Timeless Wisdom: Ultimate Issues Hour - What Do Women Want?
Dennis Prager argues modern feminism misleads women by dismissing their core desire—love from a good man—as secondary to career, using the case of an astronaut charged with attempted murder to highlight its emotional toll on families. Historian Stephanie Koontz’s Los Angeles Times claim that women now prioritize ambition over traditional relationships clashes with Prager’s view, backed by examples like Lawrence Summers’ daughter and cultural texts from Homer to the Bible, that women’s fulfillment lies in love and connection. Listeners like Janet and Ryan agree, while Carlos challenges its universality, but Prager insists universities sell a false narrative, denying women’s "genius" for relational depth. The debate underscores a clash between feminist ideals and timeless biological or psychological truths about gender differences. [Automatically generated summary]
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This is the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
Every week at this hour, I talk to you about some great issue of life.
And it might be micro, it might be macro, it could be religious, philosophic, moral, human nature, some of the great questions of life.
And now you can't get greater than this one.
Certainly in terms of it mystifying much of humanity, if not all of humanity.
What do women want?
And I raise it because of the news item today about this tragic story.
And to me, it is a tragic story.
And I must tell you, I resent anyone in the media making fun of this astronaut, making jokes about it.
All I think of is that we have here a mother, a wife, a mother of three children, and all the lives that have been terribly affected by this terrible story.
I don't find it funny at all, and I even have a very dark sense of humor, but there's nothing funny about it.
But it does raise a tremendous question.
We have here the story of this astronaut.
She has just, incidentally, just been charged with first-degree, attempted first-degree murder.
And here is a woman who, both literally and figuratively, reached the greatest heights a human can achieve, being an astronaut and actually being in outer space.
You can't get a more prestigious position in this country.
Maybe President of the United States, maybe.
That would be it.
That would be the one more prestigious position or achievement.
An astronaut is that highly regarded.
And what does it all boil down to when all is said and done?
She's in the midst of a romantic triangle or whatever the facts may come out as.
And she is not the issue for this hour.
But rather, I use this only as an example to say that I believe that a generation of women in the post and height of feminism period from the 60s on have been terribly, terribly misled to deny what for most women is the greatest single yearning of their life, and that is to find a good man who will love her and whom she will love.
For the great, great, great majority of women, that is their greatest and deepest yearning.
You cannot say this at a college campus.
To say this is to be regarded as a patriarchal anachronism, as something from the Stone Age morally.
No, that's not what women want.
In fact, there was a Los Angeles Times piece just this very week, in fact, two days ago, a Los Angeles Times piece titled, She Earns More and That's Okay.
And it's about how often it is now that women are earning more, how they are now half the law school students, half the medical school students, that the ratio of college degrees is now essentially six to four in favor of females, and how wonderful this is.
And they have this historian of a family historian, Stephanie Kuntz, whom I've had on my program, and she is quoted here.
There's a certain exhilaration that women are feeling, historian Kuntz said.
Women have suddenly been freed to pursue ambitions that they once had to channel into finding a successful man rather than being a successful person.
And that's the classic feminist and academic and elite statement.
That is what you will read and hear and read and hear and read and hear over and over.
And that is what girls are told.
Now, there was an article in the New York Times magazine by a feminist mother who was writing recently about how the idea of her daughter wanting to be a princess and having princess dolls disturbed her a great deal because it implied that what she really wants is to be a princess married to a great prince.
When in fact what she should really want is to be a successful whatever it is in the outer world and make a nice income and be a success in some profession.
And that's what women really, really want.
They shouldn't have, as Stephanie Kuntz writes, they shouldn't have to channel themselves, channel their ambitions into, quote, finding a successful man rather than being a successful person.
And so on this ultimate issues hour, I'd like to venture an answer to the question of what do women want?
And if they know their nature, that's what they really want.
They want a good man to love and be loved by.
That is the way it has been throughout history until the very modern contemporary period in American life.
1-8 Prager 776.
1-8-P-R-A-G-E-R-776.
Oh, if only you could see all the emails and on occasion hear the calls from women who have been very successful and don't have a man in their life.
And ask and say, you know, I was really led to believe that this is where the greatest satisfaction for me, the greatest satisfaction for me really has been.
I was told, I should say, I, a woman, I was told the greatest satisfaction will be in professional success.
Well, here I am making into the six-figure income.
And I said, oh, I'll be successful and then I'll find a man one day.
Well, here I am at 40 years of age.
And by golly, I really am successful, run my own business or a really good top with a top law firm or whatever it might be.
And the prospect of another 50 years, and by golly, most women have every reason to believe that unless tragedy strikes, they will live till 90 or more.
And they'll have the great professional success.
But that's not what they most want.
Now, I'm not speaking for every single woman on the face of the earth.
There's no such thing.
But for the vast majority of women, it is a good man.
And I emphasize good men, not any man.
And there was a time where basically any man who, so long as he made an income, made a living that he might suffice as a husband.
That should not be.
It should be a good man.
And I speak a great deal on this program and have written a great deal about what it means to be a good man, which includes, first and foremost, to take care of a woman and a family.
But I believe, And it pains me that women, young women, and now they're not so young anymore, have been led to believe that their nature, they don't have this in their nature.
Now, as this Stephanie Kuntz writes, women have suddenly been freed to pursue ambitions that they once had to channel into finding a successful man rather than being a successful person.
As if success, this defined success entirely outside of relationship realm.
But women are relationship-oriented.
I remember the stories told by people who raised their daughters in non-sexist ways.
They wouldn't give their daughters dolls.
And I think of the former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, who told the story about his daughter.
He and his wife gave their daughter trucks instead of dolls.
Trucks Named After Love00:15:46
And to his amazement, he found that his little girl had named the trucks, gave the trucks names to have a relationship, as it were, with the trucks.
1-8 Prager 776.
This is what the deepest yearning is in female nature.
And to say this on a college campus today is equivalent to saying in an astronomy class that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth.
All righty, let's go to your calls here.
And 1-8Prager 776 is the number we will as soon as we come back.
This poor woman and the whole story is heartbreaking.
I think of the families involved here.
Came an astronaut, and still what propelled her more than anything was in the realm of love and relationship.
We return and I will take your calls, including the many that differ, if there are, at 1-8Prager776 on the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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Now, just $4.99 at SalemNow.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
This is the ultimate issues hour of the Dennis Prager show, an hour each week on some great issue of life.
And the issue today is what do women want?
And I brazenly offer you the answer that they most yearn, female nature most yearns for relationship.
And it is ideally with a man.
I say ideally because women so yearn for relations that if it isn't going to be a man, it may well be, and I do not mean this in sexual terms, but it may well be with an animal.
It is not coincidental that overwhelmingly it is single women who work most with animals at preserves, at places where animals are taken care of in the animal rights movement.
And the passion to have a relationship is so deep to love and be loved that it has simply been thwarted because they have been told, as I read to you from this L.A. Times article about women earning more than men, and it is about that this historian, Stephanie Koontz, says, you know what?
It used to be that women had to channel their ambitions into finding a successful man rather than being a successful person.
But now women have been freed to pursue those successful and their ambitions for success without a man.
1-8-Prager 776.
Take your calls, your challenges.
Sean in Fountain Hills, Arizona.
Dennis Prager.
Hi.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Hey, I understand and I appreciate your point, and I agree with you, but I'm wondering why you're limiting it, making it exclusive to women.
Why isn't this a discussion about the deepest yearning in human nature?
I mean, it may take more time for a man to realize it in his life, but isn't it a human virtue?
Isn't it tacit to being a human to want to love and be loved?
Yeah, of course men want to love and be loved.
Of course.
But unless you hold, and you might, so let's analyze that.
Do you believe that women and men have virtually identical natures?
Well, no.
Okay, then, Sean, then it is fair to say what do women want as a specific subject.
Well, I mean, you're talking about all the attributes of men and women, but to say that women are quote-unquote relationship-oriented, which that's their deepest yearning, yes.
Okay, but I mean, that seems to imply that men aren't.
And oh, it implies that men have a somewhat different deepest yearning.
And I'll give you the way I would answer it.
I believe, certainly it's true for me, that that is as deep a yearning as anything else.
However, men are not capable of being happy with that as their primary issue in life, as their primary achievement in life, as women would be.
A woman is far more capable of having satisfaction and happiness in life, being loved by and loving a good man, than a man is by solely loving and being loved by a good woman.
For him, more than for female nature, outward achievement, conquering the world, is a yearning on that level.
And what feminism has said is women are like men and wish to conquer the world just as much as men do.
But that's not so.
That's why I gave the astronaut story only as an example, only to use it as a springboard for this discussion.
She obviously doesn't typify all women.
Most women don't get involved in the tragic circumstances that this astronaut has.
So yes, men and women are different in their deepest yearnings.
Thank you, Sean.
It was an important question.
And we go to Lakeville, Minnesota.
Janet.
Hello, Janet.
Dennis Prager.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I have lived this the whole nine guards.
I was a tomboy.
I went away to college.
I got my first degree in education.
And I taught elementary school, went back, got the MBA, the CPA, worked for two of the finest corporations in the United States, practically worldwide.
Absolutely phenomenal.
I retired about eight years ago, and so I had the career, I had the travel, I had everything.
My first marriage in the early 80s was on the rocks from the get-go, but we did have one son.
Part of it was my own issues, but I am now married to a man who is absolutely the dream of my life.
If I would have met someone, well, I can say that, but hindsight, you know, 20-20.
But he has become the father to my son.
He is, he's a guide's guy, but we have a great relationship.
But I have lived this independent stuff, the traveled, the small family, and I am the happiest now that I have ever been.
Well, you know what?
You need to write your story or go to colleges and tell young women at college that they're being served a false meal.
I actually teach college now.
Oh, good.
What subject?
Business?
I teach management information systems.
It's the business side of computer science.
They wouldn't let me in the humanities department.
And naturally, but if you could ever sneak this into the women.
Oh, they get it.
That would be a very good thing.
I thank you very much.
All righty, let's go to Ryan in Phoenix.
Ryan Dennis Prager.
Hi.
Hi, Dennis.
This is Ryan.
Love your show.
It's great to talk to you.
I appreciate it.
I'm 26.
We'll be 26 on Saturday.
And I'm married.
And we've been married for a little over five years.
And my wife has always thought of herself as a princess.
So I think it was kind of funny when you said that.
Even now, I bought her a Bible cover and it says princess on it.
And she loved that.
But I just thought I really appreciate the fact that she is one of those women who is looking for a successful man, and hopefully I can become that.
But she, I'm sorry, a little nervous here.
That's all right.
It's totally understandable.
What you're saying is at 26 years of age, you recognize this to be true.
Yes, yes, I do.
I mean, there are exceptions.
You're religious, I got from the Bible, right?
Yes, Christian, yes.
That's right.
Well, you know what?
This is one of the reasons that a lot of people of the secular elite have a problem with the religious in our society because you will take this view and this drives them crazy.
My wife wants to be a princess.
The Cinderella story is largely true.
That is the woman's yearning.
There is a huge denial of this.
There is, in fact, at the university, and I'm generalizing because a generalization means, by definition, that is generally true.
Of course, there are exceptions to what I'm saying.
But generally speaking, at the university, the idea is offered to people, and especially to young women, this is not what you want.
Deny your nature.
You have a nature indistinguishable from that of men.
Sexually, you want to be as promiscuous as male nature wants men to be.
You want to be successful in the outer world.
Relationships are nice, but not central to your self-assessment.
And it's all a lie.
We'll be back in a moment.
You're listening to the Dennis Prager show, The Ultimate Issues Hour.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
Some great, great issue of life discussed this hour each week.
This one is What Do Women Want?
Based on the tragic story of the astronaut who had theoretically the greatest success available to an American outside of the presidency to be an astronaut and to be in outer space and yet brought down by her yearnings and the tragedy of her being arrested now on charges of attempted first-degree murder.
And my heart breaks for everybody concerned, frankly.
I see no ability to make jokes about that situation.
I only use it, though, as a jumping off point because of the enormity of the dishonesty of what is offered to young women today at college, that they are indistinguishable from men in their sexuality.
They are indistinguishable from men in their yearnings.
That it was all a bunch of patriarchal sexist drivel that their biggest yearning was to find a man to love and be loved by.
No, no.
Not true.
You want to be astronauts.
1-8 Prager 776 trying to alternate men and women on this particular issue.
And let's see.
Hmm.
Okay.
In Cleveland, it's Simcha.
Hello, Simcha, Dennis Prager.
Hi, Dennis.
It's the two Simchas you met in Cleveland.
And if you ever want a great home-cooked meal, please call.
I remember you sitting in the front row.
Right, right.
So I feel that the love for my child, my son, is much stronger.
And the desire, and I wanted to have a husband only to have children.
You know, not that I cared so much about a husband, but I wanted my child to have a mother and father.
That, you know, if the husband and the son were drowning, I would definitely save the son.
You're married, right?
Yes, I'm married to Mr. Simcha.
Yeah, I met him, yeah.
Does he know this?
Yeah.
Yeah, he knows.
I also called one time when you had a question and I said that I put up with the husband for the son's sake.
Well, all right.
Well, that may be a reflection of your particular circumstance.
And I feel that it's not something perhaps for the world to know.
And I appreciate your call very much.
And there are a number of people calling and saying, no, women's biggest yearning is for family, not for a man.
And that's, first of all, they have been somewhat indistinguishable.
But I would be very interested to ask women if they could have the love of their life until they die or no love of their life but a child.
Which would they ask God for?
That would be a very interesting test of the question.
Not a husband to put up with, but the love of your life.
You know, my dear friends, I am crazy.
I am crazy about my children.
I'm crazy about children.
I have always wanted more than anything, even more than outer world achievement.
I have wanted to be a father.
I love it beyond words.
It has filled emotional holes in me that I wanted filled.
I am crazed by it.
So I only say that to preface the following.
Children have to grow up and leave you.
You're a lousy parent if your children can't leave you.
It is the bittersweet task of a parent to raise children so that they can leave.
But that's not the case with the love of your life.
Ideally, the love of your life doesn't leave you.
That's the ideal.
It's not common, but it's tough to achieve and to find.
But that remains the ideal.
So I don't believe that women's greatest yearning is for children.
Of course, there is that deep, deep yearning, and thank God for it.
And I think that's a yearning for many men, too.
But on the deepest level, it is to is to beloved and love a good man.
That's my take anyway.
Why Women Prioritize Love Over Looks00:06:51
And we continue on the Ultimate Issues Hour 1-8, Prager 776, The Dennis Prager Show.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Popular, happy, well-rounded kids across America are being exploited online through a sinister scheme that leaves them broken, defeated, or worse.
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the U.S.
And to raise awareness, SalemNow.com is offering Sexploited in America, the four-part talkie series from AGA Media, at 50% off.
Sexploited in America now, just $4.99 at SalemNow.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Dennis Prager here, and this is the Ultimate Issues Hour, the hour each week on some great issue.
This one is what do women most want?
What do they most yearn for?
And I believe that it is to be loved and love a good man, and that a real bill of goods has been sold to young women for the last generation.
That no, You want outer world professional success.
You have the same nature as a male does.
The idea that men and women have different natures is sexist, patriarchal, drivel.
You want promiscuity as much as male nature wants promiscuity, and etc., etc.
All right.
Now, let's go to Carol in Encino, California.
Hi, Carol.
Dennis Prager.
Hey there.
Yeah, I love your show.
I think you're awesome.
And I just want to say, like, the media has taught men, okay, your prize is Pamela Anderson.
So, average-looking girls out there, if we don't do it for ourselves, I can't wait around for a guy.
You know, I don't look like Pamela Anderson.
So I live in L.A., that's what guys want.
They want the Hooters girl.
If you're normal-looking, smart, have a good job and a personality, doesn't matter.
If you're not arm candy, you forget it.
I mean, not to sound negative, but I've lived here.
I see what happens.
I know my hot friends.
They get asked out constantly.
My plain-looking friends who own real estate, have great jobs, make good money, really sweet people, wouldn't hurt a fly, kind, considering.
They're single.
I don't get it.
I mean, well, all right.
This is a very fair statement, but it's not fully accurate.
It's very fair.
First, there is probably a phenomenon in L.A. that is not quite as true in Milwaukee.
So there is some truth to that, given that L.A. has such a large number of actresses, models, and the like who flock here from the Milwaukees of America.
So that's true.
Having said that, a vast number of, as you put it, normal-looking or average or plain-looking women get married.
Vast numbers of them, since by definition, if that were not the case, the vast majority of women would never marry, but the vast majority do marry.
And the guys who only care about Pamela Anderson types are very possibly the type of guy you wouldn't want to marry anyway.
Having said all of that, it is not wise, and I'm not saying you are doing this, but it is not wise for a woman to disregard how she looks because she can't be Pamela Anderson.
Alan, that should be a subject for an hour, too.
See, I would be very interested in your case where you feel your hot girlfriends, they get asked out and so on.
I would be, and as difficult as it is for me to say this, I would be interested if with a serious infusion of money, you went to some massive makeover place.
I think they even had that on TV where they do all sorts of things with hair and with face and have, I don't know, trainers and whatever.
But if the time and effort and money were put in, it's hard for me to believe that you would still be considered by yourself even as plain-looking.
There's a lot that a woman could do, and a lot of women sell themselves short by saying, well, I'm not Pamela Anderson.
Pamela Anderson probably walks around thinking she's not Pamela Anderson.
And if you saw her in the morning before makeup and before every way that she appears to the public, that would be probably a sobering lesson for you.
Well, just using her as an example.
I know, I know that, and I'm using her as the same example.
Yeah, I'm using her as the same example.
And all I'm saying to you, and I'm saying this to Carol because I'm saying this to all women who feel as she does, there are many, many reasons why men are attracted to a woman.
Obviously, the physical is first because that's the only thing that is known first.
But over the course of time, and that is one of the reasons that I believe that there are good ways through the internet now to meet a person, where you just get to know them as a person first, and then as a physical being.
But I also believe that a lot of women do not give the time and effort to how they look that they need to.
I'm sorry to say this because a man doesn't have to give the same amount.
That's true, but a man has to give a lot of time and effort to his job because men are judged by their job as much as women are judged by their looks.
Each sex has its own burden.
And I say this only out of a desire that all the women who want to get married find somebody.
That's the only agenda that I have in answering Carol this way.
Alrighty, let's go to Philadelphia and Carol.
Hi, Carol Dennis Prager.
This is Carlos.
Oh, I'm sorry, your name?
Carlos Carlos.
Carlos, it's down here as Carol.
I'm sorry, I changed your sex, but that's Eva's fault and she'll be punished.
Go ahead.
Dennis, I just want to say that I think I disagree with you.
I think your point of view comes from a biblical perspective and from a cultural perspective.
Cultural Perspectives on Gender00:05:25
I think that people 10 or 20,000 years ago, women, when they were living in caves, did not think about culture.
I mean, about men, the way they think about them after, you know, cultures became civilized.
I think this is a cultural thing.
Okay, so, all right, I know.
All right, Carlos, I will modify.
I will modify my statement to this is women's nature for the last 10,000 years.
That for Cro-Magnon women, it may have been different.
Okay?
Have I met you?
I think it's a learned behavior that comes from.
Well, you can argue learned.
You can argue evolution.
You can argue divine.
You can argue whatever it is.
That has been women's nature through the recorded civilizations that we have.
That is the way Homer described Greek women.
That is the way the Bible described whatever women it was describing.
The most ancient texts we have, where people did write things in pre-literate society in caves, it may have been different.
I can't address that.
1-8 Prager 776, final segment coming up on the Ultimate Issues Hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Popular, happy, well-rounded kids across America are being exploited online through a sinister scheme that leaves them broken, defeated, or worse.
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the U.S.
And to raise awareness, SalemNow.com is offering Sexploited in America, the four-part talkie series from AGA Media, at 50% off.
Sexploited in America now, just $4.99 at SalemNow.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Dennis Prager here, final segment of this edition of the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
And a reminder for those of you in Philadelphia, I will be there this coming weekend, scholar in residence at Temple Sinai in Dresher, Pennsylvania.
215-643-6510.
People of every faith are welcome.
215-643-6510.
Saturday night is the happiness talk.
And it's meant to be life-changing, to be perfectly blunt with you, plus some other important subjects such as the nature of America and Judaism as a vehicle to personal fulfillment.
Some very real big talks there.
215-643-6510.
This edition of the Ultimate Issues Hour has been devoted to the question raised by the tragic story of the astronaut woman been arrested now with charges of attempted murder in pursuing a fellow astronaut in competition with another woman who I also believe was an astronaut, but I don't recall.
Astronaut is the highest achievement you can attain in America today.
Beats brain surgeon, beats anything but perhaps President of the United States.
And her greatest yearnings, and it was all chucked for her desire for a man, apparently.
Now, I'm not saying obviously her conduct is not typical, neither of astronauts or of anybody else.
I'm only using it to say that, you know what, little girls yearn for a prince more than they yearn to be astronauts.
But they have been taught that they really want to be astronauts and lawyers and doctors and business people, that that's where their satisfaction will really lie and they are being sold a bill of goods.
And at ages when it's easiest to attract a man, they are overwhelmingly preoccupied with professional success.
I have no desire to deny any female professional success.
It is not even a subliminal part of my message.
My message is to take human nature seriously, something that our universities do not.
They don't even believe that there is a difference between male and female nature to begin with, and this would be one of those examples.
And so what do women want in the first case or relationship?
That's what they most yearn for.
That is their genius.
That is their gift.
And it has been squelched by a generation raised to believe that they really want to be astronauts.
This has been the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.