Should Porn Be Banned？ - Lila Rose
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 11 minutes
Words per Minute
190.97476
Summary
This week on Trigga, we have a special bonus interview with the great Lila Pippin, host of the new show, and host of about sex and relationships with children. In this episode, Lila talks about the importance of a good relationship between men and women, and why it s so important to have a solid relationship with your kids.
Transcript
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And I think sex work, as they call it, of course,
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It's the pragmatist in me, Lila, that just thinks,
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There's upload videos of young girls' rapes and boys'
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And it takes sometimes months or years to take it down
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And there's all this burden of proof now on the victim
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to show that this was me, this was me as a child,
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Lila, I saw this incredible clip of you doing a debate about relationships
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between men and women, which is one of the things we want to talk to you about.
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And I have a bit of a reputation for, quote unquote, destroying people with facts and logic.
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And what I love to do is use the logic that people present in order to challenge their own argument.
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And that's what you did with this guy. We'll play a clip of it.
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Oh, you never know. I might like family more than you so much. I have five.
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Do you think that's a good thing to have multiple families?
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I think it's good if there's one dad and there's not a bunch of step parents involved
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and the dad can be the hero. And those five families live a 10x better life
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than they would have otherwise. Yes, ma'am, I do.
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an opportunity for jealousy or disharmony amongst two different families?
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Women are always going to be jealous. What's changed about that?
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Women have been jealous all the way through time. I'm not jealous in my marriage.
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I don't care about your marriage. I'm talking about mine.
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Well, my life is going to be so I don't answer to you.
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Yeah. Yeah. I live my life unapologetically on my terms.
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So but I guess I'm asking if you're comfortable answering, obviously.
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But are you wanting to be a role model for your kids?
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A father should show up in every way for his children.
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I think I'll be better than most fathers, regardless of how many children I have.
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But you think part of being a role model, it's okay for your kids not to know even
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They will know the relationship status with me and their mother.
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But you have other relationships with other women, too.
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I'm just wondering if you think that's a problem.
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I haven't even said that. I'm just saying, like, if I want to, I will.
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But you don't think that's a problem for your daughter to know that about their dad?
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Why don't you just commit to one and choose to be faithful to her?
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I'm just not wired that way. I spent my whole 20s trying to fix myself.
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You're a man of self-control. You work out. You do business.
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You can possess your own power and direct it the way you want to direct it.
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I think it's none of your business, but I don't want you to think I'm triggered by you. I'm not.
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I saw somebody say that and I think that's interesting. I think you're annoying, but I'm not triggered.
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You know what I'm saying? No, you are. You're annoying in like this goody two-shoes type way, and that's fine.
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I'm going to live my life on my terms unapologetically, like truly.
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So you can ask me this 85 different ways. At the end of the day, I'm going to walk out of here the same man.
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Essentially, what we're seeing in the world right now is there's a lot of these influencers
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who are telling men and women some moronic things about relationships between men and women,
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and you exposed that beautifully. Tell us a little bit about what your thinking was and kind of how
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you see this whole thing. Sure. Well, first of all, it's interesting that the people that I think are
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some of these influencers giving moronic, as you call it, advice, often they themselves don't seem to
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come from very happy situations. I think that when you're referring to the clip, the gentleman there,
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he says, I can't fix myself. He's basically a victim of himself in his relationships where he
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has to be promiscuous. He can't commit to one woman. He even admitted when I talked to him that
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it seems like something that he doesn't have control over. He's just a slave to his passions,
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basically. Does someone want to live like that, to be a slave to your appetites? Is that really going
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to bring happiness in the end? And it seems like, you know, you look at the statistics,
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the research on this, people that do not, you know, people that have multiple families,
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people that divorce, people have broken relationships, all in all are less satisfied
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and less happy according to all the data than people that are in monogamous, long-term committed
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relationships. And so you look at just the sheer data and the large body of it that shows what brings
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human happiness in relationships. And it's not what those people are preaching, many of them anyways.
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And that in itself, you know, along with just real world examples, you know, of people that my parents
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have been married 40 plus years and they've struggled and loved each other through it. And I look at them
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as this beautiful example of what I aspire to in my marriage. And that's what we need to have as models
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again, as opposed to, I think, you know, the influencer culture of just do what you feel.
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And one of the most interesting things about people like that guy, and I don't know him,
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I'm not picking on him particularly. It's a phenomenon we see across, particularly the online
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world is a kind of like, you know, I do feel men are lost. I do feel that they've been demonized for
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quite a long time by certain elements of the culture and young men in particular. And we have
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young men that work for us and listening to their take on what's going on is quite interesting.
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But one of the things that is happening is a lot of young men are being told that, you know,
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you must take control. And these are not bad things, actually. Men should take control of
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themselves and their emotions. But what your conversation with that guy revealed is that
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it's very one-sided. It's like, yeah, take control, be in charge. But when it comes to
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some other things, when it comes to the way you relate to women, when it comes to
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what are you doing to build relationships, it's encouraging men to be completely out of control
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of the very things that historically society has trained men to be in control of, because that's
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how society needs to be for it to work. Right. It's control over your economic future,
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you know, be disciplined, save money, work hard, be an entrepreneur. It's control over your physical
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body to be healthy and fit and strong. But there's no control over your sexual appetites, which
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can make or break someone's future. Right. I mean, you look at the abortion rate, you know,
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the fact that out of abortions today, nine out of 10 women having abortions are unmarried. You know,
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these are abortion is happening because people are having sex outside of marriage and they're having
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sex with lots of different people and they're not ready to commit and not ready to raise that child.
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And so you have this abortion crisis and, you know, you look at pornography and porn addictions.
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People can't be monogamous and stay with one woman and love one woman. And all of that is because
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people are not directing their sexual passion. If you can't do that as a society, the society is going
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to crumble. And the social data shows that. The thing that I find really worrying,
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Lila, is you see these, some of these influences and we all know who we're talking about, about
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naming names. And they put forward this narrative that it's not just about, you know, men being
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better, which I'm all for, but it's about pushing women down. Like women are something to be conquered
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and dominated over. And that is your role as a man. And to me, that seems the most toxic of narratives.
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I think it's a reaction to modern feminism, of course, you know, it's this, you know,
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women are now in many ways outperforming men and, you know, in corporate jobs, there's sort
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of affirmative action for women. So they, more women graduate college today. So I think there's
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an anger among men who see women as being given the special status over them in what, in the Western
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world and the reaction of, you know, ultimately I think it's a very, it's a wrong reaction,
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but you can understand the reaction when you look at modern feminism, which is training many women to
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see men as less than, to hate men even, to reject men. We don't need men. Men are not necessary for
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our happiness anymore. When I think the foundation of any society needs to be a strong family, to raise
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the future children and children need a mother and a father who love each other and have respect with
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one another and are married and committed to each other. But that vision is lost for many people.
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And so you have men now disaffected, unhappy, broke it, feeling upset with women, feeling they can't
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even find a woman. And there's a lot of, I think, divisiveness that has entered into the relationship
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between men and women that's becoming more mainstream today, which is again, yes, a result
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of modern feminism, but also men are just struggling. They're, they're disaffected. They're looking for,
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how do we, how do we root ourselves? How do we succeed economically? How do we find relationships?
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And where are the teachers for those men? And they're attracted to these online influencers.
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And the online influencers come in because there is a fatherhood vacuum.
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In that a lot of these poor boys, you know, when I, I taught for many years in poor, in poor areas of
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London, a lot of the boys and a lot of the girls that I taught, dads weren't around.
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You are more likely today than in any other decade to be raised in a single parent household,
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particularly a single mother household in the United States. And so the amount of children
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being raised without fathers in the home is unprecedented today. And what does that bring?
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For young women, I think it brings special problems. Certainly for all men and women,
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girls and boys, it brings more drug addiction, more incarceration, less, worse economic and
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educational outcomes. But it also brings more likeliness to divorce, more likeliness to cohabitate,
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less likeliness to marriage in the future for those children. So you're building these cycles
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And you talk about the cycles of brokenness. I suppose the question is particularly the
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economic reality that you and Francis were just discussing, which is, historically speaking,
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women want today a cross and up. They want the man to make as much money as them or more,
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they want, and be kind of more successful in some other ways. They want someone to be on their level
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or more. And yet in a society that increasingly is, you know, shaped in a different way, that seems
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like quite a difficult problem to resolve. Yes, I've heard that many times, you know, women want
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the wealthier man, you know, the more successful or powerful man. And, you know, I look at,
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and this is anecdotal, yes, but I look at, you know, women who were raised by good fathers, you know,
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or maybe they weren't, but they went through work to really be at peace with men and the masculine.
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And I think that it's less about, I want a wealthy man, or I want a powerful man. And it's more about,
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I want a good man. And I know that that's not a popular narrative today, you know, especially in
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certain online spaces where it's like, no, women are out for money. They're out for security.
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That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. I think your point is accurate in that
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women will prioritize a man who's kind and a man is going to be a good father. And these are all important
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things. But cross-culturally, all the evidence is that women look for a man who can provide.
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Yes. And I'm not saying they don't want a man who can provide, but I think there is,
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anyways, I've seen a narrative that they want, it's not just enough for him to provide as you
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know, and work hard. It's that they want him to be this kind of top 1%, super wealthy, you know,
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super wealthy, super handsome. And that's what they want. And I don't think that's most women.
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Certainly that's some women. I'm not saying there aren't women who are, you know,
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gold digging. We're in LA. We're in LA, sure. But I think there's a lot of, you know,
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the people that I think are seeking health in their relationships, right? And are seeking
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health for themselves. You know, they have a positive view of the masculine, a positive view
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of the feminine. They want to build a family. They want a faithful, monogamous marriage.
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Those people are not so much looking for, you know, wealth and perfect, you know, physical
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perfection in their partner. They're looking for qualities like trustworthiness,
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hard work, loyalty. And that is what we should be, I think, celebrating and promoting, you know.
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And unfortunately, sometimes I think those are underplayed and more the dynamic of you've got
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to be rich. You know, you've got to be successful. That's the way you're going to succeed with women
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or whatever it is. That's more promoted and said. And I think that's not doing anybody any favors.
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No, I completely agree. And that narrative is definitely out there, which is women are
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all gold digging whores and blah, blah, blah. That is out there. And people are saying that
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stuff, which isn't true of the vast majority of women.
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And the feminist narrative is out there that men are all rapists and toxic.
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So there's obviously two very negative narratives about men and women that are both false.
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Yes. This is what I always say. Any ideology that is designed to drive men and women apart is bad,
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whether it's feminism or this red pill stuff or whatever. Definitely true. However,
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if you go down from the top 1%, the top 1% of gold diggers, the top 1% of super wealthy men,
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at the end, you're still left with a society in which women increasingly graduate from college at
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higher rates, make more money than men until they become mothers, etc. And that is still a structural
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issue that gets in the way. I think you're right that it certainly doesn't help that man who says,
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I want to succeed and do my best. And then he feels he's being disfavored, not because of his
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qualities or his work, but because of being male to that woman next to him, whether it's in the job
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process, application process, or applying to a university. And I think that's very harmful. I don't
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think there should be sexism. You know, even affirmative action sexism is sexism in the end,
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in the university application process, in jobs. And I think the bigger point underlying that is,
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what are we telling women? What is the message to women about what your fulfillment as a woman looks
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like? And because of feminism, we have been instructed, and I think also materialism,
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quite frankly, materialistic Western culture, that our success is in how successful we are,
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materially speaking. You know, how much money we make, how far we go, how many degrees we get. Yes,
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education is wonderful, but to what end are you being educated, right? Are you being educated for
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healthier life and your relationships, or so that you can just be this successful person? And women now,
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instead of being valued for, yes, you are a whole person, but in society, you have that special gift of
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being able to bring life into the world as a woman. And that should be valued and cherished,
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and yes, put up on a pedestal that we can bring life and families need special protections. Mothers,
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fathers need special protections, and special support in societies. Okay, so now women encourage that
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your femininity, your womanhood, bringing an ability to be a mother is worth cherishing,
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worth valuing. But that's not the message at large. The message at large is, go be a girl boss,
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you know, the Sheryl Sandberg message of lean in, go sit in the corporate boardroom,
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that's where you're going to fulfill your feminine power, compete with men in the workplace. And I
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think that, yes, no, nobody should close off those doors to women. You know, they shouldn't be shut to
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women. But I think the greatest superpower of a woman that makes her different from a man is her
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ability to be a mother. And that's what we should be celebrating in a society. And we should be
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fostering what's the message for women today, when it comes to their ability to mother, largely
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speaking, your reproductive rights. I mean, think about that. Women's Rights National Organization
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for Women in America, one of the leading pro women's organizations, as they claim,
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their top plank is not, let's help women be fully mothers and then also educated and be able to be
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fulfilled in their life holistically. Let's fight rape, let's fight abuse. Their top plank is,
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let's have, ensure that you can have an abortion and that it's tax funded and that it's supported
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by society and that there's every restriction is removed. So when women are told your empowerment
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is reproductive rights, AKA abortion, which is killing a child. And typically abortion is encouraged
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so that you can go to school if you're pregnant, you can get the job and not be set back in your
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career. What is that message to women? The very antithesis of what it means uniquely to be a woman,
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your ability to mother, is being denigrated and saying that motherhood ability you have is
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actually a threat to you competing with men and a threat to you being successful. There was this
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famous speech at the Golden Globes just a couple of years ago, I don't know if you saw it, Michelle
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Williams, an actor. And she's clutching her prize, her statue, and she's thanking the abortion that she
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had as a young woman for the success that she had in her entertainment career. And she's saying,
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if I hadn't had the right to choose, I would not be on the stage basically holding this,
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holding this prize. I mean, that's the image of womanhood in the Western world. You need abortion
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and you don't need men in order to be successful. And that's your empowerment. It is no wonder
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there is so much division between men and women and so much unhappiness.
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Look, what you're saying is incredibly powerful. And that, I'll be honest with you,
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this is a subject which I'm still not completely decided over if I'm being honest, but that is
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absolutely horrendous and an awful, awful thing to say. Especially as well when you look at falling
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birth. Francis, I'm sorry to interrupt. It kind of makes sense though. Do you know what, like, in some
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ways because what you're saying, it makes sense because if the purpose of a woman is to be
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successful. And compete with men, to be better than men. And to be better than men. And if what we,
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if a baby prevents, or my wife has a baby, she's not very successful in her career right now because
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she's with our son, right? Then yes, then she is right to thank her abortion for her success.
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If that's the frame in which we operate. The baby is now the aggressor, the potential
00:18:58.120
child or the actual child, if you're pregnant with that baby, to your success as a woman, to your
00:19:02.680
empowerment and fulfillment as a woman. And so the very thing that is unique about you from different
00:19:07.800
from men, your ability to, our reproduction systems are different. That's our primary difference.
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Transphobic. I mean, it is our biological DNA difference is our reproductive systems and those
00:19:19.640
systems uniquely different in how they affect us. I can bring a life into the world through my body.
00:19:25.640
It's amazing. I can gestate. I can then lactate. That requires commitment of at least nine months and
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beyond. And that requires, does society organize itself to prioritize reproduction and value it,
00:19:39.880
or does it reject it on the altar of economic success, careerism, material good? And that's
00:19:47.400
what our society has chosen so far at large. Sorry, mate. No, it's fine. It's fine.
00:19:53.480
And what that breeds in women, I think, is a real sadness because what they've been taught to believe
00:20:00.440
is that this career will make you happy. And I think what they realize as they hit mid to late 30s,
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even early 40s is, I've kind of been sold a lot.
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I mean, women, yes, absolutely. I think there's a lot of, when we talked about disaffected men,
00:20:19.400
a lot of disaffected women who are unhappy, who are single, who are childless.
00:20:25.240
You know, if you go on Reddit and look at sort of the threads about fertility and declining fertility
00:20:30.440
and egg freezing, there's these horror stories of women, you know, they lost their fertility window,
00:20:34.680
they were working, they were studying so hard. They can't find, you know, a man, you know,
00:20:39.240
they're in their late 30s. And just the abject misery many of them feel that their life they feel
00:20:46.200
is passing them by and there's nothing they can do about it. It's not just women, though, I would say.
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It's both women and men who, when they wake up one morning and they realize,
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where am I at? You know, I'm not married. I have no children. And, you know, you shouldn't get married
00:21:03.720
and have children just because, you know, statistical research tells you to be happier. Like, you have to
00:21:08.440
go into it to want to serve and love your spouse, you know, serve and love your children. But those acts
00:21:14.840
of service and love to another human being is a purpose bigger than yourself. And if you don't
00:21:19.720
have that in your intimate life, you are going to be unhappy. You're going to be adrift. People are
00:21:26.920
made for relationship. We're human beings. You know, as mammals, we're made for relationship,
00:21:30.600
but we have spirits and we're made for connection. We don't have that. If we just have ourselves and
00:21:35.560
we're living for ourselves or, you know, we have maybe just sexual connection without the deeper
00:21:40.200
connection, we're not going to be happy. And, you know, we talked about data, but I'm sure it's
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been mentioned on your show before. Everyone seems to mention it. We know about it, but the Harvard
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happiness study, you know, this study over a hundred years, two cohorts of men removing,
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you know, economic differences and educational opportunities, removing those to look at them
00:21:58.520
as the same, meaning you have your less wealthy cohort, your more wealthy and educated cohort.
00:22:03.400
And they discovered that at the end of the day for both groups, the happiest, healthiest
00:22:09.800
men were the ones that ended up choosing long-term marriages and staying married. And you found
00:22:18.360
misery, bankruptcy, lack of health in both groups of men, even the ones that were wealthy and from
00:22:24.680
good educational backgrounds versus not. And you found better outcomes for both groups of men,
00:22:29.880
including the more, you know, the poorer group, the less educated group when they married and when
00:22:34.600
they stayed married and built families. A hundred years of research on that. And there's so much other,
00:22:39.640
data to that too. Again, we're made for connection. We're made for long-term committed relationship.
00:22:44.200
Do you think, and this is going to set me sounding like a big old lefty,
00:22:47.960
but do you think part of this is the fact that we live in a consumerist society
00:22:52.680
where every type of relationship is transactional? Now, if every type of relationship is transactional,
00:23:00.040
doesn't that mean that we're going to view sex as transaction? We're going to view
00:23:04.120
relationships as transactional. What can I get? Because that seems to be the very basis of our
00:23:09.080
society. I think that's a great point. I mean, we are, you know, you can blame,
00:23:14.920
some people like to blame capitalism for it. I would just say it's, you can have a capitalistic
00:23:19.000
society, but still values that see the human person as more important than material things
00:23:24.280
or material success. But yeah, I think people today, you know, we're, we don't think, I mean,
00:23:29.560
I think technology helps, you know, hurts this too, our connection with each other.
00:23:34.520
Um, we're always trying to produce something, you know, it's always about production, uh, producing
00:23:40.280
work product, producing, you know, likes on the internet, producing success. And so we're not in
00:23:45.640
the present moment with each other. And the pace of life is so fast. There's not really time to,
00:23:51.320
is there even time to fall in love? Is there even time to have a baby, take the time off of work to have
00:23:56.840
the baby, take the time off of work to raise the baby. We don't make time for human relationships
00:24:02.360
today the way we used to. And I think media plays a part because in media, what is, uh, celebrated is,
00:24:10.360
you know, success and wealth and physical beauty and these things, as opposed to experience of just
00:24:16.840
being with people. Cause you can't really see that in media. You know, you don't, you can see,
00:24:20.600
I guess, snapshots on Instagram of people, you know, having beautiful times with their family,
00:24:24.440
maybe having breakfast, but watching someone else do that is different than living it.
00:24:28.040
Yeah. And also as well, it's this idealized view that we have of relationships. And we tend to be
00:24:35.480
a society that avoids discomfort and every relationship has its ups and its downs. And it's
00:24:40.840
also, there are going to be times where you don't get on that well. And instead of thinking to yourself,
00:24:46.520
right, let's move on to the next one, which you're incentivized to do in our culture,
00:24:51.560
it's about sticking and working in it. It's a great point. Yeah. If you just run,
00:24:56.120
when it gets hard, uh, you'll never, you'll never find, I think the happiness and the purpose that you
00:25:02.280
want, because life is going to be hard one way or another. You know, even if you choose to live for
00:25:07.240
yourself, live for your career, you know, the Michelle Williams, hold the golden statue and have
00:25:12.120
the abortion to succeed. Uh, there will still be hardship. You know, you'll feel loneliness.
00:25:16.600
There'll be the stresses of your work. It's what hard do you choose? And, you know, I look at my
00:25:21.240
parents' marriage. I mentioned that. And I look at the couples that I admire who stick with each other
00:25:25.640
through difficult times and work at the relationship. It's not idealized. Like it's not going to take
00:25:30.760
work. Communication takes time. Your relationship is not a, uh, it's not something of utility. It takes
00:25:38.720
some, it takes your time that you can't just plug in and plug out. It's saying you've got to,
00:25:43.160
um, sometimes it's going to disrupt your work week. Sometimes it's going to be the thing that
00:25:47.000
you have to invest significant time into and do that regularly and have just leisure time with
00:25:51.800
the person, you know, just be with them. If you can't, if you can't make space for that in your life
00:25:56.760
and prioritize it, then I don't think you're going to find the happiness that you want.
00:26:01.900
We'll be back with our guests in a minute, but first, do you remember the Canadian trucker protest in
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2022 where thousands of Canadians came out to protest COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates?
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Now, these protests lasted for weeks and the people out on the streets needed funds as any
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grassroots protest would. So people set up online crowdfunding campaigns, which raised millions of
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dollars. Incredible. But once the Canadian authorities had started to criticize the crowdfunding platforms,
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ramping up pressure to close the campaigns, it didn't take long for the biggest crowdfunding platform,
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the one we've all heard of, to completely capitulate and shut the campaigns down.
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Now, this is where our partners, Give, Send, Go, come in. They stepped in when the other platforms
00:26:48.340
backed off and raised millions of dollars for the truckers. When they were criticized and dragged
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through the Canadian courts, Give, Send, Go said it respected diverse views and believed hope and freedom
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is important to you. And now, back to the interview.
00:27:28.020
And there's also, we've started to be this culture, which I find morally repugnant, that celebrates
00:27:36.480
divorce. I've seen like, you know, divorce parties, divorce cakes. And look, sometimes marriages aren't
00:27:42.640
good. Sometimes, you know, there's things like abuse or there's a breakdown of a relationship,
00:27:50.260
You know, the two of the top reasons for a divorce is number one, I just wasn't committed.
00:27:55.340
Lack of commitment. Meaning something else became the priority more than the relationship,
00:28:01.060
which it's easy to do in today's world. Your work, you know, your other pursuits or feeling
00:28:07.020
of self-fulfillment outside of the relationship, they're stopping me from this thing that I want
00:28:10.960
to do. And the second thing is pornography. Because people are, you know, pornography is
00:28:18.020
everywhere. It's ubiquitous. Everywhere you look, OnlyFans has just ballooned in the last few
00:28:23.500
years. Now, like every young girl is thinking, not every, but many, is this a career option for me?
00:28:29.420
It's like being an Instagram influencer was a few years ago. Now, should I consider an OnlyFans
00:28:33.720
account? You know, I've had people on the internet, when are you going to do OnlyFans? I mean, it's
00:28:37.280
just like everyone's, I mean, it's ridiculous, obviously, but it's-
00:28:41.560
But it's every, it's just now it's part of this, the mindset of like, women do it. Women
00:28:47.100
do it everywhere. You know, I've been on a lot of podcasts talking to different people
00:28:51.700
in the porn industry. I don't even like to call it that because it's a sexual exploitation
00:28:55.860
industry. But the amount of sheer porn use, you know, porn is the most searched for thing
00:29:01.540
on the web. Child assault material, they say child porn is increased in its searches every
00:29:08.080
single year over the last decade. It's incredible. And yes, it's breaking down marriages, but what
00:29:13.840
else is it doing? I mean, it's, it's, it's polluting male, female relationships more than
00:29:21.340
And why would you say that, Lila? Why would you say that it's polluting male and female
00:29:25.300
Because it's teaching objectification as the first, as the first glance of how you see
00:29:32.480
someone. Instead of seeing someone as a person holistically I'm going to engage with, you're
00:29:38.220
training yourself to see someone as a sex object. And when you see people as sex objects, certainly
00:29:45.200
you're not training yourself to be in a healthy relationship. Because when you are in a healthy
00:29:50.640
relationship, you see someone as a full person, body, mind, and soul, and you care for
00:29:54.500
them, you're willing to sacrifice for them. They're not an object for your sexual gratification.
00:29:58.660
Do you think the point that you've just made, and we'll stick with porn, but I just want
00:30:01.800
to make a parallel there because you talk about it teaches objectification. I kind of feel like
00:30:09.940
social media is basically that for everything else too, where we've become avatars of ourselves.
00:30:17.940
You are the latest three tweets that you've posted instead of the fully rounded human being
00:30:23.760
that other people don't really get to see. And so we are looking at each other in every lens now
00:30:29.300
through a very tiny sliver of our personalities, very often the one that we want to portray to the
00:30:34.860
world. And we've kind of become very superficial, not just sexual, all our connections have become
00:30:42.980
I mean, it's an interesting point. I think it's certainly true for, I mean, especially for
00:30:48.440
generations. I think about Gen Zers, you know, one beneath us, I think, are our younger brothers
00:30:53.820
and sisters who just grew up. They didn't have a world. Like, I didn't have an iPhone when I was 13.
00:30:59.000
Every Gen Zer did. So that's all that they know. And, you know, they're more likely to,
00:31:04.520
you know, text than talk. You know, they're more likely to Snapchat than talk or meet in person.
00:31:09.700
And yeah, what does that do to how you see people at a very deep level? It's, I'm sure it's not
00:31:15.400
healthy. Pornography is an additional, you know, unique evil because you can see someone's Twitter
00:31:23.280
or their Instagram and yeah, maybe not see them fully, but you learn about them and you can have
00:31:27.980
maybe, maybe that can contribute something positive to the relationship. Oh, you had a new baby. You know,
00:31:32.060
oh, I learned about what you thought about this latest current event. Interesting. Let's engage and
00:31:35.620
have a coffee about it. With pornography, you're violating yourself and the other person
00:31:40.940
because you're using them for sexual gratification when human beings are not objects for sexual
00:31:46.840
gratification. And you've spoken to a lot of people in the porn industry. You've been in debates with
00:31:52.820
them. What have you learned about this particular industry? Oh, it's an interesting question.
00:31:57.780
Um, well, first of all, beyond talking to people in part because my, my pro-life is connected to some
00:32:05.680
of investigative work I've done on trafficking, human trafficking, how that connects with abortion.
00:32:11.160
A lot of trafficking victims have abortions. Uh, they're pressured to have them by their pimps. I
00:32:16.660
mean, there's a whole, uh, world of abuse and exploitation that's connected here. Children are,
00:32:21.920
I mean, it makes sense. If you, um, abuse sex, new life comes into the picture. Inevitably new human
00:32:28.320
lives because sex brings life. Even with contraception, it has a failure rate. 50%, by the way, of, um,
00:32:34.780
women who have abortions are using contraception the month they got pregnant. 50% of women have
00:32:39.740
abortions. So you see this connection between new life being destroyed because we exploit people
00:32:46.660
sexually. Uh, Louise Perry, I think she was on your podcast. She's phenomenal. She had a piece out
00:32:51.140
recently, uh, calling attention to the fact that under brothels, uh, you look at, you excavate
00:32:57.040
brothels from like the Roman empire and you're going to find the common thing that you can find
00:33:01.980
are the bodies of male infants, uh, the skeletons of male infants, the remains, because the female
00:33:08.100
infants can be used for sex trade, but the male infants would just be murdered upon being born.
00:33:13.220
So you find this connection age old between infanticide, between abortion and sexual exploitation.
00:33:18.960
Um, but all that to say, you know, when I talk to people in the porn industry,
00:33:24.860
I think there's certainly a disconnect between, um, there's certainly a defense of abortion.
00:33:29.300
I found that very common because we need abortion. It's our backup contraception,
00:33:33.820
but I also find a lack of, I think, just self-worth. I mean, that's the most tragic thing is that I am
00:33:42.340
good for money. I am good for money by selling myself sexually. And money is something that is
00:33:50.640
this, uh, prize that I need to pursue and large amounts of money. I'm talking to successful,
00:33:55.680
usually, you know, people who make making lots of money and these material things, this car that I
00:34:00.780
bought, the standard of life that I have is worth it to me to sell my body. Um, and I find that for
00:34:06.960
some of them that I talked to, you know, single girls involved in, uh, you know, sexual exploitation
00:34:11.740
and pornography, many of them express the desire to want to have a relationship with a man and be
00:34:19.040
married and even have children one day. And they're sort of torn because they know what they're doing
00:34:24.480
may prevent that, but what they're doing is so financially lucrative that they're going to keep
00:34:28.900
doing it. And so I've talked with a lot of OnlyFans creator girls who say they want to be married,
00:34:34.680
but they feel like that this is how they're making money. And so they can't kind of,
00:34:39.460
they can't make the sacrifice today of I'm not, I'm going to reject this profession because it's
00:34:42.920
going to hurt, you know, this trade because it's going to hurt my potential to be in a,
00:34:46.740
in a loving marriage and have kids one day. But it's again, the short term, it connected back to,
00:34:52.840
I think even, you know, sexual ethics, it's preventing short-term gratification. It's saying no to
00:34:58.960
short-term gratification for long-term love. And in that moment, you see it play out. I'm getting
00:35:04.280
money for this thing that I'm doing. Right. But I want this long-term thing, but I'm not willing
00:35:09.280
to sacrifice today to get the long-term thing that I want. This is going to sound very crude. You know
00:35:13.980
what I find interesting? And I think it comes back to what you were talking about right at the
00:35:18.300
beginning about the idea of like women being empowered by taking control, but because, and the
00:35:25.440
reason I said this is going to sound very crude, but it is, you know, true if we were talking about
00:35:29.380
other animals, a lot of the women you're talking about are very beautiful women who could probably
00:35:35.900
secure a similar material lifestyle by finding a partner who's, who's very successful financially
00:35:43.340
and being with them and having kids as they probably eventually want. So it seems like at least I'm
00:35:50.160
exploring this with you. I'm thinking out loud, and this is always a bad idea on the internet,
00:35:53.860
but we'll try. Right. It's almost like it's about, I want to make the money here. Do you see
00:36:00.400
what I'm saying? Yeah. Because they could just marry somebody who will make that money because
00:36:04.900
they're likely to be able to secure someone who could do that. Right. And it seems to me like it's
00:36:09.700
not just about materialism. It's also about the, what we call empowerment now, which is people
00:36:16.560
ripping themselves apart from each other instead of seeking to bond together and build things
00:36:21.840
together. I mean, it's a good, it's a good point. I mean, I think there's also the, an idea there of
00:36:27.660
bodily autonomy of, I have this body, I can do whatever I want with. And that's very much, I think
00:36:33.940
we've been infected with that, especially women in this country to say, you have this radical bodily
00:36:38.620
autonomy to the point that if you're pregnant, you can kill another body inside your body. Um, and you
00:36:43.860
know, the bodily autonomy argument with pornography is I can do whatever I want with my body. As long as
00:36:48.040
I'm calling the shots, as long as I'm consenting to even this degrading sexual act.
00:36:54.140
And what's wrong with that argument? I'm not degraded. What's wrong with that argument? Because
00:36:57.460
look, a kind of the liberal perspective of which I'm broadly in sympathy with is people are allowed
00:37:04.000
to do whatever the hell they want to do within the law. Right. I mean, that, that's what the law
00:37:07.800
is for. It's to demarcate what we can do and what we can't do. Well, all rights have responsibilities.
00:37:13.200
Mm-hmm. So my right to certain freedoms will always come with responsibilities and the law
00:37:19.100
should be founded on human rights, on ideas of rights and ideas of responsibilities. As a, you
00:37:25.500
know, person in this country, I have the right to choose to marry and choose to have children. No one
00:37:29.460
can stop me from that. But then I have the responsibility in a marriage to my partner,
00:37:33.980
certain responsibilities. I think I owe them loyalty. I owe them fidelity. I owe them my kindness,
00:37:38.980
my presence. And if I conceive a child and whether I'm married or not, and I conceive a child,
00:37:44.300
I have a responsibility as a parent, even if I didn't consent to the act, act within my body of
00:37:50.580
conception happening, I consented to sex, having sex. And if I conceive a child, I have a responsibility
00:37:56.280
now to that child, even if I don't want it. But the bodily autonomy argument says I have endless
00:38:02.140
rights with no responsibility. And yes, you have an amount of autonomy to the point where someone else
00:38:08.200
has rights that you may have responsibility to. Oh, on abortion, I agree with you. That's a much
00:38:11.800
more complicated thing. But in terms of the sex industry, what is the argument for a woman who
00:38:18.060
wants to go and have sex for money to not do that? One more thing before on abortion, I just want to
00:38:24.140
say, and then I do want to answer that. I don't think abortion is complicated. I think it's actually
00:38:29.240
very simple because it's a question of, is it always wrong to kill an innocent person, an innocent
00:38:36.080
human? Is it always wrong to kill an innocent human? And I don't know, would you agree it's
00:38:40.280
always wrong to kill an innocent human? Yes. Okay. I think we can agree. And most people do agree. I
00:38:44.240
would say 95% of people I talk to agree, which is nice. All right. Well, abortion ends the life of an
00:38:50.180
innocent human. And I can prove that to you. You don't need to.
00:38:53.100
The pre-born fetus embryo is a human. Of course. Clearly, they're alive. Abortion is an act that
00:38:59.700
kills them. And they're innocent. They've committed no wrong. So therefore, abortion, because it kills
00:39:05.620
an innocent human, is always wrong. So all the nuance that we've invented around abortion, all the
00:39:11.840
arguments, all the rationalizations and justifications fall apart when you look at plainly
00:39:17.060
what is right and wrong and what that human life is. There are human life. But I wanted to set that
00:39:24.340
because I think abortion, it's unpopular to talk about. People don't like to talk about it. Or if
00:39:29.260
they do, they want to talk about it in the framework of women's rights and empowerment. They don't want
00:39:33.880
to talk about what it is that it kills human life. They don't want to talk about the morality that
00:39:37.360
that's always wrong. We have no problem talking about it. We've had people from both sides who are as
00:39:41.980
strident as you are. So we... I consider it logical. It's not an extreme one way or the other.
00:39:48.500
I didn't say extreme. I said strident. It's a different thing. You're passionate about it,
00:39:51.820
which I completely respect. Totally. But come back to me with to the other argument, which is about
00:39:57.300
why women are and aren't allowed to have sex for money, essentially. Yeah. I think it's because
00:40:03.840
we have a responsibility and society at large. I think porn should be banned.
00:40:08.520
And I think sex work, as they call it, of course, should be illegal. And first of all,
00:40:13.420
it's because sex is designed to bring life into the world. And even with contraception,
00:40:18.200
like I said, it often does. And so you need to... Morality calls us to have responsibility along
00:40:26.380
with rights when it comes to sex. And our responsibility with sex is that we are ready
00:40:32.460
and prepared, you know, as ready as we can. We know one's fully ready to be a parent, but we are
00:40:36.460
willing to accept the responsibility of a new life that we may create. And responsibility would say
00:40:41.840
that we should be having sex in scenarios, in circumstances that are primed for that life to
00:40:49.460
be able to live and flourish. And that's not a one-night stand. That's not a hookup. That's not a porn
00:40:56.180
scene. Ideally, that's a loving marriage that we've freely chosen where we can raise those children
00:41:03.800
together. And so when you look at the morality, when you look at the morality of sex and sexual
00:41:08.480
ethics, you know, the purpose of sex, what's it designed for? New life and connection between two
00:41:13.460
people. It tells us a lot about how we should behave. And so to your question about, you know,
00:41:19.240
why women shouldn't sell themselves, because what is sex designed for? Sex is designed for a
00:41:25.400
connection between you and another person that I think should be lifelong. It bonds you emotionally.
00:41:30.160
I think it bonds you spiritually. And there's a lot of science that shows that, but it also can bring
00:41:34.840
life into the world. So your right to choose to have sex with someone comes with the responsibility
00:41:39.820
that you're choosing that in the context of committing to them and loving them, not just letting
00:41:47.160
them use you or you using them for a moment of pleasure. Okay. And I agree with all of that.
00:41:53.400
The one thing that I would like to talk to you about the porn industry before we go on to the
00:41:56.840
banning thing, because that's where I think things get a lot more complicated, if I'm honest,
00:42:01.020
is the addiction element to porn, whereby you see a lot of men just get hooked on this dopamine cycle
00:42:09.000
where they are constantly going on to new clip after new clip. And you just see, and when you talk to
00:42:15.440
these men, you just see that they become hooked on it in the way that it's almost drug-like.
00:42:22.480
Yeah. I mean, exactly. It's, it is drug-like for a lot of men and, and some women too. I mean,
00:42:28.500
there's a lot of female porn users now increasingly, um, which is, you know, uncommon maybe a decade ago,
00:42:35.500
but it's so everywhere. And it's so, you know, it's so encouraged even, or treated as such a casual
00:42:41.000
thing that women are encouraged to explore it too. And girls are encouraged to explore it too,
00:42:45.520
but it's highly addictive. And, um, that makes it all the more dangerous. But I think it also tells
00:42:53.440
you something about the nature of sex. Sex is very powerful. It's very beautiful. And if we keep
00:43:00.660
treating it as cheap as a society, as something you can literally sell for a subscription of $5 online
00:43:06.200
for your account, your OnlyFans account, um, we're going to keep making misery for ourselves,
00:43:12.080
leaving a path of misery for ourselves. Okay. So let's get into banning porn. And this is where
00:43:17.300
I think we're going to have a disagreement because... He's a massive fan. I'm a massive fan. I want to
00:43:21.880
watch it every day, mate. Oh gosh. All day, every day. Someone's going to clip that. We're joking.
00:43:26.560
We're joking. I believe you're joking. Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to banning porn, this is the issue.
00:43:34.400
There are lots of things in the world that I disagree with that I think are damaging,
00:43:39.200
but I think banning them drives them underground and it just creates, it encourages a black market
00:43:47.220
where a black market happens. That's where you have criminal gangs start to operate because you're
00:43:53.880
not allowing reputable or the free market to get involved. And you create something that is far,
00:44:01.700
far darker and more dangerous for everybody involved. What say you to that?
00:44:06.620
You can certainly make that argument about many things like, you know, sexual assault material.
00:44:11.100
I mean, that's certainly black market because thankfully that's still illegal, right?
00:44:15.000
But just because something, uh, there may be a black market for something, uh, if it were to be made
00:44:20.460
illegal, then therefore it should be made illegal. I don't think it's a compelling case.
00:44:24.160
But hang on a second. Most men wouldn't be interested in sexual assault material,
00:44:28.780
but I would say most men would enjoy pornography.
00:44:31.620
Well, I don't know that that's true. Some of the most highly, uh, maybe not child sexual
00:44:35.320
assault material, very young children, but some of the most highly viewed pornography,
00:44:39.220
like on Pornhub is of, you know, um, mock rape scenes of maybe just barely of age girls.
00:44:47.160
So it's definitely a very popular, some of the most popular pornography,
00:44:50.740
um, especially for addicts that need to get more and more intense pornography is violent pornography.
00:44:56.280
Well, interestingly, the statistics show that it's actually more women that are interested
00:45:03.080
in that type of content than men. For reasons that historically make sense.
00:45:12.000
Because I've seen that men, it's a, it's a highly popular porn, pornography for men,
00:45:17.000
But those two things are not mutually exclusive. Something can be very popular with men
00:45:20.880
and more popular with women, uh, for reasons that from an evolutionary perspective would make sense
00:45:25.920
to me, uh, given how human beings have evolved and the nature of war and in our past and so on.
00:45:31.360
I hear you. Yeah. But I think the point I'm making still stands that, um, when you're dealing
00:45:36.400
with something highly addictive and in order for it to be continually sort of satisfactory for the
00:45:41.040
addict, it needs to be more and more intense. You see more and more violent and depraved
00:45:48.960
Okay. Um, and I take your argument, but surely we can use that argument for alcohol. Where I come
00:45:54.560
from in the UK, we have a horrible, horrible relationship with alcohol. You know, you look
00:46:00.160
at the destruction it causes, the assaults, the murders, deaths when people get behind the wheel
00:46:07.040
and they're drunk, assaults, all of these things. And you can use the same addiction. People,
00:46:13.600
there's a lot of alcohol addicts in my country, a lot of people with alcohol addiction.
00:46:18.240
I think the difference there is, um, porn, I believe is intrinsically evil. Uh, having a glass
00:46:24.800
of wine, you know, not drinking to excess, uh, can be a, a good even, you know, it's a,
00:46:29.520
it can be a beautiful thing to do in a, you know, at a wedding or on a date or, you know,
00:46:33.520
whatever it might be. So I think there's a fundamental difference between the thing, um, you know,
00:46:39.280
porn on, porn and alcohol. I don't think there's a way to do good porn. There's not a way to, um,
00:46:45.520
sexually objectify someone in a good way or to be sexually objectified in a good way.
00:46:50.880
But do you think by making it illegal, it's, it's then going to drive it underground and you're
00:46:56.880
going to make that industry worse? I don't think it has to be that way. I think in fact,
00:47:03.040
if we make it illegal, you know, laws have a power to instruct, you know, a few decades ago,
00:47:08.720
people didn't wear seatbelts and no one thought twice about it. Uh, then it became the law to wear
00:47:13.680
a seatbelt and there were campaigns explaining you should wear seatbelts. And now you kind of feel
00:47:18.720
uncomfortable if you forget your seatbelt on because you feeling like you're, you know, you're
00:47:22.320
certainly the seatbelt for your child. It's like, oh, you know, God forbid. And so I do think the law,
00:47:27.360
um, is instructive and that's one of its powers. And so for us to say, yeah, of sexually objectifying
00:47:34.720
someone, um, looking at pictures of someone to, you know, have a sexual experience is,
00:47:41.280
is not just immoral, but you shouldn't be able to do that. If you're, you know, on the website,
00:47:46.480
on the web searching, it's illegal to have, to create these images and be putting them out there.
00:47:50.960
Um, and, you know, I, I think it might be a step too far to born, to ban people who look at it,
00:47:56.320
you know, cause that would be very hard to, how would you practically, um, actually make that law
00:48:01.360
enforced? Right. And it's very hard to enforce, but certainly pornographers who are profiting off
00:48:06.080
of this, um, I think who are exploiting people. I think, I don't think that should be legal.
00:48:10.800
The problem with that argument, Lila, and I'm not unsympathetic to it genuinely,
00:48:15.520
is that the seatbelt analogy is not a good one because the sexual drive, particularly in men,
00:48:22.720
but I mean, we evolved to reproduce. Right. So the sexual drive in men in particular is so strong
00:48:30.400
that no one is a dick. No one, no one evolved to not wear a seatbelt. Right. So you're going to have
00:48:37.840
men seeking out sexual experiences in any which way they can. I mean, I promise you, I was a teenage
00:48:44.400
boy once, you know, that there's been lots of comedy routines about men, uh, and how they think
00:48:51.920
about these things that, that thing is going to drive men. It's the, it's, it's what drives human
00:48:58.160
beings. Um, so they're going to seek that out. And when we look at things like prohibition in this
00:49:04.560
country over something far less addictive and far less important to people as alcohol, that does not
00:49:09.920
end well, I think is the point that Francis is making. I understand the point, but I think it's
00:49:14.640
to say the answer to, you know, a teenage boy having a strong sex drive is that we should permit
00:49:20.320
pornographers to have prolific amounts of porn online. And that should be perfectly legal. I don't
00:49:24.800
think it's a sound argument. I think it shouldn't be legal for pornographers to be plastering pornography
00:49:30.320
all over the internet for teen boys to stumble upon. And then ultimately many of them enter a cycle
00:49:34.240
of addiction and unhappiness. You know, it's not making their relationship stronger. These boys,
00:49:37.760
it's not making them better workers. It's not making them better people. Um, does that mean
00:49:42.240
that some men won't go out of their way to find porn that's been illegally created? Well, of course,
00:49:47.520
you know, some men who have such, you know, maybe a brokenness and, you know, such an intense
00:49:53.760
overriding sex drive might commit horrible acts like rape, but of course we don't legalize rape.
00:49:58.320
You know, we say it's always wrong. We're going to stop it. Do some bad things still happen? Yes.
00:50:03.520
But I don't think the fact that the bad thing may happen still is a reason to continue to support it
00:50:09.920
economically as a society, allow an industry, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, uh, to allow it
00:50:15.680
to just operate without any, uh, any, any force stopping it. I think the reason, and we're pushing
00:50:21.040
back in a kind of, we're exploring the argument. This is what we do with all of our guests.
00:50:26.400
It's a good trigonometry conversation. It is. I feel that. And as you, I mentioned before we
00:50:31.520
started, we recently had Ayla on, who's from the sex industry. So we want to explore every
00:50:36.560
issue from different angles with people and challenge what they're saying. One of the issues
00:50:41.040
that I think the reason we're having this disagreement, if it is a disagreement, is we're
00:50:46.400
talking about the practicality you were talking about from morality. And this is my experience of
00:50:51.760
people who are conservative generally, they have a very strong moral core and their sense of moral
00:50:59.040
outrage about things that they find offensive sometimes overrides the practical reality of
00:51:05.040
things. I mean, for example, the war on drugs in my experience doesn't work and causes a lot of harm,
00:51:11.920
a lot of harm. Does that mean, you know, I've got a 16 year old, 16 month son that you met,
00:51:16.720
does that mean I want him to be, you know, smoking weed when he's 12? No.
00:51:20.960
No. But would you make the harder drugs illegal? Illegal, excuse me.
00:51:29.520
So you are for, I think, but the point here is you are for...
00:51:33.680
Some restrictions. And so, you know, back to pornography for a moment.
00:51:39.520
Again, I agree with you that some people will look at pornography, but I don't think it's a good
00:51:44.320
argument to say that because some people will still look at pornography, we should allow,
00:51:49.040
because what I'm advocating for is banning pornographers from creating.
00:51:53.120
Ban OnlyFans. You know, ban, you know, John Stagliano. I remember him coming to my classroom
00:51:58.240
at UCLA as a student talking about how proud he was to be a pornographer. And, you know,
00:52:03.040
my free speech professor who was really into porn, it was kind of gross, but he was so excited to have
00:52:07.920
this famous pornographer. And John was saying, yeah, the Supreme Court, you know, is stopping
00:52:12.240
basically child porn makers, but they still allow me. And I was just like, why do they allow you to do
00:52:17.360
what you're doing? It's disgusting. That should be illegal. You know, looking at porn, I'm not saying
00:52:22.400
that that should be illegal. I think that's impossible to enforce. I agree with you. But
00:52:26.560
people creating it, profiting from it, I don't think there's any good reason to allow that.
00:52:30.080
What about a couple that make their own webcam videos?
00:52:32.640
I don't think any individual or couple or corporate structure should be allowed to be making pornography
00:52:41.200
and profiting off of it. Where I'm in agreement with you, Lila, actually, is I think that every
00:52:46.480
single one of those websites should have, should not allow anyone who is under the age of 18 to view
00:52:52.640
that content. And I think that that needs to be very strictly enforced. How? Well, there needs to be,
00:52:59.920
I mean, I'm not one of these tech people. I know I look like one, but I'm really not.
00:53:04.640
But there needs to be some kind of child lock. And look, you know,
00:53:08.000
they need to do everything in their power to make sure that the people accessing that content are
00:53:14.480
over the age of 18. But think about it this way. If you are a, if you're Pornhub, and this is
00:53:19.600
happening right now, Pornhub's making billions of dollars. I think Pornhub is disgusting, can I just
00:53:24.480
say? But there's, that's who we're talking about. I'm talking about ban the pornographers. Pornhub
00:53:28.400
is case in point, right? Pornhub should not be allowed. Pornhub are not pornographers.
00:53:32.560
They're a platform where people can share their porn. I consider that a pornographer. I mean,
00:53:36.400
they're, they're publishing porn. I mean, you also want to ban the couple
00:53:39.440
making their own videos. So it's not just that you want to ban pornography.
00:53:42.480
I think, yeah. You want to ban pornography. I want to ban people that create and distribute
00:53:46.640
pornography. Yes. I want to ban that, that whole system, right? And Pornhub is essential today to
00:53:51.840
that system. And Pornhub has surprisingly, you know, it's not a surprise, is very, you know, slow,
00:54:01.680
reticent about strong controls of underage viewers of their product, right?
00:54:08.320
Because, you know, they, they want it, they want that market. And they're also very
00:54:12.400
reticent to have any sort of meaningful system to stop underage pornography from being uploaded to
00:54:18.240
their, you know, child sexual assault material ultimately from being uploaded to their site.
00:54:22.640
But we are still allowing them to operate with impunity. So you have this additional problem by allowing
00:54:27.760
pornography to be published and created that you always along the, along the edges have,
00:54:33.120
it's not just, you know, a consenting couple happily making pornography in their bedroom,
00:54:36.800
you know, this sort of myth of that. You have young girls, young boys who are sexually exploited,
00:54:43.280
many of who were sexually exploited from a very young age, who are now part of a system of
00:54:48.320
pornography by people who are exploiting them. And now they're part of pornography on Pornhub.
00:54:54.720
You know, there's upload videos of young girls' rapes and boys' rapes on Pornhub all over the
00:54:59.200
place. And it takes sometimes months or years to take it down because porn's legal. Pornhub's legal.
00:55:05.760
And there's all this burden of proof now on the victim to show that this was me, this was me as
00:55:11.200
a child, I didn't consent, take it down. If the whole system wasn't allowed to exist in the first place,
00:55:18.400
you're protecting so many victims. And this is the other side that needs to be talked about,
00:55:22.160
protecting so many potential victims. You see, I mean, look, I think a lot of what you're saying,
00:55:29.200
I really do agree with. I think that the whole child's exploitation when it comes to sex is
00:55:35.280
abhorrent, it's vile. And if what you're saying is true, and you're not the first person I've heard
00:55:39.440
saying this about Pornhub, they need to be investigated. And if they are not doing everything
00:55:44.320
in their power to protect children, then quite frankly, they need to be shut down because that
00:55:49.760
is vile. It's vile. My issue is with your argument, and I'm somebody, by the way, who's installed a
00:55:56.880
porn blocker on their phone. I don't watch it because I think it's toxic and it's bad. It's bad.
00:56:03.520
My issue is, is not the morality of it, which I'm in agreement with you, actually,
00:56:08.560
if I'm being brutally honest. It's the pragmatist in me, Lila, that just thinks if you force this
00:56:13.520
underground, you're going to create prohibition 2.0. We saw what happened when they banned alcohol.
00:56:19.280
You had the rise of Al Capone, et cetera, the organized gangs. I just think as unpleasant as it
00:56:25.600
is, we need to be pragmatic, regulate it as stringently as possible, block kids from using it,
00:56:33.280
and accept, unfortunately, that it's here to stay. That is my position.
00:56:36.800
Yeah. I just, I don't buy the argument that you can successfully regulate exploitation material of
00:56:42.560
adults or minors, and that there's a way to do it in a pragmatic or certainly moral way. And I think
00:56:50.160
that it's all bad. It's all proven toxic to the user. It's all harmful to the creator. You know,
00:56:56.880
it's all often includes, you know, really abusive corporations like Pornhub that are immoral all the
00:57:04.240
way through. And so allowing them any sort of breathing room in everyday society, you know,
00:57:09.920
and economic power by saying, you can operate, you can operate. Just, just make sure the minor,
00:57:15.200
there's no minors. Just make sure, you know, you're using, you know, an ID or whatever it is.
00:57:21.760
It's not going to be enough, first of all. And then second of all, the problem isn't just that
00:57:25.920
minors are exploited. It's that adults are exploited too and exploiting other adults.
00:57:31.840
So I think, yes, of course, there will be some people who will still look at porn. There will be
00:57:36.160
some people who still create porn, but they will have much less power. And I think they will make much
00:57:40.880
less money and it will be much less socially acceptable than it is today.
00:57:47.280
I was going to move on, but I've just remembered something, um, from, um, a former guest of ours.
00:57:52.560
She's an evolutionary psychologist called Diana Fleischmann. Um, one of the things that I remember
00:57:58.000
her talking about is, and this is very, I mean, I say, I was going to say it's counterintuitive, but maybe
00:58:03.360
it isn't societies that allow porn have lower levels of sexual violence, which I'm curious.
00:58:12.000
I would, I'd want to see her data on that and where she got that data. Yeah. Uh, I'm pretty sure
00:58:16.560
she's someone who researches these things and she's a very smart person and, uh, not ideological about
00:58:22.560
it. Um, that kind of makes sense to me because the pent up frustrations of men who don't have access to
00:58:32.400
sex of whom, as we discussed earlier, there are many, many, many, many.
00:58:39.840
I don't, I don't, I can see how those would spill out in, in nasty ways. In many ways, we're seeing
00:58:45.520
it now. I mean, incels and some of the things that they have been involved with. Well, incels have access
00:58:51.200
to endless porn. Yes. So I, I, I think I would want to see her research. I don't buy it. Um, the research
00:58:59.760
I've seen actually, and the, and the studies I've seen actually prove opposite that the more you
00:59:05.600
train yourself to sexually objectify someone, um, the more difficult it is to for you to interact
00:59:10.880
healthfully with people in real life. And I think it logically makes sense on a logical level. It
00:59:15.760
certainly makes sense from the stories of those who are porn addicted, that they struggle in their
00:59:19.280
real relationships. It makes sense from the countless stories of people, especially girls in
00:59:24.480
in relationships with, uh, men or boys that are, you know, young, these are teen relationships,
00:59:28.720
some of them are older, but who are porn, uh, trained to think about sex in terms of pornography.
00:59:34.240
And so they're asked to do degrading, strange acts. They're compared to these ideas that their
00:59:39.120
partner has in their head from their porn experience and exposure. So I think, uh, I would have to look
00:59:44.400
at what she's actually referring to, but look at American society today. We have more porn than we've
00:59:48.880
ever had. You know, porn is at an all time high. Do we think we're healthier sexually because of it?
00:59:56.320
I don't think there's less rape today than 50 years ago.
01:00:03.520
But I wonder though, I mean, I don't think, I don't, I don't imagine that.
01:00:07.680
Uh, I mean, there's has been a lot of, uh, the concept of sexual assault has evolved over time,
01:00:14.000
which has been a good thing because in the past men have been able to get away with things they
01:00:17.760
shouldn't have been able to get away with. I do wonder whether we have more sexual violence in
01:00:23.520
our society. I suspect not than, than 50 or a hundred years ago.
01:00:26.560
I mean, I'm, I, I'll be honest. I didn't come here saying in 1950, this study was done on rape
01:00:30.960
and we know how much, how much happened. Um, I mean, looking at it from my anecdotal position,
01:00:36.480
and I don't know that that research exists by the way that we, we have those sort of surveys or how
01:00:41.840
And sorry, just to pause there. I'm not sure about in the US, but I certainly until
01:00:47.760
horrifically late on, there was a marital rape was legal in the UK. I'm not sure what,
01:00:53.920
when the year was, but it, it wasn't, it was comparatively late.
01:00:57.520
So that's what I meant when I was talking about the evolution.
01:00:59.920
I don't think it's a, it's logical to say, you know, we somehow are stopping marital
01:01:04.240
rape by allowing ubiquitous court porn. I don't think it, it makes sense there.
01:01:08.960
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's what we're saying. Uh, anyway.
01:01:11.760
Okay. Well, I think ultimately the argument of your other guest, I would disagree with.
01:01:16.560
I want to see her data, the data and, and sort of the, you know, the study I've seen on this,
01:01:20.800
it shows opposite that the more you allow sexual objectification of other people,
01:01:25.120
especially in it to an addictive degree, um, the more you're going to see at minimum
01:01:29.680
sexual dysfunction and at maximum sexual abuse.
01:01:33.840
It's been great to have this conversation about this. I know I mean it.
01:01:37.600
Yeah. Uh, it's been great for us coming off as, uh,
01:01:40.480
porn advocates and defenders, uh, on the internet. Uh, you know, this is what we tried to do with all
01:01:45.120
of these contentious issues. It's just to go, let's poke here. Let's prod there. Let's find out
01:01:49.680
what's going on here. And we talk to people from every position in order to kind of start to get to
01:01:55.040
the truth. So I really appreciate you kind of playing along and, and giving us your strong views
01:02:00.800
on it. And then people will come away from it thinking whatever they think in the last few
01:02:06.160
minutes before we wrap up and move on to our questions from our audience. Uh, I wanted to
01:02:11.600
think a little bit more positively about relations between men and women and the stuff that we started
01:02:16.480
out talking about, which is, um, one of the things that I, uh, my wife was saying to me, she was like,
01:02:22.720
you really sound very conservative every time you talk about family. And I was like,
01:02:27.680
A, that's true. B, what the hell? Liberals have families. Liberals have kids.
01:02:36.400
Well, interestingly, it's many, I think it's the wealthier, more educated, uh, even identifying as
01:02:43.040
liberal that operate by what you could call conservative values. They get married. Many
01:02:48.560
don't even cohabitate before marriage. They get married. They stay married. They have children.
01:02:53.600
So, you know, what's, what's called conservative values today are basically
01:02:58.320
healthy values of monogamy, fidelity, family life, things that should not belong to one political
01:03:05.440
group. That's my point, which is like, how the hell did this idea come about the family, having kids,
01:03:13.280
staying together, working through difficult things, as you were saying in a relationship, which every
01:03:17.680
couple has to do, right? Why did that become a political issue? And then why did it become a
01:03:23.680
one side issue? Well, it's because you see much more defense on the left of things like polyamory,
01:03:31.280
of things that are sexually deviant, that have been historically seen as very sexually deviant,
01:03:36.000
of things like, um, you know, cohabitation or, you know, marriage is not, marriage is just a piece of
01:03:42.560
paper. Marriage is not really, um, the sacred bond that requires life lifelong commitment. So you see,
01:03:50.080
I think, you know, from the political side, you see politically speaking more of that language,
01:03:55.760
more of those ideas on the left, despite some of those very people espousing those ideas themselves
01:04:01.520
being married and monogamous and all these things. It's like they're saying other people should experiment
01:04:06.320
with polyamory, you know, other children should have three dads and no mother, you know, other,
01:04:12.480
other families can have, be modern and operate this way, but mine is going to be more traditional.
01:04:18.000
This is my private choice over here and it's working for me, but other people, surely it will work to go
01:04:22.320
a different path. And I think that just shows, um, you know, a superiority complex that is, you know,
01:04:30.320
harmful. They're kind of exporting harmful ideas for others while secretly living the traditions
01:04:34.640
themselves. There's a guy called Rob Henderson who we've had on the show. I don't know if you're
01:04:38.480
familiar with him. He's, he came up with a concept of luxury beliefs. Yes. Um, and this is what you're
01:04:43.840
talking about. Yeah. The people who vote left and live right. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. So how do we
01:04:49.520
move forward in the society that we are in? Because for me, uh, Louise and I have this conversation
01:04:55.200
often. She's like, if I was a billionaire, what I would do is I would pay families to post wholesome
01:05:00.320
content of them having breakfast with their little kids around the table. And actually,
01:05:04.880
until Nikolai got to an age where he was starting, you got to a point where you could recognize him in
01:05:09.520
the street. I used to post stuff with me and him all the time because I want people to see what it's
01:05:15.120
like to have, to have that, to have the joy that you and I have as parents. You know, it's amazing.
01:05:21.360
Um, what can we do to break the cycle? Because the cycle is bad. I don't like where we are as a
01:05:28.080
society. And the fact that it's become a political football, that's crazy to me. Yeah. That's crazy.
01:05:35.520
I agree. It's crazy. I like her idea, you know, encourage people to post positive pictures.
01:05:40.800
Even more meaningfully though, I would say we should encourage people to get married and stay married
01:05:46.800
because it's hard to have that happy life with your child when you're a single mom struggling or
01:05:52.800
you're a single dad struggling or whatever it is. You know, you're, the children fare best and people
01:05:59.120
fare best in lifelong committed marriages. They're economically better off. Their, uh, health is better.
01:06:06.480
The children's outcomes are better on, on every level, you know, in every category. So how do we
01:06:12.320
as a society encourage marriage? Well, first of all, we can't constantly define it away, it out of
01:06:17.440
existence. Marriage is whatever two, three, four consenting and results want it to be. Marriage is
01:06:22.240
one man and one woman who can bring life into the world. You know, I mean, they may not be able to in
01:06:27.920
the end, but that's the design of how life brings into the world, takes a father and takes a mother.
01:06:32.000
And that's the optimal way for a child to be raised who are committed to each other publicly for life.
01:06:37.440
And that's what we should be celebrating. I think, you know, public policy, you could do,
01:06:42.000
you know, cash benefits for married couples who have kids, you know, give them, give them money
01:06:47.840
to encourage, you know, not just a tax benefit, a tax credit, but you, you should get, you know,
01:06:52.400
there are some policies actually right now about giving actual, you know, cash payments to families
01:06:56.400
that have kids. Um, and I think that could be a, you got a billion bucks, a billion dollars. That could
01:07:01.440
be a positive way to encourage them to, um, to build up families. Yeah. I love what Dolly Parton does
01:07:08.320
where if she's got a foundation where if you sign up and you've got a kid, I think under the age of,
01:07:14.160
uh, nine, then she will send you a book a month. Very sweet. Yeah. For, so you can read with your
01:07:21.600
kid completely free, completely free, which to me, what a beautiful thing. The other thing I think we
01:07:26.720
need to do is, um, ban abortion. It's kind of a no, it's a no brainer. I mean, don't kill innocent
01:07:32.080
people. These are children. Uh, when Roe v Wade was overruled and some of these states had trigger laws to
01:07:38.160
enact abortion bans right now that's being all contested. It's a big fight, but there were all
01:07:43.360
of these, um, people complaining online about how now this is going to change my dating habits.
01:07:48.240
You know, now, now if I can't access abortion, maybe I'm not going to sleep with the guy on the
01:07:52.800
first date, or maybe I'm, uh, you know, not going to, um, see, you know, sex as something as casual.
01:07:58.800
Basically I might get pregnant and I might not be able to have an abortion. Now this is a big
01:08:02.640
responsibility I'll have. So abortion has always been the back door contraceptive in our society.
01:08:08.960
That's how it's used. Eliminate that and say, you can't kill children and you can't have this
01:08:13.840
back door contraceptive. We need to change our sexual behavior. If we can change our sexual behavior,
01:08:18.720
uh, to see other people with respect instead of a sexual objects to put sex back into lifelong
01:08:25.200
committed relationship into marriage, you know, not make premarital sex normal or glorified,
01:08:32.000
you know, friends is making it fun and glamorized, you know, in a TV show, you know,
01:08:36.800
cut that, cut that out. And instead say, sex is amazing. It's designed for lifelong love.
01:08:41.760
Let's celebrate that instead. You're going to do a lot for male female relationships to be healthier
01:08:46.800
and you're going to make marriage and families stronger by, by many, many, many degrees.
01:08:53.440
All right. Well, as you know, our last question is always the same, which is what's the one thing
01:08:57.280
we're not talking about that we should be as a society. And you can't say abortion
01:09:00.720
because we've talked about it quite a lot now. Yeah. Um, we talked about some very important
01:09:05.440
things. I mean, one thing we didn't talk about, it is talked about, so I'm not going to say it's not
01:09:09.600
being talked about at all today, but the role of, I think having a purpose outside of yourself,
01:09:15.760
particularly of faith, the couples that stay married the longest, the couples that, um, you know,
01:09:22.560
have the lowest rates of divorce are couples that have that purpose outside of themselves. They,
01:09:28.160
many of them are, they're practicing their, their religious devotion. You know,
01:09:31.360
they're practicing a faith. They're going to, you know, church, or they're going to a religious
01:09:35.520
service once a week. They're doing that as part of a family life. There, there's something bigger
01:09:39.280
holding them together than just a promise they made to each other. It's a, there's a promise they
01:09:42.960
made to God. And I do think that, you know, we kind of tend to say there's secular over here and
01:09:47.440
there's religious over here. Let's keep them apart. When really, I think we're made to be
01:09:51.600
religious as human beings. We're made to be, you can say spiritual, if you don't like the word
01:09:54.720
religious, we're made to have, want to have a connection with our creator. And so I think we
01:09:59.200
should be, we should be remembering that the way that that happens best, according to the data,
01:10:05.040
according to, you know, the research is when we recognize that there is a third party in a marriage,
01:10:12.000
that it's not just a commitment and promise I made to someone else, but that this is before God,
01:10:16.160
and of course the community, and that we need both God and the community for a strong marriage.
01:10:21.680
Perfect. All right. Thank you so much. Head on over to Locals,
01:10:24.640
where we ask your questions and continue the conversation.
01:10:28.640
Yeah. What's not being talked about enough is that contraception is bad.
01:10:32.400
What are we talking about here? We're talking about condoms, the coil, the pill?