The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 552. The Feminism Debate： Can Women Have It All？

00:00:00.000 This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

00:00:02.240 Watch Parenting, available exclusively on Daily Wire+.

00:00:05.780 We're dealing with misbehaviors with our son.

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00:00:15.380 Half of Western women, 30 and under, have no child.

00:00:19.660 Half of them will never have a child, and 90% of them will regret it.

00:00:23.660 This is a catastrophe.

00:00:25.020 Your life will be happier if you have a partner and children.

00:00:28.880 That's just true.

00:00:30.000 And people should be told that, and then they should be told the realities of fertility.

00:00:33.740 But in my case, Jordan, from that day to this, I've always loved working.

00:00:39.460 I love it.

00:00:40.820 It's totally exciting and interesting and intellectually stimulating to me,

00:00:46.400 and I cannot imagine not doing this.

00:00:49.400 We do potentially have a major societal issue in that men have their pathologies

00:00:56.740 pathologies that are expressed socially, aggression, antisocial behavior, drug and alcohol abuse.

00:01:03.260 But there's no reason to assume whatsoever that women wouldn't bring their own pathologies to the workplace.

00:01:08.780 I've seen women behaving terribly over the past five years in particular,

00:01:13.240 and they're at the apex of the bad messaging.

00:01:16.140 They're obsessed with abortion, which I just think speaks to a lot of things,

00:01:19.720 like the absence of religion in the public square.

00:01:21.700 So I just think the whole system is set up to breed that kind of woman.

00:01:25.280 It's become mandatory in our culture to assume that the feminist movement

00:01:44.520 has elevated women to the status that they now enjoy.

00:01:49.020 I'm not so sure about that.

00:01:51.300 I think that technological transformation and plumbing has had a lot more to do with that

00:01:57.980 than ideological movement, let's say, especially one based on resentment.

00:02:02.480 But in any case, it is the case that women occupy a position in society that was unheard of 100 years ago.

00:02:11.040 There's a downside to all of that, and the downside appears to be

00:02:16.140 the mounting unhappiness among young women, the precipitous decline in birth rates,

00:02:20.360 the collapse of marriage as a social institution,

00:02:24.780 and a spate of childlessness among young women,

00:02:29.640 as well as the feminization of our institutions in a manner that often borders on the pathological.

00:02:36.060 I discussed these issues today with Megyn Kelly, a woman who's married,

00:02:40.320 who has children, and who's had a stellar career.

00:02:42.680 And we attempted to sort through these authority issues and come to a conclusion

00:02:48.160 about how men and women might conduct themselves in relationship to one another

00:02:52.520 and what the consequences of that are for the way we think about ourselves and society.

00:02:58.960 You've had a very successful career,

00:03:01.400 and I'm kind of curious about how you've balanced your life and your work

00:03:06.320 and how that's worked for you and what advice you would give young women

00:03:11.580 who are apparently struggling quite radically.

00:03:15.540 Now, young men have their problems, there's no doubt about that,

00:03:19.100 but I think it's something in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 percent of liberal young women in particular

00:03:25.060 who are between the ages of 18 and 34 who suffer from at least one diagnosable mental disorder, for example.

00:03:35.980 And, you know, and polls show pretty consistently that since the 1960s,

00:03:41.040 the average self-reported happiness of young women in particular

00:03:46.660 has declined and quite precipitously.

00:03:50.620 So let's start with that.

00:03:52.300 Well, I'm not surprised to hear those stats about liberal women in particular

00:03:57.120 because, look, I see it with my own daughter who's 14.

00:04:01.380 The schools today try to exploit young girls and young women's empathy

00:04:07.740 to bend them to their democratic norms.

00:04:12.960 They try to impose all of their left-wing viewpoints on these young girls

00:04:17.400 by tapping into the empathy vein.

00:04:20.880 You know, if you don't support Black Lives Matter, you're racist.

00:04:24.280 If you don't support trans girls, meaning boys, playing in girls' sports, you're a bigot.

00:04:30.540 They're bullied.

00:04:31.740 Don't be a bully.

00:04:32.660 Be a nice girl.

00:04:33.720 That's how we've been raised for time in memoriam,

00:04:37.360 to be nice girls who get patted on the heads.

00:04:39.820 And you're not a nice girl if you're a bully or a bigot or a racist.

00:04:44.020 So I'm not surprised at all that girls who don't get inoculated against that kind of thinking at home

00:04:52.060 who go into any normal school system will be indoctrinated in that kind of thinking

00:04:57.740 and they will wind up very unhappy, very unhappy,

00:05:00.940 because her natural instincts will be to fight against things like watching a boy take all of her blue ribbons.

00:05:07.480 But she's been told by all the people she respects, in the school setting at least,

00:05:11.900 that she's a bad person if she objects to that.

00:05:14.740 And I think that incongruous feeling leads to unhappiness.

00:05:18.800 I think the reward system of K-12 and college education right now is for people who play the victim.

00:05:27.280 And so much the better if you could actually be a victim.

00:05:30.420 That would be terrific.

00:05:31.500 You will be celebrated.

00:05:33.340 You will be the cool one.

00:05:34.580 You'll get the snaps from your fellow classmates and your professors.

00:05:38.700 Writing your college essay about what a happy childhood you had

00:05:42.100 and your intact family that supported you and loved you along the way

00:05:46.260 will not get you in anywhere.

00:05:48.800 Maybe three universities in the United States.

00:05:51.760 But writing about the destitution derby that you have suffered from zero to 18 can open doors

00:05:58.660 that would otherwise be closed to you, especially if you happen to be a white person, a girl or a boy.

00:06:03.900 So all of the incentives are set up in a very backward manner.

00:06:08.020 And I think the other problem facing young liberal women is young liberal men

00:06:13.360 who, by and large, are being turned into these, it's derogatorily referred to as soy boys, but I get it.

00:06:21.040 Like, they're taking the masculinity out of our young men and then telling them that's the only way that they're going to be accepted.

00:06:27.720 And especially young liberal men are buying that and walking around in Birkenstocks with their Starbucks,

00:06:35.960 being quick to cry at any emotional wound.

00:06:39.400 And crying's not, that's fine.

00:06:41.300 You can cry as a man.

00:06:42.160 But most women would like somebody who doesn't do it all the time in response to all emotional upset.

00:06:49.040 They prefer the hunter-gatherer types.

00:06:51.100 And so these young women I talk to on college campuses are looking around for a man who will protect her,

00:06:58.180 who will help lead, who is not afraid to enter hand-to-hand combat if necessary,

00:07:05.100 or just rhetorical combat if necessary,

00:07:07.920 and who, while he treats her as an equal, will put his coat over her shoulders if it's a cool night out,

00:07:14.780 will absolutely protect her if somebody messes with her on the street,

00:07:18.400 will, like my husband does with me, gently move me to the side that's not facing the traffic along the road.

00:07:25.800 Just those small little things that a man does for a woman,

00:07:28.620 and women have a different list that they do for their men if they're in a kind and loving relationship.

00:07:32.720 And instead, what they're getting is somebody who wants to braid each other's hair,

00:07:36.960 which would depress you and make you question the whole experience.

00:07:42.080 Yeah, well, it's not surprising, I suppose, that boys are turning in that direction.

00:07:47.280 You know, I met a young man in a restaurant a while back.

00:07:51.980 He wasn't looking too bad when he approached me.

00:07:56.600 He was a waiter.

00:07:58.240 And he said that he had started listening to first Ben Shapiro and then me six years ago, something like that.

00:08:05.060 And that prior to that, it was his proclivity and his friends to compete with one another with regard to their victim status, let's say,

00:08:18.980 and to present themselves as radically feminized to the young women that, in principle, they were with.

00:08:26.960 He said that was necessary with the girl he had dated at one point because she was very radically liberal.

00:08:35.060 And that was a job requirement, you might say.

00:08:38.680 And he shook all that off and told me and my wife, who was sitting with me, that he was much happier for it.

00:08:46.300 But it doesn't really surprise me, Megan, because boys are not well served in the education system at all, right?

00:08:55.540 Their play preferences, I was just reviewing some stats on ADHD over medication among young boys with one of my producers.

00:09:04.460 And what the original hypothesis, such as it was with regards to hypothetically hyperactive boys, was that stimulants, which is what Ritalin is, have a paradoxical effect on hyperactive young boys, calming them down.

00:09:23.860 And that's complete bloody biochemical nonsense.

00:09:26.600 And it's a lie psychologically.

00:09:28.420 Basically, what stimulants do is focus people intently on whatever they happen to be focused on.

00:09:37.300 And they have exactly the same effect on ordinary boys as they do on hyperactive boys, not least because 90% or 95% of hyperactive boys are actually normal.

00:09:50.860 Stimulants suppress play behavior in animals.

00:09:54.560 So, if you give stimulants to young juvenile rats, for example, who are very playful, then they stop playing.

00:10:02.020 And that's exactly why they're administered to young boys in schools.

00:10:06.080 And so, their play proclivity is punished quite severely.

00:10:12.360 Any attempt they make to be competitive in a world of cooperative games, and there's really no such thing as a cooperative game,

00:10:20.780 although all games that are rule-governed or cooperative, any sign of ambition they have is pilloried.

00:10:27.920 They're associated constantly with the destructive patriarchy and presented to the world as enemies of the planet.

00:10:35.880 And so, it's not surprising that they tilt in a, let's say, feminized direction, especially to appease the angrier women.

00:10:43.340 And there's a deeper problem here that I'd like your thoughts on.

00:10:46.500 You know, the most woke disciplines in the universities, and that's really saying something, are the female-dominated.

00:10:54.600 The more female-dominated they are, there's another contributing factor, right?

00:10:59.260 So, the less cognitive power the discipline requires, the more woke it tends to be.

00:11:05.540 So, physics is about the least woke discipline, whereas social work, well, you know, enough.

00:11:12.260 The less said about social work, the better.

00:11:15.340 But, so, we have an issue here, too, because I have a suspicion.

00:11:20.380 You tell me what you think about this, because I'm very curious,

00:11:22.580 that the default female ethos, let's say, is nurture, this isn't really a radical idea, I don't think, is nurture to infant.

00:11:37.660 And in the absence of managerial training, let's say, or rigorous mentoring in the operation of large-scale organizations,

00:11:48.760 every situation turns into an infantilized family.

00:11:56.260 I mean, it's become absolutely preposterous in universities.

00:12:00.400 I mean, the faculty, to their own discredit, have been infantilized by the administrators.

00:12:05.180 You know, we have never seen a large-scale incursion of women into large organizations prior to the last 40 years.

00:12:15.540 That's never happened in human history.

00:12:17.680 And we have no idea what the social psychopathology that would be associated with that, as well as the positive benefits.

00:12:25.020 We have no idea what the social psychopathology might be.

00:12:28.320 But the infantilization of everyone and everything might well be it.

00:12:33.180 And so I'm curious about what you think about that.

00:12:37.240 You know, there is data, for example, that women prefer male supervisors.

00:12:43.380 So that's one.

00:12:44.620 You know, it's not overwhelming.

00:12:45.900 It's not overwhelming data, but it's suggestive.

00:12:48.740 And obviously, that doesn't mean there are no good female managers.

00:12:53.800 We're talking about broad trends here.

00:12:55.960 But we do potentially have a major societal issue in that men have their pathologies that are expressed socially.

00:13:07.920 Aggression, antisocial behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, a tilt towards a kind of self-serving narcissism in some cases.

00:13:18.380 But there's no reason to assume whatsoever that women wouldn't bring their own pathologies to the workplace.

00:13:24.700 And it is the female-dominated institutions that seem to be the most woke.

00:13:30.820 I mean, and that's how the 18 to 34-year-olds vote as well, right?

00:13:34.260 They're radically out of phase with the entire rest of the culture.

00:13:37.480 So what do you think about that?

00:13:41.180 How would you reflect on that, like, in your personal experience with the organizations that you've worked with and the managerial situations that you've been in?

00:13:51.760 It makes perfect sense to me.

00:13:53.560 I accept that as a likely cause of the problem that we're seeing and probably the more than likely culprit of it.

00:14:01.080 I see exactly what you're saying.

00:14:02.480 And, you know, it's, I guess with today's generation, I ask, is it, it's like a chicken egg.

00:14:09.120 Like these woke institutions are trying to exploit girls' natural empathy, as I said.

00:14:14.500 But those women at some point were the first ones in to a system that hadn't been exploiting their empathy.

00:14:22.620 And they ran wild with it, clearly, because we're now at the place we are.

00:14:26.780 And I see it being done.

00:14:27.980 I see, I, we just played videotape on the show today from peak BLM, right after George Floyd.

00:14:33.840 Oh, yeah.

00:14:34.340 The riots everywhere.

00:14:35.460 And one of those infamous videos where BLM members got up in the face of, it happened to be a woman of color.

00:14:43.260 She looked Latina to me, sitting there trying to eat her lunch at an outdoor cafe.

00:14:48.420 And the BLM crowd was moving in on her, standing over her, screaming in her face, trying to get her fist up to say, Black Lives Matter.

00:14:58.280 And it was all white women.

00:15:01.500 And I remember this from when I lived on the Upper West Side, which included 2020 during the George Floyd-a-palooza.

00:15:07.400 And it was all white women who tended to have some money in their Lululemon out there at these BLM protests.

00:15:16.260 It's like, okay, these women would never want that crowd coming back to their apartment building with them at the end of the day.

00:15:22.180 But they want to be out there on the streets and pretend that they're one of them, that they understand the experience that, you know, your average inner city person of color has had.

00:15:30.000 It's a lie.

00:15:31.520 So I accept because I've seen women behaving terribly over the past five years in particular.

00:15:37.240 And they're at the apex of the bad messaging.

00:15:40.340 And they're the last to come along on the Trump train, which is also disturbing.

00:15:44.740 You know, those same stats I've seen from that you're citing with the young women in particular.

00:15:48.740 They're obsessed with abortion, which I just think speaks to a lot of things like the absence of religion in the public square.

00:15:56.160 No one's even telling them the other side or the other options.

00:15:58.820 You know, we had laws at one point where you'd have to show women the picture of the fetus before they could abort it.

00:16:04.320 And those got struck down.

00:16:05.680 It was like, no, you can't even show her what she's doing.

00:16:08.320 So I just think the whole system is set up to breed that kind of woman.

00:16:12.800 Like, you'd almost think that it's the kind of woman that society wants because they're so prevalent.

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00:17:18.920 Well, you know, the question is, you know, did we tilt in that direction with, there's certainly a strain of feminism that developed particularly in the 1960s, although it was there long before that, that really did in some ways aim at that kind of women.

00:17:34.700 And let me ask you something as well that's deeper, you know, I've studied malevolence as deeply as I can for a very long time and the philosophical representations of malevolence and the theological representations of malevolence.

00:17:51.500 And the deepest representation is Luciferian, and that trope underlies like the evil scientist in, you know, popular entertainment, the idea of the intellect gone mad, the intellect that worships itself that then usurps and attempts to put itself in the highest place.

00:18:14.340 And so there's an idea that this is Milton's idea that, you know, Lucifer, who's the spirit of the unbridled intellect, the light bringer, is the spirit that was most finely made that went most dreadfully wrong.

00:18:28.820 And so the psychological idea there is that there isn't anything more remarkable about human beings than their cognitive ability.

00:18:37.760 But if it becomes master instead of serving something higher, then look the hell out.

00:18:43.260 Now, there's an echo of that that's very, very deep with regards to the maternal instinct.

00:18:50.380 And I think this is what's played out in the Genesis story of the consort between Eve and the serpent.

00:18:57.100 What seems to me to happen is that Eve clutches the poisonous serpent to her breast.

00:19:04.640 And so that's an overextension of that empathy that you described, which is the core element, let's say, of the maternal instinct, and really the instinct that the species itself depends on, right?

00:19:17.940 Human beings have the longest dependency period of any creature by a lot.

00:19:23.240 And human infants are markedly helpless.

00:19:26.560 And so that self-sacrificing compassion that's at the core of the maternal instinct is absolutely vital.

00:19:36.760 But as Freud pointed out, if that goes wrong within families and overextends its domain, so that, for example, that infant-mother bond isn't attenuated as the child develops, then there's nothing that's more devouring than the mother.

00:19:57.700 And that's the story of Hansel and Gretel, right?

00:20:00.500 They go out into the forest, chased there in part by the fracturing of their family.

00:20:11.140 And they find a gingerbread house, which is a little bit too good to be true, right?

00:20:17.440 It's not only a house, but it's made out of candy.

00:20:19.980 And so maybe you might suspect that the jig is up when something's painted that beautifully on the outside.

00:20:27.260 I'm oh so compassionate and embracing.

00:20:30.720 And of course, inside there's a witch whose goal is to fatten up the children and to make them helpless so that she can eat them.

00:20:38.040 And so fairy tales are pretty vicious in that sort of representation, but that's also a portrayal of how all devouring the maternal embrace can be if it doesn't, if it overextends its domain.

00:21:00.680 Now, you know, it's not like men get off easy in that Genesis story, by the way, when Eve decides she's going to put herself at the center of the moral universe because that's what she does.

00:21:11.360 She's tempted to become like a god because that's the temptation.

00:21:15.480 And she clutches the serpent to her breast.

00:21:18.120 Adam doesn't object and he goes along for the ride.

00:21:23.740 And then later in this story, when God wants to walk with Adam so that they're working together, let's say, Adam is hiding behind a bush because he's realized that he's naked.

00:21:37.660 And so the woman and the serpent have made himself conscious and now he doesn't have the courage to walk with God.

00:21:44.880 And when God asks him why, he blames the woman and he blames God for making her.

00:21:51.480 And so there's a, like, I don't want to lay this all at the feet of women because what I saw in the universities, for example, is that, let's put it this way, that when the maternal instinct went astray, partly because it didn't have any valid target, the men just backed off and didn't oppose it.

00:22:10.760 And so, you know, they're, they're complicit in this disintegration.

00:22:18.260 But we do have a problem on our hands that's not trivial.

00:22:22.180 And we also see this reflected in a growing political divide between young men in particular and young women all across the world, right?

00:22:29.540 Young men are becoming more conservative.

00:22:31.400 Yeah, I know.

00:22:32.480 Young women are becoming, and young women are becoming more liberal.

00:22:35.800 And they're also not finding each other very effectively, the political, you know, who would have guessed that, you know, so we got two problems.

00:22:45.680 Men and women both have the vote.

00:22:47.380 Now, does that mean they're political enemies?

00:22:49.600 Because that's certainly one of the things that appears to be happening.

00:22:52.320 And then we have the mass migration of women into workforces of a size where empathy cannot be the regulating principle.

00:23:02.880 You know, I'll give you one more example, and then I'll turn it over for your comments.

00:23:07.960 Because if empathy was the appropriate ethos for operation in a corporation, let's say, beyond the size of the family, then the personality trait agreeableness, which is the index of compassion and empathy, would positively predict workplace performance, particularly among managers.

00:23:30.800 But it isn't agreeableness that predicts, it's conscientiousness, which is a cold virtue that typifies conservatives more than liberals.

00:23:41.760 Big organizations run on raw cognitive power and conscientiousness.

00:23:46.260 They don't run on empathy.

00:23:48.920 Little bitty families run on empathy, especially when there are infants.

00:23:52.820 But that doesn't scale.

00:23:54.680 And I actually think that's why the personality trait conscientiousness, which is diligence, orderliness, industriousness, it's associated often with patriotism and more conservative values.

00:24:05.940 I think that's why it evolved.

00:24:08.100 Because empathy does not scale.

00:24:11.500 Because everyone isn't a big, happy family.

00:24:14.440 And once you exceed kin group size in your organization, you have to turn to a different ethos.

00:24:20.740 And I think that's particularly problematic for unconscientious women who self-aggrandize on the basis of their compassion.

00:24:33.100 There's a lot in there, and I agree with a lot of it.

00:24:35.640 I keep thinking about the fact that, look, I was raised, I'm a Gen Xer, and I was raised by a boomer, right?

00:24:43.620 Who was part of that first wave of feminism who, you know, they were told you can have it all, you can have it all at the same time.

00:24:51.080 And you're kind of a failure if you don't have it all at the same time.

00:24:54.660 And that generation of mothers did as told and left their kids alone for a large portion of their childhoods.

00:25:03.720 And that wasn't a bad thing.

00:25:05.560 And I have a great relationship with my mom.

00:25:07.380 I'm not saying I'm glad she wasn't around that much, but it led to self-sufficiency and independence and absolutely no overbearing motherhood.

00:25:16.840 That wasn't a thing in the 1970s or the 1980s.

00:25:20.260 We were so neglected.

00:25:21.640 We were called latchkey kids where you had a key around your neck to let yourself back in after you walked home from school.

00:25:27.440 And you didn't really know when your parents were going to come home.

00:25:29.660 There were rules like, you know, be home when it gets dark.

00:25:32.800 Your parents had no idea where you were and really didn't care.

00:25:35.440 Those were good things.

00:25:37.900 Those were, you know, building the ties for appropriate separation at the earliest possible age.

00:25:43.880 Love always remains, caring and all that stays, but not overbearing motherhood or fatherhood for that matter.

00:25:51.520 And that generation, so that's me now and maybe my brother and sister, you know, who are older.

00:25:57.360 And I think we'll raise the next, we'll raise the solution to the problem that came just a little bit after we came.

00:26:06.580 Because I think what started to happen was those women got into the workforce and they were doing it all and they would commit to work because there was an understanding that they would not blow it for the next generation of women.

00:26:16.780 And they'd been given the keys to the kingdom.

00:26:19.280 Now you come in and you do well at these jobs and you don't talk about your kids and you don't leave to go home early and you don't insist on flexible work schedules.

00:26:28.020 So the women did it and they raised tough Gen X kids who were fine.

00:26:33.140 But as they started to get more rights at the office and it sounds great on paper, okay, flex time and I only have to work part time and I have to leave early for this thing and the other thing and so on.

00:26:41.500 And the workplace started to bend more to supporting what mothers needed in their motherly roles.

00:26:47.860 The mothers were home more and I think started to overcorrect, started to see like go from the latchkey kid to the, you know, the helicopter parent, right?

00:26:59.240 Where I'm never leaving you alone.

00:27:00.640 I'm going to somehow overcompensate and be the parent that I didn't have or that the generation before me didn't have.

00:27:07.440 And slowly we started to migrate to parents who never leave their children alone.

00:27:11.780 Mothers and fathers for that matter, but especially mothers.

00:27:14.640 And that leads to helplessness.

00:27:16.540 And it leads to leaning into victimization and finding the newest disorder and overplaying any injury because you can get attention that way.

00:27:24.820 Especially when you have a mother whose competition you can potentially beat by overacting your injury or your upset, etc.

00:27:32.440 Like if you're in competition with a job and she's got to go to the job and you know that, you don't do anything as the child.

00:27:38.020 You understand that's the deal.

00:27:39.020 But if there's a split between her attentions and you've got to play for it, I think you lean into more upset, more victimhood, more things that would get a mother's attention naturally.

00:27:48.880 Like I have a disorder.

00:27:50.200 I'm not well.

00:27:51.460 I need extra help.

00:27:52.420 Yeah, well, that'll get her attention if she doesn't have anything better to do and it has no sense, right?

00:27:58.700 But that is another example of that exaggeration of compassion to the point that it becomes toxic.

00:28:04.900 And the fact that it's necessary to human beings, especially in the early years, like vital, also means that it's a very difficult force to regulate.

00:28:18.080 I mean, the general rule for caretaking, and this goes for the elderly as well, pretty much anybody you're actually taking care of is don't do anything for anyone that they can do for themselves, right?

00:28:30.700 Because you're actually stealing from them, not helping them, you know, I mean, certainly one of the rules for psychotherapy insofar as there are actual rules for that enterprise, which has probably become now more destructive than useful, is that people have to make their own way, right?

00:28:49.300 You listen, and you listen, and you help people strategize, and you ask them questions, but you don't provide them with the direction for their life because that's their enterprise.

00:29:01.120 And that requires a very, well, it requires a heart bound on compassion, that's for sure, because you don't want to get in there and interfere.

00:29:11.040 Can I ask you a little bit about the way that you constructed your own family and career pathway?

00:29:18.300 Because I've been working with my wife, trying to sketch out, she does a podcast on issues related to femininity, and we've been trying to sketch out, at least hypothetically, something like a appropriate timeline for young women, because they have no real guidance in that.

00:29:38.980 And so, here's a stat for you, we hit this milestone last year, half of Western women, 30 and under, have no child.

00:29:50.920 So, it's a little more than half now, so we hit more than half.

00:29:57.340 Half of them will never have a child.

00:30:00.720 And 90% of them will regret it.

00:30:03.980 That means we're setting up, this is a catastrophe, this is a catastrophe, if it's true, and the data are pretty clear, I believe.

00:30:10.400 This means we're setting up one woman in four for isolation, right?

00:30:19.440 And that gets increasingly brutal as you get older.

00:30:22.640 And I also think we're setting up that 25% of women to be preyed upon in a manner like nothing we've ever seen when they enter their later years, because they'll have no one to keep an eye out for them, especially during times of vulnerability.

00:30:40.780 This is not going to be good.

00:30:42.640 So, let me sketch out an idea for you, in terms of a timeline, and tell me what you think about that.

00:30:49.380 I mean, one couple in three have fertility problems by the age of 30.

00:30:55.200 And that's defined as not being able to conceive within a year of trying.

00:31:00.260 Right.

00:31:00.380 And so, it seems pretty obvious, all assistive, reproductive technology, notwithstanding, which is very expensive and very unreliable, and certainly not something to be depended on, except in cases of absolute necessity.

00:31:20.180 Having your children before you're 30 is a wise move if you want to ensure that it's going to happen.

00:31:27.360 And so, then the question is, order.

00:31:31.400 You know, we're best served, probably, as human beings to have our children in our 20s and probably our early 20s.

00:31:41.380 And, of course, that's going to be more demanding for women, more demanding and more of an opportunity, I would say, because each child really requires something approximating three years of pretty dedicated care.

00:31:55.880 You know, the data seem to show that if your child is three and reasonably social, then social education, daycare, can work.

00:32:09.460 Before that, especially with transformation of caregivers, it doesn't look like it's a very good idea.

00:32:14.960 So, you need three years per child, and maybe you want two children or three children, and so that's something like, I don't know, five or six years that you have to devote to it.

00:32:26.320 Now, women live about six or seven years longer than men, so that's kind of an interesting little twist on the whole situation.

00:32:33.020 And if you started your career at 30, you could have 40 years of career, which is a lot.

00:32:41.520 And that way, I would say, in some ways, you get to have your cake and eat it, too, although perhaps not at the same time, you know, which we had talked about early.

00:32:50.920 But there are no real guidelines developmentally for young women, and they don't know what to do, and they're increasingly not married, and they increasingly don't have children, and they're increasingly unhappy.

00:33:03.100 And it doesn't look to me like slave to a corporation is necessarily a substitute for family life and children.

00:33:13.040 Now, some people have a career.

00:33:14.560 You have a career.

00:33:15.680 Some people have a career.

00:33:17.540 Most people have jobs.

00:33:19.020 So, anyways, I'm not saying that that's a hard and fast rule, but I don't really see any way around it.

00:33:30.260 And here's another little twist that is worth adding.

00:33:33.460 I think most people who are popular and attractive get five chances to establish a permanent relationship, and that's about it.

00:33:42.120 That's fascinating.

00:33:43.380 Right?

00:33:44.220 Well, you know, I figure it's a year.

00:33:48.160 To kind of get to know someone.

00:33:50.160 Yeah.

00:33:50.880 And then assume that, you know, you're fortunate enough so that people are lining up, which is not that likely and probably not the position that most people are in.

00:34:01.260 Right.

00:34:01.460 And so, maybe it's two years, including the failure, and five is a 10-year span, you know?

00:34:09.760 I mean, I'm not trying to be overwhelmingly pessimistic, but I wouldn't say it gets easier as you get older.

00:34:17.300 You get more different from other people.

00:34:21.420 It isn't easier to establish a relationship when you're older, I wouldn't say.

00:34:25.720 And more people are snatched up.

00:34:27.060 Well, there's that.

00:34:29.400 That's a big problem.

00:34:30.600 You know, who's left?

00:34:32.280 And the other issue, I would say, too, that's germane is, why wouldn't you want to spend your young years with the person that you want to be with?

00:34:43.700 You know?

00:34:44.280 You're going to, what, forestall that?

00:34:45.840 For what reason?

00:34:47.300 You know, I got married to Tammy when I was 27, I think, and one of our regrets is that we didn't do that earlier.

00:34:55.560 Now, there were reasons for that, and maybe they were valid.

00:34:58.300 Probably they weren't.

00:34:59.860 But I'm not happy that that time was missed.

00:35:05.940 It would have been better to have spent it together.

00:35:08.600 So, I'd like your thoughts on that.

00:35:10.140 I mean, the timeline, just that general layout.

00:35:13.240 I mean, I think there's no problem in setting out those honest truths, which are, your life will be happier if you have a partner and children.

00:35:22.800 I just think that's just true.

00:35:24.340 And people should be told that.

00:35:25.840 And then they should be told the realities of fertility.

00:35:28.640 Because those are realities that, you know, can be potentially meddled with, but there's no guarantee.

00:35:34.480 And if you cannot, if you're one of the people who cannot meddle with it, and you missed your window, it will be a lifelong regret that will be unsolvable and will be like a deep source of pain, an ongoing deep source of pain.

00:35:46.920 So, it's not something that you could easily brush off.

00:35:48.980 And so, all those truths need to be shared while at the same time prizing and sharing the fullness of the rewards of motherhood with young women, which isn't done.

00:35:59.560 That's the other piece of it.

00:36:00.540 Like, if you listen to Jordan, if you listen to Ben, if you listen to, you know, The Daily Wire, you'll hear that.

00:36:06.160 You won't hear motherhood, early motherhood, or any kind of motherhood generally bashed.

00:36:10.280 You'll hear it praised.

00:36:11.440 But in society still, in the movies, on the television shows that women watch, it's not.

00:36:17.680 You're still, like, you still hear, she's just a stay-at-home mom, you know, or she doesn't work.

00:36:23.820 They still don't look at, you know, motherhood as something that's, you know, something valuable.

00:36:28.540 Like, work as though it's a bad word.

00:36:30.340 Motherhood is work, too.

00:36:31.500 It's great work.

00:36:32.320 It's life-fulfilling work.

00:36:33.700 But it still has this, like, and women who I know all over New York, and now I'm in Connecticut,

00:36:40.600 they say things like, it's very important to me that my daughter see me going to a business meeting.

00:36:47.520 Like, mommy's got a business meeting, or going to the office if they have just, like, some small meeting.

00:36:52.220 And I'm like, why?

00:36:53.720 Why?

00:36:54.480 Because they don't think the daughter will think that they're important if they don't have some sort of business pressing on them.

00:37:00.860 Which is absurd, and hashtag part of the problem, right?

00:37:03.360 Like, no, we all need to be teaching young girls and boys that motherhood is enough.

00:37:10.140 Like, being a mother is a completely valid, beautiful, awesome, really important choice.

00:37:15.520 I actually went to my daughter's school, and I said, I think it's fine you have career night.

00:37:18.800 It's an all-girls school.

00:37:20.140 And you bring in doctors and lawyers and journalists and whomever.

00:37:23.320 You need to bring in a stay-at-home mom.

00:37:25.600 You need to have somebody stand up there and tell the girls, I made a totally different choice.

00:37:30.580 And so much the better if she's got a great education.

00:37:33.680 And she can say, yeah, I have all the same skills you have.

00:37:38.160 And I was on the exact same path as you were.

00:37:40.480 And I loved learning and being introduced to the classics and being able to sit around a dinner table with so-called intellectuals and know the references.

00:37:48.160 And I chose a totally different path when I graduated from those schools because there was one thing that was most important to me.

00:37:55.180 And let me tell you how that's rewarded me.

00:37:57.080 The school did not do it.

00:37:58.320 Okay.

00:37:58.440 So, you know, we've got a counter program at home.

00:38:01.580 So having said all that, I'll tell you my own personal experience, which doesn't really reflect that way of thinking or this recommended course at all.

00:38:11.020 And yet still, I'm very, very happy.

00:38:13.980 I'm a very contented person.

00:38:16.900 Happy is a charged word.

00:38:18.060 But I really am very happy with my life.

00:38:20.480 I'm contented.

00:38:21.040 I have a very, very strong marriage and extremely intact, loving, present, and meaningful relationships with my three kids.

00:38:28.440 But I also have a very large career that's been hugely successful, not to be self-aggrandizing, but just saying like on the scales of careers, mine has worked out very well.

00:38:38.240 So in no way did I really sacrifice much in that lane.

00:38:42.540 And I realized this puts me in the 0.00001% of people and probably even fewer percent of women.

00:38:52.600 So the way that I did it was not that unconventional for, you know, when I grew up.

00:39:00.180 I was definitely part of a generation that felt, you work.

00:39:03.540 You know, you get to work.

00:39:05.000 You graduate from college, go to college.

00:39:06.560 But when you finish college, you work.

00:39:08.240 That's the thing you do.

00:39:08.960 But in my case, Jordan, from that day to this, I've always loved working.

00:39:15.620 I love it.

00:39:17.160 It's totally exciting and interesting and intellectually stimulating to me.

00:39:23.020 And I cannot imagine not doing this.

00:39:25.880 It's been really important to me.

00:39:27.740 And if I looked at the 21 or 22-year-old version of me versus me now, or let's say when I had my kids, which was later, 38, 40, and 42, I guarantee you, I personally, this isn't true of everybody, but I personally would not have been anywhere near as good a mother.

00:39:45.640 I was much more selfish and less capable of giving.

00:39:49.460 And, you know, I was more of a taker, like most young people are, not all, but most.

00:39:53.120 And so I really think that the calm I've brought to motherhood, the life lessons, the wisdom has been a boon to my children who are calm and cool and not panickers and have a wisdom about them that I think you kind of get through osmosis and maybe some genetics.

00:40:10.660 But they're in a very good place, I think, in part, thanks to the fact that I was, it's not age-related for everybody, but for me, I didn't reach that place in my life until I was older.

00:40:21.240 And unfortunately, it wasn't planned this way, because I didn't meet my husband until we were 35.

00:40:27.240 But unfortunately, and believe me, I think about it all the time, it means that my children and I have a shorter runway together.

00:40:34.680 And I hate that fact.

00:40:37.300 It haunts me.

00:40:39.040 I'm so grateful that I have them at all, you know, unlike so many women who weren't this fortunate.

00:40:43.700 But I hate the fact that every time we talk about their lives, I'm calculating, you know, it's his age plus 42.

00:40:51.220 That's what I'll be, you know, when my youngest has his children.

00:40:54.700 And boy, my kids better have kids young if they want me to be part of that child's life at all, if they want, if I get to be a grandparent.

00:41:03.200 And it's its own special form of pain, you know?

00:41:07.940 Like, would I have traded my career building and doing the things that I love?

00:41:13.720 Because I was a lawyer for the first 10 years, and then I switched to journalism.

00:41:17.520 I don't know if I can say that.

00:41:19.140 I didn't meet the right man until I was 35.

00:41:21.820 If Doug had come into my life at 22 and I rejected him, and then we went and married different people and refound each other at 35, that would be really painful.

00:41:29.600 But I don't have that regret.

00:41:31.460 We didn't meet until the time I think God brought us together.

00:41:35.560 And for me, that was the time.

00:41:37.220 That's when I was ready.

00:41:38.860 I was ready to not downshift in my career exactly, but to make compromises in my career that I hadn't been prior to that.

00:41:45.760 And I was fully committed to devoting myself to motherhood in a way I never had been before.

00:41:51.240 And some of it was born of the intense love that I had for my husband and still have,

00:41:55.000 in which my kids were born into, this swath of, like, truly mad romantic love that they're products of and are immersed in every day,

00:42:04.000 which is probably the best medicine for them.

00:42:06.680 So I have no regrets about how I did it, but I also acknowledge it's not all roses and unicorns.

00:42:13.600 There are downsides to doing it the way I did.

00:42:15.220 Yeah, well, you know, our culture is so youth-obsessed, and I suppose that came out of consumer culture in the 1960s,

00:42:25.300 when, for the first time in human history, young people had excess money to spend and could be, you know, marketed at.

00:42:35.260 We tend to construe, especially in popular culture, life as if you're old by the time you're 30.

00:42:43.420 Right. Oh, Jordan, when I broke into journalism, I was 32, and I thought,

00:42:48.540 I'll never be accepted in this business. I'm too old. I will have no future in this industry.

00:42:53.540 It was, like, so silly.

00:42:55.120 That turned out to be wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:58.220 Well, but that's why it's so useful to start a discussion, let's say, about the actual span of life.

00:43:06.380 I mean, you said that one of your regrets, your potential regrets, is that, you know, you've truncated the time that you'll have as a grandmother, let's say.

00:43:16.840 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:17.120 And you took advantage of that when you were young, and there was some utility in that for you, but that is a price that is lurking,

00:43:24.940 and, you know, it's very difficult to tell how it will play out.

00:43:27.720 But as a pattern, it's something for people to give some consideration to, you know, you, optimally, you want to be a grandparent when you're still youthful enough to be active and engaged,

00:43:43.220 and then you get to have the pleasures of having children again, and that's a pretty good deal, and it is something, like, we're not good at conceptualizing the entire span of life consciously, you know, that's what roles were for.

00:43:59.740 So, you didn't actually have to think about that, but we have to think about it now.

00:44:04.080 Now, there's another perversity in this that I really have a hard time figuring out, because I would say that, by and large, the feminist movement that's at the bottom of some of the things we're talking about has been a left-wing movement.

00:44:24.380 And I do not understand, for the life of me, how in the world it can be logically coherent that the left can be anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and pro-career.

00:44:39.780 Like, I don't, I just can't.

00:44:42.500 Yeah, so there's that, so we could talk about that for a bit.

00:44:45.200 It's like, okay, corporations are evil, and there isn't any higher purpose you can serve as a woman than to serve one.

00:44:54.020 It's like, okay, I'm not exactly sure what to make of that.

00:44:58.380 Now what?

00:44:58.920 Then I want to tell you a weird little story, too.

00:45:02.540 I was looking at the Brothers Grimm Snow White version recently, because I went and saw the Disney Snow White version, which, you know, was exactly the sort of mistake that you'd think it would be, both to attend and to produce.

00:45:15.200 And so, I want to just tell you a snippet of that story.

00:45:20.260 So, Snow White is young and beautiful, and the evil queen wants that, right?

00:45:27.700 So, she's an older woman who is competing with the younger woman for the younger woman's advantages.

00:45:35.440 That's the evil queen, okay?

00:45:37.380 Now, Snow White has to run away from the evil queen, right?

00:45:41.200 And where does she go?

00:45:42.260 Well, she goes out into the forest, which is the unknown, but she goes to where the dwarves are.

00:45:48.220 Now, in the Grimm's brother fairy tale, the dwarves don't have names, so they're kind of generic.

00:45:54.020 But they keep an orderly house, and they work very hard.

00:46:01.660 So, the Grimm brothers' dwarves—now, we don't know how old these fairy tales are, by the way.

00:46:06.420 There have been some folklorologists, folklorists, folklorists, who've traced some fairy tales back, like, 10,000 years.

00:46:16.240 They're very old, okay?

00:46:18.380 So, it's wisdom speaking, you could say.

00:46:21.100 So, Snow White goes to what?

00:46:24.780 To serve the dwarves.

00:46:26.920 Okay, so what does that mean?

00:46:28.520 It means that to escape the evil queen, she has to make a pact with ordinary masculinity, right?

00:46:36.060 She has to serve the dwarves.

00:46:38.400 Now, why?

00:46:39.680 Because they protect her from the evil queen.

00:46:43.440 Now, among primates, there is a phenomenon called fertility suppression,

00:46:48.020 which is where women compete, the females compete, to suppress the fertility of other females.

00:46:55.060 And it's a very widespread phenomenon that's well-known among primatologists and biologists,

00:47:00.380 and it definitely characterizes human beings.

00:47:03.160 And so, the evil queen in the Snow White story is suppressing the fertility of Snow White.

00:47:08.800 Now, she runs away from that and takes shelter among the ordinary men, the dwarves, let's say,

00:47:15.800 who are the positive side of the patriarchy, you might say it that way.

00:47:19.800 When the evil queen comes back, she shows up again, right?

00:47:23.700 And she offers Snow White three gifts.

00:47:28.320 The first is a bodice that's too tight and just about strangles her.

00:47:32.200 So, that's exaggeration of sex.

00:47:34.500 It's a narcissistic exaggeration of sexuality as a temptation.

00:47:38.800 The second is a poisoned comb, right?

00:47:42.820 Same thing in slightly different guise, right?

00:47:45.420 Right, she's tempting Snow White to be poisoned by the worship of her own beauty.

00:47:50.220 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:47:51.820 That's what the evil queen does.

00:47:53.800 The third gift is the poisoned apple.

00:47:57.220 Now, of course, that harkens back to the Genesis story.

00:48:00.380 Anything you incorporate is something that changes you.

00:48:03.660 It's like you incorporate knowledge.

00:48:05.800 And so, it's poisoned knowledge.

00:48:08.980 And the dwarves can't save her from that.

00:48:12.200 And that's the situation young women are in in the modern world because the evil queen feeds them poisoned knowledge.

00:48:18.020 And the deep question is why.

00:48:20.960 And the real skeptic would say, well, the older, jealous, childless women are doing absolutely everything they can to destroy the fertility of young women.

00:48:32.300 Now, there's a corollary to that, which is this happened to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example.

00:48:39.140 It's often the women in these brutally patriarchal societies who enforce the worst impositions on young women.

00:48:48.960 Like female genital mutilation, for example, is often a practice conducted by grandmothers.

00:48:54.860 Ayaan knows about that.

00:48:56.060 Yeah, that's for sure.

00:48:59.020 And so, there's a brutality in this, you know, a brutality in that.

00:49:03.380 And I think you see it taken to its logical conclusion, by the way, with this trans phenomena.

00:49:09.620 Because I told the bloody Senate in Canada in 2016 when they crammed through that idiot pronoun bill that was a compelled speech bill.

00:49:19.260 I told them that they would produce a psychogenic epidemic among young women.

00:49:25.320 Because what happens when you confuse people about something basic, like their sex, you confuse the most confused the most.

00:49:36.960 And so, for example, a 1% increase in unemployment produces a 5% increase in psychiatric hospitalizations.

00:49:44.800 Because you put a little pressure on the people who are barely hanging in there and they're done.

00:49:50.420 Well, if you take, you know, the swath of girls or boys, but girls are more prone to psychogenic epidemics.

00:49:57.880 You take the swath of them that are confused for 15 reasons and you add six more reasons and they're like, they're done.

00:50:05.280 And so, we've, you know, we can see the full, what, the full horror show that's the surgical mutilation and sterilization as the ultimate exemplar of this evil queen phenomenon.

00:50:22.580 It's really dark.

00:50:23.740 Let me ask you a question about it.

00:50:24.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:50:25.620 Do you think in this scenario that the evil queens are conscious of what they're doing?

00:50:32.580 Or it's just, right?

00:50:33.380 That's a great question.

00:50:34.840 It's their own self-loathing working itself out.

00:50:37.880 Well, here's a way of thinking about it.

00:50:41.220 Every time you make a decision, you're conscious of it.

00:50:44.980 But you make a lot of micro decisions and you don't remember them, right?

00:50:50.800 Like, you don't remember all the decisions you made yesterday or certainly not a week ago.

00:50:55.440 But that doesn't mean you weren't conscious when you made the decision.

00:50:58.540 Okay, now, if you make thousand little decisions in the wrong direction, you were conscious at each of those decision points.

00:51:07.720 You might not be cognizant of where you've ended up.

00:51:11.060 Look, when people fail to speak up in a state that's tilting towards totalitarianism, every time they know they should say something and they don't, they're conscious.

00:51:33.180 Now, they might not be conscious of where they're going to get to if they keep that up because that's the road to hell for sure.

00:51:41.660 But they're conscious every step of the way, and so they're culpable.

00:51:47.100 Now, if you're talking to someone who's made a lot of bad decisions in therapy, for example, and trying to help them identify where they took, you know, where they met the devil at the crossroads and made the wrong choice, you're going to have to do a lot of reviewing.

00:52:04.220 And to some degree, that's the, what, representation of all that to conscious, consciousness, because it's become implicit.

00:52:14.200 It's become part of the way that you look at the world.

00:52:16.800 But it's conscious when you do it or don't do it.

00:52:20.460 Well, I mean, I would like to think that, this is what I've been thinking while you've been talking, with all due respect, because I have a lot of friends who are Democrat women.

00:52:30.340 But I feel like you're talking about liberal women and not just women, because the conservative women I know are just not like that.

00:52:38.160 They're just, they just have a totally different set of values, and they live by them, and they raise children by them, and I think we see the results of it.

00:52:47.720 I don't know why, and not even necessarily your average Democrat woman, but a lot of them, but certainly leftist women.

00:52:55.440 Yeah, I mean, I just feel like everything you said applies, and it's obvious.

00:52:58.360 Well, here's another weird data point.

00:53:04.420 So, psychologists have known for a long while, that sociologists as well, that people become more conservative as they get older.

00:53:15.200 So, that's how the data is explained.

00:53:17.600 As people age, they become more conservative.

00:53:19.880 But you can take exactly that same data, and you can put another twist on it.

00:53:24.240 It's exactly as explanatory, and I think it's more accurate.

00:53:27.200 The reason this hasn't happened is because academics, including the researchers, are radically biased in the direction of the liberals.

00:53:36.160 It isn't that you become more conservative as you get older.

00:53:39.940 It's that conservatism is the political expression of maturity, and liberalism, progressivism, and the hedonism that goes along with it,

00:53:49.060 that self-centered hedonism, that is part and parcel, let's say, of the pride movement.

00:53:54.320 That is the political expression of immaturity.

00:53:58.780 And so, here's something else this explains, you know, because this is a perverse fact.

00:54:04.700 There has been no economic and conceptual doctrine that's been more radically discredited than, let's say, the radical leftism, the Marxist brands of leftism.

00:54:17.480 But it doesn't go away.

00:54:21.200 So, it's not leftism.

00:54:23.440 It's not Marxism.

00:54:24.700 It's Marxism is the most radical expression of hedonistic immaturity.

00:54:31.200 And the reason it doesn't go away is because hedonistic immaturity doesn't go away.

00:54:37.040 It battles with maturity.

00:54:39.280 And as you become more mature, you become more conservative because conservatives are community-oriented and not self-oriented.

00:54:49.120 Now, interestingly, as well, on the psychological side, there is no distinction between thinking about yourself and being unhappy.

00:55:01.780 Those things are so tightly aligned that you can't dissociate them statistically.

00:55:06.460 Right.

00:55:07.020 So, as you become more conservative but truly more mature, the way you orient your life is toward the future and towards other people.

00:55:17.060 And that turns out not exactly to make you happy, you know, and you pointed this out.

00:55:22.840 You said happiness was a fraught word, and I agree because happiness is a hedonistic goal.

00:55:28.220 But secure in your identity, free from chaotic anxiety, goal-directed, purpose-driven, and in service to others, right?

00:55:38.500 Well, that's not bad.

00:55:39.620 That's a good substitute for happiness.

00:55:41.320 In fact, if you were wise and mature, that's what you would substitute for happiness, right?

00:55:47.060 That's why Pinocchio discovers nothing but slavery on Pleasure Island, by the way.

00:55:53.320 So, right, because, you know, if you're a slave to your hedonic whims, that doesn't make you happy.

00:55:58.420 It just makes you a slave.

00:56:00.700 Right, right, right.

00:56:02.520 So, okay, so...

00:56:04.640 But let me ask you because...

00:56:06.120 Yeah, yeah.

00:56:06.720 I look at the political divide you mentioned when we kicked this off between young people, young men and young women.

00:56:13.540 And it doesn't surprise me one iota that young women are liberal.

00:56:18.480 But it does surprise me that young men are now becoming conservative in greater numbers than I've ever seen in my lifetime.

00:56:25.340 Yeah.

00:56:25.620 I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't.

00:56:26.540 It doesn't because I follow politics for a living and I've seen what the left has done to young men.

00:56:30.920 So I see it's a natural gravitation.

00:56:32.740 But what, do you think that that's what's caused it?

00:56:35.460 And if so, why aren't young women open to that?

00:56:39.980 You know, we've seen some.

00:56:41.400 We've seen some young women start to vote Trump with the Trump hats.

00:56:46.160 I tend to believe, maybe I'm totally wrong, this is completely anecdotal, but I tend to believe it's, they see these young men who are very pro-Trump with the hat.

00:56:53.760 And it's kind of cool.

00:56:55.100 And they like the guys wearing those hats.

00:56:56.720 And they like what those guys are saying and the way they're acting.

00:56:58.980 And it's a natural aphrodisiac.

00:57:01.140 And so next thing you know, those women have the hat on and they're open-minded and they're hearing it discussed.

00:57:06.440 Okay, okay.

00:57:07.780 Let's delve into that a little bit.

00:57:10.600 First of all, I think it's happening to young men.

00:57:13.300 And I think that the podcast crowd has had a fair bit to do with that.

00:57:20.440 And I think the reason for that is that that's the only place that young men find encouragement.

00:57:29.820 And that encouragement, I've been struck to the core in my travels and my encounters with thousands of people or tens of thousands of people, many of them young men.

00:57:42.720 And how little encouragement is enough.

00:57:46.480 None is not enough.

00:57:48.820 Some is enough.

00:57:50.680 And they've got some encouragement from the podcast sphere world.

00:57:56.900 And that's enough.

00:57:58.640 Now, why not young women?

00:58:01.120 Well, Megan, one of the mistakes that pollsters make is assuming that 16-year-old boys or 18-year-old boys, let's say, and 18-year-old girls inhabit the same world.

00:58:13.060 They don't.

00:58:14.560 Because worldwide, women prefer men who are about four years older.

00:58:19.780 And I would say that proclivity is even more pronounced in early, you know, in the teen years and in the early 20s.

00:58:27.640 So I think we should be matching young men against girls who are four years younger, not the same age.

00:58:35.800 So we'll see how that plays out, you know, in the upcoming years.

00:58:41.720 So that would be the first thing.

00:58:45.360 It is also not obvious to me that the conservative types have done a particularly good job of communicating with young women.

00:58:56.620 Now, there's a bunch of reasons for that.

00:58:58.220 You know, like the 18- to 34-year-old female crowd gravitates not towards YouTube and the longer-form content that at least at once was the hallmark of YouTube,

00:59:08.900 but to these more pathological sub-social worlds, you know, Tumblr was one of them.

00:59:15.500 Wherever you get a large aggregation of young women who are unsupervised, let's say, or unmentored, that's a better way of thinking about it.

00:59:25.700 Look the hell out because that's a breeding ground for social pathology.

00:59:29.600 And young women get a lot of their information, I think it's 60-70% from TikTok.

00:59:36.260 I know, it's terrifying.

00:59:36.980 TikTok is a complete bloody snake pit, and the Chinese and the Iranians and the Russians have a major hand in that.

00:59:43.840 And so that's not good.

00:59:45.820 This is one of the main reasons I'm on TikTok, you know, as a show, as a content creator.

00:59:50.100 I want my voice out there, and I want people to hear me and my message, just especially young women, to hear it.

00:59:55.700 There's another way, and there are different ways of thinking about this.

00:59:58.500 But I, you know, I think about the Trump election, Jordan.

01:00:01.280 I sat in this very studio that night with a bunch of young men from my son's high school.

01:00:05.460 And there were 16, 17 of them.

01:00:09.380 And we were up late, you know, Trump, the election wasn't called until, I think, the 2 a.m. hour.

01:00:14.620 And these guys, they didn't have to be a conservative or a Trump supporter to come here, probably, naturally, a lot of them just were.

01:00:22.660 But when we called it for Trump, and I'm sure you saw this in your own world, but they weren't just like, yes, they were like this.

01:00:30.420 Thank God.

01:00:33.680 They were head in hands, like, running their hands through their hair, like, near tears of, it was more than joy.

01:00:43.880 It was like relief.

01:00:45.880 Relief.

01:00:46.540 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:46.960 Well, could you imagine a four-year term of Kamala Harris and the LGBTQ crowd?

01:00:54.280 Oh, my God.

01:00:54.960 Like, these guys were that into it because they knew they had seen what happened, I think, to the class ahead of them and the one ahead of that and their older brothers and maybe their fathers, you know?

01:01:05.420 And that's why, to me, it's so crazy you've got, in our society now, Democrats throwing $20 million, was in the New York Times this week, at trying to figure out the syntax to use to connect with young men.

01:01:18.740 And I'm like, you're so, talk about being myopic.

01:01:22.740 You don't have the first idea where you've gone wrong or how profound the loss is.

01:01:28.740 You actually think you're going to be able to reach those boys with their heads in their hands in that sort of profound relief that Trump won by changing your syntax?

01:01:38.440 Or we've seen some of these Democrat senators throw out a swear word here or there.

01:01:42.460 They have no idea the depths of the betrayal, I think, that these young men are feeling from those political leaders.

01:01:52.100 And to me, that's the biggest divide right now, what the left has done to these young men, not as much with just women.

01:01:59.460 Just women, yes, women, but also men of the left who have abandoned them or at least gone along with these dominant women at the BLM protests and in corporate America, preaching these things, because they can't find their balls to stand up for what they know is right and exercise, yes, maybe some toxic masculinity.

01:02:18.160 Here and there, it's actually quite useful.

01:02:19.880 Well, as I said, my experience has been that the best pathway out for those young men is encouragement.

01:02:28.980 Say, you know, you're not who you could be.

01:02:31.380 You could get your act together.

01:02:33.660 There could be a lot more to you if you were willing to develop it.

01:02:38.060 And, you know, don't accept the line that you're intrinsically pathological.

01:02:44.060 You know, I had a friend who committed suicide because of that fundamentally when he was about 40.

01:02:49.120 You know, he had bought the sort of nihilistic Buddhist line that, you know, the patriarch was evil and male ambition was part of the force that was destroying the world.

01:03:00.660 And he was a guilty colonialist.

01:03:02.620 He lived up in northern Alberta where there was a lot of native Canadians and there was a fair bit of tension there.

01:03:07.760 And he wouldn't even defend himself in a physical fight if it came to that because he was so guilty.

01:03:13.120 And, you know, he and some of that was irresponsibility on his part, let's say, and unwillingness to grow up and take on the challenges of productive life.

01:03:24.160 You know, I'm not trying to lay it all at the feet of the social world, but I saw that in him and he it did him in by the time he was 40.

01:03:33.900 You know, and he was a very smart, attractive, talented person.

01:03:38.140 He had his problems for sure.

01:03:40.380 But that betrayal that you describe, it strikes right to the core.

01:03:49.400 There's nothing moral about demoralizing young people, young men, in the name of defending Mother Nature against the patriarchy.

01:04:02.080 That is, it's an ancient form of nature worship violation.

01:04:07.560 It always ends in child sacrifice, which is exactly the situation today.

01:04:12.260 It's pathological to the core.

01:04:14.040 And as you said, the Democrats, all they can do is ape respect for masculinity.

01:04:20.960 I mean, they tried to trot out Tim Waltz as a man.

01:04:25.520 You know, I mean, really.

01:04:27.200 I mean, you know, there are worse examples of men than Tim Waltz, admittedly, but we might also point out.

01:04:33.460 No one's coming to mind, but I'm sure theoretically spent enough time on it.

01:04:36.560 Well, if you're looking for archetype of admirable masculinity, I wouldn't start with him.

01:04:42.800 I don't know.

01:04:43.400 I mean, right, right.

01:04:45.120 Well, and the fact that that was even an idea, I'm not trying to denigrate Waltz specifically, but the idea that that was—

01:04:52.400 Well, no, but can I just say, on the same front, yes, as horrible as they come.

01:04:55.140 I mean, tampon in the boys' rooms, that's enough.

01:04:58.080 Tampon Tim is enough to convince me he's not the archetype.

01:05:01.480 They put those in the military bathrooms in Canada, you know, just so you know.

01:05:06.500 Well, they've been in some, you know, bathrooms at Facebook.

01:05:11.020 That was one of the things that Mark Zuckerberg undid as he became more right-wing or more of a Trump supporter.

01:05:16.560 But I think more about somebody like Doug Emhoff.

01:05:20.400 To me, he's even more of like the poster boy for this problem because he's married to Kamala Harris.

01:05:27.400 He is utterly feckless.

01:05:30.500 If you see him speak publicly or in interviews, all he's trying to do is project sweater man.

01:05:38.800 You know, I would never wear a suit because I'm a sweater man, I'm approachable, I'm a feminist, I'm likable, I'm non-threatening.

01:05:49.060 And he buys into all the tropes.

01:05:51.300 You know, I'm married to a professional, successful woman.

01:05:54.400 I'm happy to be the second gentleman, not threatened by it at all.

01:05:57.900 Only in his case, as it is in so many of these people who bend over backward to live up to that image, it's all fake.

01:06:05.020 He's actually not a supportive partner at all.

01:06:07.820 He's not comfortable in his own skin.

01:06:09.980 And, I mean, I don't like the word feminist and I don't call myself feminist.

01:06:13.600 But I think there is, you could create a definition of that word that would be flattering.

01:06:17.560 You know, it could be used in modern day America in a way that could really embody what could be great about femininity.

01:06:23.540 Anyway, my point is he's not it.

01:06:25.720 And he is behind the scenes, according to the Daily Mail and the woman to whom it happened, an abuser, a physical abuser of women.

01:06:36.440 So it's always those guys, right?

01:06:38.540 The ones who are totally against the patriarchy and the first to speak out against toxic masculinity and throw their fellow men under the bus as a sex, as problematic.

01:06:48.600 Who, you know, are in the sweater and saying they'll be second gentlemen.

01:06:53.120 And then you find out they're actually beating the women in their life.

01:06:57.560 That's the allegation.

01:06:58.700 I've spoken to his accuser directly.

01:07:01.320 There's plenty of corroborating evidence.

01:07:03.320 And not one journalist would even ask him about it, Jordan, when they got this guy in front of them.

01:07:07.760 Now, all these self-serving leftists who say that that kind of a man would be terrible.

01:07:12.960 We wouldn't want that man anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

01:07:16.660 Never mind a role model for our little boys and girls.

01:07:19.880 Not only did they not inquire into the story, when they had him across from them, wouldn't even ask about it.

01:07:26.400 And to me, that is the embodiment of the problem on the left.

01:07:31.160 They elevate guys like that who actually are complete shits.

01:07:35.760 And they want us to celebrate them as non-toxically masculine.

01:07:39.760 Whereas they're looking at an actual man who will throw a punch in defense of a woman.

01:07:44.560 Or just a weakling who might be getting bullied in a public setting.

01:07:48.360 And say he's the problem.

01:07:50.320 His natural male instincts to protect or compete or get ahead are somehow problematic.

01:07:57.480 Yeah, well, that's the same ethos that underlies the insistence in so many schools, for example.

01:08:02.600 That there can only be cooperative games.

01:08:05.780 Right?

01:08:06.080 There's no winners and losers.

01:08:07.540 Because we're all winners.

01:08:09.460 And there can only be...

01:08:10.520 And it's so pathological, Megan.

01:08:13.120 Because, first of all, competitive games are cooperative.

01:08:18.360 Because everybody plays by the rules.

01:08:20.980 So, they're founded on cooperation.

01:08:23.480 Right?

01:08:23.620 They have a...

01:08:24.480 The rules of the game are the constitution of the playing field.

01:08:28.440 And everyone accepts that.

01:08:29.800 And then if you're a fair player, you abide by the rules in practice and spirit.

01:08:35.500 And that's cooperation.

01:08:36.340 And so, what it actually is, is civilized combat within a container of cooperation.

01:08:44.120 So, it's unbelievably sophisticated.

01:08:46.080 And then the victory and the loss issue is, well, how about you learn to be a good winner?

01:08:53.300 And how about you learn to have some resilience in the face of loss and take some responsibility for it?

01:08:59.280 And all that does is strengthen you in every possible way.

01:09:03.180 And our education systems, K through 12, are so pathological and so miseducated that they don't even understand those basics about games, right?

01:09:15.320 Games are the...

01:09:17.180 They're a microcosm of society.

01:09:19.360 And we get all that wrong.

01:09:20.820 And so, that ambitious striving forward towards victory, you might say, that's the hallmark of stereotypical masculinity, has become demonized, even though it's a hallmark of the civilized conduct that's also protective and resilient.

01:09:37.580 Well, let me ask you this question.

01:09:38.740 What if we did an experiment starting, you know, the 2025-26 school year where we radically changed the so-called academy and we made it much more heavily male the way it used to be?

01:09:52.560 And I don't know what we would do with those women who were formerly in those leadership.

01:09:55.880 They're now running these universities.

01:09:57.600 But let's just say we...

01:09:59.120 They don't all have to go, but let's say we reduce the numbers dramatically.

01:10:02.440 Forget where the women go and what we do with them.

01:10:06.000 It's a different problem for a different day.

01:10:07.120 But do you think that the men who would be running those universities would actually change them?

01:10:12.160 Would today's collection of men want to be the men to?

01:10:18.360 That's a good question, Megan.

01:10:20.280 Like, well, you know, men...

01:10:24.160 What's the old joke?

01:10:25.520 You know what happened?

01:10:26.340 Never.

01:10:27.240 20 women got together and built a boat and traveled to a distant land.

01:10:31.580 Right?

01:10:31.980 I mean, well, we don't actually...

01:10:35.160 Right, right, right.

01:10:35.980 Well, we don't actually know, I would say, a tremendous amount about those closed sex dynamics.

01:10:45.640 You know, men are pretty good at sorting themselves out on the basis of competence when they're thrown together in a group.

01:10:53.440 Like, and I think the reason for that, think about it this way, evolutionarily, you know.

01:10:57.740 Well, why would you ally yourself with the best hunter?

01:11:02.280 Because maybe the best hunter is the highest status guy.

01:11:05.620 It's like, well, you don't die.

01:11:07.140 That's a start.

01:11:08.040 And you get to eat and so does your family.

01:11:10.340 And maybe proximity to the top dog confers status.

01:11:17.260 Not the highest status, but, you know, do you want to be the quarterback on the winning football team?

01:11:22.760 Yes, but being even the water boy is better than not playing at all.

01:11:27.560 And men are pretty good at that, you know.

01:11:29.840 If they're thrown together in a group and there's a task, they sort themselves out pretty quickly in relationship to competence at the task.

01:11:38.220 Now, that can get perverted by power and tyranny and, you know, aggression.

01:11:42.060 But all things considered, that's the way men conduct themselves.

01:11:47.500 Let me ask you something.

01:11:48.300 Let me ask you something.

01:11:49.340 If there's a follow-up on it, forgive me.

01:11:51.020 My worry about that scenario, this is completely offbeat, but I genuinely have this worry, is like all the toxins in the environment, all the microplastics, all the messing with hormones that's happening through our drinking water.

01:12:06.320 You know, these guys, through no fault of their own, may be getting more and more feminine, and it's not—

01:12:13.240 Well, it's also the case, Megan, that women on the birth control pill are less attracted to masculine men.

01:12:22.880 Well, that's definitely hormonal manipulation.

01:12:25.120 There's no question.

01:12:26.200 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:12:27.320 And we have absolutely no idea whatsoever the political consequences of the birth control pill.

01:12:34.480 We have no idea.

01:12:35.140 It could be catastrophic, for all we know, because we don't know what it means that women find masculine men less attractive on the pill than off.

01:12:49.140 Like, we don't know what the political ramifications of that are.

01:12:52.740 They don't have to be that great to be determining, given the small margins of victory that constitute the typical political campaign.

01:12:59.640 So, these sorts of questions that you're raising, like, they're open-ended.

01:13:04.460 We don't know, and the same thing applies with regards to hormonal alteration in the environment.

01:13:08.600 I feel like we're finally going to look into it, though.

01:13:10.300 This is one of the reasons why I was such a big supporter of RFKJ, is I really think you have someone in there who is very open-minded to looking into those kinds of things.

01:13:19.800 I mean, the microplastics, geez, I don't even know how we're going to solve that.

01:13:23.100 But there is evidence that it's hormonally manipulating us in a very unfortunate way.

01:13:30.080 And if that's true, I mean, the latest data says that we have the equivalent of five bottle caps worth of plastic in our brains.

01:13:38.380 We'll never be able to solve that.

01:13:39.960 We need medical doctors to actually help.

01:13:42.240 And further depressing us is the fact that even if you eliminate all plastics from your life, you never put plastic in the microwave so it doesn't seep into your food, you're inhaling plastics that they're using in Germany.

01:13:53.520 That's what the data are.

01:13:55.000 So, to me, I just feel like there's so many things we have to solve for.

01:13:58.220 Even if we were to take out our pen and write the guidelines down and then everybody were to live by them, we've lost something as a society when it comes to basic health, wellness, caretaking, a structure in the world order that would allow for all those things to blossom.

01:14:18.560 And up until about two minutes ago, we were paying zero attention to that as a factor.

01:14:23.520 Yeah, well, I guess that's what we hope will transpire as a consequence of this tilt spearheaded by the U.S. towards a productive conservatism.

01:14:35.760 Hopefully, we'll see that spread.

01:14:37.300 Well, not to Canada, by all appearances, but perhaps.

01:14:40.720 Our evil top hat, as Michael Lewis calls it.

01:14:43.460 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:45.320 All right.

01:14:45.780 Well, look, we should bring this to a close.

01:14:47.360 I know that your time is constrained today.

01:14:51.220 We're going to go over to the Daily Wire side.

01:14:52.880 I think what we'll do there is I think we'll continue a discussion on motherhood per se, because I'm curious about how you managed that and also about the manner in which having children shifted the way you looked at the world and also in what you would tell young women about that shift in perspective that's attendant on having your own child, which is a very different thing than looking at someone else's child.

01:15:20.800 So I think we'll delve into that.

01:15:22.800 Yeah, and I did a lot of management consulting with women as part of my clinical practice and watched a number of them have children at, you know, in their 30s and later and watched how that, what the transformation was like.

01:15:40.200 And also the pain that women had, and also the pain that women had when that didn't work.

01:15:43.620 That's not fun.

01:15:44.960 That's not fun.

01:15:46.340 So we'll delve into that on the Daily Wire side.

01:15:49.040 Thank you very much for talking to me today.

01:15:51.080 I'd much appreciate it.

01:15:52.180 Pleasure's mine.

01:15:52.340 Appreciate your insights on this thorniest of all problems.

01:15:57.280 And, you know, maybe we'll make some headway with it.

01:16:00.760 You know, it's certainly the case that your work on TikTok is extremely useful because young women are dying for guidance in the same way that young men were 10 years ago.

01:16:10.620 I know.

01:16:11.420 They need some women who aren't evil queens to guide them, you know.

01:16:15.700 That's right.

01:16:16.560 Well, I mean, bit by bit, right?

01:16:18.440 Brick by brick, as they say.

01:16:20.320 Yeah, right, exactly.

01:16:21.520 A typical conservative attitude.

01:16:23.240 Good to talk to you, Megan.

01:16:24.680 You too, Jordan.

01:16:25.220 Thanks for having me.

01:16:26.080 And thank you for everybody who's watching on the YouTube side and to the Daily Wire for making this possible to the film crew here in Scottsdale today.

01:16:34.440 And thanks again, Megan.

01:16:35.620 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 02, 2025

552. The Feminism Debate： Can Women Have It All？｜ Megyn Kelly

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