Based Camp - Based Camp： The (s＊x) Slave Race Hypothesis

00:00:00.980 Hi, everyone. I am super excited. We're going to be speaking with one of our favorite people

00:00:06.180 today, Diana Fleischman, who, in addition to being a reformed academic and evolutionary

00:00:10.460 psychologist, is the author of the not yet published but upcoming book called How to

00:00:14.920 Drain Your Boyfriend. And she's written a ton of other fascinating stuff that you must

00:00:18.860 go down that rabbit hole. Trust us, you'll be very, very entertained. We're going to

00:00:23.540 speak with Diana about a wide range of things. We also want her to...

00:00:26.940 The Apariria Podcast. Yes, host of The Apariria Podcast.

00:00:31.580 Yes. And we honestly want her to start by stress testing one of our weird theories. But we also

00:00:39.120 want to hear all sorts of other things from her. So Diana, welcome, first and foremost.

00:00:43.140 Thank you.

00:00:44.960 Would you like to know more?

00:00:46.640 So the theory I really want to go over with you is one from our book, The Pragmatist Guide

00:00:51.180 to Sexuality, which is that we are a slave race. And I'll explain what I mean by this.

00:00:59.060 Specifically, the majority of the evolutionary pressure put on human-to-human social interactions

00:01:04.980 was put on humans who were low within local status hierarchies. First, most humans historically 0.89

00:01:12.340 were basically near the bottom of a social status hierarchy. Very few humans were near the top

00:01:17.960 of the social status hierarchy. And while men in that position definitely had more surviving

00:01:22.500 offspring, even when they were in that position, there was less pressure on them to behave in

00:01:30.700 certain ways. Like a leader who failed isn't going to get his genes erased as quickly as a servant or

00:01:37.240 slave who fails. Which means that the average human mind is much more optimized around servitude.

00:01:45.440 And this has a few interesting takeaways. One, Ayla, a mutual friend of both of ours,

00:01:50.800 this would explain why even in men, around 40% prefer to take on submissive positions in sexuality.

00:01:56.760 But it also may explain the way we relate to things like deity or society writ large,

00:02:03.040 how like a president will say, well, I'm the servant of the people. Even though the president

00:02:07.280 is technically the highest level position in society. Or the head of a company might say,

00:02:10.840 well, I'm the servant of the board. We really have few concepts of non-servitude in our society.

00:02:17.080 So I want to get your take on this as an evolutionary psychologist.

00:02:20.700 So one idea that's very interesting is potentially hunter-gatherer societies were less hierarchical

00:02:28.340 than current societies that have very large hierarchies. I've been reading a lot about male and female

00:02:34.120 dynamics. So men tend to be more forgiving of their friends. And they also have more stable status

00:02:39.500 hierarchies than women do because their status hierarchies are based on more stable characteristics 1.00

00:02:45.320 such as strength and prestige over time. So it does make sense for men to, and I was listening

00:02:53.260 to an interesting conversation with Beau Weingart and Jonathan Pallison about why would a man gain

00:02:59.100 status by carving beautiful sculptures of a man from history who's high in status, these kinds of

00:03:05.100 ideas. So it's possible. I do see what you're saying that, yeah, the average man is actually

00:03:10.780 subservient. The average man is monogamous or worse. What I'll riff on this with is what I think is even

00:03:17.600 more interesting. I have an idea is I was talking to Louise Perry and we were talking about like how

00:03:22.840 evolutionarily novel is prostitution. And she said that it was unlikely for women to have been passed

00:03:31.420 around and have sex with multiple men, but it was probably very common in evolutionary history,

00:03:36.100 ancestral history for women to be sex slaves to a specific person. Right. And so she talks about 0.71

00:03:42.840 kind of Stockholm syndrome and women being uniquely impressed upon by Stockholm syndrome because it is

00:03:49.100 the adaptive thing to do, not just, you know, because of patrilocality. So women would have been taken away 1.00

00:03:54.420 on average from their families and given to a strange man's family for her to adapt to his culture and

00:04:00.280 his language and to his customs would have made sense. But the only way you and your kids are

00:04:05.440 going to survive, if you're taken over by a hostile group is through a kind of pleasant submissiveness,

00:04:15.220 I'll say. Accommodation. Yeah. So there's a few riffs I want to take on the, on the thing you've said

00:04:21.180 here. One thing that was really interesting is male status hierarchies being more static than female

00:04:25.560 status hierarchies. To add to that one study that's really interesting is males sort themselves

00:04:29.900 into status hierarchies much faster than women do because the majority of the way that men sort 0.69

00:04:34.600 themselves into status hierarchies is by immediate physical traits like height that they can determine

00:04:39.560 the moment they walk into the room. And the reason for that is because the top man historically was

00:04:44.300 typically the man that could beat up the other men. And that's something that you can quickly observe,

00:04:49.060 which would be partially why the male status hierarchy would be more static. Another thing that you

00:04:54.560 mentioned was wars of conquest and taking women. One really interesting study here that I, we talk

00:05:00.400 about in our sexuality book shows that when you have a competition, like a game or, or something like

00:05:06.600 that, that's, I think it's like violent adjacent games, you know, like physical, physical games,

00:05:10.600 and it looks like your side is losing. Males bond more, like they feel closer bonds with the people on

00:05:18.660 their team. Whereas women begin to bond less with the people on their team when it looks like their 0.99

00:05:24.320 team is losing, which shows sort of the behavior you're talking about, where it would have really

00:05:29.880 been evolutionarily advantageous if we assume that all the males in a tribe were killed when the tribe

00:05:34.940 was taken over. The final part I want to riff on, sorry if I'm riffing on too many things here,

00:05:39.500 and you just taking notes while you're talking, some really cool ideas, is one of our theories on

00:05:44.040 sexuality, we call the polymorphic human female. So for users, you're familiar with polymorphism,

00:05:49.840 but for users, what it is, is when you have a single genetic code that can be expressed in two

00:05:55.180 behavioral and, and physical phenotypes. So a locus is the classic example here, where when they

00:06:00.440 get above certain population numbers, they change their physiology and behavior patterns. You know,

00:06:05.380 normally they're a grasshopper, but if you rub like their hind leg with a Q-tip, they'll transform

00:06:08.940 into a locus. But even when like baboons, you see polymorphic behavior patterns above certain

00:06:12.920 population sizes. So what we would argue here is that human females, the more sexual partners they 0.99

00:06:20.420 have, their body naturally adapts to this. And we can see them producing lex, I think it's, you'll 0.94

00:06:27.640 correct me on this, oxytocin when they sleep with partners, which is a forced bonding hormone, which

00:06:32.620 would mean that human females' bodies organically adapt to either bond with the one person they sleep 0.92

00:06:39.580 with or bond less with everyone they sleep with because they are assumed they're in the society

00:06:44.580 where they're being passed around. You can tell me if that sounds crazy or Simone, you want to riff on that?

00:06:48.540 No, no, I, I, I'm writing something right now called like, you know, playfully, you know, 0.98

00:06:54.420 disagreeable sluts versus agreeable prudes. And, and so, yeah, the, I mean, this idea is like hookup 1.00

00:07:00.080 culture is really fine if you know how to disagree with the, with the norm, but if you're agreeable

00:07:05.880 and you're naturally more monogamously inclined as, as the average woman is, then hookup culture 1.00

00:07:11.120 is going to be a net bad for you. I'd be really interested in this study because I've, I've had

00:07:15.220 this idea for a long time. So there's this idea in sort of Christian culture where they tell young

00:07:21.360 people, you're like a piece of tape. The more times you stick to something else, the less sticky

00:07:27.080 you get. And so I have drafted something, but not published it basically called, I don't want to be

00:07:32.780 sticky. Cause like when I was younger, when I was like 17, I fell in love with a couple of people

00:07:37.920 who were really low mate value just sounds like mercenary, but yeah, low mate value guys. Like

00:07:42.560 the one guy was like a, like a musician that was unsuccessful. Another guy worked at my grocery

00:07:47.560 store. And, and I remember feeling so in love with this one guy who I really had nothing in common

00:07:53.760 with. And I fell in love very easily until I got past, I don't know, like 10 sexual partners.

00:08:00.300 Hmm. Yeah. We, we, we, we cite, this is actually probably being a good thing for most women. 1.00

00:08:07.040 You don't want to illogically fall in love with everyone you sleep with. So you're probably in a

00:08:11.780 lot stronger position. So I, I really liked that. Another thing you mentioned, I want to pull on,

00:08:16.240 it's a concept of bratty sluts, uh, not bratty sluts, but bratty subs, sorry. So in the kink community, 0.98

00:08:22.840 there are different ways you can be submissive. And one of these is called the brat.

00:08:26.640 And what I think is going on there. And it's very interesting is what is arousing. The woman is

00:08:33.380 the man exerting his dominance over her. So the bratty behavior elicits the, the dominance display 0.65

00:08:42.000 over and over again in the male that allows her to maximally masturbate that aspect of her sexuality. 0.97

00:08:49.100 Yeah. There's the, the resistance is screening idea, right? So like female elephant, a male will try 0.90

00:08:54.620 to mount her and she'll walk backwards, like a hundred meters or something. He gets to mate,

00:09:00.860 right? And there's other species where I think it is an orcas or some other whale where the male

00:09:06.600 drags the female to shallower water. And so there is an, an, in courtship, there's an element of

00:09:12.740 coercive behavior. And so the bratty sub is definitely like a, a test both psychologically and physically

00:09:19.920 of the dominance of the male. I think this is why women like to be tied up is because 1.00

00:09:24.020 it's a perfect, it's a, it's a facsimile of being with somebody who's so large and strong

00:09:30.200 and coordinated that they can hold all your limbs immobile. Right.

00:09:33.780 Oh, that's interesting. I thought it was a swaddling instinct.

00:09:35.800 Yeah. Yeah. So we argue something different about tie-ups, which is one of our spicier takes 0.99

00:09:39.700 is that when people are masturbating instincts, that any sort of an instinct, anything that makes

00:09:45.700 them happy, they often misattribute it to sexuality, even when it's not necessarily a

00:09:50.700 sexual instinct, because that's, that's just how we deal with these feelings, like a massage

00:09:55.340 or something like that. Right. And so what we argue might be going on with bondage is, it

00:10:01.100 might actually be a swaddling instinct that hasn't fully turned off from infants. And that specifically

00:10:08.060 when you look at like cling wrap fetishes and stuff like that, you know, where they like

00:10:11.800 vacuum feds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think even, even like rope bondage, but here's where

00:10:17.300 it gets really complicated. Right. Because like, there is definitely a dominance element

00:10:20.900 in there. And we are pretty sure that like, while the dominance submission thing is a really

00:10:26.620 big element of what turns people on and off, it's also like, you know, you can, you can show

00:10:32.020 domination through tying someone up. So like, it can both be like comforting from a swaddling

00:10:36.960 standpoint, but also super big turn on because it is a show of that dominance or it is a show

00:10:41.040 of that power. It's very, it's a, it takes a lot of skill to do it. I see what you're

00:10:44.820 saying. I, I, for me, the swaddling instinct thing, yes, there is a relaxing component to

00:10:49.780 being tied up. I used to live with this guy who was like really into BDSM and he would

00:10:53.460 try out his new gear on me because I was the smallest person he knew. So I remember he put

00:10:57.740 me in a straight jacket one time during a party and it was very relaxing because I didn't

00:11:02.680 feel like there was anything I, people could come over and talk to me or not. It was like one

00:11:06.540 of the most relaxing social situations I've ever been in. Right. Honestly, that sounds amazing.

00:11:10.600 You wouldn't imagine that. Right. Whereas I think if you're, I guess you could make the

00:11:15.660 case that for a woman, if you tie her up, the swaddling instinct relaxes her. And for 1.00

00:11:20.980 a woman has to be relaxed before she gets aroused to some extent, I mean, there's something like 0.96

00:11:24.920 that. Although the studies that I did back when I was in graduate school on human sexuality

00:11:29.760 is actually, if you show a woman like a horror film or, or thriller, like a man chasing a woman

00:11:36.360 down a dark alleyway, she gets sexually aroused faster after seeing something like that. Then

00:11:42.220 she does just in a, in a neutral, relaxed state. Well, doesn't that suggest though that like

00:11:46.820 she's, that maybe there's some kind of like evolved coping mechanism of like, these are 0.95

00:11:52.520 signals that I'm about to get raped. Like let's not cause physical damage, please. 0.52

00:11:56.940 That's the, all of the explanations of really repugnant explanations for why do women show 1.00

00:12:02.880 enhanced blood flow and even lubrication in the presence of watching pornography, no matter

00:12:08.200 what it is, you can watch two bonobos having sex and a woman in blood flow increase is that

00:12:13.340 it's, what do they call that? Like the damage reduction hypothesis, which is really nasty.

00:12:18.280 But yeah, the idea is that you're seeing anything sexual going on. It's important to get your

00:12:22.140 revolve already for what, whatever might happen. Yeah. For the bonking. Yeah. Devendra Singh,

00:12:27.680 my evolutionary psychology mentor, when I was in graduate school, who died shortly after,

00:12:32.860 he said, he made some joke about like, you know, the best form of foreplay is to chase her around

00:12:36.960 the table or something. I love that. Oh my God. Well, here's a fun take that you might like that we

00:12:42.880 had on, on, on these sorts of topics, which is what's actually going on with the arousal ties to

00:12:49.760 dominance and submission systems. And this we argue is really more of a case of just evolution,

00:12:54.860 being a cheap programmer and reusing a code base that already had. So specifically in mammals,

00:13:01.340 when you have social hierarchies, a very common thing is that mammals will display sexually to

00:13:09.180 show their position was in that dominance hierarchy. And what's really fascinating here is in like

00:13:13.500 spotted hyenas where the females are the dominant animal and females have pseudopenises and

00:13:19.600 spotted hyenas. An erection will be a sign of submission instead of like showing yourself to 0.91

00:13:24.540 get mounted. And so what's really interesting here is what we argue is probably going on 0.97

00:13:28.920 is that humans needed to show their position within their social hierarchy and the system they already

00:13:34.780 had on hand was their arousal system. So biology just like copied the code from that system to instigate 0.97

00:13:42.300 dominance and submission behavior and pre-code that behavior. And that's why it causes arousal.

00:13:47.180 People not always are necessarily because of these more rape hypotheses. What are your thoughts on

00:13:52.860 that? Well, so there's a lot of species in which males show submission to each other by bending over

00:13:59.460 or even being the receptive animal in an anal sex kind of interaction. That to me, I wrote a 0.95

00:14:05.640 behaviorist account of that once, which is that what's it called? I can't remember the behaviorist term,

00:14:11.900 but there are, you know, like, let's say there's two behaviors. Let's say you have a dog that beats up on

00:14:15.580 your other dog. So the dog can either play with a toy across the room or it can beat up on the other

00:14:20.040 dog. Those behaviors are like mutually exclusive and like a more dominant animal beating you up or

00:14:25.620 having sex with you. Those are mutually exclusive. So what you're incidentally doing, if you bend over 0.70

00:14:30.320 and show a submission behavior or let the other animal mount you is you're rewarding, not beating me

00:14:35.180 up. Oh, that's a really interesting take. I like that. So that's one interesting thing. But, but also,

00:14:43.180 yeah, in terms of dominance, yes, it's, it's always better. If you look at all these different animals,

00:14:49.820 there's a very interesting paper cooperation and they expand the notion of cooperation past what we

00:14:55.680 would normally think. And they also say, let's say two bucks are sizing each other up and they look at

00:15:00.660 each other's like antler size and one decides to forfeit because the other one has bigger antlers,

00:15:06.320 but an actual physical altercation is costly for both of them. So actually that is a form of

00:15:11.980 cooperation, even though their interests are actually not, well, their interests are aligned

00:15:15.960 and that they both don't, they don't want to fight unless it's really necessary to figure out who's,

00:15:20.660 who's dominant. So you could also see that in terms of sexuality, like physical altercation is,

00:15:25.480 is very costly. And so a sexual altercation is, is generally always preferable.

00:15:29.940 If you want to show that you're submissive. And it also has, as I said, the added benefit of

00:15:34.720 rewarding the dominant animal for not beating you up. Yeah. So just, just a quick note here for,

00:15:39.560 for listeners and quick biology lesson, what she described there is called honest signaling.

00:15:43.760 And it's a useful concept in biology that can also be applied to other areas of your life,

00:15:48.140 which are types of signals that you can show people that cannot be easily faked. So like if you

00:15:53.220 were signaling wells, something like jewelry, which can be rented is a very easy thing to fake.

00:15:58.540 While something like a house is a very hard thing to fake and a much more honest signal of wealth.

00:16:03.320 But Simone, you haven't talked much. What are your thoughts on all this?

00:16:06.280 Sorry. I thought you were about to be like, and this is why you should offer sex to your boss at 1.00

00:16:10.460 the office so that you can get promoted and make sure that you're not trying to supplant them. 0.98

00:16:14.460 Wow. Okay.

00:16:15.580 This is, this is moissanite. So this is my, my pregnancy ring because it's,

00:16:19.600 Oh, cause your fingers are swollen, right?

00:16:21.120 I don't fit into, yeah, I'm too swollen to wear my normal one. And this is like a $300 ring or

00:16:25.320 something like that, but a diamond this size, cause they're indistinguishable to like the naked eye

00:16:29.220 or whatever, or even to many jewelers would be, I don't know, 10 grand. So yeah, I love,

00:16:34.360 I love fake, fake fitness when it comes to jewelry.

00:16:37.780 Right. Also moissanite is more sparkly. So like, I almost feel like it's more effective

00:16:41.740 signaling. It's, it's, it's gorgeous. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, what I'm really curious about is,

00:16:47.820 you know, there is this, this surprising, and this shows up in ALS data. It shows up in the data that

00:16:53.040 we did abundance of people who are submissive, not just women, which of course, like the majority 1.00

00:16:57.780 of women are, are submissive, but also men. Well, what, what are other compelling reasons for 0.98

00:17:03.380 there being so many submissive men? But bottom, bottom's also at number tops. I remember Mike

00:17:09.240 Bailey having a drink with him several years ago. And he was saying that gay men joke that like,

00:17:13.480 you go out to a gay bar, which gay bars are not as common as they used to be. It's like a hundred

00:17:17.980 bottoms for every one top. No. Yeah. So bottoms are way more common. I don't know about like

00:17:24.340 versatils or switches. I mean, there's a variety of other reasons that could be the case though. Cause

00:17:29.680 like females are the default sex. If homosexuality is the result of some kind of

00:17:34.820 difficulty, let's say in the, the programming for masculinity, then you would expect that,

00:17:40.380 you know, it's, yeah. Or like female receptive behavior is much easier to code because it just 1.00

00:17:47.960 involves kind of like bending over than, than copulation or topping, which is much more complicated

00:17:53.380 and involves a lot more motivation. Right. Well, it's also fairly risky. So you have a female 0.99

00:17:58.580 mimicry, which you see in a lot of species. And that could be what we're seeing here.

00:18:02.800 Oh, you mean like sneaky copulation? Yeah. Sneaky copulation. Yeah.

00:18:06.400 You guys have a curse on this podcast.

00:18:09.780 We can, we can curse. It's called sneaky fuckers. 1.00

00:18:13.720 Yes. So essentially what happens in, in some animals for listeners and this may or may not have 0.99

00:18:22.380 relevance to the world today. So some males, especially in highly gender dimorphic species. So

00:18:28.400 like, you'll see this in like some crabs or like some males are like three times the size of other

00:18:31.980 crabs. Occasionally males will be born the size of a female crab and the big males don't notice them

00:18:37.600 and they will enter these other crab communities sneakily. In other species, you will see males adopt

00:18:44.680 female behavior or even take on gay roles to enter sort of the trust circle of other males and then 0.94

00:18:53.740 sleep with the women in that animal's harem. I guess you could call it. 1.00

00:18:58.160 Yeah. The sunfish has got three morphs, which is the, the regular male that has the territory that

00:19:03.560 guards his territory, a tiny little male that sneaks in. And then the male that looks just like a female 0.93

00:19:09.540 that sneaks in more effectively.

00:19:12.320 And this is, so we had a podcast where we argued that the, the red pill in a way, in the way they're

00:19:16.980 approaching women creates thoughts. I actually, THOTs, I actually believe that in the same way, 0.92

00:19:23.060 the extremist feminist community, one of the reasons why whenever you do surveys in that 1.00

00:19:27.800 community, you see such high rates of rape is they are essentially bringing in these female 1.00

00:19:34.200 mimicry guys who are going to pretend to have this like ultra white knight-y perspective on the world.

00:19:40.740 But in, in animal kingdoms, those are the, the types of males that are most likely to rape or one 0.98

00:19:47.240 of the most likely to rape. 0.54

00:19:47.980 Of course, males. Yeah. I mean, I did a deep, I did, I did work on this 10 years ago on bisexuality 0.99

00:19:54.740 and about evolutionary explanations for homosexuality. And I taught human sexuality. I remember a deep dive 0.83

00:20:01.520 on this in a lecture and chapter that I read in my twenties. And this guy was talking about how gay men

00:20:08.320 have, you know, very reduced rates of reproduction, obviously compared to straight men. And then it 0.89

00:20:14.280 doesn't actually seem like this kind of sneaky fucker strategy. Maybe you're talking about 0.98

00:20:19.080 something different, but it doesn't actually. No, no, no. I'm not talking about gay men. I'm 0.99

00:20:21.520 actually specifically talking about white knight-y guys. So these are guys. Oh, okay. Feminist guys, yeah.

00:20:26.280 An extremist, like feminist perspective, you could say that like no rational guy looking at the world

00:20:31.500 today would adopt to get into these, I guess people would call them like hardcore SJW spaces.

00:20:36.520 But it is related. Basically, they're creating an incentive to create sneaky fuckers, essentially. 0.99

00:20:43.200 Well, I mean, it's a copulation strategy that is, that is premised upon dishonesty. Yeah. I mean, 0.99

00:20:48.620 that's how they're getting into these communities by being dishonest about their lived experiences,

00:20:52.440 because that's what you need to be as a guy often to enter these communities.

00:20:56.380 Well, that's, that's what I'm saying is the communities create that requirement. Like you have

00:21:00.380 to be sneaky to get in. So it creates people who are being.

00:21:03.180 So we'll see. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could also say that these communities, like the,

00:21:07.640 there's a very advantageous sex ratio and there's a variety of good, good reasons to try to get,

00:21:13.160 get into them. Yeah. I'm pretty agnostic about that given that I'm not in those communities myself.

00:21:18.580 Yeah. I have loved this episode and I would love to do another episode with you if you are open to

00:21:25.920 that. Yeah, for sure. Yay. Okay. Then we are going to record it right now. Yeah. We're going to record

00:21:32.860 it right now.

Based Camp - June 21, 2023

Based Camp： The (s＊x) Slave Race Hypothesis

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