Why hookup culture splits feminists on freedom and risk

1. 0:00 – 2:14

   Intro

   1. EKErica Komisar0:00

      The feminism movement didn't unite women, it split women.

   2. NANarrator0:03

      I feel totally-

   3. EKErica Komisar0:03

      Wait, listen. 50% of young women don't wanna have children. They're really preoccupied with making money and materialism.

   4. NANarrator0:10

      But we're still looking at a society that is increasingly telling women where they could be better.

   5. LPLouise Perry0:16

      But sometimes feminism expects women to be prioritized and both sexes want the privileges without the responsibilities.

   6. EKErica Komisar0:22

      Can I just add? We are producing women and men who are (beep) and I'll tell you what I mean by that. It'll be an interesting discussion. We're joined by three leading and outspoken voices in female societal issues with very different opinions. To unpack the choices and consequences women face in modern society.

   7. NANarrator0:38

      The sexual revolution gave women freedom.

   8. LPLouise Perry0:40

      But things like the washing machine, women entering the labor force, the pill had enormous social changes. For instance, it gave the illusion that sex was consequence free.

   9. EKErica Komisar0:49

      But the second wave of the feminist movement was every woman should want free sex and yet 82% of young women are depressed and anxious after casual sexual encounters. Or every woman should wanna go out to work and leave their children in daycare, but we are doing terrible damage to our children by putting them in daycare.

   10. LPLouise Perry1:07

       This strain of feminism has basically aspired as much as possible to make women like men, and now gender roles are changing.

   11. EKErica Komisar1:14

       And we've gone so far, so we have women dominating men. That-

   12. NANarrator1:17

       How are we dominating men though?

   13. EKErica Komisar1:18

       Oh, my goodness. 60% of college students are women. Men-

   14. NANarrator1:22

       That's not us dominating them.

   15. EKErica Komisar1:23

       No. Let me finish. Young men are afraid of women and the power they have over them.

   16. NANarrator1:27

       Oh, God. To blame feminism for those things, I mean, it's insane.

   17. EKErica Komisar1:31

       But there are solutions.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett1:33

       I'm just gonna jump in there and talk about a report that came out in 2025. And this was really shocking. What are your thoughts about this?

   19. LPLouise Perry1:38

       Okay.

   20. EKErica Komisar1:39

       So first of all-

   21. SBSteven Bartlett1:43

       This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. (gentle music)

2. 2:14 – 3:28

   Introducing the Panel

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:14

      Let's start with some introductions. Louise, what is your professional background and what do I need to understand and know about your experiences that feed into your perspective on this subject?

   2. LPLouise Perry2:24

      So my professional background, I'm a journalist. Um, I write about ideas for a living. I don't have, like a political agenda. I'm just, I just write and say things that I think are true. In terms of how I arrived at some of my views on what we're gonna talk about today, sexual revolution, I think I was raised with a lot of the assumptions around the sexual revolution, which are sort of like the water that we swim in now culturally. And it wasn't until I got to university that I started gradually unpicking them. After I was, I left university, I worked in a rape crisis center, which was quite formative for me in that I saw some of the ways in which some of the feminist theory that I had learned at university didn't quite map onto reality. And then I, after leaving that job, I became a journalist. Again, I kept thinking about these things and I guess I've reached a point where I take a very mixed view of this history. I think there are good things, I think there are bad things that have come out of the sexual revolution.

3. 3:28 – 10:01

   What Is the Sexual Revolution?

   1. LPLouise Perry3:28

   2. SBSteven Bartlett3:28

      Louise, can you define for me what you mean by sexual revolution for anybody that doesn't know? Because it's gonna be quite an important term today.

   3. LPLouise Perry3:34

      Right. So I think that there are two things really, the ideological event really of the 1960s and 1970s. So this was a, a period of not just in relation to sexual relationships, but all sorts of things. A period of really questioning and challenging traditional ideas, and particularly traditional Christian ideas about how, what sex relationships ought to look like. I think actually the, the, the point that we've reached in terms of progressive culture is the assumption that those traditional ideas are necessarily questionable or necessarily, uh, fit to be challenged. I think that's the ideological thing that we're talking about. But there's this other thing that happens at the same time, which is partially connected, which is a material change. So you have the introduction of the pill, the advent of safe abortion. Remember historically, abortion is not safe. So you have the advent of safe abortion and of course it's decriminalization. You have things like the washing machine and central heating and all sorts of other domestic appliances, domestic technologies, which actually have been enormously important in changing sexual relationships 'cause all of a sudden it means that it just basically takes less time to run a home. And so it becomes more possible for women to enter the workforce. So then you see this wave of not only changing marriage rates and birth rates, but also women entering the labor force en mass. And really some enormous social changes, like so enormous that it can be a little bit hard in 2025 to realize how enormous they were 'cause we've become used to them.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:09

      We'll talk about all of that today. Going clockwise then, Erica, same question to you about your background and how, the work that's fed into the perspective you have.

   5. EKErica Komisar5:16

      I'm a psychoanalyst in private practice. I'm an author. I write books about parenting and the book I'm probably most well known for is my book Being There. And it's basically about the neuroscience of attachment or the importance of mothers in the first three years of a child's life to create emotional security which lays down the foundation for mental health in the future. And so from my perspective, I guess the conversation we're gonna have, I should say right off the bat, um, I consider myself a feminist. Um, but I consider myself a term that I like better and that my community uses, the people that I work with and which is I consider myself a maternal feminist. Basically there was a, a school of thought called maternal feminism which really elevated women in their work as mothers and really talked about it as very important work. Um, and so I'm not an anti-feminist and I'm certainly for women to have choice. So it's, uh, it'll be an interesting discussion. I guess you could say I'm more of a centrist on this topic as Louise said. Um, there are parts of feminism that I think really helped women and there are parts that really did a lot of harm to children.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett6:26

      And lastly, Deborah.

   7. DFDeborah Frances-White6:29

      Yes.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett6:29

      Same question to you.

   9. DFDeborah Frances-White6:31

      So, I am best known as the host of the Guilty Feminist podcast, and I started that podcast to learn about feminism, and I have since researched a lot. I wrote a book called The Guilty Feminist. I've just written a book called Six Conversations We're Scared To Have, which does also challenge some of the directions that we've gone, but more in a- about how combative we've become as progressive people to each other, and how difficult it is to talk to people on the right now, and how we need to get back in rooms, and we need to be having difficult discussions like this. So, it's interesting what Louise says about being raised in a progressive household, but then being disillusioned and thinking that there was, there's some ways in which life was better before the sexual revolution, um, because I'm effectively a time traveler. I did live before the sexual revolution because when I was 14, just coming into my puberty, my family joined a religious cult. I didn't have any normal sexual development, and I didn't get out. I didn't escape that patriarchal cult till I was in my mid-20s. So, I know what it is, and I do not believe women want it. I know what it is to not have autonomy, to not have agency, and to not have emotional freedom. And those are the three big things that I think the sexual revolution gave women. First of all, agency. I think it's just agency is so important. So, agency is just the ability to go around and choose what you do moment to moment. And autonomy is, can I, can I decide what my life looks like? The shape of my life. What, what choices do I have? And emotional freedom is the third one, and I don't think the sexual revolution did f- did give us emotional freedom (laughs) , because I think we're still sitting in a lot of guilt as women as to like, if I'm at work, I should be at home with my children. If I'm at home with my children, am I providing for them financially well enough or am I, am I gonna have a career when I go back to work? Um, if I'm doing both of those things very well, am I good enough daughter, friend, am I running a half marathon for charity? Like, we are in a stage of such guilt... That's why my show and my, one of my books is called The Guilty Feminist, because I felt that feminism had become another thing to feel guilty about. And so anything to me that engenders more shame in women or more guilt in women or takes their autonomy away, even emotionally, for me, I would like to move far away from that.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett9:12

       Mm-hmm.

   11. DFDeborah Frances-White9:12

       Because in my life, every year I've been away from that cult and I have had more autonomy and more emotional freedom, I have felt more spaciousness, and I have become a better person-

   12. SBSteven Bartlett9:27

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DFDeborah Frances-White9:27

       ... a better partner. I have maternal roles in my life. It makes me so much better in those roles if I'm filled up, if I'm creatively fulfilled. And it also makes me a better person in my community in every way. So that's, for me, what feminism is.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett9:46

       So autonomy, emotional freedom, and agency. I also want to touch on the word guilt as well because I remember that being pertinent to our conversation. But if, if I reflect on those three words, Louise, autonomy, emotional freedom, and agency as the byproduct of the sexual revolution, would you agree with that?

4. 10:01 – 14:48

   Autonomy, Freedom, and Agency as a Byproduct of the Sexual Revolution

   1. SBSteven Bartlett10:01

   2. LPLouise Perry10:01

      Yes and no. So, I think that... Can I give an example that is, like, quite dark, but I think throws us immediately into, like, some of these really difficult questions about freedom and whose freedom, right? There's this line from Matthew Arnold that I really like, "Freedom is a really good horse to ride, but to ride somewhere." Like, freedoms ought to have a purpose, right? And so an example from my professional life, which I think highlights some of the issues about the sexual revolution promoting freedom, the law around BDSM. I won't go into the details because it's boring, but there's, like, complicated law around BDSM basically, like, the, so, so this is, um, bondage, domination, sadomasochism. So people basically doing consensually violent or abusive things in sex, so stuff that would be illegal if there weren't consent pretty much. And the law around it is complicated. The law basically says that you can consent up to a certain level of harm, and then above that level of harm, you're criminally liable, and if something goes wrong, like, you're done for it. And there's been ongoing campaigns by proponents of sexual freedom to loosen these laws and to make it so that you can consent to more than what you legally can at the moment. So consent to, like, serious body modifications as a sex thing or consent to quite serious violence as a sex thing. Like, if something goes wrong at the moment, you might be criminally liable. So, me and a bunch of other feminists set up a group called We Can't Consent To This. The reason we did this is because there were an increasing number of cases in the UK, this isn't unique to the UK, of women who had died during sex and their partners claimed that they had consented to the violence that killed them. So this was normally strangulation, but there were other, like, horrible ways in which these women died. And these men were getting away with this in the sense that they were successfully claiming, "No, no, no, this was all just a sex game," and they were successfully avoiding a murder prosecution and sometimes getting very light sentences for manslaughter. And I think this is a really, really good example of freedom for who and freedom for what because you can completely see why some campaigners would want the law in BDSM to be much more liberal and they would say and they do say, you know, "I'm a consenting adult. Who are you to tell me that I can't do X, Y, Z in the bedroom? Who are you to tell me that the law will just step in and try and criminalize what adults do in the privacy of their own homes?"... and you can see their argument. But then I say, "Okay, but the problem is we're all connected to one another, and your freedoms impact on mine." And this all, you know, a society is greater than the sum of its parts. And if you're going to say that sexual freedom is the preeminent value, then I don't know what we do in these cases, these concrete cases where it seems to me that a terrible wrong has been done to this woman, and if we don't have illiberal laws, at least partially illiberal laws, then men who make this offense are gonna get away with it. And so, I, I, I'm sorry this is a dark example to, like, kick off a conversation with, but I just think it's a pertinent example of how freedom is difficult and agency is difficult and choice is difficult, and we can say that these things are, are good, generally. I think they are good, generally, but they are virtues that need to be balanced against other virtues. And that's the challenge.

   3. EKErica Komisar13:29

      Freedom is a wonderful thing. No one would wanna take freedom away from human beings, but excessive freedom without structure is not good for human beings. So I'll just, uh, use the example because I talk about children a lot. If you raise your children with respect for their will, that is a good thing, right? You don't wanna raise... You don't wanna quash their will. You want to support their individuality and support their choices. And, and even when raising children, you're gonna give them choices. Do you want eggs or waffles for breakfast? Do you wanna wear your green pants or your blue pants? No more than that with small children. But if you don't provide any structure for them, they don't feel loved, they don't feel secure, they don't feel stable. And so what I'm afraid of is that we went too far. It's not that freedom isn't a good thing. It's that excessive freedom without any structure at all can also make us feel untethered, unbound, without connections to the people that we're most intimate with, and that's my concern. So it's not that sexual freedom isn't a good thing. It's that, in my mind, it may have gone too far.

   4. DFDeborah Frances-White14:47

      So-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett14:47

      Just,

5. 14:48 – 30:47

   Casual Sex and Hookup Culture

   1. SBSteven Bartlett14:48

      just to add to that before you jump in there, um, des- despite the general decline in sex, especially amongst younger people, societal acceptance of casual sex has grown quite rapidly. In the UK, approval of casual sex rose from just 10% in 1999 to 42% in 2022.

   2. EKErica Komisar15:05

      The hook-up, the hook-up culture.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett15:06

      Yeah.

   4. DFDeborah Frances-White15:08

      So when you say rules and structure, Erica, I'm really interested in that turn of phrase, because of course children need rules and structure, but women aren't children.

   5. EKErica Komisar15:19

      Well, we're all children. Men are children too. From a psychoanalyst's perspective, there is a child in everyone, but, yeah, yeah.

   6. DFDeborah Frances-White15:25

      Of course, but I think when we're talking about rules and grown women, we are really, really in dangerous water, because we are looking at s- society that is increasingly closing down on women and telling women where they could do better, be better. If we're looking at an extreme example, we're looking at Iran in 1970s, and women in parliament and women walking around, as, uh, part of the sexual revolution, in miniskirts and having a wonderful time, and then you're looking at women in Iran now, you're wo- looking at women in Afghanistan now. Women in Afghanistan now have rules, and they have structure. They can't stand near a window. They can't leave the house without a man. They can't, uh, h- raise, they can't use their voice in public. They can't sing. Like, anything that says rules to me, I'm immediately like... Firstly, our society has plenty of structure. We have a lot of structure. We all have to work to make a living. We are all encouraged into monogamous relationships, and there's a feel that you're successful if you find the one and get married and have 2.4 children. There's, uh, so much structure in our lives, there's very little time for relaxation or even considering what, what we really might wanna do. I would be very intrigued to know what you mean by, "Women should have rules."

   7. EKErica Komisar16:54

      Yeah, so-

   8. DFDeborah Frances-White16:54

      What, what do you mean?

   9. EKErica Komisar16:55

      So first of all, I don't agree with you, if I can just, uh, say that I don't agree that we are encouraging monogamy. I think we're encouraging polygamy, um, and I don't mean marriage polygamy. I mean multiple partners, young people are hooking up. Um, I wrote an article for the Institute for Family Studies on why, uh, on the statistics on the hookup culture and what it's doing to young people in terms of their mental health. It's causing them to feel, um, more depressed, more anxious, more embarrassed, having more regrets, self-esteem issues. It's got some major implications, and we're talking the statistics say 72% to 82%, 72% of young men and 82% of women, uh, young women, are feeling depressed and anxious after these casual sexual encounters. Tinder has a, an ad that says, "Meet the love of your night." Um, it, it, what it does is it takes something so sacred and intimate, and it turns it into something, um, not just casual, but it turns it into something irrelevant, unimportant, and dangerous, if you ask me, um, emotionally dangerous, and it can be physically dangerous. If you're having casual sex, you could get a sexually transmitted disease. AIDS is still around. I think, in a way, what we've taught our kids and what I encourage the young people that I work with is that, um, experiment with sex, but care about the people that you're experimenting with. Find people who care about you and who you care about, so that structure.

   10. DFDeborah Frances-White18:35

       Can I just counter-

   11. EKErica Komisar18:37

       Mm-hmm.

   12. DFDeborah Frances-White18:37

       ... about this sort of idyllic-... option of monogamy. In the United Kingdom, the police receive a domestic abuse-related call every 30 seconds, yet it's, it's estimated that less, that less than 24% of domestic abuse crime is reported to the police. One in four women in England and Wales will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime. On average, nearly two women are killed a week in this country, and I know that America has a similar story, but probably worse 'cause there's guns. That is, this is around the world. It's the same in Australia. It is not an either/or. It's not that women were so happy and fulfilled in the 1950s because their husbands would go to work and... I mean, watch Mad Men, which is a, you know, it's a sort of, uh, researched idea of how things often were for women then, and men, and how, you know, Don Draper would go off into the city, he would have a f- fulfilling career, then he would sleep with any number of women and come home to his wife who knew he was having affairs, who could sense it, who could vibe it, who could smell the perfume, and had to just put up with it until she couldn't any longer.

   13. EKErica Komisar19:46

       Mm-hmm.

   14. DFDeborah Frances-White19:46

       And she was at risk of, of STDs because he was going out and doing whatever he wanted. The idea that a sort of mon- mon- monogamy is this utopia, and since we've gone into a more hook-up culture, I still think there's a hell of a lot of pressure for people to find the right one. Yes, people hook up before they find the right one, but there is pressure to have the rom-com ending. Most people, if they're hooking up, are hooking up to have sexual satisfaction while they are looking for a longer term relationship, or they're not and they're really happy single and they're finding fulfillment, and that is the spaciousness and the freedom and the autonomy to do that. I love that women can choose that now. I love that women can say, "I'm really happy single. This settling for someone who's not good enough for me," or, uh, "doesn't suit me or it doesn't fit me doesn't have to happen for me anymore. I can live my full self, and maybe my career is more important to me or fulfilling, or my friendships or my desire for travel." I love that we have options. I want the women watching this to appreciate all the options that they have. All the options that they have. If they wanna be single, uh, they wanna hook up if they're looking, but in the t- meantime having that, that, that sexual freedom, I want them to have it all. But if the, what they want is this monogamy that you're talking about and find the love of their life and settle down and have two children or whatever they want, I want them to have that too.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett21:23

       Deborah, can I ask, do you, do you think that there is a cost to hook-up culture and casual sex in regards to the implications it has on women, as Erica was implying, psychologically, and is that more adverse in women than men?

   16. DFDeborah Frances-White21:36

       I think human beings can suffer from too much choice. Like, we know that if you put 800 varieties of jam out on a supermarket's shelf, people will buy less jam than if you put out eight, because they get confused and they just think, "Oh, God, I, I don't know. Uh, none of it, then," and they walk away. I think the fact that we have young people sitting in a bar on a, on a Hinge date, and while the, that person goes to the bar, they're like, "What else is out there?" I think that's bad for human beings.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett22:09

       Mm-hmm.

   18. DFDeborah Frances-White22:09

       I think that is bad for women, for men, for non-binary people. That's bad for everybody.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett22:16

       But this sort of sacredness, Erica was alluding to a sacredness of sex itself.

   20. DFDeborah Frances-White22:19

       Yes, I think that is, uh, not a thing, that we are somehow finding women find sex more sacred than men. I... (sighs)

   21. EKErica Komisar22:29

       I didn't say that women-

   22. SBSteven Bartlett22:31

       Yeah.

   23. EKErica Komisar22:31

       ... find it. I think it's sacred for men and women, but... Yeah.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett22:35

       Yeah, but you were speaking to, to a sort of sacredness to it.

   25. EKErica Komisar22:37

       Yeah.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett22:37

       And I know, Louise, in your work you've, you've talked about how there's different implications for men and women as it relates to casual sex.

   27. LPLouise Perry22:43

       So, (laughs) I think that hook-up culture basically is better suited to the average preferences of men than of women. So, the av- the average preferences of men are more likely to be, uh, towards the having lots of partners, jumping into bed really quickly end of the spectrum, basically, and this is what, um, psychologists call, um, sociosexuality. So, men are te- generally more unrestricted in their sociosexuality than are women, and hook-up culture favors the highly sociosexual. And actually, you can see this if you look at campus dating cultures and sexual cultures, which are interesting 'cause in a way, university campuses are almost a closed environment. You've got all these young, horny people hanging out, not very much to do, and like, interacting with one another. And on campuses which have more men than women, so the women are the scarcer resource, basically, assuming everyone's heterosexual, right? Um, they tend to have more, uh, more conservative sexual cultures, so more monogamy, less hooking up, people wait longer to have sex, et cetera. On campuses where there are fewer men and more women (clears throat) , which increasingly is true of all universities-

   28. EKErica Komisar23:51

       Yeah.

   29. LPLouise Perry23:51

       ... actually because-

   30. EKErica Komisar23:52

       60 to 40. Yeah.
6. 30:47 – 33:00

   One Sexual Partner for Life

   1. DFDeborah Frances-White30:48

      but if you're engaged, the next step is marriage. So, presumably, you're gonna marry that person, i.e., you're gonna sleep with, the first person you sleep with, if you take that advice, is your partner. So, you're gonna have one sexual partner for life. I do not recommend that, ideally, because I came from a religion where that was the only option, and because I didn't meet anybody, I atrophied. I had no intimacy.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett31:21

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DFDeborah Frances-White31:22

      I felt so lonely. Now, you're saying sometimes people have a hookup and they feel lonely afterwards. Uh, totally, of course, that's happened to everyone who's ever had casual sex at, in any quantity, where you feel a bit like, "Oh, that didn't fill me up." It's like, you know, when they say you go and have a Chinese meal and you feel hungry half an hour later and you were wanting more. There is no utopia here. There's only options. And th- what happened to me because I had no option, I had no autonomy, I became more and more atrophied, more and more lonely, more and more empty, more and more disconnected from myself. To this day, I struggle with that. I struggle with intimacy, with a- with, with, because we were in such a culture of you can't have sex before you get married that you didn't really make eye contact with people. You know, normal teenagers would sit on each other's laps and just experiment a little bit or they might have a little kiss or whatever. If you don't have anything like that, you can't really look at people properly because, you know, oh, it might lead to something. It took me so long to heal, guys, and however old you think I was when I lost my virginity, I was older. And it was tough because if you're losing your virginity very late, the person you're losing it with has had a more regular, healthy, in my opinion, sexual development. They've had their first girlfriend or boyfriend. They've, they've experienced a few things. It's still hard for me to say what I want. So, I don't recommend the other thing either, which is don't have sex with anyone until you're ready to, prepared at least to marry them.

7. 33:00 – 33:40

   Age of Marriage Increasing Over Time

   1. DFDeborah Frances-White33:00

   2. SBSteven Bartlett33:00

      I've got a graph here that somewhat dovetails into this conversation about when you should have sex, and also marriage as a subject, and it shows that from the 1970, in 1970s, roughly women would get married at about 21 years old, and now, this graph will be on the screen, it's about 30. Men used to get married at around 23 years old, and now it's just over 30, which is a pretty crazy climb.

   3. DFDeborah Frances-White33:27

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett33:27

      So, it feels to me if the sexual revolution took place in around this e- era where we see this rapid climb, maybe the two are somewhat interlinked, i.e., the age in which we'd be getting married or having sex under Louise's, you know, potential

8. 33:40 – 39:36

   Emotional Consequences of Sex

   1. SBSteven Bartlett33:40

      advice that it's

   2. LPLouise Perry33:40

      It's because of the pill.

   3. DFDeborah Frances-White33:42

      best it's worth it not to wait.

   4. LPLouise Perry33:42

      That's why that happened.

   5. DFDeborah Frances-White33:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LPLouise Perry33:44

      It's because it used to be that if you were having sex with someone, you were risking pregnancy, and now that's not... I mean, it is still true because actually all contraception fails and something like half of women in this country who get pregnant didn't mean to or whatever. So, the, the idea that it's foolproof is not true. But what the pill did when it arrived on the scene in the late '60s was it gave the illusion that sex was consequence-free. And it isn't on a physical level, not really. It's less, it's less consequential than it was because of the pill, but the physical, the physical consequences are still there. But I think just as importantly, it became no less emotionally consequential. Just because you're on the pill or using condoms or whatever, your mind, I'm thinking particularly of women who, as we talked about, bond more quickly, your mind still thinks that this person could well become the father of my child. You are still experiencing sex as, in the way that all of our ancestors did for all of human history up until five minutes ago, until we invented this new technology, and I think that's why it has to... I mean, the reason that women have evolved to be picky about who they have sex with is because getting pregnant is an extraordinarily consequential thing for women. It's dangerous, it's difficult, it's a huge, you know, investment of their time and of their life, and you don't wanna get pregnant by some bozo, right? That's why women tend to be very selective about who they're willing to have sex with and feel really bad. And I mean, I've gotta say, um, uh, leaving aside words like sacred because they're obviously difficult 'cause of the religious implications, I think that we should, as feminists, describe sex as at least special, like having some kind of special status. It's not like other kinds of socializing. It's not like having a conversation with someone or playing tennis with someone. And we can tell that it's-

   7. DFDeborah Frances-White35:40

      They've been doing it wrong. (laughs)

   8. LPLouise Perry35:41

      So, well, but we can tell... (laughs)

   9. EKErica Komisar35:43

      Well, it's, we could call it one of the most intimate experiences you can have-

   10. LPLouise Perry35:47

       Right.

   11. EKErica Komisar35:47

       ... as a human being.

   12. LPLouise Perry35:48

       And that's why rape is so bad, right? That's why feminists are so-

   13. EKErica Komisar35:52

       Because it bastardizes the most intimate experience by making it into vi- by turning it into violence, yeah.

   14. LPLouise Perry35:57

       Rape is worse than theft, for instance, or race, rape is worse than assault, like non-sexual assault, and law re- and the law recognizes that, and we all socially recognize that because there is something uniquely intimate and therefore uniquely violating about having sex without consent. And I think that it's really hard actually to hold those two things simultaneously in mind and say sex is unimportant, it's basically just like a skillset that you can practice on other people, that it's a leisure activity, all this kind of-

   15. EKErica Komisar36:26

       It trivializes it.

   16. LPLouise Perry36:27

       Right. And then also say, "Ah, but consent is extraordinarily important." Like, why? Do, do you not see the contradiction there?

   17. DFDeborah Frances-White36:36

       Autonomy. If I want it, if I want somebody, especially penetrative sex, you're talking about rape there, you're talking about penetrative sex, there's nothing worse than somebody inside your body violating your actual insides. Nothing worse than that.... that does not mean that women do not have sexual urges-

   18. EKErica Komisar37:01

       I thought you said that.

   19. DFDeborah Frances-White37:01

       ... that are exciting. Yeah, I know, know. Let me finish the sentence. That was a (inaudible) drop. That women don't have sexual urges that are just about attraction and a moment and fun and play. Play is so important to human beings. When I left that cult, it took me a long time and a number of different sexual experiences to find out what kind of sexuality I even had.

   20. EKErica Komisar37:27

       Mm-hmm.

   21. DFDeborah Frances-White37:27

       You can't necessarily find it with the first person you meet. They may not be sexually compatible with you. And you may not know how to communicate well with them and end up having a life of very boring missionary position sex. If you encourage young people just to have sex with the first person they meet and stay with that person, which I'm not saying you're saying, but I am saying if you don't have sex before you're engaged, will engagement leads to marriage, you may end up with very little sexual fulfillment compared to what you could have had. You might not. You might get lucky. The first person you meet might just be amazing in bed with you, and you find your space together, and it might be wonderful, but I would say that is unlikely. And I would say that the reason that the Pill changed how much sex women had and with, with what variety of partners is because it gave them autonomy. It gave them agency. Suddenly, I can, and guess what? When I can, I choose to try. When you give women the choice, which the Pill did, to have some experience, we see that most women want some experience, wanna find themselves sexually, wanna feel, "Oh, this or not that? Or yeah. Or oh, oh, my God, this one. This is amazing. I could be with this guy forever. We hit it off. He's great in bed. We're, you know, we're, we're working together. Oh, we've got a little problem now, but we'll work through it together because we love each other." Most people do some version of that, and maybe they hit a point in that monogamy where this relationship isn't working anymore, or something terrible happens, and they have another go at that. That's, that's a, a large pattern. Now, how much of that is because that's what society expects? I don't know, but that is what most people tend to do. So for me, saying that because one night at a music festival I had a really passionate, exciting encounter with somebody who I never saw again, that I am somehow minimizing rape is very disturbing.

   22. EKErica Komisar39:29

       Can I just interject and just say that, um, you're, you're right in turning to me and saying, "I didn't mean that you have to

9. 39:36 – 43:13

   Feminists Typically Have Had Trauma

   1. EKErica Komisar39:36

      marry your first partner." Um, but there's something very important about the emotional connection, and that's coming from maybe me being a therapist and knowing and seeing the pain that the young people who come to me are in when there's no emotional connection, and they give their bodies over. By the way, young men too. I think young men... I think it's shifting actually. It's interesting what I'm seeing in my practice. Young men are more vulnerable than women now. Women have taken on the role that young men used to have emotionally. And so, you know, women have all these choices and now they're leaving young men in the dust, and the young men are feeling lonely. And, you know, they, they have sex with a girl and they want to date her, and she says, "No, I'm dating f- I'm sleeping with five guys at the same time." And these are kids in their 20s. But sex is better with emotional connection. It doesn't mean you have to marry the first guy that you have sex with. I, I also wanna say that there is something called neurotic repetition. A lot of the early feminists had a lot of trauma. You had trauma. A lot of people have had trauma. And what happens with trauma is it tends to be like PTSD. If we have disconnection early on or abuse or violence against us, um, attachment disorders, as I've talked about in your other podcasts, when you're very young, it gets reenacted and repeated throughout your life over and over and over and over again. So interestingly, the early feminists were mostly traumatized women. If you look at the histories of them, they had physically abusive fathers, alcoholic fathers. They had, um, uncles who raped them. They had, I mean, terrible. Even their mothers too. I mean, just really abusive parents, but mostly the men in their life were horrible. And so a lot of this whole experience depends on where you come from and what you had, if you've had good models. I mean, it's why I sort of talk about... I'm writing a book about divorce. Why am I writing a book about divorce if I believe in relationships? Because divorce is gonna happen and we need to help parents to know how to raise healthy children in spite of it. But relationships matter. They matter in the raising of children. So when we have a disconnected society where we say, "Relationships don't matter, just sex matters. Sex, sex, sex." Of course, sex matters, but what I say to young people is sex is a very small part of a relationship. It really is, because in the beginning it's hot, hot, hot. And then as you get to know each other and you have the daily comings and goings of life, it's the friendship, it's the connection, it's the companionship, it's the relationship. But if you've had a lot of trauma, then you are not gonna turn towards relationships and you are not going to turn towards men. If men traumatized you and you saw a man abuse your mother, of course you're not gonna want men in your life. So a lot of it, I think, I think the feminist movement does something which it, it's... First of all, I'm gonna say, it's done a lot of good. I wouldn't be here. None of us would be here without it. Those women that took the risks, we have to be grateful toward. But, I mean, what it also did is it, it distorted a lot of...... the importance of relationships and how important male and female relationships are. I'll stop there 'cause I've talked too much, but...

10. 43:13 – 47:27

    Agency as a Personality Trait

    1. EKErica Komisar43:14

    2. LPLouise Perry43:14

       Can I say something about agency? Because this word came up earlier and I've been thinking about, a lot about it recently, and I just find it interesting as a subject. So I, I think that actually a better way of thinking about agency than as this binary thing that, you know, humans have agency, et cetera, is, um, is it's kind of more of a personality trait. I think that some people are very agentic. Some people are able to set their minds on doing something and they just make it happen. Those people are very well-suited to making their own decisions. Those people hate the idea of any kind of limits on their freedom. But they are unusual people. Most people, actually, they go with the flow, they kind of do what other people around them are doing, they drift a little bit, they're a little bit passive, they kind of make decisions based on what seems normal, they follow the template as it appears to them in their moment. But, you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that those people are more vulnerable to bad scripts.

    3. EKErica Komisar44:19

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LPLouise Perry44:20

       The problem with the sexual liberation narrative is it assumes that everyone is highly agentic. It assumes that everyone is capable of being faced with all these various choices and saying, "I'm gonna choose this one and that one," and making it happen, rather than what I think is more realistic, and particularly when you're talking about young people, and I think even more talking about young women. I think young women are particularly memetic and particularly... I mean, th- there are studies showing this, that women, for instance, are more likely to, like, imitate other people's body language. They're more likely to, they pick up slang more quickly than men do. Like, young women are very, uh, socially attuned, like more than any other group. They're very, uh, alive to what's high-status and low-status and, like, keen to imitate it. You also see this with fashion, all sorts of things, right? I think to just say to those young women, "Good news, you can choose anything you want, you can do anything you want," obviously if you are highly agentic. I think you mentioned, Deborah, young people who are just like, "No, I'm not into this, off the apps, not doing it," they're highly agentic.

    5. EKErica Komisar45:19

       Mm-hmm.

    6. LPLouise Perry45:19

       That's very impressive, but it's rare. Like, most people actually are basically gonna do what their peers do. And so that's why I think just saying, "Everyo- give everyone choice," and kind of close the, close the lid and say, "Good luck," I think that doesn't work. I think that actually we need to be a bit more prescriptive.

    7. DFDeborah Frances-White45:38

       Women were less agentic before the sexual revolution. Overall, as a population, we are more agentic now. We have more agency, and we flex that agency more frequently. If you are worried that young women seem to you to be memetic, i.e. in- influenced by their peer group, then we need education for what, what's happening in that peer group. I don't disagree with you that thinking about intimacy, thinking about, "Do I really wanna do this with my body? Do I wanna let this boy touch me here or there, or this girl, you know, do this or that with me," or whatever. Of course. But that's education so they can have agency, and that's the discussions that the parents have, ideally the schools are having.

    8. EKErica Komisar46:21

       It needs to be.

    9. DFDeborah Frances-White46:21

       We desperately need that, but-

    10. LPLouise Perry46:23

        That's what we're doing here, right? Or trying to.

    11. EKErica Komisar46:25

        Yeah. Yeah.

    12. DFDeborah Frances-White46:25

        But rather than saying, "They need rules," I would say, "They need to be further attuned to their own desires, their own body, their own environments, relationships." You know, "How long does it feel right to me, listening to my own body, listening to my own mind?" Having, uh, confidants that they can talk to who are older and more responsible if they don't feel comfortable talking to their parents, 'cause some kids, of course teenagers don't necessarily go, "Mom, I had this urge." Do you provide other people in their community who they might have that conversation with? There are all sorts of ways that we can make sure our girls, and our boys, have agency and listen to themselves. But when I hear "rules," when I hear, "It's just better for them not to until they're engaged, and then just stick with that person for life ideally," I fear that is going, taking us back generations, and women 100% were not happier then. They put us, put up with more.

11. 47:27 – 49:19

    Sex Education in Schools

    1. DFDeborah Frances-White47:27

    2. EKErica Komisar47:27

       I, I do wanna separate, um, young people from what you were talking about, adult women. I, I wanna separate them because they're not the same species. (laughs) Um, there's so much development going on in adolescence, and adolescence, as I said, goes on till 25. So by the time you're an adult woman, you are for the most part developed. By the time you get to 32, you know, there's gonna be stuff going on, but the major part of your personality and character development is, is pretty much set. And so that developing period is really more my concern. It's not that I'm not concerned about my older patients who come to me and talk about how free sex and, you know, multiple partners makes them feel good. I would say, "Great, it's your choice. You know, if that makes you feel good, wonderful." But in young people where they're developing, I agree with you that we need more education. Um, I, I'm all for more education. But I'm for edu- so we have so much sex education right now in schools. Too much sex education, if you ask me. Um, it, uh, we're teaching nine-year-olds about anal sex. We're teaching them about genital warts. That's not something a nine-year-old needs to know, you know, in school. So, but I think we're not teaching them about emotional connection, about relationships, about family, about, about the arc of a life, that if you wanna be single and you wanna have multiple partners and you wanna be free......that's your choice. I have no problem with that, but we're not teaching about the importance of connection and emotional connection and building families. And so what do we have? We have a bunch of young people out there who are having sex, but feeling empty and lonely and depressed and anxious and, and not knowing why, because we're, we are teaching sex, but we're not teaching about connection.

12. 49:19 – 51:12

    Female Pleasure

    1. EKErica Komisar49:19

    2. DFDeborah Frances-White49:19

       Can I also say, and I don't know that it's true that in the UK that we're te- teaching nine-year-olds about anal, by the way, but the thing that's lacking in sex education often here is pleasure. They do not talk about how pl- how pleasurable, how pleasurable it can be or that girls should be, when they have their first sexual experience, ideally as young women, that, not girls, but of course they should be young women, they should be of age, that... Their pleasure matters. There's so many young women who at the first just go, "I guess I have to do this, and h- he has to find pleasure in it." But, uh, learning what makes your own body feel pleasure is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Knowing that it, it, it can give you great intimacy, and it can be a lifelong relationship partner and all of those things...

    3. EKErica Komisar50:12

       So, that's a 1950s idea. The 1950s were a time... I mean, nobody wants to go back to the 1950s. You know, when I... The books that I write, people come up to me, and they say, "You want women to go back to being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen." I'm like, "What?" No, we don't wanna go back to the '50s because women didn't have choice, and women didn't know about orgasm, and they didn't know about, you know, that sex could be pleasurable. And, um, so we don't wanna go back. We wanna move forward. We wanna take the best of, the highlights of the past and not leave all of the good parts of the past behind. And, you know, take the good parts of the feminist movement too, but there's a lot of it that's not so good. And I'm going to ag- agree with Louise that there are so many young women and older women, but let's just say young women-

    4. DFDeborah Frances-White51:00

       Don't point at me and say old woman. (laughs)

    5. EKErica Komisar51:01

       No, no, no. I'm old too. Older. Uh, over 32.

    6. DFDeborah Frances-White51:05

       I'll admit to-

    7. EKErica Komisar51:06

       Adult.

    8. DFDeborah Frances-White51:06

       ...over 32, Erika, and that's all I can give you at this time.

    9. EKErica Komisar51:07

       That's, but that's all we're doing. That's all we're doing. You're o- older than 25.

13. 51:12 – 53:36

    Is Sexual Freedom Making Us Happy?

    1. EKErica Komisar51:12

       There are so many young women who, um, are looking to understand the secret sauce, w- what is gonna make them the happiest. You know, I don't love the word happy, but I think our young people are so very unhappy. They have never been so unhappy. The statistics on mental illness and unhappiness and loneliness are high. We have all this sexual freedom. We have all of these feminist ideals, and yet young women are so very unhappy.

    2. DFDeborah Frances-White51:45

       I think we've got a causation/correlation problem there. I think the world is not well. We are, we are really looking down the barrel of climate change, land wars, cost of living is out of control. Young people will never own a home unless their parents give them an enormous amount of money. There are so many factors feeding into the unhappiness of people of all ages, and young people look at this long future and go, "What is this going to be for me?" I think to blame feminism for that, uh, is misguided.

    3. EKErica Komisar52:20

       It's a piece of the puzzle, and remember that my lens is a lens of seeing patients who come to me for relational issues.

    4. DFDeborah Frances-White52:27

       So therefore, your, you've got a biased set of information, that people that are unhappy with their relationships come to you, "Yes, everything's a piece of the puzzle, but if it wasn't this, it would be that." And what that was, was, you know, uh, "Oh, I'm stuck with this person now that I'm, uh, we're not having sex, and it's a miserable time, and he doesn't talk to me, and I don't talk to him, but I can't really get out of it." Human beings find ways to be dissatisfied with their lot in life. Somebody who we look at and go, "Oh my God, they're so fortunate, they've got everything they want," is probably one of the unhappiest (laughs) people you know because they're going, "Is this all there is?" You know, that's why often you'll see like a, uh, a rock star or a movie star get absolutely everything they want, and they have to go up a mountain to talk to a guru because they're like, "Well, I was hoping that I'd be super successful and wealthy and, you know, have a- all this choice, and now I've got that, and I'm still not happy." And, uh, uh, the idea that we can look at unhappiness with what is here and then say, "If this wasn't here, but that was here, those same people would be ha- blissfully happy," is, doesn't bear out

14. 53:36 – 57:29

    Feeling Bullied by the Narrative of Freedom

    1. DFDeborah Frances-White53:36

       with history.

    2. EKErica Komisar53:36

       So, I actually think what does bear out is that human beings universally, from birth, crave security. We know that. They crave safety and security and stability from birth, and we don't teach that. We say, "Just be impulsive. Be in the moment," and I think that's a lot of what's causing the unhappiness, is that we don't help educate and strategize what a good life means to you. Now, maybe for you, a good life is just being free and, you know, having a great career, and I have no problem with that. I'm, I'm the first one to say the women's movement gave women choice to have the life they wanna have. Absolutely. I think there's a lot of women who feel bullied by this narrative of freedom. They feel bullied by it, and I... Listen, I, I hear it in my practice. I see it online on my, uh, you know, uh, my Instagram following and people writing and... You're right. I have a particular lens, so people may come to me because of that, but what I will say is that there is...It, the feminist movement, at least the second wave of the feminist movement, was a little bit of a cabal, in a sense that it was a small group of women saying, "Every woman should feel this way. Every woman should want to go out to work and leave their children in daycare. Every woman should want free sex." And the bottom line is, a lot of women don't. A lot of women want the choice to be respected, to have intimate and loving and marital relationships and monogamy, and they want to be able to stay home with their children and have society say, "You are amazing," and admire them for it. And, and what I know is that there's a lot of young women, and adult women, who are feeling, um, pressured to live a life that isn't making them happy, that is without relationships, that's without having one intimate partner, that is, um, you know, freedom without any limits.

    3. DFDeborah Frances-White55:37

       If women feel bullied by freedom, I feel like they should try the alternative. I, I, I still feel the predominant narrative is the rom-com one. The predominant narrative is you should be married by 30, with a white dress, everyone should stand around and say, "You've done it now," you should have babies. That, to me, is still the predominant narrative, that you are successful if you have achieved these things. Now, it is true that, uh, many women feel also they should have some kind of career. That is very true, but I feel like a l- the main thing that women are asked to aspire to, if you really look around, it is still find the one, have the rom-com ending. And I do not see this idea that women are told the whole time, "We should be out on the town, sleeping with everyone in town." Far from it. And I, I know this isn't true because I, (laughs) I went to a school that's a very, very good girls' school, it's a state school, but a very, very high-end one in London, in 2018 when we were all out marching in the street, the Women's March. Recently, I went back and all those girls are talking about being a high-value woman, which is from the manosphere, and not too high, having, having not too high a body count. These are obviously different girls, the ones 2018 went off to university. That's in seven years. They were saying, you know, n- t- in 2020- in 2018, 2019, around that time, they were saying, "No slut-shaming", "Listen to your body." They weren't saying, "Run around and have sex with everybody" or "I've gotta have a lot of lovers." They were saying, "I h- I, I make my own decisions. I don't l- l- you know, listen to patriarchal ideas about how I need to live my life. I am going to go to university. I'm going to meet people and make meaningful relationships, and some of those will be friendships." They are now h- talking manosphere talk.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett57:28

       (paper crinkles)

15. 57:29 – 59:32

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16. 59:32 – 1:06:55

    Manosphere and Tradwives

    1. SBSteven Bartlett59:32

       (paper crinkles) Manosphere talk. Um, I was, I found this graph as well, which just shows the sort of explosion in people searching "trad wife," which means traditional wife.

    2. EKErica Komisar59:40

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett59:41

       And it seems from 2024, there's been this real explosion in people searching for this trend. And, uh, you, you said something a second ago, Erika, about young boys in particular-

    4. EKErica Komisar59:51

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett59:52

       ... being more vulnerable, I think-

    6. EKErica Komisar59:54

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett59:54

       ... were your words, than the young girls that you're seeing.

    8. EKErica Komisar59:57

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett59:58

       So, how do these ideas come together to, to, and also link in and parlay into this word manosphere? Because this subject of manosphere has been-

    10. EKErica Komisar1:00:05

        It-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:05

        ... at the very forefront of conversation.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:00:07

        It's, everything's a little outta balance, everything's a little outta whack. So it was outta whack in the '50s, and so we fixed it, and now it's outta whack in a different way. (laughs) Uh, we went from the patriarchy of men dominating women to now we have the patriarchy of women dominating men. I mean, what we need to do is not go back, but come to the middle. (laughs) We need to, it just makes common sense that-

    13. DFDeborah Frances-White1:00:28

        How are we dominating men, though?

    14. EKErica Komisar1:00:30

        Oh my goodness. Um, the, 60% of college students are women, and graduate students. Men-

    15. DFDeborah Frances-White1:00:36

        That's not us dominating men, though.

    16. EKErica Komisar1:00:37

        No, wait. Let me finish, let me finish. Young men are afraid of women and the power they have over them to accuse. No, it's true, in universities, it's a real thing. I know 'cause I have two sons and, um, you know, uh, there is, uh, again-... the correction was necessary. We needed to course correct in society, absolutely. But we've gone so far, so we to- so the men were powerful and the women weren't. So, the women said, "Give us some power." So now the women took the power and now the men feel powerless. You need a society that's balanced. It needs to be balanced and the idea was that w- where we wanted to go, and, and the truth is that all movements often go to extremes. The women's movement, those women had to go to extremes because to change society, you have to do that, right?

    17. DFDeborah Frances-White1:01:27

        So should some women not go to university? Is that what you're saying?

    18. EKErica Komisar1:01:31

        N- n- no, but actually I think there needs to be a balance in society of men and women. If we say that we are going to be like Amaz- Amazon women and not need men anymore, the truth is that the way it works is that, by the research, is that, um, women will marry at their educational level or above and men will marry at their educational level or below. That means that because we have fewer men in college and graduate school, women are not finding partners.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:02

        I'm just gonna jump in there and talk about a report that came out in 2025, which, um, sent shockwaves across the UK.

    20. DFDeborah Frances-White1:02:07

        Mm-hmm.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:07

        It was called The Lost Boys Report. I think we, we might have talked about this, uh, in a previous episode, but it was a report by the Center of Social Justice which highlighted how many young men are now struggling in school, facing increased mental health problems and lacking positive role models, leaving them lost and isolated. And as a result, they said, they suggested that many of them are turning to what we call the manosphere. And to give a definition to the manosphere, 'cause I didn't actually know what it was, the definition I have from Cambridge Dictionary is manosphere includes websites and discussion groups focused on men's rights, which often oppose feminism in some way. Um, and just to give a, a sort of a top line look at some of the stats around this, by age five, 25% of boys in the UK are falling behind in language communication skills compared to just 14% of women.

    22. EKErica Komisar1:02:49

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:49

        At GCSE level, boys results are on average half a grade lower than girls. The same applies for mental health and wellbeing. Obviously, we know about the suicide rates in young men, um, with nearly three and a half... they're nearly three and a half times higher than those of young women. Eating disorders have risen as well in young men and from an employment perspective, as of late 2024, 15.1% of men aged 16 to 24 were not in education, um, compared to 11% of women, which equates in the UK to about 550,000 men. And lastly, um, young women are, between the age of 16 and 24 now earn nearly 10% more than their male peers, reversing the traditional gender pay gap in this age group. And I could go on and on and on, specifically the things that I've kind of not talked about are just how f- family dynamics have changed and by, by age 14, nearly half of first-born children do not live with both natural parents compared to 1970. And this was, this was really shocking and I think it really rose an argument which I saw play out in, uh, I saw The Sunday Times do a big piece about it, I saw it on LinkedIn, which is what is going on here? And is this a clue as to why we now have this term manosphere?

    24. EKErica Komisar1:03:56

        It's a reaction. Manosphere is a reaction to the, the pendulum swinging too far. The pendulum needed to swing, for sure.

    25. LPLouise Perry1:04:04

        I slightly disagree.

    26. DFDeborah Frances-White1:04:05

        Mm-hmm.

    27. LPLouise Perry1:04:06

        So, I think I spoke at the beginning about the sex revolution being two things. So one is the ideological thing, which we've spoken about quite a lot, and the other is material changes which no one designed really, like this wasn't coordinated by anyone, this just happened, this is just how technology goes. And I think in general that history should best be understood as technology with everything else kind of running along in its wake, including ideology. I actually think a massive thing that, th- that's going on with young men, it's not actually feminism that has messed them up, it's actually technology and economics. So it's that one of the the most consequential things of the 20th century and before, this is really Industrial Revolution onwards, is male strength became less important economically. Blue collar work is less valuable than it used to be, it's less available than it used to be. It turns out, America was saying that girls, um, predominate at universities, girls actually tend to be better suited to a lot of work which has flourished in this era. So say, service sector work or, um, uh, working in education and things like that. There's basically been a boom in, um, areas of life which are better suited to women professionally and the opposite has happened with men. And I really think that a lot of what's going on with men, say, turning to the manosphere, is this feeling of being economically devalued. And there are feminists who cheer that on, but that's not basically... that's a, that pretty much has actually nothing to do with ideology. It's actually to do with just m- m- much bigger changes in the world and we should expect, by the way, I mean if A.I. continues apace, we should expect to see the same sort of social effects happening that this, this, when you change how people earn their money and particularly when we're talking about people matching up, that women tend to want to marry a man who... I think being a provider is not quite right. I think what women really want though is a man who provides excellent insurance, a man who when you've just had a baby and you can't work or you're ill or you want to spend more time home with your children, whatever, you want a man who can step up and can look after your family. And unfortunately, the nature of the economy means that there actually aren't that many of those men.

    28. EKErica Komisar1:06:23

        Mm-hmm.

    29. LPLouise Perry1:06:24

        And that, that, that makes men feel really bad and it makes women feel resentful and it creates a lot of dysfunction and it's not really anyone's fault. It's just what's happened.

    30. DFDeborah Frances-White1:06:34

        I want a partner. I want someone that when things are going badly for them, I'm there. When things are going badly for me, they're th- they're there for me. Like I want a partner.
17. 1:06:55 – 1:07:46

    Do Women Want Men to Be Providers?

    1. DFDeborah Frances-White1:06:55

       But-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:55

       Deborah, can I ask to that point then on that partnership?

    3. LPLouise Perry1:06:57

       No.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:59

       As a man, I still kind of assumed that a woman is more likely to choose me if I have more money than her and I can pay the bills, and I take care of her. And so I looked into some of the research around that, and there's still an expectation amongst women that their, their male partner will earn much more than them.

    5. EKErica Komisar1:07:12

       Some of it.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:12

       And when they did, they did this, this big, uh, I think it's about 70%. I'll put the right stat on the screen. When they did this big analysis of dating behavior, where they looked at 1.8 million online dating profiles across 20 different countries, if you earned more, so if you had higher income, you are 255% more likely to get an indication of interest on these applications. And so I, I would love to live in a world where that wasn't the case, but it seems that women are still choosing men that earn much more money, and that expectation of their full ... being the provider is so inherent in reproductive success as a man.

18. 1:07:46 – 1:12:08

    Children and Gender Roles

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:46

    2. EKErica Komisar1:07:46

       Well, there's a reason for that, though. So what we haven't talked about, can we talk about children now?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:50

       Sure, we can talk about-

    4. EKErica Komisar1:07:51

       Okay. (laughs)

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:51

       ... whatever you're happy with.

    6. EKErica Komisar1:07:52

       Um, if you want to raise children and be the primary attachment figure for your children, and it's usually the mother. Sometimes it's the father now, but it's still usually the mother. Children need a primary attachment figure as present as possible in the first three years if they are going to be mentally healthy in the future. All of the research shows that. If you're gonna be as physically present as possible, unless you've saved a lot of money as a woman, you need to depend on your partner, on your team member. My husband and I were a team. Before we had children, we both earned a lot and worked really hard and spent our money equally, but then we decided, it was a strategy, we were gonna have children, and I was gonna work as little as possible so I could be there for them. And he did the bulk of the earning, and now the joke is, I'm out in the world and I'm gonna be taking over, and he's gonna be sitting by the pool, you know? And I'd be fine with that, but that's what teamwork is. But the idea that I could lean on my husband financially in those years and not have to earn money and be able to be present for my children, there is a very good reason why that is critical for children, and we don't talk about children. We're sitting here, this is the first time we talked about children. We're talking about adults, uh, and w- and individuals, and no, children are dependent on us. If y- you don't have to have children to be happy, but if you are gonna bring children into this world, you have a responsibility to those children, and it surpasses any individual desire you may have. It-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:22

       And you're saying the mother should be there in those opening years?

    8. EKErica Komisar1:09:24

       The primary attachment figure, who's usually the mother. Daycare is terrible for children. Let's define daycare. Daycare is anything under the age of three. Otherwise, we call it preschool. We used to call it nursery school. Three to five, before kindergarten. Okay, so anything under the age of three where you put your child in group care is daycare, and what it really is, they're day orphanages. You separate a baby, who needs skin-to-skin contact, the sound of their mother's voice, her eyes, her physical and emotional presence to soothe that baby when they're in distress from moment to moment, help to regulate their emotions. So two things mothers do, they buffer children from stress, which is so important, 'cause the part of their brain that regulates stress is meant to remain offline for the first year and very quietly, slowly come online for the next two years. So what are we doing? We're throwing babies into these institutional orphanages. It's overstimulating. It's stressful. If you walk into any daycare, you are going to hear many, many children crying. Children are not meant to cry much in the first year. They're meant to be held by their mothers and, and held against their mothers' bodies. So they buffer children from stress, and they regulate their emotions. So what we're seeing is a mental health crisis, is a crisis of emotional regulation issues in children, adolescents, and adults. Depression, anxiety, ADHD, these are all emotional regulation issues. That means people cannot regulate their emotions, and so we're just giving them pills. We're not saying, "Where does emotional regulation come from? What's the origin of it?" And the origin of it is in the very early days of your life. If you had a mother who soothed you when you were in distress from moment to moment, it regulates your emotions. So it's only after three, 85% of the right brain is developed by three, it's only after three that you internalize the ab- start to internalize the ability to regulate your own emotions or to deal with stress and adversity in the future. S-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:23

       So does that mean if I'm not home, as a mother, for those early three years, you think there's possible chances that my child might grow up to be somewhat traumatized or have some kind of ...

    10. EKErica Komisar1:11:32

        It is not what nature intended for us, and so we have made social changes that are about narcissism and self-orientation and me, me, me and don't involve an understanding of children's irreducible developmental needs. And if we did, then maybe more women wouldn't have children, and that would be fine. I have no problem. I'm not a pronatalist. You don't have to have children to be happy. You can, you know, build businesses, build houses, have loving, intimate relationships, not have children. But if you're gonna have children, you need to know that drop, dropping and running,

19. 1:12:08 – 1:18:17

    Poor Mothers Looking After Children

    1. EKErica Komisar1:12:08

       putting them in daycare or ... Now, let's talk about very poor women, 'cause this is always gonna come back at me, "What about very poor women?" There are so many solutions for very poor women that do not involve daycare, and I hate when people say, "Poor women have to rely on daycare." Why should they have to rely on daycare when rich women don't have to rely on daycare? And the truth is, there are other solutions. Poor women can live together and support one another and form communities. They can share care of a caregiver. It's far better to have a single surrogate attachment figure, a babysitter who is a full-time babysitter, than putting a child in daycare. So if you can't be there and you're poor and you have to work, then it's far better to have, first, kinship bonds, someone who's related to you, 'cause it's gonna be a more similar investment in that child than anyone else. Secondly, a single surrogate caregiver, a, a babysitter or nanny. If you can't afford it, share the care with another mother, because that's still gonna be better for that child than, uh, than putting them into an institutional group environment. 'Cause what you're doing is you're basically putting, uh, usually no less than five children with one caregiver.... under the age of three. In, in some cases, it's under the age of one. And if you've ever had a baby crying, you know that that baby is gonna get the other babies crying, and now you have five babies crying. There's no way you can soothe them in dis- when they're in distress. There's no way you can regulate all those babies' emotions. We are doing terrible damage to our children by putting them in daycare now. Daycare was the feminist agenda. It was about the, the second wave of feminism. They said, "Put your babies in daycare. It's the only way you're gonna go back, back to work and work, work, work." And, and they didn't talk about children. The first wave of feminists, they talked about children. Um, Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft, they believed that mothering was powerful work. It was work, it was a career, it was admired, it was elevated. They also believed in fighting the patriarchy. They believed in equality. But they didn't forget about mothering. The second wave of feminists, I think it was Betty Friedan said that, um, staying at home with your children was, she called it a concentration camp with comforts. That was the beginning of the tide. That's when the tide turned for women where the narrative changed, so women felt... Women who were loving being mothers and loving raising children suddenly were told that they were in a concentration camp, and that they were prisoners and oppressed, and some of them were, and some of them probably shouldn't have had children, and many of them weren't. And even today, m- we, people write me every day and say, "Thank you for saying what you say." Because society's narrative is so, uh, much about we have no value unless we go out into the workforce.

    2. DFDeborah Frances-White1:15:07

       So can I ask you-

    3. EKErica Komisar1:15:08

       Yeah.

    4. DFDeborah Frances-White1:15:08

       ... genuinely want to know-

    5. EKErica Komisar1:15:09

       Yeah.

    6. DFDeborah Frances-White1:15:09

       ... what... Baby boomers tended to be raised by stay-at-home mothers because financial world was totally different then. Like, you know, when, we're not, when you talk about very poor women, I have university-educated friends who cannot afford to buy a property anywhere, 'cause they don't have parents that can give them money. They're never gonna be able to save that much money. And they move out of a rented property probably once a year because the landlord moves them on, and then the boiler's not working, and so on, and so on, and so on. And I have a local food bank that I donate food to, and I often get chatting to people. There are nurses, full-time nurses-

    7. EKErica Komisar1:15:46

       Mm-hmm.

    8. DFDeborah Frances-White1:15:46

       ... who live in London who have two children at home, who, uh, the, the hospital cannot have any more nurses leave because there is n- there are not enough nurses. It's a real problem that the NHS-

    9. EKErica Komisar1:15:56

       Mm-hmm.

    10. DFDeborah Frances-White1:15:56

        ... is so understaffed. Various reasons for that.

    11. EKErica Komisar1:15:58

        In America too.

    12. DFDeborah Frances-White1:15:59

        But the nurses can't give up their job because their children would have nothing to eat. They are at food banks with a full-time nursing job. So we're not talking about v- you know, I don't really know what you mean by very poor women. I, there are women with professional roles who will never own, own their own home, who are struggling to keep the lights on, struggling to put food on the table. Now, when I heard you talk on Steven's podcast before-

    13. EKErica Komisar1:16:25

        Mm-hmm.

    14. DFDeborah Frances-White1:16:25

        ... you said, "Well look, you know, people don't wanna downscale, and when, when my children were young, we did without things like second homes and vacations." And Erika, there is no hope for a second home now for anyone, and I understand that's different. Your generation-

    15. EKErica Komisar1:16:40

        No, that, and that's, um-

    16. DFDeborah Frances-White1:16:40

        ... was different.

    17. EKErica Komisar1:16:40

        No, but that's why I said women who are working class and must work, there are solutions for those women that don't involve putting their children in daycare.

    18. DFDeborah Frances-White1:16:49

        But do you see-

    19. EKErica Komisar1:16:49

        And we're not discussing those solutions.

    20. DFDeborah Frances-White1:16:51

        But do you see... Listen, I would love if the government, of every government, would say, "Here's the option to stay home for three years." Here's the, here-

    21. EKErica Komisar1:17:01

        There are some.

    22. DFDeborah Frances-White1:17:01

        Well, and great. There should be more.

    23. EKErica Komisar1:17:04

        Slovenia, Hungary, there are some.

    24. DFDeborah Frances-White1:17:06

        And that is amazing, and I think lots of parents, and for me, I don't think it has to be the mother, and I've got friends who are same-sex parents and who have the most incredible, uh, relationships with their children. I don't think it has to be a mother, but I, I feel like there's lots and lots of parents who would love to stay home for three years with their children and be able to afford that, and to be able to afford to get, and, and that, that corporations would then go, you know, there's a lot of evidence that if you take three years off to raise your child, when you come back, you've got a whole new skillset. You, you, you-

    25. EKErica Komisar1:17:38

        Yeah, there's books written about it actually, yeah.

    26. DFDeborah Frances-White1:17:39

        Oh my God. You go back into the financial district, you've negotiated with a toddler for three years-

    27. EKErica Komisar1:17:44

        That's right.

    28. DFDeborah Frances-White1:17:44

        ... step inside.

    29. EKErica Komisar1:17:45

        Absolutely.

    30. DFDeborah Frances-White1:17:46

        And yet, often that is not recognized. Women are pushed out of the workforce. So I am 100% with you-
20. 1:18:17 – 1:22:20

    The Role Feminism Has Had on Motherhood

    1. EKErica Komisar1:18:17

       (laughs)

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:17

       What are your thoughts on this, Louise, in terms of the role that feminism has had on mother, mothers and motherhood?

    3. LPLouise Perry1:18:23

       I'm someone in the trenches.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:24

       Yeah.

    5. LPLouise Perry1:18:24

       So we, I, I mean, I should say, I, partly as a consequence of reading Erika's work and also having you on my podcast, um, we have moved heaven and earth to not put our children in daycare, which has involved quite a lot of, like, creative thinking.

    6. EKErica Komisar1:18:36

       Yay.

    7. LPLouise Perry1:18:37

       And we are poorer than we would otherwise have been. You know, and, and people look at us like we're crazy sometimes and think, "Why have, why have you made your life so complicated?" And it's because, um, me and my husband both have this really strong feeling that we don't wanna put them in institutional childcare. And that is weird, and one of the things that I really don't like in the UK policy space, and I, I, this is true in other countries like the US too-

    8. EKErica Komisar1:19:00

       Mm-hmm.

    9. LPLouise Perry1:19:00

       ... is that governments at about the turn of the millennium seemed to have cottoned on to the fact that they can use women to boost GDP. And, um, David Goodhart, who's a, a friend and author, he wrote a book recently called The Care Dilemma, and he described this, this, uh, historical event as a one-time boost to GDP.

    10. EKErica Komisar1:19:22

        Mm-hmm.

    11. LPLouise Perry1:19:22

        It's not replicable.... but in really the 1990s, obviously the sexual revolution predates this, but really the 1990s is when you see this massive surge of working mothers. This idea that you should be out of the house 40 hours a week, children in daycare, that's pretty new. And governments like this because governments like women paying taxes.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:19:42

        Mm-hmm.

    13. LPLouise Perry1:19:43

        And I think that to some extent, some, should we say, non-maternal feminism-

    14. EKErica Komisar1:19:48

        Mm-hmm.

    15. LPLouise Perry1:19:48

        ... has been a little bit naive about this. And thinking that if we can get the government to support daycare-based initiatives, that that's-

    16. EKErica Komisar1:19:59

        Mm-hmm.

    17. LPLouise Perry1:19:59

        ... good for women. There's so much research on this showing that actually most women find it really, really hard and it's a, it's a very common thing in mom's groups and on social media and where, and so when women thinking, "I do not want to leave my, my baby."

    18. EKErica Komisar1:20:10

        66% of women in the UK want to stay home if they were given the option.

    19. LPLouise Perry1:20:14

        Right. Or want to work, stay home more.

    20. EKErica Komisar1:20:16

        Yeah.

    21. LPLouise Perry1:20:16

        And what I object to is the current arrangement that we have in the UK and elsewhere, where the government does nothing for you if you're a stay-at-home mother. The government actually punishes families in the tax system. If you're a single earner family, you will earn, you will pay more tax than if you earn the same amount but across two incomes. You are directly punished. This was d- uh, deliberately established as a, quote unquote, "feminist" policy, so that it would, so that it would channel women back into the workforce after they'd had children.

    22. EKErica Komisar1:20:47

        Yeah.

    23. LPLouise Perry1:20:47

        I also don't like the fact that the only setup that's available in terms of getting any kind of funding from the government is for daycare. You can't put money towards a nanny. You can't put money towards having your, a, a grandparent or an aunt or something help to look after ...

Episode duration: 2:27:32