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Nov. 9, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:57:53

1207 Sunday Show Nov 9 2008 Women's Conference - Women and Philosophy

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	Okay, well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	This is the female conference part two.
	Sorry that a man is introducing it, but if it's any consolation, I am wearing a hot pink wig and a slinky little Olga number.
	So we will just briefly do an intro, a few orders of business, and then we will turn it over to our moderator, Colleen, who will be talking about women and relationships to philosophy and so on.
	So, as far as order of business goes, if you would like to order a couple of FDR books, there are the five non-fiction FDR books.
	On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love, Compact Edition, Everyday Anarchy, and Practical Anarchy.
	Are all available for $89, including shipping if you'd like to order someone.
	So if you'd like to order some for the Christmas season, if you could get your orders in sooner rather than later, that would probably be quite wise.
	I can ship them, of course, further out, but call me before you, or send me an email or ping me before you spend the $89 and then ask me to ship them to the Mir space station just because that's an extra $12.
	So, that's it.
	Thank you so much to those who have subscribed to the new $50 a month.
	Good lord, that's like $1.10 a day.
	$1.20 a day, perhaps.
	The $50 a month subscription level that gets you straight to Philosopher King, the private boards, and all of the 200-plus premium podcasts that are out there.
	Some very, very advanced topics.
	So, if you would like to sign up for that, just go to freedomainradio.com.
	forward slash donations and sign up I hugely appreciate that and it takes if you are a very enthusiastic member of the community and wish to help use that resource or give me that resource to help spread the word that is wonderful I really appreciate that and it takes it off your mind for when to donate which I think and it's also planned income for you and planned income for me which is fantastic And I think that's it,
	other than to say the baby is coming along just fine.
	Obviously I've been doing quite a bit of work with an acetylene torch to make sure that he's combat ready.
	So that's excellent.
	We have had our chat with the people at the hospital.
	We go for prenatal classes, how to juggle babies, and I think it was forks.
	We go in late November?
	Yes, late November.
	Everything's fine, and the baby is slightly above average weight, and they said that's mostly forehead.
	So I think it might be mine, which is very cool.
	Yeah, the LCF, the little chatty forehead.
	And we still don't know the gender, but it does seem to be a night owl and quite grabby.
	And so I think it's a boy, of course.
	Christina thinks it's a girl.
	But we shall see.
	Yeah, Christina thought it was a boy all along, but now she thinks it's a girl.
	And why has that changed?
	Intuition. Ah, intuition.
	I can't believe I wasted all my time with this first principle stuff when I could just make stuff up.
	I really have no idea.
	Anyway, so the baby got an 8 out of 8 on its physical exam, which is excellent.
	And now we have six weeks to go and it's just a matter of waiting and writhing around in vague discomfort for Christina and for me making jokes about belugas.
	Anyway, so that's it for the news of FDR. I guess one last thing is that we had almost 400,000 media hits last month.
	month, that would be October of 2008, which translates to 5 million a year, if we can keep it up.
	That was largely due to a more than doubling of views of the YouTube videos that the True News series seems to be doing relatively well.
	And thank you so much to the fellow who's coming up with a fancy schmancy intro.
	I think that's going to startle some people to hear crazy talk coming out of a guy with a CNN logo, a suit, And babbling incomprehensibilities.
	So that's great.
	Thank you to those who are doing the email gathering and promoting the videos.
	It's doing some fine stuff to help with the conversation.
	So that having been said, thank you so much for the intro.
	Now we turn it over to the ladies for a startlingly civilized show with far fewer bad jokes than normal.
	So, Colleen, if you would like to cheer and take it away, it's all yours.
	Okay, thank you. So I thought we could talk today about women and their relationship to philosophy because we often describe what we're doing here as a multi-generational project, which to me means that women have a really important role in what we're doing because they are the primary caregivers, they have the most contact with the children, they teach the children to think.
	I mean, in the early years they They have the potential to do the most to teach children about ethics and children develop their empathy through their interaction with their mother.
	It's really important that we make parenting better to make people more rational in this world.
	Because women have a primary role in that, it's very key to get women interested in conversations about ethics and philosophy.
	However, the fact remains that, at least in my experience, and I think this is statistically true, that women tend to be less interested in discussions of philosophy and politics and those kinds of things than men do.
	So I thought what we could talk about today is why that is.
	I mean, there's been a lot of theories that have been talked about on the show.
	Are there biological brain differences?
	Is it an evolutionary thing?
	Are women more threatened by philosophy because it's more threatening to their relationships, which they value more than men?
	Are there societal pressures against it?
	Do they not see how the abstract principles of philosophy relate to their lives?
	I mean, there's all these different factors that it could possibly be.
	So I wanted to pose some questions to the women in this conversation about what their experiences have been.
	And I thought, you know, anyone can ask a question or contribute an observation about that sort of thing and we can sort of share our experiences.
	And of course, if the men wanted to ask any questions, that would be great too.
	So... The first thing I kind of wanted to...
	I'll just start off with this question of there being biological brain differences.
	That's been given as an explanation for why women are less interested in discussions of philosophy.
	I actually did a little bit of research before the show.
	I was thinking that I found a lot of these articles, I'm not sure if anyone else has found this kind of research recently, that they did these neurological brain scans on men and women and they They sort of colored the different kinds of informational processing parts of the brain as white matter and gray matter.
	What they found was that men have 6.5 times more gray matter than women and women have 10 times more white matter than men.
	What that means is that the gray matter, what men have more of, is sort of this localized processing thing where they They sort of focus on specific problems.
	It would explain why they're more adept at things like mathematics or logical proofs.
	And so they'd have more skill in, say, writing a book about a logical framework for evaluating ethical principles.
	And women, they have more of what's called white matter, which has to do with networking and integrating information.
	And so it's like connecting ideas to each other, and this would explain why a woman would be more inclined to see an idea like the state is an effect of the family, because they're more skilled at relating different concepts and different ideas.
	So I was thinking about this, and...
	Is it because that these different types of information processing, is it because that one is more valued in philosophy?
	Or is it that we just, I mean, you can see how lots of things in philosophy like logical syllogisms, ethics, would have to do with this kind of localized processing.
	Are there just a lot more things in philosophy that women can contribute because they have this different kind of information processing?
	I just wanted to open it up to whatever anyone else's experience is with Have you found that you actually think differently than most women or anything like that?
	Is there any other kinds of scientific research that anybody else knows of about the biological brain difference between men and women?
	Is it on?
	Yeah.
	Oh, there it is.
	Hi Colleen, it's Christina. That was a wonderful introduction.
	I do know a very little bit about differences in brains between men and women, but not so much in terms of the We speak about philosophical ideas, but just in terms of emotional processing, and men and women process emotions differently and in different parts of the brain, and that may have something to do with the networking as well as the ideas.
	Men, I think, have their emotional processing occurs lower down in the brainstem than it does for women, and it's more, I think it's less sophisticated.
	That doesn't mean that men can't Feel emotions or don't feel all the emotions, but women process a little higher up, and I think that has a lot to do with their more socializing personalities and less to do with ideas.
	That's not to say, again, that women can't process ideas or think about ideas, but I think...
	Men are much more logical in that regard than women are.
	And it would seem to go with the research that you have pulled out.
	I would also add to that that to me philosophy and psychology are not separate disciplines fundamentally.
	And so I think one of the things that has always been limiting For philosophy is not examining why it has had so little success, right?
	A discipline that was invented...
	I mean, if you look at science, modern empirical science is a couple of hundred years old, and if you look at it particularly over the last 200 years, it has completely transformed the world.
	Philosophy as a discipline is 2,500 years old and remains a bunch of squabbling, academic, nonsense, infighting crap.
	And libertarianism as a discipline is 300 years old and has not transformed the world.
	In fact, the world has gone further away from reason and from freedom, certainly in the West.
	So I think that one of the things that's valuable about what we're doing here is we're really trying to unite the gray matter and the white matter, so to speak.
	Because we are trying to say, well, if we're right rationally, why are we not succeeding politically?
	emotionally or psychologically.
	If we are correct in terms of our syllogisms, why are we failing so badly in terms of our effect?
	And being correct in your syllogisms doesn't do anything to free the world.
	But of course, you don't want to have an effect without being right.
	So it's important to be right.
	It's important to have an effect.
	And what we've done is we've tried to be right as hard as we can.
	And we've worked hard to figure out why in the past things haven't had an effect, how we can have an effect.
	And the insight that I think Christina fundamentally brought to FDR was that the success of the syllogisms is barred by the Negativity in the relationships,
	right? That the state is an incorrect moral premise, but it succeeds because or it flourishes and is so hard to uproot because the relationships which people have preclude honest conversations about the use of violence in society because family relationships preclude the honest conversations about violence within the family.
	Irrationality It's in society not because philosophy is bad, but because religious and other kinds of irrational family structures or members attack anybody who talks about that.
	So I think that to harness what we're talking about here in terms of male and female prowess, to me it's a yin and a yang.
	We simply cannot achieve freedom without an examination of our relationships and examining our relationships without Objective or syllogistical or rational truth doesn't lead us anywhere in particular.
	So I think that's one of the reasons why this conversation, unlike most philosophical or political conversations, or God forbid, economics, why it appeals to both men and women is because we really do need to be a team or we need to bring both of these skill sets.
	And I know that there's a bit of an artificial divide and we're sort of, it's not, you know, one or the other.
	But I think that we understand that both genders need to combine their skills, abilities and talents to uproot this.
	If you get one without the other, I just don't think it will work.
	So that I think is one of the things that we're doing here that really is unusual, different and unprecedented.
	Because philosophers have often been either alienated from or hostile to women.
	And some of the more touchy-feely female aspects of things, if you think of that sort of self-help psychology that's kind of goopy.
	It doesn't have the rigor of syllogistical reasoning.
	But these two things together is unprecedented in terms of bringing these forces together to help free the world.
	And I always wanted to do something that was unprecedented.
	Because given that everything else hasn't worked, if we can bring the male and the female together, the male and the female skills and attributes together, it is absolutely unstoppable.
	in my opinion and I think that's the value of taking this approach.
	So that's it.
	For my speechifying, I turn it back over to the women.
	Oh, this is Lily.
	So it was just on my mind that it might be the word, because if I think about philosophy as a word, I picture old grey men in my mind, and I don't have any connection to it.
	It's totally different with psychology.
	I also, just an experience from yesterday, I had a lunch and it started with psychology about child rearing and ended in a political fight.
	And I think it's connected and it's all...
	Yeah, it goes from one point to another and it starts in psychology, in my opinion.
	I'm nervous. So, I mean, when you say that, when you hear the word philosophy, you just think of a bunch of old men with white hair, it's sort of like...
	Because, I mean, that was sort of for me, too.
	I mean, I don't... It was never portrayed to me that women could be philosophers.
	Like, it's just the idea had never occurred to me when I was growing up until I discovered Ayn Rand.
	I mean, the idea that women could be philosophers had never occurred to me, so...
	It could be just one of the factors is that the perception of the discipline of philosophy, a lot of women don't get involved in it because of just that.
	But even Irene Rand is a horrible role model because she is so blind.
	Her emotions are so blind sometimes.
	That's not really somebody you can look up to.
	Right, right. She wouldn't appeal to most women because of the lack of...
	Of regard for emotions and that sort of thing.
	Like Christina was saying, women just tend to process higher on the emotional level, so that's very true.
	Does this mean that we are more hit by emotions?
	Do we feel it more intense than men?
	Yeah, what does it exactly mean to have higher processing levels in regards to our emotions?
	No, I don't think it means that women feel their emotions more intensely than men.
	I don't think that that's it at all.
	I just think that in terms of how it's processed cognitively, I mean, we all feel the emotions, but women process the emotions a little differently than men do.
	I think men can be more impulsive, particularly around anger, that kind of thing.
	And although that's not to say that there aren't some pretty impulsive women with their emotions as well.
	It's men and women just not experience their emotions differently, but express and communicate emotions differently.
	What would be an example for that?
	I'm just curious. That's an excellent question.
	Give me a second to think about it, because I'm not on my feet.
	I have mommy brain.
	Give me just a sec. Anybody else can talk in the meantime.
	I was just curious if the women who are involved in this conversation Have you experienced yourself as being different from other people, other women around you?
	Were you interested in philosophy or things like politics before FDR more than other women?
	And what was the sort of reaction to that?
	I mean, I'm interested in what the history of some of the female listeners is.
	I experienced that there are not a lot of women who would make statements or have an opinion on something because they're scared they would get attacked, I guess.
	And yeah, they're just kind of slithering through everything.
	And once you start talking about it, it's different.
	It can turn out good and bad.
	Candice, you were saying something?
	Oh, can you hear me?
	I'm not sure if my mic is working.
	Yeah, I can hear you. Yes.
	Oh, okay. I was just going to say that before FDR, I had no interest in philosophy or politics or anything like that.
	It was only until after FDR. And even then, I still listen primarily to podcasts about relationships and psychology and so it's It's taken me a while to get interested in things like, I don't know, agnosticism and atheism and free will and all that.
	Were you interested in psychology before you came to FDR and that's just sort of what drew you in?
	Definitely more interested in psychology.
	I would never have really given philosophy a second look though.
	Not until after FDR. I was always about psychology.
	Great. But you say that's sort of starting to change?
	Yeah, I'd say that's just starting to change.
	It's been slow. It's been a slow process.
	I wouldn't say it's still something I'm majorly into. - So we have any other women on the call?
	I'm just going to comment.
	Hello?
	Go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	Just about the feeling different from other women thing.
	I definitely experienced that pretty much my entire life.
	I don't know.
	I just never could connect with other women very much.
	Thank you.
	I've had the same thing.
	Yeah, like emotionally or intellectually, I just couldn't connect with them.
	Very, very much.
	And yeah. Did that have to do with the kinds of things that you wanted to talk about, or what was that?
	Yeah, yeah, definitely.
	I was always like...
	From the time I was like three or four years old, I was always like, science, yeah, robots, let's talk about stuff, and everyone else was like, Barbie dolls and boys and stuff like that.
	And there was definitely a resistance to it as well, like the way I was, people resisted it.
	Like, you know, my mom Would always buy me Barbie dolls and stuff like that.
	And I'd be like, you know, I hate Barbie dolls.
	I want a science book or something like that.
	But she really didn't listen to that.
	Right. Yeah.
	I have a similar doll experience.
	I remember my mother gave me a doll as a present to my...
	Birthday when I was five, and I never played with dolls.
	Never. Yeah, me neither.
	I used to play with dolls all the time.
	I was a bit of a typical girly girl, I suppose, but I guess when it comes to not being able to connect with other girls, it happened most when I was in my earlier teens, and they all started wanting to go out drinking and clubbing every night and things, and I was just never into that sort of stuff.
	So I guess I was always different in that respect, but And a lot of the time we always hang out with other lads.
	I had a few good girly friends, but I've always been quite different to the main crowd, so to speak.
	I never had the experience of being more interested in science or something.
	I always preferred frilly dresses and pretty dolls and stuff like that, so that's me.
	Right. Because I sort of...
	My experience was that since I was somebody who really was interested in politics or philosophy or whatever, for most of my life, I only ever was close with two other women that would talk about those kinds of things with me.
	And they were always really ostracized women.
	Like, they... They didn't get any sort of advancements from guys.
	I mean, they never got asked on dates.
	And they were really just very much disliked by the other people in the school.
	And not that that has anything to do with what they were talking about.
	Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
	But those were the only women that I've ever experienced that they would talk to me about things like politics or philosophy or Even psychology on a more principled scale, on beyond just the sort of pop psychology thing, right? So I was just wondering if we had other women like that in the conversation who sort of felt themselves as being very different in that way and were always sort of drawn to this.
	But I guess it's interesting to me that most of the women here are just interested in psychology.
	It was the comment I was going to make earlier.
	Women tend to be drawn to psychology and self-help and emotional stuff.
	And I think men are drawn to philosophy, which is more about ideas and basic principles.
	And that may have something to do with the brain differences that you were describing earlier on.
	I mean, I certainly can't comment on that.
	I don't have any experience in that area.
	But just in terms of what we know with numbers...
	Women populate the psychology boards.
	You look at Dr. Phil's show, and it's all women.
	Look at Oprah's show, it's all women.
	You get maybe a handful of men in those audiences.
	And Steph is doing a show on FDR, and it's great to see that there are women around, but it is predominantly males who listen and participate.
	Well, but that depends on the topics, right?
	Sure. I mean, for sure, the psychology stuff.
	I mean, you could say, broadly speaking, that...
	Philosophy is about the criticisms of others, whereas self-help is about the criticism of the self.
	So you could almost look at it like men prefer combat and women are self-critical.
	You could take these, in a sense, stereotypes, though, I think they're founded in some truth, and take them to pretty wide areas.
	But I think that men are more used to combat and women are more raised for compromise.
	And compromise requires a greater degree of empathy, of, you know, ideally, empathy, psychological understanding, and so on.
	Whereas there's a lot of aggression, outward aggression, in men, right?
	And so we've not had, to my memory, and if anyone else can remember, we've not had, I mean this is very interesting when you think about it, we've not had a single female trawl on the FDR boards in two years, two and a half years.
	And I almost never get these kinds of hot-headed, aggressive I think this idea that philosophy is a kind of ritual combat, whereas psychology is a kind of internal confrontation.
	I think is quite interesting.
	And I think does something – I'm sure that the interest in psychology is an effect and philosophy of the different genders is an effect of that.
	But, you know, men like to be right and women like to connect.
	I mean, to put it in very simplistic terms, that does seem to me.
	Men like to be right and they like to dominate.
	And philosophy is a great way of doing that if you are a pencil-necked intellectual, right, and you can't win in the rugby field or the football field.
	So, you know, men like to dominate and live in this pecking order, and women like to connect and live in a sort of relationship soup, a more horizontal compromise situation.
	So, to me, it makes sort of sense that women would not be drawn towards black and white, right and wrong kinds of interactions, but it makes sense to me that women would be drawn more to communication, expressive compromise and intimacy kinds of situations.
	Which, to me, again, I think we need them both to really make progress in the world.
	And that's why I think the contributions of the women to this community have been just completely stellar.
	Somebody said, it seems to me that psychology would use the argument from effect while philosophy uses the argument from morality.
	I think that's very interesting.
	But I would say that I would not underestimate the degree to which women are subject to the argument for morality.
	I mean, sorry, why don't you, oh yeah, comes from the sisterhood of the traveling red room.
	So why don't you mention that?
	Honestly, I mean, we're always told you have to be good, and who defines the good is the person that you have to obey.
	I think this might be true for a lot of women.
	I can't say that it's true for all of them.
	Certainly, it has been true for me.
	Do as you're told.
	Be polite.
	Be nice. Don't be aggressive.
	Smile all the time.
	Those kinds of things.
	And, you know, obey your parents and obey your teachers.
	And he who defines those rules are the people that you have to conform to.
	But that's, again, morality without principles.
	Morality not based on any, you know, principles as Stefan has defined them.
	So do you think that...
	Because, I mean, like what you were saying, that women are taught more to conform.
	And I do think that there might be some natural reasons why women are more prone to conformity than men.
	But do you think that it's sort of also inflicted on them?
	I would say that it is inflicted upon them.
	I mean, we have these natural tendencies which of course are exploited, right?
	The children's natural tendencies to respect their elders and to be dependent on their parents and to have this attachment to their parents is often exploited by parents.
	I think that these tendencies that we have as genders are both exploited and exacerbated, right?
	So because women feel maybe 10% or 20% worse than men when criticized about interpersonal skills, People swarm that and they widen that gap, right?
	In the same way that a man who reaches, or a boy, who reaches for compromise or more participatory games rather than, you know, win-lose combat war games.
	So maybe boys have a 10 or 20% more of a desire for these kind of hierarchical win-lose games.
	But any boy who suggests something else, like it quickly becomes like, 100-0 because people rush in to extend and exacerbate these gaps, if that makes any sense.
	So I think that there are some innate differences for sure, but I think that society does a lot of that.
	I mean, particularly dysfunctional families cannot...
	Even remotely stay together unless there's one or two or more people and they're usually women who are the compromisers, right?
	Who are the mediators, who constantly repair these sharp and broken interactions and who, you know, will, like, you know, the typical thing where you have the bullying dad and the mom who just kind of meekly goes along with it.
	And so I think that The natural tendencies that we have, which are probably not that great, are really exacerbated by societal pressures and exploitation, and it would be fascinating, I think, to see what would happen in a society where those kinds of things weren't necessary for exploitation and to maintain corrupt power structures.
	I think that's really interesting, because something I've always sort of wondered is the degree to which the differences Yeah.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. I didn't get the sense that they were just simply bored by them or whatever like that.
	I mean, that's part of it, but it's like I always got the sense that there was a real conscious avoidance of those kinds of topics.
	I certainly do remember when I was a kid, I really enjoyed those hierarchical games, but I also really enjoyed sitting and chatting.
	You know, and I found that you just kind of align yourself to the path of least resistance when you're a kid, because we're all designed to do that.
	And so, you know, whenever I would say, let's sit and chat, people were like, oh, that's gay, man.
	You know, and And, you know, when British boarding school kids are calling you gay, it means something.
	So, you know, maybe a little bit more I wanted to play the hierarchical games and a little bit less I wanted to sit and chat, but it quickly became 100-0 for fear of rejection or bullying or that kind of thing.
	So, again, and that's what we're trying to do here is to, you know, have the men feel and the women still logistically work, right?
	Who we would have been in the absence of all of this ridiculous pressure to go, you know, one way or the other?
	Yeah, I just know that as a kid, the way I thought and acted was definitely rejected as not feminine.
	Like, it just wasn't something that girls do, you know?
	Right. Like, discussing how the world worked and stuff just wasn't a girly thing to do.
	For me, it was a result that I tend to hang out more with men who were interested in those things.
	In high school, for example, I remember.
	I personally have a tough time...
	Hello?
	Go ahead. I personally have a tough time with those fight and flight situations, where you have this overwhelming feeling of adrenaline.
	I really have a tough time standing this adrenaline.
	I'm working on that.
	And I think it's probably the same with a lot of women, that this is the reason why they tend to compromise a lot.
	But I know that you have to have a little bit of a black and white thinking about what is good and bad for the future.
	I don't know. Right.
	For me, I mean, I had those same kind of...
	If there's a pause in the conversation, I would also like to mention that, again, I can only speak about this from a man's perspective, but I read a book, when I was in therapy, my therapist suggested a book called Man's Fear of Women,
	and I found that to be very helpful, and it went over a lot of the primitive fears that men have about women, and There seem to be two major ones, and it is the authority of the mother and the sexual rejection of the woman.
	And I found that, certainly in my own experience, and I remember reading a very poignant, in Marlon Brando's autobiography, he talks about his fear of women.
	And I think that's a real shame.
	I mean, certainly if men and women can't get together, the world can't be free, because you can't even be effective parents, right?
	So, I think that my experience was that women were scary, and there is this sitcom cliche of the woman who is irrational and emotional and talks a mile a minute,
	talks herself in and out of particular states of thinking or feeling, while the man just kind of stares there bewildered and doesn't have a clue what's I've seen this in a number of different sitcoms and I'm sure you've seen the same kind of thing.
	It's that sort of bumbling romantic heroine with the baffled and distant kind of Pride and Prejudice dude.
	And what is perceived of as the irrationality or the volatility of women is something that is alarming to a lot of men.
	So, I mean, I've sort of worked through a lot of that kind of stuff and realized that there's no need to be afraid of women if you just surrender to a particular woman.
	It just becomes that much easier.
	So, you know, if you're just Poland, you're Weiss Wehrmacht.
	It actually works out very well.
	But does that work the other way as well?
	I mean, is there a fear?
	Well, I guess if there are men in the conversation who have that fear of women, that sort of one thing.
	It was hard for me.
	It was hard for me to end up just looking at women as people.
	I mean, it's just hard to get to that.
	And that was some focus of the early parts of my therapy.
	And I had a female therapist, which of course helped a lot.
	But other men who have this fear of women or other women who would like maybe to talk about if there's a corresponding fear of men, that to me would be an interesting topic but I certainly don't want to hijack just because there was a pause.
	I don't want to hijack what anyone else is saying but that to me was something that I had to spend quite a lot of time and energy working on.
	Yeah, I'm kind of interested if any other men on this call have sort of experienced that or if they've worked through something similar to that.
	Well, I can definitely vouch for what Steph is saying.
	That fear is there for me, for sure.
	Although I wouldn't say that I have a clear answer for it yet, but it's definitely an issue.
	Is it sort of an issue of like because of the experience with the mother that you perceive women as really volatile and dangerous, but on the other hand, you feel like you need one in order to have sex or have a family or that sort of thing.
	So it feels like sort of a trap or something like that.
	No, for me it never felt like an impossible situation.
	It was just sort of something to be avoided.
	I mean, a lot of it obviously has to do with my own mother.
	But I don't think I ever felt sort of the frustration that you're describing – Like, you have to have this thing, but you can't because it's too scary, right?
	It's always been sort of just...
	You know, like when you're choosing sort of activities or hobbies in your life, you You kind of pick which ones are challenging but not death-defying, if that makes any sense.
	Right? So...
	Okay. Anybody else?
	That was just a topic I came up with about fear of women.
	But if anybody else wanted to talk about anything else or that topic or women's fear of men, I think that would be interesting.
	But go for it.
	I'll just say, like, on my end, I have experienced that some men are...
	They treat women like they're really afraid of them and they treat women like they're irrational and they're gonna snap any moment.
	You'll be involved in a small disagreement with them or whatever, and you just sense that they're getting kind of really nervous about it, and sometimes they'll joke around and say things like, okay, geez, don't snap, don't go postal on me or anything.
	And it's like, I've always experienced that as pretty insulting.
	Before I came to FDR, and I understood...
	Why that was. Obviously, some men are just projecting their experience with their mother onto other women.
	I did experience that as kind of insulting, to be treated as if I was a ticking time bomb.
	I was totally scared by men.
	Can anybody hear me? I think I'm...
	Yep. Oh.
	So, yeah.
	And I think my problem was that I didn't have the tools.
	I just wasn't taught the tools.
	What scared you about them? Like basic fears, like they're going to kill me or something.
	Or that I have to agree to everything they say.
	So you have to build up the tools to defend yourself for a while.
	It takes a while. I don't know, am I the only person?
	I was afraid of men and boys, I guess, when I was younger.
	It never had anything to do with ideas.
	Again, I was never socialized that way.
	I was never raised to...
	I mean, there was never any discussion about politics or ideas in my home around my kitchen table or even when we had company over.
	I mean, the conversations were always so superficial.
	And, you know, when my mother would sort of talk about me and my sister and describe our characteristics, yeah, we were smart, but smart really didn't mean intelligent and independent thinkers and creative thinkers.
	It's just, you know, good students kind of thing.
	But always about being pretty and being attractive and being, you know, good girls, that kind of thing.
	So... When it came to men, it was always, from my perspective or from my point of view, it was, am I pretty enough?
	Am I attractive enough?
	Those kinds of things. Is he going to find me not so much interesting, but pretty?
	And that caused me to have anxiety around men.
	I've definitely had the same fears.
	The attraction thing definitely was a big thing for me.
	How pretty I am and stuff.
	Because I always assumed that men found those things, like, a lot of value in those things.
	So I thought, like, well, if I'm not pretty or something, then I'm just not of any value to a man.
	I never had that.
	No, not the...
	How you look or something.
	No. No. Just, I don't know, in my past, the most men were just violent creatures.
	And the only people who didn't attack me were women, I thought.
	Looking back, it's different.
	I think I was actually less afraid of men than I was of women.
	To me, because, I mean, when men got angry or whatever, like, they would maybe explode or, you know, yell at you or that sort of—they'd get aggressive.
	But that sort of thing you could sort of avoid, you know.
	It's, like, easier to see that.
	But with women, I just sort of felt like if they— If they became hostile towards you, it would be so subtle and murky.
	It was really hard for me to understand how they operate and how they use social ostracism more than they use outright aggression or they use gossiping or that sort of thing.
	To me, it was just so much harder to keep track of.
	It was so much harder to read them that I was more nervous around women than I was around men.
	Can I interject for just a moment here, guys?
	Sure. I've just been following along just recently here in the chat and I think that for me, I've always been very easy to get along with women more than it is to get along with men.
	But at the same time, I have a tremendous fear that deals more with the attraction level The more attractive a woman is, the harder it is for me to deal with them.
	And I think this is probably along the lines of what somebody was saying, is that that makes a big difference.
	If you feel attracted to that person, then I guess it's nerves or whatever that makes you trip all over yourself.
	Does that make sense?
	I know here on the chat...
	That's interesting, actually.
	Because right now, the way at work, I'm an architect and I work with a lot of female interior designers.
	And we get along really well.
	We're always going out to lunch.
	We're always doing things like that.
	But still, I still have that problem.
	I don't understand why.
	And I get along really well with my girlfriend.
	We're very close.
	And I just don't understand.
	I guess I still have that fear.
	of attractive women.
	And I could see from the board here, a couple of people are also saying that they feel petrified by beautiful women too.
	Um, I think for me, and I, uh, my, my dad used to always say that my mom was the smartest woman that he'd ever met and that she was smarter my dad used to always say that my mom was the smartest But when they were, but when he would tell me separately, but then when they were together, he would yell at her for being stupid or lazy.
	It did mess with my idea of what women were like.
	Oh, that could totally mess with it.
	I mean, your father is...
	I mean, at least for me, my dad was, you know, the example of how I wanted to be, you know, to be a man.
	I looked to him for that kind of direction.
	So if he didn't really trust women, then it would be something that would follow on me, you know, that I would sort of pick up on that.
	So I can understand where that comes from.
	I just wanted to mention, too, that in my thinking, which has nothing to do with the truth, but just in the way that I... I think the men who have been the most rejected by their mothers when the men were boys, of course, tend to be the men who are most frightened of beautiful women.
	And again, that's just a theory.
	I mean, maybe it fits with you, maybe it doesn't.
	And the reason for that, of course, is that to a child, all mothers, like when you were a kid, your mother is beautiful.
	I mean, it's the essence of beauty and desirability in terms of intimacy and connection and touching and feeding and so on.
	And so desire, which is rejected by a mother, desire for union with and intimacy with your mother, if it is rejected by your mother when you are A baby, a toddler, and so on, if you are rejected by your mother, then what happens is desire becomes mingled with fear.
	I mean, it's right down there in your central cortex, right down in your hypothalamus.
	And when desire then is united with fear, because of the history of maternal rejection...
	I would say that when you are in the presence then of a woman who you desire, and maybe that's physical beauty or maybe that's something else, but then desire and fear for the feminine become united within your mind.
	It's really within your neurological system, the two simultaneous feelings of obviously extreme ambivalence and so on.
	So that would be a sort of, I just sort of float that out there.
	I don't know if that fits with other people's thoughts or experience, but let me know.
	Yeah, Steph, that makes a great load of sense.
	I feel that when it comes to my relationship with my mother, my mother is a strong single parent, and I guess we have a good relationship, so I think that translates to me being able to work with women really well.
	The thing about the rejection, though, what you're saying is I spent a lot of time being rejected in my life From Beautiful Women.
	And I felt always that it was unnecessary because I feel, you know, that I'm a good person and I have strong things about me, strong qualities about me.
	So the fear of Beautiful Women, I think, has to go along with, or is caused by the rejection that I had, experienced throughout my life with Beautiful Women.
	Sorry, to me, unless I missed something that just seems a little circular to me.
	So are you saying that you did not experience rejection from your mother when you were younger?
	Or hostility or distance or alienation?
	Quite the opposite. She was very affectionate, very loving, very supportive, certainly, of everything I've done.
	But what I was saying, maybe this will clarify it a little bit, is that I think my fear of beautiful women comes more from being rejected by beautiful women, not by my mother.
	So if I saw a pretty woman and I asked her out, I'd get rejected.
	And so the rejection was more from other women, not from my mother.
	Does that make sense? It doesn't make sense to me, but again, that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
	It just doesn't make sense to me.
	Because when we end up in a situation of repetitive rejection, it usually has a very early cause, if that makes any sense.
	It's not the beauty or non-beauty of a woman that causes the rejection.
	It is her nature.
	Now, sometimes, or you could say there might be a vague correlation between external attractiveness and a necessary kind of coldness, simply because you will get a lot of people, if you're a beautiful woman, you will have a lot of men approaching you, so you need to get that a bit of haughtiness or distance.
	So, Just to sort of get through the day.
	But if you are in a situation where you are being repetitively rejected by women, That would seem to be, obviously you're an intelligent fellow, that would seem to be a lack of pattern recognition, if that makes sense, about the types of women you should be approaching.
	Because again, it's not the physical exterior, it's the internal character, the personality of the woman who is rejecting you.
	And so if you are blind to that kind of rejection and you keep, in a sense, beating your head against the wall over and over...
	Then either you don't have the intelligence to do that kind of pattern recognition and stop approaching women who will reject you, which I don't believe for a moment, or there's some earlier psychological repetition compulsion at play, if that makes sense.
	Okay. It does make sense.
	I'm just trying to think about it a little bit here.
	I think you're right about the pattern rejection thing.
	You know, it's certainly hard to think about, but then at the same time, I don't know.
	I mean, this is where I'd like to throw it out to you guys, because to get the opinions from other people is definitely very helpful, because I guess you need the distance from the whole situation to really understand it a little bit.
	For me, I've always seen things that since I've been able to get along with women, I felt that I've always had a foot in the door.
	I've been better able to understand what they like and things like that.
	So I would feel that I could go after somebody who is a little bit more attractive than, say, that should be in my level.
	And I've had some success with it, but I guess you're right.
	I mean, I haven't seen the pattern.
	And, you know, when I did see the pattern is when I felt a lot better about my life.
	I don't know if that makes any sense.
	Well, it does. And I don't want to displace the women's conference with a dude chat.
	And perhaps we could talk about this another time.
	Because I think it's very interesting...
	This thing. And you're certainly not alone in feeling intimidation in the face of attractive members of the opposite sex.
	So I want to turn it back to the women, but maybe you and I could chat about it sometime because it certainly is a common issue.
	We'll have a whiny dude beta male fest or something like that.
	And we'll talk about it some more.
	Sorry, let me turn it back to Colleen to keep moderating.
	Okay. Um...
	Well, another thing I was thinking of, and this has sort of been mentioned on FDR, this question of why don't women get involved in discussions, not just of philosophy, but of maybe more scientific approaches to psychology and raising children.
	Is it because the consequences of not doing so are not really apparent to them?
	Is it because women are more inclined to perpetuate the status quo because there's less social resistance to that?
	So is it sort of like they don't experience consequences for not Examining their ethical life or that sort of thing and the consequences that they do experience are in fact almost always negative in regards to what women are more interested in.
	I sometimes experience talks about politics like a major hiding behind the bushes.
	So I don't really see the purpose of starting a conversation about it unless the other person starts.
	And this is what Steph said a lot of times, that if somebody is not willing to talk about his or her upbringing in some sort of sense, so that you can figure out why he came to his opinion in the moment, It's a waste of time, not a lot of times.
	Right. Because, I mean, I don't know, maybe perhaps we look at the political discussions that a lot of men get into as sort of just becoming a pissing contest that don't really go anywhere, right?
	Nice fight.
	Yeah. Is that the perception that it's kind of pointless, that sort of thing?
	Yes, if I see two men just fighting about a political issue, I'm like, man, it doesn't make sense.
	Nobody will change his opinion.
	So what's the purpose of interacting with them?
	Right, that makes sense.
	That does make sense. They just fight because they like to fight.
	It's not that they want to change anything.
	At this point, I would leave anyway, I guess.
	You know, it's interesting, because I was interested in politics, and not that I ever bought a political science textbook or anything like that, but I would read newspaper articles on international news relating to politics and subscribed to the national magazine here in Canada,
	Maclean's, and I would pick up Time magazine and just read about I read about politics, but I never really had discussions about politics with anybody, men or women.
	I'm just commenting that I find that rather interesting about myself at this point.
	I don't know if anybody else had those experiences where they have an interest in something, but maybe they, again, sort of doing some self-reflection, I'm not sure that it was That I had any fears about talking about it.
	I just, I don't think the conversations ever came up and that could have been that I never brought them up.
	but I don't know what other people's experiences are around that.
	Yes, I also read the newspapers every day, and so in case the conversation would come up, I were able to say something, but I got never involved in discussions or something, right?
	Yeah, the same.
	Right, I wonder that's interesting.
	I wonder why that is. I mean, it would seem natural in any other instance to bring up what you were interested in to other people, but it was just specifically politics that you didn't discuss with other people?
	Religion to some extent as well.
	I did have a good friend that was studying religion in university, and we would have occasional discussions about religion.
	But it's interesting. I mean, I grew up going to church pretty much every Sunday as a child and going to Sunday school.
	I have never once read the Bible.
	I was given, when I was very young, before I could...
	I mean, I was able to read, but it was a children's Bible.
	I was six years old, and it was far too complicated for me to read at the age of six.
	I remember just looking at the pretty pictures.
	So, I didn't think that I was ever in a position to really talk about religion.
	I didn't know very much about the different religions.
	I mean, I couldn't tell you at that time the difference between Catholicism and Greek Orthodox religion, or...
	I knew a little bit about Judaism, but I didn't know a lot about religion, so maybe I felt like I couldn't have an informed discussion about different religions, and I guess even to the point of talking about agnosticism or atheism.
	Oh yeah, the argument about knowledge.
	At one point you just discovered that you don't know enough.
	And then they got you.
	And it certainly has been my experience that women have...
	And again, this is a gross generalization, but women have a private arena of knowledge.
	Because men's arena of knowledge is combat-based so often, so they're not shy about it, right?
	And of course, the lack of knowledge doesn't stop most men.
	But it has been my experience that if you can gain the trust of a woman to get into this private world of knowledge...
	There's some brilliant stuff to be said, the brilliant stuff that the women can say.
	But, you know, it's a traditional thing where at a dinner party of men and women, The men are arguing and the women are getting food.
	It is that almost Old Testament Hasidic Jew kind of thing.
	And I have found that you get some amazingly brilliant stuff.
	And we've, of course, heard this in this show as a whole, amazingly brilliant stuff.
	Out of women, but you have to sort of get to the inner sanctum of female knowledge and thoughts and experience and it doesn't usually come out in a sort of general combat or adversarial or debating kind of scenario.
	That has absolutely been the case in 100% of the instances that I've encountered.
	I have a general question for everybody who's listening in today.
	How many people actually have in-depth discussions about, you know, very important topics, religion, psychology, philosophy, self-worth, With their friends in a social setting,
	in a social group, because certainly, I'm trying to think back to before I met Steph and the kinds of conversations that I had with friends, that I had with boyfriends, that I had with family members, and Certainly they weren't all completely superficial.
	They weren't all completely about, you know, how's the weather and, you know, what are we getting each other for Christmas kind of thing?
	Or, you know, what's the latest trend in lipsticks?
	And how best to practice French kissing?
	Maybe that's a fantasy of yours, darling.
	Sorry, I'll stop contributing.
	But certainly, you know, and I realized, I knew that there was something missing from my conversations and my interactions with people.
	And again, you know, it could be my own doing for not bringing things up.
	But I was curious about what other people's experiences are around this issue.
	Um... Mine was kind of almost the opposite where I kind of brought that sort of stuff up almost to a fault to the point where it would annoy everybody.
	And I actually, I mean, I think if there is a reason why women or anybody doesn't bring those kinds of things up in public, it's exactly because of what I experienced, which was...
	Just not very many friends, not very popular and that sort of thing.
	It always is really uncomfortable when you bring up a topic like that in a group setting or with friends and there's just like a stony silence or an indifference.
	I mean, that's a really tough thing to experience.
	Just because I like to talk about those things all the time, it's something that I experienced quite a bit until I just sort of had one or two close friends.
	Yeah, with my one and two close friends I have the same deep conversations, but I don't bring up hot issues on a dinner table at somebody else's place.
	I don't know well. I think you're right.
	There's a time and a place to bring up a conversation.
	Especially when I'm around coworkers, I tend to avoid talking about political issues, but inevitably they come up.
	I've gotten to the point where I've just I'll say it.
	Because I feel like I have enough to back up what I say.
	So if somebody asks me, you know, why, are you going to vote?
	Are you going to do this? And I'll give them my response.
	And I feel like I can back it up.
	But as for my core group of friends, I'm lucky that my core group of friends all pretty much think the same way.
	So we have no problem in bringing these things up.
	Um... My experience is more like Colleen's, is that I used to bring up all these important issues like atheism and politics and things when other people wanted to talk about movies or something and I just saw them as superficial and shallow and I'd get into a lot of arguments that way.
	But that was what I wanted to do, was get into arguments with people, make them feel uncomfortable.
	Right. Whenever they make a statement that where I cannot stay silent, I bring it up too.
	For example, like yesterday at my lunch when she started talking about child rearing and she asked me if I would believe in spanking and I exploded.
	And then I don't care about the company anymore.
	But I don't seek situations like this.
	To me, the whole child-rearing issue with women is really interesting because, I mean, what we talk about a lot here is parenting and how, you know, one should treat what we talk about a lot here is parenting and how, you know, one should treat their children, how should you teach them about
	I think the women in the conversation are more interested in topics like that, but it's interesting in today's society, Women don't sort of, they're never blamed for bad parenting.
	I mean, that's just my observation.
	It's always like, if you watch something like Dr.
	Phil or whatever, it's always the fathers that are blamed.
	It's always the fathers that are more violent.
	And if the women do something wrong, or if the women are violent, and they get the whole sort of weepy thing going on, and everyone's so forgiving of mothers.
	So, I don't think women really experience so much negative consequences from bad parenting as men do.
	Well, I think that's an excellent observation, and I think that it also ties into this idea of the supportive sisterhood, that to criticize another woman is breaking the worldwide estrogen bond of non-criticism or something like that.
	And it is highly, highly confrontational for a woman to criticize another woman.
	And so I think you're right.
	And I think that unfortunately that robs women women have a lot of important feedback.
	I mean, to me, it's really cruel to not give somebody feedback.
	You know, it's like if you go to the doctor and you're smoking four packs a day and he says, great, I'm being supportive of your smoking habit, he's not actually helping you very much.
	In fact, he's doing a lot of harm to you.
	And I think that this sort of unspoken thing that to criticize another woman is explosive, it actually makes women appear much more fragile Women are incredibly tough in my experience, but women treat each other often like these incredibly fragile Fabergé eggs or something, and we can only be supportive.
	We can never be critical. And I think that robs women of a lot of the free market give and take of feedback that is really essential to getting any kind of improvement in life.
	Right, because if you protect people from the negative consequences of their behavior, it's only going to exacerbate it.
	And so I think that's a really interesting thing that I think is an obstacle for women Getting involved in real serious, objective questions about ethics and parenting because if their children turn out bad or whatever,
	you know they they're completely protected from the consequences of that because mothers are seen as completely invulnerable to criticism and i think all that means is that there's just angry moms out there right I mean, nobody likes to be criticized, obviously, right?
	It's not fun, although I guess it can be if it's done in the right way.
	Nobody really likes it, but it is just one of these essential things that you need in life.
	So if men are afraid to criticize women, it's because every time they would criticize their moms or whatever, or their dads would criticize their moms, they'd get the rage, the withdrawal, the huffiness, the tears, the manipulations, the dissociations, and so on.
	And I'm sure the same thing would be true of women, but I think that it is one of the most disrespectful things you can do to any group or any individual is to no longer give them honest feedback.
	I mean, this happens to me in the chat room and even in conversations.
	I try to bring something across to someone and they just refuse to listen and they don't give any sort of feedback.
	Like there's a guy in the chat room today who was saying that, oh, the psychologizing that goes in here, you know, people bore me to tears when they do that.
	And I was just saying, well...
	That's kind of cruel, kind of cold, right?
	To say that, that people striving to be honest and to understand themselves bores you to tears.
	And he was just defensive.
	I just meant it in this context.
	And then to me, it's like, okay, so I'm not going to give you any more feedback.
	Because it's not worth it, right?
	And that's when I lose respect for someone.
	It doesn't mean it's permanent, but it just means in that situation.
	And by the way, that's not what happened with the guy I was talking to earlier.
	So I think that it's hugely disrespectful to women to not give them that kind of feedback and to not challenge women with the assumptions that they have.
	But I think also with the recognition that it is a very alarming encounter of what women are raised to be in so many situations, which is, you know, conduits and lubricants, social lubricants and food providers and so on, right?
	I mean, things, you know, the seen and not heard kind of stuff.
	So I think it's important to give the respect to women, to criticize them, but also to recognize and be sensitive to the fact that it's more alarming for women than it is for some men who are a little more used to the hurly-burly.
	But I think finding that line is really, really important.
	And why is it this way?
	Because I experience it the same.
	It's really like you're doing something really, really bad if you start criticizing or questioning the opinion of another woman in a circle of women.
	Is it because we need other women?
	Something Stone Age related?
	I don't know. I think it's more socialized, but I'm not going to try to answer as to why, because that's a woman-on-woman interaction, so I'm not going to presume to cross the circle, so to speak.
	I'll turn it over to the other women.
	If they found that criticizing other women is volatile, why is that?
	The one thing that is true, and I think it's not just something about criticizing women, but it's about criticizing parenting.
	The comment that always comes back is, well, this is my child, and I will do what I want.
	And how dare you?
	You haven't walked a mile in my shoes, or...
	Yeah, I have a difficult child.
	You don't understand.
	Those are the kinds of things that come back.
	But definitely criticizing one's parenting or someone's parenting, whether it's a man or a woman, garners a lot of hostility.
	I just wanted, since it's always easy to work with a specific example, and this is a minor one, but I thought it was actually quite important that...
	This is with Christina and I. We're at your mom and dad's place one day, and your mom was saying that, oh, so-and-so used to be married to this guy who was an alcoholic and a gambler and this and that, a really dysfunctional guy.
	She left him, she got remarried, and now she's perfectly happy and has a great marriage.
	And you said, psychologically, that can't really be the case.
	She can't leave a totally dysfunctional marriage, relatively quickly get married again, and have a great and happy marriage.
	And that's not, you know, you're not saying up is down, black is white, and God is evil, right?
	That was a relatively minor correction of a certain perspective that your mom had.
	And this is not something that is foundational or catastrophic.
	You weren't, you know, yelling at her, oh, you witch, you destroyed my childhood or anything like that.
	You were giving her a fairly mild correction on somebody who wasn't even a close family friend, right?
	About her perception to do with that.
	And of course, she remembered what happened, right?
	Oh, the hostility, the agitation.
	My mother got physically agitated and basically said, I don't want to talk about this anymore.
	And the whole room chilled.
	Yeah, then there was this cold silence.
	That is interesting.
	I mean, I've experienced the same thing.
	The most common defense of women that I've noticed, and maybe this is just my experience, if you criticize them, it's this whole martyr defense like, you know, oh, I do so much and I slave away, and if I'm failing in any way, it's only because I'm so spread thin over everything else and that sort of thing.
	I'm not really sure why that is, though.
	I mean, has anyone else experienced that kind of thing?
	I think why this happens is because when you do start to offer criticism or correction, what it does is it shakes the whole fundamental basis of one's philosophy.
	The individual is aware of it or not.
	So if you start to criticize one thing, then it really shakes up their ideas of who they are and what kind of parent they are.
	And it's extremely uncomfortable.
	People don't want to go there. Oh, and your mother, who was hypersensitive to and hostile towards criticism once when we were Going for a brunch with your parents, your mom came into the parking lot and she gave you three zings right off the bat.
	Boom! Why don't you get a haircut?
	Boom! You look cold.
	Why don't you keep a jacket in your car?
	Boom! Why don't you wear makeup?
	Because it was Sunday, right? Or something like that.
	Why don't you wear lipstick? Was that to me?
	No, that was to you. Nice heels, Steph.
	So this woman who you couldn't say boo to a mouse has no problem.
	You know, coming, storming in with these kinds of criticisms.
	And of course, if you tried to pull the same stuff with her that she pulled with you, it would not go over very well, right?
	Oh, yeah. Right, and also, women do, I mean, women are highly critical of men.
	I mean, not all women, but in general, I'd say women are a lot more critical of men.
	Can you tell me what you mean?
	Oh, I mean, that's just, it's just, maybe it's not true.
	It's just a complaint that I hear a lot from men is that the women that they get involved with have a tendency to over-criticize.
	But if we're saying that, you know, women tend to be more sensitive to criticism than men, it's interesting that a lot of them will start to criticize everything the man does.
	I kind of get both spectrums because I see both men and women individually in my office and I hear women criticizing men and men criticizing women.
	So to me it seems like it happens both ways.
	But I guess the question is, do, and again maybe there's no way to answer this, my impression is that women are more vocal in their criticisms of men than men are of their criticisms of women to each other.
	The traditional thing of the nag, whether it's true or not, it's still a cliché, which is worth looking at, which is that the man feels that he is criticized by the woman a lot, and he will complain about his wife's nagging, but if you were to look at the complaints flying back and forth directly to each other, that it would be more of the woman towards the man.
	I really couldn't comment.
	Again, when I do couples therapy, I get criticisms from both parties to each other, so...
	I don't know if that's what you're referring to.
	Yeah, I mean, I found...
	I mean, when I was in my other relationships before I got married, I found that certainly women had...
	Oh, no shortage of criticism towards me.
	But I found that I would certainly complain sometimes to my friends about my girlfriend's complaints towards me or about me, that she would voice directly to me.
	And I'm not trying to extrapolate from my experience, but it was common enough with other relationships that I thought it was worth mentioning.
	But I would not...
	It's the old thing. The woman could be saying, and another thing, and go on and on for an hour, and then you'd respond with a criticism or two of something, and it was like, we're not talking about me.
	You simply couldn't, right?
	It was like a one-way street. But again, that might just be me.
	If it's not the case with people you've seen or known, then we won't continue with that, unless other people have had the same experience.
	I think what I see a lot of is where somebody will lodge a complaint and the other person will defend and then attack back.
	So there's a lot of back and forth in terms of attacking each other.
	So it's not one more than the other?
	No, not in my professional experience.
	Yeah, it's interesting then why that would be such a cliche because you do hear a lot about...
	There are jokes about how women just want to change men and that sort of thing.
	They just want to find the right man that they can change and, you know, that can be their sort of project, you know, that sort of thing.
	Women complain, again, in terms of my experience in talking to a lot of men and women individually as well as in terms of couples, women will complain that their husbands in terms of my experience in talking to a lot of men and women individually as well as in terms of couples, women and And... Oh, where was I going with this?
	The kinds of criticisms that men have about women are that, God, she's so moody, nothing's ever good enough for her...
	Oh, hi.
	Sorry about that.
	I crashed on the server.
	Sorry, if you could just mute if you're not talking.
	Please.
	So we were just talking about how it turned out that Christina was in fact agreeing with me.
	And so what I sort of meant by that was That the men are complaining that the women are complaining, right?
	She's moody, she gets mad, she criticizes me, she gets upset.
	Whereas the women have specific complaints about behavior, but the men have general complaints about mood resulting in complaints from the women.
	So that was just, I just wanted to point out that...
	You're right. Oh, one more time.
	Sorry, you only... Oh, so close!
	So close. So close.
	Anyway, so please continue.
	I'll add a few more people in, but I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	But maybe we could go back to this question of why women are more sensitive to criticism.
	Right.
	Right. I just have an idea, going back to the Stone Age.
	You often have a circle of women raising children.
	Maybe it has an origin there somewhere, and this is why women tend to compromise a lot, just to remain the circle of women who help each other raising children?
	I think it's because criticism can equal ostracism, and if you're a woman with a child, then ostracism can and if you're a woman with a child, then ostracism can equal basically the death of both of so maybe that's why.
	Just to add a little something here, I mean, I've certainly heard and I appreciate the anthropological arguments as to why women are a certain way.
	The reason that that is tough to maintain is that, of course, women for, and rightly so, for Five or six generations have been saying to men, you need to outgrow your biological conditioning, right?
	You need to reduce your aggression, you need to get in touch with your feelings, you need to be more expressive about your emotions and so on.
	So if we do answer the question as to why women are sensitive to criticism, and I think the ideas are great, it doesn't explain why it hasn't been part of that outgrowing biology, if that makes sense.
	Because women have said, and rightly so, to men, you should not judge a woman by her appearance alone, though of course men have biological cues, as women do, which would lead us to evaluate a woman's attractiveness by physical appearance alone.
	But we're supposed to grow beyond that, and men are usually naturally more reticent or hesitant to express emotions, to appear low status relative to other men.
	And all of those have biological roots and causes, but, or maybe it's just men's job to do for women what women did for men, which is to say, you need to outgrow these biological causes or these historical developments, or what was optimal in the past is no longer optimal development.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, I think that's a very good point.
	I mean, I've never thought of it that way.
	It is true. I mean, if you listen to feminists, that they...
	They'll criticize men for being sort of cavemen, but when we talk about the predispositions of women, naturally, it's supposed to protect them from any sort of criticisms for being lesser in this or that area.
	So it's pretty hypocritical.
	Unless, of course, women can't see it for themselves and need men to point it out, in which case it's kind of...
	Weasley for the men to say, I'm not going to call you on the biological adaptations, which are no longer optimal, even though women have successfully.
	And I think feminism has been very helpful, hugely helpful, in giving men a richer and deeper emotional life.
	But if in the same way men are not confronting this, quote, fragility and lack of ability to be criticized of women, then we're not returning the difficult favor, if that makes any sense.
	Oh, it totally makes sense, but it helps to understand why there is this fear of criticism among women, and I was just assuming.
	Well, I mean, how do the women on this call feel in the face of criticism?
	Is there a way of being criticized that is, I mean, obviously there are some ways of, are there any ways in common that would be more helpful to be criticized on?
	Or what is the feeling that comes up when, when criticisms arise?
	For me, it's, um.
	Disapproval is pretty scary, I guess.
	That's one of my biggest fears is disapproval.
	And is it a kind of overwhelming...
	I think most people feel scared with criticism.
	Is it an overwhelming fear?
	fear?
	Is it something that is completely unbearable or is it something that is more manageable?
	It is pretty overwhelming sometimes.
	And it brings up a lot of self-criticism and self-attack and stuff like that.
	It's quite isolating.
	And, yeah, fear for me.
	Isolating in what way?
	Well, of course, if you have a different opinion than everybody else.
	This is the case for me most of the times.
	And sometimes if you remain in your position, they get curious and ask questions, but sometimes they don't.
	Wow. Just the way it is.
	For me, I always struggled in the past with trying to see that a criticism of behavior was different than a rejection of the person.
	I mean, I think I always conflated the two, so any kind of criticism would feel like a complete, total rejection of me.
	But... Yeah, so there is definitely, I'm definitely uncomfortable with criticism a lot of the time, but being criticized by the people at FDR, or I've experienced that much differently than criticism in the past, because it always comes across as being very helpful, and there is a sort of respect in it.
	If somebody is criticizing you, then It's sort of implicit that they believe you can change.
	So I think that's sort of been a new development in the way I respond to criticism.
	But in the past, it definitely felt like I was being totally rejected.
	And do you think that this is behavior that you experienced as a result of feeling criticized or being criticized?
	Or is this a behavior that you saw modeled in your mothers or other adult women if they were ever criticized?
	Oh, I mean, it was definitely modeled that way.
	Yeah, I mean, if anyone ever criticized my mother, she would just completely wither and there would be this guilting aspect to it because she would treat it as if you were rejecting her as a mother or as a wife or that sort of thing.
	So yeah, it definitely was modeled for me.
	Yeah, there's a kind of, and I'm sorry to keep interrupting, but there's a kind of hyper taking it personally that I have experienced when criticizing women, not the women in this conversation, but sort of in the past, and I'm sure that had something to do with me as well, but it's like any criticism causes a massive self-attack, which you are then responsible for and must be punished for in a way.
	Oh yeah, that's definitely how it is.
	It's really manipulative.
	But I still don't think we figured out why.
	Well, um...
	A pattern I've noticed is when you criticize women, a lot of them tend to be like, well, what about this and this and this that I do for you and stuff like that.
	You know, I do so much for you, so you have no right to criticize me and stuff like that.
	I got that a lot too, yes.
	I think it's a kind of martyr complex that someone was talking about in the chatroom.
	And it is a very sad thing because it actually makes The generosity not feel generous, right?
	It's like, I have done all these things for you, and therefore you can't criticize me.
	It's like, well, then you kind of did these things so I couldn't criticize you, not for me, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, exactly. And the reason I think this is such an important topic is that, of course, we as a philosophical movement are doing a lot of criticisms in the world.
	And if we can't find a way to get through this barrier of criticizing women, then we'll still win, but it will take a few more generations, to say the least.
	least.
	Yeah, that sounds like a really good point.
	Yeah, it's true.
	And the really terrible, sorry, the last thing I'll say, the really terrible thing, of course, is that when we look at some of the defu confrontations that have occurred, or rather when the child is sitting down to talk to his or her parents, fundamentally what is happening, and it's not just of course, the mothers here, but fundamentally what is happening is...
	The child is attempting to bring a criticism to bear on the family, and it turns out that the avoidance of criticism is stronger even than the parent-child bond, which is truly mind-blowing when you think about it.
	Wow. Yeah, it really is.
	So, I mean, a question I would ask is, Is there a way that you've sort of been able to evolve your response to criticism as a woman?
	Is there a way that people have criticized you in the past that has worked better or felt more bearable or helpful in the past than other ways?
	Or is it just something that is a problem with the woman herself and not the person doing the criticizing, or is it both?
	Sorry, just from a man's perspective, if you do have a criticism you want to bring to bear on a woman, and this is true for just about any woman, either get Brad Pitt or George Clooney to do it, and I think you're sad.
	But other than that, you're doomed.
	I would say it's the problem of the woman who gets criticized.
	I just can't say it for myself, and it's important who criticizes you.
	I had to learn that a lot, that if people I don't value start criticizing me, it doesn't have such an effect anymore, but it did in the past.
	And it's just something you have to learn and figure out.
	I don't know. Is it the same for somebody else too?
	I think it is important at first to get surrounded by people that you know are going to act in your interest.
	Because that becomes a lot more bearable if somebody has proven to you that they're going to act in your interest and they criticize you.
	I mean, that sort of makes me really want to listen, you know?
	That's a good point, the interest, yeah.
	I think that one of the big differences in my relationship was that Christina was criticisable in a way that I had never experienced.
	A woman being criticizable before.
	Now, this is not to say that I have all these men who were really open to being criticized, but I mean, just in terms of romantic relationships, she was...
	Correctable or criticizable, and I was more gentle, of course, because I was older, but she was, when we first began talking about, for instance, the existence of God and things like that, because of your scientific training, I think, sorry, speaking to Christine, because of your scientific training,
	I think that had a lot to do with that, because science is all about self-criticism, comparison to logic and to reality, and of course, because of your psychological training, which is really about bringing people into reality and reducing the power of mythology, I think that you had, and of course because you have self-criticism that is not self-attack, which is a really, like, it's important to criticize yourself without being abusive, right?
	So you can say to a scientist, your theory is wrong, but you can't reasonably say to a scientist, you're an idiot, right?
	Because the first one is a correction and the second one is an abuse.
	And moving from self, I mean, that's one of the reasons why we've worked a lot lately on self-attack is that I don't think that you had that.
	Self-attack thing that was really strong.
	You've had it a little bit as we both have but you could see reason and evidence on a variety of levels.
	Now it took longer for me to gain credibility within our relationship as far as the efficiency goes of trusting the other person that they're not manipulating you, that it's not A scar tissue from their past that's setting them off, but that they are perceiving something important and accurate emotionally in the moment.
	Stuff that you can't prove so logistically, but something feels odd about this interaction in our relationship.
	It took longer for that to occur within our relationship, but certainly with regards to comparing your thoughts to reason and your theories to evidence, you were great up front.
	No, and I would say that this goes back to the comment that the ladies were just making about, you know, that I knew that you had my best interest in mind and that trust was fundamental.
	And I was striving to achieve connection, not dominance.
	So I didn't...
	If I felt like I was leveled down, we would talk about it and we would go through that process.
	But I was really...
	What I criticized was what I perceived as distance between us.
	So I was always trying to get us to connect, not to get you to do something.
	And I think that made a big difference.
	But yeah, certainly if...
	If we can't undo the self-attacks that people have, and we're talking more specifically about women at the moment, which I think is really important.
	If we can't undo the self-attacks, we can't reason with them philosophically because the moment we attempt to correct or criticize, which is fundamental to philosophy, they're just going to go off nutty and not listen.
	And so it is a real challenge to undo this self-attack.
	And that's part of why we work on the MECO system, right?
	We work on the MECO system so that we can identify and dismantle the self-critic in others, in ourselves first and then in others, so that we can actually turn the volume of crazy down to actually get reason across, which is sometimes like shouting across a Metallica concert, it seems like.
	So I think that difference is the degree to which we can undo self-attack is the degree to which we can be receptive to positive criticism.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I think that's very true.
	But as for why, Why women in particular have such a hard time with it?
	I mean, I really can't think of an answer right now, but it certainly is an important question.
	Not to jump in, but if there's a pause, the other thing that is essential, I think, in the question of self-attack, I mean, if we look at our relationship with ourselves as similar to a relationship within if we look at our relationship with ourselves as similar to a relationship within a group, which is the
	Then we know pretty much for sure that somebody who is attacked, like a child who is attacked by a mother regularly, does not have...
	A bond, a strong bond with the mother.
	In fact, the bond is very precarious and very weak.
	And self-attack is the same issue, that there is a lack of bond and trust within the self, and a kind of savaging of the self.
	It's like you spend your whole life keeping a biting, feral, rabid Tasmanian devil at arm's length.
	And... So, trying to help people to recognize the fragility of their relationships is really important.
	Like, you can't get somebody to give up God if he doesn't understand that God is the fear of other people, right?
	Because all he'll do is talk you round and round and round intellectually.
	The same thing is true of nihilism and determinism and agnosticism, which is all around fear.
	They're all fear-based philosophies.
	Or, I think, with determinism, it's more shame-based.
	We'll talk about that another time.
	But if people won't give up God, if the real reason that they conform to God is a fear of attack by their peer group, right?
	So if once they understand the fragility of their relationships, they can then understand why they believe what they believe, and they can work to undo the emotional fear of that very thin and very unstable bond, which is really only maintained through conformity and self-denial.
	And so with the strength of your relationship to yourself, the strength of your ability to absorb your own criticisms, strengthening that bond is really important.
	And you cannot have, that's the fundamental issue about reviewing your relationships, you cannot have a stronger bond with yourself.
	Than you have with those around you.
	You simply cannot, right?
	A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
	You can never have more self-esteem than the respect of the least respectful person around you, right?
	You can never have a stronger relationship with yourself than other people have towards you.
	And so if you have all these people around you or any people around you who don't treat you with respect, who don't have a strong and committed bond to you, which doesn't mean acting perfectly.
	We all understand that.
	But that's why improving your relationships is fundamental to improving your relationship with yourself because we can never be stronger with ourselves than we are with our relationships around us.
	And so fixing your relationships allows you to fix yourself, which allows you to accept criticism, which allows you to improve and become better.
	So this is all of the nefarious maze that philosophy, psychology, men and women, society as a whole, has been unable to navigate before.
	They either just talk about the intellectual stuff and forget about the emotional stuff, or they talk about the emotional stuff and go round and round in circles about experience without reason.
	But the amount of work that has to be done to dismantle this bomb of repetitive self-denial and self-attack, it's really complicated, which we should be damn happy it is, right?
	Because if it wasn't really complicated, then it would make no sense as to why it hadn't been done yet.
	But those are all the kinds of things that I think are really, really important.
	And I think what Christina said at the beginning has just come back to me now, where she said that if you criticize a woman, everything, for a lot of women, and it's true of men too, but you talked about women, a lot of, it will cause them to have to reassess everything, right?
	Because, like, okay, so if you criticize a woman and she accepts the criticism, then...
	It means that she has a stronger relationship with herself and she's able to accept her own criticisms.
	But that's going to highlight the weaker relationships or the less positive and more destructive or abusive relationships she has around her.
	And that's why people stay in this self-attack, right?
	You have to fix your relationships, right?
	Because it's all intertwined, right?
	We can't have a stronger, more beneficial relationship with ourself than other people have with us.
	Otherwise it highlights and you have to change.
	And so I think that this slippery slope that we've always talked about, you take one step down what you think is a stone staircase and it turns into a luge, ice, you know, supersonic death drop tunnel.
	I think that's what people recognize and that's why they fight so hard.
	We're talking about women here, why women fight so hard to avoid that initial criticism.
	Is there anything else that anyone wanted to talk about today?
	Bell rings Do you know that sometimes it is months between getting peanut butter cookies for me?
	Sorry, are we still on criticism?
	Sorry, go ahead. I interrupted someone.
	I apologize. I guess I'd just be interested in hearing about people's experience of highly dominant and forceful women.
	Like... In my family, the women ran absolutely everything and the men were just like, they were just like older children that had to be taken care of.
	And I was wondering if anyone else has kind of experienced that or had any theories on why that is or anything?
	I guess not.
	Would you like to hear the experience of a weak man who has to be managed a lot with peanut butter cookies?
	Yeah, sure. Sorry, just kidding.
	Well, I mean, remember, of course, that I think it's like a third of boys and two-thirds of black boys now grew up without a father at all.
	I mean, the experience of a lot of men is that it's a complete matriarchy.
	I mean, I completely remember being shocked at the idea of a patriarch.
	I've mentioned this before, but, you know, when I was a kid, the women ran everything, right?
	Because when you're in a single-parent family, you're often in cheaper housing, and so you're around a lot of other families that are single, and since women get most of the kids, so most women get kids in that kind of divorce...
	I mean, all I knew, for the most part, not all, but the vast majority of what I knew, the people that I knew, the families that I was exposed to, were single-parent, mother-driven, mother-controlled, mother-dominated families.
	And then, of course, you go to school, and who's teaching kindergarten but school?
	All these women. And there were these distant male authority figures like a principal or whatever, but as far as I was concerned, for the first, I don't know, ten years of my life or eight years of my life, with the minor exception of some aspects of boarding school, women ran the world.
	I mean, there were some distant authority male figures, but I never really interacted with them, but women ran the world.
	And so I think that's something that people often forget, that sort of early experience which most boys have to authority, which is that it's almost all female.
	Right.
	And in my experience with my family, the men were always like broken and had to be fixed.
	Like, um...
	One of my aunts, the Christian one, she married a severe alcoholic and turned him into Ned Flanders and stuff like that.
	Right.
	And my own stepdad was just completely empty and not there.
	Like, I don't think I had a single conversation with him my entire childhood.
	But my mother was always present and always in your face and stuff like that.
	I mean, yeah, that was certainly true of my mom as well.
	And my mom had a big bag of tricks that she would even tell me about, about how to manipulate and control men.
	You know, you sit on your lap, you coo in their ear.
	Wildly inappropriate stuff, of course, but I certainly saw women as, you know, the powers behind the throne, so to speak, that there's this myth that my mom had, which is not just my mom.
	Other people have it too, right?
	That, you know, what is it that they said in my big fat Greek wedding?
	That the man is the head of the family, but the woman is the neck and can turn the head any way she wants.
	And that men are the sort of titular leaders, but the powers behind the throne, the people who really make things happen, who actually make all the decisions and, you know, seduce or bamboozle the men into obeying them.
	This is the women, right?
	That the world really is a matriarchy.
	But, you know, the government is the power, but Barack Obama is the face of it, and the mother is the power, and the father is simply the guy who sits on a horse like a military leader going nowhere while the women actually make the decisions and get things done.
	That was certainly a very strong myth, and it's not just me who's experienced that, and I think that definitely came from where I came from in terms of upbringing.
	And, of course, I mean...
	When you grow up in a single-parent household, it's the dad who is forced out, which of course, in a sense, is an ultimate power play, right?
	It's like, my mom and dad had a disagreement, and as I perceived it as a kid, my dad was kicked out, right?
	And of course, that doesn't exactly add to the stability of your bond with your mother.
	It's like, oh, so you got rid of dad, who's next?
	But I think that aspect of things where the women are dominant but are manipulative, shadowy, behind-the-thrones kinds of puppet masters, mistresses, I guess, is a pretty strong myth for a lot of people.
	And it took me some time to confront and overcome that myth.
	That if you get involved with a woman, she kind of slithers into your unconscious and becomes your puppet mistress and so on.
	And you can't make decisions on your own and you have to always please implicate her and she's always going to be manipulating you with her moods and so on.
	All of that kind of creepy female spider brain stuff I really had to work to to overcome.
	And then I got married.
	Yeah, we make a joke actually about I call Christina the wife because she's relatively compact or was. - And I talk about my inner wifelet, right?
	So if I'm taking my clothes off and there's two laundry bins, right, for coloreds and whites like the South.
	And... So I'm like, if my wife, if Christine is in the room, I'll make sure to sort it, right?
	And I say, I'm sorting, I'm sorting.
	And if she's not in there, I'll just say my inner wife that told me to do it.
	You know, sit there with her finger wagging at me and so on.
	But anyway, I just thought it was a funny story.
	But let me get back to something serious now.
	Someone said thanks for sharing, but I don't think they meant it.
	And the men that I saw when I was growing up were almost all weak and pitiful.
	And it took me a long time to get over my disgust for adult men.
	Of course, my mom was very attractive and slender and so on.
	So my mom had a series of boyfriends, all of whom were pitiful specimens.
	As you can imagine, they were dating my mom, right?
	All I saw was, my dad has this theory, you know, that when he retired, he lost his manhood because the home is the woman's domain and work is the man's domain and then you move into the woman's domain and you don't have your authority anymore.
	All she does is give you a list of things to do and you just run around like her errand boy and so on.
	So, you know, I come by that fear of a woman's authority somewhat honestly and it definitely took some time.
	To overcome that, and it's really hard to find examples of men who are strong and confident and positive and loved.
	Now you could say it's hard to find examples of positive women as well, but as far as men goes It was really really tough to find role models and I sort of gave up when I was in my teens Right, um all the men in my life I guess we're just like empty voids of nothing and
	I think that probably went a long way to why I became such a raging feminist when I was like 15 or something.
	All the men in my life were so weak.
	Right, right. And I think it has been hard.
	We can have another conversation maybe about masculinity, but it definitely has.
	There has been a rewriting of manhood which has left a lot of men very, very adrift because they got one template from their fathers and another expectation from their spouses.
	To me, most men are just kind of weak and gross and not honest and weaselly and shallow.
	But that's just my feminism, I guess.
	I mean, if I had to quantify idiot, stupid, abusive communications that I get, it's like 95% men.
	And that's just the YouTube stuff and the stuff I get in my inbox and so on.
	All that nasty, petty, vicious stuff.
	Ratty kind of stuff.
	To me, that's all men. And not just to me, but pretty objectively, you can see.
	And I just find women to be more reasonable, more curious, if you're gentle and curious yourself.
	And it's been really hard for me to find respect for men.
	But of course, I really had to...
	And the men are trolls too, right?
	Men on the internet are trolls.
	And we just don't get female trolls, right?
	I mean, it's 100%, right?
	So, I mean, I agree with you.
	I think that it is hard to find an example of respectful manhood.
	I mean, as it is, I think, as we've been saying, it's hard to find an example of respectful femininity as well.
	All right.
	Well, sorry, just to turn it back to you, Colleen, was there anything else you wanted to add or is there anything else that people wanted to add as a result of this call?
	There was nothing else that I wanted to add, if anyone else had anything else they wanted to talk about?
	No, I don't have anything on my mind right now.
	But I would like to do this again.
	I really enjoyed it.
	Somebody said that they'd like to do a men's show.
	I think that would be great.
	Obviously, we'll need top hats and arseless chaps to really pull that off, but I'm sure we'll be able to one way or another.
	It'll mostly be a webcam and it will be broadcasted to everyone who doesn't donate.
	So, I guess, check later tonight.
	Again, the podcast awards are being announced tonight, the winners.
	Just to balance and manage everybody's expectations, the odds of us winning are terrifically slim.
	That doesn't mean that it wasn't worth entering and it wasn't worth voting.
	But remember, our good friend Grammar Girl has been on Oprah, has been written up in the New York Times and the New York Post and has been on CNN and has been on Larry King.
	We're not quite there yet, right?
	So we've got a long way to go in order to get that kind of exposure, but the work that we're doing, quality work, quality conversations like this one where everybody's just done fantastically well and And kudos especially to you, Colleen, for starting it off and managing it just beautifully.
	I thought you did a fantastic job.
	And yes, we should definitely do this again.
	But thank you everybody so much, and particularly the women, for some absolutely wonderful thoughts and a truly wonderful conversation.
	And absolutely, we will be all over this again.

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