Based Camp - Feminism Stole Her Family & Purpose (Why Modeling Your Life on Sex and the City Is A Bad Idea)

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be talking about not just a piece that was published in the New York Times called The Trouble with Wanting Men by Jean Gernet, but some other pieces she wrote leading up to this.

00:00:13.800 I think you're getting into her lore.

00:00:16.820 Oh yeah, I've had to break apart these pieces, restructure how they're being delivered, because in the same way our Life of a Cenobite episode really dug into the life of Anna Valens and through it understood one way that the urban monoculture can destroy everything in her life that matters.

00:00:33.680 This individual, you know, a lot of the manosphere has been examining her takes and just being like her-der-der, like women being salty about men, you know, making bad decisions and ultimately being a hypocrite.

00:00:47.900 Which, you know, okay, all of that is true, but I think it's more interesting to dive into the psychology and sort of how she spiraled into this position in her life and how feminism can destroy the mind of a woman and lead her to absolute emotional ruin in the same way that, you know, we talk about sort of the trans-semitic virus can destroy the life of like a young autistic person.

00:01:15.880 Sure, yeah.

00:01:16.960 And I don't think that feminism, like when you see this person's life, you're going to be like, wow, like there's a lot we can learn from this.

00:01:24.300 Oh, a cautionary tale.

00:01:26.460 Well, perhaps then we shall share this with our children when they get older, at least especially our daughters.

00:01:32.920 I'm curious to see what you find, though.

00:01:34.840 Is there stuff that wasn't obvious to us?

00:01:37.120 Oh, well, just tell me.

00:01:38.040 Let's go.

00:01:38.420 Well, yeah, what's more interesting when you read sort of, and this is why it's good to peel back into the older stuff as well.

00:01:44.200 Because when you read her in-state, she just appears to be such a vile and hateful person who deserves every bit of sadness that she's experiencing due to living a life that's dedicated to prejudice and prejudice against men.

00:01:58.400 But it's how did she get there, right?

00:02:00.420 Did she start off a little more like optimistic and hopeful?

00:02:03.220 Yes, yes.

00:02:04.800 She started off with a whole everything is working.

00:02:07.460 And it wasn't even her that I would argue started this trail of dominoes, but her husband.

00:02:13.060 She was married?

00:02:15.160 Oh, yes, yes.

00:02:16.280 We'll get into this.

00:02:16.980 Okay, so let's jump into this.

00:02:18.820 Happily married?

00:02:19.620 I thought this was about, you know, a single young woman who's trying to make it work.

00:02:23.180 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:02:24.460 If the experts say my romantic letdowns have some larger social significance, I am not going to argue.

00:02:30.660 The men I want are not wanting me badly enough, not communicating with me clearly enough, not devoting themselves to me.

00:02:39.760 By the way, like you read that as like a normal human and you're like, that comes across as psychotic.

00:02:44.560 Yeah, a little entitled.

00:02:45.640 Men are horrible because the men who I want aren't devoting themselves to me enough.

00:02:52.400 I think she is.

00:02:54.180 By the way, if you want to see a picture of her, I'll put one on screen here.

00:02:56.480 I find that that sometimes tells people she is, I'd say, all the more attractive side for her age, normal looking white woman.

00:03:03.460 Okay.

00:03:04.580 All this certainly seems calamitous enough to warrant an ism.

00:03:09.700 Wait, that they're not devoting themselves to you enough.

00:03:12.780 The men who you want is calamitous in your mind.

00:03:16.640 The level of entitlement, right?

00:03:18.520 Like you are a walking nightmare for a guy.

00:03:23.400 But to continue, men are what is rotten in the state of straightness.

00:03:27.420 And why shouldn't we have an all-inclusive byword for our various pessimisms about them?

00:03:33.400 Domestic pessimism.

00:03:34.780 They still do less of the housework and childcare.

00:03:37.960 Partner violence pessimism.

00:03:39.960 Femicide is still gruesomely routine.

00:03:42.780 Erotic pessimism.

00:03:44.800 The clitoris and its properties still elude many of them.

00:03:48.740 And the perpetually proud masculinist subcultures that have risen, at least in part, as a reaction to these pessimisms, keep coughing up new reasons to fear and rage and complain about men.

00:04:03.100 And I just love that all of this here gets framed in the men who I want, not just don't want her, but aren't devoting themselves to her.

00:04:15.320 Yeah, I also have a beef with people who, I don't know, are extremely entitled about being pleasured properly.

00:04:26.360 When, like, for men, it's so freaking easy.

00:04:29.280 Like, there is literally, like, a handle and you kind of, like, I'm not saying there's not finesse to it, but, like, it's so easy.

00:04:36.700 Whereas for women, it's like, well, some women feel it this way and some women feel it this way.

00:04:40.480 And, like, I couldn't, like, if someone was, like, pleasure this woman, I'd be like, oh, my God, I'm going to die.

00:04:46.080 Whereas if someone was, like, pleasure this man, I'd be like, okay, I'm pretty sure, like, male or female, you can probably figure that out.

00:04:52.160 But if you are given, like, a random woman, any of us, and someone's holding a gun to our heads and, like, you need to make her orgasm, like, we're all going to be like, okay, I guess I'm going to die.

00:05:00.140 And here she is being, like, how dare people?

00:05:02.560 I mean, we've already addressed all this stuff around, like, you know, violence in lesbian relationships being actually pretty high.

00:05:09.340 Right, so just to her point there about domestic violence of women, if you look at straight violence levels in heterosexual couples, the violence levels in lesbian couples are way higher, whereas violence levels in gay male couples are the same as straight couples or less, depending on the study you're looking at.

00:05:26.820 Right.

00:05:27.040 Which implies that it is not the men who are engendering the violence.

00:05:32.220 Like, we can just look at the data, it's the same as divorce rates.

00:05:34.820 Divorce rates way higher in lesbian communities than in straight communities or gay communities.

00:05:39.340 We can just look at the rates, like, it's coming from inside the house, women.

00:05:44.760 But, hold on, I had pulled that from the center of the article so we can get to, like, her core complaint and what she's trying to set up here.

00:05:50.820 This hatred that some women have now of straight dating and the suffering and anxiety that they feel when on the straight dating marketplace, all right?

00:06:00.720 Have they tried lesbian dating? Like, is that so much better?

00:06:03.520 We'll get to that.

00:06:04.220 Okay, I'm very curious.

00:06:05.120 That does come up in here.

00:06:06.420 But we're going to go back in time.

00:06:09.340 And go to, what happened to her last marriage?

00:06:12.280 Because clearly she was married, right?

00:06:14.060 Yeah, what happened?

00:06:16.020 One of the reasons my marriage ended was that I fell in love with another man, who I'm referred to by his first initial J.

00:06:22.600 And people weren't devoted enough to her.

00:06:25.480 Hold on, hold on.

00:06:26.360 Spontaneously graceful with a soft voice and an inordinate sad smile.

00:06:31.680 Jay made me laugh, stopping my breath, being a quote-unquote good guy.

00:06:36.640 He intimated from the jump that he did not know how to quote-unquote do relationships.

00:06:41.700 Giving me to understand that if I expected one with him, or as he may have conceptualized it from him, I did so at my peril, which was his peril too.

00:06:55.280 Since he'd hate to hurt me, still, he pursued me.

00:06:59.560 We seem to quote-unquote be doing something together.

00:07:02.860 So note here, this guy who she pursued, okay, told her, I am not interested in a serious relationship with you.

00:07:12.860 And worse, he's doing the classic good guy routine who's not actually a good guy.

00:07:17.760 I just hate to see you be hurt.

00:07:20.360 But if you chase me, that's what's going to happen.

00:07:22.720 So you should stay with your husband, sweetheart.

00:07:25.020 No, seriously, stay with your husband, sweetheart.

00:07:26.700 Yeah, like, I'm not here for you.

00:07:30.140 Yeah, my husband and I have an open relationship at the time Jay and I met.

00:07:35.000 So the terms of our involvement were, at first, limited.

00:07:39.120 And although Jay exerted a pleasant pressure against these limitations, ultimately they suited him.

00:07:45.400 I was the one who violated the terms by finding it intolerable.

00:07:49.600 After a while, to care that much in a way for one person while being married to another.

00:07:55.240 I could not disambiguate sex from love, nor love from devotion, futility, family integration, things I wanted with, from, Jay.

00:08:07.640 Even as throughout the year and the half or so that we saw each other, he continued to gesture to his incapacity to commit as if it were a separate being.

00:08:18.720 An unfortunate child who followed and relied upon him, maybe, or a physical constraint.

00:08:25.240 I stood there reacting to him for a while, while he, sad face, back at me, looked like a box mime.

00:08:32.520 He couldn't talk about it.

00:08:34.000 He wished things were different.

00:08:35.600 Maybe someday the child would mature.

00:08:37.800 The glass would break.

00:08:39.040 But for now, there was really nothing to be done.

00:08:41.380 And later in this, she'll talk about how men and women just, men do not take time to understand what women are really telling them between the lines.

00:08:51.320 And it's men who can't communicate well.

00:08:53.940 And men, and this is why dating is so bad for women.

00:08:58.000 And I'm like, Bea, I am reading your writing down in a favorable way to you what this guy told you.

00:09:05.780 And it seems to me that he was communicating with a fire hose and a siren in your face saying, I will not commit to you.

00:09:14.820 I am using you for sex.

00:09:16.700 Please stop taking this further.

00:09:19.060 I really don't like you in that way, but don't want to hurt your feelings.

00:09:23.340 And she just refused to listen to what he was loudly and repeatedly communicating to her because it didn't follow what she wanted to be true.

00:09:33.840 And this is the thing.

00:09:35.280 She's showing that her problems with her own communication failures in not listening to what's being loudly signaled to her.

00:09:43.620 It seems to me, surveying the field of dating as a novice, that this kind of studious irreproachability, male helplessness abounds.

00:09:52.760 I keep encountering and hearing it about men who, quote unquote, can't have these ever men heard of, quote unquote, don't want to.

00:09:59.780 No, what he was telling you is, I don't want a serious relationship with you.

00:10:05.120 But he didn't want to hurt your feelings.

00:10:07.420 So what he said was, oh, I'm just not mature enough for that yet.

00:10:12.180 I'm not in a place in my life where I want that right yet.

00:10:15.300 But what he was telling you in no uncertain terms was, I don't want you.

00:10:20.620 You're just not that good.

00:10:23.300 I want other things.

00:10:25.140 I want to keep playing the field.

00:10:27.080 You are not worth my time or emotional effort.

00:10:32.120 And you, this woman, was unwilling to hear that.

00:10:36.260 And then to go later in the piece, she talks about why he refused to start something serious with her after she left her husband.

00:10:44.400 I toppled the whole structure of my life for a man who, when I asked him, do you want to be with me or not, replied after a few seconds of silence, I want to be with you.

00:10:55.040 And I want to be everything, everywhere, all at once.

00:10:59.360 Jay was referring, of course, to the 2022 surreal sci-fi comedy set across a multitude of parallel universes in which many versions of the protagonist play out many versions of their lives.

00:11:09.800 Like, I love how he's playing the manic pixie dream boy.

00:11:13.860 Like, playing this woman like a fiddle while also clearly signaling to her, I only want you for sex.

00:11:20.620 Yeah.

00:11:20.880 Like, I wish I could fob you off to another version of me in another dimension, because that would be great right now.

00:11:27.600 Yeah, because the me in this dimension does not want you.

00:11:31.620 Be clear.

00:11:32.460 I have other plates I'm juggling right now.

00:11:36.740 You go off and do your own thing, right?

00:11:38.820 But I think that when men in the manosphere, you know, talk about a woman where they're like, oh, you know, she destroyed herself on Chad, you know, like alpha widows is what they call them.

00:11:49.780 These women who got these great guys and then couldn't accept.

00:11:52.880 This is what this form of alpha talks like, okay?

00:11:56.880 They don't talk like, I'm going to put you down.

00:11:59.500 I'm going to, you know, throw you around.

00:12:01.340 I'm going to, they talk like this to women and women eat out of their hand and destroy their lives chasing these types of men.

00:12:10.000 Okay.

00:12:12.700 Now we're going to go to a different piece that she wrote.

00:12:15.440 Scenes from an open marriage.

00:12:17.040 This was written three years before the piece that you just read above.

00:12:20.840 Oh, the before.

00:12:22.620 Hmm.

00:12:23.280 Okay.

00:12:25.080 About six months after our daughter was born, my husband.

00:12:28.280 They have a daughter together?

00:12:30.160 Right.

00:12:30.400 Oh, this girl's life over her wanting to be with this other guy who told her she wasn't interested.

00:12:37.660 Well, she's a married woman with a kid.

00:12:40.440 No kidding.

00:12:42.160 Yeah.

00:12:42.660 There's baggage.

00:12:43.960 Oh, okay.

00:12:46.060 We're going to go over what she wants in a guy, the way she talks about guys, because it's terrible.

00:12:49.920 She's clearly a very vile person.

00:12:51.360 But how did she get lured into this life of polyamory that seems like it destroyed her marriage and then spit her out in a world where, you know, she, a late thirties, early forties woman is just not desirable.

00:13:04.160 And she thought that she would be desirable to the, I mean, she's desirable to men who want to pass her around, but she's not desirable to be the one for any guy who she would actually want.

00:13:14.200 So how did she end up in this, this open relationship to begin with?

00:13:20.240 Indeed.

00:13:20.680 About six months after our daughter was born, my husband calmly set the idea on the table like a decorative gun.

00:13:26.320 I said, I'd think about it.

00:13:28.140 I couldn't pretend to be that surprised by the proposition or ignorant of my part in agendering it.

00:13:34.440 I was too tired.

00:13:35.460 I was too busy.

00:13:36.680 The baby, the baby, the baby.

00:13:38.700 I had a deadline.

00:13:40.120 I was reading.

00:13:41.040 I was watching The Sopranos.

00:13:42.480 Again, I was depressed.

00:13:43.940 I just wanted a nap, needed a nap, ached for a hot, throbbing nap.

00:13:50.040 This might, I figured, be quote unquote real marriage, harder, deeper marriage, marriage opening its cute mouth all the way and showing the mess that was back there.

00:14:01.800 Maybe I thought the libido of a certain kind of woman is an animal that lives a little and then crawls into a cave and lies there panting for a few decades until with a final rabid pant,

00:14:13.180 it expires.

00:14:14.820 Could it expire so early?

00:14:16.780 Or perhaps I was taking a breather postpartum, understandable surely, given how a six and a half pound human body had been slither pulled out of the place I get at.

00:14:29.020 That's a small baby.

00:14:30.140 Oh.

00:14:31.680 Or one of the places.

00:14:33.840 Or one of the places.

00:14:35.500 Okay, so by the way, what you will learn as we go through the later piece after she left this guy three years later, she is sexually insatiable.

00:14:43.180 Just everything she talks about is who is effing her, how they're effing her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:14:48.540 I cut all that out of this, by the way.

00:14:49.820 You guys are going to have to hear that for your benefit.

00:14:53.960 But it is clear that her libido had not died.

00:14:56.500 It had died contextually with her husband.

00:14:58.760 And I think that what we actually see is it might not even be a death of a libido.

00:15:05.600 It might be that like when a lot of women have what's called a reactive sexuality, which means that they become aroused when they are put in a sexual scenario.

00:15:16.620 Yeah.

00:15:17.220 And often husbands, especially a progressive husband like this guy was a feminist wife, don't feel comfortable putting their wives in a sexual scenario when they haven't asked to be put in a sexual scenario.

00:15:28.400 Right.

00:15:28.740 And I think that this is how libidos die in a lot of marriages.

00:15:32.040 Yeah, this is a super underrated point.

00:15:33.720 But I'd also note here is this expectation that you need to be having lots of sex with a six-month-old.

00:15:40.220 When I have a six-month-old in the house, I basically have no sex.

00:15:43.420 Like, first, I wouldn't want to risk.

00:15:45.660 No, you generally had a C-section.

00:15:47.980 It could cause scarring that could prevent future embryos.

00:15:51.400 I mean, I think after the six-month mark, it's...

00:15:53.840 Okay, yeah, but I'm talking about that six-month window.

00:15:56.840 Oh, yeah.

00:15:57.760 Okay.

00:15:58.240 Yeah, whatever.

00:15:59.440 I don't like to risk it.

00:16:00.540 I don't like to risk your body, which carries my kids, right?

00:16:03.720 Like, and I think that a lot of guys hear this and they're like, oh, that's horrible.

00:16:08.340 Oh, whatever.

00:16:10.980 Sex.

00:16:12.280 Recreational sex exists entirely.

00:16:15.680 Like, the entire reason you want this is to produce offspring.

00:16:20.260 Yeah.

00:16:20.680 Should it be any surprise that a woman who's lactating and sleep-deprived and, you know, dealing with an infant...

00:16:26.620 Well, no, but even more so, if it has the opposite effect, if it could damage, could create scar tissue,

00:16:32.080 which could prevent future embryos from implanting.

00:16:33.700 That too.

00:16:34.260 Yeah.

00:16:34.620 Well, I think you're more likely to have complications in your pregnancy if you get pregnant super,

00:16:38.640 super soon after.

00:16:39.580 And you're cucking yourself.

00:16:41.400 You're cucking yourself because you are allowing your own arousal pattern to limit the number

00:16:47.700 of offspring you have and to hurt your relationship with the woman who is having those future offspring

00:16:53.260 on your behalf.

00:16:54.160 You know, you shouldn't be trying to get pregnant again six months after the last kid.

00:16:58.460 And people are like, oh, well, you should have sex for X reason or Y reason.

00:17:02.780 And in reality, no, I don't think you should.

00:17:06.040 And a lot of people will be like, oh, Malcolm, this is just you being, you know, low, low testosterone

00:17:10.640 or something.

00:17:11.280 And I point out, because I've often pointed out with my facial structure, but I was recently

00:17:13.700 looking at Nebula.

00:17:14.960 If you know how testosterone affects a person's body, you would know by my facial structure,

00:17:18.440 I actually developed in a very high testosterone environment.

00:17:21.520 And I'm 98% in terms of testosterone production.

00:17:24.720 Like I'm at the very, I'm like two standard deviations above the norm.

00:17:28.040 I'm in the top 2% of men in testosterone production.

00:17:30.640 But my testosterone production has almost certainly gone down because it goes down when

00:17:34.880 you're in a monogamous stable relationship.

00:17:36.580 And it goes down when you have children with the number of children you have for obvious

00:17:41.260 biological reasons.

00:17:42.580 And I think that some men just see sex as like something that they need, like food or something

00:17:48.400 like that, when it's just not, if it's getting a lot of people have, what's the word, perfunctory

00:17:55.040 sex for the same reason that people have perfunctory travel, where they're like, I'm pretty sure that

00:18:00.220 it's a sign that I'm not thriving if I'm not going on expensive trips every year, that kind

00:18:04.360 of thing.

00:18:04.680 So they're like, well, I have to do it because otherwise there must be something wrong with

00:18:08.640 my marriage or something wrong with me, or I'm not manly enough or something like that.

00:18:13.120 Yeah.

00:18:13.400 But I think that it's good to translate these desires into their purpose, whether you believe

00:18:19.260 God gave you them or whether you believe evolution gave you them.

00:18:22.300 When you see a busty woman and that arouses you, or you see a character in an anime, let's

00:18:29.460 say, dating five women, and you're like, oh, I really like watching this.

00:18:32.860 That is your biological response that exists because you are supposed to want to have kids

00:18:37.800 and give those kids a good childhood.

00:18:38.780 And so reframing that, I think what, what led to a lot of this is her husband wanting

00:18:43.800 more sex.

00:18:44.480 That is, that is functionally what destroyed everything that came downstream.

00:18:48.620 And it's clear given how reactive her sexuality is and how lusty after men she is, that she

00:18:54.960 probably would have been okay with it.

00:18:56.520 Had he just worked with her to try to find out what works for her after the kid had grown

00:19:02.740 up enough that they didn't, you know, that they weren't six months old.

00:19:05.640 What is there to want after all?

00:19:08.660 He is mine sacredly in sickness and in other states of being, except he is not.

00:19:13.980 And his absolute non-proprietary realness can flash out so suddenly that the spell of

00:19:19.580 matrimonial monotony is reversed and becomes again a free man.

00:19:24.120 And so I note here that even the way she frames her marriage and her vows here were like not

00:19:29.060 that serious.

00:19:30.160 The first time he came, and I'm just jumping around in this piece because I don't want to

00:19:33.620 get that deep into it, but it's interesting to see how a lot of this diving into the world

00:19:38.080 of polyamory before it destroyed their marriage was being framed in her head and in the husband's

00:19:43.400 head.

00:19:43.580 So you can know if this is happening to you and it can all seem like it's going okay

00:19:47.220 at first.

00:19:48.240 The first time he came home, boyish whisper laughing in the dark as he tore off his sweatshirt

00:19:53.540 and climbed into bed.

00:19:54.660 He used the word fun.

00:19:56.620 I had been waiting, braced for some seismic shift, but there he was, home, and mine again

00:20:03.320 was out so much as a waking the baby.

00:20:06.340 Just P and V, I reminded myself, with people attached through.

00:20:12.260 My husband and somebody else moving deliberately, perhaps tenderly, in pursuit of each other

00:20:17.660 and pleasure beyond.

00:20:19.360 But didn't he deserve some compartment of his own?

00:20:22.960 A chamber of mystery?

00:20:24.500 Don't we all?

00:20:25.300 I found I could be happy for my husband in his fun.

00:20:28.660 More than happy.

00:20:29.800 In fact, I could be a real thrill to let your partner go out and give it fully to another

00:20:34.900 woman and then come home and look at you in the eyes and kiss deeply and touch over that.

00:20:40.160 It is romantic in a way that culturally underscripted moments often are.

00:20:47.120 This is for some people.

00:20:48.340 I'm sure for some, I know, I know for some people this is a thing.

00:20:52.400 Which is funny.

00:20:53.060 And people know that with our relationship, I'm allowed to sleep with other people if

00:20:56.620 I want to.

00:20:57.160 I just don't think it's worth the effort.

00:20:58.920 But I certainly wouldn't make it a regular thing.

00:21:02.100 And her husband clearly made this an everyday thing that was causing very clear here stress

00:21:08.480 on her part.

00:21:09.540 And it's also clear that she went into all of this knowing the risk.

00:21:13.080 The inherent risk of an open marriage is exhilarating.

00:21:15.940 But seeing the risk is a positive thing.

00:21:18.120 She had a daughter, right?

00:21:19.300 Like, why is the risk exhilarating?

00:21:22.360 Nothing refines a romance like proximate disaster.

00:21:26.600 But it's not a romance.

00:21:28.280 You have a daughter.

00:21:30.260 Your parents.

00:21:31.440 You're not romancing each other.

00:21:33.440 In fact, ours began when at 17, we went home together from the funeral of a mutual friend

00:21:40.180 who had been on American Airlines Flight 11.

00:21:42.940 The city was covered in ash from that fall.

00:21:45.300 And us city kids were, there was a strong buddy system vibe like, everyone quickly grab

00:21:51.320 your buddy.

00:21:51.740 This is not a drill.

00:21:52.820 I still think of that friend whenever I'm traveling alone and a plane leaves the ground.

00:21:57.180 I think of my husband at those times too.

00:21:59.220 Imagine him mourning me, reviewing our parting final words via text exchange.

00:22:04.900 Cool.

00:22:05.540 Coming.

00:22:06.260 Can you look on the floor in the front seat?

00:22:08.980 As the third round, and now she's talking about a different thing here after the funeral

00:22:13.000 friends are talking.

00:22:14.340 And I think that this leans to the point I was making earlier about thinking that sex

00:22:17.380 is an absolute part of marriage, like constant sex.

00:22:20.420 As the third round of drinks arrived, the woman across from me said, with a laugh, that

00:22:25.380 she hardly ever had sex anymore.

00:22:26.960 Oh yeah, came a voice from farther down the bench.

00:22:29.940 We haven't had sex since H was born.

00:22:33.080 A third agreed that sex was barely a thing lately.

00:22:36.520 Reflectively, I joined the rush to wrap the initial confession and assurances.

00:22:41.940 Even the married women with kids seemed in her looks and noises to allow some lessening

00:22:47.940 was inevitable after a while.

00:22:49.720 Or else outnumbered by the new and newish mothers, she just knew her audience.

00:22:55.060 Only the single woman who listened wide-eyed and wavering in the schadenfreude excerpts

00:23:00.160 of concealed alarm was left to insist on the value of frequent, high-quality effing.

00:23:06.440 And it's like, the only reason you want that effing is because you're hoping one of these

00:23:10.840 guys settles down with you and starts having kids.

00:23:13.460 This is so bizarre because all of my friends in high school and everything, we loved romance

00:23:19.780 mangas and whatnot, but they were probably all bisexual.

00:23:23.720 There was no lust for boys ever discussed.

00:23:26.080 And I can't imagine being, I've never been in any conversation with women in which an interest

00:23:32.760 in sex has been expressed, which is so strange.

00:23:35.640 I can't imagine this meal.

00:23:37.260 No, but I think that this happens, it's actually interesting that you say this, because I think

00:23:42.800 that what you're saying is true.

00:23:44.160 You do not often see this in young female friend groups.

00:23:47.160 This is something that begins to happen in the sex in the city groups, which I'll talk

00:23:51.040 about as I go further, where they're dating a chain of men who are using them for sex.

00:23:56.160 And so now the key relationship they have with men is as, well, basically sex toys.

00:24:01.500 Now, of course, they don't realize that that's what they've been reduced to.

00:24:04.620 And that's what this woman has been reduced to after leaving her husband and abandoning

00:24:09.300 her duties as a mother.

00:24:11.080 But it's because they are, that it's a predominant way that they are relating socially because

00:24:16.680 they're trying desperately to recapture a real deep relationship, like the one that this

00:24:24.180 J guy was dangling in front of her so that he could use her for sex.

00:24:29.320 Wow.

00:24:31.560 I think that that's what's happening.

00:24:33.020 And I think that your experiences are actually correct here and that the group of girls who

00:24:37.580 get around a table and talk about sex, that this is a phenomenon that married women don't

00:24:43.880 often do.

00:24:44.560 Have you ever?

00:24:45.400 Married?

00:24:45.900 No.

00:24:46.320 Single?

00:24:46.760 No.

00:24:47.200 Young?

00:24:48.120 Teen?

00:24:48.880 Never.

00:24:49.460 I mean, I don't know.

00:24:50.180 Like, I just, I hung out with nerds.

00:24:53.060 I mean, like, you know, it was anime and manga and Doctor Who and all that.

00:24:57.940 But like, nerds, they're, they're voracious nerds too.

00:25:02.420 I don't, I just don't know.

00:25:03.440 This is just so strange to me.

00:25:04.940 I wonder if there, there's some kind of selective thing where like women tend to sort and just-

00:25:13.200 I don't think that's true.

00:25:14.200 I remember the girl I dated in college, you know, well, we had sex occasionally.

00:25:18.540 She was actually one of the people I had sex with the least of all of our partners, but

00:25:21.920 she had a friend who was just completely asexual and anti-sex.

00:25:26.120 And it was like notable to her?

00:25:28.760 I mean, it was a big part of this other girl's personality.

00:25:32.500 Like, sex is gross.

00:25:34.160 Oh.

00:25:35.140 Like publicly?

00:25:36.460 Yeah, like publicly.

00:25:37.460 It was like part of her thing.

00:25:38.580 That's so weird.

00:25:40.180 I mean, I suppose-

00:25:40.800 I don't know.

00:25:41.080 I think anyone making any bit of their sexual part, like their sexual tendencies part of

00:25:47.120 their identity to me is just bizarre.

00:25:49.520 Yeah.

00:25:49.780 I do see that as a little weird, but it's a common thing within the urban monoculture

00:25:53.620 and everything like that.

00:25:54.480 And people wanting to, you know, discuss it and make it a key part of their identity.

00:25:59.560 Yeah.

00:25:59.920 But the point I was making here is, is these other girls who were married and not having

00:26:04.280 much sex anymore, you change.

00:26:06.500 Your biology is meant to change when you're in a marriage.

00:26:09.780 Okay.

00:26:10.520 And if your biology is functioning correctly, keep in mind, biology doesn't always function

00:26:14.980 correctly.

00:26:15.380 Sometimes men find other men attractive.

00:26:16.940 But you, as a guy with five kids, if you have the same sexual appetite you did when

00:26:22.740 you had zero kids, you are about as broken as a guy who prefers other men.

00:26:30.080 It's not the way your biology is supposed to work for obvious evolutionary reasons.

00:26:35.140 And so-

00:26:35.700 Careful.

00:26:35.820 You might start sounding like Ben Shapiro here.

00:26:38.380 It's going to be like, really Malcolm?

00:26:40.940 Well, that was one of the times we went viral when I pointed out to men, this is the testosterone

00:26:47.500 thing.

00:26:48.120 And they're like, oh, you know, don't you want to look high T?

00:26:50.140 And I was like, high T is a sign that you're a genetic failure.

00:26:53.220 Yeah.

00:26:53.440 If you're still high T in middle ages, because your T and sex drive is supposed to drop if

00:26:59.320 you're in a long-term monogamous relationship with lots of kids.

00:27:01.780 And so if you still have it at those ages, it probably means you're not in a monogamous

00:27:06.600 It's your hormonal throw profile in the death throes of someone who knows that they're about

00:27:10.260 to go terminal.

00:27:11.720 Yeah.

00:27:12.300 If your body is basically going for broke, because that's not healthy for you to stay

00:27:17.340 at for a long time, right?

00:27:18.740 It causes riskier behavior and stuff like that.

00:27:21.240 And I also need to point out, like, you wouldn't want to take advice from one of these people

00:27:25.300 either, because they're in a mindset, like basically what happens to a male brain when

00:27:30.100 they go into father mode versus Jim bro mode is they're going from go for broke.

00:27:35.560 I need to be the top so I can breed the most to it's my job to protect my family, build alliances

00:27:43.040 and ensure stability within my community, which means that they're typically going to give

00:27:47.260 much better advice and be a much better ally rather than the more crap than a bucket mentality

00:27:52.260 that is baked into the male brain at those sort of earlier stages or when you are failing

00:27:56.960 in romantic pursuits.

00:27:58.760 But then to continue with this article, I did and do worry, especially about the younger

00:28:04.640 girls in their 20s.

00:28:05.880 Were they all right, these kids?

00:28:07.520 How did they feel about being, quote unquote, on the side?

00:28:10.560 Occasionally, I stumbled into something like outrage on their behalf, as I thought I were

00:28:15.480 the spirited friend in the drama.

00:28:18.520 F that guy.

00:28:19.920 Were they being exploited?

00:28:21.120 In fact, wasn't I exploiting them, outsourcing the labor of care, pleasure and attention,

00:28:27.700 affirmation to this scattered precarious workforce?

00:28:30.720 How sinister in that light in those nights my husband and I spent scrolling through the

00:28:35.520 faces of sexual supply, our ethic blatantly consumerist, collecting primary and vivacious

00:28:42.520 thrills that rebounded to our own marriage, strengthening our family through the efforts and maybe even

00:28:49.180 the pain of others.

00:28:50.560 And I love that she can see sort of how exploitative this is in the way that she was doing it.

00:28:55.760 So they're in their 30s and they're both like...

00:28:58.180 Helping her husband hook up with 20-year-olds.

00:29:00.300 Skeezing on.

00:29:01.020 Oh my goodness.

00:29:02.280 Okay.

00:29:03.400 All right.

00:29:03.500 And she knows it's wrong, but she's like, whatever.

00:29:07.020 But here is how the article ended before we get back to the other article in her, how she's

00:29:11.980 sort of thinking about all this.

00:29:13.460 Em is, by the way, before I go into this, the husband's girlfriend.

00:29:17.700 Here's another scene.

00:29:18.680 My husband and daughter and me in the car, parked at the station, waiting for Em.

00:29:23.620 We hear the rush of the train, the opening of the doors, the distant announcer's voice.

00:29:28.480 Various strangers emerge in masks, greet the writers, depart.

00:29:32.700 Suddenly, I hear my daughter singing Em's name.

00:29:35.780 My husband, window humming down as he calls out to her and catching the sight of the familiar

00:29:40.940 baseball hat pulled low over the messy curls.

00:29:43.700 I feel the approach of the world itself coming to puncture the seal, let in some light and

00:29:49.260 air.

00:29:49.860 And so this all felt good to her.

00:29:51.540 She really talked throughout this article how much she appreciates this Em woman helping

00:29:54.840 her in the house with chores and with childcare.

00:29:57.040 But you can see that the daughter is beginning to see Em as the mother and not her as the mother,

00:30:03.080 even before the divorce.

00:30:04.920 So at first I felt bad for this husband.

00:30:06.940 But then when I read this other piece, I was like, oh, he's probably with Em now.

00:30:10.100 Em just seems less crazy than this woman.

00:30:12.740 And to have already taken on the role of mother before any of this happened.

00:30:19.380 I don't want this life.

00:30:21.820 Yeah, I know.

00:30:22.760 But so she's created this narrative.

00:30:25.500 So to get back to where we are, around men, what was the word she used here?

00:30:33.080 Like heteropessimism or something, right?

00:30:35.420 Like some women just...

00:30:38.400 What was heterofatalism?

00:30:38.740 Heterofatalism.

00:30:40.000 Heterofatalism.

00:30:40.580 They hate their fate as hetero women because they have to date these horrible, evil things

00:30:45.920 that are men.

00:30:48.660 And so I want to dive into...

00:30:51.600 Okay, but what are you doing?

00:30:54.780 Like if men are these toxic things that are doing all these horrible things to you,

00:31:00.380 what are your actions like and what are the man's actions like, even by your own admission?

00:31:08.520 And who is actually sort of the vile one here?

00:31:11.880 Why is it that the lesbian relationships have the higher rates of spousal abuse?

00:31:16.480 Why is it that they have higher rates of divorce?

00:31:18.880 Why is it that when you get two women together versus a man and a woman, things seem to always

00:31:24.060 be worse?

00:31:24.740 Well, let's get in to her own account of her life.

00:31:28.560 Okay.

00:31:30.580 I was looking forward to seeing you again.

00:31:33.140 He texted me the following week around lunchtime, but I'm going through some intense anxiety

00:31:37.560 today and need to lay low, frowny face.

00:31:40.980 Quote unquote, totally understand, I replied.

00:31:43.880 But I didn't.

00:31:45.840 Feeble, fallible.

00:31:47.320 Looking forward is not longing.

00:31:49.540 A man should want me urgently or not at all.

00:31:52.140 I was about to collapse into a ritual of frustrated horniness, fantasy, masturbation, snacks, when

00:31:59.980 a friend urged me to join her and two other women for dinner.

00:32:03.300 So keep in mind, this was a woman who just before said that her entire arousal system had

00:32:07.580 stopped working and a guy doesn't get back to her fast enough and is trying to be vulnerable

00:32:15.000 with her, something that she would say that she wanted from men throughout the piece.

00:32:19.320 I'm not going to read through those parts.

00:32:20.540 And her response is gross, but also I need to just go and masturbate and eat, like stuff

00:32:28.920 my face.

00:32:29.320 Like what?

00:32:30.300 But anyway, so a friend invites her for dinner with other women in this position.

00:32:35.560 And no, you can be like, why is she thinking about sex?

00:32:38.100 Why is she talking about sex?

00:32:39.240 Because when you're used like this as a woman, the way that men keep you on the table is they

00:32:45.440 promise something more.

00:32:47.100 You know, they dangle something more in front of you, like this guy is doing, you know, he's

00:32:51.440 like, oh, sorry, can't see you today.

00:32:54.240 Anxiety issues.

00:32:55.280 Let's talk again in a few weeks.

00:32:57.280 And so the women who are going through this are constantly thinking about these men and

00:33:02.260 the way that they are relating to and being related to by these men.

00:33:06.400 So one of the other women goes, of course, he had anxiety, said one of them, a therapist

00:33:11.700 who sat across from me at the restaurant, that life, that's being alive and going to meet

00:33:18.000 someone you don't know.

00:33:19.560 Well, yeah.

00:33:20.760 So the other woman beside her, a historian, it's called sexual tension.

00:33:24.660 Stay with it for a minute and you might get some.

00:33:28.000 They can't, said my friend was a triumphant disgust.

00:33:32.580 She told us about a woman she knew that was dating a man from another city.

00:33:36.940 After weeks of saying, I can't wait to see you, the man ghosted her during his actual

00:33:42.040 visit.

00:33:42.680 His explanation, he'd been too anxious.

00:33:46.700 Oh, poor baby, cried the historian.

00:33:49.440 And we all cooed and moaned.

00:33:51.320 If this was men talking about women, can you believe the reaction, right?

00:33:55.940 For the poor, widdle, frady, cat, boo-boo, working themselves into a frenzy of laughter

00:34:00.900 where men's inability to quote unquote man up and F us.

00:34:04.880 We are four women at a vegan restaurant in downtown Manhattan.

00:34:10.020 We knew what show we were in and couldn't help but wonder in a smug, chauvinistic way.

00:34:15.700 Where are the men who could handle hard stuff like leaving the house for sex?

00:34:20.980 Just a quick reminder for people who don't know this.

00:34:23.740 The Sex and the City writer, the person who created this world that this woman is looking

00:34:28.100 up to and trying to recreate, has said that she made a mistake and wishes that instead

00:34:34.380 she had gotten married and had lots of kids.

00:34:37.820 And that the whole sleeping around and dedicating her life to her career was a huge life mistake.

00:34:45.980 And I'm like, whoa, lady, like, do you not understand that?

00:34:50.820 Let's take the man at face value here.

00:34:53.100 And he really did have anxiety.

00:34:54.400 So the man had anxiety because he was dating the type of woman who liked to go to restaurants

00:35:01.620 with her friends and demasculinize and make fun of him by your own admission.

00:35:08.440 It's not just you.

00:35:09.940 It's all of the girls here.

00:35:12.800 Why are guys able to use you and all of these other women without feeling bad about it?

00:35:18.340 Because this is who you are.

00:35:20.460 You dehumanize them in the way that you talk about them.

00:35:24.600 Everything you think, say, and breathe is toxic.

00:35:28.880 Like, would you not see it as a major red flag, even just for a friend as a female,

00:35:33.060 if you had a female do this in front of you?

00:35:36.220 Yes, I would see this as a red flag.

00:35:39.940 And some of these women, you know, making fun of men for having anxiety is a therapist.

00:35:45.260 If you are a man going to see a therapist and that therapist is a woman,

00:35:49.140 know that this is the type of thing that she's joking about on weekends with the money that you pay her.

00:35:55.880 You know, just keep that in mind, right?

00:35:58.300 No, no, it's, it's, it's, this is where the urban monoculture comes from, right?

00:36:02.280 Like, her core happiness throughout this entire piece is belittling the men she is dating to other women.

00:36:08.860 That seems to be the only place that she's still getting happiness from.

00:36:12.640 And yet she wants a man, right?

00:36:14.980 This is where the head of her fatalism comes from.

00:36:17.060 And it's mentally destroying her.

00:36:20.400 Yeah, she, she presents and seems to hate and belittle men,

00:36:24.020 but she also seems to be largely dependent on them for her physical pleasure and, and just amusement.

00:36:30.720 So that's not great.

00:36:33.080 When did men get so anxious about desire?

00:36:35.820 Asked the therapist.

00:36:37.260 And I said, I didn't know.

00:36:39.560 Yes, you do.

00:36:40.500 My friend said it was when they were put on notice that they can't just get drunk and grope us.

00:36:45.460 And it's like, but lady, you're the one saying you want these men to be more aggressive.

00:36:50.500 Of course, if you have.

00:36:52.100 Yeah, isn't she basically just saying, why can't this guy just get drunk and grope me?

00:36:56.660 Yeah.

00:36:57.660 What?

00:36:58.620 What?

00:37:00.140 Of course they have anxiety when they're getting these sorts of missed signals,

00:37:03.520 especially when you consider the consequences of misreading the signals.

00:37:06.700 But let's go to a different part here.

00:37:08.300 I thought that that part was useful.

00:37:09.760 So you can get an understanding of like who this person is at their core, right?

00:37:14.420 Sure.

00:37:14.840 Yeah.

00:37:15.040 And then you, you look at her on this market and with this perspective of,

00:37:18.500 I am cursed to have to date the other gender rather than reflecting on her own behavior.

00:37:25.280 And at no point in this entire piece does she once reflect on her own behavior.

00:37:30.140 She seems almost pathologically incapable of it.

00:37:32.820 There are many routes to the species of disappointment I am circling here.

00:37:36.620 But however we get there, the complaint is so common,

00:37:39.860 such a cultural narrative stapled that the academy is weighing in.

00:37:43.820 We now have a fancy word, heteropessimism,

00:37:46.760 to describe the outlook of straight women fed up with the mating behavior of men,

00:37:51.180 coined by the sexual scholar Essin Surin, who later amended it to heterofatalism.

00:37:57.380 The term seems at first glance to distill a mood that is no less timely than being timeless.

00:38:03.580 Whereas she just comes across like a sexual predator here, right?

00:38:07.100 Like everything about the men who she is making fun of are expressing their vulnerability

00:38:11.520 and she is exploiting that.

00:38:14.080 She's not even talking about the mating patterns of men

00:38:16.620 because these men clearly don't want to reproduce with the women in question.

00:38:20.700 Yeah, they don't want her.

00:38:22.080 Yeah.

00:38:22.440 It was really, well, I love how she starts with it.

00:38:24.800 It's about the men who I want not desiring me enough.

00:38:28.980 Quote, it was really nice, end quote.

00:38:31.320 A close friend texted me recently reporting on her third date with a lawyer.

00:38:35.020 He's really sweet and nice to me and good at sex.

00:38:38.400 No doubt something humiliating and nightmarish will occur soon.

00:38:41.840 On more than one occasion when my friend checked in with the lawyer to confirm tentative plans,

00:38:46.100 he did not respond to her for many hours or even a day.

00:38:49.120 Granted, he worked a punishing schedule.

00:38:50.860 But my friend reasoned it took 90 seconds for him to send a quick reply.

00:38:54.880 The dissonance between his caring and attentive in-person behavior and these silences confused her.

00:39:00.720 And she mentioned this to him.

00:39:01.920 The lawyer was sorry that he had kept her waiting.

00:39:05.080 He hadn't meant to, but he said her complaint got him thinking.

00:39:08.880 He unfortunately wasn't able to escalate whatever was happening between them into a relationship.

00:39:13.240 My friend clarified that she had not been asking to escalate into anything.

00:39:17.000 No, you literally did ask to escalate.

00:39:20.060 You were saying, why do you only talk to me when you want sex?

00:39:23.300 And he was saying, I thought that's what this was.

00:39:26.320 I thought I had signaled that to you very, very loudly.

00:39:28.900 If you want something more, you're not getting that with me.

00:39:31.480 And she's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:39:33.920 Sorry, sorry, sorry.

00:39:34.600 I want to keep doing the sex thing.

00:39:36.260 Treat me however you want.

00:39:37.640 And I'll just keep waiting.

00:39:38.740 And then eventually you'll get more time and more into me.

00:39:40.940 But he's telling her, I'm not into you that way, right?

00:39:44.300 She wants the intimacy.

00:39:46.180 And he's signaling that that's not what their relationship is about.

00:39:50.040 Now, note here, what does the friend do?

00:39:53.020 My friend clarified that she had not been looking to escalate into anything,

00:39:56.820 merely expressing a need for clarity about plans.

00:39:59.820 He understood that.

00:40:00.720 He said, but their, quote unquote, communication skills were obviously too

00:40:05.260 different for them to continue dating.

00:40:07.060 I love how the guy is even letting her down nicely.

00:40:10.060 Like the guy is being nice here.

00:40:12.660 When he says our communication skills are different, he's saying, what the do you

00:40:18.300 not get, B?

00:40:19.540 I don't want to talk to you.

00:40:21.380 I'm using you as a sex toy.

00:40:23.660 Like, how do you not understand that?

00:40:26.600 That you want more for me than that just shows that we don't want the same thing.

00:40:31.200 So I'm going to let you go and pursue life with the guy who does.

00:40:34.000 He is being imminently kind.

00:40:36.340 And you're being a psycho.

00:40:37.640 I mean, not just that, but that her friend couldn't recognize this.

00:40:42.480 And then her friend, when it is relayed to her, couldn't recognize this so much that the

00:40:46.600 original intent of what the guy was saying comes through in her piece.

00:40:49.600 The humiliating and nightmarish part she explained to me was not so much the rejection as being

00:40:55.540 cast against her will as, quote, the woman eager for a relationship, end quote.

00:41:02.920 Cast against her will as the woman eager for a relationship?

00:41:06.420 But that's what you are.

00:41:08.200 This guy is probably dating and having sex with a bunch of other women.

00:41:11.420 You are just a booty call.

00:41:13.500 In her memoir, Fierce Attachments, Vivek Gornik describes the anguish of being ignored by a

00:41:19.360 lover to her female friend.

00:41:22.200 Why I couldn't absorb, she writes, was his plunging us back into the cruelty of old-fashioned

00:41:28.200 man-woman stuff, turning me into a woman who waits for a phone call that never comes, and

00:41:33.200 himself into the man who must avoid the woman who was waiting.

00:41:37.500 But that's what you are.

00:41:41.040 But do you see what I mean here?

00:41:42.840 Like, they have built this nightmare scenario around themselves by refusing to accept reality

00:41:49.260 that they are not desired by the category of men that they desire, and that they need

00:41:54.420 to set their sights significantly lower.

00:41:56.180 And many of the things that they see of as flaws are things that they're just going to

00:41:59.180 have to bite the bullet on.

00:42:00.240 She's never going to be able to get a guy as good as her original husband again.

00:42:03.400 I wish, because, you know, she's getting older every year, and he's getting older every

00:42:06.460 year, and apparently he can still date 20-year-olds.

00:42:08.680 To skip to a different part in the piece.

00:42:09.980 I wish I could just be gay with you, she said, and I said I wish that too, so much.

00:42:16.820 This was our commiserate routine, what Saracen might call, quote, performative disaffirmation

00:42:24.920 with heterosexuality, end quote, or our spin on, quote, take my wife, please, end quote,

00:42:31.400 to my straightness, please, take my attraction to men.

00:42:35.360 A note, all of your conversations, it seems like, are just about how much you hate the

00:42:40.100 people you're dating.

00:42:41.580 Like, of course, that's going to spiral you into worse and worse relationships, always,

00:42:45.920 but it seems to be the only thing you find happiness in.

00:42:48.940 And not that women wouldn't do that, right?

00:42:51.280 They are evolved to be that way to an extent.

00:42:54.300 What do you mean?

00:42:54.980 To present the men that they're with?

00:42:56.640 No, to gain benefit from gossiping.

00:42:59.100 Oh, okay.

00:42:59.880 To look with their female community to have conversations that are gossipful.

00:43:05.900 Is heterophatalism a useful concept?

00:43:08.600 I took it up for a while, considered the positions the writer and gender scholar Sarah Abram had

00:43:14.140 advanced the idea of, quote, complaints as feminist pedagogy, end quote, arguing that to

00:43:20.620 bitch is inherently transgressive.

00:43:23.540 So note here, she, even the woman who had invented this term, invented it with the idea that women

00:43:32.040 should be bitching a lot.

00:43:34.720 You know, so you know that she does this a lot, and I don't think that they should be.

00:43:37.920 I wouldn't appreciate my wife going around and bitching a lot.

00:43:40.900 In general, philosophy that involves leaning into misery and negativity doesn't seem very

00:43:45.800 productive.

00:43:46.260 Yeah.

00:43:48.640 So what is she like when she's dating people these days?

00:43:51.320 If you want to get a look inside her dating life.

00:43:53.180 Sure.

00:43:54.040 On the way to his place, I had been texting with my aunt, quote, word from an expert,

00:43:59.320 end quote.

00:44:00.060 She wrote, wait till he wants it so bad that he's nutsy cuckoo.

00:44:05.040 Sounds facile, but man, truer words have never been spoken.

00:44:09.160 Make him suffer is my mantra, exclamation mark.

00:44:12.140 I kept catching myself, staring at his mouth, his bottom lips.

00:44:16.200 He told me to slow down.

00:44:17.880 He needed me to get a better sense of me and how I work.

00:44:20.780 So note here, she thinks he's making him wait.

00:44:24.120 He on the first date is like, whoa, you need to slow down.

00:44:29.180 I lay back to murmur.

00:44:31.120 And by the way, she ends up sleeping with him on the first date.

00:44:33.280 I'm not going to get into all that, but I laid back to murmur, let him try stuff.

00:44:37.480 And he warmed to his own control, putting his mouth right up to mine, then pulling away

00:44:42.600 when I tried to engage his tongue.

00:44:44.580 I see what you are, he said, finally pinning my forearm.

00:44:48.320 You're a bratty sub.

00:44:50.100 He held himself there, just out of reach, breathing on me.

00:44:53.820 I'd like to make you wait, he said.

00:44:56.060 He did make me wait.

00:44:57.540 And then again, everything that happened between them, which nobody needs to hear.

00:45:00.320 And I find it weird that you wrote in an article.

00:45:02.180 I guess you thought it was hot, but it just shows that you apparently have like five intimate

00:45:07.340 encounters that you're able to describe in this article.

00:45:10.040 And clearly this is a guy who's, you know, been involved in the BDSM scene, been involved

00:45:15.020 in sleeping around a lot, given the way that he's framing you and is using you for sex.

00:45:19.260 That's why he's framing you this way, even to yourself.

00:45:22.520 When my friend complained about the lawyer, I expressed outrage at his behavior and worked

00:45:26.740 my way quite naturally along a well-worn groove to condemnation of all, okay, most men, as

00:45:33.440 incapable of upholding basic standards of communication and care.

00:45:36.260 But he's communicating very clearly.

00:45:39.380 It is you and your friend who aren't listening.

00:45:42.280 Like as a woman, even you can understand what he's trying to tell her, right?

00:45:45.840 Or am I crazy here?

00:45:47.960 Is this like man language?

00:45:49.460 If a guy was like, look, I don't have time for you.

00:45:51.720 And then you're like, well, I need more of your time.

00:45:53.280 And he said, well, clearly, you know, we're having trouble communicating.

00:45:55.900 We should end this relationship.

00:45:57.980 That's pretty clear.

00:45:59.420 Yeah.

00:45:59.640 Yeah.

00:45:59.980 That's not ambiguous.

00:46:00.880 I was thinking, of course, about Mr. J.

00:46:04.060 And I am not proud that my instinct response to the shame of being gender stereotyped by

00:46:09.620 life is to pay another stereotype forward.

00:46:12.380 Men suck.

00:46:13.780 Groundbreaking!

00:46:14.900 But Mr. J never did anything to you.

00:46:17.280 He told you exactly that he didn't want you.

00:46:19.780 This lawyer told you exactly what he wanted.

00:46:21.860 That's the other thing about this piece is the minute it seemed to be so upstanding.

00:46:25.020 And yet she's framing them as horrible because they don't do what she wants.

00:46:29.740 This would be like a man hating you because you turned him down, right?

00:46:33.560 Like, you know, you're like, oh, you know, somebody was your friend.

00:46:38.120 And then they're like, hey, can I sleep with you?

00:46:39.640 And you're like, no, you can't sleep with me.

00:46:41.400 I just want you for friendship.

00:46:42.620 And they're like, well, you know, okay, I guess I'm sort of bummed about that.

00:46:47.980 But, you know, and then they're like, you know, she's just using me to her friends.

00:46:51.460 And you'd be like, what a sicko thing to say.

00:46:53.360 But these men, just as clearly as you are to that friend, are saying, I just want you for sex.

00:46:58.480 I don't want the friendship.

00:46:59.440 I don't want the intimacy.

00:47:00.940 That said, men struggle to communicate in romantic relationships as widespread enough

00:47:04.300 to have earned psychological designation, normative male alexia,

00:47:08.480 or the condition of being unable to put words into emotions.

00:47:13.960 And the note here, she had the whole thing about emotional labor

00:47:17.060 and new terms for emotional labor, hermetic labor, a new way for women to hate on men.

00:47:21.500 What is hermetic labor?

00:47:23.360 Vis-a-vis emotional labor.

00:47:26.420 So she calls the work women do to demystify male cues, hermetic layer,

00:47:33.040 and posits it as a form of gender exploitation in intimate relationships.

00:47:38.140 So her almost intentionally misunderstanding what these various guys in her life

00:47:43.600 are telling her and her friend is them exploiting her.

00:47:46.760 No, she's exploiting herself.

00:47:50.340 But for another part I found interesting here, the stranger waiting at my back corner table

00:47:59.760 looked a bit squirer than my average date.

00:48:02.020 His hair apparently washed cut, and he wore a button-down short,

00:48:05.600 but some restless mischief played on his face, bearing itself fully in our laugh.

00:48:10.380 Our conversation was brisk and jesting.

00:48:12.760 I got the impression that he was enjoying my company, but was more bonus than criteria for him.

00:48:19.920 He was partnered already, he had told me, and seeking only compassionate sex.

00:48:25.020 His dating profile referenced this clearly below the picture of him wearing a blue blazer,

00:48:29.880 petting a donkey's head.

00:48:31.160 So now she's going on dates with people who tell her,

00:48:33.500 I literally just want you for sex.

00:48:35.640 That was in my dating profile.

00:48:37.580 That is all you are to me.

00:48:39.840 And getting mad that they're not giving her more.

00:48:42.120 We turned eventually to the subject of erotic temperament.

00:48:44.680 He was interested in the possibilities that arise between people

00:48:47.460 when any eventuality of marriage, procreation, or fidelity was, so to speak, taken off the table.

00:48:53.360 What might then happen in bed?

00:48:55.580 That community, in that world, watching his clean-cut boyish,

00:48:59.880 form, and listening to him speak with eloquent enthusiasm of a connoisseur,

00:49:03.920 the phrase that occurred to me was,

00:49:06.440 sex nerd, many dabblers in non-monogamy were not really, he noted, was a laugh.

00:49:11.160 Quoting from Chati, about that life, he was.

00:49:15.680 I meet his type around sometimes, fluent in the language of polyamory,

00:49:19.300 waving his respectful desire like a plastic saver.

00:49:22.000 Pew pew, why would you play with just one toy

00:49:24.700 when you can take turns with all the toys?

00:49:26.660 And that's what you are, a toy, a sex toy to somebody like him.

00:49:30.980 Why, at the same time, vaguely subverting something?

00:49:34.380 Capitalism?

00:49:35.120 I love that!

00:49:36.160 She's, like, proud of what he's doing with her.

00:49:38.760 And he's telling her, I don't want this thing that you want, right?

00:49:41.960 I find this wild.

00:49:44.100 This, men can't communicate.

00:49:46.360 And she just so clearly makes it clear.

00:49:47.860 And then, yeah, she proceeds to give a ton of examples of men really clearly communicating.

00:49:53.320 The theme isn't that men can't communicate.

00:49:55.340 The theme is that men are not communicating the message that she desires.

00:49:59.560 Exactly.

00:50:00.100 Which is that they want her, which they don't.

00:50:03.500 But, I mean, in the first quote that you led with in this discussion,

00:50:07.840 that is what she said.

00:50:09.320 She said the problem was they don't want her enough.

00:50:11.140 It wasn't necessarily that they weren't communicating.

00:50:13.640 It was that they don't want her.

00:50:16.780 They don't want to commit to her in any meaningful way.

00:50:21.100 And she doesn't seem to understand that casual sex does not equal

00:50:25.860 slavish devotion and obsession.

00:50:31.000 Yeah.

00:50:32.280 And if you want to see how she screws things up with this one,

00:50:35.960 you're flattering the men.

00:50:37.100 A former lover wrote me after I sent him a partial draft of this essay.

00:50:40.200 They never get to be real.

00:50:42.660 You see the men in her life just use her.

00:50:44.560 Like, clearly she's not flattering the men in this piece.

00:50:46.900 But the guy knows that's what she wants to hear.

00:50:49.460 So she made it easier to use.

00:50:52.000 They use to confirm a story about disappointment and frustration.

00:50:56.360 This man I met last fall when he was, like me, reeling for romantic rejection.

00:51:01.440 It was in half an hour.

00:51:02.260 We lunged at each other as though by tacit agreement to be each other's comforting,

00:51:06.360 orgasm-giving blankets for a time.

00:51:07.920 We traded obsessive accounts of failed relationships,

00:51:10.760 cheered each other on through the rigors of no contact,

00:51:13.440 watched Albert Burt's movies,

00:51:15.040 belted Weezer songs and karaoke tracks on his couch.

00:51:17.740 Whatever was happening between us went on for about six weeks,

00:51:20.840 at which point I became annoyed that he was withholding something from me,

00:51:24.020 though I couldn't say what exactly.

00:51:26.060 So you found a guy that liked doing what you like to do most,

00:51:28.760 which is bitch about other people.

00:51:30.640 And you feel like he's withholding something from you because, again,

00:51:33.800 he doesn't want a real relationship with you.

00:51:36.380 And accused him of coldness and accused him of being unfair and so on.

00:51:40.460 The familiar female-demanded-male-withdraw pattern descended on us like a polarizing spell.

00:51:46.060 Unlike some other exchanges of my past, this one had an oddly mechanical quality.

00:51:49.940 And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:51.480 Eventually, I admitted to him that it felt more natural to me to default to,

00:51:56.240 quote-unquote, wounded female rather than assume responsibility for my desires.

00:52:01.240 Any self-realization here?

00:52:04.220 Your desires.

00:52:05.620 So instead of recognizing your desires,

00:52:08.040 you defaulted to the internal framing of a wounded female.

00:52:14.560 For his part, he described a large, looming ex who adapted the use of guilt and left its mark.

00:52:20.000 And this is clearly what she was doing.

00:52:21.460 She was using guilt.

00:52:22.380 Like, look at you.

00:52:23.200 You're oppressing me.

00:52:24.160 You're hurting me.

00:52:25.500 And it's showing that that is something that she is doing tacitly.

00:52:28.320 She's admitting that.

00:52:29.840 One guy, I went on, spoke of a hint of longing about a relationship between his grandparents

00:52:34.700 who barely spoke to each other before getting married as teenagers in Sicily,

00:52:38.180 then thrown together by slim pickings village life,

00:52:40.700 adolescent hormones, and the oppressive myths of female honor.

00:52:43.720 What a system.

00:52:44.640 What a gamble.

00:52:45.460 And then both people were trapped for life.

00:52:47.220 But at least you were spared the anxiety of choice.

00:52:49.780 At least there was that.

00:52:50.840 But what I love is you don't actually get choice

00:52:52.720 because nobody who you want seems to want you.

00:52:55.660 And then there's another part where she goes deep into maybe I'm aromantic and blah, blah,

00:53:01.640 blah, blah, blah about that.

00:53:02.360 But I want to get your thoughts on this person because I think you can get a full picture

00:53:05.260 of their life and what it's like to be a woman on the dating market these days

00:53:08.300 and what it might feel like to you to be on the dating market if you're out sleeping around.

00:53:12.080 I would say if you're a young woman and you're listening to this,

00:53:15.120 this is what dating is like if you hit your mid-30s.

00:53:18.620 You need to get off the market before your mid-30s.

00:53:22.840 Your life will become a health day.

00:53:24.820 Like either you withdraw for men or you end up being passed around by this woman

00:53:29.100 by men who clearly don't care about you.

00:53:30.780 I think there are some highly educated professionals who are in their 30s

00:53:38.300 really looking to get married who are just going for it.

00:53:41.020 And I think that those dates are far more like the dates that I would want to go on,

00:53:46.060 which is like, okay, what do you want?

00:53:47.620 Like there's that famous, not famous, but like people often cite that scene in like a,

00:53:52.980 I don't even, some random show where some couple's having a very unromantic discussion

00:53:57.360 about like how they would be married and they ultimately decide not to get married

00:54:01.640 because they're like, well, no, I'm not meeting with a mother-in-law or something like that.

00:54:05.280 But it's just kind of like these, these, these cold negotiations

00:54:08.080 about potential married life together.

00:54:10.340 And that would be okay.

00:54:11.360 Melanie, I'm single.

00:54:13.480 You're single.

00:54:13.920 What do you say we get married?

00:54:17.520 What's your offer?

00:54:18.440 Single rich male seeks matrimony.

00:54:20.380 Primary residence?

00:54:21.280 Westchester County.

00:54:22.240 Would you be open to considering a secondary residence in Manhattan?

00:54:25.280 Central Park West?

00:54:26.180 South.

00:54:26.680 Done.

00:54:27.360 Time spent together.

00:54:28.700 Eight hours, five days a week.

00:54:30.380 Seven hours, 12 hours weekends.

00:54:32.000 55 hours aggregate, specifics to be determined later.

00:54:34.740 I'm amenable to that children.

00:54:36.160 One.

00:54:36.440 Three.

00:54:36.820 Two.

00:54:37.140 Done.

00:54:37.740 One of them has to be a male.

00:54:39.500 I'll see what I can do.

00:54:40.980 Vacations.

00:54:41.500 December, Hawaii.

00:54:42.540 June, the vineyard.

00:54:43.580 June, fine, but Hawaii.

00:54:44.780 Nope, the vineyard.

00:54:45.580 Is that a deal breaker for you?

00:54:46.860 I'm afraid so.

00:54:47.640 Me too.

00:54:48.660 Well, we gave it a shot.

00:54:51.260 And I think that that exists.

00:54:52.660 It's just completely unmoored from this world of

00:54:56.280 mostly casual sex.

00:54:59.320 You know, I think this guy who talked about his grandparents in Sicily and saying that's

00:55:03.300 what he wants was signaling to her, hey, let's have a real conversation about marriage.

00:55:07.440 But she doesn't want that.

00:55:09.160 So, yeah, there are clearly different markets.

00:55:12.200 I think that the really tragic thing that happens to many young women in their 20s is

00:55:16.200 they end up on this sexually, this casual sex market, either because they've been told

00:55:24.600 to just explore in their 20s, as I was, but I just didn't, or because they don't realize

00:55:30.380 and they think that this is just these and all dating markets for marriage and for just

00:55:36.040 fun are all the same.

00:55:37.340 So they're just on it and they get trapped in it.

00:55:39.260 She wants the guy who she saw in rom-coms growing up.

00:55:43.660 She wants the manic pixie dream boy.

00:55:45.280 That's what Jay was simulating for her.

00:55:48.180 But when Jay was simulating that for her, when these other guys have simulated that for

00:55:52.100 her, that's not their real personality.

00:55:53.600 It's something they're doing to get sex from her.

00:55:55.480 I don't know.

00:55:55.780 She seems to just be interested in the individual encounters.

00:55:58.540 What confuses me is that she does want more when she seems to be so keen on just

00:56:02.500 the passionate sex.

00:56:07.200 So I'm confused.

00:56:09.260 I feel like she just keeps ruining it when she could just be getting casual sex.

00:56:14.220 And if she filled her pipeline more, like any, any normal guy who wants the same thing

00:56:18.920 that she proposes to want, aside from this extra commitment, blah, blah, blah, is, you

00:56:24.040 know, I want to, if I want to physically satisfy myself in a sexual way, okay, great.

00:56:29.060 And where she gets frustrated is the guys are too anxious to come out or whatever.

00:56:32.080 But like, then you should have a backup rota of guys that she can just text and be like

00:56:36.440 you up and then they can meet up and have their assignation.

00:56:39.940 And it's great.

00:56:40.780 So what confuses me is that she seems to really enjoy just the sex.

00:56:47.580 And yet I don't even know if she wants the commitment.

00:56:51.060 She seems to enjoy complaining about the commitment and maybe thinks that it is important

00:56:54.940 to do so, or else she'll come across as too vapid.

00:56:57.900 And I think the framing of all of this around the sex in the city, like this is what she knows

00:57:01.880 hanging out with a friend group who just sits around complaining about men.

00:57:04.340 Right.

00:57:04.980 And so even if she's had a potentially good relationship with a man at the time, she like

00:57:08.720 the, the friend who was dating the lawyer and everything was going well.

00:57:11.460 And she was like, I need to find something to be worried about.

00:57:14.760 Right.

00:57:14.960 Like, obviously things are going to go bad because that's the framing I have of what

00:57:19.300 it means to be in a relationship with a man.

00:57:21.640 Whereas I didn't see this was a woman I dated.

00:57:23.500 I did not have many, like actually negative relationships with women.

00:57:28.200 And she wants to see this as negative.

00:57:30.020 I think, yeah, maybe it's part of the version of feminism that she subscribes to where, of

00:57:35.820 course, these men are terrible.

00:57:38.180 Of course, this is the worst.

00:57:40.960 So that, that could, that would make a lot more sense to me than whatever it is she, she

00:57:47.800 says she's doing because she's not, she's so vague about what she even means by commitment.

00:57:52.760 I mean, I don't think any reasonable person and she's clearly educated.

00:57:56.400 I don't like her writing style because I find it kind of hard to follow and understand.

00:57:59.480 She's trying to be very like floored and poetic, but it's not in a good way.

00:58:04.240 I mean, I can appreciate the good turn of phrase, but that just ain't it for me at least.

00:58:08.480 And I think that, yeah, I, she, she's only saying these things that she logically knows

00:58:17.360 are entitled and preposterous and impossible because she needs to have something that she

00:58:22.840 can resent about men that she herself is just exploiting as much as they are maybe exploiting.

00:58:28.500 I mean, it's mutual exploitation that she is exploiting in a way that ultimately frustrates

00:58:34.720 her.

00:58:35.120 Like, I don't, I don't know if those men are exploiting her because I, the exploitation isn't

00:58:39.680 in the sex, in the casual sex, cause that's mutually agreed to.

00:58:43.580 I think the exploitation is in the, the act of trouncing on these men's reputation, mental

00:58:49.580 health, I think, I think in demanding from them something that they've clearly signaled

00:58:53.480 they're not interested in, this is as exploitative as the man who pushes past the sexual boundaries

00:58:58.300 of woman.

00:58:59.460 And then conversation at lunch, if this was a bunch of men talking about women, why don't

00:59:03.080 they just get over it and have sex with like, what that you can't, well, that's.

00:59:09.200 And men really, by the way, adult men really do not talk about women this way that frequently.

00:59:13.440 I have never heard one of my friends in private ever talk about women this way.

00:59:20.660 I mean, it might be the guys I'm with, guys might have done this in previous generation.

00:59:24.080 I get the impression that like boomers and maybe like in Trump's generation, people did

00:59:27.500 that.

00:59:27.520 It seems like a grabber by the pussy kind of conversation.

00:59:29.920 It's just so crazy that like, these are the women who put on pussy hats and yet they are

00:59:34.000 having the grab him by the pussy situation, like conversation.

00:59:37.040 Yeah, but I don't think men of my generation talk about women in these.

00:59:40.040 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:59:42.720 Locker room talk these days is about like video games and not women.

00:59:47.340 Oh, absolutely.

00:59:48.340 That is, I know like actually like all the women are in the other room thinking like,

00:59:51.940 what is he talking about me?

00:59:53.060 What are they saying about me?

00:59:54.220 And they're like talking about video games and like Warhammer.

00:59:57.820 Exactly.

00:59:58.320 No, literally.

00:59:58.940 Like I go see like my brother and it's like pulled me aside because he knows he's not

01:00:02.800 allowed to talk about video games in front of his wife because it annoys her because

01:00:05.820 we've talked too much about video games and she can't follow.

01:00:07.940 So, so he's like pulls me aside.

01:00:09.900 He's like, Hey, have you played the new, whatever?

01:00:12.360 I know.

01:00:12.900 You're great.

01:00:13.660 It's so great.

01:00:14.980 Yeah.

01:00:15.320 That's love you.

01:00:17.220 Love you too.

01:00:18.500 Thank you for not being this way.

01:00:19.820 And thank you for saving me from this, this carousel of, of horribleness.

01:00:23.580 And I think for a lot of guys, what you need to take away from this is if you think that

01:00:27.520 women who are writing the quote unquote carousel or the quote unquote alpha widows, if you

01:00:33.320 think that it is traditionally masculine men who you are losing to, it is not, it is men

01:00:39.180 who play these roles for them, but don't play these roles for them because the type of fish

01:00:45.460 you catch with that lure is psycho like this.

01:00:49.780 Yeah.

01:00:49.820 And these are, these are not women that I've encountered.

01:00:53.940 I, well, no, I just like, I have not met women like this.

01:00:56.980 That's why this is so weird to hear.

01:00:58.520 So yeah, I think you've made this point in other podcasts in the New York times, like

01:01:03.600 some random, I know, but still the red pill men are like, why are women so terrible?

01:01:08.100 And it's because they're selecting for this really weird population.

01:01:11.480 And like, where are all the good women?

01:01:13.100 Like they're, they're there.

01:01:15.040 You, you've just gone to like, you, you, you want bread and you've gone to a butchery

01:01:19.620 shop.

01:01:20.220 And I don't know what to tell you.

01:01:22.060 What she means by this is that the tactics that you're using, like a lure catches a specific

01:01:25.480 kind of fish or a specific kind of woman.

01:01:27.420 Where they're going to the wrong marketplace.

01:01:29.140 I mean, the, yeah, the place where you go to look for women is going to influence a type

01:01:32.880 of women that you get.

01:01:33.960 Yeah.

01:01:34.120 But the manic pixie dream girl boy thing that catches one type of woman, the tough, dark

01:01:39.200 triad frame thing that catches another type of women.

01:01:43.120 Both of these types of women are trash.

01:01:45.140 You know, the, the, I mean, my thing was the whole intellectual nerdy thing.

01:01:49.280 It caught a really good, good group of women.

01:01:52.360 Yeah.

01:01:52.520 Y'all need to go to more anime conventions to find women.

01:01:55.500 And they, they, the women I've dated, I, I really like them as people.

01:01:58.800 Like I, I feel like I had a lot of.

01:02:01.720 I've yet to encounter stories of, or IRL meetings with ex-girlfriends of yours that I haven't

01:02:09.120 found to be fantastic people who I wouldn't want to be friends with.

01:02:11.860 So.

01:02:13.020 Yeah.

01:02:13.380 I love you to death, Simone.

01:02:14.440 Love you too, gorgeous.

01:02:15.240 This, the other link is ready to go.

01:02:18.540 So I'll see you in there.

01:02:20.140 Could be a little brighter.

01:02:22.180 I was just listening to a lecture on the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

01:02:28.700 She's the author of the little house on the Prairie books, which are, I mean, they're not

01:02:33.540 like 100% accurate.

01:02:34.840 They're based on her memories of her childhood in like the mid 1800s in homesteads, largely

01:02:41.620 in, in, on the Prairie in the U S and man, life is so much better now.

01:02:48.320 It was rough.

01:02:49.500 And I remember reading those books as a kid with my mom and just thinking about how romantic

01:02:53.580 it all was.

01:02:54.540 And I'm going back and I'm thinking about what she actually was living.

01:02:57.440 And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:02:59.360 Thank you.

01:02:59.840 Absolutely not.

01:03:01.140 She had a little brother who died in infancy.

01:03:04.000 They lived in a, I thought that this idea of living in a sod house at the time sounded

01:03:08.920 so romantic and wonderful, but no, they're, they're living in a, in a dirt hole.

01:03:14.800 That's, that is what a sod house had somehow, you know, her sister went blind.

01:03:20.420 Oh, you know, just cause you know, they thought it was scarlet fever, but it was probably some

01:03:24.920 form of like encephaly, like, like her brain swoles, was swelled so much that she went blind.

01:03:30.140 Like, I just, no, no, this is not romantic.

01:03:34.600 This is not, you don't want that.

01:03:36.980 You don't.

01:03:37.760 And we're so fricking lucky.

01:03:38.960 I mean, I still like marvel the fact that we get to take warm water showers.

01:03:43.940 I feel like everyone should live at least a month with either no running water or at least

01:03:49.360 only cold showers.

01:03:50.200 Like I did that for a month in Mexico and it was, and I, I'm too OCD to not take a shower

01:03:56.700 every day.

01:03:57.180 So I still had to do it, even though it was like, I've lived on boats a number of times

01:04:03.220 where I had to do that.

01:04:04.640 And it's worse on a boat because you're constantly covered in sea air and everything.

01:04:08.760 Oh yeah.

01:04:09.120 You're so sticky and gross.

01:04:10.740 Yeah.

01:04:11.160 You're constantly sticky and gross and everything's sticking together.

01:04:14.240 Well, and to think what it was like for families who crossed the Atlantic or any.

01:04:20.600 Oh yeah.

01:04:21.140 Then I would have been able to take freshwater showers or any showers.

01:04:25.340 Yeah.

01:04:25.800 I mean, maybe, maybe you pull up a bucket of seawater, but I mean, probably not even that.

01:04:30.260 I mean, my gosh.

01:04:32.300 Yeah.

01:04:32.760 With just the luxury living.

01:04:34.200 Like I was just thinking too, everyone's like, Oh, I mean like an almost on sourdough,

01:04:37.960 sourdough, everything.

01:04:38.800 I was sourdough every day.

01:04:39.580 I'm making all my sourdough, my sourdough starter, but like, okay.

01:04:42.660 And I think a lot of people making them and their jams with their chickens and like,

01:04:46.040 we're kind of getting in that direction.

01:04:47.380 Right.

01:04:47.640 But like most of their meals were just basically flavorless, you know, like just, this is not,

01:04:54.840 I love fresh homemade, you know, scratch simple ingredient meals, but I love that tonight

01:05:02.120 I'm making you pho.

01:05:03.260 I love that, that we have gochujang sauce, paste or sauce, like in our refrigerator.

01:05:09.540 Like we live such luxurious lives.

01:05:13.960 Oh no, I can't even.

01:05:15.800 Yeah.

01:05:16.500 And the, the perfect sycophantic assistance to tell us everything we want to hear about

01:05:20.620 ourselves in the form of AI.

01:05:21.860 Right.

01:05:22.140 Right.

01:05:22.340 Like our, our primary, that's like the gout of our times, right?

01:05:25.820 Like before.

01:05:26.720 Actually, it is the gout of our times.

01:05:28.680 Like gout came because like they got sugar for the first time and they were just like

01:05:32.300 all the world.

01:05:32.760 Too much fat and salt or something.

01:05:34.720 Yeah.

01:05:34.920 Anyway, I will get started here.

01:05:38.220 Let's do it.

01:05:38.640 I'm excited.

01:05:39.260 You're my palate cleanser of the day after all the nonsense.

01:05:42.720 It was funny.

01:05:43.380 I've been reading more.

01:05:44.700 I'm so addicted to romance novel and romance mangas, by the way, which are clearly made

01:05:49.400 for women.

01:05:50.140 I got into it because I read that first one because we were doing the Omegaverse episode

01:05:53.020 and I was like, are there any Omegaverses that a man might like?

01:05:55.680 And then I found one that was only women.

01:05:58.400 And so I was like, okay, this might be interesting.

01:06:00.080 But then after that, because it was a villainous one, you know, somebody waking up in the body

01:06:04.260 of a villainous, I just started going into the villain scenario, which were often like

01:06:10.820 female romances.

01:06:12.080 And I realized why I like them today.

01:06:15.280 Okay.

01:06:16.560 Because I really like, as you know, from like me watching shows where the protagonist is

01:06:24.980 like a genuinely cruel villain.

01:06:28.000 100%.

01:06:28.560 That is my jam.

01:06:30.240 And the thing is, is that when people write books for male audiences, where the male is

01:06:36.000 supposed to imagine themselves as a protagonist, they always put too many like qualifiers in

01:06:42.300 for them actually being like good people.

01:06:44.840 But when it's about the woman supposed to be desiring the protagonist, they really don't

01:06:50.220 mind leaning hard on dark triad traits.

01:06:52.600 Okay.

01:06:53.060 Of course.

01:06:53.780 Of course.

01:06:54.420 Right.

01:06:54.700 And so they're much more villainous.

01:06:57.680 And I'm just like, yeah, you go.

01:06:59.980 And always, or very frequently, the logic behind their, quote unquote, like ruthless actions

01:07:05.060 is just, it's the most logical and efficient outcome, which means they're making stupid

01:07:09.600 choices less, which I love.

01:07:11.460 Like if somebody annoys them in court, they're just like, kill them.

01:07:14.500 Like, I don't want to risk this.

01:07:16.700 Very fun.

01:07:17.960 That is really funny.

01:07:20.700 Right.

01:07:20.920 I'm the women, women liking bastards.

01:07:24.520 It does me a solid.

01:07:26.100 And people will know this because I do it's okay scenarios with AI.

01:07:29.280 I'm going to begin publishing some new ones soon that are really, really good because

01:07:32.420 we've got our own AI system working on like the internal server as well enough that it'll

01:07:36.540 eventually be on our fab AI that I can create good stories with it.

01:07:39.520 Potentially better than the original ones I was making.

01:07:41.740 But anyway, those are available to Patreon followers.

01:07:46.280 We do them in audiobook.

01:07:47.400 Okay, what are you doing?

01:07:51.220 I'm upside down.

01:08:05.400 I'm upside down.

01:08:07.720 I'm upside down.

01:08:10.400 You're going to do it?

01:08:12.840 Yeah, I mean, I want to do it.

01:08:15.000 Hey, come back here.

01:08:15.760 Titan, jump.

01:08:29.480 Titan, show me what you're holding.

01:08:35.680 It's a pregnant woman?

01:08:38.220 Talisman?

01:08:39.500 Here you go.

01:08:40.300 Here you go.

01:08:40.360 What's that?

01:08:53.080 Do you like this?

01:08:57.780 I'm okay.

Based Camp - July 29, 2025

Feminism Stole Her Family & Purpose (Why Modeling Your Life on Sex and the City Is A Bad Idea)

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