#1016 - Rob Henderson - Is Having a Boyfriend Cringe Now?

28:17Can you dig into that and then sort of the hormonal? Because we've got two forks on how the mating suppression thing is going on here, the fertility suppression. One is like literally especially hormonally, you can fuck with women. And the other side is like socially in terms of their drive, mimetically, what is it that they're trying to do? I think that's the right way to frame it, right? We've got one side, which is a physiological intervention and the other side, which is a mimetic or cultural intervention. Yeah. Yeah. Really quickly on your point about when you enter a relationship, like for guys, they respond differently.

28:53Like, oh, oh, like, we miss you, man. That's kind of the sentiment here. Not so much like, oh, she's taking you from us. Whereas the reverse often happens. And I see this with like other kinds of examples where someone gets something that's really desirable. And then the friend group gets mad at them, like, like for successful people. Often, I think there's this trope out there that, you know, if you come from a community that doesn't do so well, and then you do really well for yourself, and then you lose contact with those people you spend a lot of time around, grew up with, whatever, it's because your head got too big.

29:22You think you're better than them. Like you got a new group of friends, you don't like them anymore. But the pattern that I see that's more often that takes place is, is the opposite where it's the people who feel that left behind. They're like, you know, you're doing better than us. So we're just going to stop talking to you because you remind us of the fact that maybe we aren't doing so well. And just like your very presence makes us feel uncomfortable. And so they're the ones who actually pull back more so than the successful person, I think. And then your point here about, yeah, I mean, as you were talking about, you know, the first thing that came to mind was birth control.

29:54Like it's literally a hormonal manipulation technology. And, you know, I think one of the founders of birth control, Margaret, was it Margaret Sanger? Like she thought that this would be good for poor people, low income people, historically marginalized people. And, you know, that's, you know, as we've been describing, it's a very nice story to tell. You're helping these women. But then on the other hand, she's also reducing the number of children out there, the number of women who are reproducing potential competitors, and rivals. And so, you know, if you can, if you can, and you see this with, with a non-human primate species like tamarins and baboons, where dominant females in these hierarchies, sometimes it's like open, like intimidation and bullying tactics, harassment, like they'll push these subordinate females around, they'll scream at them, they'll prevent them from having access to food and resources.

30:49Because if there's a malnutrition factor going on here, then they're not going to be able to reproduce. This also elevates cortisol and stress hormones that can suppress ovulation and fertility. And so, you know, you see this very clearly in these primate groups. But then for humans, there's a version of this that's more so mediated through culture and through, you know, socialization and technology and these kinds of things where, you know, you don't usually see human women like openly bullying, but you can increase stress through indirect means. So, you know, there's there, we talked about the pill, but then beyond that, you can also, you know, spread memes, you can tell them that actually, family formation is unwise or irresponsible, or actually, you can have a much more fulfilling life if you focus on yourself on self care on career on climbing the corporate ladder on foregoing dating altogether.

31:45Sometimes you'll see these articles, like every two or three years, I see like, uh, uh, these legacy media outlets will say like, well, you know, why can't we focus on friendship rather than romance, you know? And then it's targeted toward women where women should, um, you know, like, like, uh, we should de-center, uh, romantic relationships and instead replace it with friendships. And so, um, you know, women should form these, you know, uh, female communities and, and, and for men altogether, you know, stop dating men and all of these things to, um, reduce fertility. But then the, um, this idea, uh, about culture, and this is very speculative.

32:26I think, you know, I wrote about this in my sub stack that, um, if you can convince women that you're only a successful mother if you can fulfill these very expensive requirements, this also introduces stress. And so if you look 50 years ago, a middle-class family in the 1970s, you have a modest house, you have one car, one television, your children may share a bedroom. College was not necessarily the only marker of success for your kids. There were other pathways to having a fulfilling career, or at least perceived, you know, the perceptions of a fulfilling career. Now you fast forward 50 years, and, you know, who sets the standard for what acceptable parenting and acceptable family arrangements look like?

33:15Generally, it's elite women who talk about this. Men don't talk that much about, you know, this is what a successful family looks like. This is an aspirational lifestyle if you're a parent or if you're a mother. It's generally elite women who contribute the most to the discourse around, you know, successful motherhood and parenting and family formation. And for them, what is a successful parent? It's someone who can give each kid their own bedroom, having a nice house, paying for ballet lessons, music lessons, sports teams, SAT prep, college tuition, ideally at the most selective and expensive college the kid can possibly get into.

33:53walkable city right and and even for something like like even before all of that begins um weddings right like weddings are more expensive than ever uh and so you know if you can convince people like oh your marriage is only valid or legitimate if you can spend 50 or 100 plus grand on a wedding whereas 50 years ago our parents grandparents generation it was considered like perfectly reasonable to have a very modest ceremony go to the courthouse sign some paperwork and you know, you're locked in. Whereas now, I mean, in part because what I think is going on here is because marriage is so easy to dissolve, you have to have a very costly and ostentatious display of burning resources to demonstrate your commitment.

34:34And so, you know, in a world where you can sign papers and have a divorce right away, how do you prove your commitment to this other person? You publicly burn$100 ,000 on a wedding. Isn't there a there's an inverse relationship between the size of the engagement ring and the success of relationships? I've seen some studies like that. Yeah, it's really amusing. Anyway, the speculative explanation I saw for this is that it's almost like a counter-signaling thing. Yeah, compensation or counter-signaling for the people. Only people who are very confident in their relationship would feel comfortable spending very little on an engagement ring.

35:10Like, you know, we love each other. We don't have to prove it this way. And so, yeah, I think like, so this is what's going on here. So, so, you know, elite women, high status women say, this is what a successful family looks like. And you need to be able to afford all of this. You need the expensive wedding, the expensive house, multiple cars, family vacations, fly international, send your kids to, you know, all these expensive activities. And if women who are unable to afford those things, low income women, women with less access can't afford them. And they're thinking, well, you know, I don't want to be looked down upon, you know, elites in any society get to, to, I get to decide for the most part, what's considered a desirable high status, laudable behavior.

35:49And if people lower down the ladder think, well, okay, that's what success looks like. And if I can't do that, you know, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be, um, a mother who can't give my kids everything, uh, that, that, that is expected of me. And so this too, uh, introduces stress and, and issues around, um, fertility as well. And of course, you know, it is the case that a lot of credentialed affluent women, for a time, they will abide by this, a lot of them. Like, they really do believe it, and they will live by it for a time. But something I point out is that these women have the resources to freeze their eggs.

36:27And then even if later in life, they reach their later 30s or early 40s, they can afford expensive fertility treatments. and then failing that, they can pay a surrogate to have a child for them. So there are so many pathways available. So they're promoting this one set, this one line here of, you know, marriage isn't everything, family, you know, maybe shouldn't have kids, having a boyfriend is embarrassing. And then in their own lives, they have so many options to not live by those ideas. Yeah, I mean, one thing that's, I can already sort of imagine what cogs would be turning in a well-meaning woman's mind who may be partaking in this sort of a meme.

37:11They would say, what are you talking about? I don't think these things at all. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to get my friends to stop getting into relationships. The guys out here just aren't very nice. And I'm trying to protect my friends from getting hurt. And men are trash sometimes, or maybe even a lot of the time. and these are just me. Like, how can you imbue on me all of these supposed motivations when that's not what I'm doing at all? And I think it's important to just say the difference between proximate and ultimate reasons, very rarely are we aware of what the ultimate reasons for our behavior are.

37:51Like, you are much more effective at deceiving other people if you also are deceived by the motivation that you're doing this through, right? I think the thing that makes it particularly unpalatable or weird to talk about in a way, even I find myself being like, fucking hell, this really doesn't paint women in a particularly flattering light. and I think that that is because the subtlety of the way that women compete seems much more conniving and manipulative than the way that men compete like men compete in a way that may be like ruthless and brash and cutthroat but it's much more kind of up front and we've said this I've said this to every intracsexual company like fucking Tanya Reynolds Deborah Lieberman like whoever it is that I'm talking to from the EP world on the woman side, I'm so glad that I'm not a woman.

38:45I'm not constructed, and I just don't have the mindset to be able to deal with the very fine, finessed, delicate gamesmanship balance thing that needs to be done to be able to navigate this stuff. It's a real samurai blade meets a scalpel of social dynamics. But the point here is the reason that somebody does something is not necessarily the reason that somebody does something. It's best explained. My favorite example of this is Bill Burr's bit about the WNBA and body positivity. And he says, women, if you could only support your friends, if you could only support the WNBA in the same way that you support a fat chick who's proud of her body and no longer a threat to you, that league would be doing better numbers than the NBA.

39:32He goes, oh my God, you're a goddess. You're gorgeous. You look great in a bikini. I'd kill myself if I looked like that. Keep eating, keep eating, lose a toe, you fat bitch. And it's literally the same as if you saw an alcoholic and said, oh my God, you're lying face down. Your kids are crying. You're a hero. You're a God. Keep doing what you're doing. And this is basically, if you can convince women to eat themselves out of the mating pool, couched under empathy, compassion, acceptance, very pro-social motivations, you have managed to appear publicly like somebody that's very empathetic very supportive very inclusive you you're beautiful at any size while also secretly taking glp ones uh dieting having a pt wishing that you weren't the size that you are or trying to actively sort of diet yourself down and like am i saying that all body positivity support is by women trying to encourage their friends to eat themselves out of their mating pool competition?

40:32No, obviously not. And in many ways, maybe not at all because your conscious awareness of why you're doing this isn't that. But we have motivations for our behavior that we are not aware of. The reason that we're not aware of it is it makes it way more compelling and easy to deceive others if we believe it ourselves. And when you sort of spin all of this together, you end up with women being very pro short haircut. You should Cut it off. You've got the breakup hair. Cut it all off. Cut it all. You're going to look, girl, you look beautiful. It's going to look so cool and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know that guys prefer long hair.

41:07Like very reliably, it's a sign of youth. It's a sign of fertility. It's a sign of fecundity. Men on average prefer longer hair on women and women that are high in intersexual competition advise potential sexual rivals to cut off more hair. In other news, this episode is brought to you by RP Strength. This training app has made a huge impact on my gains and enjoyment in the gym over the last two years now. It's designed by Dr. Mike Isretel and comes with over 45 pre-made training programs, 250 technique videos, takes all of the guesswork out of crafting the ideal lifting routine by literally spoon feeding you a step-by-step plan for every workout.

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42:19Yes. And the first author on that paper is this woman I've been referencing, the evolutionary behavioral scientist, Danny Silikowski. And yeah, yeah, this is a common trope. And it's funny, you know, when I read that paper, I thought of this quote from another comedian, Adam Carolla, who said something like, short hair is something that chicks always tell each other. You know, they're always like, oh, you'd look so good if you cut your hair off. And then he says, what they're really thinking is, you know, that's one bitch I'm not going to have to compete with anymore. But just to round that out, man, my point here is, there are, when talking about this stuff, male intrasexual competition seems, like for want of a better word, it seems fairer.

43:01It's like, oh, that's like, you're like playing a fair game here in some sort of a way. Like you tried to steal his girl by saying to his girl that he's a fucking bitch and that you're hotter than him, bigger than him, richer than him, faster than him, will look after her more than him. Or you tried to beat him up or you, you know, you did. Guys don't typically have the, social finesse to be able to do the things that women do. And I think the reason that it sometimes feels a little icky or accusatory or uncomfortable to talk about this stuff is it does like belie a lot of like coercion and manipulation and connivingness on women.

43:44And that's simply because they're more complex, right? They are more socially, they are more complex than men are. And it's funny, because sometimes people will hear, you know, these, this distinction between ultimate and proximate and the hidden motives that women have. And, and this turns them off of evolutionary psychology. And they think, oh, this is just like, you know, fueling this idea that women are bad or something. But the thing is, like, those very same patterns of behavior can be easily understood with an evolutionary psychology lens, which is that women are reproductively more valuable, they can't compete out in the open, because then you are potentially inviting physical violence, right?

44:21Like if you just go up to a girl or a guy or whatever, say you should leave her, like she sucks, whatever, like just being very open about that, you are raising the risk of actually being physically harmed in some way. And then even if it isn't physical harm, because women don't, you know, they're not as physically confrontational as men, you are raising the possibility of ostracism, social exclusion, backbiting, all these kinds of things. And so if you can strategically express the same idea in a more plausibly deniable way, you're reducing the risk of being killed or hurt or being ostracized.

44:54And that's important because, you know, historically, women who were, you know, tactful were more likely to survive and reproduce. And perhaps at some point in the human lineage, there were women who were more like men, who would just openly and bluntly say whatever dumb thing came to mind, and then they were cast out or the women would ostracize them. And that was the end of that genetic lineage. And then, you know, your point here about yes, it's not, you know, there's a self-deception element. And so much of what happens with human beings, we're not aware of it. And sometimes I draw this parallel to animal species.

45:29You don't need to know why a behavior is effective for it to be effective, for it to work. So birds don't know in a conscious, articulable way why they engage in mating calls. They're just obeying their instincts that have been honed through billions of years of evolution. Same thing with elk. During mating season, the male elk walk antlers and they're trying to impress the women. But if you could somehow communicate with the elk, they wouldn't be able to say, oh, I'm trying to impress the females around me. They're just obeying this impulse. Same thing with spiders. They don't know why they weave webs.

46:07But all of these things occur because they inherited these genes that led them to partake in behaviors that enhance the likelihood of survival and reproduction. I think the same thing is true for humans. You know, so many of our behaviors we're unaware of, they operate under the hood, and sometimes it can be advantageous to believe we're doing something for one reason versus another. And the reason why it's advantageous is also tied to evolutionary reasons, that I'm going to give you this nice, kind, compassionate sounding reason so that you don't hate me or cast me out or reduce my fitness in some way.

46:38So I'm going to give you this nice reason so that you still like me and want to be friends with me and whatever, like, like, uh, I want to, uh, uh, you know, be, be, be supportive with romantic relationships and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah. And, and I think like what you said before about, you know, women might hear this and think, oh, how can you apply all of these negative motives and so on? I mean, as you were saying that, I thought like, you know, why is so much of the discourse around men are all trash or focus on red flags? I think, you know, if you were a person with a platform and an audience, you could also focus on green flags.

47:12You could say something like, you know, here's what to like if you want a relationship that if you don't want a relationship, that's fine. But if you do, you know, here are some tips, some green flags. If you're in a relationship, you could say, here's how I chose my partner. Or, you know, here are the lessons that I've learned along the way. There was that very famous essay a couple of years back by Bridget Fittese, Why I Regret Being a Slut. And she was speaking to young women about the lessons she'd learned throughout her life. That essay went super viral and grew her audience. And so there are ways, I think, to help people and not try to knock them out of the mating pool.

47:47It's very interesting. That's a great point. How many articles online are here are things to avoid, not here are things to chase? and it is all this is a reason not to do a thing this is a reason not to get into a relationship the girl with the list 350 reasons not to have kids like this is a red flag this is an ick you shouldn't chase it as opposed to these are all of the things to pursue like stuff that you're supposed to go after is really only framed as the absence of things to avoid and it's like it is all about that runaway element. I think, dude, your article on this was so fucking good.

48:25I want to read an excerpt from it. And everyone should go and subscribe to your sub stack because I'm in love with it. Women in positions of power, corporate leaders, senior academics, influential media figures create environments that make reproduction difficult for the women below them. They do it through culture and expectations. Long work hours become mandatory. Women who prioritized family are passed over for promotions. The message is clear. Serious women don't have children, or at least they don't let children slow them down. The subordinate women absorb this message. This helps explain something puzzling about modern feminism.

48:56This is so fucking good. Progressive feminists often criticize capitalism. They talk about how corporations exploit workers, how the pursuit of profit harms people, how we should value things other than career success. Yet, the same voices insist that there's no higher priority for young women than organizing their lives around a career. Many of these elite women have partners. Many of them have children. They figured out how to balance career and family, or they had resources that made it easier. But they don't advertise that. They don't tell young women that women who are married and have children report the highest levels of happiness.

49:28Instead, they emphasize the importance of career and the burden of children. It's the primate pattern playing out in modern institutions. Dominant females suppressing the reproduction of subordinates, not through conscious malice, but through the same unconscious evolved mechanisms we've seen baboons and marmosets. Non-elite women absorb the message that reproduction is incompatible with success. Their fertility gets suppressed. Dude, that's so fucking great. That squaring of the circle of capitalism is bad down with this sort of modern economic system and your career is the most important thing in the world.

50:01Make sure you go to college, university, complete your degree, go and chase down the career. Like, I've never thought that those two things don't square, but that's, that's fucking brilliant. I thought it was so good. Yeah. And you see, I mean, those, those highly educated, I mean, you see this with men and women, you know, the higher up you go in education, the more likely people are to bash capitalism, but then the more likely they themselves are to pursue those very same careers. And, you know, it's on the one hand, they're, they're badmouthing this pathway for others, but then for themselves, they're frantically working as hard as they possibly can to climb to the top of those same ladders.

50:35And yeah, this, you know, you mentioned, so it's, you know, influential media figures, academics, corporate leaders. I had this conversation a while back with an editor at a well-known magazine. It wasn't Vogue, but he was telling me that they had recently ran this story of a woman who, she was married, had a family, and then she got a divorce, started OnlyFans, and wrote about how happy she was with her decision. And I asked this magazine editor, I said, would you guys run the reverse story? Like, there's a woman on OnlyFans, and then she realizes she's unhappy with this, quits OnlyFans, finds a husband, gets married and has kids, and then writes an essay about how happy she is with her life now and with this decision.

51:17And he said, oh, we would never run that. Like, not in a million years. And I find this absolutely fascinating. Why? Why do you think that is? I didn't I didn't ask him because, you know, we were basically on the same page, like he understood where I was coming from about the messages we receive from media. And, you know, one thing he told me, which is interesting is like, you know, he was kind of a cog in the system to like he said, you know, I would like to run that, but I know like that would get squashed immediately. um but you know the reasoning here i think is you know tied to what we've been discussing that um you know you on the you know you you want to suppress rivals you want to convince people that maybe this pathway is unfulfilling and actually just you know getting naked for strangers for money is more exciting it's more interesting it's more titillating um and you know i don't know if the world actually is objectively more competitive, but it's perceived to be.

52:12I think there is this growing perception that, you know, Peter Turchin talks about surplus elites and competition and all this kind of stuff that, you know, if you want to live a comfortable life, the entryway onto that path is narrower. And so if you can convince people to just opt out altogether, mother um you know this can be beneficial for you and for your own children and then you know kind of on a maybe a more kind of proximate level it's just um you know it's more interesting it's more clickable like that's a clickbait headline you know i i left my husband for only fans and i'm so happy like that is a more uh sensationalistic feels counterculture it feels uplifting again it plays into this sort of hyper independent female you can go and get it yourself thing one question that people may have is why would a successful career woman who already won the husband and the family care about suppressing the reproduction of subordinates?

53:13Like you've already reached escape velocity. So what do you do? You're no longer in the mating pool. What would be the logic of that woman still trying to pull the ladder up after her, so to speak? Well, so there's, God, I hope I'm getting the name of this right, and I'm probably not. But there's this idea, it's something like the absent, oh, it's called the absent father hypothesis, which, yeah, that is it. The idea here is tied in with the grandmother hypothesis that the reason why women have prolonged lifespans, one reason, maybe because they were able to help their daughters with child rearing.

53:53And so humans are one of the, I think we're the only primate species where women live long past menopause. And so the grandmother hypothesis is, oh, they can help their daughters raise their grandchildren, their own grandchildren. But then the absent father hypothesis is related, which is this idea that, you know, at various points in our evolutionary history, men were often not very invested as fathers. And so the grandmother could step in and support the child. And so one reason for absent fathers was, you know, things like warfare, hunting, you know, different ways to die, infections and so on.

54:28Mortality rates were higher. But another common reason is that men, especially higher status men, will leave their wives for younger partners. And if you, you know, you could imagine that that kind of psychology has been passed on to us. we evolved in societies where there was a limited number of desirable partners, a limited number of potential mates. And so, you know, you want to hold on to the partner that you have, and you can enact strategies to suppress competition from the few competitors you have in these small hunter gatherer nomadic bands. In the modern world, this can express itself as, wow, my husband's a CEO.

55:10you know, maybe I'm getting a little bit older. And I know that men as they age are still, you know, often very desirable to younger women. And so I'm going to, you know, convince younger women, like, actually, you shouldn't be dating men, you shouldn't be interested in men. You know, and I've talked about this before, who is often the most upset about the age gap, you know, the whole age gap discourse, it's often women who are getting a little bit older, and who start to become more stressed out about young women dating older men, especially if the young women happen to be younger than themselves.

55:41And so I think that's also playing a role here is that older women who have reached escape velocity, they have the husband, they have the nice house, they have the kids and so on. But, you know, if you're a magazine editor or if you're a politician, corporate leader or something, you can still kind of introduce this idea out there to younger women to maybe avoid that same path so that you don't lose what you have. This episode is brought to you by Incogni. If you've ever typed your name into Google and found your info on some weird website that you've never heard of, that's not a fluke. Data brokers and people search sites collect your personal information like your name, address, phone number, buying habits, your income, your medical history, and they sell it without your consent.

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56:52That's I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. Jamie Krems taught me probably the most unpalatable theory the only people left are people that are like amenable to the to this so i think we're safe now um once you get once you get an hour into a podcast like all of the people that hated it have self-selected out uh jamie krems gave me the most ruthless um proximate versus ultimate explanation for pro-life versus pro-choice that being pro-life means that the cost of casual sex increases. And if you look at the data, if the decision, this is the maddest thing, dude. If the decision around women's bodies was left up to men, like men are trying to control women's bodies.

57:42If the decision around women's bodies and reproductive rights was left up to men, they would almost certainly have all access to abortion. If you look at the voting and the preferences, women are more pro-life than they are pro-choice. And this skews older. So you might say, well, women who go through the beauty of childbirth and see just how wonderful it is to bring a young baby into this world don't want women that are about to have a kid or potentially going to have a kid to miss out on that. Also, there is this sort of connection to the beauty of rearing a child. You see this life come into the world and you want to protect that.

58:27But on the other side, you could say, well, I now am beholden to my male partner. His resources and his investment in me is very important to the future survival of both me and my child. And maybe some younger women might tempt him away. And if I am able to make it more difficult for them to have casual sex by raising the price of casual sex, by making access to birth control more difficult, they may be less likely to engage in casual sex. And as such, my male partner who I want to look after me and my child is less likely to engage in casual sex because there's going to be fewer potential suitors.

59:06That was the most fucking unpalatable theory. People fucking hated it Because on the surface, it's like, what do you mean? I just don't want to kill babies. I don't want to destroy the future. I need to fix the birth rate. This is like part of the downfall of society. Like when someone feels like they're doing something so good, and this is why I think the visceral response, body positivity. What do you mean? Well, like including these women, like, oh, you just want to be exclusionary. You just want to tell people. What do you mean about this? Like men are trash. They're not looking after these women.

59:37They're like 10 million men aged 20 to 54 are unemployed. You want us to just be mankeeping it? all of these things up front sound so laudable. And to hear that what on the surface is pro-social charitable, and maybe a position that you take pride in. You're like, I'm proud of the fact that I am such a pro-social caring person that I do this for the world to then have a hole poked in it and for someone to say, ah, yeah, interesting. Shame that it's total, like, shallow self-promotion and survivalism that's more exclusionary than it is inclusionary. People don't seem to take that very well. Yeah.

1:00:23And, you know, this is like a basic principle in psychology, which is that if something is aligned with your interests, your belief in it isn't reduced, it's increased. Your sincerity is increased, not decreased. So if you tell me that, oh, if you support this thing, and it's going to help you in some way, I'm going to sincerely believe it. And I'm going to tell you how great it is. And there's not actually going to be any kind of layer of duplicity necessarily. And so yeah, if you're, as you were describing this, and to paraphrase, right, you're saying that older women are more pro-life because they want to reduce access to abortion so that their husbands don't stray and impregnate the young woman and so on.

1:01:07And so it's in their interest to actually genuinely 100 % believe in the pro-life position because it's helpful for them. And so there actually is no duplicity at all, right? It strengthens their sincerity. You're right. There's no duplicity. The motivation is less pure, right? That might be a way to look at it. Yes, right. Yeah, yeah. The difference between the stated reason versus the the unconscious reason. And yeah, yeah, the Jamie Krems work. I mean, the other paper that she wrote that I find really interesting on this sort of abortion issue, you know, she basically found that people who are pro-life, there seems to be this unconscious motivation in part to increase the costs of promiscuous sex, right?

1:01:48Like people who are pro-life tend to have more monogamous reproductive strategies. And so by raising the cost of promiscuous sex, they are kind of indirectly ensuring that people pair bond to one particular mate. And I remember I had this conversation with her about this, because this implies the opposite is also true that if you're pro choice, of course, there's the ostensibly compassionate stated reason, which is, you know, like women may need access because, you know, they don't want to derail their life or their careers or what have you. So you want to have access for healthcare reasons and so forth.

1:02:20But if you take that sort of unconscious, ultimate level of explanation, if the pro-life thing is, you know, I'm a monogamous strategist, the pro-choice stance is you're a casual, short-term oriented strategist. I want to reduce the cost of casual sex so that I can partake more in it. I want to make it easier to have lots of promiscuous sex without having to pay any cost for it. Rob Perzban, who I know you're familiar with, he did a similar paper years ago on political stances around the legalization of drugs. And he and his co-authors basically found that there's a kind of a... The relationship between your stance on drugs and your openness to casual sex, that is basically the link there.

1:03:15That's the relationship. I remember that. Basically, hedonism at large, people are going to be high, and maybe they fuck each other. Even if you try to control for religiosity and all these other things, still the much stronger predictor was your stance on casual sex. And so this basically says, like, oh, people want to ban or prohibit illegal drugs because drugs tend to reduce inhibitions and encourage promiscuity. But then, of course, you could say, you know, the opposite is the case that people who are very anti drug, they have a more monogamous relationship strategy, and they want to reduce people from participating in casual sex.

1:03:58And so, yes, I think so many of our motives that sound very articulate and interesting and well thought through and sophisticated, there's often kind of an evolutionary motive going on under the hood. Yeah. So one of the other things, sort of beyond this stated versus revealed masterclass thing, what do you think this atmosphere has done to the way that men show up? Because I remember your article, no one expects young men to do anything and they're responding by not doing anything. um yeah how what have you sort of come to believe about the way that this dynamic influences male behavior sort of in response to it because it's not as if this is a one-way street yeah yeah i think um one of the things that i find interesting now is like you know the the you use the phrase man keeping and you know there's this idea of toxic masculinity and it seems like there's remarkably little resistance from men you know i know there's like the incel community and like all but they seem very small and ineffectual uh uninfluential and it's a tiny group of guys um who say anything at all uh challenging these ideas and i think what what may be happening here and and these ideas were inspired by um this amazing book called Manhood in the Making by the anthropologist David Gilmore.

1:05:27He points out in this book that actually the idea of manhood, you know, and he surveyed cultures around the world, small scale, non-industrialized societies from Melanesia, South America, islands of Greece, like all these kind of pre-industrialized societies. And what he finds is that, you know, these cultures created rites of passage for men, because if you leave young men to their own devices, they actually don't like they don't want to be men is basically the conclusion he came to men, at least in the sort of traditional masculine sense. They are very happy to be withdrawn, self-interested, you know, non-contributors, lazy, selfish, and so forth.

1:06:14And the reason why manhood rituals arose independently in so many different societies throughout history is, oh, like if we don't do this, guys are just going to like withdraw and turn into inert nothings. And so we're going to inculcate this ideal in them of you have to be a net contributor, you have to be brave, you have to be courageous, you have to be productive and assertive and all these kinds of things. And some of the raw ingredients obviously already exist in young men for those positive masculine qualities to emerge, but they have to be shaped and inculcated by the community. But because our society doesn't really have this, and you have, you know, all this language around toxic masculinity, and men need to step aside and all this stuff, like a lot of guys are just like, you see this online, too, like, well, I would try if women would stop badmouthing us, or like, I would do this, but you know, society hates us anyway, so why bother trying?

1:07:07I think a lot of that, what they're saying is, you know, with encouragement, and if there was some kind of incentive or reward, they would live up to it. And it's not entirely wrong. But also, I think there's a bit of self-interested reasoning there, which is like, you know, inside of me is a great man, but I just needed people to stop being mean to me so it can express itself. If criticism ceased, they wouldn't become like, you know, strong, traditional, positive, masculine men overnight. Like, they would not turn into that man. They don't have that yet, it would require years of effort and work to build that up.

1:07:42And some mean headlines and tweets and so on, that's not going to be enough to undercut them. It takes a lot more than that for positive masculinity to emerge. Yeah. I told you as well about the swag gap relationship, something that I read about a while ago. I'll give you a recap about swag gap relationship. What I will not do is have a swag gap relationship, says TikToker, it's almond milk honey in a video. I mean, I can't say that with a straight face.

1:08:29Having me showing up in public looking swagged out, looking fly, I have a cool outfit, and then my partner just looks like an effing mess behind me. I can't do it. The swag gap can erode self-esteem. When one partner compares themselves to the other, even if it's not too evident, it can quietly affect that partner's self-esteem. This may cause an imbalance where the seemingly less cool partner may start to shrink, hold back, or internalize feelings of inadequacy. The swag gap triggers a shift in perceived power. 2021 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships studied 181 heterosexual couples and explored how different aspects of power influence relationship satisfaction.

1:09:03The researchers distinguished between personal sense of power, how empowered a person feels, positional power, formal advantages, general power motive, and balance of power. They found that subjective personal sense of power rather than objective positional power or the overall balance predicted both couples' relationship quality. Couples who felt more empowered and satisfied with their own influence reported higher relationship satisfaction. This is true regardless of formal structural power differences, perceived coolness can redirect romantic attention. Feeling more confident than your partner can create an unspoken sense of elevated status for the partner who feels like the cooler one.

1:09:37While this may boost self-esteem and a sense of control, it can also draw the partner's attention outward by making the seemingly cooler partner more aware of attractive alternatives or opportunities outside the relationship. So I think, again, there's a few things going on here. First off, it seems like the primary use or the primary currency that your relationship is supposed to convert into is not relational satisfaction, but a branding option, opportunity, and how do other women perceive you? Maybe part of this is I don't think that this is going to be a long-term investment because this relationship is likely to be transactional and transient.

1:10:20My social status with other women is going to last longer than the relationship. Therefore, I'm going to prioritize how other women see me as opposed to fully investing myself into this relationship. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, they're optimizing for approval of women rather than, I guess, secure attachment and relationship with a man. Because they think it's going to drop off at some point in the near future. Their friendships are going to last longer than their relationships. Yeah, yeah, the followers are forever, but boyfriends are fleeting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder if, yeah, there is something going on like there.

1:11:03Yeah. So you're the first person who told me about the swag gap that shows how out of the loop I am. So you told me about it. And I went and read a couple articles trying to get a sense of what it was. And I mean, okay, so yeah, there's a gap where one person in the couple is more stylish and cool than the other. And the photo that I kept seeing in these articles was Justin Bieber. He had the hoodie, but then a ball cap over the hoodie. And he's wearing shorts and Crocs. And then the girl he's dating, I don't know her name is like, you know, decked out, you know, red dress. makeup hair done she looks uh very glam and uh yeah you see this i guess other other other cases too like pete davidson like dressed down and then whoever he's dating looks um swagged out so the swag gap here and i think like a lot of this it seemed to be um a lot of it was like women who were angry like you know women putting so much effort into their appearance how they look how they dress their hair their makeup everything and then the guy they're with just looks like you know, homeless, he looks like a bum.

1:12:02And I think this may be the result of people just kind of misunderstanding, you know, how status is generally evaluated by both sexes as well, which is that, you know, women are judged both by men and by women more so on their appearance, whereas men aren't judged as harshly by men or by women on how they look. And I think a lot of swag gap stuff, like, I mean, maybe you see it in ordinary relationships. But at least with the celebrity cases, you know, like Bieber is basically counter signaling, right? He's like, I'm Justin Bieber. I'm a world famous celebrity, I can wear Crocs and a hoodie, and my girl can be, you know, decked out.

1:12:44And this is fine, because everyone knows, like that I'm Justin Bieber. So dressing down is essentially a counter signal. And then I thought, okay, like, it doesn't really work for women, right? Because a man's attractiveness, his desirability is indexed more so on his social status, which Bieber has a lot of. So he can be indifferent to his appearance. Whereas for women, because so much of their status and their desirability is tied up with how they look, they can't really countersign all in the same way. So I think like a woman, the equivalent of a swag gap would essentially be, and this almost sounds ridiculous to even say aloud, which I think just also helps to eliminate how the current swag gap discourse is silly is this would be like a woman who's not working right like a woman who doesn't work a nine-to-five and the unspoken message here the counter signaling messages i'm so beautiful i don't have to participate in the rat race right and so you could imagine like a guy having a really cool high status amazing job um and then his girl who's beautiful but doesn't work and and people saying like oh what's going on with the swag gap here?

1:13:48She can't even hold down a job. Yeah. She can't hold down a job. Like, why are you with her, bro? Like you're working, like you're doing all this stuff. You're paying taxes, you're paying the bills and she's not, you know, she's not working. What's she contributing? And you, I've never seen anything like that. Like of, uh, men trying to convince other men that a woman who, who doesn't work isn't worth, uh, being with. I wonder whether part of this is that it's a failure of cross-sex mind reading that women are assessing other women's male partners in the way that women assess women. They know that primarily women tend to do more self-beautification, they're going to show up in that kind of a way, and they're using that criteria of judgment and pointing it at the men, failing to understand that what it is typically...

1:14:41But this would be strange, right? Because the women should be able to detect, well, I am attracted to men for things that are different to why men are attracted to women. But my point on this is, socioeconomically, if men are no longer the breadwinners on average, whatever it is, the bottom 40 % of male earners and top 20 % of female earners are now in a relationship where the woman earns more than the man. Have you seen this data? I've seen something similar, yeah. bottom two quintiles of men, top quintile of women are like the breadwinner is skewed toward the female. If that's the case, and Mack and Murphy put this proposal forward a few years ago, and I think it's true, men would start to show more beautification.

1:15:28Men would start to try and present themselves because they need to compensate in some sort of way. If you can't compete socioeconomically, or if you can't contribute socioeconomically, you need to contribute in terms of beauty and luxe. And maybe it's the case that first off, guys who are not Justin Bieber and aren't bringing that level of socioeconomic resources to a relationship, trying to emulate sort of the Bieberfication. It's like, hey dude, Crocs, socks, and like a homeless hoodie, you may not be able to get away with this if your partner is also the breadwinner. You have missed the fact that there is a huge skew toward Justin Bieber because he's fucking Justin Bieber.

1:16:10And then perhaps another part of it is just that women realize or women are starting to think, well, guys need to look better because they can't contribute in the same sort of way. I don't need them socioeconomically. So I'm not going to put like Homer Simpson. Like how long is the swag gap relationship has always existed. Peter Griffin wasn't cool. Homer Simpson wasn't cool. Like every archetype of the dad or even of the boyfriend typically has been the girl has a better sense of style and fashion. And, you know, the guy turns up inappropriately dressed or uncool or with a stain on the front of his like polo shirt from ketchup or whatever.

1:16:50I don't feel like this is a new, a new phenomena. It's just that the trade that was being made, I will put up with his lack of swag because he is keeping a roof over our heads, that trade no longer makes as much sense when you can afford the roof over your head without him. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense that, uh, you know, if you look, look at this in a very sort of cold analytical way that, you know, what is each party bringing to the relationship? And historically it was, uh, uh, resources, um, sustaining the home financially, economically. And then And if men are falling behind in education and occupation and attainment and all these kinds of things, then what else could they bring?

1:17:34Well, they can look good. That makes sense to me. I think generally this sort of pressure now among guys, particularly young guys, to look good, that makes sense. And none of these explanations, I think, are mutually exclusive. They probably all play some role. So that explanation of you've got to bring something to be attractive to a woman. And the other, I think, is just we are like we've always been sort of obsessed with image. But I think this has been aggravated in the era of dating apps and social media where, you know, we pay a lot of attention to how we look now and how we come across online.

1:18:07Because like that's all you have really to evaluate in person. You have all these other things like charisma and how you speak and the sound of your voice and all these other things like your mannerisms. There's so much kind of unspoken, unacknowledged information that we're unconsciously absorbing when we meet someone in person versus seeing a 2D image online. And then I think the other thing, and this is, I think, is more speculative, which is because the, I guess, availability of cosmetic enhancement for women has increased so much, even within the last couple of decades. Like, women can do all kinds of things with fillers and Botox and, like, you know, ways to use makeup now that didn't exist.

1:18:47like if you watch a movie from like 2003, you know, like even the hot girls don't have like whatever's going on with the sculpting and the airbrush. I don't know what it is. Like, I don't know what to call it, but women looked a lot different today, like hot girls today versus hot girls 2025 years ago. And I think, yeah, some of that is cosmetic surgery, but some of it is just like whatever, like advancements in like basic makeup have taken place. And so as women get better looking, I wonder if there's a pressure on men in turn, like there's always going to be a gap where women are always going to be better looking than men, but the gap will stay constant.

1:19:20So as women start to become more attractive, men feel like obligated in turn to like keep that gap the same instead of like staying put while women continue to get hotter. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I mean, you mentioned it before on the toxic masculinity thing that the traits in men that are often being pointed at as red flags or things that are kind of out of vogue or base desires or like, why does, I mean, even in that Vogue article, there is something out of vogue, there is something that says, why does having a boyfriend feel Republican now? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:20:00You're politically suspect if you have a boyfriend. Yeah. Yeah, that is hilarious. You saw that with Taylor Swift, right? Taylor Swift gets married and suddenly there are these think pieces about like, oh, you know like this is this is a this is a bad bad for women it's like traitor to the cause like this feels very conservative the same dude and you know hey hey to fucking full circle this and have a great callback what happened when adele lost weight yeah body positivity community felt like she'd betrayed them in exactly the same way yeah yeah she was dude i'm absolutely certain that she would have been accused of uh there would have been accusations of she's she's taken a hard right pivot.

1:20:37She's right wing. This is like a Nazi-ish patriarchal thinness, body standards, heteronormative, you know, cisgender fucking superstructure, misogynistically keeping women down, forcing them to be thin and comply to the male gaze. I could fucking do this all day, dude. I'd be, I'd be great. But the exact same dynamic happened with Taylor Swift. When she got into a relationship. I actually went on to the child free and happy subreddit thing, or r slash child free, I think it is. And there was a huge, huge discussion. I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that it was at least partly balanced, but there was some people in there.

1:21:24There were some commenters that were basically saying like, I can't believe that she's with that animal. um like how could she betray like basically the same as an incel that ascends throws the rest of the incel community into harsh light because it compares something that they have been able to achieve with something that the rest of the community hasn't like if you get a girlfriend then it makes my lack of girlfriend my fault as opposed to something systemic that's out there now obviously the problem with the child free community is that there are biological limitations to whether or not some of these women can have kids.

1:21:58But presuming that that's not Taylor Swift's issue, like what you're saying is this person should elect to adhere to the culture that I haven't elected to adhere to. Like if you're limited biologically and Taylor Swift is limited culturally or because of preferences, like that seems, that's like saying Usain Bolt should cut off his legs in solidarity with the disabled community. Right, yeah. Yeah, and I think that kind of self-handicapping or whatever, like, yeah, it's selectively applied. And yeah, just this, this feeling of, you know, I'm going to behave this way in order to show solidarity.

1:22:38But but it's often only expressed through like these, it's performative, right? Like, I'm going to say this on my podcast, I'm going to post these inspirational quotes, or these ideas, or these clips, or whatever. but then privately, you know, very few people actually abide by it, right? And so, you know, even if like the body positivity thing, I think it would be hilarious if women who take very good care of their bodies, but like publicly espouse, you know, body positivity and fat acceptance, I'm going to gain 60 pounds in solidarity with differently weighted women who have difficulty with weight because of our oppressive society, whatever.

1:23:16And I'm going to pack on 60 pounds because I'm supporting the sisterhood, I'm fighting the patriarchy or whatever. And you never really see that. You see women who work out a lot and then they say all the right words. Dude, Lizzo's lost weight. Oh, really? I didn't know this. Wow. Now we're in the era of GLP-1s and Ozempic and everything else. So I just feel like, you know, I saw this tweet the other day and it was something like, you know, it's really funny how you're seeing like less chatter from the fat acceptance community now that Ozempic is becoming more widely available. I mean, this was one of my favorite takes after the Golden Globes that GLP ones have just proven that body positivity was a scam all along.

1:24:02Body positivity was the inner citadel for these people. And the second that they had a free route out of being bigger than they wanted to, who is not taking that? Yeah, I mean, that is because there's a difference between choosing to not lose weight because of anchoring bias. It's like, well, I'm already this size. I've always been this size versus, hey, if you're so in tune with the body positivity community, why not gain 50 pounds? But why not pack on 50 pounds in solidarity? Because if weight has no bearing on health or attractiveness, if beauty is at every size, you could stand with your bigger sisters.

1:24:43and there are so many like you know you see so many examples of this chris like you know i spend a lot of time in academia and i would see like white male university professors and presidents people in prominent roles and they would often say like yeah it's about time we stop hiring people who look like me and and give a voice to women people of color you know uh members of the lgbt community whatever and i'm always thinking in my mind when i heard these you know these grand speeches like start with yourself yeah like you just abandon the position it would be like and you would be lauded for at least you know temporarily you know if you said like i am publicly going to step down if the university can agree to replace me with a woman of color like yeah that would like why not do that but they never they never do anything like this dude that is so funny just getting people to put their money where their mouth is yes with regards to this really sort of reveals the the luxurity of the beliefs is there anything else you got anything else to say is there anything else that we haven't covered on the the swag gap embarrassment cringe of boyfriends no no i i mean i yeah i thought the swag gap it's so funny like you said like this is as i was also thinking like this has always existed like you've always seen like a guy who doesn't put as much effort into how he dresses and then his wife looks much better than him or his girlfriend so yeah it's funny now that it has a label but yeah a deeper dive than either of us ever thought that we should need to do on a single single article dude i am stuck in a world where i can't work out if this is tiktok brain slop or a genuine insight into important mating trends that will literally shape the future of humanity like that's the that's the current world that i'm in and um alas we will continue to assess it uh way too deeply until that day comes and we work out which is true rob henderson ladies and gentlemen everyone needs to go and subscribe to your sub stack it fucking rips i love it you publish like two or three pieces a week you're now doing office hours you've got your own little thing going on from a podcast perspective and stuff too i think it's uh i think it's so good um anything else do you want to push uh no i mean my book's out in paperback trouble the memoir foster care family and social class um and yeah always appreciate you having me on Chris