Stefan Molyneux
  • 10 months ago
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux takes down manosphere misogyny!

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Transcript
00:00:00 Excellent. Well, nice to meet you. Glad we could get a bit of time in today and thanks for your flexibility and all of that good stuff.
00:00:07 So I'm all ears if you want to help me understand what's going on.
00:00:14 Should I start by reading the email or something?
00:00:21 It's up to you, whatever you like.
00:00:25 Well, actually, I guess not exactly. I don't really want to read that because it's kind of unclear.
00:00:33 Anyways, so actually, I don't know how to start. I don't know where to start.
00:00:41 Can you kind of direct me, maybe ask me questions?
00:00:44 Well, why don't you start by reading the email if you like, or you can email and paraphrase it as you see fit.
00:00:50 I'd of course like to know best how to zero in on how philosophy can help you,
00:00:56 and to do that I need to get a sense of where the major issues are that philosophy can help.
00:01:03 Okay, so let me just try to explain with my own words what I think is the main thing.
00:01:13 I think I have a little bit of an issue with women in my life.
00:01:21 I don't know how to...
00:01:24 Like, lately I thought that the best way to describe it is to say something like,
00:01:32 you know when you talk about differences between men and women,
00:01:40 you usually say they're beautiful differences and this kind of stuff,
00:01:46 and sometimes we can't understand, we can't communicate properly, but we don't want them to be men.
00:01:54 So that's a good thing, right?
00:01:57 But at the same time, there's this whole thing about red flags and this kind of stuff,
00:02:04 and I feel like I'm confused.
00:02:08 How do you understand which is it?
00:02:14 Like, what happened right now when I was talking to a woman,
00:02:18 was it something really, really bad and irrational, or was it just this beautiful difference?
00:02:26 Do you know what I mean? Am I making sense?
00:02:28 Yeah, it's a great question.
00:02:30 Is there something in particular in your life that is in this area,
00:02:36 or is it more of an abstract question? Which is fine too, I'm just curious.
00:02:41 I would like it to go to a more personal direction,
00:02:45 because I have a very particular, weird upbringing, like childhood,
00:02:52 and many conflicts with my mother and this kind of stuff.
00:02:58 I have a feeling that it's not a problem with women.
00:03:03 It's something that... Well, first of all, I guess I picked those women that I have problems with.
00:03:11 Well, but not your mother.
00:03:14 Well, yeah, not my mother.
00:03:15 You didn't pick your mother, and that's often the most fundamental challenge, right?
00:03:19 I mean, even Adam didn't choose Eve, so to speak.
00:03:23 God chose Eve and gave him to Adam, so this is why Eve is generally more the mother than she is the girlfriend or wife.
00:03:29 But anyway, that's perhaps a topic for another time.
00:03:33 So, tell me a little bit about what went on with your mother, or a lot, if you like,
00:03:38 what went on with your mother when you were growing up?
00:03:42 Well, generally, my family, my parents, they kind of hated each other.
00:03:50 Yeah, I'm so sorry. You've probably heard me say this before.
00:03:53 This "uh, uh, uh" stuff is really going to grind down the conversation.
00:03:59 I know, you know, I really admire your command of English, and I think it's wonderful.
00:04:04 But if you're going to talk like that, it's going to drive me slowly insane.
00:04:09 So, I'm sorry to be annoying to just ask you to...
00:04:12 Sometimes that's emotional hesitation, like you're uncomfortable,
00:04:16 so whatever you need to do to relax and just communicate clearly and fluently would be fantastic.
00:04:22 Yeah, yeah, I thought it would be...
00:04:27 Yeah, okay, I'll try to do it. You're right, it's a little bit connected to my English.
00:04:32 I have to always translate in my head what I'm about to say, so there's that, but I will try my best to avoid...
00:04:40 Thank you, I appreciate I'm asking a favor, and I also appreciate that if we try to do it in your native tongue,
00:04:45 it would be infinitely worse. So I say this with all humility, and I appreciate the favor. Thank you.
00:04:51 Right. So, okay, so I come...
00:04:55 Like, my parents in my childhood, well, they still do, but they always kind of hated each other.
00:05:03 So, my mother didn't want to be with my father from the beginning, and I come from a Central Asian country,
00:05:11 so it means like it's a Muslim country, so traditionally women don't exactly pick their husbands.
00:05:19 So she was kind of forced to marry my father, and they somehow actually existed in this family by never talking to each other, right?
00:05:34 So if they talked to each other, it would look like if you have this company of your friends, and one of them doesn't like the second one,
00:05:44 and they would communicate by saying, like, "Say to this man to do this and that," you know?
00:05:50 And it always felt like my parents actually communicated like that.
00:05:55 Other than that, my father is really, really, like, he was very, very violent, and I'm doing this again.
00:06:05 I'm doing the thing again. I'm sorry.
00:06:08 No, no problem.
00:06:12 So, yeah, so I grew up in this environment, and very, very early on, I thought I had, like, one idea really, really clear to me,
00:06:23 that whatever I do when I grow up, I don't become like my father, and it was really, really important for me.
00:06:31 So, yeah, I don't remember where I was leaving with this.
00:06:37 So hang on, sorry. So was it an arranged marriage? Is that right?
00:06:42 It was kind of. They had, like, a date. My mother had a date with my father, so they arranged this date,
00:06:48 and she hated him, and she told my grandmother, her mother, that she doesn't like him.
00:06:55 But the story goes that she didn't talk to my grandmother for a while, for two weeks,
00:07:04 and then she agreed to do that, to marry my father.
00:07:08 Wait, so your mother hated your father on the date, and then, sorry, did I miss something?
00:07:12 How did she end up turning around and agreeing to marry him?
00:07:16 So, exactly. That's the story that I was given, that she didn't like him on the date,
00:07:26 and then she fought with my grandmother that she doesn't want to marry him,
00:07:30 and they didn't talk, like, for three weeks or something like this, and then she turned around,
00:07:37 but I don't know what exactly happened.
00:07:39 I guess the idea is that she actually didn't have a choice, because of the traditional situation there.
00:07:51 And did she ever say what she didn't like about your father on the date?
00:07:57 Yeah, she said something like this. He's a very, very—like, she didn't say that, I'm just adding a little context.
00:08:05 He's a very, like, awkward person in a relationship sense.
00:08:10 He's really, really hard to understand what's on his mind, and he's, like, he grew up in an orphanage.
00:08:16 Maybe it has something to do with all that, but what she said was that he was very late to the date,
00:08:25 and they got on a bus, and then they tried to, like, talk, and it didn't really work,
00:08:33 and then he just left without paying for the bus. So that's the story that I have.
00:08:38 They had a date on a bus?
00:08:41 They just met somewhere, and they took bus. I don't know. Maybe that's how they do dates in where I'm from.
00:08:48 So he shows up late, they're on a bus, and then he leaves without paying for the bus.
00:08:53 Yeah.
00:08:54 So what on earth was your—sorry. Why on earth would your mother's mother set her up with such a guy?
00:09:02 I mean, does she not understand her own child at all? Like, I'm a little confused.
00:09:08 So the situation's like this. As far as I understand, he was kind of a—he went to Moscow to learn,
00:09:16 so he was, like, educated person, and for this little city that I'm from, it was, like, a big deal.
00:09:23 And also, for him, she was this, like, Russian-speaking, intelligent girl, so it was also good for his side,
00:09:37 and something like that, right? So, you know, intelligent people.
00:09:41 Well, no, but I mean, I'm obviously not a big fan of arranged marriages,
00:09:46 but one of the arguments is that your elders are not blinded by lust, and your elders know—
00:09:53 your mother and your father know you very well, and because they know you very well,
00:09:58 they will be more likely to pick out—like, the argument goes that they'd be more likely to pick out
00:10:03 someone suitable for you because they have experience in marriage,
00:10:06 they know what's important in the raising of children, and whereas you're just like,
00:10:11 "He's handsome," or "She's pretty," like, sort of stupid ways to make these kinds of decisions.
00:10:16 So, if there is a strong suggestion of who to marry, it would be because your parents know you well enough
00:10:26 to know who's going to be really compatible with you, so I don't—
00:10:30 Was it just status? Was it just like, "Well, these two people are educated and high status"?
00:10:34 Like, I don't quite understand. Like, wouldn't it be to indicate that you don't know your own child at all
00:10:40 if you're going to set your child up with someone this awkward?
00:10:44 I think I never thought about that, and I never asked those questions.
00:10:48 It's just kind of a given that it's just how it goes.
00:10:53 And my grandmother that did that thing, she wasn't—she just died, by the way, like a week ago,
00:11:01 but she never was a person that you could kind of reason with.
00:11:05 It's really hard to speak with her because she's not very—like, maybe she is, you know,
00:11:11 I don't know what her IQ is or something like that.
00:11:14 I just always thought she was a very simple woman, and I could never—
00:11:20 no one could ever talk to her in that sense.
00:11:23 Oh, you mean like ask motivations or abstract questions or something?
00:11:28 Yeah, she's like—everything I remember about her, like her way of talking to me from my childhood is like,
00:11:36 "You should listen to your mother," and "You should wash dishes," and this kind of stuff.
00:11:42 There was never something—she could never tell about her childhood, and it was very interesting to me,
00:11:48 but I couldn't because she's like, you know, Second World War and this kind of stuff,
00:11:55 so all of this was very interesting to me, but she couldn't ever tell me anything about this stuff.
00:12:02 And my mother, that's the story that she told me, that I just gave it to you.
00:12:08 And you don't know why your mother changed her mind and decided to marry your father?
00:12:16 Her story is that she just had no choice. She had to listen to her mother.
00:12:25 Is that true?
00:12:32 It's, you know, like we're only talking for a couple of minutes and already, like, I never thought about this.
00:12:39 Well, no, I mean, like, she obviously wasn't—I mean, you have to pay taxes, you know, like, she wasn't forced.
00:12:46 Like, they didn't drag her, you know, at knife point to the altar. Like, she wasn't forced.
00:12:51 Why did she have to obey her mother? Or, I guess, could you think of instances where she didn't obey her mother?
00:12:57 Like, was it possible for her to bypass her mother's—I'm sure your mother didn't do everything,
00:13:02 absolutely everything her mother told her to do in her life.
00:13:08 I guess so. I guess she didn't. But, again, I don't know. I just don't have this part of her.
00:13:15 Like, she does tell me about, like, being this very, very close to my grandmother and being kind of her protector of some kind, you know.
00:13:28 Sorry, who was whose protector? I didn't understand. Your mother protected your grandmother?
00:13:33 Yes.
00:13:34 What does that mean?
00:13:35 Like, she would kind of tell the story of, like, if we—if she would go on a bus or something—a bus always, you know.
00:13:44 So, we go, and then the man would, you know, catcall her.
00:13:49 Then she would just, you know, protect her and tell them to shut up or something like this.
00:13:56 And it kind of makes sense to me that she couldn't actually not obey her mother in a way, but I don't know why she changed her mind.
00:14:09 And so, I assume that your mother was very pretty, or maybe still is, but certainly in the past, right?
00:14:18 I think so, yeah. She herself doesn't think that.
00:14:23 I think she has this really big taboo on sex, you know, like, on sexuality.
00:14:33 And it's a giant problem.
00:14:36 So, and that story about catcalling on the bus and this kind of stuff kind of coincides with it.
00:14:42 Am I making sense?
00:14:45 I'm not sure what you mean by taboo on sexuality.
00:14:50 Like, all my life, all our lives, it's like every mention of even something suggesting sex or sexuality, you know, that is just—was just prohibited in our house.
00:15:04 For example, if there's a movie like Titanic or something, and somebody's kissing, then we were urged to look away.
00:15:11 You know, things like that. And there are some episodes that I could, you know, tell you that happened to me with her that kind of demonstrate that.
00:15:23 Well, I mean, wanting to shield children from sexual matters is not bad.
00:15:30 I mean, I'm not sure that's a taboo, if that makes sense.
00:15:32 I mean, wouldn't you kind of want to do that with kids?
00:15:35 Keep them away from sexual matters?
00:15:38 Yeah, I meant a little bit in a different way.
00:15:43 Like, I think it was very, very bad for boys.
00:15:47 Like, I have a brother and I have a sister.
00:15:50 So, for me and my brother, I think it was really—I think we were kind of urged to be ashamed of the fact that we're boys from early childhood.
00:16:04 Okay, so that's a slightly different topic. Now we're talking about gender, not sex, which I'm happy to do, but I'm still not quite sure—and we'll bookmark that—but I'm still not quite sure what you mean by sexual taboos.
00:16:21 As far as I understand from stories from my mother, she never dated. She never had any romantic interest with anybody.
00:16:35 And her sisters did. Like, one of her sisters did fall in love, and she was the youngest but still married the first. And they were very interested in that, and they were, like, interested in looking pretty and, you know, cosmetics and this kind of stuff.
00:16:53 And my mother, she was kind of a man in the family, as she puts it, like, changing light bulbs and this kind of stuff, and again, protecting my grandmother, whatever that means.
00:17:07 And did your mother ever talk about any sexual trauma—I guess not, right—that she might have had as a child?
00:17:14 No. She can't really talk about this stuff. Like, she never talks about sexuality. That's what I'm talking about. She's very afraid of that. Well, I don't know what she's afraid of and what she's not, but she just doesn't talk about that.
00:17:32 Yeah, I mean, just—I don't know, obviously, but, you know, there's this internet meme of the hot crazy matrix, you know, the more attractive the woman, the more likely she is to be crazy. And, I mean, some of that certainly has to do with the fact that pretty girls are targeted by predators, right, like when they're little.
00:17:50 And there are a lot of predators around, and there's a lot of molestation, right? I mean, one in three girls, one in five boys, probably the number is closer to equal, but so—and I assume that these monsters in human form go for pretty children.
00:18:07 And so if—the hot crazy matrix, I think, has something to do with the fact that the more attractive the woman, the more likely she is to attract these kinds of predators, and then the more traumatized she's going to end up.
00:18:18 I mean, I don't think—I'm not saying it's a huge part of it, but I think it's certainly a part of it. But we don't have any information, so I'm just sort of putting that forward as a possibility, but we don't have any information about any of that, so we can't really apply it here.
00:18:32 Okay, so how were you—how were boys bad? How were you—how was it communicated to you and your brothers that boys are bad?
00:18:41 Well, first of all, my father was bad, and my mother somehow didn't understand that saying, "Well, you look exactly like your father," would not be really pleasant to hear when living in that situation.
00:19:01 And later there are like—well, for example, I think when I was around four or something, or four or five, had to be at the time when she still washes me, right?
00:19:18 So if I need to—like, I don't take a shower myself, she does it with me, right?
00:19:24 So I'm pretty young, and for some reason I remember this episode, and at some point she gives me—she puts a soap on my hand, and she tells me, "Wash there," or something like this.
00:19:40 And I just—I'm a little bit confused. I just don't understand for a second, and I'm like, "Oh, you know, like, what did she say?"
00:19:48 And she suddenly takes—puts soap on her hand and, like, aggressively puts her hand in my, like, genitals and in my, you know, ass, and like, with words, "I mean, wash your dirty ass," or something like this, you know?
00:20:06 Very, very aggressively, and I don't know.
00:20:14 Like, it's always—this thing kind of makes a—creates a feeling in me that I should have been ashamed for my genitals or something like that.
00:20:28 [silence]
00:20:38 Sorry, does your mother have brothers?
00:20:41 She has one brother and two sisters.
00:20:46 Right, okay. I mean, again, we don't know, but it would fit that if she was preyed upon by men or another child when she was a child, that she would view with threat and horror male genitalia, male sexual organs, right?
00:21:06 Again, we don't know. I'm just, you know, it's a possibility that—I don't know. If she ever talks about it, it would be interesting to hear, but again, we don't know for sure. But yeah, that level of hostility towards male genitalia would not come out of nowhere, right?
00:21:22 Yeah, I guess so. But again, for some reason, I never thought of this this way.
00:21:29 It also might have just been—it might not have been any molestation. It could just be seeing without any context male genitalia, which I assume would be somewhat traumatic for a little girl.
00:21:42 And so it could be any number of things, but there is a hostility, sort of in a sense fear and hatred of male genitalia is not—I mean, there's no evolutionary advantage to that, right?
00:21:54 I mean, how could it possibly be at all positive for women to have a fear and horror of the male genitalia, given that that's kind of required for reproduction, like it's not—so there's no evolutionary reason why that would occur in the mind of a woman. Does that make sense?
00:22:14 Yeah.
00:22:16 So it's got to come from somewhere, right? And the reason I say this is that if you ever have been friends with or dated someone who has a huge fear of dogs—"I hate dogs!"—and they're just awful creatures, they're smelly, they'll jump up, they're really intense about dogs—I mean, what do we kind of know for sure about their past?
00:22:44 That at some point something happened with dogs.
00:22:47 Yeah, that they were attacked by a dog, or threatened or frightened by a dog. I mean, it would be incomprehensible if that wasn't the case. Does that make sense?
00:22:59 Yeah, that makes sense.
00:23:00 Like if somebody had this intense fear and hatred of dogs, and they're smelly, they're disgusting, and yet had never had a negative experience of a dog, that would be kind of incomprehensible, right?
00:23:13 Right. I don't really know, but maybe it has something to do with Muslim culture or something like this, or culture of that locality.
00:23:24 I can't speak to that, but it's certainly like if she has this hatred and disgust of men. Also, if she's hostile towards sexuality, as it sounds like she is, is that a fair way to put it? I don't want to put words in your mouth that she was uneasy with or hostile towards sexuality.
00:23:44 Yes, so any mention of, even if you do it by mistake, would enrage her, like seriously enrage her.
00:23:54 Right, okay. So, if she has a hatred or a fear of sexuality, or if she's anti-sex in a way, then marrying a man she doesn't like would solve that problem, right?
00:24:11 Right.
00:24:18 You get why, right? Because if she marries a man she doesn't like, then she doesn't have to have sex with him.
00:24:24 So, if I understand you correctly, then what you're saying is something like, so that's the reason why she turned around and said, "Okay, I will marry this guy that I don't like."
00:24:37 I mean, it could be unconscious, maybe she was going through a lot of pressure, but if she's hostile towards sexuality, then being in a bad marriage means she doesn't have to confront that psychological problem.
00:24:50 Because if she fell in love with a man, whatever, if she was really attracted to him and she wanted to have sex with him, then whatever hang-ups or conflicts or problems or trauma she has about sex will immediately arise, and then she'll have to deal with it, right?
00:25:07 Because she wants to have sex, but she also has this fear. But if she marries a guy she doesn't like, especially a guy who's violent, then she could say, "No, I'm not having sex with you," and then she doesn't have to confront whatever trauma may have happened in the past.
00:25:19 But at the same time, being kind of raped, right?
00:25:26 I'm not sure what you mean. What are you referring to there?
00:25:30 So, if she didn't want to marry him and she doesn't want to have sex with him, then, well, they made us somehow, so they had to have sex.
00:25:39 Well, yes. I get that. But if she had sexual trauma in her past, then unwanted sexual activity that's half forced upon her, I mean, in the marriage, if it was forced upon her as a child, then that would be entirely forced upon her.
00:25:55 But she would submit to aggression in sexual matters as well as in interpersonal. So she would submit to aggression, but she would rebel with noncompliance, right?
00:26:07 When you force people to do stuff, they'll often submit, but then they will rebel with noncompliance.
00:26:12 So if your father, you know, "We've got to have babies. I'm a husband. I demand my rights." She'll submit, but then she'll resent sex.
00:26:20 She'll resent him, and she may get to avoid the topic over time just by wearing him down with being unpleasant or difficult or aggressive or avoidant or cold or something like that.
00:26:31 Well, that makes total sense. I mean, that's exactly what happened to being cold.
00:26:41 Actually, that was one of the things that my father, when he started those big fights, he complained about that.
00:26:49 He would say, "You're bitter all the time, and you're cold all the time." He would say exactly that.
00:26:56 Right, right, right. Yeah, so then that would explain why, yes, you can force people to do stuff. You just get resentment and all of that.
00:27:06 And also then, if she would be concerned about if the family's watching Titanic, right, and you've got sexual activity, you've got kissing, you have the naked woman, and it's fairly sexually charged.
00:27:25 She would then want to turn that off for fear that it would arouse your father, and then he would want to have sex with her, and there'd be a big conflict about it.
00:27:37 And that's maybe why no sex talk in the environment.
00:27:45 Yeah, that makes sense. That makes total sense.
00:27:49 There was this weird episode that I remember. I was a very curious kid, and I learned to read really, really early.
00:27:58 And at some point, I think I was like six or something, and I read on a package of some food, there was this word in English, "preservative."
00:28:08 And at some point, I mentioned this word to my mother regarding a food, "Will you add the preservatives as well?" as kind of a joke, and even maybe trying to kind of, "Look, I know this weird word. It sounds cool."
00:28:22 And apparently, this word in Russian means "condoms." I didn't know that.
00:28:28 Yeah, "preserve your semen," I guess. Yeah, yeah.
00:28:31 So I didn't know that then, but she screamed at me. She yelled at me, like, "Do you know what that word means?" And I'm like, "No."
00:28:40 She's like, "Why do you use that?" She was so angry. And yeah, it's a kind of an episode that I remember really, really clearly.
00:28:50 Well, and of course, again, we don't know, but if she did have childhood sexual trauma, then you saying a sexual word as a child would really trigger her, right?
00:29:02 Yeah, that makes total sense, but I have no idea what could have happened.
00:29:08 No, no, and again, we don't know, right? It's all circumstantial, right? Which is not enough for conviction, so to speak, or not enough for proof.
00:29:16 It's a way of approaching these things that might help understand some of the patterns, right? We're looking for some of the patterns and why they might have been occurring.
00:29:25 Right.
00:29:29 And how has your parents' marriage played out over time?
00:29:35 Well, it wasn't good. It was really, really bad. They fought a lot, and my father beat her and beat us. He didn't touch our sister, by the way.
00:29:50 But yeah, he was very, very violent and, like, obviously, uncontrollable, kind of.
00:30:03 And I always thought that they actually hated each other, right? Like, really hated each other. They talked to each other as if they were strangers and kind of really, really in this tone of, "We need to communicate really, really fast."
00:30:20 They never said even the word "you," if you know what I mean.
00:30:25 "Go tell your father this," or "Go tell your mother that."
00:30:29 Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And if they talked to each other, they would actually usually speak in Russian, which is in post-Soviet countries, everyone speaks kind of Russian, so that we don't understand, kind of.
00:30:45 But still, they wouldn't use "you." It's like, you can build sentences without saying "you," right? Or without using names, or without saying a word like, using his name, or... I don't know.
00:31:03 I was just always wondering why every other family, there were words in all the English vernacular, they would use words like "daddy," right? Like, a mother would say, "Call her husband daddy."
00:31:19 And something like that was there as well, and it was very kind of sweet, and they would do that, but my parents didn't do that. They just didn't call anything, each other, right?
00:31:34 And why do you think they stayed married?
00:31:44 In a sense, I think divorce is not really an option in that environment. There are, as far as I remember, there are a lot of broken families that are catastrophically broken, and all of them continue existing.
00:32:03 And a lot of men in those territories, like in Central Asia, they will have, maybe even they will have a separate family. They will have another family somewhere.
00:32:16 And in my extended family, there are several instances of that.
00:32:22 And I think my father had, there was this very, very weird incident once where he came home drunk, and he told everyone to prepare, and we're going somewhere.
00:32:38 And we went into a store and bought some cookies, and then he led us to a place, to a home, an apartment of someone, some Russian-speaking lady, with two kids.
00:32:53 And those two kids would call him by his first name with this, you know, with this, like, how do you call it when you change the name to sound more sweet or something?
00:33:05 Yeah, like a nickname or an endearment.
00:33:08 Right, right. Like endearing, kind of, yeah, changing the name to sound more cute and this kind of thing.
00:33:14 So those children would call him that, and for some reason he took his wife and his children and, like, bring us there, and I still don't know why he did that.
00:33:25 But one thing was very, very interesting, and that name thing that they would call him in this nickname fashion.
00:33:33 At the same time, we had to call him, we talked to him very respectfully and say "you" and not "thou," and every time he comes home, we should have, you know, we would meet him and, like, say, like, this Arabic greeting, you know, very respectful Muslim greeting thing.
00:33:57 And here they are, those two children. I don't know whose those children are. They would call him by, you know, first name and they say "thou," right?
00:34:09 Sorry, are you telling me that, you know, I just want to make sure I'm on the same page. Are you saying that you think your father had a second family?
00:34:19 I think she was just, it was just an affair, but again, I have no idea.
00:34:25 No, but the children...
00:34:27 My father, I don't know if it's his children. I just don't know where they came from.
00:34:32 Well, I'm not saying what you know. I get that we don't have proof, but the endearments, the saying, "you had to be formal, but they could be informal, and you didn't know where this woman came from," do you think that your father had, I mean, I'm just curious, right?
00:34:50 Do you think that your father had other children with another woman, or maybe this was a woman he had an affair with who had children through some other man, or what does your instinct or your feelings tell you?
00:35:00 My instinct is that it's not his children. It's more like an affair. He just slept with her.
00:35:07 Okay, and you...
00:35:09 But that doesn't explain those...
00:35:11 That doesn't explain that, yes. That doesn't explain that, except that if, you know, it's this sort of fundamental question of a bad marriage. Can you hate your partner, but love the children you share together?
00:35:25 Seems kind of impossible, in a way. If you hate your wife, how are you going to love your children? So it could be that he had more affection for the children of this woman because he had affection for the woman, and therefore he could be nicer to the children.
00:35:41 But can you... I mean, I know this from my own family history. My mother seemed to have a big deal of trouble loving her children when she hated their father. So maybe they were more affectionate because he was more affectionate with the mother.
00:36:00 That makes a little sense. And he was one of those people that happened... Like, this story happens all the time in the Colin shows, right? That he was this monster inside the house, and he was the greatest man that everybody thought that, well, he helps everybody and he's so nice to everybody, so...
00:36:20 Predators... Everyone thinks that predators are all about aggression. But predators are half about camouflage. I mean, you can't be a tiger if you don't look like the grass. So you have to... Everyone thinks that predators are about teeth and claws, and it's like, no, a lot of it is about camouflage.
00:36:38 Even sharks do it, right? They darken the bottom... On the top and light on the bottom so that they camouflage better. And so, yeah, so the fact that he camouflaged and would be great in public while cruel in private is part of the whole thing.
00:36:52 Tell me a little bit more. I sort of understand the nature of these beatings, and I'm, of course, incredibly sorry that you and your brother went through this, and I'm terribly sorry that your sister had to witness this. It must be terrifying for her as well.
00:37:03 What was the nature of these beatings? How often were they? And what, if anything, would generally provoke them?
00:37:11 The biggest thing that I can remember that would provoke that is he had to watch the news at 8 o'clock, right? And if there's a noise and we say something, he could just, you know, lose all control.
00:37:31 And you could actually see his face and he's clenching his teeth together, and he's like, now he just takes you and just throws you somewhere or something. And those are those more angry and chaotic situations, which happened a lot. It happened every two days, three days or something.
00:37:57 But there were beatings, more like cold-blooded, you know, parenting-style beatings, right?
00:38:07 Sorry, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with parenting-style beatings.
00:38:11 I'm trying to find a term for that, but, you know, the ones that, like, discipline, you know, like, to try to beat discipline into you.
00:38:23 Which is, of course, I never believed that. I didn't even believe that then, because he didn't care. He wasn't involved in our life at all.
00:38:37 He was always at work. And so, and those have, like, this type, the cold-blooded type, happened once in a while, I guess, maybe once in two weeks or something, where he would just, you know, methodically beat us with…
00:38:55 Yeah, like straight up assault, right? And this would be, would it be beatings with his fists or open hand or an implement?
00:39:03 No, he wouldn't, like, punches or something. Usually it's a belt or open hand.
00:39:09 I remember this weird thing that he would do. He would move you by inserting his fingers in your mouth.
00:39:21 Oh, yeah, the tiny fishhook.
00:39:25 Oh, oh, it has a name! I could never explain when I talked about this. If it has a name…
00:39:33 And he sort of pulled you by the cheek?
00:39:35 Yeah, yeah, something like this, yeah.
00:39:38 Yeah, my father had a knuckle wrap on the top of the head that was exquisitely painful. So, okay, so there would be genuine beatings. I mean, would you be bruised? Would there be marks?
00:39:49 Yeah, there were, constantly there were problems with school. So, mother did a lot to hide this, and we had those stories, I fell and all this stuff, so, yeah.
00:40:03 The abuse that you were experiencing, the assaults, were unusual even in the culture, right?
00:40:09 Oh, yeah, yeah, it was an unusually crazy family, yeah. It was an unusually dysfunctional and violent family. And I always felt, I had this feeling that, oh, it's so much more safe outside than inside. Makes no sense.
00:40:29 Oh, no, I mean, it was. What do you mean, it makes no sense? You were being beaten with a belt inside, nobody was beating you with a belt outside. I mean, isn't that perfectly logical?
00:40:39 Right, it's perfectly logical, yeah. I just mean that I felt then that it makes no sense. Why is it like this?
00:40:46 Oh, I see what you mean, yeah. I used to, I built a treehouse, and I would climb up a tall tree, where I would store my comic books and so on in a plastic bag, so, I would climb a tall tree, and it's like, yes, it's safer climbing a tall tree than it is being at home. So, yeah, it's sad but true.
00:41:06 And then, of course, I still am, and I was always told that I'm a difficult kid, and it was explained by the fact that I would always try to run away, and when I would do this, I would do it very dangerously. So, I would run away to a street with cars and this kind of stuff, and my mother would run after me, and it usually would happen after some more, like, violent events.
00:41:35 More, like, pleasant relative would come to our place, and I would just run after him. So, it's just in relation to the safer outside.
00:41:47 It's a tough question, I suppose. But do you think that you had, if you would run to places where there were cars and so on, do you think you had any kind of death impulse or desire to not live when you were a kid?
00:42:04 It's too far to say that. My instinct tells me that, yes, I did. And another, like, thing, point of, you know, after, when I was 12, I remember saying that to my friend, "I hate myself. I just hate myself."
00:42:23 And when I said that, I thought it was totally normal to hate yourself. Moreover, I thought that it was virtuous to hate yourself. And then I was very surprised by his reaction, when he was like, "What? Like, why don't you hate yourself?"
00:42:37 I mean, hang on, hang on, brother. Why are you giving me this smiley voice? That's kind of weird. Like, you're talking about hating yourself, and you're like, "Hey!" And I thought, "Hey, my friend, I hate myself!" Like, why are you giving, this is really sad. This is really tragic. I mean, you're trying to invite me into this "ha-ha, isn't it kind of funny" world, and it's like, this is tragic shit, man.
00:42:58 I think it's, I'm just trying to, I'm a very sensitive person, and I'm kind of a little bit scared of showing too much emotion, I think.
00:43:10 I understand that, but it's, like, if you could not do that, I hate to be nagging you, I really do. I hate to be nagging you, but if you could not do this "ha-ha, wasn't it funny that I didn't want to live as a child," because that's a little, that's a lot for me to manage and process, and I can't be, nobody can drag me into the world of child suicide impulse comedy.
00:43:30 So, if you could just, you know, take a deep breath, you know, I mean, you can't ever be too passionate for me, that your feelings are more than welcome in this conversation, but I just can't go with you to that upside-down world.
00:43:43 Yeah, I understand, and I also understand that I listen to a lot of Colin shows, and I know that it's a little bit kind of annoying, and…
00:43:51 No, it's not, I mean, I sympathize with the impulse, I really do. It's a way of telling people that you're hurt, and rejecting any possibility of sympathy or compassion.
00:44:09 It was my whole, like, my first 20 years of my life are so dark. I usually, when I talk about it, I think I use this kind of demeanor, but after a while I get angry, and that's a little bit more fitting, I think.
00:44:27 Well, I think that you're putting out this language to see if anybody cares. Like, does anybody say, "That's really dark, that's really tragic, that's really horrible." Or they're like, "Ha ha, yes, what an unusual childhood, boy, kids are funny that way."
00:44:46 Right, that makes sense, yeah.
00:44:49 Okay, and again, I'm not trying to be Mr. Nag, but… Now, so your parents did not express any affection, in fact, it sounds like pretty clear hatred and hostility towards each other, right?
00:45:04 Yeah, I can't remember any, you know, there was no love at all, like, zero.
00:45:13 Well, hatred, really contempt. So you had the question of why did your father bring you to this woman's house?
00:45:22 If I asked him?
00:45:25 No, I think you had said that you weren't sure why your father, and you said he brought your mother, too. Like, why would your father bring his family to this woman's house with the kids who were affectionate with him? Is that your question?
00:45:39 Yeah, I still don't know, and I never asked him. It's just, at the time when I could ask him, when he was around…
00:45:47 No, I can tell you why. So the reason that he would bring your mother to this woman's house is to humiliate her, because he was angry at her, they had a big fight, something negative had happened, and he's like, "I'm going to show you," and he brings your mother over to this woman's house to show how affectionate he is and how much the kids love him, and to rub her face in this.
00:46:13 You think it was kind of a humiliation thing?
00:46:17 Of course, yeah. I mean, I assume if he hates your mother, then everything he does is to harm her, or upset her, or frustrate her, or, you know, he would say, "She's so cold to me, what does it matter if I'm affectionate towards other people?" But no, it's just a punishment thing.
00:46:37 Yeah, again, I never thought of it this way, but it makes total sense.
00:46:44 All right, so what happened when your hormones hit as a teenager and you start becoming interested in girls and all of that kind of good stuff? What happens in your family there?
00:47:00 Well, when I was 12, my family moved to another country. So it was a little bit more Western country, and now it's a new language, new culture, everything's different.
00:47:16 And he started to just work at some – by the way, he was a business owner, he was a very successful businessman, but for some reason he still decided to emigrate to this country.
00:47:33 And then in this country, he started to work in those minimum wage jobs and making money and this kind of stuff. And at some point, he decided to go back to that country, and he did that.
00:47:53 And when he came back, my mother was like, "Okay, it was a year that I had to feed three children by myself, and I managed to do it, and it was much better without you, so why would I let you in? Why would I let you back in?" And that's how they divorced.
00:48:13 Alright, so hang on a sec, there's a lot in what you're saying here, I want to make sure I follow it all. So your father was a business owner in your country of origin, you moved to a Western country, and he had terrible jobs, is that right?
00:48:27 Right, but I don't think it wasn't planned. I think it's just, in my country of origin, money that you make in a Western country is much more valuable, so even working in low-wage jobs, it's very – I think he was actually sending money to his business.
00:48:47 Oh, back home.
00:48:49 Yeah.
00:48:51 Okay, so then – and you have no idea why he moved you.
00:49:01 Oh, there is a story about that, that my mother tells, that what happened was that she wanted – she had the ability to move to this country, and he wanted to, but she didn't. But at some point, he came home and he said that he got a position of a municipal business that – he was in printing and this kind of stuff.
00:49:29 So there was this big factory of – printing factory that's in another bigger city, and he said, "Okay, I'm starting to work there," because they decided to put me because I'm a successful businessman in this, so I get this job.
00:49:43 And then my mother asks him, "Okay, when we're moving?" And he says, "No, we're not moving. Only I am going there." So that's when my mother said, "Okay, if that's the way it is, then let's go to this country."
00:50:01 So was he lying about the job?
00:50:05 No, he wasn't lying. I don't know why he was interested in that job. The way I understand –
00:50:11 No, but that job wasn't minimum wage, was it?
00:50:15 No, no, no. His business wasn't with minimum wage either. He was very, very –
00:50:19 No, no, no. I get that. Sorry if I misunderstood. Didn't he say to your mother, "We're moving to this new country because I have a great job there"?
00:50:30 No, no, no. What I meant is he got a job in my country of origin, like a municipal thing, like a government printing factory.
00:50:42 That's a contract.
00:50:43 Right. And he would be a manager there, so it's kind of a maybe political thing. I don't really know. So I guess it was a big deal for him that they're giving him this job.
00:50:55 But he wanted also to move to this Western country. I guess he thought of it as a growth opportunity.
00:51:04 At some point, I remember when we moved here, he started learning French because he wanted to emigrate to Canada, to Quebec,
00:51:14 because it's easier to get to the French part and not the English part or something like this. That's what he told us anyways.
00:51:20 So I think he saw this as, "Yeah, I will just go into this world and I will – " It was very important to him to return to his country of origin as a winner.
00:51:34 Yeah, he's the slatest guy.
00:51:37 But I still don't understand – now I think I understand the sequence – I still don't really understand why your father said to your mother,
00:51:48 "I have a great job in this country. Let's move to – oh, I'm going to move to another country."
00:51:53 I mean, if you got this great job that was a big deal, wouldn't you stay in the country?
00:51:58 Well, I guess moving to this Western country was more – it looked better to him.
00:52:05 But why wait until you get a really great job offer to move to another country?
00:52:09 Oh, I'm saying that it was a decision of my mother. The second that there was this opportunity to move to this country, he wanted to do this.
00:52:20 But my mother didn't. My mother said, "No, we're not moving."
00:52:25 And then when he said, "I'm leaving you with the family and moving to another city to work at that factory," that's when she said, "Okay, we're moving to this city."
00:52:36 Oh, so sorry, the municipal job was in another city.
00:52:39 Right, yeah, yeah.
00:52:40 So he was going to leave the family anyway. And so she said, "If you're going to leave, we might as well all move to the Western country." Is that right?
00:52:50 Yeah, and as far as I understand, as my mother puts it, in a Western country, she has more, let's say, vote, right?
00:52:56 She can be more independent and she can survive even if he leaves.
00:53:02 I think that was the idea behind her decision.
00:53:07 Because if he's leaving there, then she has no – he can just leave us and that's it.
00:53:13 And she can't work, she has three children, and that's a really bad situation.
00:53:18 But in the Western country, she had some family and it's a more free society.
00:53:26 Okay, so you move to the Western country, and then your father returns home after a while. Is that right?
00:53:36 We all moved to the Western country. It was my father.
00:53:40 And we lived there for a while and they started working in a different place. My mother at some place and my father as well.
00:53:48 And after a couple of years, I think, maybe two years or something like this, he decided to go back.
00:53:55 I think he was saving money for this business and he took a giant loan.
00:54:03 And he wanted actually to make my mother to take a giant loan as well before going back to our country, to the homeland.
00:54:12 And then he just went there for a year.
00:54:17 Sorry, the giant loan was that in the Western country?
00:54:21 Yeah.
00:54:22 So, hang on, hang on.
00:54:24 So, was your father trying to get him and his mother to take out these giant loans and then leave the country?
00:54:33 Yeah, he wanted to take that money and pour it into his business.
00:54:37 Well, hang on, hang on. I mean, if you take out a big loan and then you leave the country, isn't that kind of fraudulent?
00:54:46 When I say leave the country, I mean only him. So, my mother actually stays and I don't think he planned to stay there.
00:54:54 I think he wanted to just grow his business and then come back and continue with whatever he was doing.
00:55:01 Listen, I'm not a business guy in this way. Like, I don't know much about the loan business.
00:55:07 But I can't imagine if I was a lender and someone said, "I want you to lend me money so I can go and invest it halfway around the world and I may or may not come back or I'll probably come back."
00:55:21 Like, I think that that would be pretty tough to make that loan. Like, why wouldn't you just get the loan in the home country?
00:55:30 Again, I'm not an expert in these kinds of things, but it seems a bit odd to me that he would say, "Let's get a loan and my wife will get a loan and then we'll take all this money out of the country and we'll put it overseas and then I'll go manage that business and I'm sure I'll be back."
00:55:46 Like, it just seems like an odd business decision for the lender to make, if that makes sense.
00:55:52 You mean the bank, right?
00:55:54 Yeah, the bank.
00:55:56 Okay, so in this country, it's fairly easy to get a loan. There is like every person has kind of a limit on how much he can get, judging by the credit history and how much he makes and this kind of stuff.
00:56:11 So you can actually go into your website of your bank and just click a button, you will get a loan.
00:56:17 Okay, got it. So it didn't go through a business vetting process or anything like that. It was just, you have, basically, it's like a line of credit. You can just get a loan that way. Is that right?
00:56:28 Exactly, yeah.
00:56:30 Okay, so he wanted to get the loan in the Western country and then go and spend the money in his home country and then the plan was to come back. Is that right?
00:56:42 I guess so, yeah. Again, all of it is, you know, the story that my mother tells. I have no idea. He never talks about his affairs, so I don't know what was his plan.
00:56:53 Got it, okay. So then he goes and he's gone for like a year.
00:56:58 Yeah.
00:56:59 And you said that your mother had to raise the three kids, you three kids, your brother and your sister. She had to raise the kids on her own so he wasn't sending money back or never came back or what does that mean?
00:57:13 No, that's the thing. He wanted her to take the loan and then he wouldn't also like provide for us. He would just leave for a year and I guess that was just normal. I don't, but that's exactly what happened anyways.
00:57:27 So he left and your mother had to pay all the bills herself?
00:57:31 Yeah.
00:57:33 And then he's gone for, and when did, you said he was here for what, or not here but in the West for two years, so you were 14 when you left and then 15 when he came back, is that right?
00:57:45 I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:57:48 Okay, so he comes back and your mother basically says, "I didn't miss you, I don't need you, I have my own income," and did your mother initiate the divorce, is that right?
00:57:58 Yeah. He lived with us for a while after he came back and I remember this time and of course they didn't talk and I remember all those gestures, like if he's in the kitchen then she's demonstrably standing there and waiting until he gets out and then she gets in, things like that. It was a very unpleasant time.
00:58:24 Well, he also beat her too, right?
00:58:27 Well, not at this time because at this point I remember I overheard him saying things about her, like saying that she's sleeping with other men and this kind of stuff and I overheard that and I came and I kind of, as I thought, that I pushed him a little bit but he broke everything.
00:58:56 So, yeah, it was the moment in my life where I understood that, okay, he can't harm me anymore.
00:59:08 Right, and his beatings of her, were they with fists or hands or belts or…?
00:59:15 Open hands.
00:59:18 And they were like more…
00:59:20 And would she also get bruised and have to wear sunglasses or like black eyes or anything like that?
00:59:29 Yeah, I do remember that she would, not sunglasses because that's not the culture, but you know, the headscarf, she would close her face somehow. But I remember the same headscarves closing her face with my several aunts as well, so like, it happened so much there.
00:59:50 You mean the beating of the women?
00:59:53 Right, yeah.
00:59:54 Right, okay.
00:59:56 So then she decides to divorce him.
01:00:01 And how does that go? Does he agree? Is he relieved? What happens?
01:00:07 Well, he does create a scene because what happens is he lives with us until our contract for the apartment that we're living there then ends and then he goes his own way, so that was the idea. And then he did make a little scene when we were giving the keys back to the landlord.
01:00:29 He just said, "I don't want to leave." But other than that, there was nothing. And of course, there was this thing that he would say to us that, "Well, you guys left me." It's like he didn't say she left me, he would say that we left him, like children left him.
01:00:55 Right, okay.
01:00:57 But other than that, just didn't have any communication with them. He just disappeared and that was it.
01:01:04 Right, okay. And was it an ugly divorce or drawn out or how did that go?
01:01:11 I think they're still not divorced by documents and this kind of stuff, so I think they just separated.
01:01:22 And how long ago was that?
01:01:26 Around 15 years ago.
01:01:29 Wow, okay. And where did they end up? Where did they end up living?
01:01:37 I think now he lives in a car somewhere, but he built himself this kind of semi-RV thing. I never saw it. I don't know what it's like. I almost never see him. And my mother lives currently alone. My sister is married and my brother is also married.
01:01:59 My sister was married and I'm going too far away right now, but she lives alone in an apartment right now and I'm living separately in another city.
01:02:10 And your sister didn't have kids, is that right?
01:02:13 No, she had kids. Her story is very interesting. She's in this very typical, right? She's in this Western country and somehow she finds a man exactly like my father.
01:02:27 He's from that region, not exactly the same country, but from that region. He has the same kind of culture and at some point he starts being very, very tyrannical towards her and they already have two children and they divorced later.
01:02:42 And now they have like a 50/50 arrangement with the kids.
01:02:47 Okay. So she didn't exactly process her childhood very much either?
01:02:55 Oh, no, no, she didn't.
01:02:57 She just reproduced it.
01:02:59 And once I said that to her and she said, "Yep."
01:03:05 But didn't your mother want to help her avoid this kind of stuff?
01:03:14 I mean, wouldn't your mother say, "For heaven's sakes, don't marry this guy. This is not good. This is like your father. See how unhappy I was." All this kind of stuff, right?
01:03:28 Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. This is the time when my relationship with my sister and my mother were terrible. It was a terrible time for me those teenage years.
01:03:42 My mother did two one-year-long silent treatment situations while I was living with her in the same place.
01:03:54 So I always felt at this point that my mother…
01:03:58 Sorry, who had what length of not talking?
01:04:02 Two times my mother didn't talk to me for a year. Twice at my teenage years.
01:04:12 Pretended that I didn't exist.
01:04:14 So the feeling was that I kind of replaced my father or something like this. I was the one to hate now.
01:04:22 Or something like this.
01:04:26 Wow, I'm sorry about that. Your father was gone, so you were essentially unparented for two years.
01:04:33 Yeah, and at the same time, my sister, my whole teenage years, she doesn't talk. I don't even remember when it started, but until I was maybe 19 or 20, she just played the same game.
01:04:51 I later learned that it's not normal. I'm smiling again, but it was really painful. It was really bad.
01:05:01 But this is the way that I understand that my mother deals with things.
01:05:07 No, she doesn't deal with them. She just avoids them.
01:05:10 Right, right. And this is not the first time. She did it all the time in our childhood.
01:05:16 I think this whole deal with my father, even when we were little, it was that. She would just try to pretend that he doesn't exist.
01:05:26 It was her way.
01:05:29 And my sister, yeah, well, that's what she learned, I guess.
01:05:35 And yeah, for five or six years, I think she just didn't talk to me, just pretended that I don't exist and hated me. I never knew why. I don't remember what started it as well.
01:05:52 What would she say that she hated about you?
01:05:59 Later, when we fought, before we started talking again, there was this big fight and she told me that I would beat her every day when we were children.
01:06:13 Now, I think she's talking about four or five years old, this kind of time. Actually, a little bit later, I guess, like five, six or seven or something like this.
01:06:25 By the way, we're all a year apart. I'm in the middle, so she's a year younger than me.
01:06:32 And there were times, it was a weird situation. I think the fact that she was the only child that wasn't beaten at first when she was little and didn't really get what's happening, she would kind of use that.
01:06:49 I remember those situations when she would just start crying and then I would be punished. And then she's going off with a smile.
01:07:00 So, there was this and then later she told us that at some point she told about something me and my brother did to her, to father, and he really, really beat us up, really, like extremely brutally beat us up.
01:07:18 And it was very traumatic for her and she stopped talking about all of this. She started avoiding.
01:07:25 Oh, so she complained about you and your brother to your father and then he beat you very badly.
01:07:30 Yeah.
01:07:31 Okay.
01:07:32 Yeah, and she says it was very traumatic for her and then she stopped complaining to our father.
01:07:37 Did she ever express sympathy that it might in fact have been traumatic for you to be beaten that badly?
01:07:42 She kind of does now. Now I really like her, actually. She's the only one person in my family that I can kind of speak to her and understand her. And it seems like she understands. She kind of empathizes with it.
01:08:08 All right.
01:08:11 But I don't have a very deep relationship with her.
01:08:18 And what's happened with your dating life?
01:08:24 I never really dated before lately, like maybe two years ago I started actually dating. What happened was that at some point when I was in high school, there was this girl that I wasn't really attracted to her.
01:08:43 And I always at this point, I thought that there's no way that somebody could like me. I was like, I'm un-dateable or it just didn't even cross my mind. So it was very, very dark.
01:08:59 But there was this girl in school that just always tried to be around. And then she started to walk home with me. And then anyways, slowly somehow it happened that we are together.
01:09:23 And we never did that. We never decided that or said that. You know what I mean? It's like, it's just at some point we're like, oh, okay, we're together.
01:09:33 It just kind of unfolds.
01:09:36 But the problem is that I was kind of never attracted to her. And of course, when she kind of shows interest, I couldn't believe for a long time that no, no, no, she must be mistaken.
01:09:50 She just doesn't know who I am. She just doesn't understand. But she still did like persevere, let's say.
01:09:59 And later we were together and we've been together for 10 years. And two of those years we were married.
01:10:07 Did you end up being attracted to her?
01:10:11 At some point I had this very intimate and I really liked her. She was very, how do you say that? I had this tenderness towards her.
01:10:29 So, yeah, it was, how do you say it? Well, yeah, it became much, much better later. I learned to like her and love her.
01:10:44 And what was it that you found not attractive about her? Or why do you think you weren't attracted to her sexually or romantically?
01:10:51 Well, when we were in school, those first years, she wasn't really feminine. She would put on men's clothes and she was very kind of, well, yeah, that, that.
01:11:05 She wasn't very feminine. She wasn't feminine at all. And also I didn't really, I guess she wasn't my type.
01:11:17 What do you mean by that? Was she overweight or facially unpleasant?
01:11:23 She wasn't overweight, but she wasn't pretty. She wasn't pretty at all. Like she was, her face was a little bit kind of distorted.
01:11:33 Was your mother feminine in your way of looking at it?
01:11:39 Yeah, my mother was feminine and is still feminine.
01:11:43 Okay. So tell me what you mean by feminine and how your mother fit.
01:11:59 Oh, this is really hard to formulate. How do you even?
01:12:07 Well, the movements, how they move, like the plasticity or something. I really don't know. Can you ask more specific questions?
01:12:22 Sure, yeah. Okay. Do you associate femininity with affection?
01:12:27 No.
01:12:31 Do you associate femininity with submission where the man is better at something?
01:12:41 I think there is a little bit of that, yeah.
01:12:44 Okay. And did your mother submit to your father where he had expertise?
01:12:53 I think she did, yeah.
01:12:56 Can you think of an example?
01:13:03 Well, all the affairs like money, the finances, all of this was his responsibility and she just submitted to this and didn't.
01:13:19 Okay. And do you associate femininity with being a homemaker, staying home, raising the kids, having a happy home?
01:13:29 Yes, yes I do.
01:13:32 Okay. So she's got one out of three if your definition is femininity.
01:13:39 Because she didn't create a happy home, right? She was not affectionate, but she did defer to your father on matters of, say, finance.
01:13:55 Do you view femininity as being slightly better than masculinity in taking care of the sick?
01:14:10 Yes, I kind of do, yeah.
01:14:12 And how was your mother when you and your siblings got ill?
01:14:19 I think she was, yeah, she was very attentive. She took care of us.
01:14:26 Do you view femininity as having something to do with creating a strong social network to help people?
01:14:33 You know, like in church or in a mosque or a synagogue that the women will sort of band together to bring food to the elderly, to help out sick, and you know, in the community as a whole.
01:14:45 No, I don't think so.
01:14:47 So that's not femininity to you?
01:14:51 Well, when I say femininity…
01:14:53 It's fine if it's not, I'm just trying to figure out your definition.
01:14:55 I think when I say femininity, I mean just more in how it looks, right? It's like, can she dress in a dress, you know, actually dress and not…
01:15:11 Oh, so femininity is the outfit, is that right?
01:15:16 Yeah, the outfit and the way that you talk and, you know, I'm really confused right now.
01:15:32 Okay, let me ask you this. Does the doctor get to wear the white coat because he's a doctor, or does anyone who wears the white coat become a doctor?
01:15:52 No, you can't become a doctor by wearing the thing. I think I understand now.
01:15:58 Is she feminine because she dresses in a feminine fashion, or does she dress in a feminine fashion to reflect her pre-existing femininity?
01:16:13 The second, I guess.
01:16:15 I mean, I think femininity would be something internal, and it would have external manifestations.
01:16:23 But to say that the femininity is in how she dresses is to, I think, reverse cause and effect.
01:16:32 I mean, it could have been a kind of camouflage, right? Or it could just be that she wants to fit in, and that's what she does, right?
01:16:39 Yeah.
01:16:41 So that brings us back to our question. What is femininity? Because you say, well, my wife…
01:16:47 Sorry, are you still married, or what's happening with the girl you're 10 years?
01:16:51 We're divorced.
01:16:53 When did you divorce?
01:16:55 Six years ago.
01:17:03 And why did you divorce?
01:17:05 It was actually her that left me. What she told me happened is connected to the disease that I have, and everything was getting worse and worse.
01:17:19 And that's what she told me, anyways. That it was getting overwhelming, and she can't deal with it anymore.
01:17:25 Right, right. Okay. And again, my massive sympathies for all of that. That's very, very tough.
01:17:30 So, you said that you weren't as attracted to this woman in part because she dressed in a non-feminine manner, and if we take away femininity and masculinity as an outfit, as a costume, and sort of look at the inward manifestation, that's important.
01:17:45 To me, a woman can be perfectly feminine while working on a farm.
01:17:49 Now, working on a farm, she's not in dresses and heels or whatever, right? But she's… I mean, my aunts were feminine, and they worked the land, right, a lot of them, and were pretty handy with tools and so on, but that's not…
01:18:06 It doesn't make them any less feminine. To me, it's a whole bunch of other things.
01:18:10 And the reason I'm saying all of this, of course, is that if you let your mother determine what femininity is to you, you'll either be attracted to crazy, violent women or not attracted to women.
01:18:25 Because we're primed, as men, to be attracted, in general, to femininity, right?
01:18:30 But if your mother is what you define as femininity, then… because this is all the way back to your first question, right? What is viva la difference? What is the good difference between men and women, and what are red flags of dysfunction? Does that make sense?
01:18:46 Yeah, that makes all the sense.
01:18:48 So, if you define femininity as what your mother was, then femininity is deeply disturbed and violent and manipulative and incredibly dysfunctional, and femininity is not defined by being a good mother, but by not talking to your child as a teenager for two years, off and on, right?
01:19:13 So, what is your definition? I mean, if I had defined my mother as femininity, I don't know what to think of my wife, because she's nothing like that, right?
01:19:25 Yeah. So, you think that this definition by itself is important, that it could be the source of this kind of confusion, the way that I define this word?
01:19:45 Well, it's more than just a definition. It's a question of laziness. Sorry to be harsh. It's a question of laziness. So, if you just let your mother's personality stamp in your heart, "Well, this is what femininity is, this is what being feminine is," then you're just inheriting your values from circumstances. You're not defining them yourself. Does that make sense?
01:20:10 Yeah, that makes sense. So, it's connected to the attraction, it's connected to virtue, right?
01:20:19 Well, okay, let's explore. If femininity has value, that value has to do with virtue, because virtue is fundamentally the only value that matters. So, if there's a positive aspect to femininity, then it has to have something to do with virtue.
01:20:43 So, let's talk about the virtues of your mother. What virtues did your mother manifest?
01:21:04 I think she was kind of smart, and you could talk to her.
01:21:13 Intelligence is not a virtue. Hang on. Intelligence is not a virtue, right? Because it's not earned, and also, there are plenty of intelligent people who are stone evil.
01:21:24 And currently, I think that as a mother, she failed utterly. She was a terrible mother. So, I'm a little bit stumped.
01:21:35 Well, she's not honest, she's not direct, she's not courageous, she didn't protect her children. In fact, she put them in harm's way and kept them in harm's way. She only divorced your father when she wanted to, not for the sake of the children who your father was literally beating. I mean, two of you, two out of three, right?
01:21:52 I honestly, based upon what you've said, and I'm happy to be contradicted here, I can't think of a single virtue that your mother has manifested.
01:22:02 I guess me too, I can't think of anything. But I'm more confused with the connection of this. For example, for me, and I want to understand this, attraction is involuntary, right? So, I'm trying to understand how my...
01:22:23 No, sorry, love is different from attraction.
01:22:29 Right, and I think when I was talking about my ex-wife, I was more... I meant attraction, not really love.
01:22:39 Right, I don't think I've done much on attraction. I've talked about love as our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous, but I don't think I've done much direct work on the definition of attraction, because attraction is... love is a very specific word, right? To humans and to deep emotional affection. But attraction is quite different, right?
01:23:03 Attraction is not necessarily a positive attribute. I mean, there are some people who are attracted to raping children, there are serial killers who are attracted to murder, right? Attraction just means drawn to. It doesn't have anything to do with virtue in particular. I mean, it might, but it's not defined within the term. It just means drawn towards, or have a predilection for, or a preference for.
01:23:26 Yeah, right. Turn off the notifications.
01:23:34 So, let's go back to your mother for just a sec. What immoral things did your mother do or support?
01:23:45 Immoral or moral?
01:23:48 Immoral. I think we already disposed of the moral question. What immoral things did your mother do or support?
01:23:59 You mean, okay, if we talk more in a family sense, like things that she did, she actually did several times kind of sell us out to our father for punishment. So, I would think it would be really, really immoral thing to do.
01:24:19 Right. Are you a religious man?
01:24:24 No.
01:24:26 Okay. Did your mother make a vow to love her husband?
01:24:34 I don't know. I don't know how the ritual in the Muslim thing goes.
01:24:38 I'm sure that it has something to do with love and affection, no matter what the local language is, what the religion is, what the rituals are. The vow has to do with love and affection. I mean, there's no marriage vow there that says, "I promise to hold my husband in contempt for the next 50 years."
01:24:59 "I promise to give him no affection. I promise to never hold his hand. I promise to never hug and kiss him. I promise never to speak to him directly." Like, there's no vow that has that, right?
01:25:11 So, your mother made a vow before God and community to love your father. And he made a vow before God and community and his own conscience to love your mother. Did they keep their vows?
01:25:32 No, they didn't.
01:25:33 They broke their vows and then they ended up breaking belts on their children, right?
01:25:39 Yeah.
01:25:41 So, your mother has done great evil. I mean, that which causes children to be beaten is about as great an evil as can be imagined, because it is through that that so much other evil comes, right?
01:25:57 Right.
01:25:59 Your father did great evil in failing to resolve the issues within his marriage, in beating his sons with a belt, in failing to intervene in his wife's cruelty towards you guys.
01:26:19 So, I mean, they're two evildoers. I'm not going to say they're existentially defined as evil, like I don't even know what that really would mean, but these are two people who did great evil, unless I have misunderstood something. And I'm happy to be corrected on this, but that's my understanding.
01:26:35 No, I completely agree with this.
01:26:43 To get back to your original question, my friend, the mystery of women is things that you value, but you don't know how they come about.
01:26:59 I'll give you sort of a tiny example. In the relationships in my life that have come and gone, sometimes I think with nostalgia back on friendships I had or people that I knew years ago.
01:27:13 And I will say to my wife, "Why did that relationship fall out? Why did I end up not seeing this person again?" I genuinely can't remember. Maybe I live a little bit too much in the now, but you know, I genuinely can't.
01:27:29 Now, what does my wife say? If you're married, you'll know this one, if you're married to a good woman. What does my wife say? "Oh, this happened, then this happened, then this happened on this date, and this date, and this date."
01:27:41 And I'm like, "Yeah, that's right, I remember now."
01:27:47 Now, my wife is fantastic at remembering dates and places and people and events, decisions. I'm not.
01:27:58 My wife knows where everything is in the home.
01:28:02 The other day, I'm like, "I think, didn't I at some point have a nose hair trimmer?"
01:28:10 And my wife said, "Yes, it's right here in this drawer under this." Boom! Right?
01:28:15 I didn't even know we had that drawer. Or if I did know, I'd forgotten. She knows exactly where these things are.
01:28:24 Now, I don't know how she does that. I can't imagine being in a brain that remembers that kind of stuff.
01:28:30 But it's very valuable to me. I admire it. I can't reproduce it, but I admire it. Right?
01:28:39 My wife's patience with a baby was a beautiful thing to see.
01:28:46 She never complained, got up three or four times a night, never complained, never had any problems with it.
01:28:53 Loved the whole process.
01:28:55 Maybe I'm a bit grumpy, kind of incomprehensible to me.
01:28:59 So, these are things that I value and I treasure that I do not understand. Does that make sense?
01:29:05 Yeah, that makes sense.
01:29:07 So, things that are mysterious in women are things that you value and you treasure,
01:29:20 and you can't reproduce really and don't understand.
01:29:23 And the fact that we don't understand them doesn't mean that they're not of value.
01:29:26 I don't really technically understand how antibiotics work.
01:29:29 That doesn't mean that I'm not going to take them or find great value when they cure my infection. Right?
01:29:33 I don't even understand all of the technical mechanics of how you and I are able to have this conversation.
01:29:38 Doesn't mean I'm not going to find value in the conversation. Right?
01:29:41 So, these are things that women do that have value for us that we really don't understand.
01:29:53 My wife loves making her home beautiful.
01:29:56 Now, you're a bachelor, right?
01:29:59 Is your home beautiful?
01:30:02 I can easily identify with what you're saying. I don't see the point.
01:30:10 Right, you don't see the point. Now, you don't see the point, but I guarantee you,
01:30:14 if you live with a woman, you marry a woman who makes your home beautiful,
01:30:18 you come home and you're like, "This is really nice."
01:30:22 Yeah.
01:30:24 "This is really nice, man. I like this."
01:30:28 My wife's a bed maker. I'm not. Do I like seeing the bed made? I certainly do.
01:30:34 Would I make the bed? Almost certainly not.
01:30:36 Except when I was like washing the sheets or something, right?
01:30:39 So, it's things that are of value that I wouldn't do, that I don't really understand,
01:30:47 but I appreciate that they're done. Does that make sense?
01:30:49 Yeah, that makes sense.
01:30:51 I could talk about the virtues, but these are just some examples that are more concrete.
01:30:57 So, those are mysterious good things.
01:31:03 Now, the red flags are signals of immorality,
01:31:10 of instability, of a lack of trustworthiness, of impulsivity,
01:31:17 of a lack of capacity to defer gratification,
01:31:27 or a signal that you don't want to rise in the world.
01:31:35 So, like a woman who gets, I don't know, a giant tattoo on her chest or something, right?
01:31:40 Well, that's going to preclude her from certain social circles.
01:31:43 So, she's signaling that she wants to sort of live down there in Trash Planet
01:31:47 and not ascend to anything more refined or more noble or more cultured or more sophisticated or whatever, right?
01:31:53 Women who dye their hair many different colors and dress weird,
01:32:02 they're signaling that they don't want to have a normal, happy, healthy guy.
01:32:06 That they want to attract dysfunctional weirdos,
01:32:11 and then claim that men are dysfunctional weirdos, right?
01:32:14 Somebody who's got on their social media platform,
01:32:22 in their biography or their About section,
01:32:25 they have all of the icons of the latest NPC thing, right?
01:32:31 Whatever it is, right?
01:32:33 So, they're saying, "I like to virtue signal,"
01:32:39 which means, "I don't want to be good, I just want to be thought of as good,"
01:32:42 which means, "I'll attack anyone who actually demands that I be good rather than look good."
01:32:46 A woman who pushes forth her sexuality in a highly in-your-face manner, right?
01:32:56 She's posting mostly nude selfies on social media and so on.
01:33:01 What? She's demanding that you look at her body rather than evaluate her character.
01:33:07 A woman who has a good relationship or a woman who claims to have a good relationship
01:33:19 with a clearly abusive parent or parents,
01:33:22 is saying that she has no sense of self-protection,
01:33:26 she is Stockholm Syndrome bonded with abusers,
01:33:31 and she will choose to obey abusers rather than do the right thing,
01:33:36 which means that your children are going to be exposed to abuse.
01:33:40 So, that's a red flag.
01:33:44 A woman who doesn't take care of her own appearance, as is true for men as well,
01:33:52 but a woman who doesn't take care of her own appearance,
01:33:54 is signaling that she feels worthless and probably depressed.
01:33:59 A woman who takes too much care of her own appearance, right?
01:34:03 Like she's got, I don't know, boob jobs and lip fillers and bazillion butt lifts,
01:34:10 you know, she looks like a plastic space alien cupid doll,
01:34:13 is also signaling that she is dysfunctional because she doesn't want to be evaluated for herself,
01:34:19 she only wants to be evaluated for her looks.
01:34:22 But a woman with neutral to positive grooming is a plus.
01:34:27 She has enough self-respect to look good, but not a crippling insecurity
01:34:34 to the point where she needs to look so good that a man is going to be programmed
01:34:38 to be attracted to her regardless of her personal qualities, if that makes sense.
01:34:43 A woman who is highly emotionally invested in ideology,
01:34:55 and this could be on the left or the right or whatever,
01:34:57 it's generally on the left at the moment, I'm sure the pendulum will swing at some point,
01:35:00 but a woman who is really passionate about ideology,
01:35:05 and then if you ask her questions about her ideology,
01:35:09 like say she's really in "Oh, the wage gap is terrible", right?
01:35:11 And then you say, you know, it takes about 30 seconds to dismantle the wage gap, right?
01:35:16 Men study things that are more lucrative, men work harder, they work longer hours,
01:35:22 they tend to take fewer breaks from work, and that explains the wage gap, right?
01:35:26 How long does that take? Or if you say, women with the same amount of experience
01:35:30 and education actually earn slightly more than men, there's no such thing as the wage gap,
01:35:33 there's a result of choices gap.
01:35:35 Does she get angry at you? Well, then she's saying that she would rather be right
01:35:42 than honest, she would rather be right than accurate,
01:35:45 she would rather be correct in that sense by holding on to her beliefs
01:35:50 rather than submit to reason and evidence.
01:35:52 Now, if she can't submit to reason and evidence, she's going to bully you.
01:35:55 I mean, people invested in ideology are clearly saying, "Get involved with me,
01:36:01 I will bully the living shit out of you."
01:36:03 Because I want to be right, I don't want to be honest.
01:36:07 I want to be right, I don't want to have facts.
01:36:09 Ideology destroys empathy, and the first empathy we need to have is for ourselves
01:36:16 in the future, if we reject the truth, we'll be unhappy, right?
01:36:19 And we accept the truth even if it's painful, so we'll be happy in the future,
01:36:22 and so we don't lie to ourselves, to others.
01:36:26 So ideologues, it doesn't mean everybody who believes in the wage gap,
01:36:31 it's everyone who believes in the wage gap who doesn't even stutter
01:36:34 when it's disproven, they don't care, right?
01:36:37 So they're just, "I'm going to bully you.
01:36:40 I don't care about the truth, I only care about being dominant, being superior."
01:36:46 You know, someone who says, "Sexism is bad, men are sexist."
01:36:52 It's like, you know, making a general negative statement about men is sexist.
01:36:55 Well, it just is that way.
01:36:56 Like, if she doesn't sit there and say, "Gosh, you know, I've never thought of that before.
01:36:59 I guess it is sexist to say that men are sexist.
01:37:02 I have to think about this some more, or tell me more, or, you know,
01:37:06 what other wisdom do you have?"
01:37:08 Because I have been running away from wisdom.
01:37:12 Wisdom has been chasing me my whole life, as the saying goes.
01:37:15 I have just always been slightly faster.
01:37:17 Right?
01:37:18 So these are red flags that are not to do with femininity,
01:37:22 because men can do most, if not all, of these things,
01:37:24 but have to do with a lack of integrity and a focus on dominance
01:37:28 as opposed to honesty and intimacy.
01:37:31 Is it feminine to lie?
01:37:38 Nope.
01:37:41 But in a situation of threat, women are more likely to lie than men are
01:37:45 because men can fight, physically, or run away and get away.
01:37:48 Right?
01:37:49 A woman can't outrun a man, and a woman can't physically fight a man,
01:37:52 for the most part.
01:37:53 Right?
01:37:54 So if a woman is in a state of confrontation, she will likely lie and manipulate,
01:37:58 whereas a man might fight or run.
01:37:59 Does that make sense?
01:38:01 Yeah.
01:38:03 So saying that women lie doesn't mean anything.
01:38:08 It's not accurate.
01:38:09 But if we say, "Yes, smaller, shorter, and physically weaker people
01:38:15 generally will try and talk their way out of trouble rather than fight and run
01:38:19 because fighting and running won't work for them, usually."
01:38:22 Right?
01:38:23 So saying that it's, you know, women lie, women manipulate,
01:38:26 it's like, no, women have ways of dealing with threats that are different from men.
01:38:31 But the important thing there is the threat.
01:38:33 If a woman feels threatened, she's more likely to lie than a man.
01:38:36 A man is more likely to fight or run than a woman.
01:38:42 But the threat is what matters, right?
01:38:46 If you remove women from a state of threat, then they're generally honest.
01:38:50 I mean, certainly if they're committed to virtue, then they'll be honest.
01:38:56 But if a woman--and, you know, how often does a man have to fend off a woman
01:39:02 persistently asking him out, right?
01:39:04 Well, not very often.
01:39:08 I mean, I guess you had the woman who chased you and caught you for 10 years,
01:39:10 but in general, women get asked out a lot more than men.
01:39:16 And if a big guy asks a woman out and she's kind of frightened of him
01:39:20 and not attracted to him, what's she going to say?
01:39:28 No.
01:39:30 She will not.
01:39:31 She will generally not say no because he's a big, scary guy,
01:39:35 or she's concerned he might get volatile or he might get aggressive.
01:39:39 Because if she says no, right, the guy says, "Let's go out on Friday,"
01:39:43 she says no, he's going to say, "Why not?"
01:39:45 And she's going to say, "Because you're big and unpleasant and scary
01:39:47 and you smell a little bit," right?
01:39:50 And then what's going to happen?
01:39:52 He could get really mad, right?
01:39:56 So what she's going to do--and also she just may not want to hurt his feelings
01:39:59 or whatever, it might be a little oversensitive that way--but what she's going to do
01:40:03 is she's going to say, "Sorry, I have a boyfriend,"
01:40:08 even if she doesn't have a boyfriend, right?
01:40:11 Or she's going to say, "I'm busy Friday."
01:40:16 Or--
01:40:17 I see a lot of women decide to just write down the number.
01:40:22 Yeah, or, "Give me your number in a call," or she'll give him her number
01:40:25 but it'll be the wrong number.
01:40:28 "Hi, can I speak to Carrie? This is Pizza Pizza."
01:40:31 You know, "Oh, I guess she gave me the wrong number.
01:40:33 Maybe it was some one-number digit, different."
01:40:39 So, yeah.
01:40:41 I mean, so we say, "Oh, women, they don't tell the truth."
01:40:44 It's like, but women are in a state of threat that men don't experience.
01:40:51 I mean, unless you're Brad Pitt or, you know, the top one in a thousand guys,
01:40:56 you generally aren't going to have a whole bunch of women swarming you
01:40:59 and demanding you go out with them.
01:41:00 I mean, maybe that's changed now.
01:41:01 I think the women are more forward in this way in this generation, but--
01:41:07 Men look at women that not only are women smaller and weaker physically
01:41:14 than men on average, but women are in possession of sexual access,
01:41:18 which men are desperate for, right?
01:41:23 So, it's like having-- it's like being, as a guy, I mean, it's like being 90 pounds,
01:41:28 5'3", and walking through a bad neighborhood with a big, clear plastic bag
01:41:34 full of cash.
01:41:38 I don't know if you've ever seen these videos where some guy goes to a bad neighborhood
01:41:41 with a clear plastic bag full of cash on his back.
01:41:43 It lasts about five seconds before people rip the bag off his back.
01:41:48 So, women go through life with a great treasure and a general inability
01:41:53 to physically run away or defend themselves physically, right?
01:41:56 So, they have to develop methods of deception in order to survive
01:42:02 or to reduce threat or whatever it is, right?
01:42:05 And then men, we don't look at this and say, "Okay, if I were in their
01:42:09 high-heeled shoes, if I were in their Manalo Blahniks or whatever,
01:42:13 Jimmy Choo's, if I were in their shoes, what would my life be like?"
01:42:16 But what we do is we say, "I can't believe how much women--
01:42:21 like, they don't tell the truth.
01:42:22 I heard this woman say to this big, scary guy, she said,
01:42:25 'I have a boyfriend.'
01:42:26 I know for a fact she doesn't have a boyfriend.
01:42:28 Women just lie all the time."
01:42:29 Does that make sense?
01:42:30 We then judge without recognizing the difference.
01:42:37 As if a man is speeding and the cop pulls him over and the man knows
01:42:41 he's been speeding, what does the cop say?
01:42:43 "No, I was passing.
01:42:44 No, I wasn't speeding.
01:42:46 No, I didn't--" They never just say, "Yeah, you got me," right?
01:42:50 So, men lie when they're in a situation of threat from the police officer
01:42:54 and women lie when they're in a situation of threat from a man.
01:42:57 And yet, men, when we do the same thing, right, we do the same thing
01:43:03 when we're in a position of threat.
01:43:06 Or let's say we're exchanging some glances with some woman in a bar
01:43:11 and her 6'3" boyfriend, who's a wrestler and a bouncer,
01:43:15 comes over and says, "Hey, have you been looking at my girl?"
01:43:18 What do men say?
01:43:19 "No."
01:43:21 We don't sit there and say, "Yeah, she's totally hot, man.
01:43:24 She was totally flirting with me.
01:43:27 I guess she likes me more than you."
01:43:28 A man's not going to say that, is he?
01:43:35 So, when men are in a situation of threat, men generally lie too.
01:43:43 A man's looking at a woman's butt.
01:43:45 A woman comes over and says very loudly, "Were you just looking at my butt?"
01:43:48 What's the man going to say? "No."
01:43:55 What's he going to say? "Yes, I was, but now that I've seen your actual personality,
01:43:58 the value of butt has diminished."
01:44:01 Does that make sense?
01:44:05 So, I don't want to do monster lecture here, but in general,
01:44:10 there's a mysterious difference that is positive
01:44:13 and then there's a moral difference that is negative.
01:44:15 The red flags are the moral difference that is negative.
01:44:21 If you get upset with a woman and she treats you like you're about to beat her,
01:44:24 then she has trauma that's unprocessed.
01:44:27 That means you can't have a reasonable disagreement, right?
01:44:35 But the number of abusers in the world for women as adults
01:44:39 is far greater than it is for men as adults.
01:44:45 So, she's got to be jumpy, trying to create a situation of safety for a woman
01:44:50 so that she can relax and enjoy her life rather than being jumpy all the time
01:44:54 because there's threats around, as there are.
01:44:57 One of the reasons why men want to protect their families
01:45:00 is so the women can relax and be themselves.
01:45:05 So, women want a lot of male attention.
01:45:07 It's a program to enjoy male attention, but at the same time,
01:45:10 getting a lot of male attention raises their risks in life,
01:45:13 which is why the hot crazy matrix is kind of true from that standpoint as well.
01:45:17 The women who want a lot of male attention will also, by definition,
01:45:20 get a lot of unwanted male attention.
01:45:22 So, it's going to be kind of stressful.
01:45:25 You can flash your skin on the internet and you might get a stalker, right?
01:45:29 And it's a shame if you do and it's not right to stalk,
01:45:31 because there's a natural risk of that kind of behavior.
01:45:36 So, I mean, women's brains and men's brains have evolved slightly differently,
01:45:40 but they are complementary.
01:45:42 They would have to be, otherwise we wouldn't have survived,
01:45:44 let alone become the dominant species on the planet.
01:45:47 Men and women are complementary.
01:45:49 We have offloaded to women stuff that they're good at
01:45:53 or they've become good at the stuff so we can specialize on other stuff.
01:45:56 Typically, women are better at navigating familiar spaces,
01:46:00 like a house or the local neighborhood streets,
01:46:02 and men are better at navigating remote places, right?
01:46:06 So, my wife never gets lost in the town and I never get lost in the woods.
01:46:14 And that's, we've just, I mean, if we had to be good at both things,
01:46:16 we wouldn't be as good at either, right?
01:46:18 It's, you know, specialization is important, right?
01:46:22 So, recognizing what is of value that men have outsourced to women
01:46:27 and what is of value that women have outsourced to men
01:46:29 is the foundational basis of having a productive heterosexual relationship
01:46:34 and enjoying the fact that my wife is better than me at a lot of things
01:46:38 and I'm better at my wife at a lot of things.
01:46:40 It's not a matter of superior or inferior at all.
01:46:45 It's a matter of complementary.
01:46:47 You know, I'm better at philosophy than I am at dentistry.
01:46:51 My dentist is better at dentistry than she is at philosophy.
01:46:55 So, using the medium of money, I trade my philosophy for her dentistry, right?
01:47:00 I give her philosophy and she gives me dentistry.
01:47:03 Now, if I had to be as good at dentistry as I am at philosophy,
01:47:06 I'd be worse at both because I get to specialize.
01:47:09 Sorry, this is all like econ 101, but it's really important for males and females
01:47:13 that this is what we've done.
01:47:14 We've specialized in things and we've outsourced to the other person
01:47:18 so that we can get better at what we do.
01:47:21 Men are better at hunting because we've sacrificed remembering things
01:47:26 in the immediate environment.
01:47:28 I don't know where things are in the house, but I never get lost in the woods.
01:47:33 So, my wife is much better, or women are much better,
01:47:36 at knowing what's around locally and they will get lost in the woods
01:47:40 because you can't be good at everything. You have to specialize, right?
01:47:44 So, finding the complementary skills which men and women both have
01:47:47 and we have absolutely designed to work together.
01:47:50 It's kind of like saying, "What's better at making babies?
01:47:54 The penis or the vagina?"
01:47:57 Well, what's better at making babies? The sperm or the eggs?
01:48:01 It's like, that is an incomprehensible question.
01:48:05 Both are necessary, both complement each other, and both have evolved
01:48:08 to the fact that we are the most brilliant and dominant species
01:48:13 in the universe that we know of, right?
01:48:17 The red flags are all indications of subjectivity, dysfunction, and mistrust.
01:48:31 And subjectivity in that if the woman says, "I hate men because of the wage gap,"
01:48:39 and you spend 30 seconds disproving the wage gap,
01:48:41 and she still maintains the wage gap, then she's a subjectivist.
01:48:44 She says, "My feelings, my preferences, my prejudices, my bigotry
01:48:49 is all that matters, and the truth doesn't."
01:48:51 So, that's subjectivism, right?
01:48:53 "My emotions, my preferences, my beliefs matter."
01:48:56 Yeah, I get that, but isn't it...
01:49:00 Actually, I think that's the closest to what I wanted from this question.
01:49:04 I feel like women are so much more subjective and irrational.
01:49:10 Well, see, now that's interesting. Hang on.
01:49:12 Because you say subjective is irrational.
01:49:15 I don't believe that.
01:49:18 Right? So, for instance,
01:49:22 do women tend to prefer their own children or other people's children?
01:49:29 Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
01:49:31 Their own children, of course.
01:49:33 Now, objectively we say all children have value,
01:49:36 but you and I both know that if our children are in trouble
01:49:39 and there's a bunch of other children around,
01:49:40 we're rescuing our own children first.
01:49:42 And if the danger isn't too great, we'll go back and help the other kids.
01:49:46 Right?
01:49:50 So, is it a subjective preference to like our own children?
01:49:55 Yes, of course it is.
01:49:56 I mean, we understand there's evolutionary reasons for it,
01:49:59 but of course we prefer our own children.
01:50:02 But it can't be objective or universal.
01:50:06 But saying things like "my truth" and this kind of stuff...
01:50:09 No, no, no, I get all of that,
01:50:11 but that's women taking their subjective preferences
01:50:14 for their own children, for their own families, for their own husbands.
01:50:17 That's women taking their subjective preferences
01:50:19 and moving them into the realm of philosophy.
01:50:22 But then we men, we look at women's subjective preferences
01:50:26 and we say, "Well, in the realm of philosophy,
01:50:28 that just means women are feelings and subjective and irrational in general."
01:50:32 And we refuse to say that those subjective and "irrational feelings"
01:50:36 have any benefit. Of course they do.
01:50:41 Of course they do.
01:50:43 We couldn't survive if women weren't non-objectively bonded to their own children.
01:50:51 And then we say, "Oh, but women, they're emotional and subjective."
01:50:54 And it's like, you know, that's why we're here, right?
01:50:59 We're not giving women... we're not curious about women and saying,
01:51:03 "Okay, let's say women are subjective and irrational.
01:51:05 Let's just say that as a statement, right?
01:51:07 Even if we accept that that's true, right?
01:51:09 We just take that for the sake of argument."
01:51:11 Rather than saying, "How does that serve the species?
01:51:14 How does that serve their children? How does that serve humanity?"
01:51:17 Because if it doesn't serve humanity, it sure as heck would never have evolved, right?
01:51:23 Yeah, I actually had that thought.
01:51:26 When I wrote you, I told you that I'm blaming the game because I can't win in it.
01:51:31 Right, right. No, I get that. But so, this is the principle.
01:51:34 The principle is women exhibit, let's say, irrational and emotional behavior.
01:51:44 So rather than saying, "How does that serve the species?"
01:51:48 We say, "That's a negative.
01:51:50 Women are just irrational and subjective and feelings-based and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
01:51:56 Women can't be objective.
01:51:59 Well, a woman has to pair bond with a man.
01:52:03 That man is not the best of all possible men, right?
01:52:07 And yet she devotes her entire life to him and his kids.
01:52:10 Her children are not the very best of all possible children.
01:52:14 Yet she devotes her life and her energies to those children.
01:52:17 She has a subjective, emotional, irrational preference for her husband and her children,
01:52:23 which is what keeps them alive and has the species continue.
01:52:27 Does that make sense?
01:52:28 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
01:52:30 From our evolution, right? We can, like, pre-Marls and all of that, right?
01:52:34 I mean, we've had these ducklings, right?
01:52:36 My daughter loves these ducks. We have these ducklings.
01:52:38 These ducklings follow us around.
01:52:40 They follow us around because that's their best chance of survival.
01:52:43 We're the big things they saw when they were born, so they follow us around.
01:52:48 Say, "Oh, they have an irrational preference for me as opposed to the tree or some other person," right?
01:52:54 It's like, it's not irrational, it's survival.
01:52:59 If women didn't have this subjective, emotional passion,
01:53:04 we wouldn't be here.
01:53:06 We wouldn't survive.
01:53:09 Women have to love their own children and their own husbands
01:53:13 and devote their lives to their husband's success and their children's survival,
01:53:17 even though, objectively, they're not the most moral husband or the best children in the known universe.
01:53:22 Does that make sense?
01:53:24 Yeah, that makes sense.
01:53:26 How dare women have these irrational preferences and these emotional-based thinking?
01:53:29 It's like, "So that they can love you!"
01:53:31 Or me, or their children, or have that attachment.
01:53:34 Does that make sense?
01:53:38 Yeah.
01:53:40 Because women are there to provide resources to helpless children and support wayward husbands.
01:53:47 Men are there to deal with reality, women are there to deal with people.
01:53:51 And so the fact that men have developed objectivity and the suppression of emotion
01:53:56 is because we have to deal with rational reality that we need reason to deal with
01:54:01 and it does not respond to emotion.
01:54:03 Women have become less objective and more emotional because they deal with people.
01:54:09 And therefore, to deal with people, being objective, is not particularly helpful a lot of times.
01:54:14 We all know this from being objective.
01:54:15 As men in the world, you get attacked for being objective or rational, right?
01:54:19 And being emotional-based is important because they're dealing with emotions.
01:54:26 Like, you and I deal with practical, tangible, material reality
01:54:30 and women deal with crying toddlers and manipulative grandparents and resentful aunts
01:54:37 and slightly over-attached second cousins.
01:54:40 Like, they're just dealing with emotions all the time.
01:54:42 So the fact that they've become emotional and expert at emotions
01:54:45 and deal more with subjectivity than objectivity is because that's the world they navigate.
01:54:49 And that's the world we should thank them for navigating because that's why we're here.
01:54:54 If women weren't that good at doing this, none of us would have survived
01:54:57 and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
01:54:59 So rather than saying, "Hey man, the fact that you're more subjective and more emotion-based
01:55:04 is a huge benefit to me. I really, really appreciate that."
01:55:07 And listen, it's true.
01:55:10 Women are better at maintaining relationships than men are.
01:55:13 I mean, I guess even your mother did that, right?
01:55:16 But in terms of maintaining, "Oh, I got to call so-and-so.
01:55:20 I want to see how so-and-so is doing.
01:55:22 So-and-so is having a birthday. So-and-so's mother is ill.
01:55:24 I got to give a call."
01:55:25 Like, women are just better at doing that stuff than men, right?
01:55:28 Would you agree?
01:55:30 Yeah, I would agree.
01:55:32 Yeah, so community is the work of women.
01:55:35 And we are communal creatures. We're isolated. We die.
01:55:41 Like, not having a woman in your life is like smoking
01:55:43 because smoking is as bad as loneliness.
01:55:45 Loneliness is as bad as smoking.
01:55:47 And without women in your life, you're almost certain to end up isolated as a man
01:55:50 because we care more about things than people, so relationships fall away.
01:55:58 We live in a smaller, alone, and then we say, "But women are so irrational."
01:56:03 And it's like, no, that's... Sorry, go ahead.
01:56:07 Yeah, that makes total sense.
01:56:09 And then, like, there's a little bit more kind of...
01:56:14 And then, if that's the territory that women excel at,
01:56:19 and for us, it's kind of this magical world that we don't really understand,
01:56:24 but we give them the expertise to deal with that.
01:56:27 But we still have to choose the ones that do this work,
01:56:33 do this communal stuff well.
01:56:39 Still, you have to, in that territory that you can't understand,
01:56:42 somehow understand it, and then decide that it wasn't the red flag.
01:56:46 No, but listen, no, no, because you don't have to understand it,
01:56:49 you just have to value the effects.
01:56:51 Like I said, I don't understand how antibiotics work,
01:56:53 but I appreciate the effects.
01:56:55 But you have to say, "It's nice living in a beautiful house."
01:56:59 "It's nice when my plates match."
01:57:02 "It's nice that there's a tablecloth."
01:57:04 "It's nice that there's coasters rather than me leaving endless rings on the wooden stuff around me."
01:57:08 "It's nice that we have a social life."
01:57:10 "It's nice that we have a dinner party."
01:57:12 "It's nice that we have a gathering." It's a plus.
01:57:16 It's good.
01:57:18 But you have to love and appreciate women for what they bring to the table.
01:57:23 Because the funny thing is that men want women to value reason and objectivity,
01:57:28 and generally what a lot of men do is complain that women are just subjective and irrational,
01:57:32 having no respect for women's skills and behaviors,
01:57:35 and then they expect the women to have respect for the men's skills and behaviors.
01:57:38 If you're not willing to give respect, you can't expect it back.
01:57:44 If we're not willing to respect and treasure what women bring to the table,
01:57:48 if we're not willing to respect and treasure women's "subjectivity and irrationality,"
01:57:52 then how can we expect them to love and respect our objectivity and reason?
01:58:02 That would be like hating someone and expecting them to love you.
01:58:05 Now that's irrational.
01:58:07 It's so rational. It's like, "No, you're not!"
01:58:11 I don't know if that's half-autistic or what.
01:58:14 I'm going to scorn women, but then I want women to respect my reason and evidence and rationality and objectivity.
01:58:21 You can't scorn people and then ask them to value your characteristics,
01:58:27 because the most important characteristic to women is that men are scorning them.
01:58:31 They don't care what's on the other side.
01:58:32 "Oh, but on the other side of all of that scorn is all this great reason and objectivity,"
01:58:36 because the man is also, by scorning women, he's not displaying any reason or objectivity whatsoever.
01:58:41 He's displaying a hurt and wounded soul.
01:58:43 He's displaying recoiling from an aggressive woman.
01:58:46 He's displaying hurt from rejection.
01:58:48 It's not rational.
01:58:50 It's not rational to say to women, "How you've developed over the last four billion years is negative.
01:58:58 Thank you for delivering unto us the greatest species the world has ever seen,
01:59:01 the ultimate alpha species, which you bore and raised, but you're deficient.
01:59:07 You're wrong. You're bad."
01:59:08 Like, this makes no sense.
01:59:10 It makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint that women would develop all these negative characteristics.
01:59:15 It makes no sense from a religious viewpoint that men would create a companion for men and women that would not fit together.
01:59:22 So, all of this reason and objectivity of men is the most evident, is the most absent when they are insulting women
01:59:33 for the characteristics that women developed in order for men and women to survive childhood and for our lives to flourish.
01:59:41 Look, men don't go to doctors.
01:59:46 We don't go for checkups unless we're married, in which case our wife makes the checkup
01:59:51 and says, "We're going."
01:59:54 Now, is it rational to get checkups? Yes, it is.
01:59:58 Yes, it is.
02:00:01 But we don't do it.
02:00:05 Is it rational to maintain your relationships? Yes, it is.
02:00:09 Do we do it? We don't, in general.
02:00:15 Is it rational to know where things are in the house? Yes, it is.
02:00:20 Do I do it? I do not.
02:00:22 I don't remember.
02:00:24 And then what a lot of men do is say, "Well, that's not important."
02:00:29 Oh, so what the men do, by definition, is important, but what the women do isn't important.
02:00:34 So, men pouring half their goddamn lives into sports and politics, that's totally important.
02:00:39 But women trying desperately to maintain the health and relationships of those around them is just unimportant.
02:00:46 Well, of course women are going to not respect men's "objectivity and rationality"
02:00:51 if women are being as subjective and irrational in their dislike and contempt for women
02:00:56 as the worst women they could possibly think of.
02:01:01 Because the men are saying, "Well, I'm judging femininity as a whole."
02:01:04 It's like, no, you're just judging your own crappy mom or your own crappy ex-wife, right?
02:01:10 You're not rational, you're not objective, and yet you claim these as virtues.
02:01:15 So, you're even more subjective and irrational than I am,
02:01:19 and then you complain that I'm subjective and irrational,
02:01:21 while claiming to have all this objectivity and rationality that you're not possessing by attacking me.
02:01:30 Women have evolved for the maximum survival of the species.
02:01:34 Everything that women have evolved to do is essential for our survival.
02:01:37 If it wasn't essential for our survival, women wouldn't be doing it.
02:01:41 So, men are basically saying, "That which is essential to our survival is bad."
02:01:47 "Oh, look how objective and rational I am!"
02:01:50 "It's retarded!"
02:01:51 I say, "Sorry, I don't mean to insult retarded people or those mentally handicapped,
02:01:55 because it's worse than that."
02:01:57 Because men are claiming rationality while displaying nothing but
02:02:01 wounded pride, vengeance, and pettiness, and insult.
02:02:06 I'm not putting you in this category, I'm just talking about in general.
02:02:11 So, the first step is to learn to appreciate that.
02:02:17 Well, if you want to be objective and rational,
02:02:20 accept that women's evolution is massively essential to our survival.
02:02:27 It is the same as our survival.
02:02:30 Women's characteristics are essential for our survival.
02:02:36 By definition, right?
02:02:38 I'm sorry?
02:02:40 By definition, right?
02:02:41 Well, by evolution, yeah.
02:02:43 I mean, if we were some sucky species that didn't do anything,
02:02:47 you know, if we were ringworms or something,
02:02:49 but the fact that we're able to have these incredible conversations about
02:02:52 reason, virtues, evidence, good and evil, is because women have evolved
02:02:57 for us to not just survive, but flourish and conquer the universe.
02:03:03 Women are why we went to the moon.
02:03:05 Women are why we've sent probes to Mars and Venus.
02:03:10 "Oh, well, men did that!"
02:03:11 It's like, yes.
02:03:13 And women birthed and raised those men.
02:03:18 And it's insane to take that away.
02:03:24 Women have difficult lives in many ways.
02:03:27 Men have difficult lives, too.
02:03:28 I get that.
02:03:30 But men look at their own supposed strengths and compare them to women's
02:03:35 weaknesses and say, "Ah-ha!
02:03:37 Men are superior!"
02:03:38 It's like, that's nonsense.
02:03:41 I mean, it's a really boring argument to take the strengths of one thing,
02:03:44 compare it to the weaknesses of something else,
02:03:46 and say that means it's superior.
02:03:49 "Well, the brown bear can't survive in the Arctic, but the polar bear can,
02:03:52 so the polar bear is superior."
02:03:54 It's like, "Well, that doesn't make any sense.
02:03:56 The polar bear's adapted to the Arctic and the brown bear has adapted to the forest."
02:04:02 I mean, why would you compare the two?
02:04:04 They've both done perfectly in their own environment,
02:04:06 and women and men have both done perfectly in their own environment.
02:04:10 And it's falling prey to the most primitive Marxist propaganda to set
02:04:14 women and men against each other.
02:04:17 That's just falling into the most obvious propaganda pit known to man
02:04:21 beast woman and God.
02:04:24 We're here to love each other.
02:04:28 We're here to love each other, and I'm sorry that your parents didn't
02:04:31 offer that to you, offer you that example.
02:04:39 And your father said, "Your mother's irrational and cold."
02:04:42 And your mother said, "Your father is harsh and violent and..."
02:04:46 Right?
02:04:48 Just two wounded people striking out at each other their whole stupid,
02:04:52 wasted lives.
02:04:56 "Hey, were you wounded?
02:04:58 Hey, I can spend the rest of your life wounding you, too,
02:05:00 only if you do the same thing to me, though.
02:05:02 That'd be excellent."
02:05:05 [silence]
02:05:18 You know, women say to men, "You can't go out dressed like that."
02:05:25 And men say, "Trap pants are comfortable."
02:05:31 But life is not about comfort.
02:05:36 Status matters.
02:05:39 And a woman is saying to a man, "If you go out dressed really badly,
02:05:45 it's much more likely that you'll get much less respect from others,
02:05:48 and that could actually mean that you'll be picked on or bullied,
02:05:52 or something unpleasant could happen.
02:05:56 Whereas if you go out dressed nicely and walk around confidently
02:05:58 with good posture,
02:06:02 or it could be that if you're out there dressed really badly,
02:06:06 nobody's going to strike up a conversation with you.
02:06:09 Now, maybe if you're out there dressed nicely,
02:06:11 walking tall and proud, you're going to strike up a conversation
02:06:14 with someone, and that might lead to a really great job opportunity.
02:06:18 "I'm comfortable!" It's like, it's not about comfort.
02:06:26 And so just this refusal to listen. "Tell me more.
02:06:30 Why do you think, tell me why I shouldn't go out like this."
02:06:34 Right? And just be curious, and accept that women have evolved to help men,
02:06:39 just as men have evolved to help women, and we both evolved to help children.
02:06:43 So listen to what women have to say. It's probably really important.
02:06:51 So, men denigrate women, not because of any objective judgment,
02:06:59 they denigrate women because they're hurt and feel rejected,
02:07:04 and they've given up being able to attract quality women.
02:07:08 So they start insulting women.
02:07:11 So men are lying even about putting down women,
02:07:15 because men aren't saying, "I feel despair that I'll ever get a good woman,
02:07:20 so like the sour grapes fox, I'm just going to denigrate what I don't think I can achieve."
02:07:25 Like the fox who's trying to eat the grapes, they're too high, and he says,
02:07:28 "Ah, they're probably sour anyway. Those grapes, they look terrible, they're dried up."
02:07:34 So, men develop entire philosophies that are frankly anti-women,
02:07:43 which is irrational and highly emotional, right?
02:07:47 Because they're not being honest about their feelings,
02:07:50 they're abstracting their feelings into an anti-woman philosophy.
02:07:56 So men, by developing negative beliefs towards women, negative definitions of femininity,
02:08:05 men are acting in a highly emotional and irrational manner.
02:08:13 And then what do they say about women?
02:08:16 "Oh, those women are so irrational and emotional!"
02:08:20 And this is what they call "confession through projection."
02:08:24 That what you criticize in someone else is a confession of what you truly feel.
02:08:32 It's a standard tactic of the left to accuse others of what you yourself are doing.
02:08:39 Accuse others of what you yourself are doing.
02:08:46 And so, when the men say that women are subjective and irrational and emotional,
02:08:52 the men are absolutely being subjective and irrational and emotional.
02:08:58 They're not being honest about their feelings,
02:09:01 they're using the stupid sophist trick of comparing strengths to weaknesses,
02:09:05 as opposed to going the other way.
02:09:09 "Well, men are more objective!"
02:09:11 Well, you're not being objective at the moment,
02:09:13 because you're not trying to understand the nature of women and how it compliments men,
02:09:16 and how we ended up so successful as a species.
02:09:19 "Women are too emotional!"
02:09:21 Well, you're actually angry at women, you're hurt that you've been rejected,
02:09:24 you can't find a good woman, you feel despair,
02:09:26 but you're not being honest about any of that,
02:09:28 you're lying through your yellowing teeth!
02:09:32 And then you claim women are so emotional,
02:09:35 when you are in fact a deeply hurt person,
02:09:39 who isn't being honest about the hurt,
02:09:42 but instead is attacking women and then claiming that women
02:09:46 are unstable and emotional and reactive!
02:09:53 Allowing wounds to rob you of love is not rational.
02:10:01 And allowing emotional wounds to rob you of pair bonding
02:10:05 and the affections of a great woman
02:10:08 is allowing your emotions, or your fear of your emotions,
02:10:13 to dominate your life.
02:10:17 Almost all bigotry is rooted in despair.
02:10:25 "I can't achieve that, I can't get that, I can't win that,
02:10:31 so I'm going to attack it, I'm going to denigrate it.
02:10:35 That which I cannot achieve, I will now deem as negative or unimportant."
02:10:48 And it's a basic psyop.
02:10:54 The men who believe that women are just irrational and emotional,
02:11:01 well, they're the most irrational and emotional of all.
02:11:07 "Women are too subject to peer pressure,
02:11:10 women are susceptible to groupthink!"
02:11:15 Say, of course not all men, but say some men,
02:11:18 "Women are susceptible to groupthink!"
02:11:21 Oh, so you all believe that women are susceptible to groupthink?
02:11:24 The whole community of you think that women are susceptible to groupthink?
02:11:27 Isn't that interesting?
02:11:29 You all believe the same thing? That women believe the same thing?
02:11:33 Self-criticism is so important because it keeps you humble
02:11:37 and it keeps you from making these catastrophic mistakes
02:11:41 that rob you of love your whole life long.
02:11:43 Sorry, long speech there, I hope that makes some kind of sense.
02:11:47 Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
02:11:50 It's kind of along the lines of what I was thinking myself.
02:11:56 But the problem is, what do you do with this information?
02:12:02 Because I kind of started with, at some point, I actually had this revelation
02:12:08 that, well, you're just kind of blaming God for creating women this way,
02:12:13 which is just stupid.
02:12:18 Exactly as you said.
02:12:21 But maybe there's a territory in which...
02:12:26 How do you actually think about that?
02:12:30 It just seems so confusing.
02:12:35 Sorry, I'm being very unclear right now.
02:12:38 No, so what you're doing is you're detaching yourself from your emotions
02:12:41 so you don't have to process what I'm saying.
02:12:44 Right.
02:12:46 You're putting up this big cloud of, well, what do I do with all of this information
02:12:49 and how do I act on it and what does it mean?
02:12:53 Listen, I'll be honest, I've had negative thoughts about women over the course of my life,
02:12:57 absolutely, for sure, for sure.
02:13:00 And a lot of it had to do with wounded ego, wounded pride,
02:13:02 and some criticisms as well, which is fair.
02:13:06 Have you had some of these criticisms or negative views towards women as a whole,
02:13:12 individual women, which of course can be criticized, but women or femininity as a whole?
02:13:19 I have.
02:13:21 There was this period of time when I started dating and I started seeing Tinder profiles
02:13:27 and then the Internet, all this red pill stuff,
02:13:32 which was kind of a little bit revealing that the way that men, like average men speak,
02:13:38 and the way that average women speak was a little bit shocking.
02:13:43 And that whole ordeal with the Will Smith situation, if you remember, the slap thing,
02:13:50 and every woman in my surroundings was like, "Oh, finally, some man showed up."
02:13:56 Defense or honor.
02:13:59 Yeah.
02:14:00 And it was kind of shocking because that was exactly the opposite of what I thought about women.
02:14:04 I always thought that they want peace, they want, you know, they're always like,
02:14:09 usually kind of against violence and aggression and this kind of stuff.
02:14:16 And I got into lots of little fights like that with my girlfriend.
02:14:21 Well, okay, but I mean, without defending any of that nonsense, you could make a case,
02:14:26 which is to say that if men go around insulting women, that's going to cause a lot of conflict,
02:14:32 because their kids, their husbands, their brothers are going to get upset and get angry.
02:14:36 So if a woman is publicly insulted by a man, then other men need to aggress against him
02:14:41 to prevent further escalation and problems, so that men don't go around, quote,
02:14:46 "trash-talking" other women in public and causing even more problems.
02:14:50 Again, I'm not saying this is some big elevated moral case,
02:14:53 but from a consequentialist standpoint, you could understand that approach.
02:15:00 But in this case, it was like a weird situation, because it was actually a roast,
02:15:06 which is exactly what roasters do.
02:15:09 No, it wasn't a roast, it was the Oscars.
02:15:12 A roast is a very specific thing.
02:15:15 I've been at a roast where people have roasted me, and it's fun, it's fine.
02:15:19 But a roast is a very specific thing, where the whole point is to insult one person.
02:15:24 But this was the Oscars.
02:15:26 This was not a roast of Jada Pinkett Smith.
02:15:30 Don't they do a roast session before Oscars?
02:15:34 What do I know about what they do before the Oscars? I've never been.
02:15:38 But I'm just saying it's not a roast.
02:15:40 That's what I thought, and I think people have said that as well.
02:15:43 They have a comedian in all of those events where this comedian comes,
02:15:47 and the first thing that he does is he mentions all the guests and roasts them.
02:15:52 Yeah, wasn't this during the Oscars, though?
02:15:56 Yeah, yeah, I mean, I thought that's how it goes. Maybe I'm wrong.
02:16:00 No, the Oscars is not a roast.
02:16:02 I mean, sometimes they'll make--I know, the Golden Globes,
02:16:05 I mean, Ricky Gervais has made a lot of jokes at the expense of the audience and so on.
02:16:09 So there can be that aspect of making fun of people, but it's not a roast.
02:16:13 The roast is a very separate thing from the Oscars.
02:16:15 Just to be technical about that, it's not the case.
02:16:19 And, of course, the fact that a woman will view a man as willing to use aggression to defend her honor,
02:16:27 she will view him quite positively, because that means that men won't insult her honor,
02:16:31 and she's safer. Again, it's a violation of the non-aggression principle,
02:16:34 but at least to be curious about--all our evolution had to do with brutality.
02:16:41 So if women like men who defend their honor, as a rational, empirical man,
02:16:50 we should say, "Oh, that's interesting. I wonder why. I wonder why that evolved."
02:16:58 Rather than, "Women just love goading men to beat each other up."
02:17:02 Like, whatever it is, right? It's just some dismissive--right?
02:17:06 I mean, that's the level of intelligence that Marxists have when they say,
02:17:10 "All capitalists exploit workers," or whatever, right?
02:17:12 It's not an analysis. It's not curiosity. It's just a summary judgment with no due process.
02:17:20 So the question is, "Well, why would?"
02:17:23 Why would Will Smith want to hit Chris Rock for trash-talking--
02:17:28 or for making--it was a pretty mild joke--about Jada Pinkett Smith, right? Why?
02:17:34 Well, I mean, to some degree, wasn't he making fun of her hair loss,
02:17:38 which I assume has been a pretty traumatic thing for her, and something that's very difficult--
02:17:42 I mean, it's difficult for men. It's probably a thousand times more difficult for women.
02:17:47 There's alopecia or whatever. She's got the hair loss, right?
02:17:50 So maybe it was a little insensitive to make fun of somebody's illness.
02:17:56 And was it right to use force? No. But that's how we evolved.
02:18:04 We evolved in an environment where force was the default for resolving conflicts.
02:18:11 Like, almost all human conflicts throughout the course of human evolution
02:18:16 were resolved through either force or threats of force.
02:18:22 So that's how we evolved. And women haven't--
02:18:27 I mean, if we accept that women have less testosterone than men,
02:18:31 we understand that evolution hasn't been overcome by the last 150 years of the Industrial Revolution, right?
02:18:39 So we would be curious and say, "Oh, I wonder why women have evolved that way,"
02:18:45 and we'd sort of try and figure it out.
02:18:47 There must be some evolutionary adaptation that's positive to women preferring men
02:18:55 who will attack another man for insulting their honor.
02:18:58 There must be some advantage to that, otherwise it wouldn't have evolved.
02:19:01 And it does seem to be quite common across female preferences across different cultures.
02:19:08 I mean, what is it? I think there's a scene in Fifty Shades of Grey
02:19:11 where someone insults the woman or grabs at the woman and the man comes in and beats the guy up.
02:19:15 This is just something that women have evolved to like, and the question is why.
02:19:18 I don't know. We could theorize, but just ask the question.
02:19:22 So in terms of like, "Well, what do I do with all this information?"
02:19:25 Well, stop prejudging femininity as negative and be curious about it.
02:19:31 Be curious about it.
02:19:38 Ask questions rather than jumping to negative conclusions.
02:19:49 Because that's what men dislike about women.
02:19:52 Some men, right? They say, "Well, women just jump to negative conclusions about men."
02:19:55 Hello? Like, women just jump to the conclusion that there's a wage gap because men are sexist
02:20:01 and women are underpaid.
02:20:04 Rather than, "Huh, there is a wage gap. We accept that. I wonder why."
02:20:10 And then you start digging into and trying to figure out what the wage gap might be
02:20:14 and where it might come from.
02:20:16 Isn't that what we want? Women, stop being so emotional and be curious.
02:20:20 Well, I would say this to men too, with regards to femininity.
02:20:23 Stop being so emotional and start asking questions.
02:20:26 Be curious. Be rational. Be empirical. Gather evidence. Gather information.
02:20:30 Don't assume the negative.
02:20:34 In a bigoted, prejudicial, sexist way, and of course it can go both ways,
02:20:38 but I'm talking to a man about women here, and I think that's one of the big issues at the moment.
02:20:43 Ask questions.
02:20:46 Women tend to score higher on trait agreeableness.
02:20:50 "Gee, I wonder why." Well, because men have to compete with each other in a win-lose situation,
02:20:55 whereas women have to collaborate with each other in the raising of children.
02:20:59 Because if you've got five kids, you can't watch them all.
02:21:02 You need other people to make sure your kid doesn't walk off a cliff or fall into a fire.
02:21:06 So, of course you have to get along.
02:21:10 Men tend to have conflicts, and aggressive conflicts, and then shake hands and make up afterwards.
02:21:17 Yes, of course.
02:21:19 Because men have to end up cooperating in the hunt.
02:21:22 So, men have a win-lose situation, and then they have to cooperate.
02:21:26 So, of course they fight and then make up.
02:21:32 Whereas women don't have adversarial relationships,
02:21:35 and so if a woman has a big fight with another woman, it tends to be permanent,
02:21:39 because they don't have to fight and make up in the same way that men do.
02:21:44 So, again, these are just questions that I think anybody who's curious about evolution,
02:21:49 males, females, human nature, you just ask these questions, rather than "Women are bad!"
02:21:54 You say, "Oh, I wonder why. I wonder why this evolved this way." That's very interesting.
02:21:58 Maybe it's local, maybe it's cultural, maybe it's genetic, I don't know, but there's got to be a reason.
02:22:04 There's got to be a reason, and that reason is not the blanket condemnation of half the human race, right?
02:22:13 Like, that's like saying, "Well, the only reason that there are any disparities between any human groups is the result of rank bigotry."
02:22:20 It's like, "No, there's got to be a reason."
02:22:23 Rank bigotry is not an answer to most questions.
02:22:26 It can be in individual circumstances, but in general societal terms, rank bigotry is not really an answer.
02:22:34 So, you're curious.
02:22:36 But those in the business of selling rank bigotry, and you understand, this is to understand harsh on the men's rights community,
02:22:44 and I have a lot of sympathy with the men's rights community, and they've got some great and valid points,
02:22:47 and there's wonderful work that they do, so this is not any blanket condemnation there either.
02:22:52 But there is a big market out there for wounded pride, for putting Band-Aids on wounded pride.
02:23:00 So, if a man's been rejected by women a lot, because he's kind of hostile towards women,
02:23:03 and then there's a bunch of people who come along and say, "Well, women are subjective and irrational,
02:23:07 and they do this, and they do that, and there's these problems, and those problems,"
02:23:10 and then you're like, "Oof, you dodged a bullet, kid!"
02:23:12 You can now go monk mode and feel great, right?
02:23:16 People are always looking for those who will praise what they failed at, and say it was actually deferred wisdom.
02:23:28 "Well, you didn't get married, it's a good thing you didn't get married, man,
02:23:30 because the family courts are brutal, and the family courts are brutal, and there is unfairness,
02:23:34 and that's statism, though, that's not women.
02:23:36 Thinking that women are uniquely corrupted by the power of the state is to ignore the fact that men are also immensely corrupted by the power of the state,
02:23:43 and it's also to say that you can corrupt women without the participation of men.
02:23:50 Well, women just sleep around, it's like, with who? With men!
02:23:54 So the men are sleeping around, so you can't just condemn women.
02:23:59 So how do you take this information?
02:24:02 You let go of your resentment, and you open yourself up to curiosity.
02:24:06 Sorry, go ahead.
02:24:08 — It's kind of a weird celebratory kind of, you know, exploit.
02:24:13 You say, like, "Well, the family courts are bad, so, you know, f—, you know, marriage," and this kind of stuff,
02:24:21 but marriage is in your interest, isn't it? Like, you want marriage, it's not somebody else wants you to marry,
02:24:27 it's really, like, wanting kids is in your interest, an interest of your genes, of yourself, and this kind of stuff.
02:24:34 So it's a really weird kind of...
02:24:37 — Listen, there's nothing better in the known universe than having a loving companion to go through life with.
02:24:43 Nothing. Nothing better.
02:24:45 I say this on today, the year of our Lord, Valentine's Day.
02:24:50 There's nothing better in the known universe than having a loving companion to go through life with.
02:24:57 And this is particularly true after middle age.
02:25:01 Because when you're young, youthful energy, youthful looks,
02:25:07 the natural charisma of physical attractiveness, the momentum, the built-in friends,
02:25:13 you have built-in friends when you're young, because you go to school, you all hang out together,
02:25:17 you go to college, you all hang out together.
02:25:20 But it's the women who maintain these relationships over the course of your life.
02:25:24 And when you get older, you know, I could go and chat with women when I was 25,
02:25:37 and almost always there'd be a very positive response.
02:25:42 I can't imagine going to chat up women now, obviously I've been happily married for many years, decades,
02:25:50 but I can imagine that if I went to go and chat up women now, they'd be like,
02:25:54 "What's this old guy talking to me for?"
02:25:57 I mean, you could say, "Well, just chat up older women," and so on, and I get that.
02:26:04 But, you know, you lose your looks, you lose your youthful energy,
02:26:09 you gain wisdom, and that's no small thing.
02:26:14 But the value of pair bonding shows up most of all in the second half of life.
02:26:23 And so pair bonding is a fundamental willingness to defer gratification.
02:26:27 Could I have dated more women when I was younger? Absolutely.
02:26:31 Would there have been some pluses in that? Yeah, maybe.
02:26:35 Men are a little bit more drawn towards variety.
02:26:39 But I now have a companion for, I'm not quite at my sunset years, but I can see them.
02:26:45 I can see them from where I'm, this mountain of age is growing higher,
02:26:49 so I can see further over the horizon to the sunset and nighttime of my life.
02:26:57 The decline and the death of my life.
02:27:04 You know, it's the old adage, "Dates don't go with you to the dentist," right?
02:27:14 "Dates don't go with you to visit your ailing mother."
02:27:23 "Dates don't rub your back when it's sore."
02:27:28 "Dates don't pick up your laundry."
02:27:32 No, your dry cleaning.
02:27:35 "Dates don't book your plane tickets for you and make sure you actually get to the right place."
02:27:40 Why are there Alps in Australia, right?
02:27:45 So it's really in the second half of life, and of course, dates don't raise your children.
02:27:52 And dates don't really listen to your concerns and the little thoughts.
02:28:01 That's pair bonding.
02:28:05 And of course, the way it used to work is we'd see our parents and their happy pair bond, and we'd want that.
02:28:13 But you and I, we didn't grow up seeing our parents' happy pair bonds, right?
02:28:17 So there's much less to aim at.
02:28:21 In fact, we kind of want to aim away.
02:28:23 But aiming away from a bad wife who happened to be a mother
02:28:28 is not to take that and extrapolate that to all women and say,
02:28:33 "To aim away from a bad wife, I have to aim away from all women."
02:28:37 No, you just have to aim away from bad women, which I know was your original question.
02:28:42 But yeah, you have to drop the pompous arrogance, which I've had too.
02:28:46 I'm not trying to be superior here.
02:28:50 The pompous arrogance of women are X, Y, and Z that's negative
02:28:56 and say, "Yeah, some women are like that, some men are like that,
02:28:59 but I sure as hell don't want to be manifesting the very things that I'm criticizing as I'm talking."
02:29:06 Right.
02:29:07 So yeah, be curious. Ask women about their experiences, without judgment, with depth and curiosity.
02:29:17 Assume that they have a reason for what they think, they have a reason for what they feel,
02:29:20 and that reasons might not be the same as your experience, which is why you're not gay.
02:29:26 You want someone who's different from you, because you're a man,
02:29:29 and if you're heterosexual, you want a woman, which means you want someone who's different from you.
02:29:34 And you should celebrate and recognize that that difference is really important.
02:29:39 To want a woman with the brain of a man is something I can't really quite follow,
02:29:44 from a general heterosexual standpoint, right?
02:29:53 Does that make sense?
02:29:55 It makes total sense.
02:29:57 And I think this whole angry thing, that I seem to be very angry and yell at my woman, my wife,
02:30:07 which at the end happened a lot, and my girlfriend lately, and it's exactly what you're saying.
02:30:15 It's like I'm being emotional, I'm being like, demonizing them.
02:30:21 "No, you can't, there's no way you think that!"
02:30:26 You know what I mean?
02:30:28 So I think those two things are connected.
02:30:30 Well, the "subjectivity of women" is part of the objective universe we claim to understand so well,
02:30:34 yet we have so little curiosity about it that we're actually being irrational.
02:30:41 Yeah.
02:30:44 Okay, that sounds really good and inspiring, actually.
02:30:49 Good, I'm glad.
02:30:50 Well, listen, I really, really do appreciate the conversation, and I appreciate your openness.
02:30:55 I'm very, very sorry about all the things that happened to you as a child.
02:30:57 I'm sorry we had to race a little bit through that,
02:30:59 but I wanted to make sure I had enough time to get to your real foundational question.
02:31:03 But I sort of needed the backdrop, so I appreciate that,
02:31:05 and I hope that you'll keep me posted about how you're doing.
02:31:09 Okay, cool, sure, sure.
02:31:11 Thanks, brother, appreciate the conversation. Take care.
02:31:13 Thank you.