The Brutal Tactics of Female Sexual Competition - Dr Dani Sulikowski

1. 0:00 – 8:14

   Do All Women Participate in Intrasexual Competition?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How do you describe your area of research focus?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski0:05

      So my research focus is the evolutionary psychology of human behavior, and in the last few years in particular, I've really narrowed that focus down a bit to look at female intrasexual competition, which is just a, a big fancy word for how women compete with each other to see who gets the largest share of the population's reproductive success.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:28

      Okay, what is it trying to achieve? Fundamentally, what does female intrasexual competition try to do?

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski0:36

      So the currency of evolution is reproductive success. The genes that promote reproductive success increase in frequency in the population, and so whatever mechanisms and behaviors they produce will also increase in frequency. So female intrasexual competition is the suite of behaviors that have evolved to maximize an individual's, uh, relative reproductive success, not absolute reproductive success, and that's a pretty important point. So you don't need to have as many babies as it's humanly possible to have to win the evolutionary game. What you do need to do is reproduce at a greater rate than the average reproductive rate for your population, and if that continues to happen in your lineage generation after generation, then you increase your representation in that population, and you win the evolutionary game. So it's relative reproductive success that matters. So you can win by increasing your own reproductive success or attempting to inhibit the reproductive success of rivals. Both of those will increase your net reproductive success.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:42

      Okay, so you can put your foot on the gas of how many surviving children you have, or you can try to put your foot on the brake of how many surviving children other women have?

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:53

      Exactly.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:54

      Okay. This doesn't paint women in a particularly flattering light. How, how conscious is this? Is it, is it all women?

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski2:06

      Ooh, excellent. You've hit on my least favorite question straight away. How conscious is this? [chuckles]

   9. CWChris Williamson2:12

      Fuck me! Okay. Thanks, Dani.

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski2:14

       No, that's okay. No, that's, that's fantastic. It's the question I get the most often, and you'd think I would've invested some time in coming up with a better answer. I try to answer it a little bit differently each time in the hope that it's a more satisfactory answer. So how conscious people are, uh, unclear. Unclear, it varies from person to person, and it's probably doesn't really matter very much. So, mmm, understanding what... Very briefly, understanding what consciousness is and for is a really difficult question, and there's no consensus. How it operates with respect to sort of evolved behavioral tendencies is it's develops kind of post hoc justification for what you've done and why you've done it. In fact, that's sort of what consciousness does with all behaviors, really. You ask people why they've done something, they don't know, right? We can, we can do experiments where we manipulate the information that people get, and they don't know we've manipulated that, and then we ask them why they made their decision, and they just make something up, and they don't know they've made something up, right? So people generally don't know why they're doing what they're doing. So the majority of people, um, not just women, but people generally, really don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They don't know why they find this particular person attractive. They don't know it's because the shape of their face signals they, uh, that they have particular levels of testosterone or estrogen that contribute to fertility and predict behavior in really nice, adaptive ways. They just look at someone and go, "Oh, he's hot. She's nice." Right? They don't have to understand why, and so women and men, because intrasexual competition applies to men as well, it's just a completely different ballgame when it comes to men. Um, they don't have to understand that the consequences of their behavior is inhibiting the reproductive success of other women. They just have to be compelled to behave that way. So it doesn't necessitate that women be sort of overtly aware of some nastiness in their behavior. Having said that, though, women are definitely overtly aware of much nastiness in their behavior, as most women will attest to. Most women have been the recipients at some point or another of the bullying behavior from other nasty women.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:24

       Mm.

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski4:24

       So women are certainly have the capacity to be absolutely, directly, overtly, and knowingly nasty and awful to each other. That's, I mean, that's a given. Um, so maybe they're sometimes conscious of the consequences of what they're doing. Sometimes, you know, if you look at it through a, a feminist lens, which is something else that I've talked about a little bit, um, women are very conscious of what they're doing in terms of how the ideologies affect the reproductive success of other women, but they think that's a good thing, right? They think motherhood is a, a form of oppression, and, and marriage is a form of subjugation. And so if you can free women from, from those things, this is obviously certain branches of feminism, not necessarily all, um, but if you can free women from those things, well, that's a great thing. So they can be well aware that this is, you know, reproductively inhibiting ideology without necessarily thinking that they're being mean or nasty or whatever by doing it.

   13. CWChris Williamson5:18

       Yeah, I think as well some women would agree that they have been mean and nasty and that other women have been mean and nasty to them, but i- that's almost kind of like, it's not even, not quite right, but it's still-- that's like the proximate explanation. "She's a bitch. I don't like her. She d- she's annoying. She's a slut," whatever. T- the leap from that to m- some of that behavior is trying to suppress the future child-having potential of that woman, the ul- more ultimate explanation, I guess-

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski5:56

       Yes

   15. CWChris Williamson5:56

       ... Uh, that, that feels like a, a big leap that I think very few women would-... be able to make themselves, even when they've been the recipient of it. I don't know whether m- m- many women would say, "Well, the reason that she ostracized me at work, or the reason that, uh, she vented and did the, uh, bless her heart thing to a f- mutual friend of ours that was gonna tell the rest of the world that I had casual sex last week," like, those things are- it's the game within the game, it's not the game itself. Uh, does that make sense?

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski6:31

       Yeah, it does to some extent, and I think that even though y- you're right, that most women might not make the connection between what's happening and ultimate reproductive success, a lot of women do, and very rightly make the connection between what's happening and physical appearance and physical attractiveness. So a- as I'm sure you're well aware, you know, as would be your listeners, I'm sure, that physical attractiveness is a big part of female mate quality, right? And so that becomes a big part of your sort of value on the mating market, if you like. And women are very well aware that the way that they treat other women, and the way other women treat them, um, is very strongly determined often by their appearance versus the other women's appearances. So that is, you know, that is something that women are very aware of.

   17. CWChris Williamson7:15

       Ex- explain how that... Ex- explain what that dynamic would be. They're aware of other women's appearances?

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski7:20

       Uh, pe- people are very- I th- I mean, I, I, I assume, this is my impression, but I think women are very aware of the phenomenon by which a, an attractive woman introduced into a workplace or a social setting or something, w- you know, is very likely to raise the ire of, you know, potentially many other women, simply because she's attractive, and women will understand that. And, you know, and sometimes when, you know, someone's being picked on or bullied or whatever, they'll say, "Look, it's just because she's jealous." A- and that's frequently correct to some extent. Um, and so I think that, that there is a... I think there is a sort of understood c- relationship between female nastiness, bullying interactions, whatever you want to call it, relational aggression, um, and female appearance. And, and it's not just how attractive she is, but it's also how she dresses. So, you know-

   19. CWChris Williamson8:11

       How much skin she's got.

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski8:12

       Yeah, exactly.

   21. CWChris Williamson8:13

       Yeah.

   22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski8:13

       That, all those things.

   23. CWChris Williamson8:13

       Who was it who did the,

2. 8:14 – 12:23

   Why Are Women So Hard on Each Other’s Looks?

   1. CWChris Williamson8:14

      who did the study where the participants were actually outside of the study waiting to go in? A woman comes past, in one version wearing lots of clothes, in one version being quite exposed, asking for directions, and the behavior of the women is completely different despite the fact that it's the same woman. Who, who did that one?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski8:32

      Oh, I s- I wanna say Marianne Fisher, but I don't think it actually was.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:36

      Okay.

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski8:36

      She's done almost all of the great... Well, I don't think it was, though. I think it's, I think it was someone else, I'm, I feel like I'm wrong about that-

   5. CWChris Williamson8:42

      But what, what it goes to show-

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski8:43

      Yeah, I do know the study

   7. CWChris Williamson8:44

      ... What it goes to show is that, um, women respond differently to the same woman who presents in a different way, and I'm gonna guess that your explanation would be the smaller clothes-wearing, more skin on show woman presents more of a potential sexual rival, and therefore mating threat to these women, than the more demure version. Therefore, ostracizing her helps to make her more hesitant, maybe lowers her self-perception, pushes her outside of the friend group, makes guys not be so attracted to her, et cetera, et cetera, in an attempt to bring that, um, big advertising billboard of sexual availability down.

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski9:29

      Yeah, I mean, more or less all of the above. So it, it's really important to understand female, uh, intrasexual competition signaling. So most of what women do, that is sort of, I, I guess under, um, you know, sort of conventional wisdom, thought to be done to impress men, so, you know, beautiful clothes, makeup, all that, that dolling up. Um, much of that is actually not targeted towards men at all. It's actually targeted towards other women, so it's interpreted by other women as signals of intrasexual aggression and social aggression, dominance, um, those types of things. And if a woman is attractive, it's interpreted in a reasonably negative way. If a woman is less attractive and she's engaging in this sort of type of dolling-up behavior, it's actually seen potentially a little bit more positively. Um, so it'll be seen in a sort of dominant leadership competence type of way, as opposed to a, a more aggressive sort of way, which is how it's seen amongst attractive women. So when, when a woman turns up in a, in a social scenario, and she's signaling some level of, of sexual availability and looking quite attractive while doing it, that is, is itself actually a, an intrasexual competition signal. She's basically sending a signal of sexual aggressiveness out to the women around her, and so the women around her respond to that aggressive signal with a form of aggression, a form of counter-aggression of their own.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:58

      I wonder how many women that are listening have purposefully dressed down when they've been introduced to a new group of girl friends or have been newly, uh, placed into a different office with different coworkers, and stuff like that. I, I have to guess, if you have recognized the game, even if you don't fully understand the ultimate explanation of fertility suppression and ostracization, blah, blah, um, you will know if I turn up with my boobs out, uh, throughout my experience of life being a woman, I've noticed that women don't seem to like it so much when I turn up with my boobs out, so I'm gonna wear something that's a bit different. So you've just been trained like a, a LLM over time to behave in one, one way as opposed to another.

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski11:44

       Yeah, that's right, and I, I would suspect that most women, whether, even whether they realize it or not, um, would certainly moderate their dress in different social circumstances for the benefit of other women, not just for the benefit of, of men, but specifically for the benefit of, of other women. And it's, it, it is no doubt, uh, experientially tuned-... but I suspect, too, that this is, you know, these would be evolved tendencies. These are part of the evolutionary game.

   11. CWChris Williamson12:12

       Yeah.

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski12:12

       You know, all evolved tendencies rely on having a- appropriate experiences for them to develop properly, and so I wouldn't sort of- I wouldn't want to put it down to a socialization effect necessarily.

3. 12:23 – 21:36

   The Real Difference Between Male and Female Competition

   1. CWChris Williamson12:23

      How does female intrasexual competition differ from male intrasexual competition? You're sort of laying at the feet of women this fertility suppression thing, but surely the only job of men's genes, the, the, the currency that matters, is also reproductive success. So is it not just the same for guys, too?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski12:41

      No. So the, the, there's a few differences between male and female intrasexual competition, but I'd say that the fundamental one that matters is that for exactly the same reason that societies can send large numbers of men off to war, have them die, um, and recover the, the population within a generation, is the same reason why men don't tend to engage in manipulative reproductive suppression of rivals. So if a man seeks to, uh, suppress the reproductive success of another man or the group of another man, and even say, let's say he does that successfully, he convinces some large proportion of the population to effectively withdraw themselves from the gene pool. The remaining men, even if he has tremendous success, the remaining men will be able to pick up that slack, if you like. The same thing doesn't apply to women.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:34

      Mm.

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski13:34

      In exactly the same way, populations don't send forty, fifty, sixty percent of their women off to war to fight, because if they did that, they would take them generations to recover, because female-

   5. CWChris Williamson13:45

      Mm

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski13:45

      ... reproductive success is capped. So male intrasexual competition focuses much more on the side of the equation of maximizing your own reproductive success. It's much more just like a sprint race. Men are just like in their lane-

   7. CWChris Williamson13:59

      They only have a gas pedal, they don't have a brake.

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski14:01

      Yeah, they're in their lane, they're running hard, and they're just trying to, you know, get to the finish line as, as quickly as they can and get there faster or with more children than the other men. Women is like a running race, except every competitor is spending most of their time sticking out their arms and legs, trying to grab the other competitors, pull them back, trip them over, and the end result is that the entire field doesn't necessarily really go anywhere, which is why net reproductive success is so important. The entire field as a whole c- cannot move, and everybody can have relatively low reproductive success, but whoever is at the top of that relatively low number, um, wins.

   9. CWChris Williamson14:41

      I've never-

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski14:41

       So it's, the games are very different.

   11. CWChris Williamson14:43

       It's fascinating. Look, I've had Candace Blake, Joyce Benenson, Corey Clark, Tanya Reynolds... like, I've had a big suite of, uh, intrasexual competition researchers on the show, and I never realized that the asymmetry in the ability for men to reproduce and for women to reproduce means that fertility suppression for men doesn't make sense. Because, uh, give a guy a, a good half-hour break and a new glass of water, and he's probably okay to go again. Uh, that's not the same for women, uh, and that means that the, uh, v- both value, potential profit, and potential cost of, uh, improving or restricting yours or a rival's mating success as a woman is so much more valuable because you've just locked in, what? That's a two-year contract maybe of gestation-

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski15:42

       Oh

   13. CWChris Williamson15:42

       ... breastfeeding?

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski15:43

       Way more. Yeah, yeah-

   15. CWChris Williamson15:43

       But it's, it's-

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski15:44

       Way more

   17. CWChris Williamson15:44

       ... yeah, okay. But I mean, you can have another kid. Like, you can have two under two, right? Ish.

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski15:48

       Oh, y- you can have two under two, but there are still massive opportunity costs involved in the fact that you've got one under two-

   19. CWChris Williamson15:55

       Right. Yeah, yeah

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski15:55

       ... in terms of the two under two, and your, your prospects of i- if you didn't hold on to whoever the first mate was, your prospects of getting another mate, your prospects of being able to actually rear subsequent children, needing more resources to do that, and, and-

   21. CWChris Williamson16:10

       Mm

   22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski16:10

       ... things like that. So even, it's not even just restricted by the basic biology, which is obviously a massive restriction, but there's all of the flow-on effects as well.

   23. CWChris Williamson16:19

       Yeah.

   24. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski16:19

       Whereas men simply don't have those same concerns. Men can have, you know... I mean, it's not quite as simple as that, especially in the modern world with, you know, courts enforcing sort of child support payments and things like that. But essentially, men can have children from previous relationships, and it is a much less serious impediment to them then embarking on a future relationship with- that might be more long-term, that might then yield-

   25. CWChris Williamson16:46

       Mm

   26. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski16:46

       ... more long-term children in a more family-like environment. That's not really an option that's available to women, u- unless they're prepared to bear the massive costs that go with it.

   27. CWChris Williamson16:54

       Yeah, I'm thinking about Tracy Więckowski's work, and s- the, there was that recent study that came out about, um, men are more accepting of their political rivals than women are of their political allies. I think-

   28. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski17:09

       Yes

   29. CWChris Williamson17:09

       ... maybe it was Joyce Benenson, or maybe it was Tracy that did the study looking at female basketball players. Uh, sorry, male basketball players showed more physical affection to opposing team members on the court-

   30. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski17:24

       [chuckles]
4. 21:36 – 24:54

   Why Does Talking About Female Competition Feel So Taboo?

   1. CWChris Williamson21:36

      I- before we even get into what are some of the different ways this behaviour shows up, I imagine that there's many women listening who don't like the sound of their entire sex and much of their social behaviour being painted in this kind of a light. Given that you're a woman, how have you found it best to not even soften the blow, but to explain this in a manner that women become receptive to, as opposed to saying, "And you do this, and you're trying to get your friend to break up with her husband, and you- she- she's eating herself out of a fertility window, and blah, blah, blah?"

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski22:16

      [chuckles] Um, it's, it's an interesting question, actually. Surprisingly, I get... Well, I've so far, and look, so far, I've been exposed, I think, by the nature of social media and whatever, I think I've been exposed to very friendly audiences, both male and female.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:32

      Mm.

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski22:32

      So I think I've, I've been spared, not, not entirely, but I've been largely spared too much of, of vitriolic pushback or even resistance. Um, but actually, I get more resistance from men than I get from women. Most women look at me and just nod and just go, "Yep, that's exactly right."

   5. CWChris Williamson22:52

      Do you think that's because they've been-

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski22:54

      It's like-

   7. CWChris Williamson22:54

      ... on the receiving end?

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski22:55

      Yeah, and every woman's been on the receiving end. E- e- every woman, I think, has, to some extent, engaged in this, certainly with big individual differences. But I don't think there's any women who escape it either. And so women are, are very, are very ready, even if they, what I imagine would be almost definitely less ready to admit that, that they do it, um, and less ready to admit, you know, particular instances in which they don't. Although, still in conversations, most people are pretty ready to admit to rather stupid or unkind or whatever things that they did, especially when they were younger. The cover of youth always gives you some- [chuckles]

   9. CWChris Williamson23:27

      Mm

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski23:27

       ... you know, some willingness to admit horrible things you did as an obnoxious teenager. Um, but e- women have been the recipient of it, and so women, you know, just sit-- many women just sit there and, and just look at me, and just nod, and they're just like: "Yep, yep."

   11. CWChris Williamson23:41

       Mm.

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski23:41

       I actually get most pushback from men, who, whose impulse, I guess, and I sort of... 'cause I have this sort of verified from one man at least, 'cause he came back to me later and so- explained this to me, that this is exactly what was going through his head. Um, I get pushback from men because their impulse is to defend women. Their impulse is to say, "You're a woman, but I'm pretty sure this is sexist. I can't quite square those two things at the moment, but I don't like what you're saying." [chuckles] Um-

   13. CWChris Williamson24:08

       Right

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski24:08

       ... and a- a- and I actually get much more pushback from men wanting to just somehow not-... accept that this actually is a, a fundamental explanation of how women behave?

   15. CWChris Williamson24:19

       Well, look, I think men are going to be blind to much of this behavior because they don't pick up on the frequency that, at which it's happening. They are almost never going to be on the receiving end of it, at least in quite the same way.

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski24:35

       Mm.

   17. CWChris Williamson24:35

       And also, you've got like, oh, I, I guess maybe men would be on the receiving end of something, but they're not going to interpret it in that sort of-

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski24:42

       Yes

   19. CWChris Williamson24:42

       ... a manner.

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski24:43

       That's true.

   21. CWChris Williamson24:43

       Um, uh, because they're blind to it, and you've just got the general women are wonderful effect showing up here that men and women prefer women-

   22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski24:53

       Yeah

   23. CWChris Williamson24:53

       ... uh,

5. 24:54 – 35:53

   The Dating Advice War: What Are Women Saying?

   1. CWChris Williamson24:54

      for, for all things. Okay, so t- talking about some of the ways that it shows up in this competition, shows up in behavior, what about women's dating advice? How does it show up there?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski25:04

      Oh, so yeah, so it, it definitely shows up in women's dating advice. Um, I've done a few sort of bor- not boring, but some sort of, you know, formal academic studies on this, showing that in a, a number of different scenarios, so whether it's relationship formation or deciding, you know, when to start having children, deciding whether to get married, when to start having children, um, once you've had children, whether to sort of stay home as a stay-at-home mom or go back to work. Um, I've have done a bunch of studies looking at relationship advice in these different scenarios, and the, the basic take-home finding is that, uh, yes, or, or almost without exception, um, yes, women give more reproductively inhibiting advice to hypothetical women, whether these are sort of framed as friends or colleagues or whatever in, in the study. Um, they give more reproductively inhibiting advice to other women than what they say they would do themselves in those scenarios. So we use what women say they do themselves, what they say they would do themselves, as, like, the benchmark for what they presume would be the most adaptive. And then compared against that, they give more reproductively inhibiting advice to other women. So they're more likely to tell other women the, about the importance of, you know, not staying home as a mom, but going back to work, than they are to say that they would see it as important for themselves to go back to work. And they're more likely to tell other women that they should delay having children and invest more in their career until they build up more career success, than what they would say they would invest in career success before having children. So we, we see that formally, but I think it's perhaps more, uh, more, more compelling or at least more interesting in the way we're beginning to see it informally, sort of across mass media and, and social media. So it's been getting a lot of attention lately that I'm sure you would've seen them, the numerous articles just coming out with various titles like, you know, "I Had an Affair and It Was the Best Thing I Ever Did for My Relationship."

   3. CWChris Williamson26:55

      Wow.

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski26:55

      And, um, you know, the, those that, um, did the rounds a, a few days ago. Target, I think, have released their Valentine's Day range, and there's a jumper for women-

   5. CWChris Williamson27:04

      "Dump him"

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski27:04

      ... that just says, "Dump him," in yeah, of course-

   7. CWChris Williamson27:06

      Yeah

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski27:07

      ... in giant text. And, you know, we're just being bombarded with the- and another good one, too, was, um, I think the, I think it might have been called the article something to the effect of, "Is having a boyfriend right-wing coded?" Um, yeah, and, and things like that. So we're seeing this sort of devaluing of, certainly a devaluing of monogamous relationships and devaluing-

   9. CWChris Williamson27:30

      Mm

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski27:30

       ... of committed relationships in, in public rhetoric. And it also translates into the, uh, into the sort of, you know, individual one-on-one advice that, that women give to each other, and it translates to the lab situation when we sort of try to go to formally measure it as well.

   11. CWChris Williamson27:44

       [inhales] Okay. Many of those articles will justify the points that they're putting forward as emancipating women from relationships that they shouldn't be in, uh, encouraging their independence. Like, why not go back to the workplace? 50% of marriages end in divorce, and you're gonna be stuck with no money and kids to look after and all the rest of it. You need to have your own life. It's important for you to do that. Um, you can... You should get out of relationships that you shouldn't be in. Th- th- maybe you've got some questions about, whatever it might be. I guess, um, there is a pretty socially acceptable positive sum, um, almost like socially philanthropic, "I, I'm bestowing on you some of this interesting and, and, and useful advice that helps you push back against these like archaic and, and heavily structured, restrictive ideas and norms that are holding you in place." What you're saying, I think, is that would be all well and true if the women who said that also endorsed their beliefs and their behavior. Is that- so is that the sort of fun-

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski28:55

       Almost.

   13. CWChris Williamson28:55

       Right.

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski28:56

       Al- almost. So I think, so, you, yes, you, you are correct that in some senses, if there was no evidence at all that there was any discrepancy in what women thought was best for themselves, what was best for other women, then we would just say: "Well, this is the, you know, this is the female judgment of the trade-offs of the costs and benefits of staying in a relationship versus exiting."

   15. CWChris Williamson29:16

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski29:16

       Um, fair, yeah, fair enough, fine. Um, and to some extent, that's true. Except that, of course, if we're, if we're talking about a, a game of sort of manipulative intrasexual competition, wi- which we are, then there will be winners of that game, which are the women we're talking about, the women who espouse these antenatal, anti-relationship, um, ideologies, values-

   17. CWChris Williamson29:39

       Mm

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski29:39

       ... whatever you want to call them, um, but don't embody them themselves. But there will also be the losers of this intrasexual competition, and these are the women who effectively buy into these ideologies all in, and both then espouse them, but also embody them. So we would actually expect to see both, because if nobody is actually-

   19. CWChris Williamson29:59

       Oh, yeah

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski29:59

       ... falling for this stuff- that's right-

   21. CWChris Williamson30:01

       Yeah, it wouldn't work

   22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski30:02

       ... no one's actually falling for it-

   23. CWChris Williamson30:02

       It wouldn't work

   24. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski30:03

       ... exactly, then there's no payoff, basically.

   25. CWChris Williamson30:04

       Oh, that's so good.

   26. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski30:06

       So there are winners-

   27. CWChris Williamson30:06

       Dani, you're great

   28. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski30:07

       ... and there are losers. Yeah, yeah, so there's winners and losers.

   29. CWChris Williamson30:08

       I, I fucking love when the penny drop... You have just seen a 3,000-ton penny fall into my head.

   30. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski30:14

       [laughing]
6. 35:53 – 49:12

   Is Having a Boyfriend Cringe Now?

   1. CWChris Williamson35:53

      [air whooshing] Give me-- just using that, "Is having a boyf- boyfriend cringe now?" Vogue article, which almost everybody saw, is it your suggestion that many of the proponents of that, perhaps even the author of that, is going to endorse but not follow that lifestyle, and because of that, they are able to gain from the relative reproductive success, compared with the ones that don't get into relationships that take this dating advice?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski36:27

      ... I think that the-- so I think that understanding the balance of who wins and who loses, I think is really difficult. Because this is the thing, it's, you know you've got that, like, salesman. I, I always call it a Ponzi scheme, and it's not a Ponzi scheme, it's got a different name. But you know that sales technique, that business model, where you kind of sell what's effectually, effect- effectively some form of snake oil, right? You sell-

   3. CWChris Williamson36:49

      Mm

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski36:49

      ... some sort of of snake oil to somebody. But the people you sell it to, you c- you convince them sufficiently well of the wondrous-

   5. CWChris Williamson36:55

      Oh, it's an MLM, multi-level marketing.

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski36:57

      Thank you. Yeah, that's right. There we go. And so you convince them, and they then become the sellers. So they're now selling snake oil, but they believe in the snake oil, right?

   7. CWChris Williamson37:05

      Mm.

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski37:06

      So the same thing happens with these reproductively inhibiting, you know, memes, ideas, whatever you want to call them. Um, many of the people who are then promoting them ha- have also embodied them and, you know, taken them on board-

   9. CWChris Williamson37:18

      Mm, mm-hmm

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski37:18

       ... and genuinely believe them. But from an evolutionary perspective, it's still, you know, their, their contribution to the game has not finished. So even though they may be effectively de- depending on how well they actually embody this particular ideology, potentially for their entire reproductive, um, you know, capacity and, and end up genuinely on zero, that doesn't mean they're, they're done for, right? They, they can still improve the reproductive success of their genes, assuming that they have relatives of any kind.

   11. CWChris Williamson37:48

       Mm.

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski37:48

       Um, they can still improve the reproductive success of their genes by continuing to promote this reproductice- reproductive suppressive ideology to other women.

   13. CWChris Williamson38:00

       Mm.

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski38:00

       So they would be selected for to promote it, and sell it, and pass it on, irrespective really of whether they're a, a winner, someone who's not going to embody it, or a loser, someone who is.

   15. CWChris Williamson38:13

       I suppose-

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski38:13

       So whether someone, yeah, supports this stuff, doesn't tell you, or says they support this stuff, doesn't actually tell you which strategy they're adopting, the winning strategy or that they've been manipulated, and they're on the losing team.

   17. CWChris Williamson38:24

       Yeah. I suppose it makes for a much better smokescreen or, um, it makes your argument seem like it's coming from a much more philanthropic, positive sum place if you believe the ideology that you're espousing.

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski38:44

       Mm.

   19. CWChris Williamson38:45

       Right? Like, i- i- for instance, uh, I don't know whether you know Alex Cooper, she does this podcast called Call Her Daddy. I've said some stuff about her that I actually disagree with myself on in the past. Uh, I think it must have been a very difficult world for her to be in, where she started off doing this podcast, talking a lot about casual sex and sleep with him and not catch feels, et cetera, like the classic t- 20s, like, young girl, casual sex thing. Um, and then she was having this kind of secret relationship behind the scenes, and then one day kind of revealed that she was engaged and had this very big library of episodes, but was like: [sighs] "He proposed to me in a rose garden, and it was beautiful, and this is the ring, and I'm now doing the family pivot thing." Uh, I don't think that for a long time she would've been thinking anything other than, "I believe in this."

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski39:34

       Mm.

   21. CWChris Williamson39:34

       "I believe in this." Like, the, the, I, she's not, I don't think, deceived-- and this is where I changed sort of what I'd said retrospectively. I, I, I don't think that she was going, "I'm going to encourage women to behave in this way." It's just a pretty effective meme. Uh, it, it sounds very positive sum. It's much more progressive, and modern, and contemporary, and, um, sort of socially acceptable than the opposite, which kind of sounds restrictive and bourgeois. Um, like, uh, s- and then you get to the stage where, oh, I now need to embody this, and my life is pulling me in a different direction. And that's the point at which it becomes really interesting because you say, "I said all of this stuff in the past. Do I now still agree with me previously? Do I wish that I'd said something different? Do I- w- was I too militant with the way that I was saying that stuff?" So all, all of that together, I thought was, w- was pretty interesting.

   22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski40:29

       Mm.

   23. CWChris Williamson40:29

       But one other angle to this, I suppose, that isn't necessarily dating advice for heterosexual relationships, but I wonder if the broad elite female support for LGBT or, or, or sort of non-typical relationship preferences is also a type of fertility suppression. Because I guess having a boyfriend or a husband might be cringe, but I bet that having a girlfriend or a wife wouldn't be cringe.

   24. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski40:55

       Correct. I, I agree 100%. So I've, I have spoken a little bit before how I think that the, not just the, the sort of LGBTQ movement, but the, you know, broadly, um, which I think it is, but also the, the transgenderism as well, is also the, the reason why, um, I think that the... I mean, and the, you know, the data on this are, are, I think, reasonably well known, that it is al- almost by and large, exclusively women who are really strongly in favor of gender ideology and are the pushers of gender ideology. Which is why it has taken hold in industries and workplaces and, and whatever, that are, that are dominated by women. Um, and I think that, too, is because it has very clear reproductive suppressive, um, implications. It was really interesting what you were saying, um, about that, about that podcast, if I can go back to that for just a second-

   25. CWChris Williamson41:49

       Mm-hmm

   26. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski41:49

       ... because that also raises a really interesting, um, dichotomy. And that, or, or, yeah, an interesting contrast, and that is because that for the vast majority of women, it would not be adaptive to reproduce when you become biologically able to reproduce. So there is this sort of tension amongst, you know, in the sort of human mating system, that is created by the fact that women become biologically able to get pregnant long before it's actually adaptive necessarily for them to do, to do so under most circumstances. There are circumstances where it would be a- adaptive, um, but under most circumstances, it's, it's not adaptive to do that. And so women do definitely have a, a, a stage of life-... where it actually makes sense for them to engage in, you know, self-reproductive suppression, and to be discouraging themselves, and obviously, and that used to manifest-

   27. CWChris Williamson42:44

       Well, that's interesting.

   28. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski42:45

       Yeah, that used to manifest in encouraging, you know, young girls not to have sex, effectively. Um, but now it sort of manifests in quite different ways. And so w- we've actually got a situation where there is sort of, a- already built into the system, there is this period of sexual maturity in which it's actually adaptive for women to, um, you know, even though they are capable of, of reproducing, it would, it would actually be, you know, in terms of their long-term lifetime reproductive success, it would, under most circumstances for most women, be maladaptive to get pregnant during that time period.

   29. CWChris Williamson43:18

       Mm.

   30. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski43:18

       And so it's not therefore to me, looking at things through an intrasexual competition lens, it's completely unsurprising that that is the time period that, uh, you know, feminism and, and women's lib has targeted as encouraging women to really, really heavily engage in risky sexual behavior.
7. 49:12 – 55:37

   Do Reproductive Suppression Strategies Work Against Men?

   1. CWChris Williamson49:12

      things. I, I have a question: Did, do, regardless of whether or not it would be, uh, evolutionarily useful from a resource perspective to try and do, do reproductive suppression strategies work against men?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski49:28

      That's an excellent question. So I would s- so I, I think there's a, there's a two-part answer, and the, the first part is generally no, because of the reasons we've already, already described. So in the limited circumstance where you, where as a, as a man, um, you are looking to actually get the partner of a rival, so you're looking to, like, mate poach. Um, yeah, then, you know, harming another man's, you know, potential reproductive output, you know, and doing things to him, um, might help you, um, if it helps destroy that, really, or sabotaging his relationship the way women sabotage each other's relationship, that, that might help you. Um, but, but again, the, the reason you're doing that is not really 'cause you care about his reproductive success, it's because you've decided you want his partner for whatever reason. Um, so, you know, for the reasons we talked about before, the fact that other men can pick up the slack, the fact that there's very little men can do, uh, within themselves to actually move the dial on the, the population's background reproductive rate, just means that the payoff matrix isn't there. However, um, there's a second part, I think, to that answer, and that is if we f- fast-forward a little bit, or maybe a better way, to zoom out a little bit, and instead of thinking... At the moment, we've, we've sort of thought and spoken mostly about this being kind of, you know, an individual-on-individual interaction or, you know, a, you know, a many on one or one on, on many. Um, but once you reach the, the stage of reproductive suppression that I argue that we're at, so, you know, I, I know that you're aware that the birth rate is, you know, well below replacement level and is declining.

   3. CWChris Williamson51:04

      Hmm.

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski51:05

      Um, and my argument is that in itself is because of manipulative reproductive suppression, that that is in fact the ultimate explanation for what we're seeing. Um, and I think that once you actually reach that point, then you perhaps do get to see, um, a benefit to men of engaging in their own type of-

   5. CWChris Williamson51:27

      Oh, because your-

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski51:29

      ... manipulative reproductive suppression

   7. CWChris Williamson51:30

      ... your weapon is now sufficiently powerful, that you're able to do it at a broad enough scale that this might actually work. But how would that- we, we, we wouldn't have an evolved mechanism, we wouldn't have anything in our programming as men to be able to understand that. Surely we can't adapt to a novel situation that quickly.

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski51:49

      That's a really good point, and that's why I don't-- that's why my argument is that this is not a novel situation. This is actually, so what we're experiencing now with birth rate decline and the-

   9. CWChris Williamson52:03

      Mm

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski52:03

       ... the rise of feminist ideals and the feminisation of the institutions, um, all of this is part of a repeated pattern that we see in civilisation after civilisation after civilisation. This is not a unique, idiosyncratic issue that has appeared in the West as a function of the particular social and technological forces that we sort of find ourselves living with.

   11. CWChris Williamson52:25

       Mm.

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski52:25

       This is actually, this is the human mating system. It goes through these cycles, and so actually, yes, we have been here before, and there has been selection pressure operating, and this is actually the system-- this is not, this is not a bug, this is the system operating as intended.

   13. CWChris Williamson52:41

       [whooshing] This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. You want to look and feel good when you're in the gym, and Gymshark makes the best men's and girls' gym wear on the planet. Let's face it, the more that you like your gym kit, the more likely you are to train. Their hybrid training shorts for men are the best men's shorts on the planet. Their crest hoodie and light gray marl is what I fly in every single time I'm on a plane. The Geo Seamless T-shirt is a staple in the gym for me. Basically, everything they make, it's unbelievably well-fitted, high quality, it's cheap. You get thirty days of free returns, global shipping, and a ten percent discount sitewide. If you go to the link in the description below, or head to gym.sh/modernwisdom, use the code MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. That's gym.sh/modernwisdom and MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. [whooshing] When you say we have been here before, as far as I'm aware, we haven't really seen birth rates decline, really ever below replacement. Uh, there's been incidents where-

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski53:35

       Uh, no, that's not-

   15. CWChris Williamson53:37

       Am I wrong?

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski53:37

       Yeah, no, that's not true. So certainly, um, declining birth rates, um, are part of the, the sort of suite of things that are, that have been sort of pointed to as things that we see in civilisations that are declining and degrading and reaching their endpoint. Same as, you know, we see, like, you know, that the price of sex going down and, and art becoming vulgar, and we see marriage rates declining, we see birth rates declining. So-

   17. CWChris Williamson54:03

       Mm

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski54:03

       ... so Rome, um, towards its, well, not, not towards its very end, um, a little bit earlier than its very end, but it had, you know, many policies in place that sort of what, what we're sort of calling a baby bonus, to try to motivate women to get married and to have children because the fertility rate was, was declining so severely. Um, and what happened in, in Rome, and I would hazard a guess it's a similar thing that's happening now, is the, the birth rate declined, um, sharply, primarily because the, the women were choosing to be liberated and to be free, and to not be married, and to not be mothers, and to have careers and, and everything else. Um, and that left, you know, a relatively small number of women having a relatively small number of children, which meant that those women were able to have sort of their pick of men, and so reproductive success amongst men-... especially to some extent amongst women as well, but especially amongst men, became restricted to the very elite of men, and the rest of men just basically got kicked out-

   19. CWChris Williamson55:04

       Right

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski55:05

       ... of the reproductive pool.

   21. CWChris Williamson55:05

       Okay, so women w- th- that cultural adjustment, which was, um, anti-family, anti-coupling, anti-mating, affected women more than it affected men. Many men wanted to mate, but fewer women did, and bec- that basically skewed the sex ratio so that women had more power, but also so that the high, uh, as happens with the tall girl problem, the high status men also r- relative get more power

8. 55:37 – 1:00:30

   Why Evolution Hasn’t Saved Us From Falling Birth Rates

   1. CWChris Williamson55:37

      than they would've done. Okay, so reproductive suppression c- may work against men. We're not quite sure h- how ingrained that mechanism would be evolutionarily. So comparatively, it's easier to influence women in this regard. Why is it the case then that women haven't developed a defense mechanism to this? Like, why would you leave the keyhole in there if that vulnerability... We already know, what is it? Uh, F to M is, like, five times as many transitions as M to F. Uh, the ROGD, rapid onset gender dysphoria thing-

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski56:14

      Yep

   3. CWChris Williamson56:14

      ... um, women, uh-

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski56:15

      Eating disorders, social contagions as well.

   5. CWChris Williamson56:17

      Y- yeah, the social contagion thing is there, especially during puberty, right? I'm looking around, I'm scanning my environment, I'm vigilant for what's cool, what's hot, what's not. I need to make sure that I'm on trend. Why would human evolution not patch that bug so that females wouldn't be susceptible to this? Because surely that would be the ultimate game. Like, I- I'm just a reproduction machine, and you can't limit- you can't suppress my fertility, no matter what you tell me.

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski56:46

      Because the-- because it's not a bug, it's a feature, and this, this is the, this is the problem. So it's, uh, it's a bug for the, for the women who lose, but the women who lose, it's not their genes that get passed on. For the women who win, who are engaging in this behavior, it's a feature because it promotes their reproductive success, and so the genes perpetuate.

   7. CWChris Williamson57:07

      Would, would that not suggest-

   8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski57:08

      The fact that there are losers-

   9. CWChris Williamson57:09

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I- uh, totally right.

   10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski57:11

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson57:11

       Would that not suggest then that we are the progeny of the women who are the less or the least susceptible to these sorts of things, given that they are the genes of the ones who didn't necessarily embody, even if they maybe did endorse?

   12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski57:25

       Uh, yes, potentially, but the other, the other part of the sort of system that makes this make sense is that when-- is that human civilizations have got like this cycle, and so we only a- are able to see this type of female manipulative reproductive suppression that we see now under certain circumstances, and those circumstances include affluence and safety. And so when you've got societies that are not very affluent and not very safe, then the payoff matrix isn't there. Women are investing all of the resources that they have and all of the resources that they get to accrue, um, into their own reproduction and into their own offspring. It's once you get to a point where we have the, the affluence of organized society, that women have an opportunity to be able to accrue more resources than what they just need to pour in. You get like a, a, like a law of diminishing returns. You, you, the resources that the elite women are effectively able to accrue, they no longer-- it's no longer, you know, adaptive to just keep pouring all of those-

   13. CWChris Williamson58:33

       Mm

   14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski58:33

       ... into their own individual reproductive success. It now becomes more and more adaptive to start pouring this, this time, effort, and energy into manipulative reproductive suppression of rivals. And the more affluent and the safer the society gets, the, the, the more the scales tip in that way. So because this is not an adaptive strategy under all circumstances, it doesn't reach fixation, if you like.

   15. CWChris Williamson58:57

       Mm.

   16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski58:57

       So it's-- and so what you sort of end up with is well, according to my theory, I should probably be careful to preface that because not everything, you know-- much of what I'm saying is, is not the sort of thing that, you know, you would be finding other people reaching any kind of consensus on, right? Like, that's I think, I think most people understand that's pretty far-out stuff. But according to the way I see it, the winners of this game enter a-- effectively enter a sort of genetic bottleneck. So as fertility rates drop, and the fertility rates are well below replacement, then the, the size of the mating pool is actually much... the, the effective population size is much smaller than the actual population size. So it may not necessarily look like a, a genetic bottleneck because we're not actually necessarily seeing a massive population crash, but when large numbers of the population, large numbers of women in the population are not reproducing, and that does appear to be what's happening. So I think there, there might be modest falls in, amongst women who have children. I think there m- might be sort of modest falls in the number of children they're having, but I think that's largely being maintained. What's causing or what's sort of accounting for the large fall in birth rates is the, is the massive increase in the number of women having no children. So what we're seeing is large numbers of women actually withdrawing themselves from the gene pool.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:00:18

       Yeah, the, the-- if you have one, the likelier it is you have two point five-

   18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:00:22

       Exactly

   19. CWChris Williamson1:00:22

       ... but the number, the proportion of women who don't have one at all, that is the big cohort-

   20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:00:27

       That's what's going

   21. CWChris Williamson1:00:27

       ... that's contributing to birth rate decline.

   22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:00:29

       Yeah, exactly.

9. 1:00:30 – 1:04:33

   Why It’s So Controversial to Talk About Birth Rate Decline

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00:30

      Is it possible to have these sorts of conversations publicly without getting heat?

   2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:00:40

      Yes, it is, it is almost impossible to have these types of conversations. And look, I think the, I'll, I'll-- the sole explanation I would say for me not yet having sort of really encountered any serious blowback is just lack of exposure, right? And you, you're right, that may well change now.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

      Good luck after this!

   4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:00:56

      So be it. That's fine. That's fine. You know, my life's been boring up until now. Why not have some fun?

   5. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

      Wonderful.

   6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:01:02

      Um, [chuckles] but-... but no, y- you can't. And I, and I think one of the reasons, I think one of the main reasons why y- well, according to my theory [chuckles] one of the main reasons why we can't have this particular conversation about birth rate declines, m- motherhood, and, and reproduction, you know, maybe other aspects of intrasexual competition, um, speak to more women directly and, and, and they can, um, yeah, they can empathize with it, and they can, they can understand it. But once you start talking about birth rate decline, um, and you start talking about women having children in particular, you're getting- you're really just cutting straight through to the heart of the issue. Everything else is just periph- peripheral, right? Everything else is just in service of birth rate decline. All the other aspects of female intrasexual competition, they're just ultimately in service of birth rate decline, right? So, you know, giving women poor relationship advice, that's so that they will have either poor relationships or no relationships, which greatly reduces the likelihood of them reproducing, or at least reproducing successfully. Um, because, you know, I mean, I'm, I- I'm sure you're aware that the, the stats are pretty clear on the, on the costs of fatherlessness to, to children, right? The, the outcomes are just systematically, substantially worse across the board for fatherless children. And so if you can encourage women to, you know, h- to engage in behaviors that result in them being single mothers, that's not quite as good as resulting in them being not mothers at all, but it's pretty good. I mean, it's a pretty good way to, to damage their ultimate reproductive success. Um, so, you know, we, we talk about all the other issues, and, you know, sometimes we can have a little bit of fun with it. Um, people had a lot of fun with that haircut study that I did, where, you know, women will advise other women to cut off more hair. Um, and they, you know, they focus this kind of most strongly towards women that are perceived to be as attractive as they are, so, like, their direct rivals on the mating market. And we can have a little bit of fun with these types of conversations, and I can have a little bit of fun with feminists sometimes about certain things. But once you get down to talking about birth rates and children and motherhood, now you're getting to the heart of the issue, and that's not fun anymore. N- now you're a serious threat to the ultimate reason for the strategy, and it gets women very angry.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:03:20

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10. 1:04:33 – 1:13:10

    Is the Modern Workplace Hurting Reproductive Rates?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:33

       [whooshing sound] What is your perspective on women being encouraged to enter the workplace by other women, how that plays into your perspective here?

    2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:04:44

       So, yeah, so I think that is-- I mean, I, I think that, you know, that talk by her and then the essay she wrote, she's done a couple of podcasts. Um, I mean, I think that was fantastic. So she's... I mean, she's, uh, like, almost 100% correct in, in most everything that she says. All of the observations that she makes about workplaces, um, what she says happens when women reach sort of a, a critical mass. Um, you know, and it's not- I mean, I think it's at some point she was sort of she, she did, I think, emphasize, if I remember correctly, that, you know, the sort of the points in time where these workplaces, you know, became sort of more than 50% female, and then she sort of pointed that as the, the tipping point. And we have a small point of difference there. I think that you, you don't need women to be at 50% in workplaces to see these- to get the ball rolling, to see these changes begin to emerge. Um, I, I... women don't need to be at those, at, at the, the, the mechanisms by which women use to make these changes in the workplace are not democratic, and so they don't need a democratic majority to do it. I think the critical mass of women is actually substantially lower, and their ability to manipulate both their male and female colleagues allows these sorts of things to happen long before you actually get to the 50%. Um, so that's a small point of, of difference. Um, but everything that she was saying, other than that, I think about what's happening in these workplaces, um, and the, the fact that it's because of the proportion of women in them, I think is absolutely 100% bang on. Um, and I think, and it's fantastic that she got, um, you know, that it got so much traction that she was able to effectively start a conversation on something which I, I think had people had been either unwilling or unable to really get a conversation started on. And I think m- maybe the fact that, that she was a woman coming out saying that, um-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:29

       Oh, God! Fuck, if a man had written that article-

    4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:06:31

       [laughing] Yeah

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

       ... it would have been absolute death. But I mean, look, you're, you're a woman who is, uh-

    6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:06:34

       Allowed to do that

    7. CWChris Williamson1:06:35

       ... who is professionally accomplished. Uh, is it not a good thing for women to be able to get into the workplace, to be able to have their own care- careers, be financially independent, have a life, all of that?

    8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:06:47

       [sighs] Depends what you mean by good. Depends what you mean by good. So, you know, if we sort of think about... So if we sort of think about human societies from first principles for a moment, in order for societies to grow and stay healthy, they need to, to reprodu- well, in order to, to exist, they need to reproduce at at least replacement. Um, ideally, they, they need to, to grow, right? Growth is great for prosperity, which means they need to reproduce at above replacement. Now, depending on the costs of reproduction, um, you know, in a society like ours, you know, individual people are able to accrue the resources needed for successful reproduction quite easily. Um-... and in societies gone past, you know, reproductive success was relatively much more expensive. Um, and all that excess wealth is one of the reasons why we have this massive manipulative reproductive suppression. But, so if you're in a society where you, you need to maintain, you know, an investment in reproduction that will ensure that the reproductive rate stays at above replacement levels in order to continue prosperity, and the women in your population, who are the ones who basically are the limiters on your reproductive output, decide to invest a certain amount of time and effort and energy in non-reproductive activities such that it becomes impossible for your society to reproduce at the levels required to maintain prosperity, is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's the end of, it's the end of the society. The society simply cannot sustain itself.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:08:16

       But no individual-

    10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:08:18

        Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

    11. CWChris Williamson1:08:18

        No, i- yeah, no, no individual is going to think, "I'm going to not do the thing that seems exciting and independence-enabling to me in order for me to serve..." It feels almost like c- like some kind of social, uh, reproductive conscription that you're asking me to do, where I don't get to do this thing because what the, the, the world's c- civilization needs me to be a birthing machine.

    12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:08:44

        So feminism has certainly done a really stellar job of making sure that that's the way people think. Um, and, you know, props to it. Um, but forgetting about the imposition on individual people for a moment, 'cause we could say exactly the same thing, uh-- In fact, well, I think we could say much more about what's needed about the male commitment to keep a civilization profiting, right? I mean, you, you think that, um, it's might be bad news for women that they need to have children and families in order for civilization to prosper. Well, what do men need to do in order for civilization to prosper? They need to work themselves to the bone, frequently die, get sent off to war. Like, if civilization is going to prosper, men have got a pretty raw deal. So it's, it's not as though, um, it's not as though, you know, we're talking about it's, you know, it's all fun and games for men, and women have to, to carry some sort of burden. So if we're able to put that bit aside for a moment, even just answering the question of is it good or is it bad if a society moves in a direction that effectively dooms that society after a couple of generations, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Um, that's not an easy question to answer. If you, if your argument is that, well, it's better for the individuals who are in that society at the moment because they'll have a more fun life, um, it's worse for the continuation of the society. But if we're going to prioritize the individual, then maybe that's, maybe that's a good thing. Um-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:10:18

        It's a very individualistic society at the moment, right?

    14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:10:21

        It is.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:10:21

        I mean, that's an awful lot of, an awful lot of the, uh, well-meaning and bad-meaning pushback that I get online is saying something along the lines of, "You're trying to remove agency." Um, it's taking women out of the boardroom and putting them back into the kitchen, et cetera. It's very mu-- The, the, the language is almost exclusively framed around independence.

    16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:10:45

        Yeah, of course it is. Um, and it's... And, you know, and that's a, a very, um-- it's a very effective way of framing it. It's probably a little bit of a, of a different, um, of a different conversation, but the, the notion of individual, um, of individual freedom and decision-making around these things is also a little bit, um, is also just a little bit of a, little bit of a fallacy and a little bit fallacy, a little bit folly. It's, it's, it's kind of the-- it's the libertarian fantasy, right? That if you just let everybody do what they want, then everybody will do what they want, and everybody will be happy. When in fact, the, the vast majority of people only know w- what to do based on what everybody else does anyway. So if you don't actually have, which we're sort of seeing now, um, when you abandon the, the kinds of sort of, you know, societal institutions that, you know, placed guardrails on what people should do and had to do, um, you just end up with people being really vulnerable to manipulation by others. Because actually, the majority of people don't sort of make their own decisions about what they would want to do anyway.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:11:48

        Mm.

    18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:11:49

        They, they go with the crowd, and they follow the norm. Um, but to get back to your question about, you know, is it, is it a good thing or is it a bad thing to have women generally in the workplace? Um, and, you know, it's, it's hard to-- it depends on what you mean by good or bad. If you mean good or bad for the society, well, then there's definitely-- I mean, it's definitely bad for the society if the inevitable result of it is that it's terminal. I, I think we can argue that that's definitely bad at the level of the society. So then we have to move down to the level, so then we move down, we don't have to, but let's say now we move down to the level of the individual and say, well, is it good or is it bad for the individual? And so, well, have a look at the state of women at the moment. Massive mental health crisis, um, not generally not happy, um, ending up childless, partnerless. So w-we're not, you know-- And we sort of spoke about this earlier in this discussion as well, that, you know, the, the end results of these strategies for women, you know, I think sensible people, I think, would have predicted that they may not have been very positive. But we're now seeing, you know, that the happiest women are the women who are married and have children, and the least happy women are the women who are not married and don't have children. So once again, it depends on what you mean by good, and-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:13:08

        What's the most-

    20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:13:09

        But for feminism, it's good

    21. CWChris Williamson1:13:09

        ... But just on that,

11. 1:13:10 – 1:14:51

    Are Single Women Unhappier?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:10

       what, what, what's the most robust data that you've seen around the happiness, the comparative happiness levels between coupled women with kids and single women without kids?

    2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:13:22

       [sighs] I couldn't answer off the top of my head. I would have to go and look it up. I-- My understanding of it is that it is pretty robust, and it's been out there for a while. Like, it's not just, like, one recent study or anything, it's kind of multiple studies out for-... long periods of time, it's pretty well understood that in terms of life satisfaction, self-reported well-being, self-reported mental health problems, like it's not just one DV either, it's, it's multiple DVs are all pointing to married women with children being happier than single women who are not mothers.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:54

       The, the interesting thing that I th- and maybe it was just because of the cohort of people that were commenting on this little storm in a teacup. What I was surprised by was, in the same way as you have pro-life and pro-choice, you should still have pro-motherhood and kind of anti-motherhood, or pro-natal and anti-natal. Um, and I was just surprised at how few people stand up and say something to the extent of, "Mothers are important, and having kids is a good thing." Um, that there's kind of a soft misogyny to saying that the, the highest contribution that a woman can make is behaving or working like her father and having sex like her brother. Like, it is a kind of soft misogyny. Um, and I don't, I don't think that that's necessarily seen as the call coming from inside of the house all the time. Okay, so

12. 1:14:51 – 1:26:00

    How Toxic Masculinity is Harming Female Competition

    1. CWChris Williamson1:14:51

       what are some of the more under-recognized methods of intrasexual competition that women engage in? What are some of the, the elements that people typically don't think about?

    2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:15:03

       So I think perhaps the least-- I think probably the one of the least well-recognized, because it's sort of framed as a, a man-hating thing, I would say is or is the, the whole kind of toxic masculinity little cottage industry that's appeared. So that's, you know, frequently and, and, and, you know, not without good reason, um, is frequently framed as like an anti-male movement. It's, you know, it's the man-hating s- you know, stream of feminism that wants to brand not just men as toxic, but boys as toxic. And, look, I don't know, um, I don't know what your experiences are and, and what you've seen, but certainly in Australia, um, and I believe the UK, there's lots of talk, and I think it's, it's sort of actually happening now, they're introducing effectively, like, preemptive education into schools for young boys so they can teach them not to be toxic. And these are, you know, exactly what you would imagine. Um, and you know, there was a-- it made a little bit of a splash, um, just the other week, there was a, a study that came out, um, saying, you know, talking about how terrible it is that, you know, our young boys, young, young boys have just got all of these, you know, toxic attitudes. It was an Australian study. Young boys have got all these toxic attitudes, and, and of course, the, the attitudes were, were things like, you know, some women lie about, you know, sexual assault allegations. Like, that's not a toxic attitude, that's just happens to be the truth. So, so, you know, we're sort of seeing this, you know, real branding of, of male toxicity, uh, which is-- and I'm don't deny that that's having terrible effects on men. So I'm, you know, I'm about to suggest that the men are actually the collateral damage of that, um, of that whole little enterprise, and just because it's collateral doesn't mean it's not serious, doesn't mean I'm minimizing the impact it's having on men.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:16:56

       So explain, explain to me how branding men and masculinity as toxic is female intrasexual competition.

    4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:17:05

       Because it destroys female mate choice preferences. It's what it's targeting. What, what the, the, the toxic brand is being attached to is every aspect of men that women should actually, uh, that women-- I won't say every single aspect of men, because it obviously gets targeted at actually bad behavior, but most of the regular-- all of the regular masculine behaviors that this toxic label gets thrown at are exactly the type of masculine behaviors that women should actually be looking for in a high-value partner, and so it is skewing women's mate choice preferences.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:17:42

       Can you, can you, uh, explain how that manifests or what-- how, how that comes into land?

    6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:17:46

       [chuckles] Men who are, who are socially dominant and socially aggressive make for excellent providers and for excellent protectors, but any kind of social dominance or aggression shown by men is, uh, is, is being completely demonized and, and labeled toxic, to the point where I was-- I, I won't say who, but, um, I was having a discussion the other day, um, with a guy who was sort of explaining that one of the things that really upsets him the most about what he sees amongst kind of, you know, his, his peers, and he was, um, he was American. Um, what he sees amongst, amongst his peers is the lack of men policing each other's behavior anymore. Because from where he sits, his sort of impression of what's going on is that any kind of male aggression and male dominance is so, um, has been deemed as so inappropriate and such terrible behavior by women or just by society at large, that men don't even feel it's appropriate to be aggressive and dominant with other men who are behaving badly. So he was sort of using the example of how, you know, there are men who would, um, you know, he was sort of saying that, you know, when he was a bit younger, you know, back in his day, um, you know, men who, who didn't treat women well, or, or men who showed any kind of inappropriate interest in children would be, you know, taken out a back shed and be beaten to within an inch of their life, and then they wouldn't do it anymore. Um, or at least would s- you know, think really hard about, about doing it again. And he said that sort of stuff simply doesn't happen now because people are w- as concerned or even more concerned about demonizing the behavior of taking him round the back of the shed and beating him to the inch of his life than they are about demonizing the behavior that needed to be policed in the first place. And so what we're seeing is, is-... you know, society, feminism, whatever you want to call it, having reshaped the positive aspects of male dominance and male strength, and, you know, even what th- they've decided to, to label, uh, benevolent sexism, which just because they've called it benevolent, they don't see it as, as good. Um, which is basically all of the etiquette around gender role interactions, um, that happen to favor women. Um, they've still decided that's sexism that is inherently bad for women, but even the benevolent sexism. Um, all of that stuff has been demonized and been sort of, you know, w- labeled sort of, you know, not- no longer socially acceptable. And so men can no longer behave in the, the kinds of ways-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:20:18

       Mm

    8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:20:18

       ... that they used to behave in order to be able to demonstrate their, their quality as a prospective mate to women. And so men are responding by actually engaging in sort of what, you know, what you might call beta behavior, just to demonstrate that they're not a strong, masculine man. And women are being taught to reject men, you know, to be- uh, they're taught to recognize signs of masculinity and mate quality as red flags to be avoided. And I think that's-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:20:46

       But if that's... If, I- if women are influencing men to be more docile, and women are being taught to get into relationships with men who are more docile and less aggressive, how is this not just a changing of the mating landscape and the preferences moving over time? How does this suppress anything? It, it, it seems to be a set of instructions being given out and a set of preferences being adjusted.

    10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:21:09

        Because I don't think that we're... 'Cause we're not necessarily seeing the- it's, it's not as though the women who would have paired up with the high-quality men who were able to, you know, uh, able to signal all of those signals of strength and dominant, 'cause they're costly signals, right? They're real signals. The s- the, the signals of effectively harmlessness, uh, don't differentiate between mate quality because you don't actually have to have anything or do anything or be anything. In order to be physically dominant and socially dominant and be able to be aggressive, you have to be big, you have to be strong, you have to have good leadership, you have to be competent. You don't need anything to not be competent, to not be strong, to not have good leadership, and to not have social dominance. And so it's not that it's sort of one set of reliable, costly signals now just having to be signaled a different way. It's obliterating all of the male ways and sort of de-socializing all of the male ways of advertising their own mate quality, and it's leaving men with ways of advertising their mo- their own mate quality that are not reliable indicators of mate quality, which makes it very difficult for women to actually choose quality mates. And any reliable indicators of mate quality that ne- that, you know, do manage to, to bleed through are being systematically de-preferenced by women-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:22:27

        Right. Okay

    12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:22:27

        ... rather than being preferenced.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:22:29

        Okay. Uh, so it's-- Let me see if I've got this right. You're suggesting that women are saying these sorts of traits, typically masculine, dominant, prestige, go-getter traits, are things that men shouldn't engage in and that women shouldn't like, but the problem is that women aren't as capable at getting themselves to not like those things or, more specifically, to like the reverse of those things?

    14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:22:57

        That's right. And so women might make these explicit, sort of, you know, mate choice decisions where, you know, they might be encouraged by their friends or whatever to sort of, you know, go out with this guy even though they're not especially attracted to him or to not go out with that guy even though they might be attracted to him. Um, and therefore, they end up in relationships where the, the relationships are either not, um, not compatible, they don't work very well, they don't last very long, and they don't end up becoming long-term, stable relationships in which you can- in which you can raise families. Because the other thing that, that sort of happens, if women make-- I think this, this happens to, to a reasonable extent to men as well, but, but more so with, with women. Women are by far the, the sex that terminates relationships more commonly. Um, if women pair up with someone who they then later decide is not sort of their mate quality, the relationship doesn't work, and they're not satisfied, and they do attempt to trade up, um, at least in those, you know, early stages before it's complicated by having children and, and things like that. And so it's, you know, if you can convince women to perpetually date men, that her brain is gonna tell her, "No, this is not the person that you should be reproducing with," then she's gonna find it very difficult to end up actually having a, a, a nice, you know, profitable, stable, long-term relationship that will work.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:24:20

        I think what would be interesting would be to look at the women who are proposing, whatever you want to call them, cinnamon roll husband, golden retriever husband approach.

    16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:24:31

        [chuckles]

    17. CWChris Williamson1:24:31

        Um-

    18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:24:32

        Look at their husbands?

    19. CWChris Williamson1:24:34

        Look at their husbands. Yeah, exactly.

    20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:24:35

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:24:35

        Like, who is it, who is it that you're marrying? Who is it that the women are, are ultimately getting with? And, you know, part of this you could see as, well, it's... People don't know what they want, and they're ex- I thought I was right in the past. I thought that the, the, the casual sex thing, the sleep with them and not catch feels thing, I thought that that was right then, but it's not right now. I think when you do see that, it, it does show some women may reach, like, realization escape velocity to get out of that mindset and into the one that they end up in. But other women may just cycle through a series of medium-term relationships with guys who are not a type that they want to keep going because they've seen this meme, and they've committed to it, and they think that that's the way. So yeah, I can see how... I, i- it's difficult, right? Because, I mean, one of the biggest insights that I learned when thinking about Me Too was that blanket advice doesn't land on people evenly. So when you say to guys, "Don't be pushy," the guys who really could have done with a little bit more gumption and less approach anxiety will take that to heart-... while the guys that were blowing through boundaries all along don't think that it's meant for them in any case, and-

    22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:25:47

        Well, that's right. Exactly. If you're gonna blow through boundaries, then putting up an extra boundary is not gonna change your behavior. If you're the type of person who doesn't blow through boundaries, well, as you say, putting up a boundary just pushes you even further back.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:25:59

        Yeah.

13. 1:26:00 – 1:31:45

    Why Modern Men Are Pulling Back

    1. CWChris Williamson1:26:00

       Going back to the benevolent sexism thing-

    2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:26:02

       Mm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:26:03

       Did you see there was a video, I think it might be in a CCTV video, of a girl in Vietnam? She was traveling, and she got her bag tried to be taken off her by a guy with a knife. It looked like there were two travelers, a, a man and a woman, young, maybe 20s, something like that. This video was maybe a month ago, a month and a half ago.

    4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:26:22

       Oh, and he hides? Is that the one?

    5. CWChris Williamson1:26:24

       Yes, he hides be- he hides behind the pillar. Yeah.

    6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:26:27

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:26:27

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought that was, that was really fascinating, looking at the response from that in particular, um, because so many of the responses were, "This guy's not worth your time of day", "Men are trash", "Girl, just leave him", "This is what's," you know, "the current generation of men." And trying to square that circle with w- dominance in men, benevolent sexism, w- sort of a patriarchal, classically masculine, protectionist belief about women being delicate and special and needing men to use their increased robustness and resilience to be able to wall them off from the world. W- in one headline, it says that that's oppressive, and in another headline, it says that it's a marker of, like, uh, modern men not being up to standards. Uh, well, yeah, it feels like talking out of both sides of your mouth.

    8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:27:29

       It is, and, and that's-- this is why men can't win, right? This is- there is- th- this is why I think many men are almost sort of self... just de- just deciding to just self-remove from the mating, mating market entirely. Because they've seen the writing on the wall, and, you know, they, they understand, in some cases, perhaps, perhaps misunderstand and are perhaps overestimating the risk. But I, I, I, I don't know. I think, I think the risks are real. Um, and, and it's hard to know what, what weight men should put on those. But, you know, it's, it's really difficult because there's very little that men can do that they-- that they're not going to be criticized for, right? If you, if you go and a- and approach a woman, you know, th- th- then you're- you, you, you're, in some cases, you know, you're sort of, f- you know, automatically being demanding and, and, and sexist and presumptuous. Like, I'm not sure if you remember. I remember because they went up around my university, that little fad where th- they started putting up pictures of, you know, various women's faces with sort of statements underneath them, supposedly being things that, you know, men needed to hear from women. And one of them was is, you know, "I don't owe you polite conversation."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:28:34

       [chuckles]

    10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:28:34

        So, you know, the very idea-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:28:36

        Mm, mm-hmm.

    12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:28:36

        ... yeah, the very idea that a man, you know, expecting that if he goes and talks to a woman, she might at least be polite, even that was a sexist presumption, right? Like, there is very little that men can actually do that is not going to lead to them being potentially criticized, and sometimes quite seriously, by one or other branch of, you know, the t- the talking heads, the progressive collective, progressive talking heads, m- you know, from various feminist angles. And so it has become incredibly difficult for men. And then, you know, they do have genuine fears about... You know, I think w- you know, I, I don't want to sort of necessarily s- sort of speak on behalf of men, 'cause I suspect I don't really know.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:29:12

        Feel free to.

    14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:29:12

        But, um, yeah. [chuckles] I sus- I suspect I don't know-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:29:15

        Speaking for the male community

    16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:29:17

        ... as well as I should. Speak for the male community? Sure, let me just scurry right off. Um, [chuckles] no, I, I think that there is a very real fear of false accusations of sexual harassment or, or sexual assault, and I think that that is probably, in a really confusing way for a lot of young men, is probably blended with, with, you know, sort of coupled with genuine fears of maybe actually accidentally committing-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:29:39

        Yeah, yeah

    18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:29:39

        ... a sexual offense or sexual assault.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:29:40

        L- let me, let me give you-

    20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:29:41

        And it's really difficult to tell those two things apart, I think, especially for a lot of young, inexperienced men. And so they, they're scared of the false accusation, but they're also scared of the, you know, accidental commission of an offense, which is a crazy, a, a crazy position for, for young men to be in. Um, but, you know-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:29:58

        Well, o- o- on, on that, I... Is it a crazy position for men to be in? There are certainly times where guys can be fumbling around and coercive, emotionally manipulative, in a way that doesn't cross anything close to a legal boundary or even s- something that's ethical, but it's-- there's a bit of gamesmanship. She said, "No," so he took his arm out from underneath her, stopped cuddling her, and turned over on the other side of the bed and said, "Well, if we're not gonna do it, I'm gonna go to sleep." Like, is that-- like, what's that? Because that's a, an effective strategy of kind of the retreating, uh, the, the, uh, removal of emotional, uh, comfort and physical touch because you didn't want to do that thing, but I d- like, is that... A- and, you know, we just create this entire spectrum. I think-

    22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:30:48

        Yeah

    23. CWChris Williamson1:30:49

        ... I, as a perfect example, this was probably five years ago or six years ago now, I was out in London with a friend who was 20, 21, and there was a group of girls up by the bar, and I said, "We should go and talk to them. I'm bored of you. Uh, we should go and talk to the girls by the bar." And he looked at me like I'd suggested that we go and kill them, put them in a bag, and bury them in a, a pond.

    24. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:31:08

        [chuckles]

    25. CWChris Williamson1:31:08

        It was like, "You're kidding." Like, "No, they, they, they look c- they look nice. There, there's three of them, there's two of us. I'm sure we can take them. Like, it, let's-

    26. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:31:18

        [chuckles]

    27. CWChris Williamson1:31:19

        ... We should go, we should go and talk to them." And, uh, he was like, "I have been told under no circumstances to ever approach a woman in public." And that was, [stutters] it blew my mind, 'cause-

    28. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:31:33

        Yeah

    29. CWChris Williamson1:31:34

        ... I'm th- I'm 37, and when I was at university, we didn't even have iPhones, so that was a very different-

    30. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:31:40

        You had to go and talk to people [chuckles]
14. 1:31:45 – 1:49:33

    Has Gender Politics Broken Dating?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:31:45

       I, look, I get it on the, the challenges of guys sort of balancing this, this new world that they're entering into, and the fact that they decide to check out as opposed to potentially do something. I think it's a great point to say that guys not wanting to accidentally do something that they would later regret, there's the, uh, hypersensitivity to the-- and less forgiveness to the sort of innate, bumbly, q- white, chaotic world of young people mating. Like, if you're 20 and you're trying to work out, like, you've both had a drink, uh, what, like, is-- should we-- I-- we've met before. Like, it's all-

    2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:32:31

       Yeah

    3. CWChris Williamson1:32:31

       ... it's the devil really is in the details with these things. And-

    4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:32:34

       Of course it is

    5. CWChris Williamson1:32:35

       ... as you try and navigate through all of this, if you basically make the fear-setting higher, uh, guys, uh, as my friend, t- well, I've been told, under no circumstances ever go up to a woman in, uh, in public. Like, that's a, you know, that's a real thing. So, yeah, I, [sighs] it does make it difficult. It makes it a difficult environment for, for, for men to navigate. And then, unfortunately, I don't, I don't think that women's preferences have updated themselves to be the ones that want to come up and talk to guys. Uh-

    6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:33:11

       No, of course not. Of course not.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:33:12

       Yeah, I think it's-

    8. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:33:12

       I mean, this is-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:33:13

       ... eighty-six percent of women say that they want to make, want a man to make the first move.

    10. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:33:17

        Yeah, yeah, and, and, and this is, this is why sort of one of the reasons why I'm sort of really convinced that this a, a sort of attack on male masculinity, dominance, whatever you want to call it, is this attack on being a man. Um, it's been so effective in disrupting that, you know, human courtship behavior. It's been really, really effective. Women are not, you know, for the most part, are not going to initiate these relationships and, or these interactions, I should say. Um, and so if you can stop men from initiating them, then that goes a long way towards stopping them from, a long way towards stopping them from happening. And then I think there's been-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:33:55

        But does that not mean that-- just to interject that, does that not mean that-

    12. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:33:57

        Yeah

    13. CWChris Williamson1:33:58

        ... you, as the proponent of this idea, would be on the receiving end of it, too? That doesn't seem like a particularly good thing. Like, you're also curtailing the men that would come up-

    14. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:34:06

        Ah

    15. CWChris Williamson1:34:06

        ... and approach you.

    16. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:34:08

        Yeah. So, so this is a-- [sighs] so no, that's a, that's a really good question, and it's good 'cause it gives me a, a chance to sort of explain a, a sort of important principle that kind of wraps around all of this. So what's happening with all of, of these things, that the devaluation of motherhood, the devaluation of marriage, the demonization of, of men that would actually make excellent husbands and fathers, the, you know, the, the valorization of, of careers for women and all the rest of it, um, one thing that w- the end result of all of these sort of individual things that are happening is that they're feeding into creating an environment that is really hostile to reproductive success. So we just have an environment in which the, the, the rules that we've sort of-- you know, the, the social etiquettes and the rules that we've sort of developed and built over time and over generations have all of a sudden just been thrown out. So now that the guardrails have gone, and those, you know, those rules of etiquette, they were really important because people understood what you were and weren't allowed to do, and people understood that you could do this, and you couldn't do that. And we sort of had, you know, a way that the two people who didn't really know each other could navigate a potentially romantic interaction with, with some, some certainty and some guidance, and that's been chucked out the window. So w- w- we've got an environment now, a social environment, that is incredibly hostile to reproduction, and yes, that impacts everybody negatively. But all of these things will always impact those who generally have lower reproductive potential more. So if you are, from a reproductive perspective, an elite, if you are, uh, as-- let's just say as a woman, if you are highly attractive, you can do a crazy thing like decide to get a little pixie crew cut, um, which for most women would massively decrease their attractiveness. You can probably do that and start setting that as a fashion trend, and yeah, it's going to decrease your attractiveness a little bit, but you're still going to be pretty hot. It's going to be much worse for all the less attractive women who are now copying this trendy pixie cut, and that same principle applies across the board to all of these things. So yeah, it hurts, um, everybody, but the people who can-- the people who have the most reproductive potential because they have the highest mate quality, and they're the most fertile, and they already have, you know-- they're already in a position in society which gives them social access to the best men, you know, those women are hurt the least, and so they are the ones who are pushing and setting all of these trends. So if you imagine that, like, if you sort of think we've got this kind of linear scale, and the odds of reproductive success are, you know, those that have the highest odds, the highest likelihood of the most reproductive success are at the top, and you can line everyone up, right down to those people that have really low prospective reproductive success. The more hostile you make the environment, the, the higher you lift the bar along that linear scale to a point where people are not having any reproductive success, which is exactly what we're seeing, right? More and more people are just not able to navigate their life to lead to reproductive success in this really anti-natal environment that we, that they find themselves in, whether it's because they devalued finding a mate when they were at their peak mate quality and it should have been the easiest, whether it's because they delayed having children when they were at their peak fertility and that would have been the easiest, whether it's because they made bad mate choice decisions, bad, uh, life choices, ended up investing a lot in their career, thinking that they would somehow magically find a partner and be able to have a family between the ages of, you know, thirty-eight and thirty-nine, and then that didn't happen. Um, you know, we have a, a social environment that is very hostile to reproduction, and therefore, the only people in there who are able to reproduce are the ones that have the most reproductive capacity.... to begin with, by virtue of a whole bunch of factors that contribute to that. So yes, it hurts everybody, but the ones who benefit are the, the, the relatively small number of those who survive it and successfully reproduce, and they benefit because large numbers of their competitors simply can't reproduce in such a hostile environment.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:38:09

        So that's your line from the very beginning, saying that running the race results in everybody moving more slowly?

    18. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:38:16

        Yes, exactly. The female race slows everybody down, but someone still wins, and so it doesn't matter that, that the whole reproductive output has dropped for, for, for the fact that they still continue to win this-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:38:30

        Because the-

    20. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:38:30

        -individually-based race.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:38:31

        -the genes aren't smart enough to realize that if there is no future civilization, your progeny have a bad future. We've evolved under circumstances where that hasn't been an issue, therefore, if you relatively have more kids than the next woman, that's good for you. When you start to scale this across an entire civilization, what ends up happening is it's good for you, but over time this is gonna become very bad for everybody, including you.

    22. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:39:05

        Yep. That... Yes, you're correct, but with one, with one caveat, though.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:39:09

        I always get something wrong. It's okay.

    24. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:39:11

        Yeah. No, no, no, you didn't get anything wrong. You, you're correct so far, but, um, except that here's the- so here's the kicker, right? So you, you, you would be correct if the end point of this was actually that it's just bad for everybody. Because you're right, evolution is not... It- it's not teleological, and it cannot see the consequences.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:39:30

        Mm.

    26. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:39:30

        If a, if an individual population finds itself in a local, you know, a local maxima, some sort of local adaptive thing, it will be selected for to stay there, even if the inevitable outcome of, of that trait or that behavior is that the entire species goes extinct. It, you know, evolution has no mechanism for protecting against that. So you would be right if the end point of this manipulative reproductive suppression was, in fact, just the end of all of these lineages. But it's not, and this is where it gets perhaps even, uh, well, I think, I think gets even more interesting. So this is what I- so what, what happens at the end of, you know, when civilizations crash and fall, the- you, you don't actually see an end to those genetic lineages. What you see is those ge- genetic lineages, some of them, a small number of them, those who are there at the end, um, actually becoming the founder population or a part of the founder population of what rises. So you can sort of think of it as like, almost like this really kind of dire game of musical chairs.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:40:30

        Mm.

    28. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:40:30

        Now, if you can sense... Now, the, the musical chairs play, and each round, you know, someone doesn't get a chair, and a lineage drops out.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:40:37

        Mm.

    30. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:40:37

        You know, each round, somebody doesn't reproduce, and a lineage drops out. If you can sense that the end is near, then you actually want the end to come before you end up being the one that doesn't find a chair in one of the rounds. So once female behavior reaches this really intense reproductive suppression stage, and we start seeing all of the social science that this is happening, like a massive drop in the decline of sex, um, sorry, a massive drop in the price of sex, um, increased casual sex, vulgarity, decreasing marriage, decreasing birth rates, and a whole bunch of other social factors that all point to this being the stage of society where we're at, they all act as cues to sort of intensify this behavior as everybody vies for a, a, a chair at the end. Everybody wants to be one of the lineages left standing, because what's the genetic prize if you are one of the lineages left standing, is that you get to be part- if you're a woman, you will get to be... Because when you get invaded, it's the women who survive and reproduce, it's not the men. Um, you get to be part of the founder population of a new society that will go through a large expansion phase. So you may have started off, your lineages may have, say, like, you know, it's... Lineages are not this separate, but for sake of argument, your lineage may be, you know, one of 10,000 in the population at the start of this game. But if you're, you know, one of just 50 lineages that are left, and you become that as part of the founder population-
15. 1:49:33 – 1:50:19

    Where to Find Dr Dani

    1. CWChris Williamson1:49:33

       Uh-

    2. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:49:33

       [chuckles]

    3. CWChris Williamson1:49:34

       ... Dr Dani Sulikowski, ladies and gentlemen. Dani, uh, you're fascinating. I really appreciate you explaining this stuff. Uh, it's-- there's a, a lot of conflicting narratives at the moment, and someone who's spent so much time thinking about this is, uh, is really cool to, to get some time to dig into. Uh, where should people go to check out all of the stuff that you do?

    4. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:49:52

       Um, follow me on Twitter, so Doctor, um, @drdanis, and anything else I do always gets put up there. So if you just go there and you just follow me, then you get to see everything that there is to see.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:50:03

       Heck yeah! Dani, I appreciate you. Thank you.

    6. DSDr. Dani Sulikowski1:50:05

       Brilliant. [upbeat music] Thanks very much.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:50:07

       Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Come on.

Episode duration: 1:50:19