TRIGGERnometry - Bridget Phetasy： I Regret Being a Sl＊t

00:00:00.640 We live in a culture that seems very averse to even having any regrets.

00:00:06.640 I blame myself for drinking.

00:00:09.180 I blame myself for being, like, friendly with the guy.

00:00:13.280 And I didn't want to tell my mom because I felt like she would be ashamed.

00:00:18.280 If you see the way that they talk about women being sexually assaulted,

00:00:22.780 imagine if you're a man who's gone through that

00:00:24.860 and how hard it would be for you to come forward.

00:00:27.980 It's a weird thing that social media has done

00:00:30.580 where everyone is pretending to be empathetic, 1.00

00:00:33.740 but actually everyone's a fucking psychopath. 0.99

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00:01:59.940 Bridget, so awesome to have you back on the show. 0.95

00:02:02.860 So great to be back.

00:02:04.100 We love you.

00:02:05.040 You're one of the funniest people online and offline, frankly.

00:02:09.100 You're one of the funniest people is what I'm trying to say.

00:02:11.180 Thank you.

00:02:11.660 But you're also a brilliant writer and a very serious writer.

00:02:15.760 You wrote this article that absolutely destroyed the internet,

00:02:19.760 as far as I could tell, which was called Why I Regret?

00:02:23.360 Or was it I Regret?

00:02:24.240 I Regret Being a Slob. 0.98

00:02:25.100 I Regret Being a Slob. 0.98

00:02:26.100 There's no why.

00:02:27.260 There's no why.

00:02:28.020 Because everybody knows.

00:02:30.780 Why did you write it?

00:02:32.180 Tell everybody what the core of it is, why you wrote it,

00:02:35.040 and we'll talk about it.

00:02:37.080 Yeah, I wrote it.

00:02:38.880 I'd been trying to write it for a long time.

00:02:41.080 So it's a piece, I think, since 2018 that I had been wrestling with.

00:02:46.180 And I could never really thread the needle in a way that felt like I wasn't slut-shaming everyone.

00:02:54.500 I had to really make it about me because I don't care what other people do and who they sleep with

00:02:59.840 and whatever, I was only trying to talk about my own experience,

00:03:03.880 just how I felt I had been kind of lied to by the culture,

00:03:08.580 and internalized so many of those lies myself.

00:03:12.200 Like, basically, can I swear? 1.00

00:03:15.200 Of course you fucking can. 1.00

00:03:16.380 So the idea that I could fuck my way to empowerment, 1.00

00:03:19.320 this idea that, you know, you can sleep your way to feeling like a girl boss 1.00

00:03:25.340 or feeling confident.

00:03:27.240 And coming from trauma and having addiction,

00:03:31.360 that generally wasn't the case.

00:03:33.520 But I kept doubling down because I think I was trying to cope with feelings of shame

00:03:38.820 and worthlessness.

00:03:39.620 And it was complicated, too, because I had so much stuff around sex being raised Catholic.

00:03:46.400 So the messaging I was raised with was very guilt-infused around sexuality

00:03:53.120 and feeling guilty about having sex or even thinking about sex sometimes

00:03:58.660 and kind of rebelling against that.

00:04:02.720 And then really embracing that, this very modern idea of just,

00:04:10.100 and the reaction to a lot of this kind of religious, puritanical ideas 0.99

00:04:15.320 of just being a proud slut. 1.00

00:04:18.460 And I was, I don't know how much of it I actually believed in my quiet moments alone. 0.98

00:04:29.720 And then when I got sober, I really had to look a lot of the damage I caused

00:04:35.240 to kind of my soul and spirit directly in the face, as uncomfortable as that was.

00:04:42.060 And that led me to kind of wanting to write this piece

00:04:44.620 because I saw so many women on just dating and online. 1.00

00:04:50.500 And it seems like they might not feel like they want to sleep around,

00:04:56.700 but there's this kind of pressure to just be like,

00:04:59.520 I'm okay with just having sex, you know, with whomever.

00:05:05.160 And maybe they aren't.

00:05:08.100 And wondering if, I don't know, they're making decisions maybe for reasons

00:05:17.800 that they're not totally in touch with, which is what was the case for me.

00:05:21.720 So I could, again, only kind of speak for myself, but yeah, it was something I really,

00:05:27.400 people, when I wrote it, were like, oh, you wrote this because you're married

00:05:30.640 and everyone feels differently after they have a kid.

00:05:33.000 And I was writing this before I ever got married, was in a relationship or had a child.

00:05:39.100 So these feelings were surfacing way before any of that.

00:05:44.540 And the cultural lie you talk about is the idea that sex with casual sex with lots of people

00:05:51.420 is empowering and liberating for a woman. 0.60

00:05:54.360 Yes.

00:05:55.220 Yeah.

00:05:56.100 Which for some people that might be true.

00:05:59.440 You know, there's many people who they feel confident in that and they love it.

00:06:06.080 And there were probably times where I did.

00:06:08.720 I'm not saying that all of my casual sex was horrible and regretful.

00:06:15.980 It's just that I think, for me, I came from, I was trying to kind of heal trauma using sex, 0.75

00:06:28.600 which is not something I recommend to people who might be in a similar position.

00:06:36.860 You know, I think that there was a lot of shame after I was raped when I was 18.

00:06:43.440 And I didn't really know how to cope with it.

00:06:46.040 And some people respond to sexual assault by being hyper-promiscuous.

00:06:53.320 And some people go the other way.

00:06:55.340 And I happen to kind of lean into alcoholism, addiction.

00:06:59.440 I mean, I don't think it's an accident that I ended up in rehab a year after that happened to me.

00:07:04.500 And I still ended.

00:07:07.200 But there was also just this desire to feel like I had some kind of power and control.

00:07:12.860 And I think as a woman, you do have a lot of power, particularly in those super hot years of your late 19 to like 25. 1.00

00:07:24.140 When you're, I look at pictures of myself then, I'm like, I had no idea how hot I was.

00:07:30.880 I mean, I knew I had sexual power, but I didn't.

00:07:34.900 It's like you get this Corvette and you're, you don't know how to drive it.

00:07:39.540 You're just, that's the weirdest thing about becoming, coming into your sexuality for me as a woman was, I couldn't, I literally could not wear the color red when I was in those eight.

00:07:50.180 It was like too, too powerful of a color for me to wear with that much sexual energy and appeal.

00:08:01.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:03.040 And I didn't, I didn't know how to wield it at all.

00:08:05.220 It was like having a lightsaber that I was like, I don't know what to do with this.

00:08:09.700 And I did whatever I wanted, but I don't think I always felt great about it.

00:08:15.260 If I was really, because there's this question, am I just rewriting, is this just historical revisionism?

00:08:22.760 Am I just looking back and now feeling that way?

00:08:25.940 But at the time I was like, hell yeah.

00:08:28.240 Yeah, and I think at the time I was like, hell yeah, but I don't know that I believed that 100% because I know there were mornings, many, many mornings of feeling shame.

00:08:40.540 And I mean, I remember one time I had to wake up and drop a pin to figure out where I was.

00:08:46.360 And a lot of it is addiction, too, which I think complicates this somewhat, is that I don't know that I would have been as promiscuous had I also not been a crazy alcoholic.

00:09:01.760 So there's that piece, too, that I couldn't delve into in the piece I wrote.

00:09:09.460 But that's a big part of it.

00:09:11.280 And so looking back, I know there was, I just had so many mornings of feeling ashamed and feeling used, that feeling of being discarded.

00:09:21.640 I just see, I have so many girlfriends now dating and I see what they go through and I see how much it hurts them to not hear from someone if they sleep with them or, I don't know.

00:09:38.120 It's tough out there.

00:09:40.200 Yeah, it is tough.

00:09:42.240 Here's another way of looking at it.

00:09:44.160 William Blake had a saying that the palace of wisdom is reached through the gates of excess.

00:09:50.180 And actually, maybe a way of looking at it and reframing it might be the fact that, okay, you had all these experiences which you look back on, but maybe you shouldn't regret it.

00:10:02.320 And maybe it's given you a deeper understanding not only of who you are, but what you want from life.

00:10:07.140 I mean, that's true.

00:10:08.500 What was interesting to me, too, is this default, the reaction to the piece was really interesting.

00:10:15.580 I still get emails from men, women, gay men.

00:10:19.080 I heard from a lot of gay men.

00:10:21.140 And one of the more interesting things that I wasn't expecting was people's resistance to my use of the word regret.

00:10:29.260 We live in a culture that seems very averse to even having any regrets.

00:10:34.600 You know, this kind of like, YOLO.

00:10:36.480 And I don't know if this is a cultural thing, but I feel okay with having regrets.

00:10:44.100 I think it's part of life.

00:10:46.280 I do think you learn from them.

00:10:48.460 I don't think you should let them hold you hostage.

00:10:51.640 And I don't live in regret.

00:10:54.200 But looking back, there's many reasons I regret this, too.

00:10:58.000 It's not just because of what I feel it did to my own spirit and soul at the time and having to, doing more damage to myself than was already done.

00:11:09.040 I also regret that some of these guys can say they had sex with me.

00:11:12.800 Like, it's from a purely egotistical point of view.

00:11:16.740 I don't like that.

00:11:17.820 The first time I ever went on Rogan, I got so many text messages, and I was like, ugh.

00:11:22.740 Like, it was probably the beginning of me thinking about writing this piece because someone texted me, and they said it was a man I'd had, like, a fling with.

00:11:33.960 It wasn't even a one-night stand.

00:11:35.620 I think it was in another country, too.

00:11:37.840 And he texted me.

00:11:39.160 He was Australian, of course.

00:11:44.400 And he texted me, and he was like, I'm super happy to be able to say I was in somebody who was on Rogan.

00:11:52.220 And I was like, ugh.

00:11:55.340 And that's why you should never date an Australian. 1.00

00:11:57.440 And that's, I do stand up about this.

00:11:59.820 Yeah.

00:12:00.300 I don't ever want to hear from women if they're dating rock stars, comedians, and Australians. 1.00

00:12:07.840 Yeah.

00:12:08.220 You lose the right to, like, cry to me.

00:12:11.940 No, but that, that was, you know, and there were many of those. 0.90

00:12:16.240 There were, not hundreds, but there were, there were enough that it made me feel disgusting. 0.99

00:12:22.780 And, um, also, just like, shit, I don't want that guy to be able to say that. 0.99

00:12:29.920 Just point to his buddies and be like, mm, I shagged her. 1.00

00:12:34.320 Great use of a British word.

00:12:36.240 I'm only using shagged because I'm with you guys.

00:12:38.140 Yeah.

00:12:38.360 I do love that word.

00:12:39.920 It is a great word.

00:12:41.080 It is a great word and somehow not as offensive as, exactly, and slightly more playful. 0.99

00:12:47.220 Like, if you say, fuck, you're like, ugh. 0.99

00:12:48.680 You're like, that's a little harsh. 1.00

00:12:49.900 But if you say, shag, yeah, that's kind of nice. 1.00

00:12:51.300 Takes the edge off.

00:12:52.100 Takes the edge off.

00:12:53.140 I was trying to take the edge off because.

00:12:55.100 But it's so interesting to hear you talk about this because we live in a culture where promiscuity

00:13:01.240 is celebrated.

00:13:02.480 Yeah.

00:13:02.660 You know, where we say there's no difference between women and men. 0.95

00:13:05.620 We can all go out and enjoy casual sex.

00:13:08.820 And to be brutally honest with me, I never, I've had a few one night stands.

00:13:13.140 I've always found them lonely and dispiriting experiences.

00:13:16.640 I don't think enough people realize that even if, you know, males and females are wired differently

00:13:24.480 and men are able to sleep with more people, have less social cost, have, I see even in

00:13:32.720 all of the emails I've received from men, they have a cost too.

00:13:37.280 It doesn't always, like you said, it doesn't always feel good for them either.

00:13:41.220 Or even, even getting sober, the difference in male and female meetings when you kind

00:13:47.640 of, there's still a difference.

00:13:49.780 What's the difference?

00:13:51.180 You looked at me like there's a, there's a difference.

00:13:53.820 No, I'm just kidding.

00:13:55.620 They, the difference, I think women have a lot of shame about what has been, what they've 1.00

00:14:03.640 done, what's been done to them in many instances.

00:14:06.860 Men seem to have a lot of shame about what they've done, to not, not necessarily what's

00:14:14.160 happened to them, what they've done to other women, how they've treated other women.

00:14:17.640 So it seems very different to me that, and that's just what I've gathered from talking

00:14:22.880 to men about the different, why they love going to men's, you know, recovery meetings

00:14:27.380 is just because they can talk about different things in a way that they can't when there are

00:14:32.020 women around in the same way that women can share about stuff that is very specific to

00:14:38.840 the female experience, particularly when you are doing drugs and drinking, that maybe men 0.99

00:14:44.960 can't relate to or are part of their, you know, problem and trauma and whatever.

00:14:52.240 So, yeah, I think it's, it's been, um, that piece is still going.

00:14:59.980 I just didn't, I did, I had a podcast with the Ask a Jew podcast hosts, and they were saying

00:15:05.720 one of the women, women, Hialeah was telling me that she gives it to her students. 0.96

00:15:10.640 And I've had so many parents reach out to me who have young, young, you know, 20 something

00:15:16.700 college age women, and they're saying, they send it to them and say they have their daughter

00:15:21.640 read it.

00:15:22.340 I have people with young, you know, teenage girls, and they reach out to me and ask me,

00:15:27.600 they're like, I don't know if my daughter should read this.

00:15:30.040 And it's very interesting having a daughter now and having that out there because I don't

00:15:35.500 know if my daughter should read it either.

00:15:37.340 Yeah.

00:15:37.960 Um, but she will eventually.

00:15:39.620 Well, she's only what, 16 months, 17 months, your daughter?

00:15:42.000 She's pretty much 16 years old, though.

00:15:43.720 I mean, A, she's, she's, she's really quite, uh, got quite a mind of her own.

00:15:52.320 But also, I think it's, you know, it's crazy how fast it goes.

00:15:57.200 She's going to be 16, and it is, in a blink.

00:16:00.220 In a blink, yeah.

00:16:01.020 And I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to talk to her about these things, but it's,

00:16:06.120 those are going to be interesting conversations.

00:16:08.680 Oh, for sure.

00:16:09.300 I've found, you know, when we're talking about this and when the Russell Brand allegations

00:16:16.060 broke, and look, firstly, just to clarify, yeah, you know, it's, you know, nobody knows

00:16:23.200 about, apart from Russell.

00:16:24.620 That was a gear change.

00:16:25.520 We were just talking about motherhood.

00:16:27.360 Russell Brand!

00:16:28.900 And Russell, but not necessarily the allegations, but the reaction to the allegations I found

00:16:34.340 even more interesting, you know, how people were just like, you know, he's guilty, and

00:16:39.960 the other people who, many of whom never even knew about Russell or about the allegations

00:16:46.020 and may not even have read, immediately were just like, oh, you know, it's the women and 1.00

00:16:50.280 blaming the women.

00:16:51.200 Yeah.

00:16:51.840 And I just found that so interesting.

00:16:54.240 And there was kind of a subcurrent, which is actually what I want to talk about, is these

00:16:58.420 women were promiscuous. 1.00

00:17:00.260 Therefore, they kind of deserved it. 0.93

00:17:03.100 I mean, that's a very 90s, late 90s, mid-aughts.

00:17:08.420 When you look at Pamela Lee Anderson and why the judge basically threw out the, they said

00:17:16.240 that essentially because she was in Playboy and it already showed her body when that tape 1.00

00:17:20.840 got released, she, the judge said, oh, well, you're already out there, so it's not violating

00:17:26.240 it all, which is insane and crazy to me.

00:17:31.560 But that idea of, you know, she's asking for it is not, that's the other funny thing about

00:17:38.520 the weird modern, like, whatever the discourse is right now, it's insane.

00:17:43.820 And it feels very extreme, but there does seem like there's this rise of misogyny, there's

00:17:50.200 a lot of body count talking going on, and I don't think it's, it's very weird, but, like, 0.92

00:17:56.100 all these guys who are doing this are acting like they invented slut-shaming.

00:18:01.740 I'm like, you guys, like, this has been around, you know, you aren't inventing some new thing. 0.73

00:18:08.520 This is, like, the oldest tale of time around women. 0.95

00:18:12.900 And the stuff, I reacted very strongly to the, to the way that particularly people with large

00:18:20.600 platforms automatically came out and just defended Russell Brand before they'd even heard

00:18:26.400 the allegation.

00:18:27.440 Right.

00:18:27.720 That was so weird.

00:18:28.720 It's like, you haven't even seen what is being alleged to.

00:18:31.420 You don't even know.

00:18:32.780 Yeah.

00:18:33.300 And I have, and then when I came out and said, you know, I pushed back against this, I got

00:18:38.520 kind of piled on and people, I, I, people act like I didn't extensively write about this

00:18:46.020 is the downside of Believe All Women. 1.00

00:18:48.920 We're going to pay a cost for this in the future.

00:18:51.540 And here we are, the chickens have come home to roost.

00:18:54.120 And now it's just, there's no such thing as no allegations are to believe.

00:19:01.460 Well, this is what I said about Me Too.

00:19:04.220 It was, everyone seems to, not everyone, but the vast majority of people want everything

00:19:08.680 to be black and white.

00:19:09.740 And it's like, what happened to Aziz Ansari was an abomination.

00:19:14.080 Yeah.

00:19:14.400 What happened to Harvey Weinstein?

00:19:16.420 Well, who's against that?

00:19:17.460 Right.

00:19:17.880 Who, who, who regrets that that happened?

00:19:20.080 Right.

00:19:20.380 Who, who, who are the people that think that was a bad thing that happened?

00:19:23.960 Harvey Weinstein's accountant.

00:19:25.400 Probably.

00:19:26.380 Right.

00:19:26.640 Apart from him.

00:19:27.500 Yeah.

00:19:28.300 Do you, do you see what I mean?

00:19:29.220 But we've, we have lost the ability to have that nuance.

00:19:32.360 And, and it's something that we lost during Me Too, which was why women like myself who 0.51

00:19:38.140 were coming from the left, it was one of the things that pushed me, you know, sent more

00:19:44.260 center saying, okay, well, due process is necessary.

00:19:47.820 We can't have these witch hunts.

00:19:50.020 They're going to backfire.

00:19:51.720 The Kavanaugh stuff drove me insane because the Democrats, I'm like, you guys have gone 0.78

00:19:57.240 from using women to now using sexual assault you're weaponizing.

00:20:02.240 So I came of age around Monica Lewinsky. 0.99

00:20:05.100 And that was the first time that I really was like, wow, neither party gives a shit about 0.99

00:20:10.160 women. 0.99

00:20:10.700 I remember I was five years younger than her.

00:20:13.380 So I was close in age to her.

00:20:15.320 And I remember every, all the adults in the room were talking about the politics of it

00:20:21.200 and how this, whatever side they might've been on, how this played out.

00:20:25.040 I was like, what about this poor girl?

00:20:27.760 She's being piled on by, you have the, you know, Hillary Clinton basically throwing her 1.00

00:20:33.280 under the bus and you have all the right wing using, her own mom had to testify against, 1.00

00:20:40.240 like, they called her mom to testify.

00:20:43.840 That is, that is insane to me.

00:20:45.520 It was, it was heartbreaking from a person.

00:20:48.320 I remember that was a very specific moment.

00:20:50.860 And it was shortly after I had been sexually assaulted that I really checked out of politics

00:20:56.360 and was like, no one's coming.

00:20:57.840 I don't care. 0.92

00:20:59.340 And I think everyone's gross.

00:21:01.080 I actually have been thinking so much about this because I really believe that was the

00:21:05.800 beginning of that internal sense of politically homeless that drives everyone crazy.

00:21:11.500 But I'm like, I can't help how I feel.

00:21:15.020 This is just how I feel.

00:21:16.340 And then the Kavanaugh stuff drove me crazy because it reminded me so much of that. 0.98

00:21:23.000 But then I felt like they were weaponizing sexual assault and it got more and more ridiculous. 0.98

00:21:28.080 You had that douchebag, whatever that lawyer was, Avanetti, coming out and saying he was 0.98

00:21:34.080 gang, but it just, it was so undermining to the whole entire process and it made people 0.83

00:21:41.040 not, and again, you had kind of people on the right wing going, talking about, you know, 0.95

00:21:47.060 being like defaulting to rape apologists immediately because they're fighting against this ridiculous

00:21:54.340 kind of idea that you need to believe all women. 0.94

00:21:59.920 And I was like, this is not going to be good in the long run.

00:22:04.080 And now here we are.

00:22:05.460 And you have huge people with lots of followers just coming out.

00:22:11.340 And I mean, I think Elon even came out in defense of him before.

00:22:15.780 I'm like, you are the richest man in the world.

00:22:19.080 You are the owner of the platform that this discourse is taking place on.

00:22:24.240 You didn't need to say anything, but you said, I stand with Russell.

00:22:29.420 And then you wonder why women don't come out and report and they don't come forward because 0.97

00:22:38.340 lots of women still don't. 1.00

00:22:40.940 And it's just, it feels like we're going backwards.

00:22:43.980 Hey, Constantine, when you go to the bathroom, do you always close the door?

00:22:50.260 This is possibly the worst way anyone has ever opened a conversation in the history of

00:22:54.580 the universe.

00:22:55.100 It's not my fault.

00:22:56.040 What do you mean it's not your fault?

00:22:56.920 You just said it.

00:22:57.740 No, it's ExpressVPN's fault.

00:22:59.900 What?

00:23:00.460 It's how they asked us to start the advert.

00:23:03.320 ExpressVPN are the VPN that we use at Trigonometry.

00:23:06.220 They're so smart that they've created a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the

00:23:10.760 internet, so your online activity can't be seen by anyone.

00:23:14.300 And you expect me to believe this.

00:23:16.120 Give me the script. 1.00

00:23:18.780 Fuck me, you're right. 1.00

00:23:19.860 They're much better at creating VPNs than writing ad copy. 1.00

00:23:23.060 I think they're trying to use the toilet thing as a metaphor.

00:23:25.620 What?

00:23:26.220 What they're saying is using the internet without a VPN is like going to the bathroom and

00:23:30.720 not closing the door because your internet service provider knows every website you visit.

00:23:35.580 And this means that they can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants who then use

00:23:41.480 your data to target you.

00:23:43.120 That's terrible.

00:23:43.880 All they have to say is it works on phones, laptops, even routers, so everyone who shares

00:23:48.340 your Wi-Fi is protected.

00:23:49.660 Just fire up the ExpressVPN app and click one button.

00:23:53.060 Agreed.

00:23:53.600 It is terrible.

00:23:54.700 Leave out the bit in the script about closing the bathroom door.

00:23:57.440 Couldn't agree more.

00:23:58.620 Get an extra three months of ExpressVPN free by going to expressvpn.com slash trigger.

00:24:04.600 That's expressvpn.com slash trigger for three extra months free.

00:24:10.640 Expressvpn.com slash trigger.

00:24:14.100 The one thing that I wanted to touch on as well, the thing that I found most depressing

00:24:18.300 and dispiriting about the whole thing was just then there was the narrative would always

00:24:24.520 been bubbling under. 0.88

00:24:25.420 If you're promiscuous, you deserve it. 0.87

00:24:27.840 And then it became overt.

00:24:29.600 And then what people started saying is, you know, you can't settle down with a woman who

00:24:35.480 has been promiscuous because she has this, she is unable to, in their term, pair bond. 0.99

00:24:42.120 And you're going, mate, you're a dickhead with Twitter followers. 0.99

00:24:47.280 Are you a psychiatrist? 1.00

00:24:48.240 Have you done research?

00:24:50.360 But then they all start sharing it.

00:24:53.060 And I go, and these are some of these people I know.

00:24:56.120 And I used to respect.

00:24:57.460 And I think to myself, what is going on?

00:25:00.400 I went into a very dark depression after all of this.

00:25:04.400 It was really upsetting to me because perhaps being, I think being rejected by the left,

00:25:10.860 as we talked about on the last podcast and that we did, and really coming, feeling like

00:25:16.700 I was tribalist, maybe there was some sense that the right post-COVID, maybe they were

00:25:26.060 opening up their tent.

00:25:27.720 They were kind of OK with gay marriage.

00:25:31.240 Perhaps they were allowing for more people to come in that had felt alienated by them in

00:25:37.600 the past, and maybe, and I'm just, you know, working this out as we're talking, I perhaps

00:25:45.040 felt like there was some kind of place that I could go where I felt like women were respected 1.00

00:25:55.000 and protected.

00:25:56.280 Because the other thing that I get online when I talk about the right wing has a problem with

00:26:00.860 women is all the people on the left going, oh, the leopard's eating your face. 1.00

00:26:06.720 I'm like, fucking, I don't want to hear shit from you. 1.00

00:26:09.300 You can't even define what a woman is. 1.00

00:26:11.100 You guys erased women. 1.00

00:26:12.780 And don't give me shit about, like, the leopards eating my face on the right. 1.00

00:26:16.640 That is ridiculous. 1.00

00:26:18.400 You guys, you have systematically reduced me to the sum of my parts in all of your rhetoric. 1.00

00:26:25.340 And so, like, I'm not hearing any of that shit from the people who are now like, oh, that's 0.98

00:26:32.020 what you get for cozying up with the right wing. 1.00

00:26:34.600 But then you do see the leopard eating your face.

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00:27:13.380 And it's such a great point, because just to finish on this.

00:27:16.780 Yeah, you go for it.

00:27:17.220 The, I was thinking, and with brand, and I thought it was so interesting.

00:27:25.420 And if you look at what's happened kind of from 2014, but it really hit acceleration point

00:27:31.740 in 2016, we saw the dark side of the left, the kind of the shadow side of the left.

00:27:38.160 It's been coming more and more to the fore with trans, with, you know, talking about equity,

00:27:43.400 wanting to punish.

00:27:46.520 But recently, we've seen the masks slip from the right as well, where I've seen people on

00:27:51.220 the right, I'm like, oh God, you're actually awful.

00:27:54.520 This is, this is the problem.

00:27:57.220 I have a friend, it's actually someone who's been a subscriber in my locals community, but

00:28:03.080 we've become friends, as you know you do, with people who are very active in the community.

00:28:07.200 And he says the default ideology in America is but the right, you know, there's, it's

00:28:13.540 really just like, but the right, but the right.

00:28:15.640 But then when you see some of the stuff that comes bubbling up under the surface, you're

00:28:22.240 like, but this is what people are afraid of, you know, and people are saying, and again,

00:28:27.700 I think what I really landed on post brand and watching the discourse around it was that 0.99

00:28:35.760 no one gives a shit about women. 0.99

00:28:38.020 I'll vote for whatever party cares about women, but I don't see it coming. 1.00

00:28:42.940 I certainly don't see it in the rhetoric on the right.

00:28:46.260 And I, I don't see it in at all from the left, whether they want to say that's true or

00:28:52.740 not, I disagree.

00:28:54.960 So yeah, I feel, I feel actually more, as we sit here today, feel more politically homeless

00:29:02.280 than ever before.

00:29:03.480 And it's interesting because when we spoke last, I was hearing from, because I occupy

00:29:09.780 this very strange, you know, wasteland of the center, the, it was a lot of women on the 1.00

00:29:17.220 left saying, thank you for saying this.

00:29:19.140 I can't say this.

00:29:20.340 Thank you for speaking out.

00:29:21.860 Lately, particularly when I tweeted about, you know, the right has a woman problem. 0.98

00:29:27.300 Um, and it went, and then someone quote tweeted me and said, maybe we don't want, um, someone

00:29:32.760 who's slept with a hundred dudes voting for the, I'm like, you're okay. 1.00

00:29:37.080 Yeah, why won't, why won't these slut whore bitches vote for us? 1.00

00:29:41.180 Yeah, we don't want your whore vote. 1.00

00:29:44.460 Um, okay, so you're only making, yeah, what exactly is the number too? 0.99

00:29:49.860 Is it 25 and then I can vote for the right?

00:29:52.400 No, no, no, you're supposed to be a virgin until marriage.

00:29:55.360 Yeah.

00:29:55.840 And I say this, by the way, as someone who I think probably on family stuff, I am actually

00:29:59.640 quite socially conservative.

00:30:00.800 I do think in an ideal world, that is the best way for people to get together.

00:30:05.660 And it's what I've done and it's been great for me is all I'm saying.

00:30:08.520 Right.

00:30:09.000 But I don't think that, uh, attacking women for not doing what you think is going to be

00:30:14.360 politically a very wise move.

00:30:15.660 But Bridget, I want to come back a little bit because there's something that happened

00:30:21.380 when the brand allegations broke.

00:30:23.300 Oh, wait, I want to finish my point though.

00:30:25.020 Oh, sorry.

00:30:25.780 So now I hear from conservative women thanking me saying they can't say.

00:30:31.500 So that's been an interesting shift is that it was women on the left saying, oh, I can't 1.00

00:30:36.240 say that.

00:30:36.680 And now it's women on the right going, yeah, we do have a problem. 1.00

00:30:39.700 I can't say it.

00:30:40.500 I'll get piled on.

00:30:41.660 Thank you for saying it.

00:30:43.020 And so that, that's been a weird dynamic, just anecdotally in my DMs, which is always

00:30:51.140 very interesting to me.

00:30:52.220 Well, very much on that point.

00:30:53.280 I apologize for interrupting earlier.

00:30:54.960 No, it's okay.

00:30:56.720 One of the things that happened when those allegations broke was a lot of people said

00:31:02.520 something which on the surface sounds correct, which is if you have allegations against somebody,

00:31:09.180 go to the police.

00:31:09.780 And these women didn't go to the police and it's been 15 years.

00:31:17.620 What do you want?

00:31:18.540 What do you want us to do about it?

00:31:20.340 Right.

00:31:21.180 And I, I, that's a minefield that I don't really know how to navigate exactly because

00:31:27.180 if, if you're talking about criminal prosecution, the only way criminal prosecution happens is

00:31:32.940 if you go to the police.

00:31:33.940 Right.

00:31:34.220 Right.

00:31:34.520 On the other hand, having spoken to not just you, but other people who've been raped,

00:31:38.780 that isn't how that works.

00:31:40.280 Yeah.

00:31:40.900 Right.

00:31:41.500 So how do we, how do we do, how do we solve that?

00:31:46.260 I mean, and you look at like the number of cases that actually get prosecuted when they

00:31:51.240 do go to the police and the way that police often treat victims and it's, it's not great.

00:31:59.080 I don't, I have no idea how you solve that.

00:32:01.780 I think about this a lot because did I, at, at the age that I was at, I felt that it was

00:32:11.480 my fault.

00:32:12.180 So I think you often feel in the moment, I, you know, what's really interesting is that

00:32:17.280 I was, because of all this talk about the brand stuff and then they were talking about

00:32:22.600 the journal and I was like, did I write about this?

00:32:24.760 I feel like I did.

00:32:25.680 And I have a journal from, it's like the darkest time in my life all through, it's, it's a

00:32:32.880 crazy person's journal.

00:32:34.280 And I did write about being sexually assaulted right after it happened. 0.79

00:32:39.480 And it was, it was, it was, it was painful to read because I put so much blame on myself.

00:32:51.300 And that's why I don't fault women for 10 years later when they're older and more mature 1.00

00:32:57.400 and have some hindsight to say, I was a child.

00:33:01.720 I was, I, and I can look at that girl and say, I was a young girl who I, I blame myself

00:33:09.420 for drinking.

00:33:10.520 I blame myself for being like friendly with the guy.

00:33:14.880 And I didn't want to tell my mom because I felt like she would be ashamed.

00:33:19.440 And I, I have a different perspective on that than I had at that exact, like having the ability

00:33:27.060 to re look at what I was thinking at that age is so eyeopening for me and for people going,

00:33:33.900 well, why didn't you just report?

00:33:35.300 Like you cannot know unless it's happened to you, how disruptive something like that

00:33:42.140 is and, and how confused you are and how betrayed and how ashamed or like the, the, it's,

00:33:51.940 I, and this guy was older, he was powerful and I felt like no one would believe me, you

00:34:07.080 know, or they'd say that it was my fault.

00:34:09.260 And I didn't want to have to put myself through that.

00:34:11.340 And I didn't want to have to expose myself that way.

00:34:15.020 Anyway, so I don't, I mean, I, that's why I thought Me Too was so good.

00:34:21.020 Like it was the good thing about Me Too, because I felt like my daughter was, I would never want

00:34:26.200 her to feel that way about me, but I felt like she was coming into a world where there was

00:34:33.300 more insight into that and compassion.

00:34:38.360 Um, so I, I felt like she was coming into just a place where we had come to somewhat more

00:34:46.580 understanding of what that does to a woman, a man.

00:34:51.020 I mean, if you see the way that they talk about women being sexually assaulted, imagine if you're

00:34:56.820 a man who's gone through that and how hard it would be for you to come forward.

00:35:01.280 People don't talk enough about that either.

00:35:03.980 It's not like only women experience this.

00:35:06.640 Men are violated and molested and all kinds of things.

00:35:10.780 And if you're a man and you see the way that people are speaking about this as if it's their

00:35:15.360 fault or whatever, you're, the chances that you're ever going to come forward are even

00:35:19.920 less than if you're a woman. 0.98

00:35:21.720 And so I felt like that was changing.

00:35:25.100 And I actually thought that was a good thing.

00:35:27.020 People were having this conversation.

00:35:29.440 They were seeing how many of their sisters, mothers, friends have experienced this.

00:35:34.820 And then now it feels like we're regressing again.

00:35:39.340 You know, it feels like we're going, we're going back into, into the time where women, 1.00

00:35:45.380 again, you, when you see this discourse occurring and everyone from, I think Jordan Peterson even

00:35:51.560 came out, people that you kind of look to and respect on some level, perhaps, particularly

00:35:57.020 if you're independent or right wing because everything's fricking partisan now.

00:36:01.680 You see that and you're like, oh, I'm, I don't, you know, suddenly you start asking yourself

00:36:09.300 if you're, if you, if it is your fault or if it is something that you should be ashamed

00:36:14.960 of or if you, it is because you were promiscuous and that's never an excuse.

00:36:20.720 You know, you can, that's just never an excuse.

00:36:24.120 You can't use that no matter how many people someone slept with. 0.94

00:36:27.360 And I don't know how you fix that because it seems like it's getting actually worse now.

00:36:35.500 So I'm not sure.

00:36:37.740 You know, I, I would encourage, I can only say that, and I've talked about this before

00:36:42.820 on Rogan, I was kind of able to help someone through this when they went through it themselves

00:36:49.740 around exactly the same circumstances and age that I was.

00:36:53.920 And we went and got, um, a rape kit done and all that stuff.

00:36:59.600 And she didn't have to, you know, press charges right away, but she could have, and she didn't 0.98

00:37:04.440 want to, she didn't know how to talk, same thing.

00:37:07.620 But, um, I encouraged her to talk to her mom about it, which she eventually did.

00:37:12.760 And she did something that I didn't do, which was just taking the step to even go get a rape 1.00

00:37:19.400 kit done.

00:37:20.600 And I don't know.

00:37:24.240 It's something that looking back, should I have done that?

00:37:27.580 Yeah, I should have.

00:37:29.340 But at the time, could I have, did I feel like I had anyone who would take me or I didn't.

00:37:36.940 So, and if a bunch of women came out and, you know, came, were saying that this person did 0.97

00:37:43.960 something to them, I would absolutely come forward, even if it meant all the stuff that

00:37:49.900 comes along with that.

00:37:51.140 However many years later, I would definitely bring my journal and, and stand behind those

00:37:57.320 women because I know that it happened to me.

00:38:01.500 But, you know, there's a lot of women who will say that I, it was selfish of me not to 0.94

00:38:09.140 do something because they could have gone on to rape other women.

00:38:14.140 And I, I have to, again, I, I live with that now looking back.

00:38:20.740 But at the time, I, that wasn't even like a consideration.

00:38:25.720 I wasn't even, I was like, how do I get through the next day?

00:38:28.900 How do I just, I started drinking alcoholically almost immediately and then doing hard drugs.

00:38:34.940 It was like, I wasn't thinking about like anything other than, and other than the pain

00:38:41.840 that I was in and how to, and surviving it.

00:38:44.780 Yeah.

00:38:45.660 And, and moving through it.

00:38:48.020 And so, yeah, I don't know.

00:38:50.660 I don't know.

00:38:51.800 It's a weird thing that social media has done where everyone is pretending to be empathetic, 1.00

00:38:57.120 but actually everyone's a fucking psychopath, right? 1.00

00:39:00.620 Yeah. 1.00

00:39:01.060 Do you know what I mean?

00:39:01.740 Like, there's a distinct lack of empathy in the idea that, you know, well, if a woman 1.00

00:39:07.180 was raped, then if she has to go to the police, otherwise it didn't happen.

00:39:11.840 Right.

00:39:12.400 Like you, if that was your daughter, you think that, you really think that if your daughter

00:39:17.200 came to you and said that, and she did, do you know what I mean?

00:39:20.640 You wouldn't be like that with your daughter.

00:39:22.580 You wouldn't say that about her.

00:39:24.620 If you, if you're 40 years old, you have a 20 year old daughter and she comes to you

00:39:28.200 and says, actually, when this thing happened five years ago, whatever, you wouldn't be

00:39:31.260 like, when you go to the police door.

00:39:33.200 And now imagine that it's a huge star.

00:39:36.340 And you know that if your daughter comes forward, it's, it's going to be the entire right wing

00:39:44.320 ecosystem is coming after this person now. 0.75

00:39:47.020 And that's the other thing that was bothering me about all of this is that I felt like the

00:39:51.080 women who came forward were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. 0.99

00:39:55.060 If they came forward, they would be like riding Russell's coattails and trying to get famous. 1.00

00:40:00.120 If they remain anonymous, they're just hiding in the shadows and they're, they're liars.

00:40:05.620 And so there's no way for these people to win in this situation.

00:40:11.040 And I don't know whether it's true or not.

00:40:14.520 It might not be, but I still feel like in, we cannot deny him due process any more than

00:40:22.080 we should still at least give some benefit of the doubt to people who are making these

00:40:27.840 allegations.

00:40:28.340 And in fact, people say, oh, it's because he's moved over to the, you know, he's like, 0.98

00:40:34.960 whatever, confronting the matrix or whatever the fuck they say. 0.96

00:40:38.420 Like he, this guy is a threat to, you know, everyone, the, the, whatever they're saying. 0.97

00:40:45.940 Well, wouldn't that make it even more dangerous for these people to come forward then?

00:40:51.600 Wouldn't it make it more, they have now this whole ecosystem coming after them as opposed

00:40:58.180 to when it was just famous.

00:40:59.840 And, and, and then the other weird thing that was such a paradox was they're like, well,

00:41:05.640 he was protected by his tribe.

00:41:08.680 And he, I'm like, but now you're doing the same thing.

00:41:11.720 So like he was protected by the establishment and he was protected by these people and they,

00:41:17.280 nobody came after him and they buried all this stuff.

00:41:19.460 And that all might be true.

00:41:20.500 But now can you see that you're potentially doing exactly the same thing?

00:41:25.140 And it's, that was, it was weird.

00:41:27.900 It's like, oh, they were protecting him when he was their dude.

00:41:30.880 I'm like, and now he's your dude.

00:41:33.320 And now you're protecting him.

00:41:36.000 Like, I see no difference.

00:41:38.860 When did we become so judgmental?

00:41:40.500 Because the whole, one of the main, one of the main sort of ethoses of the left was don't

00:41:48.400 judge other people.

00:41:49.340 You know, everybody, we're liberals.

00:41:51.980 Everybody's free to live the life that they want.

00:41:53.880 Then the left became super judgmental.

00:41:56.160 The right are very, very Christian.

00:41:59.020 The majority of them, you know, super Christian.

00:42:02.080 What did Jesus say?

00:42:03.180 Judge not lest ye be judged.

00:42:05.160 Yeah.

00:42:05.380 But then they're like, yeah, let's judge them.

00:42:07.120 And you go, hang on.

00:42:08.460 Are you not turning your back on your own ways of being?

00:42:13.520 Do you understand?

00:42:14.360 Yeah, it's, it's weird to watch what's happening on the right is interesting to me right now.

00:42:25.360 Because the algorithm, it's like they're being red-filled.

00:42:29.180 And for lack of a better word, it just feels like they're being, the incentives are kind

00:42:35.600 of pulling them to the, in the same way that we saw on the left, the extreme faction that

00:42:41.480 did not represent most people pulled the discourse to the left.

00:42:46.600 Yeah.

00:42:46.900 And left a lot of people adrift or, or, you know, that idea like, I didn't leave the left,

00:42:52.640 left me behind.

00:42:54.000 I see the right kind of, it's like this negative feedback loop that's just pulling, pulling

00:43:01.180 them to the right because you're seeing people who like to talk about, you know, the matrix

00:43:10.140 shirtless, um, like making millions of dollars and really capturing this young male audience

00:43:19.740 that everybody wants.

00:43:20.960 And so I can't help but this, think that this new weird, like in kind of conservative, conservacon

00:43:28.020 discourse about body count and stuff, I'm like, you guys had so much goodwill post COVID and

00:43:34.680 post woke-ism, so much goodwill and you cannot win.

00:43:39.600 You just, you, you're determined to just like, you're going to start now policing women, being 1.00

00:43:45.480 like obsessed with who women are sleeping with.

00:43:48.660 It's, it's, it's freaking creepy and weird guys.

00:43:51.640 Like now you're going back to the right that I remember.

00:43:55.440 I'm like, oh, there you are.

00:43:57.320 That's right.

00:43:58.220 Yeah.

00:43:58.400 That's right.

00:43:58.900 I remember.

00:43:59.840 Except now you have no God, to your point.

00:44:03.220 Now you have, now you're like a godless version of the moral majority, which is basically what

00:44:09.340 the left became.

00:44:10.900 It's creepy.

00:44:11.860 It is, it is.

00:44:12.760 Do you remember James Orr who we had on?

00:44:14.600 Yeah.

00:44:14.900 He, I don't, I don't think it's his own line.

00:44:17.260 He quoted someone.

00:44:18.040 He said, if you're, if you fear the religious right, just wait till you meet the post-religious 0.99

00:44:22.360 right.

00:44:23.860 We're, we're meeting that.

00:44:25.240 Yeah.

00:44:25.460 And we're seeing them.

00:44:26.440 And, and the thing that I find terrifying is the right were what, one of the main, particularly

00:44:32.740 in this country, pushing back against the extremes of trans ideology, you know, which

00:44:37.880 everyone in this room I'm sure is just absolutely, finds absolutely in horror. 0.95

00:44:43.760 The medicalization of children is disgusting.

00:44:46.880 Yeah. 0.57

00:44:47.440 Your prime minister came out pretty.

00:44:49.200 Yeah.

00:44:49.440 Yeah.

00:44:49.740 In the UK, we're actually winning the argument.

00:44:52.540 Turf Island.

00:44:53.240 Turf Island.

00:44:53.800 Yeah.

00:44:54.240 We're winning the argument.

00:44:56.340 And then you see certain people coming out in the, on the American right.

00:45:00.040 And they're, you know, they've always been pushing back on it.

00:45:02.240 And I've been like, that's good.

00:45:03.940 And then you start to go, how long will it be until you come after the gays? 0.98

00:45:07.960 Because when you win this fight, as the fight will be won, because it's so awful what

00:45:12.860 they're doing, how soon until be, until you're like, you know what, you know gay marriage?

00:45:17.580 It was a slippery slope.

00:45:18.880 Yeah.

00:45:19.560 Well, they're already talking about gay marriage, but it seems to me like if that, if that is

00:45:23.880 taken to its logical conclusion, you say the right that I remember, the right that

00:45:27.640 I remember is the one that Carlin and Hicks were pushing against, right?

00:45:30.860 Right.

00:45:31.420 They're going to be censoring people's speech before long.

00:45:33.720 They're like, they spent 20 years shouting about free speech.

00:45:36.120 Right.

00:45:36.560 And before you know it, we're going to be like, you can't say this, you can't joke about

00:45:40.080 that.

00:45:40.580 Yeah.

00:45:40.900 That's coming.

00:45:41.380 Yeah, it does seem like anyone who has power wants to censor people, and everyone seems

00:45:50.200 to think that they're immune to that.

00:45:52.120 You know, they're like, oh, wow, the censorship is coming, and it is.

00:45:56.820 And that is where I feel very conflicted, because the institutional power lies on the left, and

00:46:06.060 there is no doubt that you have big tech in cahoots with the government, in cahoots with

00:46:12.720 academia, and the media, and Hollywood, and entertainment, and all of these huge institutions,

00:46:19.840 school, everything, working to be pro-censorship, and all this weird flip-flopping that we've seen,

00:46:30.060 and you guys have discussed ad nauseum.

00:46:33.060 So I understand the kind of, oh, and you guys are, why the right is becoming more extreme, 0.99

00:46:40.060 and they're like, well, these centrists like ourselves are frickin' useless. 0.98

00:46:44.800 In some ways, we are. 0.99

00:46:48.200 They're right.

00:46:48.900 They're not entirely wrong in saying, in this fight, you have to, if you, so they're talking 0.98

00:46:56.980 about women being sluts and body count, but they're sterilizing children. 1.00

00:47:02.760 Like, don't you eventually have to take a stand and say, this one's worse than this one? 0.99

00:47:10.100 And I wrestle with this.

00:47:12.660 You know, I've been, it's probably the biggest criticism that I receive that I don't think

00:47:17.540 is entirely wrong.

00:47:19.160 But then when I get piled on by the right and see that other side of them where it's

00:47:25.760 unsettling, and it just feels like misogyny is everywhere, you know?

00:47:35.260 I hate to use that term, but it does feel like there's this misogynistic impulse that's

00:47:40.640 like, wants to tell me what to do with my body and what I can, and shame me for my past,

00:47:47.120 and, but is that, do they have any power?

00:47:51.460 Do they have any actual power?

00:47:53.180 See, I disagree with you about us being useless because I think-

00:47:57.200 I'm glad.

00:47:59.640 Look, countries are different and America's politics is very different.

00:48:03.440 Right.

00:48:03.880 But the reason we've been successful on the trans issue in the UK is actually because

00:48:09.840 more moderate people have been speaking up about it.

00:48:12.740 Right.

00:48:13.280 Right.

00:48:13.780 So when J.K. Rowling comes forward-

00:48:15.940 But Douglas Murray, sorry to interrupt you, will argue that it's because we don't have somebody

00:48:20.400 like Oprah coming forward and speaking out on this that doesn't give people permission 0.91

00:48:25.860 in the States to even push back who are moderate and might feel like, like they do in the UK.

00:48:32.980 Well, but that's exactly what I'm saying.

00:48:34.620 But, but people like us who are clearly not on the right strongly or on the left strongly,

00:48:40.740 providing a space for that conversation to be heard.

00:48:43.600 And people with much bigger platforms like a J.K. Rowling, there's a left-wing Labour MP who we

00:48:48.300 mentioned on Rogan, Rosie Duffield.

00:48:50.660 You know, you have people speaking out who are immune as much as is possible to the isms and the

00:48:58.980 phobias and the whatever.

00:49:00.620 That's very important because most normal people, they don't want to side with the people who are

00:49:07.560 on the extreme edges shouting the loudest.

00:49:09.840 They want to see a position they believe in reflected in moderate, sensible conversation.

00:49:16.220 And then they feel more empowered to be like, oh yeah, I'm against this ideology as well.

00:49:20.960 So I don't think we're useless actually at all.

00:49:22.740 I think the reason you say that is it's not the most pleasant place to be.

00:49:27.400 The centre is always the place of greatest tension.

00:49:29.660 I agree, but I do think at a certain point, I would have to choose a side in terms, I don't

00:49:45.120 think the reasonable moderate centre feels represented.

00:49:49.160 So in absence of having any political representation, you are forced to kind of choose the lesser of

00:49:55.240 two evils. And I think many people, the argument would be that people of the IDW or the classical

00:50:05.440 liberals or whatever space we occupy, the centre, default to voting for the left. I don't know

00:50:12.900 that that's actually true in practice.

00:50:14.840 I don't anymore.

00:50:15.960 Yeah, I don't either. But when it comes to choosing a president, which I actually

00:50:22.120 there's not many options, you know, I guess I could vote third party just out of, out of

00:50:30.940 some sense of my morality. But as these fights become more, I was joking on Dumpster Fire

00:50:38.020 just this week. I was like, if Gavin Newsom become, gets the election, I might have to

00:50:43.980 vote for Trump, which is like something I, and I don't even know if that's, if I could hold

00:50:49.040 my nose and vote for him because I find him so just reprehensible as a, as a person. But,

00:50:55.860 and I think character matters. But, but then when it comes down to these kinds of fights,

00:51:01.000 like pushing back against sterilizing kids, what do you do?

00:51:09.280 Well, I'll tell you my answer. I'll tell you my answer, which is there are some things.

00:51:14.800 I live in the UK.

00:51:16.480 I mean, that's part of it, but there are some things that are so abominable that they are

00:51:20.980 just more important. And therefore I will hold my nose with both hands if I have to, is the

00:51:26.540 truth. And I will vote for whoever is going to oppose that. That's actually one of the

00:51:30.840 dangers in, in what this is doing, because it, it forces a lot of people to vote for parties

00:51:36.300 that they don't actually want to vote for.

00:51:38.140 Right.

00:51:38.740 And the more you, the left pushes the extremes into the mainstream, the more you're going

00:51:44.580 to, people are going to be like, Oh yeah, you know what? You know, I don't care about

00:51:47.940 women's rights. Fuck it. 1.00

00:51:49.020 Right. 1.00

00:51:49.260 You know, this is more important.

00:51:50.280 The border is being invaded.

00:51:51.560 Right.

00:51:51.860 Yeah.

00:51:52.440 Yeah.

00:51:52.700 And, and it's, but that if, if, if the left-wing parties refuse to have borders, want to sterilize

00:51:59.100 children, et cetera, I'm sorry. I will vote for Donald Trump without, if I lived in this

00:52:04.420 country, I'll vote for a right-wing party in the UK without any hesitation.

00:52:08.620 Yeah. 1.00

00:52:08.780 I will not hesitate for a second because it's fucking evil. 1.00

00:52:11.700 Yeah. 1.00

00:52:12.360 It's evil.

00:52:13.400 Yeah. And, and there's a lot of people who would say that the, the stuff that's happening,

00:52:20.400 I mean, January 6th, we're touching all the buttons today. And now we're talking about

00:52:25.740 January 6th. People would argue that the stuff that's happening on the right is a constitutional

00:52:32.780 crisis and that if he got power, he would never leave. And that there's, you know, fascism

00:52:39.140 and, and so, and whether or not you-

00:52:41.500 But that isn't true though, Bridget. He's not a fascist.

00:52:44.340 Yeah. No.

00:52:45.200 Right. So we have, this is where, this is where the thing comes in is like, the reason I will,

00:52:50.060 I will, as someone who is in our kind of politically homeless space, vote for somebody on the right

00:52:55.120 is because the things they say about the right are not true.

00:52:58.380 Right.

00:52:58.840 Right. Whereas the things that people say about the left are true.

00:53:01.800 So for example, in the UK, um, they call Suella Braverman, who's a descendant of immigrants,

00:53:09.800 racist and xenophobic for wanting to prevent people from getting into boats illegally and

00:53:15.840 coming into the country in a country, which now spends about $10 million a day on hotels

00:53:21.840 for illegal immigrants.

00:53:23.920 Yeah.

00:53:24.200 Right. Now that's true.

00:53:26.040 Mm-hmm.

00:53:26.720 Is it, does that make her a fascist? I don't think so.

00:53:29.660 Does thinking that there are men and there are women and you can't change sex by incantation, 0.88

00:53:35.000 is that making you a fascist? No.

00:53:37.840 Right. So in my opinion, you have to go down the list of the issues and go,

00:53:42.320 is what is being said about the right true? Is what is being said about the left true?

00:53:46.000 And in my opinion, right now, when I look at that, I mean, the American right, yeah,

00:53:51.260 is going loopy as we've talked about, but they're not, they're not actually fascist.

00:53:55.380 Right. They're not actually going to suspend democracy. They're not actually going to do

00:53:59.780 any of these things. January the 6th was not an insurrection. It was bad. It's bad that that

00:54:03.720 happened. It's not a good thing, but it wasn't an attempt to seize power. Right. So just because

00:54:10.280 the left says certain things about the right doesn't mean it's true. Just because the right

00:54:14.460 says certain things about the left doesn't mean it's true. We have to actually look at what they're

00:54:17.600 saying and go, is this true? Yes. Is this true? No. And play issue by issue. Do you know what I mean?

00:54:21.780 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, but then I start thinking about, uh, like Breitbart's whole politics are

00:54:29.500 downstream of culture, which the right has really embraced and why they try, they're trying to be

00:54:34.540 more culturally persuasive. And if that is actually true, why they would engage in all of this silly,

00:54:43.280 um, discourse around like my Instagram feed, there was one last night that I was showing my cousin and

00:54:52.060 my, and we were dying laughing and it's a woman and she has like a Kraft mac and cheese bag and she 1.00

00:54:57.940 flicks it. And it's like when you're a suburban mom, but you have a questionable past, like you used to

00:55:03.240 flick like a baggie. And I was like, my whole Instagram feed is suburban moms who joke about how they used to 1.00

00:55:09.860 be party girls. And now their mom's living their best life. That is the entirety. Granted, it's all

00:55:15.560 being targeted at me because that's also me, but that, but that is also just the suburbs and kind of

00:55:22.420 where we are. Why would you, why would you even risk alienating this, these people who you could

00:55:30.120 potentially bring over to your side? Because I think they're worried about their children, which

00:55:35.900 ultimately I think will win out, but I don't even know why you would risk it with like a silly 0.90

00:55:42.820 body count discourse and all this like slut shaming and, and, and the, the weird stuff we're seeing 0.53

00:55:50.440 kind of, um, popping up. But do you think, and I thought about this a lot, do you think it's about

00:55:57.120 disgust? Because when you get to the extremes of the political spectrum, the extreme left are

00:56:04.080 disgusted by the right. They go, these people are racist. Yeah. They're disgusting. They're fascists. 0.85

00:56:09.640 They're Nazis. And you can hear when they, when they talk about them, they, they really feel, they 0.97

00:56:14.640 almost taste the emotions. And then when you get to the right, you know, they're transing the kids. 0.96

00:56:20.560 Yeah. You know, they're disgusting. They're communists. They want to abolish our country. You know, all of 0.99

00:56:26.120 the, that's what we're getting from both sides. It's like visceral disgust.

00:56:31.680 And yet it's not what I experienced. I think the best thing that's happened to me being, uh,

00:56:39.960 living in the suburbs and being weirdly one foot very in the discourse and one foot not is that

00:56:48.700 most people have no idea what we're talking about. They're not, they might, if it's invading their

00:56:55.460 schools, I think this is why you're seeing a lot of people leaving New York, uh, LA and going to

00:57:01.280 states that are more purple or red. And, but otherwise it's like, they talk about how the

00:57:06.840 pool is down in the HOA, you know, Facebook group and what their kids are going to be for

00:57:13.940 Halloween. And, and this is only, again, only my experience. I don't, I don't think normal

00:57:20.640 people are, I think the, they are more in the center. They're just naturally, people have

00:57:28.660 different ideological beliefs and they are still neighbors and friends and go to barbecues together.

00:57:37.260 So I'm not, this is something that I've been really fascinated with lately too, is observing

00:57:44.140 how it seems like the very online people and that discourse is, is getting away from the people who are

00:57:52.820 not very online and living very much in the world in, in kind of an accelerated way. It seems like

00:57:59.640 they're, the realities are splitting completely. Like the language that people use who are very

00:58:07.040 online and the things that they talk about. Nobody, if I walked around my suburb and knocked on every

00:58:11.960 door, how many people do you think would have ever heard of bronze age, bronze age pervert?

00:58:16.360 I don't, I don't think I've had a point. Exactly. You guys are very online. And this is a person who's

00:58:22.860 very online, who's got, had a 30, number 33 on Amazon for a minute, at least bestselling book that,

00:58:29.840 um, and people talk about this, like it's an argument. That's the, my point is I think we're

00:58:36.920 arguing about things online and they'll feel like they have to, um, like push back again.

00:58:46.340 His arguments are somehow contend with this. And it's like, no one's ever heard of this person

00:58:51.300 other than people online, people who are very online. And that separation is really interesting

00:58:57.980 to me because I'm not sure what that looks like even in a year as, as we enter into the, because

00:59:05.620 the things that I do hear about in the suburbs from people who are now choosing to homeschool

00:59:12.620 their kids and pulling them out is the gen, the gender stuff. And as Helen Joyce was just on

00:59:18.020 walk-ins welcome our podcast, and she's like, this breaks everything. It was so eye open, you know, the

00:59:24.500 way she's so clear and brilliant and just saying how it's breaking everything. It's just, it, it, it really

00:59:31.580 does. It's the tip of the spear, which is why everyone spends so much time talking about it. And it breaks

00:59:38.220 democracies, it breaks norms, it breaks families apart. And you see people wrestling with not

00:59:45.780 wanting their children exposed to this crap and how, if the minute that it happens in a school, 0.99

00:59:51.580 they're pulling their kid out of school and starting a homeschooling pod. And even people 0.99

00:59:56.600 on the left are libertarians are starting their own little preschools because they don't want their

01:00:01.300 kids exposed to this. So that is the one area where I actually feel like it's, it's, it's really

01:00:12.120 bled into reality.

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01:00:47.580 But you know what you've just said really gives me hope Bridget because it really, really does

01:00:52.800 because there's always going to be these people who are very online, like all of us are. But the

01:00:58.820 fact that there's the majority who are just living their lives, raising their families,

01:01:04.560 having their careers, having relationships, that's what life really is about. To me, there is nothing

01:01:11.920 more wonderful than when I go for a meal with a friend or I go for a drink and they don't want to

01:01:17.380 talk about this. And I'm like, oh, that's amazing. You know, we all talk about the cost of food.

01:01:23.260 Yeah. That's what everyone talks about everywhere. How expensive food is every single city state that

01:01:29.140 I go in when I was back east with my family, when I was on the west coast with all my family out there

01:01:35.320 recently when I it's like everywhere I go, that's what everyone's talking about is how expensive food

01:01:40.400 is got. Because it's really important. And yet we're being gas lit and told like, oh, everything's

01:01:46.320 great. Bidenomics is amazing. And like, you guys are just imagining that you're poor. You know,

01:01:52.820 it's a weird, that's what real people are talking about. But I disagree with you guys, though. The

01:01:58.980 elite discourse is always separated from the ordinary person and always has been. And yet that is what

01:02:05.180 determines reality. I mean, I don't know if you saw this post-BLM, the top 100 standard and poor 0.91

01:02:10.520 corporations. Did you see this? No. They made 300,000 new hires. Six percent of them were white.

01:02:25.920 Right. So once this ideology becomes embedded in institutions and corporations and schools,

01:02:33.160 et cetera, the fact that Joe Bloggs down the road is doing is barbecuing and not paying attention to

01:02:39.560 any of it. It does not mean that Joe Bloggs down the road is not getting hired for a job on merit.

01:02:44.780 His children aren't being taught trans ideology in school, et cetera. This elite discourse,

01:02:49.620 this is always the way the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority. Right. Right. But they were motivated.

01:02:54.880 They were united. They were driven. They were passionate. They had a strong ideology.

01:02:58.960 This is why I've always opposed wokeness, because look at what it's done. Yeah. 1.00

01:03:04.020 Yeah. Look at what it's done. And so the fact that ordinary people aren't paying attention,

01:03:08.920 good for their mental health, I guess. Yeah. Right. But it's not protecting them from being

01:03:14.660 affected by it in real life. And it's not just a trans issue. The re-racialization of society is a 0.93

01:03:20.040 big problem. Yeah. It's a big problem. I don't know if you saw, there was this amazing piece about how

01:03:26.440 the title, I think, was Complex Systems Won't Survive the Competency Crisis, the Competence Crisis. And it's about

01:03:32.300 how artificial diversity essentially is causing airplane accidents and all of this other stuff

01:03:39.080 because people aren't being hired because they're good at the job. They're being hired because they

01:03:42.880 tick boxes. These things affect real world stuff. It's the only reason I care about it. You know,

01:03:49.240 I've never been interested in having online fights about things that don't matter, but this stuff

01:03:53.220 affects reality. It really does. Yeah. No, absolutely. I'm not saying it doesn't,

01:03:58.620 but I don't, I don't know. Then, then, yeah, I think that is why people are increasingly

01:04:06.620 becoming radicalized because if you are pushing back against this, this reorganization of the world

01:04:16.540 and reality and you are, you know, they're, they're, it's gone pretty extreme, you, and it's all about

01:04:28.260 power, then the argument that a lot of people on the right make is they have to play, these are the

01:04:33.660 new rules. But then that feels like, um, that's an abdication of responsibility in my, well, it feels

01:04:41.100 very like, uh, okay. So now, yeah, you abdicate every, all your principles too for power. No. And

01:04:51.300 now nobody, and now people are looking around and there's, sure, there's people fighting for power,

01:04:57.280 but there's no real leadership. Who's, who's leading? It was nice to hear your prime minister.

01:05:02.880 I, we were saying a dumpster fire. I'm like, finally, an adult in the room. And we shouldn't

01:05:07.860 get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can't. A man is a man

01:05:13.580 and a woman is a woman. That's just common sense. Like the one world leader who's willing to come out 1.00

01:05:20.880 and say, boys and girls are different and we shouldn't be bullied into believing otherwise,

01:05:26.520 which is insane that it's even got to this point. And he's being called a transphobe, a bigot, a

01:05:32.500 fascist, et cetera. And I think it's, but that's leadership to me, you know? And so I don't see very

01:05:40.220 much leadership. I do see a lot of people jockeying for power. And I think the incentive structures

01:05:46.400 online around the discourse are generally, you know, get attention and get clicks. It's not

01:05:52.840 necessarily what's good for America. No, no. We, we all joke what's bad for society is good for us.

01:05:59.440 Yeah. Um, which is not good. You know, that's, it's hard for me to, I don't, I try very hard not to

01:06:08.000 lean into a lot of that outrage cycles and clicks and whatnot, because I don't want to, I don't want

01:06:15.080 to be a part of the problem. And so do we, we try to do that on that happy note, Bridget, we're going

01:06:20.080 to go to locals in a second and ask questions from our supporters before we do. We always end with the

01:06:25.320 same questions, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should

01:06:29.560 be. Nothing. We all need to shut up. Except us, obviously. Subscribe. Yeah. We should all take one of

01:06:40.200 those Vipassana meditations where you don't talk for 10 days. Imagine if the world just did that

01:06:45.520 and everybody just went for 10 days and just didn't. Silent. And silent. We'd either come out

01:06:52.080 better or just significantly. Or insane. Insane. Yeah. Totally out of our minds. Yeah. So nothing

01:06:58.200 would change then. Yeah, exactly. We'd stay insane. Yeah. All right, guys, head on over to Locals

01:07:02.580 where we continue the conversation, including your questions. He will shamelessly and sociopathically

01:07:10.800 lie to continue to gain power. He's a very disciplined psychopath. Left wing Trump. He's much better 1.00

01:07:22.000 than him.

TRIGGERnometry - November 22, 2023

Bridget Phetasy： I Regret Being a Sl＊t

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