Modern Society Is Failing Men & Women - Mary Harrington

Mary Harrington 0:00 Attacking chivalry as a certain social code has been the biggest self-oh that feminism could possibly have come up with. It's been absolutely catastrophic. It was an incredibly stupid idea. (wind blowing)

Chris Williamson 0:12 Mary Harrington, welcome to the show.

Mary Harrington 0:14 Thank you for having me.

Chris Williamson 0:16 I spent a couple of days in New York with a friend. I'm not around young children. I don't have any children, at least ones that I'm aware of.

Chris Williamson 0:24 And I got to see the tyranny that is bedtime. Uh, and-

Mary Harrington 0:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:31 ... from my perspective, you can tell me if this is true, right? To me, it seems like a daily game theoretic litigative negotiation with a tiny drunk tyrant, uh-

Mary Harrington 0:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:44 ... that happens every single day on an evening at pretty much the same time. How accurate of a representation is that?

Mary Harrington 0:52 Uh, uh, yes, maybe, sometimes. Uh, it depends a lot on your child's personality, and it depends a little bit on how you roll as a parent as well. Um, what I mean by that is, um, if you, if you treat small children as rational beings who need to be negotiated with, then you're, you're letting yourself in for a world of pain. Um, but if you treat them as something a little bit more like dogs that need to be trained, and I say that with love, um, as a mother who really very profoundly loves her daughter, um, and you, and you start doing that very lovingly and very firmly from a young age, you know, with luck and patience, um, you'll have a child who likes a bedtime routine, who's familiar with it, and who's, when they get to a point of tiredness, just goes, "Oh, okay, now I'm in the groove. Now I know what's coming next." And they'll just chill out, and then bedtime becomes a relaxing thing. So, it depends on a number of different factors. I mean, also how many kids you have. You know, if you've got three, then, you know, that harmonious sort of twinkly, twinkly twinkly kind of thing isn't quite so straightforward because they all want different things. And, you know, my dear friend who has three under five, um, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, it is a little bit more like crowd control. Um, you know, you've got one, one screaming for milk while the other one is, um, throwing poo at the wall or whatever, you know.

Chris Williamson 2:05 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 2:05 So, it, it's, it's a different ball game. But, but I think, but the idea, the goal is, is to have a routine that everybody just kind of falls into and you know where you are with things. And, and actually, it's more like, it's more like, uh, it's, it, it's, it, it's about training the unconscious mind so that you can, you can think less about the stuff that doesn't matter. You know, in that way, it's like doing a kata in martial arts. You know, it's just teaching, teaching the body to react instinctively. And I think that's very much, that's very much the approach that I'm in favor of when it comes to very small children.

Chris Williamson 2:38 I saw the group of three that you were talking about. I think that definitely contributed. There was a, a point we were sat down ha- sat down having dinner, and I think the oldest two had gone to bed, and then there was a poi- (laughs) a point at which a naked three-year-old just came sprinting through the dining room-

Mary Harrington 2:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:55 ... uh, and then dived, dive-bombed onto the couch. And there's a mother sort of frantically chasing after going, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Mary Harrington 3:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:04 (laughs) It's so good. But, uh, yeah, I'm glad-

Mary Harrington 3:07 That is nice.

Chris Williamson 3:07 ... that, that negotiating, uh, or whatever it is, the training, I think, that needs to happen before. There should be, there should be some sort of onboarding prep school for that.

Mary Harrington 3:16 (laughs) Yeah, I mean, it's, it, uh, I guess in that sense, I'm quite old-fashioned. You know, there are, there are parents who take the view that, you know, children, children will naturally, spontaneously know what's good for them in all possible respects. And you should just be guided by them. I'm not really... I, I'm not really a believer in that. You know, I, I'm, I'm very, I'm very much more classical in the view that, you know, children have to be h- habituated to the good, and that's actually part of your responsibility as a parent. And they'll still, they'll still be, you know, they'll do their best to thwart you in every possible way, and some are more thwarty than others.

Chris Williamson 3:46 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 3:46 Uh, that's very much a sort of personality thing.

Chris Williamson 3:48 More thwartly. That's, that's something that all children can aspire to be, to be thwarty.

Mary Harrington 3:52 (laughs) Yeah, they all, they all have their, they all have their ways of being thwarty. But, um, yeah, I, I think it's, it's your responsibility to try and habituate them to the good, even if they don't appreciate it at the time, and even if they don't realize it until like 25 years later. You still have to try.

Chris Williamson 4:07 Yeah.

Mary Harrington 4:07 I think that's really, that's all you really can do.

Chris Williamson 4:09 Given the fact that you spend a good bit of time on Twitter, and this has probably been one of the most intense weeks on Twitter ever, what's your, what's your sense? Give me the aura that's in the air. How apocalyptic has

Chris Williamson 4:24 this week been? What's the shittiest stuff that you've seen on Twitter?

Mary Harrington 4:28 I've been... Honestly, I've been trying to dial the noise down on the whole Ukraine thing on the basis that it's not really my wheelhouse. It's not my area of expertise. None of us knows what's happening on the ground because it's just wall-to-wall propaganda from about at least five different... I mean, I can think of two obvious int- interest groups and probably another three, um, who... less obvious interest groups who've all got a stake in skewing the story one way or another. And then, and then you've got this absolutely insane free-for-all of people piling into different fandoms to just nice treating it as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Um, and the whole thing is honestly just doing my head in, um, because it's... like, the signal-to-noise ratio is terrible. Um, and there's... and I have no, I have no useful contribution to make. So, I've just been trying to keep the noise down and-

Chris Williamson 5:13 Someone told me-

Mary Harrington 5:14 ... trying to keep it clear.

Chris Williamson 5:15 ... someone sent me a, a big email with a bunch of stuff about Ukraine that was really interesting. One of them was the current Wikipedia article about the Ukraine-Russia crisis in February 2022 has over 20,000 words written in it and more than 500 contributors. Now, so, you are literally live streaming a modern war, and I'm seeing videos on Twitter, like TikTok. TikToks... di- I fi-... apparently, the Ukrainian troops were using Grindr to locate where the Russian troops were at. Did you see this? I shit you not.

Mary Harrington 5:56 Yeah, and, I mean, there's something, there's something just so wild about that and hon- hone- honestly deeply unnerving. I mean, I, I've sort of...... I, I set out to write a review of a, of a, a woman's written this memoir about raising her transgender child, and I sat down to write the writing review of that book this week, which should run later this week. Um, and I ended up, I ended up writing about, um, the parallel universes that are formed in digital culture because... Well, let, let, let me explain. I mean, for me, you, you're pro-... You're familiar with my writing, you know, you'll... I'm, I'm sure you've... You, you... My, my views on, my views on trans rights are, are... They're, they're not, they're... Well, they're... It's, it's complicated. It's a difficult issue that needs to be approached sensitively, put it that way. Um, and it's... And reading, reading this book, which was obviously very sincerely written by a woman who loves her daughter very... Loves her child very much indeed, um, really, really wants to do the right thing. Um, it was like going down... It was just like diving feet first into a completely parallel universe. Um, you know, a lot of the same talking points that I'm familiar with were referenced but with completely, completely antagonistic interpretations on them. You know, the, the same, the same sets of facts but carefully curated to tell a completely contradictory story. It was completely disorienting. It was like being in the Upside Down. Um, and I, and I read through this whole thing. I found it... Uh, I had to sort of, I had to sort of stop and, stop and just take a few breaths every, every few pages and just think, "She believes this as completely and as sincerely as the people, as the people who pit themselves absolutely against her do." You know, ev- everybody really, really believes this.

Chris Williamson 7:31 Certitude on both sides.

Mary Harrington 7:32 And there's just... Yeah, completely. And there's no, there's no reconciling these two points of view. There's... It's absolutely... The, the, the contest is absolutely zero-sum and I don't know where you go from there. And I was thinking, well, you know, this is, this is a serious enough thing when we're talking about the bodies of children. You know, that's actually what's at stake in, in that particular s- set of internet culture wars, is the bodies of children, you know, the bodies of adults as well. But, you know, where, where, where the rubber really hits the road and where the fights get really bitter is the bodies of children. And then you think, well, you know... And then you, then you scale that up to the bodies of civilians in an entire national, international conflict, and, you know, then, then you'll, then you'll see... Then you'll really... You know, that, that, that escalates the intensity of the fandom and it escalates the, the, the, the bitterness of the culture war to, to just an unimaginable degree. Um, and I honestly, I, I don't see, I, I don't see how that can be resolved. And I... You know, and I've been, I've been watching the, watching the temperature go up and up and up this week and thinking, you know, never again am I going to wonder how it was that the entirety of Europe memed itself into, you know, massive... Into a world war in 1914, 'cause that's, that's kind of what happened at that point and it feels like that's, that's... You know, un- un- unless we take a few deep breaths and step away, you know, and, and a lot of people step away from the keyboard and touch grass, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna meme ourselves into international nuclear war, and that's fucking terrifying. You know?

Chris Williamson 8:59 It's people

Chris Williamson 9:00 spending too much time, too much time on the internet. So I went to (laughs) , I went to a meetup in Austin, uh, this weekend. Do you know who Scott Alexander is, from Astral Codex 10?

Mary Harrington 9:08 I do.

Chris Williamson 9:08 Yeah, so he, he held a meetup in Austin and he sent that out to his entire mailing list which is probably not too far off half a million people. And obviously very f-... Very, very small number of those are in the States, that are in p- proximity to get to Austin or whatever. But I met, I met a guy who spends eight hours a day in virtual reality. I s- met people that are, um, moderators of 4Chan, moderators of 8Chan, um, moderators on Reddit boards. You know, people, like real, real internet people. And, um, yeah, it's, it's so fascinating to think about what happens when you go web first into life, uh, and the-

Mary Harrington 9:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:50 ... externalities and the, the, the assumptions that people have about how they're supposed to live.

Mary Harrington 9:55 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I guess that's a theme that recurs fairly often in my work. Um, it's, it comes up a lot for me because I'm probably the last generation to have grown up in the before times. Um, I'm 42, which puts me right on the cusp of, of the internet or really the social media age which is where it, where it went supernova. You know, I mean, there were nerds who were on the internet for a good 20 years before I was but, you know, we got our first online connection when I was... In 1997, I think, when I had my first email address at university. So, you know, I can remember actually doing research in libraries. I wa- I went all the way through school without even a mobile phone. Um, I remember the before times. It was a completely different world. Um, you know, I know, I know there are thoughts... There are lots of people who are sort of nostalgic for the 1990s because, you know, culture was a thing then. I, I don't know. I could... Hmm. Yeah, I have a few things to say about that. But, but, but it was, it was completely different. Um, and there's been a, there's been this weird sense of, like some things have just stood still since the internet arrived. You know, we don't really have teen- teenage subcultures anymore, for example, as far as I can make out. You know, I mean, if there are teenagers out there who can correct me on this, and I'm grateful-

Chris Williamson 11:00 What, what do you mean by that?

Mary Harrington 11:01 ... to hear about it. Well, well, but it... Like I was, I was a boff in, in-

Chris Williamson 11:05 I was an emo.

Mary Harrington 11:06 Right. Okay. Yeah (laughs) , you, you see, you know what I'm talking about. Um, but like, you know, back... In the, in the before times, you know, you... Like, what you need for a teenage subculture is, is li-... Is the, the right alchemy of boredom and sexual frustration and a limited social sphere and, um, and, and var- various factors like that, and then a lot of spare time and not very much mobility or, or pocket money.

Chris Williamson 11:28 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 11:29 You know, and you need all of those things to make it, to make it come together. Um, and if you can find your people just like that just by searching, then you don't ever, you don't ever end up with the sort of, you know, the, the, the happenstance collection of misfits that creates a... That, that's, that's the sort of spark you need-

Chris Williamson 11:45 Mm-hmm.

Mary Harrington 11:45 ... for a teenage subculture to happen-

Chris Williamson 11:46 Why?

Mary Harrington 11:47 ... in a, in a place.

Chris Williamson 11:47 Why?

Mary Harrington 11:48 Well, I mean, if you think about... Like, they're, they're all, they're all very bound by place. Like, the subcultures as they emerge, they, they, they start out very sort of place-bound. Um, and, and the whole-

Chris Williamson 11:59 You mean geographically?

Mary Harrington 12:01 Yeah, geographically. I mean, Manchester, you, which you, you may, you probably remember. Uh, you know, the punk thing in the 1970s was... That was all, that was all the angry council estate kids in, you know-... in, in grumpy, grumpy industrial towns, you know, not really seeing much, much of a future and not seeing much of the, much of the good life, um, and you know, seeing, seeing the 1960s turn sour on them. Um, you know, they're all, they're all very bound by place and location, and then it becomes an aesthetic, and then it becomes commercialized, and then it sells out to the man. And then there's this cycle which sort of, you know... I remember s- you know, which starts accelerating, you know, from the, from the '60s onwards. You know, that, that line in, in Withnail and I, whi- um, which I'm sure you've seen. Y- you know the film Withnail and I?

Chris Williamson 12:43 No.

Mary Harrington 12:44 You've never seen that film?

Chris Williamson 12:45 No.

Mary Harrington 12:45 Oh, man.

Chris Williamson 12:46 What is it?

Mary Harrington 12:46 Oh, it's, it's a... Oh, it's a, it's a... Richard E. Grant, um, and Paul McGann, um, from the mid-1980s. It's an absolute cult classic, um, all about, all about these two, um, completely, completely disruptable failing actors at the end of the 1960s, um, who, who, who spend a weekend in Penrith with, with one of their, one, one of their pederastic uncle. Oh, I mean, you, you have, you have to see it, but I mean, it's, it's about, it's about repression and it's about the end of the 1960s, and it's about a new subculture that's falling apart, and it's about whether... You know, the meaning, of course, selling out to the... But it's a, it's a great film. It's an abso- but there's this, there's this line right at the end where, where, where Danny, the drug dealer, says, "They're selling happy- hippy wigs in Woolworths now." You know, the greatest decade-

Chris Williamson 13:31 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 13:31 ... in the history of man has just come to an end.

Chris Williamson 13:35 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 13:36 And we have failed to paint it black.

Chris Williamson 13:38 Is that the death knell, do you think-

Mary Harrington 13:39 Um-

Chris Williamson 13:39 ... of a movement if it gets featured in... Like, if there's a WHSmith's-

Mary Harrington 13:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:43 ... end, end of aisle stall with a cardboard cutout of whatever it is?

Mary Harrington 13:50 Well, yeah, but if you think about it, you know, th- think about, think about what the s- what the cycle time is now between something appearing on the internet and s- and there being merch of it. Like, it doesn't even have time to go through a sort of buyer's... A, a, a, a product-buying process to get into Woolworths. You know, there were Ghost of Kiev T-shirts on, in, in Etsy, you know, within 48 hours of that clip going round the internet.

Chris Williamson 14:10 I saw the tea, the tea towel of, uh-

Mary Harrington 14:12 Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 14:13 ... fuck you Russian ship.

Mary Harrington 14:15 Exactly, exactly. You know when-

Chris Williamson 14:17 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 14:18 When, wh- when they, wh- when the cycle between meme, the, the sort of meme to merchandise cycle is like less than 48 hours, um, there's, there's, there's no, there's, there's no space in which a culture can even... Uh, a subculture is... It can even emerge, let alone sell out, because the cycle's too short.

Chris Williamson 14:32 Oh, okay. And because as soon as you start to commercialize something, much of the seductiveness about the movement has been taken away because it's not subversive or cool or niche anymore. Is that the reason-

Mary Harrington 14:46 Kind of, yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:46 ... that it, that it shortcuts it?

Mary Harrington 14:47 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I mean, like c- cool, like a b- a subculture will start out being a, being a cool group of kids and then the, the, people will just, people will start jumping on the bandwagon. And then, you know, more and more people will pile in, and then eventually they're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths.

Chris Williamson 15:01 Yes.

Mary Harrington 15:01 At least that's how it used to work in the before times. But the cycle just goes too fast now.

Chris Williamson 15:05 Yeah, it's direct from meme to Woolworths.

Mary Harrington 15:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:09 Yeah.

Mary Harrington 15:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're within 48 hours. So they're just... I mean, you know, and, and I don't know what, what you're... Hon- honestly, I think the closest thing we have to youth subcultures now is tics, like TikTok induced, uh, Tourette's and, and emoji pronouns and stuff like that.

Chris Williamson 15:27 (laughs)

Mary Harrington 15:27 Sorry, have you ever heard... Did you hear, have you heard about this? Like, there's a-

Chris Williamson 15:29 So I've heard... Uh, I know-

Mary Harrington 15:30 name?

Chris Williamson 15:30 I, I know about pronouns on Twitter, but I d- I don't know what emoji-

Mary Harrington 15:34 Yeah, there's a-

Chris Williamson 15:35 You're making me feel... Mary, you're making me feel like the biggest boomer ever.

Mary Harrington 15:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 15:40 (laughs) I'm 34 years old and I'm being made to feel-

Mary Harrington 15:44 Well, um-

Chris Williamson 15:44 ... like a fucking boomer.

Mary Harrington 15:45 Oh, uh, yeah. I, I should... I, I clearly need to touch grass. I clearly need to go outside.

Chris Williamson 15:49 Y- it's you. It's you that you're speaking to here.

Mary Harrington 15:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 15:51 So what, what's a TikTok tic?

Mary Harrington 15:53 It's just, um-

Chris Williamson 15:53 And what's an emoji pronoun?

Mary Harrington 15:55 Um, no, this is, this is a, this is an article that Helen Lewis wrote recently, who... At the Atlantic, at least I think she, she certainly did... I think she's written an article about it. And there's been... The Tourette's clinics all over, all over the place are seeing an epidemic of a new variant of Tourette's, which doesn't seem to have the same etiology as classical Tourette's, which can be treated with antipsychotics. That this seems to be being caused by the internet. You know, people, people are coming in, like kids. They're usually, they're usually teenage girls, and they're coming in with... Often with exactly, or more or less exactly the same tics as, um, influencers with Tourette's on social media.

Chris Williamson 16:35 What would that-

Mary Harrington 16:35 And so they're basically-

Chris Williamson 16:35 Have you ever seen what the... Or has it ever been described what this sort of tic is? Because I can't imagine-

Mary Harrington 16:39 You know, they'll-

Chris Williamson 16:40 ... what that would be.

Mary Harrington 16:41 They'll, they'll, you know, they'll think like saying, saying particular, a particular word. I can't, I can't remember the, an example, but they're just sort of random stuff like, you know, saying "cucumber" spontaneously in the middle of a sentence or, or you know, falling to their knees and, you know, waving their hands. You know, just odd sort of gestures or spasmodic tics. Um, and, and girls appear to be, especially teenage girls, appear to be catching this off influencers who display those symptoms on TikTok.

Chris Williamson 17:06 Fuck me. So this is like some sort of, uh, mimetic modeling of high-status social behavior, at least within one particular niche that's-

Mary Harrington 17:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:17 ... been delivered through-

Mary Harrington 17:19 Through social media.

Chris Williamson 17:20 Uh, oh my God.

Mary Harrington 17:20 Yeah, and I think... I mean, this is probably, this is probably the closest we have now to youth subcultures. Um, there, there's sort of-

Chris Williamson 17:26 What, some sort of parasitic psychological contagion that gets girls on TikTok to do, like, I don't know, duck faces spontaneously out of nowhere?

Mary Harrington 17:36 I mean, it's not massively different to the Ice Bucket Challenge really, is it?

Chris Williamson 17:40 The Ice Bucket Challenge was conscious. This appears to be subconscious.

Mary Harrington 17:44 It's still a meme.

Chris Williamson 17:46 Anyone that tips a bucket of ice over their head subconsciously, they ha- that's a, that's a serious tic.

Mary Harrington 17:52 Right, right. But, but, what... My point is, my point is it's still a meme, and it's still, it, it... And it's transmitting through the same, the same vectors and, and to a degree with the same, for, to, to, to the same ends. I don't know. I mean, there's this sort of weird esoteric corners of the internet where people mutter about the fact that these memes are, in a sense, alive and independent of us. But, you know, I don't really want to speculate about that.

Chris Williamson 18:15 People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.

Mary Harrington 18:18 Yeah, I mean, that's, uh... I, I wouldn't be the first person to, to contemplate that. But, you know, you watch, you watch something like this rip through impressionable populations and you think, "Well, you know, maybe there's something to it." And then you watch, you watch an entire, you know... A, a, a entire international population of social media addicts, you know, sort of seemingly memeing themselves into, you know, thinking that maybe nuclear war wouldn't be such a bad idea. And you think, "Well, actually, it's not just ice bucket challenges."

Chris Williamson 18:44 Yeah.

Mary Harrington 18:44 And it's not just teenage-

Chris Williamson 18:45 But to them...

Mary Harrington 18:46 ... girls on TikTok.

Chris Williamson 18:46 Ah. To them, the externalities of talking about this stuff is basically the same. Talking about-

Mary Harrington 18:52 Yeah, 'cause I mean... Because I, I mean, I think they're just not really thinking about it. You know, there's, there's a whole class of people who are like, "Yeah, yeah, we should lock down," and it didn't actually make very much difference to them, you know? And I'm, I'm sure, you know, somewhere in their li- lizard brains, they're assuming that Ocado is still gonna be delivering groceries after nuclear Armageddon and that... Then they haven't really thought it through.

Chris Williamson 19:13 (laughs) Shit the bed.

Mary Harrington 19:13 And like... What?

Chris Williamson 19:15 Shit the bed.

Mary Harrington 19:17 Yeah, I mean, that's, that's about where I am this week. You know, you said, "What's the vibe?" And I'm like-

Chris Williamson 19:21 Apocalyptic.

Mary Harrington 19:22 ... "What's wrong with you?"

Chris Williamson 19:22 It's a, it's a-

Mary Harrington 19:23 It's not good, man.

Chris Williamson 19:24 It's a blend-

Mary Harrington 19:25 It's not good.

Chris Williamson 19:25 ... of sort of nihilism, sort of a- apocalyptic Cassandra complex, and apathy, which is nice, which is a nice place to be, actually, I think. Let's talk

Chris Williamson 19:38 about... I want to talk about this war on relationships that you've been thinking about. The last few months for me, I've been completely submerged in evolutionary psychology and looking at trends in dating dynamics. You might be familiar with Vincent Harinam, uh, who has done some stuff for Quillette alongside Rob Henderson, who again, like-

Mary Harrington 19:54 Okay, yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:54 ... here's my, here's my fucking advert for Rob Henderson. Everyone needs to go and follow him on Twitter-

Mary Harrington 19:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:58 ... 'cause he's like one of the best people on Twitter. Um, talk to me about this war on relationships. What's that?

Mary Harrington 20:04 Um, well, I, I mean, it's... My, my, my MO is always meme first, ask question later. And I started, I started saying war on relationships before I'd really come to, come to a decision about what I meant by it. Um, (laughs) uh, and it's... And when I talk about a war on relationships, I'd like to be clear, I'm not just talking about, um, the, the breakdown of relationships between men and women. Um, I mean, it's, uh... My working hypothesis is that that's kind of... That's about where we are with it right now, but it opens out to a much more wholesale, um, war on our ability to... On, on spontaneous interpersonal social reactions which are not mediated by the market. I mean, that's, that's quite a long thesis, which I'm in the middle of writing up as a book chapter at the moment for the book, which hopefully will come out towards the end of the year, if I can shamelessly plug that here. It's called Feminism Against Progress.

Chris Williamson 20:51 You'll be back on, you'll be back on-

Mary Harrington 20:53 Um-

Chris Williamson 20:53 ... to talk about that, so we'll shill-

Mary Harrington 20:54 Yeah, no, no, I'm re-

Chris Williamson 20:54 We'll shill it multiple times.

Mary Harrington 20:56 (laughs) I'm really excited about it and it's, it's a... Absolutely, it's a, it's a wild ride writing it. But yeah, I mean the... My- the current chapter I'm working on is the one about the war on relationships, which, which to my mind is about, it's about destroying, um, organic interpersonal relationships between people, um, except those which can be mediated through the market and commercialized.

Chris Williamson 21:19 What's an example-

Mary Harrington 21:19 So-

Chris Williamson 21:19 ... of that?

Mary Harrington 21:21 Um, well, I'm, I mean, actually, and, and that's, that, that's really where the, the relations between men and women, you know, serve as a very powerful example, um, 'cause it, it seems to me that there's a, there's a fairly concerted effort to discourage men and women from just meeting and falling in love. You know, w- when women could be encouraged, for example, to offer their services on OnlyFans instead and monetize, monetize men's desire, or, um, everybody could be persuaded to sign up to dating apps, which, um, you know, increa- you know, encourage a sense of endless optionality and stop people and, you know, discourage anybody from ever actually falling in love and getting off the dating apps, because the grass could always be greener on the other side. Um, you know, in, in a... It sort of, it de-... It unplugs, um, the human longing for connection from other humans and plug... And, and orders it instead to limit capitalism, you know, with the kind of re- rewiring of all of our basic desires, you know, to, for, for... In, in the interests of profit.

Chris Williamson 22:22 Mm-hmm.

Mary Harrington 22:22 I mean, that prob- probably makes me sound like a completely unhinged, um, anti-capitalist, sort of, you know, Alex Jones-type loony, but, uh, but this is... I... Once, once you start seeing the war on relationships, you, you can't unsee it. You know, to b- like... Pretty much every, every facet of, uh, COVID policy ineffe- effectively served to support the war on relationships, um, because every, everything which was banned came under the heading of spontaneous interpersonal interaction, um, and everything which was somehow, which somehow made exception for came under the heading of human, human interaction, which in some way serves the market. So, you know, going to church was banned. You know, going... Free, free fucking children's playgrounds were closed. Singing together was banned. You know, visiting your family in groups of more than a small number was banned, but somehow you were still allowed to go to the office, and somehow, you know, you were still allowed to go to shops, and somehow, you know, for a long... Th- you know, on and off, you were still allowed to go to pubs. You know, the only, the only context in which you were allowed to, to continue interacting with people was where money was, wh- where there was a credit card involved in some form or another.

Chris Williamson 23:28 Mm-hmm.

Mary Harrington 23:28 And everything else was shoved online, um, which again, you know, serves, you know, serves to monetize it in one form or another, whether it... You know, whether it's Zoom making the money or... I don't know. Or, or OnlyFans or whatever. Um, you know, Zoom, Zoom replaces family get-togethers and OnlyFans replaces, you know, whatever it is that so- young single people do on a Friday night. Um, and su- suddenly you're in a situation where all, all, all, all kinds of domains of spontaneous interperson- interpersonal relationships have been, have, have been methodically destroyed and reordered to the market. Um, it probably makes me sound like a tinfoil hatter, but that was... Uh, that, that for me was the... That, that, that's the story of, of what the pandemic did. I don't, I don't think of it as a deliberate conspiracy, but in practice that's what happened. So that really, at the sort of macro scale, is what I'm talking about when I talk about the war on relationships.

Chris Williamson 24:19 Mm-hmm.What's this Korean untact policy thing?

Mary Harrington 24:24 Oh, my fucking god. Pardon my language, but oh, my god. This is a- a South Korean policy which has accelerated over the course of the pandemic which seeks to remove, eliminate all human contact in the interests of increasing productivity, so automating shops, um, automating libraries. Um, just removing, removing any s- any messy, frictional situations where people are involved in interactions with one another, in, you know, just t- turning everything into a sort of hyper-mechanized set of vending machines in the interests of, or so they say, increasing productivity, you know. I mean, it strikes me that they haven't really thought it through because humans have some basic needs, um, which include other humans. Um, but I- I- I- I suspect that a lot of, a lot of the people who come up with this stuff, you know, believe very firmly, as do, as do a lot of progressives, that there is no such thing as human nature and that, in fact, we can just be remodeled, um, you know, either to serve the greater good or to serve the interests of profit or, you know, perhaps those two things are the same thing or whatever. You know, let's- let's all just hope it turns out for the best.

Chris Williamson 25:35 Rory Sutherland says-

Mary Harrington 25:37 And, uh-

Chris Williamson 25:37 ... that, uh, Silicon Valley sees everything as an optimization problem. And he said this to me three-

Mary Harrington 25:42 I think that's accurate.

Chris Williamson 25:43 ... three years ago and I can't stop thinking about it. And it's not just Silicon Valley. It's that, uh, rather than looking at it from a human-centric perspective, it's presumed to be some sort of engineering problem where if we can just get the right set of parameters and deploy them into the world, then all of the problems that we've got can be fixed. When you realize that the human brain is wholly irrational and the more that I learn about it, the less and less that I feel like I have conscious control over anything. Free will discussions aside, the fact that I'm just whatever, rider with blindfolds on on the back of an elephant, um, makes me think that, you know, when you- when you are talking about this, if you're talking about increasing productivity and yet making someone go into this completely sterile petri dish of a- of a supermarket and maybe not have their one conversation per day that they might have with somebody which would be the person behind the checkout then leads to this person killing themselves in two years time because they've never had any intimate contact or any, uh, human contact with anybody, you go, uh, it's- it's far too reductive to think that this is an effective policy. And yet because we're in this world where we no longer pray at the altar of human nature or of religious ideology, the technological revolution has presented us with a new god that can fix all of the problems that we have in our lives. And if we follow that forward, you just think, "Well, it's just a technological problem. It's simply, uh, an optimization issue where if we get the right logistics and the right parameters set, everything's gonna be sorted."

Mary Harrington 27:10 And it's not true. It's not true. You know, people- people can't just be re-wired like that. I mean, I'm full... I don't know. Maybe, maybe if you set about, you know, conditioning people over the course of several generations, you know, perhaps you could, perhaps you could have some effect. But, you know, what sort of monster would go... (laughs) what sort of monster would do that? I don't know. I mean, maybe we're in the process of finding out.

Chris Williamson 27:30 The Koreans, apparently. I've got this quote.

Mary Harrington 27:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:32 I- I absolutely

Chris Williamson 27:33 adored this quote from you in one of the articles. "The consequence of liquefying all courtship rituals and sexual norms wasn't a feminist paradise of non-exploitative sex, but endemic intimate violence and a multi-billion dollar porn industry. But the utopians believe so firmly that human nature doesn't exist, that the same thing keeps being tried." What did you mean by that?

Mary Harrington 27:56 Just that, really. Um, you know, I mean, w- a r- recurring theme, um, in the idealistic efforts to break down existing norms, um, which I mean you can... you know, one way of looking at existing norms might be, you know, the sort of the- the simplified stories we tell our children in order to make sure that humans don't keep making the same mistakes over and over again. You know, you could... there are nice simple heuristics. You know, you teach your child to go to bed regularly because, you know, you leu- you've learned from experience, as I have, um, that, you know, if you go- you go to bed at the same time every night, it just saves you a lot of hassle. You get enough sleep, you feel good, you know. It's not rocket science, but you can't explain that to a one-year-old, so you- you just, you just train them like a dog to go to bed regularly and then hopefully they'll carry on (laughs) doing it when they get to adulthood. And I mean, you know, that's a, that's... in- in microcosm, that's just what, that's all traditions are really. Um, and you know, sometimes, sometimes they need to be dumped if they just don't fit the conditions anymore. You know, if you've got traditions that apply to living in the desert, you know, 3,000 miles away but just don't really make sense in- in a temperate climate, then, you know, maybe- maybe you need to rethink them. But, you know, traditions like going to bed regularly, uh, going to bed at the same time every night, you know, they still work. Lots of them still work. Um-

Chris Williamson 29:09 Why did... why- why was it that w- the feminists, the- the paradise that they were looking for, why did that not come about?

Mary Harrington 29:18 Honestly? I think they, I think they just had a, a... Well, I mean, that's a, that's a very big question. Um, fundamentally I think there are- there are some irreducible differences between the sexes which are just not taken into account. I mean, this is... you- you should talk to Louise Perry about this because of her... she's... her book's coming out. I don't know. Have you heard of Louise Alm?

Chris Williamson 29:35 No. Who is she?

Mary Harrington 29:35 Um, she's- she's... oh, she's- she's a great friend of mine, another, another reactionary feminist. I don't think she'll, I don't think she'll, uh, hate me for describing her that way, um, or- or- or adjacent anyway. She's- she's got a- she's got a book coming out called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution which is a feminist book, um, and it's the feminist take down... it's a feminist critique of the sexual revolution which i- you know, her... she argues very cogently from evolutionary psychology amongst other things has been a disaster for women fun- because fundamentally men and women, you know, at scale, want slightly different things, um, and they, or at least they prioritize slightly different things. You know, and that might not always be the case, you know, and- and- and- and- and as- as she put it to me the other day, you know, her view is that, you know, on the- at the individual level, the differences between men and women are not that great, but at scale they're big enough that actually you need to, you- you need to, you need to treat men and women slightly differently.

Chris Williamson 30:25 Can you give me an example?

Mary Harrington 30:26 And you-Well, let's think, um, what's a good example? Men are more violent at scale. You know, I mean, I'm, I'm married to a very lovely man. He is not a violent man. I dare say you're not a violent man. You know, most men I interact with on a daily basis are not violent men. Um, but at scale, men are more violent than women. You know, nine- something like 97%, 99% of all sexual crimes are committed by men. You know, most of the, most of the murderers in prison, most of, well, most of the prisoners full stop, are men. Um, and you know, you, you, I'm sure you're familiar with all of these statistics, you know, and it's not, it's not an accusation against you or any other individual man to point out that men are more violent. Um, so and, and because of that, it, it does, it, it makes sense, for example, to treat male and female prison populations different. You know, and that, that opens out into a whole, you know, there are, there are a whole, whole series of minefields we can, we can walk into there, (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 31:26 Well, you, um-

Mary Harrington 31:26 ... which you may or may not want to, but, but ju- just to, just to keep the, keep the thing on, on, on why, why the sexual revolution didn't work, um, is because it was premised on the idea that men and women are basically the same apart from some sort of trivial kind of topographical differences. Um, but it's just not true.

Chris Williamson 31:43 You-

Mary Harrington 31:43 And it's definitely not true when it comes to sex.

Chris Williamson 31:46 You said in a different article, "Similarly, chivalrous social codes may feel condescending, but men are still statistically physically stronger and more violent than women. An assault on codes that encourages men to restrain their physical dominance may not wholly be to woman's advantage." So that's the fact that we can say, "I don't need a man to open the door for me. We don't need to have this sort of power dynamic in a relationship typically." However, when you roll the clock forward and say, "Okay, what happens if you erode these and you get rid of these?" You realize, well, maybe the second and third order effect of this was that, was that it was constraining some of the more malignant parts of men's-

Mary Harrington 32:23 Yep.

Chris Williamson 32:23 ... is that, is that what you're saying?

Mary Harrington 32:24 Yep. Exactly, exactly. I mean, in my, in my... and, but I'll push it much more strongly since I'm, since I might as well, might as well have a go at getting canceled this week. I've had two or three, two or three attempts already. Um, I think, uh, I think atta- attacking chivalry, um, as a set of social codes has been the biggest self-own that feminism... It's one of, one of the, one of the most savage self-owns that feminism could possibly have come up with. It's been absolutely catastrophic. It was an incredibly fucking stupid idea. And it was, it was brought about by a bunch of women who, who was, who felt safe enough doing it because they were, they were fairly, fairly civilized, fairly privileged, and they were confident that they could demand that the men in their lives would treat them well. And they didn't think about, they didn't think about men and women in different social contexts who maybe needed a s- a, a clearer and more simplified set of guardrails. And they specifically didn't think about how much more vulnerable it would make the women in, you know, perhaps, you know, among people who, who need a simpler set of guidelines and maybe just stay home and stuff.

Chris Williamson 33:23 Are you talking about maybe the, the difference between a middle and upper class versus a, a, a typical working class environment?

Mary Harrington 33:30 Well, I mean, it's not... it's, it's obviously over-simplistic to, to, to break down, you know, educational achievement, you know, to, to say that that map always invariably maps onto cognitive ability and educational achievement and, you know, impulse control and so on and so forth. But there are some correlations. Um, and when you're talking, I mean, the, the sort of, the, the sort of free-for-all and, you know, everybody should just, you know, be themselves, um, edit, which, which is great, you know, amongst a bunch of, you know, young university graduates who sort of, who've been broadly brought up with decent manners and told, and taught to go to bed regularly on, on the same time every night. You know, it's a completely different ballgame to people who, for example, you know, do- have poor impulse control and, you know, not very much education or have grown up in a violent or traumatic war, impoverished family, you know, who have, who, who have a history, you know, who have a history of interpersonal violence already. And, you know, saying, saying to somebody like that, "Oh, you should just follow your heart," is a, you know, is going to produce different results. And if you then say, "Oh, and you don't, and you don't need chivalry, you don't need codes of chivalry," which says don't, which, which say, "Don't hit women," you no longer need those, and in fact, it's, it's, it's feminist to get rid of the codes which say men shouldn't hit women, then it's not gonna produce the, it's not gonna produce a good result.

Chris Williamson 34:43 Well, presumably they didn't mean to get rid of, um, explicitly get rid of, "Don't hit women." It would have been, "Don't hold the door open." But are you saying-

Mary Harrington 34:52 Yeah, no, no, it's just that-

Chris Williamson 34:52 ... are you saying that downstream from that, that's, that was the inevitable conclusion that you got to?

Mary Harrington 34:58 Well, I mean, you know, d- I'll, I'll dodge that very slightly by saying, by, by pointing out that, you know, choking and intimate violence is now normalized during sex.

Chris Williamson 35:09 Was that by feminists?

Mary Harrington 35:11 You know? Well, so certainly the, you know, s- sex positivity has been, has been mainstream feminism since the 1980s. So actually, yeah, you know, and there are, there are bitter ongoing turf wars, with a U, not, not an E, um, within, within feminism today about, uh, whether or not, you know, whether or to what extent interpersonal violence and, you know, how, how that maps onto consent and, you know, don't... whether, "Don't yuck my yum" is really enough to... I don't, I... whe- whe- whether, whether that's really enough to, to account for, you know, the ways that, the ways that an intimate encounter can be abusive without being non-consensual. And, you know, it's, it's very, it's very volatile terrain. And, and I think a lot of the re- one of the many reasons it's become so volatile is that there just aren't any rules anymore. And to a significant extent, there aren't any consequences in the sense that you can have the most degrading sexual encounter, but as long as you use birth control, chances are nothing, nothing permanent will come as a result of it, which in turn-

Chris Williamson 36:17 So that was... Oh, okay, so you're saying that part of the sexual revolution you had, um, physiologically, the decoupling of having sex from making children, and then culturally also, you had this decoupling of the sacredness around sex, the, um, lack of none-

Mary Harrington 36:34 But...... Virginia Ironside, um, is a, a, a journalist who, a longstanding journalist, you know, was, was in her 20s in the 1960s and she wrote a few years ago about what that was like. And she, and, and she said that prior to the pill, it had been possible to say no to somebody coming onto you because there was always a risk of pregnancy. But, and you... I'm trying to, I'm try... I can't remember the exact quote, but she said, "Well, armed with the pill, it was basic- it was easier sometimes to just have sex with a man out of politeness to make him go away because they knew, they knew you were on the pill." And so, I mean, what other reason did you really have to say no? And so, y-

Chris Williamson 37:13 Oh, wow. So the implication or, uh, the male ego had one fewer self-justifiable or excusable reason for why men could have to swallow their own pride around, "This woman doesn't want to have sex with me," because-

Mary Harrington 37:31 Right.

Chris Williamson 37:31 ... wow, I never even thought about that.

Mary Harrington 37:33 It made-

Chris Williamson 37:33 You, um-

Mary Harrington 37:33 It, it made it orders of magnitude more difficult to say no to loveless or degrading sex because it, it could now potentially be consequence-free. So there was no, there was no longer a material reason for a woman to hold out for a loving, long-term relationship. Um, and I, I'm, I'm with Louise on questioning whether the long-term consequences of this have been over- have been overwhelmingly positive for women.

Chris Williamson 37:56 That is wild. I never thought of that before. You, uh...

Chris Williamson 38:00 I, I heard you talk about the statistics, the relationship between abortion and shotgun weddings as well.

Mary Harrington 38:07 Yeah, I mean, that's one, that's one that Catholics are very fond of. Um, it's a counterintuitive relationship, but, uh, but it's, it's fairly well-documented, um, that in fact, um, the... immediately after abortion, uh, after contraception became... contraception and then abortion was legalized, um, well the, the, the number of, the number of abortions went up. Y- and you would expect with contraception now widely available, you'd expect the number of abortions to go down. But in fact what, that, that wasn't quite what happened because, um, you, you sort of have to think of it as a difficulty of scale. You know, there was just more, there, there was just more sex happening because it, because it was theoretically consequence-free. Um, and so even though the number of, even, even though the number of sexual encounters that resulted in accidental pregnancy was lower, um, there were so many more of them that the absolute number of acc- accidental pregnancies went up. You fol- you follow?

Chris Williamson 38:59 Yeah, yeah, and then there was an implication for the man's, uh, requirement to stay around because it was seen as-

Mary Harrington 39:06 Correct. Yes.

Chris Williamson 39:07 L- can you explain that?

Mary Harrington 39:08 Exactly. And, and also because it was now possible to go and get an abortion if you were accidentally pregnant, the social pressure on men to then step up, uh, went away. Um, so, so there was no longer an obligation on, there was no longer an expectation that if a man got a woman knocked up, um, he'd, he'd be expected to marry her.

Chris Williamson 39:27 Because the pregnancy-

Mary Harrington 39:28 Um-

Chris Williamson 39:28 ... was much more, or the birth, sorry, was much more her choice.

Mary Harrington 39:33 Exactly. Exactly. So, so because it, because in ending the pregnancy was now an option, um, it was, it was sim- that similarly meant it was a, it was much more of an option for men to walk away. Um-

Chris Williamson 39:43 These two things blow my mind. They absolutely blow my mind. This is like Rory Sutherland's level stuff where he's talking about, "Oh, well, here's the first order effect and maybe you can see half of the second order effect. But roll the clock forward five to 10 to 25 years, and you have this externality that you had no idea it was coming and it's completely terrible."

Mary Harrington 40:04 Absolutely. And I mean, it's, you know, what, what we do with these conclusions, I don't, you know, I, I don't really have a firm view on that. Um, you know, I have, I, I have friends who are very firmly pro-life. You know, I'm, I'm... I have... I, I wrestle with it. Um, I think it's a, it's an incredibly complex and incredibly fraught issue and I'm, and I'm als- I'm also of the view that once the material change is there, um, you know, just saying we need, we, we need to put this back in its box, um, is, is, is very rarely enough. You know, because once technology is there, people are going to want to use it. Um, and, and I think, yeah, I, I think just saying, "Well, we should put this back in its box," may or, may or may not actually have, have the desired effect. Um, but, you know, but I do think it's absolutely incumbent upon us to think through what the actual second and third order effects have been of these absolutely monumental technological changes. Because in, in, in my view, um, the sexual revolution is, is on a par with the industrial revolution. You know, in, and in a sense, actually, Wendell Berry, the American writer, uh, describes, describes the, the uh, the consequences of the sexual revolution as being a kind of industrial, industrialization of sex. You know, the, uh, a reordering, a reordering of sexual intimacy, um, along, uh, uh, to the same para- to the same industrial paradigm.

Chris Williamson 41:17 Mm-hmm.

Mary Harrington 41:18 You know, suddenly it was open to the market. (laughs) I found a very, I found a very, you know, a telling detail, uh, the same year that Hayek, um, was arguing about, you know, the spontaneous, you know, about the s- markets just, you know, the spontaneous order of markets. I think that's his phrase, spontaneous order. Um, what, what was the first, was also the first, um, p- anti-pornography conference organized by Andrea Dworkin in New York. Um, (laughs) and I, I, I just think it's fascinating that, you know, while this guy is holding up this idealized picture of markets as this spontaneous self-organizing force, right at the other end, r- you know, somewhere else in the picture, somebody else is, is, is waving a placard and saying, "No, actually, there's this market which is happe- which seems to be happening spontaneously and we really don't like the order which it's, which it's bringing in." Um-

Chris Williamson 42:04 Ta- talking about the sexual revolution then, you speak about, uh, I don't know whether it's an anti-sexual revolution or it's a sex-negative position that we're sort of finding ourselves falling into. Can you explain that?

Mary Harrington 42:16 Well, I'm, I don't really, I don't really think of myself as... I, I, I don't really see the arguments that I make as being, um, sex negative at all. I mean, I've (laughs) I've, I made a, I made a pro-sex argument against, um, against being public about your kinks on the basis that you'll just enjoy them more if they're private. Um, and the moment they...You know, the moment you start parading your, your disgusting proclivities through town. You know, they start, the start seeming flat and boring, and you have to find something even more disgusting to get the same thrill. Um, so I mean, if you're going to... I mean, some people, some people are gonna have... Some people, people like what they like, right? Um, but, uh, and I think, you know, the, the way to keep that frisson of the forbidden is a healthy dose of repression. You know, that's, that's the only way to keep it feeling forbidden. You know, so I-

Chris Williamson 42:59 That's one of your... Is, is that one of the dynamic, the porno-dynamics laws?

Mary Harrington 43:03 Yeah, the, (laughs) the three laws of porno-dynamics, yes.

Chris Williamson 43:06 Yeah. The, there's... What was it? The f- the law of fap entropy?

Mary Harrington 43:10 Yeah, the law of fap entropy. It, it's the-

Chris Williamson 43:12 Can you explain what the law of fap entropy is for the people who... (laughs)

Mary Harrington 43:16 Well, the... (laughs) That, that's, you know, that, that, that's really, that, that's the law that says, you know, whatever it is that you start out wanking to is going to s- is gonna start seeing, well, seeming boring, and you'll have to find something yet more disgusting, um, to get the same thrill, which is why it doesn't... You know, people can make all the arguments they want to about ethical porn, but you have to see if porn's a vector. You know, it's a, it's a direction, not a, not a series of... Not a static thing. And, and, you know, you can start at ethical porn but you'll be, you'll be down there in the, down there in the sewers watching lubri-porn before you know it. It's a thing. Don't even ask. Don't Google it. Really, don't Google it.

Chris Williamson 43:50 Okay. Okay, okay.

Mary Harrington 43:51 Yeah, I mean, really, really, really.

Chris Williamson 43:51 Uh, so yeah, anti- anti-sexual revolution, I think that you mentioned about you're seeing increasing numbers of sort of 17, 18, 19-year-old, um, people, uh, girls especially, who are kind of withdrawing from a hyper-sexualized world. You have a friend-

Mary Harrington 44:05 Yes.

Chris Williamson 44:05 ... I think who refu- took all of her bikini photos down from Instagram-

Mary Harrington 44:08 Yep.

Chris Williamson 44:08 ... and wouldn't post photos-

Mary Harrington 44:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:09 ... where she's got her shoulders out and stuff like that. And that seems-

Mary Harrington 44:12 Yep.

Chris Williamson 44:12 ... like, almost puritanical, you know, compared with what's typically being put forward in popular culture for young people.

Mary Harrington 44:19 Absolutely. And I mean, uh, I should s- I should underline the fact that this is very sub-cultural at the moment. But my, my good friend Ka- Catherine D., um, also known, kn- known on the internet more as defaultfriend has been tracking this for a few years. You know, she writes a lot on, um, internet fandoms and, um, sex and relationships, and she's been, she's been tracking the, the rise of sex-negativity, particularly in young women for, for years. And, uh, it's... And, and in a nutshell, young, young women have just had enough, you know, especially the girls who went through the Tumblr years where it was all, "Don't, don't, don't kink-shame me," and then just found themselves in these violent and abusive encounters which were supposed to be fun and just weren't, and there was no discursive space in which to say, "No, actually this was disgusting and upsetting, and I don't ever want to do it again," because it's like, "Oh, don't kink-shame me." And, you know, if you're going through, you know... (laughs) Uh, there was one... I mean, it's, it's been, it's been deleted since, but there was a horrific, a horrific series of tweets that some, some young woman put up. And I mean, she was only in her early 20s and this had happened to her, you know, sometime before, and she was saying, you know, "I, I, I, I, I had a relationship with this guy who liked to... You know, and he was a dom, you know, but, you know, I woke up, I woke up one day to find him... You know, I, I sort of came, came back to consciousness one night to find him shoving crushed-up Adderall into my cup." You know, and this is supposed to be sort of, you know, kinky stuff, but ju- but just what is that? Right, exactly. Exactly. You know, or, you know, he wanted to experiment with breath play, so he got steaming drunk and put me in a rear naked chokehold and I passed out. You know, that's, that's not, that's not fun for anyone. You know, I don't know what's going on there but that's not fun. And that's somebody who's gone a long way down the porno-dynamics rabbit hole and is just, you know, needs to get his kicks somehow. Um, but then... And, and is sort of has perhaps kind of lost sight of the fact that that's a real human person that he's doing it to, because...

Chris Williamson 46:09 Hmm.

Mary Harrington 46:09 I mean, you hear horrif- yeah, b- I mean, again, don't Google this, but if you ever want to see, you know, what the, the suffering this causes to men, um, it's, you know... You don't have to spend very long on the NoFap forums, um, to see, to see, you know, that, that some of these guys are really struggling with it. You know what I mean? I, I, I salute every single one of them for trying because it's, you know... They've, they've had their sort of dopamine receptors hacked by this stuff sometimes for years and they're, and they're trying to, they're trying to kick the habit, and I... And it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. You know, when your brain has been rewired by it to the point where, you know, you, you can't get off except in a very, you know, in a particular, from a particular angle whilst thinking about something incredibly baroque, um, which basically-

Chris Williamson 46:51 Yeah, that you've got to do some sort of mental jujitsu mindfulness exercise-

Mary Harrington 46:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 46:55 ... in a desperate attempt to put yourself in an aroused state.

Mary Harrington 46:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is, this is well-documented, you know? This isn't just in... This is an anecdote for this, this scene. This happens a lot, um, and these n- these guys... And, and once you're, once you sort of, you know, o- once you sort of wank yourself into that kind of a paralysis, you know, you, you, you can't have an intimate relationship with somebody, not really, you know, until you've got yourself... Until you've rewired your brain again, because I mean, how are you ever supposed to be intimate with another human being, you know, if y- if you can only, if you can only get off while sort of standing on your head and thinking about lubries all over this, uh... Yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's horrendous. I think, I think it's absolutely monstrous. Um-

Chris Williamson 47:35 So rolling- rolling the clock forward from there, uh, are you... Do you think that we're going to see more of this... I, I, I don't know what you would call it. Like, an anti-sexual revolution or a, a re-, uh, sacredizing of the intimate relationship, or is, is that what you would prescribe if you were to try and fix it?

Mary Harrington 47:54 Um, I, I sincerely hope so. But it's not a, it's not a simple problem to fix. And I think... You know, inasmuch as... I mean, it, it's already happening. Um, I, I see it already happening but it's, it's sub-cultural and it- it's generally coming from sort of what I, what I would call young counter-elites.

Chris Williamson 48:10 Who's that?

Mary Harrington 48:10 By which, um... Who's that? You know, kids who are in their 20s I'd say, probably. Um, you know, young, younger millennials or Gen Z, um, and who, who don't buy into the whole mainstream thing. Who, who don't, who don't... Who, who, who aren't fully signed up to the integrating mess- what Wesley Ang calls the integrating, vertically-integrated messaging apparatus, you know, and who, who read whatever it is... Who, who, who sort of-... and I don't want to call them conservative because they're not exactly conservative. Um, they're, they're... I don't know quite what they are. Um, they're their own thing. But, but those, those kids, some of them, are, are thinking this stuff through very concretely, you know. Some, some of the (laughs) conclusions they come up with are frankly terrifying.

Chris Williamson 48:55 What, like?

Mary Harrington 48:55 But then, you know, I'm not... I'm... (laughs) I'm not even going to go there. Like, I'll, I'll, I'll write about it. I'm not doing that on the podcast, so I'll get myself in trouble.

Chris Williamson 49:01 Okay. Okay.

Mary Harrington 49:03 Um, but, um, but again, you know, I'm not in their shoes, so, you know, what can I... Well, yeah, what can, what can I say, really? I... If I was there, maybe I'd be, I'd be forming the same views. Um, but yeah, I th- I see, I see, you know, young, younger sort of countercultural people, you know, taking, taking very firm views on this and being... and lot... I don't know. It's sort of... Among, among that cohort, I see it sort of going in two directions. You know, people either go radically... You know, they are, they either go full nuclear war on relationships, you know, and there are various different ways you can do that. You can go, you can go full-on hedonistic. Um, you can go all out for the, you know, the victory of one sex over another. You know, you can go sort of girlboss OnlyFans vibe, or alternatively, you know, the pickup artist thing is another, there's another variant on that. It's just about, you know, instrumentalizing, defeating, and, you know, symbolically humiliating the opposite sex. You know, to me, that seems to be the kind of, you know, the, the, the, the principal mood. You know, and you're, you're more interested in kind of keeping the score with, with respect to your male friends than you are in the sort of interacting with a human. And I, and I think, you know, there are, there are male, there are male-coded and female-coded versions of this, in my observation. You know, the, the, the girlboss OnlyFans thing is, is, is in a sense, you know, just a mirror image of the pickup artist thing.

Chris Williamson 50:24 It's adversarial, right? It's taking the primary-

Mary Harrington 50:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:27 ... uh, typically the primary source of value that the opposite sex had, and then weaponizing your ability to manipulate that.

Mary Harrington 50:37 Yep. Yep.

Chris Williamson 50:37 So men weaponizing their ability to get women's bodies and women weaponizing their ability to get men's resources.

Mary Harrington 50:44 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm finding it really, really striking that, um, there are... You can find almost exactly the same, um, comparison, you know, e- exactly the same attacks on marriage in feminist writing as in incel and pickup artist writing. They all, they're all... They all hate marriage. They all see it as no better than prostitution and think it should be replaced with a more, with a franker and more, more, more market-based, in fact, version of exchange. There we are, we're back at the war on relationships, you know. In, in, in a sense that sort of, you know, the... Th- this, this effort to, to, to break down any possibility of solidarity between men and women, um, and replace it, replace it with something that's transactional and instrumental, um, and can, you know, and, you know, can be ordered, you know, to, to the logic of, you know, wages or, or commerce or... You see it, uh, as you... You see it, as you say, coming from both sides. You know, it's, it's, it's older than, it's older than social media. You know, um, I would sp-... It's probably older than the sexual revolution, although it definitely accelerated with the sexual revolution. Um, and I, I sort of feel like we're reaching some kind of an end, some... I honestly don't know how much worse it can get without the human race just, (laughs) just sort of losing, losing the ability, like, w- without us all just losing the ability to talk to one another or, you know, form families, full stop.

Chris Williamson 52:13 That was the-

Mary Harrington 52:14 Um-

Chris Williamson 52:14 That was the end point. So the last time that I was... stood here in Austin, I was having a conversation with a guy called Vincent Haranam, who I've mentioned twice today, and I'm gonna continue to, uh, force-feed traffic to him in the way that he precisely doesn't want to have happen.

Mary Harrington 52:28 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:28 He is the most pseudonymous man I've ever met, and yet I'm going to continue to get people to go and look at his stuff. Um, and the end point that we came to, he's done a big deep data dive. He's a data scientist that's looked at the, um, relative attraction rates, what's happening on dating apps, so on and so forth. And the outcome really is pretty terrifying, especially when you look at the, um, population projections. Uh, not just in the West now as well, like China is in a pretty good place, uh, pretty bad place with this as well too. But (clears throat) there's not a very positive, rosy outlook. The apocalyptic way that we started talking about Twitter at the beginning looks, uh, paradisal in comparison with the future for relationships, I think. And, um, I, I remember reading this article from, uh, Kat Rosenfeld, I think she's called, and she was... I think you've spoken about this too, which is, in order to make something attractive and, um, uh, for there to be excitement in a relationship, there needs to be a little bit of uncertainty and a small amount of, uh... Danger might be the wrong word, but at, at, at least a little bit of uncertainty and some sort of play between the two people. And there's two things that are going on at the same time. One is this complete liberalization of "Don't kink shame me," and at the same time, this sort of e- equivalent of helicopter or snowplow, uh, not parenting, but, uh, sexual norming to the point where you get this consent porn. And I learned recently that there is a push for a blockchain of consent, which would be able to track every single degree of consent that you would be able to tumble down. So you have these two, uh, sort of diametrically opposed but parallel, um, dynamics moving at the same time. In order for me to g- m- get, uh, most people to get excited, you're going to need some degree of uncertainty and excitement and play between the relationship, and yet, at the same time, you have this helicopter situation where any slight discomfort needs to be pushed out of the way. Uh, and you mix that in with the pornification of everything and access to OnlyFans and women being able to commodify men, and men being able to sexualize women, andMm. It's not good. It's not good.

Mary Harrington 54:50 It's not good. What do you think we should do, Chris?

Chris Williamson 54:55 The only solution that I've come up with is putting marriage back up on a pedestal. Um, I think that you're going to struggle to pull women back from the very recently acquired position of, um, equity in society. Uh, you know, by 2030, you're going to have two women for every one man at a four-year US college. On average at the moment, between the ages of 21 and 29, women earn 1,111 pounds more per year than a man. All of these sorts of things, and you have this hypergamous nature, which is obviously kind of like the thing that the manosphere, like, gets its kicks off. It's increasingly difficult for women that are raising up through their own competence hierarchy to find a man that is equally or more competent than them because young women are outperforming men in a bunch of different domains at the moment. So, a- and also saying, "Girls, you should settle for less," like, that- that meme is not going to take hold. Telling girls that you- y- like, Joe Schmoe is the guy for you. But if you make it less about the partner and less about the commodification of that, less about, oh, what's their Instagram follower count, or what sort of car do they drive, and you make it more about, "Well, I want somebody that is able to provide, that's going to be a good father, that's going to be a good member of my, uh, my extended family, too, that my parents are going to like, that's going to be reliable." Like, that institution of marriage was what wrapped that up and made it something beyond just the quantifiable metrics of success. And I think that you can... Uh, that's the first part. The first part is to negate some of the hypergamous nature that w- that women have, and rightly so. They want to find the- the- the right man for them. Um, by making it slightly less about the man's quantifiable metrics of success and s- um, much more about the institution of family, relationships, so on and so forth. And then Geoffrey-

Mary Harrington 56:53 Abolish big romance.

Chris Williamson 56:54 Big romance, precisely.

Mary Harrington 56:55 Abolish big romance.

Chris Williamson 56:56 Yes, exactly. We need to get rid of it.

Mary Harrington 56:58 Just- just nuke it.

Chris Williamson 57:00 Um, and then Geoffrey Miller, the evolutionary psychologist, one of the guys that did all of his- all of this stuff in dating dynamics, he told me that you can hack hypergamy in a really smart way in the bedroom and also around the house by just doing role play. He said that the human brain, and this is something that makes complete sense, you don't need to have an actual power differential in a relationship all the time, because you can fake yourself into believing that there's one there. You know, if you've got a- the- the high-powered boss bitch PhD half a mill a year woman with a man who is the lower earner in the household, and yet you flip that polarity in the bedroom, the human brain doesn't really know... I- it's not like, "Oh, th- th- this is just a game that we're playing." It doesn't really know. So you can use those tricks. So those would be my two. Uh, (laughs) more power play in the be- (laughs) power play in the bedroom, uh, to flip hypergamy, and then the re-, um, pedestrialization of marriage as an institution. Those are my solutions. What do you think?

Mary Harrington 58:02 Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I have a- I have a whole com- probably completely unprintable thesis about why- why BDSM has been so- has become so popular. I mean, I- but I think it's a sort of... It's a- it's an involuntary, uh, it's an involuntary backlash against there being too much equality between the sexes. In fact, people just like a power dynamic, and you can't, and you're not gonna be able to get rid of that. You know, the- and the more you repress it, the more appealing it becomes. You know, this is- this is an- one of the laws of porno-dynamics, isn't it? You know, every- ev- every taboo has an equal and opposite category of porn. And (laughs) the moment, the- the- the- the moment- the moment you make- you make power dynamics, the- the- the moment you make, you- you put equality on a pedestal, you know, I mean, what- what do you think is gonna happen in the bedroom? People are going to sexualize power imbalances. And so, you know, the more egalitarian society-

Chris Williamson 58:49 It's gonna feel taboo and forbidden, yeah.

Mary Harrington 58:51 Right. So the more- the more egalitarian society becomes, the more- the more kink, the more- the- the more kinky peoples' sex lives are gonna be. And I thi- I think we just need to embrace the fact that, you know, pow- power dynamics, people just like power dynamics, and we ought to lean into them more and we should just make them real. And we should do it without safe words, but lovingly. Properly.

Chris Williamson 59:09 What's your solution, if-

Mary Harrington 59:11 And- a- and- a- and no, I- no, I will not elaborate on it.

Chris Williamson 59:13 (laughs) .

Mary Harrington 59:13 I mean, I- I think we should abolish big romance. I also think we need more single-sex spaces for both sexes. Um, and I- I'd actually lean harder into that for men than for women.

Chris Williamson 59:21 Why?

Mary Harrington 59:21 I think one of the most disastrous things that's happened- that's happened to men in the last three or four decades is that the number of- the number of spaces where men can be men together without the company of women has got- has really shrunk. Now, I- I mean, I can't speak to that from in a first-person sense, obviously, because I'm- I'm a front-hole person. Um, but it's- it's very clear to me, thinking about my male friends and just- just from observation and from listening to- listening to men speak. It's- it's just obvious. There aren't very many... You know, unless you- unless you're on a football team or, you know, un- un- unless you- unless you play a sport or, you know, there are- there are- there are some limited other contexts which will mo- probably still be mostly male or all male. Um, there just aren't- there aren't very many places where- where men can talk amongst themselves without- without women. And that- that seems- that seems like it could be a problem to me, because I mean, I have no idea what men talk about amongst themselves, but it seems right to me that that- that should be a thing. Um, and it's possible, you know, it seems- it also seems likely to me that there are- there are kinds of social encounter and kinds of communication which are gonna happen in that context, which I have no idea about, um, but which are probably quite important to men. And if you don't do, you know, if those things aren't there, then, you know, men are gonna be sad. You know, this all, this- none of this seems to me like it's rocket science. Um, and, you know, and- and my observation just looking at the numbers is that men are sad at the moment. You know, the suicide rate has never been great and it's getting worse. Um, you know, men- men- men are not doing, men are not doing great at the moment. Um, and, you know, if- if we want good husbands, you know, that's- that's an issue for women as well. It's an issue for everybody, it's a human issue.... you know, the, if we're- if things are, you know, and, and I'm, I'm sure, I'm sure somebody will come along and be like, "Oh, you know, she's all like, 'Oh, what about the men?' You know, women suffer as well." You know, of course, of course, that's true, but you know, the, so it's, pain isn't a pie, you know. One person does... One, one group doesn't get less of it. One, one isn't, you know, so one, one group isn't de- deprived of suffering and status just because another group is suffering as well. You know, it's not a... (laughs) there, there isn't... Suffering really isn't a limited resource in this world.

Chris Williamson 1:01:23 Yeah, the zero-sumness of suffering.

Mary Harrington 1:01:25 Um-

Chris Williamson 1:01:25 That, I mean, that's, that's exactly what, what you see when you try and have this discussion online, you know. It, it, it's, it's, uh, this is your job, right, to memefy everything, but you would be able to create a flowchart of the way that, um, discourse moves forward when somebody tries to put forward either women are suffering or men are suffering. Um, and with the men are suffering one, it's typically something to do with, uh... In, in the mixer would be, um, "I thought you just needed to man up, bro," sort of, um, small dick energy, or "You need to, you need to get your act together." Uh, and then this is, uh, just a rehabilitated... So asking for male-only spaces, this is a, a rehabilitated version of excluding women from powerful conversations that men just want to have again. And it's like really tropey, and every time that you see somebody do this online-

Mary Harrington 1:02:14 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 ... you can predict what's going to be the, the pushback. And you go, "Well, this is why we're not actually making any genuine progress towards anything," because it's just the same horseshit arguments just, like, spat out every single time.

Mary Harrington 1:02:26 Well, lovely. You know, if a, if a hand- if the price of reducing the suicide rate across working-class men is that a small number of female barristers and CEOs get excluded from the old boys' network, I'm okay with that. You know, I think there's a class dimension to this which often gets left out. And, and the, and the, the women who are being, who are pushing for entrance, entry to all of the old boys' networks, you know, are sort of, you know, arguing very cogently from their own economic interests. But you know, the, the subset of women who are barristers and CEOs and girl bosses is relatively small, and the subset of men who are, you know, just people with jobs, and women who are just people with jobs, is considerably larger. And if you, if you break down single-sex spaces in the interests of, you know, of the elite, um, and in the process destroy important social spaces for everybody else, then I'm not sure that's a good trade-off. And I, I, I think that's one we could usefully look at again.

Chris Williamson 1:03:22 You talk about this to do with the number of women that want to be stay-at-home mums versus those that want to work and those that are in the middle that want to have a blend between the two as well.

Mary Harrington 1:03:32 Yeah. Um, I mean, that's a... That, that, that study's actually... It's a- it's 20 years old, so, and I, I hope somebody will come up with something more recent. But, um, this is Catherine Hakim, who's a sociologist, did some research into what women actually want, given the choice, when it comes to work. Um, and, and according to her findings, there are maybe 20% who, who really just want, who really want to be mums, they want to be in the home, and maybe 20% who really want to be girl bosses, and everyone else, um, kind of would, would, would like a nice mixture, please. I mean, anecdotally, when I think of the, you know, fairly normal middle-class mums who are kind of my social circle and, you know, at school pick-up with me or whatever, that's true. You know, the- there are, there are some who work full-time, but most of them would quite like to have a relationship with their children and see them for more than an hour once a week. Um, you know, mo- most, most, most people don't have careers, they have jobs, you know, of both sexes. You know, there's a ve- there's a small minority who have careers, you know, that... And they're willing to trade off the amount of time they spend with their kids in pursuit of their career. But most people, most people have jobs and, you know, there's some bits that are fun and some of it's, some bits of it suck, and they quite like spending time with their kids as well. You know, it's, it's, again, it's not rocket science. (laughs) It's quite common sense. I'm not saying anything which ought to be controversial at all.

Chris Williamson 1:04:46 What was the insight that you explained to do with how the UK government pushing their primary, um, women-we're-here-for-you policy to be more assisted childcare was playing into that. It was to... basically encouraging women that, uh, their primary role should be in careers.

Mary Harrington 1:05:10 Yeah, I think it was... You know, I seem, I seem to remember that at the last election, you know, when it came to, "Oh, we're..." when it came to offering something to women, every single one of the major, all three of the major political parties, you know, competed for how much more childcare they could offer. You know, nobody, nobody offered, for example, to extend maternity leave or, you know, there, there was, there was some talk about, you know, making paternity leave more flexible, which I support, even though I think uptake is a bit patchy on that. But perhaps that's a, that... perhaps that's a medium-term cultural change thing. I don't know. Um, but yeah, I mean, the, the, the, the reflex, you know, which is perhaps understandable from, from the kind of women who become MPs, you know, if you think about the sort of personality type who's going to, who's gonna end up in, in, elected to Parliament anyway, um, is the, the, the assumption is generally that, that what women need is more childcare. Um, and it's, it's, it's considerably rarer amongst MPs to find somebody who's willing to stand up and say, "Well, what if mothers actually want more time at home with their child- What if some mothers want more time at home with their children when they're young?" And pretty much the only person, the only MP I've seen who's willing to, who's willing to stand up and say that or even come close to saying it was Miriam Cates, who's a... I, I forget. She's, she's Conservative MP for one of the needs boards, I think. Um, but she's, she's really an outlier on that, and pretty much everybody else is just all, you know, they're, they're f- full-on girl boss. Which then is fine.

Chris Williamson 1:06:33 But it sounds primitive, right? That's why.

Mary Harrington 1:06:37 (laughs) But why? Why must-

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 Well, because that's how it would be interpreted-

Mary Harrington 1:06:41 Why?

Chris Williamson 1:06:41 ... by the press. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to re-enable, uh, women's ability or the, um, their predisposition to be seen as purely mothers, that their role is just to give birth to women and then make sure that the dinner's on the table at 6:00 PM? That's the unsophisticated way to look at it.

Mary Harrington 1:06:57 (laughs) I mean, o- one, one pushback, which I, I, I doubt, you know, I'm not going to put in the words of Miriam, in the mouth of Miriam Cates because I don't know what she'd say to this. Um, but, but again, I mean, you say that like it's a bad thing. You know, what's so bad about doing... I've been a stay-at-home mother. It's a great life. As long as you get on, as long as you have some, enough funds and you get on with your spouse, being a stay-at-home mom is really nice. You know, it's, I mean, you're your own boss. Like, you know, really what's not to like? You know, it's, it's a... I, I struggle to understand why anybody would want to... wo- wo- would think that's terrible.

Chris Williamson 1:07:27 I'm with you.

Mary Harrington 1:07:27 Um... But that's just... But, but that's not how it gets framed. And I mean, you know, again, um, here I am. Here I am working. I sort of started by accident, and now, here I am. Um (laughs) , so it's complicated, you know. I, I sort of fell into doing something that I loved and now, and now here I am. Um... But, you know, but it's, it's one thing... It's one thing making sacrifices for a career that you love, um, and, you know, with, with the help of a supportive partner. Um, and it's another thing altogether, um, you know, being, being offered more childcare by the government so you can spend eight hours rather than six hours a day putting packets through a scanner in a supermarket instead of seeing your children. You know, I, I... Yeah, I, I just, I just struggle to see how, you know... I'm, I'm not convinced that every woman in that situation would see that as doing them a favor, I guess is what I'm saying. You know, may- maybe there are other possibilities too.

Chris Williamson 1:08:25 Mary Harrington,

Chris Williamson 1:08:26 ladies and gentlemen. People want to check out your Substack and follow you on Twitter, which they absolutely need to do. Where should they go?

Mary Harrington 1:08:33 Um, look me up at reactionaryfeminist.com or, you know, or search that on Substack. You'll find me there, reactionaryfeminist.substack.com. I'm @movingcircles on Twitter. It's... This has been fun. Thank you for having me.

Chris Williamson 1:08:44 It's been really, really great. I'm looking forward to the book coming out. If you can hurry up and write it-

Mary Harrington 1:08:48 Ah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:08:48 ... please. Uh, that would be great.

Mary Harrington 1:08:50 Yeah, I need to get some sleep and get on with it tomorrow. War on Relationships chapter.

Chris Williamson 1:08:54 I'm looking forward to it. Thank you very much, Mary.

Mary Harrington 1:08:56 All right.

Chris Williamson 1:08:56 What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.