Ep. 543 skewers Trump’s Helsinki press conference as a media frenzy over his skepticism of U.S. intelligence, contrasting his pro-American stance with Obama’s alleged disdain for Western values while exposing Putin’s "scorpion" tactics. Mona Charon’s Sex Matters debunks modern feminism’s rejection of biological sex differences—citing newborn studies and cross-cultural mate preferences—while blaming the movement for dismantling marriage, chivalry, and women’s happiness, arguing 76% of married mothers prefer staying home yet face economic pressure to work. The episode ties Trump’s chaos to deeper cultural wars: from Mueller’s politicized witch hunts to feminism’s war on nature itself. [Automatically generated summary]
The massive Russia elections conspiracy continues to unfold.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has now produced indictments charging that Donald Trump only won the election because 13 Russian agents cleverly disguised themselves as 63 million Americans and voted for Trump in states that had more electoral votes than the states where Russian agents disguised as Hillary Clinton voters voted for her.
Although the Russian agents ran out of voter costumes before they could vote enough times to give Trump the popular vote, Mueller's indictment charges that the Russians then traveled back in time where they disguised themselves as the founding fathers in order to create the electoral college system, which shocked the Russians disguised as Hillary voters by stealing the election from their candidate through a complex and arcane mathematical charade that was clearly designed by Vladimir Putin, who then returned to the present, only stopping off to assassinate President Lincoln along the way.
Democrats in the news media, but I repeat myself, took the indictments as evidence that Trump colluded with the Russian conspiracy.
Democrats also found evidence of collusion in the words Trump said at the recent Helsinki press conference, in his body language, in certain code words embedded in reruns of the television show Aid is Enough, and in the way the wind blows through the trees on a quiet summer's afternoon, seeming to whisper Trump is guilty of collusion in the melodic voices of a thousand naked virgins dancing on a tropical beach.
That last one may just be a personal fantasy of mine.
Former humiliated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton charged Trump with treason, saying, quote, Donald Trump has sold out the United States so that we are all now slaves of Putin who only think we're free because Trump has put drugs in my glass of Chardonnay, unquote.
Mrs. Clinton then pitched forward onto her face and snored loudly for the next 17 hours, a noise that many people said reminded them of watching CNN.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety boom.
Birds are winging me also singing hunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray.
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Trump And Putin's Parody00:15:38
All right.
You know, I met, speaking of Russian spies, I met this latest woman who was indicted.
This Russian, what's her name?
Like Maria Bhutina or something like that?
She was, what is it?
That's it.
Yeah.
She was, she was being, I was waiting at one of those David Horowitz events down in Florida.
And this guy, I, you know, kind of, you know, I know him.
I meet him at these things.
He was kind of introducing her around.
And she was dressed in this really slinky, kind of sexy way.
And she talked to me for, we had a fairly substantial conversation where she asked me, she said she was fighting for gun rights in Russia and wanted to know whether she should do it from here or from there.
And so you have this very young, very sexily dressed woman asking an older man for advice.
And, you know, even I am smart enough to think like, nah, you know, no way did I ever, ever think she was a Russian spy.
I don't even know if she is now, but they indicted her for it.
But I just, you know, people think you know these things, but what do you think?
You think I'm talking to a pretty Russian girl on the make, you know, basically.
That's what I thought.
And I thought like she was going around talking to a lot of older guys at this thing.
And so I thought, yeah, this is what she does until finally she hits one.
We'll sit around.
Anyway, I did see her out at the pool.
And I have to say it was the smallest bikini I've ever seen outside of a James Bond movie.
All right.
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So it's a really good thing that the world ended when we left the Paris Accord because otherwise it would have ended after that Helsinki press conference.
But luckily, even if it hadn't ended when we left the Paris Accord, it would have ended when we left the Iran deal.
And then, you know, if it hadn't done that, it would have ended when we left net neutrality.
It always, whatever Trump does, you know, every summer, I feel like I make this speech.
Every summer I've done this show, I have to come on and remind people that summer is the perfect time for the left to go insane because there's not as much news.
This has been a big news summer because of the Kavanaugh appointment and because of for the Supreme Court and because of the Helsinki, you know, the Europe trip and all this stuff.
But they just get hysterical.
And like, you know, I mean, Obama promised Putin, we played this yesterday, he would pull our missile defenses.
He did pull our missile defenses.
I remember walking to PJ TV and there were people on the ceiling saying, this is treason, this is treason.
You know, then Obama went around our Congress and made the, he went around Congress and made this deal with Iran.
He's shipping them money.
You know, he's sending them little that, you know, that was treason.
That was treason.
So now Trump makes a miscalculation in a press conference and now we're all going to die.
You know, I mean, and he did make a miscalculation.
You know what this reminds me of?
It reminds me of like when a Christian movie comes out and it's anti-abortion.
And so all the press, the press is all left-wing.
So they're like, this is the worst movie.
It's ugly.
It's filthy.
It stinks.
It sucks.
It's going to destroy our nation.
So you go to the movie to support it because it's a good Christian movie, you know, opposing abortion.
And you watch it and you think, yeah, it's really not that good.
You know, it's like, it's not that good.
So you find yourself saying it's not that good.
Well, everybody else is just screaming and screaming.
So let's take a look at what they're scared.
This is treason and it's the end.
Oh, it's the end of everything.
But it is a mistake.
And I'm going to talk about why I think Trump did it.
And I'm going to talk about why, aside from his own ego, which is always involved in these things.
But also why he's wrong and why some of what he said was right.
So he's at the press conference, talked to Putin, and we're all hysterical about Putin because the press has been ginning this story up forever.
And a reporter asks him, Did the intelligence agency, our intelligence agencies, American intelligence agencies, say the Russians tried to meddle with the election?
Putin says they didn't.
Who do you believe?
Here's Trump's response.
You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server.
Haven't they taken the server?
Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
I've been wondering that.
I've been asking that for months and months, and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media.
Where is the server?
I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying.
With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.
My people came to me.
Dan Coates came to me and some others.
They said they think it's Russia.
I have President Putin.
He just said it's not Russia.
I will say this.
I don't see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.
But I have confidence in both parties.
I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server.
OK, so he says he basically has faith in both sides, Putin and our intelligence agencies.
And here's the left's response.
You think I'm joking, but here is an actual cable montage from our friends at Newsbusters.
This is Cup 3.
First of all, I just have to say I'm sick to my stomach.
I'm really feeling nauseous.
Stunned.
Gobsmack.
We're hearing words like, I feel sick.
This is frightening.
Calling it an abomination.
Shocking.
Stunning.
Genuinely stunning.
What is going on?
Unbelievable.
Astonishing.
Just astonishing.
It is astonishing.
It's heartbreaking.
And it represents, I think, a pivotal turn in our nation's history.
It's time for Americans to be out on the streets.
There are people protesting in the streets every day in the 70s.
Why is that not happening now?
When do we see almost a shadow government come out and say, we cannot side with the government?
As an American citizen, I just personally think today is just an incredibly depressing moment in our time, in our history as an American.
Was this a new low?
Jim Schudo, Josh Campbell, I appreciate you both being with us on what has been really a difficult day for this country and frankly for much of the free world ahead.
He didn't even meet his own low bar for not screwing this up.
I mean, it is an absolute disgrace.
It's a parody of the disgrace.
This entire week of President Trump abroad has made Hillary Clinton seem all the more precious.
All he had to do was not, you know, put on jammies and crawl under the covers with Vladimir Putin, and he couldn't do that.
I'm a sternacle.
I'm a server.
I love Anderson Cooper.
He's so upset.
He's always so upset.
It's been a very difficult day.
It's been such a difficult.
And my favorite part of this is this whole thing.
And I was even getting these from conservatives because conservatives were piling on Trump as well.
But Chuck Schumer, let Chuck Schumer say it.
This is why they think he was being nice to Putin.
What could possibly cause President Trump to put the interests of Russia over those of the United States?
Millions of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous behavior is the possibility that President Putin holds damaging information over President Trump.
You're a mean man.
Yes, a mean man.
That's the only possible explanation is that Trump is being blackmailed by Putin.
If Trump is, I was getting this even from right-wingers yesterday.
If Trump is being blackmailed by Putin, how come he armed the Ukrainian rebels?
How come he shut down two of their consulates, threw out 60 diplomats?
He sanctioned the oligarchs who were all Putin's really got is oil and oligarchs supporting him, expanded the Magnitsky sanctions.
He tripled our defense in Europe.
It's utterly absurd.
I mean, it is utterly absurd.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, well, I'll get to that in just a minute.
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The New York Times, a former newspaper, has their lead editorial, Why Won't Donald Trump Speak for America?
And the minute I saw this, I thought, Trump, why won't you speak for America?
You guys stand for socialism.
You write articles about how great women, sex was for women during the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union.
It was great sex for them until they dragged their husbands off and shot them.
You know, I was like, wow, what great sex.
You know, you guys, at the New York Times, you backed a man who said he wanted to fundamentally transform America.
Why didn't you speak up for America then?
You've posed justices who uphold the Constitution.
You know, I mean, this is what's so absurd about this, is even though I thought Trump should not have said it, and I'll tell you why in a minute, even though I think Trump should not have equated anything in America with anything in Russia and really shouldn't have these ideas about Russia that he has, it's like he at least is viscerally pro-American.
He loves this country.
He wants to do things good for this country.
He wants to fix things for this country.
He wants the country to love him.
The New York Times can't say that about itself.
The New York Times hates this country, hates what it stands for, hates the freedoms of individual, the kind of people who voted for Donald Trump.
So why don't they speak for America?
Walter Russell Meade, who is, I think, the new Charles Krauthammer because he is doing what Krautham, the way Krauthammer defined the Reagan doctrine when nobody, including maybe Ronald Reagan, thought he had a doctrine overseas.
Walter Russell Mead is working very hard to define the Trump doctrine without, without romanticizing Trump, without being an ever-Trumper and saying everything Trump does is right or that Trump can be trusted or whatever.
He just tries to define what he's saying.
And he says, first of all, he makes the point in today's Wall Street Journal.
He says that Obama's policy, Trump's policy in Russia bears a lot of resemblance to Obama's policy.
Both men held foreign policy establishment in contempt.
Both came to the job with the belief that their unique life stories and personal qualities would enable them to transform global politics in a historic way.
Both were willing to accept a Russian presence in Syria and to overlook Russian complicity in Assad's atrocities.
Long after the 2009 reset failed, Mr. Obama was willing to flout domestic public opinion to make concessions to Russia.
We remember him whispering to Medvedev that he would take the missiles out.
And the thing about Obama is he, like the establishment is complaining that they gave Trump all the information he needed to stand up to Putin and he didn't do it.
But like Trump with that, Obama ignored everybody with the Iran deal.
So what is it that makes Trump different aside from the fact that Trump actually likes America and Obama hated America?
This is the thing.
Trump is apologizing overseas for agencies that he feels have been corrupted, like the Justice Department.
Obama was apologizing for Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
He was apologizing for America itself.
He thought America itself was essentially fundamentally flawed.
And that is not what Trump is doing.
So it's nowhere near the same thing.
But the difference, and this is what Mead points out, is Mr. Obama saw Europe.
Everything is about Europe right now.
If you think Europe is great, then you are a left-winger.
That you think is, oh, that's all we need is socialism.
Yeah, you don't have a job.
Yeah, your life has no meaning.
No, you have no purpose.
Yeah, you don't really produce anything, but you have free medical care.
If you think that, and all those Muslims, they don't mind.
They don't matter.
All those Muslims moving in your neighbor just set you on fire.
Doesn't matter.
If you think Europe is doing great, you're on the left side.
So that was Obama.
Obama saw Europe as a rich and generally well-intentioned part of the world that punches well below its weight in world affairs.
Trump's view, he sees in the EU a mix of fecklessness in defending Western values and ruthlessness in promoting its own bureaucratic power.
Mr. Trump and the Brexiteers see the EU as a screen for German domination of the continent, and Mr. Trump's concern that excessive levels of migrants from Islamic countries threaten the social cohesion of Western societies.
So in other words, he is in line with politicians in countries across Europe who resent German power and fear the imposition of post-Christian, post-nationalist values through the EU.
Here's what Mead says about this.
From this perspective, Mr. Putin looks less like a malign force bent on dismantling the Cathedral of Liberty and more like an unsavory but potentially useful partner.
And that is what Trump sees.
Trump sees Europe going down the drain.
I believe he's right about this.
He sees Europe abandoning Western values, abandoning nationalism, abandoning the Christian values that underlie our freedom.
And he thinks, well, Putin's not a good guy, but I can use him.
Here's the problem with that, okay?
Trump thinks, probably knows that Putin is a gangster, but he's dealt with gangsters.
Trump's Gangster Miscalculation00:08:00
He was a New York real estate developer, so he's dealt with gangsters.
And he thinks, oh, well, I can deal with gangsters.
But he's wrong, because gangsters don't want to kill you.
They want to rip you off.
They want to take money from you.
And then everybody gets what they want.
You want to keep your restaurant?
Yeah, you pay us for protection.
You can keep your restaurant, but you can still have your restaurant.
Putin is not that guy.
He wants his enemies dead, and we are one of his enemies.
Chris Wallace did this amazing interview with him yesterday.
And he just said to him right out, he talked to him like the mobster he is.
It's a really interesting exchange.
He said, well, listen to this question.
This is cut number one.
Why is it that so many of the people that oppose Vladimir Putin end up dead or close to it?
Former Russian spy and double agent Sergei Skripel, the victim of a nerve agent attack in England.
Boris Nebesov, a political opponent gunned down near the Kremlin.
Investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya murdered in an apartment building.
Why is it that so many people who were political enemies of Vladimir Putin are attacked?
Well, first of all, all of us have plenty of political rivals.
I'm pretty sure President Trump has plenty of political rivals.
But they don't end up dead.
Not always.
Well, haven't presidents been killed in the United States?
Have you forgotten about it?
Has Canada been killed in Russia or in the United States?
Mr. King.
What happens at the clashes between police and civil society and several ethnic groups?
Well, that's something that happens on the U.S. soil.
Classic Soviet gangsterism.
First of all, John F. Kennedy was killed by one of their guys, a guy, Lee Harvey Oswald, who wanted to defect to Russia and basically killed Kennedy because he was afraid he was being too hard on Cuba.
That's the first thing.
And secondly, it has nothing to do with the fact that this guy murders his enemies.
He murders his enemies.
Donald Trump is not doing that.
Barack Obama is not doing that.
Clinton, maybe, but I don't think so.
I don't think Clinton was doing it.
So it's like, it's classic Soviet gangsters.
But then Wallace asks him about the hacking.
And this is a hilarious cut.
Do we have this cut?
Well, let me start answering your question with something a little bit different.
Let's have a look at it this way.
People are talking about the purported interference of Russia with the election process in the United States.
I've mentioned this in 2016 and I want to say it now again.
And I really wish for your American listeners to listen to what I say.
First of all, Russia as a state has never interfered with the internal affairs of the United States, let alone its election.
Putin says, absolutely not.
We did not hack, and everything we hacked was true.
So the stuff we sent out, the emails were really emails.
Everything we got was absolutely right, but we didn't do it.
So it's a completely nonsensical answer.
And the thing is, Putin has to understand.
I mean, Trump has to understand that this guy is not, there's nothing for him to give us anything.
There's no reason for him to give us anything unless it is exactly in keeping with what he wants.
And what he wants is us gone.
He wants us reduced to nothing.
He's not like a gangster.
He's like a gangster dealing with rival gangsters.
And when Trump stands up there with him and makes a comparison with us to him, you know, he's basically saying, that's right, we're all rival gangsters here.
And that is simply not true.
We are not a gangster state like Putin's Russia.
Here's what he's right about.
Here's what Trump is right about.
When Trump says, where is the server?
When Trump says that the investigation into Russian hacking and collusion have become politicized as attacks on him, he's right.
There is no indication that Mueller or anybody else in the Justice Department has ever seen the servers that they are saying are hacked.
They were looked at by a Democrat firm, basically, that was built there to protect Hillary Clinton.
And as far as we know, the Justice Department, the FBI has never gotten their hands on those servers, so they do not know for sure that it was what they're saying.
But let's say it was true.
Then the question becomes, and I said this yesterday, but it remains true, why?
Why was this indictment that Mueller turned out, why did it come out exactly when it did?
Why did it come out just after Strzok humiliated the FBI?
And why did it come out just before Trump went over to have this summit in Helsinki?
Michael Mulchesi, who was attorney general under Bush, he writes a piece in the journal today saying, look, this is something that prosecutors are not supposed to do, that prosecutors are not supposed to do stuff that damages the political sphere.
Now, usually they talk about this in terms of elections.
Prosecutors are not supposed to do investigations that might affect the outcome of an election unless it's desperate, unless we find out that Trump is actually holding up liquor stores and he has to be stopped.
But if it's not like that, the prosecutors are supposed to hold back.
So in a case where we're going off to do this summit, it's the same kind of thing.
We do not want the prosecutors releasing these indictments when Trump is going off to do a summit.
Why did they do it?
Why did they do it if it's not political?
I think they did it.
Here's the thing.
What was Putin thinking when his guys went into these computers?
He was obviously was not thinking Trump is going to be president.
The guy is not a seer.
He's a gangster, right?
He didn't know that Trump was going to be president.
Nobody knew.
Nobody knew.
And so what he was thinking was, Hillary's going to be president.
And so I'm going to have this and I'm going to humiliate her.
And I'm going to be able to hold this over her, you know, and hold this over her when she's president.
So Trump is wrong in putting us on a par with the Russians.
That is just wrong.
He's wrong in thinking, I think he's wrong in thinking that he's going to get anything of value out of Putin.
This is the same mistake Obama made early on with the reset button and all that stuff.
Same mistake Bush W. Bush made when he said, oh, I see into Putin's heart.
First of all, if he saw into Putin's heart, he must have been looking in the freezer because it ain't the guy's chest.
And, you know, this is the same mistake.
And they all kind of came around and realized, no, I'm dealing with a gangster who wants nothing.
I'm dealing with the scorpion.
The scorpion's going to sting me no matter what because that's his nature.
So he's wrong about that.
He is right that this collusion thing has become a politicized investigation.
He is right.
You know, also when he's talking, he's conflating, you'll notice, the look at Russian hacking with the Russian collusion story.
But the press has been doing that to him since he took office.
So I can't blame him for doing that.
But he is right about that.
And he is right to attack an organization, the Justice Department, that was corrupted by Barack Obama, just as the State Department was corrupted by Barack Obama and the IRS.
All right.
But don't panic.
It will all pass over.
There'll be more news tomorrow and it'll all, you know, we'll be going on to something else.
So far, listen, the other thing is Trump is doing a great job as president.
So that's the other thing.
All right.
The conversation is later today, 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific.
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Vulnerability Of Women00:15:14
We have Mona Charon coming up to talk about her new book, Sex Matters.
really interesting interview, but we got a break from YouTube and Facebook.
All right.
Mona Charon is a terrific syndicated columnist, political analyst, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Institute, and host of the Need to Know podcast, as well as an author of two New York Times bestsellers, useful idiots about how liberals got it wrong in the Cold War, and also do-gooders about how liberals hurt those they claim to help.
She's got a new book out.
It is really good, very powerful.
Sex Matters, How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.
Sex Matters by Mona Charon, one of my favorite people in the conservative movement.
Here is our interview.
Mona, it's great to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
Thank you, Drew.
Great to see you.
Your new book, Sex Matters by Mona Charon.
I have to tell you, well, let's talk about it.
You say that it has taken you, and in some ways, you've been writing this book your whole life.
What do you mean by that?
Right.
Because my life kind of matches the modern feminist movement.
I was a very small child when Betty Fredan wrote her book, The Feminine Mystique.
And her acolytes over the years have influenced my life because feminism has influenced us all.
And I'm countercultural.
I've never bought into the representation of reality that they were peddling.
And what I point out in this book is that they're not just anti-men, but they, of course they are.
They're really against nature.
That's their biggest battle is that they resent and hate what nature has done.
Well, before we get to that, though, let me just say you have a wonderful family.
You have a great career.
Do you owe none of that to feminism?
Would you have had that even without Betty Ferdinand?
Right.
So that's a debatable thing.
One of the things I talk about in Sex Matters is that women were moving into the workforce before Betty Ferdin wrote her book.
And a lot of the changes that feminism has been able to claim credit for were probably under, were definitely underway before they even wrote a single word.
And in any event, probably owed quite a bit to the changing nature of the economy toward an information economy and away from an industrial economy that plays in more to women's strengths.
And there are other things going on in changes in the economy.
But look, to be totally fair, I do give feminists some credit for doing some things that I agreed with.
I think it was good that rape victims, for example, were no longer cross-examined on their sexual histories on the stand.
You know, I think that there were other things where if women had a little bit more self-confidence in the workplace, great.
I'll give feminists credit for that.
But in return, I just want them to be honest about the price that we have paid for their extremism, which has been dramatic.
All right.
Well, let's start then with where do they go wrong historically?
Where do you feel that feminism, at least as we know it, because at some point women were arguing for the right to vote, things that we would probably all agree with.
At what point do they go wrong?
So they go wrong in the 1970s when it became not just about equal pay for equal work and so on, but a real comprehensive attack on nature herself, on the differences between men and women, which they insisted were illusory.
And you're, I mean, we're all familiar with the expression that sex differences are completely socially constructed, right, or culturally constructed.
Well, that's just not true.
And the no kidding, right?
But it's funny that it should be shocking to say that, but there it is.
Yes, exactly.
And see, the science caught up with them because they were peddling this stuff in the 1970s.
And then over the last number of decades, the science keeps rolling in.
You know, we know so much more now about the role of hormones in brain development and about cross-cultural studies and about studies of infants.
I talk in the book about how baby girl infants a few days old will respond more strongly to the sound of a human in distress than baby boys.
And baby boys will stare longer at flashing lights and mechanical objects.
And these things are, you know, could it be socially constructed when they're a few days old?
Doubtful.
And then there's the other thing.
When you look cross-culturally, you know, there are surveys that ask people, what are you looking for in a mate?
And based on those answers, they can predict with 90% accuracy whether you're a male or a female.
So men tend to be looking for youth and beauty in women, and women tend to be looking for resources in men.
And this is true from Bangladesh to Boston to Beijing.
So it's probably not culture.
There must be something to it.
It's funny that the people who accuse us of being unscientific and who believe in evolution and get so upset when anybody denies evolution deny the effects of evolution.
Well, exactly.
Exactly right.
And so, yeah, they are the anti-science party when it comes to sex differences for sure.
So let's talk about the effects of this, especially.
I mean, the book is called Sex Matters.
So especially in regards to sex and the way people deal with sex.
What has been the effect on women as far as you're concerned?
What has feminism done to women?
Well, first of all, it has denied them the traditional protections that were a part of our social inheritance, right?
The idea that we were vouchsafed was that women are the more sensitive, vulnerable sex, and that men had to be raised to be gentlemen, to be protective toward women and respectful of their modesty.
And the sexual revolution that the feminists endorsed swept that all away.
And the other thing the feminists did was that they denigrated chivalry.
And they said, you know, don't hold that door for me and don't, you know, don't do any of that.
It's patronizing.
But of course, when you sacrifice that kind of male chivalry, you leave women with very, very more vulnerable, let's say.
And I think when you look at the Me Too movement, it's being sold by some as yet another phase of feminism.
But I think of it actually as a reaction against feminism and against the sexual revolution.
It's women saying, we're tired of being treated this way.
We do want gentlemanly behavior from men.
And so in that sense, it's kind of a rebellion.
But can you ask for gentlemanly behavior from men without being a lady?
No.
No.
And that, and look, I mean, the other aspect of why I'm so why I want to bring feminists to account is that they always claim to be pro-woman.
But the fact is, when you take a look at a woman's life in full, we cannot have full and happy, most of us cannot have full, happy, and fulfilled lives if we're separated from men, if we're alienated from men.
I mean, our happiness depends on one another, and we're complementary.
And so for women to be expected to have the best possible lives, they need husbands, they need sons and brothers and all the people that are closest to them.
And unfortunately, because of feminism, which was all about smashing the patriarchy and dismantling marriage and the family, women are without that support that the family provides.
Now, so are men.
And that's really bad for men too.
But the feminists were wrong in seeing marriage as the trap for women that had been carefully plotted by men.
Is there a possibility?
It seems to me one of the things that I really oppose feminism.
I'm really against feminism.
And one of the things I hate about it is that it seems to me to be against femininity, which seems to be one of the graces of life.
I mean, it seems to be one of the consolations of life that there are men and there are women.
I thought that was the good part, after all the difficult stuff.
Is it possible, though, in chasing women out of the home and telling them that motherhood is not a necessary function, that maybe the answer to that is that women need to construct their lives differently in terms of time, that maybe their youth can be spent one way, that while men spend their youths trying to build a career, maybe women should build the career later?
Is that offensive?
Is that too much to ask?
So here's the reality that you don't hear very much, which is upper class women, that is the upper third, right?
Women who have college degrees aren't doing that.
They are living out the most traditional choices.
The ones who are highly educated and have options because they tend to be the ones who are married.
76% of married mothers say that their ideal situation when their children are young is either working part-time or having no work outside the home.
It's the people who are less educated.
It's the people at the lower end of socioeconomic scale who are faced with an awful choice because marriage is rapidly disappearing.
And so women are forced to work.
And what do they do?
They don't have a career.
They just have a job.
And they can't be with their kids.
So the kids get farmed out to, so a high school graduate, let's say, who is raising kids by herself is farming them out to low-cost daycare to be raised by or cared for during the days anyway, by an even less educated woman who's going to be doing that job.
It makes no sense.
And it's one of the tragedies of our era is that women are being driven away from their children.
Caring for children is one of the great pleasures and joys of life.
And the feminists happen to have missed that too.
You know, I want to get back to the idea of sex.
What would you tell a young woman about her sex life?
I mean, obviously, one of the things that they're arguing, which sounds fair, is that women should be as free in their sexuality as men are.
They should behave essentially as men have behaved.
And yet that seems to lead to a lot of depression and confusion.
What would you tell a young woman about her sex?
And self-harm.
Yeah, the feminist message, I can tell you that when I got to college, the theme was chaste makes waste.
That was one of the slogans.
And we were instructed that to be really great women meant to be as promiscuous as men.
And I would tell a young woman that they've been told a lie.
They have been told that men and women are exactly the same when it comes to sexuality, and that is a lie.
Women are more monogamous.
They are less into casual sex.
They want relationships.
They want love.
There's an old saw.
It's way oversimplified, but there's truth in it anyway.
It's in my book.
Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.
And there's a little bit of truth to that.
And women should be aware that no matter what the feminists tell them, they will always be the more vulnerable sex, that they will not be able to engage in casual sex with the same abandon that men do and walk away without feeling hurt or wounded in some way.
Some can, but not many.
The typical thing for a woman is that when she has sex with a man, she gets attached.
And that's just biology.
And so she should be very careful in discriminating about who she has sex with and when and where.
What about abortion?
I mean, one of the arguments for abortion is this is what gives women the freedom to have the sex they want.
This is what gives them, you know, makes them equal to men.
And if you take abortion away from them, you've taken away their rights.
Yeah, isn't that great?
So they've persuaded generations of people that, you know, here, look, you should be sexually promiscuous, which, hey, is a great benefit to men.
But they claim that it was for women's sake.
You can be sexually promiscuous.
And then when you get pregnant, we're going to allow you to have this surgical procedure that will rip your heart out as well as your baby.
And isn't that a great advance for women?
So look, and besides which, abortion is an atrocity.
And so even if it were true, which it is not, that women regard it very casually and need it as a backup for failed birth control and in order to have sex.
No, it's even still, even if people did feel that way, I would still oppose it because it's morally wrong.
So here you are, someone with a family, with a career.
I mean, you are one of the most important conservative voices and columnists.
What reaction do you get when you say these things from feminists?
I mean, I can't help but notice that feminists can be kind of fierce and ferocious whenever anybody opposes them.
One thinks of the harpies.
What kind of reactions do you get when you make these comments?
So it depends.
You know, there are pieces that I've written where I've talked about the Me Too movement in sympathetic ways.
And they said, oh, well, you know, like she has a point there, you know, and it is true what she says about casual sex and about women being more vulnerable.
So sometimes they're open to that.
When it comes to abortion, they tend to get their backs up.
And certainly when I talk about making it easier for women to spend time with their kids and not driving them out of their homes if they don't want to be driven and most don't, they react badly to that too.
And, you know, they've been using the same slogans for centuries, it feels like, you know, oh, you want to have women, you know, barefoot and pregnant and slaves in the kitchen and the bedroom and so on and so forth.
So you get some of that.
I'm going to watch and see if you get reviewed in the New York Times, which I can't, they'll probably try to ignore you.
I think that's probably their best bet.
What do you want to see going forward?
You know, it seems that feminism has so permeated.
Certainly, one of the things that's unfair is that so many of the people who are on the news and on television are women who have left their children at home and so are very sympathetic to that point of view.
And the feminist who, the woman who stays at home with her children, doesn't have the same kind of voice, doesn't have the same megaphone that they have.
What would you like to see going forward?
And what do you think will happen going forward?
Feminism's Impact on Media00:05:47
Well, that was one of the reasons I wanted to write the book is because I have had a career and I wanted to say, look, I was happy with my choice.
You know, I cut back on my career when my kids were young and I have no regrets.
I mean, I could have been a contender.
But I'm happier.
My kids are happier.
My husband's happier.
We're all happier that I made the decisions that I made.
And so that was one of my goals was to be able to just be a woman's voice who could say that.
And another goal is to cause people to back up and look at the true radicalism of what the feminists have argued over the last several decades and confront the fact that it has led to a great deal of misery, to many, many women struggling to raise kids on their own, to many men being disconnected from their families and addicted and alone, not working.
All of these things are in part a consequence of the feminist message.
And so I hope to spark a debate and get people to reconsider some of the pieties that feminism has fed them, as well as some of the misrepresentations of reality, like the 77 cents on the dollar statistic, which is bogus, and other things, like there are no differences between the sexes.
And so, you know, my hope is to cause a reevaluation.
Mona Charon, not just a contender, but a champ in my book.
Sex matters.
Only you and I know what that's from now.
Sex matters.
Mona, thanks so much for coming on.
I hope you'll come back and we'll talk again.
And if you're in town, let me know.
Okay.
Thanks, John.
See, I never get to see anybody anymore.
I just get to interview people.
This is the thing.
All right, sexual follies, speaking of which.
So Scarlett Johansson, a talented and attractive actress, has dropped out of this movie Rub and Tug in which she would have played what is called a transgender man.
So I'm always get very confused about this.
This is, Rubin Tuggs tells the story of Jean Marie Gill, who was born a girl, but who assumed the identity of a man, right, and operated a massage parlor and prostitution business in Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 80s.
So she's a woman dressed up as a man, essentially.
And the transgender community, which has got to be like six guys, right, or girls, or who knows what the hell they are, they say to Scarlett Johansson, it is not right that a woman should pretend to be a woman pretending to be a man.
I mean, it's like no acting here.
This is the movie business, right?
You're not allowed to, she's not allowed to act, but what she's not allowed to do is a woman can't pretend to be a woman who is herself pretending to be a man.
I mean, that is, and she caved in, you know, and it's like, you know, here's the funny thing.
I've said this a million times, I know, but like, I don't have anything against transgender people.
I think it must be a tremendously terribly painful thing to feel out of place with your gender, right?
To feel that, I don't know, you know, somehow I'm really a woman.
I don't even know what that means exactly.
Well, I do know what it means because we know men and women are different.
So you feel like you're not fulfilling the archetype of a man.
You're fulfilling the archetype of a woman.
You know, that must be tremendously painful.
And I don't actually believe it's necessarily even a mental illness to feel that way.
It may just be something biological that is, you know, something even, even if it's psychological.
What I do think is a mental illness, what I do think is a mental illness, is declaring, A, that if you feel that way, you actually are the other sex, because that's absurd.
That's a mental illness.
Torturing children and giving them hormones, that's mentally ill.
It's not the people who are experiencing this painful state who are crazy.
It is the people who are trying to convince us that that state is reality.
And therefore, an actress can't place a woman who is playing a man.
I mean, that is completely irrational.
And the fact that people keep caving in, you know, you can be a leftist.
You can be tolerant and still not be bullied by nonsense, still not concede the point to people who are talking absolute crap.
You know, professors at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities could lose their jobs if they don't use transgender students' preferred pronouns.
A newly drafted gender identity policy at Minnesota's flagship public university is aimed at fighting misgendering or calling someone by a name or pronoun they don't use.
So in other words, they want to take the people who teach our children how to find truth and force them to not say what they believe.
They want to force them to not say what they believe.
Never mind even the question of whether a woman who pretends she's a man is actually a man or not, which is absurd.
But never even mind that if you don't believe it, you should be able to say it.
That is part of free inquiry, free thought, free speech.
This thing is driving people crazy.
And the underlying idea of it has to do with this hatred of sexuality, this hatred of humanity, which is male and female.
It's the only thing, only two kinds of people.
There are only two kinds of people, men and women.
Everything else, we're just pretty much the same, but men and women are different.
And the fact that that is true and the fact that it's unfair and the fact that it has all the wonderful and terrible things that it produces in life, which is basically everything about life, drives these people crazy.
They hate life.
They hate humanity.
They hate sexuality.
And we should be ignoring them with all the power of our apathy.
Okay?
We should marshal all our apathy to ignore them completely.
Cannot Be Stopped00:00:53
Shame on Scarlett Johansson.
She's a wonderful actress.
She should have stood up and said, I am an actress.
This is what I do is I pretend to be other people.
That's what I do for a living.
You cannot tell me I can't do that for a living because of your stupid politics.
All right.
The mailbag is tomorrow.
Get your questions in.
Conversation later today.
See you there.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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