If you travel deep into the new right,

what you find at the moment is a

constant yearning for something very

old. Not just a time when America was

great, but a time when men were great,

when men were men. You hear it in Cost

[music] Vlad Alamaru, who's better known

as the Bronze Age pervert. You hear it

in his longing for the Bronze Age.

>> I am here just to spread the political

uh views of the ancient Hittite Empire

or the ancient Mitani Empire. You hear

it when [music] the pastor Doug Wilson

yearns for the time before the 19th

amendment.

>> The net effect of women's suffrage

[music] was not an advance in women's

rights, but rather part of a push to

replace covenanted [music] entities like

families with raw individualism.

>> You hear it in the increasingly constant

idealization of 1950s America? Why

wouldn't you design a system consistent

with nature? [music]

>> What would that look like to you? It

would look like what we had before Betty

Ferdan wrote the feminist mystique,

before lifestyle feminism dominated

every institution in the west. There's a

time when all this could be dismissed

[music] as a fringe movement on the

fever swamps of the internet. But bronze

age pervert is a favorite of young Trump

staffers. Defense Secretary Pete Hgsth

invited Doug Wilson to preach at the

Pentagon. Tucker Carlson is well, he's

Tucker Carlson. These are not all fringe

figures and it's not just them. It's a

much broader thing on the new right

which increasingly wants a return is

theorizing for how to create a return to

very old ideas of how men should be to

very old policies that centralize the

power they wield and the way society is

ordered. Helen Lewis is a staff writer

of the Atlantic and the author of

Difficult Women: A History of Feminism

in 11 Fights and the Genius Myth. She's

just written a great cover story for the

Atlantic mapping this world. She calls

it masculinism, talking to many of its

key figures, trying to understand

[music] its core ideas. So, I want to

have her on the show to talk about it.

As always, my email as her clan showny

times.com. [music]

[music]

>> Helen Lewis, welcome to the show.

>> Thank you. So, I want to start with a

clip from Scott [music] Yenner, a

professor at Boyise State University

that I think is a a good place to start.

>> Our independent women seek their purpose

in life in mid-level bureaucratic jobs

like human resource management,

environmental protection, and marketing.

They are more medicated, mealsome, and

quarrelome than women need to be.

Without connections to eternity

delivered through their family, such

medicicated, quarrelome, and mealsome

women gain their meaning through the

seeming participation in the global

project. They are agents of the new

world, but not new life. Such women are

now the backbone of every left-wing

cosmopolitan party in the western world.

I thought that was as concise a

description of this masculinism that

you've been reporting on as I've heard

from any of its subjects. So tell me

about him and the view of society you

understand him to be spitting out here.

>> Well, you know, as you heard, it's one

that's not afraid to be uh offensive,

but the essential thesis is that it's

women's role in life to have children.

Modern women have been deluded in

instead into pursuing careers which

aren't real jobs. They're not doing

anything of any merit anyway. And

therefore, their lives will essentially

be empty and pointless. But I find it I

I like my job. And I also feel that my

job is equal social worth to Scott Yenna

being in a think tank, right? Like he's

hardly a cancer surgeon. Calm down, son.

I I I find it kind of intriguingly

repellent and I think a lot of people do

as well. One of the things I heard in

that uh clip is an echo of the JD Vance

miserable cat ladies clip that went

around in the 2024 campaign. We're

effectively run in this country via the

Democrats via via our corporate

oligarchs by a bunch of childless cat

ladies who are miserable at their own

lives and the choices that they've made

and so they want to make the rest of the

country miserable too. which I mention

because I think it can be easy to look

at Yenner and something people will talk

about and think, "Oh, this is a fever

swamp right-wing movement. This is when

you've clicked on too many posts on X

and the algorithm has found something

out about you that you wish it didn't

know." But one of the arguments you make

in this piece is that masculinism has

become a a kind of unifying theory on a

MAGA right that in other ways is coming

apart.

So defend that for me a bit.

>> Right. So you can see the splits in MAGA

very obviously at the moment over the

war in Iran. Um American support for

Israel as a military ally protectionism

versus free trade. You know there are

all these interesting currents that are

going on. However, if you asked, do you

think feminism has gone too far? How

many people in the MAGA coalition are

going to, you know, are going to push

back on that and say, actually, I think

we should give more jobs and

opportunities to women. So, it is this

one thing that basically everybody can

agree with. Traditional gender roles are

better. Um, equality has been a a failed

pursuit. It's maybe even an illegitimate

pursuit. Empathy, which is feminine by

nature, has been misused and is ruining

our politics because women and their

parties that represent them, the

Democrats, feel sorry for all these

underdogs who aren't really underdogs.

They're kind of cancers on our society,

like violent criminals or illegal

immigrants. So, you know, there is all,

you know, this is a very coherent

ideology. And the reason that I wanted

to write the piece is I think people are

now quite familiar with the idea of the

manosphere and the kind of Andrew Tate,

you know, these provocators who are

creatures of the algorithm. And I wanted

to say, well, hang on a minute.

Actually, there is a really serious

ideological and political project here

behind this. It has got people in think

tanks. It's got people who are working

in politics. And it has got its kind of

intellectual outriders. But this isn't

just some, you know, over steroided guys

in tight t-shirts parading around in

nightclubs for the Graham. These are

people who want to completely

restructure American life into a way

that they find more agreeable and they

want to use legal instruments and

political instruments to do so.

>> What does that vision look like?

>> So the simpst way to say it is that men

would be the breadwinners and women

would be homemakers. I mean the kind of

reference point always tends to be the

1950s but it's a you know it's a very

fake Pleasantville black and white

picket fence version of the 1950s. Lots

of families did not in fact live in that

way. But you know, you would do that.

For example, Scott Yenna, he mentioned

there, one of his most controversial

proposals is this idea of the family

wage. The idea that you would restore

discrimination back into the job market

by saying it's okay to preferentially

hire men, married men. It's okay to h,

you know, to promote them more, to pay

them higher salaries. You know, what we

want to do is essentially restore a

traditional way of life in which, you

know, men are the ones who go out and

earn money. And women's money, if

anything is, you know, is back to being

pin money. It's kind of secondary.

>> So I I I it's worth, I think, for you to

expand on that, which is to say,

I think the core critique here and the

core politics here is that modernity has

thwarted masculinity.

the arguments here, and we're going to

tore through a number of them. They they

shift between this, as you say, 1950s

nostalgia for when you had the single

breadwinner family and this in some

cases it's very Christian, in some cases

it's very pagan, but this spiritual

level of politics and and it seems to me

to have this dimension of modernity is

hollow. People are working as as you

mentioned particularly women these

jobs in human resource

management and in marketing and

environmental protection and men are

caged in these little offices and you

know doing retail work that is beneath

them

and you know Yenner in that quote says

agents of the new world but not new life

there's all this emphasis on what life

is the good the beautiful vitality

vitalism

can you talk about that dimension of it

this the the spirit virtual cell being

made.

>> Yeah, I think that is part of it because

another thing that often comes up is the

idea that women are on a huge amount of

anxiety medication and anti-depressants.

So, you have this situation in which

women having anything that they feel is

wrong in their lives is taken as proof

that they've picked the wrong course in

life and if only they would pick this

alternative vision of femininity, they

would be happy. Anyone this is part of

the exchange that I had with Doug

Wilson, the evangelical pastor, that

this is not a new phenomenon. It was

something that Betty Fredan was writing

about in the feminine seat when she was

talking about specifically the

unhappiness of stay-at-home housewives.

She said, you know, they're taking

medication like cough drops. And the bit

that I struggle with as somebody who

loves reading historical novels,

historical fiction, historical

biographies, is that are we absolutely

sure that women in 1700 were, you know,

were living these incredibly blissful

lives? That's not what you get from the

literature of the period. Um, in my

first book, which is a history of

feminism, I wrote about some of the

women who wrote to Mary Stoopes, who was

our kind of version of Margaret Sanger,

a contraceptive pioneer. And they were

describing lives of despair where they

had far more children than they can

afford. They didn't know how to stop

having anymore. You know, they were

exhausted by their late 30s from this

relentless tide of childbearing. And but

this is the kind of you know that has

now that era has now passed into memory

long enough that it is susceptible to

being you know revitalized by this into

this kind of tradition that is now you

know sold to people on Instagram because

no one can really remember what it was

like to live in those conditions

anymore.

Okay, let me try to think about how to

do this because I will say that

typically when I get into a literature,

I think I'm a usually generous reader

and I leave with more sympathy for it

than I came in. And I read your piece

and then I read The Last Man by Charles

Cornish Dale, uh, The Raw Egg

Nationalist. I read Bronze Age Mindset

and it's one of the first times I can

really remember coming out of something

like this and thinking, "Oh, there was

so much less there than I thought."

Like, I just assume that people were

making some reasonable arguments. But I

want to try to be generous before I get

into that reaction. So let me ask it

this way. As you were talking to these

people, as you have immersed yourself in

this literature, which parts of the

critique

or the diagnosis of modernity and its

ills and ailments

did you find recognizable or find

yourself responding to?

I do find the kind of battery cage idea

of humanity to be quite compelling. Um,

I know that I'm sure I would my life

would be better if I took more exercise,

got outside more, took a screen break,

didn't doom scroll. Like, I think all of

those things are reasonable. I think the

American diet is hideous, particularly

for lower income Americans. So, not I

don't think all of those things are

ridiculous, you know, and that's that's

that's something that comes up a lot in

um The Last Man, the idea that, you

know, elites are keeping you fat,

they're keeping your low testosterone if

you don't eat enough meat, you know,

that like vegans are are oppressing you.

Um

>> vegetarianism is a tool of social

control to sap our vitality and make us

easier and more obedient as subjects.

But it's very interesting because

clearly that has caught on because

Arnold Schwarzenegger made a documentary

about being vegetarian except he'd

rebranded it as plant-based and it was

all about how actually you could be an

incredibly good weightlifter if you were

on a plant-based diet. You could have

incredibly strong erections on a

plant-based diet. So clearly that has

seeped into that discourse that there is

something unmanly about not eating meat.

But I I I think I like that book more

than you did. I found it maybe my

expectations are lower but the thing

that I found that was interesting about

it was that it moved from saying it is

impossible to be a man fully in a

liberal democracy as there's a line in

that says essentially that that because

of the fact that you're being kept in

this you know rubbish jobs and you're

you have low testosterone all this kind

of stuff and then you get to the end and

you find out okay so what what are we

doing then and there's a bit like well

you should chuck out your plastic

chopping board [snorts] and I was just

like oh I was I was sort of expecting

you to advocate fashion ism at the end,

but you've kind of you you kept it

lower. You've kept it more achievable

and and and that's the bit where I that

was the bit where I slightly parted

company from it.

>> That's where you parted company. Okay,

let me let me describe the argument of

this book because I think it actually

gets at something that that I I want to

try to do here, which is it brings up

some things really worth talking about

and then goes in some really wild

directions. Uh you can correct me if you

feel like I am being uh unfair in any

part of this. The last men is an

argument that

begins by saying what we need is a

hormonal theory of politics.

And the hormonal theory of politics is

this and and and this part is real.

There has been over the decades a

measurable and sustained drop in

testosterone in men across a number of

countries in sperm quality and count

among men across a number of countries.

Uh there's also and this is a big topic

of discussion on on this side and I

think a like an an actually important

one that I wish the left would take more

seriously. There is been a sustained

drop in fertility rates across many many

different countries. So relatively uh

few liberal democracies are now at a at

replacement rate or above if any of them

are. I think Israel is although whether

Israel is a liberal democracy is its own

question. So he sort of starts there

and says look the core of masculinity

thymos or thyos I don't know how you say

the Greek word is testosterone the this

thing that Francis Fukuyama is talking

about in the end of history in the last

man this thing that n is talking about

just testosterone and we are destroying

testosterone and we're destroying it

with endocrine disrupting chemicals that

are in all the things we buy destroying

it with bad diet it, destroying it with

uh chemicals in the water. And it is

creating and is maybe a sort of actual

effort to create. And this is where

things begin to my view to go a bit off

the rails. A docel form of man

who is suited for

the long house of liberal democracy

and not suited for the displays of

dominance and hierarchy and the conquest

and excellence that has driven

civilization forward and defined man

forever. And then as you say, it kind of

ends with a stirring call to throw out

your plastic cutting boards and filter

your water. But but this is the

argument, you know, that there's like a

sort of some stuff I actually agree with

on chemicals, some stuff I'm generally

worried about and hormonal changes. And

then this sense that what's really

happening here is the destruction of

what it means to be a man and the the

literally the vital fluids that make men

manly. That's that's the book,

>> right? But there is a there is an

obvious overlaid political veilance on

this which is that this idea that if

you're high tea you're risktaking,

you're possibly violent and you don't

mind about inequality. You know, it's

about the strong dominating the weak and

therefore liberal democracy is

inherently feminine because it's more

concerned with making sure that the weak

don't suffer too much that there is, you

know, there are equal rights for all. So

it's very easy to see how that vision of

masculinity maps onto kind of

magaritism. Definitely the bit I find I

just again when I start drilling down

into the examples it's it I find it

tricky. So young men for example have

much higher testosterone than old men.

So actually really are we talking about

if if women shouldn't be in leadership

positions maybe old men shouldn't be in

leadership positions. So because they

don't have the requisite thymos either.

Oh no you're not saying that. So

actually you're just making very large

sweeping claims about men are one thing

and women are another thing. Um that

kind of stuff you know sort of falls

apart in your hands. But I also think

that don't you think it does speak to

some people? It and I think it speaks to

people who have like a female boss and

they resent it and they find it slightly

emasculating. The kind of people who if

a woman upset them, the word would

be pretty close to their lips, right?

That that's the like how how dare you

speak to me like that. You know, you're

just you're just a woman. And I think

that's closer to the surface in men,

even men who are otherwise impeccably

liberal than perhaps we sometimes like

to acknowledge. So, I can see why this

stuff does have a relatively wide

appeal.

>> And and the person of Donald Trump in

the 2024 election became a vehicle for

this feeling. This guy who stood up and

pumped his fist covered in blood after

an assassination attempt rather than

cowering behind

his secret service guards or a lectern

or, you know, staying on the floor.

This guy who would say anything he

wanted to say no matter who it offended,

who did not play by the rules of

feminized society.

This man who kept driving forward

through adversity, you know, lawsuits

and electoral losses and made his own

reality around him. That that Trump for

all his sedentary lifestyle and obesity

and the fact that he's, you know, in

advanced age and, you know, I haven't

measured his testosterone, but it's

probably not that high anymore. But that

Trump represents

what masculinity in a way is supposed to

be, which is an effort to dominate other

people in a bid to achieve greatness for

yourself, your kin, your country. And

the liberal democracy had thwarted that

until he came back and like bust through

the and showed you could still do this.

But it's it's an incredible cherrypick,

isn't it, about Donald Trump the

ultimate alpha male. In the same way

that, you know, this is what I I find

very difficult about all of this

literature is it just implies that

everybody is a kind of a a Kend Doll or

a Princess Sparkle. Donald Trump is at

the same time a man who wears more

makeup than I do most days, a man who

loves Sunset Boulevard. You know, like,

you know, the man loves a loves a

musical. Um, one of his better

qualities, but you know what I mean. So

those aren't the things that they're

emphasizing.

saying actually right exact exactly

>> which I like about Donald Trump right

like I I actually I'm not dissing on him

here but so much of these people are

engaged in a very Judith Butlerian level

of gender performance it is the most

like cisgender performance of

heteromasculinity you could possibly

imagine and Trump I think in some what

makes him appealing is he's got some of

that but he's got the other thing too

because he's actually not at his core

like an insecure thwarted like little

goblet

[laughter]

>> yeah I I I personally find that much

more appealing than I do the very

pompous we're all going to have a sauna

together in us guys but you know it's

definitely not gay kind of that kind of

you know that sort of very terrified um

homophobia is that sometimes comes out

of some of those communities.

>> So so let me let me take it here um

because again I I want to try to run

through some of these ideas. I think of

one of the the founding fathers of this

in in the new right as this guy bronze

age pervert. Can you describe who that

is?

>> He is a thinker whose real name is uh

Costen Alamario. Uh he's Romanian and he

has a kind of whole persona which is

about bodybuilding and eugenics and

nature. Yeah, that's those are his maybe

his three favorite things. And again,

it's you know there's a kind of almost

like I am Dracula kind of level to the

to the hamming up the accent and that

kind of stuff. So once again, this is

somebody who's playing a character on

the internet.

>> Yeah, it's it's very much the way I

describe the book, which is

aesthetically interesting, even if I

think it's intellectually becomes a bit

tedious, but it it has this really like

niche for gooners quality. It's very

very

um you know like romantic poetry but

like filtered through 4chan lingo. Maybe

it's worth I want to play a clip of this

interview he did with uh Michael Malice

in 2024 talking about the problems of

modernity.

>> Why is it disgusting? It's because it

privileges safety and near life, the

preservation of life at the expense of

things that are exciting and great and

free, you [clears throat] know. And when

I wrote this book in 2018,

uh sorry to keep talking Mike if I may

go. why you're here.

>> But when I uh when I wrote this book in

2018, some people liked it because I

expressed myself directly and with humor

and so on and they said, "Oh, okay, Bap,

this is very nice, but is it really

true?" And then what happened uh you

know people will say now I planned it.

No, I didn't plan it. the pandemic

happened which basically I think uh

demonstrated the truth of what I'm

saying in the pandemic in my view was a

mass sacrifice of the world's youth to

>> the desires of disgusting old people who

sacrificed the youth and also to women

frankly especially you know the

middle-aged sterile woman who made the

pandemic procedures her whole life it

gave meaning to her life you saw it in

action you know

>> I I I I can't tell tell you how much joy

it brings me to hear you with your

accent say the phrase these middle age

middle-aged sterile women. It's just

[laughter]

>> so the reason I think that clip is is

useful and and you know this book bronze

age mindset got written up in the

Claremont Review of Books. Uh there

reports that most young staff in the

Trump administration had read it. It had

become a a like a piece of code passed

back and forth some is done. [gasps]

The reason I think that clip is

interesting is it combines the two

things the book does, which is this

sense that there is something more than

mere life, right? He says the

preservation of life at the expense of

things that are exciting, great, and

free with the kind of campy

provocatorism. Like, oh, it makes me so

excited to hear you say middle-aged

sterile women. What's this idea about

privileging safety and mere life over

things that are exciting and great and

free?

Well, this is the idea that women

because of their lack of thymos and

testosterone are, you know, weak and

empathetic and and they don't want to

put themselves in situations of danger.

So, this is the idea that you you know,

essentially the whole world is r has one

kind of giant HR department telling you

that you're not allowed to do the things

you wanted to do anymore, particularly

the kind of things that young men want

to do. And I mean I can understand why

people feel like that but I I also think

that again I just I find a huge amount

of complacency I think has driven it. I

don't think people would be talking like

that in a time when they had lost three

of their eight children to a preventable

disease before the age of two. You know

I don't think they would have been

talking about that when immediately

after the first world war right when you

could quite easily have lost four of

your sons in a completely pointless

advance 2 miles across France. This is a

an ideology that is born out of fat

modernity itself. Right? The luxury that

they have to play with these ever so

spicy ideas are because they've never

lived these lives. I don't think if you

went over to somewhere that is currently

in the middle of a conflict and you said

to them, "Are you all enjoying this

incredibly dangerous masculine

experience that you're having?" I think

no. I think they'd actually they'd like

a stable food supply and peace. So, you

know, this it's ironic that they, you

know, they talk about Fukyama because

this is what he predicted in the end of

history. He said that you're going to

end up with people who are just bored,

full of onwe and they're going to have

to find things to now to sort of

entertain themselves because they don't

have the material deprivations and

challenges that previous generations

have. And that's what I hear when I hear

that. I hear, oh, we're all having a go

at Karen's on a podcast. Isn't it so

spicy? And you think, how is what has

this got to do with the Spartans? you

know, this is this just fake cosplay

version of masculinity that everybody is

is kind of indulging in. You know, these

people could sign up to the army. They

could go and serve in a war. And they've

not chosen to do that. They've chosen to

become podcasters.

>> I think the laring point of that is is I

think very important because it is a

bunch of intellectuals in elite

competition with other intellectuals, a

bunch of humanities academics. I mean,

Bronze Age pervert went to uh Yale, was

it? He's yeah he's definitely spent a

few terms teaching I think at Emory but

this is you know and that's the same

thing with Lomez he was an academic

Charles Cornish Dale has a PhD you know

I'm many of my friends are academics but

I can see how it slightly deranges

people

>> there's an elite overproduction problem

>> right it does it as soon as I was

thinking about this I started thinking

about Peter Turchin's idea of surplus

elites that you know and and some of

these people perhaps they didn't fit in

socially at universities and colleges

perhaps they didn't fit in politically

but they had that same kind of yearning

in them to be intellectuals and to take

ser be taken seriously and this provides

an outlet for that.

>> One thing that I find interesting about

the modern right is it can't seem to

decide on when its nostalgia is for.

>> Yeah.

>> So there's a dimension of it that's for

the 1950s. I think of that as more where

Donald Trump has based his remembrance

of politics and and he was around for

that. So fair enough. But then you have

people who seem to be looking back to

earlier in the country's history. But it

has stretched way beyond that now all

the way to a sort of preodern much more

directly pagan view. There's a lot of

primitivism in all of this. A lot of

societies filled with chemicals and

endocrine disruptors, right? It connects

to the Maha movement in that way. But th

this question of when were human beings

human, when were men men, when were

women women, there actually isn't

agreement on it.

>> No, you're right. Some, you know,

somebody like um Doug Wilson, Pete Hex's

um congregation founder, you know, he

seems to like he basically sort of wants

to live in Salem circa 1650. As far as I

can see,

>> the liberation of women was a false flag

operation. The true goal was the

liberation of libertine men. And in our

day, this was a goal that has largely

been achieved. These were men who wanted

the benefits for themselves that would

come from easy divorce, widespread

abortion, mainstream pornography, and a

promiscuous dating culture. The early

20th century was characterized by the

Christian wife. The early 21st century

is characterized by the tattooed

concubine. And [snorts] these sons of

Biliel have the chuspa to call it

progress for women.

>> That's, you know, that for him is is his

vision. Other people, yeah, have that

vision of 1950s suburbia. Other people

look to the Romans or the Greeks or the

Spartans even. You there's a big uh

excitement about the Spartan. Other of

them take inspiration from kind of

nature, which is interesting to me,

right? So nature is writing these

critiques of modernity at the end of the

19th century at which point he he is

making all the same criticisms about his

society that they're making now. And you

think, well, hang on a minute. This is a

vastly less industrialized society. You

know, this is before the invention of

antibiotics, all of this kind of stuff.

So how can this be exactly the same

criticism now? And it goes in the other

direction too. So one of the things I

read for the piece was this very famous

essay on the long house by Lomez um

which is constantly referred to and his

idea is that there were these

matriarchal societies or there were

these uh communal dining halls that were

seen overseen by a denmother and they

were ruled by kind of petty bitching and

backbiting and ostracism um where while

the men were going out doing manly

things. And one of the things I thought

was, "Oh, right. That's interesting. I

wonder what society he's referring to.

Then I should go out and and and like

read a bit more about, you know, what

what these places are actually like."

And he's not referring to anything. He

says there's no specific historical

reference. And he says in in any case,

one can't really define the long house

lest it should lose its force to lampoon

the vast constellation of social forces

it imagines. And I thought, well, that's

extremely convenient, isn't it? you're

invoking this this terrible thing that

happened in history, except it it didn't

happen in history in any way that you

can concretely describe. And in any

case, you don't want to define it

because it's more it's more a vibe

really.

>> But this is the grammar of a lot of this

this constant are we joking, are we

serious? I mean, when you talk about

almost any of these people, almost any

of these books, it's all the ethos of

the troll where the real argument is

being smuggled in, gift wrapped in irony

and imagery and jokes and, oh, I'm only

kidding, and are you really offended?

Such that to argue with it has a little

bit of the quality of arguing with

smoke. and and in some ways that is its

point. One of the things many of these

screeds are are say explicitly is that

you know they're a reaction to

empiricized bloodlessly technocratic

modernity. There there's an idea that to

to sort of cohhere things into that

fact-based form is to force yourself

into a form of argumentation that by its

very nature misses deeper truths about

life.

>> Right. But that does get on my nerves

because as somebody who spent a decade

writing about feminism, the thing that

you constantly got assailed with was why

you know you're just talking about

feelings. You're not talking about

facts. if you look at the facts actually

they're against you and so it's quite

odd to have pivoted into an era in which

apparently no actually we're not that

interested in in facts you know we're

actually just interesting in vibes again

um but yeah I think that's exactly right

I I think that I I thought a lot about

what the point of the offensiveness of

the language is and it's clearly part of

it is about a kind of signal like we're

all guys in here you know you know

you're cool with this like a sort of

initiation right essentially like you

know if you if you don't blanch at

somebody using the n-word in the group

chat That's it. You know, you're you're

allowed in the club. [gasps] And and the

other thing is about this idea that you

just you trip up liberals because

essentially you say, "I want to

sterilize retards." And then everybody

goes, "How dare you say the word

retards?" Well, what you've done is

you've invoked a very old idea about

sterilization of the the unfit for

breeding. And the idea would be just as

aborant if you used extremely clinical

language about it as your deliberately

offensive, you know, firework language.

But be you've trapped your opponents at

the level of kind of going huh about

about the exact words in which you're

wrapping it.

>> I want to try to because I actually I

will say I had a really quite negative

reaction to a bunch of this. The part of

it that I could recognize and the part

of it that I do understand why it

connects to people is

it is an effort to pull up ideas of the

romantics, ideas from niche into a

modernity that often feels very hollow.

I mean you talked about this I think is

battery cage modernity and and when he's

talking about [sighs and gasps] you know

more than mere life and and probably

when he's talking about in the book uh

before I get into what I don't like

about the book the thing that he is

often getting at and articulating in a

way that is

you know 4chan poetic is that there has

to be something more than this

that there has to be a way that is more

authentic to be human being more

authentic to

expressing the energy of life that moves

within us that we don't know how to talk

about but we do feel and that modernity

has very little language for

particularly disenchanted modernity

than than this and and the place where

the book has I think you know genuine

moments of appeal and inspiration

is in the channeling of of of that sense

which is a very old sense

>> [gasps]

>> that there is some form of immediate

experience

that industrial society alienates us

from.

I mean, I think that's probably why

nature is such a reference point because

[snorts] you have the sense both of an

intellectual who is not appreciated or

known in his own time. Right? Nature

goes mad after seeing a horse being

beaten in the street and spends the last

decades of his life just sitting in a

corner, his mind completely broken

masculinity. if there ever was

>> I masculinity massive mustache to be

fair he did have a very impressive

mustache but you know but also had these

delusions of grandeur right he's got a

book that's I believe literally called

why I am so great

you know and the idea of the the uber

mench is that everybody around you is

essentially cattle and you're not and

that is like that is every member of the

kind of intellectual dark webs theory of

of the universe right was oh they're a

sheeple and everybody else is them but I

alone have seen through it so there is

this inherent kind of narcissism to it

about the idea of kind of being an uber

mch that I think you really that that

doesn't surprise that's a reference

point to me there the Christianity I

struggle with more so I'm not religious

myself but I was raised in a very

religious household my parents are

Catholic my dad was a deacon in the

Catholic church my mom was a religious

studies teacher and their practice of

Christianity was I think an incredibly

positive one they would go and give the

sacrament to the sick uh you know and

they'd go and visit nursing homes people

who didn't have anyone else to visit

them they would volunteer in soup

kitchens for example like their idea of

Christianity was a one that was based

around service to other people and I

don't really see a great deal of link

between that and the version of like the

even in the persona of Jesus right so

the persona of Jesus in the gospels he

says blessed are the meek you know it he

is in some ways an incredibly feminine

figure passive one he lets things happen

to him he doesn't storm into you know

Pontious pilot's uh front room with an

AK-47 and gun everyone down he lets

himself be killed to die for our sins

and therefore there's this interesting

sense that actually Jesus is kind of

slightly an embarrassment to some of

these people. They've had to in this

American Christianity, particularly

evangelical Christianity, had to wreck

on him as a much more masculine figure

than the biblical record suggests. I

raised this with someone, one of the

pastors I interviewed in Doug Wilson's

church, and I, you know, I said this, I

said, "It's really hard to match up your

idea of this masculine patriarchal

Christianity with the Bible." And he

said, "Oh yeah, but remember when Jesus

overturned them, you know, the tables in

the temple, the money lenders." So, you

know, there again has been a kind of

attempt to go back through the Christian

tradition and find the bits you like.

Often these guys are more keen on St.

Paul than they are on Jesus because St.

Paul was a preacher. He was a

controversialist. You know, he was

somebody who had a, you know, he had

literally had a divine revelation. Um,

you know, and then he was also somebody

who was patriarchal. There are lines

from there saying, you know, godly women

should be quiet. you know, women

shouldn't be preaching. So, I, you know,

the relationship with Christianity is

also very tense, I think.

>> Well, there's a desire for the order or

the perceived order of

the Catholic or Greek Orthodox Church,

not, I think, for the social radicalism

of Jesus Christ.

>> Well, it's also very funny because

successive popes just turn out to be a

terrible disappointment to them, which

is just like somebody was raised

Catholic, just really funny. No, have we

got another pope? Does he agree with No,

no, [snorts] no. He also keeps saying

things about the poor. Oh, gross.

>> I mean, yeah, this is a practical

problem. But but there's a split and and

I think Louise Perry was the first one.

I heard her talk about this and I and I

it's actually helped me think about this

between the pagan side of the new right

and the Christian side of the new right

and bronze age pervert is on the pagan

side. And I want to go back to what

you're saying about hierarchy and the

uber mansion and niche. This is a quote

from his book. He writes,

"Neez [snorts]

never forgot that the fundamental fact

of nature is inequality." And this is

something these people, the followers of

Haidiger and Haidiger himself to a great

degree, all forget. It is madness to ask

the common prefab run of man to fashion

his own way, his own religion. The many

find solace and meaning only in

submission. It is good that this is so,

and they shouldn't be made to feel shame

for it. So much of the modern idiocy is

based on shaming those who would find

true pleasure in submission. The long

chain of being is held together by

command and obedience.

And and this is really the the core

politics of of this book and a lot of

these which is that we have ended up in

this Christianized

um you know liberal democracy that

believes in equality and in doing are

subverting and denying

the hierarchical dominance and obedience

structures of of nature.

>> Right? But when you read some of that

stuff, don't you think it's a bit like

how people who regress to their past

lives always end up that they would have

been Cleopatra? They would never have

been some guy who died as a toothless

peasant at the age of 12. There is a

kind of belief belief that if they lived

in these ancient hierarchical societies,

they would be one of life's winners. I

went back through my notes from when I

was reading the last man and I written

do we want to return to a civil service

run by unuks, right? Is is Elon Musk

ready to make the ultimate sacrifice?

Because actually that's much better if

you have a professional unic class uh

who are looking after democracy. No,

there's loads of stuff from this period

that they don't want to take back. And

all of it is really predicated on the

idea that yeah, if you want to go back

to Roman times, you're going to be a

Roman citizen, not a slave, right?

You're one of you're one of life's

winners. So that's inevitably what you

would have ended up as. And the thing I

kept coming back to was this thought

experiment by the philosopher John

Rules, the veil of ignorance. You know,

you should make decisions not knowing

which side of the outcome you'd end up

on. And if I said to you, do you

honestly want to take your chances if

you could be any citizen in the Roman

Empire at any time or any citizen in

America today? I think almost everybody

would take their chances being born in

contemporary America rather than

thinking that you were going to end up

as you know Caligula. Probably not.

You're probably going to end up as a

essentially a 12-year-old girl who got

raped by her master every night. You

know, sure there is just this kind of

but then I think this comes back to this

idea that they are special people and

therefore they don't live in a society

where they're able to exercise that

specialness anymore.

>> Sure. And and this will start getting

into this real discussion of of

masculinity. The I guess the argument

they would make, let me let me try to

steal man this is of course I don't like

John RS because we don't live behind the

veil of ignorance and acting as if we do

and ordering society as if we do turns

out to have this fundamental problem

which is that it subverts the natural

way men are supposed to be which is it

is the expression of these competitive

aggressive ambitious even violent

instincts

which maybe we didn't realize it at the

time, but we now know are a

potent driver of civilizational progress

and we fall into stagnation and

decadence when they are thwarted.

That's what I understand them to be

saying when when you talk to them. I

mean, is that what you hear or is that a

misread?

>> No, I think that's reasonable. And there

is a kind of light side version of that,

right? Which is that in here in the

developed world, we live in aging

societies. And that has profoundly

shaped how decisions are made in just

ways that we're only really beginning to

reckon with now. That that I I'm not

sure if that's so much about gender as

as it is about an an aging society. If

you live in a much younger society, then

the young people are the kind of

dominant force and they set the rules.

Well, at the moment, we live by the baby

boomer's social like their social

conditions that they find most amanable

to them. But the other bit that I think

is worth taking away from this and I,

you know, I don't want to dismiss all

this stuff out of hand. I wrote in

difficult women about the problems of

boys in school which again I think are

real. I think there are lots of boys who

find it really difficult to sit still

for 8 hours a day and they you know they

are not encouraged to kind of burn off

their energy and the whole school model

has been framed around this idea of the

kind of good girl who sits there

passively and kind of just digests

information in a way that doesn't suit

lots of boys. The New York Times had a

really interesting report a couple of

months ago about ADHD diagnosing in

teenagers. And one of the things I took

away from that is that lots of them

don't end up on medication that they

start as teenagers in adulthood because

they find a job that suits them better

than being cooped up in school put into

this box that I think is particularly

restrictive for boys. you know, if we're

going to take some of this ideology,

perhaps we do say that girls and boys on

average, on average, maybe there are

some differences between them and that

we need to be more attentive to the ways

in which some bits of modern society

aren't set up well for boys.

>> I think it's worth dwelling on this for

a minute and I've had Richard Reeves on

the show, uh, who's written a lot and

and done a lot of work on this. it one

place a lot of these ideas have

magnetized tors because it it acts as a

genuine true justification for the idea

of something being wrong is that there

is something going wrong for men and

boys. I mean we talked a bit a few

minutes ago about falls in testosterone

and sperm quality. I mean that's

measurable and strange and it's been

going on for many decades now and and we

should I think think about it and and

and worry about it. But you also have um

men's wages not doing great. You have

girls performing much better than boys

in high school, much more likely to

enroll in college. Um, men today are

five times likelier than in the 90s to

say they don't have any close friends.

They are four times more likely to die

by suicide. Sometimes this can all get

framed as a like a competitive race with

girls like as if, you know, it would be

fine if both genders were dying by

suicide at the same rate. But but that's

not the way I think about it. that there

is boys are not doing great um on their

own terms and the sense that you know

perhaps society's evolved in a way

whether that is in terms of the chemical

soup and the microlastics that we're all

exposed to from childhood now all the

way up to the structure of school the

structure of the workplace the idea that

it is more recently evolved in a way

that is you know not good for boys and

men it's not a crazy thought and I think

is something worth you know when you

look at this data taking seriously

>> it's not a crazy thought I think of it

differently to that which is I think

that there are girl specific problems

and there are boy specific problems and

then there are some problems that affect

all young people you know um screen

usage but that you break that down and

it affects boys and girls in different

ways again these on averages with huge

amounts of exceptions you know we're

always talking very broad brush strokes

here but we you know there is some

evidence I think that things like

comparing yourself to other bodies and

faces on Instagram hits girls

particularly harder. You know, social

contagions of particular things hit

girls harder. And then at the same time,

you get boys who are funneled towards

crypto, gambling, day trading. You know,

those things are are more heavily pedled

to to men. We know that the majority of

problem gamblers are men, but this comes

out, I think, we're still steeped in

this idea that everything is a kind of

neat oppressor oppressed binary. And in

the case of gender that's you know there

are there are there are still things in

ways in which you know like sexual

violence being a very obvious example

that you know women are oppressed by men

but I think we can also get to this

stage now where we say it's not actually

a competition a lot of time it's

capitalism is doing it to both boys and

girls doing unpleasant things right in

the service of social media companies

making a profit girls are being shown

huge amounts of very filtered images of

of what faces can look like and and I

think we just probably need to find this

slightly new way of talking. I try and

discourage, you know, feminists from

sort of framing everything in kind of

men are doing this to us kind of way.

And I think that the real downfall of a

lot of this discussion is it's almost

impossible to have a conversation about

men on its own terms in lots of these

parts of the right without it having to

some point women's fault. And if we

could just break that chain, those

conversations would be a lot healthier.

And I think liberals would be a lot

happier in participating in them. Right?

If it can be actually maybe we got some

bits of the COVID response wrong.

Schools should have opened earlier in

California. That's a conversation people

are going to be much happier to have if

it's not done. Some childless cow did

this to you. Right. Cuz at that point

I'm like, I'm out. I'm not interested in

what else you have to say at that point.

Sorry. If you can't keep a if you can't

keep a civil tongue in your head, then

we won't have this argument. There's

this interesting dimension in a bunch of

these books where it does feel to me

you're watching um both in these books

actually and in culture broadly men

import what has more traditionally been

a huge problem for women and girls

really quite rapidly which is this

obsession with unrealizable body

aesthetics. Um, Bronze Age pervert, true

to the name, is known for constantly

posting pictures of, you know, tanned

and muscled male bodies. Raw egg

nationalist Charles Cornish Dale

weightlifter you talks a lot about that

in in his book. Um, there's this whole

idea of the pursuit of beauty

as a way of aligning yourself to higher

good. This is from the bronze age

perfect mindset in in in its sort of

weird internet grammar. In same way see

from all this that aesthetic physique

has the most cosmic significance and it

is because of what I've said so far that

aesthetic bodies are a window to the

other side because they are the pinnacle

of nature.

The book is full of just like hatred for

the obese he keeps calling like yeasty

you know physiques. Um, you now see

Clavvicular who you know is like the

biggest streamer of the moment who is

this looks maxer who has like [snorts] I

think has become deranged and is clearly

in a very unhealthy spiral appearing in

court overdosing on live streaming, you

know, as he has this like crazy stack of

testosterone and other things that have

made him infertile. it like you're

watching like a like a mass social body

dysmorphia emerge very rapidly it seems

to me among men and one thing I see in

the stuff in the new right like this is

like the one place I want to talk about

this more broadly but the one place

where they seem to have an idea of

selfmastery or discipline for men but

it's all this homosocial weightlifting

competition

>> that's the interesting thing about it um

is that it's all done for other men and

you used to find people on the men's

rights inter internet would talk about

women as intraocial intraexual

competition and the fact that they were

all kind of doing all these sort of

things for each other. And I think, you

know, I just think about that a lot is

that a lot of it is done to impress

other men. Um, at the same time as

having this intense anxiety about about

homosexuality, but it also has this deep

and that quote you you bring out has

this deeper eugenic quality to it.

Right? If you go back and read Buck

versus Bell, the famous eugenic um

judgment by the Supreme Court, you know,

this idea of the unfit, you know, the

morons, the imbeciles, and then the

physically handicapped and and and the

degenerate, you know, that that kind of

Nazi language. There is the idea that

there are life's winners who are

physically perfect and mentally acute

and then there are life's losers who are

you can even read in their features that

they are subhuman. Yeah. That's got such

a long dark history. um in in even in in

America on the left as well as the right

you know in California there were

thousands of people sterilized for

mental and physical disabilities in the

20th century. So these are ideas that

were in circulation and they could be

again these are not you know we like to

think that all these things just got

ruled out completely after the second

world war. Why so many other things that

you would never have thought would come

back have come back. this idea that

there are there are kind of yeah there

are sort of subhumans,

you know, you find them all that so

often in in the kind of right-wing and

non-discourse on things like X. You see

it all over these books, too. I mean,

there's an explicit passage in Bronze

Age Mindset where he talks about the

problem of the Jews and their palid,

nerdy,

you know, they they've made everybody

want to be these intellectual,

conceptual,

you know, not sort of connected to the

real vital forces of of of being alive.

And I mean, this is very old-fashioned

anti-semitism.

And he, you know, tries to soften him by

saying, well, when I say the Jews, I'm

not saying just the Jews or all the

Jews, but but it's straightforward. I

mean he you know he uses the term uh

directly

which is maybe to say all this is very

old.

>> This is all very old and it and it

expresses itself as old, right? It's

bronze age. It's um you know going back

into Christian nationalism. It it it is

all making this argument that modernity

has taken a wrong turn. It has taken a

wrong turn in all of this equality among

men and women, among people of different

races and ethnic backgrounds, among the

idea that people in different countries

have equal worth. A lot of it is framed

as like a debate about gender roles or,

you know, sexual facts, but a huge

amount of it just about the past versus

the present and whether or not our

modern values are a betrayal of our

baser and more fundamental instincts. I

mean that's why it's appealing because

it's saying if if you are alive today

and unhappy it's because of modernity

and it may be any other number of other

things but it gives you know it

specifically addresses itself to people

who are alienated by society in whatever

way it might be and latches on to that

you know who does someone like Andrew

Tate appeal to to go back to the kind of

broader manosphere it's actually young

teenage boys right it's actually at that

period of of age where you know you're

getting all these messages about how men

are patriarchs and toxic masculinity and

blah blah blah but you are you know

maybe small and frightened and you don't

really know if you're going to have any

friends or girls who want going to want

to date you. It praise on people at the

most insecure moments of their life. For

a long time, you know, the the men's

rights internet was specifically aimed

itself to like recent divorcees who were

also absolutely primed to hear some, you

know, thoughts about how women are kind

of pretty awful. And and I you know I

think that is I think that is really sad

because that's the bit where I I find

these people quite predatory if they are

taking people who have got genuine

personal problems and supplying a kind

of ready-made like bad guy for them to

fixate onto which is probably not going

to go anywhere like what can you do

about these things if you think that the

world is rigged against you. This is

funny cuz they all believe very much in

like being a you know having agency. But

if you feel that the world is this

gyocray

then like how how are you supposed to

navigate that? You just you know you

just keep consuming more of their

content and kind of wallowing in your

own stew. We we've been talking here

about various essays and and books

written by the the men of this, but one

of I think the most influential essays

in the space that is also framed as more

of an actionable set of policy ideas is

by Helen Andrews in her essay the great

feminization.

So who is Helen Andrews and and what was

the argument of that piece? Helen

Andrews writes for compact uh magazine

and uh that you know the argument with

that it starts with Larry Summers being

outed from president of Harvard in the

2000s and this is the kind of first

moment really when there were so many

women in academia that they had a

hysterical overreaction to his public

comments that maybe there weren't so

many women in STEM because you know just

innate lack of aptitude or interest

essentially and this is portrayed as

this kind of warning sign of like the

feminist freakouts that are about going

to dominate the next two decades. And

then Andrews goes on to make this case

that you have far more female lawyers

for far more female doctors, far more

female academics. And they are not

interested in the pursuit of truth and

justice and rigor. They are driven by

feelings. And so in the law that will

translate to the fact that they will

just feel quite bad for criminals and

kind of not want to discipline them and

punish them appropriately. In academia,

it means that you stop asking hard

questions with uncomfortable answers and

you instead end up having a kind of

hippie kumbaya drum circle where

everybody talks about their

positionality. And there is obviously

something there that spoke to a lot of

people. I mean the reason that I wrote

about it is that again I had this sense

of smoke and sand in that I tried to go

through the specific evidential claims

that were being made and see whether or

not they they stack up. One of which

being that wokeness is an epiphenomenon

of demographic feminization. There's a

something to practice as a tongue

twister. But the idea essentially that

the if you get too many women in a in an

organization, it will collapse into kind

of bitching and backbiting and all the

things that characterized that period of

whatever you [snorts] want to call that

peak woke of 2020. And it was incredibly

viral essay. Um, you know, I wrote a lot

of articles taking issue with some of

the things that happened in that period.

I don't know if you can separate out

correl correlation and causation in all

of those times. I don't think you can

ever draw a neat line which is when

women in organization get above 60% then

organization collapses and that's kind

of the claim that basically Andrews

makes which is that that you know these

bureaucracies run by women become just

self-perpetuating and and squalid well

you know go and read like you know the

government inspector or something like

that bureaucracies have been cfka was

onto this when it was all men this is

just a quality of bureaucracy it's just

now that the we have moved into a

situation in which the majority to

people in things like HR, university

administration, you know, they are

female that it's become, well, hang on a

minute, this is just yet another sign of

of creeping evil feminization. The other

one that got to me was I, you know, I

looked into the Larry Summers thing.

First of all, those his reported

comments were very much skimming the

surface of what his private emails to

Jeffrey Epstein reveal his views to on

gender to be. And I'm not entirely

confident that I want to say that that

his colleagues who obviously knew him a

lot better didn't think this is a very

good chance to get rid of somebody who

we think might be a liability to us.

Often in cancellations that I've

covered, there has been something else

going on, something office politicsy

going on. The other thing that I found

out was 2006, the year that happened,

four-fifths of Harvard's tenure faculty

were men. So the claim is, yeah, there

was a feminist backlash to the things he

said, but it took place within an

organization that was still at that

point ruled and run by men. So it's not

as simple as suddenly Harvard became a

citadel of women and therefore at that

point it didn't tolerate anybody saying

anything it disagreed with. There's much

more complicated things going on.

>> I found that essay so strange and

maddening. Um, and [snorts]

uh, she was on Ross' show, which is an

episode worth watching, debating that.

But

her argument,

>> well, she was on exactly the same

problem in that episode of Ross' Show.

She's on with Leila Labresco Sergeant,

and they bring up a discrimination case,

which she frames as being some women

ejected to a kind of slightly porny

poster, and it turns out to have been a

pretty explicitly pornographic poster,

and the woman, you know, in a very

male-dominated workplace experienced

that as sexually aggressive. Once you

get to that stage with an essaist where

you go, I'm going to have to go and

follow your every single citation down

the rabbit hole to find out if you've

really pre represented this or have you

just, you know, have you have you come

to a conclusion first and just had this

chain of stuff that lines up below it

that that to me is is fatal. So I tried,

you know, I like you, I tried to read

things with an open mind. I think she

captured something important that many

people felt otherwise there wouldn't

have been such a reaction to it. But I I

I became increasingly annoyed at the

vibesiness of it.

>> Well, there's just this reality that the

essay, I think, avoids confronting in

any way. So, her basic argument, among

other things, is cancellation is an

explicitly female way of meeting out

punishment. Cancellation is a a feminine

punishment, whereas getting punched in

the face is a male punishment. And so

this age of cancellation just reflected

the tipping point of of women taking

over work forces among just other

completely obvious questions about this.

Is cancellation an exclusively female

way of doing things? Or when the Trump

administration went around getting

people fired for saying a bad thing

about Charlie Kirk after his murder or

when they went around firing anybody who

had used the term diversity in a grant

application.

was that uh cancellation being done by a

very maledominated structure. It it's

just it's constant to watch what

she is describing as a

outcome of uh female domination and to

say no this is quite obviously what

social media makes possible and that the

period in which he's talking is a period

of algorithmic social media taking over

as the primary communications platforms

and in this period you also have Slack

coming into workplaces

and it creates this capacity

for like individual instances to be

raised up to ricochet everywhere and but

you can just look around you look on the

right you look as as you're noting I

mean did the communists not cancel

people did they handle everything by

having a like a upfront direct

discussion about their differences in

which the men hashed it out and got to a

truth outcome

>> was Senator McCarthy actually secretly a

woman is a really [laughter] big thing

we should know but like the so um Even

the word ostracism, right? The word

ostracism comes from the ancient Greek

practice of writing down people's names

on a is it like a stone or pottery

tablet and then they are banished from

outside the city walls. That is done in

a society in which women were explicitly

secondass citizens. You can take all the

women out and people will still decide

that there are sometimes ways that you

settle disputes that don't involve

violence. But you're right, partly yes,

this is again this is a correlation

causation question, right? Yes,

obviously things like cancellations and

indirect conflict have increased, but is

that just part of a wider social shift

away from violence? Someone like Steven

Pinker would argue that's just true. We

live in a less violent society than our

equivalent countries were in 1800 when

people were jeweling. And is that is

that about women's entry into the public

square? Maybe it is, but maybe it's also

about, you know, a bunch of other

things, too. Here here's the other thing

that I found very strange in a bunch of

these different books and what you just

said gets it in. They don't really try

to argue normatively that the changes

have been bad.

>> So I think dueling was bad.

>> Big strong. I'm going to make this I'm

going to make this claim

>> and

I think that the way we have gotten I

mean maybe until very recent past but

but over time better and better and

better at living in complex societies

without falling into civil war with each

other. I think that has been a human

advance

that the kind of self-mastery

we have

developed and the virtues of liberal

democracy that became taken often for

granted even if not always followed

uh they reflected progress. Um, one

thing I found strange about BAP, about

the the last men, which particularly I

found this flaw in, you know, he has all

this thing about how if you rub

testosterone gel on men and then put

them in a dominance game, they're more

comfortable with hierarchy.

Is that good? Like, am I supposed to

prefer that they don't look for more

win-win outcomes when you like slather?

Like, I don't want to be slathered in

testosterone and become uh worse at

cooperation. I have enough trouble like

like limiting my own competitive

instincts as it is. And you know it's in

Helen Andrew's piece too that you know

what she in some ways if I'm going to be

maximally generous is talking about the

HRification

of you know modernity and yes in

modernity you have a lot of big

institutions and as institutions get

bigger they bureaucratize and this can

be a problem. I've written a book

abundance in part about the problems of

institutional incentives taking over.

But nevertheless, there is a dynamic

here where you are trying to make

complexity and scale work at a very high

level. And that does require you to have

rules, procedures, approaches to

managing difference that are not

dueling.

And I bring this up both because I think

it's a weakness in the pieces, but also

because I think it actually gets at

something that is significant here,

which is

the implicit vision and sometimes the

explicit vision of masculinity in these

books I found

deeply depressing, like almost

repellent. And what I

>> It's funny. Yeah, it's funny you say

that because it it made me think that

none of these things are the things that

I love about men. You know, I'm someone

who's always had loads of male friends

and very happily married for a decade.

And some of the things I love about men

are, for example, their ability to

become completely nerdly obsessed with

very stupid things. You know, just like

that like level of intensity of focus.

Um, you know, I absolutely love my dad's

terrible jokes that are passed into

family law that we all repeat back to

him. You know, there are just so many

different models of masculinity that are

just I I think the word I would put is

comfortable. You know, that idea of the

the great thing that you become a dad or

you you follow your interests and you

become comfortable with the person you

are and you just radiate that. Maybe,

you know, maybe you are a bit weird.

Maybe you're into model trains, whatever

it might be, that's all good. You know,

you'd like to read a lot of books about

the Second World War. All of these

things are very true of many of my

friends. You know, just I was just

having a conversation about my article

with somebody who who said, "Oh, yeah.

You know, my friend's boyfriend got

really into all this stuff. And of

course, they're not together anymore,

right? So, women don't want to be with

anxious, controlling men. And as a

result of the fact that they can earn

their own wages and we have divorce,

they don't have to be. So, you have to

find some way in which they have to put

up with it. But you know, I just I I I

just think if you really want to if you

really want a successful relationship

with a woman, probably looks maxing is

less good than being thoughtful sending

a gift occasionally [laughter] like you

know I think if you ask I mean I'm

speaking on behalf of all women here

always a good idea but if you said do

you want like 10 out of 10 incredibly

chiseled boyfriend or do you want one

who like you know will have dinner ready

for you when you've had a really long

day out almost all of them I think would

probably pick the small thoughtful acts

of kindness over Stone Cold Hottie. Like

I just think that's how it works. And I

think that's again is kind of it's a

it's a big part of this political

project is is very difficult to

accomplish if women don't have to put up

with it. But what I find so unsettling

about the visions of masculinity and

lots of these books is they seem so

anxious at the same time as calling

women anxious. They seem so unsettled,

so on their edge. They don't they don't

feel happy. They feel stressful to me.

Like and that's me reading them as a

woman. I don't know if you had the same

experience as a man. I'll go maybe

further than you as a man who loves

being nerdly obsessed with issues. Uh I

>> I think it is fair to say that a vision

of masculinity has to begin at some

level with recognizing that biologically

men are stronger, more aggressive just

physically.

And as such, masculinity in its healthy

spaces and its healthy development

has tended to insist upon selfmastery

and discipline. It is a way of

channeling

strength and competitiveness and

aggression and yes, testosterone and

thymos

in a direction that is pro-social,

in a direction that is

committed to its obligations to others.

to children. I am amazed at how little

there is about fatherhood in these

books.

>> But that's by as with many eugenicist

fans, lots of these people don't have

kids themselves and also while having

lots of you know attacks on childless

cat ladies. Yes.

>> Lots of these people also don't have

children. They it was this one as as I

read more of this and I read you know

some of the people you had had written

about I had this is what I mean that I

came out less sympathetic to all this

and I went into it with I had assumed

that all these talk all this talk about

virtue somewhere somebody was going to

talk about what I understood to be

virtues but no they just like the word

virtues because it sounds old and they

like old things because they think it

was better before there's no virtues

anywhere here and the and the way you

the way you see it is in the people who

are now, I think,

the leading voices.

You have Donald Trump, this virtuous,

disinhibited, incredibly corrupt man

with his multiple wives, his like

endless amount of sexual harassment, his

inability to control himself and be

decent to other people. You have Nick

Fuentes. It's like incel in a basement

railing against women's unmarried has no

children does not connect himself in

obligations to others to community to

any of the things that build the kind of

civilization he claims to want Doug

Wilson this national Christian

nationalists pastor who as you mentioned

is you know the founder of the se Pete

Hexath is in Pete Hex has tweeted out

his Doug Wilson's attacks on women

voting. Doug Wilson who like has severed

his Christianity from all of the

humility and care and compassion and

radicalism that you just read on the

literal words of the Bible. I mean, what

is a sermon? Where is a sermon of the

mount in any of his work? I find it

appalling. I I I really this was a part

that like I actually found myself having

a more a more emotional reaction to

like where any good men here. I'm not

against the critique that the left did

not create space for a healthy vision of

masculinity. I agree with that critique.

But

this is so warped where [snorts]

these people have ended up. This is a

terrible vision of what it means for a

man. It means to be an adult.

>> Yeah. I don't want to live in the world

that they envision. You know, I And I

think it's also a recipe for anxiety.

You know, this idea that you have to

have a woman that you control and

actually if you if you if she does

things, if she's dis disobedient, that's

a bad reflection on you and it's

humiliating to you, I think is a recipe

for both violence in relationships, but

also deep insecurity and unhappiness.

You should have somebody for me the

vision of like equal partnerships is

just that it it's so much more relaxing.

You know, you have freely chosen each

other and every day you make that

commitment to stay together. It's not

like if one of you leaves you'll be

destitute and you know or you know

whatever it might be or the or you're

living in fear all the time. You have

freely made this commitment. To me, that

is a much more positive vision for a

heterosexual relationship than the kind

of thing that I'm seeing in this, which

is, you know, about kind of, you know,

capturing a woman and kind of and

holding on tight to her and having these

kids that are there because essentially

they're miniature versions of you,

right? That they perpetuate your empire.

You see that in the kind of Elon Musk

belief that he wants to use surrogates

to have like, you know, to make himself

the modern Genghish Khan.

>> I mean, man, so many of friends I know

have like zero one kid.

>> That's why I'm like I'm always banging

the baby drum. I like cuz I'm like, man,

civilization's going to, you know,

collapse and no big deal.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, where do you think

people come from? Like some magical

people factory. [laughter]

>> Where's the bit in that about how joyful

it is to be raising children? You know,

the idea that you are, you know, these

these are their own independent human

beings. They're not really, you know,

the carriers of your glorious surname

into eternity. I I didn't have a

particularly emotional reaction to it.

And I think I think I've just burned out

my circuits after 15 years of writing

about feminism because I just feel like

misogyny is so deep a bigotry. It's so

casually indulged. It's not treated

seriously. If these guys were saying

going around saying, "I don't think

black people should vote. I don't think

Jews should vote." It wouldn't be seen

as, "Oh, aren't they kind of cute and

putting some edgy things in them?"

Actually, even has even Nick Fuentes

gone that far, right? Whereas you can

say it about women because there's an

assumption that it's a part of a

continuum that starts with kind of

standup comics doing stuff about how

their girlfriend is annoying. This is

all kind of good rhombus battle. The sex

is fun. I mean, I know that these people

despise me and everything about my life

and and I I sort of don't care because I

like my life and I think it's a pretty

good life. you know there is service

involved to other people and I think

that I try and think about other people

more than I think about myself and and

and all of those things I do find a bit

missing in this literature right I I

think it's also why it's so popular now

is that a lot of it is essentially

self-help and that is the dominant

literary genre of the age and the kind

of dominant social media genre of the

age

>> this is what I want to say about it

because this is where I think I actually

feel very strongly about it I care about

it because it is actually popular not

Not necessarily some of the individual

people we're talking here, but Andrew

Tate clips, Nick Fuentes clips, right?

These things are exerting a real

cultural pull. And it is self-help.

And it is selfhelp