Louise Perry: The Pill Quietly Rewrote Sex Against Women

1. 0:00 – 2:21

   Intro

   1. LPLouise Perry0:00

      I think casual sex is almost always more risky for women than it's worth it.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:04

      Why?

   3. LPLouise Perry0:05

      Because, one ... (instrumental music plays)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:07

      The things you're saying, you know that they're unpopular, but you're saying them anyway.

   5. LPLouise Perry0:10

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:10

      Why?

   7. LPLouise Perry0:11

      Parents are really worried about their daughters and also their sons, and really, really want them to know this stuff.

   8. NANarrator0:16

      Louise Perry, journalist, author, and podcast host. She is renowned for her views on topics such as sexual politics and the impact of modern feminist movements.

   9. LPLouise Perry0:25

      We have a culture that prioritizes male preferences for casual sex.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett0:29

       And you're saying it harms both men and women?

   11. LPLouise Perry0:31

       I think in different ways. So for example, a lot of young women kinda go along with it, even if they don't want that. But that causes a lot of misery, because women in particular tend to get emotionally bonded from sex more than men do.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett0:43

       Do we know that?

   13. LPLouise Perry0:44

       Yeah. But there are also other problems that we should talk about. So ...

   14. SBSteven Bartlett0:50

       Would it be better for men if we waited longer before we had sex?

   15. LPLouise Perry0:53

       Waiting 'til engagement is a better call. The problem is, when you don't have the expectation that people wait, there's really nothing stopping those very attractive high-status men from playing the field and not being forced to commit, and then low-status men just have none. When people are left to their own devices on dating apps and you monitor it carefully, this is basically what you see. But in a monogamous system, you have to commit to one woman and remove yourself from the dating pool.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett1:14

       So what is the uncomfortable advice that both men and women need to hear on this subject for their best interests?

   17. LPLouise Perry1:19

       This is a profound problem, and it's partly because I think we don't tell the truth about it, which is ... And governments know this, which is why they're starting to freak out.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

       We've just hit six million subscribers on The Diary of a CEO. Um, so me and my team would like to do something we've never done before as a little thank you, and we're calling it The Diary of a CEO Subscriber Raffle, and here is how it works. Every episode this month, we're going to pick three current subscribers at random, and we'll send one of you a 1,000 pound voucher, one of you tickets to come and watch The Diary of a CEO behind the scenes live with our team, and one of you will have a 10-minute phone call with me to discuss whatever you want to talk about. If you're a subscriber, you're in the raffle. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to do something that me and my team love doing so much. It is the greatest honor of my lifetime, and I hope it, I hope it continues, uh, off into the future. Let's get to the episode. (instrumental music plays) Louise, in this season of your

2. 2:21 – 4:24

   What are you trying to achieve??

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:21

      life, what is your objective? And why is that your objective?

   2. LPLouise Perry2:28

      Well, as is kind of obvious, I'm in the having-babies season of my life. It's a really interesting experience being, living the, the, the, the exact, um, sort of social phenomena that I so often write and talk about, which is basically the role of women in participating in public life, and the, the inherent ways in which the fact that women bear children comes into conflict with that, which is very much the, you know, the subject of my first book. This, this question of, like, if you can artificially suspend that. If you can ... If the Pill arrives, 1960s, and suddenly women can go from being constantly ... I don't wanna say at risk of pregnancy, 'cause that's not like the right word. Like, pregnancy's a good, pregnancy is a good thing, but constantly having to negotiate the possibility of pregnancy, and then suddenly a new technology comes along, first time in the history of the world, which pretty much cuts that out. What does that do to women's public role? The social experience of being a woman? Um, and my argument is it's had so much more of a profound effect than we tend to acknowledge. Um, because the fact that it's women who bear children is so, so, so socially important in terms of our ability to work, our economic, uh, vulnerabilities, um, our ability to participate in politics, all of this. And the Pill is just this, like, enormous game-changer, where suddenly it's a choice. And I'm in a season of my life where I've ch- (laughs) where I've chosen it.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett4:14

      For anybody that is, um, not watching on video, Louise is six months pregnant.

   4. LPLouise Perry4:17

      (laughs)

   5. SBSteven Bartlett4:18

      So that's the reference.

   6. LPLouise Perry4:19

      With my second baby.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett4:20

      What is it that you think society

3. 4:24 – 5:00

   What does society disagree with you on?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett4:24

      at large disagrees with you on, as it relates to these issues?

   2. LPLouise Perry4:28

      I think that most people ... Well, most people. I think that the kind of dominant narrative is that this is, has been an unambiguously good thing and there's been no trade-offs. And I think that, uh, there is ambiguity and that there have been trade-offs. That's basically th- the disagreement. And I think that pretty much ... I think there are pretty much trade-offs with everything, not least a massively, massively consequential new technology like the Pill.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett4:56

      Do you think the net impact of the Pill is positive or negative?

   4. LPLouise Perry4:59

      (laughs)

4. 5:00 – 6:09

   The trade-offs of the contraceptive pill

   1. LPLouise Perry5:00

      I suppose it depends on which area of your life you're talking about. So, I think that one of the things that the Pill and other reliable contraception ... One of the ways in which it's magical and really good is that it allows people to be ... It allows people to plan their families. It allows women to have spaces between births, which are healthy. It's really, uh, like ... In a lot of cases, it's really bad for you to be constantly pregnant, right? It has a really, really deleterious effect on the body. So on that front, fantastic, and on a personal level, fantastic. Um, the, the, the trade-offs are normally in other areas of life, like ... Well, like we have massively falling birth rates and there are political and economic problems arising from that. Um, that's not just downstream of the Pill, but the Pill is a really big part of that story. Sexual culture has changed so much, um, and I think that causes a lot of misery, particularly for ...... uh, younger women, women who are younger than me.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:06

      Sexual culture in, uh, has changed in what regard?

   3. LPLouise Perry6:08

      In that

5. 6:09 – 7:38

   How has sexual culture changed?

   1. LPLouise Perry6:09

      I think that it has shifted towards a ... And you be careful here, 'cause I don't wanna, I don't, what I don't wanna say is that, um, the sexual revolution has been fabulous for men in general. I think that a lot of men have not done well by it. But I think in general that the really big winners from the sexual revolution have been a small subset of men. So what I write about in the book is the Hugh Hefners of the world, right? Hugh Hefner who founded Playboy Magazine, massive sexual appetites and are attractive and can basically have as many women as they want, don't have to get married to them because Christianity has faded away, um, don't have to worry about unwanted pregnancies because of the pill, you know, so they've had a ball. And I think that what we've seen in the culture is more of a, sort of the center of gravity has moved more towards their preferences. And some women are okay with that. You know, some women genuinely enjoy the, sort of being the Playgirl, right? Um, but most don't. I think that there are some important average, average differences between men and women psychologically, not least ... I mean, that's not just what I think, like the data is, I think, unimpeachable on this, and not least when it comes to sexuality and a culture that prioritizes male preferences when it comes to sexuality is going to be more costly to women.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett7:34

      So who are you, Louise?

   3. LPLouise Perry7:35

      (laughs)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett7:36

      And what, um, what experiences in your life

6. 7:38 – 10:28

   Working in a rape crisis centre

   1. SBSteven Bartlett7:38

      and what sort of upbringing has informed the way that you see the world?

   2. LPLouise Perry7:43

      I started off as a very kind of basically holding the mainstream progressive view, being very s- uh, very kind of conventional in my thinking. I went to a very, a very, very progressive university, um, School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and when I left university, I, um, I worked for charities, including working at a rape crisis center, which was, um, which had an, a significant effect on me in the sense that I was very familiar with sort of standard feminist theory. Standard feminist theory says men and women are basically the same, there aren't any real important differences between us, either physical or psychological, apart from, you know, the babies bit, whatever, who cares, um, and that sexual violence, rape, is not about sexual desire, it's about power. It's a, it's, you know, it's a power play thing, it's all could ... sort of understood in political terms. And then I actually went to work with victims and I noticed things, I sort of couldn't help but notice things about what they'd been through that made me think, "I don't think that's true." Like, you know that the modal victim, uh, of sexual violence is 15? It's really young, right? Really young. And also the age of, um, um, perpetrators is also skews quite young, like teens and 20s is the most common age group, and one of the things I noticed or couldn't ... could not but notice, is that perpetrators, um, basically the peak age of perpetration for men, young men, is the same as testosterone peak.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett9:33

      Oh, really?

   4. LPLouise Perry9:34

      Yeah. It's the same curve. It's also the same curve you see in other kinds of violent crime. There's basically just, um ... Testosterone rises a lot in your mid-teens and then drops in your 30s, and it's basically during that period that, um ... I mean, there's, there's massive upside to this as well. Like, you know, testosterone is also the drug of, um, the hormone of, uh, being adventurous and risk-taking, and like there's, there's a lot of upsides to having that sort of youthful male energy. The downside is, um, things like rape. And ditto, the peak age of female victimization is also peak fertility.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett10:16

      So what's your conclusion from that?

   6. LPLouise Perry10:18

      That it's not about power, it's about biology. Or it's not just, you know ... If you look at, say, sexual harassment in the workplace, it's rare for, like, junior men to sexually

7. 10:28 – 12:38

   How to channel men's aggression in the right direction

   1. LPLouise Perry10:28

      harass senior women, right?

   2. SBSteven Bartlett10:29

      Yeah.

   3. LPLouise Perry10:29

      So there clearly is an element of people that's sort of, um, making decisions based on social power structures and so on. But I know when it comes down to it, um, this is a biological phenomenon. It's also not unique to humans. Other animals, other primates are also sexually aggressive, you know, basically for the same reasons. So sort of what we're dealing with is like a, is an eternal problem. How do we, how do we channel male aggression in the right directions? How do we protect young women during these, um, vulnerable years? This is a profound problem, and it's a pro- a problem that every society faces, and I don't think that we deal with it as well as we could. Partly because I think we don't tell the truth about it, and not least feminists don't tell the truth about it. Because if you say, "Oh, there are no physical differences between men and women, male and female sexuality is basically the same, women having as much freedom, sexual freedom as possible is obviously the best possible thing," you know, I think what you end up doing by telling these untruths frankly, I mean, I, uh, people, people say these things with the best will in the world, um, but what you end up doing is actually putting young women at risk, young women who don't, who don't know the truth 'cause how could they, you know, 15-year-old girls. And I say this as someone who used to be a 15-year-old girl and has also s- you know, spoken to lots of 15-year-old girls who've really learnt this the hard way, they don't know, they don't know these realities about, you know, the fact that, like, men have double the upper body strength that women do on average.... which means they can punch twice as hard as women can, on average. And things like that, I think that we, I think we should be more honest with these young women. And that was my motivation for writing the book. And also, why I ended up, partly as a consequence of working Rape Crisis, ended up moving politically and becoming more skeptical of a lot of, sort of, um, dominant political ideas.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett12:35

      So if we, um, if we think the understanding of the phy- physical

8. 12:38 – 14:07

   The physical differences between men and women

   1. SBSteven Bartlett12:38

      and, um, psychological differences between men and women are central to understanding how we should respond and behave and the advice that we should give to men and women, um, we should probably talk about what those differences are.

   2. LPLouise Perry12:53

      Yeah.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett12:53

      You mentioned physical differences between men and women.

   4. LPLouise Perry12:55

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett12:55

      So strength being one of them.

   6. LPLouise Perry12:56

      Yeah.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett12:57

      Um, are there any other physical differ- differences that are really pertinent to this subject?

   8. LPLouise Perry13:01

      So strength sports are the biggest gap between men and women.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett13:04

      Yeah.

   10. LPLouise Perry13:04

       Um, sort of sprinting cardio, like short distance, there's also a big gap. And it's funny. When you look at the numbers of like, the fastest man in the world, the fastest woman in the world, they're not that different. Um, but if women did not have their own reserved sporting categories, there would be no women in elite sport. Because like, the fastest woman in the world would be like, the thousandth fastest man in the world or something like that. Because once you get into, into elite sports levels, that's when these differences become very obvious. And there's this expression that's, I think it's the golden ratio in endurance sport, where women are always, it's like 85% or something-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:50

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LPLouise Perry13:50

       ... of what men are. You know, the, the, the, the very most accomplished elite female athlete and the very most accomplished elite male athlete, there's always this gap. So anyway, so the cardio differences are not massive. The strength differences are pretty big, um-

   13. SBSteven Bartlett14:03

       This physical difference ...

   14. LPLouise Perry14:04

       Mm-hmm.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett14:05

       ... what does this then mean for

9. 14:07 – 15:37

   How men and women differ in their view on sexuality

   1. SBSteven Bartlett14:07

      the subjects we were talking about, as it relates to sort of sexuality and society more generally?

   2. LPLouise Perry14:13

      So it means, for instance, that I think casual sex is almost always more risky for women than it's worth it for women.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett14:21

      Why?

   4. LPLouise Perry14:22

      Because being, one, being alone with a man that you don't know basically, is what we're talking about, is inherently dangerous for, for women just because of that physical asymmetry. Two, because women are the ones who get pregnant. (laughs) Like even with the pill, even with the most reliable contraception, you've still got that small chance. Um, and so that either means that you carry a pregnancy to term, with all of its physical risks and emotional risks, or it means you have an abortion. Like basically, all of those costs are borne by the woman. The man might have no idea that this has even occurred, right? So there's this kind of essential asymmetry which you can try and get past with technology, with contraceptive technology, but you can't quite. You know, it's still there. The psychological differences between the sexes, in terms of, um, sexuality, are, are, are, are also important. They're not as massive as, say, upper body strength, but on average they're, they are very, very marked. And one of those differences is that men are basically keener on casual sex than women are. Men wanna jump into bed more quickly than women do.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett15:33

      How do we know that?

   6. LPLouise Perry15:35

      Um, looking cross-culturally

10. 15:37 – 18:38

    Why men are more likely to have casual sex

    1. LPLouise Perry15:37

       is one big clue. Because you might say, and some people do say ... Like there are these studies, they're quite funny, where researchers will go into university campuses and get an attractive woman, an attractive man, and they go up to members of the opposite sex and basically proposition them and say like, "Do you wanna go back to my home right now?" And, um, in 0% of cases do women say yes. 0%. And this is consistent. Um, whereas in quite a high proportion of cases, men will say yes. Right? A- and that is consistent across. It's been done in different times, different places. You know, you might say, "Oh, it's because women are scared of slut-shaming or, you know, that there's like a social penalty for women." And that's a little bit true, but then when you see ... You know, there's been surveys done of like, basically every country in the world, to my knowledge, and in no country do women watch more porn than men. In no country do women express more of a desire for casual sex than men do. In no country do women buy sex more than men do. Like, it's basically only men who buy sex. It's very, very rare for women to buy sex. When you see these gaps absolutely everywhere, I think that's a very strong indication that you're dealing with something innate. That should be, that should certainly, that's certainly the simplest explanation, isn't it? Rather than that you, you know, you flip the coin a thousand times and it comes up head every time. It's that plausible.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett17:06

       Is there anything in the animal kingdom that might refute that point? Is there any, you know, certain animals where the woman is the dominant, uh, sort of sexual, um, a- aggressor or the, um ...

    3. LPLouise Perry17:16

       So yes, but not animals that are similar to us, so like spiders or, or something like that.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett17:21

       Okay.

    5. LPLouise Perry17:21

       Um, in terms of other primates, I mean there are, there is variation with other primates. Um, bonobos are quite into casual sex, but since bonobos are quite different.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett17:34

       'Cause people do get a little bit triggered. I- i- because you're not saying that women don't enjoy sex at all.

    7. LPLouise Perry17:38

       No.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett17:38

       You're not saying that they, they aren't as, um, horny in certain situations as men.

    9. LPLouise Perry17:44

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett17:44

        But you're just saying on average-

    11. LPLouise Perry17:46

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett17:46

        ... men are more keen on casual sex than women are.

    13. LPLouise Perry17:50

        Yes. Yes. And there are a- there are always outliers.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett17:54

        Of course.

    15. LPLouise Perry17:54

        I mean, you're talking about overlapping bell curves, right?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett17:57

        Yeah.

    17. LPLouise Perry17:57

        So the averages are different, but the thing with overlapping bell curves is, it's more obvious at the tails.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett18:02

        Mm-hmm.

    19. LPLouise Perry18:02

        So for instance, like people who, people who buy sex or people who become addicted to porn or something, they're basically entirely male because you're talking about this...... sort of tippy, tippy tail of people who really, really desire sexual variety. Most people obviously are not out there, most people are somewhere in the middle. But when you're talking about culture, you need to be thinking about the big picture. You need to be thinking like, okay, what, what would a, what does a culture of casual sex, how would a culture of casual sex af- affect men and women differently?

    20. SBSteven Bartlett18:34

        And how does it affect women differently? Because if you're saying that it's innate, it's not s- a sort of social

11. 18:38 – 24:10

    How does a culture of casual sex impact women

    1. SBSteven Bartlett18:38

       construct-

    2. LPLouise Perry18:38

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett18:38

       ... there's something deep within our wiring in men and women that makes us have a different sort of, uh, sort of proclivity towards sex-

    4. LPLouise Perry18:45

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett18:45

       ... casual sex. Um, why does that have a consequence that's, uh, negative for women?

    6. LPLouise Perry18:51

       Basically, what women are more likely to want is monogamy, like not necessarily marriage, but certainly signals of commitment. If you think about this in our evolutionary, in terms of our evolutionary history, it makes perfect sense, right? Because having sex is pretty much the most consequential thing a woman can do, right? Because if you get pregnant, you've got nine months of pregnancy, which is risky in itself. Um, childbirth, which is very risky in the ancestral environment, less so now fortunately. And then you've got, um, maybe 15 years or something of having to look after a child until it's capable of being economically self-sufficient. That's an enormous (laughs) right thing to happen in your life. Whereas, and, and it also means that women can only, women can only really reproduce once a year, absolute max, right? Whereas men, in theory, can reproduce thousands of times a year and can have basically no involvement in raising the children but take basically no risks whatsoever. So if you look at it in those terms, of course women would be pickier. Of course they would, and that is indeed what we see. But I think that what we're... I think the, the reason that young women express so much unhappiness at the moment with the sexual culture is that a lot of young women kinda go along with it. They, they, they... I know this is, this is kind of surprising to men, right? And I've spoken to men about this who, who find this completely amusing. They're like, "Why would... If you don't wanna have sex, don't have sex. It's fine. Like, what's, what's the big problem? Like, women are so lucky because they can't step out onto the street without being propositioned. They can have, you know, they have so much choice. Like, you know, you girls are so lucky." (laughs) "What are you complaining about?" And I think it's this problem that one... Okay, two problems. One is that, um, both sexes are not necessarily very good at understanding what the other sex actually want, and that's partly comes from the fact that I don't think we're honest enough about sex differences. So like, men think that the fact that women can get casual sex anytime of any day is amazing (laughs) and women are like, "But I don't want that. That's, that's like horrible. I don't wanna shag some random man on the street," right? Um, so there's that gap in sort of, uh, there's a empathy gap. Um, and similarly, I think women have an empathy gap. Like they probably don't realize how... They don't realize, one, how many men basically don't have access to any kind of sexual relationships and feel incredibly resentful and frustrated about that. They don't realize how scary it is for men to approach a woman, things like that. So there's like a mutual sort of incomprehension. Um, and I think the other thing is men find it very hard to imagine doing what a lot of young women do, which is basically going along with sex that they don't really wanna have, because they wanna be polite, and because they don't wanna scare off a man who maybe they do fancy, and because they don't wanna be uncool, and 'cause they don't wanna be weird, and they don't wanna be a prude. You know, uh, one of the features of teenage girls psychology, and maybe this is into the 20s as well but particularly teenage girls, is teenage girls are so, so concerned about what's normal. Whenever you have contagious mental illnesses, which like historically are quite common, so something like, um, the Salem witch trials, um, apparently girls are now giving, like getting Tourette's from TikTok because it's like a viral thing on TikTok. Um, uh, hysteria in the 19th century, anorexia, like there's a lot of examples of these, right? Where, um, mental illnesses which are seen to be socially contagious, people catch it from each other, you end up with this mimetic effect. They always start with teenage girls, always. Sometimes they spread to other groups, but teenage girls are always like the first, you know. And I think it's because teenage girls, probably for self-protective reasons, there must be some adaptive reason here, are very, very socially sensitive. They're very s- like constantly aware of their social position, what other people are doing, what's cool, what's not cool, um, obsessed, which is also translates to things like fashion and slang. Slang, ditto, you know, a lot of slang starts with teenage girls because they're this very, um, they're this very mimetic group, right?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett23:07

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LPLouise Perry23:08

       And that's fine, like that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does sometimes have bad effects, and one of them is, for instance, the idea that being a prude is incredibly cringe, has taken hold really, really effectively among this group of girls. And so, you know, I'll, I'll talk to girls or, or, or read or listen to girls saying like, "You know, I went along with the most like degrading, upsetting, whatever, sexual things because like, I don't know why, because I wanted him to think I was cool, because I didn't..." Y- y- you know, it's g- and I think that's something that, I think that's something that a lot of p- a lot of people find difficult to empathize with, and will, and will say, and some men do say, in, in criticism of my position, like, "Why don't these, why don't these girls just sort of get a grip?" (laughs)

    9. SBSteven Bartlett24:05

       When you say that, um, there's young girls and women going along with it-

    10. LPLouise Perry24:09

        Yeah.

12. 24:10 – 29:33

    Repercussions of casual sex in society

    1. LPLouise Perry24:10

    2. SBSteven Bartlett24:10

       ... are you talking about both the type and the frequency of sex or are you just talking about the casual sex and then the different ways people have sex, like BDSM and choking and these kinds of things?

    3. LPLouise Perry24:22

       Yeah, so all of the above.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett24:24

       Okay.

    5. LPLouise Perry24:24

       I mean, I think particularly it's the, um... BDSM is a bit of a complicated one, um-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett24:30

       We'll get to that, then.

    7. LPLouise Perry24:30

       Yeah, we can get onto that.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett24:31

       We'll separate that one. But-

    9. LPLouise Perry24:32

       Um, in terms of the, the casual sex things, so like having flex- sex on a first date ...

    10. SBSteven Bartlett24:36

        Okay.

    11. LPLouise Perry24:36

        ... kind of thing, um, historically, very, very, very rare. Like such a weird cultural convention, right?

    12. SBSteven Bartlett24:44

        And you think that happened because ...

    13. LPLouise Perry24:46

        Well, because the pill, number one.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett24:48

        Yeah.

    15. LPLouise Perry24:48

        Because it means that you can do it without it being, without pregnancy being, uh, h- uh, high risk.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett24:54

        Mm-hmm.

    17. LPLouise Perry24:55

        Um, and I think it's all ends up being downstream of that, that it then changes. Like it basically used to be, you can actually read accounts of women who were, um, who were, who were in their 20s, say, at the time when the pill came along, and they'll say, "I used to," um, it used to be the case that you go out on a date and the expectation is we will not be having sex, right? That was the, that was the agreed upon thing. Not to say it never happened, obviously it did, but that was the default. And then you might have sex, um, on engagement or when you get married or, um, maybe when you're going steady. You know that expression you hear in, like, old high school films? But that was a way down the track, right? And then the pill comes along and you, you, you read women saying, like, it suddenly completely changed things. It suddenly was like the default was not, "We're not having sex," the default was, "We might." And so suddenly, it became a negotiation and it became a, um ... There's this evolutionary psychologist, um, David Buss, who specializes in human sexuality, um, and he writes about this sort of eternal power play basically, where women would like to wait longer before they have sex and men would like to have sex sooner, and there's always this sort of volleying back and forth, like, who is going, who's gonna, who's gonna win basically (laughs) , right? And the pill massively shifts it in the have sex sooner direction. And so yeah, used to, say women who like, you know, used to be the assumption, "I would not have sex after a date," and now I'm having to, like ... This is so often what, what actually is happening in Me Too kind of cases. I mean, obviously Me Too cases, there's a lot of range. You've got straightforward really criminal behavior, like Harvey Weinstein or whatever, but you also quite often what you, what, what's going on is it's not even ... It's so much more subtle than that. It's like, like the Aziz Ansari case. Do you remember that? Quite an interesting case because he, in terms of the response, so Aziz Ansari, you know, famous actor/comedian. He goes on a date with this woman who's a fan, and it's all going well, and then they go back to his and he wants her to have sex and she doesn't want to basically. But she also, he's like a famous man who she likes, like she might want to in the future. She doesn't wanna, like, she doesn't wanna offend him. She doesn't wanna mess it up. And so there's this, like, subtle kind of tussle, and they end up doing some sexual stuff or whatever. She goes home. She feels terrible. She subsequently says to him, "You took advantage," basically, by text. He says sorry, and then later she sort of spills the beans in, um, in a magazine article. And that kind of thing is basically an invention of the sexual revolution, that kind of conflict where there's that degree of ambiguity. It wasn't that unreasonable for him to think that sex would be a co- like, would happen. It wasn't that unreasonable. The problem that she found herself in is that she had to try and as politely as possible say no without ... And that's a really difficult social game, isn't it? Particularly when everyone's drunk. (laughs) Right? And she ended up, I guess ... (sighs) like, they both messed up to some degree. Like, he didn't read her social cues. She didn't communicate clearly. Like, s- so often that's what's really going on with these Me Too cases. There's like, there's so much ambiguity in terms of what everyone is supposed to do, and you've got this tussle between what men and women prefer, and ... I mean, adding alcohol is really bad. You know, there's this bias that men have. It's like a deep, like a, like a deep-seated bias where men will tend to see sexual interest where there isn't. They're more likely to see sexual interest where there is none. They kind of overestimate how much women fancy them basically. I know. (laughs) And-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett28:49

        Don't know what you're talking about. (laughs)

    19. LPLouise Perry28:51

        (laughs) And alcohol makes it worse.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett28:53

        Oh, really?

    21. LPLouise Perry28:54

        Yeah. Alcohol exaggerates that effect. So if a man's drunk, he's more likely to see sexual interest when it isn't there. And then if she's drunk as well, she's less able to successfully navigate this difficult social situation. Do you know what I mean?

    22. SBSteven Bartlett29:08

        Yeah, yeah.

    23. LPLouise Perry29:08

        It does just feel like we're, the, the lack of social rules just sort of sets everyone up to fail, and it's kind of inevitable that you're gonna end up with these, um, these (sighs) I guess tragedies, right? Of people not understanding one another.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett29:29

        So sex becoming a negotiation now at, when historically it wasn't

13. 29:33 – 31:57

    The lack of communication and education is hurting both genders

    1. SBSteven Bartlett29:33

       such a negotiation, and therefore sex happening much sooner in the interaction between women, men and women, often on the first date, maybe the second date. Um, you're kind of alluding to it there, but I just wanna get clarity on, you're saying it harms both men and women in the long term.

    2. LPLouise Perry29:50

       I think in different ways.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett29:51

       Yeah.

    4. LPLouise Perry29:52

       So I think the harm that's done to women is feeling, is em- is emotion- Well, no, there are obviously some situations where the worst possible thing happens, you know?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett30:05

       Yeah.

    6. LPLouise Perry30:05

       You go home with a man who turns out to be incredibly dangerous. More common is women just feeling bad about themselves.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett30:12

       How do we know that? Like, is there, have they done studies?

    8. LPLouise Perry30:14

       Survey data.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett30:15

       Oh, really?

    10. LPLouise Perry30:16

        Yeah, yeah. You just ask women, like, "How do you feel after, um, different kinds of sexual encounter?"

    11. SBSteven Bartlett30:22

        Like a one-night stand?

    12. LPLouise Perry30:23

        Yeah. And then you ask men the same thing. And women feel, um, disgusting basically to some degree-... is, sort of, the dominant, um... I included this quiz in my book, right, for men and- for men and women. Like, basically, um, for people who had had casual sex of some kind or another, right, who participated in this culture. And I, I sort of pooled the questions from my male and female friends. Um, and, uh, one of the questions for women was, "Have you ever had a consensual sexual experience which now makes, thinking about it in retrospect, makes you feel like kind of physically uncomfortable, like gives you a disgust response?" Um, and, uh, so many women say yes to that. And one of the reasons for that is that, um, women have a much lower disgust threshold than men do. So like women feel, women feel disgust more easily than men do, um, in response to all sorts of things, but including in response to, um, not non-consensual, but unwanted sex. You see, like the kind of subtle distinction? Like legal, but not really desired sex.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett31:35

        Yeah.

    14. LPLouise Perry31:35

        Women are more likely to find that just makes them feel disgusted.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett31:38

        Because?

    16. LPLouise Perry31:39

        Well, probably because it's an evolutionary thing, right, where like having sex with a man who you don't wanna get pregnant by is a bad decision.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett31:49

        And a big risk.

    18. LPLouise Perry31:49

        And a big risk. Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett31:52

        So you talk about, in the book, about, um, how icks are more prevalent

14. 31:57 – 34:09

    Why women have icks towards men

    1. SBSteven Bartlett31:57

       amongst-

    2. LPLouise Perry31:58

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett31:58

       ... women, essentially.

    4. LPLouise Perry31:59

       Yeah. The ick. Yeah. It's a really interesting expression, isn't it?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett32:02

       Mm-hmm.

    6. LPLouise Perry32:02

       It's that, uh, women use it to mean when they're like, they like a man and then suddenly something switch- switches and they get the ick. And all of a sudden they're like, "Ooh, no."

    7. SBSteven Bartlett32:13

       Yeah. I had, um, I've got a friend, who I shan't name, um, who met this really great guy on a dating app. And I was, I was looking at

    8. NANarrator32:22

       (laughs)

    9. SBSteven Bartlett32:22

       ... he, 'cause she was asking me for some advice on her dating profile or whatever. And not that I could give anyone advice, 'cause I've basically never been on any dating app.

    10. LPLouise Perry32:29

        (laughs)

    11. SBSteven Bartlett32:29

        But, um, she showed me this photo of this guy, and this guy was like really good-looking. He looked like he played rugby or something. He was just like, I was like, "What a great guy." And she was like, "No. He's got boxes on the, the, uh, wardrobe behind him." Ugh.

    12. LPLouise Perry32:42

        (laughs)

    13. SBSteven Bartlett32:43

        She's like, "He's got like-"

    14. LPLouise Perry32:44

        The ick.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett32:44

        "... cardboard boxes on the wardrobe behind him."

    16. LPLouise Perry32:45

        Right.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett32:46

        She was like, "Ugh." I was like, "This guy is like, he's like perfect."

    18. LPLouise Perry32:49

        (laughs)

    19. SBSteven Bartlett32:49

        "He's like, he's like an action figure." But because he had boxes, cardboard boxes on the wardrobe behind him in the profile picture, she was like, "Ugh."

    20. LPLouise Perry32:55

        Interesting.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett32:57

        Bizarre. I thought, you know, is that a cultural thing or is that innate, this... 'Cause there's no guy that I know-

    22. LPLouise Perry33:02

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett33:02

        ... that would look at a profile-

    24. LPLouise Perry33:03

        Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett33:04

        ... of a stunning woman and go, "Ugh, she's got cardboard boxes on the..."

    26. LPLouise Perry33:08

        Although might they, do you think, for a woman they were like deciding whether to marry? Do you know what I mean?

    27. SBSteven Bartlett33:16

        Would-

    28. LPLouise Perry33:16

        Because men do tend to have sort of two, there are kind of two tracks, right? Like there's the woman I'd have sex with and there's the woman I'd marry, and they're qu-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett33:23

        Yeah.

    30. LPLouise Perry33:23

        And they're different.
15. 34:09 – 38:49

    Women should listen to their icks

    1. SBSteven Bartlett34:09

    2. LPLouise Perry34:09

       (laughs)

    3. SBSteven Bartlett34:09

       The one that always makes me laugh is if a man on a date, the date goes really, really well. And then at the end of the date, he pulls out his wallet to pay and he has a Velcro wallet. (laughs)

    4. LPLouise Perry34:20

       (laughs) Right.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett34:23

       Is that an ick for you?

    6. LPLouise Perry34:25

       Mm...

    7. SBSteven Bartlett34:27

       (laughs)

    8. LPLouise Perry34:27

       I, I, I'm not sure if it would be a personal ick-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett34:30

       Okay.

    10. LPLouise Perry34:30

        ... but I guess maybe we should respect it as a, as a, as an idiosyncratic ick. I don't know. (laughs) I think in general, this goes for men as well, I think this goes for people, I think it's, um, have you ever read The Gift of Fear?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett34:46

        No.

    12. LPLouise Perry34:46

        A Gavin de Becker book. Really great book. It was published like 30 years ago or something. I think Oprah made it quite a big deal. And, uh, it's about, it's by a, um, I think he used to be a bodyguard. He's like a personal security expert. And he tells all these stories, it's mostly about women, and maybe this applies to men too. Um, where women basically ended up getting, um, attacked by men who they did actually have bad vibes about in some way, but they ignored those, and it cost them, right? And his argument is that, um, fear is a gift and that you should listen to your instincts. Because often, again, highly ev- you know, very, uh, evolved to be very, very attuned to these instincts, right? There's a reason why we are descended from people who listened to their instincts, in this regard. Um, and often your unconscious will spot things that your conscious brain hasn't spotted. And maybe you'll be worried about being impolite or being weird or whatever, you know. So I, I can't remember all of the stories, but I remember there's one of a woman who a man, um, offered to help her carry her shopping up to her flat. And he was really insistent about it. And she was like, "Okay." So she let him, and then as soon as he was in the flat, he shut the door and attacked her, and she was lucky to survive. She, she said later that it, it was weird. It, he, like he, it didn't feel like he was just being nice. She got, she got bad vibes from him, she got the ick, whatever. There was something like going on. But her conscious brain said, "He's just being nice." And so she ignored her instincts and she let him into her flat. Like that's the sort of example where actually-I think that our unconscious brains, no, are actually very wise about a lot of these things.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett36:44

        Women's more than men's in that regard?

    14. LPLouise Perry36:46

        Interesting question. I would guess probably yes, because particularly in relation to the sexual violence threat.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett36:53

        Yeah.

    16. LPLouise Perry36:53

        Right? Which women carry and men don't as much. I mean, men certainly don't carry it from women. G- if men get sexually assaulted, it will be by other men, almost always. Um, uh, like again, you know, really interestingly, if you show women ... I think this is true for women but not for men, as far as I know. If you show women a map of their local area and ask them to say which streets they would not wanna walk down alone late at night, and they h- you know, they highlight those streets, they map on perfectly to actual rates of crime. And these women know nothing about this. They're not familiar with, like, local police statistics or whatever. It's just vibes. They just feel unsafe in these areas. They're actually, those vibes are actually really accurate, surprisingly so. And I guess because, yeah, it's this evolved thing that, um, (smacks lips) (sighs) like to put it really bluntly, rape is a very bad outcome for women evolutionarily. Right? It's something you really want to avoid, and so we have these in-built systems which-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett37:54

        Fatal, right?

    18. LPLouise Perry37:55

        Well, sometimes. But it, it's also just that the, the ... Well, there are several costs. There's the, there's the carrying a ba- the rapist baby and all the downsides of that, right? There's the risk of being ostracized by your community. Maybe your, your husband, like, casts you out. There are so many downsides, even aside from the physical threat. Um, we've evolved some very good systems to try and protect ourselves against that. I also think that to some extent, you know, our ... the, you know, the 15-year-old girls, they do have these instincts so they, they have some degree of, like, in-built protective instincts. But they also, they do also la- lack life experience, um, which is, I think, why we have, or ought to have, social conventions that also protect them.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett38:45

        Do you know what's interesting? A- as a ... You know, this is called the Diary of a CEO podcast, and although

16. 38:49 – 41:41

    Women's 6th sense

    1. SBSteven Bartlett38:49

       we strayed quite far from business, and people tell me that all the time, um, my, my lens, because I run businesses when I'm not doing this, is always to think about how a lot of this applies to business.

    2. LPLouise Perry38:58

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett38:59

       And as you were talking about, y- the way that I heard it is that women have a different sort of radar-

    4. LPLouise Perry39:05

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett39:06

       ... sort of like than men, and are able to spot different things than men. And I thought about how useful that is in business, and what a great case for diversity that is, both in, like, the hiring process. Because often, and I've ... This is just an observation from running businesses. Often, the women that run some of my businesses are able to spot something in certain candidates that it wasn't abundantly clear to me. And often, again, and this is anecdotal, um, one candidate who all the men in the interview process are good with, fine with, all of the women in the interview process have a problem with.

    6. LPLouise Perry39:43

       Interesting.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett39:43

       And a problem they almost can't explain.

    8. LPLouise Perry39:45

       Interesting.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett39:46

       It's a vibe they're getting.

    10. LPLouise Perry39:47

        It's a vibe, yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett39:48

        And the men in the interview process often, sometimes, not always, don't have the problem with this individual, but then all of the women in my organization have a problem with this person. And so over time, I've learnt that maybe I don't have the radar and maybe, you know, maybe I need to ha- listen to both sides to make an informed decision. And it's plausible when you think about evolution, that men and women have a different sort of sixth sense-

    12. LPLouise Perry40:13

        Yeah.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett40:13

        ... in that regard. I see it in my partner. Obviously, I can't give an anecdotal example-

    14. LPLouise Perry40:16

        (laughs)

    15. SBSteven Bartlett40:16

        ... 'cause it's my partner, but it's like she's operating on a different frequency oftentimes to me.

    16. LPLouise Perry40:20

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett40:20

        And that's kinda what makes the relationship work.

    18. LPLouise Perry40:23

        My husband says I'm a witch.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett40:24

        Yeah, I think my partner's a witch.

    20. LPLouise Perry40:25

        Yeah. (laughs)

    21. SBSteven Bartlett40:26

        So if we can ... We, if we're making it a safe space, my, my partner is a witch. But she's a, she's a white witch, and she knows she is. But she can just ... It's like she can see s- things that I can't see.

    22. LPLouise Perry40:35

        Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, uh, there's a great book to be written, um, about, like, how these sex differences play out in the workplace. Because again, I think it's because we ... Because there's a bit of a taboo about talking about it too much.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett40:47

        Mm-hmm.

    24. LPLouise Perry40:47

        And there is obviously a risk. I mean, I don't ... The reason, big reason why feminists don't want to, uh, overplay these psychological differences between men and women is because historically, they have been used to discriminate against women.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett41:05

        Yeah.

    26. LPLouise Perry41:06

        Right? The women are too irrational to do X, Y, Z. You know. Um, so, and that's a completely reasonable concern. But I also think that just pretending, therefore, that they don't, that they don't exist doesn't really do anyone any favors, because they do. Um, and I think we should just be honest. And I say simultan- be honest, but also simultaneously be like, you know, "This doesn't mean that women are inferiors, you know." Um-

    27. SBSteven Bartlett41:28

        For me, it's a case for diversity.

    28. LPLouise Perry41:30

        In some places. I mean, I think there probably is an argument for-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett41:35

        In, like, the hiring process, for example, if your business is intending to-

    30. LPLouise Perry41:36

        Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think there are probably some roles where,

17. 41:41 – 47:23

    There are some jobs women shouldn't do due to biology

    1. LPLouise Perry41:41

       or indeed things like, like in policing for instance, um, you know, to be really direct, I don't think that women should be in front-line policing roles because I think that the physicals differences are too profound, particularly in the UK where women don't carry ... where police officers don't carry guns. The m- the average woman, even a really strong, fit woman, is gonna really struggle in a direct confrontation with the average male.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett42:08

       But if I was to, to rebuttal that-

    3. LPLouise Perry42:09

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett42:10

       ... I'd say, you know, what, what, what happens if you have a crime where, um, involving several women, and a man shows up without the empathy or without the ability to r- sort of resonate or to relate?

    5. LPLouise Perry42:24

       So the ... Yeah. So this, so I think women should be involved in criminal justice, but f- 'cause for instance, probably women are better at interviewing.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett42:31

       Yeah.

    7. LPLouise Perry42:31

       I wouldn't be surprised. And interrogation. You know?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett42:34

       Yeah.

    9. LPLouise Perry42:34

       So there are probably some roles where women are gonna outperform men. Again, it's, you know, it's the overlapping bell curves. There'll be some men who are really good at this, whatever, but you'd expect there to be a female advantage in that role. But there isn't a female advantage in the, like-... being out and having physical confrontations with people role, and I think that's fine. I don't think that we should... Th- this is a very frustrating tendency, um, in policing, in f- fire service as well, to, for people to notice the fact that there are fewer say female firefighters, and therefore to lower the, the physical demands to get more female firefighters in.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett43:14

        What if the, what if the physical demands, what if the test was... Is the test the same for both, i.e., if I wanna be a frontline police officer, I have to pass the same physical task irrespective of gender?

    11. LPLouise Perry43:23

        Yes, that's true, but one of the things that they've done over the years because of pressure, like feminist pressure, to be blunt, is that they've loo- uh, they changed the standards. So they've, um, say, reduced the upper body strength component, or they've made the... Like in policing, and in firefighting, all these, and military, you have to have bleep tests, stuff like that. Um, they've lowered the standards necessary in a lot of roles.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett43:48

        Okay. So that's really the issue then.

    13. LPLouise Perry43:49

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett43:50

        Versus the Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's wha- yeah. Because there's... I mean, the, s- several of the women upstairs would whoop my ass in a bleep test.

    15. LPLouise Perry43:56

        (laughs)

    16. SBSteven Bartlett43:56

        No, they will. They, like, run marathons and stuff, all of them in the bloody office. They'd all whoop my ass.

    17. LPLouise Perry43:59

        Yeah.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett44:00

        So really the issue is about making sure the standards are sufficient for the-

    19. LPLouise Perry44:03

        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett44:03

        ... for the role, for the requirement of the role.

    21. LPLouise Perry44:04

        Yeah. Don't lower the standards so that you can get more women into these physical roles. Just accept the fact that there will be... I mean, like, I do know actually, I... Like one female firefighter that I know personally from jujitsu, she's so strong, she's so fit, she passed a very, very high standard. Great. You know, you will get that woman in 1,000 who can, and in which case, fine. You know. But what I, what I don't think is wise at all is, like, engineering it such that you have 50/50 in every role. I think that that's a recipe for disaster.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett44:37

        So, but just to be clear on this point, because you said, um, you don't think women should be involved in frontline policing-

    23. LPLouise Perry44:42

        I- (sighs)

    24. SBSteven Bartlett44:43

        If they can meet the required-

    25. LPLouise Perry44:44

        Yes, the very high standards, I think that one woman-

    26. SBSteven Bartlett44:48

        Would you?

    27. LPLouise Perry44:48

        ... in 1,000, yes. But I, but I...

    28. SBSteven Bartlett44:52

        One woman in 1,000 is like-

    29. LPLouise Perry44:53

        Yeah.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett44:53

        You think that's it?
18. 47:23 – 49:01

    Heroic masculinity

    1. SBSteven Bartlett47:23

    2. LPLouise Perry47:23

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett47:23

       ... shot the terrorist.

    4. LPLouise Perry47:24

       Yeah. And there was also that man, did you see, who, like, barricaded the escalator?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett47:28

       Yes, and he was-

    6. LPLouise Perry47:28

       He was just a-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett47:28

       ... holding this chair.

    8. LPLouise Perry47:29

       He was just a member of the public, yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett47:30

       Yeah.

    10. LPLouise Perry47:31

        Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett47:31

        There was, so that was really interesting 'cause this idea of, I read this article about heroic masculinity-

    12. LPLouise Perry47:36

        Yeah.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett47:36

        ... in The New York Times, written by a woman, and it does, uh, the article goes to highlight these instances where the man runs in the building, 9/11.

    14. LPLouise Perry47:43

        Yeah. Yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett47:43

        I think it was like 98% of the people that died in 9/11, firefighters were, were men.

    16. LPLouise Perry47:47

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett47:47

        I think it was a couple of women as well.

    18. LPLouise Perry47:49

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett47:49

        And then I saw that video of the terrorist attack in Australia, and you have, aga- you have the guy on this, the escalator holding a chair-

    20. LPLouise Perry47:55

        Mm-hmm.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett47:55

        ... threatening this-

    22. LPLouise Perry47:56

        Mm-hmm.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett47:56

        ... terrorist that he's gonna smash him with the chair if he comes closer.

    24. LPLouise Perry47:58

        Mm-hmm.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett47:59

        And then the person that ultimately ended the terrorist attack was a woman with a gun.

    26. LPLouise Perry48:03

        Mm-hmm.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett48:04

        And so, you know, it's nu- it's super nuanced, isn't it? This...

    28. LPLouise Perry48:08

        Yeah. What's really interesting about this physical courage thing is, um, so often people say later that they didn't even think about it. It wasn't, there was no conscious process. There was no, like, "Should I or should I?" They just-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett48:20

        Yeah.

    30. LPLouise Perry48:21

        ... do it.
19. 49:01 – 51:33

    Social media affecting our view on relationships & dating

    1. LPLouise Perry49:01

       um, there's kinda two sides to this ick argument. There's this, "I've got this radar which is useful, and it's protecting me," and then there's this other sort of more newer social TikTokification of the ick- Uh-huh. ... which is probably causing people not to get in relationships. I've got a friend that, um, she's been on about a hun- she goes on about a hundred dates a year, and she's- she's like, sh- I think she's actually starting a dating podcast because she's that unsuccessful at dating. (laughs) And in my head, I go, "I think this might be part of like a s- broader social issue, that-" Yeah. "... the reason we're not coming together, we're having less sex, all these things, is because, in part, because of these icks. We think everything is a problem." Yeah. "Because social media told us it was." Yes. And yeah, and I think it's probably true going back to this memetic thing, right? There are probably some, um, social status s- signs which are very memetic. Like one of the things that some women will do, for instance, is they'll like say, "I will only date a man over six foot," and actually, and just set that cutoff. And you can be very objective about that on the app because they say how tall they are. I mean, I'm sure everyone's exaggerating, but like they say how tall they are. And it's- it's a really silly thing to do actually because you're cutting off like, I don't know, 80% of men, more, depending on the group of men. Um, you're just cutting them out, and actually, if you were to meet this person in real life, the fact that they were 5'9" wouldn't, you wouldn't even notice probably. So sometimes I think that, um, modern technology can encourage a level of pickiness which is actually really counterproductive and probably actually... And- and again, it's like s- I think so much of, um, mutual sexual attraction is about the, uh, about pheromones, about vibe, about being in person. Mm-hmm. And dating apps don't capture that at all, so I'm sure that definitely works against, um... Yeah, there are 100% women who are way too picky (laughs) , definitely, definitely. We, um, we talked a second ago about how the introduction of the Pill and how that caused negotiation in this first sort of s- encounter- Yeah. ... impacts women. Um, we didn't cover how it impacts men downstream. Yeah. I... Would- would it be better for men if there wa- you know, we waited longer before we had sex with a woman? You know, in your book you talk about waiting three months, but then- Mm-hmm. ... you whispered something to me, which I'll let you say just in case people wanna say it. (laughs) I think probably actually waiting till engagement is a better call. So you think we should wait until

20. 51:33 – 56:50

    Wait until engagement to have sex

    1. LPLouise Perry51:33

       we are engaged with someone before we have sex? Yeah. You bite your lip when you say that. Are you nervous? I'm saying that because there are trade-offs, and I acknowledge them. And also it's more difficult to do that in a culture where that's weird. Yeah. Because what you end up doing is cutting out anyone who- who, for whom that's too weird, right? Like you basically cut out a big chunk of your possible matches by insisting on that, unless, say, you're very religious, in which case everyone in your religious community is gonna have the same expectation. But for most people, that's gonna be quite, um, quite a weird thing to demand, which is why I said three months in the book because it seemed like more reasonable (laughs) - Yeah. ... um, and more achievable, and also 'cause my mum said to me when I was, she read the draft. She was like, "If you say this, if you say wait till engagement or marriage, that's the first thing every reviewer is gonna notice about the book. It's gonna be a big deal. So it'll be, you'll- you'll get more of a hearing, you know, if you're more reasonable." The thing is we're a really weird culture in this regard. Like basically every other culture. There is obviously variation, you know? Yeah. My, so my first degree was in anthropology, and one of the things about anthropology which is so, um, powerful and interesting when you're interested in contemporary social issues is that, um, there are a lot of differences between cultures. Of course there are, and that's what's interesting for anthropologists. But there are also a lot of similarities, and actually there have been various efforts over the years to compose lists of human universals, which you find in absolutely every culture. Um, it's called the anthropologist's veto. If you find a culture that doesn't have this, then you can kinda strike it off the universals list. But the universals list is pretty long and includes things like every culture has religion in some fashion. Every culture has gender roles in some fashion. Every culture has wages war in some fashion. There are things that everyone does. And, um, everyone has marriage customs of some kind. They can look different from ours. I mean, the most common way in which cultures differ from- from our culture, or at least our culture up until recently, is, um, permitting polygamous marriage. So about 80% of cultures permit polygamous marriage. Only permitting monogamous marriage is more unusual. I think we're drip- drifting back towards permitting polygamous marriage through polyamory, but that's, we can get onto that. The, the thing is I just think the thinking that went for- for- for sort of radicals in the 1960s, so what happened in the 1960s, it was the Pill and other tech as well. It was also an ideological thing. It was also people wanting to completely reject the old order, you know, reject religion, reject conservatives and whatever. And what a lot of people said at the time was, "Why are we needlessly restricting people? Why are we, you know, um, limiting people's freedom in a way that makes them miserable? We just gotta throw this out the window," right? And I think that, um, that doesn't work (laughs) . Like throwing conventions out the window. That's not how humans work. We have a tendency to construct, in one way or another, rules around these things. And human reproduction is like the most important. It's a very, very complex and delicate thing, right, that you have to get right. It's really, it's like a, it's like this enormous coordination problem. You've gotta find the right person. You've gotta find 'em at the right time. You've gotta like ensure commitment from them. And of course there's this whole game about how like men might wanna-... have sex with more people, a woman wants to tie a man down, like, it's a really complicated game. And what, um, societies come up with is ways of regulating it, ways of regulating heterosexuality basically, right? Which means restricting women's freedom. It does. That's what feminists have always noted. It also means restricting men's freedom. It says there are certain things that men can't do. And we had such a system, you know? We had the, like, you can't have sex outside of marriage, marriage has to be monogamous, all these, all these rules that you have to ask the bride's father's permission, all this stuff. We had it all, right? And we basically threw out the window, I mean, it lingers a bit, but we have very low... I mean, in London, right, uh, now half of children will reach the age of 15 without their biological father in the home. Those are very, very high figures compared with, say, 100 years ago. Very, very high figures. So we've seen basically the dissolution of that old order. And there are upsides to that, there are, but there are big downsides too. And I think (sighs) every culture has marriage customs of some kind, apart from ours, sort of. Like, what makes us think that we alone among peoples can just have a free for all, can just, you know, style it out, people do whatever they feel like? Do you know what I mean? I think that, I think that the, what h- what anthropology tells us is that actually we need structure, we need conventions and constraints and, and, and, uh, and templates, you know? And those will sometimes feel restrictive, and there will sometimes be people for whom they don't work very well. Um, but I think the idea we can just do without them is not true. I mean, going back to the polyamory thing, if you look at dating app data, one of the... Sometimes people

21. 56:50 – 1:01:20

    The dating crisis

    1. LPLouise Perry56:50

       exaggerate this effect a little bit, right? But there is a tendency for basically very attractive men, high-status men, the Hu- the Hugh Hefners, right? To, um, to do really well on dating apps, to get a lot of, uh, attention from a lot of women. And then for the bottom chunk of men in terms of attractiveness to get none, to just get no matches whatsoever. And s- and this is a tendency, it's called hypergamy, female hypergamy, that women will tend to want to marry up socially, so they'll want to marry a man who is richer than them, better educated than them, more successful than them, et cetera. Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, you, you... This is basically what you see. When people are left to their own devices on dating apps, and you can monitor it carefully, um, that is basically what people do. And the problem you end up with is that, um, when you don't have a system of monogamous marriage and you don't have the expectation that people wait, um, there's really nothing stopping those men from just having loads of girlfriends, maybe having them at the same time, like having little harems, right? You know, not, not calling them that, but having... Basically playing the field and not being forced to commit, because no one expects them to really. And it's, like, good fun for those men. It's frustrating for the women because they're like... They're, they're, they're having relationships with these men in the hope that it'll turn into commitment, and then it never does. And so they end up feeling really bitter, right? And it's also frustrating for the less attractive men who are getting no attention whatsoever and who read me or listen to me saying, "The sexual revolution was good for men," and it's like, "It wasn't good for me." It's, "I know, I know, I know." There's a real... There's, like, an in-built inequality.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett58:32

       Sorry to interrupt, but hasn't there always been an in-built inequality in the male experience?

    3. LPLouise Perry58:35

       Well, this is what's interesting about the monogamy-polygamy system, right? In a monogamous system, to some extent that's prevented, because these high-status men, unless you're like a king, unless you're Henry VIII, okay? You can't, you can't have multiple women on the go. You have to commit to one woman and basically remove yourself from the dating pool, right? And so it isn't possible for the really attractive men to sort of amass a lot of women. Um, and so I've heard it described as sexual socialism, (laughs) monogamous marriage, because it does sort of encourage like an, like a equalizing effect. Um-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett59:11

       One each.

    5. LPLouise Perry59:12

       Yeah. (laughs) Whereas in a polygamous system, obviously that's completely permissible and, you know, in extreme circumstances, you'll have high-status men having, you know, 100 women or something like that in historical examples. Um, and then low-status men just have none. And it's, it's quite an unstable... One of the downsides of a polygamous system, it is quite common, and it's probably, to some extent, our species norm. It's... I think it's what people kind of do when left to their own devices. That's, like, the natural way we settle if there are no social restrictions. Um, o- one downside of it is having a lot of unmarried, or, like, having a lot of sexless men is quite bad for social stability, because they're very frustrated, they're angry, they don't have a lot to lose. One of the really interesting things about, going back to testosterone, when men, um, have children and get married, their testosterone levels drop. They become less aggressive. Like, in the year after a baby is born, men commit less crime, they're less promiscuous, like, there's a real sort of, um-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:19

       They just have no sleep.

    7. LPLouise Perry1:00:21

       (laughs) I'm sure that's part of it.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:22

       (laughs)

    9. LPLouise Perry1:00:22

       But there is, like, if you're directly involved in caring for your own child, you do, as a man, you do become less, less high tea. And that has a sort of taming effect, right? Where it's like ch- where it's channeling male energies in a different direction, which on a societal scale can be really good in terms of having a peaceful, stable society. And polygamous societies do tend to be more unstable in that sense. Um, there's also... There's more, um, domestic violence in polygamist societies. There's more conflict within households. Like, there are quite a lot of bad outcomes that you get from polygamist systems. So even though monogamy is maybe not the norm anth- anthropologically, it does seem to be a good norm.... and some of the most successful societies have adopted monogamy as their, as their norm, um, and have been successful partly because of that.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:15

        If you, um, are to have a daughter in the future, I know you've got

22. 1:01:20 – 1:04:08

    Why you should have sex before marriage

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:20

       a son already and you've got another boy on the way. But if you are to have a daughter in the future, and that daughter comes up to you, um, let's say 18 years old and says, "Mom, I heard on that podcast you did ages ago-"

    2. LPLouise Perry1:01:30

       (laughs)

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:31

       "... 20 years ago..." (laughs)

    4. LPLouise Perry1:01:33

       (laughs)

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:33

       "... that you said I shouldn't have sex with the guy I'm dating until engagement."

    6. LPLouise Perry1:01:37

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:38

       "Mom, can you just confirm why?" What, what would you say to your daughter?

    8. LPLouise Perry1:01:42

       A few reasons. One is because women in particular tend to get emotionally bonded from sex more than men do.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:48

       Do we know that? 'Cause anecdotally, you know, in the group chat-

    10. LPLouise Perry1:01:54

        (laughs)

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:54

        ... confirmed. (laughs)

    12. LPLouise Perry1:01:55

        Yes. (laughs)

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:56

        But is there science to support that idea?

    14. LPLouise Perry1:01:59

        Yeah, I think that you can measure it in terms of, um, things like oxytocin.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:04

        Okay.

    16. LPLouise Perry1:02:05

        And, um, uh, there's actually... I wrote about this in the book. There's this whole, like, horrible genre of journalistic articles, um, basically advising women on how to have casual sex without being miserable and, um, sort of what, what can you do to, like, hack your brain so you can have casual sex without feeling dreadful afterwards. This is like publicly acknowledgment that this is a thing. And one of the advi- one of the pieces of advice is things like, um, take ecstasy while you're having sex because it will, like, dull your emotional bonding response, things like that, which I just find so dystopian. I'm like, or you could just not. (laughs)

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:40

        Yeah.

    18. LPLouise Perry1:02:41

        Or, you know, you don't have to, like, try and biohack your brain to, uh, enjoy something you don't really wanna do. But anyway, um, women get more emotionally bonded from sex than men do, and then you do, uh, end up with this, um, kind of asymmetry which comes up in the group chat, right? Of like, she basically is more into him than he is into her. Um, and if there's no commitment, not even any necessarily social acknowledgment of the relationship. It might be just, uh, friends with benefits or something. That can be really painful. Um, so it's a good idea to basically ho- if you hold off on having sex, you hold off on having that effect, and it means you can make clear-eyed decisions. If you see red flags, you're more likely to respond to them properly if you're not, like, befuddled by oxytocin, basically. The other thing is it's like... (sighs) it's just a really, really good demonstration of commitment. If you... Y- you always risk getting pregnant, you always do. Even if you're on modern contraception, there's always that risk. And do you want a man who is gonna ditch you if that happens, basically? Like, how, how can you... How can you find some guarantee that he's not gonna do that? A diamond ring is a pretty good one, don't you think? (laughs) There are other ways you could demonstrate it, but that's a really good one, and it's a kind of tried and tested one.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:04

        It's pretty crazy how significant the shift in attitudes

23. 1:04:08 – 1:08:12

    Why is marriage good

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:08

       towards casual sex have changed. I was reading some research earlier that said 67% of Gen Z think it's justifiable to have casual sex compared to 12% of the pre-war generation.

    2. LPLouise Perry1:04:18

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:19

       And, you know, when we... you talk about the diamond ring being a good way to get commitment-

    4. LPLouise Perry1:04:23

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:23

       ... but I had a div- divorce lawyer on the podcast the other day, and, um, he said to me that 56% of marriages fail. And that-

    6. LPLouise Perry1:04:35

       One thing that skews that though, you know, is that people who have multiple marriages are more likely to get divorced.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:39

       Yes, he did say I think 86% of people that get married again-

    8. LPLouise Perry1:04:43

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:44

       ... after that.

    10. LPLouise Perry1:04:45

        Yeah. So there's some... But, but yes, I mean, the principle is true.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:49

        So do you think marriage as a system or a technology is good?

    12. LPLouise Perry1:04:55

        (sighs)

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:55

        Or do you just think it's... 'Cause in the book, it sounds like you think it's just the best available option.

    14. LPLouise Perry1:04:59

        Yeah, becau- okay, so the key reason I think that marriage is good part- specifically for women, right? It's good for men too, but the, the particular reason why it's good for women and why I think that feminist arguments against it are flawed is that the nature of carrying children is that you have a period, of some period of time where you cannot participate in the labor market, right? Where you're too pregnant, you've got a newborn, whatever. I mean, I... when I had my first baby, I, I calculated that in the first, um, weeks and months of his life, I was spending 40 hours a week just breastfeeding, right? So you can't... You basically... Mothers and babies aren't really individuals, right? In the sense that they're not completely autonomous. My friend Merri Harington, who's also an author, um, she said that she... this really, like, um... She realized this for the first time when she had her daughter, and, um, her baby was crying to be fed in the middle of the night. And she realized that in a sort of... If you, if you, uh, looked at their relationship in an individualist way, you were like, "Okay, you've got one human being who, like, wants to be fed and another human being who can provide the feeding." Um, but they're autonomous agents, they can just make their own decisions or whatever. She's like, "No, no, no, I can't just decide, 'Now I'm gonna ignore it. I'm gonna go back to bed.'" Like, every, every cell in your body is saying, "I must go feed my baby." It completely changes you, you physically, psychologically. It's like completely transformative experience because you, your biological goal becomes, "Keep this baby alive," and the baby is completely dependent on you. There's this, uh, the, uh, child psychotherapist, um, Donald Winnicott said, "There's no such thing as a baby. There's only a baby and someone." Right? Babies can't survive on their own, and normally, that someone is the mother. And when it comes to things like breastfeeding, it has to be really. I mean, we now have formula and so on, so we can sort of... It's that old thing of using technology to take the edge off some of these social realities, but-... it's still basically the case that mums and babies are, like, tied together like this emotionally, biologically. And during those times in your life, you need another adult, at least one other adult who's gonna do the, you know, getting food, paying rent, doing all this basic stuff to support you. And who that adult is, is, uh, something that one can ex- people have experimented with, right? Like, attempts at communal child-rearing, say, or, I mean, what to some extent you can do is depend on the state.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:45

        Yeah.

    16. LPLouise Perry1:07:46

        Right? Depend on the welfare state, depend on, um, say, um, state-provided childcare services, things like that. That all of those solutions kind of work (laughs) but come with significant downsides. The only solution, I think the best solution that we've come up with historically, is for the father of the child to, to play that role, basically.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:09

        And then, then on this subject of marriage, just to really interrogate this

24. 1:08:12 – 1:11:41

    How likely you're to get divorced

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:12

       further because I feel like I'm in two minds about it.

    2. LPLouise Perry1:08:15

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:15

       Aka, A, because of the stats show that 56%, you know, end in marriage, of, of divorce, and you've kind of rebuttaled that because of the remarriage rate. But then even the amount of people that seem to be in unhappy marriages seems to be pretty significant. This is part of what the divorce lawyer said to me. He said, "Y- you know, you could say 56% of marriages fail-"

    4. LPLouise Perry1:08:32

       Mm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:32

       "... but if you defined failure as one or two people in that marriage being unhappy, the number is significantly higher." And I know a lot of people, again, it's anecdotal so it's not worth much, but a lot of people that are married, you know, who I would define as being really just kind of, the divorce part is so uncomfortable-

    6. LPLouise Perry1:08:52

       Mm.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:52

       ... and painful, that they've just decided to stay together.

    8. LPLouise Perry1:08:55

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:55

       Which is not always in the interest of the kids, because if that home becomes toxic in any regard, the trauma is passed down-

    10. LPLouise Perry1:09:01

        Mm, yeah-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:01

        ... sufficiently to the kids.

    12. LPLouise Perry1:09:02

        ... okay. Uh, I take all of that.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:04

        Yeah.

    14. LPLouise Perry1:09:04

        But I do think that, one, the divorce rate is, to some extent, a product of a divorce culture, right? Where it's very permissible, in fact, very normal for people to, you know, really, really, like, tricky bit for people to get through is the first year after a first child is born because everyone's tired, everyone's stressed. Money, there are money pressures, et cetera, et cetera.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:25

        No sex.

    16. LPLouise Perry1:09:26

        Yeah. There are lots of reasons why that's a difficult time, and it's quite common for people to, whether or not they're married, but for people to break up during that period and then to regret it, because actually it's a temporary period of your life. It will get better, you will get less stressed, you will get less tired, et cetera. So to some extent, a divorce culture will sometimes encourage people to make, um, permanent decisions which they, they will regret. And there is, there are stats showing that quite a lot of people do regret getting divorced, something like a third-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:55

        Mm-hmm.

    18. LPLouise Perry1:09:55

        ... of people regret getting divorced. So there's that. The other thing is that there is a lot of, uh, it's not just ... It's true, yes, that the people who have multiple marriages are more likely to get ... Some people can be kind of serial offenders in this regard, right? With divorce. Um, there's also, you know, there's a massive skew with, uh, class and education. So only about 10% of graduates who get married will get divorced.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:18

        Interesting.

    20. LPLouise Perry1:10:19

        Yeah. And that's, it is interesting, isn't it? And it does suggest that to some extent marriage is becoming a luxury good. And th- I mean, there's this, there's this phenomenon, right? Where a lot of people who are from those kind of elite graduate classes will, um, they'll talk the 1960s but walk the 1950s. So they'll proclaim all the stuff about freedom and individual choice and whatever, but actually they live pretty conventional lives. They tend to get married, they tend to stay married, they tend to have 2.5 children, et cetera, and be very, um, actually be very conservative in their own choices even if they don't necessarily promote those choices. So, so that, you know, there's that. And, and actually I think, I think it's probably because people know that there are massive benefits to their children from staying together. There are, of course, some instances, particularly with abuse, when it's better for the children if the parents break up. That's absolutely true. But I think when you're talking about kind of v- uh, v- vague unhappiness, dissatisfaction, like, "We've outgrown each other," like that level of, uh, unhappy marriage, I think it's much better for the children to stay together. And one big reason for that is because the presence of step-parents, (laughs) on average, isn't good news for children.

25. 1:11:41 – 1:15:26

    Step-parents vs biological parents

    1. LPLouise Perry1:11:41

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:41

       How do you know that?

    3. LPLouise Perry1:11:42

       There's this thing called the Cinderella effect in, uh, evolutionary psychology where children who have a step-parent in the home are a hundred times more at risk of child abuse than children who don't have a step-parent in the home. Hundred times.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:58

       A hundred times?

    5. LPLouise Perry1:11:58

       I know. And obviously, I, I, you have to be careful. I'm not, I'm obviously not saying that all step-parents are abusive by any means. We're just talking about risk.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:06

       Yeah.

    7. LPLouise Perry1:12:07

       But it does go up by a lot. And what was, I mean, when this was discovered, um, it was taken as proof of the fact that parents having a genetic investment in their children is one of the re- ... I mean, and children are very, um, trying, okay? (laughs)

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:23

       Yeah.

    9. LPLouise Perry1:12:23

       They wake you up, they have tantrums, whatever. If you have a genetic investment in them, it carries you through those moments. You're like, "I love you. I want the best for you." You know, you can-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:34

        Mm-hmm.

    11. LPLouise Perry1:12:34

        ... sort of get over it. If you don't have a genetic investment in those children, if in fact you potentially have a conflict, if say you have children with the new partner and there's children in the household and you want those children to sort of be favored and do better, unconsciously, right? But there will be, there will be kind of a playing of favorites game. Like, it's not just-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:56

        In some cases.

    13. LPLouise Perry1:12:57

        In some cases. It's not just like violent abuse. It's things like step-parents are less likely to put a seatbelt on their step-children, things like that. It's like, it's like subtle but small ways in which step-children are disfavored compared with biological children. And of course some people will surmount that and be amazing step-parents, ditto like adoptive parents.... plenty of people will do a wonderful job, but it is a really significant risk thing. I had this woman called Katie Faust on my podcast, a little while ago, who, um, is a, uh, American campaigner for children's rights. And she said, "Try this, okay? Google 'my s- my, my mum's boyfriend,' and see what Google suggests." It's not pretty.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:44

        You've Googled it, haven't you?

    15. LPLouise Perry1:13:45

        Yeah.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:45

        What does it suggest?

    17. LPLouise Perry1:13:46

        It's things like, "My mum's boyfriend touched me." "My mum's boyfriend looks at me weird." "My mum's boyfriend makes me uncomfortable." Things like that.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:56

        Is a stepparent better than raising a child without a second parent, though?

    19. LPLouise Perry1:14:02

        (sighs) Probably financially, yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:05

        In terms of stability and having a role model or something?

    21. LPLouise Perry1:14:07

        Yeah, potentially. And obviously some stepparents can be really good, so it's difficult, isn't it? But I think the thing that pe- I think the thing that people should know, I think the reason why it's good to know about the Cinderella effect, is that if you're... It's quite easy as an adult to k- to kid yourself (laughs) and to be like, "I'm not very happy with my partner, my husband or my wife. Um, you know, sex is not as good as it used to be. We, like... He doesn't understand me." Like that kind of level of dissatisfaction. Um, "If only I had, was with someone else, everything would be so much better."

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:42

        I ask that in part because I was just thinking, as you were saying it, about adoption...

    23. LPLouise Perry1:14:45

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:46

        ... and the implications. Is, is it, an adopted child being with a family better than, than being...

    25. LPLouise Perry1:14:52

        I think definitely, yeah.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:54

        You know what I'm saying?

    27. LPLouise Perry1:14:54

        But I mean, this is one of the reasons why adopt, adoption agencies are so careful and screen so thoroughly, and like the criteria to be an adoptive parent are really, really stringent. It's because they know that there is this issue. I mean, particularly 'cause also children who are being adopted are more likely to have their own, uh, issues and like to be more difficult in some ways.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:15

        Yeah.

    29. LPLouise Perry1:15:15

        So, I think there's a recognition that this is a, this is more difficult setup, it's a more risky setup, and so you have to be careful.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:24

        The things you're saying, you know that

26. 1:15:26 – 1:20:29

    Why are you saying these unpopular opinions

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:26

       they're unpopular.

    2. LPLouise Perry1:15:27

       (laughs) Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:28

       Especially in 2024.

    4. LPLouise Perry1:15:29

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:29

       But you're saying them anyway.

    6. LPLouise Perry1:15:31

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:31

       Why?

    8. LPLouise Perry1:15:32

       'Cause I think it's true. (laughs)

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:34

       Do you care about the consequence of people being annoyed about it?

    10. LPLouise Perry1:15:39

        Uh, yeah. Although, you know what? Since this book was, since this book was published two years ago, um, I have had... And I really did feel a little bit when I was writing it, like, "Oh, no, have I just completely (laughs) like ruined my life?" Like, "Am I gonna just constantly face like, um, uh... Am I gonna get constant grief for this? Is it gonna be a complete disaster?" And actually, I would say that like 95% of the responses have been incredibly positive. And I get emails and messages all the time from people saying, "Thank you. I've been thinking this, this whole time."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:14

        The feedback you've gotten following the publication of your book, how has it surprised you? And when I ask that, I'm asking in terms of like who is sending you messages and what they're saying.

    12. LPLouise Perry1:16:26

        I would say, probably the two most common groups of readers are, um, dads.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:34

        Okay.

    14. LPLouise Perry1:16:35

        Who are really worried about their daughters, in particular, and also their sons. And saying like, "Thank you so much for..." This was the reason I decided to do a young adult edition of the book. So in, um, in a few months there's gonna be a young adult version, which is basically like edited, made shorter, simpler, whatever. Because the book has a lot of very adult themes, obviously. And, um, I had so many people saying like, "I wish I could give this to my 14-year-olds."

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:00

        Mm-hmm.

    16. LPLouise Perry1:17:00

        "And I just kind of feel uncomfortable doing so, but I really, really, really want them to know this stuff." Um, and so we did a young adult edition for exactly that purpose. And often it is dads who are feeling... Mums too, but it, dads who are feeling really anxious about this.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:13

        What, what are they worried about?

    18. LPLouise Perry1:17:14

        They're worried about... Well, they're worried about sexual violence to their daughters, is probably the key one.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:18

        Yeah.

    20. LPLouise Perry1:17:19

        But they're also worried about, say, the impact of porn on their sons, and they're worried about their children being miserable in various ways. The other group of readers I hear from are women who have lived this and who have had this exact process of thinking, "I can have sex like a man." Thinking, "I can like completely imitate the masculine template, and that's, that's good for me." And have had this deep sense of cognitive dissonance, which they've only belatedly realized was needless. Like it, they didn't have to actually put themselves through what they did, but they felt like they did. You know, they had this process of, uh, conforming to something that was bad for them. I hear from a lot of those women. Um, and, and you know, in many cases, like I have had two women email me recently to say that they are, are having a baby because of me. It's amazing. (laughs)

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:22

        It's pretty amazing.

    22. LPLouise Perry1:18:22

        It's so cool. Just because they, because they had this... Because the anti-mother messaging can be so strong, and-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:32

        And feel so empowering.

    24. LPLouise Perry1:18:33

        Yeah. And this feeling that... This painful feeling that actually the, that there's something much higher status about the masculine template, that there's something lesser, there's something worse about doing, doing the feminine thing. You know, being the mother, I think is very baked in, and is actually very anti-woman, I think, you know? To say that, to say that being just a mum, there's something wrong with that. That, that it would be better to have, say, a corporate job. That it would be better to live like a man. I think that when we... I think that when we say things like that, what we're basically saying is that what women do is worse, that there's something worse about women. Something like actually very deeply sexist about that in a way that I don't...... like at all. So a lot of what I try to do in my writing and podcast and everything is actually elevate some of the feminine stuff which is needlessly marginalized, you know, being a mo- It's okay to want to be monogamous. It's okay to want to have children. It's okay to care more about your children than your career. None of those things are bad.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:45

        It's okay to care more about your career than having children?

    26. LPLouise Perry1:19:48

        Yes.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:49

        You said that a little bit more reluctantly.

    28. LPLouise Perry1:19:51

        (laughs) No, it is. That is okay. I think that it is more common right now in our current cultural moment for women to be pushed towards the masculine role when it doesn't suit them than the other way around. I think historically it has been the other way around, right? The women who wanted to do the masculine thing and were really intelligent and ambitious and whatever were suppressed, and were, and were basically confined to the home, right? That definitely happened historically. I think we've kind of flipped, though, actually, and now it's more common for women to be told that being just a mom is worse.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:25

        At a societal level, there's been a big decline in birth rates, which is quite, um,

27. 1:20:29 – 1:25:55

    The decline in birth rates

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:29

       quite interesting. Are you concerned about the decline in birth rates?

    2. LPLouise Perry1:20:32

       Um, I mean, I think it is definitely going to cause significant political and economic problems.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:37

       To read some stats, by 2050, over three-quarters of countries won't have high enough fertility rates to keep their population size growing over time. Um, the global fertility, or to keep it stable over time, the global fertility rate has decreased from 4.84 live births per w- women in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021, and is expected to drop to 1.5 by 2- 2100. And the last one I'll read is Japan's population was 124.3 million, down 595 pe- thousand people from 2022, and the falling rate equals out to almost 100 people an hour are being lost from that population. Countries are taking drastic measures to give, to get their birth rates back up. South Korea, for example, is considering giving families about 60,000 pounds in cash for each newborn baby that they have. So yeah, there's a societal, social imp- impact, economic impact on the declining birth rates, and I've heard you say previously that you think it's one of the biggest evolutionary challenges we're facing.

Episode duration: 1:49:47