Based Camp - The Things Women Aren't Allowed to Talk About in Public (With Meghan Daum)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. I am so excited today because we're joined by Megan Dahm, someone who I

00:00:03.980 admire on so many different fronts. She is a prolific author. She has written six books,

00:00:08.440 or written or edited six books. She has been also a prolific journalist, very respected by

00:00:13.200 many of our friends. She now is on Substack. Plus, she hosts A Special Place in Hell with 1.00

00:00:18.960 Sarah Hader, also a friend of the podcast. And before that, she had the Unspeakeasy podcast,

00:00:23.080 which I listened to with really great interviews with heterodox thinkers. She's kind of like the

00:00:27.460 Alex Kishuda of like a different sort of segment of the internet. And more recently, Megan has

00:00:33.200 launched a series of retreats, which I kind of wanted to dig into now. It's called The Unspeakeasy,

00:00:38.220 kind of inspired by one of her books, which is titled Unspeakable. And it is a place, they're

00:00:42.840 mostly, sometimes they're mixed gender, but they're mostly female-only retreats. Pretty small, like

00:00:48.420 very, like sort of, you can have a real conversation with everyone who goes. Maybe 16 people or fewer,

00:00:53.760 maybe sometimes 20, right? Yeah. And behind closed doors, these, you know, mostly all women 1.00

00:01:01.360 finally get to sort of discuss what they want, whatever. That's what we want to get to is what

00:01:07.180 do professional, educated, you know, probably more affluent women in the United States think and say 0.99

00:01:14.880 and worry about and discuss behind closed doors? Because I think there's this perception

00:01:20.440 perception that the educated women of America are largely this progressive monolith. They all kind

00:01:26.540 of think the same thing. Like they're not very interesting. You know, then you have some like

00:01:29.640 far right, you know, crazy women and like, you know, whatever, like cam girls and cat girls or 1.00

00:01:35.240 whatever. Like, but then there's like just this, there's nothing, a big question mark. So we wanted

00:01:40.960 to, you know, we might, we might get into a little bit of a, an antinatalist discussion at the end of

00:01:44.780 this, but we wanted to get into what's going on behind closed doors with all these women. 1.00

00:01:50.620 Well, if I, I couldn't tell you, right. If it was really behind closed doors, I wouldn't be able to

00:01:54.360 tell you. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I love talking about all these topics. And I will

00:01:58.860 just say, I I've got my hand in so many things that it gets confusing what I'm doing. So I still

00:02:04.400 host the unspeakable podcast. So I actually have two podcasts. I do a special place in hell with Sarah

00:02:09.140 Hayter. And I know you've, you've been on our podcast and she's been here. I do the unspeakable

00:02:14.220 podcast, which is sort of my flagship podcast. And that's an interview. It's a weekly interview show

00:02:18.820 started it four years ago, summer of 2020 when all, when every podcast started. And so, right.

00:02:25.080 So I've been doing that. And yeah, so the speakeasy is it's an enterprise that has sort of,

00:02:30.560 you know, arisen out of a lot of my work, the podcast, my books, my teaching as well. I've been a

00:02:37.080 teacher of writing for a really long time. So yeah, I guess, well, I guess the easiest way to

00:02:42.140 kind of launch into what the unspeakeasy is about is to tell you the origins of it. And, you know,

00:02:48.160 that is, I've been, I've been a journalist for a long time. I was a Los Angeles Times columnist for

00:02:52.840 12 years on the opinion page, written a bunch of books, written for every magazine was like,

00:02:58.560 you know, an acceptable, celebrated, arguably celebrated member of the literary community.

00:03:04.960 I looked at the number of reviews your books have gotten. Yeah.

00:03:08.280 Yeah. And they used to be really positive. Yeah. And you know, I've always been allergic to

00:03:14.260 bullshit. Like that's my thing. I've never been really particularly political. I mean, 1.00

00:03:19.800 obviously as a journalist, you have to write about what's going on in the news and the culture,

00:03:23.300 but I just never liked virtue signaling. Even before there was a term for that, I just got it

00:03:30.640 everywhere. And I was very sensitive to it. And I was very interested in why it was happening. So

00:03:37.760 that's always been a theme of my work. And I've always tried to sort of look at the places, you

00:03:42.260 know, in the culture or in politics where like what people saying, what people were saying about the

00:03:47.320 world or themselves was not matching up with what was actually true about the world and themselves.

00:03:53.160 So, so people, you know, knew that about my work and I started doing the podcast and I would have

00:03:59.160 people like Sam Harris and, you know, all the sort of the hetero docs, you know, I've had hundreds and

00:04:04.480 hundreds of guests by now, but people sort of trying to pick apart these issues, nuanced discussions,

00:04:10.200 right? So nuanced AF is what the merch says. I love it. Here's the, yes. Nuanced AF. Okay.

00:04:17.960 That looks good. So, so, you know, people would listen to the podcast. I was talking about things

00:04:24.520 like gender, you know, pretty early on Sasha Iyad, who's, you know, wonderful is now the co-host of

00:04:30.180 Gender Wider Lens was like my fifth guest. And, you know, I had Peter Moskos on really early talking

00:04:35.700 about policing. I had, you know, John McWhorter, all, you know, all, all these sorts of people and

00:04:40.460 also a lot of literary people. Cause that that's my world, but I also teach writing. So I just teach,

00:04:46.740 you know, personal essay, memoir, opinion, writing, that kind of thing. And I've always,

00:04:51.200 I've taught at Columbia and elsewhere, but I teach private workshops. So, you know, around,

00:04:56.760 you know, 2021 or so, I started noticing that the people who were coming into my workshops,

00:05:02.620 many of them, women, not, not all by any means, but a lot of the women in particular were like,

00:05:07.480 not necessarily wanting to write. Like they didn't necessarily want their stuff workshopped. They just

00:05:11.860 wanted a place to talk about things. And they knew that I talked about this stuff on

00:05:16.660 my podcast and I wrote about it. And I had a certain approach that wasn't like particularly

00:05:22.160 partisan and that appealed to them. And they, they just wanted a place to talk about this.

00:05:26.840 And they would come in and say, I can't talk about this with my friends. I've gotten kicked

00:05:32.440 out of my book club. I can't talk about this with, with my, you know, I have lost relationships.

00:05:38.160 Families are being torn apart over politics and over, you know, wokeness, Trumpism, whatever it is.

00:05:46.120 And I feel like I'm losing my mind and I feel so lonely. And they were silencing themselves in a way

00:05:53.040 that was a little bit different from the way men were silencing themselves. I mean, obviously they

00:05:57.460 were having a lot of the same problems at work. Like everybody wants to protect their, you know,

00:06:02.480 their paycheck and their situation at work, but women were really talking about relationships 1.00

00:06:07.220 a lot more and talking about how they had a lot to say and they weren't speaking up because they

00:06:15.380 didn't want to get excommunicated by the group and they didn't want to hurt people's feelings.

00:06:20.900 And I, so I was seeing this on like this micro level, like people were talking about how this

00:06:24.880 played out in their personal lives, normal people out in the world. And these were all kinds of women. 0.91

00:06:28.680 These were women with big careers. These were stay at home moms. These were women in their twenties

00:06:33.540 into their sixties, seventies, eighties. It was like so many all over the country, all over the world.

00:06:39.040 Yeah. These were not like necessarily girl bosses. These were all kinds of women. And I was seeing

00:06:46.020 this. And then I was also noticing that like in our sort of podcasting content creator space,

00:06:50.400 a lot of the people who are speaking up about culture war issues are men, not all by any means,

00:06:57.380 but it's a very male dominated space. And I started to think, well, why is that? And the

00:07:02.120 listener communities were like all men, like, you know, you feel like I went to a persuasion 0.95

00:07:06.560 hangout for instance, and I, there was one other woman there and we were like, whoa, what is going

00:07:11.460 on? And so I said, you know, I really need to start a heterodox women's community. Like somebody 0.99

00:07:17.760 needs to do that. And it's hilarious. Cause I'm the last person who ever would start a woman's 1.00

00:07:21.880 anything. I hate it, but I thought, you know, something is really wrong here because women are, 1.00

00:07:28.540 are, are left out of the conversation in the public arena and in their private lives. And they're,

00:07:33.800 they're leaving themselves out. And I want to try to fix that. And so I want to dive into, you said

00:07:40.060 the women have these conversations that they are afraid to have in public or they've gotten in 1.00

00:07:44.780 trouble. What are these conversations? Like what are the topics that you see come up again and again

00:07:49.140 in this environment? Yeah. So gender is a big one. We'll lock down COVID policies is another big 1.00

00:07:56.600 one. It's no accident that this started to emerge around COVID. You had a lot of people who were nice,

00:08:03.080 normal liberals and remain. So still identify as liberals. And they were suddenly like dealing

00:08:10.120 with school closures that didn't make any sense in many cases. And then the kids were at home and then

00:08:16.560 they could hear what the kids were learning on the zoom school. Like all of a sudden they knew what

00:08:20.560 was like, they didn't know what was going on in the classroom. And all of a sudden they're hearing

00:08:23.840 it. The huge mental health crisis among kids during these years. And they're like, what is going on

00:08:30.700 here? And a lot of the gender stuff started coming up. And these are a lot of people, a lot of parents,

00:08:35.700 a lot of moms who were, you know, very liberal. If my kid is gay, fine. Fantastic. No problem. 0.98

00:08:41.620 Even if my kid is trans, whatever that means. Well, that must just be like gay 2.0. Okay, fine. 1.00

00:08:47.920 Like, let's, that's, we're, we're liberal in this house. We believe, you know, et cetera, et cetera,

00:08:52.500 et cetera. And then they, you know, this whole movement started to, you know, kind of mushroom

00:08:58.340 before our eyes. And they're like, what is going on here? And if they questioned, you know, something

00:09:03.920 like gender affirmation or something like that, the neighbors would say, what are you a bigot? What are

00:09:08.600 you a transphobe? You know, you can't, you can't do that. And so, you know, they were,

00:09:12.320 they were really feeling like they were losing their minds. And I'm really careful about the way

00:09:18.980 I talk about this stuff. And I think they, they appreciated it. So, so those are two examples,

00:09:23.560 but we talk about everything in the unspeakeasy, like everything.

00:09:28.640 Well, no, are there others? I mean, so this is really interesting because I think one,

00:09:31.840 you're sort of charting where Republicans can win white educated women. It is on.

00:09:37.000 That's our motto. That is not our motto, but yes, but you're right. Yes.

00:09:42.400 This is what I'm thinking. Like, like where did you win this, this, this demographic? And what I'm

00:09:47.000 peeling here is one, I think is, is, is, is focus on, I think gender transition in children,

00:09:53.880 very easy fight. And for some reason, the liberals always take it. And then two is bureaucratic

00:09:58.940 overreach during COVID. I think Republicans need to live in the past. A little was this,

00:10:03.400 that was a good opportunity. Be like, Dems will try this again. Dems will try this again.

00:10:07.600 Very much the way Dems do. It's like January six, keep going back to the COVID stuff. And,

00:10:12.820 and what was happening in schools. And I also think school choice, it's like an also really easy

00:10:17.360 thing, but what else are you seeing like personal life wise? Like how do these, I guess here's a

00:10:22.340 question I have, is there regret about feminism and sort of the way it changed the expectations

00:10:28.800 that were ahead of them? We talk about that a lot. That's really complicated, right? Because

00:10:34.440 what it's like, how, how are we defining feminism? What era of feminism? Are we talking about second 0.82

00:10:39.860 wave feminism, third wave, fourth wave, digital feminism, online feminism, me too? Like, what are 0.95

00:10:45.680 we talking about? And again, like we have a range of ages. So we had women who were in, in their seventies 0.99

00:10:52.000 or eighties and they came of age in the sixties and seventies and benefited enormously from, from

00:10:59.060 second wave feminism. And then we have women who were in their twenties and thirties who were saying,

00:11:03.580 oh my God, like nobody told me that there's such a thing as a biological clock. And I, and I mean,

00:11:09.640 you know, I'm a Gen Xer. So I grew up, you know, with every single women's magazine, constantly being

00:11:15.580 like, tick tock ladies, there's a biological clock. So, you know, at some point along the way that,

00:11:20.500 you know, being told that fertility was limited somehow became like a, you know,

00:11:26.460 misogynist or something. So they stopped talking about it that way.

00:11:30.860 That's so interesting. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of like, I, when I, I grew up in like the,

00:11:35.500 the, the period of feminism where we denied that there were like unspoken dating norms. Like if, 0.93

00:11:41.640 if a guy invited you back to his hotel room that he probably expected something and literally did not

00:11:46.760 believe that. So like, it's interesting to see like, it's like, it's like,

00:11:49.440 dangerous situations. Yeah. It's worse than like biological clocks, not even like being a

00:11:54.280 warning sign. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Maybe don't go down an alleyway at two in the morning,

00:11:59.360 the dangerous neighborhood defense. Yeah. I mean, you know, right, right. Yeah. I mean,

00:12:03.760 I talk so much about this in my book, the problem with everything. I mean, this, it's like, you know,

00:12:07.860 just because we wish something was true doesn't mean it is true. Yes. We wish you could get blackout

00:12:14.140 drunk and pass out in an alley with your clothes half off and have nothing happen to you. Yeah.

00:12:20.520 True. It'd be so nice. And in a just world, it would be true, but we live in the real world. And

00:12:27.440 if you're not equipping people with, with the facts about reality, then you're doing them a huge

00:12:32.460 disservice. So these are the kinds of distinctions that we, that we talk about a lot and, and yeah,

00:12:37.920 but I mean, the thing with the unspeakeasy is it's so, it's all about the nuanced discussions.

00:12:43.460 It's, it's not partisan. I mean, we have women who are like Bernie Sanders voters and we have women,

00:12:48.880 you know, who are Trump voters. I don't think. You actually have Trump voters show up.

00:12:53.160 What's that? Yeah, we do. But I mean, I would say it's, I mean, it's changing all the time,

00:12:59.780 but I mean, I would say it's mostly people who voted for Obama, people who are really excited about

00:13:04.180 Obama and then are sort of being like, wait a second, something is off here, but, but having

00:13:10.480 a really kind of existential crisis about it. One of the things that you mentioned that I'd

00:13:15.240 love you to dig deeper into, because this is something we've noticed with our own fans of

00:13:18.400 our podcast is the generational change in terms of what's being hidden from people and the

00:13:24.600 expectations people have. One example from our podcast is somebody was like, it's really weird

00:13:28.700 to hear you guys talk about gays as a discriminated group when you were growing up, because at our

00:13:32.720 school, like they're the group that's not allowed to be punished. Like there's a, they were talking

00:13:36.240 about like a gay kid on their campus that like sold weed and he wasn't punished because the school

00:13:40.240 didn't want to be seen punishing a gay kid. And, and all the drug dealers are gay now. 0.99

00:13:46.820 I've heard this. Yeah. I've heard that this is because you just get away with it apparently. 0.99

00:13:50.500 And I'm, and I'm interested in like other, like, what are the big like shocks to you in terms

00:13:57.140 of generational change? Well, I mean, one of the things that really animated me to get,

00:14:03.440 you know, much more overtly involved in culture war discourse was what I saw around like online

00:14:10.020 feminism. I mean, even before me too. So around 2012, 13, 14, there was all this stuff online that

00:14:17.240 was, you know, it's never been a worse time to be a woman, you know, toxic masculinity, like, 1.00

00:14:22.840 you know, obsessing about being cat called on the street. You know, it's, it's so terrible. We live

00:14:27.740 in a rape culture, like all, all these ideas and I was seeing it. And in the meantime, like,

00:14:32.760 it's like actually women are doing better than ever before in the history of human civilization. 0.99

00:14:37.840 It's never been a better time to be a woman, you know, in the West anyway. And I, it just wasn't

00:14:44.680 making sense to me. And I was like, where's this coming from? Because I grew up in the seventies. I just

00:14:49.520 thought that was being a girl was great. And being a tomboy was great. Like being a girly girl was 0.97

00:14:55.420 not cool. And so I really started to think a lot about maybe why these changes occurred. And I

00:15:02.300 actually, you know, I was, I kind of had my nose at a joint, you know, I was rolling my eyes a lot

00:15:07.460 at like a lot of the, the, the, you know, the, the Jezebel stuff. I mean, Jezebel used to be a

00:15:13.020 brilliant, hilarious. Oh man. Yeah. Remember Jezebel. Wow. It was so great. They would like

00:15:18.580 actually, you know, this was back, you know, they would like take a magazine. Yeah. Yeah. Anna

00:15:23.340 Holmes, the brilliant Anna Holmes started Jezebel and, you know, sort of the early, the mid

00:15:27.880 two thousands, it was like, they would do all these things where they showed the airbrushing

00:15:32.080 and the magazine spreads and they would show like what actually happened. And it was great. And it was

00:15:35.880 very snarky and sarcastic and very empowered and not victim-y at all. And just very funny.

00:15:41.640 Yeah. And somewhere along the lines, it really changed. And it was like absolute preoccupation

00:15:45.880 with, you know, male tears and. It got angry. It got, it got angry and it got just very,

00:15:51.720 just stripped of, of its agency somehow. And I used to roll my eyes at it a lot and I still do,

00:15:58.540 but I think that, you know, we cannot forget that the nineties came along, you know, there was still

00:16:06.100 this like riot girl kind of grunge aesthetic for, for women. But then you get into like the late

00:16:12.140 nineties, early, you know, two thousands. First of all, you've got the Disney princess culture.

00:16:16.860 You've got this hyper girliness that little girls are exposed to. Everybody's a princess,

00:16:22.780 princess dress, glitter, fairy wings everywhere, which is fun and fine, but like very different from

00:16:28.160 the seventies when everybody was really just like gender neutral. And then you've got this

00:16:33.160 raunch culture. You've got girls gone wild. You've got spring break bikini, you know, just 0.76

00:16:38.480 absolute debauchery. And, and you've got, you know, pornography goes online, porn hub comes along.

00:16:46.420 We're just absolutely inundated with these hyper-sexualized, very degrading images around 0.84

00:16:53.400 sex and around womanhood. And it makes sense, doesn't it? That like women would resist that and 1.00

00:16:59.560 be very angry about it. And, and I never thought of like maybe a correlation being between honestly,

00:17:05.680 internet porn and, and women getting like feminism, becoming angry, taking totally, I mean, I would, 0.85

00:17:11.160 I would be, and I mean, cause I missed that stuff, right? Like in my time, yeah, I don't, I, and also

00:17:16.500 like, you know, the way that men think about sex and what they expect from a date or a sexual

00:17:22.500 encounter. I mean, you know, you know, like women younger than me talk, I mean, Sarah and I talk

00:17:27.500 about this all the time. People were obsessed. People say we're obsessed with like choking.

00:17:30.940 Okay. Like the, like the choking thing and in sex. Okay. No, this is something where I have to go

00:17:36.180 on a tangent. Cause we actually wanted to do like a, like Mary Harrington also complains about this

00:17:42.340 all the time. Yes. I wanted to do like Mary Harrington versus reality, because if you look at the

00:17:47.080 statistics on choking, the guys are choking the girls because all of the other girls are asking for 0.99

00:17:54.240 it. Right. Choking is much preferable. Girls are more turned on by being choked than guys are by 1.00

00:18:00.260 choking girls. Cause it's a big turn on. At a rate of like two to one. But is it a turn on or do they 1.00

00:18:05.280 think it's supposed to be a turn on? No, it's, it's, it's enough of a turn on where like auto

00:18:10.220 asphyxiation is a really major problem, like a safety problem. Like this came up in our sexuality

00:18:15.000 research when we, when, when Malcolm wrote the pragmatist guide to sexuality and we had to put in all

00:18:19.140 these warnings, we're like, okay, this is a big turn on for people guys. Don't do this.

00:18:24.820 We need to get into our sexual theory because I think I know why you might find this weird. So

00:18:30.200 we actually argue that there are the people that act like the kinks and the things that turn somebody

00:18:35.540 on are random. And I don't think that they are totally random. I think that there's specific

00:18:41.060 polygenic sexual patterns that emerge based on the social environment. Evolutionarily, our biology

00:18:48.160 thinks that we're in. Now, if a woman in a historic context was sleeping with tons of men, 1.00

00:18:56.440 that historically basically only happened if your tribe had been raided and you were a sex slave 0.99

00:19:02.440 and you were doing everything you can to stay alive. I think that there is a correlation between 0.86

00:19:08.880 women liking this incredibly demeaning sex and women who sleep around a ton. I think that what's 1.00

00:19:15.360 happening here is their bodies have shifted to a, oh, I'm a sex slave desperately trying to prevent my 0.99

00:19:22.340 captors from killing me. And I will like anything that keeps them from killing me. And so when I think 0.99

00:19:28.100 a woman, maybe like you or a woman who is more chaste or more like sexually reasonable engages with

00:19:33.700 this, they're like, what? I would never want that. And, and, and, or Mary Harrington or something like

00:19:38.640 that. And I think that that's where there's this, this unintentional is we don't tell girls that

00:19:43.880 sleeping was tons of people is going to change the type of things they find arousing. Yeah. Like

00:19:49.920 in other words, Malcolm saying that he thinks that, that our behaviors sexually, like, especially a

00:19:54.560 number of different partners will trigger different like arousal pathways as a sort of adaptive

00:20:00.680 evolved mechanism. I think there could be some truth to that. I mean, I don't, yeah, I know.

00:20:05.800 I'm not going to, because otherwise it is really weird, especially, I mean, we don't know, I mean,

00:20:09.600 sexuality is so mysterious, right? We don't know like where these things come from. I mean,

00:20:13.140 where does like autogynephilia come from? Like there's, you know, so many fetishes and, and 0.96

00:20:17.700 I have a hypothesis where autogynephilia comes from. I haven't done the episode yet, so I'm going to drop

00:20:23.100 it right here. Okay. And we'll do a full episode on it, but I actually think autogynephilia comes from a

00:20:27.780 misunderstanding of human sexuality. So in our book of human sexuality, we point out that sexuality

00:20:32.160 should actually be sort of a spectrum of arousal to disgust and not stopping at zero. A lot of

00:20:38.060 people are like sex is arousal or you're not aroused. It's like, no, it's, it's arousal to

00:20:42.560 disgust anything. Yeah. 10 to negative 10. If you, when you're aroused, what happens? Your people

00:20:47.760 dilate, you breathe in, you look at something longer. When you're disgust, what do you do? You look away,

00:20:52.320 your eyes contract and you hold your nose. They're likely using the same system. And we even see

00:20:57.220 evidence of this from the fact that anything that arouses the large portion of the population

00:21:00.400 is going to disgust a small portion. Anything that disgusts a small portion is going to arouse

00:21:04.340 the portion. People can be like, well, no, that's just everything. It's like, no, you don't see this

00:21:07.440 random effect in everything else. So you can look at something like fire. Fire does not like randomly

00:21:11.560 arouse a portion of the population, but like insects do. Pooh does. Like, why is that? Okay. It's a

00:21:16.660 misarousal to disgust system. Well, autogynephilia, I think it's actually a misinterpretation from a lot of

00:21:23.700 men, which is to say that a lot of men have a very strong, much stronger than women have to female 0.97

00:21:29.280 genitalia, disgust response to primary male sex characteristics. So specifically other male 0.91

00:21:36.220 penises, other male forms, et cetera. It causes like a visceral reaction in them. I'm one of 0.99

00:21:42.620 these men. I like find this disgusting. But do you think that's socially constructed or do you think

00:21:48.000 that's like inherent? It's probably more of a, I think it's an evolved, like try to screw the thing

00:21:53.140 that will produce kids. Right. Exactly. No, it's an adaptive trait. Yeah. If you're a woman, 1.00

00:21:58.960 historically, you know, there were periods in history, you look at around the agricultural

00:22:02.600 revolution for every 17 women having kids, only one male was having kids. So that means that you

00:22:08.520 had long evolutionarily relevant periods where women were expected to be in relationships with

00:22:13.040 lots of other women. So it is not surprising to me that women tolerance of other female sexuality

00:22:18.640 was something that was selected for. However, historically speaking, if a man let other men

00:22:23.300 sleep with a woman who he was pair bonded with, or just any other woman in the community, that's a 0.55

00:22:27.760 net loss to him because, you know, that's the other guy. No, I get that. No, I get that. I get that.

00:22:31.780 My guess is that what's happening with these guys is they're like, oh, well, when I like playing video

00:22:38.760 games, I really like playing as female characters because any other male character or avatar causes a

00:22:44.700 disgust reaction in them. When I like dressing up as other characters, I like

00:22:48.220 always being a female. And they don't realize what's driving this. It's not an arousal reaction, 0.84

00:22:53.200 but a disgust reaction to other males. And then they begin to identify. They're like, well,

00:22:58.320 if I always like whenever I'm in a role-playing game or whenever I'm in a video game or whenever

00:23:02.260 I'm a furry playing a female character, that must be because I secretly want to be a female,

00:23:07.000 but it's not. Anyway, that's my... Okay. No, I'm in no position to argue that.

00:23:13.600 Getting back to the way of feminism and what the generational differences. Yeah, I do think that 1.00

00:23:22.300 people, men and women, have plenty of reason to be angry and frustrated these days. I think that

00:23:29.380 women have reason and I think men have reason. I mean, you know, a lot of the ironic misandry

00:23:35.460 of that digital age, you know, making fun of men, you know, and I have a whole theory as to why that

00:23:41.460 was sort of, you know, sanctioned as an okay thing to do. Like, you know, all that sort of like,

00:23:46.500 you know, men are hard, men are toxic. What we now see with this like red-pilled right-wing 0.63

00:23:52.140 misogyny online, like that is a mimetic inversion, right? It is the same thing. I mean,

00:23:57.140 it's absolutely mirroring it. So as much as I hate to see that stuff online, it's like, well, guess what,

00:24:04.300 fourth wave feminist, you created this, you made this and now you're stuck with it or it's going 1.00

00:24:10.620 to have to correct itself. What's your theory? Well, I mean, if you go around telling men that

00:24:17.180 they're garbage, but you said, I have a theory as to why this. Oh, well, so, I mean, the thing is 0.98

00:24:22.580 around that time you started seeing this, you know, 2014 or so, like they would, they would be

00:24:29.920 horrible to men. And I think the idea was that because men have power, you're punching up. It's

00:24:36.120 okay to say terrible things to men, no matter, no matter what, no matter what like class level you

00:24:42.020 are, or they are no matter like any kind of power differential, it doesn't matter because by definition

00:24:47.580 of by virtue of being men, it was assumed that they automatically have more power. So it's okay to

00:24:52.540 be terrible to them. And my thing was like, why are you assuming that like, that is so unfeminist

00:24:57.440 to just like you, by, by assuming that you are effectively handing men power that they 0.95

00:25:01.820 don't necessarily have, you are putting them on a pedestal in order to punch them. Well, 0.97

00:25:06.200 how about realizing that women are doing so much better than men? Chances are any given

00:25:12.480 man and any given woman, that woman is going to have a higher level of education, have more 1.00

00:25:17.100 friends, better connections. Just her wellbeing is going to be at a higher level across any number

00:25:22.820 of metrics than any given man. So like, be careful who you're, you know, calling a piece

00:25:28.140 of garbage, you know, it's, it's really lame. And anyway, so this is what started this. And, 0.96

00:25:33.160 and I, I was very outspoken about these things around, you know, my, my book, the problem with

00:25:39.080 everything came out in 2019, which was all about this. And, and it was really about, you know,

00:25:44.580 being, it was, it was a self-interrogation, like looking at the different generations, like,

00:25:49.060 how come me, how come I, as a Gen X-er felt empowered in a way that these millennials and

00:25:53.980 Gen Z-ers apparently don't like, what is this about? And why am I so frustrated? And why do 1.00

00:25:58.300 I hate this stuff? And why am I rolling my eyes? And why are they mad at me and calling me an

00:26:02.700 anti-feminist? And, you know, it's all this kind of vortex of stuff. And people got really mad at

00:26:08.100 people for it. Like, they just thought, oh no, she's just a, she's gone to the right. She swung over to

00:26:13.040 the right. Megan. And, and the funny thing is like, this is nothing different than I had said.

00:26:18.420 I've been talking this way for my whole career. Yeah. The Overton window has shifted.

00:26:23.600 Yeah. Suddenly it was not allowed. And so here we all are in the, whatever,

00:26:28.100 alternative space, clown world, where we have be clowned ourselves. 0.72

00:26:33.460 Okay. I'm dying to see how you approach this, because this is something you mentioned in the

00:26:37.960 origins of these retreats. And now it's, it's kind of at the core of what I'm thinking about.

00:26:43.000 The, what we call like woke culture, progressive culture, we call it the urban monoculture. And we,

00:26:48.380 we argue that it's main value proposition is I will remove in the moment suffering or pain.

00:26:54.400 That's kind of like the big, like you cannot break that rule. And it sort of connects to everything

00:26:58.860 that can be very damaging about the movement because, you know, it causes a lot of bad downturn,

00:27:03.700 like downstream effects. You mentioned that many of the women who are joining on speakeasy retreats 1.00

00:27:09.320 are doing it because they don't want to hurt their friends' feelings. And they're, they're very much

00:27:13.460 part of this. And I think it's, it's a very female on average, it skews female, that general 1.00

00:27:18.900 desire to not cause conflict, to not hurt feelings. And yet I think for a lot of these women to deal 0.99

00:27:24.560 with the cognitive dissonance they're facing or to work through these problems, especially because

00:27:28.220 you have so many differing opinions showing up at these retreats, you know, you've got the Trump

00:27:31.620 voter, you've got the Bernie voter, you've got, you know, this, this varying range, they're going to

00:27:36.320 be feelings that are hurt. How do you manage that? Especially among like groups of women, 1.00

00:27:40.760 because I'm used to doing this and like retreats that are like primarily men, but how do you manage

00:27:45.780 it for women who are going there because they know it's a problem, but they also are of that culture 0.92

00:27:50.860 of like, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Yeah. I mean, I, I am always aware of it. And I mean,

00:27:56.840 I think we've been pretty lucky so far. So I started doing the retreats in 2022. We've probably done 12

00:28:04.760 by now or something. I mean, we did so many, we have done eight this year. Wow. So I try to keep

00:28:13.320 it very ideas based and concept based. So it's like, we don't have it. So, so the way the structure

00:28:19.180 of the retreats, it varies. I mean, most of them, you know, they're overnights. We go out to a

00:28:24.360 beautiful place and spend like three nights overnight. Sometimes they're just like for a

00:28:28.640 weekend, daytime only, but you know, we'll have like, I will make a schedule and we're going to

00:28:34.540 talk, you know, for 90 minutes about like, you know, why can't we talk about gender without losing

00:28:39.800 our minds? Like that will be the framing of the talk as opposed to these people are horrible and

00:28:46.020 crazy. It's more like, why do we feel crazy? How, why do I feel crazy? What led to it? And I'm going 0.87

00:28:53.360 to talk about my experience. I mean, I cannot say that there haven't been hurt feelings. I'm sure

00:28:58.940 that there have been. And we also have an online community. I mean, you know, we have a really

00:29:03.640 thriving private membership based online community that is, you know, very affordable. And, and we have

00:29:10.360 all kinds of things that they're like book clubs and guest speakers and all kinds of things. And I

00:29:15.740 know that there've been blowups. I mean, there've been, there are little satellite groups and people

00:29:20.300 are actually forming, they're also, they're also forming, no, not satellite groups, like

00:29:23.760 people, you know, there's a politics, you know, there's a sort of left-leaning politics discussion

00:29:28.940 group and a more center-right discussion group. And there's a, there's a snitch and bitch one that's 1.00

00:29:34.500 they, they knit and they talk about politics. The knitting world is very, very fraught. 0.98

00:29:40.540 Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I've watched it reported has done some great, yeah. Knitting world.

00:29:44.820 I can't control that. But so I, I, you know, most of the conflict I have just stayed out of,

00:29:51.160 but I think that they're really, really good, especially on the retreats. I think everybody

00:29:56.360 knows we're out somewhere. We want to have a good time. They've, you know, they have invested

00:30:01.760 a certain amount of resources and time to come and do this. They have, we have enough downtime that

00:30:09.040 they form friendships. I mean, they have come to these places because they are lonely and they want

00:30:14.560 connection. So the last thing you're going to do is, you know, deliberately get into a bad,

00:30:21.980 a bad dynamic with somebody. It's, it's just not, it's not worth it. I'm not saying it never happens,

00:30:27.740 but we've been really lucky. And frankly, the fact that we're all women really makes it so that any

00:30:33.180 kind of political differences that we have are just transcended by the fact that we all have this

00:30:37.880 thing in common. Like it really is an, it's an incredibly effective container for all kinds of

00:30:44.240 points of view and, and, and walks of life and backgrounds and experiences. I mean, it's,

00:30:48.600 it's pretty magical actually. That sounds awesome. And I, I'm also sort of getting the impression that

00:30:54.440 like going in with it being normative to disagree and like, it's okay to disagree is just like the,

00:31:01.260 the mere fact that that's a premise of the events probably helps is there's alcohol.

00:31:04.840 Yeah, of course. I mean, not in the morning or anything.

00:31:09.200 Sure. Yeah.

00:31:10.920 I want to move to the second topic here.

00:31:14.080 Antinatalism.

00:31:15.140 Antinatalism. So why shouldn't women be obligated to have children? 1.00

00:31:19.240 Well, some people are terrible parents and make terrible parents. So if you're going to be a

00:31:22.920 terrible parent, please do not force that person to be, to become one.

00:31:26.920 I concur.

00:31:27.800 I mean, shouldn't they learn to be better?

00:31:29.560 No, you can't learn that.

00:31:30.560 I mean, can you learn to be, yes. I mean, the thing is, it is normative to try to learn to be

00:31:35.340 a better parent. They're everything in the culture. I mean, maybe you see this differently,

00:31:39.520 but again, this might be a generational thing. I mean, I, you know, grew up, I assumed I would

00:31:45.300 have kids. It was assumed that everybody was going to have kids that everybody wanted them and that

00:31:50.540 everybody would be a good parent, that it would just come naturally to you. Even if you thought you

00:31:54.140 didn't want kids, the minute it's your own, everything will be different. And the fact is that most

00:31:58.340 people do want kids. I like people who don't want them are outliers and I'm an outlier,

00:32:02.860 but I just, it's just never something that I, I wanted to do. Oh my God. I really love that her

00:32:12.200 age of a baby. I have to say, like if I could just have that age.

00:32:16.120 Yeah, it was very short lived that age.

00:32:18.080 I know.

00:32:19.480 Well, so this is, this is something, were you a single kid yourself?

00:32:22.700 No, I have a brother. He doesn't have kids either.

00:32:24.340 Okay. I mean, yeah, it's definitely, I mean, there's people, people choose not to have kids

00:32:30.720 for all kinds of reasons. Yeah. Well, tell us about this book that you worked on about not having

00:32:35.120 kids. Yeah. Right. So the book is called Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed. 16 writers on the

00:32:41.140 decision not to have kids. So I wanted to do this project for a long time because it's like a

00:32:45.860 pronatalist book, by the way. It's ironic. Yeah. It came out in 2015, back when irony was still alive.

00:32:52.960 Yeah. Those are good days. Not anymore.

00:32:55.760 Right before everything, everything changed. But I always thought that people, you know,

00:33:01.660 the sort of childless by choice, child-free crowd had really bad PR because instead of just saying

00:33:09.140 like, oh, I just don't want to have kids. It's not for me. They would always be like, oh, I don't

00:33:14.360 have kids because I want to have a fabulous life and take expensive vacations. Or like my child has

00:33:19.420 four legs and drinks out of a bowl on the floor. Ha ha ha. My fur baby. Or my child is that boat in

00:33:27.320 my driveway. And it's like so ridiculous because nobody decided not to have kids so they could have 0.63

00:33:35.060 a boat or expensive shoes. Like if they, if, if any, if, if anybody is that, that way, I don't want

00:33:41.880 to know that person. Like, oh my God, I love it. That's absurd. And it was just, it was always amazing

00:33:48.000 to me that there was such a taboo against saying this just isn't for me, that people would like 0.99

00:33:55.640 present themselves as selfish assholes because this was somehow better as materialistic, shallow 0.94

00:34:03.920 pleasure seekers, because it was just not okay to say, hey, I think parenthood is really important 0.99

00:34:10.400 and it should only be done by people who want to do it. I mean, my position is like people who think

00:34:14.940 hard about this and choose not to have kids, they are paying the ultimate respect to parents

00:34:19.460 because they're saying that this job is really hard and it should only be done by people who

00:34:24.660 really want to do it. That's it. I like that. Oh, I, this is, it's so confusing to me though,

00:34:31.040 the, the bad PR and maybe this is, it's a generational thing. I'm not sure. I never plan on having kids

00:34:37.120 and I would tell people that, and they'd always going to be like, good for you. And I don't know

00:34:41.980 if that's like me personally, like they're just like, yeah, she'd be a terrible mother. Like my mom

00:34:47.060 was definitely in that camp. I thought she was saying that about me. No, no, no. She'd look at you

00:34:51.380 and she'd be like, oh, you're going to be such a great dad. And then she'd look at me and she'd be

00:34:54.020 like, and then she'd kind of look back at Malcolm. But yeah, I, I don't know. I know that some people

00:35:01.100 really feel that. And I'm so intrigued by this, that like a lot of people feel that shame and feel like

00:35:05.220 it's, you know, whereas I grew up in like, you know, with the environment, you know, it was the

00:35:09.140 proper decision to not have kids and that, you know, a lot of people were going to be shitty 0.87

00:35:14.660 parents like me, of course. Whoops. And then, oh no, what have I done? And yeah, I, I'm curious if 0.99

00:35:23.800 you, if you have come across people who celebrated or support it more normatively or, or maybe it's just

00:35:29.800 like, if you don't want to have kids, well, where did you grow up? Yeah. Like, I don't know.

00:35:34.800 I mean, I grew up, I grew up like, you know, my family's a little bit unusual, but I mean,

00:35:39.580 I grew up in, in, you know, outside of New York city, mostly we kind of moved around a lot. I grew

00:35:44.440 up in Texas and in New Jersey, but more traditional than, but yeah, I mean, I mean, look, I grew up in,

00:35:49.160 I was a teenager in the eighties and you know, families were way more normative. Yeah. They were

00:35:54.780 normal. And then, you know, but you were also like, if you were kind of educated classes, then that the

00:35:59.180 whole sort of like yuppie baby boom, like women is going to go, you know, put her power suit in, 0.96

00:36:04.460 her running shoes on and go to the office and achieve and then like marry her equal. And then 1.00

00:36:09.060 they were going to, you know, then they would have kids and like, do it all, do it all. Like

00:36:12.620 that was the fantasy. Yeah. And I definitely thought that was what I would do. I didn't really

00:36:17.320 question it, but I always was sort of like, well, I don't really want kids, but I will want them.

00:36:21.940 I'm sure like something will happen. One day I'll wake up and, you know, the biological alarm clock

00:36:28.680 will have gone off and it just really could never get there in an authentic way. But no,

00:36:34.840 I think you're right because I think that, you know, for the millennials, the climate stuff

00:36:39.360 did affect people. I mean, I used to say that anybody who said, I mean, I probably said this

00:36:45.640 like 20 years ago that anybody who says that they didn't have kids because of, because of the

00:36:51.120 environment as they used to call it is, is lying because they're just using that as an excuse.

00:36:56.420 But I don't know now, but, but that was before this like absolute hysteria and fear of God

00:37:04.860 was put into a whole generation. So, so I don't know. I mean, it's, it's a religious thing at

00:37:10.520 this point to me, to me, when I look at some people, they do seem to be a little cult-like

00:37:14.940 in regards to like, they don't seem to logically be thinking about the environment in any way

00:37:18.480 that I would, I guess, think about the environment.

00:37:20.200 Look, people run on emotion. It's really hard for people to decouple their personal experience

00:37:27.860 from data. It's really hard for people to decouple their, their feelings from, from facts,

00:37:34.700 sorry, facts versus feelings. And, you know, it takes a certain kind of person to do that. And,

00:37:41.060 you know, you guys are like that and I'm like that and Sarah's like that, but like, we're kind

00:37:45.120 of abnormal, you know, a little, a little outliers. Were there any arguments in the essays in the

00:37:52.840 book that surprised you? Like, you know, this, you know, that's an argument that makes me feel

00:37:57.760 really good about being child-free.

00:37:59.520 I mean, it really ranged. I mean, a lot of people spoke about their, you know, sort of trauma in

00:38:05.120 their families growing up and how they didn't want to repeat that. But, you know, I have to say that,

00:38:10.200 you know, one response to traumatic upbringing is to not want to have kids, not repeat it, but

00:38:15.560 an even more common response is to have kids so that you can correct it. Like, because of what

00:38:21.700 happened, I want to do this. I want to, I want to do over. Right. So I don't think we can,

00:38:26.600 we can generalize and say like, you know, this particular kind of household causes people to feel

00:38:32.460 one way or the other. I mean, everybody's wired so differently. You know, there was a lot of,

00:38:37.420 so the book came out in 2015 and one of the criticisms, I mean, it did, people were,

00:38:41.500 it did so well. That's a hilarious thing. It was like, I had been pitching this idea for years

00:38:46.000 and everyone in publishing was like, that's a terrible idea. Nobody will buy that. There's

00:38:49.700 no market for this. It was almost five stars, 794 reviews on Amazon.

00:38:53.880 It was on the bestseller list in the, in the childcare and parenting category. Cause I kept saying

00:38:59.980 like, no, parents are going to be fascinated by this. This isn't just like childless people are going

00:39:04.400 to buy this because it's really about, it's about the way we live our lives. It's not even about

00:39:09.760 like this particular decision. Like ultimately it's just sort of about what you want your,

00:39:13.840 your life to be. Yeah. But there was one of the criticisms of the book. And I think it's a fair

00:39:19.040 one was that a lot of the writers were kind of apologizing for the way they felt. There was a lot

00:39:24.520 of, well, I love kids, but I don't hate children or anything. Wrong approach. I hated kids before I had

00:39:32.200 kids. Yeah. Well, I kind of hate kids now, to be honest with you. They're gross. I don't know

00:39:38.160 what to say. I hated being a kid and I, yeah. So, so there was a lot of that. I will say, however,

00:39:44.480 that, that in 2015, that throat clearing was probably necessary in order to make the book palatable.

00:39:52.700 I don't think we would need it now, obviously, but I think that for whatever reason people needed to

00:39:59.600 hear that because there was still a lot of like, Oh, you must, you must just hate children.

00:40:04.280 If you have made this decision. And I think a lot of people were like, no, I really like kids. And

00:40:08.000 in fact, you know, there were people who talked about working with children and they talked about

00:40:11.800 feeling really important as like an aunt or an uncle. There were three men in the book. There

00:40:17.000 were, it was 13 women and three men, because I really wanted to include some male perspectives.

00:40:21.060 Cause I think men get overlooked in this discussion a lot. Totally. Totally. Well, that's really cool.

00:40:25.280 Anyway, I have had a great time talking to you. I hope to, you know, come on your podcast again

00:40:30.160 sometime. I think you guys' work is fantastic. Thanks. And yeah. And everyone, please, you can

00:40:36.860 learn more about everything that Megan does at megandahm.com. That's M E G H A M D A U M. 0.78

00:40:44.060 Yeah. And actually a better place to go is to the unspeakeasy.com or my sub stack. Yeah,

00:40:50.340 actually I haven't, I'm, I'm one of those people with too many websites and megandahm.com has not

00:40:55.620 been updated. Go to my sub stack. Oh yeah. Megandahm.substack.com. Yes. Yeah. Or the

00:41:00.700 unspeakable with Megandahm. You can look that up. I will say you are one of the only guests that we've

00:41:05.340 had where I actually recreationally watch your content. Yeah. Not all of it, but, but a lot of the

00:41:13.040 time I don't, you know, I'll have on guests where I'm like, I know we're ideologically aligned,

00:41:16.120 but I don't actually watch their stuff. Yeah. Um, Malcolm's a fan. Malcolm's a fan.

00:41:20.740 Thank you. But yeah. It's a good audience is wondering what to think. It's, it's very good.

00:41:25.240 Like urban monoculture looking at itself. I think it's, it's, it's, no, I mean, it's like, what do,

00:41:31.720 you know, educated, you know, successful women think of their own culture? Yeah. Well, 0.99

00:41:37.900 and we have a big age difference. I mean, we're 20 years apart. So I guess you get those different

00:41:41.720 perspectives. Yeah. I love it. Oh, it's so fun. Yeah. Especially when you want like a,

00:41:46.300 like a conversational chatty show, like a lot of podcasts, like just don't have that charisma.

00:41:51.380 You've got, you guys have the, as the kids say, you have the riz. Riz, the riz. I am too old for

00:41:59.340 this. I know. I love it. I've heard of the riz. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having a

00:42:04.660 spectacular day. Yeah. We have to have you back soon. All right.

00:42:08.060 And that's how Rubik's cubes work. Okay. So what are you going to do with your Rubik's cube? Once

00:42:23.720 it's solved, are you going to break it again? No. Well, I mean, you're just going to solve it.

00:42:32.480 Okay. Well, you just want what buddy? You want a Mickey mouse bicycle is not the bicycle we have.

00:42:48.620 All right. You want one that has Mickey mouse on it? And he wants a Mickey mouse bicycle.

00:42:54.900 We need new bikes for the kids when they're chasing dogs. Oh. I just want to give them our bikes.

00:42:59.560 Because right now they have two bikes. So two of them can ride down the hill. And they were doing

00:43:03.620 that for an hour. But Octavian got married. And Tori got married. Oh, that's fair.

00:43:12.060 So either more fancy. Because right now they're using cheap bikes at their house. So we can get them

00:43:16.760 either more cheap bikes or fancy bikes. Hey, stop talking to each other. What? Are you

00:43:21.940 going to stop talking to Mommy? No. Okay. Fried rice is almost done, buddy. I think we're good

00:43:28.140 to go. Oh, you want to talk to Mommy. You don't want Daddy to talk to Mommy. Oh, I can. Okay.

00:43:34.440 Mommy, I'm so thirsty. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Based Camp - November 07, 2024

The Things Women Aren't Allowed to Talk About in Public (With Meghan Daum)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript