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Dec. 20, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:19
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #810
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Good afternoon, folks.
Welcome to the podcast, The Low Seaters for the 20th of December, 2023.
I'm joined by Esther Krakow.
Whatever feels right.
I asked twice, three times, and I still got it wrong.
But thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
And today we're going to be talking about a new film called The American Society of Magical Negroes.
Fat airline seats, how they're the newest frontier in human rights and whether women should propose to men.
I knew you were going to say that.
That's why I thought it would be a good topic to discuss.
But before we begin, I've got some announcements.
Tomorrow, Lads Hour is going to be at 3 o'clock, as always.
It's going to be about pet peeves.
Josh and Bo have lots of pet peeves.
They've already got a long list.
It's going to be a good one.
And on Friday at 3 o'clock is the last Gold Zoom Call of the Week.
So do come down and join us for it.
Right, so let's begin.
So there's a new film out called The American Society of Magical Negroes.
I can't even believe they even allow that to happen because you could get shot for using that word.
Like, allowing people to just say it because it's a film title.
These are the arbitrary rules now.
You can't say it if Jay-Z raps it in a song in a platinum award-winning hit where millions of people are singing it.
But if you put it as a film trailer, you can say it.
Well this caused quite a lot of controversy and actually I don't think it's as controversial as people are making it.
Really?
Yeah, I actually think people are taking this way more seriously than it needs to be taken.
Then it deserves, okay.
Yeah, then it deserves, exactly.
Let's watch this right now.
I know you can feel their discomfort, Aaron.
Watching you walk through a room full of white people is the most painful thing I've ever seen.
Excuse me.
Sorry.
I don't want to take you to a job interview.
There's a recruiting class starting right now and we gotta get you in it.
Welcome to the American Society of Magical Negroes.
I don't really understand.
It's easier said than done.
What's the most dangerous animal on the planet?
Shark.
White people, when they feel uncomfortable.
White people feeling uncomfortable precedes a lot of bad stuff for us.
That's why we fight white discomfort every day.
Because the happier they are, the safer we are.
The name is a little updating.
Maybe like magical black people or something.
I guess they don't have the same ring.
Oh, wow.
Your first client is a Jason Munt.
His morale is far too low.
Hey.
Hey.
Darn it.
I was hoping there was a station right next to him.
Oh, is this one spoken for?
No.
Yeah, it's actually fun and weirdly relaxing.
It's like being a secret agent with none of the danger.
Hey!
I'm Lucy.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
She's great.
Yeah, she's cool.
You kidding?
Come on, man.
She's smart and funny.
I know what you were doing going on about her.
You're trying to set us up.
No, no, no.
That's not what I was doing.
You cannot have a relationship with Lizzie now, because if you don't put Jason first, everyone's magic will fail.
I've always felt like it's my job to make white people feel comfortable, and here it literally is.
But maybe it shouldn't be.
I've got a great plan to ask her out, but I'm going to need your help.
Do you think you could, like, work your magic?
Hey, is he talking about me?
Hey.
Oh, wait, are you?
I think we can stop it there.
That's weird, right?
That's genuinely horrifying.
It's so bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's such a silly premise.
But the thing is, Honestly, I can't imagine.
First of all, that guy, I don't know how to say this without getting in trouble.
Even the main character, he's mixed race.
And he's British.
Why?
Does everyone with a tan qualify as black in the US?
I find it so bizarre.
It's really weird.
There are loads of people in America who are black who I'm like, And also, also, also, like, why is everything up?
Like, America is a country of like, what, 350 million people?
A lot.
Of all of, like, loads of Hispanic people, loads of people from Asia.
Like, why is everything up against the white man?
Like, it's a very multicultural society.
That's a very good question.
Like, do you not run into anyone else?
Like, even when I grew up in Ghana, I ran into, like, I don't know, Thai people, Vietnamese, Lebanese people, Indian people.
Even, like, African cities that are pretty, by most living standards, not great, are pretty, like, metropolitan.
What is this?
There's a weird relationship between the blacks and the whites in America.
It's very... I don't... Wow.
I can't believe someone funded this.
You know, I can believe it.
It's very American.
It's very niche.
It's strange.
But it's just very, very much American.
But of course, this annoyed a lot of people, saying that white people are the most dangerous animals on the planet.
And I was like, come on, guys, you don't need to get that sensitive about it, right?
But the thing is, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that, like, I think Nick Cannon said something even more derogatory.
He said something about white people not even being human or something.
And he still gets to have a career, right?
He gets to have a career and breed like a cockroach and impregnate as many women as he physically can.
And at this point, the standards are very clear.
You can say whatever you want about certain people and certain races.
There's no point even in getting upset, right?
The floodgates are now open, right?
Because how do you go back from here?
You can't go and try and cancel these people because then you're still racist.
Well, that's what everyone's objecting to, being like, hang on, you can't say that white people are the most dangerous animal and plant.
It's like, is that an insult?
I mean, it doesn't feel like an insult to me.
You really just have to ignore them.
And it's also, it's strange enough, it's also quite debilitating because you're positing white people as the standard, like, oh, they're so dangerous, they can take me down.
I'm like, hmm, I'm pretty sure the Chinese have a pretty good chance of that as well.
The thing is, as well, it's just not really true.
The average white person is rather polite, normally.
Well, I mean, in Britain, working-class white boys are at the bottom of scholastic attainment in schools.
You can only make such statements and assumptions, one, if you have a very warped worldview, in which case I don't think there's much helping there, or you're just misinformed and you're not interested in them.
Or maybe you just really hate them because they're white.
Yeah, which again, because after assuming that they hate you because you're black, I'm like, Newsflash, no one cares about you, period.
Most people are consumed with their own problems.
Yeah, but that's also pretty true as well.
Most people just don't think like this.
Genuinely, most people are very self-centered for good reason.
It's such a waste of energy to not like someone because of such arbitrary things.
But this is an entire industry in America that deals with essentially being oppositional to white people and trying to conscript every other race of people on the planet in opposition to white people.
And so you get Chinese people being like, oh yes, I've been impressed by the white man.
It's like, really, have you?
You know, come on.
Well, it was an industry.
So at this point, I don't think there's any kind of social utility, or at least they're not even feigning it is.
It's just milking as much money as possible.
It's kind of like, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion, all these HR.
I mean, the only people that have benefited from these sorts of movements are HR departments and film executives and anyone that can make money off this grievance niche.
And white women as well, because they're the ones who fill HR departments.
And if there's one people who need their power reduced, it's white women.
Like college educated women.
Well, I say that as a married man.
I love you, darling.
Couldn't resist.
So anyway, this is one racist problem with this film that everyone has.
But there's another one, which is from the other side.
This film is also racist towards black people.
Oh, OK.
So this is an American as well.
Yes, also American, yeah, so you can't please anyone, so why bother trying?
But this term, the title of the film originally comes from a term coined by a black film director called Spike Lee, in which he says the magical negro trope is used as a black side character as a plot device whose purpose is to advance the story of a white protagonist.
Are these people ever happy?
I mean, literally no.
I also I've heard of Spike Lee.
Isn't he the guy that wrote sort of a black comic book for Marvel or something along those lines?
I don't know if he did a comic book.
As far as I'm aware, he's a film director who has a really big problem with white people.
Yeah, I do.
I do think he may have pitched it, but I know he kind of delved into a lot of comic books.
I mean, he may well have done.
Yeah, I think that's where I've heard of him because I honestly I gave up on films in Hollywood Yeah.
And it's hard because I used to love, I used to love films.
That's because Hollywood used to be amazing.
Yeah.
I saw, I saw a post on Twitter the other day just saying, you know, Oh, you know, Hollywood can only produce so many films a year.
And I'm like, look, man, when I was a kid, Hollywood used to put out a dozen bangers every year.
It's just every film was a great film.
And what's wrong.
It's because they let people do what they want.
Like the fact that American pie would never exist today.
It's so deeply depressing and it's not even like the pinnacle of film.
It's really not but it was at least funny.
You know and I feel like I can't believe Adam Sandler's happened to have a career like if he was born like 10 years later he would be nothing because all his films are terrible but he had the freedom to make like tell terrible jokes and you know play on stereotypes you can't do that now.
But also, where are just the great films?
I mean, did you watch Ridley Scott's Napoleon?
No.
Awful.
Absolutely atrocious.
And it's a real shame because, I mean, Ridley Scott, A, has directed some absolutely classic films, but B, Napoleon is such an amazing story.
How can you mess this up?
Well it's because the thing is they've inevitably given like put themselves or put constraints on themselves and they feel like it's just it's for diversity and inclusion when actually they're robbing good stories of being told because you always have to hit these kind of you know tick these boxes and it's completely irrelevant.
I just find it so... I genuinely... Nollywood films are known for being absolutely awful.
I mean, to the extent that you will actually see the camera in the shot of like the terrible bad acting, the terrible audio, and I still enjoy watching that more now than like the films that are being released, at least it's authentic.
Yeah, yeah.
I can get past the production quality.
Yeah.
I mean, you don't have like a 50 kilo woman beating up someone like The Rock and pretending like that's reality.
It's just so bizarre.
And it's definitely putting a warped view of Yeah, I didn't.
Yeah, I wanted to frame it a bit more gently than that, but it's putting that in.
I keep seeing these posts.
I saw one a while ago and it just really stuck with me where this woman who posts on Reddit being like, Oh, I was having a play fight with my boyfriend and I was winning and I told him, okay, really start fighting.
And he just threw me down and that was it.
And I was just like, yeah, exactly.
It's like, what did you think was going to happen?
You know, like, you don't like literally her mind.
It believes that men and women are roughly of equal strength.
And also it distorts, it actually robs women of their real power.
I'm like, why would you?
The beauty is the dichotomy.
Your power isn't being able to beat up literally a building with feet in the form of a man.
It's the power of your femininity, of your feminine grace, of your sensuality, all the things that you bring that he cannot in a million years bring.
And now they've distorted that to actually, the standard is now men.
Well, that's the thing, isn't it?
And then this is the same thing with this.
Like, the standard is white people.
The standard is men.
They put these things on a pedestal and rob the alternatives of having any virtues or graces of their own.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think these people would actually struggle living in a majority black country.
This is what I... Oh, well, yeah.
Because the thing is, like, we have sometimes, like, when I was a kid in school, you'd have, like, these, um, I can't remember the name we call them.
We had a term for them where, like, British and American kids, mainly their parents had gone in.
But they grew up in America, so they have, they were imbued in American culture.
And they would come to school in Ghana because their parents were trying to discipline them or trying to get them.
And they completely hated it.
And I'm like, but this is, this is a black majority country.
You are home.
Hello, welcome back!
I've been hating it because they're like, yeah, you need to go fetch your water, the power's out, you know, the road, what road?
The dirt road, the bumpy, get ready, bumpy ride.
The realities of how people actually lived was a complete shock.
I'm like, you see, skin deep is very shallow.
You need to look past it because people have real problems.
Yeah.
And I can't remember what we used to call them.
Something the white man doesn't sound so bad.
Exactly.
But it's funny because now when they come as tourists, they will come to like, I don't know, some of the Tory spots, like the Door of No Return, like the Elmina Castle, where they looked at where the slaves and all that.
You have these black Americans, they're crying, they're like, we was kings and queens.
And I'm like, where?
Kings and queens where?
What do you mean, kings and queens where?
- Egypt. - Like, who sells the kings and queens?
Do you understand the history This is just a brutal industry.
The thing is, most people that have a better knowledge are pretty agnostic about the history.
They don't get attached to it because they're like, look, I don't really have anything to get attached to because my life still sucks.
Like, I don't have a great quality of life.
Can we sort that out first before I get attached to things that my ancestors went through that I never did?
Personally, it's strange.
But yeah, but the point is, it's about creating the justification for why you don't have to do any hard work.
Well, yeah, it's an excuse.
Yeah, exactly.
That's all it's about.
Because like, no one who's actually successful is sat there on this victim mentality of just being like, well, I can't get ahead.
No, you do.
You just have to continue grinding and getting ahead.
I think most successful people are just so grateful Like what they have that they just feel they just want to keep going.
Like I mean that's that's kind of because you know I speak to like friends and family back home and I'm just like so grateful that I like I opened the tap and the water's flowing.
Like because sometimes like seriously when I when I fly back home the first thing I do is you know is there water in the polytank?
Is the generator on?
Like I'm just I'm trying to look at the basic amenities.
Yeah.
And so for people to not understand what a what gift it is to live in this country despite all those problems I for me I just I find strange.
See, I'm totally used to it but I guess I would be, wouldn't I?
But yeah, the thing is like, I read this interview with this guy and the director is a guy called Kobe Libby.
Okay, is that his given name?
That is apparently his given name.
His mum was Italian or something and his dad was African or something like that.
But it's just a really Non-threatening thing and so many people have taken this very very seriously.
It's kind of a comedy, it's playing on a trope that was coined 20 odd years ago.
Everyone's getting really upset about it and initially I was kind of like, you know, but I looked into it and it didn't seem like that big a deal and so I mean, I think this is where like the American right, I don't know if that's probably the best way I can coin it, kind of tied themselves up in knots over nothing.
They do, yeah.
Because people know that these things will cause outrage on one side of the political spectrum and excite people on the other side.
People that get excited by this are also excited by the rage of the other side.
Exactly.
And I just think, look, at the end of the day, there's some realities you need to accept.
The floodgates are open.
You're not going to...
You know, make these things go away.
The best you can do is just ignore them or treat them with the irrelevance that they are.
Well that's the thing.
People, again, it's putting the thing on the pedestal and giving it way more power than it deserves.
More attention.
Yeah.
Like how many, every time I read like a trans story or like something like this or like a white People, discrimination.
So I really, I'm just, I just skim past it because I like, this is not important.
There will always be people like that.
That's it.
You just have to accept it.
So I don't really care.
Let's focus on the important things.
I mean, to be honest with you, this might well be amusing.
Like it's a comedy.
Well, yeah, exactly.
And it's just, it might even be taking the mickey out of people that genuinely have this worldview that white people are the most dangerous.
And I'm like, wow, don't you have taxes to pay?
That's your issue?
You've got to be up for work tomorrow.
That's a great response that you have taxes to pay.
It's like, God, yeah, I do have taxes to pay.
I don't know, maybe it's old age, but at old age, I'm 27, I don't have the energy to be upset about these things at all.
No, I totally agree with you, but I think there's a great point.
For the American right, just don't get upset by this.
Actually mock it if you have to.
Don't give it attention.
See, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
Exactly.
These kinds of people hate being ignored.
They hate feeling like they're not making any headway.
They hate feeling that they're not getting a rise out of it.
Exactly.
That's what they're trying to do.
And that's why I'm just very much like, OK, well, white people are the most dangerous people on the planet.
That sounds scary.
And look, it's a land of the free, right?
It reinforces that you can say what you want genuinely.
Because the thing is, when people get upset about it, they're like, oh, what are you going to do about it?
And it's like, oh, are you going to threaten the right to free speech?
No, just do what you want.
I'm going to laugh at it.
But anyway, let's move on to the next thing.
This actually really annoyed me.
Genuinely, I tweeted about this, I was like, I'd rather stand.
Yeah, this is just beyond the pale and really annoys me, right?
So, this is travelling while fat.
I think we'll watch some of it, just because... I mean, I guess you've never had the experience of travelling... Oh, I have.
...while wearing... No, no, while weighing 500 pounds.
Oh, no, that's... no.
Unless I ate my... Let's talk about how embarrassing it can be to travel as a plus-size person.
All I'm thinking about is the police.
God, do not sit me next to a fatphobe.
I was escorted off the plane by police tonight.
How's your night going?
I have to board a plane into Toronto and all I'm thinking about is police.
God, do not sit me next to a fatphobe.
On top of that, I have an anxiety about asking for a seatbelt extender, and like if you have to go to the washroom, like trying to get through the aisle in a larger body, and if you'll really fit.
And once you're in the washroom, there'll be even space to wipe your ass.
Imagine being too big to get into the toilet to wipe your bum.
These people have no shame.
You have to be shameless.
Oh, it's mad.
But I mean, this must feel very much like first world problems, right?
I mean, but the thing is, here's the thing.
I This is why the culture really annoys me.
Yes.
Because these people are allowed to live in their delusion.
Yes.
That's, that's why I get angry.
It's not the fact that like, oh, they don't, don't you think they know that they're fat?
No, they don't know that this is unacceptable.
Yes.
Like you're squishing me.
There's two humans here.
And if my bag is like 0.3 kilos overweight, I have to basically take out a second mortgage to get it through.
Yeah.
And also it's bad business.
It is definitely bad business.
But the thing about it is the attitude, right?
For example, an open letter to thin people who feel infringed on by fat people on airplanes.
As if being fat is just like a natural, normal state of affairs.
As if it's God-given.
Exactly.
As if it's just thunderbolt from the heavens, right?
Again, there's nothing I can do.
It's not connected to my actions in any way, shape or form.
That's the issue.
I don't know, they're treated like they're disabled.
Yes.
I remember one time, I don't remember where I was flying to, but I was asked to move because there was a disabled person.
They're like, oh, could you please move?
Because there's a disabled person in their family.
No problem.
Genuinely, they were like, They had like a trumpet sound.
I actually couldn't believe my eyes.
My jaw dropped.
I know.
I think I think I was flying.
I think I might have been flying like to Heathrow from Accra.
And I think this family went on holiday.
I couldn't believe I was in shock.
And so I looked at the air hostess and she was like, thanks.
You're so great.
You know, that's really generous.
And I was like, this is a nonsense what I'm seeing here.
The whole family was fat.
Of course they were.
I'm like, my dad was so fat.
He had like a wheelchair and there's like this disability.
I'm like, yeah, his jaw doesn't close.
That's the disability.
I could not believe I was so angry.
And then I ended up sitting next to this guy, who also happened to be fat, who poured beer on my jeans.
So I had my flight ruined by these people.
I was really upset, but I just couldn't believe it.
Well, this is apparently not an uncommon state of affairs in the new world anyway.
But this, this whole thing, you can see the way it's framed.
You don't know me, but I know you.
I see you glance over me as if this person is just living in a world of victimness because of the fact that they massively overeat.
I think it's either complete self, lack of self-awareness or just completely shameless.
Like you have to have shameless.
Yeah.
You just have to be completely shameless.
They're actually quite self-aware that they are, you know, three times bigger than a regular human.
Are they, are they aware that they're like making the experience Deeply uncomfortable for the person next to them.
Yeah, I think so.
She says this actually, I want to ask you for your compassion to remember that the fat person sitting next to you or near you on a flight is a human being.
I want to ask you to remember that you don't know us or why we're flying and to consider the idea that maybe our sole purpose for being on that plane is not to make you comfortable or invade your space.
But that's what you're doing.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, the thing is, I think these people, because they don't have enough, like, obviously people are influenced by the people that are around them and, you know, the kinds of things that they're, whether they're seen with approval by their friends and family.
And I think that's the issue here.
They live in a culture where they're mollycoddled.
Yes.
Like, I remember I was talking to my friend who I grew up with down the road and he's moved to Switzerland, so he's not from here.
And I was like, do you remember when I used to ask you for directions and you'd be like, You see that fat person there, turn left, and you see somebody in yellow wear a kiosk, turn right, and you see a really tall person there.
We used to speak in such blunt terms, not because it was offensive, but because we're not familiar with living in a society where people lie.
And this person, genuinely, she probably got over 50% of her actual weight, her recommended weight, before she ever found out she was fat.
I think that's what it is.
Because you don't just wake up like this.
No, and the problem is, in the West, we have a culture of I mean, you call it lying, which... It's actively lying.
It's lying.
But it's lying for a particular reason, that's the thing.
It's lying to spare people's feelings.
Because the goal is to make it apparent that there's no bad choices in lifestyle.
I think it's for money.
Like, if I was in charge of the world, which should happen, I wouldn't allow, like, these shops to have, like, plus-size, like, dummies outside, like, saying, oh, look, this is how the clothes look if you're a size 18.
Huh?
So what?
You know, I can understand why someone who comes from outside of it thinks it's for money, but honestly, it's really not.
It's for morality.
Really?
Yeah, no, I swear to God.
They think they're being moral when they try and normalize the difference between being a healthy weight and being massively obese.
But the thing is, the reason why I say we're lying is because when you see a magazine cover with Tess Holliday, I think her name is.
Like, this is objectively not an attractive woman.
You are lying by putting her there because you know the people on the cover of these magazines should be attractive.
I'm like, if I told you, oh, you're so hot.
You look like Lizzo.
You're so hot.
You look like Tess Haldane.
Like, you'd punch me, right?
So we're actively lying.
So I'm like, either you're lying because you want to make money off these deluded fat people, or you're immoral because there's nothing moral about this.
It's the immoral part, but they think that what they're doing is the right thing because they think sparing people's feelings is worse than indulging a massive overeating disorder.
I don't know.
I know it sounds crazy.
I find it so bizarre.
And it is bizarre.
And also, there's nothing kind about diabetes.
No, there's nothing kind about this.
There's been a spate, in fact, recently of fat activists who have died from obesity.
But you know the power, who really has the power to stop this?
Men.
Yeah.
Men do.
Because if men said, particularly black men that are looking for immigration papers, if they stopped sleeping with overweight women and just said, you know, I'm going to do this to boost my immigration status, I think things would change.
If all men said, if you look like a building with feet, I wouldn't even look at you.
I'll just pretend like you're not there.
You just don't exist in my world.
No attention, no likes on Instagram, like you just, you don't exist.
Oh, they would drop the weight like that.
No, absolutely.
I believe you, but that would be a human rights issue.
No, there's no abuse, there's nothing.
I agree.
You don't exist.
I'm just describing, I'm not endorsing.
I mean, look at this.
Yeah.
Oh my god.
Like, that wasn't an accident.
You knew what you were doing when you kept eating.
Like, there's no excuse, right?
But the thing is, this is the thing, right?
They're complaining, well look, we've got to pay twice the amount for airline seats.
The same experience.
But that's because you take up twice the space.
But this is the point.
You're two humans.
Yeah.
Literally, you shouldn't be like this, and you know you shouldn't be like this.
And you're literally encountering physical barriers in the world because you're like this.
What do you think if the airlines define person by their weight?
I think that'd be a human rights issue too.
Just be like, so this is how the airline, for technical reasons, classifies person.
Like, this height, this weight.
That's a great, I like the way you're going with this.
Because, and the thing is, you don't even have to get into the whole gender thing, right?
You just, XY chromosomes, this height, this weight, you know, I think that'd be a great idea.
I mean, you don't even need, yeah, you don't need any gender name.
Like, literally, it's just, we're just literally doing it on weight.
Yeah, exactly.
So, stand on the scales.
I went to Orlando.
I went to Universal Studios and me and my boyfriend were standing on the weighing scales and they're like, yeah, you're both fine.
One person stood on it and they were like, no, you're over.
I couldn't believe it.
Listen to the beginning of this, right?
They say the average width of an airplane seat has been shrinking for decades.
That's an issue of money.
Bodies around the world are getting larger with experts predicting that over half the global population will be overweight or obese by 2035.
That's not even that, that's a decade.
But yeah, isn't there a larger conversation about our way of life if that's the case?
Because yeah, I, okay, the thing is, It's difficult because I often have this conversation.
Is it because people are time poor and they don't have the time or the knowledge to cook healthily?
It's the food as well.
It's both.
It's the culture around normalising eating crap and normalising the culture around being in a larger body, which is bullshit.
And also, yeah, the food.
It's a big problem.
The food is just junk.
It's just so bad, honestly.
So a lot of airlines in America, where this is happening, require customers to buy extra seating.
But of course that's unfair because they're still just technically one person.
So how does that work?
Do they buy extra seating in the plane or when they check in?
In advance.
So they're supposed to book two seats, buy two seats.
So if they don't and then they turn up, like the Michelin Man, do they get taken off?
Well, sometimes yes.
So no, I'm not even, I'm not even joking, but that's going to change.
Right.
Okay.
Uh, so basically it depends on the airline differs between airlines, but, um, but sometimes yes, there'll, there won't be enough seats on the airplane if they haven't booked two seats.
And so they won't be allowed to fly.
And this has led for a call for a clearer anti-discrimination laws, because this is a form of discrimination against the morbidly obese.
The thing is, I don't have a problem with discrimination.
We discriminate in our lives on a regular basis.
You discriminate by buying first class or economy tickets.
Life is full of discrimination.
I'm all for this.
Yay to discrimination.
To be called discriminating used to be a compliment.
Well, yeah, exactly.
A discriminating person means you have good taste.
Exactly.
You're discerning.
Exactly.
Yes, but instead we've arrived at the point where any form of discrimination is now immoral.
And so you have something called, quote, the Obesity Collective, which is a fat activist group that is calling for a mandatory code to deal with the issues that eliminate discrimination against those with the condition, the condition of being obese.
Maybe I'm a bit self-conscious, but I would just actually be embarrassed to do any of this.
This is embarrassing.
I would be embarrassed to allow myself to get to that size and then complain that someone doesn't want to be squashed under the weight of me.
And I'd be embarrassed to join a group like that.
Yeah.
But these people aren't.
As you said, they're shameless.
And they want clear rules for all airlines to provide consistency for passengers.
The director of the obesity collective, Tiffany Peter, said that it was crucial to have clear laws to ensure airlines didn't discriminate against passengers, especially as seats seem to be getting smaller in recent decades.
Maybe you're just getting fatter.
Despite the trend in Australia of our body sizes going in the other direction, there should be clear rules to level the playing field for airlines.
And so you've got airlines like Southwest who have been like, okay, we'll just give you free extra seats.
Well, that's fine.
If they want to run their, their business into the ground, that's, that's because the thing is Americans are only going to get fatter.
So this is literally eating into your bottom line years in advance unnecessarily.
I don't have a problem with that.
I, I, I genuinely just think I don't have a problem with fat shaming actually.
I think I should be honest.
I don't have a problem with a lot of shame.
I think actually that's what society needs, a bit more shame.
Yeah, absolutely.
People need to feel shame.
They need to feel a sense of discomfort when they're doing things that are not acceptable.
Yeah, we're all judging you.
Yeah, exactly.
And I want you to know that I'm judging you.
I'm not ashamed of that at all.
No, but the thing is, because that's human nature.
We judge people regardless.
If you saw a naked person walking down the street, you're going to judge this person as mentally unwell.
Why do you get away with doing that?
And it's for your own good as well.
If this woman had been subject to a bit more judgment, then she'd probably be in better shape.
Honestly, I'm very curious.
Because the thing is, the likelihood of her entire family being fat is really high.
I don't understand in what world.
I've known people where they're getting a bit chubby as kids and they'll be like, oh mum, I'm hungry.
It's like, there's no food.
That's the end of the conversation.
And I remember thinking, my mum's done that to me before.
I mean, I was never chubby, but she was very particular because she was like, you really can't get any.
And she used to say that, I was like, oh, there's no food.
Fair enough.
Or like, she didn't want me to have McDonald's and there's rice at home, which is like a new trope.
But this is the point though, this is not good for her.
This is an unhealthy way of living.
I will say that in the US they're particularly unlucky because of the strength of the food lobbyists.
Honestly, even buying rice cakes, I tried to buy rice cakes in the US and it was like $7.
I'm like, you can get two burgers from McDonald's for that.
And also when you look at the ingredients in their food, it's full of just shit.
Yeah.
It's complete rubbish.
But it's also like this almost weird, unnecessary stuff.
I mean, high fructose corn syrup, all these hormones and, and food colorings.
Like I saw bright green yogurt for kids.
Why is yogurt bright green?
Most people like don't know how to put together a decent meal.
And so the Americans, I hate American food.
Whenever I go to America, I put on weight and it's like, but I don't normally put on weight.
I don't eat anything.
Honestly, I struggle with the food in the U.S.
To the extent that I actively either under eat or I stick to genuinely like meat, potatoes, veg.
I can see it coming from the ground or it looks like it's from an actual animal.
But the problem I have is when I'm traveling, I don't have the opportunity to cook.
So like me, I took the family to Disneyland in Florida.
And we go to just some restaurant there and I swear to God, right?
I literally was like, look, it was lunchtime and I was like, right, I'm not going to get something big because I know that's going to be thousands of calories.
So I'll get a salad and I looked at the salads and one salad was 1,800 calories.
I'm like, how do you make a salad?
1,800 calories?
That'd be like 300 calories back in Britain.
And the meat, they're huge!
I had chicken wings in New York with the celery sticks and the buffalo dip and all of that.
And I was like, these wings look like it's from a pterodactyl.
I was telling my uncle, I was like, this chicken looks like it's going to wake up and punch me.
The chicken was so big!
Well, you see, I've realized that Americans eat differently to pretty much the rest of the world.
Because I don't know about in Ghana, but in England, your dad will tell you, you've got to clear your plate before you can have anything else.
You've got to clear your plate.
And that's just a totally normal thing in England.
Totally normal, pretty much everywhere else.
You don't even have to clean your plate.
Like, this is what you're getting, period.
Yeah, exactly.
If you want to, if there's more food, like, yeah, you can have more, but like, this is your portion.
Yeah.
But in England, it was always like, you go clean.
And in America, it's absolutely not that.
Like, you're expected to just leave half of your food.
Yeah, that's another really big attitude problem.
Yeah, I don't have that attitude.
So whenever, you know, I go to America, someone puts something in front of me, I was like, well, okay, well, I've got to win it all because I just trained.
Oh, I see.
I see.
Yeah, I see.
Yeah.
I mean.
Yeah, I mean the thing is I think culturally another thing is because we don't really um a lot of our food is fresh like so you go to the market that day we didn't really do I mean you can you can free stuff but we eat like a lot of um just fresh food in general so if you don't finish it like that's that's your dinner right there's no keep in the fridge microwave but like yeah it's usually so you kind of eat smaller portions as well um it's it's very strange I mean this picture really upsets me I'm sorry.
Because she looks like a young woman.
She is a young woman.
She probably doesn't even have kids.
She's probably not going to have kids.
But yeah, so anyway, this was something that was picked up by the airlines themselves.
Southwest Airlines decided to offer customers of size, customers of size.
Customers of size!
That's not descriptive.
And that's the point of this.
What size?
Exactly.
Everyone's got a size, like everyone's of some sort of size.
Some people are petite, some people are tall, but no, that means fat, right?
Fat customers are getting extra seats at the boarding gate if necessary.
A policy that's being praised for its inclusivity, despite some concern that other passengers may risk being turned away if they have their seats filled.
Can you imagine that happening to you?
Can you imagine you get to a plane and they're like, yeah, sorry, this Gargantuan human being.
Yeah.
Has, has actually been given your seat.
It's like, what'd you mean?
Why would they get my seat?
Like it's insufferable, isn't it?
Right.
The airline told the Telegraph this policy was to offer seats and seatbelt extenders, which is hilarious.
A seatbelt extender.
Okay.
Come on.
If you need a seatbelt extender, the problem is you.
You know, you know, you know that the sad thing is, and I hate the fact that I'm saying this, like fat people used to be jolly.
You can't be fat and insufferable.
You need to pick a struggle.
Like you can either be a skinny hot bitch or you can be a fat, jolly, nice person.
And I'm like, you can't make us hate fat people too.
That's so unfair.
Like this kind of entitled attitude is just worsening social relations because it's like everyone has something that's going for them.
You know that a fat woman I don't know how vulgar I can get, but she's, she's very, um, she's appreciative for any kind of sexual attention she gets.
So she puts her back into it, you know, but if you don't have, exactly like you have to, you have to pick a struggle.
You can't be fat and insufferable.
That's just not, that's not, that's not acceptable.
Uh, it does recommend that overweight passengers book two seats, but then why would I book two seats if you're going to give me one for free?
Well, this is the problem.
I mean, this is an incoherent policy.
I'm surprised at Southwest though.
You'd expect it to be like a small local airline.
Well, I don't know.
They've got a bottom line, haven't they?
Not anymore, it's going to be eaten!
It literally is.
And so they realize this is going to be a problem, which we'll come back to in a minute.
But then you get like TikTok's people posting, being like, oh yeah, this is how you can take advantage.
Although I haven't got that in there, so apparently we'll just go straight.
Can I just give a caveat that I despise TikTok?
I think it's just rotting people's brains.
Oh it is, and deliberately by the Chinese Communist Party.
Um but so this was inevitably going to have some sort of knock-on effect and it turns out that this is a woman who's like oh hang on a second I've actually been kicked off the airplane because of some giant fat guy took my seat.
Oh so this actually happened?
This actually happened.
This video is going to be very controversial but I really need to understand what just happened.
Flying from Antigua Bay Stop in Baltimore, going home to Denver.
And in Montego Bay, they tell us on Southwest that we cannot go on the plane because it got overbooked and we cannot get in because I was on standby.
Well, I wasn't on the standby.
It wasn't my ticket.
I purchased the ticket.
Um, and they couldn't get, so it's me, my daughter and her friend, me with two teenagers.
We can't get in on the plane.
later to find out that there's a person of size that did not purchase two tickets but was being accommodated and that is why we could not get in on the airplane and about to get stuck outside the country please again i said it's controversial please help me understand um why am i do i have to
Spent the night without any accommodations in Baltimore because person over over what is a person oversized person how did they call her um didn't purchase a second ticket oh here's the thing I asked that here at the Baltimore they said sorry we can't accommodate you nine o'clock right now I have a ticket I have
I don't mind them doing that so far as it's not an inconvenience to someone else.
But it's demonstrably an inconvenience.
Exactly.
But she explained to me that Southwest policy is to accommodate a person of size, there we go, person of size, even if they did not purchase a ticket.
But that is just unbelievable and insufferable.
I don't mind them doing that so far as it's not an inconvenience to someone else.
But it's demonstrably an inconvenience.
Exactly.
This is the issue.
I mean...
Why is that person of size?
Why is that person more important than me and my family getting on the plane when we have paid for our tickets?
We're not breaking any rules.
We are, in fact, following exactly the rules.
We're just going to get in our seats and go.
And someone who is a gargantuan giant who's like, yeah, I didn't book two seats even though I knew I couldn't fit into one.
You know, I suspect.
Why don't they get privileged?
They're seeing where the trends are going.
Like America is just going to get flatter and flatter.
So actually, the rise of having to accommodate people of size is going to increase.
I'm sorry, they can get to the back of the line!
Actually, I think if they got to the back of the plane, they might tip it.
So it might not be able to stop their take-off!
There might be an uneven distribution of weight.
That's true, but this really winds me up, because this woman has done nothing wrong.
She's done everything right.
She's with kids as well.
And she's got her kids, so yeah, exactly.
And this side, no, sorry, I'm utterly incapable of controlling my appetite, and so you're going to have to wait for the next plane tomorrow.
I would be so angry.
They were like, oh yeah, Esther, could you please move?
There's a disabled passenger and you just hear boom, boom, boom.
It's not disability!
Oh my God.
I was so angry.
What are the comments saying?
I can only imagine that people were not happy.
That's true!
I mean, I can second that.
Yeah, there's no profit.
At that point, you're cargo.
Yeah, well, just book the second seat.
Where do they put pets?
There's a place for pets, right?
I've no idea.
Yeah, there's a storage carriage for pets and it's well ventilated.
I've actually got no idea.
But the point is, like, you just go, look, if you need two seats and you only book one seat, you don't get on.
You've got to go book your seat and you can get the next one.
Yeah.
You know, it's you that has to be inconvenienced because you failed to book what you needed for the transport.
And also you're fat.
But, OK, fair enough.
You're a giant.
OK, fine.
But you knew that in advance.
Well, you're the one who needs special accommodation.
Exactly.
You didn't wake up today and go, oh, my God, look how big I am.
You know, oh, sorry, I only booked one seat.
You knew.
You knew what you were doing.
And this is, as people are pointing out, this is totally rewarding, the obesity.
You're making them a privileged class.
It's like, sorry, what the hell are you doing?
Well, this is the thing.
We increasingly infantilise people in society.
I mean, I talk about the infantilisation of society being really endemic, at least here in the UK, but it's extending to... This is one of those weird trends where it's actually moving from Britain to the US as opposed to from the US to Britain.
Yes, probably.
Because I saw at some point, you're just going to hear every overweight person in the US saying, I'm working class.
Wow, we've really done a number, haven't we?
Seriously, it's just the complete infantilization of society.
But it's totally unfair.
I just can't get over just the phenomenal unfairness of this.
And also, this can only happen somewhere like the US.
I mean, seriously.
You can see fights breaking out.
This happened in the Philippines or India.
Fat, fat, get off the fat!
I don't know a single person that would tolerate this in other parts of the world.
I just can't get free seats.
I can't imagine getting free anything because I was irresponsible.
You should fire the CEO of Southwest Airlines if this is genuinely a policy.
It's amazing, isn't it?
Imagine if you have your pension fund invested in this company and this is what they're doing.
Yeah, I'd be furious.
But honestly, the fundamental unfairness, these people Do not deserve a free seat.
What they should do is have to pay for an extra seat and it shouldn't come at the cost of someone else.
I can't get past it.
It must be because, you know, I've got kids and I'm, you know, we fly places.
Well, maybe they didn't think they were overweight or maybe they don't like, I don't know.
Maybe they don't know the size of the seats or something.
I don't know.
A general rule is if you can't go on roller coasters because you don't fit in the seats, it's the same thing for planes.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Anyway, we'll leave that one there and go on to the next thing that I found that I still wanted to talk about, because why don't more women propose?
This, again, is a very American thing and a very modern, progressive feminist thing that I'm totally against because I'm not a modern American feminist.
This entire article is quite long, so I'll quote from a few bits of it.
Oh my god, a woman actually did it!
Rebecca Kendall!
Yeah, well, Rebecca Kendall, a New York City public school teacher, used her February 2021 break to do something few women ever get to do.
She proposed to her boyfriend.
None of us ever get to do.
As if women are... Oh, if only I could!
She proposed to her boyfriend, an assistant principal at this different school, on a beach resort in Jamaica.
He sounds Middle Eastern, Bilig Bayar, so that probably went down like a lead balloon.
On a beach resort in Jamaica.
Yeah.
I got down on one knee, did the whole thing, she says.
How do you feel about that?
Horrifying.
I think I would rather mop the sea.
I saw, you know, I saw this lady on this.
Okay.
So I used to watch telenovelas a lot as a kid.
And this was a lady who was in a telenovela that I watched as a kid.
She moved to Miami and she, I never knew that she wasn't married.
So she, she, she, I saw, she got married and all of that.
And then after the wedding, she posted a picture of her on one knee and I'm like, did you fall?
Like what happened?
Were you injured?
It's like, no, he proposed to me and I proposed to him.
Like it was a mutual thing.
Right.
Well, that's, that's something similar.
I mean, it's hard.
You have no self-respect.
It's horrifying.
Yeah, I agree.
Like, but it's not just horrifying.
It's, There is a purpose to marriage and you are totally inverting that purpose.
What?
Because they don't believe in the marriage as... I know this doesn't sound...
I don't know, fashionable or trendy.
But there's a reason why, even if you don't necessarily subscribe to the biblical version of marriage, there's a reason why the headship of a marriage or a relationship falls on the man.
That's not to say that you're oppressed or whatever, but you cannot have two pilots.
There has to be one pilot and one co-pilot.
And I don't understand why we're trying to subvert everything that plays to the natural strengths of men and women.
Well, that's the thing, isn't it?
There are particular roles that differentiate men and women, and one very classic part of the role of the man is to be the one who proposes.
It's a scary thing to do, but it's also kind of privileged.
But it's something that's reserved for men.
It's, you know, and so it's something that a man has to work up to.
It's an honour.
Because the thing is, it's an honour.
And these women, I'd be very curious if this, I mean, she's probably the kind of person that would split the bill on the first date.
Undoubtedly.
But I just think, do you, like, why do you want to do everything?
Why do you feel like you should be responsible for everything?
But again, it's why do you feel you have to try and be the man?
Yeah, exactly.
Trying to be the man in your relationship.
Get a dog.
Also, yeah, get a dog, but you're the woman.
What's wrong with being the woman?
Maybe she doesn't know how to.
I think that's probably a bigger issue.
I think many Western women, especially the later generations, not the younger generations, not the older generations that have spearheaded this nonsense.
I think it's the later generations.
They're now thinking, actually, could I even be a woman if I wanted to?
Because they've grown up with these generations of women that are saying, oh, you don't need a man or just get a job, prioritize your career, don't have children, all of that.
And now they're at a point where even if they wanted to be women, they don't have any kind of knowledge of it.
Yeah, because the older women are free to say that because they were raised to know how to be women.
So they have the choice.
Exactly.
They have the choice.
They've broken that connection.
And now women 40 years later have just got no idea.
They've been robbed of the choice.
Even if, I don't know, for some reason you decide to do a 180 degree turnaround and become that traditional woman, can you do it?
Can you manage a home?
I knew people that used to boil milk in a kettle at university.
They had no Why would you boil milk?
No domestic skills whatsoever.
At the point where you can barely nourish yourself, let alone a family.
They've been robbed of the choice.
That's the bigger issue.
If you can at least do that and still say, actually, I'm going to be a strong, independent woman or I'm going to look for a particular kind of man, fine.
At least it was a choice.
But now it's sad.
No, I totally agree.
So she shared her plans to propose to her boyfriend beforehand, and they weren't actually big on it.
She says, they didn't try to talk me out of it, but they definitely didn't have the reaction I would have liked.
They were like, that's so you.
Good for you!
That's not a compliment.
No, yeah, they were definitely like, OK, we don't want to insult her, but you shouldn't be doing that.
But anyway, they go on and tell us a bit more about How dating is in America at the moment, and it's not great.
It's not great here either.
It's not great anywhere, but this is just an American-centric one.
The process by which men and women meet, mate, and manufacture more humans is undergoing a radical realignment, and look how that's turning out.
A half century ago, two-thirds of Americans aged 25 to 50 were living with a spouse and a smattering of offspring.
Today, that fraction is closer to one-third.
Whereas marriage used to be an institution widely adopted across all socioeconomic levels, today it is much more prevalent among people who are wealthy and educated.
I don't remember who said this, I think it might have been Louise Berry, but she was saying that one of the greatest bulwarks against poverty for women is marriage.
So if you think about the poorest women past the age of 40, they're usually unmarried and they have children, single mothers and all of that, or they're just unmarried.
And I think that's probably the most feminist case you can possibly make for marriage.
But again, it goes back to, can these women be married?
Do they have the ability to live with a man?
Because most women, again, most of the modern generations, they don't like any kind of inconvenience.
They don't like give and take.
They don't like to negotiate.
They don't like to be uncomfortable.
They never think of, what can I give to the person?
They think, what can that person do for me?
The fundamental skills of actually being able to live with someone, to run a home, to do all these things, doesn't exist.
They've been robbed of a choice.
And all of the numbers are in.
If you want to build generational wealth, a married family that produces children who go on to get married, that's how wealth becomes accrued in a family.
And so to essentially rob the lower classes of this, the poorer classes of this, condemns them to an eternity of poverty.
And I think a couple of that with the social media era and this kind of glossy, this highlight reel era we're living in where everyone thinks, oh, what is it?
Hot girl summer or big vacation or elevating women like Cardi B, who is married actually and has a kid.
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.
And who doesn't let her kids listen to her own music.
Exactly.
I mean, like these people, these people that are bastions of the culture that are destroying society.
I mean, it's, you can't, it doesn't get worse than that.
Genuinely, like young people these days are scared of responsibility.
It's genuinely exploitative on people you are condemning to a terrible future.
Exactly.
And it's like, okay, well that's awful.
Most people I think before the age of 35 don't actually have regular contact with children or young people.
Most people don't have like, I always say age is just a number because what actually matures you is responsibility.
And most people don't have that.
They were allowed to be, you know, stay children up until like the basically 30s and they call it adulting, which is an Yeah, that's really interesting because I had like 18 cousins in my family.
And I was like the third oldest, so I always had younger cousins.
So I was always just, it was normal to have like, you know, you've got to look after, you know, Rebecca or whatever when you go out and it's like, yeah, okay, no problem.
I was actually talking to my friend about this because I mean she's Indian but she grew up in Ghana which is interesting you see and she has a stronger Ghanaian accent than I do but we were like we didn't have that many siblings I only have one brother she only has one brother yeah but it's like imbued in us from a young age of that responsibility of taking care of your family doing stuff for each other your cousins and all of that and it's completely lost on people when I tell people like I don't know I have to drive to Staffordshire because my mum needs this like a Why can't she do it herself?
She can, but that's why I'm there.
I saw this the other day.
It was, I think it was an MP who, or it was like an LBC host or something like that.
It's like, oh my God, these people are, you know, these people are expecting children to look after their parents.
So who the hell should be looking after them?
Honestly, I actually think everyone should work in a care home.
Every young person should work in a care home, just because most people don't think about old age.
I mean, I worked in a care home for a time, and it was such a harrowing experience.
There were some people's flats that I went to clean, and it was like a bombsite.
And I remember asking my manager, like, why is this person, like, why have they been neglected?
Why are they so depressed that the NHS has hospitalized them?
Like, you know, there was, I don't know how far I can say, but I mean, there were some residents that, you know, they were obviously, they had, early onset dementia.
And so I was there just to give them their medication and I'm like, have you changed your nappy?
And their family are nowhere to be seen.
I'm like, this is a future that awaits you if you think it's all glamorous.
Unless you're earning so much money that you can afford stellar care.
And most people are not.
You actually need to take your life seriously.
This will be you one day.
Exactly.
And I'm telling you, I mean, there was one lady who used to hug me.
I only had an hour with her.
That was kind of the designated time I had at the time.
She used to hug me for 15 minutes while I was there.
I would walk through the door and she would hug me for the 15 minutes where I'm supposed to be getting her ready and making her breakfast and all of that.
And I'm like, that will be you.
Yeah, and this culture of just atomization, I can't stand it.
And like ignoring your... I don't understand it.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, getting back to this.
They complain that plenty of things about the process of getting married have remained stubbornly unchanged.
Men still buy women expensive engagement rings even when the couple already shares expenses.
American women married to men continue to take their husband's last names at a rate of 80 to 20.
After a lull during the pandemic, the wedding industry is back in the black or white.
An overwhelming number of proposals still made by men.
So, even with the layers of feminist indoctrination being proliferated through the culture, there are still some traditional aspects of being a man and a woman that simply can't get passed.
You know, I think the one thing that's hopeful in this case is these kinds of people will breathe themselves out anyway.
Well, that is true, yeah.
But it just goes to show you that, like, men buying women expensive presents, Yeah, literally.
Flowers, that's nice.
I bet women these days wouldn't know what to do with flowers.
You know, the thing is, the sad thing is, they never think, what can I do for them?
I remember I did a show and someone was like, Oh, what do you think like the typical man wants?
And I was like, just someone who cares.
Like if you wake up and make him a coffee and just like, oh, you didn't sleep well last night.
I saw you like, I think you genuinely care.
I mean, do you know how rare it is for men to have that?
Yes.
I was like, men, like I said to one guy.
Someone who cares, wow, that's a radical, really high.
There's a producer I work with who's quite young, I think 2021.
And I was, he was wearing a jumper.
I was like, oh, that jumper is really nice.
It really brings out the color of your eyes.
And he's never forgotten it.
Because people don't care.
People don't, like, notice when he's got a haircut.
Or, like, when he's putting himself together.
I just find it... I just care!
It's weird.
It doesn't sound like very much, does it?
But it's kind of the opposite of the direction we're traveling in.
We live in such an individualistic society.
But they complain that, you know, there's just no uptick of women proposing to men.
And it's like, yeah, but why would you want there to be?
And the only reason to want that to be the case is to eventually destroy the roles of man and woman.
So there's just human, you know, there's just the undifferentiated human matter.
And it's terrible.
I mean, it's absolutely terrible.
So they go on to ask, well, what prevents a woman who wishes to marry her partner from proposing to him?
Is it not mortification?
Is it shame?
Well, that's exactly what they're getting.
Is it mortification?
The suggestion the woman had to force the issue because she was not desirable enough to be chosen?
Is the unspoken prohibition on any act that whiffs of female aggression or ambition?
Does it seem forward and loose?
Well, I mean, I think it depends on your conception of marriage as well.
Yeah.
I think like, I mean, I was saying, you know, the whole getting down on one knee, that's, that's not a big thing.
It's when you meet my family.
Because in my conception, marriage is actually not just between the two people.
It's actually a lot bigger than that.
It's between, it's bringing two families together.
That for me is, you know.
But that traditionally was what it always was.
Exactly.
I mean, you get to the point where you're building something bigger than yourself and you have, you know, your community around you to attest that this is a good setup, right?
And now it's just, oh, we're going to do it for five plus years.
And then if I get sick of waiting, I'll pop the question.
First of all, that's embarrassing.
And secondly, you don't take your life seriously.
You're allowing someone to just waste your time.
And also, you're not thinking of yourself as something very important.
It's more than not just taking yourself seriously.
It's acting like you aren't like a node in this network of people who are all connected together and that rely on you to do something.
Most people, and this makes me very sad, especially when it comes to men, don't think of legacy.
I don't think I've actually heard the word legacy in mainstream conversation ever, but it's very important.
What do you want your legacy to be?
It's all, oh, I just want happiness.
The point of life isn't happiness.
I hate to break it to you.
It's such a juvenile conception.
It's not happiness.
It's about fulfillment.
It's about being of use to your community.
That is the meaning of life.
I view this as a part of an aspect of being childless as well.
Because I didn't ever think about my legacy until I had a couple of sons.
And then I was like, oh, actually, you know, and so every night I make my eldest son read half an hour of a history book and then do half an hour of piano practice.
Because the only thing that's going through my mind, because a lot of the time it's not fun to make him do it.
You know, every single night he doesn't necessarily enjoy it.
But all that's going through my mind is that son, when you leave home, you're going to be able to at least read a book from start to finish and play the piano.
And you'll be, when you start thinking of your legacy, you'll be grateful to have a father that thought of you in the same way.
Exactly.
And at some point, I know at some point in his future, he'll be like, God, I'm glad my dad made me do that.
When he's playing a piano in front of a girl to impress her or something.
He will consciously think, I'm glad my dad made me do it.
And this is why I often make the point again, this is maybe controversial, I don't think a woman can raise a man the way a man should be raised.
Because you're not a man!
I remember I did this show once where we were like, oh, how should women approach raising men?
Get them raised by the kind of men you want them to be.
You cannot raise a man.
I'm sorry, it's hurtful.
You have a role to play in their lives.
My brother knows I'm very... If he brings a girl to the house, I'm the first kind of vetting process.
I'm like, oh yeah, is she well-spoken?
Does she have clean shoes?
You know, does she speak... There are things, but I'm like, because I'm thinking of your legacy.
You are not going to bring a bum to this house and pretend like you don't matter or the kinds of people you associate with don't matter.
But I'm not my dad.
My dad has so much more to teach my brother that I would never understand.
Unfortunately, when you say this, people think it's in a front to single mothers and all of that.
I don't care if it is.
Who do we want the best for?
Is it for the feelings of the mother or the children?
A society that's not rooted in looking out for children is a society doomed to failure.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And it's so totally true that the mothers and fathers have different strengths and roles that they bring to the situation.
I dread to think how soft I would be if I didn't have my father around when I was growing up.
And I can see it in my own children.
My own children are very kind and When they hurt themselves, I'm the one who's like, look, don't cry.
You've got to toughen up.
And my wife would just indulge their crying.
And it's totally normal.
I don't blame her for doing it, but it's a genuinely hard line for me.
I'm just like, no, no, no.
You need that balance.
I mean, this is the thing, because we've gotten so used to not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings.
We can't say certain things.
This rise in Hollywood of these single women Either hiring a surrogate because they're in their 40s or 50s and they just want a child.
I'm like, it's not about what you want.
If it's when it comes to children, it's not about what you want.
I'm sorry.
And I feel bad for saying this because I even know people have colleagues and stuff who like, you know, they got into their 40s and like, I don't need to wait for a man.
I want a child.
You are, you are, You are being selfish.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
You are.
This child needs a mother and a father.
You should have planned your life in a way.
And maybe you were deprived of the choice because you weren't raised to even have the skills to look for that kind of person.
And that's totally true.
I mean, I can't have blue eyes and blonde hair.
I need to accept certain realities in life.
But planned your life is, I think, the most important thing.
People don't in the West.
We do not.
We live forever in the moment and expect this one moment to just last forever.
And then for us to be able to get whatever we want from where we are, wherever we are now.
And if we don't, then it's... It's a bigger problem when it comes to men.
Because if men were better and more deliberate about planning their lives, women will fall in line.
I mean, I've met men that were like, oh, my ex was crazy.
We dated for three years.
I said, oh, OK.
And like this person's 35.
So what are you going to do next?
Oh, maybe take it a bit slower.
Huh?
You're 35.
You dated this woman for three years.
What are you going to do?
Date someone for 10 years before you find out?
I mean, I'm just like, you make poor decisions.
You don't learn from that.
You are a poor leader.
You are not someone that you don't want the kind of woman that you want.
Yes.
That's the bottom line.
Well, that's another thing as well.
Men are just deliberately trained not to take themselves seriously.
Because society has stopped taking men seriously.
Society has stopped talking to men about their legacy because apparently that's patriarchal.
Good.
I'm pro-patriarchy.
You need to bring back the patriarchy.
Treat men like they matter so they can take their lives seriously.
And when that happens, women will fall in line.
If you tell a woman, actually, I'm looking for a wife and kids and you don't match up, you know the next year she's lost 50 kilos.
She's bought some cookbooks.
She doesn't need a second airplane seat.
Assuming she's a natural woman and there's no bulge hidden somewhere.
Yeah, assuming.
I mean, it's just people, because not everyone has the privilege of growing up where they're being told this.
I completely accept that.
Yeah, that's true.
I think it's a culture-wide issue.
I think, you know, generations of women particularly have actually robbed young women of the choice because they haven't raised them that way.
Fine.
But also young men.
But you have to start somewhere.
Yeah, exactly.
It just has to be the harsh truth about it.
Just like, sorry, no, actually, you've got to do some work.
And to be honest, I feel like it's sad that a lot of people, that void is being filled by the Red Pill bullshit that we're seeing online.
The Red Pill bullshit is a total reaction and a cope in response to the fact that these are not worthy men.
Like, worthy men don't ever think about any of this stuff.
Like, the Pierce Brosnan thing with his wife going rad.
I mean, age, she's 60, of course she's putting on a little weight.
Give her a break.
But, like, the fact that, like, you've got some 20-year-old kid going, look, your wife will get fat when she's 60.
It's like, bro, by the time... You will be bald and fat yourself.
But even that, yeah, you will.
But, like, by the time you get to Pierce Brosnan's age, that just won't matter to you.
Because they don't understand what marriage is about.
I mean, that woman that you're mocking is a part of him.
Yeah, exactly.
And she's not just a part of him.
She's a part of loads of people.
You know, she's, she's got two sons with him.
She's, you know, like a core part of his life.
And He doesn't think like a 20-year-old man.
Exactly.
He's not thinking like a 20-year-old man.
That's probably why he got married again.
Exactly.
But that, you can see that there's no thought to the life plan from the person who posted the critique of his wife when she was 60.
Like, he didn't think, one day I'll be an old man and one day I'll have the concerns.
And am I worthy?
Because in all of this, I'm like, you have to remember Pierce Brosnan He actually convinced two beautiful women to give him five children.
Yeah, he did great.
He was worthy of that.
Are you worthy?
Yeah.
And we're not talking about, you know, Nick Cannon and his 15 kids with these unworthy, because those women are not worthy.
Seriously, they were not raised properly.
They are breeding like a cockroach with an unworthy man, right?
Are you worthy of a quality woman?
And most people don't ask them.
Most people are not discerning in that way.
It's not like, and I take a bigger issue when it comes, especially with women, maybe because I'm a woman, but I just, there's nothing more off-putting than like a haughty woman with no self-awareness and all of that, because it's like, because we think who, if someone raised their standards, then society would change.
Of course, I think ultimately lies with men.
If men raise their standards and things would change, women have a role to play as well.
If you're tolerating a man, not treating you like a lady, you are setting a standard.
One of the major problems is women giving easy access to sex.
You knew where I was going with it.
Don't even get me started.
It's an entirely downward spiral, because you are right that if men just adopted some standards, women would change.
But if women adopted some standards, men would change like that.
I mean, men would just literally do whatever it took to get the wife.
It's a self-esteem issue as well, because I'm like, how low must your self-esteem be to not see your body as something sacred?
We don't have a concept of the sacred.
If a thousand people in a room spat in your hands, would you go and shake every single one of their hands?
What you're doing is worse, more intimate than that.
It's way more disgusting than that.
It's more intimate than that.
You wouldn't do that, but somehow you think having sex with a random person is nothing wrong with it.
It's normal.
It's not cheapening yourself.
Sometimes you have sex with someone you don't even know their middle or last name.
You've not met anyone in their lives.
Are you not embarrassed?
You're only going to meet them for one day.
So there's something deeply wrong.
Yeah, it's a crisis of self-esteem.
Amongst other things.
But it's just a genuine civilizational crisis as well.
It affects everything about our culture and we don't understand how disgusting we look to the outside world as well.
We genuinely don't.
But anyway, I guess we'll leave that there and just go to some comments.
Richard says, it's always great to see Esther.
She has cutting and often hilarious insights that always make me laugh.
Hot drinks should be avoided.
Okay, why should hot drinks be avoided?
Hot drinks.
On a date or in general?
Well just general.
Why should hot drinks be avoided?
Maybe, I don't know, tea?
I like tea.
Yeah, I think hot drinks mainly stain your teeth, but you can brush your teeth.
I'm not saying it's not on downslope.
Yeah, hot drinks are like... The thing is, offering someone tea is really nice.
You don't want to turn down a nice warm drink.
Let's have tea and biscuits.
I don't know, maybe he doesn't like tea.
Anne says, all of this racial strife shown in the movie in the first segment does not help anyone.
IBM CEO tells his employees not to hire white people.
All of this is decreasing meritocracy because color matters more than skill.
This is going to be scary when the current crop of airline pilots and doctors are in the workforce.
Man, I tell you what, right?
Many of whom will be from India, probably.
Because they're the people that bother to push their kids.
So, I had a moment a few years ago when I was in America.
I was in the waiting room to get on a plane and there were a bunch of fat black women who were the stewards and they were not very professional, is the way I would describe it.
And I was like, wait a minute, I'm about to get on a bloody airplane.
I got on the airplane.
I looked in the cockpit and it's just these two really straight-laced white guys.
And I genuinely had a moment.
I was genuinely worried.
Stereotypes are rooted in like, I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.
I'm not joking.
Like I had a similar experience.
I flew to the US and I got, I think it was IAD Dallas airport.
And in front of me, there was this Indian lady and she, the, I don't know.
TSA agent was a black American woman.
She was like, very big actually.
And she was like, do you have any like fresh fruit or vegetables?
And she was like, I have apples in my bag.
And the lady was like, apples?
You can't bring no apples here.
And she like, got really angry.
Oh no, not apples?
Yeah.
She stomped out of her seat, unlocked it.
It's like, show me them apples.
And so she followed her to like the bag carriage area.
And she was like, and I saw, I remember turning around, I saw her with like a bag, like something from a skit.
And I was like, you know, it doesn't take very much for you to just be polite.
Yeah.
But also it's not a bag of cocaine.
What is that?
And she's probably never eaten an apple before, given her size.
But I think if people held themselves to higher standards and realized that actually being of good character, being polite, being courteous and all of that, it's not a reflection of society or how you feel society sees you or treats you, but it's a reflection of yourself and your values, things would be very different.
Oh yeah.
No one who's a good character and who's polite to other people has a hard time in the world.
And it's not conditional on whether you think someone sees you a particular way.
Unless they do, you're still going to be more polite to someone who's polite than you.
Exactly, you can sleep at night.
That's very strange.
No, you're totally right.
Ethelstan says, I find it concerning that this film is being made, but even more worrying is the Obama produced post-apocalyptic world in which there is a line saying they cannot trust white people.
Former president and his wife signing off on that seems to be churning out a really high volume.
The thing is, it's such an obvious cope because everyone can see the statistics of the condition of the American black community.
It's like, okay, what are you going to do about it?
It's like, well, the white man has made his decision.
Has he?
You know, was that a choice?
I mean, the thing is, I often say that if you, you can paint a completely different picture of black America, if you, the people that you surveyed were Nigerian Americans, as opposed to African Americans.
And I think that should tell you something.
And they get so touchy when you say this, but actually...
Most change, most profound change happens from within.
Yes.
And I think if you've developed a habit of constantly blaming external sources, you're not really serious about doing anything differently.
Yeah.
Well, you're not taking responsibility for the problem that proliferated.
I mean, is it, and is it the fact that the, I don't know, the people that you see that are hailed in the black community are often rappers and football players and not businessmen.
I mean, I can't really name five, like Warren Buffett of the black community.
That should, that should tell you something.
Kanye West is a successful businessman.
I mean, he's got a bit of future, future who has seven kids by six different women.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's no one that you'd hold up as a model citizen.
Well, the thing is, even the people that you hold up as a model, as models, they're seen as, oh, they talk white or they pander to the white.
I mean, they find some way to denigrate them.
And I'm like, look, at the end of the day, responsibility lies on your shoulders.
If you're looking around yourself and you're not seeing what you like, I would highly suggest you don't blame someone who genuinely doesn't give a shit about you.
Most white people don't walk around thinking, how can I bring down the black man today?
They have taxes to pay.
They don't think about them at all.
They don't think about even members of their own family that much.
Probably.
Genuinely.
Anyway, it should be empowering, but it's not, apparently.
Sophie says, you know, I'm glad they get to make these movies because now it's just blatant.
No one can deny it.
There's a group of people that just hate white people.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose just having it out in the open is better than... I think the thing is people say, oh, that kicked them out.
Listen, you've opened Pandora's box.
There's nothing.
The only thing you can do is ignore them and let them breathe themselves out.
That's it.
Aethelstan again says, fat airline seats is just first class.
That's the whole point of paying more money for greater space and comfort.
Ron says, if I ran an airline, I'd be charging people based on the total weight they bring on the plate.
It doesn't matter if it's luggage or body fat.
You get the whole package on the big scale and charge them based on that.
These people ultimately cause plane tickets to cost more as the flight companies need to put more fuel on to get them on the ground.
It's natural that they should pay more.
But also if they're being given free seats, they're going to be driving up the cost of each seat anyway.
Oh yeah, exactly.
And it's also unsafe.
I mean, I know no one is talking about this, but it's unsafe.
What do you mean?
Like having these really, really... Because the thing is, as each person gets bigger, and your apparently luggage weight, like the luggage specification is staying the same, you're having heavier passengers, but the same weight for your cargo.
Well, non-human cargo, let me be specific.
Because someone suggested they put them in the cargo hold.
So at some point, they're just going to be like, actually, we're really teetering on a knife's edge here.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know about the physics of it at all, but I'm just...
Resentful.
I would be so angry.
Yeah, I know.
I just can't even imagine getting to the airport and just being like, yeah, sorry, not on this flight.
It's like, yeah, I am.
I've got this ticket and everything.
I'm sure the flight attendants felt bad.
They must be mortified.
I'm really sorry, ma'am.
This is the policy.
Yeah, it's not my choice.
What would an overweight person have done?
Complain?
I know.
What would the rationale be?
You are sitting in someone else's seat.
You can't do that, so you have to get off.
Like, sorry.
It's really not like... Anyway, anyway.
Alex says, the lady on the flight to Toronto is pleading with God not to be seated next to a fatphobe and yet referred to herself as being in a larger body.
The utter delusion that requires two distinct vocabularies to describe how others perceive her and how she describes herself.
That's a great point, actually.
It's literally creating two separate realities in her own head.
But she lacks self-awareness.
That's the point.
But also, there's a shocking amount of indulgence, right?
Like, we should be using the one vocabulary to describe the one thing.
And so, right, if you're morbidly obese, you shouldn't be calling yourself someone who's in a larger body, you know?
Or what is it?
Big something?
Big boned?
Oh, well, yeah, that's obviously not the case.
Yeah, I mean, because the thing is, when you scan them, it's just like your bones are the same.
Yeah, we can actually see through you.
Yeah, exactly.
There's just a whole bunch of fluff around it.
As Desert Rat says, I grew up in a household of finish your plate.
As an adult, I had to... This chap's from Arizona.
Yeah.
He says, as an adult, I had to teach myself to measure my portions and be okay with saving leftovers for the next meal the next day.
Taking leftovers home in a box from a restaurant is very acceptable.
That was another weird thing about America.
Doggy bags, I think they called them.
Yeah.
In Britain, obviously, you don't take your food home from the restaurant, but then you're not given an unrealistic amount of food to eat.
Yeah.
And so it's just really weird in America.
It's just like, yeah, we'll just take this home.
Why would you want to reheat like this?
You know, it's very bizarre.
Very weird.
And also why not be very good using microwave that much to reheat like old meat in particular.
I don't know.
It's probably fine.
But like most things like that aren't going to taste good.
Yeah.
You know, like we don't have ridiculous portion sizes.
I mean, I bought a medium sized drink from McDonald's when I was in Maryland and I finished it over three days.
I put it in the fridge and I could only finish it.
It was so big.
I could not believe it.
The cup was the size of my head.
Kevin says, I saw a thing today about a couple with a combined weight of 55 stone being banned from using the local taxis in their town in the UK.
55 stone!
Wow.
I mean, they deserve each other, quite literally.
Well, I think they probably can't get away from each other.
Ru The Day says, as a recovering foodaholic, I beg society to bring back social shaming.
We need it and it's good for us.
Yes, absolutely.
We need to bring back shame.
Yeah, I agree.
So many people, so many people.
I mean, I remember I did a show when some guy was like, if I was fat, would you have called me a beached whale?
That wouldn't have helped.
I was like, well, I wouldn't have called you a beached whale because I don't know you, but you own a mirror.
You know how you look.
Let's not pretend, yeah?
Maybe less cutting to just call them a beached whale.
Exactly.
I was like, Me calling you a bitch?
You're not my friend, but we don't have to pretend here.
The thing is, this happens all the time.
Oh, Esther, would you call me fat if you met me?
It's like, no, I don't know you, but you own a mirror.
So let's get back to the culture of lies.
This is where the lies come in because it protects people's feelings.
Yeah, exactly.
They're like, oh, that makes you a horrible person.
You're misunderstanding me.
I don't need to go up to someone and abuse them.
You know what you are.
But you own a mirror.
You know exactly what you look like.
You didn't just wake up 20, 30 stone.
There is a remarkable culture of self-delusion in the West.
Absolutely.
And they try and vilify you as an individual.
I'm like, look, that's not my character.
You're not going to get anyone to say yes as a kind of person, so drop that.
But I'm not going to sit here and say, you are sexy.
You are not sexy.
You have diabetes.
I think it's the laugh that really drives the knife in.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh, you couldn't believe it.
I was like, you've known me for years.
You know I'd never call you fat, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend like you're skinny.
The Crusader says, oh the irony of that article asking for compassion regarding fatties.
Hey dumbass we're telling you to lose weight out of compassion because we know it will destroy your life.
I think that's what's really upset people, the fat story.
Because it's so jarring.
Well, it's so uncompassionate to try and pretend like it's a perfectly normal, healthy lifestyle.
That's totally true.
I don't even want to make that judgment because I'm not paying their medical bills.
That's one thing I appreciate.
Well, I pay for the NHS, so I am paying their bills.
This is the thing.
Whenever I have these conversations in the NHS, it's like, it's no one's business.
Actually, it is.
No, it's totally my business.
I know how much I'm paying.
Exactly.
But in America, I'm fine.
Yeah, in America, I suppose it doesn't matter.
But over here, I definitely get to fat shame.
Yeah.
Because I'm literally in it for the money.
They're like, it's none of your business.
Actually, it is.
Yeah, it's totally my business.
Joe says, Carl, you're really disrespecting the rights of fat people.
It's especially bad because they have three to four times as many rights as a normal person.
And three to four times the number of fat cells.
Exactly.
That's totally true though.
I wouldn't even be that bothered about it if it wasn't someone actually had to pay the price there.
You know, literally this woman's like, I can't get on the plane.
But the thing is, we're encouraging a culture of resenting people that already have issues.
You can't be fat and insufferable.
You have to pick a struggle.
You have to be fat and jolly.
Or skinny and a bitch.
Yeah.
Ideally, you can be skinny and nice, but you don't live in a perfect world.
You cannot be both.
Because now I feel bad because it's like one entitled fat person.
Now you say, oh, she must have an attitude.
It's like, oh, actually, no, I know I'm fat.
I'm sorry.
I did book two seats.
Yeah.
I mean, like, that's the thing, isn't it?
Like, if you weren't taking this highly abrasive attitude, if you're just like, I'm really sorry.
Yeah, I know.
I know what's going on, but I'm sorry about this.
I'm sure the average person would be like, don't worry about it.
That's fine, yeah.
That's actually where compassion would come from.
Do you want to come for a walk with me?
No, seriously, people would be more inclined to be compassionate if you didn't have an attitude about it.
Because at the end of the day, it's not society's fault that you're this way.
Yeah, exactly.
I didn't make it that way.
And then when you get a second dessert, I'm not even allowed to tell you're wrong.
Christian Johnson says, it's not just that they're allowed to live in their delusions, but they're actively protected from outside opinions by law.
Yeah, exactly.
That's another thing as well.
I mean, it could well be in Britain that it's some kind of legal question about Discrimination, if you would say any of the things you've said to someone about being fat.
I'm not even joking.
It might be... The thing is, if it's true, like why is... A lot of things are true that we're not allowed to say in this country.
Culture of lies.
Yeah, we infantilize people and we lie to them.
No, I agree.
And the thing is, it's kind of... It's been a cultural norm in Britain for a long time to Be tactful, I suppose, you try and say it?
Yeah.
And things like Germans view that as a kind of dishonesty.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
It's a very strange, it's actually like a Europe-wide attitude.
They're like, why should we not say the truth?
Yeah, and in Britain where we think propriety and tact is more important than just being direct.
Which is incredible because the Americans think neither of that.
So I'm actually surprised this is an American thing.
Yeah, they didn't inherit it at all.
Yeah.
Core Wizard says, I don't get why they can't just swim across the ocean like the rest of the whales.
Yeah, that's gonna happen because they can swim.
They'd probably just float.
Oh yeah, technically they can float, but like swimming is a high-impact sport.
Yeah, exactly.
Atra says, one of the reasons that men are hesitant to propose has to do with the lingering elements of the Me Too movement.
We treat all men as toxic, don't be surprised when the good ones will try and stay away from your own good.
You know, I'm not sure that's the case.
I think it's initiating relationships that the Me Too movement really interfered with.
I don't think it's about the proposal to marriage.
I think at this point, it's men not having a position of pride, a position of honor, as you put it, from being the husband.
Because it used to be that as a man, you did gain something from being the husband.
It was a status symbol.
Exactly.
And I think with the Me Too women as well, we deliberately encouraged delusion around intersexual dynamics.
Men find women attractive.
Wherever they find them, they find them attractive.
This is why clubs can have free women's nights and they still make a profit because men will flock.
We need to stop pretending, and most people spend their time at work, most people meet their significant others at work, we need to stop pretending like if a CEO falls in love with a secretary, oh my god, it's like, what are you talking about?
Yes, women like men who have status, men like women.
More attractive and not like beach whales.
Whatever Victoria's Secret model is.
I'm not sure I agree with that, Atrus.
I think it's a little further down the chain.
I really think the status thing is something we don't think about at all.
It is a position of honour and it is right that it is ascribed to the men.
Because women have their own positions.
If women treated men like that, responsible men in that way, With respect, I think that would change as well.
Because if a man knows that in a woman's mind, she finds it more attractive when he has responsibilities.
I mean, the red pill stuff, it's so strange.
They demonize people like single mothers, single fathers, people with children.
I'm like, no, it's attractive that you've taken a responsibility of raising a child.
If we treated these sorts of things with the respect they deserve, the culture would completely change.
Men would aspire to this.
Charlie says, I find it funny that young women are always going on about wanting a traditional man to pay bills while they stay at home and yet they can't even boil an egg.
Yeah, literally.
Yeah.
Like this is another thing as well.
Like, uh, I saw a thing on, on Twitter the other day, it was some, you know, red pill guy, uh, who'd had a conversation with a woman and said, Oh, I'm looking for a traditional, traditional woman.
And she replied that, Oh, that sounds great.
I, you know, I'd like to be a part of a traditional man, a household.
And they started going through it and he came to the business like, what, you're expecting me to pay for everything?
Yeah.
You're a traditional man.
Yeah.
She's not going to have a job.
Well, exactly.
Of course you're going to be.
It's not even like she's not going to have a job.
You're the man.
Like, I think I've not even been out.
I remember saying this to my friend.
I was like, even I tried to pay for like a meal that me and my male cousin had in Ghana.
And he was really upset.
He was like, I was trying to disgrace him.
Like even taxi drivers.
I've had taxi drivers refuse to let me pay for anything.
Just by virtue of me being the woman.
No, but the thing is, but it's because they expected a certain level of respect from me and a certain level of deference, if you would.
That's, I don't know, it's like most of the people that say the things that they want actually can't get it.
Yes.
Like if you say you want, like my mom always said she wanted me to have the option, right?
So she knew that I would go to university, I was intelligent, all of that.
But she was like, I was in the kitchen from like 12.
Because she was like, she wouldn't be doing her job right if she robbed me of the option of having a certain kind of lifestyle.
She didn't, she, At some point may have wanted a career but you know she prioritized being with me and my brother and taking care of the house and all of that.
People don't have the choice because we've made the choice for them and we've pushed this binary bullshit.
I have to say, just having a career is not that great.
Most people have terrible careers.
Exactly.
I was saying this to a friend, I was like, look, because I don't stack shelves in Tesco, I realized that I am very fortunate to have a job that I love and I'm in a career that I really enjoy.
So I will, like, I will work in all of that.
But I'm like, I'm like one percent.
Most women try and not do that because your jobs suck.
Being an office manager, you're not changing the world.
You're really not doing very much.
And also, Do you really enjoy it?
Do you really enjoy it?
Do you enjoy being told what to do by someone who's not your husband?
Yeah, exactly.
Charlie again says, regarding marriage, I proposed to my girlfriend about a year ago this month.
She often has said it was a huge surprise.
Wait, are you not married?
I think he is married.
Okay.
I think he's engaged.
Okay.
But he says, of course it was a surprise.
If I didn't know I was going to do it, how would you?
The most nerve-wracking thing of all things was ringing her father to get his blessing.
He was only more than happy to give it.
I'll tell you what, it is terrifying to sort of propose.
Yeah.
Genuinely terrifying.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Well, yeah.
What if she said no?
You should be more terrified to me, my family, but they look like the set of Black Panther.
Genuinely, you will see like hundreds of big, bald black men looking at you like the scum on their shoe.
That should be more terrifying.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, my dad is like, what are you doing in my house?
And we have like pitbulls and rottweilers.
Honestly, that is all fine because that's just a physical issue, right?
Okay.
That's a physical issue and that's okay.
You can deal with that.
The problem is, When you think you, you're like, okay, yeah, she's definitely gonna say yes.
And if she would say no, that means that you've misread everything completely.
And it's a psychic problem that you have there, you know?
So the fear is she might say no?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Oh, I thought the fear is just like doing the act.
Okay.
No, no, no.
The fear is that you misread the science so completely that you don't really understand the world properly.
That the person that you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with actually didn't feel the same way about you, right?
And so that's... Oh, that's a huge problem because then the values are misaligned.
It's like, why did you spend this much time with me if you didn't... Yeah, that's a huge problem.
You know, what was my perception of the world?
So completely wrong.
Like, you know, oh, you've got a bunch of, you know, big family members.
Okay, yeah, fine.
That's no problem.
I can't believe that's okay with you.
That's fine.
Really?
Yeah, of course.
Why would that be a problem?
I don't know.
I feel like my uncles are like really intimidating.
Yeah, they might be.
Oh my gosh, it's fine!
Physical violence is not that bad for men.
It's not that bad.
Oh, that's the difference.
Yeah, it's very bad for men.
I'm terrified of having a horrible mother-in-law.
Sure, but like, you know, okay, you have a fight with someone and even if you lose, okay, it's not the end of the world, right?
But it's a pride thing if she says no.
It's not just pride.
It's worse than that because like you're really putting your heart on the line when you propose.
And if she would say no, then it would be genuinely heartbreaking.
Do you think that relationship can be salvaged if she says no?
I think that's the breakup as well.
I mean, why are you together?
You know, what's the point?
I need time.
Go find someone else.
Yeah, exactly.
If she's not saying no to you when you propose, then you're not the one.
Yeah.
Go find your proper wife.
Oh, gosh, that's horrible.
Yeah.
So it's really scary for men to do it.
And so it's like, why don't women propose?
Why do you want to propose?
My knees don't bend.
Yeah, fair.
Which is exactly the right way women should look at it.
No, no, no.
It's fundamentally a disrespect.
They're disrespecting you to your core.
Yeah, it's disrespectful to him, but it's also disrespectful to her.
To herself, yeah.
Like, don't do it.
Another thing is double-barreled names or not taking his name.
Guys, don't marry a woman who's not going to take your name.
That's your privilege as a man that you pass your name down to your sons.
You must have your wife take your name.
There's just no question.
I have a friend though.
She said it's only her and her sister and her parents are very like, you know, we have no sons.
Please don't take your husband's name.
So they're a very rare case, but I'm like, yeah, okay.
My parents have my brother and my grandfather had ten kids.
Other than my dad, there are nine of you.
It's fine.
For me, it's not a big deal.
It's important, yeah.
It should be enforced.
It should be culturally normal.
I think it says a lot about the woman and her values.
It's the same thing, like, you know, I've turned down dates with a guy that, like, on the day of the date, he's like, hey, so what's the plan?
And I was like, I thought, like, this is a date.
Where am I meeting you?
I'm getting dressed, I'm wearing the dress and heels.
And he was like, oh, I thought you could recommend something.
I was like, You are not the person for me.
They blew up my phone, started calling me, emailing me.
I was like, this is over.
Don't worry about it.
I'm not the woman for you.
Harsh on him though.
But the thing is, once you see there's a value misalignment, there's literally no point going forward.
But also, like, you've got to feel kind of bad for him, right?
Because he's been raised in a society that's, I guess, excessively consent-based.
They made it okay for him to not have those kinds of standards.
Yeah, exactly.
But they've put it in his mind that you're not the one who is trying to impress her.
You're not the one who's trying to show her a good time.
It's actually not about that.
And it's like, no, no, but that is what a lot of women want.
Yeah, no, but this is the thing.
If you treat a woman like a lady, she will see you as a gentleman.
That is, what do you want?
Do you want a lady or do you want a street rat?
A lot of men apparently are happy with street rats.
Kevin says, I worked once with a guy who, when he got married, took his wife's name.
Back in the early 90s, this was pretty much unheard of.
He had a castration as well.
Yeah, I know.
Jesus Christ.
I can't even imagine.
I think my dad would be furious.
No, he wouldn't even be furious.
He'd just be really disappointed.
I mean, I genuinely cannot think of a more emasculating thing to do.
I'm like, she could have the most amazing everything.
She could do to you what Meghan Markle does to Harry.
And it still would not be worth it.
Well, she dusts him in the bedroom to make him give up his life.
And it still would not be worth it.
I can only imagine the look on my dad's face.
Horrified.
Break my heart.
But he says, to be fair, his surname was Cuckoo.
So hyphenating her name on the end made him a little bit less of a laughingstock.
But you could always change your name if you need it.
Exactly.
Make it Smith.
Yeah, whatever.
Exactly.
Genuinely, change your name.
We're all the Smiths now.
Yeah, exactly.
That'd be fine.
But then it's, again, it's just a point of nobility at this point.
Legacy.
It's a legacy issue.
Yeah, absolutely.
What a shame.
Oh, my God.
You should have ostracized that person in your life.
Joe Schmo says, it's easy to talk a big game about fat women on the internet, Kyle.
Why don't you go to SeaWorld and say that to their faces?
I'm not that brave.
They would sit on you.
Just give me a bunch of giant garnered men to fight instead.
Yeah.
Very much.
Well, you don't have to do very much because they can't chase you.
I'm not the world's greatest runner, to be honest.
But right, I suppose we'll end it there.
So, Esther, where can people find more from you?
On Twitter and a bunch of other bits and bobs.
I'm usually... Sorry, go back to the Twitter a sec, John.
So it's at Esther K underscore K. Yes.
And on Instagram, I mostly post memes and I do... I write for newspapers.
I do broadcasting work across various channels.
So that's it.
Do you ever find yourself, I imagine you must find yourself regularly engaging with left-wing men on these?
Yes.
How do they take you?
Left-wing men, I'm telling you, are not different from right-wing men.
They've just allowed themselves to lower their standards.
They want the exact same things.
Every time I say these things, they know they find what I'm saying attractive, but they're like, oh, but the patriarchy, but you love it.
Yeah, but I'm pro-patriarchy.
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of like, it's like that forbidden fruit.
They want the same thing.
They just, they feel like they can't have it.
Right.
Okay.
That's interesting.
So basically they've been sort of whipped into line by the women.
This is what I'm saying.
Society has deluded women that we don't have a superpower.
I'm like, look, I'm very big on standards.
I'm like, if you are well-dressed, polite, beautiful woman, you will never be disrespected in public.
Almost never.
And I say this because if you let people make you place value on like, you know, how feminist you are, your degrees or whatever, you are ridding yourself of something very, very valuable.
How you present yourself in the world goes a very long way and don't let anyone tell you differently.
Men and women.
So all these laughing guys are like, oh yeah, I definitely want a tatted up woman with nose piercings and blue shorts hair.
All of them were watching like 90s sitcoms falling in love with the beautiful brunettes with long hair.
And on that note, we'll leave it there.
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