Ep 1392 | Sex-Positive No More: Why This Sexologist Changed Her Mind on P*rn | Dr. Debra Soh

0:00I previously thought that porn was just benign entertainment for adults as long as they're not hurting anyone who am I to judge. For me to be willing to change my mind about it was I mean asking myself why is it people are not having sex? I mean if you look at the statistics across multiple data sets the number I kept seeing is one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the past year. I began really asking why is this happening and what is taking the place of that connection. Porn is so powerful in terms of acting as a replacement for sex. Porn viewing, especially excessive porn viewing, tends to be associated with boredom, lack of meaning in life, anxiety. These are issues that need to be addressed as opposed to society telling people, oh you can watch as much porn as you want and it's not unhealthy. Dr. So, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. So a few years ago I had you on,

1:01you wrote a book about the end of gender and now you've written a book about the end of sex, sex distinction rather. And so you're writing about the ending of things. In this case what are you talking about? So you're right, my first book, The End of Gender is fun because the title sounds very progressive but it was basically talking about gender ideology and how it has no place in education, no place in dictating any social policy or the way we think about gender. So, sex distinction is in a similar vein in that I'm calling out basically progressive science denial and saying these views around sexuality and in particular so-called sex positivity are actually harmful, very harmful even though they're being pushed by mainstream sex experts and sexuality researchers. And sex distinction is very much about how there is this larger sex recession or dating recession happening. Birth rates are down, people are choosing to turn to sexual surrogates instead of having actual sexual partners. And my interest in sexuality and this decline in sex is because it is a

2:04reflection of a lack of intimacy, a lack of connection more broadly in society which I find quite worrisome. And would you say that your view on sex and sexuality has changed even in the past few years or are you just writing about kind of what you have seen for a very long time working as a sexologist in this industry? I would say both. I would say definitely my own views around sexuality have changed a lot even since the last time I spoke with you about my first book. I was still very much quote sex positive at that time and I think that is a relic of having been in academia for so long and also working within the field of sex research. There really are certain parameters within which you have to comport yourself as a scientist and also in terms of the questions you ask and the type of research you pursue. So I don't want to say this about all of my colleagues and friends who are still in the field because there are some genuinely good scientists who are unbiased, they're not activists, they don't have a political agenda, they really just want to do good research

3:07but I would say there are very many scientists in the field who also have political motivations and their particular narratives that they want to push on the public because they have a larger movement or goal that they are seeking to achieve. So my goal with this book is not to tell people how to live their lives but just to offer research that is unbiased and I think many people, I'm sure in your audience they are already aware that there's something not right in terms of the zeitgeist around sexuality nowadays and what's being told to the public, what the cultural norms are but here's some evidence that they can point to that says here's why that intuition or those feelings you have or the values you have are actually correct and you don't have to listen to basically the mainstream so-called experts about it. You said that a few years ago when you were on my show you would have described yourself as sex positive. How would you summarize what that means or what that meant to you then? Sex positivity is a movement or ideology that revolves around

4:09this idea that anything goes sexually essentially so long as both people or however many people who are involved consent and that it's known as place to judge that and that in fact it should be celebrated to some degree and if you are not on board with this you are quote sex negative or there's something wrong about you or you're bad and bad or what have you. I agree to the extent that I don't think there should be shame around people embracing their sexuality so long as it's not hurting themselves or other people I don't think there should necessarily be shame around sexuality or discussions of sexuality but they are private conversations they are sensitive conversations I don't think it should be something that you should be talking about with strangers say or necessarily in public when they're children around things like that. I mean it's gotten to the point now where I see people enjoying kink in public in front of children and around people who haven't no desire interest partaking in that and things like I guess we'll get into some of the subjects in sex distinction things like how young people are feeling. Course in many cases to go

5:09along with certain sexual activities that they don't necessarily want to partake in but they don't want to say no or they don't feel they can say no because they don't want to be seen as boring or sexually unappealing there's a sense of peer pressure around that so there are various subjects I've really changed my view on say with regard to pornography or like I said kink or even sex dolls and sex robots and technology that's coming in to replace or amplify human sexuality in ways that are not actually conducive to human connection and I don't think are good for us at the end of the day. Yeah it's so interesting because I've talked about this idea as of consent being the only moral standard the only standard of what is right and what is wrong and I'm talking from a Christian perspective and so I'm like it consent is one component of morality but it is not the only is not the only component there are things that people consent to that are morally wrong of course from our Christian perspective you're writing from a secular psychological scientific perspective

6:13and it seems like you're kind of pushing back on this idea that consent is the only standard of what our sexual ethics should be. Right because if you look at something like say BDSM which is basically say domesticism so people who enjoy either harming their partner or being harmed during sexual activity and in the eyes of sex positivity or this consent model so long as you consent to being harmed or harmed or your partner consents to it then that's okay but I don't think people should be able to consent to abuse and I also think we should be talking more broadly about why is it some people enjoy being abused during sexual activity as opposed to saying okay they consented to it so it's not our place to question that because if you do basically look under the hood of the car and try to figure out why is it people feel this way or why do people gravitate toward these behaviors usually there are other reasons usually there are unfortunate things that happen to them when they're younger that let them to be interested in these proclivities as opposed

7:15to it being something just fun and exciting and new that people want to do and I do think there's a difference between say people who are playful or say in a monogamous relationship if you want to spice things up with your partner but again in a way that's not actually harming your partner and it's not degrading them it's not degrading yourself but nowadays it's really seen as it's really frowned upon to question any of this and I think many people are reluctant especially if you look within the field of sex research if you if you question or you um criticize any of these ideas you're gonna get kicked out pretty quickly yeah you mentioned that you know there shouldn't be shame around sex and sexuality in those kind of conversations as long as you're not hurting yourself or other people but I did hear you mention in kind of like the list of things that you seem to have changed your mind on like sex robots and some people might say well you know what's what's wrong with that why even have any opinion on that it's totally neutral this is not a human being

8:17so what's wrong with that kind of development of people using objects for their sexual pleasure so I previously thought we were not going to see realistic sex robots in our lifetimes I really thought that it was going to happen decades if not or that such a thing could never really actually exist because the technology could not possibly be so good that a robot could emulate a human being so convincingly but I have seen how quickly this technology is advancing and I do see it uh being implemented very soon maybe not in the next five years but somewhere around I'm within the next decade for sure when I look at what smart phones and social media have done to us and screens more broadly once this technology becomes mainstream I'm really worried and AI companions I have a chapter on that in sex distinction I really think the the entire dynamic between men and women and the concept of relationships and marriage and again intimacy and closeness with the partner is going to come radically be changed and challenged and so my issue with it I previously I thought you

9:19as a scientist or as a scientist a former scientist why not just let the technology flourish and isn't that a wonderful thing that we have the ability to create a form of being that may not be human but it's so similar to humans that it's remarkable and intellectually I still think there's something interesting about that but we have to think also about from a practical standpoint what are going to be the implications or the consequences of that technology again if we already see people turning away from human other human beings and choosing objects as opposed to fostering that real connection and so we don't have data to suggest that this technology is not going to affect human sexuality um previously I thought okay that lack of data well we should just do studies but I realize it's going to be impossible to do objective studies because people are not going to want to put out findings saying that this technology is potentially dangerous so what have you or bad for people's relationships and marriages because that's just not something that researchers

10:23in the field are necessarily they feel compelled to do right so there's a bias in that way and then also when I see what say AI companions are doing to people I mean I tested out dozens of AI boyfriend and girlfriends um on various platforms and they're so realistic and they're so compelling I fully understand why people are falling in love with their AIs while they're choosing their AIs over other human beings as partners and then also we see the trend of this in children there's a study that came out of the UK recently that found in teenage boys one in five know someone who's in a relationship with an AI and one in three prefers talking to an AI over a real life person so once this starts reaching children that's when it really disturbs and and upsets me because they don't even have a chance to develop in a healthy way and these kids don't know right I think many parents also don't know they might not even know that their kids are using this technology so I don't want to blame the parents for that but that's where I started to change my mind on the robot conversation because sex dolls already are very popular and once you can

11:28download an AI brain essentially into that physical vessel that's like a whole other um a whole other can of worms that that's going to be opened. All right quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day and that is cove pure I love this sponsor we use this every day it is a water filtration system that sits on your countertop we've got it in a cabinet we don't have to hide it because it's really beautiful it comes in all of these colors it looks really sleek and sophisticated but we've got it kind of tucked away really easy to use easy to change my kids can easily use it I love that it's reverse osmosis and so you know it's getting out all of those contaminants that you just don't want in your water but I also love how many modes it has and so out of this filter you can get cold water you can get warm water you can get hot water and so no matter what you're making whether it's tea or whether you're mixing some cold lemonade whatever it is you can get that with your cove pure

12:30filter it really is so simple to use works so well we've been using it ever since we caught one that's what ours looks like it's black right there that you can see in the picture I highly recommend this better best water filtration system that I have ever used go to cove pure cove.com slash alley you can get $250 off cove pure.com slash alley I just imagine that this really affects how someone views a person and treats a person it's kind of like and this is not necessarily what you're talking about but I think about the elevation of animals in some cases is being like just as important as humans it turns out that that doesn't mean that we are treating all animals better it also means that we end up degrading the dignity and the sacredness of what it means to be a human there's this chesterton quote he was

13:30a Catholic theologian and he said like wherever you see animal worship you also see human sacrifice it's actually that elevating one thing can degrade to degrade rather the other thing that was that was really meant for the you know adoration that you are giving it and I think about that with robots I don't just fear that people are viewing AI or viewing robots as human and so they're going to treat them with the same politeness and consideration that they would treat another person but that they will actually degrade how they treat human beings that they will start treating humans like objects that they will start treating their you know the people that they're with as robots as people just to serve them as entities that just exist for their pleasure I don't know about from your perspective like what you see the harm is because I could see people asking what's the problem with them having an AI girlfriend or boyfriend I'm like well it's not what we're

14:31meant for and to be human is to be sacred and we're exchanging that for something far less and I think it really affects our human relationships not to go on that rant but from your psychological perspective like how would you explain to someone no this is not a good thing for people well like you said I mean if you're especially working at kids now if they're what they learn about the opposite sex or what they learn about interacting with the opposite sex and relationships and dating and even signaling romantic interests is with a machine as opposed to a real life person that's really going to skew their perspective and I think what young boys find so alluring about this technology is that they don't ever have to deal with rejection they don't have to deal with someone potentially saying no or disagreeing or I mean both sex as I guess with girls two who might be using this technology or women saying okay I like that my AI boyfriend is always

15:33there for me is always consoling me when you are interacting with an AI the AI doesn't have needs of its own so it can never say to you I want to talk with something you don't want to talk about it's never going to nag you it's never going to give you a hard time but that's not the reality of real life relationships so if you grow up and that's the norm if and when you do choose to try and date it's going to be such an awful experience because you're used to your so-called partner giving you exactly what you want all the time and they're available for you all the time which other human beings are not so that's one part of it and then also my criticism of porn has come from I mean I used to write for a very well-known men's magazine that features nude women I was a column a regular columnist for that magazine so my views on porn has have changed a lot and especially in writing this book and when I look at what pornography is doing especially to young minds and I would even say to young people more broadly like I know millennials we grew up with internet

16:33porn I don't think we were as negatively affected as Gen Z say but I do think there are some effects there because there is a literature showing that with early exposure to pornography it leads to negative outcomes like hypersexuality greater propensity for risky sex so that means having sex with many people having unprotected sex being under the influence of drugs and alcohol when having sex so these are teenagers you know they're not making the best decisions so again if you are if this is the norm for you as a child there's a young person and say now this is available in the in the context of a physical being even though it's not a human being I can't help but think that is going to affect how you view the opposite sex and also it's going even if it's not in a sexual interaction just how men potentially view women more generally and that sounds like such a cliche but at the same time I don't see I don't see how that would not be the case because what we consume is going to

17:35affect the way we view ourselves and the way we view other people yeah there just seem to be an argument about that just making the making the claim based on the fact that what you consume ends up dictating what you think it just ends up influencing your perspectives that's not even something that's arguable and yet you will see people online denying that not only when it comes to pornography but really anything we watch or listen to that that has no effect on how someone thinks or how someone behaves but it very obviously does I'm interested to hear you expound on that more you're changing views on pornography specifically it sounds like before you thought it was maybe like a neutral tool and you're seeing its consequences more and more can you kind of go deeper into that I previously thought that porn was just benign entertainment for adults and that this is something that people look at it's just it's their personal business and as long as they're not hurting anyone

18:42who am I to judge and I have to say it's very the feedback I've gotten in terms of my criticism of porn I was surprised because it seems to be a very taboo thing maybe it's as a woman criticizing porn which is something that men typically like although I would say more women are probably having issues with porn nowadays because they were exposed to it at such a young age and because it is so readily available but I do think for some reason culturally it's become so normalized that people understandably like it and they get upset when you tell them it's not good for them even though I again I don't think it is and for me to be willing to change my mind about it was I mean asking myself why is it people are not having sex I mean if you look at the statistics across multiple data sets the number I kept seeing is one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the past year and this is across all developed countries it's not just in the

19:43West it's in the East also and it doesn't matter if you're married or single even I mean the fact that married people are having less sex to me is very strange and concerning not out of judgment just that when you have a regular sexual partner it's unusual that people would be choosing not to have sex with them so I began really asking why is this happening and what is taking the place of that connection and people have been saying to me for years that porn is doing something weird to people's sex drives and pulling them away from wanting to actually couple up and diminishing that interest in actual women like real life women and I was very skeptical for so long but then when I started to really think about it and I went back and looked at the research literature I thought you know porn is so powerful in terms of its way its ways of activating the brain and acting as a replacement for sex essentially because the same brain network is activated during porn viewing as is activated during sexual activity so if you are essentially getting the benefits

20:44or what seem to be the benefits of sex or the enjoyment of sex by watching it on a screen well it's understandable why young people are not interested in actually engaging with each other and I think especially post me too which has made it very difficult for men to want to approach women they don't know or to even interact with women they do know because they're afraid that if she doesn't appreciate that attention that she could ruin his life but I still think people should meet in person I don't think they should be an ops or social media to meet I understand it's terrifying but I do think that's a healthier way to do it and a more successful way to do it and the other thing is because porn there's a release of with orgasm you feel good you're relaxed after it's de-stresses a person so it actually dampens the motivation for young men to go out and actually meet women in real life and I've had young men tell me this that it was only after they actually cut out porn that they had this renewed motivation to actually go and talk to women in real life because if you know

21:47say you're in public and you see an attractive woman but you're a little bit intimidated you don't know if you should talk to her you know in the back of your mind that you can always turn to pornography then it really disincentivizes you from taking that risk and actually approaching uh whoever it is right so I previously I just assumed like everyone watches porn especially for men but I do think there's this growing movement of young men who are turning away from this because they recognize that it's not good for them and that in some cases it's destroying their life especially if you're watching it for hours a day multiple times a day you can't have a job you can't go to school you can't have healthy relationships in that case and porn viewing especially excessive porn viewing tends to be associated with boredom uh lack of meaningless uh lack of meaning in life anxiety so these are issues that need to be addressed as opposed to society telling people oh you can watch as much porn as you want and it's not unhealthy. All right next sponsor my friends add a lion's to finning freedom we have talked to many of

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23:51correct the things that did it for you in the beginning when you first saw pornography just two people having sex might not do it for you forever and so I've heard of kind of these rabbit holes that especially young men go down that maybe they didn't start looking for a certain kind of pornography or a certain category it wasn't interesting to them but as time goes on they click on a different video they explore a different category and suddenly like their desires are changed and what they're into and what turns them on and what does it for them whatever that changes over time and can actually lead them to the place of what you were talking about of liking violent sex or liking these kinds of degrading forms of sex and sexual activity that are really not good for them and other people from your psychological perspective is that true of how the brain works? I think it depends on at what age someone is when they first start watching online porn so I would say of say older generations where they were not exposed to online porn especially today's

24:56iteration of online porn if they were not exposed to that prior to puberty or during sexual development if they have abhorrent sexual interests or say non-concentral sexual interests or they're abusive of women I don't think it's necessarily porn that made them that way or that made them have these interests it's more likely due to their upbringing or experiences they had when they were younger that have led them to have negative use of women or to be into various kinks it's different I would say for kids because their brains I'm not finished developing and so if they are pairing this I mean for for kids when they see pornography online porn for the first time many of them find it quite frightening they don't know what it is but they know that they shouldn't be looking at it and they're in many cases it's really violent it's scary and they don't like it but at the same time they know this is somehow related to sex so in their mind they think this is what sex actually is for older generations what I've found in my research is that they may say that they

25:56started off looking at more benign content and then over time it's the algorithm that fed them more extreme forms of pornography but if you actually sit and have you know an in-depth discussion many of these individuals will say actually that was the thing that they liked all along it just took them a while to admit it to themselves and actually seek it out whereas with kids I'm concerned that their exposure to this at such a young age is actually going to increase the likelihood that they're going to find these bizarre things sexually rousing or these acts enjoyable because they're pairing it with early sexual development and again it's crazy to me because there are experts in the field who will say early porn exposure is benign it doesn't harm children which I think is absolute nonsense so yeah I mean when you look at statistics it's what one in seven kids the average age that kids see porn now is 12 and that number is getting that age is getting younger and younger so when I think of a random group of children you think

26:57of how many of them in that group have statistically speaking seen porn that's not acceptable to me yeah you've studied gender you're studying sexuality or you've been studying sexuality for a very long time before you've been started talking about the idea of transgenderism do you see a connection between those two things I know that I've talked to a lot of D-transitioners and many of them especially men not really women for the women that I've talked to it tends to be that they had some kind of traumatic sexual event or something that made them want to reject their feminine bodies for men very often a commonality that I hear is some kind of sexual desire or a certain kind of porn that they got addicted to and that's not to say that they never had an idea of being a woman before they saw that kind of porn but they definitely felt affirmed when watching it would be BDSM or it would be like what's called sissy porn or things like that they felt that oh my gosh

28:01this is who I really am and so I'm wondering what you think about that connection that just anecdotally I tend to see when it comes to men who identify as women and the kind of sexual kinks and pornography that they participate in or watch I would agree with you for sure and I think it's pretty remarkable that in the interviews you've done you've noticed the same trends that we see in research as well so both of those subjects in terms of why young women and young men or just women and men and men more broadly are choosing to transition to live as the opposite sex as you know it was a really contentious area of research and so there are a few studies that are done objectively but if you speak to people in the field who work predominantly with these populations they'll tell you the same thing so if with young women unfortunately it tends to be correlated with the history of sexual trauma and then for men it is more of a parapheria so parapheria are unusual sexual interests and it depends

29:02with the men whether they are identifying as gay or straight so if this is more so I'd say in the ones who are straight so they're sexually attracted to women but it's like having a cross-dressing fetish except it is more of a permanent or anatomical fetish around women's bodies and wanting to have a woman's body because they find that sexually rousing so as you mentioned with sissy porn or something like bimbaballification there's an element of sexual massacres in there so that has to do with enjoying being humiliated or degraded finding that erotic and so there's something unfortunately obviously I don't think there's anything degrading about being a woman but these men view having a woman's body or being seen as a woman humiliating because I guess they're men and also because of the way society can treat women in some context so treat women as sexualized objects purely purely that we only exist for men's pleasure so when these men find the sexually

30:03rousing when they're looking at this pornography it is appealing to that massacresic aspect so the aspect of it's not so much that they identify as women but it's that they enjoy this idea of being a woman and being subjugated by men and so especially for younger boys or say teen boys who are starting to fall into this with the pornography I if say none of this porn existed or say this was decades ago where older men might realize they have this sexual proclivity but the porn is not as easily accessed they would still find ways of getting it say through magazines but it would just be more difficult for them to achieve that I think part of the reason why we see such high rates of transitioning now in young people is because yes like you're saying the the easy availability of porn but also societal messaging telling young people if you question your gender you must actually be transgender or you must actually be non-binary or what have you so I would say for these young men unfortunately they're being they're spending more time online and they're consuming this content

31:05they find it arousing and it's rewarding for them to be doing this over and over again they might start to actually believe that they're women as opposed to recognizing no I'm a man with a pair of filia and especially in the in the field of mental health good luck finding a therapist who's going to be honest with you right therapists are basically bound usually by the licensing body to affirm so it's very very difficult for these young men and for the young women to get objective help next sponsor is javelin y'all I love javelin we used javelin I think it was a little over a year ago to make sure that everything is good in our bodies to make sure that our health is top notch and we got our blood draw done by javelin sending out a phobautimus to our studio chief related bro did I did and then after she did our blood draw she sent off the vials the results came to our profile in our javelin app within a matter of days we got all of our results but my favorite part

32:07was the 30 minute video that I got from a doctor that works with javelin who interpreted all of my results and told me exactly what they mean not only did she tell me what they mean but she made recommendations like hey you need to look into this this is what this means you need these supplements you need to change your diet this way you should be doing this kind of exercise this is how this could be a fact in you so I had a really clear picture of how I was doing health wise before I got pregnant with this fourth baby which was just really helpful because then I was able to optimize my health and feel my best as I am bringing forth new life which is really important so don't do the guesswork anymore don't take the traditional answer of oh you're just tired you're just stressed see what's really going on in your body optimize the body that God gave you go to gogevity.com slash alley you get 20% off when you do gogevity.com slash alley what is it inside that institution that would be motivated to deny the parapheralia so-called

33:13gender identity connection with men I mean if they don't believe that any parapheria is immoral what would be wrong about making that connection why is it that I can only get this through like information through you through my own anecdotes through like more conservative outlets who are willing to report on this and do this research I'm not really seeing the connection there like why would they deny that this is clearly a pattern when it comes to these men who want to be women at the core my sense is well because it stigmatized if anything is seen as based in sexuality or do you sexually motivated it is stigmatized by society still even though we live in the most hypersexual culture that's probably ever existed and it's less taboo to talk about sex now than ever before if you say you want to radically change the way you look and live as a woman when you're born

34:15a man and this is due to your sexual interests you're gonna have a harder time getting social approval than if you say this is something in my brain or this is something that is inherent to my identity and how I feel and it's just that I'm making my outside match my inside as opposed to saying this is something that turns me on and that I think about in a sexual context and in the field I'm just thinking of the conversations I've had and my sense is people who are legitimate clinicians and researchers they will all acknowledge that autogonophilia exists so the reason why this has been so downplayed or suppressed in the mainstream discussion is because activists who usually have autogonophilia are the ones saying no this is pseudoscience it doesn't actually exist these are just hateful researchers who are promoting this because they have their own internalized shame about their sexual interests that's my sense of it and that's why they are so angry and they are so aggressive and especially if you as a man or a woman but I think especially as a woman say as I've

35:18seen I've been witnessing this debate for pretty much a decade over a decade now since I started writing about these issues when women call out these men and say you are not like us they are infuriated because I think on some level they know and there is a lot of guilt and shame about that and also because as men it is shameful I would say to your born a man you're meant to be masculine and strong and instead you want to be women who are more gentle nurturing right I don't think there's anything wrong in terms of sex differences but men and women do have different roles on average in society and men and women view each other differently so for you as a man to want to be a woman I think that's why there's been this why there's such an overcompensation to say it's not about sex it's really about identity but as you're saying it is it's very much contradictory because if there's no if there's nothing wrong with anyone's sexual interest and so long as it's consensual it's totally acceptable then why do these activists and researchers

36:20feel the need to push an agenda that says this has nothing to do with sex if anything they are behaving in a quote sex negative way but it's it's never consistent I would say it really is just about what's probably going to shut the activists up the most easily and so if the trans activists tell you you have to say something you just I mean if you want to keep them happy you're just going to say what they tell you to say no I think you're right because it's true if they were to say well look this is just sexual interest or a kink that I have then there would really be no discussion or debate about whether or not a man especially an intact man should be in a woman in a woman's locker room taking a shower with women and girls in there even though I know yeah that's like a sexual interest that that person has that's a perversion that that person has and they're trying to satisfy that they probably also in my mind have some kind of humiliation fetish and they get off on forcing other people to participate in their delusion but if that's if that that's not good PR

37:25basically that's just not a good campaign most people aren't going to get on board with that even if you are progressive like I think that used to be known that's why in silence of the lambs it was just we didn't have to have it explained to us that this is weird that there was this man who was dressing up like a woman it was just known that that is a strange thing to do and so I do think that they the attempt to separate sexuality from this gender gender identity is an effort at normalization so I think you're exactly right about that I'm curious what you think about the increased rates of those who identify in Gen Z as LGBTQ so not just trans but even putting like everyone knows what I think as a Christian moral perspective about sexuality and marriage and all of that but just from the psychological perspective I am curious what you think about going from you know virtually 0% maybe not 0% but a very low percentage of young people identifying as

38:27this acronym to some say 20 to 23% I think that's Gallup that's a lot that's that's one fifth of generation Z who says that they identify as something other than straight I mean what do you make of that I would say that's a lot of time spent on the internet and probably having friends who identify as one of those letters or multiples of those letters and wanting to fit in I being young and developing is hard enough as it is and so when you're seeking support and say a community now especially I would say within progressive circles if you are one or very many a couple of those are an amalgamation of those letters you're going to have an easier time finding connection I mean even the fact that people use a term queer queer is a slur and so what I find is that people who use this term tend to be straight and it's it's a way of just finding other people who are progressive if you say that you're queer but among people who say identifies gay they would never

39:32use that term or they're very rarely rarely would use that term they understand it's a hurtful term so I think a lot of it is the education system I'm talking about this more in my first book the end of gender but basically that these children are unfortunately being indoctrinated into believing that if you are a good person you're sympathetic to these communities and I agree with that to some extent I don't think this should be I don't think it should be to the point where everyone needs to identify as one of these letters to be a kind person but it's gone so far that these children I think they grew up believing that if they're sympathetic it's not enough to be sympathetic you need to be part of the community and then they also get more points I guess or there's there's seen as more valid if they are part of one of these communities because you can't change your race I mean from a progressive or woke standpoint if you're not white that's ideal right white in Asians we're seen as the aggressors so you can't really change your race but you can identify as one of these letters and no one in a progressive camp is going to challenge you on

40:34that so that would be my take on on why that is but I'm sad for these kids because again it's going to leave them very confused and they may enter relationships or go along with things say in the dating world that they're not actually okay with and not recognize that it's okay to be straight it's okay to be you don't need to identify as transgender to be a worthwhile person or to be a good person next sponsor is good ranchers and we actually have some breaking news with our good ranchers add today and that is that in order to lower beef costs in the US we are about to import 300,000 metric tons of foreign ground beef it's about to flood the US market and it might seem when you're going to the grocery store wow grocery prices are going down the price of meat is going down but the cost of that is still really high because we are relying on these foreign imports we don't know the quality a lot of times we don't know where they're coming from and of course this hurts the

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42:45that it does especially when it comes to the men I didn't find as women issue or the pushing of different kinds of behaviors that clearly like women get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to sexual promiscuity when it comes to serial dating dating apps pornography I think bad for men and women but women are typically I would say if there's going to be a victim of these things victimized by some of the things we just listed and yet sex positive feminists in general are all about all of the things we just talked about so break that down for us I don't think casual sex is good for either sex but especially for women I think the reasons why it is detrimental for them is slightly different from why it's detrimental for men I think just in terms of pair bondying and emotional intimacy it's not good to have very many partners and especially in the context of having very many partners whom you don't know well and might never see again after you have one say experience with them but the reason why I would say it's worse for women is because women

43:49do tend to become more attached after sex whereas for men hormonally it's different so women there's more more bonding hormones are released during sexual activity and during orgasm whereas for men after orgasm their bond bonding hormones go back to baseline so they actually disengage after sex and lose interest in their partner so a woman becomes more attached whereas a man becomes less attached and most research has actually shown that women tend to get into short-term encounters or hookups with the hope of having a relationship it's not because they just want to sleep with the guy whereas for men they have a dual mating strategy so they will slot women into one of two categories they will say either she's short-term material like a hookup or friends with benefits or a situation ship as Gen Z calls them or she's long-term material as in he plans to hopefully one day marry her and he'll invest more and take her seriously in respect her so the issue with women selling themselves a short term is they especially I think young progressive women mistakenly think

44:50if a man is actually interested in them that's a win and that means he's going to want to waive them up but if you are selling yourself on your sexuality or being promiscuous you're getting lumped into the short-term category and you're not going to be ever considered long-term material at that point so that's one part of it I think it's really irresponsible that very many feminist influencers and podcasters tell their young fans that they should be promiscuous or that they should have sex on the first date because you want to vet a guy make sure that he's good and bad etc but I sense that these women they must know that this is horrible advice because especially if they are in a long-term relationship or they're married surely they know that men don't take women seriously if they behave this way and so they're telling their young fans to engage in behavior that is ultimately going to be soft destructive and I do think this is an example of intersexual competition in that women compete with other women and men compete with other men for sexual partners and

45:50so if you tell your legion of fans to do things that are going to diminish themselves in the eyes of men that's going to help you as the influencer so I find that really sad because I see especially with Gen Z women I've seen millennials probably too really bought into this idea that having sex on the first date is not a big deal that casual sex if men can do it women should do it and like I said I believe in being consistent so I don't think it's fair to shame women if we don't hold men to the same standard I think both sexes would benefit from being less promiscuous and also from again a practical standpoint your sexual health it's better for you to have fewer partners I don't think it's good for you to especially if you're on apps I mean that's a whole whole other discussion I could go on for hours about in terms of why it's not conducive to healthy relationships or finding your one true love in terms of the feeling that people are really disposable and evolutionarily speaking or in terms of what has benefited our ancestors in terms of picking the

46:53best mates you're never going to be seeing in one place going through hundreds of potential partners and it gives you the sense that people are replaceable that you can constantly find someone better and then I have to say also compounding with this is the concept of hypergamy the fact that women prefer to date at the same level or date men who are more successful than they are so if you have this imbalance right now where women are typically outperforming their male peers in terms of education and in the workplace if a woman is going out there having sex with a guy on the first date so you have fewer men that successful women find attractive and those men are seen as attractive by all women regardless of their financial status or their educational status because men don't tend to care as much about those status markers in their female peers so those men are really being propped up and almost incentivized to behave badly because they have no reason to want to settle down they're not being incentivized if women just keep having sex with them without

47:55any obligation or without any expectations so this is just further feeding into this dynamic that it is really not good for either sex and I think ultimately why we are seeing the decline in terms of birth rates and the lack of interest in dating why people have so much burnout around dating apps especially when you look at big cities there tends to be this skew in terms of there being more women than men or especially I would say in progressive cities or in areas and the men just basically have an entire roster of women and the women cannot negotiate for a relationship or marriage because the men say well I'm having my fun and if you don't like it I'm just going to replace you with somebody else. Yeah it's really interesting what you're talking about about replacement male and female when it comes to apps so you know I've thought obviously about the health of apps and I'm very glad that I did not meet my husband on an app it was really before like tender became a thing and I'm just so thankful that we met the old fashioned way and you can kind of see some of the

48:56obvious issues with being able to swipe left or right it's superficial it's based on aesthetics but one thing the two said that I hadn't thought about is that having more options is not it's a historical anomaly so our ancestors before us did not have this roster of people within you know a 200 mile radius that they were judging based on a self-assessment and pictures. I want you to talk a little bit more about that why is it not always better to have more options? Why is it not always better to be able to get a feel for someone digitally before you meet them in person? Why is it not always better to like you know not just marry the person that your family knows by someone that you met online? Yeah well the paradox of choice speaks to this so there's there have been studies showing that when people are given more options or when they're people are given fewer options they're more likely to actually make a choice and to be satisfied with

50:00that choice so when you're on a dating app it feels as though there is an unlimited number of potential partners and so people are constantly seeking the next best thing and as I've heard sex in you know I've heard stories of people who are on dates and they'll still be swiping when they're on a date with another person across the table from them so it speaks to the mentality of really I don't think I think there are very many of us who are just not present in terms of the dating process and that's part of I would say that's a side effect of being online and just how so much of romantic interest or courtship is based through online connections or lack there I suppose nowadays but when you look again to the scientific research in terms of what predicts marital satisfaction or long-term success in a relationship its personality factors like agreeableness, kindness, people tend to look for a sense of humor and intelligence in their partners and you can't get a sense of that from dating apps and I initially thought when dating apps first came about or say online dating came about that this was a novel way and potentially a positive way

51:04for people to meet outside of their immediate social circles especially if you didn't want a date at work or say your program at school or what have you but because it is a commercial enterprise and understandably these companies don't benefit from people finding someone and never needing to use the app ever again and the fact that they are based very much in physical appearance so when you see someone's bio you see a bunch of photos you see whatever they chose to write and then you might text back and forth you might have a video call but that's still not the same as actually meeting someone in real life and getting to know them in real life and I think the issue with selecting someone based on photos in terms of how attractive you find them not everyone is photogenic and then also a majority of men who are on these platforms are actually married or in a relationship so that from day one sets you on an unfortunate path if you do decide to try and date that person and so the metrics by which people are choosing their partners are not actually feeding into or conducive of a healthy relationship because these are characteristics that you can only learn

52:08about someone with time and my sense is when you're on the app because it feels like there are so many partners out there people are not really giving individual people the time investment that they deserve to get to know someone they're constantly distracted with all of these options and there's also this sense of wanting to do better all the time and I think part of that is also social media and the images that we see there and that you could always be someone you could always be with someone who's better looking or richer or who treats you better and I find that that formal content is the most alarming because there's no shortage of people on social media complaining about I find it used to be people talking about how great their spouse was but now it's more so how awful their spouses and how they can't wait to divorce them or how bad their first date was and then their entire community is coalescing around influencers to just talk about how a terrible dating is and so it just overall puts this really awful chill I think on relations between men and women and people wanting to to couple up and people also being open and vulnerable when they go into a

53:11dating situation instead people tend to expect the worst of the opposite sex and so if you met someone through a friend like back in the day or through say an organic situation like if you are at university or if you're at the store and someone talks to you it's very different you you would take that interaction differently from when it's on an app and you really don't know anything about this person last sponsor is Patriot mobile all right if you don't want to wait till the midterms to vote you can vote with your dollar right now by supporting American companies that love America that fight for your values that are on the front lines ensuring that the politicians and the principles that we support are actually being supported Patriot mobile is one of those companies they share our values when it comes to the first and second amendment when it comes to the sanctity of life when it comes to securing our borders and unlike so many of the other mobile carrier companies they're not donating to causes that we don't believe in they're doing the opposite

54:14and so that's why we want a partner with them you're not going to have to sacrifice customer service you're not going to have to sacrifice any of the nationwide service that you are used to they have a 100% US based customer service team that makes switching really easy this is a great wireless service but they're also our partners in fighting for what is good right and true go to patreon mobile dot com slash alley use code alley for a free month of service patriot mobile dot com slash alley code alley I was thinking as you were talking about one of the things that is lost when you meet someone online that you have no connection to at all I mean even hinge I think that does rest upon you having some kind of connection but it doesn't have to be it doesn't really have to be a real one there's such low risk and like the worst way it's not even that okay you're not risking a lot as you're swiping through but even if you swipe right on the person and you start talking to them

55:16there is very little risk that you're going to run into this person y'all's parents probably don't know each other your friends probably don't know each other probably don't go to the same church you probably don't run in the same circles and so the risk of ghosting someone and then being called out by your mutual friends or like you know her mom calling your mom and being like what's going on here the risk is so low and there's so little potential friction that I think people also just treat others worse on this app because there is no fear of shame there's no fear of being called out I mean who's going to hold this person accountable I mean you forget about this person you come up with different plans you totally stand them up on the date you can go out that night get a drink go to work the next day and completely forget you did that because this isn't a real person with feelings I've watched this happen except it is a real person with feelings that woman now is really hurt even

56:16though she wasn't in love with the guy she had her hopes up and now as you said she is more conditioned to think what this is just men or this is just me like this is how I deserve to be treated or this is just how men treat women and then they go into social media and as you said the algorithm feeds that kind of thing and I mean we can get into the technology of like our you know apps knowing what we do and what we're going through but you get on TikTok you get on Instagram and it's each sex talking about the other one and how hard it is and how terrible it is and so I think it's also just setting single people up for failure all of the ways in which we are being driven apart through technology yeah I agree with you and if you talk to anyone who is on the apps they will tell you what a miserable time they're either having or have had which is really unfortunate because you see the I mean it's been how long now I'd say 15 probably years that the technology's become

57:18mainstream and I do think a lot of the burnout and the jadannas that people feel around dating if they have used these apps is part of that because as you said people not held to the same standard and if you go through this process of constantly being ghosted or being treated badly on their it really starts to generalize to the opposite sex more broadly and to say well I would just say especially for younger people like say Gen C who grew up in a time where dating apps always existed or social media always existed they can't imagine meeting someone outside of these platforms they don't know how it seems like a foreign concept to them and they'll say how do people meet before social media like was there such a thing or before dating apps so if you say to them hey maybe try meeting off of these platforms they have no idea they have no idea how to do it and I think also culturally the norms have changed so much the people do frown upon meeting in real life just that makes that like strangers talking or approaching each other in public is seen as weird nowadays which is I think a really unfortunate thing yeah everything that you're talking about from the

58:22dating apps to the AI girlfriend boyfriend the sex robots it's just seeking frictionless pleasures frictionless relationships and it makes sense when you think about the rest of our lives especially as millennials and certainly Gen Z so much of our lives has been about instant gratification and it hasn't been where we have to wait that we have to work that we have to just say you know what I'm going to learn how to deal with this uncomfortable inconvenient thing because it's good for me inconvenience has been seen my entire life as an impediment that needs to be overcome or you know try to short circuit it somehow so it makes sense that all of that is affecting how young people think about marriage how they think about sex how they think about relationships what is in your mind the way out of this because this is a very bleak picture of intimacy and fertility and marriage these building blocks of society to not just allow

59:22it to survive but thrive so what do we do I have one chapter in sex tension that is dedicated on reproductive technology and also endoccurring disruptors and environmental toxins that may be affecting our libido and our psychology at a biological level and in that case it may be affecting us in ways that we are not fully aware of so I would definitely recommend people if they're interested in this to check that out because I list all the studies and I talk about how there are things like pharmaceutical waste or something as simple as plastic I mean I think there is more of a discussion going on about how these toxins are potentially taintering with our hormones but something like the birth control pill which is almost ubiquitous among women most women will be using some form of contraception throughout life where the pill is especially quite popular and it affects the way it affects your mating strategy it affects your desire to even be to achieve or I'd say attract male attention in ways that I don't think the public is

1:00:26necessarily aware of and then also this larger issue with testosterone decline and how it's affecting men's motivation both sexually and otherwise are important pieces to the puzzle because if we don't rectify the biological component or the biological issues no amount of social awareness or change in policy is going to effectively rectify this issue and so I would say in terms of solutions physical health mental health are very important we are experiencing a mental health crisis right now especially I would say younger generations in terms of depression and anxiety use of antidepressants is through the roof antidepressants have been approved and children as young as age six we do not know the long-term effects of this class of drugs nor of birth control or the birth control pill on sexual development which might be surprising to some people but that's just the reality of it considering how many young people or children are being put on these medications and

1:01:26that's not to say that people should get off of their medication but I think it's important just to be aware of what we are consuming and also how this might be affecting us internally because if you are not physically healthy or if your if your mind is being affected in certain ways that you're not aware of again that has lasting potentially lasting repercussions and so that's one piece of it I would say you know in the book I'm really focused on also things like physical health and you can't be mentally healthy or healthy in a relationship if you are not taking care of your physical health and I would also say just having will trying to be as traditional as possible in terms of not relying on these technologies to meet people not relying on say online interactions to feed that desire to connect and also to recognize that a lot of the content we are exposed to is biased because it's being created and promoted by people who are trying to make money off of us so

1:02:29if you don't personally know someone who's giving you advice they're probably not giving you the best advice that would be my overarching suggestion with regard to say people who might feel lost in dating I really wrote this book just trying to speak to people's frustration about dating and how they can hopefully make better choices or become maybe more aware of their own decisions or how they live their life to improve the chances of finding someone who's right for you but I would say more broadly just to not be afraid of being counter-cultural and to say just because society's telling me to go along with certain things we touch on this a bit in the discussion with pornography but I would say if you especially as a woman feel that you know there are things you don't want to do sexually or that you feel pressured to do because the culture is telling you to it's totally okay to say no and choking is one of those trends that's very popular right now I've yet to speak to anyone in Gen Z who's not experienced this and both male and female and to know it's very dangerous and it is potentially fatal and that it can lead to all kinds of negative repercussions

1:03:31down the line in terms of mental health issues especially if there's any form of brain inflammation as a result you may not necessarily pass out but that doesn't mean that brain cells aren't being affected or dying and again so anxiety that I do question nowadays especially with the rates of anxiety being so high among young people does this have something to do with it because if you are effect you're you're basically suppressing oxygen flow to the brain that's going to affect its function and there has been research showing that choking is associated or sexual choking or strangulation is associated with brain inflammation and also clinical dissociation later in life so this is a practice that is seen as empowering for women to be which is absolutely insane like when I say this I can't even believe it sometimes still that this is seen as something if women want to be choked or or basically physically hurt during sex this is empowering for them and this is sexual liberation and this is great for women because they're enjoying themselves I don't believe

1:04:34most women actually enjoy this I think they're doing it because they feel pressured because of what they've seen and porn at a young age and because of potentially what their male partners want or maybe because both sexists think this is what the other sex wants because of what they've seen and porn and they're doing things that neither wants to actually do but they're afraid to say so because they don't want to potentially turn the other person off so yeah just do what feels right for you and also you know my discussion I love the discussions you've had about infertility and just women reproductive attack and just telling women you know how to how to think critically about these issues because that's another part of it I see very many women choosing to delay fertility and getting to a point where they're realizing that oh you know they didn't realize that their biological window was finite and now they're relying on technology that isn't a guarantee so that's a bit of a different discussion but it's leading to the separation and I'm saying if you want to find love and you want to get married and have children then really prioritize that because you don't know what obstacles you're going to come in the way in terms of finding the right person or if you do

1:05:36have fertility issues down the line. Yeah gosh that's also good I could talk to you for hours and hours about all of this there's so many avenues that I wanted to go down but I really encourage people to get your book because you talk about dating you talk about the health on the mental and the physical side you talk about the difference between just having a bunch of sex and actual intimacy and why intimacy really matters not just on the individual level but the societal level too and so this is just such great time even this discussion is so necessary so everyone go buy your book sexting chin doctor so thank you so much thank you so much Alibat bye

1:06:50you