The Megyn Kelly Show - 20221129_balenciagas-gross-campaign-and-feminisms-false-pro
Aired: 2022-11-29
Duration: 01:33:11


=== Balenciaga's Arrogant Campaign (15:03) ===

[00:00:15]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:26]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:28]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:00:30]  The sexual revolution of the 1960s promised liberation and freedom and a better life for women.
[00:00:36]  Decades later, a brave feminist is asking the hard question: was it true?
[00:00:41]  Did the sexual revolution help or hurt women to this day?
[00:00:45]  She'll join us just a bit later in the show.
[00:00:47]  But we begin with this: Kim Kardashian and one of the world's top fashion brands facing new backlash today over an ad campaign that features young children on beds holding teddy bears, wearing SM-style harnesses, chokers, and thong underwear.
[00:01:07]  The outrage from parents nationwide is only continuing to grow.
[00:01:12]  And one mom, who we recently spoke to on this show, is refusing to allow this controversy to be swept under the rug and for really good reason.
[00:01:22]  Joining me now, the former Miss California 2009, Carrie Prajan Bowler.
[00:01:27]  Carrie, thanks for coming back on the show.
[00:01:29]  This is absolutely disgusting.
[00:01:31]  Good for you for standing up for people like me who hadn't, this did not cross my radar until a couple of days ago.
[00:01:39]  Can you outline what Balenciaga, this very high-end fashion brand, did?
[00:01:44]  What did they do that got people so upset?
[00:01:47]  Oh my gosh, I saw this before Thanksgiving.
[00:01:50]  By the way, thank you so much, Megan, for having me on.
[00:01:52]  I saw this that's posted on Instagram before Thanksgiving, and I thought this had been a mistake.
[00:02:00]  I mean, the fact that Balenciaga, this huge fashion brand, and I used to model, so I remember photo shoots and things like that.
[00:02:07]  Nothing like this would get past a huge company like Balenciaga.
[00:02:13]  And for them to say, oh, we didn't know about it.
[00:02:15]  No, they knew exactly what it was.
[00:02:18]  It's pedophilia.
[00:02:19]  It's grooming of our children.
[00:02:22]  And I want to know where is the outrage by the left.
[00:02:25]  All the people who posted the Black Square during Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests, they were quick to post and denounce the, you know, Black Lives Matter, all that.
[00:02:35]  But now, all of a sudden, celebrities and elitists are completely silent on this.
[00:02:39]  So I am calling to cancel Balenciaga.
[00:02:42]  We want to see them completely wiped out.
[00:02:45]  What they did was disgusting, despicable.
[00:02:49]  And every person, man, woman, parent, everyone should be outraged about this.
[00:02:55]  So they have posted these ads.
[00:02:58]  They posted them, and now they've been forced to take them down.
[00:03:01]  But the first, as I can see it, is a little girl with red hair standing there holding a teddy bear, described as follows by I'm reading off of I think it's somebody's sub stack.
[00:03:14]  I'm trying to find the name of the person, but she did a good write-up of apologies to her for not having the name.
[00:03:19]  This is how it's described: a young girl holding a toy, wearing fishnets, restraints, and a padlock with bruised purple and blue eyes.
[00:03:27]  Then there's a picture of a girl on a sofa surrounded by empty wine glasses.
[00:03:32]  That's a separate one.
[00:03:34]  This is there's this one as if the girl's been partying all night.
[00:03:38]  These girls, they look about four, four or five.
[00:03:41]  You know, you have children.
[00:03:43]  I have children, including a daughter.
[00:03:46]  You can see that there's a leash.
[00:03:48]  Why is there a dog leash?
[00:03:50]  Why is there a fork, a knife, and a spoon?
[00:03:52]  Why is there, like you said, alcohol?
[00:03:54]  This is absolutely, we can all agree, even prisoners agree that child predators and pedophiles are the lowest of the low, but yet we are completely silent about this.
[00:04:08]  And I'm really proud of my conservative community.
[00:04:11]  They are out of this.
[00:04:12]  Well, and I'll get to what you've been doing and good on you because it's working.
[00:04:15]  But the thing is, this is what they're doing is they're sexualizing little children and in the context of BDSM of, you know, what exactly does that stand for?
[00:04:26]  Bondage domination, sexual, whatever.
[00:04:29]  But it's, it's basically rough, dominatrix, submissive type sex relations, which are inappropriate for children to be featured in in any way, shape or form.
[00:04:40]  And really young children.
[00:04:42]  I mean, honestly, these girls look about four years old to me.
[00:04:45]  It's absolutely disgusting.
[00:04:46]  The parents, I have to say, are part of the problem because one was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying, oh, they flew us to Paris.
[00:04:56]  We were there the entire day.
[00:04:57]  You know, these have been taking, they've been taken out of context.
[00:05:01]  Really?
[00:05:01]  Somebody puts a bondage teddy bear in my four-year-old's picture while she's around empty cocktail glasses and grown-ups in a sexualized set.
[00:05:12]  And we are running for the hills out of that photo shoot campaign.
[00:05:16]  And how about the court case?
[00:05:17]  I don't know if you saw the court case that was photographed.
[00:05:20]  That separate ad campaign.
[00:05:21]  Tell them about that.
[00:05:23]  So they had a court case.
[00:05:24]  I don't remember exactly the case, but basically it had said that kiddie porn is okay.
[00:05:29]  So what they were saying is they were so arrogant in this photo shoot.
[00:05:32]  They were saying, what we're doing, there it is right there.
[00:05:35]  What we're doing is completely okay by slamming that court case on the bottom of the, there it is right there.
[00:05:42]  So they're covering their ass by saying, hey, it's legal.
[00:05:48]  What we're doing is legal.
[00:05:49]  That's how arrogant these people are.
[00:05:51]  I want to see them canceled.
[00:05:53]  I want to see them completely eliminated from the public square.
[00:05:56]  There's a long line of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the subject of child sexual abuse photos.
[00:06:02]  And that's what these are.
[00:06:03]  That's really what these are.
[00:06:04]  It's child pornography, that doesn't cover it.
[00:06:08]  That almost sounds, I don't know, like it doesn't sound bad enough.
[00:06:11]  This is child sexual abuse photos.
[00:06:13]  That's what child pornography is.
[00:06:14]  And this is adjacent at a minimum to that.
[00:06:16]  This will titillate pedophiles who get off on thinking about children in a sexualized way.
[00:06:23]  These photos will hurt children.
[00:06:26]  They will potentially lead to the titillation of the worst of the worst amongst us.
[00:06:32]  And there's zero reason for this.
[00:06:34]  There's plenty of adult women who would be happy to be featured in a Balenciaga campaign, including the BDSM imagery.
[00:06:41]  You don't put a four-year-old in front of a camera like this.
[00:06:44]  So there's a reason why it's been outlawed explicit photos of children.
[00:06:49]  And what happened in Supreme Court jurisprudence was originally the Supreme Court said you can't outlaw every, like even discussions about child sexual abuse photos.
[00:06:59]  There's certain things that the law cannot ban because of the First Amendment.
[00:07:03]  And then Congress tried to pass a law saying, okay, okay, I guess we failed to do it, but now we're going to try to do it properly.
[00:07:10]  And that went back up to the Supreme Court.
[00:07:11]  So there's been a long line of legal fighting over what, how far can these pedophiles go and their discussions.
[00:07:17]  And this, and one of these cases gets featured by Balenciaga in its ad campaign on the heels of the little girls with the BDSM stuff.
[00:07:26]  You can't even make this up.
[00:07:28]  I mean, when I was on your show a couple of weeks ago, what were we talking about?
[00:07:31]  We were talking about, you know, the drag shows, the drag shows going on in our kids' schools.
[00:07:36]  Why are we not surprised?
[00:07:38]  Why are we not surprised that now we're hearing, oh, minor attracted persons, that's okay.
[00:07:44]  No, it's not okay.
[00:07:45]  Okay.
[00:07:46]  This is what it leads to.
[00:07:47]  When people don't stand up and fight back against this, we are seeing now the most despicable act, sexualizing our kids is now okay.
[00:07:58]  What crazy world, sick, demonic world are we living in?
[00:08:02]  They also, several photographs in their campaign include a copy of this book, Fire from the Sun, which is a collection of portraits of naked toddlers with sinister overtones.
[00:08:16]  And some of the children look castrated in the photo.
[00:08:19]  I mean, it's deeply disturbing.
[00:08:22]  And so this is not an accident.
[00:08:24]  This is a pattern by Balenciaga.
[00:08:26]  It is a pattern, undeniable pattern.
[00:08:29]  And now, now they want to say, oh, okay, we're horrified.
[00:08:33]  Now, this was very wrong.
[00:08:35]  And we're going to launch an investigation.
[00:08:36]  We're going to scrub our social media.
[00:08:38]  And you and I both know this doesn't get past because initially they were, they're pointing at the set designer on that one, that one photograph that features the handbag over the child pornography decision.
[00:08:48]  They're suing now.
[00:08:49]  Balenciaga's suing the set designer on that shoot.
[00:08:53]  They're not suing the ones who did the little girls.
[00:08:55]  No, because that's an admission by them.
[00:08:57]  They were fully aware of that one.
[00:08:58]  They're claiming, oh, well, we didn't realize those court documents were behind that bag.
[00:09:02]  But the point is, Valenciaga is up to it, up to its neck.
[00:09:05]  This doesn't happen without the blessing of the top bosses.
[00:09:07]  You've been in the modeling industry.
[00:09:09]  Executives from Balenciaga would have poured over each and every shot.
[00:09:13]  So this is not good enough.
[00:09:14]  Oh, we're going to look into it.
[00:09:16]  We're going to lift the pictures.
[00:09:17]  It's not good enough for them.
[00:09:18]  It's not good enough for Kim Kardashian, who refuses to disassociate with the brand.
[00:09:22]  Even though she's a billionaire, she's a disgusting, shameful billionaire because the money is worth more than her morals and the protection of these children to her.
[00:09:31]  You're exactly right.
[00:09:32]  And why did it take Kim Kardashian six days to come out with a statement?
[00:09:36]  Right.
[00:09:37]  It wasn't until Candace Owens slammed her three times, three times for her to come out with some lame statement.
[00:09:45]  And you know what, Candace Owens, you are right.
[00:09:48]  Kim Kardashian is a total sellout.
[00:09:50]  She's soulless.
[00:09:51]  All she cares about is her money, exploiting her kids.
[00:09:54]  And you know what?
[00:09:55]  She's an absolute disgrace.
[00:09:57]  And so her lame apology, no, you're not sorry, Kim.
[00:10:00]  You're not sorry.
[00:10:01]  You're sorry that you got caught.
[00:10:03]  And now you want to continue your, you know, I'm going to reevaluate.
[00:10:07]  No, you're not going to reevaluate.
[00:10:08]  You're going to reevaluate how much money you're going to lose.
[00:10:11]  Okay.
[00:10:11]  You hope that this would go away.
[00:10:13]  Thanksgiving would come and go.
[00:10:14]  No, it's not going away.
[00:10:16]  We're doubling down.
[00:10:17]  Conservatives are doubling down.
[00:10:20]  And can I tell you, it's not even, I don't believe it is the money for her.
[00:10:23]  It's her vanity.
[00:10:25]  It's her need to see herself in the Balenciaga dresses looking high fashion because she's jealous of the one sister who really is a high fashion model.
[00:10:34]  And she's been a wannabe on this front for the past couple of years running around.
[00:10:38]  Here she is featured in Balenciaga where at the Met Gala a couple years ago.
[00:10:41]  This too is a misogynistic outfit with her face entirely covered because there's somebody sick at Balenciaga working on the set design and the imagery and the fashion choices because covering a woman like this is disturbing and dark.
[00:10:55]  And Kim shouldn't have done it and Balenciaga shouldn't have done it.
[00:10:58]  But I think she can't let go of her own imagery as this high fashion model.
[00:11:03]  It's her vanity that's making her slow to say goodbye.
[00:11:06]  It's not the money.
[00:11:07]  No, you're exactly right.
[00:11:09]  She is so into herself and she worships herself that she cannot let go of, you're right, being dripped in Balenciaga.
[00:11:17]  I mean, you look at their stuff.
[00:11:18]  I went the other day to Nordstrom and I thought, ew, this stuff is absolutely disgusting.
[00:11:23]  It's not even beautiful things.
[00:11:25]  It's poorly made, overpriced shoes and handbags.
[00:11:30]  They're not even, they're not even beautiful things.
[00:11:32]  So I'm just thinking, you know, Kim, wake up, start speaking out.
[00:11:36]  You know, I know you want to be a lawyer and you want to stand up for things and speak out against things that you're passionate about.
[00:11:41]  Why don't you stand up against the sexualization of our kids?
[00:11:44]  You had every, every opportunity to come out and say, I will never wear Balenciaga again.
[00:11:49]  And you didn't do that, Kim.
[00:11:51]  Yep.
[00:11:51]  And by the way, it's not just her.
[00:11:53]  Nicole Kidman is being featured right now in an ad campaign by them.
[00:11:56]  She has said nothing about this.
[00:11:59]  Bella Hadid, isn't she the one who's constantly lecturing us about Israel and Palestine?
[00:12:04]  And she left Twitter because of Elon Musk.
[00:12:06]  Now, this hasn't said, oh, no.
[00:12:08]  Okay, this isn't apparently a huge problem for her because I don't see her lengthy statement condemning all of this.
[00:12:15]  And by the way, here's a twist for you.
[00:12:17]  Balenciaga too left Twitter because of Elon Musk.
[00:12:22]  That was too much for them and their high, high ground moral principles because they were too busy exploiting four-year-olds for cash on the couch.
[00:12:32]  Do you really believe, Megan, that they thought that they could get away with this?
[00:12:36]  Yes, I do.
[00:12:38]  They're so arrogant.
[00:12:40]  And too many have been too silent.
[00:12:42]  You know, the left has been lecturing us on how like, it's our, don't be so uptight, whatever.
[00:12:46]  You know, like you can't, you have to use somebody's pronouns or you're in big trouble with this crowd, but you can sexualize a four-year-old girl repeatedly and celebrate child pornography rulings that loosen, you know, the, the, the restraints.
[00:12:59]  And that's no problem.
[00:13:00]  That's art, you see.
[00:13:01]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:13:03]  And I don't know if you, every day it gets worse and worse and worse.
[00:13:05]  Some the stylist, her name is like Lola.
[00:13:08]  I don't know if you heard about her.
[00:13:09]  Yes, I have that here.
[00:13:11]  If you look at her Instagram, it is, it is satanic.
[00:13:16]  I mean, this goes really deep, Megan.
[00:13:18]  This goes really, really deep.
[00:13:19]  I mean, you're talking about blood, you know, bloody babies and Satan worshipers.
[00:13:24]  I mean, this, this is really dark and this is just the beginning.
[00:13:29]  Every day it gets worse.
[00:13:31]  So this woman, I'm trying to find, you're saying last page in my ear, Debbie Murphy, but I, I don't know, it's not coming together.
[00:13:38]  Last page of what?
[00:13:39]  The lengthy packet that I have.
[00:13:40]  I'm looking at her pictures.
[00:13:41]  Okay, here she is.
[00:13:42]  Lola Volkova.
[00:13:46]  She's not the Balenciaga stylist right now.
[00:13:48]  Apparently she left the brand in 2017, but they've had many past controversial ad campaigns.
[00:13:55]  And this woman's page features, I mean, very disturbing things like mutilation, satanic themes, violence, you know, guts coming out of people's bodies, what appears to be a little girl tied up with her mouth covered, a little baby holding up a skull.
[00:14:11]  So they have a history of being attracted to this kind of designer.
[00:14:15]  And so far, even though Balenciaga says, okay, we'll take the responsibility for this latest ad campaign, they're not saying who the set designer was.
[00:14:24]  They're not specifically saying here's the person who did the set design on this particular and how exactly this got approved and who looked at it.
[00:14:32]  And here's the real question.
[00:14:33]  Who's getting fired?
[00:14:34]  Who is getting fired?
[00:14:36]  No one.
[00:14:38]  No one.
[00:14:39]  They're hoping that this goes away, the next big thing comes out in the news and all of a sudden it's lost and it's gone.
[00:14:46]  That's what they're hoping for.
[00:14:48]  So you decided after having seen this to do something about it.
[00:14:53]  I mean, like, it's not even, it's great.
[00:14:55]  And I love that Candace spoke out about it.
[00:14:57]  But so you don't have like the big microphone exactly.
[00:15:00]  So you decided to make a difference at the local level, same as you did with your school board when they wanted to promote some drag queen show for children.
[00:15:10]  And you made a difference locally.
[00:15:11]  This is an example for everyone who feels frustrated by this stuff, but feels disempowered to do anything about us about it.
[00:15:17]  Tell us what you did.

=== Donating to Child Help (08:00) ===

[00:15:19]  Yeah.
[00:15:19]  So I went down to Nordstrom.
[00:15:21]  I have a Nordstrom card.
[00:15:23]  I love Nordstrom.
[00:15:23]  I shop at Nordstrom.
[00:15:24]  Okay.
[00:15:25]  I went down there on Black Friday with my daughter and a couple of friends.
[00:15:29]  And I could not believe my eyes when I saw Balenciaga front and center.
[00:15:35]  I'm talking the best real estate in Nordstrom, front and center, right there for everybody to see.
[00:15:42]  There was thousands of people there.
[00:15:44]  And I could not believe it.
[00:15:46]  I thought to myself, Nordstrom is aligning with pedophiles and the sexualization of our kids.
[00:15:54]  And I just, I had to get out my phone.
[00:15:56]  It wasn't even a planned thing, Megan.
[00:15:57]  I got out my phone and I just took a video of it and I posted it.
[00:16:01]  And I said, shame on you, Nordstrom.
[00:16:03]  Why are you showcasing front and center Balenciaga, the biggest shopping day of the year?
[00:16:09]  Now, if Balenciaga came out against an LGBT, you know, did something against the LDB, oh, they'd be pulled immediately.
[00:16:15]  Oh, that's so true.
[00:16:16]  You know, and so I just am so tired of this double standard.
[00:16:19]  Look at Ivanka Trump.
[00:16:20]  She was completely eliminated from Nordstrom.
[00:16:24]  Yeah, right, exactly, because her father was president.
[00:16:26]  She didn't do anything.
[00:16:27]  Exactly.
[00:16:27]  She didn't do anything wrong.
[00:16:28]  So I'm just thinking to myself, I cannot believe this.
[00:16:31]  So I went right up to the store manager and I said, this is despicable.
[00:16:36]  I don't know if you've seen the Balenciaga ad.
[00:16:39]  I don't know.
[00:16:40]  I don't know who you are, but for you to have this Balenciaga front and center, I said, I will be exposing you and I will let all of my people know on my social media that Nordstrom supports the sexualization of our kids and pedophilia, the lowest of the low.
[00:16:58]  That's a universal rule.
[00:17:00]  Stay away from our kids.
[00:17:02]  And so he heard me out and he said, I'm going to talk to our people.
[00:17:08]  And sure enough, it was removed that night.
[00:17:11]  Good.
[00:17:11]  That's amazing.
[00:17:13]  I will say Nordstrom still carries Balenciaga.
[00:17:16]  So I met with the store manager.
[00:17:18]  I urged all my followers to email the store manager.
[00:17:22]  I met her the following day.
[00:17:23]  I went back and I met with her and I said, thank you for removing it from front and center.
[00:17:27]  However, it's not good enough.
[00:17:29]  You have not removed it from the store.
[00:17:31]  And she, of course, passed the ball.
[00:17:32]  Oh, you need to email corporate.
[00:17:34]  But I've emailed, you know, I've sent all the emails to corporate.
[00:17:36]  That's their decision.
[00:17:38]  And I said, well, I will not be shopping at this store until Balenciaga is removed.
[00:17:42]  And I know a lot of people will follow suit.
[00:17:45]  That's so, I mean, we can just make a difference.
[00:17:48]  Yeah, we can make a difference, Megan.
[00:17:50]  I really like it.
[00:17:50]  Because you know who, who buys Balenciaga?
[00:17:53]  Women, women, a lot of whom have cash in their pockets and they can spend it anywhere.
[00:17:59]  These brands are a dime a dozen.
[00:18:00]  You don't need Balenciaga.
[00:18:02]  I don't have one piece of Balenciaga in my wardrobe and I'm doing just fine.
[00:18:06]  You don't need it.
[00:18:06]  You can spend your money elsewhere.
[00:18:08]  May I suggest donating it to Child Help, an organization that actually helps prevent the abuse and treat abused children, as opposed to Balenciaga, which likes to celebrate it.
[00:18:18]  I mean, that's how this looks.
[00:18:19]  Like they're celebrating because let's be honest.
[00:18:22]  There was a campaign not long ago where they had women walking down the runways looking one of there was one with a model who'd been looked like she'd been beaten up who had like a bloody lip and a bruised eye.
[00:18:36]  There was one where they had just like last year.
[00:18:38]  Here's here's one.
[00:18:39]  She's carrying a little teddy bear, child imagery, again, sort of beaten up as handbags.
[00:18:44]  They were, they've been getting close to the line for quite some time now because apparently they think it's fun to take children's things and show adults playing with them in a way that's getting more and more sexual.
[00:18:55]  And so this was just the graduation of the earlier campaigns, right?
[00:18:59]  This is a long line.
[00:19:03]  What are they holding there?
[00:19:04]  Teddy bears.
[00:19:05]  They're holding teddy bears that are beaten up.
[00:19:08]  And I don't know.
[00:19:11]  Why would you feature a grown-up in a dark, dreary, disgusting, dangerous way?
[00:19:16]  What is that?
[00:19:18]  Holding a child's toy, like playing with like a barbecue.
[00:19:21]  I don't know who would buy this.
[00:19:23]  Look at this disgusting person.
[00:19:24]  That looks like Satan.
[00:19:25]  I'm sorry.
[00:19:26]  That is Satan.
[00:19:27]  Who would buy that?
[00:19:30]  Who thought this was an appropriate model?
[00:19:34]  That is not beauty.
[00:19:35]  That is not fashion.
[00:19:36]  I'm sorry.
[00:19:37]  No, it's not.
[00:19:39]  So Kim Kardashian, just to round back to her, here's the report on her.
[00:19:43]  She was introduced to the current creative director with whom the responsibility does ultimately lie in my view, Dema Vasalia, by her ex, Kanye West, along with the couple's daughters who also like to sport this brand.
[00:20:00]  They were recently spotted the children carrying four figure bags from Balenciaga.
[00:20:08]  All right, so you've got children, Kim Kardashian's children, wearing $1,000 bags from Palencia, from Balenciaga.
[00:20:16]  And now Kim Kardashian comes out.
[00:20:17]  First, she comes out with a statement on Sunday saying, well, I've been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven't been shocked and outraged by the campaigns, but I wanted the opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened.
[00:20:27]  Who gives a shit how it happened?
[00:20:29]  Just put out a statement.
[00:20:30]  It's deeply wrong.
[00:20:31]  And I will speak with them, but this is effed up.
[00:20:34]  It's really not that hard, right?
[00:20:37]  She's too busy trying to get criminals out of jail.
[00:20:39]  That's her new business.
[00:20:41]  So she wasn't able to do it.
[00:20:42]  She says, I've been shaken, but now I believe they understand the seriousness of the issue.
[00:20:47]  Then she got into the hands of some PR person who was like, that was a dumbass statement.
[00:20:52]  And she tries to beef it up by adding the words, I'm disgusted.
[00:20:56]  Not just outraged, I'm disgusted.
[00:20:58]  And the safety of children must be held in the highest regard and should have no place in our society.
[00:21:03]  She adds, moreover, any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society.
[00:21:08]  I mean, a lawyer, a real lawyer got a hold of her.
[00:21:10]  She's not a real lawyer.
[00:21:10]  She hasn't pressed the bar.
[00:21:12]  Then she says, as for my future with Balenciaga, I'm currently reevaluating my relationship, basing it off their willingness to accept accountability for something that should never have happen to begin with.
[00:21:20]  You were part of it.
[00:21:21]  You wore the stupid black veil.
[00:21:23]  You put your kids in Balenciaga.
[00:21:24]  You've been seeing them with the teddy bears.
[00:21:26]  They did the thing with the Supreme Court opinion.
[00:21:28]  They did the thing with the little girls.
[00:21:30]  Like, what do you mean?
[00:21:31]  Reevaluating?
[00:21:32]  What is to reevaluate?
[00:21:33]  They're sorry.
[00:21:34]  They're sorry now because people like you, Carrie, made a thing out of it.
[00:21:38]  It's become a PR nightmare for them.
[00:21:40]  You're exactly right.
[00:21:41]  She thought that this would go away.
[00:21:43]  She could enjoy her Thanksgiving with her family and it's not going away.
[00:21:47]  In fact, we're doubling down, Kim.
[00:21:49]  We're doubling down.
[00:21:50]  You are the problem.
[00:21:52]  You have ruined an entire generation of women.
[00:21:54]  I'm sorry.
[00:21:54]  Let's be real.
[00:21:55]  You have completely destroyed women.
[00:21:57]  Yes.
[00:21:57]  You've sexualized women.
[00:21:59]  You have destroyed a generation of women because you pimp yourself out, you pimp your kids out, and you're disgusted.
[00:22:07]  You don't represent women.
[00:22:08]  You don't represent beauty.
[00:22:10]  You're the furthest thing from that.
[00:22:11]  Let's think about this.
[00:22:12]  She launched a working career from the beginning.
[00:22:14]  Exactly.
[00:22:14]  She launched her career with a sex tape, which she then pretended was released against her will.
[00:22:20]  But her partner in that video has come out publicly saying that they worked on it together and Chris Jenner marketed it like a pimp.
[00:22:27]  That's what happened.
[00:22:28]  Then she invented selfie culture by manipulating herself in gross and distorted and obviously fake ways, then denied it to a generation of little girls who felt less than because they thought this was a beauty standard because she's in the beauty business.
[00:22:43]  And yet, unlike I will give kudos to Bethany Frankel, who has been open about talking about the things that she's had done or would like to have done because she says, I'm in the beauty business.
[00:22:51]  And I think I owe it to my audience, to be honest, exactly the opposite of the Kardashians.
[00:22:55]  The country's made her a billionaire and she can't be bothered to do the right thing when the circumstances are staring her dead in the face.
[00:23:03]  She's exploited her own children.
[00:23:05]  She's her, just the same way her mother exploited her.
[00:23:08]  And now she doesn't see the ethical lines.
[00:23:10]  But thank God, people like you see them.
[00:23:12]  And I don't think Balenciaga is going to get away with this.
[00:23:15]  I think the blowback will continue.
[00:23:16]  And if this is a PR stunt, they'll soon be out of business.

=== Normalizing Pernicious Evil (06:52) ===

[00:23:20]  That's my prayer.
[00:23:22]  Yes.
[00:23:23]  Yes, Carrie.
[00:23:24]  I'm so glad you're out there.
[00:23:26]  Very fierce mother bear.
[00:23:27]  And, you know, hell hath no fury like the mother bear.
[00:23:30]  Love talking to you.
[00:23:32]  Love talking to you too.
[00:23:33]  Thank you for having me.
[00:23:34]  Okay, when we come back, we've got the perfect next guest on this issue.
[00:23:37]  Author Louise Perry has been writing about the backlash, the downsides to this sexual revolution that we were all supposed to celebrate and be liberated as a result of.
[00:23:47]  She's very critical of the whole BDSM thing when it comes to women and what it actually does, as opposed to what books like 50 Shades will tell you it does.
[00:23:56]  And we're going to get into all of it when Louise Perry comes on the show in two minutes.
[00:24:04]  My next guest is one of the most influential feminists in the UK right now.
[00:24:08]  She is anti-casual sex, anti-porn and pro-marriage.
[00:24:14]  The outrage.
[00:24:15]  She makes her argument in a new book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, a new guide to sex in the 21st century.
[00:24:23]  And she is here to discuss it all.
[00:24:25]  Welcome to the show, Louise.
[00:24:26]  Hi, it's so good to be here.
[00:24:28]  Oh, it's so great to have you.
[00:24:30]  So I know that you saw the first segment and have been following what's going on with Balenciaga.
[00:24:36]  First, just to kick it off, since you are, I don't want to say you're an expert in this, but since you've just written the book on the matter, what exactly does BDSM stand for?
[00:24:43]  I know it's like bondage and discipline, but what does it stand for?
[00:24:47]  Bondage, domination, or discipline, and sadomasochism.
[00:24:51]  Although I kind of prefer to just call it sadomasochism, which is the slightly more old-fashioned term, but I think actually tells you what it is in the way that the acronym disguises.
[00:25:01]  Someone's going to hurt you.
[00:25:04]  It has become insanely mainstream.
[00:25:07]  I have a chapter on it in my book, The Extent to Which It has just gone from being a really niche, initially really an element of gay male subculture, and then it moves towards straight sexual culture.
[00:25:19]  And then it with online porn at the turn of the century, it just suddenly becomes incredibly mainstream to the extent now that things like strangulation porn is now on the front page of every porn site in the world in a way that it never used to be.
[00:25:35]  So yeah, so that's you can see that's where Balenciaga are getting their inspiration.
[00:25:38]  Yeah, so let's talk about that.
[00:25:40]  Just to kick it off, you know, take a step back because we played some of the old ad campaigns, not old, I mean, over the past couple of years, ad campaigns where things are getting darker and darker and they do look very sort of bondage.
[00:25:52]  They look straight out of that BDSM type of sexual promotion.
[00:25:57]  Very unattractive looking people looking dark, evil, depressed, angry, prone to, they look like they've either been subjected to violence or are prone to violence.
[00:26:07]  This has been their thing.
[00:26:08]  And now they've graduated to bringing it down to children.
[00:26:12]  First, they have just the tip of the hat to the children because these people are holding teddy bear purses.
[00:26:17]  Who uses little teddy bears?
[00:26:18]  Young children.
[00:26:20]  And now they've graduated full on to let's put the four-year-old little girls on a couch around leashes and collars and cocktail glasses, holding these little bears with what are clearly, you know, leather bondage, inappropriate outfits on them with sad, confused little faces.
[00:26:40]  Yeah, I mean, they're trying to shock us right.
[00:26:42]  This is the idea that if they can shock us enough, then we'll pay attention, it'll be good for the brand.
[00:26:48]  I think it's almost certainly backfiring.
[00:26:50]  I think they've definitely pushed it too far.
[00:26:52]  But I think one of the features of this new political culture, post-sexual revolution, where everything is permitted, where you can be as hypersexual as you like, as hyper-violent as you like, where taboo breaking is seen as a good thing is actually a positive revolutionary act.
[00:27:13]  Of course, businesses are going to go in that direction because it attracts eyeballs.
[00:27:18]  Even if it's attracting negative attention, they might think that that's worth running the risk.
[00:27:21]  And there isn't any more the moral limits that there used to be.
[00:27:27]  And so the only direction that it makes sense to go in for many businesses is more shocking, more extreme in the hope of just driving more and more profits and with no interest in what that does to our culture more generally.
[00:27:43]  And now we're seeing, it's so extreme.
[00:27:46]  We're seeing an actual movement to redefine pedophilia as just a bunch of quote minor attractive people.
[00:27:55]  They're just quote minor dash attracted, trying to normalize this as though that's another option available to you on the spectrum of sexual choices, as opposed to the most pernicious and evil thing short of murder one can do to a child.
[00:28:11]  Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's kind of been memory hold is the fact that the sexual revolutionaries tried this already.
[00:28:18]  In the 1970s, there was an amazing degree of acceptance of pedophilia from theorists like Michelle Foucault, who is now taught in every university syllabus across the world, pretty much.
[00:28:30]  These incredibly influential theorists who took basically the central principles of the sexual revolutionary spirit, the idea that all of the old bourgeois Christian norms needed to be done away with, that we were all being oppressed by these restrictive sexual limits, and therefore that taboo breaking was the name of the game.
[00:28:55]  They took that principle and they ran with it all the way to the end of the road.
[00:28:59]  And that road leads in the end to sexualizing children.
[00:29:04]  I think it's impossible to set up a sexual culture, which is based on being revolutionary, which is based on boundary breaking and all of this stuff in the name of anti-oppression and not have it lead in that direction inevitably.
[00:29:18]  And it's why we've kind of seen this cycle since the sexual revolution, since those ideas entered the mainstream, where you have an amazing degree of permissiveness, say in the 70s, and I think now, and then you have a backlash because people say, actually, no, you can't, this taboo is one that you just cannot break.
[00:29:36]  We won't accept it.
[00:29:38]  But they keep pushing and they keep pushing.
[00:29:40]  And, you know, they are, they're right in the end about the fact that these ideas do lead to those conclusions, which is why I argue in the book that I think the ideas are wrong.
[00:29:52]  Well, I feel like this is a great example of, it's great proof of your whole theory, because the fact that this has been mainstreamed on a, you know, previously stellar brand, you know, by a previously stellar brand and clearly okayed by multiple executives at the top levels of the company, it would have to be.

=== Pushing Dangerous Ideas (13:40) ===

[00:30:13]  Not to mention the set designer and even the photographer now is trying to say, oh, you know, I had no responsibility.
[00:30:18]  All I did was light the set and take the pictures.
[00:30:20]  Baloney, baloney.
[00:30:22]  Anybody would have said, any photographer worth assault would have said, I'm not doing that.
[00:30:27]  Find somebody else.
[00:30:28]  I don't photograph little four-year-olds holding BDSM dolls in the midst of a grown-up situation or in the midst of another photo shoot that celebrates a child pornography ruling and or also features a book by somebody who has images of what appear to be castrated children.
[00:30:45]  I don't want anything to do with it.
[00:30:46]  No one's taking responsibility except now Balenciaga in words.
[00:30:50]  But this is the greatest proof that it could be so mainstream.
[00:30:52]  This isn't some freak YouTube person or somebody deep down a rabbit hole on Reddit.
[00:30:58]  It's Balenciaga.
[00:31:00]  Yeah, it's so mainstream.
[00:31:01]  And I mean, that goes, I think, for all sorts of extreme sexual imagery that you'll now see.
[00:31:09]  I set myself the project of walking down my local high street, which is completely normal high street, and taking note of all of the super sexual imagery that I saw in shop windows, on buses, on posters on the streetscape or whatever.
[00:31:22]  And I realize in doing it that it's everywhere, like to the point that you actually start almost zoning it out because it becomes so normal.
[00:31:31]  It's just part of the streetscape.
[00:31:33]  I don't know if you remember back in the 1990s when the Wonderbra ad came out with Eva Herzegovina, where she was wearing a black push-up bra.
[00:31:42]  And at the time, it was considered to be so boundary breaking.
[00:31:45]  And it was apparently causing men to crash their cars because they were so distracted when they were driving.
[00:31:51]  And now I look at them like, that's tame.
[00:31:54]  You could use that to, you know, supermarkets or whatever have women in that degree of undress in their advertising now.
[00:32:00]  It's the those kind of limits are like a distant spot in the background now, which is why, of course, you've got the likes of Balenciaga who are pushing more and more and more and more, because I think brands have learned that there's normally little to stop them, except, of course, and this is what, of course, your last guest was talking about, except mums.
[00:32:20]  I actually think that we are entering a really interesting period in feminism right now.
[00:32:24]  And I'm using feminism in a very broad kind of way, just to mean like advocating on behalf of women, whatever that means politically.
[00:32:34]  I think we're entering a really interesting phase where we have so many more mothers involved in campaigning because it used to be that the nature of having little children is that you can't really go, you know, you can't go to public meetings, you can't go to protests, you can't really participate in public life in the way that you can if you don't have little children.
[00:32:54]  But with the internet, you can be breastfeeding with one hand and on your smartphone, you know, tweeting at your congressman or whatever it is with the other hand.
[00:33:03]  And so I think we've had this influx of women entering online political discussion and online campaigning.
[00:33:11]  And they are exactly the sort of people, the mothers of young children, who look at this kind of Balenciaga content and say, absolutely not.
[00:33:18]  Absolutely not.
[00:33:19]  So I think that maybe there's going to be more of a reckoning for this sort of stuff soon.
[00:33:23]  I hope you're right.
[00:33:24]  I mean, this one's so clear-cut.
[00:33:26]  You don't, you just stay away from children, stay the hell away from children.
[00:33:28]  Anybody who would have the inclination to go to children for anything like this is sick himself.
[00:33:33]  I mean, that person needs to be fired just for having the idea.
[00:33:35]  Truly, this is sick.
[00:33:36]  Like there's something wrong with this person.
[00:33:38]  No normal person would conjure this up as art or a means of selling handbags.
[00:33:44]  Good God.
[00:33:45]  So let's take it up to the adult level because that's sort of where you began the book and sort of took a look back at the sexual revolution that, you know, my mother lived through, though not really because she was married and kind of tame, but she was alive for, I should say.
[00:34:03]  And that was supposed to liberate us all.
[00:34:06]  It was supposed to put us on equal footing with men.
[00:34:08]  Now we could own our own sexuality.
[00:34:10]  Now women didn't have to feel ashamed about sex anymore.
[00:34:13]  Women could have as many sexual partners as they wanted thanks to birth control and didn't have to feel bad about themselves.
[00:34:20]  And yet, and yet it wouldn't work out that way.
[00:34:26]  Now we've had some 50 years to look at, to judge how the experiment has gone and you've concluded what?
[00:34:35]  That it hasn't gone very well.
[00:34:37]  Yeah, so that's the promise, right?
[00:34:39]  And that's sort of the popular narrative, particularly on the left, that the whole project of the sexual revolution, it was done by and for women.
[00:34:48]  And it was all about liberating us from the patriarchal tyranny of the past.
[00:34:55]  I mean, there is a little bit of truth to that.
[00:34:57]  I think that it's a really good thing now that we're able to control our reproduction, that women don't necessarily have to spend their whole married lives pregnant or breastfeeding.
[00:35:07]  And, you know, the punishing effects on the body are really real from that kind of experience.
[00:35:12]  So the fact that women can now limit family size is clearly really good.
[00:35:17]  But also, I think, I mean, I start from what is a controversial premise, even though it shouldn't be, which is that men and women are really fundamentally different in really important ways.
[00:35:28]  And some of those differences are physical.
[00:35:30]  There's a sexual asymmetry that is just not going away.
[00:35:33]  There is only one sex who gets pregnant.
[00:35:36]  And that sex also happens to be a lot smaller, a lot less physically strong than the other, which means that in any heterosexual encounter, women are going to be at a disadvantage.
[00:35:47]  The other even more controversial premise that I start from is that there are also psychological differences between men and women.
[00:35:55]  And they're average psychological differences.
[00:35:57]  There are outliers in every direction, but they are also extreme, particularly on some facets.
[00:36:05]  So on sexuality, for instance, it shouldn't need saying.
[00:36:10]  I think that anyone who's sort of lived in the world will have observed this.
[00:36:13]  But there is plenty of data showing this.
[00:36:15]  This isn't just anecdotal.
[00:36:18]  Men are on average more interested in having casual sex than our women.
[00:36:22]  And men are also more interested in watching porn and men are also more interested in buying sex and prostitution.
[00:36:29]  And basically, all of the things that have suddenly become much more socially acceptable post-sexual revolution are things that men are much more likely to want to do than are women.
[00:36:39]  And they're things that also come at an expense to women.
[00:36:43]  You know, if men are seeking out casual sex or buying sex or buying porn or whatever, they need women to participate in that.
[00:36:50]  They need women to be providing that casual sex or providing that porn material, whatever it is.
[00:36:56]  And I think that the liberal feminist narrative, which says that this is all a chance for women to sort of revel in their sexual freedom and to have sex like a man, that's the phrase that's used in Sex in the City, the first episode.
[00:37:08]  And it's the phrase that I run within the book.
[00:37:10]  It's a good phrase because that is basically what's being described.
[00:37:14]  The whole essence of the sexual revolution is about encouraging women to be more like men in every way, including to have sex like men, to try and imitate male sexuality, to be more casual, to be more emotionless in sexual attachments and so on.
[00:37:30]  And, you know, for a few women, that works fine, although there's always the risk that, you know, any kind of casual sexual encounter is always going to be much more risky for the woman than it is for the man because of the risk of violence, because of the risk of pregnancy.
[00:37:44]  But some women do really want to do it.
[00:37:45]  And I sort of think power to them, but those women are a minority.
[00:37:49]  What's much more common is for women to actually not really be very into casual sex, to do it because they feel like they are obliged to do it in the hope that it will turn into a real relationship down the track.
[00:38:03]  And this is where I think our sexual culture is really misserving women and young women in particular, because there is this feeling that it's not as though having sex like a man is one choice out of many that's now available to them.
[00:38:15]  It's that having sex like a man is aspirational, is compulsory, even.
[00:38:19]  And I think actually, if you look at it in those terms, the only people who've really benefited from the sexual revolution are a minority of men who are really interested in sexual variety and are attractive enough to get it.
[00:38:31]  I mean, in reality, most men are actually not reveling in any sexual freedom because most men aren't attractive enough to be attracting loads of partners.
[00:38:40]  You've got this small number of men at the very tippy top who are doing really well.
[00:38:44]  This reminds me of a discussion I had with Steve.
[00:38:47]  When you're actually pretty miserable.
[00:38:48]  Who is hilarious?
[00:38:49]  And he talked about how he and his wife, Christians, decided to wait until marriage to have sex.
[00:38:55]  And he's a good-looking guy, and his wife is an attractive woman.
[00:38:58]  And he made the joke of, you know, lots of people say, like, we waited until marriage.
[00:39:03]  And then he made the joke where he looks at them and he's like, sort of.
[00:39:09]  They're not particularly attractive.
[00:39:11]  doesn't really think they deserve full credit the way Stephen and his wife did, which was a very funny little bit.
[00:39:17]  But in any event, yes, you're right.
[00:39:19]  It's a small few on the male side that are able to sort of run around and have as much sex as they want to.
[00:39:26]  Women have a lot more opportunity because it's just men tend to want sex more than women want to have it.
[00:39:32]  So it's like if you're somebody who wants to give it, you'll have plenty of opportunity as a woman, even if you're not at the peak, peak, peak of the attractiveness scale.
[00:39:39]  But you have an interesting line in your book, which I remember Bridget Fedesey cited in her amazing piece about your book.
[00:39:45]  And she's a friend and I love her and she came on the show.
[00:39:47]  We talked all about it.
[00:39:49]  But the line said something to the effect of women fail to recognize too often that being desired is not the same thing as being held in high esteem.
[00:39:58]  And so many women show up at the guy's house after swiping whatever on Tinder and feel like this is going to be an answer for them.
[00:40:08]  This is going to make them feel hot or in control or strong by having meaningless, casual sex with some hot guy or some rich guy or whatever guy.
[00:40:19]  And it's not until maybe the next morning, maybe a few years later, maybe once they're married, maybe once they just had a baby like Bridget did, that they realize that's exactly the opposite of what happened that night.
[00:40:31]  Yeah, completely.
[00:40:32]  I mean, one of the things that I think one of the ways in which women are really misserved by us not being honest about the differences between male and female sexuality, there is so much effort put into denying those differences, trying to erase those differences, trying to pretend that none of this is none of this is biological.
[00:40:53]  It's all just kind of negative stereotypes that we absorb from the culture.
[00:40:57]  No, I think that this is try as we might, I think that we do eventually sort of hit the biological buffers when we try and erase sex differences.
[00:41:09]  And there is an extremely logical reason why male and female sexuality would have evolved to be really different.
[00:41:16]  The costs to women of pregnancy are really high.
[00:41:19]  We're talking, you know, particularly in the ancestral environment where you definitely don't have contraception, you don't have access to safe abortion, you don't have a welfare state, right?
[00:41:31]  So, and pregnancy and labor are really dangerous.
[00:41:35]  So, you're talking about nine months of labor, painful, dangerous childbirth, and then many, many years of infant care if you're going to raise this child's adulthood.
[00:41:44]  Those costs are vast.
[00:41:45]  It means that having sex is one of the most consequential decisions a woman can make in her entire life, right?
[00:41:51]  Whereas for men, in theory, they can reproduce every time they orgasm, they can flip from woman to woman.
[00:41:58]  You know, most men don't do that because that's actually not sort of the best evolutionary strategy.
[00:42:03]  It actually makes sense normally for men to invest in one wife and to and to maximize the attention he gives to his family, his children.
[00:42:12]  But some men might choose the short-term mode where they're trying to just kind of mate with as many women as possible.
[00:42:20]  They can do that.
[00:42:21]  There's a kind of psychological mode that men can switch into where they can have that emotionless sex and it doesn't mean anything.
[00:42:27]  But that's just not how women are built with maybe a few very unusual exceptions.
[00:42:32]  We're just not built that way.
[00:42:34]  And we can try.
[00:42:35]  I mean, this is the nature of being a human being compared with other animals.
[00:42:38]  We have our animal instincts.
[00:42:40]  There are ways in which we are evolved that are not going away.
[00:42:44]  But we also have we're really intelligent.
[00:42:47]  There are ways in which we can try and override those instincts and try and redirect our behavior.
[00:42:56]  And so that's, I mean, that's what Bridget writes about in her amazing essay, right?
[00:43:00]  That the years that she spent trying to Have sex like a man, trying to fulfill this aspirational model, seeing it as a way of being free and resisting all of the sort of old stereotypes and stuff.
[00:43:12]  And it just made her miserable.
[00:43:13]  And it was only years later that she really fully acknowledged to herself how miserable it had made her.
[00:43:20]  I am, I dedicated my book to, so this is basically the first line when you open it, to the women who learned it the hard way.
[00:43:29]  And Bridget said that when she first read that, she just burst into tears because she was like, that's me.
[00:43:33]  I learned it the hard way.
[00:43:35]  And I've had a lot of readers who said that.
[00:43:38]  We had a long talk about it on this show.
[00:43:40]  And we had very different history in that way.
[00:43:43]  And Bridget had a troubled past and it manifested in all sorts of dangerous ways in her life.
[00:43:48]  Thank God she's very well now and an example to us all and how to persevere.

=== Wisdom Learned the Hard Way (03:28) ===

[00:43:54]  I had a much stronger foundation in my family.
[00:43:57]  And I think that really helped.
[00:43:58]  That really helped.
[00:43:59]  Like I always knew I was never going to do that.
[00:44:01]  I always, it's not that I didn't have any premarital sex.
[00:44:05]  It's that I was extremely selective.
[00:44:07]  And I just always knew I was never going to be providing that to anybody who didn't deserve it.
[00:44:12]  And that I would never have sex with somebody that didn't respect me or that I didn't feel, I knew I wouldn't feel good about after it was over, you know, that I wasn't looking for a meaningless pleasure.
[00:44:23]  You can have a meaningless pleasure with in a glass of wine, you know, without any of those very sticky attachments, so to speak.
[00:44:32]  So I kind of just knew that at a very young age.
[00:44:35]  And that was a gift.
[00:44:35]  That was a gift.
[00:44:36]  It wasn't like my parents told me that.
[00:44:37]  It was just I was raised in a very sort of strong, loving family.
[00:44:41]  So I think that can that can do it.
[00:44:43]  You know, strong ego for the daughters and understanding who they are and what their sense of self-worth is and praising them for their intellect and not in empty ways like, oh, you're so smart, you're so smart.
[00:44:52]  No, actually give them challenges that they can meet and then praise them for their accomplishments that speak to their smarts, not just empty words.
[00:44:59]  Anyway, I think there's a whole different way of approaching getting your daughter to be at the place where she just knows she's not going to do that.
[00:45:06]  But what we're doing right now is exactly the opposite.
[00:45:08]  We're gaslighting all these girls.
[00:45:10]  We're telling them as a society, this other choice that you and I are saying here is going to more than likely make them unhappy, is going to make them happy, is going to show how strong they are and how liberated and evolved.
[00:45:24]  So we've crossed into a really dangerous place.
[00:45:27]  Yeah.
[00:45:29]  I am constantly, I'm the mother of a toddler.
[00:45:33]  So I'm not yet phasing this like for real, not family yet, but just speaking to other parents and looking around at what's sort of considered normal among liberal Londoners, which is our social circle basically.
[00:45:50]  The permissiveness is amazing to me.
[00:45:53]  I mean, this idea that comes out of the 1960s that social guardrails are restrictive, that we shouldn't have default templates, that people should be allowed to make their own choices.
[00:46:06]  You know, you can run with that up to a point.
[00:46:10]  I do think that the completely removing social guardos is a mistake.
[00:46:13]  I think honestly, that most people do happiest when they follow the sort of regular templates.
[00:46:20]  But with to extend that to children is madness to think that children can be deciding, you know, absolutely everything about even down to deciding whether or not they're boys or girls from infancy is absurd.
[00:46:35]  But that's become completely normal.
[00:46:36]  And the idea actually that parents should be, should be setting boundaries and should be telling children, you know, these most basic facts that, you know, there are hard limits.
[00:46:46]  There are ways in which our biology does, I mean, afraid, determine our lives.
[00:46:50]  This phrase that was popular in the second wave, biology isn't destiny.
[00:46:54]  It's not destiny, but it absolutely sets limits in what life can be.
[00:47:01]  And that's just, that's just the truth.
[00:47:03]  It's real and we can learn a lot from people who have had to deal with its reality for decades and decades and the lessons that they learned the hard way, right?
[00:47:11]  It's like this wisdom is available to us if only we'll be honest about the lessons, as opposed to saying, oh, those were a bunch of Neanderthals who made terrible choices and now you're going to feel really happy if you make the choices I want for you.

=== Dark Drives Behind Icons (15:03) ===

[00:47:22]  Stand by, Louise.
[00:47:23]  We have so much more to go over.
[00:47:25]  I love your book.
[00:47:25]  I love the way you think.
[00:47:27]  And there's so much more.
[00:47:28]  She's taking a hard look at the way men are living and approaching this issue as well.
[00:47:32]  We'll talk about that in one second.
[00:47:37]  Let's start back at the beginning of the book because you open it in, I think, a great way, which I know I will be citing again in the future.
[00:47:45]  As soon as I read it, I was like, oh my God, this is everything.
[00:47:47]  This speaks to me on so many different levels.
[00:47:50]  And it is the arc of the sexual revolution when you put someone like Marilyn Monroe through it, who was, you know, a little before her time, but she was one of the leaders of it.
[00:48:02]  And Hugh Hefner.
[00:48:04]  So it starts off with the fact that they were buried next to each other, but she did not consent to that.
[00:48:14]  He chose it.
[00:48:16]  And for you, this is a perfect metaphor for the way they live their lives with respect to each other and with respect to the opposite sex in general.
[00:48:24]  Explain.
[00:48:24]  So Hefner and Monroe were actually born in exactly the same year and they spent most of their lives in LA.
[00:48:32]  And they're both considered to be the great icons of the sexual revolution, right?
[00:48:38]  But they also had incredibly different experiences of the sexual revolution in that Hefner lived to grow old.
[00:48:46]  And as you say, he bought the crypt next to Monroe's in his final act of creepiness.
[00:48:53]  He said that I can't pass up the chance to spend eternity next to Marilyn or some words to that effect.
[00:48:59]  But they never actually met at any point.
[00:49:03]  But Hefner did kind of owe the success of Playboy to Monroe because she was both the first cover star and also the first naked centerfold because he bought images, naked images that she had had taken many years before when she was a much younger woman and desperately in need of the money.
[00:49:20]  She had she'd agreed to do a naked photo shoot and tried her very best to make it anonymous and to she signed the release with a fake name and so on.
[00:49:31]  But Hefner slammed out about the photos, bought them from the photographer, didn't pay Monroe a cent, didn't ask her consent, and printed them anyway.
[00:49:40]  And Playboy was a huge success from the very beginning.
[00:49:43]  And she said later that she had to go and buy a copy herself.
[00:49:45]  He didn't even give her a free copy.
[00:49:47]  So, you know, that when Hefner died, he was feted by some eulogists as being this kind of surprise feminist icon and so on, because Playboy was always pushing for the greater availability of contraception and decriminalization of abortion long before many other places were doing so.
[00:50:08]  But, you know, you kind of got to laugh in a dark way because, of course, Hefner would want contraception abortion to be made available to women because all that he was interested in was having sex with as many beautiful young women as possible.
[00:50:21]  I mean, right up until his final days, he had a harem of blonde 20-somethings around him at all time.
[00:50:28]  You know, what he was interested in and what other, I would say, men who were sort of supporters of the sexual revolution, what they wanted all along was just to make women more sexually available to them.
[00:50:39]  And they succeeded in that.
[00:50:40]  Whereas Monroe, she, as we all know, died young and suffered from all sorts of mental health issues, substance abuse issues.
[00:50:49]  She suffered from domestic violence, from child abuse, you know, the recent biopic, I think, really threw into sharp relief exactly how painful her life was at many points.
[00:50:58]  And she's not alone.
[00:50:59]  There are a lot of women who are considered to be sex icons of that period and later, including porn stars who, you know, many of them have become very, very, very famous, who've experienced exactly the same kind of mental health issues, exactly the same kind of life's cut short.
[00:51:18]  I mean, the suicide rate in the porn industry is absolutely amazing because this very often is what that kind of sex symbol status does to women.
[00:51:28]  It destroys them.
[00:51:29]  in a way that it doesn't destroy the likes of Hefna.
[00:51:32]  He had a ball.
[00:51:33]  I mean, it did.
[00:51:34]  Can I say, even in the case of Monroe and so many other women, they gravitate toward this status for dark reasons in many cases to begin with.
[00:51:46]  You mentioned Marilyn's abuse as a child.
[00:51:49]  That's part of it.
[00:51:50]  It's no accident that she wound up becoming the world's greatest sex symbol because this was something that was taught to her from a very young age as an appropriate lane for her to be in, as maybe even the only lane in which she would be recognized and validated and in which she might succeed.
[00:52:06]  So it's almost, I don't mean to sound harsher on our fellow women than this, than I want to be, but it's almost like you have to be a little suspicious when somebody is living in the lane of sexual icon because you have to ask yourself what made them gravitate toward that.
[00:52:25]  I mean, honestly, to bring it back to my first discussion, I talked about how Kim Kardashian, she was an adult, but her mother put out her sex tape.
[00:52:34]  That is what her sex partner on that tape alleges, that he cut a deal with the mother and that it was a willing proposition to put out this very graphic sex tape of her daughter.
[00:52:44]  And now you have her refusing to stand up for these little girls who are being featured in these ads.
[00:52:48]  It's just, I don't know, I'm seeing patterns and it does lead you to question, how did this person get in this role to begin with?
[00:53:00]  Yeah, I mean, Kim Kardashian is so mysterious in this regard, isn't she?
[00:53:03]  Because she's, on the one hand, she's the most overexposed woman in the world, but also we actually have so little insight into why she does all of this stuff.
[00:53:12]  You know, what is the psychological drive behind being famous primarily for your sex tape and your gorgeous body?
[00:53:23]  Right.
[00:53:24]  It is really mysterious.
[00:53:25]  I mean, perhaps in time we'll come to discover more.
[00:53:28]  I agree with you.
[00:53:30]  I share the skepticism of women who choose to commodify their sexuality in some way.
[00:53:37]  I think like 99 times out of 100, you end up finding out at some point that there's some sexual abuse and mental health issues, you know, some kind of really dark drive towards doing that.
[00:53:49]  It's not to say that's always the case, but it's rare to find exceptions.
[00:53:56]  And you mentioned some of these porn stars.
[00:53:59]  You write about this in the book on how almost invariably, if you interview one of these women while they're in the midst of their stardom, they will defend the porn industry and talk about being liberated and how they are making a lot of money and they're there by choice and don't feel sorry for them.
[00:54:18]  They're exploiting the industry.
[00:54:20]  The industry is not exploiting them and so on.
[00:54:22]  And yet you actually take a deep dive into that and find that in case after case, some of the most famous adult film actresses we've seen have come out later with a very different message, which doesn't get covered anywhere near as much.
[00:54:36]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:54:38]  They basically always travel in that direction.
[00:54:40]  So when you're in the industry, you defend the industry, you talk about how you're doing it for your own sexual liberation, et cetera.
[00:54:47]  And then after you leave the industry, that's when the story changes.
[00:54:49]  because actually I think sometimes you need that distance from what can be really, really traumatic experience in order to actually sit back and assess it and say, hang on, that actually caused me a lot of pain.
[00:55:00]  A really good example of this is Jenna Jameson, who's extraordinarily famous, successful porn actress of the 1990s and is now actually a campaigner against porn and in particular campaigner against MindGeek, which is the big umbrella organization that owns the most popular porn platforms in the world.
[00:55:18]  Jenna actually did a participate in a debate in the Oxford Union 20 odd years ago in defense of porn and spoke very persuasively on how porn was actually a great thing and she won her debate.
[00:55:34]  And then I recently spoke up the Oxford Union on much the same issue and stood in exactly the same place that Jenna stood.
[00:55:42]  And I opened by saying, you know, this was the debate that was held 20 years ago.
[00:55:46]  And I reckon Jenna Jameson would now be standing on the opposite side of this bench because she has completely changed her tune about porn industry as porn actresses almost always do if they live that long.
[00:55:56]  Because as I was saying, the suicide rate, the substance abuse rate is absolutely amazing.
[00:56:02]  What about, I mean, I worry about porn because I have three kids, right?
[00:56:06]  And they say that the average 12-year-old boy has already been exposed to porn, at least.
[00:56:10]  I think it's well over 50% have more than likely been exposed to pornography by 12.
[00:56:16]  By 12, they don't know what this is.
[00:56:19]  That's dark.
[00:56:20]  And it's not, I mean, forgive me for drawing lines like this, but back in my day, you know, in the 70s, maybe you saw some guy's Playboy, right?
[00:56:28]  You saw a picture of a naked woman or you read something naughty in a penthouse.
[00:56:32]  Not at all what these kids have available to them with just a phone, you know, just a phone.
[00:56:38]  And ideally, you've got the parental, all that stuff, but they can get around it.
[00:56:42]  They have some friend who doesn't have it or there's some device in the house that doesn't, whatever.
[00:56:46]  They're seeing it.
[00:56:47]  And I know I've read and we talked about how like one of the reasons it's so damaging is because these young boys who really get into it can start to think that that's what sex is.
[00:56:57]  And when they have their first normal sexual relationship with a real live girl in their school or, you know, college, they think that, you know, this is what sex is and it's some dirty, weird, bizarre thing instead of this beautiful, somewhat tenuous in the beginning, you know, like exploratory, beautiful, loving exchange.
[00:57:19]  So, but I think it's more complex than that.
[00:57:21]  Like there are, there are other dangers to exposing yourself to porn, having your child get exposed to porn.
[00:57:28]  Could you talk about it?
[00:57:29]  I mean, I'm going to do the back in my day thing too.
[00:57:31]  And I'm only 30.
[00:57:32]  I was born in 1992, but I was just a little bit too young to have smartphones specifically.
[00:57:39]  So we didn't have smartphones until we were sort of 18.
[00:57:42]  And I think that's the really, really big change that Gen Z now have access to this stuff when, as you say, they're 12 younger.
[00:57:50]  The statistics are horrifying for any parent, for anyone really, who's concerned about the next generation.
[00:57:58]  They're basically guinea pigs.
[00:58:00]  We've got these vast multi-billion dollar global corporations who are basically beaming the most sadistic content you can imagine into little computers that are in the pockets of children.
[00:58:12]  And it frustrates me so much that anyone who talks about this, you're sort of treated as if you're being alarmist or prudish.
[00:58:19]  I'm like, hang on, this isn't normal.
[00:58:21]  This isn't, you know, we've had however many millennia of people, you know, having, having sex and working it out, it's not as if this is being anti-sex to say that we shouldn't have children watching hundreds or thousands of adults video of adults having sex before they've even kissed a member of the opposite sex.
[00:58:43]  I mean, that's not normal.
[00:58:45]  This is extremely novel.
[00:58:46]  Extremely experimental what's going on right now, and I mean i've i'm i'm personally really frustrated by how little governments have had done to regulate these huge businesses and actually how people on the left, who are supposed to have, you know, an opposition to big business and to be critical of capitalism, they're actually often the first to resist any kind of efforts to to regulate this stuff and say actually, you know, children really shouldn't be seeing this.
[00:59:15]  The really extreme stuff really shouldn't be there.
[00:59:18]  The problem is, I think, that the, the platforms, make money by attracting viewers and particularly they make money from the most compulsive users.
[00:59:27]  I mean that tends to be also true of say, the gambling industry or alcohol smoking drugs, all these things which are addictive.
[00:59:34]  They tend to sell most of their product to the minority of users who use it really compulsively.
[00:59:40]  So it's about two percent of men.
[00:59:42]  You watch porn for more than seven hours a week, which is an enormous amount of time right, and anyone who's doing that is going to have almost certainly going to have erectile dysfunction, is going to have really, really dysfunctional relationships, is basically not going to be capable of having normal sex, having normal sex relationships at all, and those men are the main people who are driving the industry and one of the the the one of the harms done to them.
[01:00:09]  You know, I think that the harms done to porn stars is really extreme, but I actually think the consumers are harmed too, and I feel terrible for some of the men who get stuck in this addictive cycle.
[01:00:18]  It's a miserable cycle, you know.
[01:00:20]  I've heard from these men i've got, i've had emails from them and so on saying how much they they actually hate this product.
[01:00:25]  They hate being so hooked on it.
[01:00:27]  But the way that it's designed is such that it really kind of taps into the most primal bits of your brain and it is almost like being addicted to gambling or to drugs or something like that, and that it leaves you wanting more and and even more.
[01:00:39]  So it it kind of you have to get an even more extreme stimulus in order to get the next hit, because you get um uh, acclimatized to the more vanilla content and then you seek out more extreme content, and this is when the platforms come in with their algorithms and they suggest the more extreme stuff.
[01:00:56]  So they say, and what about this video?
[01:00:58]  And what about this video?
[01:01:00]  And one of the really disturbing things that we're hearing now from um psychologists who are working with sex offenders is that, while it used to be that the only the, the kind of the profile of the sex offender who had been caught watching child porn, um in possession of child sexually abuse images, you know more accurately, were men who were sort of very deep-seated paedophiles, like they were only interested in children.
[01:01:26]  They had the kind of classic profile of of of the pedophilic offender, whereas now what they're seeing more and more is men, sometimes really quite young men, who actually don't have that kind of profile, have not necessarily been interested sexually in children.
[01:01:40]  What they, what's wrong with them, is that they're addicted to porn and they end up initially they're watching normal porn, but probably from a very young age, and then very soon they get they, they get used to that and they seek out more extreme content, and so they they end up watching pseudomasochistic content um, really kind of taboo, Taboo breaking content.
[01:01:59]  And, you know, what's the most taboo breaking content that is?
[01:02:02]  It's child sexual abuse images.
[01:02:03]  And so they end up in the very worst parts of the internet because that's the kind of pipeline that's being established.
[01:02:11]  And it's a profitable pipeline.
[01:02:12]  That's what's really disturbing about it.
[01:02:15]  So dark, but important to know about.
[01:02:18]  For the people who just give your kid the phone and you just trust and you think you're okay because you put parental controls on there, your kid can figure out your parental controls.

=== Predatory Men Exploiting Fear (08:43) ===

[01:02:26]  He's probably smarter than you are on there.
[01:02:27]  You have to check.
[01:02:28]  You have to be a spy.
[01:02:30]  You know, the host who follows me here on Sirius is Dr. Laura, and she made her bones as a family and child psychologist growing up, you know, years and years.
[01:02:39]  And, you know, she talks about how there is no child privacy when they're minors in your home.
[01:02:45]  When they're living in your home, you're responsible for their welfare.
[01:02:48]  And you don't need to broadcast it from the rooftops that you're spying on them, but you need to check your kid's history and figure out where he's been going online because this is not only because of this, but because of bullying, which has led to a lot of suicidality amongst teens.
[01:03:01]  Sometimes you don't even know what's happening in the back end of Snapchat and so on.
[01:03:05]  So be a spy, be nosy.
[01:03:07]  It's not about violating a privacy.
[01:03:09]  It's about being a parental role model who cares and prioritizes safety.
[01:03:15]  Something you mention in the book is one of the biggest stories of the past couple of years when it comes to celebrities.
[01:03:21]  And that is the actor Army Hammer.
[01:03:24]  Army Hammer.
[01:03:25]  Yeah.
[01:03:26]  Who correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the guy, he actually is of the family Arm and Hammer.
[01:03:32]  That's why he wound up named Army Hammer.
[01:03:34]  My team will tell me if I'm wrong.
[01:03:36]  But anyway, he's got that connection, very successful actor in Hollywood.
[01:03:39]  And then his career completely imploded because he had the most unusual, weird, me-too situation that we've seen amongst any actors for a very long time.
[01:03:50]  And I wonder if there's any clues there for regular women, because I think without the story having broken, 90% of women would have looked at Army Hammer and said, sure, good looking guy, Hollywood celebrity, comes from this long line of, you know, well-off families.
[01:04:05]  You know, what was Army Hammer's problem?
[01:04:08]  And what lessons are there for the rest of us in this?
[01:04:11]  Right.
[01:04:11]  He looks so wholesome, doesn't he?
[01:04:13]  Yeah.
[01:04:14]  He does.
[01:04:14]  All the male celebrities you'd expect.
[01:04:16]  Yeah.
[01:04:18]  Yeah.
[01:04:18]  So what Army Hammer was caught doing was, well, I think the lesson in the Army Hammer story is actually that there were so many clues for so many years that he had weird, aggressive sexual preferences.
[01:04:35]  So he himself had spoken to interviewers about the fact that he liked choking women in bed.
[01:04:42]  Choking isn't the right word.
[01:04:44]  It's the word that's used in the porn industry, but it's really strangulation because choking, you know, you choke on food, you're strangled externally by someone else.
[01:04:51]  And it has suddenly become this incredibly voguish thing, I think, almost entirely as a result of porn mainstreaming it.
[01:04:58]  So he was speaking to interviewers about this years ago.
[01:05:03]  Girlfriends had sort of, there'd been whisperings about him being kind of aggressive in bed in a way that was maybe, you know, made women uncomfortable, but also within the sort of sex positive ethical framework, that's fine.
[01:05:16]  You know, you can, you can have as sadistic as you like in your sexual tastes.
[01:05:21]  You can, you can like, you know, it doesn't matter how weird it is.
[01:05:25]  It doesn't matter how troubling it is.
[01:05:27]  All that matters is that your partner is consenting.
[01:05:30]  And he's this gorgeous, as you say, wealthy family, whatever, gorgeous Hollywood actor.
[01:05:36]  He had no shortage of women who wanted to have sexual relationships with him and were willing to put up with whatever weird stuff he was requesting in bed.
[01:05:44]  It was only later on that more and more of these women were starting to talk about how bad the relationship had been leaving the relationships.
[01:05:54]  And you had, I think it was like text exchanges that got shared showing that he was asking for really, really weird sexual stuff, including the, you know, the big headline thing was that he had a cannibal fetish.
[01:06:05]  Not that he had actually killed and eaten anyone, but he had all these fantasies about cannibalism that he wanted the women to play along with and like really, really crazy stuff.
[01:06:14]  Not sure how you can satisfy desire in a partner.
[01:06:17]  It's not really on the table.
[01:06:20]  And the thing that was really kind of darkly funny about it is the way that this got reported.
[01:06:25]  And I think it was Rolling Stone and some other places as well, reported this all as like, there's nothing wrong with cannibalism per se.
[01:06:34]  The problem is with cannibalism without consent.
[01:06:37]  And that he was trying to sort of pressure women into participating in this best if she didn't want to.
[01:06:41]  And I was like, oh, come on.
[01:06:43]  Like, how, how many red flags do you need until we start saying, no, look, this guy just clearly has really, really aggressive, unpleasant, violent sexual fantasies.
[01:06:54]  He's not safe out, basically.
[01:06:56]  You know, you wouldn't recommend him as a as a as a husband to your daughter.
[01:07:01]  This is absolutely, you know, this is bad news.
[01:07:03]  But the problem is that I think we actually, the super tolerant sex positive thing, which is extremely fashionable among young women, I think it trains women out of their self-protective instincts.
[01:07:15]  I think that actually we, you know, one of the blessings actually that women are born with is a radar for sensing like guys who are weird sexually.
[01:07:26]  I think that we have that built in.
[01:07:29]  The problem is that it can be overridden when we're worried about being polite, we're worried about being politically correct, whatever it is.
[01:07:39]  And when you've got this ideology that says that actually anything goes, even cannibalism, as long as everyone's consenting, what you end up doing actually is telling young women who want to be nice, who want to be liked, who want to be with it, who want to be attractive to gorgeous Hollywood actors, that actually their instincts are wrong and they need to be overriding them.
[01:07:56]  And I want to say, and I say explicitly in this book, no, your instincts are right.
[01:08:01]  Actually, you know, the best way that you can like navigate a really dangerous sometimes sexual marketplace and stay away from the bad guys is by properly listening to your gut instinct.
[01:08:13]  Because if you feel something's off, it's probably because it is.
[01:08:17]  Well, that's the thing, because I know at the end of your book, you get into advice that you have for your daughter, right?
[01:08:23]  You have a baby daughter.
[01:08:24]  You were pregnant with her when you were.
[01:08:25]  I have a baby son, actually, but I have my imagined daughter, my future daughter.
[01:08:29]  Okay, all right.
[01:08:30]  I know you're pregnant when you're ready to book.
[01:08:32]  But it's good advice.
[01:08:33]  And one of the pieces of advice reminded me of Gavin DeBecker's gift of fear, which is you have an instinct.
[01:08:39]  Listen to it.
[01:08:41]  Listen to it.
[01:08:42]  And when the circumstances around you are telling you, don't listen to it.
[01:08:47]  Blow it off.
[01:08:48]  Go with this guy.
[01:08:48]  Look, he's so handsome.
[01:08:50]  No, that instinct in there is there thanks to thousands of years of evolution, which have given you a gift, one that you need.
[01:08:58]  It only works if you obey it.
[01:09:00]  Totally.
[01:09:00]  That's such a good book.
[01:09:02]  And he has so many case studies in there where he talks about cases where women had, they'd felt that fear, but they'd overridden it because they wanted to be nice.
[01:09:11]  And I think that so often that's what's going on with women.
[01:09:13]  I mean, that I mentioned at the top about the ways in which there are psychological differences between men and women.
[01:09:20]  There are quite a few.
[01:09:21]  And one of the ones that's most marked is a psychological trait that psychologists call agreeableness, which is basically in layman's terms, like niceness, your desire to please other people, to put other people first.
[01:09:33]  Women are much higher on average in agreeableness than our men.
[01:09:37]  And it's probably because you have to be agreeable with your baby.
[01:09:44]  Just the nature of being a mother is that you have to put your children first.
[01:09:47]  You have to put their needs first.
[01:09:49]  You have to be nice and patient and they're screaming at you and all of this kind of stuff.
[01:09:52]  So it's completely adaptive when it comes to looking after your children.
[01:09:56]  The problem is that it can be taken advantage by other adults and particularly by predatory men who will push it as far as they possibly can in trying to encourage women to prioritize being nice and polite over obeying their instincts and listening to the gift of fear.
[01:10:17]  And yeah, and I think unfortunately that this whole political ideology around supposed sexual liberation actually really plays into the hands of the sexual predators.
[01:10:30]  There's a bit a bit in my book where I talk about advice columns and a particular advice column I zoom in on, which is a woman who talks about how she's interested in BDSM.
[01:10:43]  She's been, I guess, watching Media Semporn and she kind of wants to experiment and she's got out of a relationship.
[01:10:49]  What should she do?
[01:10:50]  And the advice column says, you know, first of all, great.
[01:10:53]  Like pursue every possible source of sexual freedom you can imagine.
[01:10:58]  And second of all, what you've got to do is go onto a kink dating app or dating website and just say that you're really interested in whatever being strangled by a man.

=== Trusting Authority Figures (07:13) ===

[01:11:09]  Oh my God.
[01:11:11]  And then just like invite him around your house.
[01:11:12]  And I said, what are you talking about?
[01:11:14]  That is the worst advice you can possibly imagine giving to a young woman.
[01:11:19]  But this is so mainstream because partly because the idea is that there is a completely bright line between who we are in the bedroom and who we are outside of the bedroom.
[01:11:30]  And so if a man is really interested in violence and sadism and cannibalism, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about what he's really like, which is so counterintuitive.
[01:11:41]  And I think, no, that bright line doesn't exist.
[01:11:43]  What you're basically telling this young woman to do is to go out and find men who are interested in sexual violence and then invite them home.
[01:11:52]  I'm like, if you go out looking for a guy who's interested, he's just like aroused by rape.
[01:11:57]  There's a pretty strong chance he's going to rape you.
[01:12:00]  And just to say, oh, well, like teach men not to rape, that's on him.
[01:12:04]  It's like, fine.
[01:12:05]  But actually, I'm interested in preventing this stuff before it happens, not just in trying to punish it afterwards.
[01:12:11]  Yes, this reminds me.
[01:12:13]  I had a great conversation when I was at NBC with Pamela Anderson.
[01:12:17]  And, you know, she's incredibly beautiful and she's like iconically beautiful and of course starred in Baywatch and was married to Tommy Lee and Kid Rock and so on.
[01:12:26]  And she was never me too'd.
[01:12:28]  She never, she had experiences with Harvey Weinstein and so on.
[01:12:32]  And it didn't happen to her.
[01:12:33]  Now she's Canadian.
[01:12:35]  She's very practical.
[01:12:37]  She is a nice, practical, wholesome Canadian gal.
[01:12:42]  You wouldn't, you might not associate the word wholesome with her, but having spent some time with her, she really is.
[01:12:47]  She's got a very good head on her shoulders.
[01:12:49]  Not to say she hasn't made any mistakes.
[01:12:50]  I'm just saying I was impressed with her sensibility.
[01:12:53]  And she was like, you know why?
[01:12:54]  I never took a meeting in a hotel room ever.
[01:12:57]  Somebody tried to take me to the hotel room and I was like, hard pass.
[01:13:01]  And you know, plenty of people tried to take Pamela Anderson into the hotel room for the meeting.
[01:13:05]  I mean, there is zero chance that these men in Hollywood did not try to exploit her in that.
[01:13:10]  So she has a very good head on her shoulders.
[01:13:13]  And I'm not victim blaming.
[01:13:14]  I understand why these women got manipulated.
[01:13:16]  The Harvey Weinstein, it's like you're in the middle of a hotel lobby meeting and then he's like, I'm meeting whoever in my hotel room and you should come with, you don't know.
[01:13:23]  He lured people.
[01:13:24]  He was smart and devious.
[01:13:26]  But my point is, you can have your hard and fast rules because you say that this happens mostly to girls.
[01:13:31]  I think you write between the ages of what, 15 and 24.
[01:13:35]  That age set in particular, correct me if I'm wrong, but they really need to have some hard and fast rules about under what circumstances will I put myself behind a locked door or a closed door with an unknown man.
[01:13:49]  Yeah.
[01:13:50]  So the One context here is I used to work in a rape crisis center.
[01:13:54]  So I obviously don't write about like girls and women I work with in the book, but it's it really informed my thinking on this.
[01:14:03]  Partly just from seeing how amazingly young rape victims are.
[01:14:05]  They're younger than you'd think.
[01:14:07]  So the modal rape victim is only 15.
[01:14:09]  So what we're often dealing with here is girls who basically don't know anything about the dark side of male sexuality, who can't, you can't expect girls that young to come up with their own rules, their own boundaries, to know things like, you know, don't trust a guy who invites you to his hotel room for a meeting to all of these things, which for older women seem like common sense, but when you're 15, you don't know that.
[01:14:34]  And you, and what you're interested in is being liked and being popular and being normal.
[01:14:41]  You know, teenagers care so much about being normal.
[01:14:44]  It's so painful for them to be seen to be doing something weird.
[01:14:48]  And I think that we do girls a real disservice when we don't offer them proper guidance and boundaries and limits and say, well, you know, you kind of make it up yourself.
[01:14:58]  It's going back to that permissive parenting thing.
[01:15:00]  I think actually we owe it to younger women as women who've learnt it, who've learnt it the hard way, who've lived it already, to say, you know, here are the things that are ill-advised.
[01:15:13]  Because the problem is if you just require that young women learn it themselves, then sometimes they will, sometimes they'll learn it sort of painlessly, but often they won't learn it painlessly.
[01:15:24]  And the problem is that the very worst stuff can sometimes happen, which you can't come back from.
[01:15:30]  I say so much better to be a strict parent who sets boundaries.
[01:15:36]  And by the way, the other dynamic purposes with the young women, the 15-year-olds is very often the men who take advantage of them are older and there's something special about being chosen.
[01:15:47]  If you're the young one and some especially authority figure is coming on to you in some of these circumstances, it would be statutory rape.
[01:15:56]  But the girl has no appreciation for that and just feels special, like a chosen one, like she's, there's something about her that would make this authority figure pay attention to her.
[01:16:04]  And it's something to warn against.
[01:16:07]  Only only a bad person would exploit that dynamic with a young, with a young girl.
[01:16:12]  There's so many landmines out there for these young girls in particular.
[01:16:16]  We have to educate them on them on them all.
[01:16:19]  You have to do that and then keep them happy.
[01:16:21]  It's a challenge.
[01:16:22]  You can't spend your life mired and don't take a drug.
[01:16:26]  I just walked my kids through the other day.
[01:16:28]  My friend Eric Bowling, he lost his sweet son, Eric Chase, to one pill at his university.
[01:16:34]  He tried a pill like so many kids do, and it was laced with fentanyl and he died.
[01:16:39]  And now Eric's got a foundation and it's called One Pill Can Kill, his campaign to try to raise awareness to this problem.
[01:16:47]  So, you know, you tell your kids about that, like, don't even try the one.
[01:16:50]  It's too dangerous.
[01:16:51]  Don't take a pill that wasn't prescribed to you directly by a doctor and under control, the amounts and all that.
[01:16:55]  And don't go behind the closed doors and don't trust authority figures who want secrets between you and you.
[01:16:59]  It's like, oh, have a great day.
[01:17:00]  Bye, honey.
[01:17:01]  Mommy loves you.
[01:17:04]  But we have to do it, Louise.
[01:17:06]  We got to do it.
[01:17:07]  Yeah.
[01:17:10]  Yeah, we do because this is the parental.
[01:17:13]  And no one said parenting was the easy job, right?
[01:17:16]  Yeah.
[01:17:17]  But it is more difficult, I think, in the in the age of the internet and so on, when you don't have these kind of small communities where people know each other.
[01:17:25]  I mean, the nature of the internet, it's basically like it is a global community and we hand over these devices to kids and just say, like, off you run.
[01:17:34]  And I do wonder actually if parents of my generation, when we get to the point of having teenage children, are going to be more restrictive than, say, baby boomer and Gen X parents were, because we know what the internet's like.
[01:17:50]  So I think there might be a bit of a swing back against giving kids the sort of freedom that they're enjoying now.
[01:17:56]  I mean, I'm in news, so I'm already living that on my poor kids.
[01:17:59]  But it's working.
[01:18:01]  I mean, I have a 13-year-old.
[01:18:02]  He's our eldest.
[01:18:03]  And I checked his phone to see what he was doing and how long he was.
[01:18:07]  And he was averaging seven minutes a day.
[01:18:10]  Like, good boy.
[01:18:12]  That's good.
[01:18:13]  And they were the most benign websites.
[01:18:15]  It's all like Steph Curry.
[01:18:16]  You want to know what the stats were, that kind of stuff.
[01:18:18]  So I'm very pleased.
[01:18:19]  But of course, he's only 13.
[01:18:21]  And as they get older, it gets trickier.

=== Abuse in Long-Standing Relationships (13:40) ===

[01:18:23]  All right.
[01:18:23]  Stand by, Louise.
[01:18:24]  I'll squeeze in a quick break and we have much more to discuss right after this.
[01:18:27]  Don't go away.
[01:18:30]  Louise, this is a weird way to start, but can we spend a minute on strangulation?
[01:18:37]  It's like a weird way to start.
[01:18:39]  First of all, I would like to offer my tip right now on how to avoid being strangled.
[01:18:45]  I know I don't mean to make light of it, but it's honestly a safety tip.
[01:18:48]  I had a very bad stalking problem and I had these security guards with me for many, many weeks and I learned all sorts of great things.
[01:18:56]  And here is a tip for anybody.
[01:18:58]  God forbid, you should find yourself in the position where you are being strangled and it's against your will.
[01:19:06]  This is why I'm talking to Louise about it because some people actually say, oh, it was by consent.
[01:19:10]  So I'll try to do this to myself.
[01:19:12]  Abby just left the room.
[01:19:13]  Otherwise, I'd have her come over here and try to pretend to do it to me.
[01:19:15]  All right.
[01:19:16]  So let's say the person's hands are around your neck.
[01:19:19]  All right.
[01:19:19]  So for our listening audience, picture the strangulation pose where the person has their hands around your neck.
[01:19:25]  So the average woman trying to pull on the wrists of the average man, because it would usually be a man, trying to pull, pull, pull those hands down, she cannot do it.
[01:19:34]  She is not strong enough.
[01:19:35]  As Louise points out, this is one of the fundamental differences and dangers between men and women.
[01:19:40]  So what you do is, and then forgive me, I'll take one hand away so I can just show you.
[01:19:45]  The woman can do this.
[01:19:46]  She can pull the pinkies.
[01:19:49]  You just grab both pinkies and you pull as hard as you can out and down.
[01:19:55]  And that's not about strength.
[01:19:57]  That's about ligaments and bone structure and tendons.
[01:20:02]  And the person's hands will come off because they don't want to lose their pinkies.
[01:20:05]  So anyway, it's a tip.
[01:20:07]  I give it to every woman, every woman I can find, every women's group, every young girl, you know, colleges and so on.
[01:20:13]  It's just simple and anyone can do it.
[01:20:16]  All right.
[01:20:16]  There's a reason we're talking about, quote, choking or strangulation, because as you point out, weirdly, this is a rising trend.
[01:20:25]  More and more men are saying they want it and women are claiming they'll do it and they want it too, which I don't believe, but they'll at least submit to it.
[01:20:33]  So do the men want to do the strangulation in addition to having it done to them?
[01:20:38]  Or is it just a one-way deal?
[01:20:40]  The men do it to the women and the women have to pretend it's okay with them.
[01:20:44]  It's pretty much always in straight relationships, it's almost always male and female.
[01:20:51]  And as you say, the strict difference is such that that's a dangerous position for women to be in.
[01:20:56]  I mean, sometimes there are women who will who will ask for it.
[01:20:59]  It's been very normalized in porn and in women's bags and so on.
[01:21:02]  So you can kind of see why it would become a fashion thing for us to ask for.
[01:21:08]  It's a way of showing that you're edgy and all of this, right?
[01:21:11]  But the problem is, I mean, well, there are a whole bunch of problems with this.
[01:21:16]  One of them is that there's this, there's been this rising phenomenon in the UK and also in the US and in most of other countries, where you have women who are killed by men that they're in sexual relationships with.
[01:21:31]  And the men, when they're asked by police what happened, say, oh, well, it was a sex game.
[01:21:37]  She asked for it.
[01:21:38]  And, you know, one thing led to another and she died accidentally.
[01:21:43]  And I actually work for a campaign group called We Can't Consent to This, which documents examples of cases where men have made these kind of claims.
[01:21:54]  I mean, it's always been male defendants in every single case that we found.
[01:21:58]  We've not found an example of a woman trying to claim this kind of defense in court.
[01:22:02]  And the problem is that when you have this amazing normalization of that kind of violence in the bedroom, it becomes so much easier for defendants to get away with spinning this kind of story.
[01:22:13]  I mean, often we're talking about cases where there's been really extreme violence.
[01:22:18]  There's often long-standing abuse in the relationship.
[01:22:21]  This might be a woman who's, you know, a prostitute who's been murdered by a client, like all sorts of extremely suspicious circumstances, which make you think, actually, no, this has got nothing to do with a consensual sex game.
[01:22:32]  This is just murder.
[01:22:33]  But the problem is that when you've got this idea implanted in the heads of policemen and jurors and judges and everyone that, oh, well, this is normal.
[01:22:43]  This is just sort of the slightly adventurous aspect of sex games that people get up to.
[01:22:49]  Then it becomes so much easier to spin these stories.
[01:22:51]  And the nature of the cases is the woman can't give her side of the story.
[01:22:54]  She can't tell the court that actually this guy's making up a pack of lies.
[01:22:59]  And so they're getting away with it.
[01:23:00]  You know, we found that in as many of half of cases, men who spin these stories are not being convicted of murder.
[01:23:09]  They're being convicted of manslaughter at a much, much lower sentence, or they're getting away with it entirely.
[01:23:14]  And this is happening in America as well.
[01:23:16]  It's a really troubling phenomenon.
[01:23:17]  It's just one example of why, you know, the defense that's made by sex positive feminists is that this is just about liberation.
[01:23:30]  This is about choice.
[01:23:31]  And they say, no, you can't just say, well, this is between two people privately in a bedroom and it's no one else's business when it's leaking out of the bedroom, when it's leaking into the culture, when, you know, you've got these horrible stories, which are directly downstream from the mainstreaming of BDSM coupon.
[01:23:47]  In some ways, this is more disturbing, more dangerous even than stranger strangulation, because if a stranger, a bad guy, comes up and tries to hurt you, you understand what your mission is, which is get away, run, do the trick I just showed you, do whatever you can to save your life.
[01:24:06]  In what's supposed to be a loving sexual relationship, you're quote, consenting.
[01:24:12]  And by the point you realize or someone watching you would realize you're in danger, you're in trouble.
[01:24:21]  You've lost oxygen.
[01:24:22]  You've lost your strength.
[01:24:23]  You've lost probably the ability to actually do my trick to get yourself out of it.
[01:24:28]  You have entirely placed your safety in the hands of this other person who obviously cannot be trusted.
[01:24:37]  I quote a clinical neurologist in the book who's done studies of the effects of strangulation on the body.
[01:24:45]  And she said that it's a myth to think you can do this safely, that the neck has just contained so many important things that it isn't possible to place pressure on the neck without placing pressure on something really important.
[01:24:59]  It's also kind of a myth to think that you can just accidentally kill someone through a slip of the wrist.
[01:25:03]  Like it takes five minutes maybe to strangle someone to death.
[01:25:07]  And if you try, I wish that every lawyer would do this to juries when you're dealing with these kind of cases.
[01:25:13]  You know, try gripping your own wrist really hard for five minutes.
[01:25:15]  It feels like a really long time.
[01:25:17]  So the idea that these guys are killing women accidentally, I don't think it's true.
[01:25:22]  But even if you don't kill someone, you can still cause a lot of damage.
[01:25:26]  You know, the all sorts of injuries resulting from strangulation, everything from miscarriage to stroke to incontinence, you know, you don't mess with the neurological system like that.
[01:25:39]  The idea that this is being promoted as just a kind of way to spice things up in the bedroom, I think is terrible and being promoted to young people even worse.
[01:25:48]  Yeah.
[01:25:49]  One second on sex workers before we get to advice.
[01:25:56]  Sex workers, you sum it up as follows.
[01:25:59]  People are not products.
[01:26:01]  I told the audience yesterday, we just got back from a few days in Amsterdam over in Holland.
[01:26:06]  And they are, of course, famous or infamous, depending on your view, for the red light district, which we did not attend, given that, well, we're normal.
[01:26:14]  No offense, but we're over there with our family.
[01:26:16]  And but it was described to me by some of the locals.
[01:26:20]  And apparently you go over there as a young woman, a prostitute, and you can basically rent a room.
[01:26:26]  You can put yourself on display for eight hours.
[01:26:29]  These are rented out by landlords.
[01:26:30]  The women don't own the spots.
[01:26:32]  And any number of men will just come in and frequent your, you know, room over and over and over all day.
[01:26:40]  And this is supposed to be, look, there's their choice.
[01:26:43]  It's their money.
[01:26:45]  It's legalized prostitution.
[01:26:47]  We have it here in Vegas in the United States.
[01:26:50]  You know, this is definitely an outcome of this, you know, modern feminist movement, which sees prostitution, as you point it out, as quote, sex work.
[01:27:01]  We're not allowed to really use any term other than sex work because otherwise you've demonized these women and their choices.
[01:27:09]  What do you make of that?
[01:27:10]  I mean, if you want to claim that sex is just like anything else, like it's like playing tennis with someone, shaking someone's hand, whatever, it's like a neutral social interaction and therefore that it's completely fine to commodify it and it's just sex work and sex workers work.
[01:27:26]  That's the slogan that you've probably heard, that it should just be regarded as any other type of job.
[01:27:31]  The problem with that kind of idea is that if you if you take that to its logical conclusion, then if sex can't have a special category, then neither can rape.
[01:27:42]  Then we just have to regard rape as what, theft or fraud or something like that.
[01:27:48]  Sexual harassment can't be considered to be uniquely harmful.
[01:27:51]  It just has to be considered alongside any other kind of harassment.
[01:27:55]  And the problem is that people don't feel that way.
[01:27:58]  People instinctively feel, and legal systems reflect this fact, that rape is worse than theft.
[01:28:03]  And they instinctively feel that sexual harassment is more harmful than other kinds of harassment.
[01:28:08]  Louisa, I'm just going to go through a couple of them, but people need to buy the book so they can read your conclusion.
[01:28:12]  Listen to your mother.
[01:28:13]  One of your points is chivalry, people need to remember, is actually a good thing.
[01:28:19]  Why is that important?
[01:28:21]  It was, as we were talking about at the top of the show, that there is this inherent sexual asymmetry between men and women.
[01:28:28]  Women are the ones who get pregnant.
[01:28:29]  Men are bigger and stronger.
[01:28:31]  You've got all the psychological differences going on.
[01:28:33]  I think given that fact, which isn't going away, is hugely unwise from a women's perspective to do away with chivalry, which is basically, you know, an ideology that says that men ought to restrain themselves, ought to, you know, if you understand male strength is a sword to keep it within its sheath, to be courteous towards women, to put women first, to open doors.
[01:29:01]  You know, sometimes, I get it, sometimes let's say as a professional woman, it might feel patronizing.
[01:29:06]  It might feel annoying to be have doors held open for you and all this kind of stuff.
[01:29:11]  But that is a tiny price to pay for the benefits that chivalry brings with it.
[01:29:16]  And I think those women who complain about that stuff are ruining for the rest of us.
[01:29:20]  Most normal women like it.
[01:29:22]  They like chivalry.
[01:29:23]  So don't men out there, don't listen to that minority voice.
[01:29:25]  Listen to the rest of us who appreciate you treating us like you are gentlemen and we are ladies while understanding that we are full empowered ladies as well.
[01:29:34]  Okay, this is a good one.
[01:29:37]  If you're going to get drunk or high, do it in private and with female friends rather than in public or in mixed company.
[01:29:42]  This is basic safety.
[01:29:43]  More people need to be told this.
[01:29:45]  More young women need to be told this.
[01:29:46]  I went on Breakfast TV here in the UK when my book was first published and we spoke about that piece of advice.
[01:29:52]  And I got such a grilling from the hosts and there was so much out.
[01:29:55]  They were so outraged at the idea that I would suggest this.
[01:29:57]  I mean, bear in mind, I'm not saying don't drink in mixed company.
[01:30:02]  It's getting drunk.
[01:30:03]  It's incapacitating yourself, putting yourself at risk.
[01:30:06]  That's the thing that I think is ill-advised.
[01:30:08]  So yeah, I got such a grilling on TV.
[01:30:10]  And then as soon as I got home, I was inundated with emails, comments, tweets, whatever from people saying yes, obviously.
[01:30:16]  And it was one of those things where actually the general view was 95% plus, yes, this is common sense.
[01:30:22]  And actually, this was considered completely normal even 20, 30 years ago.
[01:30:26]  The idea that, yeah, this was basic stuff that your mom would tell you to do, that your female friends would tell you to do for a reason, because obviously it's a bad idea to put yourself at risk when you're around people that you don't know.
[01:30:41]  Bad things happen when young women in that age group in particular get drunk out in public.
[01:30:48]  And by the way, bad things happen when young men in that age group get drunk out in public.
[01:30:52]  Quickly, don't use dating apps.
[01:30:54]  You write mutual friends can vet histories and punish bad behavior.
[01:30:57]  Dating apps can't.
[01:30:59]  You know, this happened sort of on the tail end of my dating life, so I never had to deal with these apps, but so many people do use them.
[01:31:05]  So what do you say to those who say, I don't have friends who can set me up?
[01:31:08]  Or they've fallen down on the job.
[01:31:09]  This is my only way of meeting people.
[01:31:11]  I really think that we should be much more sort of generous with our friends about setting people up.
[01:31:16]  This idea of like going on a blind date with people, someone you've been set up with by friends, it seems really old-fashioned, but like it's actually the, it's not just the best possible way to meet partners, actually the best possible way to meet new friends as well, because you've got a sort of filter that's already been put in place.
[01:31:30]  And so you're meeting people who are already likely to get on with.
[01:31:34]  Okay.
[01:31:34]  Now we're going to have a couple more because we only have 60 seconds left.
[01:31:37]  I get a huge amount of choice, but it's low quality.
[01:31:40]  Okay.
[01:31:41]  Lastly, hold off on having sex with a new boyfriend for at least a few months.
[01:31:44]  Good way of discovering whether he's serious about you or just looking for a hookup.
[01:31:47]  Only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children.
[01:31:51]  I like that.
[01:31:51]  It's just a good rule of thumb in deciding whether he's worthy of your trust.
[01:31:55]  And last but not least, monogamous marriage is by far the most stable and reliable foundation on which to build a family.

=== Rules for Safe Dating (01:07) ===

[01:32:04]  That's really what's at the heart of the book and what's really pissed off your critics, Louise.
[01:32:09]  But truer words were never spoken.
[01:32:12]  Listen, thank you so much for being here, for sharing all of your research and your insights.
[01:32:16]  A lot, a lot of wisdom for such a young woman.
[01:32:19]  I appreciate you doing the work and letting us know what you found.
[01:32:22]  Thank you so much.
[01:32:24]  All right, all the best.
[01:32:24]  And it is, again, the book is called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.
[01:32:28]  And thanks to all of you for joining us today tomorrow.
[01:32:30]  Our friends from the Ruthless podcast are back with me for our first conversation since the 2022 midterms.
[01:32:37]  Don't miss that.
[01:32:38]  Download the show in the meantime for free on Apple Pandora Spotify and Stitcher.
[01:32:42]  Also go to youtube.com slash MeganKelly.
[01:32:46]  We've got a lot of videos posted right there.
[01:32:48]  Right now, they're doing great.
[01:32:49]  We'd love to have you follow us over there because you can see my strangulation tip.
[01:32:53]  And I know I'm making light of it, but it really is important.
[01:32:56]  And you know what?
[01:32:57]  It could save the life of yourself or someone you love.
[01:33:00]  So check it out.
[01:33:01]  Thank you for listening and we'll do it all over again tomorrow.
[01:33:07]  Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
[01:33:09]  No BS, no agenda, and no