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

1. 0:00 – 2:38

   Is Marriage Still Useful?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      There's a Wall Street Journal column about marriage as a mirror of human nature that says 40% of young adults say marriage has outlived its usefulness.

   2. LPLouise Perry0:10

      Hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:10

      What do you think is going on?

   4. LPLouise Perry0:12

      I mean, I'm not surprised, 'cause these are young adults who've, like... I think, so I think in London now, and this would be true in lots of parts of the West, um, about half of kids will reach the age of 15 not living with their biological father. Half. So I guess these young people just look around and they're like, "Well, it's, like, evident to me that marriage isn't working." So-

   5. CWChris Williamson0:37

      Mary Eberstadt's got this idea about, um, motherhood and family life as a mimetic desire.

   6. LPLouise Perry0:44

      Hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:45

      That the dearth of mothers and families causes fewer people to see them, which causes fewer people to want them, which causes fewer people to, to, to, to, to, to all the way down.

   8. LPLouise Perry0:55

      I think that's definitely true. And you can see that in data actually with, um, like if your sister or your close friend has a baby, you're more likely to have a baby in the year or two following, and vice versa. So if, if the people around you are not having children, you're less likely to have children yourself. I think, and that's, it, I think that's so interesting because there's always been this assumption by demographers up until birth rates started really crashing in recent decades, that people would just spontaneously decide once they had access to contraception or whatever, to have 2.1 kids, that that was, like, the natural settling point for the human species, that we'd all, we'd all reach there and we'd just stay there.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:35

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LPLouise Perry1:35

       And that's clearly not true, because so many countries now are falling way below replacement. And I think it's because actually there's no law of nature that says that people should want 2.1 kids. People look around them and they're like, "Oh, okay, everyone here has one or zero or six." And then that becomes, as you say, the mimetic desire. I think that becomes what's considered normal. And humans are completely obsessed with what's normal. Which is why I'm just genuinely quite, generally quite skeptical of the idea of, um, of people having this, like, absolute agency or abso- Yeah, I mean, we, we do clearly have, we do clearly have free will. But I think that what we consider to be desirable, normal, the life template is so incredibly dependent on what other people around us think.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:25

       Mm.

   12. LPLouise Perry2:26

       Um, which is, I think exactly why we've got into this downward spiral in terms of fertility.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:32

       There's a... I love your analogy or y- your conception of prudishness

2. 2:38 – 11:52

   Society is Becoming More Prudish

   1. CWChris Williamson2:38

      and licentiousness, that there's, we kind of flip-flop between the two.

   2. LPLouise Perry2:41

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:43

      Which one do you think we're in now?

   4. LPLouise Perry2:45

      Uh, licentiousness transitioning to prudishness, I think.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:50

      Okay. Is this like the, uh, peri-pilled equivalent of the hard men create strong times-

   6. LPLouise Perry2:54

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson2:54

      ... weak men, weak times, blah, blah, blah?

   8. LPLouise Perry2:57

      Loose women create... (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson2:59

      Yeah. (laughs)

   10. LPLouise Perry2:59

       Yeah, right, okay, okay. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, I think it's kind of natural to have... I think there's always a bit of a rollercoaster within culture, because you reach a point where, um, you know, whatever particular excess becomes obvious, and then people start quietly thinking, "Hang on, I don't really like this." And then some people start saying loudly, "I don't like this." And then, you know, everyone kind of joins in.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:25

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LPLouise Perry3:26

       You know, so on forever through history. Um, what's different about this one, of course, is that we invented the pill. So previous periods of licentiousness, they didn't have the technological means to sort of go all the way with it.

   13. CWChris Williamson3:42

       There was a glass ceiling on how licentious you could be without incurring a ton of costs.

   14. LPLouise Perry3:46

       Yeah. Like, you always had some people, some wo- I mean, 'cause it's women who, like, carry the, literally carry the consequences of, um, of sex outside marriage, right? There were always some women who, either because they had to, 'cause they were in prostitution, 'cause they were poor, or because they were, like, crazy aristocrats who just could be eccentric and get away with it, who would, who would behave unusually. But most women in the middle, you know, having sex is probably the most consequential thing a woman can do without contraception. So most women would take that decision very, very seriously, for obvious reasons, up until the '60s, and then it's all out the window. And we can't un-invent that. Like, the pill is not gonna get un-invented.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:33

       Mm.

   16. LPLouise Perry4:34

       Even if all these... I mean, there is a little bit of a reaction of the kind of, what I think of as the Goop class, right? (laughs) Like, like women who are really into-

   17. CWChris Williamson4:43

       Here we go.

   18. LPLouise Perry4:43

       ... women who are really into wellness.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:45

       The Goop class?

   20. LPLouise Perry4:47

       Yeah. Like, really into, into-

   21. CWChris Williamson4:49

       Goop?

   22. LPLouise Perry4:49

       ... Gwyneth Paltrow. Yeah. Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson4:51

       What's, what d'you, why is Goop... What's she got to do with Goop? What's that?

   24. LPLouise Perry4:55

       Because there's this recognition, which I think is true, that hormonal birth control is bad for you, basically.

   25. CWChris Williamson4:59

       Mm-hmm.

   26. LPLouise Perry5:00

       And so there's a, it's, it's not coming from traditional Catholics or anything like that. It's coming from women who are, I think, justifiably concerned about the health effects-

   27. CWChris Williamson5:10

       Mm-hmm.

   28. LPLouise Perry5:11

       ... who are doing things like fertility tracking rather than hormonal birth control. Like, that's happening, but I don't think that, I don't think that heralds a mass sort of rejection of the pill.

   29. CWChris Williamson5:22

       O- okay. There's, can you dig into the Goop class for me then? What are they doing?

   30. LPLouise Perry5:26

       (laughs) So, like, Natural Cycles, for instance, if you've heard of this.
3. 11:52 – 15:05

   Young People’s Views on Sex in Movies

   1. CWChris Williamson11:52

      generations don't think sex is necessary to the plots of most movies and TV shows. That's according to a recent study from UCLA. Researchers interviewed 1,500 individuals between the ages of 10 and 24 about the way that they're interacting with media. Those between the ages of 13 and 24 were asked if they thought sex was needed for the plot in entertainment, and 47.5% of respondents said it was not. They also said they wanted to see less romance on screen, 44%, and more content centered around platonic friendships, 51.5%. In a video UCLA released in conjunction with the survey, 16-year-old respondent, Anna, said, "When there's media with too much sex in, me and my friends often feel uncomfortable." She later added, "I feel that it is way too graphic." The survey also quoted pop star Olivia Rodrigo's answer to the question of whether or not she watched the HBO series, The Idol. "I don't have the desire to. I remember walking out of Barbie and being like, 'Wow, it's so long since I've seen a movie that is female-centered in a way that isn't sexual or about her pain or her being traumatized.'" What do you make of that?

   2. LPLouise Perry12:53

      Interesting. Um, so is it just the girls who are, who are reacting against it, does it say?

   3. CWChris Williamson12:57

      I'm not sure. Uh, researchers say-

   4. LPLouise Perry12:59

      Because it's like, I mean-

   5. CWChris Williamson12:59

      ... 1,500 individuals.

   6. LPLouise Perry13:01

      Okay.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:02

      Uh, no, it seems like it was, it seems like it was both, uh, males and females that were saying that.

   8. LPLouise Perry13:06

      I have got three possible explanations come to mind. The first is it's the girls not liking porn culture. Fair enough.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:12

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LPLouise Perry13:13

       I think that it's not hard to find women, young women, who've been raised in this, you know, who had the internet a- access from the get-go, who absolutely hate porn culture, like, hate what the boys are expecting from them, all of this.

   11. CWChris Williamson13:26

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LPLouise Perry13:26

       It might be that. It might be, um, differential fertility rates already having an impact in terms of the conservatism and religiosity of young people, because, you know, um, like in America, for the first time in 60, 70 years, you've actually seen a decline in pro-LGBT attitudes among young people.

   13. CWChris Williamson13:52

       Wow. Where's that coming from?

   14. LPLouise Perry13:54

       Well, my guess is that it's coming from the fact that basically since the pill, more-

   15. CWChris Williamson14:00

       There's only conservatives that are having kids.

   16. LPLouise Perry14:01

       ... more conservative, more religious people are having kids, yeah. And then that's already starting to play out in terms of the younger generations being more religious and conservative.

   17. CWChris Williamson14:07

       We're seeing that male-female, uh, liberal-conservative divide amongst-

   18. LPLouise Perry14:12

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson14:12

       ... kids as well though, right?

   20. LPLouise Perry14:14

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson14:14

       So presumably, if you split that polling down, but it seems like everybody's shifting a little bit further right.

   22. LPLouise Perry14:20

       That's plausible.

   23. CWChris Williamson14:21

       Yeah.

   24. LPLouise Perry14:21

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson14:22

       All right. And what was the third one?

   26. LPLouise Perry14:23

       Uh, like xenoestrogens. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson14:28

       (laughs)

   28. LPLouise Perry14:28

       It's possible, isn't it?

   29. CWChris Williamson14:29

       Everything... All roads lead back to Alex Jones, ultimately.

   30. LPLouise Perry14:33

       Yeah, I mean, he was sort of onto something, wasn't he? I mean, uh, but it is possible that the sex recession, so-called, is partly hormonal, is partly caused by... I mean, it might partly be caused by women being on hormonal birth control, which is changing their sexuality.
4. 15:05 – 20:19

   Birth Control is Making Weak Men

   1. CWChris Williamson15:05

      she taught me that male testosterone levels are mediated by the fertility of the women in their local ecology. So, if you are a, uh, male in their 20s, but you happen to be around a bunch of other men or a bunch of other grandmothers perhaps, or a bunch of children-

   2. LPLouise Perry15:24

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:25

      ... your testosterone levels drop.

   4. LPLouise Perry15:28

      Interesting.

   5. CWChris Williamson15:28

      And what you have are women who are very highly artificially suppressing their fertility. So, men are able to smell the T-shirt of a woman and be able to pick the one, the one that they're most attractive to, is the w- attracted to... Is the one who is currently at that stage of her cycle, uh, sh- she's currently fertile, et cetera, et cetera. They can see... They've done studies where men watch women's silhouettes walking.

   6. LPLouise Perry15:52

      Mm.

   7. CWChris Williamson15:53

      And the women who are currently, uh, during their seven-day you-can-get-me-pregnant period, they're the ones that they're most attracted to. The fucking silhouette of the way they walk displays the current-

   8. LPLouise Perry16:04

      And h- and high heels replicate that. That's the idea.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:06

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LPLouise Perry16:06

       The high heels make you walk in that distinctive way-

   11. CWChris Williamson16:09

       Move, jiggle in that way.

   12. LPLouise Perry16:09

       ... that make you, that make you look like you're ovulating.

   13. CWChris Williamson16:11

       So, you have this recursive, uh, uh, feedback loop of hormonal birth control-

   14. LPLouise Perry16:15

       Mm.

   15. CWChris Williamson16:15

       ... causes women to select for men who are more providers rather than protectors.

   16. LPLouise Perry16:19

       Mm.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:20

       They want provisioners, right? They want the, um, academic and the resources more agreeable.

   18. LPLouise Perry16:25

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson16:25

       They then either come off or don't come off birth control, but find that they're... Come out of this fucking hormonal fugue state, "Oh my God, who am I in a relationship with?" But you also have this effect on men, too, not only socially, in, "I notice that lots of women seem to be attracted to Timothée Chalamet, who's painting his nails and kind of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

   20. LPLouise Perry16:43

       Yep.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:44

       But the genuine physiological, hormonal response to men just being around lots of women who are on hormonal birth control. Now, processed foods, not enough time outside, not enough time with vitamin D, not enough time with friends, da-da-da-da-da, but there's a big X factor apparently amongst, uh, testosterone researchers, who don't know why men's T levels have dropped-

   22. LPLouise Perry17:09

       Mm.

   23. CWChris Williamson17:10

       ... the amount that they have. Right? It's about one percent a year, every year, since, I think, 1950.

   24. LPLouise Perry17:16

       Wow.

   25. CWChris Williamson17:16

       So it's like... And then that goes to 100, and then it's that again, and it goes to 100. So, it's not how we're in minus fucking, uh, testosterone soon. But, uh, yeah, so hormonal birth control has a lot to answer for, I think.

   26. LPLouise Perry17:28

       It's a really tricky trade-off, isn't it? Because, uh, like, there are clear downsides to having a bunch of low T men, you know, in terms of, in terms of fertility, in terms of men and women just fancying each other and like having functional relationships. But also, like high testosterone is also associated with crime and violence.

   27. CWChris Williamson17:48

       Yeah.

   28. LPLouise Perry17:49

       So, which, you know, do we choose to have a society of kind of-... sexless, incredibly like online...

   29. CWChris Williamson18:02

       Placid, sorry people.

   30. LPLouise Perry18:04

       Yeah. Who also are quite chill. (laughs)
5. 20:19 – 25:23

   The Gen-Z Pushback Against Romance

   1. CWChris Williamson20:19

      pushback against romance, this is what I thought was super interesting, right? So we've got, uh, y- your spectrum of prudishness and licentiousness.

   2. LPLouise Perry20:27

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:28

      But it's not just the, uh, short-termism of, uh, physical desires being satisfied. There's also another level to this which is to do with romance and how central your connection to another person, a significant other is, right? 'Cause that kind of fits on the prudishness licentiousness scale, but it's also not exactly the same. Like that would be something that's slightly different. Like how important is it that you find a significant other? And-

   4. LPLouise Perry20:55

      Mm.

   5. CWChris Williamson20:56

      ... I think that at least a little bit of that UCLA study probably is Rachel Zeigler, Ziglar as the new Snow White saying, "W- we don't need a prince to come and save her." She didn't have a prince. She had a stalker. Um, like sh-

   6. LPLouise Perry21:12

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:12

      ... a sleeping beauty can't consent. Uh, like I, I wonder if it's not just a pushback against the sex side of stuff, but the no-mance, right? Just against romance culture in general. Uh, HSBC got Emily Ratajkowski, the tennis player to come and do, uh, Fairer Tales: Uh, Princesses Doing It For Themselves, which was a rewriting of Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White where instead of waiting for a prince, the princesses went and started their own businesses on their own-

   8. LPLouise Perry21:44

      Mm.

   9. CWChris Williamson21:45

      ... and invested their money wisely. So I think, (laughs) I think because HSBC is really where we go for like modern fucking dating culture.

   10. LPLouise Perry21:54

       Yeah. Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson21:55

       So yeah, I just think that this Gen Z pushback against what may on the surface appear to be about sex, may actually run deeper.

   12. LPLouise Perry22:03

       The thing is that they're sort of right. The sort of a, a man, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle old line. Or the line from Gloria Steinem I always thought was really clever which is, "We became the men we once wanted to marry." I.e. second wave feminists were able to do that. And, uh, I mean, I always, I always think there's about the sort of, the disposability of men in modern culture, which is totally real. You know, the, the, like that basic red pill position is true. There is this problem of men basically not feeling having purpose, not feeling needed, whatever. W- women not feeling as if they need husbands because like they kinda don't, you know?

   13. CWChris Williamson22:44

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LPLouise Perry22:45

       If they don't have to... If they're not having children, or even if they do have children, you know, they can participate... Like it turns out that actually women being slightly more conscientious than men are, for instance, and slightly more agreeable than men are, is actually really great in a sort of laptop job-

   15. CWChris Williamson23:02

       Yep.

   16. LPLouise Perry23:03

       ... economy.

   17. CWChris Williamson23:03

       Brain based instead of brawn based.

   18. LPLouise Perry23:04

       Yeah. Like women are actually slightly better. Not, not at the, not at the tech nice. You've still got overwhelmingly male CEOs and things like that, but in the kind of the, the median range, women are actually kind of better employees-

   19. CWChris Williamson23:16

       Mm.

   20. LPLouise Perry23:16

       ... in service economies.

   21. CWChris Williamson23:18

       Mm-hmm.

   22. LPLouise Perry23:20

       You know, the problem that men are facing is not actually feminism as such, although feminism has kind of accelerated some of these phenomena. It's just, it's basically technology and affluence. In highly technologically sophisticated and affluent societies, men who are not in this incredibly, you know, far right tale, super successful, intelligent, whatever, just normal men have less to do. We don't need brawn. Like when, when we invented the internal combustion engine, the importance of male muscle power-... dropped like a stone.

   23. CWChris Williamson23:59

       Diminished.

   24. LPLouise Perry24:00

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson24:00

       Yeah, and then as soon as you had equality in terms of access to education and employment-

   26. LPLouise Perry24:06

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson24:06

       ... and you'd pivoted already from that brawn-based to brain-based economy, it turns out that women have a kind of, a genetic unfair advantage with the current working environment.

   28. LPLouise Perry24:15

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson24:15

       Which meant that the, you know, like... L- l- this is something that the manosphere or the red pill never really gets right, like when they talk about how, uh, women in the past and the culture that they applied to their dating made them happier, they forget the fact that women were largely financial prisoners-

   30. LPLouise Perry24:35

       Mm-hmm.
6. 25:23 – 27:54

   Is Patriarchy the Best System?

   1. LPLouise Perry25:23

      pay gap is an artifact, one, of the fact that there are some, a small number of very, very high-earning men, and two, of, it's basically, it- it's basically a maternity gap. It's actually-

   2. CWChris Williamson25:31

      Right.

   3. LPLouise Perry25:31

      ... just the fact that having children-

   4. CWChris Williamson25:33

      Motherhood tax.

   5. LPLouise Perry25:33

      Yeah, having children means that you can't operate in the workplace in the way that a man can. Like at the very least when you're very pregnant and you've just given birth, you know? But women are choosing not to do that, right? So if you, if you, if you don't have children and you are a sort of typical woman in terms of being slightly more conscientious, slightly more agreeable, having all of these, you know, being more, probably mean more punctual, being a better employee, you do basically have more of an advantage in the workplace than another man. But this is completely unsustainable (laughs) because of going back to the whole birth rates thing. Like, any culture that just stops reproducing itself is not gonna last. It's either gonna just wither away and die or it's going to be overtaken by some other culture. And I, and I sort of think, like, the, the, the answer to the riddle of why every culture that we see on historical record that has sustained itself and flourished has been patriarchal is possibly because a culture has to be patriarchal in order to reproduce itself. Like, that's my black pill (laughs) -

   6. CWChris Williamson26:40

      (sighs)

   7. LPLouise Perry26:40

      ... reading this stuff.

   8. CWChris Williamson26:41

      Dig into that.

   9. LPLouise Perry26:42

      Because it's very hard to be, to have lots of kids as a woman. You can maybe have one or two, just about, and it not, like, affect your career. But there's just a straightforward clash between the labor market and reproduction for women that you can kind of get away with if you make enough money, because you can pay for nannies and all this kinda stuff. But for most women, it's just, like... That's just, that's, that, they're ir- they're almost irreconcilable. You have to, you have to trade off something. And what most women are choosing to do, it seems, is that they're having fewer children.

   10. CWChris Williamson27:23

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LPLouise Perry27:23

       Which for them personally might actually, you know, the truth is, like, children are expensive and knackering. Like, they're wonderful, they are wonderful, but if you've not had them, you don't know how wonderful they are. Like, once you've had your children, you just love them more than, more than life itself.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:37

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LPLouise Perry27:37

       Like, every mother I know says, "I would unhesitatingly die for my children." But if you've never experienced that kind of love and it's kind of theoretical-

   14. CWChris Williamson27:47

       Abstract.

   15. LPLouise Perry27:47

       ... yeah, then why wouldn't you say, "Actually no, I'd rather make this ne- next promotion"?

   16. CWChris Williamson27:52

       Well, uh, the

7. 27:54 – 33:00

   How Culture Impacts Our Views of Sex

   1. CWChris Williamson27:54

      modern culture prioritizes pleasure in the here and now-

   2. LPLouise Perry27:57

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:57

      ... and short-termism over everything else.

   4. LPLouise Perry27:59

      I think human beings just do that as well.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:01

      M- you know, but maybe there was... I don't know. M- m- m- maybe you're right, but it seems like there was definitely a preparedness to, uh, invest now for returns in the future more so. Our ability to... Th- the marshmallow test was more effective 100 years ago for most.

   6. LPLouise Perry28:18

      I think because culture kind of... I think culture serves, good culture serves the purpose of channeling people's... Making people more long-termist.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:26

      Mm-hmm.

   8. LPLouise Perry28:27

      Because our natural inclination is to be short-termist, most of us, and... Or, I mean, the thing is with having children is, like, you, you're short-termist 'cause you wanna have sex and then, oh whoops, a baby came along.

   9. CWChris Williamson28:38

      (laughs)

   10. LPLouise Perry28:38

       Like, normally you don't have to think about that.

   11. CWChris Williamson28:40

       Yeah, that was evolution's big trick, wasn't it?

   12. LPLouise Perry28:42

       Yeah, exactly, but now-

   13. CWChris Williamson28:43

       You thought you were just having fun.

   14. LPLouise Perry28:44

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson28:44

       Guess what? The next 19 years of your life are blocked off. Yeah.

   16. LPLouise Perry28:47

       And, and I mean, there's like, there's a certain elegance to that, right? But we've lost that because of contraception. And now there are still groups, there are still cultures, there are still, there are still people who just love babies and will have loads of kids because they just get so much joy from babies, which is great. Um, like, I'm one of those people. I would rather have loads of kids and earn less money.

   17. CWChris Williamson29:08

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LPLouise Perry29:08

       I've, like, made that rational decision. But a lot of people, for a lot of people, that's not an obvious choice. Some cultures are still channeling people into being more traditionalists, being more long-termist. But the mainstream culture absolutely isn't doing that. And the, the very likely consequence of that is that... I mean, like, I can't remember the numbers exactly, but South Korea, you'll know, has the lowest fertility rate in the world.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:33

       For every 100 South Koreans, there will be four great-grandchildren.

   20. LPLouise Perry29:37

       Right. Like, there's never been a plague that has knocked out that many people.

   21. CWChris Williamson29:43

       There's a 96% extinction rate over the next 100 years-

   22. LPLouise Perry29:46

       Incredible.

   23. CWChris Williamson29:46

       ... of Koreans.

   24. LPLouise Perry29:47

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson29:47

       Remembering that we shut down the entire world for something that kills 1 to 2% of people.

   26. LPLouise Perry29:51

       Yeah.It's crazy.

   27. CWChris Williamson29:52

       Yeah.

   28. LPLouise Perry29:52

       It's the most incredible evolutionary bottleneck that we're going through.

   29. CWChris Williamson29:55

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   30. LPLouise Perry31:07

       Yeah.
8. 33:00 – 43:55

   Are Women Happier Now Than 70 Years Ago?

   1. CWChris Williamson33:00

   2. LPLouise Perry33:00

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:00

      So, uh, you know, uh, o- one of the promises, I had, uh, Mary Eberstadt on the show a couple of weeks ago, who's just phenomenal.

   4. LPLouise Perry33:06

      Mm.

   5. CWChris Williamson33:06

      Um, uh, I feel like she's your spirit animal. Um, and she was talking to me about very similar sorts of things, that the promises that women were given previously, uh, you know, the freedom, the liberation. Ultimately, do you think that most women on average are more happy with modern sexual culture than they were previously, let's say, 60 or 70 years ago?

   6. LPLouise Perry33:35

      Um, I think no, but the outliers are quite, um, striking. So there are some... (laughs) The thing is that having the kind of, uh, let's say, like mildly patriarchal kind of structure where the assumption is that the men do participate most in public life and do the bulk of... Well, I mean, it depends on what era you're talking about materially, right? So in subsistence cultures, women do actually do loads of economic work. They just do economic work that is compatible with also looking after little children. So like, the man goes out in the field and collects raw materials, and the woman processes the raw materials at home while minding the toddlers and, like, sharing the, the burden of, of childcare with her sisters and cousins or whatever. Um, the more recent model of the breadwinner, where the man goes out and earns all the money and the woman stays at home and does all of the housework is, is, is kind of historically unusual. It's not that, it's not that bad. Like actually, it's, it's, it's fine if and only if your husband isn't a tyrant.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:41

      Mm.

   8. LPLouise Perry34:41

      But if your husband is a tyrant, it's completely disastrous. So it's like for most people, it's fine. For most women, it's fine, and probably is actually better than like the current, the sta- the status quo where women have to still do disproportionate amounts of childcare-

   9. CWChris Williamson34:56

      (coughs)

   10. LPLouise Perry34:56

       ... and housework and do all of the, you know, all the pregnancy, obviously, all the breastfeeding, obviously, plus going out to work, right? This is what feminists call the second shift, that you end up doing two jobs. That's, I think, worse, actually, for most women.

   11. CWChris Williamson35:09

       What was it that you... Didn't you say you'd worked it out that you were doing a full-time job breastfeeding?

   12. LPLouise Perry35:15

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson35:15

       You were doing 40 hours a week of breastfeeding?

   14. LPLouise Perry35:17

       Yeah. Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson35:18

       That's the third shift.

   16. LPLouise Perry35:19

       Yeah, exactly, like crazy levels-

   17. CWChris Williamson35:21

       The breastpace shift.

   18. LPLouise Perry35:22

       ... of (laughs) of crazy levels of work that you have to do, which is obviously, you know, joyful, meaningful-

   19. CWChris Williamson35:27

       Yeah, yeah.

   20. LPLouise Perry35:28

       ... et cetera. But it, uh, like, there are only so many hours in the day. You n- like, you n- (laughs) It isn't feasible unless you have loads of money available to you or whatever. It isn't feasible to not have a husband, father who goes out and does all of that-

   21. CWChris Williamson35:47

       Mm.

   22. LPLouise Perry35:48

       ... and still be as good a mother as you want to be.

   23. CWChris Williamson35:51

       (laughs) It's... I'm so interested in paradoxes. You know, Mary taught me about a ton of them. Uh, b- w- you have the pill.... gets introduced, increase in single motherhood, increase in abortions. Like, paradox, interesting. Another one that I found from Candice Blake, who's over in, uh, Australia, is that (laughs) gender inequality in the pay gap between men and women positively predicts both male and female satisfaction in relationships.

   24. LPLouise Perry36:20

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson36:20

       That the more unequal the earning opportunities are for men and women, skewed in the direction of men, not women, the happier both men and women are in their outcomes in relationships.

   26. LPLouise Perry36:32

       And stay-at-home dads is a very strong predictor of divorce.

   27. CWChris Williamson36:35

       Yeah. If the-

   28. LPLouise Perry36:36

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson36:36

       ... uh, woman is the primary breadwinner, men are 50% more likely to use erectile dysfunction medication. (laughs) Uh, you know, increases in domestic violence.

   30. LPLouise Perry36:46

       Mm.
9. 43:55 – 55:20

   10 Years On From #MeToo

   1. CWChris Williamson43:55

      One, one other thing I wanted to really dig into, what do you think the fallout of Me Too has been, now approaching 10 years hence?

   2. LPLouise Perry44:05

      I often hear from men that they are now more reluctant to go up to a woman in a bar or whatever, that there's this problem of fear of being falsely accused of something. And so, I think... I mean, I believe them, you know, if that, if some men are experiencing that. I'm sure, though, what's gone on is that the men who were already sexually aggressive and likely to actually be, you know, Me Too perpetrators haven't changed their behavior at all. And the men who started being really careful were probably fine to begin with.

   3. CWChris Williamson44:38

      If you were a raper, the-

   4. LPLouise Perry44:40

      People weren't listening.

   5. CWChris Williamson44:40

      ... recent social media campaign probably... Uh, uh, well, they've got a hashtag on Twitter, #IdBetterStopGoingAroundRaping.

   6. LPLouise Perry44:46

      (laughs) Yeah, which is, uh... I mean, there's a... I always... I wrote about it in my first book, and it applies to this as, as to loads of things, the problem of normal distribution, where you have some trait which is arranged on a bell curve. And the problem is that if you apply some intervention, so whatever that is, like a, a social movement like Me Too or some policy change or whatever, probably what you wanna do is you wanna actually target one of the tails. You wanna... You're like, "Oh, so we've got the... you know, we've got a bell curve of sexual aggression, and there's this, this, like, most aggressive end who are causing no end of harm. What we wanna do is make them stop." But it's ve- y- you can't just apply an intervention to that, to that point on the normal distribution. Like, it's gonna shift in one way or another, and everyone is gonna be affected.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:32

      Yeah, you're smearing the entire group with the same solution.

   8. LPLouise Perry45:34

      So what you end up with is moving the threshold for being, like, reluctant to go up to a woman in a bar or whatever, slightly, just to mean that, like, some of the nice guys are not doing it. I... But that doesn't actually improve... It doesn't affect the rapists.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:46

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LPLouise Perry45:47

       And it doesn't improve women's experience of it.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:49

       David Buss's book Bad Men talks about, uh, it's one man doing a thousand sexual assaults, not a thousand men doing one sexual assault.

   12. LPLouise Perry45:56

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson45:57

       You know, it's repeat-

   14. LPLouise Perry45:57

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson45:58

       ... offenders over and over and over and over again.

   16. LPLouise Perry46:00

       Yeah, absolutely.

   17. CWChris Williamson46:00

       Uh, a- and unfortunately, as well, repeat victims. Th- there is something about the way that... A- again, this isn't victim blaming, but it is, like, something about the way that women hold themselves-

   18. LPLouise Perry46:11

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson46:11

       ... where they showed this to, I think, maybe criminals in prison or assaulters or assault- y- m- men that had assaulted people and showed them a number of women walking-

   20. LPLouise Perry46:22

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:22

       ... and they asked them to pick which one they would attack if they were going to.

   22. LPLouise Perry46:26

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson46:27

       And they converged on the same women. Uh, so, you know, for all that we can say, you know, th- it's not about wearing the skirt, it shouldn't be about being in the dark alley at the wrong time, all the rest of it, like, correct. But there is something about particular women that, uh, causes predators to see them as viable prey.

   24. LPLouise Perry46:48

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson46:49

       Does that excuse it? No. Does that, you know... Is that, uh, them choosing it? Also no.

   26. LPLouise Perry46:53

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson46:54

       But, like, this is just the way that the world appears to be.

   28. LPLouise Perry46:57

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson46:57

       It's ruthless.

   30. LPLouise Perry46:58

       Yeah, and it drives me mad that we tell lies to girls all the time about this.
10. 55:20 – 1:10:49

    Why Men Aren’t Approaching Women

    1. CWChris Williamson55:20

       have never approached a woman in person in their life, and uh, like even a higher percentage, 18 to 30, haven't approached a woman in the last year.

    2. LPLouise Perry55:28

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson55:29

       Is this downstream from Me Too?

    4. LPLouise Perry55:33

       I have a slightly weird take on this, which is that actually the thing you hear about as sort of... The thing that Gen X people talk about of going up to someone in a bar and this being a way of striking up relationships, I think that was a very brief period history, sort of post-sexual revolution but pre-internet, where that was considered normal. Um, and I'm slightly too young to have ever actually experienced that. The normal way, actually, that people start relationships in the vast majority of cultures is to be like, it, it is like semi-arranged marriage, right? Like not the full, you've-never-met-this-person-before, you know, 13-year-olds, whatever, getting betrothed, like not like that. But the sort of you're introduced by family members, mutual friends, you're known in the community, you go to the same church, whatever it is. And then your, both of your families, like, consent to the marriage, and it works out okay. But the o- but the expectation isn't like... The expectation of marriage up until relatively recently was that you would have an economic relationship, a, you know, and then a reproductive relationship, but you weren't best friends.

    5. CWChris Williamson56:47

       Mm-hmm.

    6. LPLouise Perry56:48

       And actually, I don't think, I don't think m- husbands and wives used to talk to each other (laughs) as much-

    7. CWChris Williamson56:53

       (laughs)

    8. LPLouise Perry56:53

       ... as they do now. I think, and people used to have much more homosocial kind of lives.

    9. CWChris Williamson56:57

       Mm-hmm.

    10. LPLouise Perry56:57

        You'd hang out with other men, you'd hang out with other women. You wouldn't necessarily hang out a lot with the opposite sex, including your spouse. Um, th- so this idea that, like, the going up to a person in the bar is like the normal and natural way of starting relationships I don't think is historically accurate.

    11. CWChris Williamson57:14

        That's interesting. So the male aversion, felt fear of approach anxiety, which every guy-

    12. LPLouise Perry57:23

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CWChris Williamson57:23

        ... listening is aware of, apart from the psychopaths, right?

    14. LPLouise Perry57:26

        (laughs)

    15. CWChris Williamson57:26

        There is a girl that I find attractive that I either know or don't know or partly know or whatever.

    16. LPLouise Perry57:30

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson57:31

        "Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you," is kind of like a miniature war that you have to go through, and the felt sense of palpable fear-

    18. LPLouise Perry57:40

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson57:40

        ... is just ripping you apart inside. That isn't, uh, o- or the modern aversion to that isn't some novel new problem. It was a, uh, in your opinion here, a bar that kind of never really needed to be gotten over in the first place in some regards because you had seen each other at church for ages, or her father owned the farm next to your father's land and you guys had known bla bla bla, like...

    20. LPLouise Perry58:07

        Yeah, yeah. People have much more kind of static social lives.

    21. CWChris Williamson58:09

        Mm-hmm.

    22. LPLouise Perry58:10

        So yeah, just approaching some stranger and ending up getting married to her is not...

    23. CWChris Williamson58:17

        I had this, uh, I had this conversation with a guy called Mads Laursen, who is a mating ideology researcher. I'll send it to you. It's phenomenal. And he talks about this, uh, all of the different, uh, arrangements that people went through and the, uh, romantic to the confluent, which is what we've moved through most recently, has left us with a really interesting vestige, which is previously it was they owned the, the farm next door. It was almost like a tactical, uh, marriage between the two of you.

    24. LPLouise Perry58:47

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson58:47

        And then it's no, no, no, no. You're supposed to, uh, uh, you guys are supposed to be together forever. You know, there is supposed to be deeper meaning instantiated in this. But then as soon as you have the sexual revolution, you have confluence, so for as long as you can benefit me and I can benefit you. I think even Mia Khalifa, who obviously paragon of sexual virtue, uh, said on a recent interview that, um, uh, people think that marriage is some sacred thing. It's not. It's just a piece of paper, and if this person isn't helping you grow, it's time to move on. Um, so they just-

    26. LPLouise Perry59:18

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CWChris Williamson59:18

        ... confluent, like, uh, ideology there, you know.

    28. LPLouise Perry59:21

        Helping you grow. (laughs)

    29. CWChris Williamson59:22

        Front and center. You need to be helping them grow.

    30. LPLouise Perry59:24

        What does that mean?
11. 1:10:49 – 1:19:09

    The Mental Health Crisis of Girls

    1. CWChris Williamson1:10:49

       a lot of the stats coming out about the happiness, or lack of, amongst young girls.

    2. LPLouise Perry1:10:53

       Mm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:10:54

       You know, 60% of girls aged 12 to 16 have regular or persistent feelings of hopelessness and stuff like that. What's your assessment of the current mental health of young women?

    4. LPLouise Perry1:11:07

       I mean, it seems to be really bad. The, the, I mean, there's all the obvious stuff, um, about why, you know, young people, they don't go outside enough, they don't do enough exercise, all that. But that's, that's true for boys as well. I think, um, and Jonathan Haidt's done lots of work on this, that the main thing that's going on for girls is social media. Because girls use social media differently from boys. One of the ways that girls use social media is to talk to each other, right? Girls are so... Like, you know that all, basically all contagious mental illnesses start among and predominate among teenage girls. Things like, like something like anorexia, for instance, is like a classic example. Or, or like now, apparently all these teenage girls have got Tourette's that they've a- acquired from TikTok.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:11:55

       There was a period where, uh, multiple personality disorder and the-

    6. LPLouise Perry1:11:59

       Precisely.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:11:59

       ... the, the others were coming out on TikTok too.

    8. LPLouise Perry1:12:02

       Precisely. And I think it's because, it's kind of like that witchy thing we were talking about earlier, like women being very, very socially sensitive-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:08

       Mm-hmm.

    10. LPLouise Perry1:12:09

        ... for obvious evolutionary reasons, you know, that women being smaller, not having the kind of physical capacities that men do, the main advantage you have in terms of your own survival and the survival of your children, is making alliances.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:12:25

        Mm.

    12. LPLouise Perry1:12:25

        ... particularly among oth- other women. You know, re- recruiting other women to assist you in your endeavors and whatever requires this social sensitivity. And I think that that can misfire in terms of, say, being so receptive to whatever, getting Tourette's from TikTok-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:12:46

        (laughs)

    14. LPLouise Perry1:12:46

        ... that you, that, you know, you do, you do yourself harm basically. I mean, it's not terrible harm, but like anorexia is terrible harm, right, that you might acquire sort of memetically. Um, and I think also it means that girls... I mean, one of the things I always think about Inst- Instagram, it's like the i- it's the image-based social media which seems to be particularly bad for girls. Um, Twitter is bad for journalists, it sends them completely insane. TikTok and Instagram sends teenage girls insane. I think it's because, um, one of the things that, uh, looking at these, these, these platforms, one of the things it does to girls is it gives them a completely false impression of their intersexual competition pool. That normally they would look around at the young women they actually know who are as like-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:13:30

        Plain and normal as them.

    16. LPLouise Perry1:13:31

        ... skinny and acne-ridden as they are, yeah. And think, "Oh, okay, right, yeah, this is like, this is basically my, my like competition pool for acquiring whichever like equally mediocre-looking man," right? Whereas now you look at Instagram and you see the most beautiful women in the world airbrushed and having had plastic surgery, and you think that's your intersexual competition. So I think it just kind of, I think it just plays complete havoc with their minds. And-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:14:00

        This also explains the, uh, social contagion theory for F-to-M transitions.

    18. LPLouise Perry1:14:07

        Yeah. Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:14:07

        Because if the... You've heard of the, uh, left-handedness argument for trans people, right? That i- i- as soon as you remove the societal impositions and judgment, people can truly be their real selves.

    20. LPLouise Perry1:14:20

        Yeah. Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:14:21

        It's like, well, okay, if that's the case, and that very well may contribute-

    22. LPLouise Perry1:14:24

        Hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:14:25

        ... if that was entirely the case, why is it four girls that all sit together at the same lunch table in school?

    24. LPLouise Perry1:14:31

        Right.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:14:31

        Like, why is it not evenly smeared-

    26. LPLouise Perry1:14:33

        Right.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:14:33

        ... across the entire populous? It's not, it clumps together.

    28. LPLouise Perry1:14:36

        Right.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:14:36

        Right? Um-

    30. LPLouise Perry1:14:37

        It's also gone from being, like diagnoses of gender dysphoria have gone from being pri- primarily a male thing to being primarily a female thing, like by a big margin. Like the huge explosion as being among teenage girls specifically.
12. 1:19:09 – 1:23:08

    Do Pedophiles Need Sympathy?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:19:09

       uh, uh, sexual predisposition or the, the, the, pedophilia being a sexual, uh, orientation. Peter Thiel's got a famous question, which is, "What do you believe that most people would disagree with?" And for a long time, that was mine, that, uh, non-offending pedophiles need, need way more sympathy than we give them-

    2. LPLouise Perry1:19:28

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:19:28

       ... uh, because I've had a bunch of neuroscientists on the show, and they've put people in FMRIs with arousal responses, uh, and they can show, uh, non-offending pedophiles everything. They can throw every sexual kink under the sun at them. Nothing.

    4. LPLouise Perry1:19:47

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:19:48

       And then they are able to show them something that tickles their fancy and it-

    6. LPLouise Perry1:19:53

       It's really disturbing, isn't it? It would be so much, it would actually be so much more, like, psychologically reassuring, which is why I think most people prefer this explanation, to think that it's just some manifestation of evil or something, or it's under people's control, 'cause it's just, it's awful to think-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:20:08

       It's so uncomfi- uh, uncomfortable.

    8. LPLouise Perry1:20:09

       ... imagine being cursed with that.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:20:11

       Yeah.

    10. LPLouise Perry1:20:12

        Awful.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:20:13

        I remember learning about it. I was at uni, and there was, I was dating this girl, a smart doctor, a medical student girl, and she taught me about this, and, uh, she'd given a presentation on stage basically saying like, you know, "The, we need to give these people more sympathy," uh, because, y- it wasn't that long ago that gay men and, were seen basically as the same. Now, the difference being that gay men could enact, or, or not they couldn't, but they were i- in the right future able to enact it without doing something that was taking advantage of a, a person that can't consent.

Episode duration: 1:39:08