In this special episode of Basecamp, we are joined by the excellent Raw Egg Nationalist, who will be speaking at the Natalism Conference in Austin, Texas in December. We talk about the dangers of hormonal contraceptives and their relationship to depression, and why we should all be worried about them. We also talk about his new book, The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity.
00:00:00.000There's a new study that shows that or that suggests that women who take the combined hormonal contraceptive pill, they actually suffer shrinkage in particular regions of their brain.
00:00:13.660Yeah, it's quite a shocking study that's just come out.
00:00:16.680Yeah. Wow. Question of those who had taken women who had taken hormonal contraceptives and then stopped.
00:00:24.020Did they show signs of recovery? Yes, they did. So there was no difference in there.
00:00:28.560So it looks like it might be reversible. But then there are other studies.
00:00:32.980There are other studies. There was a study of hormonal contraceptive use and its relationship to depression recently.
00:00:40.200And it showed that if you started taking hormonal contraceptive as a teenager, you would and then went to and then and then stop taking it.
00:00:49.960You would always have a massively increased risk of depression as a girl.
00:00:54.240Whereas if you if you're an adult woman and you go on it and then you come off, your rate of depression falls back to the norm.
00:01:02.660So that suggests that that suggests that there is clearly some developmental function or developmental process that is affected in some way by taking hormonal contraceptive as a teenager rather than as an adult.
00:01:19.640Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Basecamp and a very special episode of it at that because we are joined by Raw Egg Nationalist, who I'm so excited to meet.
00:01:29.340We're meeting him because he's also speaking at the natalism conference that we're going to go to in Austin this December.
00:01:34.360But we've been very familiar with his work before. So, yeah, we have an excuse to talk with him.
00:01:38.660If you don't know Raw Egg Nationalist, he is an anonymous Twitter user with some really fun content.
00:01:45.980It's his Twitter username is actually Baby Gravy Nine, but he goes under Raw Egg Nationalist.
00:01:50.480You won't miss him. Plus, he's written four books, all part of the Raw Egg Nationalist Presents series on Amazon.
00:01:57.180But the most famous one is probably Raw Egg Nationalism in Theory and Practice.
00:02:03.660The next book is going to be different and that's what we're going to be talking about today.
00:02:07.540So tell us a little bit about this upcoming book and what it's on.
00:02:12.360Well, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you both. I've really been looking forward to this.
00:02:17.520So I wrote a book. My last book was called The Eggs Benedict Option, and that was my most detailed work to date about health and nutrition.
00:02:28.100I talked basically about the plan for a global plant-based diet and the health and political ramifications of that.
00:02:36.220So I'm kind of I'm following on from that and I'm writing in the same vein as sort of all of the other books that I've written, the main things that I focus on.
00:02:45.920But the book is going to be called The Last Men, Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity, rather.
00:02:54.820And it's about well, it's about it's about a lot of different topics that are very germane to our to our interests, our shared interests to this natalism conference that we're going to that we're both going to be or that we're all rather going to be attending.
00:03:10.780It starts with a it starts with a reinterpretation of Francis Fukuyama and his end of history thesis.
00:03:19.560And there's there's something very interesting.
00:03:22.420I mean, Fukuyama is a is a thinker who is he's he's caricatured.
00:03:28.760He's straw man. You know, people see him as the epitome of liberal hubris.
00:03:33.680And, you know, he's somebody who who supposedly believed that liberalism was the end stage of history in a very uncomplicated way and, you know, an unnuanced way.
00:03:43.060But actually, when you read when you go back and read the end of history, what you notice first or what I noticed, what I I came to my attention was the fact that actually the book is called The End of History and the Last Man.
00:03:55.360And the end of the last man bit is very, very important.
00:04:02.180And it's actually probably it's a it's an absolutely devastating critique of liberal democracy, of the shallowness of liberal democracy and the fact that it will basically never be able to satisfy certain of man's very, very fundamental wants and needs,
00:04:21.520including what the Greeks called megalothymia, which is the desire for distinction.
00:05:13.440Megalothymia is what liberalism can't satisfy.
00:05:16.160Well, I also like this term in in relation to the manosphere, because it sounds to me like a very good mirror for hypergamy, in which we often talk about females having hypergamy.
00:05:29.180And I absolutely do believe that males have megalothymia, the innate desire to be better than other men.
00:05:36.860It is not something that is provided for or or lauded within this system.
00:05:42.480Well, what's but what's I mean, what's interesting, of course, about this is that these are Greek terms, you know, to two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks recognized the Greeks had a better understanding of, I would say, individual psychology in many respects.
00:05:58.360And the kind of motivating factors that drive people to do particular things as human beings in a social setting.
00:06:09.200Fukuyama says, look, liberalism is always going to have this massive, massive blind spot.
00:06:14.120It's not going to be able to satisfy people, man's.
00:06:17.340And I think he means particularly men's desire for distinction.
00:06:20.920Well, I think that I start from I start and I say, look, this is actually really what Fukuyama is getting at.
00:06:29.080You know, he's not talking about the fact that liberalism is the best system in the world.
00:06:32.440And, you know, we've we've reached the end point of history.
00:06:34.500He's actually saying we've reached this very difficult impasse where we've got a system that we probably kind of can't improve on, really, in certain respects.
00:06:43.000And we're probably not going to get away from.
00:06:47.640But there's a there's a deeper aspect to it.
00:06:50.660There's there's a there's a sense in which what Fukuyama is actually saying isn't pessimistic enough.
00:06:57.980Because the the megalithymia thing, the failure to satisfy man's man's desires for distinction and self and sort of projecting himself out into the world has a biological aspect to it.
00:07:12.980And this is where all of the stuff that I talk about, about endocrine disruptors, about unhealthy lifestyles comes in, testosterone decline in particular.
00:07:23.560And so I take I'm going to take megalithymia, the decline of megalithymia in liberal society as a proxy for or or as kind of code for testosterone decline and biological decline.
00:07:38.340And I'm going to look at how not only on an ideological level is liberalism totally unsatisfying for men, but also on a biological level, modern life is totally sapping man of his vitality.
00:07:51.720And yeah, so that's the basic premise of the book is that extending Fukuyama to a biological level.
00:07:59.280I want to I want to pull out an idea that you had here where this is something that people may not know.
00:08:04.700So something people will know, likely either of our audience is going to know this, is that endocrine disruptors appear to be changing the way gender is being expressed, specifically feminizing both male bodies and behavior.
00:08:17.100And we are dealing with a quick drop in testosterone.
00:08:20.800What is it, 30 percent over the past 20 years?
00:08:25.380And what's interesting is that I think that we often when we talk about this, when people like you or I talk about this, we often talk about it in terms of environmental like pollutants that could be increasing this.
00:08:37.200But a really important thing about testosterone in men is that it will drop when a man feels disempowered.
00:08:45.380So when you are homeless or in other ways disempowered, your testosterone will drop pretty dramatically, which can have physiological and behavioral impacts.
00:08:54.280And it sounds almost like you're saying here is that you think that this empowerment may actually be a big reason of why male testosterone is dropping, because they do not feel they can participate in these gains they were built for.
00:09:07.700Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, that's absolutely, that is absolutely a central, a central part of my argument.
00:09:14.620I think it's what we've done really is we've entered the perfect storm, really.
00:09:19.340So we've got all these social factors that are incredibly poisonous, really, for traditional expressions of masculinity.
00:09:28.300There are economic factors, physical factors, the fact that people are, you know, record obesity, people are less active than they were.
00:09:38.840And then you've also got this terrible, terrible environmental pollution crisis.
00:09:43.480And one of the things, one of the things that I try to do is I try to draw people's attention to the environmental pollution because it's not received a great deal of, it's certainly not, it's certainly not had as much of a spotlight as maybe these other factors in testosterone decline.
00:10:02.180And that was one of the things I think that the Tucker Carlson documentary, the end of men did very well, was it, you know, put this, put the, these, these terrible, terrible chemicals and their terrible effects on, on male and female bodies, right in the spotlight in a way that was, that was actually unavoidable.
00:10:23.480And, and that's, and so that's, that's really what I'm trying to do.
00:10:27.060I'm trying to, I'm trying to give a, as close to a complete picture, I suppose, of, of all the reasons why masculinity is, is really on the wane and, and, and it is, and it is.
00:10:38.880And I marshal all sorts of scientific studies because there, there, there's a huge literature on testosterone decline and on the, the various different factors that, that, that sort of weigh in on testosterone decline.
00:10:51.040And it's what it, but what it really needs, I think, is it needs, it needs a compelling synthesis.
00:10:57.060One of the things that we were actually inspired to do after our first conversation with you, and I want to let our fans, in case any of them are interested in some way getting involved in this, is, is see what we can do to actually get some of these chemicals regulated in the UK.
00:11:10.040Because, you know, we've been making a point of meeting more conservative UK politicians.
00:11:13.420And I think that this is actually a, a very doable thing.
00:11:16.800It's just not the thing that I think a lot of conservatives have in their evoked set, which is I should write an environmental policy bill.
00:11:25.680So when you put together a book like this, and you are giving advice to the individual, what advice do you give the individual man today in today's society or woman today in who's either, and then in women, I guess it's in two stages, either as a partner to somebody or somebody looking for a partner?
00:11:43.400Yeah, there's a lot of, although the problem is dreadful, and it really is, I mean, we're facing an unprecedented crisis, I think.
00:11:53.500There are, there are, there are simple, meaningful things that you can do to improve your hormonal health, and your, and your health more generally.
00:12:01.240And one of the, one of the best things that you can do is to reduce your reliance on plastics.
00:12:05.680So a huge number of these, these endocrine disrupting chemicals, BPA, bisphenol A, phthalates, PFAS, per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, they're all used in the manufacture of plastics and greaseproof packaging and food packaging and, and things like that.
00:12:24.620So if you can reduce your reliance on, and in personal care products as well, this is a big thing for women, but also for men to a lesser extent, if you can reduce your reliance on products that contain these chemicals, you can significantly reduce the levels of the chemicals in your body.
00:12:41.240So there was a, I've talked, I mean, I talk regularly on Twitter about particular studies and, you know, what they show about exposure and mitigation of these chemicals.
00:12:51.560And there was a study that showed that the average sort of college age girl in the US will use at least eight personal care products a day that contain endocrine disrupting, known endocrine disrupting chemicals.
00:13:04.020Some will use as many as 20 a day, every day.
00:13:09.260If you stop, well, I was just going to say, if you, and then there's another study that shows that if you stop using these chemicals, if you stop using these products, if you just discontinue using personal care products, you can reduce levels of particular chemicals in your body.
00:13:21.480You buy up to 50% within a matter of a few weeks.
00:13:24.840And that's a, that's a massive, that's a massive, massive intervention, massively meaningful intervention.
00:13:31.100So there are very simple things you can do.
00:13:34.060Simone, do you want to go over the fireman study here?
00:13:36.160Because I thought that was really powerful in endocrine disrupting.
00:13:38.680Yeah, I don't know if you've, you've already seen this, but I know when a woman's about to be pregnant, like we're really concerned about basically everything the baby's absorbing,
00:13:45.920because both male and female fetuses, babies are exposed to, you know, all this while they're gestating.
00:13:54.460And it has a pretty significant impact on their development, as you know.
00:13:57.680So I keep thinking like, okay, well, how can parents, especially mothers who are about to be pregnant,
00:14:03.280avoid having really high concentrations of this sort of accumulated pollution in their body before they become pregnant?
00:14:09.780And the one thing that I found that was compelling was a study of firemen in Australia,
00:14:15.000where they measured the concentration of endocrine disrupting chemicals in their blood before and then after several sessions of donating plasma.
00:14:23.360And they found that it did significantly reduce it.
00:14:25.080So it seems like one thing you can do is what you pointed out, which is just try to eliminate as much as you can.
00:14:29.320And you actually, you know, because we're exposed to so much, like anything could be a big deal.
00:14:33.340But then another one is like eliminate it and to get out stuff that's been accumulating to donate plasma.
00:14:40.260So it seemed like an interesting thing to do.
00:14:42.320I wish I knew that before I got pregnant for the first time.
00:14:49.060Then another thing that you can do if you actually want to try and get rid of some of the stuff that's in your blood or in your body, rather,
00:14:55.680because the problem is that these endocrine disruptors are largely, they're lipophilic molecules.
00:15:02.120So they go into, well, first of all, they can pass through fats, through the sort of fats in your tissue so they can get through your skin.
00:15:10.100But then they accumulate in your fat tissues.
00:15:12.220They make you produce more fat and then they accumulate in the fat tissues.
00:15:16.880So you have to find some way to get them out.
00:15:27.860And I think, in fact, there was a study where it showed that if you do a calorie-restricted diet and exercise that makes you sweat heavily,
00:15:35.120you can shed quite significant quantities of these chemicals from the fat tissue in your body.
00:16:12.720Actually, this does bring me to something that I think is important, which is a lot of guys I know care about this stuff.
00:16:19.020Like when I talk to like right-leaning young guys, I see this.
00:16:22.820But the problem is, is that this information is actually dramatically less relevant to adult males than it is to adult females.
00:16:31.360This is information, because if you're looking at who's going to be most impacted by endocrine disruptors, it's men during their sexual development.
00:16:41.380And that means either in utero or, you know, really up to the age of, let's say, until they find a long-term partner.
00:16:50.420And so if you are a guy and you're married and you're trying to have kids, you can actually blunt a lot of the endocrine disruptors.
00:16:57.240Like with Simone and I this morning when we were up, some, you know, the clerk shoves a receipt in our face and I have to snatch it from without retouching it.
00:17:05.700Because for me, this is a fairly trivial effect compared to her who's a pregnant woman right now, right?
00:17:11.940And I just think that that's important to remember is it's a lot of guys tech their own, that's enough.
00:17:17.800And that's really, unfortunately, it would be easier if that were true.
00:17:44.340So a man who has a deficit of estrogen in his body will suffer all sorts of terrible problems, including things like fertility problems and erectile dysfunction.
00:17:53.840Estrogen has an important role in erectile function, which most men probably wouldn't realize.
00:17:59.260So, but the thing is that the vast majority of these chemicals, as I say, they mimic the effects of estrogen.
00:18:05.740Now, a woman having too much estrogen in her body, that's bad too.
00:18:09.420And it can promote cancers and infertility and all sorts of other stuff.
00:18:13.900But for men, for the developing male body, it is absolutely fatal.
00:18:26.900We've shown that they're in the placenta, that they're in cord blood from the placenta, that they cross the placental barrier.
00:18:32.860They've done studies of womb tissue that show the presence of these endocrine disrupting chemicals within the actual womb itself in the amniotic fluid.
00:18:43.520So, I mean, anything that you can do to mitigate your exposure to these chemicals is good, is fantastic.
00:18:53.880But at the same time, you have to remember that actually, unfortunately, you can't totally avoid exposure.
00:19:00.540That's the black pill, as it were, about these things, is that they are everywhere.
00:19:06.480Well, this is something I want to, one, touch on this really quickly, this black pill, which is something that we always tell people is as things change, because human biology is changing and human fertility is changing, many technologies that religious groups historically could just say, well, we won't touch that and it won't have any effect on our group's vitality and ability to thrive.
00:19:29.320Now they're making much bigger sacrifices than they were historically.
00:19:32.500And, of course, the technology I'm thinking most of is IVF.
00:19:34.740I think a lot of groups that are eschewing IVF are really shooting themselves in the foot.
00:19:43.380And it actually kind of grosses me out when I see influencers, especially in the Tradcast space, that I know under the table are actually using IVF to get pregnant.
00:19:52.260And they will, like, shame IVF because it gets them clout in their communities, and their communities don't realize how hard it is for somebody to get pregnant without these technologies these days.
00:20:02.360Yeah, I mean, I'm absolutely not a technophobe.
00:20:06.380I mean, I'd like to think that there are natural ways that we can protect ourselves.
00:20:12.100There are simple ways that we can protect ourselves.
00:20:14.800You know, exercising will protect you to a degree against the effects of endocrine disruptors.
00:20:20.520So I'm going to do a long post, I think, on Twitter tomorrow because I've dug up quite a few studies that show that actually the effects of exercise significantly mitigate some of the nastier effects of endocrine disruptors.
00:20:33.640But it may very well be the case that actually this isn't a problem that we can solve on a societal level without the creation of new technology.
00:20:43.380I think it is a civilizational, it is a species level catastrophe that's taking place.
00:20:51.900And so, yeah, I mean, I don't think that any option should be off the table.
00:20:55.640Another thing I want to touch on here from the last bit of conversation is when we talk about testosterone rates falling in things like women, I think a lot of guys are not aware of the psychological effects that's going to have in terms of a population.
00:21:09.320Because, you know, when you're talking about like changes this big, you're talking about an average difference in behavior patterns, which can be pretty big at the societal level.
00:21:17.160So I'll just go over the few that I remember off the top of my head and you can elaborate more if you can think of some.
00:21:21.180But I know specifically in women, if you have lower testosterone rates, that's going to lower aggression, particularly sexual aggression and sexual appetite is my memory.
00:21:31.880Like the biggest impact testosterone has in women is like ordered logical thinking and sexual appetite.
00:21:39.780And I typically think if you're like, what does the mind of your average extremely high testosterone woman look like?
00:21:45.680I think Ayla is almost the perfect picture of what a woman looks like when she's exposed to, I want to say too much testosterone, but a very large amount of testosterone.
00:21:54.200And so I think if you're trying to contrast like what does a woman look like with extra testosterone versus what does one look like with a smaller amount of testosterone, she's a good model of extra testosterone.
00:22:04.480Well, I did a tweet yesterday or the day before, I think it was about there's a new study that shows that or that suggests that women who take the combined hormonal contraceptive pill, they actually suffer shrinkage in particular regions of their brain.
00:22:24.080I mean, yeah, it's quite a shocking study that's just come out.
00:22:27.920Yeah, well, women, women who take the combined hormonal pill suffer shrinkage of I forget the name of the region, but it's a region that's associated with fear and emotional processing.
00:22:39.540And what they did was they did these MRI scans of the brains of women who had never taken hormonal contraceptive, of women who had but weren't, of women who were taking it, and then of men.
00:22:54.760And they showed that this very particular region in the brains of women who were currently taking it was much thinner than it should be and was in all of the other cases.
00:23:08.460And so that, I mean, that potentially, I mean, all they're doing is they're showing, look, this region of the brain is thinner, but actually the potential implications, I mean, you can imagine.
00:23:17.240And look, we all have anecdotes, we all have personal experience, or a lot of us will have personal experience of friends, girlfriends who have taken the hormonal contraceptive pill and whose behavior has changed significantly, either when they've gone on it or when they've come off it.
00:23:36.420And that is an estrogenic, that's an estrogenic chemical.
00:23:39.720Question, of those who had taken, women who had taken hormonal contraceptives and then stopped, did they show signs of recovery?
00:23:56.460There was a study of hormonal contraceptive use and its relationship to depression recently.
00:24:01.840And it showed that if you started taking hormonal contraceptive as a teenager, and then stopped taking it, you would always have a massively increased risk of depression as a girl.
00:24:18.500Whereas if you're an adult woman and you go on it, and then you come off, your rate of depression falls back to the norm.
00:24:26.140So that suggests that there is clearly some developmental function or developmental process that is affected in some way by taking hormonal contraceptive as a teenager rather than as an adult.
00:25:14.240So here's a question that I also wanted to ask.
00:25:16.000We were at a retreat this weekend, and we were talking about endocratist repress with a lot of people.
00:25:20.100And this is something that actually comes up a lot when we talk about it.
00:25:24.200You know, we're talking about dropping testosterone, you know, that, like, you know, from the TIDE studies, you know, men, young boys being born kind of a little bit less like boys.
00:25:33.180You know, they have smaller and no genital distance.
00:25:34.800They have less male dimorphic play when they're kids.
00:25:37.720And, you know, we say this to people, and a response that we get not uncommonly is, why is that a bad thing?
00:25:44.780And I'd love for you to comment on, like, how do you answer people when they say that?
00:25:49.200You know, they're like, well, you know, who cares?
00:25:50.820You know, is it so bad if there's less testosterone or less traditionally male behavior or if men are less dimorphic?
00:26:02.760Well, I mean, there are a number of different ways to approach this.
00:26:07.420I think the first thing I would probably say is, look, this is a, let's put the social stuff to one side.
00:26:16.540Let's put aside, you know, the way that men behave.
00:26:21.180Testosterone is an index of male fertility, of male health, right, reproductive health.
00:26:27.840If testosterone levels are declining, men are less fertile, it's going to be harder for people to have children.
00:26:33.940And it might even, as we're seeing now, it might even get so bad that actually within a couple of decades, men might not be able to produce any sperm whatsoever.
00:26:43.560The median man, according to the predictions, will produce zero sperm, right?
00:26:49.080I mean, that's an extrapolation of observed trends.
00:26:53.160And that is, you know, if you are producing less testosterone, your sperm quality and quantity will decline.
00:26:59.620So there's that, you know, there's no getting away from that.
00:27:02.780The social thing, of course, is, well, it depends on the kind of society that you want to create, right?
00:27:10.300And if you are the kind of person who, in a kind of misguided but well-meaning way wants, you know, for there to be no conflict within civilization, no conflict among people, no, you know, you want everyone to be friends, then you might think, oh, yeah, no, testosterone decline.
00:27:26.900That's great because testosterone is the aggressive hormone.
00:27:30.500It's testosterone, it's testosterone that makes men nasty, it's testosterone that makes men fight and murder and rape and do all the things that are regressive and that we don't want in a modern liberal society.
00:27:42.680But that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what testosterone is and what it does.
00:27:47.400And testosterone doesn't, estrogen makes men aggressive.
00:27:53.520And there are plenty, there are plenty of studies that show that actually it's an, it's a deficit of testosterone and an imbalance of estrogen that makes men aggressive.
00:28:18.300And soy isoflavones are estrogenic, so they're phytoestrogens, so they're naturally occurring plant estrogens.
00:28:25.020And what they discovered was that if you feed male macaques soy isoflavones, they basically become incels.
00:28:33.480They become passive aggressive incels.
00:28:35.760So they, they observed that male macaques, this was a study, I think, from 2004, male macaques who consume or were fed significant quantities of soy isoflavones become,
00:28:46.840became more aggressive and simultaneously more submissive.
00:28:51.300So they isolated themselves from the fellow members of their troop.
00:28:55.440They, they behaved in a submissive way, but were also more aggressive.
00:28:59.640So it's like, I mean, I, I mean, I, it actually got, that study actually got picked up by Joe Rogan as well.
00:29:05.900And he said, I think this explains a lot about, you know, like modern, modern sort of soy boy men.
00:29:10.700Well, it's the, it's the personality type that I always imagine when I think of the stereotypical, like vegan.
00:29:19.120It's, it's avoid, avoid direct head on confrontation with other men or with other people, but does sneaky, nasty things when they can get away with it.
00:29:28.460It's, so, I mean, it's, it's the, I think that one thing that actually really needs to change, and this is something that I'm trying to do in my own small way,
00:29:36.880is to educate people about the, the nature of testosterone, that it isn't just the, it's not the aggressive hormone.
00:29:44.480Testosterone is involved in, I mean, there are all sorts of studies that show that, that men with more testosterone are more generous,
00:29:50.640that men with more testosterone are more faithful to their partners.
00:29:54.560Oh my, this is so crazy because I've not heard this and I've not seen this and I didn't even know about the estrogen thing.
00:30:36.660I'm babygravy9 and you can, I have rawegnationalist.com, which also will point you in the direction of all of my writing and mansworldmag.online.
00:30:47.680So I have an online magazine, men's magazine, a bit like a sort of revived playboy.