Based Camp - Are Lesbians Faking It？

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be speaking with you today because there are a variety of odd

00:00:05.080 things about lesbians and we need to talk about it because it's really bothering me.

00:00:08.680 And let's just jump right into it. One analysis of census data found that 36% of women in their

00:00:14.420 40s with same-sex partners were previously married to men. Sorry, this is hugely understating this.

00:00:20.520 This is 36% of lesbians in their 40s had previously been married to men. If you go to lesbians in

00:00:26.640 their 50s, it goes to 50%. And if you go to lesbians who are 60 plus, it's 75%.

00:00:34.100 And that's what got me started on this because I found that while we were researching another

00:00:37.980 podcast episode. So I dug deeper and then I just found all these other things that didn't make

00:00:43.540 any sense. Like despite there being fewer women who identify as lesbian, a large pooled analysis

00:00:48.600 reported around 1.5% of men and 1.2% of women in survey populations identified as gay or lesbian

00:00:56.220 respectively. There are more lesbian marriages than gay marriages, at least in the USA. Roughly 53%

00:01:02.960 of same-sex marriages are lesbian, which is weird because I only now know gay couples. So where are

00:01:08.760 these mysterious lesbian couples? Yeah. Also women make up the lion's share of LGBTQIA population,

00:01:16.580 but mostly due to their identification as bisexual, which they identify as at twice the rate of men.

00:01:22.860 Plus also the rate at which women identify as lesbian or bisexual is trending up with younger

00:01:28.680 generations more than at the rate at which young men are identifying as gay. So this, the whole theory

00:01:34.260 of like, you're born this way. Doesn't seem jolly. Well, I remember this, this all started with us going

00:01:41.340 into this. And I think the thing that shocked you because- With the previous marriage ones.

00:01:45.820 Yeah. I was like, I was like, wait, what- 36% of lesbians were previously married to a man?

00:01:51.140 Right. So it's like, you're probably not that lesbian. Yeah. On a scale of one to lesbian. I mean,

00:01:55.480 you're not that lesbian. I was like, are lesbians even a thing? And then I started to think,

00:02:01.780 right. And I started to be like, okay, when I think through what I know of history,

00:02:05.220 I know of a lot of gay males in history. I know of a lot, or not a lot, but a few women who decided

00:02:11.520 they want to dress up and act like men. But in terms of explicitly lesbian women, I actually

00:02:17.240 couldn't think of- We're going to go into it, actually. Yeah. We're going to start off with-

00:02:21.100 And Sappho, by the way, probably not a lesbian, which- We're also going to go into that.

00:02:24.740 But I set you on this pass. I was like, Simone- Look at that.

00:02:28.700 Because this could be like, are there actually, is there actually a cross-cultural argument for

00:02:32.820 lesbianism being real? Well, yeah. And I did, I looked and I'm like, oh my God,

00:02:36.860 are lesbians fake news? Are lesbians a farce, a smokescreen, a complete fever dream of men who

00:02:45.060 like the idea of women kissing? I mean, what is this? I mean, there are also other weird things

00:02:49.480 though, that I want to talk with you about that, like, I don't know how they fit into the narrative.

00:02:52.820 Like the percentage of lesbians among professional athletes is significantly higher than the percentage

00:02:58.040 in the general population. So 30 to 38% of WNBA players are openly lesbian or in same-sex

00:03:04.800 relationships, which is 15 to 30 times higher than the general population.

00:03:10.000 Oh, that's the answer.

00:03:10.880 Okay, why?

00:03:12.060 That's likely due to performance enhancing hormones they're taking.

00:03:16.320 Maybe, but also there are also disproportionately more lesbians in academia, STEM fields, psychology,

00:03:21.580 social law, nonprofits, the trades, and the military. They're not doping.

00:03:25.500 Right. Okay. So first of all, you're dealing with two categories here. One is probably doping

00:03:30.780 and one is probably just more urban monoculture.

00:03:33.820 Oh, I was going to say maybe higher, like, fetal testosterone?

00:03:38.600 No. Well, that could be partially it, but military, I would expect rates of doping because it's useful

00:03:43.980 in training and everything like that. In terms of academia, I mean, you're dealing with an extremely

00:03:48.880 urban monoculture environment. So of course they're going to feel pressured into identifying

00:03:52.780 as same-sex attracted. Instead of just bisexual or asexual or trans?

00:03:57.240 Oh, yeah. Bisexual people are really heavily discriminated against by the urban monoculture.

00:04:02.060 Bisexual is actually kind of like a conservative or right-leaning identification within urban

00:04:07.580 monocultural environments because many gays and lesbians see it as being a traitor or not

00:04:11.640 being fully dedicated.

00:04:13.060 Oh, yeah. Everyone hates... They're the Mormons of the sexual identification. Everyone hates bisexuals.

00:04:18.000 See our episode on, like, what's wrong with bisexuals? Because we go over the stats showing,

00:04:21.600 like, really weird stuff with bisexual status. But that all makes sense. That's not a mystery to me.

00:04:27.100 Well, then let's go to the history. Let's start with the history. Because that also, I'm like,

00:04:30.720 oh my god, you're right. And like, every... It's okay. But yeah, let's just start at the very beginning.

00:04:35.960 Very good place to start. People claim that Sappho was a lesbian, meaning a woman whose primary

00:04:42.440 erotic and romantic attractions were to other women, based on the strongest available historical

00:04:47.500 evidence, her own surviving poetry. And that sounds very compelling on the surface of it. Like,

00:04:51.960 right? Oh, okay. Just look at what she wrote. And the proof. And it's argued that her poems,

00:04:57.800 which were written from around 630 to 570 BCE on the island of lesbos, lesbians,

00:05:03.260 provide clear, direct expressions of intense desire for women. Okay. Let's... That sounds... That's what

00:05:11.540 I'd always been told. So I'm like, okay, let's actually look at it. The problem is that if her

00:05:18.360 own surviving poetry is the evidence, she's no more lesbian than, like, modern male songwriters

00:05:23.200 who write for female artists or, like, right-wing bodybuilder appreciators who are not gay. Like,

00:05:29.960 you can write about the female form or about women and not... Go over the lines because they're not that...

00:05:36.400 And this is where I directed Simone first, because this is actually really telling. If our entire

00:05:40.820 nomenclature around the term that we could not find a single real historic lesbian, that both

00:05:48.000 the term lesbian and the term sapphic come from one person who wasn't even same-sex attracted,

00:05:54.960 what that means... I mean, I think that really highlights how farcical the entire downstream of

00:06:00.580 this is. Yeah. Just a little bit of context, though. I think it's important because I hadn't

00:06:06.040 known this. Most scholars think that her primary audience was other women in her own elite social

00:06:11.900 circle, especially young unmarried women who she taught and led in song. And her poems were composed

00:06:18.080 to be performed aloud with music, often in small aristocratic female circles, sort of like her rich

00:06:25.320 socialite friends. Or at religious occasions, maybe for female deities, and at events like

00:06:30.500 weddings. So in other words, she was like a micro Taylor Swift. And so just think about that as

00:06:36.280 you're hearing some of these, you could say, song lyrics. And that's... Yeah, I think that that

00:06:42.060 context is important. So in one of her most famous poems, the speaker, you know, the person saying the

00:06:49.240 words, describes overwhelming physical symptoms of desire, like trembling and sweating and feeling

00:06:54.460 near death while watching a woman sitting with a man. And the intensity is portrayed as romantic or

00:07:02.400 sexual jealousy and attraction to the women, allegedly and according to historians. But let's

00:07:07.580 actually look at the lines written, translated into English, to be fair. That man seems to me to be equal

00:07:14.420 to the gods who is sitting opposite you and hears you nearby, speaking sweetly and laughing delightfully,

00:07:21.180 which indeed makes my heart flutter in my breast. For when I look at you, even for a short time,

00:07:27.580 it is no longer possible for me to speak. But it is as if my tongue is broken, and immediately a subtle

00:07:33.380 fire has run over my skin. I cannot see anything with my eyes, and my ears are buzzing. A cold sweat

00:07:38.700 comes over me, trembling, seizes me all over. I am paler than the grass. I seem nearly to have died.

00:07:44.180 But everything must be dared slash endured since... Then it sort of breaks off because, you know,

00:07:49.380 they have fragments of poems, but not the whole thing. The other important thing to remember about

00:07:53.700 this poem is that there is no reason to believe that the person who's supposed to be saying these

00:08:00.020 words about the person is Sappho herself. That is just not the way poems were written during this

00:08:05.240 period of history, or this ancient Greece. It would have been a play. And the character that is speaking

00:08:10.560 in the play is a bride-to-be. She's looking at her husband talking to somebody else. That is something

00:08:16.680 we know about this poem. So it's basically about a bride's jealousy, and that's supposed to be

00:08:23.000 relatable to other women, which seems a lot more relatable than assuming all the other women in

00:08:27.880 her social network are also secretly gay. Like, even if she was gay, this isn't the way she would show

00:08:33.080 it. To drive that home, one of the mainstream historical interpretations of this particular line

00:08:37.880 is that it's actually sung by a chorus to sort of highlight that this woman is ready for marriage

00:08:44.160 and excited to be married. That's what apparently is going on in this.

00:08:49.120 Though I, the first time I read this without any context, I thought it was a poem about a girl

00:08:56.200 observing romantic competition, because it starts out with the framing of this person talking to a

00:09:01.260 godlike man. And when I think in the context of her singing to or reading this to a young,

00:09:08.200 unmarried female audience, this is the kind of stuff that they relate to. Like, all of their

00:09:13.840 close friends are women, and they may, like, have crushes on guys or think about getting married

00:09:20.360 someday, but most of the contextual mooring points they have are women. So it's a lot easier to relate

00:09:26.940 to poetry like this, I would imagine. But that's just my interpretation of it.

00:09:30.840 It's not your interpretation. I think it's, it's, it's a better, like, it's a more likely

00:09:35.760 interpretation from the texts that we have and other Greek poems of this period, then is the

00:09:40.740 interpretation that she is actually lusting after the woman. It is, it is just, it starts with a

00:09:45.940 discussion of the man is godlike, like, this man is perfect. He's hot. And then she starts describing

00:09:50.920 the competition. Yeah. Right? Like, the, the, and I had experiences like this, like, as a, as a young

00:09:58.420 girl, and watch, people are gonna be like, yeah, confirmed, Simone's a lesbian now. But all of the,

00:10:03.080 like, when I looked at people's body parts as a young woman, like, in high school and stuff, or middle

00:10:11.720 school, I would, I remember sitting in an assembly once and looking at a girl's legs and being like,

00:10:19.300 oh my god, her legs are perfect. And you think, oh, she is confirmed a lesbian. I really wanted to

00:10:25.200 have her legs, because she shaved her legs. And I was not allowed to shave my legs. My mom didn't

00:10:29.500 want me to shave my legs. And I hated my legs. And my legs were dry. But I, and I just like, I was

00:10:34.500 jealous of her. I wanted to have a body like hers, because I wanted to be coveted and pretty. And I

00:10:40.380 think that an outsider will see something like that, or see like someone's diary entry about that,

00:10:44.720 or their poetry about that, and think, from a male's perspective, like from the male mind,

00:10:51.460 that like, oh, you're looking at this, you're obsessing over this, you're getting stressed and

00:10:56.200 emotional over it. That means you want to bang it. And that's not how women's minds work. There's,

00:11:03.400 there's a lot of jealousy. That's actually really interesting. It is male historians reading this,

00:11:08.100 and not understanding that what's being described here. She wants to bang her, because that's how

00:11:13.620 it is. She wants to bang anybody, yes. Yeah, it's like, for with women, I think there's so much more

00:11:17.700 mental processing power dedicated to intra-sex competition, which is very emotional, which is

00:11:24.820 very focused on appearance and all these other things. And there's all these research that shows

00:11:29.360 that like, you know, hair cutters will cut women's hair a little shorter than they should,

00:11:33.760 because they're like, all right, you're a little too pretty. And there's just all this stuff going on.

00:11:37.620 And then this stuff gets misinterpreted. But also, then when I read the historical

00:11:42.020 interpretations of that snippet of poetry, I'm like, oh, God, like, imagine like far future humans

00:11:49.280 discovered fragments of Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl. And we're like, oh, the famous historical

00:11:55.980 lesbian, Katy Perry. Katy Perry. Yeah, it's calling it Perryism. Oh, you're a Perryist, aren't you?

00:12:02.620 Because you're like, I Kissed a Girl, I liked it as even more explicit than anything Zaffo ever.

00:12:07.280 Yeah, you actually kissed a girl and it felt like instead of just being like, oh, I looked at her

00:12:12.760 and was like, oh, but I mean, there's all these other songs about like admiring women, even today

00:12:18.700 and stuff like Suddenly I See, Put Your Record On.

00:12:21.000 Do you have some other clips from Zaffo? Because I remember like all of the clips from her are like

00:12:24.660 comical that anyone would think.

00:12:26.120 Yeah, so in fragment one of the hymn to Aphrodite, the speaker praised Aphrodite for help in winning

00:12:32.960 back an alleged, according to broadly male historians, female lover who rejected her using language of

00:12:40.120 pursuit, flight, reciprocation that they argue is typical of erotic poetry. And Grok, when asked to

00:12:48.220 summarize the original Greek without referencing external sources, which I kind of don't believe it

00:12:53.080 actually did. It says, the speaker Sappho, so immediately, because I didn't say Sappho,

00:13:00.280 the speaker Sappho passionately calls upon Aphrodite, the immortal goddess born of Zeus,

00:13:05.700 who weaves a wiles and sits on a many colored throne. She begs the goddess not to crush her heart

00:13:11.980 with grief or anguish. She recalls how Aphrodite has heard and answered her prayers before the goddess

00:13:17.600 left her father's golden house, yoked her swift sparrows, blah blah blah. So basically, she talks a lot

00:13:22.700 about Aphrodite in terms of like, oh, the goddess who does the things and rides the horses, chariot,

00:13:28.680 whatever. Aphrodite promised that the beloved who now flees would soon pursue, who now rejects gifts

00:13:35.540 would soon give them, who now does not love would soon love even against their will. The poem ends with

00:13:42.400 the speaker pleading to Aphrodite to come now, release her from her painful worries, grant whatever

00:13:47.920 her longs to achieve, and stand as her ally once again. I also asked Grok if she was referring to

00:13:53.860 a woman, and it said the speaker in Sappho's hymn to Aphrodite, fragment one, is asking Aphrodite to

00:13:59.120 help win the favor or return the favor, love slash affection of a woman. And that's based on, I think,

00:14:03.880 how a verb is conjugated. So it's, it's, I don't think it's ambiguous that this is about winning back

00:14:09.280 the favor of a woman. What Simone forgot to mention here is there is literally no evidence that the

00:14:14.860 poem is being written from the perspective of a woman. Now keep in mind, poems of this period would

00:14:19.520 have been like plays. This is a bit like you're reading Twilight, and because Edward likes to watch

00:14:26.040 Bella sleep at night, you're like, oh look, he's showing an intense desire for a woman. No woman ever

00:14:31.660 could have written fantasies about men showing intense desire for women. But again, what was the life

00:14:38.600 of an ancient Greek woman? The life of an ancient Greek woman was one in which she was isolated

00:14:46.400 from the rest of, of society, not hanging out with dudes. This is like being in like a private

00:14:54.320 Catholic girl's school, and the mean girl is rejecting you, and you want Heather to not be mean

00:15:01.700 to you anymore, and to let her back into the clique, and then you have Pink Thursdays, and you wear your

00:15:06.760 scrunchies together, and she's not being nice to you, and you, you want to be the queen bee. And

00:15:12.080 that's kind of what I read from that, but again, like. So, so it's important to note here that Greek

00:15:17.060 women of this period would not have been allowed to talk to men other than their husbands. Yeah.

00:15:21.300 They were not allowed to talk to anyone other than their small social circle of women.

00:15:25.480 Men weren't, I don't, I don't think they were, men were like more, more like jobs than romantic

00:15:31.260 interests. Yeah. Your fun gossip and relationships and, and romance, really? Like in terms of like

00:15:37.840 the drama, would be with other women, because you didn't have any other choices. Well, you also have

00:15:43.400 the, the scandal if you're going too overboard in a song about a man who's not your husband.

00:15:49.240 Um, which is one of the outlets that you need to consider in terms of how she's structuring this stuff.

00:15:53.640 Yeah. So if she, if she's talking about lusting after somebody and that person is not her husband

00:15:59.500 and she is a woman, that could lead to very, very negative consequences within Greek society of this

00:16:06.080 period. Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, I, I just think it's not fair. There are also, it should be just more

00:16:17.160 broadly noted that some fragments of her poetry hinted attraction to men too, or at least heterosexual

00:16:24.680 marriage norms. So I decided to look for some of these. And as soon as you read them, it becomes

00:16:28.920 really clear that her style was writing about men lusting after women. So these other poems make a

00:16:35.040 lot of sense as potentially being from men lusting over women. So here's some example. Here's a metaphor

00:16:40.360 for a bride's unattainable beauty, like the sweet apple, which reddens upon the topmost brow, a top on the

00:16:47.080 topmost twig, which the apple pickers forgot, or rather did not forget, but could not reach.

00:16:52.980 And then this is her talking about a guy coming in the room on their wedding night. Raise high,

00:16:58.320 the roof beam carpenters. How am I see us? Like areas comes the bridegroom taller, far than a tall man.

00:17:05.420 How am I see us? I love it. Just like tall, so tall that he's taller than a tall man. And then

00:17:11.060 blessed by groom, your marriage has been fulfilled as you prayed. You have the girl you prayed

00:17:16.840 for. Your form is graceful, eyes soft, and love flows over your alluring face. Aphrodite has

00:17:23.460 honored you astoundingly. To what, dear bridegroom, and this is a separate one, can I fairly compare

00:17:29.360 you? I can best compare you to a slender shoot.

00:17:32.060 So some historians are like, oh, they were straight washing her. I really don't know. I just don't think

00:17:42.400 that there's definitive evidence that this was a lesbian. At best, she was bisexual, but I think

00:17:47.840 more, we're misinterpreting the social norms of a very different time. And like, maybe if we looked

00:17:53.260 at more what it's like for extremely conservative, cloistered Muslim women today, it would give us a

00:18:00.180 better understanding of the female experience with romance and other women closer to what Safa would

00:18:06.400 have experienced and grown up with. So I think she's kind of understating here how common these rumors

00:18:12.080 were. One of the most enduring rumors was that Safa fell helplessly in love with a young ferryman named

00:18:18.340 Fawn, pursued him obsessively, and when rejected, committed unaliving by leafing from the Lucas cliff

00:18:25.100 to the sea. This tale implies intense heterosexual passion and promiscuity, and it frames her as an

00:18:30.760 over-sexualized predator, specifically desperately bedding and chasing young men. We see this in numerous

00:18:37.740 sources, including Memondros and Ovid, but I would note that's not the only one. We also have from a

00:18:46.920 number of historians that Safa was married to a merchant named Karkalis from the island of Andros,

00:18:53.520 with whom she had a daughter named Kleis. Kleis comes up as her daughter in a number of her poems.

00:19:00.140 We also have Safa frequently depicted as in 4th and 5th century BCE Athenian comedies as a promiscuous

00:19:07.900 heterosexual woman, eagerly pursuing and sleeping with younger men, or rival male poets for affection.

00:19:14.040 For instance, lost plays titled Sappho by authors like Diaphlysis portrayed her in heterosexual

00:19:20.400 entanglements with male contemporaries. So for hundreds of years after her death, all anyone could

00:19:25.940 talk about was what a promiscuous heterosexual woman this person was, and she has been rewritten

00:19:32.600 by modern historians. Like, if she was gay, why would these rumors be going around? Presumably this would be

00:19:38.940 the lesser rumor. This would be the lesser scandal than her being gay. But no. To me, this implies it's almost

00:19:44.980 completely impossible that she was gay or even bisexual. Roman philosopher Cinca, 1st century CE, even complained

00:19:51.680 about a scholar writing a treatise debating if Sappho was a prostitute. These depictions are so common with

00:19:58.980 Sappho that they've had to come up with the two Sappho theory, which is what progressives used to try to defend

00:20:06.580 against this, saying that there were two famous poets named Sappho at exactly this period. And somehow we only know of

00:20:13.780 one from the poetry, the lesbian one, and the other one is a complete myth only known about from rumors from how slutty she

00:20:19.960 was. And so some historians argue that she might have been bisexual by modern standards, though apparently

00:20:27.580 her surviving erotic poetry, or seen as erotic, is directed more toward women. And then much of her work

00:20:36.020 was lost, and ancient rumors sometimes portrayed her as being promiscuous with men instead. There's one

00:20:43.480 fictional story of her leaping off a cliff for a man named Fayon. Like, if we looked at an elite circle

00:20:50.540 of cloistered Islamic women in a very strict Islamic state.

00:20:58.500 Yeah. Well, I think that what we know from the period is that people of the period, like we do have

00:21:04.140 like works that show that she was talking about potentially lusting after things, sort of like

00:21:10.500 general song stuff you would expect today, was in this context. But we know from the rumors about

00:21:16.740 her life from the period, and we have very little of her surviving poetry, that other people thought

00:21:22.860 she was a slut, right? Like four men. And I do not understand, people can be like, oh, that's

00:21:27.860 straight washing. No, it'd be straight washing if some historian did that. These are people from her

00:21:33.700 own time period who are spreading scandals. If she was sleeping around with woman, that would be more

00:21:39.500 scandalous. That would have been the rumor. You don't spread a lesser scandal against somebody

00:21:45.680 that's absolutely wild. So more important, I think, you know, when you, again, when you look at

00:21:51.000 fashion magazines that teen girls wear, or sorry, rare, read, there are spreads of women,

00:21:58.640 young women, you could argue, I mean, sort of poetically lust after the bodies of attractive

00:22:06.020 young women, because they wish they looked like them, because they're jealous of them, because

00:22:10.020 they're engaged in intersex competition, and trying themselves to be and yearning themselves to be more

00:22:16.060 attractive. And I think that's just, it's very, it's very difficult for the male mind to understand.

00:22:22.280 I never, there are no, to my knowledge, female magazines of just like bodies of boys, you know,

00:22:31.500 like body, like just hot boys. I know there's, there's like a, I've seen a trope sometimes of women

00:22:38.060 having pictures of men in their lockers or something, like famous guys, but like, that's a much more common

00:22:45.960 thing that you'd expect to see in like a teenage boys, like 1990s room, like the Pamela Anderson

00:22:52.180 poster is iconic, right? But when you think of in your evoked set of like 1990s girls room poster,

00:23:01.400 it's not like a bunch of pinups of men, girls lust visually after girls and not because they want to

00:23:10.260 bang them. And I don't know how to explain this to people. I've done my best. Okay. But, but to your

00:23:16.920 example also of just notable historical lesbians, because I think it's, it's fairly safe to say

00:23:21.900 that Sappho is at best bisexual, probably not even that. And I think it's very weird that we now choose

00:23:30.360 to call them lesbians. That's just wrong. Okay. Let's go to, let's go to more historical examples

00:23:34.960 here. So I asked multiple different AIs to give me historical lesbians. And I, I don't know, man.

00:23:44.200 I'm not even convinced a lot of these people were same sex attracted, like sexually attracted.

00:23:49.660 Part of me is just like, they're like, you know what? Men are, men are kind of dicks. And I have a

00:23:55.580 friend here and we have something good going. Can we just like have a bromance? And there's no word.

00:24:01.100 That's what most lesbians seem to be today. Yeah. There's, there's no word for, I'm going to get

00:24:06.040 to that. Trust me, Malcolm. There's no word for bromance for that's for women. Did you know that?

00:24:11.040 Like, do you think about that? Like, why are we allowed to have a bromance where like, it's just

00:24:15.800 two guys who are like Sean and Gus, right? Like they're great friends. Oh, but when two women hang

00:24:20.220 out all the time and it's just them and they have a lot of fun. Oh, they're lesbians.

00:24:24.340 No. Okay. But I bet they're doing some weird stuff at night. I'd like, I just, it really,

00:24:29.900 it really bothers me. The term is homance. Oh, can we make that a thing? The beautiful

00:24:36.360 homance. Okay. So there's allegedly Anne Lister who lived from 1791 to 1840. She is known as the

00:24:43.980 first modern lesbian. She was an English landowner and diarist who wrote extensive decoded diaries

00:24:51.340 detailing her sexual relationships with multiple women using terms like kiss for sex. Her most

00:24:57.280 notable long-term partnership was with Anne Walker and they took communion together at a commitment

00:25:01.960 ceremony in 1834, which was often referred to as one of the earliest lesbian weddings. And

00:25:08.820 they lived together at Shipton Hall until Lister's death. That sounds, if she wrote about kissing

00:25:15.160 women, I'm going to give her that. I'm going to say she probably was a lesbian.

00:25:21.340 We have a strong start here. What do you think? I don't know. You don't buy it. There's also

00:25:27.560 like gay men we have in history. When we have gay men in history, they're constantly thirsting over

00:25:32.780 men. They're constantly sleeping with man after man after man. It's not a guy who got jilted and

00:25:38.780 it's just like, I'm done with women. I'm going to live alone with this guy. This sounds more like a

00:25:45.980 spinster. And I think a lot of people do not understand how, what it was like to be a spinster in

00:25:50.780 this period, what it was like if you did not find a partner in this period. Well, it sounds like she

00:25:55.200 was independently wealthy. So she had the luxury of choosing who she wanted to spend her life with

00:25:59.140 in terms of companionship. If you were a spinster otherwise. Hold on. You don't necessarily,

00:26:04.100 if you're over a certain age, does it matter if you're independently wealthy often? You do not get

00:26:10.540 to choose the partner that you want unless you're choosing a woman. Oh, sure. Yeah. No,

00:26:16.760 definitely. Like you couldn't cohabitate with a man. My argument was typically you don't get to

00:26:22.260 choose who you live with because you are like shoved off to be a caretaker for some member of

00:26:27.060 your family who will then house you. That's what typically happened with spinsters in England,

00:26:31.880 like around this time period. But then there are the ladies of Laglan. There's Eleanor Butler who lived

00:26:39.820 from 1739 to 1829 with Sarah Ponsby, 1755 to 1831. They're two Irish women who eloped together

00:26:48.980 in the late 18th century, lived as a devoted couple in Wales for over 50 years in a shared home

00:26:54.700 and were celebrated and sometimes scandalized in their time as inseparable romantic partners who

00:27:00.480 rejected heterosexual marriage. To me, they just sound like two asexual women, like cat ladies,

00:27:06.680 cute, but I'm not getting like ravenously sexually attracted to each other. Jane Adams, 1860 to 1935,

00:27:16.280 the American Nobel Peace Prize winning social reformer and founder of Hull House, had a primary

00:27:23.120 decades-long romantic partnership with Mary Rosett Smith. They lived together for about 40 years,

00:27:29.340 exchanged daily affectionate letters with endearments like dearest one and expressions

00:27:34.800 of lifelong commitment and were viewed by contemporaries as a married couple in all but

00:27:40.420 legal name. That sounds like a homance. Radcliffe Hall, the English novelist, author of groundbreaking

00:27:46.520 novel. Not very horny, by the way. Who? Dearest one is not a very horny confession. Dearest one.

00:27:54.460 Yeah, not hot cheeks. Well, who is the person who talked about like being farted on? That was

00:28:00.860 wonderful. That was with the guy who wrote Irish stories that are considered like super inscrutable

00:28:06.440 and hard to read. Oh, I can't remember. But yeah, it's not like people lacked the vocabulary or were

00:28:12.620 too proper to like, let it be known when they had fun sexually with each other. That was not...

00:28:19.200 James Joyce. James Joyce. James Joyce. God bless you, sir. God bless you.

00:28:26.800 But I think you make a strong point here. What I really need to see to believe that lesbianism was

00:28:31.640 real in a historic context as a woman who was sleeping around with multiple women. I do not

00:28:36.240 need to see a spinster who settled for another spinster, okay? Yeah. Anyway, let's see. Radcliffe

00:28:42.300 Hall, English novelist, author of the groundbreaking lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, lived openly

00:28:47.540 in a masculine presentation and had a long-term partnership with Una Trowbridge from around 1915

00:28:55.820 until Hall's death, who was her devoted companion, lover, and eventual biographer. They were known as a

00:29:01.180 couple in artistic and queer circles. I mean, we've got a little bit of trans in there, so

00:29:06.160 that's fine. What makes them trans? Well, she was... She had openly masculine presentation.

00:29:12.220 That's not trans... That's being a butch lesbian in today's context.

00:29:15.340 I guess. I know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't... Honestly, I don't care that

00:29:20.060 much, but it didn't sound like this was a ravenous sexual relationship, but maybe it was.

00:29:24.020 No, it doesn't sound like a ravenous... It sounds like people who are settling. And we need to point out

00:29:28.120 that there's a big difference between settling and being deeply attracted to the same sex.

00:29:33.940 That men in history, when we see gay men in history, they are clearly ravenously attracted

00:29:40.000 to the same sex. That... None of this sounds like that.

00:29:43.420 Yeah, including... Which I had... I didn't know this. Sally Ride, 1951 to 2012, the first American woman in

00:29:51.820 space. Had a 27-year romantic and domestic partnership with Tam O'Shaughnessy, her childhood

00:29:58.760 friend, business partner, and co-author. They sound like BFFs. Publicly confirmed after Ride's death

00:30:04.760 through her obituary and family statements. Honestly, that just sounds like BFFs, which was

00:30:09.500 really sweet. Again, this is what we're talking about. It just sounds like BFFs, yeah.

00:30:12.160 Yeah. Yeah. Like, that sounds adorable. And people want to say that women, when they're

00:30:17.880 in relationships, like gay women today, when they're in relationships, people want to be

00:30:22.080 like, oh, well, women just don't, you know, sleep around a lot. They don't trade partners

00:30:26.320 a lot when they're in relationships. So we should expect something different than what we expect

00:30:30.420 from gay relationships. And I want to be like, that is true to an extent, but where you're

00:30:35.260 wrong is female lesbian relationships are actually shorter than gay relationships, much more likely

00:30:40.880 to end in divorce. This is where the concept of the U-Haul wife comes from. If these historic

00:30:45.960 relationships were analogous to modern lesbian relationships, we would expect them to have

00:30:50.980 multiple partners. That is not what we're seeing here.

00:30:54.340 Well, and also there's so much, there's so much reaching with historical lesbians. Like another

00:30:58.720 one that apparently gets alleged a lot is of all people, Eleanor Roosevelt, who apparently

00:31:05.080 had a long-term intense relationship with Lorena Hick, Hickcock. Hick was her nickname. Evidenced

00:31:12.820 by thousands of passionate letters. They exchanged rings apparently too. And I'm just like, Eleanor

00:31:18.840 Roosevelt was, are you, are you dropping the fact that she was married?

00:31:22.960 Roosevelt? How'd she get that crazy name?

00:31:26.100 Whatever. She was definitely a lesbian. So screw that. She had friendship rings with her

00:31:33.760 BFF. She had friendship rings. Hardcore lesbian confirmed.

00:31:38.840 Yeah. Like, have you guys never heard of like girls exchanging friendship bracelets? I think I

00:31:44.000 even had a friendship necklace. They sold them at Claire's, which if you're not in America, there was

00:31:49.180 like this cheap jewelry store that you'd find at every like mega mall before they all died. That like,

00:31:54.380 you know, there's like hearts, like with each, each, each part of the necklace has like half a heart

00:31:59.240 and you put them together and they fit. I had those with like some friends, you know, it's like,

00:32:03.160 it's a thing. It's called, it's a homance. Okay. We're making it. It's, it's a thing now. We're

00:32:09.300 making it a thing. But then also when you ask AI about historical gay men, you just get a bunch of

00:32:14.380 great answers. There's, and I think some of them.

00:32:16.840 For some examples of just like how low the bar is and how explicit gay male poetry is. So if we're

00:32:22.160 looking at the period of Sappho, here's one. Boy, you were like a horse just now sated with seed.

00:32:28.400 You've come back to my stable yearning for a good writer, fine meadow in icy spring, shady groves.

00:32:36.040 If we go to a bit later, you have your honey, sweet eyes, Juviettes. If anyone let me keep on

00:32:43.180 kissing them as much as my burning desire wants, I never grow tired. Not even if the kisses were more

00:32:49.920 numerous than the ears of standing corn or the stars in the sky when night is quiet.

00:32:56.300 And note here, this is explicit. Like it's explicit that the kisser is male and the subject is male.

00:33:02.860 Here you have another one. If you love boys and slender limbed graces please you and the sweet

00:33:09.080 bloom of youth in its pride, then don't be so slow to kiss the lovely boy for the rose too fades when

00:33:15.660 its season passes. Many, this is very about young, young people. A lot of these, I will note that

00:33:22.980 that could be an interesting one. It's if we see gayness that is not pedestal after the Roman period

00:33:29.320 up until fairly modern times. Well, I mean, first off, there's just this amazing precedent of all

00:33:34.780 these Roman emperors who just, not only are they like, this isn't like, oh, well they have this close

00:33:40.120 friendship or whatever. It's like, well, you know, they're, they're gay harem, of course, you know,

00:33:44.080 the, all, all the, all the, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're stable of boys

00:33:48.960 who were there for sex. It's just really clear that it's a sex thing because you don't have a

00:33:53.900 harem of boys just because you're like really close to them emotionally and you want to settle down

00:33:58.340 together and write passionate letters back and forth. That's not how a harem works. I've not heard of a

00:34:04.100 sexless harem before. They're also more like they, some people stretch, people argue that,

00:34:09.100 that Alexander the Great was gay. He's a lesbian? That he had an intense relationship with

00:34:15.060 Hephaestion, his childhood friend and closest companion. Why do people want to push this when

00:34:19.680 it's, there are so many obvious examples. Alexander the Great had a relationship with his horse,

00:34:24.720 then he had a relationship with a guy. I'm going to be honest. That's my bromance. My ultimate

00:34:28.660 bromance is Bucephalus and Alexander. Good name, by the way. That's the thing is like, I, I, I want.

00:34:35.880 Should we name our next dog Bucephalus?

00:34:39.100 We're going to name our next dog the Commodore or something like to stick with him. I don't,

00:34:43.040 I don't know if I mind Bucephalus. Bucephalus is great, but I don't know if we could ever

00:34:48.360 get another dog after the professor. She's so perfect. She's a very sweet dog, but I think

00:34:53.640 it'll be one of her pups. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Bucephalus. It's not bad. I mean,

00:35:00.060 I'm also okay with never having another dog again if you don't want to. But yeah, anyway,

00:35:03.840 like the fact that they were like harems of, of dudes in across cultures, I think is for me,

00:35:11.780 the biggest thing, but people also point to prominent, both. I think very alleged like Edward

00:35:18.620 II. I don't know. They say, they say that he had a devoted decades long relationship with Piers

00:35:23.320 Gaveston, his favorite and possible lover. I think it's much more obvious, for example,

00:35:27.840 that like Louis Philippe, King, King Louis, the 14th brother who, you know, wore dresses and had

00:35:33.440 like a very open male lover. Like people are walking around, like they're, they're obviously

00:35:37.000 at it. Like you can, Versailles was not a very private place. Then there's Oscar Wilde,

00:35:43.800 there's Alan Turing. I mean, we know that Alan Turing was gay because he was, he was chemically

00:35:50.140 cast castrated. He was. Yeah. No, what I'm saying is you don't have any lesbian equivalent to

00:35:55.260 Alan Turing or Oscar Wilde or anything like that. We have to jail you for being, yeah. Like they're

00:36:01.000 not, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not even going to the historical gaze because we know that they're

00:36:05.100 real. They're not, they're not alleged. We know about the sex. We know what they're into. They,

00:36:09.540 they were very, but, but yeah, to your point about when, when we hear about lesbians historically,

00:36:15.160 and even today, weirdly it's, it's two spinsters living together. There's not a lot of sex going on.

00:36:21.880 So a widely cited early study by sociologists, Pepper Schwartz and Philip Blumstein from their

00:36:28.080 1983 book called American Couples, which was based on surveys of thousands of couples. So this is by

00:36:33.840 the way, in the eighties when, you know, people weren't as, as like, I would say like prolific and

00:36:40.100 like super into their LGBT, whatever sex they found notable differences in rates of sex, particularly in

00:36:47.540 the early stages of relationships. So among couples together for two years or less, 67% of gay male

00:36:53.500 couples reported sex three plus times per week compared to 45% of heterosexual couples and 33%

00:37:01.720 of lesbian couples. And then among couples together for 10 plus years, only 11% of gay male couples reported

00:37:07.780 sex that often compared to 18% of heterosexual couples and just 1% of lesbian couples. Like they tried,

00:37:15.480 they're like, no, we're definitely lesbians. Let's wait. Just 1% of lesbian couples had done what

00:37:20.820 had had sex, uh, three plus times per week. So basically they just weren't having sex three

00:37:32.080 plus times per week. The pattern has been replicated in subsequent research though. So reviews and

00:37:36.360 summaries, including from sources like the encyclopedia of human relationships and various journal

00:37:42.240 articles indicate that on average, lesbian couples report the lowest sexual freak frequency among

00:37:49.220 couple types. So gay males have the most, cause if you want to have fun and hedonism max, you should

00:37:54.760 be a gay male and then heterosexuals and then lesbians. And I just, it's, I think that's one of the most

00:38:04.080 damning things. One of the most recent analyses, which was from the 2010s onward. So this isn't just

00:38:08.720 an eighties thing, confirmed that lesbian couples tend to have sex less often. For instance, higher

00:38:14.220 proportions reporting sex once a month or less, sometimes 23 to 74% in certain samples, depending

00:38:21.100 on the study in comparison group compared to other pairings, gay male couples and relationships often

00:38:26.540 show frequency similar to, or higher than heterosexual couples. But again, with recent research,

00:38:34.000 like 23 to 74% of lesbians report having sex once a month or less. And who knows what they even define

00:38:42.720 as sex? Kissing possibly. So the term lesbian bed death originated from these findings, particularly the

00:38:50.880 Schwartz Bloomstein study. And that was supposed to describe this perceived sharp decline in sexual

00:38:56.640 activity among long-term lesbian relationships. So there's a lot of, what's interesting is that

00:39:03.100 when I asked a couple different, like Grok and perplexity about this and about the research,

00:39:07.900 it, they also, it's very clear from all the, the like data they're scraping for this,

00:39:14.940 these research summaries that most of the articles that write about them are also like,

00:39:20.400 oh, but, but, but, but, but, but lesbians are real because the, well, actually the, this,

00:39:26.760 this shows up was different because lesbians have a lot longer duration sexual encounters,

00:39:31.840 but that wouldn't affect the fricking reporting. What? I love that.

00:39:36.320 What, like what, do they only have sex once a month? Cause it just takes them five hours every

00:39:40.240 time they do it? No, come on guys. They also like, well, well, no, it's, but, but, but, but,

00:39:46.260 but it's because of higher rates of orgasm during sex. No, you think gays aren't having orgasms during sex?

00:39:52.760 Yes. You think they're not, you think they're not coming really or equal or greater overall sex and

00:39:58.900 relationship satisfaction, often emphasizing quality, emotional intimacy, communication,

00:40:03.800 and non-penetrative activities over sheer frequency. They're like really reaching here.

00:40:08.980 Yeah, that doesn't sound. Also like, I don't know. I mean, is there overall higher satisfaction in

00:40:15.540 lesbian relationships if there's all these, the higher rates of divorce and abuse? And yeah, I mean,

00:40:22.940 we're reaching. And then of course there's the issue that got me so perplexed about the existence

00:40:30.440 of lesbians at all in the first place, which was the marriage issue that so many lesbians were

00:40:36.360 formerly married to men. In fact, the lesbians that I grew up knowing were formerly married to

00:40:42.200 men. Why? I mean, obviously why? I mean, I had friends whose moms were lesbians, but how are those

00:40:48.000 friends created in an era in which IVF was a lot? Right. Yeah. How did you have so many friends who

00:40:53.500 had lesbian moms? Yeah. It's because they had dads who were their ex ex-husbands and that is how it

00:40:59.800 worked. The commonly cited UCLA Williams Institute analysis of census data from around census data from

00:41:05.980 around 2010 and earlier periods found that 36% of women in their forties with same-sex partners

00:41:11.680 had previously been married to men. This rose to over 50% for those in their fifties and about 75%

00:41:18.000 for those 60 and older. This pattern is attributed to many women coming out later in life, often after

00:41:24.060 heterosexual marriages and families. So they're trying to attribute this to, you know, the

00:41:28.300 discrimination. The stigma. The stigma. Yeah. I mean, you could also just not, like, if it were such a big

00:41:35.040 deal though, maybe you just don't marry at all instead of marrying a man. But okay. In more recent

00:41:43.280 data on remarriages, like a 2019 ACS analysis. No, but what's funny about this is you've told me before

00:41:48.420 that if I ever die and you remarry, you've constantly told me that you have like a list of women. You don't

00:41:53.520 have any list of men. You're like, I would marry women if you died. And what are they going to call

00:41:58.760 you? The lesbian in history? Simone. Famous lesbian. Famous prolific lesbian. Yeah. Like. Where did they

00:42:06.980 come from? Who knows? Yeah. But here's the thing, which you're not pointing out, is that I would, I would

00:42:13.700 want to marry the same women that you would want to marry. Oh yeah. No, actually we've gone over our lists of

00:42:18.460 people who want to marry if the other one dies. And they're the same women. It's the same women.

00:42:24.960 Which is so cute, actually. So there's, there's, I don't know if, like, for those of you who are not

00:42:30.380 familiar with the, the Church of Latter-day Saints, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

00:42:35.740 aka Mormons, you're like forever married to someone. When you get temple sealed in your marriage,

00:42:41.800 when you die, you're going to be together in your afterlife. You can't undo that, at least not

00:42:48.080 easily. And so when women, like when wives get terminally ill, they will sometimes coordinate

00:42:54.200 with their husbands. If their husbands plan to remarry and pick out the next wife and try to be

00:42:59.340 on good terms, like make sure they're on good terms with that next wife. Cause they know that they have

00:43:04.180 an entire eternity with their husband and that woman, their sister wife in the afterlife. And what

00:43:10.760 I think is cute is that we, yes. And that into like, well, you know, it's going to, it's, you know,

00:43:16.040 I wonder if we should tell these women that they're on our, like, Hey, just, you know,

00:43:19.720 if I die, we're just going to surprise them. We're just going to surprise them.

00:43:23.080 It's highly approved. Yeah. It's okay. It's going to, we can write it down privately somewhere.

00:43:27.640 I can record a video. You can record a video. And then in the event of time.

00:43:31.120 Yeah. You're like, you should really give her a shot. She's a great woman.

00:43:34.660 Yeah. Like we'll handle a lot of stuff around the house.

00:43:36.860 Give him a chance. He's freaking awesome. You're going to love it. You fully have my blessing.

00:43:41.580 Oh God. I'm sorry. Why are we saying this on a publicly recorded podcast? But anyway,

00:43:51.000 that's that. Everyone's going to come away from this saying that I'm a lesbian. This is very

00:43:56.180 annoying. I'm very annoyed by this. This is how all the historic lesbians feel. Quote unquote

00:44:01.040 lesbians, right? I know. I know that it's, it's fake news. People, no one understands female

00:44:05.960 sexuality is, is my, is my opinion here, but yeah. So where was I? The Bowling Green State

00:44:12.200 University data showed that about 42% of women entering same-sex marriages were remarrying

00:44:17.660 implying a prior marriage, which was almost always to a man given historical norms. This

00:44:22.440 is because in, in a lot of the surveys that are being used for this, they're not reporting

00:44:25.780 like what the affiliation of the previous marriage was though. Who knows what the high rates

00:44:32.520 of lesbian divorce. Like it's not perfect data, but contrast that with gay men. The same

00:44:37.620 older Williams Institute census data analysis suggests that the rate is notably lower for

00:44:44.120 gay men than for women with expert consensus that late life transitions coming out as after

00:44:49.500 a heterosexual marriage is much less common among gay men because if you're actually gay.

00:44:56.700 Right. Well, and in our society, gay men are significantly more discriminated against than gay women.

00:45:01.120 I'm sorry that that's going to offend gay women, but that's just like an obvious thing to anyone.

00:45:04.480 Yeah, that's the thing. No one cares. No one cares.

00:45:06.840 Nobody cares that you're a lesbian. They're like, well, whatever. Right.

00:45:09.380 Yeah. Yeah. It's just, and I think probably this comes from like sort of a, I mean, they're

00:45:15.460 religious things I'm sure, but I think it has to do more with the fact that STD risks are a lot higher

00:45:22.360 and like disease spread risks are a lot higher when you're doing penetrative anal sex and lesbian

00:45:29.000 relationships just don't really like, what do you, what do you, are you fingering each other?

00:45:33.160 Like, like it's, it's just not going to cause problems in the state, like from a disease

00:45:37.140 spread standpoint. And also no one's getting pregnant. Well, it's not gross to anyone. Nobody's

00:45:42.140 like, eh, like, okay. It's gross to me. I have a huge bias against vaginas. I really don't like

00:45:48.320 vaginas. So I really don't like, but these women aren't having sex. So you don't need to worry

00:45:52.920 about that. I know it's a huge relief. This is how bad this, this is how angry I'm about. Like

00:45:57.420 w we had at one point, a, a, a lesbian like film director here who was like interviewing us and

00:46:04.340 everything. And she's like, yeah, like I'm getting strong lesbian vibes from you. And I'm like,

00:46:07.980 I know, but like lesbians aren't real. I didn't say that to her, but it's true. Like a cottage core

00:46:14.560 woman with doc Martens is, is kind of giving something, but Malcolm, you also give lesbian. So

00:46:21.200 don't look at me. That's why I'm wearing this now. That's why you're wearing that. The

00:46:25.440 gambes in. Lesbians appropriated leather jackets. I have to dress. I have to do what's the word

00:46:32.620 hostile compliance. What's the word here? Oh yeah. Malicious compliance. Malicious compliance

00:46:37.660 with people saying I need to be more trad, right? So I got medieval armor. Well, and it's not your

00:46:44.920 fault that lesbians appropriated sweaters and leather jacket. It's very annoying. I'm very off.

00:46:50.640 That was my wholesome dad look. And lesbians took it. So now I need to dress like your medieval

00:46:56.620 husband. Yeah. Cause what are you going to wear? Hoodies? Freaking North face jackets and vests?

00:47:02.020 Like button down shirts all the time. It's just not. Anyway. So approximately 53% of U.S. same-sex

00:47:09.440 marriages are between women, lesbians. I don't get this. I just, where are all the lesbians?

00:47:14.940 Is it that gay men aren't marrying as much? I couldn't really find this out. So if someone has

00:47:19.640 good sources of additional data, please let me know in the comments, the slight female majority

00:47:23.860 has been consistent. So this is a very consistent thing that slightly more same-sex marriages are

00:47:29.520 female. And I just don't get it. Earlier census and ACS-based analyses, like from 2021 data showed

00:47:35.660 similar patterns. The same-sex married couples skewed female, like from 52 to 55%. What do you think's

00:47:43.660 going on there? Also from 2019 onward, marriages of same-sex couples were about 55% female, female.

00:47:53.040 What's going on? I mean, they remarry over and over again. If you look at divorce rates,

00:47:58.380 gay men get married and they stay married. Gay women get married every year. So it's the divorce

00:48:04.460 rate. That's what I'm missing. Okay. That solves it. Okay. Country differences. So weirdly,

00:48:09.400 there are more lesbian couples in the USA than gay couples. Right. But like, as, as of mid 2025,

00:48:16.340 there are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S. with 53% being female couples.

00:48:25.420 So again, just by volume, Malcolm, not by like the number of marriages in the year.

00:48:30.340 Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, I think that, you know, there's a portion of the gay community that

00:48:34.220 just likes partying. I'm going to be honest. And that's not with lesbians.

00:48:37.080 Doesn't just doesn't want to marry. No, I mean, I think a big portion of the lesbian community is

00:48:41.200 still their spinsters. Look, the fact that lesbian is normalized the concept of political lesbian

00:48:47.280 and nobody ever normalized the concept of the political gay man. That was never a thing. No

00:48:53.020 one ever did that. Right. The gays didn't need to do that. When they normalize the idea of the

00:48:58.380 political lesbian, this is the lesbian who's sleeps with women for political reasons and not because

00:49:03.080 she's actually more attractive to women. Yeah. The fact that the LGBT community didn't

00:49:07.660 immediately freak out and say, you know, this is super homophobic at the concept. This implies

00:49:11.780 you're not born this way. This implies it's a choice. You know, the very fact that that didn't

00:49:16.180 happen to me shows they all know. Oh yeah. Okay. They would have freaked out and they didn't all

00:49:21.200 know this was happening during the height of born this way. Right. And they did not fight against it.

00:49:26.820 The fact that political lesbians happened during the height of born this way implies to me that

00:49:33.080 everyone in the community basically knew what was up. Well, I really think that there's also at least

00:49:38.100 I would say weak evidence for this being a highly cultural thing, like basically political lesbianism

00:49:45.820 being the vast majority of lesbianism. And I should say, like, I don't want to deny the fact that I do

00:49:51.020 think that there, well, we know, we know for a fact, just from like the, the survey data and the

00:49:56.780 research data that we pulled when doing the pragmatist guide to sexuality, that there are 100% women who

00:50:03.380 both have high sex drives and are very attracted to things like vaginas. They're out there. I'm not

00:50:09.440 denying that. I just think that they're rare. They're very rare. Yeah. They're not like an average

00:50:13.780 tendency. They're not. So let's look at that. So globally, and this is from Ipsos averages across 20 to 30

00:50:19.520 countries ranging from 2021 to 2025, approximately 1% of women identify as lesbian or homosexual compared

00:50:28.160 to about 4% of men as gay or homosexual. Women are more likely to identify as bisexual. That's often

00:50:37.120 two to 5% or more, which leads to overall higher LGBTQ rates among women. So I think that's that,

00:50:47.480 that comes down to the very fundamental thing that we've pointed out again and again in our podcast

00:50:51.800 and first on the pragmatic guide to sexuality, our book on sexuality, which is that women are not

00:50:57.540 their sex, their, their, their, their sexual access of, of interest is not related to primary or

00:51:03.940 secondary characteristics. It's related to power dynamics and resources. When you look at romance

00:51:09.660 novels, when you look at what women are into, it is money and power and dominance and not like,

00:51:18.000 you know, the various things. In fact, when you, even like when you read language and romance novels

00:51:24.580 and stuff, they don't like describe how the penis looks, you know, it's not like, and it was circumcised

00:51:31.100 and it was this long, you know, it's like, no, it's just, it's, and they, they always use euphemisms,

00:51:35.500 you know, like, or just, you know, my favorite was walking around the store and there were various

00:51:40.380 books about, you know, what men and women want and everything like, you know, like the, the romance

00:51:44.640 books and Simone saw one that was her favorite. And the image was just a money clip. It was nothing

00:51:50.840 else. No guy, no, anything else. It's just like, I know what you're here for straight to the cum shot

00:51:56.580 for women, the money, money clip. Oh, I'm sorry, Tex. Just anyway, in the U S and the most detailed

00:52:04.780 data and for the U S is, is via Gallup, lesbian identification is around 1.4%. So that's much

00:52:10.580 higher than the global average of 1% already. I think a little bit of a red flag. And then it

00:52:15.880 translates to roughly one to 2% of women since around 15% of LGBTQ plus identifying adults are

00:52:24.820 lesbian and women dominate LGBTQ plus identification due to their bisexuality in cross-country direct

00:52:32.780 comparisons for lesbian. I think it's also a smoking gun here. If it turns out that all women can

00:52:39.820 basically choose to sleep with whoever they want, right? Like if it turns out that they just don't

00:52:45.620 care. Yeah. That lesbianism isn't a thing because women fundamentally don't care that much. They care

00:52:51.360 more about dominance. As we found in our research on this, what that would mean is that any straight

00:52:57.380 woman who wants to can identify as bisexual in the same way that any bisexual who wants to can identify

00:53:02.100 as a lesbian? Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Continue. Yeah. Women don't care. That's, and again, this is,

00:53:09.140 this is due to, if we want to take the, you know, woke way of wording this or describing it,

00:53:15.380 this is due to a very patriarchal body of research around sexuality. This is men looking at sex from,

00:53:23.640 through a male. What she's pointing out here is that if the field of sex research, if the field of

00:53:30.600 historic research, like if women had looked at those Sappho poems, they wouldn't have thought,

00:53:34.600 oh, she, the raging lesbian. They'd be like, oh, I remember feeling this way. Yeah. If women were

00:53:39.600 looking at arousal patterns, what we point out in our book is that the average woman cares more about

00:53:44.880 dominance or submission in terms of her arousal pathways, then she cares about the gender display

00:53:50.200 pathways that her partner is presenting. Well, it'd be so, I mean, we're maybe like a year from being

00:53:55.880 able to do this. We could do an analysis of romance novels, like using AI, and we could ask,

00:54:01.700 you know, how many words are devoted to talking about the level of power and resources of the main

00:54:10.740 male love interest versus his physical characteristics or sex acts? What do you think we're going to find?

00:54:19.600 Everybody knows what we're going to find. 5%. It's his body and his appearance and his sexual

00:54:28.020 activities with her. 95%. It's the resources. It's the wealth. Yeah. And people being scared or looking

00:54:36.480 up to him. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And being dominant. That's, that's it. I mean, like, and I've read

00:54:41.920 to fall asleep people. I don't read them for reasons. Of course, of course you don't read

00:54:49.440 them. That's how you're in book five. I really, I hate this. Oh, now Tex knows that his mom is a

00:54:57.000 horrible woman. Okay. He's falling back to sleep. Okay. Oh God. By the way, I was able to run these

00:55:06.320 analyses on things in the public record. So if we're looking at Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy,

00:55:11.280 there are 670 words tied to his power, resources, wealth, status, estate, influence,

00:55:17.400 but then physical characteristics, appearance, and looks only 176 words, which means there are four

00:55:22.740 times the amount of focus on how powerful and wealthy he is than how attractive he is. If we go

00:55:29.760 to Weathering Heights, Heathcliff, there are 1,704 words tied to power and wealth and only 622 words

00:55:39.200 tied to appearance and looks, which means that there are three X the number of things tied to

00:55:46.400 wealth than there are tied to his looks. If we're talking about explicitly sexual acts,

00:55:51.920 there are zero sexual acts, by the way, in Pride and Prejudice. And there are 296 words like

00:55:56.980 Desperate Embraces, Kisses, etc., which would mean 6X references to power. If we go to Jane Eyre,

00:56:03.560 Mr. Rochester, there are 2X the focus on power over looks. And then there are 4 to 5X the focus on

00:56:13.680 power over romance stuff, like convulsive grips on hands, wrists, passionate kiss, etc. And then I had

00:56:21.160 do a sentiment analysis on X, and it shows that posts from women thirsting after characters in

00:56:27.800 books, this is 2024 to 2026, show that 70% emphasize power in resources, and only 20 to 30% look at look.

00:56:36.740 Anyway, though, let's see. God, where was I? Oh, here's another really big, I think, smoking gun,

00:56:42.700 which is that rates are higher rates of less. Whoa, there we go. Okay. So another important

00:56:49.440 thing to note is that cross country direct comparisons for lesbian only among women are

00:56:55.620 rare outside the US and UK. And many sources combine gay and lesbian to report overall same

00:57:01.320 sex attraction, just because the numbers are so small. Plus, very important rates are higher among

00:57:07.660 younger women. So 5.4% of US Gen Z women identify as lesbian per gallop. 5.4%. Suddenly you're like,

00:57:18.880 oh, I only like women. You don't like if people are born this way, you don't just jump from one

00:57:25.880 or 1.2% to suddenly being 5.4%. Just because I don't know, like, people are more accepting of

00:57:33.000 lesbians now today. No, I think a lot of this comes down, one, to- Oh, actually, I need to make

00:57:40.280 an aside here. This is knowledge that I have that the average human may not have. Okay, what? Okay,

00:57:45.940 so I hung out a lot with the LGBT community in high school, and people also know I slept around a lot.

00:57:53.820 Because you're a lesbian. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

00:57:57.220 It's actually fairly common, because women knew that in the community. They knew that other women

00:58:02.460 talked about me. I was whatever status. They didn't talk about it, didn't- You did not sleep

00:58:06.980 with women who said they were lesbians? Lots. In fact, almost, most women, yes. It's like a thing.

00:58:15.360 Like, and they actually, well, they would come to me, and I remember what one of them said,

00:58:20.500 right? Like, because it was, it was, it really stuck with me. I don't know why you remember this

00:58:24.540 story, but she was known in the community as, like, a gold star lesbian. Blah, blah, blah.

00:58:28.220 No. Oh, no. You ruined it. And she's like,

00:58:33.860 it just feels really different to have a D inside you, and sometimes you just get really thirsty for

00:58:40.040 that feeling, and I like girls, and I like being seen this way, but, like, this feels different,

00:58:49.060 and this is, this is something that, like, like, she actually had, like, this- Girl, girl, you know

00:58:53.680 lesbian, no. I need to just sleep with guys so I can get that out of my system, and then I'll go

00:58:59.440 back to pretending I'm a gold star lesbian. Oh, my God. And the entire lesbian community, all the

00:59:03.760 gold star lesbians, they don't, they don't know that all the other gold star lesbians are pretending.

00:59:07.800 Yeah, they're not lesbians, they're thespians.

00:59:09.740 Martin, by the way, also slept with me. Oh, that's cute.

00:59:12.300 They didn't know. They didn't, they didn't talk about that. Oh, they didn't? Oh, you, you, you other man.

00:59:19.520 How dare you? I'm just saying, like, people don't realize, like, how, like, these communities.

00:59:24.440 Oh, my God. I can't even. Sorry, Tex. Okay, but just anyway, to your point, right, of, like, women just

00:59:31.540 not caring, when you compare the rates of lesbians to bisexuals, and then keep in mind that there are

00:59:37.060 about twice as many bisexual women as men, it's just so obvious that, like, women just don't care.

00:59:44.140 Western countries, like the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc., you'll see bisexual identification

00:59:50.820 among women really just skyrocketing. It's, it's among four to eight percent overall, but 15 to 20

00:59:58.400 percent for Gen Z women, which I think just shows that I think, to a certain extent, I think women are,

01:00:04.420 are choosing either other women or less choosing men, because of the political polarization taking

01:00:11.040 place among younger generations, as we've talked about in other episodes, where they're just like,

01:00:16.220 well, I can't really find men who I agree with politically, and I don't really care who I sleep

01:00:20.760 with, so I'm gonna, you know, maybe, like, pair off with women more. Though I should also point out that

01:00:27.500 another cultural thing is just, in Asian countries, like in Japan and China and South Korea, only, like,

01:00:33.660 below two percent of women identify as bisexual. In India, it's sort of all over the place. It's kind

01:00:38.900 of hard to tell. So only when bisexual gets you laid by men is bisexual something. Yeah, I mean,

01:00:45.080 it's extremely suspicious. It's not suspicious. We all know what's up. It's not even suspicious.

01:00:50.860 We all know what's up. Yeah, yeah, this is, oh, sorry, Tex, okay. And again, like, just the fact that

01:00:57.500 Gen Z is so much more lesbian, like, Gallup's most recent data from 2024, it was only published,

01:01:05.740 though, in 2025, shows lesbian identification is just, like, it has been one to two percent for the

01:01:14.460 longest time. Like, there has been no change. And then suddenly, oh, five percent of Gen Z women

01:01:20.080 are officially lesbians. And it just, it's, it's very suspicious.

01:01:23.840 And I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, some of the lesbians I slept with, I probably

01:01:28.260 wouldn't have slept with if they weren't lesbians. So it works for them.

01:01:30.900 Oh, my God. As, as, as a, as a, a tactic for getting men, that is, that is just so sad.

01:01:39.860 Then, of course, they're, they're, I'm not even going to go into the number, like,

01:01:43.020 the suspicious number of athletes that are lesbians. I guess you could, you could be right

01:01:47.340 in that maybe it's just higher levels of testosterone. I mean, it does increase your sex drive.

01:01:51.960 And if you're around women in that competition format, just so much more, why not just

01:01:57.360 get with them? I don't know. What do you think?

01:02:02.480 Yeah. Well, and if you're a competitive, dominant woman, you might be more drawn to those sorts of

01:02:06.720 things. You may be less, remember, women primarily relate to sexuality and arousal through dominance.

01:02:12.120 You may not want a man dominating you, right, in bed or something like that.

01:02:15.560 Oh, that's a good point.

01:02:16.880 We have a resistance to that.

01:02:19.100 Yeah. It just like feels, yeah, like you're, you're kind of not, yeah, you're capitulating

01:02:26.440 in some way. I just, I had no idea though. Personally though, I really didn't know. I

01:02:31.240 guess I hadn't looked, I don't really care about anyone's relationship, but I didn't realize

01:02:35.900 that WNBA players were like 30 to 38% lesbian. Women's soccer and football players, like,

01:02:42.020 you know, soccer, if you're in the U S around 12% are publicly out as lesbians among the Olympic

01:02:48.660 elite athletes around like nine, nine to one are, are, yeah, it's, it's crazy. And even in like ice

01:02:56.440 hockey reports indicate around 15% or more of ice hockey players are openly queer or lesbian. So I,

01:03:04.640 I just, I don't know. I think it's interesting. It could just be that it's like female only spaces

01:03:09.240 may disproportionately attract women who just want to be really easy if you're on a team and

01:03:14.160 everyone's attracted to everyone else on the team. Like that just would be great. I mean,

01:03:18.080 why not? Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know what to make of all this though. My takeaway is just

01:03:25.040 for women, it's not about, it's just not about the, the primary sexually character,

01:03:31.760 like sexual characteristics. Don't think about it that way for women. It's, it's more about politics

01:03:37.900 and power and who you're compatible with and who you have a better lifestyle with.

01:03:42.820 And sometimes that's a woman and sometimes that's a man and women just the sex for women

01:03:47.400 just doesn't matter that much. There are absolutely women. I mean, I know the mere fact to me that

01:03:53.100 multiple lesbians came to sleep with me when I was like, that to me says that they still have a desire

01:04:01.820 to sleep with men. They just want to do it under the table. Like, well, I mean, here's the problem,

01:04:06.400 I guess. Yeah. With, so if you're gay, like there's a hole that you can put your thing in

01:04:11.980 when you're a lesbian, like your anatomy, like for many lesbians to reach good climax, like you require

01:04:19.160 penetration. And I just, you know, with like, there, there are tools and accessories that one

01:04:27.140 can use. And I'm sure that, that lesbian couples who really enjoy sexual play can use them, but there's

01:04:33.200 just, I feel like lesbians don't have the advantage that, that, that gay, gay men do when it comes to

01:04:40.860 like substitution as it were. So yeah, anyway, fun times, but yeah, I, I just don't.

01:04:49.700 Oh, here's, here's a particularly funny thing about me sleeping with lesbian girl. This is back in the

01:04:54.320 days of MySpace or something, right? You know, like, and I remember one of them, this was, I want to say

01:04:59.280 years after we had slept together, she wrote this post about how like, she wasn't going to be used

01:05:05.920 by men anymore. And how like, you know, she blah, blah, blah. And how men had manipulated her

01:05:12.240 into doing things. It was, it was like, the whole thing was very under the table, like very clearly

01:05:17.540 targeted at me. Like it was like a, I was like, B, you reached out to me. Like, what are you talking

01:05:24.460 about men not going to use you? You said me like this was, this was a proactive thing on your part.

01:05:32.360 Right. And I love that. I think this goes into like why men these days don't want to date anymore

01:05:37.820 because they know that women may just retroactively decide that they regretted their relationship with

01:05:43.640 you or that, you know, now you're, you're not a convenient part of their narrative. And then

01:05:48.020 retroactively in, depending on the country you're in, you could get arrested. Yeah. No,

01:05:52.400 like rewriting her narrative to herself on my space. No, this is exact. Like our, I think a lot

01:05:57.840 of the guys in our audience will hear you say that and be like, this is why I can't date. This

01:06:01.740 is exactly why like, I can't get married and I can't find a wife because the risk of getting with

01:06:06.340 anyone now is that high. Historically, we knew do not believe women. This, this is a thing of like,

01:06:11.420 believe women. Oh my God. So you're the worst, you're the worst woman ever. You're not good at

01:06:17.640 womaning. Oh, well, no, apparently I am because you know, I'm going to enter a lesbian marriage when

01:06:23.000 you die. Oh, if they, if they'll have me, God, it'll be sexless. I really, I really don't like

01:06:31.940 vaginas. I just really don't like vaginas. If I can have a Barbie bottom, I don't know. I do,

01:06:39.140 I do like, I, yeah, I do like pouncing on you every now and then. Nevermind. But I try to pretend

01:06:44.700 that there's something down there. Oh God. Anyway. Anyway. That was fun. Good to chat.

01:06:53.440 Interesting. Interesting. Deep dive. So they, they don't exist historically in the record.

01:06:58.340 It's a modern phenomenon. People think they exist, but I think it's mostly like

01:07:03.060 women finding great company and other women, which is great. Homance all the way. Yes. However,

01:07:09.020 it doesn't look at all. I think it's, it's broadly male historians being like, yeah. Like hearing

01:07:14.800 at them. It's honestly misogynistic that we even see lesbianism in the historical record.

01:07:19.600 It is. Yeah. It's yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a misogynistic male

01:07:24.560 patriarchal historians doing some quality leering and I don't like it. The leering center. We need to

01:07:30.940 fund more of these. Get some Somalians in here. Okay. All right. Love you, Simone. I love you too.

01:07:38.380 I can't believe they call it quality. Did you see Aria Babu's recent piece?

01:07:46.020 The one on the wall? No, I might even do an episode on it. It's, it's very fun. When you

01:07:50.740 read it, you'll understand why when I met her, I would immediately was like, I, this is somebody

01:07:54.680 I can marry if things don't work out with Simone. You met her well after we were married. Well,

01:08:00.240 I know that's why I didn't make a move on her or pursue her because I already had a perfect wife,

01:08:04.460 but I've only felt that way about her and one other person since meeting you where I was like,

01:08:10.780 this would be a fine enough person to marry. And I'm glad that she ended up getting married to a

01:08:14.640 really nerdy looking guy. Like that's what I want from, from the time. He's a total catch. Yeah. I'm,

01:08:19.740 I'm really, really not nerdy and like a bad, like, like, you know, six, five.

01:08:24.100 No, no. Well, I mean, yeah, like alpha, alpha nerdy, Mike Dexter, astronaut, Mike Dexter nerdy.

01:08:31.840 No, he comes across nerdier than astronaut Mike. He comes across as like a leader of the,

01:08:36.160 the, the nerd patrol. Um, it's really weird how, after you're in a secure married partnership and

01:08:43.340 you run into somebody who you think, Oh, this person would make a great wife. You have the exact

01:08:48.860 opposite reaction that you would have before you're in a secure partnership, because before

01:08:53.700 you're in a secure partnership, you're like, Oh my God, I really hope they don't end up dating

01:08:56.840 someone. You know, you get this jealousy and then you get this reverse jealousy when you are,

01:09:01.620 because you're like, Oh gosh, this person, it's going to be a great mom has great genes.

01:09:05.600 I really hope they find a partner and especially a partner who seems genetically close to you.

01:09:11.620 That's why I'm like harking on the very nerdy looking. I'm like, yeah, this, this guy seems like

01:09:15.760 one of my people, at least from the pictures I've seen, but my kids are going to need people

01:09:19.300 to marry. And there's so few based people having children. And here's the, the piece that she wrote

01:09:24.760 titled against witchcraft, because of course it is. Well, you'll understand why I got along with

01:09:29.500 her so well, but, but Simone, sorry. It starts with ever since I first read Scott Alexander's book

01:09:35.180 review of Albion scene, I've developed a deep and totally earnest love of Puritans. I'm like a girl

01:09:40.340 clicking her heels together, listening to the Beatles and smoking weed saying I was born in the wrong

01:09:44.840 generation. Alas, I was born too late to start an extremist colony in the new world and born too

01:09:50.680 early to start a sectarian splinter group in space. I was born just the right time to start a terror

01:09:56.660 cell on discord, but I need more sub stack followers for that. What a delightful person.

01:10:03.400 She is, she is magnificent. If you're wondering who we're talking about, her name is Aria Babu and

01:10:07.680 she's been on our show before, but just Google her. I hope her story continues to grow. I think

01:10:13.520 it will. I mean, her subject's bigger than it used to be. And she's just getting warmed up. Yeah, no,

01:10:19.200 she's, she's going to be. Well, and now she's got a husband who's, who's building up his own,

01:10:22.560 you know, career. So that could always just end up working out and then she can go from there.

01:10:27.520 I want her to continue to have influence whether or not her husband is a breakout success. Anyway.

01:10:34.640 Yeah. They're amazing. Your husband are working on different things. That's sort of like two

01:10:38.480 gambles. Yeah, you got it. It's, well, it's, it's helpful to, to diversify your portfolio. We're doing

01:10:43.340 something uniquely risky in working so closely together. It's uniquely pleasant because I love

01:10:49.260 working with you. It is delightful. I too enjoy it. After the last episode, people said that they,

01:10:54.520 they were, our early relationship reminded them of character from Vampire the Masquerade

01:10:59.160 Bloodlines, who just becomes a thrall and obsessed with the vampire. And I was like,

01:11:03.240 yeah, that's basically what I thought of Simone when we started dating.

01:11:06.200 I saw that you hearted that comment. Oh, you're such a thing. You're so cute.

01:11:11.560 No, I'm not. You're such a thing.

01:11:14.280 Malcolm. But no, I actually remember thinking that I was like, I don't know if that specific

01:11:18.760 character came to mind early on in our relationship. And I was like, yeah, wow. She just does

01:11:22.280 whatever I tell her to with, you know, desperate desire to please me. And I was like, this is what,

01:11:28.600 what does, yeah. A guy like you want, but a thrall. And what does a girl like me want, but a vampire?

01:11:36.760 It's all good. I guess we all got our dreams. Okay. I will kick us off.

01:11:43.000 Are you a box race car driver? Who do you think is going to win? You or Indy?

01:11:53.720 You think you're going to win? Indy, do you think Titan's going to win?

01:11:58.360 I think she might. Okay.

01:12:00.360 Are you a box race monster?

01:12:09.480 Oh no, your box is being attacked by a dinosaur.

Based Camp - February 23, 2026

Are Lesbians Faking It？

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