Based Camp - How the Internet is Changing Gender and Sexuality with Katherine Dee (Default Friend)

00:00:00.000 I think maybe we overrate how much awareness people had of their gender identity in prior

00:00:05.900 periods, when just so much of it was related to things that we were doing and the way we

00:00:10.880 were engaging in our communities.

00:00:13.240 And now that those things are gone, and those people are much more isolated, it's also going

00:00:18.960 to impact.

00:00:20.320 Would you like to know more?

00:00:21.600 Okay.

00:00:23.020 Hello, we have a very special guest joining us today.

00:00:26.740 Catherine D, aka Default Friend, who is one of my personal favorite writers, journalists,

00:00:32.420 and general cultural commentators.

00:00:34.420 She has some of the best insights on different cultural movements, current events, people,

00:00:40.220 groups that I've read.

00:00:41.940 She's incredibly thoughtful, incredibly clever.

00:00:44.340 And Malcolm, you were saying there was something you actually wanted to ask her.

00:00:47.560 Yeah, so I'm excited to go into a topic.

00:00:49.020 But the way I would frame her is she is like the, from an anthropological perspective, sort

00:00:53.980 of internet historian, in the more academic context, not the internet historian, but just

00:00:58.940 a really good studier of internet cultures and how they evolve.

00:01:02.640 And I had heard you say a recent interest of yours that you delved into was a sissification 0.98

00:01:09.580 hypnome, which actually dovetails with topics that we've talked about on the show recently,

00:01:15.860 like the Transmax movement.

00:01:17.440 We actually had the creator of the Transmax movement.

00:01:19.480 We interviewed him, and it was so boring, we've never aired it, because I don't want

00:01:23.140 to lose followers over it.

00:01:25.080 But it is a topic that really interests us.

00:01:27.920 So I'd love to dig deep on where you think, you know, how the movement originated, how it

00:01:33.280 developed, and how it plays with something that we've talked about in a very recent episode,

00:01:38.000 the idea of human gender sort of transforming, potentially even at the biological level, in

00:01:44.140 terms of how they're engaging with sexuality and gender.

00:01:47.160 Yeah, so origins, that's, that's sort of a hard question.

00:01:53.120 I've heard people say-

00:01:54.360 Oh, let's start with definition, because people may not know.

00:01:56.640 Oh, sure.

00:01:57.600 So a sissy hypno is, are there hypnosis videos or audio that is supposed, it's, they're usually

00:02:06.320 for a male audience, but sometimes can be like unisex or for women.

00:02:11.000 And, and it's supposed to sissify you, right, like make you increasingly more feminized.

00:02:16.620 And there's different genres of it, it can be, you know, more or less violent or forced.

00:02:21.560 Sometimes it's, it's more like brainwashing.

00:02:24.760 Yeah, there's, and there's many different expressions of it.

00:02:26.900 And it's interesting, because recently, NBC News did a piece on race change to another,

00:02:32.740 which are like a sort of video, which is very similar to sissy hypno, but it's like racial

00:02:37.860 changes, right, like, yeah, sort of a different conceit.

00:02:43.500 The first question I have about it, given the way that you've presented it, is about what

00:02:47.920 percent of sissy hypno would you say that the, the, the hypno itself is the pornographic

00:02:55.120 material versus what percent would you say is consumed or created specifically in order

00:03:01.680 to change an individual's sexual preferences?

00:03:03.660 I don't, I don't know, I haven't done like an exhaustive, I haven't done exhaustive research

00:03:09.780 on it.

00:03:10.520 I, but if I had to, to guess, I'd say the, the, the act of listening and convincing yourself

00:03:19.480 that you are being like forcibly changed into something you're not is the erotic component.

00:03:24.580 And that's what people are sexualizing. 1.00

00:03:26.660 There's a lot of people who want to see themselves as either a woman or a bimbified woman, an ultra 1.00

00:03:32.780 feminine woman and, you know, cis women can experience this as well. 0.99

00:03:38.300 It's not, it's not confined to natal, natal males, but yeah, I think there's something about

00:03:42.800 the change and the force of the forcing that is like an erotic.

00:03:47.180 So before we go deeper, something that I've noticed was in, like, when I briefly looked

00:03:51.940 into the sissy hypno movement is that historically it seemed related to, as you're saying, like

00:03:57.540 bimbofication or sissification, which was the idea that, you know, through being forcibly 0.92

00:04:04.480 changed into something else, maybe even transformation pornography types, that is what is turning you

00:04:09.580 on.

00:04:09.860 And that is why you are consuming the content.

00:04:11.940 Whereas there is this growing new movement.

00:04:14.800 I mean, chief among them being the trans maxers, but they're hardly the only group. 0.99

00:04:18.500 Do you know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the trans maxers? 1.00

00:04:20.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:21.820 Yeah.

00:04:22.260 Where they are engaging with this content, not primarily because it turns them on, but

00:04:28.420 because they actually want to permanently change their sexuality into something new that they

00:04:35.260 feel will be easier to get access to is specifically this belief that if it's really hard to gain

00:04:41.660 access to attractive women as a man, well, then I need to change what I want instead of I need 1.00

00:04:47.420 to change, you know, who I'm going after.

00:04:49.940 And that's been a, to me, at least that's the most interesting new phenomenon within this,

00:04:54.420 this sort of sissy hypno category.

00:04:56.800 I, I would imagine that that's super rare.

00:05:01.820 And I can see maybe a, someone who's transitioning for, for whatever reason, using sissy hypno in

00:05:09.820 a non-sexualized way as sort of an act of desperation or placebo.

00:05:13.880 But I tend not to believe what's actually doing anything per se.

00:05:18.700 I've, I've listened to a whole bunch of audio and watched some of the videos and it does,

00:05:23.740 I mean, it might just be because I wasn't open to it or whatever.

00:05:26.500 And I was looking at it more as research and not, you know, without, not with the intention

00:05:31.580 that I'm going to bimbo-fy myself. 1.00

00:05:33.360 But I, I just feel like there has to be, you have, there's something so crazy and desperate

00:05:39.340 about like using it as a tool, if, especially outside of a sexual context and not using it

00:05:45.720 as a fetish object.

00:05:46.780 So I want to give people benefit of the doubt that there is some percentage of people who

00:05:50.380 are using it to learn or something.

00:05:52.760 They, it's like real desperation and like a real place of maybe like despair that they're

00:05:57.820 doing that.

00:05:58.520 Cause there's so many better, even, even if they are trying to like do some sort of like

00:06:02.820 conversion therapy on themselves, there's obviously so many better avenues to, to do

00:06:07.360 that.

00:06:07.700 Right.

00:06:08.400 Yeah.

00:06:09.020 Well, and I think you're totally onto something here because Ayla just released another like

00:06:14.780 visualization of her fetish data and hypnotism is right there in the center on a graph of reported

00:06:23.600 interest versus average taboo rating.

00:06:25.620 So it has like decent interest actually from both sides of the gender spectrum, but also

00:06:33.160 like it's, it's halfway there, like halfway to the most extreme stuff in terms of taboo

00:06:39.360 ness and like very close to that is also dubious consent and mind break.

00:06:45.140 And these are all sort of like, you know, similar clusters, I think.

00:06:50.080 So it could just be that this is something that really gets people excited.

00:06:56.440 And we have seen people argue that the trans maxing movement is, doesn't really represent

00:07:02.820 a meaningful number of people that feels like, Hey, I'm just going to trans maxing movement 0.97

00:07:08.580 is a movement of people that largely came out of the incel movement that is transitioning,

00:07:14.060 not because they felt they had gender dysphoria, but because they felt that women had it easier

00:07:19.500 in our society and that they were never going to win given the hand that they were dealt.

00:07:23.800 Right.

00:07:24.020 It's gender euphoria, not gender dysphoria.

00:07:26.640 It is, it is gender transition for gain. 1.00

00:07:28.200 My guess at that is like, there are probably people who sort of subconsciously believe that,

00:07:35.340 right.

00:07:35.560 And there, and there's maybe like subconsciously influenced, but the actual movement that would

00:07:41.000 identify with that label is probably pretty confined.

00:07:44.540 And I think there's lots of, lots of things like that, right.

00:07:47.100 There's the, there's tons of people who believe X, but the people who would, you know, use Y

00:07:51.900 label is probably much smaller and much, much more eccentric.

00:07:56.420 Let's go into the origins.

00:07:58.320 Cause I interrupted you when you were talking about that.

00:08:00.680 Yeah.

00:08:01.320 So, like I said, I haven't done an exhaustive project on this.

00:08:05.300 I did an interview and I was sort of looking, you know, looking through it a few, few months

00:08:10.460 ago, but other, other projects caught my attention.

00:08:13.420 Finding the origin was difficult because it's, it's like what, you know, what the origin of

00:08:17.580 what, like a sissification or like sissy hypno, you know, like a discreet, that discreet phenomenon.

00:08:23.220 And both were actually like pretty hard to pin down like a first instance of it. 0.98

00:08:28.480 I, again, like I could only speculate, but like sissy, sissy, sissification and bimbification 0.95

00:08:33.000 seem to go back pretty far back to like 1790s far. 0.96

00:08:38.600 Even sissification.

00:08:40.260 Yeah.

00:08:40.560 I mean, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't look exactly the same way that it would look today.

00:08:45.720 Right.

00:08:46.160 But like some version of like feminizing a man as a, you know, a sexual expression as

00:08:51.460 a sexual tool. 0.99

00:08:52.360 It seems to have always been a piece of, of BDSM.

00:08:56.780 Not that that term has always been used, but just sort of that type of sexual expression.

00:09:02.200 But the hypno videos, there's no one's written a history of it.

00:09:05.320 And it's, it's actually like pretty hard to find where it originated.

00:09:08.660 And the closest thing is like this Andrea Longchoo essay about it.

00:09:14.140 And it, Andrea Longchoo suggests that maybe it originates on Tumblr.

00:09:18.680 I don't really buy that.

00:09:20.360 That feels, that feels wrong, but I don't actually know where it comes from.

00:09:24.600 I did one interview with someone who first encountered it on 4chan.

00:09:28.900 And I think, I think in 2008, if I'm remembering correctly.

00:09:33.880 So it must've been like very, very early.

00:09:36.120 So yeah, it's, I wish I, I wish I knew.

00:09:39.060 So I can, I can maybe give an answer to this because so sissification has clearly been part 0.96

00:09:44.740 of the, like the general sadism, masochism and dominance and submission displays for a

00:09:51.260 long time.

00:09:52.180 Likely going back to the English fights, as you said, easily 1700s.

00:09:54.900 1700s bimbofication, I would argue, or at least from what I've seen, because, you know, 1.00

00:09:59.980 we've done a lot of research.

00:10:01.000 We've actually given speeches on the history of different types of pornography at one point

00:10:04.100 that seems to have not arose until the women's liberation movement and, and didn't really

00:10:10.000 get big until the late nineties.

00:10:12.380 And you can correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but I have not heard of any bimbofication 1.00

00:10:16.580 porn historically.

00:10:17.540 And I think the reason being is there was, it was not considered normal for women to not be 0.51

00:10:23.760 hyper-sexualized to the extent that they, you know, you needed to, to counter this.

00:10:28.120 The, the sissification hypno, I think came after audio porn got popular, which didn't really

00:10:36.580 happen until Argonne Wild Audio, which Simone has dug deep into because it somewhat requires

00:10:43.260 that to have happened first.

00:10:45.100 And so I would guess that it probably got started on the major hubs of audio only porn, which

00:10:51.700 again, I didn't get big until the mid two thousands.

00:10:54.840 Hmm.

00:10:56.180 Yeah.

00:10:56.400 I mean that, I'm not a, I'm not an expert on pornography by any, by any state of the imagination.

00:11:01.900 So, so, I mean, sure.

00:11:03.660 I, I feel like I, I could imagine it starting at different points or like different expressions

00:11:09.100 of it appearing at different points in time.

00:11:11.640 But I mean, it sounds like, you know, much, much better than I do.

00:11:15.300 Well, no, no, no.

00:11:16.120 I thought maybe you, you did.

00:11:17.400 So I'm, I'm wondering what you think it means for, and I'd love you to pontificate within

00:11:21.820 the realm of sissification hypno and broader, how you think the ways that the internet, because

00:11:27.760 it, to some extent de-genders people, how, do you think it's like changing the way we

00:11:32.380 relate to gender?

00:11:33.780 Yeah.

00:11:34.220 It's an internet person.

00:11:35.480 Um, yeah, I don't know if it de-genders people as much as the way gender expression, you know, 0.61

00:11:43.320 like our relationship to our gender expression changes.

00:11:45.320 Like one thing I think about a lot is like certain people in text appear more masculine

00:11:51.260 or feminine and people will get like really into this with you.

00:11:55.040 Like if, if, if you sort of say that it is like you are like doing some level like of

00:11:58.880 interpretation, they're like, no, there's like, you know, an essential way that men communicate

00:12:02.360 and sort of an essential way that like women communicate and you know, you're, you're down 1.00

00:12:06.480 playing that, but I don't, I don't think so.

00:12:08.180 Right.

00:12:08.480 There's ways to present femininely through text. 1.00

00:12:11.960 And it is, it is a like interpretive art.

00:12:14.120 Like it's, it's like when you, the thing I compare it to a lot is like when you're reading

00:12:19.040 something and there's a character and there's not a physical description of the character,

00:12:22.640 but you start, you start imagining based on other things in the text.

00:12:26.120 I think that happens through text-based communication.

00:12:28.940 And that is that, that is not just something that's being like read by a third party, but

00:12:36.840 that's part of our gender expression. 1.00

00:12:39.360 And we don't really think of it that way.

00:12:41.440 And there's other components of that too.

00:12:43.580 Like the, you know, the colors we use or the type of art we might put on a profile, what

00:12:48.500 websites we use, what apps we use, all of these are gendered in a way that we don't

00:12:53.260 really, really think about.

00:12:54.800 And I think that has actually impacted our, it has impacted our gender identity a lot.

00:13:02.580 This new disembodied, very, very new way of expressing yourself that we really haven't

00:13:08.360 named.

00:13:09.780 That makes a lot of sense.

00:13:10.860 I'm curious to know if you feel like, because obviously there's so much, gender is now playing

00:13:16.580 such a key role in how people are freaking out culturally or even like coalescing into

00:13:21.300 different groups culturally, do you feel like there is a significant change to the way that

00:13:26.260 people relate to gender or even like sexuality through gender?

00:13:31.080 I mean, we can see that rates of reported sex are plummeting.

00:13:34.500 We can see that gender is getting weird and different. 1.00

00:13:37.760 Do you feel like it's overhyped and like the average person is just the same as they always

00:13:41.440 are?

00:13:41.700 Or do you think we're coming to a new evolution in human culture, at least in developed nations

00:13:46.300 or like super internet connected nations, where gender means something fundamentally 0.99

00:13:50.140 different than what it was before?

00:13:53.620 I think there's parts of it that are really underappreciated.

00:13:58.800 I think, you know, that a lot of our work is disembodied or mediated by a screen, I think

00:14:04.940 has a big part of it.

00:14:06.400 There's, it, the, gender has always been so related to what we do, right?

00:14:14.660 And a lot, and a lot of the places where that was like delineated have been like completely,

00:14:19.260 you know, abolished, right?

00:14:22.300 Work is, anyone can have any job.

00:14:25.060 There's, there's all these, there's all these things that have changed in that way that I

00:14:28.740 think are impacting the way people think of gender.

00:14:30.880 I don't think it was, I think maybe we overrate how much awareness people had of their gender

00:14:37.940 identity in prior periods when just so much of it was related to things that we were doing

00:14:43.320 and the way we were engaging in our communities.

00:14:46.640 And now that those things are gone and there's, people are much more isolated, it's also going

00:14:52.300 to impact gender.

00:14:54.100 I wonder, would we, would we have the same sort of gender questions if people were like more

00:14:59.180 connected in their immediate environments or if jobs were, you know, most people's work

00:15:05.220 wasn't, not that most people's work, but if the, the most vocal sort of gender anarchists, 1.00

00:15:10.360 so to speak, weren't probably using a laptop for their work, right?

00:15:14.480 There's all these other little things, but I think.

00:15:17.160 That's a really fascinating point that historically gender expression wasn't so much a choice that

00:15:23.760 people were actively making because they were just so engaged with people in their daily

00:15:27.400 lives, whereas today you get this level of choice.

00:15:31.720 And one of the statistics that I always found really interesting in our book on sexuality

00:15:34.420 was that about 20% of people, when they are given a choice with zero repercussions for

00:15:41.780 making the choice of which gender to express as, will actually choose the opposite gender.

00:15:46.120 So by here, what I mean is you see this when people are choosing furry costumes, but you

00:15:50.640 also see it when people are choosing online at character avatars.

00:15:55.140 Yeah.

00:15:55.840 I, I think part of, part of that with like furries and, and avatars is it's a very easy way to

00:16:03.140 experience novelty.

00:16:05.380 That's interesting.

00:16:06.640 Well, I also feel like part of what you're saying though, is let's say you live in some

00:16:10.560 village in rural France or something, and maybe given the circumstances of your life, you

00:16:17.160 are born female, but you're doing more male style roles, kind of like both given your

00:16:22.200 skill, but also, I don't know, like maybe you're married, but your husband went off to

00:16:25.460 war.

00:16:25.800 So now you're like doing all the man stuff and you're acting more manly, but it also

00:16:28.880 doesn't care because you don't have an audience and there isn't like this online world.

00:16:33.320 Is that also what you're saying?

00:16:34.260 Like in the past, gender would also be fluid, but it didn't matter because there was no big 0.92

00:16:40.240 online discussion.

00:16:42.540 But I mean, that, that must be part of it.

00:16:44.260 I think it just had different, it was just used in different ways, right?

00:16:48.840 And it had different, different utility at some, you know, a woman who's doing manual 0.99

00:16:54.180 labor might actually be like more feminine because she is doing manual labor and that's 1.00

00:16:59.700 maybe masculinely coded in her, her culture.

00:17:02.380 So she might have to compensate in other ways in different contexts.

00:17:06.240 And then, you know, why, why bother at all?

00:17:09.080 Maybe it's how, you know, just so she could signal that she's interested in a mate or 1.00

00:17:13.360 something.

00:17:13.700 I mean, there's like, there's all sorts of different, different reasons for it.

00:17:16.060 I also think, you know, part of gender is finding people with similar experiences.

00:17:21.020 And that is something that we, I mean, I think has been like completely sort of like underrated

00:17:26.380 or like even suppressed in especially like American culture.

00:17:30.500 One sort of drawback, I think of the, you know, the discussion around transition and transgender

00:17:36.840 identity is that part of saying I'm a woman is a way of saying, I have a certain set of

00:17:42.160 experiences tied to my biology.

00:17:45.380 And that is something that's been very stigmatized.

00:17:49.100 And I, you know, if finding other part of finding other women is like talking about things

00:17:53.760 that I experience in my body, my health, fertility thing, you know, that's something that someone

00:17:58.380 who is male bodied wouldn't have any insight or experience with. 0.63

00:18:04.500 Yeah.

00:18:05.340 Yeah.

00:18:05.640 That's super underrated.

00:18:06.420 I think what's really interesting, and this is something we often talk about within the

00:18:11.000 progressive movement in the United States right now is while they claim to value diversity,

00:18:18.240 they mean it purely in an aesthetic sense.

00:18:20.740 And there seems to be this resistance to admitting along any metric that humans are systemically

00:18:27.460 different from other humans in any sort of an average context, you know, whether it's

00:18:31.460 men or women are systemically different or, or, or different cultural groups are systemically

00:18:35.500 different.

00:18:36.320 Do you think that that's sort of always been the case or is this a new thing with the internet?

00:18:40.120 I don't know that the internet is necessarily the reason for that.

00:18:44.200 I think that you're right, but like in general boundaries are very, I think there's like a real

00:18:48.940 allergy to boundaries and that includes like boundaries between different groups, right?

00:18:54.020 And that could be something like in the workplace, you see like the idea of a boss or a manager

00:18:59.540 is maybe in certain, especially in white collar roles or certain types of white collar roles,

00:19:04.740 that's less emphasized now.

00:19:06.440 And it's not as hierarchical as it might've been even 10 years ago, but then that also applies

00:19:12.040 men and men and the boundary between men and women or the boundary between individuals and

00:19:17.640 and relationships.

00:19:18.520 That's another big thing.

00:19:20.200 And a lot of people speculate that the popularization of like polygamory is because, is actually because

00:19:26.880 we expect our partners to be everything to us.

00:19:29.780 So instead of, you know, saying, okay, I'm putting too much stress on my romantic partner,

00:19:35.000 you, you rationalize, say, oh, I should have multiple romantic partners.

00:19:38.380 But when really what we're doing is making our, our romantic partner, like our whole community,

00:19:43.380 the person we get advice from, the person we spend all our time with, and it puts too much

00:19:46.780 pressure on the relationship.

00:19:48.500 I've never heard that take before.

00:19:50.160 And I love that.

00:19:51.280 I'd love you to pontificate more on this point.

00:19:53.120 Why do you think polyamory has gotten big?

00:19:56.180 I think it's, I think it's a lot of reasons, like expectations.

00:20:00.760 Also, I mean, I think it's interesting to look, where is it big, right?

00:20:03.580 Like it's, it's, I think there are a lot of places in the United States and I can really

00:20:07.840 only speak to the United States where maybe people are more isolated, but like generally,

00:20:12.280 like the, the way people socialize doesn't look that different from 10, 20 years ago,

00:20:19.360 where I would assume the biggest changes are like very educated groups or, you know, up the

00:20:25.800 upper class, upper middle class people in cities and probably the very poor, but I would guess

00:20:33.200 the middle class is probably, you know, the shrinking middle class is probably not so different

00:20:40.160 than, you know, what people, people miss, right?

00:20:43.760 What people are nostalgic for.

00:20:45.620 So that, so that being said, I think the lifestyles of these groups sort of lend themselves to,

00:20:52.500 to polyamory.

00:20:53.840 Part of that is people who are in, again, like creative or tech fields may not want to

00:20:59.600 get married at the same, at the same age.

00:21:02.000 So that that's destabilizing people move away from their families.

00:21:05.960 So they don't really have communities.

00:21:07.760 I know a lot of people who like move cities a lot, or they live in cities that are not

00:21:12.860 very community friendly and the way they make friends is through dating apps.

00:21:17.520 Yeah.

00:21:18.480 Yeah.

00:21:18.920 Oh, no, I was just going to say that was definitely a phenomenon that I experienced really heavily

00:21:23.840 when I first really became, you know, sort of long-term monogamous with Simone was not

00:21:29.440 being on dating apps made it a lot harder to find friends.

00:21:32.860 Yeah.

00:21:32.980 But I've never heard that articulated before that maybe it's because one, when we argue,

00:21:37.100 because we're really big in education reform, that a really big problem with traditional

00:21:40.200 schooling is that it really only teaches you how to make friends with people you're literally

00:21:43.440 like forced to be in a room or office with.

00:21:45.600 So if you don't make friends through university or school or through your business, you sort

00:21:49.960 of never learn how to make friends.

00:21:51.320 And then after you graduate from school, outside of people you interact with in your office,

00:21:55.760 the only way that you're probably interacting with new strangers is you are dating.

00:22:00.140 Like that is the one time people bother to learn how to meet new people or make friends.

00:22:04.760 And it just never really occurred to me that like people might be interested in polyamory

00:22:09.480 because they also just want more friends, but they don't know how to make friends that

00:22:12.460 they don't have sex with.

00:22:14.200 Offering social institutions to make friends, like they might not have a church or something

00:22:17.540 like that.

00:22:18.220 But that really resonates.

00:22:19.560 Like that makes so much sense.

00:22:20.620 Cause when we think about poly communities that we've gotten into touch with or been

00:22:24.780 exposed to, or poly people that we've met, like a lot of them, it's, it seems like it's

00:22:29.560 more of a friendship thing and a more like of a social thing that it necessarily, it's

00:22:33.060 like, well, this is how I want to be romantically involved.

00:22:34.920 That's so astute.

00:22:36.140 It's weird.

00:22:36.560 It's weird that it's very hard for people to conceptualize like intimacy without sex, which

00:22:41.300 is, which is funny because like sex without intimacy is obviously very common.

00:22:45.640 Yeah.

00:22:46.020 Wow.

00:22:47.060 Yeah.

00:22:47.340 And I think, I mean, I think that's right to your point, Simone, like they, people just

00:22:50.860 don't know what a friend is or like how deep and intimate a friendship could be without

00:22:55.280 it crossing that sexual boundary.

00:22:57.640 And it, you know, it makes me wonder sometimes like the nature of, of that sex.

00:23:01.680 It, I think there's been sort of like a hobbification of sex almost, or even less than that.

00:23:06.940 It's even hobby is almost too generous because I think a lot of people do it just like to

00:23:10.640 pass the time or as an experience, they do it for a story, you know, and it, it, it's,

00:23:15.760 it, it's almost not about living in that moment.

00:23:18.540 It's about it having, it's something that happened and helped pass time or.

00:23:22.760 Well, I mean, narrative, narrative reinforcement is something we talk about a lot on this podcast.

00:23:27.280 And, and that's what you're describing there is they are trying to tell a story about who

00:23:31.660 they are to themselves and potentially to the world.

00:23:35.320 But another thing you mentioned there that I found very interesting about the poly community

00:23:38.480 is just the amount of time it takes.

00:23:40.520 You know, when I talk to these people who have like eight partners or though I'm at five

00:23:43.860 partners right now, it's, so this is like your primary hobby because it would have to

00:23:49.140 be, it would have, it would just be an enormous time sink.

00:23:52.400 It's their culture too.

00:23:53.720 It's, it's probably a stand-in for, for culture in a lot of ways.

00:23:56.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:57.720 No, I think it is.

00:23:58.900 And, and, and it comes to, you know, once you have a lot of kids or something like that,

00:24:03.640 you know, this is another thing I've seen is you just don't have as much time for it.

00:24:08.080 Yeah.

00:24:08.600 I, and something about wanting to bring children into that kind of arrangement is, is very,

00:24:13.480 it's very creepy to me.

00:24:14.780 I try to be like sort of as nonjudgmental as possible, but it just seems like it's opening

00:24:19.340 up your children to so much danger.

00:24:21.640 So when I was in Silicon Valley, you know, one of the things that always sort of weirded me on,

00:24:25.740 and again, we try to be somewhat nonjudgmental on this channel.

00:24:28.060 We're a little judgmental, but there, there's a lot of like poly group houses.

00:24:32.200 If you're familiar with that in the Silicon Valley area, we're like, they're, you know,

00:24:36.460 sleeping together to some extent.

00:24:37.840 And, you know, occasionally, you know, as I was getting older, there would be kids like

00:24:42.720 crawling around these houses.

00:24:43.920 And I always, that did not, I don't know.

00:24:47.520 I mean, it could be a stable way to host relationships, but, but polyamory, you know,

00:24:51.440 an A-list study show this really clearly leads to really low fertility rates.

00:24:55.240 So I don't think it's a, a long-term cultural solution.

00:24:58.820 Yeah.

00:24:58.960 I mean, I would argue growing up broadly in that culture, growing up in Silicon Valley,

00:25:03.000 I was surrounded by it, but also I think because I was surrounded by it, I was blind to it.

00:25:09.040 Literally, I went to Burning Man at age 15 and I saw zero sex and zero drugs.

00:25:14.660 And that's just because I was blind to it.

00:25:16.000 Well, I remember when I went to one party and there was an orgy and I was, I was like,

00:25:19.480 Simone, there's, like, there's an orgy at this party.

00:25:22.140 And you're like, no, there's not.

00:25:23.280 And so I had to walk you to a door, open it and be like, that's an or, that, that room 0.98

00:25:28.560 right there is orgy. 0.96

00:25:29.600 I just, I don't know.

00:25:30.760 So I think, I think it's probably less damaging to children than you would think, because I think

00:25:35.060 kids, especially think about it.

00:25:36.640 If kids are growing up surrounded by sex, by like very, like openness, nudity, like

00:25:42.800 all that, they're just like, so that's what old people do, you know, kind of like, you 1.00

00:25:46.380 know, sitting on the toilet for a really long time, reading newspapers, paying bills.

00:25:50.100 It's just one of those things.

00:25:51.220 And so like, it's not as old people stuff.

00:25:53.340 Yeah.

00:25:53.540 It's an old person thing.

00:25:54.840 And you see, you're just like, I don't, I don't do that, whatever.

00:25:57.900 And you're just like, so bored to it.

00:25:59.320 Like you're blind to it.

00:26:00.580 So I worry less about it.

00:26:02.600 We'll see what ends up happening with these kids.

00:26:04.680 I mean, you are one of them to some extent.

00:26:06.320 Your parents were in a polyamorous relationship at one point.

00:26:09.000 So maybe they don't all end up, I mean, you're, I think they probably end up a lot more conservative

00:26:14.080 than anyone may think.

00:26:15.100 And I actually feel like to a certain extent, Gen Z is showing this through a lot of its 0.76

00:26:20.380 conservative interests in that, you know, they were raised in a very permissive time and

00:26:26.600 their choice in perhaps rebellion or just in perhaps reasoned cultural choices after seeing

00:26:32.860 how it's working for the adults is to go, in many cases, more conservative.

00:26:37.120 But this has been a really fun conversation.

00:26:39.000 But thank you so much because you've actively changed my view on a couple of subjects.

00:26:43.500 And this is the kind of, and this is why everyone, if you're watching this, you've got to check

00:26:47.320 out her writings.

00:26:48.280 There is no, they're all over the place.

00:26:49.660 They're on different publications.

00:26:50.440 She, she, she writes for, for a bunch of different outlets.

00:26:54.020 So just search for her name. 0.94

00:26:55.080 Where she wants you to go.

00:26:57.000 Yeah.

00:26:57.580 Is there a particular website?

00:26:59.520 Yeah.

00:26:59.820 Just default.blog.

00:27:01.420 And I, you know, update people and where I'm writing and what I'm doing.

00:27:04.980 Perfect.

00:27:05.540 Definitely go there, guys.

00:27:06.760 All right.

00:27:07.440 All right.

00:27:07.780 We'll talk to you soon.

Based Camp - August 15, 2023

How the Internet is Changing Gender and Sexuality with Katherine Dee (Default Friend)

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