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The Absolute State Of Dating Today - Louise Perry (4K)

Louise Perry is a writer, Press Officer for the campaign group We Can’t Consent To This and an author. Young women have been through turmoil over the last 50 years. With their entry into the workforce, emancipation from the kitchen and greater freedom and independence, you might think they have got everything they want out of life. But unfortunately, the reality may be less rosy. Expect to learn why 40% of young adults say that marriage has outlived its usefulness, why younger generations see relationships in TV shows as an unnecessary addition, whether women are actually happy with the modern culture around sex, what the fallout of the MeToo movement has been, why young women are unhappier on average compared to previous generations and much more... Sponsors: Get a 35% discount on all Cozy Earth products at http://www.cozyearth.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom #women #dating #metoo - 00:00 Is Marriage Still Useful? 02:38 Society is Becoming More Prudish 11:52 Young People’s Views on Sex in Movies 15:05 Birth Control is Making Weak Men 20:19 The Gen-Z Pushback Against Romance 25:23 Is Patriarchy the Best System? 27:54 How Culture Impacts Our Views of Sex 33:00 Are Women Happier Now Than 70 Years Ago? 43:55 10 Years On From #MeToo 55:20 Why Men Aren’t Approaching Women 1:10:49 The Mental Health Crisis of Girls 1:19:09 Do Pedophiles Need Sympathy? 1:23:08 Why Women Support Body Positivity 1:27:50 The Normalisation of Cosmetic Surgery 1:38:14 Where to Find Louise - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostLouise Perryguest
Dec 4, 20231h 39mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Louise Perry Dissects Modern Dating, Fertility Collapse, and Sexual Culture

  1. Louise Perry and Chris Williamson explore how contraception, changing gender roles, and online culture have radically reshaped sex, dating, and family life in the West.
  2. Perry argues that the Pill and technological affluence have decoupled sex from reproduction, undermined marriage and fertility, and unintentionally sidelined average men while overburdening women.
  3. They discuss oscillations between sexual permissiveness and prudishness, the psychological and social impact of porn and social media on youth, and the emerging conservative backlash among younger generations.
  4. Throughout, Perry emphasizes trade‑offs: between safety and freedom, equality and complementarity, short‑term pleasure and long‑term flourishing, insisting that human nature and sex differences cannot simply be wished away.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Fertility and family norms are heavily mimetic, not fixed by nature.

People copy what they see: when sisters, friends, or peers have children, others are more likely to; when few around you marry or reproduce, lower fertility quickly becomes the ‘normal’ template rather than an aberration.

The Pill fundamentally changed sexual incentives and cannot be ‘uninvented.’

By removing pregnancy as the automatic consequence of sex, contraception enabled unprecedented sexual license, weakened marriage’s role as a reproductive institution, and pushed women toward treating sex more like men—at significant physical and psychological cost.

Modern sexual culture selects for high-impulse control elites and low-conscientiousness parents.

Those who can resist digital and sexual temptations (high conscientiousness) delay or avoid having children, while more impulsive individuals reproduce more, potentially shifting the population’s psychological traits and political leanings over generations.

Women face an inescapable trade‑off between career optimization and higher fertility.

Because pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and disproportionate childcare cannot be fully equalized, most women end up either having fewer children than they might prefer or doing a ‘second shift’ at home plus paid work—an arrangement Perry argues is often worse than traditional breadwinner models for the average woman.

Consent is too low a bar; we’ve lost language for ‘bad but legal’ sexual behavior.

MeToo focused on consent vs. non-consent but left a large gray zone of ungentlemanly, coercive, or reckless behavior that isn’t criminal; Perry argues societies need revived norms like chivalry to recognize men’s greater physical power and protect women without pretending the sexes are identical.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Traditions are experiments that worked.

Louise Perry (quoting an anecdote from a winemaking book)

There are no solutions, only trade‑offs.

Louise Perry (quoting Thomas Sowell)

It’s a straight line from ‘you should hold the door open for a woman’ to ‘you shouldn’t beat your wife.’

Louise Perry

Any culture that just stops reproducing itself is not gonna last.

Louise Perry

Modern women have been taught that true freedom is having sex like their brother and working like their father.

Chris Williamson

Declining marriage and fertility rates, and mimetic desire around motherhoodLicentiousness vs. prudishness cycles in sexual culture and the impact of the PillHormonal birth control, testosterone decline, and downstream effects on attraction and behaviorGender roles, work, patriarchy, and the paradoxes of women’s liberationMeToo, consent culture, and the loss of concepts like chivalry and prudenceSocial media, teenage girls’ mental health, and social contagion (anorexia, Tourette’s, gender dysphoria)Female intrasexual competition, beauty standards, cosmetic enhancement, and body positivity

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