DEBATE: Why Do Gen Z Women Hate Men So Much?

Chris Williamson 0:00 Did you read this New Statesman article?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 0:02 I did.

Chris Williamson 0:03 Okay. What did you think of that?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 0:05 I thought it was fascinating. I thought it was concerning, but also a little bit predictable that women are-- Well, there was a lot in there. There was, you know, women are, have a bleak outlook on life, and that they are also spending a lot of time online, which is making everything worse, and that they dislike men, um [chuckles] so strongly, more than men dislike women. Um, I, I think that this is to be predicted by an evolutionary framework. Throughout human history, women were very vulnerable because they are targets of sexual abuse. They, because they're reproductively valuable, they're smaller on average, and they needed assistance getting the calories for themselves and for their children. And the data suggest women's foraging isn't enough to sustain even themselves. So, women who signaled their vulnerability through, um, looking kind of pitiable would've been favored. But also any display beyond that, so communicating sadness, communicating need, would've been favored. So I think this kind of tendency towards a bleak outlook on life makes sense. And in fact, women perceive themselves around the globe to be less happy, less healthy than men, both mentally and physically. And so this is a common pattern, and there also seems to be like, um, a social contagion effect to it. So if you look at women's interactions, um, when they are sad, their partners, whoever they're interacting with, becomes more sad. Their depression spreads through networks in a way that men's doesn't. So there's also like a social contagion effect. So I, I think a lot of this makes sense. And then if you look at, like, the men-hating, it also makes sense that if women needed to signal their loyalty to one another, so if they were often in these patrilocal environments where they weren't around their family or kin, then one way to communicate to other women, "You can trust me," is by being loyal, a really good friend, but also probably being a girl's girl.

Chris Williamson 2:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 2:19 Um, and one way to signal you're a girl's girl is by hating men. Hannah Bradshaw has some cool research showing that women who are guys' girls tend to be not trusted by other women. So if you have more guy friends-

Chris Williamson 2:33 Hmm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 2:33 ... they, they don't trust you. They think you're more provocative. Um, and so I think some of this is also related to that. I think there's a lot going on.

Chris Williamson 2:42 Is that in-group loyalty thing around the guys' girl stuff?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 2:46 I think so. So she didn't test it in that framework. Um, she tested it as, like, just what do you think of a girl who only has guy friends or a girl who has girls friends? Um, and women like the girl with girl friends more and trust her more. Um, but in some of our data where we looked at kind of this asymmetry and concern for men versus women, women showed the bias to a stronger degree than men did. So I think if you put those two together-

Chris Williamson 3:13 Right

Dr. Tania Reynolds 3:13 ... I think women might be, like, advocating for women to signal to one another, "I'm on your team."

Chris Williamson 3:19 Yeah.

William Costello 3:19 Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Tania. And to add a few more evolutionary perspectives to that, I was listening to the podcast from the journalists who did the research, and I was just banging my head against the wall thinking, "There's so much evolutionary psychology at play here, but you're, you can't see it." Um, there's also an error management perspective. So everything in evolution is a trade-off and between costs and benefits. And, uh, for most of our evolutionary history, women were making the trade-off that they were benefiting by selecting men who would be able to provision them with resources and be able to protect them. Uh, those are no longer as salient as benefits to modern women who are earning their own money, achieving their own status, and living in a pretty safe world, even if they, they don't always feel, uh, it's all that safe. So those are no longer really key benefits that men can provide. So they're looking for men to provide other benefits that they're just not stepping up to the plate to do. So if you think about it from an error management perspective, the costs of selecting a bad mate still are exactly the same as they were throughout ancestral history for women.

Chris Williamson 4:25 Hmm.

William Costello 4:25 But the benefits just-- So the, basically, the juice is not worth the squeeze for modern women. So, like, I read the article, and our lab focuses on sexual conflict, and one of the solutions to sexual conflict that we always kind of promote is, uh, to try and encourage cross-sex mind reading. For the last number of years, I've tried to get people to see it from the men's side that, oh, well, imagine how it would feel to suddenly be asked to provide value in ways that you don't really know how, that your status, you're, you're being outpaced in status, and you can no longer add value in those domains. Um, but now I'm trying to put the, the cross-sex mind reading hat on and imagine it from the woman's side. And f-from a trade-off perspective in terms of mating, they're living up to their side of the bargain. Uh, men value physical attractiveness far more than women, and that was one of the key benefits that women provide as a mate. Wom- modern women look better than ever, right?

Chris Williamson 5:23 Mm-hmm. Mm.

William Costello 5:23 And they're bringing more to the table. They're actually contributing resources and status as well. And it's not like men hated those things and only liked physical attractiveness. They just didn't-

Chris Williamson 5:33 It's a bonus.

William Costello 5:34 It just wasn't as key a benefit as it is to women. So men are getting more and more from women-

Chris Williamson 5:40 Hmm

William Costello 5:40 ... uh, whereas women are getting less and less, and they're looking for different things. And that was the key thing that came through, is that the traditional benefits that men were providing were no longer ones that modern women were looking for. They were looking for things like political, uh, shared political ideals, um, uh, emotional intelligence, uh, things like that, even humor and stuff. And I think that modern men are just a little bit lost. But there is, uh-There is a way back for them to provide value in different ways. Um, but it's just the case that modern women are happier to choose singlehood than risk choosing a costly mate. And if you look at modern relationships, there's this pathway towards a, a long-term committed relationship that has to go through this ambiguity, that goes through this kind of uncertainty of dealing with fuckboys, going on these dates, getting spurned by men, uh, 'cause because the modern mating market allows for deceptive men to pursue a deceptive strategy-

Chris Williamson 6:41 Mm

William Costello 6:41 ... in, at unprecedented rates. It's incredible. Like, you have unprecedented levels of, uh, anonymity, access to millions of potential mates. So for the first time in history, you can actually pursue a purely short-term deceptive mating strategy, uh, without, uh, weathering many of the, the classic costs that you would have. Her, her kin and her friends are no longer really going to take revenge on you because you live in a city millions of miles away from them. They don't know who you are.

Chris Williamson 7:14 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 7:14 And you just move city and, you know, a lot of men are pursuing this strategy, so women are thinking, "If that's the pathway towards a committed relationship, I'd rather not," because they're get- they're not getting the benefits.

Chris Williamson 7:28 Ah, so the pathway to get to a relationship is laid with all of these different tripwires that you can kick.

William Costello 7:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:34 And women are worried about kicking one or many of them, or maybe have in the past and have gone, "Eh, actually, I, uh, I can support myself financially, socioeconomically without this." Uh, but I guess this, the rubber's gonna meet the road eventually because unless you're gonna do IVF sperm donor, you need to have a partner eventually if you ever want to have a family.

William Costello 7:54 Yeah, but it's just the case that, uh, women's status-seeking goals have become very important to them. Uh, they've been crushing it in socioeconomic arena, and it's a fact that get- getting with a long-term male partner is a massive hindrance to a woman's career. Uh-

Chris Williamson 8:10 Mm

William Costello 8:10 ... he's not really gonna want her to be around other high status mates and rivals at work. He's not too crazy about that idea often. Um, he, he often wants her to stay home and be the caregiver. That's often what she wants when she gets into a long-term relationship. So if you culturally lionize, uh, I know it's b- a bit trite to say, like, the girl boss culture, but that does clash with, uh, relationship formation. It takes time to pursue a career, and it's just, it, it, it's at, those two things are at odds. Uh, my mother famously said, "Actually, women can have it all, but just not at the same time."

Chris Williamson 8:46 Mm.

William Costello 8:46 So that's a bit of modernwisdom from Mammy Costello.

Chris Williamson 8:49 [laughs]

Freya India 8:49 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 8:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:50 1 in 4 young women say that their partner having a different political view to them would be a red flag in a relationship. However, on political, particular political issues, women's stance is more hardline. 6 in 10 say they would find it difficult to date someone who disagreed with them on the Palestine-Israel conflict or did not share their views on Donald Trump. 74% say they'd find it difficult to be in a relationship with someone who did not share their views about social justice. Young women are also more likely than young men to say they would not have a relationship with someone who disagreed with them over immigration.

Freya India 9:20 I mean, that's so interesting to me because I feel like my generation's view of morality is basically these, um, you know, faraway conflicts in the Middle East. It's things that aren't happening to our lives directly. But we seem to have this thing where we will treat how men behave as their sort of personal preference. It's, it's their subjective judgment on things. So it's like a morally relative culture. And so the only way we can judge a man by his morality is, is he posting about Palestine? How does he feel about immigration?

Chris Williamson 9:55 Mm.

Freya India 9:56 Because you can't say this is right and wrong because we're not as religious anymore. We can't really say that there is morally good and morally bad, and so we have to use these really easy s- kind of signifiers of morality.

Chris Williamson 10:08 Mm. It's the thumb finger waving on social media.

Freya India 10:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:12 Right? Of what can be easily, uh, identified, what can be easily advertised.

Freya India 10:16 Yeah.

William Costello 10:16 I, I thought it was funny when I was listening to the podcast, uh, that these women, uh, their activism is very important to them, and they were very frustrated at what to me sounded like classically male typical status striving even in these circles. So there are some men who are going to identify this as an opportunity to-

Chris Williamson 10:35 Woke fishing

William Costello 10:35 ... Y- woke fishing [laughs] is a nice term for it. Um, but they, the women were complaining that the patterns of behavior they were engaging in, they were very interested in giving the speeches, running for positions of leadership, and I was like, uh, it, it's all just a different type of status game, uh, and the same frustrations with men will exist in these domains as anywhere else.

Chris Williamson 10:57 Why do you think it is, there's this sort of lean to the left when it comes to women? What's in a female disposition, predisposition that seems to have this sort of progressive list at the moment being very compelling?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 11:13 I think it might have to do with if, uh, if women evolved to evoke care, then, you know, and signal their vulnerability, then it would make sense from a niche construction perspective that you should design a world that gives aid to the vulnerable. You know? So, like, it's in your interest to design a social world that transfers resources to the vulnerable-

Chris Williamson 11:35 Because you're going to appear more vulnerable

Dr. Tania Reynolds 11:35 ... if you see yourself as vulnerable.

Chris Williamson 11:38 Oh, interesting.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 11:38 Yeah. And so it can be... But I also think it, it functions twofold. It's both beneficial for them, but it's also a signal of their kindness, and other women really dislike unkind women, um, or any signs of cruelty, competitiveness. And so what I kind of wonder is, like, is this all a, a competition to display to other women, "I am so pro-social and kind," and then maybe your romantic partner is a reflection of you, so it's a stronger signal that I'm committed to these causes if my romantic partner also is-

Chris Williamson 12:08 Mm. Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 12:08 ... or if I don't have one altogether because they're not good enough. You know? So, like-

William Costello 12:13 I'm willing to pay the honor signal of I'm foregoing a romantic partner because there are none who meet my standards on this measure.

Chris Williamson 12:20 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 12:20 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

William Costello 12:20 And with kindness, usually there's target specificity, that women usually prefer a partner who's really kind to them, and they're less so keen on a partner who's kind to others. But ex- uh, except if there's massive status associated with someone who's kind to others, and that is in this arena. In this political arena, signaling your kindness to others is the high status.

Chris Williamson 12:41 Kind of encouraging a bit of domestication.As well of everyone around you. It's interesting that a lot of men's behavior, uh, and men's portrayal of emotions are actually quite antisocial. You think about, uh, frustration, agitation-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 12:55 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 12:55 ... uh, anger, rage, aggression.

William Costello 12:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:58 Um, they're very antisocial. There's ... Joe Hudson's daughter was crying in the bath when she was nine, and it kept happening over and over, and he came in and he said, "You know, when you're crying, you sound, like, pretty agitated. Are you sad or are you pissed off?"

William Costello 13:12 Mm.

Chris Williamson 13:12 She said, "I'm pissed off." He's like, "Well, if you're pissed off, why are you crying?"

William Costello 13:15 Mm.

Chris Williamson 13:15 She said, "Well, 'cause when I cry, my sister comes and gives me a hug, but when I'm angry she runs away."

William Costello 13:20 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 13:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:21 The antisocial element of anger or of sort of more m- male typical emotions, at least ... Uh, women, when they get angry, sometimes they cry.

William Costello 13:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 13:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:30 Sometimes men cry, too, but less so.

William Costello 13:33 Right. And this was a, a frustration that the women had about the men in these activism circles. They said that their solutions to the problems of seeing a sad story coming out of Palestine was to mobilize some logistic help.

Chris Williamson 13:47 Yep.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 13:47 Mm.

William Costello 13:47 And the women said that they wanted an outpouring of emotion.

Chris Williamson 13:50 Sit in the emotion.

William Costello 13:51 Sit in the emotion with me.

Chris Williamson 13:51 Yeah. One of them said, uh-

William Costello 13:53 And men were not interested

Chris Williamson 13:53 ... "If the guy was trying to organize the protest for tomorrow-"

William Costello 13:55 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 13:55 "... but I just want you to sort of get on with the crying."

William Costello 13:58 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 13:58 Or the business of crying, not the business of activism.

William Costello 14:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:00 I think that explains why we have a proclivity toward progressive politics, because as you said, the social contagions that spread online, and online you're encouraged to ruminate and overthink and dwell on these issues. And so if your, if your reaction to something is anger and a practical solution, that's not gonna spread-

Chris Williamson 14:20 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:20 ... as quickly online as all of these-

Chris Williamson 14:21 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:21 ... girls coming together and saying, "Isn't it so bad? Isn't it so awful?" And then one-upping each other as who is the most emotionally affected by the issue.

Chris Williamson 14:29 Well, I said this before. When I'm in a room with, uh, guys that are big into conspiracy theories, that there is this sort of race to the bottom of the iceberg for who can have the most insane conspiracy theory.

William Costello 14:39 [laughs]

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:39 So it's like, "Oh, dude, do you think that there's an ice wall about Antarctica? Let me tell you about the woolly mammoths."

William Costello 14:44 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 14:44 "Oh, do you think there's woolly mammoths, dude? Let me tell you about..." And it just keeps on going and keeps on escalating in that way.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:49 Weird. [laughs]

William Costello 14:51 [laughs] We're very serious folks.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:52 Sorry. Sorry. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 14:54 Hold on a second.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:54 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 14:54 Fucking misandry in the corner.

William Costello 14:56 [laughs]

Dr. Tania Reynolds 14:56 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 14:57 Um, it's just, I mean, you must have been around this same thing, too.

William Costello 14:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:59 It, it, it's, it is a weird sort of like entropy, uh, toward insanity or toward the most extreme position, and, uh, this is kind of the same, but it's entropy toward empathy.

William Costello 15:10 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:10 They're pushing as hard as possible into the mo- I am ... Uh, and I couldn't even leave the house because of how distraught-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:16 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:16 ... I was about this particular issue.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:18 And then intersectionality, which is like, "Oh, you think this issue is bad? Well, I've looked into it from this angle-"

Chris Williamson 15:23 Mm.

William Costello 15:23 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:23 "... and I know this from this perspective."

Chris Williamson 15:24 Oh, you, you-

William Costello 15:25 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:25 ... you're just Black? I'm Black and a lesbian.

William Costello 15:27 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:27 I'm Black and a lesbian with 50 inch arms.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:28 Or you're an feminist-

Chris Williamson 15:29 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:29 ... but you don't think about trans women.

Chris Williamson 15:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:32 There's always another way you can make it more neurotic-

Chris Williamson 15:35 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:35 ... and compete over that.

Chris Williamson 15:36 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:37 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:37 What do you think, you know, you were saying the previous ways that men were able to add value and advertise their mate value to women has sort of fallen away. What do you make of the looksmaxxing movement?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 15:48 I kind of wonder if it's a reflection of ... So there's this general trend towards, um, the gender egalitarian paradox, where as the world treats men and women more equally, the sexes diverge more.

Chris Williamson 16:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 16:01 So they do it on personality, they do it on-

William Costello 16:04 Height.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 16:04 Yes.

Chris Williamson 16:05 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 16:05 Men actually get taller in more, um, equal-

Chris Williamson 16:07 [laughs]

Dr. Tania Reynolds 16:08 ... environments.

Chris Williamson 16:08 Looksmaxxing way.

William Costello 16:09 Like, it's hard to say that's socially constructed, although people do say that. They say, "Oh, parents just feed the boys more," and that's the only reason why-

Chris Williamson 16:16 In a more egalitarian-

William Costello 16:17 Yeah. The, it, it's men.

Chris Williamson 16:19 Okay.

William Costello 16:19 But anyway.

Chris Williamson 16:20 Yep.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 16:20 But anyway, so, like, you see this pattern in both men and women. Men get more, like, risk-taking. Women get more anxious and depressed. So what I think is going on is in this, like, I think maybe gender egalitarianism is just like a proxy for social competitiveness. So as the world gets more competitive, our sex specific adaptations get activated. And so if it's the case that, you know, women are more prone to, like, anxiety or depression, that's gonna become amplified. If men are more prone to risk-taking or maybe conspiracy theory, um, that might get activated. And then-

Chris Williamson 16:55 Where does looksmaxxing come in?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 16:56 Looksmax... I mean, men and women have incentives to both enhance their appearance to the extent that they could.

Chris Williamson 17:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 17:01 It's just through different techniques. So men might have a drive for muscularity, so you know, it, that would allow them to be competitive in a really competitive world.

William Costello 17:10 And especially if the mating market is becoming, at first, more short-term mating oriented.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 17:15 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 17:15 If there's this first pass of kind of somewhat short-term mating oriented relationship that becomes, uh, a long-term one, then physical attractiveness, which we know is massively over-indexed in online dating-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 17:27 True

William Costello 17:27 ... and kind of the media saturated world. We even have data, I know you spoke Macken about this, about just, uh, people are prioritizing physical attractiveness. Both men and women are prioritizing it more and more.

Chris Williamson 17:39 Why do you think that is?

William Costello 17:40 Uh, because probably they're not able to add value in those other ways. The, the short-term mating kind of attributes become more enhanced, and especially if you have a, the kind of the visually saturated world-

Chris Williamson 17:53 Mm-hmm

William Costello 17:53 ... online dating.

Chris Williamson 17:54 I think that's-

William Costello 17:54 That's the first gateway to jump through.

Chris Williamson 17:56 Yeah.

William Costello 17:56 Then you need to meet the minimum threshold on physical attractiveness.

Chris Williamson 18:00 Yeah.

William Costello 18:00 So it makes sense that men will increasingly engage in looksmaxxing. Now, there's some predictable effects that we might see there, and I think we are seeing them, is that men tend to be a, a little extreme with their status striving.

Chris Williamson 18:13 [laughs]

William Costello 18:13 With any pursuit to get sexually selected.

Chris Williamson 18:15 It's Fisherian runaway everywhere.

William Costello 18:17 So they're gonna go to extreme lengths, um, and that's what we're seeing, right? You're seeing, like, the looksmaxx- the high profile looksmaxxers. Now, by the way, I don't think looksmaxxing is that bad. I think that microdosing looksmaxxing is probably good for everyone.

Chris Williamson 18:31 Going to the gym is for a guy, getting a haircut. Mark Manson's Models came out in what, 2014?

William Costello 18:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:37 Have you, have you ever read that book? Probably not.

William Costello 18:38 No.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 18:38 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 18:38 So Mark Manson, before he did The Subtle Art, he wrote Models, and Models was like a sanitized pickup book.

William Costello 18:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:44 It's the best way to put it.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 18:45 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 18:45 And then, uh, Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max did Mate.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 18:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:48 So the two car garage for guys.

William Costello 18:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:50 It's g- guess a bit old. It's kind of showing my age weirdly, 'cause they're both written in the teens or the tens.

William Costello 18:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:54 Uh, Mate by Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller, and then Models by Mark Manson. But in Models, it's like you should get a T-shirt that fits nicely.Pick grays and navies or blacks. And you should get a pair of jeans that don't hang off you, and you need a nice belt. It's like the most basic.

William Costello 19:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:10 But that's, to a guy in 2010, that's looksmaxxed.

William Costello 19:15 Yeah. And men can move the needle on their image pretty quick, like good haircut, get in good shape, and wear fitted clothes.

Chris Williamson 19:21 Little bit of stubble.

William Costello 19:22 You're, you're gonna kill it. Like, that's a massive improvement.

Chris Williamson 19:24 Yeah.

William Costello 19:24 But I think what happens is men, given their tendency to go to extremes, and from an error management perspective, they go too far with the muscularity and things like that. Because, and you l- there's lots of data to show that there's, they go too far and it- it's not what women like. They, men reliably overestimate the muscularity that women want. But I, I think of that from an error management perspective as well, because simultaneously we do have lots of data that women do like muscularity. So if you're going to make an error on one side, would you rather be not-

Chris Williamson 19:55 It's better to be more muscular than less muscular.

William Costello 19:57 [laughs] Yeah. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

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Chris Williamson 21:10 at checkout. What was that poll that you did about Clavicular?

William Costello 21:16 Oh yeah, I asked whether, uh... And I chose, I've really enjoyed, uh, Twitter, X bringing in the pictures with the polls now. It's really a, a nice little addition to the polls-

Chris Williamson 21:26 Mm-hmm

William Costello 21:26 ... which I'm an aficionado of.

Chris Williamson 21:28 Well, you need to fucking get off Bluesky, dude.

William Costello 21:29 Yeah, I'll get off Bluesky.

Chris Williamson 21:30 My main piece of advice to you-

William Costello 21:32 Yeah

Chris Williamson 21:32 ... is to leave the fuck away.

Freya India 21:34 Or, or do the polls on both-

William Costello 21:35 Yeah

Freya India 21:35 ... and compare the results.

Chris Williamson 21:36 And just see-

William Costello 21:37 I have no following on Bluesky. It's just a, a-

Chris Williamson 21:39 You go on there, you go on there-

William Costello 21:40 The dozens of people that are there, they have no interest in it.

Chris Williamson 21:42 You go on there as a form of self-harm.

William Costello 21:44 Yeah. I, I think you're right. Yeah. I, I do try and reach, like, both sides of the academic kind of world. Uh-

Chris Williamson 21:50 But they hate you.

William Costello 21:51 I know, but [laughs]

Chris Williamson 21:52 They actively hate you. All that happens in our group chat is he posts. Like, he, he basically comes in for kind of like emotional support. We're his emotional support group chat.

Freya India 22:02 That's lovely.

William Costello 22:03 Show up and show their emotions.

Freya India 22:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:04 That's true. That's not, you're not showing your emotions.

William Costello 22:06 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 22:06 You're showing how you're being repeatedly beaten-

William Costello 22:08 Frustration at the function

Chris Williamson 22:09 ... by the same social media platform. It's insanity.

Freya India 22:11 Why, why do you get attacked? 'Cause just 'cause you're into e- evolutionary psychology?

William Costello 22:15 Uh, yeah, more kind of narcissism with small differences about evolutionary psychology, I'd say.

Freya India 22:19 Okay.

William Costello 22:20 Yeah. It's, uh... But anyway, the polls on X are my, uh-

Chris Williamson 22:24 Tat net

William Costello 22:24 ... my fun- I love them. Yeah. Uh, the whole Olly Murs situation went viral for that. But one I've done recently, I posted a picture of Clavicular, who's the most high-profile looksmaxxer, and I think a pretty handsome guy. He's one of the only looksmaxxers that I think looks pretty good.

Chris Williamson 22:40 Mm.

William Costello 22:40 But I think he looked pretty good to begin with. I think he was gonna be handsome anyway. But anyway, he's the most high-profile looksmaxxer, and I posted a picture of, I can't even think of his name, but he's a popular K-pop singer-

Chris Williamson 22:53 Right

William Costello 22:53 ... that's, uh, a bit of a heartthrob in that arena. And reliable sex difference, the men thought Clavicular was more handsome, the women thought that the K-pop star was more handsome.

Chris Williamson 23:03 Mm.

William Costello 23:03 So there is a somewhat of a mismatch in cross-sex mind reading happening between men and women around attractiveness.

Chris Williamson 23:09 What do you think about the guys that say, "Well, that's just stated versus revealed preferences. Women actually do want the gigachad face." Uh, they, they don't wanna go with that soi boi, that's just what they think is popular to say online.

William Costello 23:21 I think it's massive cope for people to respond to all my polls with, "Oh, you can't trust anything women say, that they just lie all the time." Like, that must be such a, a comforting world to live in, to be like, "Oh, I don't have to worry about any of their criticism because it's just lies, and I know how they really behave."

Chris Williamson 23:39 Mm.

William Costello 23:39 And this is often said by just basement dwellers who never engage.

Chris Williamson 23:41 People who don't go-

William Costello 23:42 Yeah

Chris Williamson 23:43 ... off the internet.

William Costello 23:43 Yeah, exactly. So, uh, I would say that that K-pop star does pretty okay, uh, with women, I imagine, if he is so inclined. I think he would be fine. Um, but, uh, but yeah, the key point is, I think men overdo it with their looksmaxxing. They could hit a sweet spot. Because the signaling effect that they're giving by being too into looksmaxxing is kind of negative to women. I, I'd love your opinion on this, but I think it signals that they're active in the mating market, they're looking for other mates.

Chris Williamson 24:12 Mm.

William Costello 24:12 They're self-obsessed. They're gonna be not willing to have a takeaway on the couch with me on a weekend. They're gonna make me feel bad.

Chris Williamson 24:18 It's the dad of four who's still in shape somehow.

William Costello 24:21 Yeah. It's a bit sus, isn't it? And even, it, it is a, a sign of infidelity. It predicts infidelity if a guy is suddenly getting back in shape.

Chris Williamson 24:28 Yep.

William Costello 24:28 It's like he's trying to reengage with the mating market, ladies looking-

Freya India 24:31 I also think it's feminine-coded.

William Costello 24:33 Mm. Yes

Freya India 24:34 ... and so it's, it looks to me like the male symptom of social media addiction, where you see girls editing themselves, getting cosmetic surgery, obsessing over aging. Have you seen these girls when they go to bed and they have, like, a sheet mask on-

William Costello 24:48 Mm

Freya India 24:48 ... and then an eye mask on.

Chris Williamson 24:49 I've seen the red light thing.

Freya India 24:50 Yeah, but they have like 100 different things going on.

Chris Williamson 24:52 There's a, a post maybe in Slate or Wired about this girl who had 100-step beauty regime.

Freya India 25:00 Stuff like that. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 25:00 I spray the magnesium on my face before. I think that she was sitting under a lamp that's meant to keep-... bird eggs alive.

William Costello 25:07 Oh my God. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 25:08 She's, like, putting her face under a lamp, like a fucking heater that you would put food on a hot plate under.

William Costello 25:13 [laughs]

Freya India 25:13 Yeah, but I think if you see that, you'd think she's very neurotic-

Chris Williamson 25:17 Mm

Freya India 25:17 ... and maybe not a good partn- if she's, like, obsessed with how she's looking 'cause-

Chris Williamson 25:20 But because the baseline for men is supposed to be lower, even if a man doesn't have 100 step thing-

William Costello 25:25 Yeah

Chris Williamson 25:25 ... if he's got a 10 step thing-

Freya India 25:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 25:26 ... that's still quite a lot.

William Costello 25:28 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 25:28 Yeah, and it just looks like, as we were saying before, it looks like teenage girls on Instagram, but then applied to, it's how young men are reacting to the incentives. Like you said, on dating profiles they've got to advertise themselves like a product.

Chris Williamson 25:42 Mm.

Freya India 25:42 But I think it's also just social media in general because when you, like, match with someone on a dating app, the first thing you do is look up their Instagram.

Chris Williamson 25:50 Mm.

Freya India 25:50 And their Instagram has to show, like we were just saying, that they're a good person.

Chris Williamson 25:54 Mm.

Freya India 25:55 You've got to see evidence of that. You've got to see all the holidays that they've been on. Are they social? And all of these things have to be marketed immediately. And so I think that is where a lot of the looksmaxxing comes from.

Chris Williamson 26:06 So I was at dinner with, you know Signal from X? Trends all the time. Fucking sick guy. I went to dinner with him last night. I didn't know who he was, just this, like, anon. I could have been abducted last night.

William Costello 26:16 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 26:16 But he turned out to be really interesting guy, and now we're friends. And I was going through my little bit about what I think is happening with looksmaxxing, that, uh, guys have a failure of cross-sex mind reading about what other women find attractive. And what they're doing is they're basically coding for other men's formidability and respect, not for female attractiveness.

William Costello 26:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:36 'Cause there's evidence that suggests that women prefer a slightly feminized face, a neutral or a slightly feminized face with a masculinized body. But when you look at some of the lengths that the guys are going to with the jaw surgery-

William Costello 26:47 Mm

Chris Williamson 26:47 ... gonna get comical. Hasn't yet for Clavicular-

William Costello 26:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 26:50 ... but I think he's having jaw surgery today.

William Costello 26:52 Oh, no.

Chris Williamson 26:53 To... So, like-

Freya India 26:54 Congrats.

William Costello 26:54 There's another op this week. Oh my God.

Chris Williamson 26:55 An- another one.

William Costello 26:55 He overdosed two days ago. Jesus. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 26:56 Yeah. That's fi- well, maybe that might be, you could just build the overdose into the jaw surgery and just steam straight through it. I don't know. Um, but after a while the guys are kind of overshooting.

William Costello 27:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:06 Overshooting the androgyny, like, the really-

William Costello 27:09 Yeah

Chris Williamson 27:09 ... intense cheekbones and the huge jaw. And again, you can say, "Well, women don't really know what they want. They do want the gigachad." I, uh, something tells me not across all of the different studies that have been done about what is preferred-

William Costello 27:19 Yeah

Chris Williamson 27:20 ... by men and women. You know what would be an awesome thing to do? You should do this. One of your polls should be take Clavicular's face now, run it through coves, take it to Mackin or whatever, get them to feminize it a little.

William Costello 27:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:31 Get them to masculinize it a little. Get them to masculinize it more.

William Costello 27:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:35 And say, "Of these," and don't say which one is his.

William Costello 27:37 Right.

Chris Williamson 27:38 Because that would kind of blind it a little.

William Costello 27:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 27:41 Anyway, so I'm e- explaining this and I'm like, guys, because they maybe haven't been around women and because they're not women, they're just, what would women want?

William Costello 27:48 Mm.

Chris Williamson 27:48 Well, they would want what I would think is attractive or-

William Costello 27:51 Yeah

Chris Williamson 27:51 ... respect worthy or whatever, so I'm just gonna, like, optimize for the androgyny thing.

William Costello 27:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:55 And-

William Costello 27:55 And to men, the ultimate reward is short-term mating success. Uh, th- they hate being told, "Oh, you're the guy I would marry, but not the guy-"

Chris Williamson 28:02 But not the guy I would have a one-night stand with

William Costello 28:04 ... that's a massive, like-

Chris Williamson 28:05 Bingo

William Costello 28:05 ... error, prospects monitoring error.

Chris Williamson 28:06 Fucking bingo, dude.

William Costello 28:07 So men are optimizing, well, if women like Chad at all, they want him for short term.

Chris Williamson 28:12 Yeah.

William Costello 28:13 And that's true. The, the, there's some evidence that women prefer masculinized just specifically in the short term context. So given that that's the ultimate reward for men, they're thinking, "I can pursue that."

Chris Williamson 28:22 I'll optimize that.

William Costello 28:23 "That's what I'm gonna optimize for."

Chris Williamson 28:24 So Signal's thing, his point was he thinks because all women are basically scrutinized in group chats and living on Instagram, and if you go on a date with someone, all of the people in the group chat are gonna ask what's his Instagram.

Freya India 28:40 Yeah.

William Costello 28:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 28:41 Guys are optimizing to be as presentable as possible. So the self-beautification that men are going through right now is basically them future-proofing themselves from the girl they're going to go on a date with's group chat scrutiny of his Instagram.

William Costello 28:58 Oh.

Freya India 28:58 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:59 Does that make sense?

Freya India 28:59 Yeah, yeah. I think that is true. Well, it's like the app, you know the T app?

Chris Williamson 29:03 Yes. Fuck.

William Costello 29:03 Are we dating the same guy?

Freya India 29:05 Yeah.

William Costello 29:05 That goes out that app, yeah.

Freya India 29:05 But you can, like, literally rate and review men based off pictures of themselves and, and, like, rate them a green flag and a red flag. But that is happening in group chats, and I think a lot of young men think even before they've met someone, all of their memories have to be marketed in a way for a future partner-

Chris Williamson 29:21 Mm

Freya India 29:22 ... who's gonna be scrolling through their life. So it's like, yeah, when you go on holiday, capturing images, not for the memories, but for this future woman-

William Costello 29:30 Yeah

Freya India 29:30 ... who's gonna be scrolling through-

William Costello 29:31 Interesting. Yeah

Freya India 29:31 ... your profiles.

Chris Williamson 29:32 Mm.

William Costello 29:32 And that's a nice segue into the mate copying of Nikki Glaser. Have you heard about that?

Chris Williamson 29:37 What, was this the Call Her Daddy thing?

William Costello 29:39 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:39 So what, what happened?

William Costello 29:40 So she had an interview where she kind of revealed her, I wouldn't describe it as a cuck fetish, but she kind of, uh, told this-

Chris Williamson 29:46 Was it not called monopoly? It's monopoly.

William Costello 29:48 Monopoly. Whoa, okay. That's a cool term. But, um-

Freya India 29:50 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 29:50 Monopoly.

William Costello 29:51 Yeah, so she basically described that she enjoys seeing her male partner fuck other women.

Freya India 29:57 Mm.

William Costello 29:57 Now, she's not into being with other men, and this is this very kind of salacious story. And I think there's a number of things happening there, is there, there is some evidence of mate copying that's much stronger in women. The social proofing of other women's opinion of a guy-

Chris Williamson 30:13 It's pre-selection

William Costello 30:13 ... is way more important to them than it is for a man. So let's say I was going out with someone that I was head over heels with and in love with, and you said, "Oh, no, she's not that beautiful," it would have less of an effect on me-

Chris Williamson 30:23 Mm-hmm

William Costello 30:24 ... than it would for a girl having all her girlfriends to say, "No, he's not the one. He, he's, he's trash."

Freya India 30:30 And it makes sense because women's mate value is more observable.

William Costello 30:33 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 30:33 Like, so you-

William Costello 30:34 Yeah

Freya India 30:34 ... you can only do so much.

William Costello 30:35 I've always liked-

Freya India 30:35 You know, you have eyes. [laughs]

William Costello 30:36 Yeah. It's like, I don't care if they can see. Yeah.

Freya India 30:39 Whereas men's mate value is less observable-

William Costello 30:42 Yeah

Freya India 30:42 ... so you have to use these indirect cues.

William Costello 30:44 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 30:44 Um, like their partners.

William Costello 30:46 So if, if a guy goes through, uh, into a club and he's surrounded by four women, some women are looking at that saying, "There must be something."

Chris Williamson 30:52 Pre-selection.

William Costello 30:52 Or if a guy doesn't look that good, but he has a really beautiful partner, they're thinking, "There must be something. He must have something going for him." Right?

Chris Williamson 30:59 Yeah. There's, uh... I was talking to Coleman Hughes, and he was telling me about when he first started dating his fiance.

William Costello 31:06 Mm.

Chris Williamson 31:06 They'd be in New York somewhere.

William Costello 31:07 Mm.

Chris Williamson 31:09 He'd be sat down at a table and some guy that read his book or listened to his podcast or whatever would come over and be like, "Colin, I just, just wanted to let you know I'm such a huge fan of the podcast and whatever. Sorry for, sorry for interrupting you and I hope you have a wonderful night or whatever. Can we, would you mind taking a photo?" And Colin was like, "There is no better wing man."

William Costello 31:23 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 31:24 "I've just recruited some guy that I don't know, that is a fan of my work and I'm really glad to have as a fan, but I'm even more glad that you spotted me in this steakhouse with this girl."

William Costello 31:35 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 31:35 And yeah, there is this... That's why I think the black pill ruling of LMS, yes, L, uh, if you get the... If you don't hit the minimum level of looks, you are going to be at a serious disadvantage that maybe doesn't get to enter the party.

William Costello 31:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:51 But beyond that, I don't think it's M next. I think status counts for so fucking much.

William Costello 31:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:57 Like, it's just, it's able to wipe away, 'cause we, would, how long have we had money? How long have we had status?

William Costello 32:03 Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And especially when too much physical attractiveness can actually be off-putting to a female partner. They're like, "Oh, I don't want to have to mate guard him that hard," and, "He's too obsessed with himself," and, "Too many women like him."

Chris Williamson 32:14 Mm.

William Costello 32:15 It can be off-putting. Is, is that right? [laughs] I don't want to speak for the ladies.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:18 I, I get stressed out about men who are too attractive.

William Costello 32:21 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:21 Or too extroverted. Don't trust it.

Chris Williamson 32:22 Mm, yeah.

William Costello 32:23 Why?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:24 I just know they'll have so many alternatives and they're more likely to encounter them. It's like the, it's a numbers game. Even if you're really desirable, at some point, I mean, they, people habituate. So you, uh, it's just-

Chris Williamson 32:37 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:37 ... it's risky.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:38 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 32:38 There's a, a relationship between infidelity and extraversion, right?

William Costello 32:42 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:42 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I kind of wonder if that might play a role into like why women show some of these traits, is like there was an incentive from men to not be super extroverted, high confidence. Because if that's a cue of sexual promiscuity-

Chris Williamson 32:58 You want to signal dad, not Chad.

William Costello 32:58 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 32:59 Well, no, for women. If women are too extroverted-

Chris Williamson 33:01 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 33:01 ... other men might infer she will cheat, and if men have the concern over paternity certainty and cuckoldry, then they might have preferred women who were slightly more insecure, more humble.

Chris Williamson 33:13 Demure.

William Costello 33:13 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 33:13 Right. And so women might have encountered mate preferences that selected them to be slightly more insecure.

William Costello 33:21 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 33:21 It's, it's less threatening-

Chris Williamson 33:22 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 33:22 ... from a mating perspective.

William Costello 33:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:23 Mm. Mm.

Freya India 33:24 It is interesting, though, because I feel like at the moment my generation of young women are on average very insecure about how they look and they're very anxious, but they also seem to be louder than ever in terms of, "I'm empowered, I'm strong, I'm independent." And so you have women who are really trying to portray that they never get jealous and they never get insecure, but then they seem to have this deep risk aversion and anxiety, and I don't know where that comes from.

Chris Williamson 33:49 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 33:49 There are some studies where women who are really agentic and assertive, if they're negotiating, they experience backlash where people don't like them, but not if they're nego- uh, negotiating on behalf of someone else. So I kind of wonder if it's like the only way women are allowed to be like tough and agentic is to be an advocate for some moral cause for someone more vulnerable. It's like the only way you're allowed to be. 'Cause it seems like that's the domain where you see women all of a sudden be very hostile when you don't get that hostility in any other context.

Freya India 34:19 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 34:19 And so maybe that's the one domain where people allow it.

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Chris Williamson 35:33 How do you think about the hidden nature of female intrasexual competition with the need for assertiveness, independence, freedom, modern world stuff? 'Cause I would think... I'm, I'm surprised by how well women have acclimatized to the sort of modern career, fast-paced capitalist society thing. Think they're really, not only are they outperforming, I think they're outperforming what my expectations would have been of that. I don't know whether that makes sense. But given what you know about women's disposition, predisposition, selection pressures, is it surprising that they're doing as well as they are?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 36:09 I don't know. I think in a lot of ways, like the modern world is more conducive to women's traits than men's.

Chris Williamson 36:13 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 36:13 Like, we're not allowed to be aggressive. The only way that you can be aggressive is very subtly, which women are experts at. [laughs]

William Costello 36:19 Rewarded in, in the workplace.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 36:21 Yeah. And, and so, and now in a workforce, we probably are rewarded for being the egalitarian boss or the one who checks in with their employees. So like over time as we move to like a prestige based competition system, that's more conducive to a lot of women's traits than a dominance based competition system. But I see your point that at the same time you also have to be like agentic and assertive in the workforce, so it'd be really interesting to see how women navigate that in practice. But there are some data showing that more agentic women are particularly disliked by their female colleagues.

Chris Williamson 36:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 36:53 And so I think that might lead to, um, women's using these egalitarian strategies as a way of like simultaneously being competitive and assertive while looking kind along the way.

Chris Williamson 37:04 Yeah.

William Costello 37:04 And I think you could say for good reason the modern world or workplace is kind of designed to neuter men's work, most aggressive tendencies.

Chris Williamson 37:12 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 37:13 You can't exactly get into a physical fight to settle something anymore in the workplace. It's just not ac- acceptable. Uh, but you can spread gossip, and that is kind of rewarded. So in that style of aggression, women will far succeed.

Chris Williamson 37:26 Have you ever done any, uh, bless his heart stuff?

William Costello 37:30 Men do gossip too, right? It's not, like, just a female thing.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 37:33 Yeah, we try. So we manipulated whether a, a man said it about another man or a woman said it about another woman.

Chris Williamson 37:38 Can you do... Are you gonna have to just give a 30,000-foot view of the bless her heart effect?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 37:42 Okay. Basically, if women phrase their negative gossip with concern, people didn't register it as gossip. They were more likely to believe, um, that she was a good person. And so it seems like you get these benefits by believing you're concerned about your gossip target, or maybe doing it consciously. Um, a- and then there was a different study where we did look at men and women, where we looked at women's use of, like, complaining, venting about their friends, like complaining about how their friends treated them. Like, "Oh, you know, Suzy always says these weird comments to me, and they hurt my feelings."

Chris Williamson 38:14 Hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:15 If men did that, other people didn't care as much. So it just doesn't work.

Chris Williamson 38:20 [laughs]

William Costello 38:21 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:21 In terms-

William Costello 38:21 Seemed as whiny. Like, you know.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:22 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:23 Yeah, it is. It is.

William Costello 38:24 Don't want-

Chris Williamson 38:24 It's, it's non-agentic in a way, right?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:26 Yeah.

William Costello 38:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:26 They don't have the same sympathy. In terms of bless his heart, maybe it would work for men because you're just seeming compassionate.

William Costello 38:33 Hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:33 I, I don't know. If we did it, it would be interesting

Dr. Tania Reynolds 38:36 to test.

Chris Williamson 38:36 There's a, a Substack called Men Are Good.

William Costello 38:38 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:38 Have you come across this? It's like, it's, it's r-

William Costello 38:42 Sounds controversial.

Chris Williamson 38:43 It's really well, it's really well written.

William Costello 38:44 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 38:44 I mean, look, it's, it, it gets a bit men's rights-y.

William Costello 38:46 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:47 Um, but some of the insights are fucking money.

William Costello 38:49 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:49 Like really, really good. Tom Gol- Golden, I think he's called.

William Costello 38:52 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:52 Good, really good-

William Costello 38:53 That name rings a bell

Chris Williamson 38:54 ... really good Substack.

William Costello 38:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:55 Anyway, he had this one bit where he talked about how men are told that they should open up more about their emotions, but every single incentive pretty much pushes against it.

William Costello 39:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:06 Including that of other men, that men don't like to see men who are opening up about their emotions.

William Costello 39:12 Mm-mm.

Chris Williamson 39:12 There's a kind of ick and an aversion. Like, you, you look like an unreliable ally. You're not maybe thinking this consciously, but two things are true that men are trying to do at the moment. It's like men's mental health is a really big issue. But okay, if you see a guy that's crying on social media, will you give him sympathy or will you laugh at him?

William Costello 39:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 39:31 Almost every guy is gonna go, "Simp, cuck, soy boy, you're an idiot."

William Costello 39:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:34 "This is lame. You need to man up." It's like, okay, so which is it? And y- we spent two hours talking about some of the paradoxes of sort of modern female culture and capitalism versus independence and freedom versus motherhood and just a mom and all this stuff. But I think it's important to call out the ones where guys, you, you do not get to say-

William Costello 39:54 Hmm

Chris Williamson 39:54 ... men need to open up more. Men need... We need to have more services for mental health. Let's say that men don't believe that, 'cause a lot of men might say men don't need to open up more.

William Costello 40:02 Mm.

Chris Williamson 40:02 They need to man up more. And you go, okay, do you think that suicide prevention is something that's important?

William Costello 40:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:06 Okay. How do you respond when you see a guy that's incredibly depressed on social media and really struggling? Because what is it? 95% of men that took their own lives had sought mental health advice from the exact services that they're supposed to in advance. Presumably, if you're remotely online and young, you've maybe tweeted or posted something that's a bit sad at some point.

William Costello 40:27 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:27 Have you checked in on your bro? Like, if you were at dinner and one of your friends started crying, how comfortable would you be at sitting in that, especially if you're British? It's like-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 40:36 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 40:36 ... that's just not-

William Costello 40:38 Yeah

Chris Williamson 40:38 ... it's not a conducive environment. So men want room for their struggles to be acknowledged, but when other men are struggling, they don't acknowledge their struggles.

William Costello 40:49 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:49 Does that make sense?

William Costello 40:50 This is where I think the insight from our ancestral history and the selection pressures men and women faced is so informative. M-

Chris Williamson 40:56 William, you fucking put a billboard above your head that says evolutionary psychology is real.

William Costello 41:00 It's coming. All right. Okay. But no, the specific pressure. So men have this deep ancestral history of, uh, coalitional value to each other. So to express vulnerability is a massive liability and risk to you and to your allies. Uh, so the message that I think struggling men that would be more effective than, "Oh, you can come cry on my shoulder," is, "We need you, actually, and you're valuable."

Chris Williamson 41:24 Useful.

William Costello 41:24 "You're useful, and we need you to be stronger. So whatever you need to do to get back on your feet, and I know you can do it, you just gotta rally."

Chris Williamson 41:31 Hmm.

William Costello 41:32 That, that's... We've all kind of been there. That, I feel, will resonate with men more.

Chris Williamson 41:35 Much more compelling.

William Costello 41:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:36 You know what's a good example of that? Um, New York divorce lawyer, uh, was on the show a couple of w- couple of months ago.

William Costello 41:44 Sexton. James Sexton.

Chris Williamson 41:44 Yeah, James Sexton. And he was, he was saying to me, he told me this story about, uh, he was in a relationship with, uh, two different women, uh, one after the other. And-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 41:53 Okay. I was like, okay.

William Costello 41:54 At the same time. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 41:54 As a divorce lawyer, that would be a high-risk strategy.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 41:56 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 41:56 Uh, yeah. Fucking... No, it would've been safe.

William Costello 41:59 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 42:00 Um, so both women didn't like the fact that on a weekend he doesn't shave. He has to shave every single day-

William Costello 42:06 Hmm

Chris Williamson 42:06 ... before he goes into court because he doesn't want to look stubbly.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 42:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:09 And then on, uh, Friday or Thursday night, he would shave, and he wouldn't shave again maybe until a Monday morning. So by the time it gets to a Sunday, he was real scratchy. And the first relationship he was in, the woman said, "I... It irritates me so much. It makes my face red. It makes me break out in, in, in spots, and I, I really don't like it, and I wish that you'd shave. Like, it's, it doesn't make me feel very good." That relationship didn't work. Next woman had the exact same preference, but instead she said, "You know what? It is so sexy when you're clean-shaven. I think that it's just the, the hottest thing in the world." Immediate.

William Costello 42:42 I, I'm doing it right now. I love to have my hair buzz cut short, the fade, for about 15 years. I'm doing the bro flow now because my missus just is insistent upon it, so. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 42:51 But she's ins- She hasn't said, "I hate you with short hair." She said you're hotter with-

William Costello 42:54 Not twice. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 42:56 No, she said that you're hotter with long hair?

William Costello 42:57 Yeah, she prefers the long hair, so I'm-

Chris Williamson 42:59 Yeah, but prefers the long hair as opposed to doesn't like the short hair.

William Costello 43:02 Eh.

Chris Williamson 43:03 You know what I mean?

William Costello 43:03 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 43:04 Oh, okay.

William Costello 43:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:04 Well, fuck. All right. I feel like, do we need to do an intervention?

William Costello 43:06 She's quite a d- dominating woman. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 43:08 Yeah, yeah. I've, I've met her. She wears a lot of leather. Um...

Dr. Tania Reynolds 43:11 Yeah, but I like that about, like, I, I think men do respond to encouragement, and I love that about male friendships. Like, if you ever see men in the gym, they'll be honestly giving each other feedback on how to improve, whereas women will be, like, not commenting on each other's form and just chit-chatting about their lives. And so it seems like men really want each other to be better because if that's your, like, brother-in-arms, you need him to be the best soldier he can be.

Chris Williamson 43:36 100%.

William Costello 43:36 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 43:36 And so it's so funny because if you listen to, like-

Chris Williamson 43:39 Male-directed podcasts are always like, "How to maximize productivity." And, you know, and then female-directed podcasts are, are like the exact opposite.

William Costello 43:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:48 They're like, "You're a queen no matter-

William Costello 43:49 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 43:49 ... what you do. If he doesn't recognize it, leave him."

William Costello 43:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:53 And so then it makes me wonder, like if we're receiving this feedback from our same-sex peers, what is that gonna do to men and women over time?

William Costello 44:00 Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:00 Men are gonna go into looksmaxxing, financemaxxing. And then women will just go into, like, wallowing. Like, it-

Freya India 44:07 Yeah, I feel like women don't, wouldn't call each other out either. So if, like, a young woman posted on social media that she had this horrible experience with a man.

William Costello 44:15 Mm.

Freya India 44:15 And it was kind of unfair toward the man, the comments are all gonna be-

William Costello 44:18 Yeah

Freya India 44:18 ... in support of her.

Chris Williamson 44:19 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 44:20 Because if she's, say, crying or she's upset on camera, we're all gonna co-ruminate together, and then also confirm her-

Chris Williamson 44:27 Mm-hmm

Freya India 44:27 ... maybe neurotic assumptions of what's happened.

William Costello 44:29 Yeah.

Freya India 44:29 Whereas I feel like with men, as you said, it doesn't engender the same empathy. And so maybe they would have a load of comments.

William Costello 44:35 They fucking hate it.

Chris Williamson 44:36 [laughs]

William Costello 44:36 Men prefer the tough love. So there's this new trend I've got where I retweet kind of these random masculinity behaviors as tonic masculinity, and one is this guy.

Chris Williamson 44:45 [laughs]

William Costello 44:45 He was morbidly obese, and he was gonna die. Like, he was really that, that severe. And his friend text him every day, "You fat fucking pig."

Chris Williamson 44:56 [laughs]

William Costello 44:57 "Until he lost the weight."

Chris Williamson 44:58 [laughs]

Freya India 44:58 [laughs]

William Costello 44:58 And the guy loves this friend. He's like, "He saved my life. He literally, like, just doing that, checking in with me every day is saying, 'You fat fucking pig.'"

Chris Williamson 45:04 Checking in with me.

William Costello 45:05 Well, like, it worked.

Chris Williamson 45:06 Yeah.

William Costello 45:06 Like he said, if he cares enough about me, he needs me to be better.

Chris Williamson 45:10 Yeah, yeah.

William Costello 45:10 Like, that was it. It was, that worked.

Freya India 45:11 Whereas women would be like, "You look better than ever."

William Costello 45:13 Right. [laughs]

Freya India 45:14 Yes, queen. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 45:16 Yeah. What does it engender for women as you look at sort of the next generation? The best thing about this, you know Critical Drinker?

William Costello 45:23 Mm.

Chris Williamson 45:23 He had this fucking awesome take. So he compares the first Mulan movie, which was the Disney-

William Costello 45:30 Mm

Chris Williamson 45:30 ... animated one, to the live action one that came out maybe five, six, seven years ago. And in the first one, uh, the protagonist is smaller and weaker than all of the men, and she needs to disguise herself, and she has to use, like, feminine guile-

William Costello 45:43 Mm

Chris Williamson 45:43 ... and agility and speed, and she has to work even harder. And eventually after doing that, she's able to become the hero, and it's kind of a female story of self-empowerment-

William Costello 45:53 Mm

Chris Williamson 45:53 ... through determination and agency and working hard and stuff like that. Roll the clock forward by two decades. The protagonist is immediately better than all of the men. She doesn't need to work at it.

Freya India 46:04 No work.

Chris Williamson 46:04 The only, the only restriction that she encounters is the fact that the world doesn't believe in her enough.

William Costello 46:10 Yeah.

Freya India 46:10 Mm.

William Costello 46:10 She's a Mary Sue, they call it in film.

Chris Williamson 46:12 Yeah, she's got some, like ... What's that, what's that?

William Costello 46:13 A Mary Sue, some- a character who's just already perfect.

Chris Williamson 46:16 Okay. Yeah, that's like w- um, uh, Wonder Woman. Well, no, not Wonder Woman.

William Costello 46:20 The new s- the Skywalker film.

Chris Williamson 46:22 No.

William Costello 46:22 The new Star Wars film.

Chris Williamson 46:22 What's the one in Avengers that can, like, fix everything?

William Costello 46:25 Wonder Woman.

Chris Williamson 46:26 No.

William Costello 46:26 Sorry, not Wonder Woman. Uh, Ms. Marvel or-

Chris Williamson 46:28 Yes

William Costello 46:28 ... Captain Marvel.

Chris Williamson 46:29 Captain Mar-

William Costello 46:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:29 Captain Marvel is, like, she's, like, off saving other shit in the universe.

William Costello 46:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:33 And you're like, "Hey, hey, hey, Thanos just killed 50% of everyone." It's like, "No, there's other problems elsewhere." And she's, like, the most powerful-

Freya India 46:39 Mm

Chris Williamson 46:39 ... of all the superheroes. Anyway, second Mulan movie, she's got this magical estrogen chi, whatever it is. She got, like, some super feminine thing that she's able to just g- g- use, and she's immediately better. And you go, well, when I think about if I have a daughter, which I, I hope to, what role model do I want her to have? Do I want her to believe the worldview that the only time that you encounter obstacles is because of something systemic that's out of your control because the world doesn't believe in you? Or do I want her to believe that you can overcome stuff just the same way that the men can?

William Costello 47:13 Mm.

Freya India 47:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:14 And that if you do encounter obstacles, that's par for the course. There's no entitlement. There's no s- y- this isn't something that's wrong. The world is filled with problems.

William Costello 47:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:22 You just need to work out a way to solve them, and you can.

William Costello 47:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:26 Not that they're a bug, but they're a feature.

William Costello 47:28 And it's also quite sexist because they lionize the male default. So if a woman shows male typical behaviors, that's how she shows she's kickass. If she shows feminine guile, like you said-

Chris Williamson 47:39 Yeah

William Costello 47:39 ... that's not quite the same. They don't wanna promote those gender typical behaviors.

Chris Williamson 47:42 I came up with a name for it.

William Costello 47:43 Oh?

Chris Williamson 47:43 The soft bigotry of male expectations.

William Costello 47:45 Oh, no. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 47:46 And you remember when there was that hunter-gatherer paper that came out?

William Costello 47:49 Perfect example of it, yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:50 The ... Can you explain what that was when it was reanalyzed and then reanalyzed again?

William Costello 47:53 So they tried to present data to show that, oh, the man, the hunter, uh, is a basically a myth, and that loads of cultures have women as the hunters in the society. But they were really coding their data where any society that a woman did any hunting at all, a, a rabbit, one rabbit killed, that is coded as woman was hunting as well, even if men were by and large responsible for bringing the large game.

Chris Williamson 48:18 364 days of the year they were doing it.

William Costello 48:20 Yeah. And what's really annoying is there's actually a really cool story if you look at our hunter-gatherer past, is that women contributed as many, if not more calories, uh, to the society, uh, through their gathering. And that's cool, but it's sex specific. Uh, but it's, it's just as good. It ... You don't have to be just the same as the men to be as good or, uh, good in a different way.

Chris Williamson 48:41 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 48:41 It's like the ... It's k- it's actually really sexist because they think you-

Chris Williamson 48:44 It's, it's bigotry

William Costello 48:45 ... you have to be like men.

Chris Williamson 48:45 It's a kind of-

William Costello 48:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:46 It's a fucking massive amount of bigotry that-

William Costello 48:48 Yeah

Chris Williamson 48:48 ... devalues what would've been whatever female coded behavior.

William Costello 48:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:52 And this is the line from Andrew Schultz, where his wife, who used to work at Google, had their first kid and would then be walking around the supermarket near where her ex co-employees and colleagues would walk around. They'd say, "What are you doing now?" And she'd say, "I'm just a mom." And he said it was the just-

Freya India 49:08 Mm

Chris Williamson 49:08 ... that killed him.

Freya India 49:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:09 That there's something about doing something that was inherently female coded that was seen as less valuable. You go, how is this not sexist? Is this not fucking sexist to say the thing that came to you naturally, the gathering as opposed to the hunting, well, women can do it just as much as men, and may sometimes even better. And you go, well, yeah, but that implicitly devalues the thing that they were doing more of.

William Costello 49:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:36 Like, it's very ... I don't know. It feels like bigotry to me.

William Costello 49:38 Is there something going on whereby, uh, like feminine guile is, uh, meant to be kept mysterious, and you don't want it said out loud the way you do things or something?

Chris Williamson 49:48 I don't know. I just think, uh, like, maybe it's, like, a, an assumption that, like, women are a block, a monolith, when in reality women have competing interests. So, like, feminism isn't

Dr. Tania Reynolds 50:00 operating on behalf of all women. It's really good for hyper-agentic women. It might be penalizing the women who are more female typical, who are more nurturing, who want these things. And so it's kind of tragic that, like, as a result of championing these women, we have to also, like, denigrate these women.

Chris Williamson 50:18 Hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 50:18 And it, it seems like, like if you really wanted to be pro-women, support them in whichever direction they take.

Chris Williamson 50:25 For a community that's trying to be very inclusive, it's highly exclusionary.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 50:30 Yes. Yes. To critique some women for wanting, like, love and babies, it's like, that's beautiful. Support all types.

Chris Williamson 50:37 Yeah.

Freya India 50:38 I also think it's because we, we have a somewhat therapeutic culture now-

Chris Williamson 50:42 Hmm

Freya India 50:42 ... where the ultimate goal for women is, like, self-actualization.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 50:45 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 50:45 So it's becoming their authentic selves, and that's why you see these storylines in movies where the woman is basically trying to find her authentic self, and then everyone else is a distraction-

Chris Williamson 50:58 Hmm

Freya India 50:58 ... and an obstacle. The men then become obstacles. And this goes back to the beginning of the conversation with marriage and women having a negative view of men and the risk aversion because they will be an obstacle to their self-actualization.

Chris Williamson 51:11 Yeah.

Freya India 51:11 And that is now the ultimate mission.

Chris Williamson 51:13 There's a, a moment in the second Doctor Strange Marvel movie-

Speaker 51:18 Mm

Chris Williamson 51:18 ... where a zombie version of Benedict Cumberbatch goes back in time to tell the female protagonist, who is a Latina daughter of a lesbian couple called America Chavez, that she just needs to believe in herself. Like, that's where-

Speaker 51:38 That's very special

Chris Williamson 51:38 ... she's the most po- she was born as the most powerful person in the world, and she's got this thing, but she just didn't believe in herself enough. And that kind of goes to the podcast thing, which again, like, it just to me, it feels really patronizing-

Speaker 51:49 Yeah

Chris Williamson 51:49 ... to tell women that you're perfect as you are. Like, you are immutable, and the world is mutable.

Speaker 51:56 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:57 You don't need to change yourself. The world should bend around you. Whereas male podcasts say, the world doesn't give a single fuck about you. You need to do everything you can to try and counteract this entropy locally, bro.

Speaker 52:07 Yeah.

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Chris Williamson 53:26 On the topic of sexism, Freya-

Freya India 53:28 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 53:28 ... I'd like to put you on the spot a bit at the moment.

Freya India 53:31 Are you calling me a sexist? [laughs]

Chris Williamson 53:31 I would include you. Well, no. [laughs]

Freya India 53:33 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 53:34 But well, we'll see.

Freya India 53:35 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:35 Uh, I want to ask you a few questions. Right?

Freya India 53:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:37 You've been described as the voice of Gen Z women, uh, so this will be very interesting, uh, to get your opinion on these questions, so I'm gonna read them out to you. So Tania, I already know what you think-

Freya India 53:47 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 53:47 ... because we're, we're working on this together. So is it closer to sexist towards men or women to believe the following things? One, women have a superior moral sensibility.

Freya India 53:59 Uh, sexist toward men, I would say.

Chris Williamson 54:01 Okay. Women have a quality of purity few men possess.

Freya India 54:07 Sexist toward men.

Chris Williamson 54:08 Women have a more refined sense of culture and taste.

Freya India 54:12 Sexist toward men.

Chris Williamson 54:13 Okay. Full house. Sexist towards men.

Freya India 54:14 [laughs]

Speaker 54:14 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 54:15 Ne- ne- next set of questions. We're almost done.

Freya India 54:17 Okay.

Chris Williamson 54:18 Do you think it would be a good or bad thing if men mostly agreed with the sentiment of the following statements? A good woman should be set on a pedestal.

Freya India 54:28 Uh, good.

Chris Williamson 54:30 Okay. Women should be cherished and protected by men.

Freya India 54:34 Good.

Chris Williamson 54:35 Men should sacrifice to provide for women.

Freya India 54:37 Good.

Chris Williamson 54:38 In a disaster, women need to be rescued first.

Freya India 54:41 Good.

Chris Williamson 54:42 Every man ought to have a woman he adores.

Freya India 54:44 Good.

Chris Williamson 54:45 Men are complete without women, or men are incomplete without women.

Freya India 54:50 Yeah. Good.

Chris Williamson 54:51 Despite accomplishment, men are incomplete without women. So it's saying.

Freya India 54:55 Yeah. Good.

Chris Williamson 54:56 And people are often happy without romance.

Freya India 55:00 Bad.

Chris Williamson 55:01 Okay. You are a massive benevolent sexist.

Freya India 55:04 Fascist. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 55:04 [laughs] Those are the items on the benevolent sexism scale, and y- I polled all my followers on this, and they, like you, believed that the statements were either sexist to men or a good thing, right? So it, it kind of begs this question of what is this scale measuring? So this is an idea that Tania and I and some other colleagues are working on, uh, that we call the mismeasurement of men. Now, that title is strategic because there was a famous book called The Mismeasure of Men by, uh, Stephen Jay Gould, who was very critical of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary approaches to human behavior, and we think it's the precise opposite that's happening in scale development in psychology now, that a, a lack of insight into evolutionary psychology and just science in general is, uh, creating these crazy problematic scales. So you've got scales that are measuring toxic masculinity, benevolent sexism, and, uh, male sexual entitlement that are actually problematic in so many ways. But one of the ways is they're measuring

William Costello 56:08 A- awareness of facts about the world. So one of the items is, women are often attracted to muscularity and dominance, and that's taken as evidence of toxic masculinity. And i- there's no attitude added on to that inference. It's just, do you know that that's sometimes the case? And it is sometimes the case.

Chris Williamson 56:28 Mm.

William Costello 56:28 And these scales, they're like the, what I call the Cathy Newman of scales. They require an extra inference about the implication-

Chris Williamson 56:39 Mm-hmm, mm

William Costello 56:39 ... of agreeing with the statement.

Chris Williamson 56:40 Mm.

William Costello 56:40 So you believe that women deserve to be protected. Oh, so what you're really saying is they have, should have their autonomy limited to keep them safe for their own good. And it's like, that's not measured. So it's a, a total mismeasurement of men. And, uh, it also pathologizes women's own preferences. So women-

Chris Williamson 56:57 Mm

William Costello 56:57 ... have strong preferences for protection and provisioning, yet, and men care about being seen as attractive to women, so they're gonna prioritize that over being seen as sexist. So it's, uh, a huge problem we see. But yeah, sorry to tell you if you're a man.

Freya India 57:10 So is that the same as internal, internalized misogyny?

William Costello 57:13 No.

Freya India 57:13 Same concept.

William Costello 57:14 Not quite the same. So benevolent sexism, uh, is one end of the scale of what's called ambivalent sexism. On one end of the scale, they have hostile sexism, which is like-

Freya India 57:23 Yeah

William Costello 57:23 ... direct antipathy towards, uh, women to be like, "Oh, w- women are trash," basically. Like, really direct and obvious. Whereas benevolent sexism is this more subtle putting, uh, kind of infantilizing of women and, um, which I believe could be a real concept.

Freya India 57:38 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 57:39 But when I looked under the hood at these items that were used to measure it, I couldn't believe it. I, I just thought that, that they're absurd.

Freya India 57:46 Well, that reminds me of the New Statesman piece.

William Costello 57:48 Mm.

Freya India 57:48 Because the New Statesman piece basically concluded that liberal women are unhappy. And then everybody was basically, we spoke about this, they were saying that this is, no one's spoken about what's going on with liberal women. This is new.

William Costello 58:01 Mm.

Freya India 58:01 Like, the New Statesman are the first to have the balls to say it. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 58:04 Come on, Freya.

William Costello 58:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 58:05 Fucking bang your head against the wall.

Freya India 58:07 [laughs] Sorry.

William Costello 58:07 Yeah.

Freya India 58:08 No, but the interesting thing is, is that I sort of get viewed with the internal misogyny thing because I will say-

William Costello 58:15 Mm-hmm

Freya India 58:15 ... the same thing, which is liberal women are unhappy. But I'll also say it's because they have these unmet needs. It's because they wanna belong, and it's, it's like a compassionate worldview that I think women want to be protected. They want to feel like they're safe and stable and all of these things. But then I get the, "That's a sexist point of view." But the New Statesman can present it and say, young women are unhappy, and draw different conclusions, and then it's not a sexist thing suddenly.

Chris Williamson 58:40 I told you, your female privilege has been revoked.

Freya India 58:42 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 58:44 You don't have the female privilege that you once thought you did.

Freya India 58:45 'Cause I'm white or conservative.

Chris Williamson 58:47 Because y-

William Costello 58:47 That's you. Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:47 ... because you're white, because you're right of center.

Freya India 58:49 Yeah.

William Costello 58:49 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Freya India 58:50 Yeah. I'm, I then don't get treated as a woman at all.

Chris Williamson 58:54 No. You're an honorary man.

Freya India 58:56 Yeah. [scoffs]

Chris Williamson 58:56 Congratulations. It's three on one.

Freya India 58:58 Thanks. [laughs]

William Costello 58:58 [laughs] So, so in the literature, there's this kind of, uh, confusion about, oh, women are perplexingly attracted to benevolent sexism, and this is, like, a problem. It's a inconvenient finding. But when you look at the way the items are written, it's needless. Uh, 'cause I think women are attracted to men who believe women should be protected, but I don't think they're attracted to men who would add on the extra inference and would say, "Oh, because women need to be protected, they need to have their rights limited-

Chris Williamson 59:25 Their autonomy should be

William Costello 59:25 ... for their own good." So if you had the item written in a proper way, and the scale designed in a proper way, you would actually have no problematic attraction to benevolent

William Costello 59:33 sexism.

Chris Williamson 59:33 Do you remember that video of the two travelers in Thailand, and a guy pulls out a knife? It's CCTV footage.

William Costello 59:41 Oh, I think I have seen it. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:42 This... Yeah, it went super, super viral.

William Costello 59:44 Mm.

Chris Williamson 59:44 And all of the replies and all of the, uh, quote tweets of it were, "Girl, he's trash." So this guy pulls out a knife and he's trying to steal the woman's bag, and she fights him off, and the guy hides behind a fucking pillar. The dude hides behind a pillar.

William Costello 59:55 Yeah.

Freya India 59:55 Oh.

Chris Williamson 59:55 So there's two things that are sort of, yeah, icky, right?

Freya India 59:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:58 I mean, we, we all have this sense that you should protect. Dude, what was that fucking thing that I said? I put this in the group chat six months ago and I fucking called it, and I was right about the fact that women would be less, there would be more... Oh, here it is.

William Costello 1:00:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:13 Look at this.

William Costello 1:00:14 Oh, no.

Chris Williamson 1:00:16 So that guy's got a knife.

William Costello 1:00:18 Oh, no.

Freya India 1:00:19 Oh.

William Costello 1:00:19 Oh.

Freya India 1:00:19 Oh my God.

Chris Williamson 1:00:19 Homeboy hides, homeboy hides behind the pillar while she is fighting him, and there's another dude that just comes over and lo- maybe he's with the guy.

William Costello 1:00:28 Maybe.

Freya India 1:00:28 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:00:28 And then this guy with the fucking-

William Costello 1:00:29 The other benevolently sexist man.

Freya India 1:00:31 Yeah.

William Costello 1:00:31 He comes over-

Chris Williamson 1:00:32 Yeah, look

William Costello 1:00:33 ... and thinks the woman cannot defend herself. And what a sexist son of a bitch.

Freya India 1:00:36 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:00:36 I know. What a pig.

William Costello 1:00:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:38 What an absolute pig. Is it the dude on the bike? I think it's a-

William Costello 1:00:41 He, he comes in with a helmet. Yeah.

Freya India 1:00:42 Oh, nice.

Chris Williamson 1:00:43 Dude, a helmet to the head.

Freya India 1:00:44 Yeah.

William Costello 1:00:44 Commute to help.

Freya India 1:00:46 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:00:46 Yeah. Um, so almost everybody was-

William Costello 1:00:49 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:00:49 ... universal in this. That guy that's hiding behind the pillar-

William Costello 1:00:53 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:00:54 ... is, w- what are you doing, dude? Come on. Like, yeah, it's a knife and, you know-

Freya India 1:00:57 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:00:57 ... fucking scary or whatever, but, like, do something.

William Costello 1:00:59 Women's preference for protection is seriously strong. So I ran a poll asking which would have a stronger effect-

Chris Williamson 1:01:05 This was my idea. Don't fucking say I, I would run a poll.

William Costello 1:01:08 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:01:08 This is my idea, dude.

Freya India 1:01:10 [laughs]

William Costello 1:01:10 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:01:10 Jesus fuck.

William Costello 1:01:10 And I, I was even surprised by the results. Uh, women said it would have a stronger effect on their attractiveness to a man if he, if they found out he was unwilling to protect them than it would be if he cheated on her in a one-night stand.

Chris Williamson 1:01:24 Yeah.

Freya India 1:01:24 Yeah. And I-

William Costello 1:01:24 That was really strong

Freya India 1:01:26 ... I kind of wonder if, like, maybe that's one factor in, like, why women aren't interested in men nowadays, is, like, men don't get to display those abilities.

William Costello 1:01:33 Absolutely right.

Freya India 1:01:34 Like, if we're not-

Chris Williamson 1:01:34 No one's coming back from war.

Freya India 1:01:35 Yeah. If we're not seeing men defending our groups or hunting, like, you don't get to see the value of male formidability-

William Costello 1:01:41 Yeah

Freya India 1:01:41 ... or the display of it. I, what I'm starting to wonder is, like, if women even realize how much stronger men are. When I ask my students, like, I, I present the sex difference in upper body strength-

William Costello 1:01:53 Yeah

Freya India 1:01:53 ... and they're surprised, and I'm like, "What?"

William Costello 1:01:56 Yeah.

Freya India 1:01:56 [laughs]

William Costello 1:01:56 There's this viral trend on TikTok apparently now where, uh, it's, like, asking couples to ask the guy to go into the challenge of putting her in handcuffs in 30 seconds, and they're like, "It's the greatest foreplay ever." It's like [laughs] women get so turned on-

Chris Williamson 1:02:11 It's safe. Yeah. It's safe

William Costello 1:02:12 ... by, it's like, wow, realizing the strength difference is crazy.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the, the thing that Andrew Thomas was talking about. Does Andrew do Krav Maga or some shit? He does some kind of-

William Costello 1:02:21 Yeah, it would surprise me. Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:02:23 ... martial artsy thing, right.

William Costello 1:02:24 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:24 And he's saying that, uh, the ability to turn on and turn off aggression-

William Costello 1:02:30 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:02:30 ... is really rare. Like, most guys, the aggression sort of bleeds out. In the same way as your level of obsession and how much you pay attention to patterns is great when you're trying to write a new piece, but is not so great when you're dealing with your intimate relationship or whatever.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:02:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:45 Guys that are aggressive are good. If-

William Costello 1:02:48 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:02:48 ... if homeboy comes along with a knife-

William Costello 1:02:50 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:02:50 ... forget running away, he's licking his lips.

William Costello 1:02:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 The guy's like, "Oh, waited my entire life for this."

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:02:54 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:54 Just pulls out an armory of things to kill him with.

William Costello 1:02:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:56 You're like, okay, it's like everyone's like Tim Kennedy. But very few people have learned, very few men have learned to turn that off. And I think what women, what's got crossed over a little bit here is that women love the idea of a man who is able to be aggressive, but never to them.

William Costello 1:03:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:03:14 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:14 And unfortunately, the guys, I mean, how many U- MMA fighters have had, like, awful, uh, uh, abuse, domestic abuse-

William Costello 1:03:22 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:03:23 ... situations that you've ch- you've selected for a guy who is, he is gonna really, really stand up for me. Well, yeah.

William Costello 1:03:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:30 But maybe that's also, that's not to say-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:03:31 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:03:31 ... that all fucking MMA fighters are gonna be, you know, home abusers. But this has happened a bunch of times. You go, it's hard to turn that aggression off.

William Costello 1:03:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:37 And the protector thing is great, but the just raw aggression thing-

William Costello 1:03:42 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:03:42 ... carries on.

William Costello 1:03:43 It's a trade-off women have to make, and it's u- predictable the ecologies in which they'll actually select a really formidable mate, and it's predictable based on the individual differences in that woman's size. Smaller women in those dangerous ecologies tend to have a stronger preference for a really strong, aggressive, formidable type.

Chris Williamson 1:04:00 What would a dangerous ecology in the modern world be like?

William Costello 1:04:03 So, I mean, there's rough areas of, I used to live in Birmingham. There's rough areas of it. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 It's as rough as it gets. Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:04:09 We, we did a study where we tried to see this. Like, we tried to prime women to think about, so we had them learn about, like, your l- imagine your friend Sarah tells you about an experience with her boyfriend, and in one condition, the boyfriend and her are in a fight, and he gets so mad that he punches a wall.

William Costello 1:04:23 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:04:24 And then in the other condition, the boyfriend defends her against this guy coming, trying to rob her. Um, and we thought it was gonna make, when we primed women to think of, like, the man as the aggressor punching the wall, we thought women were gonna dislike the formidable men, but they had the same preferences as normal, where they were totally fine with the formidable guy. But we did find when w- we primed them with the protector condition, they liked all men more. So, like, all men-

William Costello 1:04:49 Wow.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:04:49 And so, I, but to your point, like, I think, like, maybe women aren't aware of those trade-offs totally because-

Chris Williamson 1:04:56 Yeah, because those two men are likely to be the same person.

William Costello 1:04:58 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:04:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:59 The guy that's really, really competent and prepared to go for it in the protection thing, ah-

William Costello 1:05:04 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:05:04 ... maybe he is gonna punch a wall-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:06 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:05:06 ... as well.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:07 Like-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:07 And they weren't registering it as like, "Well, maybe I should use cues of formidability as a predictor of, like, which men would be likely to be violent." Um, and so it, it was odd that they didn't show that aversion. And so I'm not sure if that link is, like, as explicit-

Chris Williamson 1:05:21 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:21 ... in women's minds.

Chris Williamson 1:05:22 Well, isn't it strange as well that there's a, especially among young girls, the sort of Gen Z girls, or I guess maybe more like Gen Alpha now, if you look at the phrenology of the guys that they're trying to go for, guys are almost signaling, like, anime character-

William Costello 1:05:38 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:05:38 ... levels of cuteness. The tousley hair, the very sort of thin body. Certainly, there's the looksmaxxing teens-

William Costello 1:05:45 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:05:45 ... that are going in the other direction that are basically trying to speed run manhood.

William Costello 1:05:48 The soft boy.

Chris Williamson 1:05:49 Yeah, the-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:05:50 ... yeah, yeah. Is that what the, the aesthetic is?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:52 Yeah, and I think that's because it's less threatening.

Chris Williamson 1:05:54 Exactly.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:55 Bingo. Bingo. Post Me Too world.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:05:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:57 This guy, he, he couldn't even force himself on me if he wanted.

William Costello 1:06:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:01 Like, there's no reason. He's basically like a cuddly teddy bear best friend that I get to be in a relationship with.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:06:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:06 But when you think about, like, what is that pushing toward, well, at some point, those women are probably gonna diverge away. And I think that-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:06:16 Well, that's what Jordan Peterson used to say about you don't wanna dominate your partner. So it's not a good long-term strategy to have a partner that you're not, that you don't find threatening at all and would never protect you, and that you can dominate because you don't wanna be in a relationship where you're controlling.

William Costello 1:06:30 You see them as a child eventually then.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:06:31 Yeah.

William Costello 1:06:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:31 Well, this was the, uh, [laughs] um, who's the, uh, blonde researcher lady that did the come-on face, uh-

William Costello 1:06:39 Katherine Salmon.

Chris Williamson 1:06:39 Katherine Salmon.

William Costello 1:06:40 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 Fucking zebra.

William Costello 1:06:40 The research on the come-on face.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:06:42 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:06:43 Shout out Katherine Salmon, dude.

William Costello 1:06:44 I don't, I don't know.

Chris Williamson 1:06:44 She fucking rules. But she was talking about how after Fifty Shades of Grey came out and the dark romance genre really started to pick up steam, which obviously I contributed to.

William Costello 1:06:54 Mm. [laughs]

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:06:55 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:06:55 And there was a world where this was politically inconvenient-

William Costello 1:06:59 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:06:59 ... especially for the sort of feminist side of the, the aisle because all of the guys that were being chosen to be the protagonists were highly dominant, highly assertive, tall, strong, masculine, millionaire, billionaire CEO people. So they tried to put more pliable, they were called golden retriever husbands-

William Costello 1:07:19 Oh, okay

Chris Williamson 1:07:19 ... or cinnamon roll husbands.

William Costello 1:07:20 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:07:20 And they tried to put sort of a more soft, pliable guy on the cover, and also the story throughout. Shock horror, they didn't sell well.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:07:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:30 And this is short-term mating and fantasy.

William Costello 1:07:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:32 The same way as what a man watches in porn.

William Costello 1:07:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:37 The, the porn that I watch, I, might be great porn-

William Costello 1:07:40 Or the sex dolls.

Chris Williamson 1:07:41 Might not want to, might not want to be in a marriage with her, right?

William Costello 1:07:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:44 Tell me about sex dolls, your specialist subject.

William Costello 1:07:46 Yeah, I was glad to make the shift from incel researcher now to sex doll researcher, so I've got the full gamoo. And they actually kind of connect in a way.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:07:55 [laughs]

William Costello 1:07:55 They're the main consumer base of sex dolls. So I came across this amazing-

Chris Williamson 1:07:59 That's a unfortunate way to open the sentence.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:08:01 [laughs]

William Costello 1:08:01 Let me rephrase that. I happened upon-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:08:03 [laughs]

William Costello 1:08:03 ... this amazing data set that was publicly available that had all the body specifications of sex dolls that are on the market, and this study that was published was very descriptive in nature, and it was just describing the, the dimensions rather than saying why they might be that way. So I did a kind of a, my own analysis on it and showed that they reveal, um-All the kind of classically predicted male mate preferences. And it's interesting because these artificial depictions of female, uh, sexual beings are like a undiluted window into men's mate preferences because these dolls, they can take on any form. They're not limited by nature. They're just literally whatever the consumer wants them to be like. And there's this. It, it's not just that the, uh, creators of sex dolls make them that way and the consumers have no choice. There's this co-evolution of the market, uh, with the consumer and the producer.

Chris Williamson 1:08:55 Mm.

William Costello 1:08:55 Uh, a good example is-

Chris Williamson 1:08:56 They wouldn't buy something they didn't want

William Costello 1:08:57 ... exactly right. There's no market for really obese sex doll. Well, there's a smaller market, uh, let's say.

Chris Williamson 1:09:04 Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a niche for everything.

William Costello 1:09:05 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:09:05 ... William.

William Costello 1:09:05 But, but, but the dolls typified all the classic evolutionary predicted mate preferences, but except they did so in an extremely supernormal stimuli way.

Chris Williamson 1:09:16 So have you got images of... Can we pull this image up, Chris?

William Costello 1:09:17 I, I do have an image. Uh, I did s- I did send through my image. Uh [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:09:21 Here's something that you prepared earlier from your armory of sex dolls.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:09:25 It reminds me, there are, there are these beetles that will try to mate with beer bottles.

Chris Williamson 1:09:29 Glass bottles.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:09:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:30 Yep, yep.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:09:30 And I always show it to my class, and I'm like, "Anyone who watches porn, that's also you." [laughs]

William Costello 1:09:35 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:09:35 Like, it's the same thing.

Chris Williamson 1:09:36 Hey, I've-

William Costello 1:09:37 Women are easily con- convinced.

Chris Williamson 1:09:38 I'm gonna fucking...

William Costello 1:09:39 Men especially.

Chris Williamson 1:09:39 I'm gonna say it. I think that romantasy is for women what porn is for men.

William Costello 1:09:44 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:09:44 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 1:09:44 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:45 Uh, you know, there's a, a great video of this dude and the woman saying, um, she's comparing Disney movies to real life, and she's like, uh, "The dad's gone. The dad's gone. She's alone and the dad's gone," and da, da, da, da-

William Costello 1:09:57 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:09:57 ... like all of the problems that Disney princesses had to go through. And the dude does it with, like, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and it's like, "He's got a big thing. He's got a big thing."

William Costello 1:10:05 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:10:06 "He's got a big thing and something in his eye. He's got a big thing and he can fly as well."

William Costello 1:10:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:09 Like, the, uh... There's another one that I saw of a, a girl talking about what I read in my, uh, romantasy novel, and it's, "I would wait until the death of a thousand sons just-"

William Costello 1:10:21 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:10:21 ... "to get to touch your cheek one more time." And then it cuts [laughs] to what she's got in her real life, and it's like the trash is smelling again.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:10:27 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:10:28 Right? From her partner.

William Costello 1:10:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:29 Um, but unrealistic expectations-

William Costello 1:10:31 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:10:31 ... for what are the key triggers for romance and attraction and stuff like that.

William Costello 1:10:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:37 Supernormal stimuli is everywhere, dude, even in romantasy.

William Costello 1:10:40 Yeah. And one of the kind of the white pills on it is that it's still really low status for the guy to be a, a sex doll haver. I mean, it's very embarrassing when you start talking about your collection, Chris. It kinda does lower your status.

Chris Williamson 1:10:51 My collection is just Debra Soh.

William Costello 1:10:53 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:10:53 I just have one, and it's Debra Soh.

William Costello 1:10:56 Oh, my God. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:10:57 Uh...

William Costello 1:10:57 Yeah. But yeah, but for now, it's low status to have sex dolls, but maybe that'll change in a while.

Chris Williamson 1:11:02 I, I don't think it's gonna change-

William Costello 1:11:03 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:11:03 ... because there's no selection.

William Costello 1:11:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:04 It's the same reason that guys can't flex the amount of OnlyFans that they subscribe to.

William Costello 1:11:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:08 Right? If you can get something that everybody else has, especially in a market where getting something that no one else can get-

William Costello 1:11:16 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:11:17 ... is highly valued, it's seen as desperate. If, if, if I can see you naked for the price of a cheeseburger per month-

William Costello 1:11:23 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:11:24 ... that's not going to be high value. It's going to suggest, "Oh, I can't get this really, so I'm gonna have to get it privately."

William Costello 1:11:29 But maybe a subset of men will say, "Ugh, ultimately, I don't care about the status now. I'll just compete. I'll... This will satisfy my sexual urges," more and more convincingly when you integrate AI into the system. Uh, maybe they'll just retreat into that world, and video games will be their other status game. They will... Internet will be the status game.

Chris Williamson 1:11:47 Male sedation, dudes. Male sedation turned up to 11.

William Costello 1:11:50 Yeah. But-

Chris Williamson 1:11:50 Gerard, I wanna see these sex dolls. Where are they?

William Costello 1:11:52 While, while he's searching for that, I'll tell you an interesting story that I learned when writing this paper, uh, is it's actually confusing from one level of analysis why women have smaller feet than men, but it's a sexually selected feature because adult human women are the only species, the only mammal that carries a pregnancy on two feet, and it's really dangerous to have falls. It might terminate the pregnancy. So you'd actually expect them, from a biomechanical perspective, to have evolved really big feet for stability and all that, but they don't. They have really small feet, and men have a preference for small feet, and it is a sign of femininity because with each age and pregnancy, women's feet get bigger and bigger. So it's, it's, it's a bi-

Chris Williamson 1:12:32 You're fucking kidding me.

William Costello 1:12:33 Uh, yeah, so they have small feet and the dolls-

Chris Williamson 1:12:35 Okay, so if you're a slightly older woman-

William Costello 1:12:37 You have bigger feet

Chris Williamson 1:12:37 ... who's, who's had a ton of kids.

William Costello 1:12:39 Big feet, yeah. Size 11s.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:12:41 I mean, the, the same is true for women's faces.

William Costello 1:12:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:12:44 So men's preferences... Well, actually, like, what we view as attractive in a female face is, like, neoteny.

William Costello 1:12:49 Yes.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:12:49 Looking like a child.

William Costello 1:12:51 Yeah. Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:12:51 And if you amp up those features, they're the same features that make people wanna take care of babies-

William Costello 1:12:56 Yes

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:12:56 ... also make women more attractive, and people wanna help women more.

William Costello 1:13:00 Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:13:00 So they're, like, just selected to be neotenous.

Chris Williamson 1:13:04 A quick aside, most people think that they're dehydrated because they don't drink enough water. Turns out water alone isn't just the problem. It's also what's missing from it, which is why for the last five years, I've started every single morning with a cold glass of LMNT in water. LMNT is an electrolyte drink with a science-backed ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, just the stuff that your body actually needs to function. This plays a critical role in reducing your muscle cramps and your fatigue. It optimizes your brain health, it regulates your appetite, and it helps curb cravings. I keep talking about it because I genuinely feel a difference when I use it versus when I don't. And best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So if you're on the fence, you can buy it and try it for as long as you like, and if you don't like it for any reason, they just give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it, and they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of LMNT's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.

Chris Williamson 1:14:10 One other bit from the New Statesman article I thought was really interesting. Women feel much more negatively towards young men than young men feel about them. 50% of women have a neutral or negative view of men. 72% of men have a positive view of women. For all of the talk about manosphere inspired misogyny, three times more women hold a negative view of men than men hold of women. Only 21% of women have an actively negative view of men, but only 7% of men feel the same. Men are told that they're the problem, but then you look at the data and young women are significantly more negative toward men than men are toward women. Men get dragged in the media, but are still showing up more optimistically about womenthan the other way around

William Costello 1:14:51 But women are fulfilling their part of the bargain. Like, if you, if you looked at it from a trade-off perspective, like women are-

Chris Williamson 1:14:57 Here's my better

William Costello 1:14:58 ... I think that women are, um, contributing, bringing more to the table financially and everything. The women, if you asked them, I bet they'd say, "Yeah. Well, we're right. They're wrong. [laughs] They're, they're... Or we're right and they're right."

Chris Williamson 1:15:08 But why would you-

William Costello 1:15:09 Men are right to like w- we're right

Chris Williamson 1:15:09 ... why, why would you hold an actively negative view of men?

William Costello 1:15:12 Well, because they see only the risks. They see the-

Chris Williamson 1:15:15 But this is not an acti- this is not a view of relationships. This is an actively negative view of men. This seems to be much more judgmental, men are bad in and of themsel-

William Costello 1:15:24 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:15:24 ... men are bad over there or they're bad when they're trying to get with me.

William Costello 1:15:27 Yeah. Uh-

Freya India 1:15:27 Do, mm, I would think that was something to do with porn.

Chris Williamson 1:15:30 Mm.

Freya India 1:15:30 Because... And I also think that explains, you know, you say that women are attracted to sort of feminine looking anime men.

Chris Williamson 1:15:38 Mm. Mm.

Freya India 1:15:39 I think because maybe they've grown up watching very hyper-masculine, like, porn stars-

Chris Williamson 1:15:44 Mm

Freya India 1:15:44 ... being really rough and violent with women, and then they go for the non-threatening mate.

Chris Williamson 1:15:50 Mm.

Freya India 1:15:50 And then also they develop this view of men based off maybe the most brutal videos.

Chris Williamson 1:15:56 Mm.

Freya India 1:15:56 And seeing it from such a young age-

Chris Williamson 1:15:58 Mm

Freya India 1:15:58 ... that then you develop, you generalize that to all men.

Chris Williamson 1:16:02 Still don't understand why you'd be actively negative. 21% actively negative.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:07 I wonder if it's that signal to other women-

Chris Williamson 1:16:09 Mm.

Freya India 1:16:09 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:09 ... that I'm team women.

Chris Williamson 1:16:11 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:11 Although my, my student Mikaela, she's designing a scale of opposite sex hatred.

Chris Williamson 1:16:15 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:15 And what's amazing, speaking of scales, no scale exists to measure sexism in both sexes.

Chris Williamson 1:16:21 Whoa.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:21 So you can never, no one has ever compared whether men or women are more sexist.

Chris Williamson 1:16:26 Oh, man.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:26 Well, guess which one is more sexist?

Chris Williamson 1:16:29 Which one?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:30 Women. Women hate men more than men hate women.

William Costello 1:16:33 Yeah. But-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:33 Totally in line with this

William Costello 1:16:34 ... which makes sense from error management perspective as well, but yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:16:36 Yeah.

Freya India 1:16:37 I, I also think something I've noticed is that young women are often, a- again, because self-actualization is the ultimate goal, they're often deterred from committing and relationships now more so than young men. So if young men say that they're going to get engaged young, for example-

Chris Williamson 1:16:54 Mm

Freya India 1:16:54 ... other young men are usually happy for them. You know, like they've got out of the dating game and the dating market. If women do it-

Chris Williamson 1:16:59 Last chopper out of Saigon.

William Costello 1:17:00 Yeah

Freya India 1:17:00 ... yeah. But if women commit early, other women-

William Costello 1:17:04 Yeah

Freya India 1:17:04 ... express this fear for them.

Chris Williamson 1:17:05 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 1:17:05 Like, "Oh, you're going to give up some of your potential." Um, and I think that's because we think that women had more to be liberated from. And so now if women close down their options, we see that as suspect and we worry for them.

Chris Williamson 1:17:20 Well-

William Costello 1:17:20 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:17:20 ... also it depends if you get Danny Sulikowski pilled-

Freya India 1:17:25 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:17:25 ... it would be there's an eligible man that's prepared to protect and provide, and he's now off the market.

William Costello 1:17:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:31 And it throws into harsh contrast the... I mean, that was the whole Variety piece about, uh, having a boyfriend is cringe now.

Freya India 1:17:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:39 That girls didn't want to post about their relationship online because it made their single friends feel bad. If the single friends feel bad, that presumably is gonna show up at some point in the pushback online-

Freya India 1:17:49 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:17:49 ... and they're gonna feel triggered by the fact that, fuck, like-

William Costello 1:17:52 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:17:52 ... it is tough. The dating world is tough, especially for young people at the moment, especially for young girls at the moment, right? They're trying to navigate this thing. We talk about the problems of the dating environment for men, and thereby kind of miss the problems that women are facing-

William Costello 1:18:04 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:18:04 ... in the dating market, including ones that are not self-imposed, but they're at least, like, intrinsic. Either their, uh, uncertainty, their fear, their-

William Costello 1:18:13 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:18:13 ... their, their social anxiety, their, you know, the, the, uh, worries about letting go of their freedom and their independence. Like, these are real things.

William Costello 1:18:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:20 Whether they're manipulated or manufactured by a modern environment, they're still things that you have to navigate, and that fucking sucks-

William Costello 1:18:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:18:26 ... for women.

William Costello 1:18:27 Uh, and I think, uh, the forensic kind of stalking that groups of women do on a potential new mate, I mean, even my girlfriend, she tells me about the deep dive she did on my-

Freya India 1:18:38 [laughs]

William Costello 1:18:38 ... years old tweets. I, lucky to come out of it alive really. Like [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:18:41 Yeah, yeah. Glad that she didn't go on your Bluesky.

William Costello 1:18:43 But that's like gr- I know, yeah. No one does. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:18:46 [laughs]

William Costello 1:18:46 No one there.

Chris Williamson 1:18:46 Like, you're so bitter about Bl- Blue Sky. No-

William Costello 1:18:49 No one there anyway

Chris Williamson 1:18:50 ... no engagement apart from people that hate you, dude.

William Costello 1:18:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:52 Get off it.

William Costello 1:18:53 Torture.

Chris Williamson 1:18:53 It's self-harm.

William Costello 1:18:53 Torture porn.

Freya India 1:18:54 [laughs]

William Costello 1:18:54 But, uh, no, they really do this kind of collective-

Freya India 1:18:57 Mm-hmm

William Costello 1:18:57 ... collective condemnation, deep dive, and everyone is a little bit cringe in some way, and you can find how they're cringe. So on some level you have to almost accept that your new boyfriend is a little bit cringe, and that's what I told my girlfriend, and-

Chris Williamson 1:19:10 [laughs]

William Costello 1:19:10 ... so we're very happy together. If you e- embrace the cringe.

Chris Williamson 1:19:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:19:15 Ta- Tania, what do you reckon about icks? Have you looked at, have you done any research on icks and stuff like that?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:19:20 No, but it, there does, like anecdotally, there seems to be a sex difference where, like, women get the ick and then-

Chris Williamson 1:19:25 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:19:25 ... men do not. Um, yeah, I wonder if it's like a absence of a sufficient, like you need at some threshold of masculinity.

Chris Williamson 1:19:34 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:19:35 And if you don't cross it, then-

Chris Williamson 1:19:37 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:19:37 ... or if you indicate anything that violates it.

Chris Williamson 1:19:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:19:40 I don't know. Freya, you'd probably know what's the stronger predictor. [laughs]

Freya India 1:19:42 Well, I'm not obviously an evolutionary psychologist, but I see it from a cultural perspective that you have so many messages coming at young women to be on guard, constantly on guard-

Chris Williamson 1:19:50 Yeah

Freya India 1:19:50 ... like looking for problems.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:19:51 Mm.

Freya India 1:19:51 And so you have a feminist message that, you know, you have to be independent. You can't let a man get in the way of your goals. But then you also have a therapeutic message, which is like, be on guard for any red flags, any signs that someone is not good enough-

Chris Williamson 1:20:03 Yeah

Freya India 1:20:03 ... or you're incompatible. And so I think young women might feel something like an ick-

Chris Williamson 1:20:08 Mm-hmm

Freya India 1:20:08 ... and then they're encouraged, especially by social media, to take that feeling really seriously.

Chris Williamson 1:20:13 Yeah.

Freya India 1:20:13 Which is like, if you feel some negative emotion toward your partner, you're incompatible or there's something wrong. And so I think we're just way more, we're bracing all the time to see-

Chris Williamson 1:20:23 Yeah

Freya India 1:20:23 ... the red flags.

William Costello 1:20:24 And it also kind of, uh, announces, like you said, kind of allegiance to the sisterhood alliance, but also elevates their own mate value. It's like, "Oh, there's just a total scarcity of guys who meet my standard."

Chris Williamson 1:20:34 My standards are so high.

William Costello 1:20:36 "I cannot find anyone."

Chris Williamson 1:20:36 Things are so difficult.

William Costello 1:20:38 I always feel-

Chris Williamson 1:20:38 Yeah. I'm, I have a refined palate.

William Costello 1:20:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:20:40 I couldn't eat, I wouldn't be able to eat at, uh, at, at-

William Costello 1:20:42 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:20:42 ... at fucking IHOP this evening.

William Costello 1:20:44 I, I always feel like that about men who say they have types. I'm like, "I just don't buy it."

Chris Williamson 1:20:48 [laughs]

William Costello 1:20:48 Like, "Oh, I only like blondes," but, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:20:50 Dude, fucking this was the, you know, of all of the things that I went through on Love Island, this was one of the weirdest ones, which is that you turn up and one of the first questions that the press during your lockdown week and you're doing interviews and all of the interviews for the show, one of the first things is, "What's your type?"

William Costello 1:21:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:04 "Uh, what is it you're looking for? What's your..." But not, "What are you looking for?"

William Costello 1:21:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:07 It's, "Who are you looking for?"

William Costello 1:21:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:08 And maybe that would've changed. 10 years ago when I was on... In fact, it was more than 10 years ago when I was on Love Island now, right?What's your type? What do you mean? Like, who is like, "Oh, yeah, it's, um, it's, uh, ginger girls with, uh, blue... They have to have blue eyes. They can't be too blue, but, like, if they're a little..."

William Costello 1:21:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:24 I'm like-

William Costello 1:21:24 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:21:25 ... who the fuck has these-

William Costello 1:21:26 You know, like

Chris Williamson 1:21:26 ... weird autistic-

William Costello 1:21:28 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:21:28 ... preferences for a partner? Because they're only talking about it physically.

William Costello 1:21:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:32 They're never saying-

William Costello 1:21:33 It's true

Chris Williamson 1:21:33 ... "Oh, I want someone, I want someone who is really in touch with their emotions."

William Costello 1:21:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:21:36 "I want someone who is..." They wouldn't have even said, "I want someone who has these interests."

William Costello 1:21:42 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:21:42 Like, physically, what are you looking for?

William Costello 1:21:45 Yeah. I think it's just a way for, for, in guys anyway, I think it's a way of just posturing, like, "Oh, I can be so specific and narrow my choice parameters so much-

Chris Williamson 1:21:53 Mm-hmm

William Costello 1:21:53 ... 'cause I have so many options."

Chris Williamson 1:21:54 Yeah.

William Costello 1:21:55 And I, I've been always a little bit sus over it. I've never bought it.

Chris Williamson 1:21:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:58 Uh, some of the new polling done at the New Statesman suggests that privileged women are the most pessimistic of all. Women in middle class professions are less likely to say they feel valued by society and less likely to believe that if they work hard, they will succeed in life when compared to their working class counterparts. Young men are now more likely to be unemployed than young women, yet young women are far more financially cynical, 21 points less likely than young men to believe they will ever out earn their parents. White women are more likely to feel the country is racist than their non-white women middle class partners.

William Costello 1:22:32 You white women are awful.

Chris Williamson 1:22:33 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:22:34 [laughs] I, I wonder how much of that is, like, related to that finding where the only way that women could be agentic was, like, on behalf of someone else.

Chris Williamson 1:22:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:22:43 So, like, the more successful that you are or the more that you have going in your favor, the only, like, way that you can be-

Chris Williamson 1:22:51 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:22:51 ... agentic is to, like, be so deeply caring. Um, there are some ethnographies on adolescent girls, and the only ones that were allowed to be popular were if they were super, super nice. And so they had to, like, kind of over-deliver on, like, kindness in order to be allowed to be popular. And so it feels a little bit like that same pattern that, like, perhaps women do this so the, the envy or resentment of other women won't bring them down.

Chris Williamson 1:23:19 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:23:19 Um, Joyce Benenson has this r- um, cool-

Chris Williamson 1:23:21 Hero, friend of the show.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:23:22 Oh, she's the best. I'm obsessed with her. Um, she has this paper on leveling showing that, like, women are more likely to use a leveling strategy where they say, like, "Oh, we should all be equal," when someone is surpassing them.

Chris Williamson 1:23:34 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:23:34 And so I wonder if, like, once you have all of these things operating in your favor, you kind of have to be, like, a martyr in order-

Chris Williamson 1:23:42 Mm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:23:42 ... to, like, continue on. Otherwise, people might not like you.

Chris Williamson 1:23:45 Where do you get your victimhood points from?

William Costello 1:23:47 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:23:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:23:47 Uh, I, I won't say who said it in our group chat, but someone replied to Rob Henderson bringing this up and said, "Middle class hay fever, Rob. When there's no high load of parasites, people's immune system gets bored and starts looking for things to react to, and you get allergies to dust and pollen. When the middle class has no threats, their threat system gets bored and starts looking for trivial things to blow out of proportion. White privilege, gender identity, ultra-processed foods, it's all pollen. You don't have oat milk? You're traumatizing me. No explicit segregation and blatant racism? Sensitivity to microaggressions increases."

Freya India 1:24:19 That's what I was gonna say, is I think it's more time to introspect and ruminate.

Chris Williamson 1:24:23 Mm.

Freya India 1:24:23 Because you have girls and young women not just picking up on icks in their partner and, like, scrutinizing them and looking for flaws, but then doing that to themselves. So constantly pathologizing, diagnosing themselves, wondering what's wrong with them.

Chris Williamson 1:24:36 Mm.

Freya India 1:24:37 Over-analyzing their personality traits. And so I do think it's just more time and less bigger problems, like, say, having children, where you put your neuroticism, you funnel it into something-

Chris Williamson 1:24:48 Mm-hmm

Freya India 1:24:48 ... productive. And instead it then turns inwards or also against your partner.

William Costello 1:24:52 Yeah. But there is status afforded to women doing that. In that ecosystem, in that social system of higher education where women are dominating now-

Chris Williamson 1:25:02 Mm

William Costello 1:25:02 ... they're rewarded for espousing views like that. So, you know, they're showing that they know the ideology of the leading status people-

Chris Williamson 1:25:10 Mm

William Costello 1:25:10 ... in their world.

Chris Williamson 1:25:11 This is me showing-

William Costello 1:25:12 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:25:12 ... fealty to the cause. I understand this thing.

William Costello 1:25:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:25:15 What's the data around men and women being demonised and seen as victims?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:25:22 So we have some studies showing that, like, w- we have this, like, kind of cognitive heuristic of victim and perpetrator, and when men and women are, like, involved in any i- instance of harm, we're more likely to see women in the victim role and men in the perpetrator role.

Chris Williamson 1:25:38 Mm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:25:38 Be more likely to blame men, um, and more likely to have sympathy for women. Um, and so it would suggest, like, perhaps some of the reason we don't see a lot of sympathy for men is it's, like, cognitively harder to see them as victims. And then for women, the sa- or it's just cognitively easier to see them as victims, and so we feel that sympathy. But this is, it kind of sucks for both sexes. So in the domain of harm, men are disadvantaged and they're not seen as victims. But for women, in the domain, in other domains where you'd want to be the agentic person-

Chris Williamson 1:26:10 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:11 ... like a, if you're deciding on a CEO or a president, women aren't seen as, as agentic and as capable. So it's not like one sex is clearly doing better than the other. They're both facing these, like-

Chris Williamson 1:26:23 One doesn't get sympathy and one doesn't get belief.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:25 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 1:26:26 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:26:26 Yeah. I, I guess that's one of the challenges I think that women face when they go into the workplace, that they feel like if they need to be assertive and dominant, they have to temper the throttle a bit, a little bit for fear of being bitchy. They don't want to be a bitch.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:26:38 Right? Or a diva.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:39 Yeah. I feel like there's, like, a agency warmth continuum, and women are expected to be here, and if they go farther along agency, they're seen as low in warmth, bitchy.

Chris Williamson 1:26:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:49 But the same is true for men. They're higher on the agency side, and so if they show warmth by crying, they're not seen as as competent.

Chris Williamson 1:26:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:55 So, like, we're both encouraged-

Chris Williamson 1:26:57 But if-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:26:57 ... to stay in our lanes

Chris Williamson 1:26:58 ... if, but if women show too much warmth, they're seen as pliable and not competent, because it's seen that people that are a little bit more brusque are seen as higher competence, right?

William Costello 1:27:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:27:08 Warmth is negatively associated with competence, I think.

William Costello 1:27:11 Mm. And, and I just think this, uh, kind of protectiveness that we have about women, uh, it just gets repackaged as oppression in a way. And I get that you could be paternalistic and overly, and a lot of kind of, you know, abuse of women does occur under the guise of for their own good and protection. But it is astounding the extent to which we are more protective of... uh, women than men. I think-

Chris Williamson 1:27:35 You have to really contort yourself into a lot of knots, you know, to see the women are wonderful effect and think of it as oppression-

William Costello 1:27:44 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:27:44 ... toward women. Like, can you, can, do you know much of the stats around the women are wonderful effect, like all of the different ways that people prefer women to men?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:27:52 I know one study that looked at this, kind of where they looked at, um, job dis- hiring discrimination, and it's gone down against women, but people overestimate its presence. And so they assume it's still there, even though the data suggests clearly it's not. So it's like we're almost, like, just sensitized to detect it, even if it's-

William Costello 1:28:10 Yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:28:10 ... not there. [laughs]

William Costello 1:28:11 Mm-hmm. A- a- and even when you learn about some discrepancy, if it's against women, people are up in arms about it, but if it's against men, it's like no

William Costello 1:28:20 biggie.

Chris Williamson 1:28:20 Is, is attractiveness under-acknowledged as a kind of privilege?

William Costello 1:28:24 Oh, I think so. Yeah. So on both ends of the spectrum, so the pretty privilege, which also has its costs. There's costs associated with being seen as pretty. Uh, other women in particular see you as more promiscuous and things like that. But there are enormous benefits across the board to being attractive, male or female. But then at the other end of the spectrum, there's enormous cost to being unattractive, and there is new research that shows that we're not readily, uh, able to recognize this form of privilege. We acknowledge other forms of privilege, but attractiveness, we're reluctant to acknowledge that it even exists.

Chris Williamson 1:28:58 Why?

William Costello 1:28:58 And we also have evidence that women are far more attractive than men. It's not just one OkCupid study. Loads of data unpublished from our lab finds this attractiveness discrepancy. There's l- tons of data. Women are just more attractive. So arguably, a feminine advantage in the domain of attractiveness, when that can be, uh, translated into so many resources. Uh, there are studies to show that beauty is status for women. Women defer to more beautiful women in the way that men defer to more formidable, uh, men. So this is an advantage, and it could be another thing that's actually a less acknowledged point about what's putting women off having children, is that they hear these horror stories-

Chris Williamson 1:29:39 The hit of beauty

William Costello 1:29:39 ... they're, they literally have to take a massive beauty hit, and that's just, there's no way around that.

Chris Williamson 1:29:43 But, uh [laughs]

William Costello 1:29:44 It's less than they've ever had to take, but it's still there.

Chris Williamson 1:29:46 It's so s- funny that, um, having kids would impact your beauty, but the effect of pretty privilege is denied and hidden.

William Costello 1:29:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:29:56 It's like, well, you, if that is playing into it, you have to admit the fact that it's there.

William Costello 1:30:01 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:30:01 You know?

William Costello 1:30:01 Yeah. Yeah, I don't th- think people would acknowledge at face value that's one of the reasons. Well, you do see them sometimes women are like, "I'm not sacrificing my body for that," and-

Chris Williamson 1:30:10 Mm

William Costello 1:30:10 ... you know, it, we have new data come out that shows that relationships, having, being a parent, uh, similar levels of happiness to not being a parent. Greater levels of meaning to, for the parents, especially for women, but lower relationship satisfaction for the parents.

Chris Williamson 1:30:27 Hmm.

William Costello 1:30:27 So it does take a toll on the relationship, but certainly on the woman's mate value thereafter. Having the kids, the toll it takes on her beauty. So you can kind of see why women, if there's all these benefits, they can translate their beauty, which is their status-

Chris Williamson 1:30:40 Hmm

William Costello 1:30:40 ... into, they'd be reluctant to, to sacrifice all that.

Freya India 1:30:43 Yeah, I mean, this is kind of what we were talking about before, which is that I think social media platforms have incentivized women to see themselves less as human and less... and more as products.

William Costello 1:30:53 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 1:30:53 And so their life becomes about marketing themselves and optimizing themselves. And so I think, yeah, having a child disrupts being the perfect pristine product.

William Costello 1:31:03 Yeah.

Freya India 1:31:03 But then we're in this really weird scenario where don't you want to look good in order to reproduce-

William Costello 1:31:08 Mm-hmm

Freya India 1:31:08 ... and have children-

William Costello 1:31:09 Yeah

Freya India 1:31:09 ... at base level? But now Instagram comes along, and Instagram, it ha- gives women so much dopamine and status-

William Costello 1:31:17 Hmm

Freya India 1:31:17 ... that then that becomes their higher priority.

William Costello 1:31:19 Yeah. Yeah, because it, it's a misconception about evolutionary psychology that we have these fitness optimizing mechanisms. We actually have, uh, we're adaptation executioners. So it's not like, it's just that behaviors that over evolutionary time would've resulted in more offspring, uh, are passed on. So women still have the desire to have sex for the most part. The, the, people don't come into the world with, "Oh, I, I really want to increase my reproductive success. I want to have offspring." But they do want to be seen as a, a high mate value to others, have sexual urges, and over time those things would've resulted in reproductive success. So now it's a bit of a, a mismatch. Uh-

Freya India 1:31:58 Yeah.

William Costello 1:31:59 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:31:59 Joyce Benenson, she has this, like, cross-cultural study where she shows, like, among young people, one of their primary goals is finding a romantic partner.

William Costello 1:32:06 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:32:07 But one of their lowest goals is having kids.

William Costello 1:32:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:32:09 Hmm.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:32:10 And so she makes this argument that, like, we probably evolved a desire to attract a mate-

William Costello 1:32:15 Mm-hmm

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:32:15 ... but we didn't need to evolve the desire to have kids.

William Costello 1:32:18 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:32:18 Because so long as you were having sex, you were having kids.

William Costello 1:32:20 Exactly. You didn't need to stop it.

Chris Williamson 1:32:21 Didn't have reliable contraception.

William Costello 1:32:22 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:32:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:32:22 Yeah.

William Costello 1:32:23 It's a hugely evolutionary novel technology that's really just thrown the whole thing up in the air.

Freya India 1:32:28 I think also with young women, sometimes the relationship becomes an accessory-

William Costello 1:32:32 Hmm

Freya India 1:32:32 ... to display online.

Chris Williamson 1:32:34 What was your line about that in the episode that we did a couple years ago? It was, uh, relationships are just brand partnerships now.

Freya India 1:32:40 Yeah.

William Costello 1:32:41 Yeah.

Freya India 1:32:41 Yeah, yeah. It's, it's something to display.

William Costello 1:32:43 Hmm.

Freya India 1:32:43 And so the characteristics that maybe you would select for before social media are very different. Now it's-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:32:49 Hmm

Freya India 1:32:49 ... presenting it to other women and how other women will react.

William Costello 1:32:52 Mm-hmm.

Freya India 1:32:53 Seeing your, yeah, your launch of a partner online.

William Costello 1:32:56 Yeah. Yeah, the soft launch-

Freya India 1:32:57 Yeah [laughs]

William Costello 1:32:57 ... and the hard launch. I didn't know about

William Costello 1:32:59 this, but.

Chris Williamson 1:32:59 Uh, 60% of romantic relationships begin as friendships. Is this making the world harder to date in?

William Costello 1:33:06 Well, given that there's fewer and fewer cross-sex friendships, I think it, it should be, um, celebrated that this is an avenue towards relationship formation and, you know, the age-old question of can men and women ever just be friends. We've just got a new paper accepted that shows that, uh, we call it courtship and cross-sex friendship, where men, uh, provision financially to their cross-sex friendships that they're m- interested in mating with. 50% of people say they have romantic interest in a cross-sex friend. Uh, the same number have had sex with at least one, particularly young people. So I do think it's a good pathway to relationships, and if you formed more cross-sex friendships, you, it would be a direct route to relationships because-Attraction grows over time. You get, uh, uh, you know, proximity breeds intimacy, but also you get to display a lot of the same qualities that make for a good mate make for a good friend, too. And men and women select friends, uh, who have the same qualities that they want in a mate. So protection, uh, physical attractiveness, resources. So it's a good pathway. But the secondary route is it broadens your networks, and it also helps you learn about cross-sex mind reading. So it's very hard to actually, you know, come to the boneheaded beliefs of some of the red pill/black pill world online if you actually have in real life female friends that you know kind of disprove a lot of what, what you hear.

Chris Williamson 1:34:32 I'm gonna quote you back to you here.

William Costello 1:34:33 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:34:33 William Costello polled 527 heterosexual and bisexual people. Are opposite sex friendships ever truly platonic? 81% of women said yes. Only 58% of men said yes. Women were three times more likely than men to say their friendship was purely platonic.

William Costello 1:34:50 Mm. So I think it's a little ... Like, women hear that and they sometimes get very upset that, to learn that their male friends see them as-

Chris Williamson 1:34:57 That nearly half of your guy friends are trying to sleep with you

William Costello 1:35:00 ... would. W- well, not necessarily. It's just that they kind of would. So, uh, and this is the, kind of the misconception. It, that women maybe hear that and they think, "Oh, so he only wants to sleep with me," and it's not quite the case. It's just-

Chris Williamson 1:35:11 He just would

William Costello 1:35:11 ... that he probably would.

Chris Williamson 1:35:12 [laughs]

William Costello 1:35:12 Yeah. But it's like-

Chris Williamson 1:35:14 Well, shut up

William Costello 1:35:14 ... when people hear about this for the first time and they doubt it, I, I always say, "Just try it. Just try when you're out for a few drinks next time."

Chris Williamson 1:35:21 Do you remember that one in The Economist, a study of Americans finds that in platonic couples, men are far more likely than the woman to find their friend sexy and far more likely to think that she finds them attractive, too. Indeed, a man's assessment of how much his female friend fancies him matches how much he fancies her and is entirely unrelated to how she really feels.

William Costello 1:35:40 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:35:40 Clearly men are prone to wishful thinking.

William Costello 1:35:42 Yeah. Yeah. Well, men need to kind of pluck up the courage somewhere. And if they had to-

Chris Williamson 1:35:45 Everyone wants to be asked out more.

William Costello 1:35:47 It, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:35:47 That was your thing.

William Costello 1:35:48 That's true als- also. So, you know, on the one hand, women want to be approached more, but then are kind of unhappy to learn that their opposite sex friends are interested in them. But, uh, I do think women keep some opposite sex friends as backup mates, too, and they-

Chris Williamson 1:36:02 Oh, this, so you've got loads of data around backup mates.

William Costello 1:36:04 Uh-

Chris Williamson 1:36:04 Come on.

William Costello 1:36:05 But yeah, I just think ultimately, uh, we should celebrate and try and cultivate more opposite sex friendships 'cause it, it could be a pathway to, to proper relationships.

Freya India 1:36:13 I wonder if on social media that, uh, disincentivizes opposite sex friendships because you live in different worlds completely. So we were talking earlier and you hadn't heard of influences that, like, shaped my childhood.

Chris Williamson 1:36:26 How did I not know Moella?

Freya India 1:36:27 Zoella.

Chris Williamson 1:36:28 Whatever.

William Costello 1:36:28 Zo- [laughs]

Freya India 1:36:30 Do you know Zoella?

William Costello 1:36:31 I've heard of her, yeah.

Freya India 1:36:31 There we go.

Chris Williamson 1:36:33 You're, so you're an avid subscriber of Zoella.

William Costello 1:36:35 Getting with the program.

Chris Williamson 1:36:36 You get ready ... Did you get ready for today with Zoella?

William Costello 1:36:38 No, I didn't. No.

Chris Williamson 1:36:39 A new try on haul from Jim Shaw.

William Costello 1:36:40 I know the things. Yeah.

Freya India 1:36:41 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:36:42 Well.

William Costello 1:36:42 Yeah.

Freya India 1:36:42 But it's, like, Zoella but also Facetune. Facetune is a huge app among young women where they can edit themselves.

Chris Williamson 1:36:48 I, I hadn't heard of it either.

Freya India 1:36:49 So I think I ... One of the statistics in my book is, like, 70 or 80% of young women wouldn't post on Instagram without Facetuning themselves first.

Chris Williamson 1:36:57 Whoa.

Freya India 1:36:57 It's been-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:36:58 Makes me so relieved to hear this. [laughs] Like every photo should have that-

Freya India 1:37:02 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:37:03 ... attached to it.

William Costello 1:37:03 Yeah.

Freya India 1:37:03 But it's, it's been downloaded, like, hundreds of millions of times. It's a core memory from my childhood. But then, so I wrote this whole book about social media and the experience for young women, but then for young men, they have a completely different childhood.

Chris Williamson 1:37:17 Mm.

Freya India 1:37:17 So it can be a young man that grew up near me-

Chris Williamson 1:37:19 RuneScape.

William Costello 1:37:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:37:20 Playing RuneScape. Playing-

Freya India 1:37:21 I did play RuneScape. Yeah.

William Costello 1:37:22 I played Runescape.

Chris Williamson 1:37:23 You played RuneScape?

Freya India 1:37:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:37:23 Oh, you said that you're a bit more of a-

Freya India 1:37:25 I'm a bit more masculine.

Chris Williamson 1:37:26 Yeah.

Freya India 1:37:26 Yeah.

William Costello 1:37:26 [laughs]

Freya India 1:37:26 But s- yeah. They will not even recognize things that were huge influences on young women.

Chris Williamson 1:37:32 Mm.

Freya India 1:37:32 And so I wonder if we, we try and be friends with the opposite sex, it's like a whole different world because algorithms-

William Costello 1:37:37 Yes

Freya India 1:37:37 ... are suggesting entirely different content.

Chris Williamson 1:37:38 You already didn't have that much in common, and now you've got even less.

William Costello 1:37:40 Interesting. Yeah.

Freya India 1:37:41 Mm.

William Costello 1:37:42 That's a good idea.

Chris Williamson 1:37:42 What else? You're brandishing some graph I can see that you've got on your phone there. What have you got?

William Costello 1:37:47 Did you find that sex doll yet? [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:37:48 [laughs]

William Costello 1:37:50 Two.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:37:50 I have a question about the opposite sex friends. Is there a sex difference in the degree to which our opposite sex friends match our mate preferences? Because if there's not, if both men and women are, like, designing their opposite or selecting opposite sex friends based on their ma- mate preferences, then when women say, "Oh, I'm not attracted to my opposite sex friends," is that true?

Chris Williamson 1:38:13 I've seen data around this. I've seen data that shows that the same traits that you look for in a partner are the ones that you look for in your opposite sex friends.

William Costello 1:38:23 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:38:23 I've seen this.

William Costello 1:38:24 That's true. Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:38:24 Yeah. So if men and women do that to the same degree, then is that really the case when women are saying-

William Costello 1:38:29 They, they can't be so shocked.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:38:30 Yeah. Like what are the odds that, like, my male friend-

Chris Williamson 1:38:33 The tall, handsome guy that looks exactly the same as my actual boyfriend thought that-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:38:37 Oops.

Chris Williamson 1:38:38 Yeah.

William Costello 1:38:39 But, but it's kind of ... Like, from a jealousy perspective, you know, you can see why it would be really jealousy inducing for a man, for his mate to have opposite sex friends or work colleagues who are-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:38:50 Mm

William Costello 1:38:50 ... sharing, you know, a mission together. Like, you hear of these things of women calling someone their work husband. I'm like, "Disaster. Tactical."

Chris Williamson 1:38:57 No. Do not do that.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:38:58 Yeah.

William Costello 1:38:58 "Never say this. This is a bad idea." So I do think that, uh, men are inclined to kind of pump the brakes on women's careers for a mate guarding perspective. You know, that's gonna-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:39:08 Mm. Mm-hmm

William Costello 1:39:08 ... and, and an opposite sex friendship perspective as well.

William Costello 1:39:12 One more thing on the looksmaxxing, uh, Chris, is I thought it was interesting that, uh, did you see the Australian guy you interviewed, Clavicular-

Freya India 1:39:20 Yeah

William Costello 1:39:20 ... the looksmaxxer?

Freya India 1:39:21 I was gonna say, he's more effortlessly-

William Costello 1:39:23 In ... Right

Freya India 1:39:23 ... good-looking. And I think that-

William Costello 1:39:25 So that's ... Yeah. I, I think that's true, that for men to be handsome, it needs to be like they didn't try.

Freya India 1:39:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:39:29 Right.

Freya India 1:39:29 Yeah, yeah.

William Costello 1:39:30 Now, I've done a little bit of a deep dive into that guy's Instagram, and he certainly tries.

Freya India 1:39:34 [laughs]

William Costello 1:39:35 And he certainly knows he's a handsome guy and what- whatever. But he's, he's definitely pulling off that effortlessness-

Freya India 1:39:40 Mm

William Costello 1:39:40 ... much more. But it's interesting that the commentary around him being, Clavicular being mugged by this more handsome Australian interviewer, it's kind of proving Clavicular's philosophy exactly correct. He's like, "You're saying that he's more handsome, so he mugs me. That's my whole philosophy." I, I'm exactly right.

Freya India 1:40:00 Yeah.

William Costello 1:40:00 It's all about looks.

Chris Williamson 1:40:01 Why do you

William Costello 1:40:03 spend time with people like that and

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:40:05 All right. Have a nice day. Uh, are you trying to... I, I see you want to make this, uh, political. Too bad I, I didn't have time to, to look into, you know, anything about potentially, uh, you know, who's, who your wife cheated with. But don't try to go down that line of questioning, uh, with me, all right?

William Costello 1:40:26 I mean, um-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:40:27 'Cause I'm not doing any political-

William Costello 1:40:28 I'm not married

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:40:29 ... castrating, so.

William Costello 1:40:31 But I was, I was simply only asking because obviously-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:40:33 Maybe you gotta, maybe you gotta looksmax then. So I could, uh, I could teach you about looksmaxxing then. Maybe you could, uh, switch that up. But thanks for, thanks for the time. Appreciate the interview. All right.

Chris Williamson 1:40:42 Uh, I mean, look, they did light them quite nicely.

William Costello 1:40:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:46 Which was good. It was definitely quite a sultry... If that turned into gay porn-

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:40:49 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:40:49 ... I wouldn't have been surprised.

William Costello 1:40:51 But yeah, like, he proves his whole thesis right for people's reaction to be like, "He's the more handsome one." It's like-

Chris Williamson 1:40:57 I thought, I thought-

William Costello 1:40:57 ... yeah, you're blind-izing looks

Chris Williamson 1:40:58 ... I thought we weren't judging people based on looks.

William Costello 1:41:00 Exactly, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:00 I thought that looksmaxxing was stupid and it didn't really matter.

William Costello 1:41:02 E- exactly right. So yeah.

Freya India 1:41:04 But isn't he more handsome because his demeanor, he's playful when he's smirking. I feel like Clavicular just looks so tense.

William Costello 1:41:10 Interesting. Yeah.

Freya India 1:41:11 And erotic almost.

Chris Williamson 1:41:12 Cold autism.

William Costello 1:41:13 Yeah.

Freya India 1:41:13 Yeah.

William Costello 1:41:13 I think Clavicular does those things on purpose, like stages the walk out for attention kind of thing. But, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:41:17 Yeah, yeah, of course he, of course he does

William Costello 1:41:19 ... but, um, but yeah, it is. It, that effortlessness I do think-

Freya India 1:41:22 Mm

William Costello 1:41:22 ... is more attractive to, to women.

Chris Williamson 1:41:23 Well, the, the same thing is true to men as well.

William Costello 1:41:27 Mm.

Freya India 1:41:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:27 Think about the difference between Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter.

William Costello 1:41:30 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:30 Sabrina Carpenter is a female designed for the female gaze.

William Costello 1:41:35 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:35 And Sydney Sweeney is a female designed for the male gaze.

William Costello 1:41:38 Or gay male gaze.

Chris Williamson 1:41:39 Yes.

William Costello 1:41:39 Sabrina Carpenter.

Chris Williamson 1:41:39 Correct. Bingo.

William Costello 1:41:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:41 And, uh, yeah, it's w- why is it that men love Sydney Sweeney and hate Sabrina Carpenter? And why is it that women love Sabrina Carpenter and hate Sydney Sweeney? Uh-

William Costello 1:41:48 There is research-

Freya India 1:41:49 [laughs]

William Costello 1:41:49 ... to show women, uh, hate women with big breasts as well. So [laughs] they're really, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:54 Well, if you see very small, very doll, very big eyes, very like, you know, small body, big head, like-

Freya India 1:42:00 Neotony [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:42:01 Neotony.

William Costello 1:42:02 Sabrina does exactly what you've described, Tania, the, the for the girls.

Freya India 1:42:05 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 1:42:06 And whereas, you know, Sydney Sweeney is-

Chris Williamson 1:42:08 Very much for the guys

William Costello 1:42:09 ... definitely for the boys. Even says it in her Instagram posts and things, so yeah.

Freya India 1:42:12 Yeah.

William Costello 1:42:12 She's signaling all the wrong things.

Freya India 1:42:13 And I feel like women's fashion is like that, where it's like, it's almost like you could tell immediately who someone is signaling to.

William Costello 1:42:19 Yeah.

Freya India 1:42:19 Because women's will be, like, the baggiest thing you could possibly find, and that's the trendy look.

William Costello 1:42:25 Yeah.

Freya India 1:42:25 And it's like no- not revealing their body at all. I'm sure men hate it. [laughs]

William Costello 1:42:30 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:42:31 Uh, Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy, they're always in big hoodies. They're always sort of quite slouchy, very cozy.

William Costello 1:42:37 Not really.

Freya India 1:42:37 I do think the pick me insult is really sort of drilled into [laughs] women of my generation, where it's like, it's not even if you're saying something that men would approve of or looking a way that men would approve of. But anything, like, masculine coded.

William Costello 1:42:50 Mm.

Freya India 1:42:50 Like, even me just saying I'm interested in masculine podcasts rather than feminine podcasts, that's like a pick me-

William Costello 1:42:55 Mm

Freya India 1:42:55 ... statement. And so I feel like it changes not only how wom- women present themselves, but their mannerisms and their actual temperament and personality becomes, uh, shaped towards what women expect of them because they don't wanna be a pick me.

William Costello 1:43:08 Yeah. It's such a clever form of intrasexual competition to be like, "Don't be seen to be trying to appeal to men." That's the, the-

Freya India 1:43:15 Mm-hmm.

William Costello 1:43:15 I say this to girls.

Freya India 1:43:16 Well, isn't that the same as, like, a cuck?

William Costello 1:43:17 Yeah.

Freya India 1:43:17 Like, men are doing it too.

William Costello 1:43:19 Simp shaming. Yeah.

Freya India 1:43:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:43:20 Yes.

William Costello 1:43:21 Women slut shame and men-

Chris Williamson 1:43:21 And simp shame. Yeah.

William Costello 1:43:23 Yeah.

Freya India 1:43:23 Yeah.

William Costello 1:43:23 They don't wanna pay the-

Freya India 1:43:23 Anyone who appeals too directly, that's cheating. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:43:26 Yeah. The game theory of slut shaming fucking blows my mind.

William Costello 1:43:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:43:29 I learned this in Mate by Geoffrey-

William Costello 1:43:30 Yeah, it's really good

Chris Williamson 1:43:31 ... and, and Tucker. And, uh, basically what slut shaming does is it's a price enforcement mechanism-

William Costello 1:43:37 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:43:37 ... to ensure that the price of sex doesn't drop below a level that most women would be happy with. So if William's prepared to give out blowjobs on the second date, but I want to wait until the fifth date, I have to lower my-

William Costello 1:43:48 Speaking about in confidence.

Freya India 1:43:50 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:43:50 Uh, so I know. I'm sorry. And, uh, that means that I need to lower my price. So it's in my interests to raise that up, especially given that I would be able to undercut it. If I make everybody else wait longer-

William Costello 1:44:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:44:01 ... to put out, and then I can come in as, like, the bargain discount, that seems like a good deal. But what is it that's happening? It's women giving away what is seen by other women as one of their most valuable rewa- resources for negotiating with men, sex, giving it away too freely. So I started thinking about, okay, what's the equivalent for men? What do men give away? And I think it's resources.

William Costello 1:44:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:44:24 So if-

Freya India 1:44:24 investment.

William Costello 1:44:24 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:44:25 ... women are prepared to give away sex without commitment, and that gets castigated by other women, men who are prepared to give away resources without sex get castigated by other men. That's why men don't like OnlyFans women.

William Costello 1:44:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:44:38 Because they are extracting from the male dating pool the thing that if they weren't able to do it through OnlyFans, they might have to go on a date maybe with me.

William Costello 1:44:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:44:48 And that would mean that I would be in with a shot.

Freya India 1:44:50 This is why I get attacked both ways, 'cause I'll get called an internal misogynist, and then men will come to my defense, and then they'll get called simps. [laughs]

William Costello 1:44:57 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:44:58 [laughs]

William Costello 1:44:58 You're everywhere. You're exactly right. That's both things in action. Yeah, 100%.

Freya India 1:45:03 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:45:04 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guys, I fucking love you all. You're all brilliant. Uh, Wes, what have you got coming out? You've got a book.

Freya India 1:45:09 Yes, just a book called Girls, and my Substack, freyaindia.co.uk.

Chris Williamson 1:45:13 Tania, what have you got to push? Anything?

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:45:14 Um, a new paper called The Greater Female Vulnerability Hypothesis. It's still getting published, so not yet out.

Chris Williamson 1:45:22 Okay. William?

William Costello 1:45:23 My Blue Sky.

Freya India 1:45:25 [laughs]

William Costello 1:45:25 [laughs]

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:45:25 [laughs]

William Costello 1:45:26 Just follow me on X.

Chris Williamson 1:45:28 Yeah.

William Costello 1:45:28 You'll see lots of fire polls and some exciting stuff coming out. Follow me on Google Scholar to see the academic stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:45:33 Unreal. Guys, I appreciate you all. We've christened, uh, Evolutionary Psychology Roundtable, uh, getting in loads of trouble in the new studio. I appreciate you all.

William Costello 1:45:40 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:45:40 All right.

William Costello 1:45:41 Health to it.

Chris Williamson 1:45:41 Goodbye, everybody.

Freya India 1:45:42 This was fun.

William Costello 1:45:43 Yeah.

Dr. Tania Reynolds 1:45:43 Yeah.

William Costello 1:45:44 Fun. Yeah. Of course. Loved it. [upbeat music]

Chris Williamson 1:45:46 Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you'll love is just here.