different places. They've got unlimited tea and coffee and herbal teas and drinks on tap, and they've got soundproof booths in which to take Zoom calls and meetings. Anyway, if you're looking for a co-working space for you or your team, then I'd 100% recommend WeWork. Like I said, I've been a paying customer for theirs for the last two years, which is why it's particularly exciting that they're now sponsoring this episode. And if you wanna get 50% off your first booking, then do head over to we.co/ali, and you can use the coupon code ALI at checkout, A-L-I, to get 50% off your first booking. So thank you so much, WeWork, for sponsoring this episode. When I was in u- university in, in my third year, 'cause, you know, in, uh, in, in medicine you can do the, or whatever you want in, in your third year. So I did psychology.

Louise Perry 56:55 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 56:55 And one of our lecture courses was the psychology of individual differences, and this was comparing things like men versus women in all s- all sorts of things, personality, IQ, controversial, different race differences between all these different things. And a lot of it was like, well, you know, when it comes to things like aggression, when it comes to things like sociosexuality, there's a clear evolutionary psychol- psychology rationale for this.

Louise Perry 57:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:18 And, you know, Homo sapiens has been around for 300,000 years. It's really been an eye blink, uh, in terms of human history where the pill has been a thing.

Louise Perry 57:27 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:27 So of course, our evolutionary brains are somewhat hardwired to, you know, for women to be choosier about who they have sex with and men's mating strategy to be like willy-nilly, you know. [laughs]

Louise Perry 57:37 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 57:37 Whatever. Um-

Louise Perry 57:38 See you wild oats.

Ali Abdaal 57:39 Exactly. Um-

Louise Perry 57:40 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 57:40 ... and yet it fe- it, it fee- it felt like even, even at the time at university where, like, I, I had friends who were doing, like, anthropology and, like, art subject and stuff, where one of the, one of the essay titles in, like, the third-year exam was, uh, biological sex is a lie. Discuss. And I was like, "Whoa." [laughs] I mean, gender, okay, like-

Louise Perry 57:59 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 58:00 ... fair, fair enough. But, like-

Louise Perry 58:01 Yes

Ali Abdaal 58:01 ... are we really gonna talk about chromosomes and biological sex and, like, uteruses and stuff as if they're just completely mythical and how hormones have absolutely no effect at all?

Louise Perry 58:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 58:08 And it became very unfashionable to even suggest that there was a evolutionary psychology explanation for stuff to the point that anytime I'd bring up the idea, "Oh, but, like, evolutionarily," the response would be, "Look, that's what the men's rights activists say. You've been reading all this red pill stuff, haven't you?" Um, but it sounds like-

Louise Perry 58:24 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 58:24 ... it ju- it just is the simplest explanation [laughs] that-

Louise Perry 58:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 58:27 ... there is a, a difference, and let's acknowledge the difference, and let's work with it rather than trying to, I guess, override our evolutionary instincts.

Louise Perry 58:35 Yeah. I think that the... So I do, I do, I do completely get and sympathize with the, um, feminist hostility to evolutionary psychology-

Ali Abdaal 58:46 Mm

Louise Perry 58:46 ... and indeed to sort of scientific sexism, so-called, in general. It goes back a long way. There have been some pretty egregious examples of, historically, of sort of attempts to rationalize, um, the subordination of women. Um, the missing five ounces was the phrase that was used by some 19th century psychologists to describe the fact that given that women had, like-- given that women have smaller brains 'cause women are smaller-

Ali Abdaal 59:09 Mm

Louise Perry 59:09 ... um, that missing five ounces on average explains women's intellectual inferiority.

Ali Abdaal 59:14 Mm.

Louise Perry 59:15 When, of course, we know that, like, if you're not gonna let women go to university, like, they're gonna struggle to [laughs] be, like, making groundbreaking achievements in intellectual fields. So, like, that's clearly an example. And we found, I mean, you mentioned sex and something Q. We know that the average IQ between men and women is about the same, even though the range is bigger for men. So I think that is a clear example of the fact that it wasn't, it was an environmental limit. But that doesn't mean that we have to dismiss all scientific research into sex differences and all of the evidence for it. And I think that evolution- I think that evolutionary psychology is just, it's just a morally neutral field of study, and we can do with it whatever we want to do. It's, it is an inconvenient field of study if what you want to do is kind of deny the existence of human nature per se and build kind of, build utopia off the idea of us being blank slates.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:12 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:00:13 Uh, we aren't blank slates, though, is the problem. [laughs] And we kind of have to deal with what we've got. And my view is that, look, if these sex differences exist, then that's, then that's just the fact. It's not, it's not a good or a bad thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:29 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:00:29 But it is what we have to work with. And I think actually there's a strong case for using evolutionary psychology to feminist ends in some situations.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:40 What's that?

Louise Perry 1:00:41 So for instance, um, if we accept the difference in sociosexuality between men and women and we accept the fact that actually it's gonna be very difficult for women to, um, be persuaded or persuade themselves into imitating a more masculine style of sexuality-

Ali Abdaal 1:00:59 Mm

Louise Perry 1:01:02 I think that the, the feminist argument against hookup culture becomes irrefutable. Whereas if you're working with a blank slate model and you're saying, "Well, all of this is socialized, all of this can be undone," you're kind of giving fuel to the, um, to the Hugh Hefners who are intent on persuading women out of their, like, natural and self-protective instincts.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:27 So as we talked about two areas in particular in which men and women are on average different, so aggression and sociosexuality.

Louise Perry 1:01:34 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:34 Um, another area that I th- I th- I think you talk about in the book, but, um, uh, again, there's a, a s- a specific example that I'm, I'm thinking of that, that brings this to light, is that I was having a conversation with a female friend, um, a couple weeks ago, months ago. Um, and there was this, this person that we were talking about, this guy was going on a date with a girl.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:55 And well, okay, cool. Guy's going on a date with a girl th- they met online, no harm done. Like, let's-

Louise Perry 1:02:00 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:02:01 ... okay, cool. Um, but then it transpired that the chap in question had in fact booked a hotel room for the night around where they were having the date-

Louise Perry 1:02:11 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:02:11 ... just in case things went well.

Louise Perry 1:02:13 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:14 Now, in my mind, I was thinking, "All right. Fair enough." And in her mind, she was thinking, "Oh my freaking God, this is just completely unacceptable." Like, oh, just this, uh, i- in- innate sense of revulsion at the thought-

Louise Perry 1:02:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:02:26 ... that a man would have the audacity to book a hotel room just in case things went well, and of course it would be consensual and stuff.

Louise Perry 1:02:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:31 And it's like we w- we, w- we were a bit puzzl- puzzled by this, she and I, because it's like we had a very clear difference in me not batting an eyelid. It's like, I mean, obviously, like it's gonna be consensual. Uh, and if there is an option and, you know, worst case, he goes to his hotel room alone. [laughs] Like who cares?

Louise Perry 1:02:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:45 For, but, but for her, it was like this real sense of revulsion, and I feel like this idea of kind of getting the ick and like feeling that innate sense of revulsion about certain things-

Louise Perry 1:02:54 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:02:54 ... uh, will, will give women a very different response than it does, it does to men.

Louise Perry 1:02:58 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:58 What, what's, what's go- what's going on there?

Louise Perry 1:03:00 Yeah, the ick. Interesting, isn't it? And the ick is one of those things that you read about in women's mags and again, um ... Well, actually, no, it's generally represented as being a woman thing. Women get the ick and men tend not to get the ick. And what's being described there basically in colloquial terms is, um, the fact that women's sexual disgust threshold is a lot lower than men's.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:21 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:03:21 Um, and that's one of those things that you can measure quite objectively because you can measure people's disgust response through things like sweating and heart rate. Um, and it's much easier to trigger in women than it is in men. Um, there's interesting evolutionary theories around this. I mean, it might be partly to do with mate choice, the fact that women care more about it than men do. It might also be to do with the fact that women tend to be more vulnerable to sexual disease, so women are m- more easily grossed out by signs of disease in a potential sexual partner.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:52 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:03:52 And that might be because, um, the nature of penetrative sex just means that women tend to be more vulnerable to disease transmission from sex, and also that women are more likely to pass sexual diseases onto their children through pregnancy and breastfeeding. So there's maybe a more, like, f- uh, deeply embedded instinctive protective factor there.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:13 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:04:14 Um, whatever the cause, it does seem to be ... It, it does seem to have some kind of evolutionary cause. It could be several. Um, and yeah, it is deeply felt, and I think it's something that, um, um ... I mean, partly because I think we're very invested in our post-sexual revolution culture in denying the differences between men [laughs] and women, pretending that we're very similar. I think it's something that, um, men and women struggle to, um, sort of ins- instinctively comprehend that difference. I think this often is what's going on with conflict between incels and feminists.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:52 Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:04:53 In that, like, I think from, from a certain kind of maybe naïve incel perspective, the fact that any woman can go out into the street or anywhere [laughs] really and pick up a sex partner within minutes is seen as heaven on Earth, right? [laughs] Like you're living, you're living exactly what I'm dreaming of, the ability to attract sexual partners. Whereas from women's perspective, they're like, "I don't wanna have sex with some random guy on the street. Like that's terrible. I dream of being, um, like left alone by creepy guys who, who, who scare me." But there's like a visceral level on which each group can't quite understand the other-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:30 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:05:30 ... because we have very different instincts around sexuality.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:34 Yeah. Or, um, I remember sort of h- anytime this ... I, I think in the last year or so, this is, th- this sort of conversation's been had like two, two or three times with, with female friends of mine where they've mentioned that, like, you know, they've got all these male friends, and then at one point one of the male friends will just throw away, you know, drop a throwaway comment that, "Oh, of course, every guy in your friendship group would, would be down to have sex with you if you, if you were up for it." And they'd be like, "Whoa. What?" Like it completely, completely blows their mind because they cannot imagine-

Louise Perry 1:05:59 Yeah. I think a lot of young women are naïve about that, I think. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:01 They cannot, cannot imagine a world in which like... But, like, I, I see these guys as my friends. They're like, they're, they're like brothers.

Louise Perry 1:06:05 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:05 And they're just, uh, yeah, there's almost no girl I, who I've ever met who's actually appreciated the fact that men were willing to have sex with basically anyone as long as they meet a reasonable th- threshold for attractiveness.

Louise Perry 1:06:16 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:16 Whereas that's just absolutely not the case for women.

Louise Perry 1:06:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:18 And there are, like, even studies where they've gone out on the streets and done this, like...

Louise Perry 1:06:21 Yes, and 100% of the women say no-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:24 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:06:24 ... to, to, to random requests from men, whereas I, I can't remember the figures, but it's probably like majority of men say yes unless they're in a relationship or something like that. I mean, it's worth bearing in mind that, um, men do have kind of different modes of sexuality, so what... Men are not consistently-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:40 Hmm

Louise Perry 1:06:40 ... behaving like cads. Um, men have a low bar when it comes to casual sexual partners when, as you say, pretty much, you know. Judy Bendel, a feminist friend of mine, she, um, likes to collect news stories [laughs] about men having sex with inanimate objects because they do sometimes-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:59 [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:06:59 ... come up in like local news. And she has a little, like, informal collection of man found having sex with a pile of leaves.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:05 [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:07:05 Man found having sex with a bike. You know, like, [laughs] like imagine it and it's happened, right? So clearly there is an extent to which men can be persuaded to basically shag anything, like living or dead. But- Men aren't like that though about, like, potential wives.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:20 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 1:07:20 Right? So when it comes to choosing a long-term partner, men have very high standards and, um, you know, care deeply about the whole package, not just how attractive a woman is, but everything else about her. Um, women don't seem to have those two modes. Women basically will have sex. The, the criteria that women look for in a casual partner and look for in a long-term partner are the same criteria. Um, and actually often women will have sex with a casual partner in the hope that he'll become a long-term partner, um, down the line. Whereas, and I th- I think a lot of women don't realize that men have two modes, which can cause s- heartbreak.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:57 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 1:07:57 Because if you've, if you're, if you're having sex with a man with the belief that you're on wife track and he doesn't think that-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:04 Yep

Louise Perry 1:08:04 ... then that's really painful.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:06 Yeah. Um, yeah. Th- th- this is another one of those things where I think there's just such a clear, like, basically every o- every man knows that there are two thresholds.

Louise Perry 1:08:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:15 There's the threshold for a good time, and then there's the threshold for an actual long-term relationship.

Louise Perry 1:08:19 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:20 And whenever women are confronted with that, at least from what I've seen, it just ag- ag- again-

Louise Perry 1:08:24 It's really upsetting. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:24 ... it's, like, really mind-blowing. It's like-

Louise Perry 1:08:25 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:08:25 ... oh my God, men are the worst. Men are trash. Like, I can't believe this is a thing. And-

Louise Perry 1:08:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:29 ... um, this

Ali Abdaal 1:08:30 idea that women don't have two modes though. So, uh, what about the trope of, like, women, uh, you know, wanting to have sex with the pool boy or the personal trainer, but not actually wanting to... You know, those people aren't, aren't husband material. They're good-time material. Is that not the same as sort of cat versus dog mode? Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:08:46 I guess it, I guess it happens, although it is interesting. I wonder if it happens more in fiction than in real life.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:51 Oh, really? [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:08:51 Because it's interesting that, um, men and women tend to cheat for different reasons. So men are more likely to cheat on their partners basically just 'cause they're horny. There, look, there's no, there's no difference between the level of reported relationship satisfaction between men who cheat and men who don't cheat. It's not because they're unhappy in their relationships they're cheating.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:09 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:09:09 It's they're cheating either 'cause they're unusually horny or they're unusually, like, unscrupulous morally or both. Um, whereas for women, women cheat when they're unhappy in their relationships, and they don't otherwise. And that, uh, you know, on average, whatever, there are exceptions, but that seems to be because what women are doing, the purpose of cheating for women is a lifeboat to line up the next relationship-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:33 Mm

Louise Perry 1:09:33 ... because you're unhappy in your current relationship. Um, so you normally wouldn't therefore cheat with the pool boy if your husband is wealthy.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:43 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:09:43 Normally, you'd be cheating with someone who seems like a, like a viable alternative partner.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:48 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:09:48 There's slightly different motivations at play there.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:50 Okay. Interesting. Um-

Louise Perry 1:09:53 There's a great book by David Buss. I mean, David Buss in general is-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:56 Oh

Louise Perry 1:09:56 ... a fantastic reader.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:57 Yeah. I recently read The Evolution Of Desire.

Louise Perry 1:09:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:59 Which is-

Louise Perry 1:09:59 Really interesting. So his-

Ali Abdaal 1:10:00 Was really interesting. Yeah

Louise Perry 1:10:00 ... his latest book is called Bad Men.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:02 Oh, I'll check it out. [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:10:03 Which is very, very good. Yes. And he covers a lot of this in, in great detail.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:05 Nice. Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:10:06 And r- and, and, um, provides the wealth of data-

Ali Abdaal 1:10:09 Mm

Louise Perry 1:10:10 ... that is very persuasive.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:12 Yeah. I k- like I, I have a s- surprising interest in, in this genre, the topic. I, I j- I just think it's, it's, it's this combination of, like, really taboo and controversial-

Louise Perry 1:10:23 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:10:23 ... and also, like, clearly there's this whole, like, scientific and, like, sociological and evolutionary psychological backing behind the things that we don't like to talk about that we feel are uncon-

Louise Perry 1:10:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:10:32 ... are, are controversial.

Louise Perry 1:10:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:33 Um-

Louise Perry 1:10:34 I think it depends on your personality and how much you enjoy that.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:36 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:10:36 I find it thrilling.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:10:38 Like, to, to, to sort of go behind the scenes and, and be like, "Yes. Of course, this is true." Um, but some people find it confronting. Depends.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:46 Yeah. Um, okay, so we've talked about kinda two, two core differences between men and women psychologically on average, again-

Louise Perry 1:10:51 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:10:51 ... with all the caveats, uh, aggression and sociosexuality.

Louise Perry 1:10:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:54 And I feel like those are sort of the two pillars that form the rest of your thesis around sexual revolution being potentially not as good a thing as we might have liked.

Louise Perry 1:11:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:02 So how sort of, if we accept that, okay, fine, let's say that Louise is right about all the evidence, the weight of the evidence suggesting that, in fact, men are on average more aggressive and more sociosexual than women.

Louise Perry 1:11:13 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:14 What does that mean about stuff re- regarding sex, relationships, gender dynamics?

Louise Perry 1:11:20 It means that the people who've actually won from the sexual revolution are high-status men. Not necessarily all men, because there are some, there are, you know, quite a lot of men. If, if you, if you're familiar with the data that comes out of dating apps, which shows that, um, it's a minority of men who tend to be getting all of the attention from women, and the majority of men are getting almost nothing. Um, I think that holds true generally, generally post sexual revolution in terms of, like, who is actually... Uh, like, the Hugh Hefners are not representative, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:11:53 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:11:53 The Hugh Hefners, the high-status attractive men who can get loads of consequence-free sex.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:58 Um, is that what-

Louise Perry 1:11:58 They're having a great time

Ali Abdaal 1:11:59 ... is, is, is that much true on the women's side as well?

Louise Perry 1:12:01 No, because what women do... You familiar with hypergamy-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:05 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:12:05 ... as a term? So, um, women are much more invested than men are in general in having, um, relationships with people who are, with men who are higher status than themselves. This is called hypergamy.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:17 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:12:18 And what that means in practice on things like dating apps, where you've got a very large pool of partners to choose from, is that women tend to all be flocking to the top, um, the men at the top of the tree.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:29 Yep.

Louise Perry 1:12:30 So I think the figure is it's like on Tinder, 10, the 10% most attractive men are getting 60% of likes-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:36 Okay

Louise Perry 1:12:36 ... from women, and then the bottom 10% are getting, like, zero.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:40 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:12:40 It doesn't match up neatly based on your attractiveness level.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:43 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:12:43 Women are all kind of aiming higher.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:46 Yeah. Sure.

Louise Perry 1:12:46 Um, and because on Tinder and in general in a kind of casual sex culture, those men are not obliged to stick to one woman. They don't get married and then remove themselves from the dating market, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:12:59 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 1:12:59 They have simultaneous relationships, or they have back-to-back relationships. W- what those men are basically doing is they are, like, living a pol- poly- polygynous- [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:13:10 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:13:10 ... life, right? Where they're accumulating multiple partners.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:12 Okay.

Louise Perry 1:13:13 The women aren't necessarily aware of this.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:14 Right.

Louise Perry 1:13:15 Right. But so you end up with some men who are having, um- Lots of partners. Most men are having none, and the women are also miserable because they're having these, like, brief unsatisfying relationships with attractive men who then ghost them

Ali Abdaal 1:13:29 But this idea of, for, for example, like the top 10% of men are getting likes, the 60% of the likes.

Louise Perry 1:13:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:34 Is this not also true of, like, the top 10% of most attractive women are getting 60% of the likes, or is it... Do, do we not find-

Louise Perry 1:13:39 All women are inundated with likes because men-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:43 Getting that spat again. [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:13:44 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:44 Just thinking of every single female friend I know who's on dating apps, just like-

Louise Perry 1:13:47 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:13:47 ... dozens, if not hundreds of matches a day. Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:13:49 Yes. I mean, you'll have a, you know, you'll have a bit of a range, but it's n- it, it doesn't accumulate at all in the same way.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:53 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:13:53 Like, pretty much, pretty much any woman on Tinder is gonna have some options available to her, which is not true for men.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:58 Yeah. Yeah, I remember there's a, there was a time a few years ago, this was when, back when I was a medical student, um, one of the chaps in our year, uh, was, like, incredibly attractive, and we just went on his Tinder one day and it wa- it, it was just like something out of this world. It was like every single right swipe was, "Oh, you got a match, you got a match, you got a match, you got a match." And we were all just like, "Oh my God," like [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:14:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:19 It's just so totally different an experience.

Louise Perry 1:14:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:22 Whereas any, any, like most female friends that I, I have who have made accounts on Tinder or Hinge have just been like, "Oh, I've got 143 matches today." I'm just like, "Wow, incredible." [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:14:31 Yeah. Rob Henderson talks about, um, uh, he, he's, um, written a Substack on dating apps, and he talks about a friend who - a very attractive male friend who was one of an early adopter of Tinder-

Ali Abdaal 1:14:43 Mm

Louise Perry 1:14:43 ... and had 21,000 women match with him over a period of some years.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:49 Wow.

Louise Perry 1:14:49 So much so that Tinder identified him as being like a stellar user, and they gave him perks, which then m- meant that he accumulated even more.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:56 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:14:57 Um, in contrast to another friend who wasn't that bad looking but was kind of bit below average. He had seven in the same period.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:04 [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:15:04 So the inequality is amazing. I've read that if you, if Tinder was, um, a nation state and you're assessing its, like, inequality, it would be one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:17 Oh, that's... Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:15:18 OnlyFans would be the most unequal country in the world because Only- 'cause OnlyFans creators are also subject to the kind of Pareto law and a minority of OnlyFans creators basically taking all the money.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:29 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:15:30 And the, the, the median OnlyFans creator has 30 subscribers.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:36 Hmm. So-

Louise Perry 1:15:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:15:38 I mean, it sounds like the, the conclusion there is like, uh, unless you are a top 10, 10% alpha male, um, then you're unlikely to have a great time on dating apps.

Louise Perry 1:15:47 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:48 Which I think is broadly the experience.

Louise Perry 1:15:49 And I think, and, and I think in general-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:15:50 I, I, and I think that applies to, to other things too. I mean, so I guess something like porn. I mean, so some men would say that, um, the fact that you now have copious availability of porn on every platform going, um, and that there isn't nearly as much stigma associated with it as there has been historically is great. I don't know, though, if... I think actually there's an increasing feeling among men that actually porn is bad for men.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:20 Yeah. There's a lot of, uh, men's, men's, uh, personal development YouTube channels that are recently peddling this narrative of like, "Porn is really bad. Delete all the porn. Like, stop spending all your time on..."

Louise Perry 1:16:29 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:29 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:16:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:30 [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:16:30 And NoFap just becomes more and more influential with time.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:32 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:16:33 Um, so I think that even though, you know, the, the argument I make in the book is, is counter to this. That the argument that I'm taking aim at is the idea that the sexual revolution has been fabulous for women, and it was all about freeing women. I don't think that's true. I think that it has been much more to the benefit of Hugh Hefner than Marilyn Monroe, right? But it's also not the case that the sexual revolution has been consistently amazing for men.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:58 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:16:58 I think the sexual revolution has been good for a minority of men who are able to enjoy its fruits, you know? But even then, I think it has a shelf life. I think it's probably really good fun to be the man with 21,000 matches on Tinder [clears throat] when you're in your 20s and 30s. You're not gonna have that in your 70s, though.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:18 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:17:18 And I think that if you make the decision to just sleep around and not ever, um, get married, not ever have children and so on, that might be great for a period when you're young. I think you will regret it later though, generally. So I would say that even Hugh Hefner had a grand old time, you know, in his prime, but he, he ended up being a pretty pathetic figure by the end, so.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:43 Yeah, someone in their 70s-

Louise Perry 1:17:44 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:17:44 ... having lots of sex is just a, just a little, you know, it's a bit grim. Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 1:17:47 It's just quite pathetic, isn't it? Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:49 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:17:49 Yeah, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:50 What was the story with Aziz Ansari, and how did we land at the idea of that consent is not enough?

Louise Perry 1:17:55 Uh, so Aziz Ansari is a actor-comedian, and he, um, he was at the center of a MeToo scandal, which attracted a lot of attention, I think because it was a particularly sort of controversial example, which means that people, people love talking about controversy. So I think that's why it became prominent. Um, he went for a date with a woman who, um... They went back to his house afterwards. Sh- he kind of subtly pressured her into sex. She didn't, she, he wasn't violent or forceful at all. She didn't say no, but equally she wasn't really into it, and he sort of persisted in trying to persuade her even when she was lukewarm, and they ended up having sex. And then late- and then she went home. She, I think she texted him later and said something like, "That was weird," and he said, "Sorry," something along those lines. And then some time later, she wrote an anonymous account or a pseudonymous account of what had gone on, and it became the source of controversy because the question was whether or not she had really consented to the sex. I think reading her account that it's clear that she did consent in a legal sense, in that Az- Ansari jumped the legal bar. The legal bar, however, is very low. I think that the, the reason that she was distressed and the reason a lot of women identified with her account in relation to their own experiences is because he, he behaved legally, but he, not like a gentleman, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:19:22 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:19:22 But she, she- That kind of vocabulary is so old-fashioned, is so unfamiliar to anyone who's kind of operating a liberal feminist framework. She couldn't use words like ungentlemanly or chivalry or even I think words like respect or, or dignity. You know, words like these are a little bit kind of, ugh. So she talks about consent, and everyone else talks about consent, and that became the subject of discussion because that was the only vocabulary left available. I think that the consent-- I think that the, the focus on consent as the sole framework for determining whether or not sexual behavior and good is bad, is good or bad is completely inadequate. There are so many-- There is so much gray area between good sex and consensual sex.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:06 Hmm. I guess c- sort of consent is this sort of legal bar.

Louise Perry 1:20:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:09 But then we're saying that the-

Louise Perry 1:20:10 Minimum

Ali Abdaal 1:20:11 ... beyond that, there is actually a moral, gentlemanly, chivalrous, respectable, dignified bar.

Louise Perry 1:20:16 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:16 And you're not allowed to talk about that because that's just, it just feels a bit weird. Like, why would you bring up, like, gentlemanliness that harks back-

Louise Perry 1:20:22 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:20:22 ... to the eras of, I don't, I don't know, the 1900s or something.

Louise Perry 1:20:24 Yes. Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:25 Um, and therefore, when trying to critique Aziz Ansari's behavior or otherwise, if the only word you're allowed to use is consent, it means that everything just-- It's like, okay, the people who are, like, pro Aziz Ansari, the only thing they're arguing about is, was it consent?

Louise Perry 1:20:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:41 To which the answer is probably yes.

Louise Perry 1:20:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:42 But, like, kind of gray area, but probably yes. The people who are anti Aziz Ansari are like, "Was it consent?" To which they think the answer is probably no. But, like, gray area, but probably no. And-

Louise Perry 1:20:50 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:20:50 ... consent becomes the battleground by which all of these things are-

Louise Perry 1:20:53 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:20:53 ... are figured out.

Louise Perry 1:20:53 And I think we're all talking past, past each other by doing that.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:57 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 1:20:57 Because actually I don't think consent is the source of dispute. I think the, the, the source of dispute is whether or not he behaved morally, to which I think the answer is no. He did also behave normally, right? Like, this is a completely standard style of encounter. I mean, that was part of the reason why it, it was so widely publicized because a lot of women can-- it resonated with them. They'd had those kind of experiences where... You know, because the expectation, particularly because he's famous, she's not famous, you know, the, the expectation was that she would put out on a first date because that's normal, and she didn't really want to, but she also didn't really have the confidence to assert her reluctance.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:38 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:21:38 Which is why she kind of went along with it. And I think-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:40 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:21:40 ... and I think it's a really good example of the fact that understanding this solely in terms of individual decision-making just doesn't quite work because we're all functioning in an environment where s- where there are paths of least resistance, which are determined by the culture. And if the path of least resistance when you go on a date with a celebrity is to put out [chuckles] on a, on a first date, then of course that is wha- the direction in which you're gonna be pushed even if you don't really want to.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:06 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:22:07 But again, how do you talk about that in terms of consent? Like it's just-- It's a g- completely inadequate framework.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:12 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:13 Yeah. One of the, um, one, one of the passages that you quote, quote in the book, uh, I think it's, um, this, this girl who had a consensual sexual encounter, um, but didn't really feel great about it-

Louise Perry 1:22:25 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:22:25 ... and tried to convince herself that it's, it's just sex.

Louise Perry 1:22:27 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:28 I think that phrase, "It's just sex"-

Louise Perry 1:22:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:22:30 ... um, highlights a lot of what-- Yeah. What's, what's going on there.

Louise Perry 1:22:34 Yeah. So this is a, um, an anonymous, I think, Me Too contribution for a woman who had had, who'd had sex with a guy who actually, you know, she fancied him. There was no coercion involved. Like, it was kind of fine. It also was left her feeling dreadful. And I think often-- I think that was often actually the case with a lot of Me Too stories. I mean, some of the Me Too stories were straightforwardly criminal, but not necessarily. Like, a lot of them were to do with having kind of sex that was sort of fine and, and was supposed to feel okay according to what's considered normal. Um, but women felt terrible about it.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:12 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 1:23:12 And they didn't quite know why they felt terrible, and it was difficult to articulate. And often the way of resolving that feeling was to talk about-- w- was to suggest that somehow consent had been absent and that the man in question had, had not respected consent in some way. Rather than, you know, as we were saying, to say that he had behaved in an ungentlemanly way, or moreover, to say that actually maybe there is something wrong in general with the norms. Maybe, maybe the whole expectation that women will be having emotionless sex is setting women up to fail, and that we shouldn't be surprised to discover that women are feeling terrible after having sex that actually is basically not suited to their self-interest. I mean, particularly when y- you think of it in terms of the physical imbalances, like the whole hookup culture setup is grossly unfair. The fact that you've got women are the ones who have to worry about pregnancy, women are the ones who have to worry about hormonal birth control, women are the ones who are at risk of violence. Women are the ones who are much less likely to want casual sex, much less, m- much less likely to seek it out. Women orgasm a lot less than men do. Like ev- in every possible way, [chuckles] like women end up on the losing side of this arrangement. So why is it being normalized? I mean, my argument is it's not, it's not feminist in the least. And I, I suspect as well that the reason that it's been normalized as it has is, is partly to do with ideology. It's partly to do with sexual disenchantment. It's, it all feeds back into liberal feminism and, and liberalism in general, which is sort of invested in seeing us as atomized individuals who are basically indistinguishable from each other in terms of sex. I think also part of what's going on is to do with this hypergamy thing. It's the fact that women are competing generally for the most attractive men. That is the ten percent of men who are getting most of the offers of sex. And it does mean that those men have an amazing amount of power in the dating market. And whereas previously in a monogamous marriage system, they would get married, and they'd remove themselves from the dating market. Now they are, like, they can basically live an informal polygamy, um, which isn't actually codified in law, but, like, that's, that's basically what they're living, which means that they can demand from women the kind of sex they like. Which is casual, pornified, et cetera, et cetera. And so women feel like they have no choice because if, you know, if, if you, if, if you don't put out, someone else will.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:37 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:25:38 And I think often it's easier to resolve that feeling. You know, it's not difficult to find women who will say that they like this, that they find it empowering, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I think the reason for that though is because it's a much, much more appetizing kind of narrative for what's going on. You don't wanna think of yourself as being someone who's just been kind of funneled into dysfunctional styles of, of sexuality and behavior. It's much better to think of yourself as being an agent. Um, and of- there will be examples where that's true. But equally, I know so many women who have lived like that as younger women and then, and later have changed their minds and thought, "Actually, I was, I wasn't doing that for good reasons. I was, I was pressured in, you know, various ways." Um, Bridget Phetasy, who's a, um, American podcaster, a comedian, she-- I spoke, I spoke on her podcast and she read the book, and she, she wrote an essay about it last week actually called I Regret Being a Slut. Because Bridget used to work for Playboy as a writer, um, and, um, very much lived this, like, sexually disenchantment life of having lots of casual hookups. Um, and now says-- she said that she opened the first page of my book and just burst into tears because she, she completely recognized that mindset of sort of persuading yourself that this is good even if it feels wrong.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:01 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:27:02 This is one of the disputes I had with Aila in the UnHerd interview because her emphasis, and like I get it on a rational level, is that some people are well-suited to this kind of casual relationship, some people aren't. The task is to work out which category you're in and to, like, carefully examine your own responses, which is fine, and I'm sure for some people that works. The problem is that human beings are amazingly good at self-deception. [chuckles] And if the, and if the, and if the high-status thing to be is the woman who likes the casual style of sex, then of course you're going to sort of-- you have an interest in, like, assigning yourself to that category and ignoring the extent to which you, you feel differently. Of course, it used to be the flip side, right? It used to be that women-- the pressure was on women not to have premarital sex, and women who actually wanted to would've suppressed that feeling in themselves. But this is the, this is the power of culture.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:59 Hmm. So presumably you're not advocating a return to pre-1950s morality where w- there is a clear, you, you know, the, the vehicle of shame is used strongly against women to disincentivize multiple partners and casual relationships as it is with men, but, like, less so.

Louise Perry 1:28:18 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:18 Um, w- presumably that's, that's not what we're trying to get to.

Louise Perry 1:28:22 No.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:22 Okay.

Louise Perry 1:28:22 And actually, I do worry a bit that the, um-- I think that there's a correction happening now, um, or starting to happen in that the, that kind of sexual hyper liberalism has swung so far in the other-- in one direction. I think that there is starting to be a swing back, and there's starting to be a reaction against it-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:37 Mm-hmm

Louise Perry 1:28:37 ... particularly among Gen Z. You hear a lot more kind of criticism of sex positivism on things like-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:44 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:28:44 ... TikTok. And I do worry a bit that that could take the form of slut-shaming, and that, say, women who went on OnlyFans in, like, the great OnlyFans fest of 2020 [chuckles] are gonna really pay the price later. And I don't want that to happen. I re- I really sincerely don't. I don't think that the-- It's kinda like with the Nordic model. I don't think that the mechanism for, um, change should be directed at criminalizing or, or, or, or shaming women who've actually been taken advantage of. I think, I think I want my shame to be directed at the playboys. [chuckles] The problem is that that obviously on, like, a societal scale, it's quite hard to coordinate.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:25 Yeah. Hmm. We'll come to your action points, uh-

Louise Perry 1:29:29 [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:29:29 ... in, in just a moment. Um, I'd love to talk a little bit, uh, uh-- love to talk is a bit of a, a w-weird turn of phrase, um, about sexual assault and-

Louise Perry 1:29:37 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:29:37 ... sexual violence.

Louise Perry 1:29:38 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:39 And I wonder if we can start with kinda your background in this, 'cause I know that you ha- have a background

Ali Abdaal 1:29:43 in this.

Louise Perry 1:29:44 I w-- Yes, so my first job out of university was working in a rape crisis center.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:48 What does a rape crisis center do, center do?

Louise Perry 1:29:50 Uh, it depends on the center, but generally, um, uh, a h- emotional support helpline, um, helping victims through the criminal justice process-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:01 Hmm

Louise Perry 1:30:01 ... providing therapy to victims, and things like support groups, and so on. My job specifically was doing one-to-one support with teenage girls, and I also did, um, consent workshops in schools and trained helpline volunteers.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:16 Oh. What prompted you to go into this career path or this job after university?

Louise Perry 1:30:20 Uh, I was, I was volunteering on it, um, at university, and then a job came up. And I had actually intended to just stay in the charity sector-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:29 Mm-hmm

Louise Perry 1:30:29 ... but then I sort of became a journalist by accident a little bit.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:32 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:30:32 So here I am.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:34 So what was your experience in this rape crisis center?

Louise Perry 1:30:37 Uh, I found the-- 'cause I did, um, when I started volunteering there, I was doing a degree in women's studies, and I found the distinction between, like, the theory, feminist theory and feminist reality extremely jarring.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:51 Okay.

Louise Perry 1:30:52 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:52 How so?

Louise Perry 1:30:54 Things like the course that we did on introduction to feminist philosophy had so little in it about-- very little in it really about violence or biology, um, almost nothing about motherhood. It was all this kind of angels dancing on the head of a pin stuff about defining women and gender presentation and all this kind of stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:16 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:31:16 And I, I've always just felt like I don't really care about things like lipstick and drag and, I don't know, all this performance stuff. It just doesn't seem to be very important to me. Whereas, um, what you see on the ground in frontline feminist, um, services, um- Like an amazing proportion, for instance, I did not know this before I saw it on the ground, an amazing proportion of child sexual abuse is committed by stepfathers.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:41 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:31:41 So much. Which is something that evolutionary biologists have paid close attention to. So a stepparent is about 100 times more likely to abuse a child than a biological parent. It's called the Cinderella effect, and the theory is that it's because they don't have any biological investment in the child. And actually, if anything, the child might be a com- a threat and a competitor within the household, um, because they, you know, monopolize the resources of the new partner.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:09 Yeah. Yeah, there's that quote from, I think, Steven Pinker that you cite in the book. Can you remember what that, what that was?

Louise Perry 1:32:16 I think he says something like it's the m- it's the single most-- the single clearest determinant ever found-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:23 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:32:23 ... for predicting child abuse.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:25 Yeah, which just feels like-- I mean, someone listening to that is gonna think, "Oh, but, like"-

Louise Perry 1:32:30 I know a stepparent who's amazing. They're fine.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:32 Exactly. Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:32:32 Yeah. Agreed.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:33 Um-

Louise Perry 1:32:33 There are loads of exceptions. We're talking about minority. But it is also very apparent on paper the extent to which it raises the risk.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:40 Okay. So it sounds like one of the things you, you learned working at the rape crisis center was difference between kind of feminist theory and, and kind of reality on the ground.

Louise Perry 1:32:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:49 Stepparents abusing their children way more.

Louise Perry 1:32:53 Yeah, being one example. Also, just the youth of victims. The modal rape victim is 15.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:59 15?

Louise Perry 1:32:59 Yeah. Surprisingly young, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:33:02 That's surprisingly young, yeah.

Louise Perry 1:33:03 Yeah. And the proportion of female rape victims who are over the age of 30 is in the single digits. So basically, your period of risk is from adolescence to 20s. Surprisingly young. It does kind of-- it, like, it kind of makes sense actually with the sort of the stereotype. I mean, all stereotypes are kind of based in truth. That's why they become stereotypes. And-- but it's not-- but it doesn't really make sense within the more academic explanation for rape, which puts much more emphasis on, um, [lips smack] power and socialization and patriarchy and all these kind of social forces, rather than thinking about possible biological origins of sexual violence. Like if you-- the age of, the age of rape victims matches perfectly with the age of, um, attractiveness to men of women, right? Teens and 20s. Like, that's why porn is all women in their teens and 20s, right? That's why teen is consistently the most popular category is because it's associated with fertility. Like, and, and if, if, if you think that the motivation for rape has nothing to do with sexual desire, that it's about, um, violence and control and power, that doesn't really make sense. But I think if you, if you recognize that actually sexual desire is in there too, then it does. And so I think that-- I think what happened in my thinking is that seeing, noticing these things, noticing these trends and things like demographics made me think, "Hang on, I don't think the full story is, is there in the academic feminist explanations for this phenomena."

Ali Abdaal 1:34:43 Hmm. Yeah. And, and so y-you mentioned-- so I, I remember when I was, again, when I was in my sort of undergrad, undergrad years, um, around 2013-ish was when rape culture started becoming a thing-

Louise Perry 1:34:59 Was a phrase, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:35:00 ... that people talked about.

Louise Perry 1:35:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:01 And within a period of like a few months, it seemed like every college and every university society was putting on sexual consent workshops.

Louise Perry 1:35:09 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:09 Which were always a little bit of a, like a-- uh, the, the impression I got was that people felt that they were a bit pointless, but, like, no one wanted to say that they felt that they were a bit pointless because, I mean, obviously there was an epidemic of-

Louise Perry 1:35:24 You don't wanna sound like a rapist

Ali Abdaal 1:35:25 ... exactly. Obviously-

Louise Perry 1:35:25 Yeah. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:35:25 ... you know, there was this epidemic of, like, rape going amongst college campuses, apparently, especially in the US, but like also apparently in the UK.

Louise Perry 1:35:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:31 Every woman you would speak to has had some kind of experience of sexual violence.

Louise Perry 1:35:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:35 Every man you speak to s-says, "Hey, all my friends are gentlemen. Like, they wouldn't act like that." Clearly, there's a difference. Clearly, there's, there's something going on.

Louise Perry 1:35:42 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:42 So you said that you ran sexual consent workshops.

Louise Perry 1:35:44 At schools rather than university-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:46 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:35:46 ... but it's much the same thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:47 Yeah. What d- what, what's going on there?

Louise Perry 1:35:48 Um, I mean, I think that they are fine. I don't-- I think that, um, I think it's good for institutions to do them. I also don't think they do what people think they do generally. Because what people think they do is they educate would-be rapists. You know, they-- the, the-- like, the, the idea being, I suppose, that, um, rapists don't know it's wrong or they don't know that what they're doing is rape or that there's some sort of like information gap that needs to be bridged. Then it's not normally phrased like that, because when you phrase it like that, it sounds really stupid. It is really stupid. I think [chuckles] what consent workshops actually do is they, um, they provide signposting for victims, who say, "If this happens to you, this is what you do." They, um, they make it clear to victims what the law is and when things that have been done to them, like that they're allowed to object, they're allowed to go to the police, et cetera. And I think it's also useful in an institution to make certain boundaries very clear. So for instance, I think it is good for schools to tell kids that if they share revenge porn, there will be disciplinary consequences. Because then if they do, they can't claim that they didn't know. Right, fine. So I think all this stuff is good. The problem is, I think that, um, sex-- uh, rape is not a consequence of misinformation or misunderstanding generally. I think it is a consequence of sexual aggression combined with opportunity, [chuckles] right? And one of the things about universities-- I mean, there's actually evidence to suggest that women who are at universities are, are less at risk of sexual violence than women who aren't if you adjust for age. So the idea that campuses are like uniquely, um, infused with rape culture doesn't really seem to match up with the data. It's also, though, the case that, um, you know, there are certain environments to some extent- Found on university campuses, but also elsewhere, which are-- provide a lot of opportunities for would-be rapists. Like for instance, environment with loads and loads of drunk women is, like, the perfect environment if you are sexually predatory and you're looking for... and you're looking for victims.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:01 Yeah. So one argument that I've heard is that this idea of sexual assault and rape being, uh, sort of violent, aggressive men finding a woman in an alleyway or in a club is not actually the majority of rape. The majority of rape happens within relationships or within families. Like, uh, I don't, I don't know the data on this. Do, to what extent does that hold true in your-

Louise Perry 1:38:22 Um, so the most common type of perpetrator is an acquaintance. Um, it is true that boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, particularly ex-boyfriends, um, are also very common perpetrators, and it is also true that sexual violence within families is more common than I think anyone really wants to admit.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:41 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:38:41 Um, so there are, yeah, there are a lot of different circumstances, and it's true that the violent rape in an alleyway is a minority of cases. I mean, stranger rape in general I think is, like, less than 5%. I can't remember exactly the figures, but stranger rape is quite unusual. Um, although women have a very intense fear of it. It's, you know-- It motivates a lot of, um, uh, safety work that women do when they're out. But y- yeah, it is less common than something like an acquaintance.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:13 I guess if we, if we put those situations aside and we th- if we, and we then think about the college campus-

Louise Perry 1:39:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:39:18 ... where, like, clearly there's this, I wanna say gray area, but, like, depending on what side, like, depending on your perspective, it's not, it's not particularly gray. It is just black and white between women having-- essentially being sexually assaulted by dudes in a college campus, and it seems like telling women to not drink alcohol [chuckles] uh, feels like profoundly victim-blamingy.

Louise Perry 1:39:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:53 And one of your, um, kind of conclusion, conclusion points at the end of the book where essentially the, the, the chapter is entitled, uh, Listen to Your Mother-

Louise Perry 1:40:04 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:40:04 ... is, um, you know, the, the idea of get drunk or high in private and with female friends rather than in public or in mixed company.

Louise Perry 1:40:13 Yeah. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:40:14 Now, when we were kinda doing research for this, for this podcast, like, this was a point where, you know, I just-- I, I've been discussing this book with loads of friends over the last, like, several, several weeks since I, since I first came across it. This idea of it sounds like Louise Perry is saying that the solution to sexual, uh, to male sexual violence is to tell women to stop drinking.

Louise Perry 1:40:33 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:34 Which feels like not the right answer somehow. So, like, what's-

Louise Perry 1:40:37 It's probably the most controversial line in the book.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:39 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:40:39 Although the book has quite a lot of controversial stuff in it. Um, yeah, I mean, I don't say women shouldn't drink. I say women shouldn't get drunk around men they don't know.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:48 Okay.

Louise Perry 1:40:49 So that is slightly different. But I, yeah, I know that's really countercultural. I completely agree. It wasn't countercultural until, you know, 1980s, 1990s. That wasn't considered countercultural. Um, I think ladette culture has had quite a lasting influence in terms of, um, valorizing women drinking like men and getting, like, blind drunk in public. Um, I mean, it's one of those things where I think I am very sensitive to the victim-blaming risk, and I, and I-- and part of the, part of the reason for low prosecution rates of sexual violence is to do with rape myths being embedded in the criminal justice system. There are a lot of other reasons too, but that is one of them. Um, and so we, you know, we do have to be sensitive to that, and I'm-- and I say completely unequivocally that a man who rapes a drunk woman is the only person at fault in that scenario. Having said that, in practice, this is what we tell our friends. This is what we tell our sisters and, um, moms tell their daughters, right? In practice, everyone knows that it's not a very good idea to, to incapacitate yourself when you're around men that you can't necessarily trust. The problem is just that it's not, you're not supposed to say it, not publicly. You say it to people in private. You don't say it publicly. And I think the problem with not saying it publicly is that, um, not all young women do have people who will tell them in private. There's a certain hypocrisy there, I think.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:14 Hypocrisy as in?

Louise Perry 1:42:15 In that you can privately as a feminist choose not to get really drunk, and you can tell your loved ones to do the same thing, but you can't advertise it as a, as a guideline. You have to s- you have to say publicly, "Well, no, of course women should be able to behave as men do." And of course they should. You know, this, this naturalistic fallacy, like, of course, it should be possible for women to do, to do anything in public and to be completely safe from predators. But the fact is that they're not. And I think that any kind of norm which encourages women to behave in a way that will, w-will result in lives being ruined by sexual violence, I just think is dishonest. So I felt, I, I felt I needed to say it even though I knew that it would get backlash because it's true, and I think that everyone does actually know that it's true. It's like with sexual disenchantment. You know, there's the r- there's the rhetorical level where you say y-you should be able to do whatever you want, and sex is like playing squash, and then there's how people behave. And the gap I think shows exactly how, how true the rhetoric really is.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:21 Do you think, like, w- what would our kinda steel man feminists say, uh, is, is the r- is, like, a good reason why we don't have this rhetoric in, in, in public?

Louise Perry 1:43:33 Because, um, men will hear it, and they will conclude that it is the drunk women are asking for it. And jury members will hear it and will conclude that, um, drunk women are asking for it, and that it will feed into these, um, negative stereotypes around rape victims. And I agree that that is a risk, but I also think that there are trade-offs involved which are really difficult

Ali Abdaal 1:44:01 Uh, this was an area in which, and I just d- I just didn't have the, uh, the v- vocabulary or, like, education or just, like, understanding to a- to actually fully appreciate the, the different sides of, of the debate. 'Cause every woman that I spoke to about this book and about the fact we were doing this interview and sort of, you know, the people who, who read it or looked at the, the headlines that said basically, "Louise Perry's advocating don't drink around men," broadly to kind of simplify it-

Louise Perry 1:44:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:44:26 ... were just like, "Yeah. I mean, like, we all, we all know this. Like-

Louise Perry 1:44:30 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:44:30 ... we all tell our friends, we all tell our daughters, we all like..." Like, everyone knows this to be the case.

Louise Perry 1:44:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:34 But it felt like there was something damaging about-

Louise Perry 1:44:38 About saying it

Ali Abdaal 1:44:38 ... about actually saying it out loud.

Louise Perry 1:44:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:41 And I guess that's this fear of, well, it just feeds further into the-- Like, it's already hard enough to get, um, convictions for rape.

Louise Perry 1:44:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:49 Does encourage, uh, uh, does putting a line like this in print actually contribute to this potentially getting worse for women?

Louise Perry 1:45:00 I also think that it's much more important to prevent sexual violence than cons- than successfully prosecute it-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:05 Right

Louise Perry 1:45:05 ... if given the choice.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:07 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:45:07 It's really hard to prosecute sexual vi- I mean, for, for a whole bunch of reasons, some of which are to do with problems in the criminal justice system, but some of which are just to do with the nature of the act. Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:14 Mm-hmm

Louise Perry 1:45:15 ... if, if, if the line between illegal and legal sex is entirely based on what happens between two people in a room with no witnesses, it is just very, very difficult to prove the presence or absence of consent. So I think that we're never gonna have 100% prosecution rate, no matter how good the system is.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:33 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:45:34 Which means I think that it's more important to try and, you know-- If you do a poster campaign saying, "Rape is bad, you shouldn't rape," you're gonna prevent precisely zero rapes because that's not what's mo- [chuckles] that's not what's motivating rapists, right? Whereas, um, you know, a, a, a style of poster campaign that police forces occasionally release and which is-- often gets feminist backlash is things like, "Look out for your friends in public. If you're out drinking, make sure you know where they are, make sure they get home safely in a taxi." And it often gets criticized, and the poster campaigns even get withdrawn because of feminist criticism. But I think, you know, yes, maybe it's the case that women know this already and they're already doing this. Maybe not. I mean, teenage girls are pretty stupid sometimes. Teenage boys are pretty stupid sometimes. Like, this is just the nature of being inexperienced and not having, not having already learnt it. I mean, I dedicated the book to the women who learned it the hard way because I think that the, the, the current setup is kind of all around these slightly unspoken truths and the, the existence of these differences which we kind of know about, we don't talk about. You know, the fact that men have two modes of sexuality, right? The, the fact that men will, will, will treat women as if they're really cheap if given the opportunity. The fact that getting really drunk around strange men is risky. All this stuff that is true, and we all kind of adults know, but we don't necessarily say it and we don't necessarily tell young people, and so you have to go through that process of discovering it for yourself anew. And I think the problem is that there will be girls in particular who, during that process of discovering it for themselves, get really unlucky.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:17 There was a common refrain when I was at university, which is, "Don't tell women how to dress. Teach men not to rape."

Louise Perry 1:47:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:27 Um, which I think was trying to get at the frustration with saying, "Hey, look, men are just trash," or, "10, 5% to 10% of men are just trash anyway, so, like, girls, watch out for yourselves." It's like, why should we have to do that? Why should we have to say that? Like-

Louise Perry 1:47:45 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:47:45 ... the problem is clearly with the men and not with the women.

Louise Perry 1:47:47 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:48 Um, yeah.

Louise Perry 1:47:49 Morally, that's completely correct.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:51 Morally.

Louise Perry 1:47:51 Yeah. It's just in practice that it's difficult. I mean, I think the, the how people dress thing is a little bit of a canard. I'm not really aware of there actually being that strong a correlation between what women wear and their likelihood of being assaulted. As far as I know, it, it's not-

Ali Abdaal 1:48:10 No, like, yeah

Louise Perry 1:48:10 ... the length of your skirt isn't, isn't very relevant. Um, I think what's much more relevant is, is basically ending up in scenarios where that 5% to 10% of bad guys have an opportunity. So, like, the example that I give in the book is, um, of, um, a dating advice column in The Times where a woman's written in saying, um, "I'm interested in BDSM. I wanna give it a go. What should I do?" And the reply is basically, "Well, obviously, you know, consent is very important, and men have to respect your consent given. Therefore, what you should do is you should go on the internet, and you should advertise the fact that you really wanna be strangled, and then you should invite men to contact you, and then you should go to their house and have consensual strangling sex together. And, you know, the, it's incumbent on them to respect your consent." And I'm like, yes, it is incumbent on them to respect your consent. However, what do you think is gonna happen if you go on the internet and say, "I really fancy a strange man strangling me in his house"? Like, I just-- it just-- the, like, the impracticality of that kind of politics-

Ali Abdaal 1:49:17 Yeah

Louise Perry 1:49:18 ... drives me round the, round the bend.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:21 Mm.

Louise Perry 1:49:21 You know? 'Cause I'm like, I, I agree that it should be possible. I mean, it should be possible for us to do all sorts of things without, like, having to protect against bad actors. But it seems like it's only in this area where we, we basically insist that young women should fake it till they make it.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:40 Fake it till they make it, as in?

Louise Perry 1:49:41 They should behave as if- There are no bad actors because they have a right to behave as if there are no bad actors.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:48 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:49:48 In the hope that down the line there won't be any more and men will all be taught not to rape, and then it will be safe.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:54 Yeah. I know.

Louise Perry 1:49:55 But you can't just like-

Ali Abdaal 1:49:57 Yeah. Sacrifice the bodies of these men for that.

Louise Perry 1:49:59 Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:01 Yeah. Um, uh, one of, uh,

Ali Abdaal 1:50:06 one of my friends who looked at your, uh, the, the, the, the final Listen to Your Mother chapter-

Louise Perry 1:50:11 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:50:11 ... kinda described this, um, s- said that it's, it's, it's-- it sounded like the advice is quite defeatist and not particularly empowering to women.

Louise Perry 1:50:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:20 I wonder what would be your response to, to that.

Louise Perry 1:50:22 Yeah. Defeatist is sometimes the expression I've heard. Um, heteropessimism is a term I've heard as well.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:27 Heteropessimism?

Louise Perry 1:50:28 Heteropessimism. I mean, basically just-- I think that there has been-- I think that there is increasingly a feeling, um, among feminists of all stripes and men and women of all stripes that, like, there is something wrong with the sexual culture, that people aren't very happy, um, men and women, that sexual violence has not gone away by any means, and maybe the, the whole kind of freedom experiment hasn't worked out very well. And I think that the, the very utopian style of thinking in the second wave, the idea that we can tear down the family and we can kind of re-socialize everyone and, and, and live in, like, new experimental ways, I think was very, very valiant and very interesting, but also pretty much failed utterly. And I think that the point that we've-- or the point that I've got to, at least in thinking about all of this stuff over so many years, is to think, look, I think that, I think that actually what we're faced with is a much more difficult challenge than we might previously have recognized. I think that some of this stuff is baked in to an alarming degree. It doesn't mean it's hopeless, but it does, I think, mean that we have to be kind of working around reality rather than trying to redesign society on the back of an envelope.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:47 Mm-hmm.

Louise Perry 1:51:47 Which also means that if we're looking for systems that seem to be more or less protective and produce more or less good and bad outcomes, what we have to choose from is not the status quo and some, like, imagined perfect alternative. What we actually have to choose from is the status quo and other alternatives that have been tried and tested in previous times and places, because those are ones that have actually worked. Like, if you're imagining a utopian system that no one has ever tried before, there's probably a reason for that. It's probably because it's not actually possible.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:18 Um, can I take a quick tangent before we come back to the action points?

Louise Perry 1:52:20 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:21 Um, another particularly controversial thing that you say in the book, uh, is that, uh, basically, and feel, feel free to correct my paraphrasing, but all BDSM is basically bad.

Louise Perry 1:52:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:31 Um, and, uh, I was on a-- I was on group holiday with some friends a few days ago, and we were talking about the book because I-- because we were, we, we were doing this interview, and they were all like, "Oh, come on, like, you know, I can be a totally nice guy, uh, but, you know, still have some, like, you know, it's, it's, it's consensual and, like, BDSM is a thing and, like, clearly I'm into it and she's into it, and it's like sometimes we swap roles and stuff."

Louise Perry 1:52:56 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:56 Uh, so it, it felt particularly controversial to say like, "Yeah, Louise's position seems to be that like, actually-

Louise Perry 1:53:01 Just no. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:53:01 ... it is, is, is, is always bad." So what's-

Louise Perry 1:53:03 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:53:03 ... what's going on there?

Louise Perry 1:53:04 Um, I mean, I think it's bad at several different levels.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:07 Yeah.

Louise Perry 1:53:08 Um, I work for a campaign group called We Can't Consent to This. Um, what we do is we document cases where, um, women have been killed in the UK. UK women have been killed, and their killers have claimed in court that they consented to violence which-- they consented to the violence which led to their deaths. So, like, the sex game gone wrong defense.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:28 Right.

Louise Perry 1:53:29 The reason that, um, my friend and colleague, Fiona McKenzie, founded the campaign is because she'd noticed that this was becoming something you'd see in the papers more, more often. And so she went away and actually documented how often this defense strategy was being used and found that it was becoming more frequent and also that it was being used often with success. So men were able to-- it's always been men who use this defense. We've never found an example of a woman using it. Um, they're able to get, to get away with a manslaughter conviction rather than a murder conviction, or able to get a very short sentence. You know, so, like, three years or something, right? For taking a woman's life. This is what we're talking about. And the problem with this defense is that the, the woman isn't there to give her side of it necessarily. And very often, what you're talking about in these cases is, like, uh, a man who's picked a prostitute, a man who seems to have had, like, an, uh, long-term abusive relationship with his girlfriend. Um, you know, all sorts of scenarios which actually look indistinguishable from just, like, normal femicide, but they're able in retrospect to spin this narrative and say, "Well, she was asking for it," and she can't, she can't say otherwise. And the fact is with BDSM that actually that is what it looks like from the outside. There is no way of telling without knowing what's going on in people's minds that this is-- whether this is domestic violence or whether this is consensual BDSM. They look identical. And from a, from a legal perspective, that's very difficult. How are you supposed to tell the difference? One of the cases I talk about in the book, which is a important piece of English case law, Emmett, involves a woman who suffered terrible injuries inflicted by her husband, went to the doctor because she needed treatment, and the doctor very unusually violated patient confidentiality and reported this to the police. When it came to court, she refused to testify either way. Her husband claimed that she'd consented to it as part of sex, and the court believed him. And I think maybe that's true. My spidey senses tell me that it, that it isn't right. Like, what's actually going on there is domestic abuse, and the nature of domestic abuse is such that women or any victim of domestic abuse, male or female, will often say that they consent to things and will often be, you know, lulled into a false narrative spun by the abuser, because that's the nature of psychological abuse, that it wears you down and that it, and it, uh, it, that it- Um, dissuades you from leaving or from objecting or from, you know, the psychological component of domestic abuse is just as, just as, um, just as pernicious and just as danger- dangerous as the physical element. And I think that this is the problem that you get to with BDSM. I mean, I, I, I can accept in theory that there are people who genuinely do it with absolute consent and are entirely responsible, and there is really no harm done to anyone involved. But also in practice, there are so many people you can find who have been previously part of, you know, the BDSM community and have had terrible experiences and will say in retrospect that they were taken advantage of, that they, you know, that there, that there was m- mental illness at play often, that there are, like, varying degrees of coercion and abuse that are often quite subtle. And this is-- And I think that the more this is normalized and made mainstream, the more incidences like that you will come up with. I mean, so something like choking, for instance, which is now... Twenty years ago was really niche. It was a niche within the BDSM community. I mean, like, responsible BDSM practitioners will say that the choking is actually really dangerous and you shouldn't mess around with it. Um, and yet now it's on the front page of every porn platform in the world. It's completely mainstream. You've got-- I can't remember the numbers exactly, but it's something like half of women in their twenties will say that they've been choked by a partner at some point, you know. And some of those women are consenting, some of them not. But that's what's gonna happen if you make it a really mainstream thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:34 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:57:34 You're going to end up with this being, like, a routine part of sex. And once something is part of the sexual script, like it's considered to be a normal, a normal thing, then the default setting is to do it. The default setting is to say yes, even if you're not sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:49 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:57:50 And actually, it makes you feel bad. And I think as well that it-- I would say as well for, for men who do it, men who are asked to do it by their partners, I mean, that's something that I hear often, you know, "But my girlfriend asked me to choke her." I'd say, I mean, her motivations for being asked to choke, I mean, it's partly to do with the fact that, um, a lot of women do... are, are turned on by like a bit of submission, right? That's very common. It probably has something to do with evolution. [chuckles] Like, it's, it is much, much more common for women to take the sub role than the dom role in any kind of BDSM scenario and vice versa with men. Um, I don't think that's necessarily a very, like, I don't think that's necessarily a terrible thing we have to dissuade people from doing. But I also think that, like, choking is a really bad manifestation of that instinct. It's like a particularly, um, particularly aggressive and particularly risky thing to do. It's difficult to kill someone accidentally through choking in sex, but it is quite easy to injure someone.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:52 Hmm.

Louise Perry 1:58:53 And in general, it's just not something you wanna be encouraging. It's an extremely gendered form of violence. It's the second most common form of murder used by men against women in this country, and overwhelmingly victims of non-fatal strangulation. It's i-in domestic, um, relationships, it's female victims, male perpetrators, right? So, like, it's just, it's not good news. And the problem with normalizing it is that I think as well for men, it, like, it reinscribes dysfunctional arousal patterns, if that makes sense, which I th- I think a problem with porn as well. I think this idea that, like, our sexual desires are fixed in quality and quantity, and what you have to do is just, like, siphon off your sexual energy in a, like periodically. I think that's wrong. I think actually we need to understand this as being like a feedback loop. Um, I mean, I don't mean feedback loop, right? This is being reinforced by orgasm, and if you are, like, if you are, um, inscribing in your own mind the fact that choking is your thing, choking turns you on, you're gonna, like, want more and more of it. You're gonna end up going down an increasingly dysfunctional road. This is one of the reasons why men using porn often ends up being really bad for the men, even though I think porn has other problems. But, you know, just in terms of the user experience, is because you end up, like, your sexual desires become weirder and weirder because you're exposed to weirder stuff-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:24 Hmm

Louise Perry 2:00:24 ... and you kind of reward the stimulus, and you end up potentially going down a really, like, grim road-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:32 Hmm

Louise Perry 2:00:32 ... which the porn platforms are perfectly designed to encourage.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:37 Yeah. There's a thing that you say here of, um, you know, I think this one is particularly uncontroversial: Chivalry is actually a good thing. We all have to control our sexual desires, and men particularly so, given their greater physical strength and have, uh, average higher sex drives. Um, then the point after that is, sometimes, though not always, you can readily spot sexually aggressive men. There are a handful of personality traits that are common to them: impulsivity, promiscuity, hypermasculinity, and disagreeableness. These traits in combination should put you on your guard.

Louise Perry 2:01:07 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:07 I wonder if you can just kinda ela- elaborate on that. What did, like, how-- S- I, I guess how typecast is the sexual offender or sexual assaulter kind of vibe?

Louise Perry 2:01:19 Um, so that combination of traits, I think, comes quite clearly from the literature looking at, um, sex offenders in prison and how they tend to differ from the general population.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:30 Hmm.

Louise Perry 2:01:30 And those traits are more likely to be found in sex offenders in prison, who obviously are not gonna be quite representative of sex offenders because only about 1% of sex offenders go to prison. Um, so they're not gonna be perfectly representative. But it does suggest that there is a, there is a trend-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:48 Yeah

Louise Perry 2:01:48 ... in that regard.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:49 So one of the, one of the interesting things I thought about that list-

Louise Perry 2:01:53 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 2:01:53 ... hypermasculinity, disagreeableness, impulsivity, um, maybe not promiscuity. Uh, but at least, but certainly those three, uh, sort of s- seem Uh, somewhat similar to kind of the dark triad traits that-

Louise Perry 2:02:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:02:07 ... that people talk about

Louise Perry 2:02:07 Yeah, yeah. Dark triad traits are a great predictor of sexual aggression.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:10 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:02:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:10 Which seem to be particularly attractive to particularly younger women.

Louise Perry 2:02:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:14 And so it seems like we have this weird-

Louise Perry 2:02:15 It's a bit unfortunate.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:16 Yes. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:02:17 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:17 What's, what's going on there?

Louise Perry 2:02:18 Um, yeah, I don't know why they would be, but yes, it does appear to be the case that some dark triad traits can improve your prospects on the dating market, um, I guess in terms of being you're effective at manipulating people, things like that.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:35 Yeah. And so I guess if you were giving action points to your daughter or something, it would be a case of even though you might find these men somewhat more attractive-

Louise Perry 2:02:43 Sometimes, yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:02:44 ... than, but actually this is, you know, when you're 18-

Louise Perry 2:02:48 It's not what you want

Ali Abdaal 2:02:49 ... 19, 17-

Louise Perry 2:02:49 Yes

Ali Abdaal 2:02:49 ... you don't necessarily know what's good for you, so, like, you know, be a little bit careful, please.

Louise Perry 2:02:53 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:53 Is that, is that the kind of vibe?

Louise Perry 2:02:54 Yes. I mean, just anecdotally, I don't know about research on this, but, um, I, I think that there's a lot of variation between women in terms of how much women are attracted to the dark triad traits.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:04 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:03:04 I personally have never found them attractive, but clearly anecdotally it's the case that some women do like the kind of the bad boy image. And it is a, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a risky combo in terms of the risk of sexual aggression.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:18 Hmm. One of the, uh, one of the other ones is, uh, and again, somewhat controversial, don't use dating apps. Mutual friends can vet histories and punish bad behavior. Dating apps can't.

Louise Perry 2:03:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:29 I totally get the rationale here, 'cause mutual friends can indeed vet histories and punish bad behaviors, but dating apps can't. And yet if we look at the stats, it seems like, you know, the majority of couples are now meeting on dating apps.

Louise Perry 2:03:39 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:39 Do you actually, are you a- actually advocating for a blanket ban on dating apps for, or, or, is there some-

Louise Perry 2:03:44 Oh, I'm not saying ban them

Ali Abdaal 2:03:44 ... yeah.

Louise Perry 2:03:44 I, I mean I think the base- I, I think people probably do mostly agree with me that they're not the, they're not the best way. I think the problem you've got though is that now people are so, it's so much become the norm-

Ali Abdaal 2:03:55 Yeah

Louise Perry 2:03:56 ... that doing anything else is difficult. Although I do have female friends who've, like, made a conscious decision not to use dating apps, 'cause actually it's not worth it. I mean, I've just, I've just actually filed an essay on this. Um, and I spoke to loads of friends in depth about their experience of using the apps. And, like, one friend told me, I was really struck by this, 'cause she's, like, super beautiful, super attractive in every possible way. S- has been on the apps for years and years, still hasn't found a boyfriend. And she said that of 95% of the dates she's been on when she's met via apps have not ended, have not had a second date.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:30 Hmm. Wow.

Louise Perry 2:04:31 And another friend who said as well that she, she tried the apps, just they weren't working, and then she ended up actually having a relationship with someone who initially she'd seen his pho- who was a mutual friend link. She initially she'd seen his photo and thought, "No, thanks." And then she met him and was really attracted to him, and it worked out really well.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:49 Hmm.

Louise Perry 2:04:49 And both saying, like, "Ah, I don't think the apps are very good." I mean, they're good in the sense that they give you access to a very wide pool, particularly if you're in London or something. Like, there are so many single people within your vicinity. But in terms of quality, I don't know. And I think also that because, I mean, we spoke about the whole hypergamy problem on the apps, but also the apps do tend to encourage a sort of anonymous vibe which encourages bad behavior. Um, if you don't have any link to anyone, like, there are basically no consequences if you misbehave.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:21 Hmm.

Louise Perry 2:05:21 Um, everything from ghosting through to sexual assault, there are basically no consequences. And so, like, I totally get the appeal, and I also totally get the fact that I'm, like, happily married, so it's easy for me to say this. I didn't meet my husband via the apps, but also that was the period before they were normal. Um, equally though, I think, like, the downsides are pretty stark, and again, I think particularly for women.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:47 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:05:47 If you're one of these guys who are getting thousands of, like, matches on Tinder, it's gonna be pretty hard to resist.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:53 Yeah. But I guess as women, like, I, I, I mean, every single woman that I've ever spoken to has had one or more or even more than 10 bad experiences on dating apps.

Louise Perry 2:06:03 Oh, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:03 Whereas very few men I know would, would have said that they had a bad experience. Because I guess, like-

Louise Perry 2:06:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:06:07 ... kind of worst-case scenario for a dude is it's ki- the date is kind of boring.

Louise Perry 2:06:10 Right.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:10 Worst-case scenario for a woman is just, like, really bad. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:06:13 It's like a serial killer, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:14 Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:06:14 There, you, um, there was this film, I can't remember what it's called. There was this film that came out last year or earlier this year, um, that was about, um, a woman who meets a guy on a dating app, and it all, all seems to be going well, but then it turns out he's actually a cannibal serial killer who, like, kills women and sells their meat on the black market.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:37 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:06:37 And it's supposed to be a comedy, this film.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:40 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:06:40 Apparently it's... I have not actually seen the whole thing, but apparently it's, it's, like, horrific to watch. But I thought it was really interesting that this, it was female writer, female director. It's very much, like, told from the female perspective.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:51 Hmm.

Louise Perry 2:06:51 And I thought it was really interesting that this was, like, what the female imagination collectively was coming up with as, like, the, the film about dating apps. Because obviously it's everyone, it's every woman's worst nightmare, but it's also, I think, expressive of just, like, a general horror. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:07:05 Hmm.

Louise Perry 2:07:06 When I text, when I texted female friends earlier this week, 'cause I was writing this essay, to, to ask for quotes about Tinder and, 'cause it's the 10th anniversary of Tinder.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:13 Oh, right. Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:07:14 I was just, like, inundated with, "They're terrible. Let me list all the, like, horrible things I've experienced on them."

Ali Abdaal 2:07:22 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:07:22 So.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:23 Damn.

Louise Perry 2:07:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:07:25 Um, I guess last thing I'd like to ask you about. So, um, you have, uh, recent- well, I guess, uh, a year and a bit ago had, uh, a baby son.

Louise Perry 2:07:32 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:33 Um, and you have, like, action points for what you would tell your daughter or, uh, but w-

Louise Perry 2:07:38 Not for this. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:07:39 ... do you, yeah.

Louise Perry 2:07:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:39 Do you have any action points for what you would tell your son? How, like, you know, how should men behave in the sexual and dating marketplace, as it were?

Louise Perry 2:07:47 So it is something that I've not really written about it, but it is something that my husband and I talk about a lot, because obviously we- our son's a toddler, so it's not yet relevant, but-

Ali Abdaal 2:07:54 Hmm

Louise Perry 2:07:54 ... it's something, it's something to think about as a parent. I think that, um, I think that it is really important to channel, um- Like, youthful male energy, which is, which, which is like a different thing from, you know, if we're accepting the men and women, women are different thesis, right?

Ali Abdaal 2:08:16 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:08:16 We're accepting that, um, men are gonna have higher sex drives, generally higher energy, aggression, all this kind of stuff. Like, you can't suppress that and I don't think you, I don't think it's wise to try. But you can channel it in positive directions. So, so like one of the things that my husband is personally very keen on is martial arts, and, um, he's done a lot of kickboxing and boxing over the years. And he thinks it's very important for boys to do that.

Ali Abdaal 2:08:41 Mm.

Louise Perry 2:08:41 Like, girls too. It's fine. I've done a bit of martial arts as well, like, it's good fun, it's good exercise. But he thinks it's really important for boys because it's a way of like taking that instinct towards fighting and being like destructive and energetic and whatever, and, and taming it and making it po- a positive thing. And I think that principle in general is a good one-

Ali Abdaal 2:09:08 Yeah

Louise Perry 2:09:08 ... in relation to boys.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:10 Nice. Um, uh, I guess, uh, there is, there is just one thing I wanna end with

Ali Abdaal 2:09:14 which is, um, in the book, let me see if I can find it. Uh, you've got this sort of list of four questions, uh, that women should ask themselves and that men should ask themselves.

Louise Perry 2:09:23 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:23 Um, I don't know-

Louise Perry 2:09:24 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:09:24 ... if you can remember them off the top of your head, but I'll, I'll-

Louise Perry 2:09:25 I kinda crowdsourced them from-

Ali Abdaal 2:09:27 Yeah

Louise Perry 2:09:27 ... people who'd, from friends.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:28 Um, hang on. Where is it? Ah, here we go. This one, this, this is a, this is a good one. Um-

Louise Perry 2:09:33 I did it because people love quizzes.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:35 Yeah, people do love quizzes.

Louise Perry 2:09:36 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:09:37 Um, so I'll just kind of read this out by kind of quoting, quoting from the book, and then I'd just love for, for you to kind of riff on these for-

Louise Perry 2:09:43 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:09:43 ... for men and women.

Louise Perry 2:09:44 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:44 And listeners or viewers can answer these questions for themselves-

Louise Perry 2:09:46 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:09:46 ... and, uh, feel whatever you wanna feel. Um, so, uh, if you're a woman who's had casual sexual relationships with men, with men in the past, you might try answering the following questions as honestly as you can. One, did you consider your virginity to be an embarrassing burden you wanted to be rid of? Two, do you ever feel disgusted when you think about consex- uh, consensual sexual experiences you've had in the past? Three, have you ever become emotionally attached to a casual sexual partner and c- and concealed this, this attachment from him? And four, have you ever done something sexually that you found painful or unpleasant and concealed this discomfort from your partner either during sex or afterwards? And you go on to say that if your score is zero, then congratulations, your high sociosexuality and good luck have allowed you to successfully navigate a treacherous sex- sexual marketplace. But if you answered yes to any of these questions, as I suspect you probably did, you are entitled to feel angry at a sexual culture that has set you up to fail. Yeah, I guess-

Louise Perry 2:10:43 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:10:43 ... having, having done 50 of these podcast interviews now, how do, how do you feel about these questions and, yeah.

Louise Perry 2:10:46 This is actually the first time anyone's brought them up. But I, 'cause I th- yeah, I think those are... I sourced those questions from, from talking to lots and lots of friends, um, many of whom had, had sort of gone through this journey that I describe of, you know, previously basically, like, relying on cope in relation to the, the, like, s- casual sex as empowering narrative. Um, and then later being like, "I can't believe I put up with that. I can't believe that I [laughs] you know, believed all of that." And I think that those questions do sort of drill down into that self-deception factor-

Ali Abdaal 2:11:28 Hmm

Louise Perry 2:11:28 ... which is very difficult, where you want to think, "I'm doing this for myself. I, I sincerely want this," but actually, do you? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:11:41 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and, and I think, uh, one of, one of the things when I, when I just kind of ran, ran these questions by, by a few friends is-

Louise Perry 2:11:49 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:11:49 ... that, like, basically the answer from men for all of those questions is just like, "Well, obviously not." Like, it's, it's just-

Louise Perry 2:11:54 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:11:54 ... it's just not even a thing. It's n- it's not even a consideration almost.

Louise Perry 2:11:57 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 2:11:57 And yet it clearly is for, like, every single female friend that I've run those questions by has always been like, "Oh, yeah."

Louise Perry 2:12:02 What's the average score-

Ali Abdaal 2:12:03 Um-

Louise Perry 2:12:04 ... that they said?

Ali Abdaal 2:12:05 They didn't say. I didn't, I didn't w-

Louise Perry 2:12:05 Okay

Ali Abdaal 2:12:05 ... I was just like, kind of more than-

Louise Perry 2:12:06 But like not zero.

Ali Abdaal 2:12:07 Yeah, not zero. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:12:08 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 2:12:08 Um-

Louise Perry 2:12:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:12:09 Yeah. Uh, there was, there was one you had... Uh-huh, uh, hang on. Where's the one for men?

Louise Perry 2:12:16 So the male ones I, yeah, again, crowdsourced fr- from male friends-

Ali Abdaal 2:12:20 Hmm

Louise Perry 2:12:20 ... who were pretty shifty about it, but [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:12:22 Yeah. Um-

Louise Perry 2:12:24 I, I persuaded them. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:12:25 Here we go. Um, so you kinda talk about this, uh, this situation where it's, it's sort of like friends with benefits and the woman has, quote, quote, "feelings" for the man.

Louise Perry 2:12:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:12:36 And the man's just like-

Louise Perry 2:12:37 And he kind of knows, but yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:12:38 ... he kinda knows, but he's always seems a bit, seems a bit surprised, be like, "What? Really? She, she, she caught feelings? What? I had, I had no idea."

Louise Perry 2:12:42 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 2:12:43 Um, and you say that, uh, these men seem to be genuinely bewildered by the fact that the women that they have been having sex with for many months are unhappy in these pseudo relationships, and the women seem to have drifted into this arrangement, not realizing how little regard their partners really have for them. This is a tragedy of mutual incomprehension. However, I cannot help but harbor a sneaking suspicion that many men, perhaps all, do realize that operating in, quote, "cad mode" is not actually harmless. Male readers who have ever had heterosexual casual sex might like to ask themselves these questions, a counterpart to the questions I addressed to female readers earlier in the chapter. One, have you ever had sex with a woman you'd be embarrassed to introduce to your friends? Two, have you ever failed to contact a woman after sex? Three, have you ever suspected that your casual partner was becoming emotionally attached to you and failed either to s- uh, and failed either to commit or to break off the relationship? And four, have you ever encouraged a woman to do something sexually even though she showed reluctance? The answer to all of these questions ought to be no, but a culture of casual sex incentivizes men to do such things, and generally with no social penalty. If anything, men who fuck and chuck, quote, "good time only" women can often expect to increase their social status among their male peers, at least in the short term. Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:13:54 What did...

Ali Abdaal 2:13:55 Shifty responses there. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:13:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:13:58 Lots of shifty responses there.

Louise Perry 2:13:59 Again, non-zero.

Ali Abdaal 2:13:59 Yeah. Again, very much-

Louise Perry 2:14:00 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:14:00 ... non-zero.

Louise Perry 2:14:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:14:01 Very much feeling like, like, again, this Aziz Ansari situation.

Louise Perry 2:14:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:14:06 It's just so ridiculously common-

Louise Perry 2:14:08 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:14:09 ... that-

Louise Perry 2:14:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:14:10 ... it, it... And- I remember when that article came out, it was like a real like, oh my God moment for like everyone I know who read that article because everyone knew that it was such a common situation.

Louise Perry 2:14:22 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 2:14:22 And the language of consent was not appropriate to actually be able to have that conversation.

Louise Perry 2:14:28 Which was probably-

Ali Abdaal 2:14:29 Yeah

Louise Perry 2:14:29 ... one of the good things to come out of Me Too, in that I think that there probably were men who were paying attention to it and who maybe were doing this stuff on a mild level who were like, "Oh, man, I'm like, I'm slightly guilty of this." I think the only problem though is that in general, when we're sort of, um, trying to appeal to men in this way, the men who are listening are the ones who are already pretty good.

Ali Abdaal 2:14:55 Mm.

Louise Perry 2:14:55 Like Harvey Weinstein doesn't care.

Ali Abdaal 2:14:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Louise Perry 2:14:57 Right? Like he's not listening. Um, and obviously there is, there is... it's a good thing to nudge men who are like, like well-intentioned towards behaving better. But there is an extent to which like the guys who are listening are the guys who are already on board.

Ali Abdaal 2:15:13 Yeah.

Louise Perry 2:15:14 So.

Ali Abdaal 2:15:14 Indeed.

Louise Perry 2:15:15 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:15:15 Um, anyway, thank you very much, Louise. This has been wonderful.

Louise Perry 2:15:18 Thank you so much.

Ali Abdaal 2:15:18 Um, any final piece of advice you would give to any young men or women listening to this-

Louise Perry 2:15:22 Um, I mean-

Ali Abdaal 2:15:23 ... uh, or watching this podcast?

Louise Perry 2:15:23 There's quite a lot in the book. I mean, my, uh, the- sometimes people ask me what's my like one underlying advice to women, and I think what it is, is the problem with sexual, the problem with liberal feminism and sex positive feminism as a, as, as, um, an ideology is that it, it really discourages women from listening to their instincts. And if anything, you're, because the pressure is on you to be open-minded, tolerant, like not to be hung up on like silly traditionalism and all of this kind of stuff, um, that can translate when it's combined with female agreeableness. As we discussed earlier in the show, women are more agreeable than men on average. It can translate into just like suppressing feelings of distress and anxiety and trying to train yourself out of those responses. And I think, no, if like, if your, if your instinctive response is any kind of distress, y- any ideology that tells you that you shouldn't be listening to that is not a, a good ideology to follow.

Ali Abdaal 2:16:24 Right.

Louise Perry 2:16:24 So I guess that's my like, that's the basis-

Ali Abdaal 2:16:28 Yeah

Louise Perry 2:16:28 ... of all of this.

Ali Abdaal 2:16:29 Trust your gut. Listen to your instincts.

Louise Perry 2:16:30 Trust your gut. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:16:30 Don't let society tell you that your gut is in fact wrong.

Louise Perry 2:16:33 Yeah. Pretty much.

Ali Abdaal 2:16:34 Nice. Well, thank you very much.

Louise Perry 2:16:35 Thank you so much.

Ali Abdaal 2:16:36 All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.