3285 The War on Men | Suzanne Venker and Stefan Molyneux
Over the last four decades, America has witnessed a profound change in marriage and gender relations-for the worse. Suzanne Veneker joins Stefan Molyneux to discuss the fractured family unit, the impact of feminism on gender relations, the myth of equality, the division of labor in marriage, feminists' war on traditional family values and rational approach to the battle of the sexes.Suzanne Venker is the author of "The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know - and Men Can't Say," "The War on Men," and "How to Choose a Husband: And Make Peace With Marriage." For more on Suzanne Venker, please go to: http://suzannevenker.comThe Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know - and Men Can't Sayhttp://www.fdrurl.com/flipside-of-feminismThe War on Menhttp://www.fdrurl.com/war-on-menHow to Choose a Husband: And Make Peace With Marriagehttp://www.fdrurl.com/choose-a-husband7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and (Most) Careers Just Don't Mixhttp://www.fdrurl.com/myths-of-working-mothersThe Two-Income Trap: Why Parents Are Choosing To Stay Homehttp://www.fdrurl.com/two-income-trapFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you are doing magnificently.
We have Suzanne Venker on the line and, in fact, on your screen, which I'd recommend.
She is the author of several books, including The Flip Side of Feminism, What Conservative Women Know and Men Can't Say, The War on Men, How to Choose a Husband and Make Peace with Marriage, and The Two Income Trap, Why Parents Are Choosing to Stay Home.
We've got a link to her website below.
She writes a lot of blog articles, which are very well written and very thought-provoking.
You can find her at Suzanne Venker, V-E-N-K-E-R dot com.
Suzanne, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thanks for having me on.
So when I sort of, I tried to do the sort of hot air balloon with introductory topics and say, let's sort of rise above the sort of everyday fracas and look at the larger lay of the land with regard to gender relations.
And I think it's not an exaggeration to say, not particularly good at the moment.
Marriage is declining.
Women's happiness is declining.
The number of women on antidepressants over the age of 40 is like 25% or something like that.
And men are alienated and frustrated and avoiding what they see as the dangerous state-enforced institution of marriage.
Birth rates are declining.
There just seems to be a lot of frustration and fear and hostility.
What's your sense of where things are?
So I agree with everything you said.
Of course, that's basically what I do, what I write about.
And I blame it on...
I mean, of course, there are...
There are various ways in which we got here, but there's no question that the number one culprit is feminism and that we are now reaping the results of 40 years of a very steady and destructive message that effectively argues for a faux kind of equality between women and men.
And there are two basic Tenets, if you will, of feminism.
One is that women are victims.
That's the number one theme of every feminist argument.
And if you're starting with that, I mean, every single issue that they deal with ultimately comes down to that so-called fact.
And if you're looking at it through that lens, you're going to obviously come up with a certain viewpoint that may differ from people who don't see women as victims.
That's number one.
Number two is that men and women are essentially the same, that biology is bogus, and that if society would just let us be who we really are and take away all those so-called stereotypes or generalizations about sex and gender, Male, female, then we would see that we are perfectly equal and by equal meaning the same and would thus act the same, behave the same, treat sex the same, look at marriage the same, work the same.
All of these issues that are so big and in the media all the time are all filtered through this false ideology.
Now the question or the issue or the approach that a lot of people I think primarily clustered on the left take is that gender is a social construct and therefore all the differences between men and women in terms of how we may think differently,
how we may act differently, the values we may hold, the priorities we may have, our relationship in particular to sexuality, that all of this is based upon a narrative and is no more core to our human nature than whether we speak English or French or whether we're one denomination or another.
Yet at the same time, there is, of course, the issue with transgendered people where they say, well, that's biological, it's built in, it can't be changed.
These contradictions seem to be quite strong, but the science does seem to be advancing along the lines of nature, not nurture.
Right.
And the reason for the contradictions, of course, is because the premise is false.
From the get-go, male and females are, of course, dramatically different.
And being equal in value as human beings has nothing to do with that.
I always am encouraging people to adopt the mantra, equal but different.
And not just stop at the word equality because, of course, what feminists are after is ultimately 50%, what they want is 50% representation of males in the home and 50% representation of females in the workforce or even in the highest up positions you can find.
And if that doesn't happen, then somehow This is some proof that we aren't equal as human beings.
This is absurd.
It's ridiculous.
Regular people don't think like that.
They don't think in terms of men and women having to do the same things and live the same way in order to prove that they are equally valuable.
That's really been what, for me, has been at the heart of why I do what I do, which is Trying to replace or shift the mind if you will to go back to what constitutes being valuable as a human being and what you do with your time and how, for example, a paycheck is more valuable than raising a family.
Which, you know, is not the case.
So it's really a value shift, ultimately, that I think has occurred over the past 40 years that we're dealing with.
And it's taking the focus off of the things that matter, which is relationships and family, and putting it onto this faux idea of self-worth or value, which can only be somehow found in the workforce or via a paycheck to prove it or some very powerful position.
And until then, unless you're doing that, you're somehow Less than.
And of course, I also argue that feminists are a miserable bunch and they're constantly looking for something else to complain about because they really aren't happy.
That's my argument.
They're not satisfied.
They haven't found, they're ignoring the very thing that will make them most happy, in my opinion, which is to connect with a man and to understand the differences between men and women And because they fight that, they're constantly miserable and constantly arguing and angry.
There is a funny thing, which until you notice it, or at least until I noticed it, it was way out of my consciousness.
Just a sort of funny aspect to feminism.
Feminism is sort of like being in an Ayn Rand novel.
There are no children anywhere.
And that seems to me a very, very important aspect of life, you know?
There are no people unless there are children.
And this aspect of...
And I'm a stay-at-home dad and have been for seven years while doing this conversation.
And part of that is because I just have these wild parenting theories and I'm an evil Dr.
Frankenstein experimenting.
But also because I wanted to know what kind of effort went into raising children because I grew up in a very different kind of household where there wasn't a lot of investment.
The amount of investment that children require is...
Unbelievable.
It's staggering.
It's mind-bending.
And they're always on your mind.
It's like a dimmer switch, as some people have said.
You can turn it down, you can't turn it off.
There will be a question if you can just...
I'll get there.
That's all right.
But the degree of investment that children require is staggering.
And of course, the World Health Organization recommends 18 months of breastfeeding.
And you're tired because, you know, obviously I wasn't doing that.
As I've said before, I'm all taps and no plumbing.
I'm all plumbing and no taps.
So when you take children out of the equation, then disparities between men and women become harder to justify.
But if you open your heart to enjoy the fact that there are children in the world, then things can't stay the same.
If women, of course, being pregnant, and if you want more than one child, and if you're breastfeeding, and if you're tired, and if your schedule is chaotic, and since you've got to take kids to the doctor a lot, and they get sick a lot.
I mean, there's just a time sink that exists called children that a lot of women happily fall into and enjoy themselves in that environment.
And so there is this weird focus where there are no children in this universe.
And maybe that's the choice of a lot of feminists.
But if, of course, as I generally hope women want children because it's nice having people on the planet, how on earth can we have equality when for at least half a decade to a decade, if you want to be a dedicated parent, you're out of the equation for the most part?
You have just hit the nail on the head.
And literally that is the impetus for why I ever started this conversation 15 years ago.
It's such an inane idea to talk in terms of equality or male and female roles and what have you by doing exactly what you just said, which is what feminists do, which is literally pretend there are no children on the planet.
I mean, then the argument is completely different.
Once you put them in the equation, everything changes.
And until you have children and see for yourself what you just said, and it really takes, in my opinion, doing it yourself to see it.
Certainly you can see it through your spouse, but you need to really grasp the taxing nature and as you put time down.
Suck, really, that it is, although that's a bad way of putting it.
If you've chosen to embrace that part of life, naturally, your previous life falls away entirely.
I always think of it, kids, as far as before kids and after kids.
Two totally different lives.
Two different people.
Even your values and the things that you thought were important aren't important anymore.
All of that shifts.
But for feminists, of course, it doesn't shift.
Either A, they don't have kids.
B, they have one.
And I've done, you know, I'm very well versed on the most outspoken feminists among us today and even in the recent past.
And what they all have in common for the most part is either no children, not married, or one child.
That's a very different life than the average family that has more than one child and who is married.
So you're constantly getting these messages about men and women and life and work and career and all that from a lens that doesn't even remotely match the average person's life, which is what makes it so skewed.
And it concerns me deeply that people, because People are human and the culture is very important and pop culture matters and all this stuff that gets thrown at them is not in any way helpful for them in their lives because it doesn't match what they want and what they're doing in their lives.
So my work is really about matching it.
So I'm saying here's what's really going to work and it's different from what the culture is telling you But my life represents your life.
I'm like you.
I'm not them.
So I'm telling you, here's what really works.
And it's unpopular, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work.
It just means it's unpopular.
You have to really seek that out to be able to find advice or guidance that will help you because so much of what you're getting is filtered through this feminist lens.
Right.
And to me, there is this Lack of empathy towards the decisions of others.
And this is a challenge we all face.
Like, there's things that I can't understand in life.
Why do people spend seven hours on a Sunday watching sports?
Incomprehensible to me.
Playing sports?
Yes.
Watching sports?
Don't understand it.
However they do.
Now, if I had to live that life where somebody strapped me to a chair, put cheetos on my belly and forced me to watch sports for seven hours, that would be a terrible life for me, but it's a good life for them.
Whereas the life that I would do on a Sunday may be terrible for them, but it's good for me.
And so this idea, so if you are, you know, a woman who doesn't want children, really, really ambitious, really hard driving and so on, then you might look at a housewife and say, that life would be terrible for me.
But the domino doesn't then fall that says that life must be terrible for you and you should stop it and you should change it and you should do it.
And there are, of course, theories that say that ambitious feminists in the workforce want other women in the workforce because they can't compete with men who have wives who are taking care of the household because it frees up the men to be more ambitious.
But this basic idea which says, okay, it's not right for me.
It's not the life that I would want.
But if it's the life that you want, more power to you.
And that proliferation of choices, which I thought feminism was about to begin with, seems to have changed into this monomania that if you're not in the workforce, your value is substantially declined.
Because I guess if you're not in the workforce, all you're doing is making life.
And the next generation and allowing for the continuation of your culture, country, life and species...
There is this idea that somehow filing paperwork and making memos and making phone calls and selling things and so on, way more important than actually developing new human life.
So I always, you know, I make the argument that ultimately, it is partly what you said, that they have, that they're competing with men who have wives at home and so they can't compete with that.
But that they ultimately, I feel that they are very envious of women who have found Happiness in the quote-unquote traditional way of doing so.
And that's very threatening if you are not understanding how that works or you don't have it in your life.
And you're constantly needing to prove yourself via the workforce.
You need a camera on you.
You need a paycheck.
All these things to validate your self-worth.
But ultimately, every single one of us is replaceable in the workplace.
Every single one of us.
We are irreplaceable, of course, at home.
And so when you really hold them up to one another, it becomes really clear which one is more important and which one will be ultimately more fulfilling for you as a human being.
But they who do not do that and thus want you to join them are ultimately, in my opinion, threatened by that.
I think they feel themselves being different from others.
the typical female and they want more camaraderie in the office so they don't feel alone.
You know, Sheryl Sandberg has been on a tirade for several years wanting to get more people to do basically live her life.
Live a life like she lives.
It must be very lonely to be with all those men and be one of the few women at that level and I sympathize with that but that's a choice you make and trying to undo the way society operates which is ultimately what she's trying to do In order to appease your own sense of satisfaction or self-worth or what have you is wrong, quite simply.
It's not up to you to determine what other people want for themselves.
And this goes back to, of course, feminists' biggest arguments that whenever you look at the gender gap, for example, They can't deal with the reason for it, which of course you and I know is because people, women in particular, choose to opt out and do that work that we opened up talking about, taking 10 years out of your life.
They want to do that and nobody who steps out to do that expects to go back in 10 years later where they left off.
Reasonable people don't think like that.
So they want to recreate a society where you can Well, number one, where you don't step out at all.
That's the ideal.
But if you do, we'll compensate you in some way so that when you get back in, you're not, quote-unquote, penalized.
Well, this isn't the way the real world works, of course.
And people are okay with that, and they're making choices that show they're okay with that.
And basically what feminists are saying is, you just don't know what you want.
You don't realize that you're discriminated against.
And if you had this other...
The way we want it to be, then you would really choose the life we're living.
That's basically what they're saying, instead of accepting that that's what most women want.
Because they don't want, feminists don't want what most women want, and that's discomforting.
That's my theory on it.
Well, it certainly has been my overall experience in life that discontented people are very good at creating discontentedness in others.
And contented people are actually quite good at creating contented lives in others.
And with regards to this question of children, it is to me kind of cold-hearted to have an entire philosophy that seems to ignore the needs of children.
And there is this This devaluation of motherhood.
I mean, we can say parenthood as a whole because, you know, women don't need men.
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
Yeah, maybe, but the kid still needs a father, whether it's a boy or a girl.
But this devaluation of parenthood is, to me, one of the most deeply shocking and, frankly, offensive aspects of feminism.
The idea that it's like, well, you can just get some come-and-go, minimum-wage...
Child care worker, you know, either in your home or just drop them off in a daycare, and that's absolutely identical to the parent, the bond, the carried in your womb, the given birth to, the breastfed, the hugged, the up at night.
And that to me is like saying to my wife, you know, on our 20th wedding anniversary, oh, I just hired some guy off the street to have dinner with you because that's exactly the same as having dinner with me.
And there is no substitute for the biological bond and the intimacy and the oxytocin bonding of motherhood.
And this idea that it can just be shipped off and replaced with someone else shows you to what degree of contempt feminists hold the whole idea of motherhood, that it's just replaceable by some stranger.
And I worked in a daycare for a couple of years when I was a teenager and everyone did their best.
But we're not parents.
So that's the subject.
That's the whole subject of the two-income trap.
And that gets into territory that is, of course, very politically incorrect, but nevertheless true, as all politically incorrect topics are.
It's about truth versus fantasy.
And I'm a truth girl.
And so the very first book I ever wrote was on this subject because, of course, I agree with you completely.
And what always struck me at the time when I wrote it originally, The Two Income Trap was actually a redo of my first book, which I wrote 15 years ago.
And at that time, the working mother craze was sort of, or the mommy wars were sort of in full throttle.
And we've moved beyond that almost because there's this tacit acceptance, of course, of the idea of daycare.
That is so sad because I truly do believe, and I've given this so much thought over the years, that it really isn't a political...
It's political for feminists, for sure, but in terms of just for regular people out there in the world, I truly believe they are genuinely ignorant about those early years and what transpires between parent and baby.
I don't think they know.
I think that they have been so...
Acculturated, if you will, to this idea that daycare is, like you say, comparable.
But when you stop and really talk about it in real terms, when you're allowed to, because the media doesn't let you do that, it's so clear and obvious how...
Well, for example, let's just say I talked about the number one problem with daycare, of course, which is high turnover, and that what babies need more than anything else More than anything else, is to learn how to bond and know what love is.
And that's where they learn in those early years before they can even speak.
We think, well, anybody can take care of them.
You know, you just feed them and change them.
There's so much more going on.
It's just insane.
And you're not allowed to talk about that.
And that same environment that you're going to have at home between mom and baby Or dad and baby, in your case, is not going to be replicated, obviously, in an institutional-like environment.
It's impossible.
And even if that baby does bond with one of those, which, of course, invariably they will, they'll bond with somebody, because They'll try.
What do you think is going to happen?
That person is going to leave.
And that is an extraordinarily traumatic experience for a baby.
And those people that they start to bond with that then leave, each time they do that, is effectively destroying that baby.
That's how I feel about it.
The only way for you to get the needs of a baby met is for one caregiver.
Even if it's not mom, if it's grandma, if it's dad, or if it's somebody, just one person as opposed to this group-like environment, you're good to go.
It's really about that one-on-one and you're not ever going to get that in daycare.
When you really explain it to people that way, I think it's genuinely new to them.
I think that, wow, I never thought about that.
Because when something goes from being sort of, you know, 50 years ago, daycare would have been like, well, that's just, you know, that's not the norm.
And so people would look at that Strangely, but once you start to insist that it's, as you say, comparable, you start to question it and then you eventually start to just believe it and then eventually you just accept it and don't even think about it anymore.
And that's the scariest part of the whole thing because people are doing this without any thought whatsoever and we're still reaping the results of this, what I think is a very huge social experiment.
Well, it would be fascinating to me to look at the hysterical need for safe spaces and the lack of internal strength and internal consistency that a lot of people have in the sort of social justice warrior leftist movement, where they need hug rooms and stuff like that.
I mean, I would like to know what their infancy was like.
Because I think one of the tragic things that happens, I mean, I talk about this statistic from time to time in this show, and it's always jaw-dropping to people, that a baby who's in other care or in daycare for 20 hours or more a week experiences and suffers the same symptoms as a baby who's been completely abandoned that a baby who's in other care or in daycare for 20 hours And if you would say, "Is maternal abandonment a good parenting policy?" People would say, "Well, no, that's terrible.
That's horrible." And it's like, well...
20 hours or more a week in other care is the same thing because children and babies in particular have no sense of time.
They don't know, oh, well, you know, mommy will be back in eight hours.
It's like, yeah, mommy will be back in my next lifetime.
Eight hours is eternity, an eternity to a baby.
You're right.
No sense of time.
And if a baby is abandoned biologically, it experiences, I believe, just evolutionarily speaking, babies that were abandoned died.
So the abandonment, that avoidance or that neglect, that abandonment to the baby, I believe that biologically the baby experiences that as a death threat.
It experiences that as a, like, you know, if you've ever been in one of these cars, a car goes by, vroom, just misses your car, and your heart is pounding, and you're like, ah!
That, I think, death experience or near-death experience that happens with maternal abandonment, I think, I can't imagine the amount of cortisol that's going to flood the baby's system with, the amount of anxiety, the amount of stress, and then that desperate need to please when mommy comes back.
You know, like, I have to win back mommy's love.
It makes the child very, I think, insecure.
And I think we can see that insecurity playing out in adult forms in society.
Sorry for the long speech, but go ahead.
No, that's exactly what I was just going to say.
So what you're dealing with are millions of people who effectively have lost the ability to trust.
This is what this is about.
And this actually, ironically, that first book that I wrote, which was effectively about that, the importance of those early years and what goes on in terms of relating to other people, are now 15, 20, 25 years later, you see these struggles that women in particular, but of course men too, because they're in daycare as well, I have with trusting love, really.
It's really about trusting in love and in attachment, as you say, knowing that that person is going to be there and putting your faith in them.
Trust is just such a huge component of, of course, marriage, but also just any relationship between a man and a woman.
Those folks, there's so many ways in which we develop trust issues when we're young.
The topic that we happen to be talking about is those early years in daycare.
That's just one.
If you're the child of an alcoholic, if you're a product of divorce, if your parents were abusive, there are so many ways that that trust in people breaks down and that daycare concept needs to be lumped in with those other bigger issues.
It's all in the same pot.
If you don't ever address and figure out how to trust and love, then you're really never going to be successful in a relationship.
And that gets into my more current work between men and women and what's happening in terms of marriage and relationships.
And I think also when I was, I came to fatherhood a little bit later than some of my friends.
And I think one of the things that has happened in society with regards to how people are looking at marriage and its positive or negative effects.
So I looked at my friends who got married and who had kids and almost all of them, the wives were working at least for some significant period of the infancy and so on.
And I tell you, Suzanne, it just didn't look like a lot of fun overall.
Because they'd always be late, always be rushing to get somewhere.
The traffic was a huge issue.
They always had to hurry their kids out in the morning.
And, you know, trying to get young kids to hurry up is like trying to push frozen treacle up a hill on Jupiter.
And so there's always this stress and their days started out.
Oh, kids, you got to get up.
You got to brush your teeth.
You got to go.
Where's the lunch?
Like it was stressful.
They drop the kids off at daycare.
They go to work.
They're tired.
And then they're racing to get to daycare before the fines kick in and they're late.
And then they got to get home and they've got to cook.
And then everyone piles into bed and they try and finish.
It's just like I was like, why would anyone?
It's not fun.
That's not fun.
That's not enjoyable.
You're not enjoying your kids.
Having kids and then having other people raise them is like getting married in order to have a long-distance relationship.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
And I think what happens then is that because there's a lack of bonding and, you know, babies, they don't know why you're not there.
They just know that something is more important to you than they are.
And that lack of bonding begins to play out, I think, in particular when the hormones hit in teenage years and there's a lot of friction and there's a lot of mistrust.
And that that results in over-controlling and rebelliousness and avoidance and escalation and conflict.
And so what happens is people are saying, well, early childhood was really stressful and lonely, and then teenage years were really fractious and difficult.
And so why on earth would I want to go through that again by having my own family?
I think that some of these really early childhoods Distance problems between parents and children result in this escalating distance that in turn results in people being less willing, which is one of the reasons, I think, for the declining birth rate across the West, at least among whites, for people to end up not wanting to reproduce what wasn't really a very fun experience.
And man, if parenting isn't fun and you have kids, you're in for a whole lot of not fun because there's a lot of parenting to go on.
And you're so right, the difference between the one-income family lifestyle, which is all again about what the two-income trap is about.
I get into the details of what that life looks like to be a two-income family that you were just talking about.
How utterly chaotic it is for children.
Well, first of all, for everybody.
For the parents, too.
It's just that with the parents, because they believe this is just what you do.
You know, I come from the thought process of everything I address with culture and the things that I write about is that most people want to join the crowd.
It's human nature.
They want to do what everybody else is doing.
That makes them feel accepted, like they're doing the right thing.
It's just the way people are.
I happen to not be that way, so I have a really interesting take.
I feel like I'm always on the outside looking in at what most people choose to do, and I'm sympathetic to it, because to not join the crowd, as you I'm sure know, is to choose a very different life, a harder life, for sure.
But, of course, it's, in my opinion, the An examined life, the real life, an authentic life, which is what I'm all about because I don't want to jump on the bandwagon unless what the bandwagon happens to be doing something good that I agree with, which is rare.
So I think people are living that life because that's what you do.
And if they stop to really think, hmm, is this coming out in the wash financially with these two incomes?
No, not really, not for most people, not unless you're both making a crap ton of money.
It's just not.
In which case you don't need the other person to work because you can survive on one.
Exactly!
So that doesn't even fly.
But even if you're not talking...
We always talk about it in terms of money instead of the quality of life and the daily existence and how it affects your marriage and how it affects your children.
I'm much more concerned about those conversations than the money piece.
Although I think the money piece can be...
Because that can be explained on paper very easily that it's not worth it.
But in terms of the marriage and the children, that's really...
What concerns me the most.
I agree with you.
Obviously, the lifestyles are not at all the same.
I think for a lot of people, they are going to look back, and many have, and say, what just happened?
What did I do that for?
You get to a point in life where you do start to self-examine a little bit more when you get off the rat race.
I don't want that to happen to people.
I want them to go into their decisions Based on common sense and practicality and authentic desire, what you want, what you believe is right, and forget about what your neighbor is doing.
It's harder, for sure, but it is ultimately so much more satisfying, especially when your family life is functioning properly.
Well, and here's another way in which this mistrust plays out.
I just had a woman call into my show recently.
And we went through some of the numbers.
And I'm sure you've done this with a number of people as well.
And she was saying, well, I make this amount per month.
And it's like, okay, but after taxes, how much is it?
And then how much are you paying for childcare and extra gas and having to have a second car?
You know, all the stuff that goes along with two.
And it turned out, of course, as is often the case when you do the basic spreadsheets, she was making a big fat zero.
A big fat zero.
On the other hand, she wasn't raising her children.
So I think you could view that as a giant minus.
But basically, she was a slave working for no money whatsoever.
And so I said, well, then why are you doing it?
Which is a basic obvious question.
And, you know, I like your point that this sort of counter the tribal, you know, all evolution requires on mutations in genes and people don't have them.
That's us, you know, sort of the social body needs people who disagree with it in order to evolve.
And people generally can't even be said to have free will unless they see counterexamples because we're kind of a social imprinting species.
So I asked her, why would you be doing this?
And she said, well, you know, basically it's because if I get divorced, Then I'm going to need work skills because I'm going to have to support myself and my children.
And that is another reason why women feel it's essential to maintain a presence in the workforce because what if you get divorced and you don't have any job skills and you're going to end up living under a bridge?
And that again seems to me that lack of trust.
Definitely lack of trust and also there's a way to completely flip that on its head and it has to do with the way that people thought about marriage and divorce back in the day.
If you go through life with that paradigm that that person described to you, in case I get divorced, I need this.
Guess what?
You're probably going to get divorced.
That's a self-fulfilling prophecy right there.
I watched something of yours that you did, I don't know what the title was, where you were talking about divorce as not being an option with you and your wife.
This is huge.
It's so huge and I've written about it extensively.
That you take divorce off the table.
Obviously, it's technically available, if anything, horrible.
Whatever.
It's there.
If she becomes possessed by seven or more devils from the realm of Beelzebub, then yes, that is on the table.
But assuming that possession is not going to occur, and I'm not exactly waiting for it, it's off the table.
It's off the table.
The trick is to pretend it is not an option.
And, of course, that's a very anti-feminist thing to say because divorce is supposed to be liberating and it was the reason why women can have the lives they have because they got away from those awful men because, you know, they were never to blame for anything.
So divorce is the really big deal for feminists.
But what I'm trying to do is say if you turn that on its head and assume that it is an option, the way you approach the problems or the conflicts in the relationship Is entirely different from the way you would approach it if you assume you can always get divorced.
And the chances of your being successful are far greater with the assumption that it's not an option because you're going to work harder.
You're going to look for things that you wouldn't otherwise look for.
It's just a whole different paradigm.
And actually, there's a great...
I don't know if you've heard about the book, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, who just...
It just did a great study on the whole concept of choice and how too much choice is ultimately counterproductive, which goes back to what we just said about divorce.
And again, that's a very anti-feminist thing to say because feminism is all about choice.
But I present this world where you have so much choice that you experience inertia, for one thing, because you're not really capable of Choosing from 10 things or 100 things instead of 3 things, but also what it does to your psyche in terms of how you approach things.
It's a psychological shift that I think rarely gets discussed because, again, the PC thing is choice and pro-divorce and anti-marriage and anti-male.
It's very hard to get these messages into a world that has a completely different mindset.
And it is, of course, hard to commit to a man if your mother never committed to you.
Like we learn commitment through our parents, not through some sort of abstract set of vows.
And the other thing, too, is that if you say, well, I'm going to trust my husband or I'm going to trust my wife, I'm going to be the stay-at-home parent, I'm going to rely on them.
It actually creates so much more of an enjoyable family atmosphere that who on earth would ever want to leave.
But if you say, well, if the divorce is going to happen, I've got to have my job skills, then you end up with this stressful, chaotic, chasing-your-tail, unsatisfying, unbonded, unconnected family life, which is much more likely.
Again, it's one of these horrible self-fulfilling problems.
Aha, I was right, you know.
And it's like, well, yeah, but that's just because you thought you were going to be right.
And lots of studies show the majority of people, five years after they get divorced, wished they hadn't gotten divorced.
And of course, that goes into the throwaway society that we live in today, where if something doesn't I do that a little bit with lamps and rugs and things like that for decorating our house and I get some trouble from my husband in that way.
Meaning that you can look at that in a lot of different ways.
If you didn't have the money to buy an extra lamp, you'd have to make do with that lamp.
You'd figure out a way to make that lamp work.
But if I could afford an extra 50 bucks for a different lamp, I'll go out and get one.
So it's the same concept, only applied to much bigger things, which is not good, of course.
You don't want to apply that to a relationship or to marriage.
So that's the other part when I said at the beginning that there were factors other than feminism.
That would be an example.
We live in this throwaway culture where we have too much, and that's a whole other conversation.
Now, let's talk a little bit about, I think, some of the challenges of sexual market value with regards to feminism.
Believe it or not, it's an old Gershwin song that first set me on to this, you know, your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking, and that was something that I was...
I remember listening to that as a kid.
Sam Cooke does a wonderful version of it, and I'm thinking, like, that's a very interesting thought, because we don't get any conversations about, you know, evolutionary sexual market value in particular, because it doesn't serve the feminist narrative and so on.
But, of course...
Men like young, fertile women and women like men who have resources because eggs need stuff.
You know, I don't want to get overly technical with people.
I don't know what the Latin for that, but it's eggs need stuff and men need fresh eggs.
And so the feminist narrative has been to, I would argue, squander For women, your time of greatest sexual market value and then try to get married and have children when your sexual market value is collapsing in your sort of mid to late 30s.
And of course, this doesn't mean that women aren't attractive beyond that.
We're just talking about the basic biology and the eggs and so on.
Whereas I think the other argument that has been made, which is have kids young and then you've got an uninterrupted career, if you want it, down the road.
Although, you know, if you have kids young, your kids are more likely to have kids young and you can transition to enjoying your grandkids and, you know, just have a wonderful pyramid of genetics to play around in.
But it has sort of, I think, been frustrating for a lot of women because in the time of their prime sexual market value, you know, the world is at their feet and men will do their bidding and, you know, someone's always around to buy them drinks and ask them out.
And I think they then squander this on a series of, I think, what are for women eventually unsatisfying and rather squalid, you know, the walk of shame sexual interactions that happen for a lot of women.
And then when they decide to get serious...
They may have, I think Rupert Everett said that a lot of casual sex just kind of smashes up a person.
And I think then they say, okay, well, now I want to settle down.
But they passed their peak sexual market value.
I think they've inherited a lot of dysfunctions and perhaps even some STDs from a decade or so or more of casual sex.
They haven't learned how to negotiate long term complex adult relationships.
And suddenly now, they want to bid in the stock market when the money is disappearing fast from their hands.
And I think that is really not explained to women.
And by the time that women hit that particular thing, or that juncture in their lives, there's no rewind.
And I think that is, I think, very stressful for a lot of women.
I don't know if I'm overgeneralizing here, but that's what I've seen.
There's just so much that's wrong with the feminist narrative, isn't there?
There's so much to uncover.
You are 100% right, and I've written about it a great deal.
And ironically, I was going to talk to the students at Williams College last fall about this very thing, but was disinvited and got really set off.
I think my disinvitation was sort of what set off From that point on, we've still not stopped hearing about what's happening on college campuses and the disinvitations and the safe spaces and all that.
The people who hate you are just serving the cause in a different way by raising your profile.
They're still helping, they just don't know.
I know.
That was big, actually.
But it's so important.
I mean, I feel so strongly and passionate about giving the truth and the facts to young women.
I believe that, of course, I agree with everything that you just said, and it's not even about agreeing, really.
It is evolutionary biology.
If you do the study, it's not even about what you and I think.
You do the research, which we have, you'll see.
Men still today want young, fertile women and attractive women, and women still look for income potential or income.
Because that's the way it is, going back to what you said about It wouldn't be that way if there were no children in the world, but since there are and since most people want it, there you go.
That changes the whole scene.
It's fine to be equal prior to getting married, but once you decide to get married with kids, the whole game changes.
So then that dating scene, prior to doing that, has to incorporate these It's the best way to go about things.
Work with it.
Stop fighting it.
Here's what you've got to work with.
Your eggs are only fertile from Technically, it's 18 to 38.
You've got the beginning and the end kind of thing.
And yeah, you'll hear about people who get pregnant at 40.
Forget about it.
That is not going to be your story.
So just the odds are so against you that your whole feminist narrative that you're being raised to believe is possible is going to be an incredible, huge, more than disappointment.
It's going to ruin your life, quite frankly, because if you want children, you're literally not going to be able to have them.
And this is, of course, happening all over the place because the idea is that you shouldn't marry young.
And you should wait.
And I'm not making an argument for marrying out of college.
That's really not the point, you know, the way it used to be.
The point is be realistic with all the changes that have happened in the last 40 years with women and how they're living their lives and marry that with facts and biology and things that will never change.
You can't do anything about it.
You can't change the world.
You can't have this, you know, brave new world that feminists Envision.
Work with what is real and what you want.
And to do that, you need facts.
And you're not going to get that from the feminist narrative.
You're not going to get it from the culture, period.
Because they're going to not tell you to map out your life, for example, in such a way.
Well, the way I did, for example.
Since the time I was young, I knew that family would be the center of my life.
I'm old and I'm 48.
So I'm old enough to have passed what's going on with young women now and the way they think I... I don't understand it.
The whole concept of, you know, I think you said casual sex.
I've now decided I'm going to call that meaningless sex because I think those meaningless encounters are so destructive to women in particular.
And there's, again, we're not allowed to talk about the fact that men and women approach sex differently and that men can separate sex from emotion differently.
More easily.
They just can't.
Women can't.
And that's the oxytocin that we talked about.
All you have to do is count the sperm and count the eggs.
That's all you need to know.
It's just...
It's the way it is.
And if someone would say to women, the reason why you're waiting by the phone the next day, the reason why that movie, He's Just Not That Into You, wasn't labeled...
She's just not that into you.
It's because you have bonded, whether you wanted to or not, when you had sex with him.
That's what your body did to you.
It's physical.
You have no control over it.
If they knew that, if they were given that information, they would look, because I teach my daughter that she's 16, and she looks at me and she says, I don't think they know this, mom.
If someone would tell them, that puts a whole different light on it, because it's not really political anymore.
It's not really...
Are you a religious person?
Are you conservative?
Are you liberal?
Are you libertarian?
It's just, it's biology.
It's the way it is.
And it's a whole different way to approach something that would, I think, change the outcome and change the thought process.
And so just going back real quick to the way I set up my life, I always knew family was going to be center.
I knew I wanted to get married and have kids.
So every decision I made from whom to marry to what career I did, everything along the way was made with that focus in mind, which is the complete flip side of what people do today, at least in their 20s and 30s, which is everything gets focused around this Life that exists, this career that is supposed to be your whole existence.
It's how you get your self-worth.
It's how you identify yourself.
It's how you live and breathe and think.
It's just everything.
And then you try to fit in men and babies around that, and it doesn't work that way.
It just, once you shift, make that small shift, it changes how you approach dating in your 20s.
It approaches, it just affects everything.
And that's, of course, the feminist way, which is the wrong way, in my opinion.
And it's not going to help you down the road get what you want, which is what I'm concerned with.
You show up late to the auction, all the good stuff is gone.
This idea that you can just go find some magical person later on in life who's going to be perfect in every way and a good provider.
They're gone!
The really good cars are sold very quickly and all that's left are the lemons on blocks.
Sorry, I just thought of something with respect to this.
This is very forward thinking too, what I'm going to say, because this isn't going away.
We're just now in the beginning of this.
But as women get more and more successful, which they will, it's not going to go backwards, It's going to be even harder for them to find what they want because of course the research shows, which I'm sure you know, that the more successful you become, What am I trying to say here?
The competition for the successful men is going to be fierce because the women don't, as they get more successful, they still want to marry a man who's as successful, if not more.
Well, there just isn't enough room for everybody to be that successful, so you're going to end up competing with the women who are more traditional in nature, and the men want those traditional women.
So there's only so many successful men to go around.
So the more successful women become, the harder time they're going to have getting their love lives in order.
It's going to be, I mean, it is a mess.
And it's just going to continue to be a mess because of that very reason.
Well, I mean, look at, look, 60% in some colleges is 60 or more percent women to men.
And men want, women, because of hypergamy, which is a perfectly valid and natural and very healthy instinct that women want to marry up.
Sorry, let me just be a little taller here while I talk about this part.
But as women Women want to marry up so that you've got more women becoming educated and fewer men becoming educated.
And given that women want to marry a man at least as educated as they are, you get a dwindling pool and an excess of women.
Now, I don't mean to shock the ladies out there, but trust me, if a man has a buffet, he ain't going to just one place on that buffet.
I mean, the more choice that men have, the less likely they are to commit.
And the other thing that happens is I think that hypergamy is a wonderful force in a free society because it drives men to excellence.
The gathering of more resources, the becoming more productive, the becoming a better husband, a better provider.
These all require the development of personal virtues that, by the way, are also excellent for society as all.
Hard work, diligence, competence, dedication, and all that kind of stuff.
What's happening now is because women are not looking for stable providers and good guys and so on, they tend to go for flashy looks and abs and cool cars.
I mean, it's kind of silly, but they're looking for all these shallow things Which other men cannot earn.
You can't become taller.
You can't necessarily just will yourself into having better hair.
You can't necessarily just get that square chiseled jaw, the dimples or whatever it is, the piercing, pierced bras and eyes or whatever.
Men can't achieve those things.
You can work hard to become a good provider.
You can't just will yourself into becoming some physical sexual alpha.
And so what's happening is the alphas are having a great time because they've got their pick and choice.
Although...
For the alphas, they will also end up lonely and miserable and Hugh Granty, seedy, elderly kinds of guys.
But the betas, so to speak, who would be great providers, can't earn the alpha status because they can't change that fundamentally how they look.
And so they're just opting out, and that is very frustrating for a lot of men and a lot of women.
And then, of course, when the woman says, okay, well, the alpha's not going to commit to me, so I guess I'll go find a beta, the beta's all resentful because he's like, well, you said no to me for the last 15 years, and now what, I'm supposed to get this alpha sloppy seconds?
Forget it, lady.
I've been immersed in alpha and beta for months because my new book is called The Alpha Wife's Guide to Men in Marriage.
It's all about the alpha-beta combo and how to...
The basic message of it is that two alphas are combustible and a big problem.
Two betas get nothing done.
That's a problem.
You need an alpha and a beta.
I don't want to get into the whole No, no.
Start reading.
Let's just do the audiobook right here, right now.
The point is that we are getting more and more alpha.
That's the bottom line.
And there are fewer beta females than there were back in my mother's day.
My mother happened to be an alpha female back in the day when most women were beta, which is how the book was very memoirish because I talk about my mother and I talk about myself because I am an alpha who has effectively learned how to become beta in my marriage and in my home life.
And my argument in this book is that it's not bad to become successful in that other way, for women now I'm talking, but if you want to be successful in your life and love in addition to in the workplace, you're going to have to essentially be two different people, which of course, again, as an anti-feminist Because the idea is that this is who I am and I'm going to be this way 100% of the time and if men can't handle it, well, screw them.
There's something wrong with them.
They just can't deal with a strong woman.
And I don't believe that for a minute.
I don't think men can't handle strong women.
I think men are fine with what's happening with all the changes, but they don't want those changes to overpower them or put them in a lower place, which is effectively what feminism does.
It empowers women at the expense of men.
You can be empowered, if you want to use that word, which I hate.
That they use that because it's used in the wrong way.
But if you want to be empowered in that way, you can't have that affect your home life or your marriage or your love life in any way.
And if you don't learn how to separate and become more beta with a man, because most men are alphas or have a lot of alpha in them, then you're going to have a problem and you're never going to be successful In love.
You'll be just successful in your career, but you won't be successful in love.
Which is what happens to so many high-powered women who ultimately end up divorced.
Of course, the more powerful they get, the more money they have.
Again, going back to that self-fulfilling prophecy, then they don't even need the guide for money.
It's not going to end.
We are on the cusp and it's just going to keep going this way.
My argument with this book was, how are we going to do it?
How are you going to marry, literally, the ideas of the changes with still having love in your life?
Here's how you do it.
That's basically it.
So I love that conversation because it's so fresh in my mind.
Well, and I believe that alphas produce betas and betas produce alphas.
Yeah.
Because if you're both out there working, your kid is going to not be bonded, is going to be insecure, is not going to be able to attach to a consistent role model, is going to grow up nervous and insecure, and there you have a beta.
I mean, I was in my younger days, you know, I was an entrepreneur, I founded companies, I grew companies, I sold companies, I was a wheeler dealer, a business guy, total alpha.
Yeah.
And then I said, okay, well, if I'm going to quote downgrade myself, because if I continue on that road, let's say my wife and I were just out working all the time, well, our kid would grow up insecure and would then have beta characteristics.
But if I'm willing to quote downgrade myself from alpha to beta to be a stay-at-home father, then my daughter is going to have a secure bond, and she is a very confident, very happy kid, so she's going to grow up to be an alpha.
And so...
If you want to pursue your alpha thing and have kids, my argument is, well, you're just going to produce a beta and that's going to be very frustrating for everyone involved because it can't be undone, I think, after the early days of development.
No, and you're going to have more of the point for me is that you're going to have a hell of a lot of conflict with your spouse because two alphas are constantly doing this because it's difficult to give when you're in alpha mode all the time.
The way I phrase it in the book is to get in the passenger seat, not the back seat.
But in the passenger seat, and that's a very important distinction, because feminists want you to believe that if you're not driving the car, you're in the back seat.
And I'm saying, no, let him drive the car.
In my case, it's reversed.
I'm home.
My husband works.
But I am alpha in nature, and he's a little more beta in nature.
But we have a traditional breadwinner, homemaker thing.
So it works.
But the point is, if you...
Ultimately, my alpha nature was bumping up against his natural alpha maleness, because even though I refer to him as a beta, there's a spectrum, of course, there, and he still has a lot of alpha M. He's more like a mix.
And so this was happening all the time.
If I didn't move over and get into the passenger seat, then this wouldn't stop.
And so somebody has to be willing to do that without Excuse me, worrying that they're somehow really in the backseat or that they're giving up some big thing.
It's not.
It goes back to being nice and kind and doing all of those, being a little bit more of, there's a lot of beta-like qualities that I feel are superior to alpha qualities.
Alphas can be very difficult.
Alphas are self-involved.
I mean, there's just a lot of negative to being alpha that, of course, feminists don't ever want to acknowledge because that's what you're supposed to be is alpha all the time.
Well, alphas by definition are short on empathy because when you win, everyone else loses.
The guy who wins the race has to not care about everyone else who's going to go home and cry into their pillow for losing the race.
And this is, of course, the great tragedy of a lack of understanding these things is that I wanted to win, win, win at all costs.
That's called being a terrible parent because if you want to win as a parent, you're just not good.
You're not being negotiated.
You're not dealing with things.
And this, of course, is what happens with a lot of women who want high status, hard-driving, aggressive, testosterone-fueled men and then complain that they're emotionally unavailable.
It's like, yes, that's why they have all the money because they don't care that other people lose.
And now you're frustrated because they don't care about your feelings.
Well, that's what you chose.
That's right.
Exactly.
And that's why getting that alpha-beta mix is so important because you can't have it You can't have what you want in the alpha with what you want in the beta and get them in a perfect...
You're going to have a really hard time finding that.
It's like a needle in a haystack.
You have to decide what works best for your personality and then work with it on that spectrum.
But, yeah, the two alphas, hard.
Now, I would like to talk a little bit about...
Making peace with marriage.
Marriage, of course, has taken a lot of body blows lately.
Famously, Hillary Clinton compared it to being a slave.
Well, you know, I think she's just describing her own marriage rather than anything else.
But marriage is...
And it's also become associated with the state.
But, of course, because the state has become so involved in the institution of marriage, defining its dissolution, often to the detriment of men...
But marriage and life as a whole and sexuality has become, I think, I think feminism has a lot to do with this, has become your sort of playground.
You know, like sexuality is just, it's fun for people and marriage is just a social institution.
And again, it's this weird, like nobody exists who's under six feet or five feet tall.
Like there's no kids in this universe because marriage fundamentally is about children and sexuality fundamentally is about children.
and the degree to which sexuality and marriage have been separated from children, when, of course, the only reason we have sexual organs or impulses is for children, and the reason why marriage is so important is a two-parent committed household is by far the best environment and healthiest environment and the reason why marriage is so important is a two-parent committed household is by far the best environment and healthiest environment for children to grow
So how is it that you've been able to convince people to take a more friendly and positive view of an institution that's been so maligned for so many years?
Basically by a little bit about what I said before is trying to help women in particular shift their paradigm.
because they're walking through the world with this attitude that governs their, and beliefs that governs their behavior that they ultimately got from either or both, the culture or their parents, let's say, but if their parents messed it up, you know, if they were a product of divorce or what have you, or even if they stayed married you know, if they were a product of divorce or what have you, or even if they stayed married but had a horrible marriage, whatever the case may be, they're sort of walking around with this very negative experience and attitude toward marriage, and the only way to make any kind of they're sort of walking around with this very negative experience and attitude toward
Um, You know, making peace with marriage to me is all about going with nature and the way that men and women are made In general, and of course there's always exceptions to the rule, and we're so honed in on those exceptions.
We talked about transgender.
I'm not talking about the 1% of the population.
I'm concerned with the majority, the norm, the average person.
There's plenty of conversation about the minority groups, and that's fine, but nobody ever talks about the majority or the average person.
They need a voice as well.
They need help.
And to acknowledge that male and female When it's understood how those differences can work in tandem to get what you want is the way Marriage is intended to be, complementary, and it's become competitive because feminists taught you to become overdeveloped in this masculine side of yourself, or adopt it if you didn't have it at all, and you basically end up with two men getting married.
That's sort of how it is.
Not gay, but heterosexual males getting married.
Women are simply too masculine, and they are afraid of their femininity.
I always have trouble saying that word, femininity.
And if they embraced it and understood how powerful it is, and that it governs, that you actually are in charge, in control of your relationship and of your marriage as a female, if you would let it be by using that femininity that you've been taught to reject.
That's really the key of the whole thing.
But that, of course, requires them to reject the cultural messages, which is very difficult because every day they get the opposite.
They're supposed to be masculine and basically supplant Male's role in society, or at least live exactly the same way in order to prove something.
But every time you make a step toward doing that, you're severing your relationship at home.
So it's really about having a whole different understanding of what marriage is in terms of being complementary instead of bringing this competitive piece to it, which is what you get today everywhere you look.
Let me run something past you.
And this is one of these thoughts that I almost fight.
Like, get thee behind me, clarifying Satan.
Let me run this thought because there is this perception that feminism is some newfangled thing.
Some new novel approach.
But I can't help but think, Suzanne, that there's something incredibly regressive about it.
Because generally what I see is women nagging men in order to get resources.
Now...
That doesn't seem all too empowered to me.
You know, like, well, we got to get these numbers.
So you got to hire more women.
And if you don't, you're sexist and bad.
It's sort of the stereotypical bad wife who nags the husband until she gets something, gets a new kitchen and just makes his life difficult and unpleasant until he just gives in and gives her what she wants, you know, unhappy wife, unhappy life kind of thing.
And it does seem to me extraordinarily hard to avoid this conclusion that women running around saying, we're in danger and you're a bad person if you don't give us resources is very Victorian fainting couch smelling salts kind of stuff.
And I can't really see this as a modern thing.
What I see in a lot of ways is women who want the benefits of marriage without actually being married.
In other words, they want to nag men into giving them resources without actually committing to a marriage.
Well, you know that approximately 70% of all divorce is initiated by wives.
Now, it's pretty huge because, yes, women have always been the instigators of divorce.
That is true, historically.
But the reasons that they did so in the past were very different from today.
In the past, it was almost always I'm sorry, just for those who don't know, this is back when you had to ask for a divorce and you had to prove a reason that was valid.
I think infidelity and abuse were generally or failure to provide or whatever were the main categories and then it changed.
Reagan actually think put it in in the California in the 60s.
He said later it was his greatest political regret.
And just then you could get divorced.
You didn't have to provide a reason.
There's this big checkbox called dissatisfaction, which is, of course, a bit of a catch-all.
And that changed significantly in the 60s.
Just a lot of the younger people don't know that particular history.
Okay.
And this isn't an argument about, we don't have to get into the law, but I'm just pointing out that once you open it up to just getting divorced for any reason, of course, and the most common reason now, really, is that it's just, they check the box incompatible.
What am I saying?
Well, I want to say incompatibility, but, oh, irreconcilable differences.
They check that box, but that means, for many women, I'm just not happy.
That gets into the whole conversation about what happiness is, how you get happiness, is marriage designed to make you happy?
No.
It's a whole different attitude about What marriage can do for you as a female and the expectations that are just so insanely inflated compared to back in the day, you know, when people had more of an understanding about what marriage was for and what it could provide.
But today it's the expectations, again, back to the self-fulfilling prophecy.
You're asking too much of it and that's why you're not getting what you want from it.
Make those expectations more realistic and you'll be more successful.
I can't remember your original question now, but in terms of going into it, and I think that the fact that 70%, and sometimes it's even higher in other demographics, of women who are checking out makes such a huge statement to me about their inability to be a wife.
In other words, you look at that statistic and there's only two ways to say, there's only two ways to Analyze that.
One is to say, well, I guess most men just suck at being good husbands.
70% of the women have to divorce them.
Obviously men suck at being husbands, obviously.
Or the other solution, the other analysis is, hmm, maybe there's something I'm not doing right.
Maybe there's something as a woman that I'm bringing to the table that isn't working here, which would be the more obvious conclusion since the number's so high because you can't have that many men who are that bad at it.
Well, and of course, the women are choosing the men, so you can't, you know, if it's buyer's remorse, the buyer has some factor in it.
The other thing I think that's true, oh, I shouldn't say that's true, there's evidence for, you know, the truth and falsehood of these things is always a bit fuzzy, but there's significant evidence for the basic fact that unlike orangutans, human beings are a sexually dimorphic species.
In other words, we have different sex organs, but that's not the sum total of the differences in behavior.
And there's been a number of studies that have come out recently That have shown that the degree to which marriage partners reject sexual dimorphism, in other words, if they say, well, we'll do equal chores, and, you know, there's this traditional divide that the man does stuff outside the house, and the woman does stuff inside the house, and there are certain things like laundry and so on that more women do than men and so on.
And the degree to which women insist on a purely egalitarian sharing of inside and outside and traditionally masculine and feminine chores is the degree to which they become unhappier and, interestingly enough, have a far less satisfying sex life, which kind of makes sense.
Sexuality is about sexual dimorphism in human beings and the degree to which we become these Buck Rogers androgynous spacesuit It's the degree to which we feel like we're having sex with something that is neither male nor female, and that's actually not very satisfying as a whole.
So, I mean, it's sort of funny when you sort of get, so if the feminist get, erase this sexual dimorphism, it vastly reduces happiness, sexual contentment and enjoyment within marriage, which makes marriage less valuable.
Now, they will make the argument, which I've heard many times, that the more housework a man does, it's more like it's foreplay.
Now, for women, meaning, and it's true that if you lighten their load, that's going to make a woman feel more warm towards you.
That part is true.
But the idea that sharing everything 50-50 makes sex better or relationship better or marriage better is absolutely false.
It actually shows just the opposite because, ultimately, women don't want Women, the average woman wants the man to be involved and engaged and do his part, you know, pick up his socks and what have you instead of making her have to do everything, obviously.
But if they completely share it and he's in the kitchen too much or he's doing too much laundry, all of a sudden, you know, you're not looking so sexually appealing anymore.
I don't really want you in the kitchen that much.
Maybe just put the dishes away and then be done.
It's just the way it is.
And if you go with it and you realize the sexual energy really comes from the fact that I don't want him in the kitchen all the time.
I do want him on the roof.
You belong on the roof.
I don't want to be on the roof.
I'm really hot for you when you get on the roof.
What you're saying is you prefer it when the man's on top.
I understand.
Okay, that makes perfect sense to me.
Now, I'd like to just talk, I want to give you the final bit, but I think I really want to stop past the little train station called Father Absence, because that I think is one of the foundational catastrophes in society that is really unremarked upon, because it does go against sort of feminist narrative, which people challenge at their peril these days, sadly.
But I've sort of made the case before that if there was some environmental toxin that produced the negative outcomes that father absence does, people would go mental.
You know, people get insane about, you know, BPA and plastic and microwaving this and problems.
And some people are walking around like, oh, is the Wi-Fi signal too strong?
Is this bad?
I know.
And the degree to which father absence and its unbelievably destructive effects on children has been squashed in the mainstream media is really shocking.
And it's one of these things you pass through that portal and your brain and your relationship to society as a whole is never the same.
You know that old saying, a mind once stretched by a grand new idea never regains its original shape.
That was certainly one of the things for me.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
Is that the idea?
Yeah.
So, you've obviously done a lot of work on the necessity of a family for stable marriages, for the positive raising of children.
Can you help people understand father absence, its growth, and its effects on children?
Yeah, so fatherlessness, first of all, just factually speaking, just research alone, I mean, it's really off the charts how unbelievably damaging it is from homelessness to doing poorly in school to dropping out of school to drugs.
I mean, it just goes on and on.
Teen pregnancy, early sexual activity, spread of STDs.
Yeah, it goes on and on.
So let's talk about boys and girls.
A girl who's struggling with her, you know, you could say the phrase daddy issues, meaning usually an absent dad refers to that.
Framework.
If your father was absent, even if you had a father and he was absent, never ever home let's say, or you literally didn't have a father in the home, The results can be very similar in that if you're missing, for a girl who's missing a father figure, she is not seeing what a man is supposed to do and can do and is capable of doing in a home as a husband and a father.
So she has no blueprint for that.
And she's looking for love from a male figure, from a man, that she didn't get.
And that is the reason why she's going to be more sexually active sooner, for obvious reasons.
I can't tell you how many girls who go into, as teenagers, We'll go to bed with a guy thinking that's going to bring them love, that it starts with sex.
Really what they're looking for is completely different from what this boy, boy, real boy at that age is looking for, which is just sex.
That's it.
But it's never just sex for her.
It's always going to be connected to these other emotional needs.
And so that right there is a huge problem in trying to Recover from that male loss by jumping into bed with people.
So that's an issue for girls.
For boys, I can't think of anything more life-altering than growing up without a father for a boy.
It's just different from a girl.
I mean, it's bad for a girl too, but it's just different for a boy.
Talk about not having a blueprint for how to be male and what it means to be a male.
Sort of mix between being strong but also good and kind is very, very much a problem for men today who grew up without fathers in that they don't have any way of knowing what they're supposed to do.
And this gives them a sense of purposelessness.
They turn into these chest-beating caricatures of masculinity.
What's that?
But they turn into these sort of chest beating caricatures of masculinity rather than.
Yeah.
And then, of course, that message mixed with the we don't need you from, you know, the message they're getting from society from women that we don't need you.
Where is the boy going to go if he has no model for how to counteract that bad cultural messages that saying we don't need you?
He's going to flounder.
He's going to spend his life on video games.
He is going to be in the basement.
He is going to be into porn.
He is going to drop out of school.
He is going drugs a whole nine yards.
He's going to go where he shouldn't go because he doesn't know how to go in the other direction.
And the only way to count and it's it's bad on two ends because the culture is also saying we don't need you.
The men and I mean, excuse me, women in society are saying we don't need you.
And you combine that with having no father to teach you how important you are, despite what the culture is telling you.
I mean, you're screwed.
Honestly, it's terrible.
And I don't mean to be hyperbolic about it, but it's it's you.
It's huge.
And of course- greatest catastrophes.
And the other thing, too, is that how many single moms out there, let's say she just chose a bad guy to have kids with.
Now, women, when they're young in particular, are in a fairly good position when it comes to choosing sexual partners.
Because, you know, lots of men around would like to date them.
Lots of men would like to take them out.
Lots of men might like to get married to them and so on.
And so if she chooses, you know, that one tattooed, shiftless, wannabe drummer, loser guy, and, you know, maybe he's a drunk or maybe he's violent or whatever.
So then she has kids with him or a series of guys like him.
How many single moms are going to sit there to their kids and say, well, I screwed up.
You know, there were great guys out there.
I could have got you great fathers.
Instead, I chose this deadbeat who, you know, skipped off to Alaska to find himself and is only sending us a crate of salmon every second month and I'm even allergic.
So how many single moms are going to say that versus how many single moms are going to say, well...
He lied to me.
He presented himself one way.
He turned out to be another.
All men are like that.
How many of them are going to shift responsibility to the man, thus creating a very negative view of men?
And I think it's impossible to have the hostile view towards men that's in society if...
There were more fathers around than people would say, hey, you're insulting my dad when you say men are bad.
But I think with the single mother of shiftless, irresponsible culture that has grown up, I think that a lot of single mothers, I would say the vast majority, are shifting the blame to men for their own poor decisions, which toxifies masculinity in the minds of their children.
No question.
So it's not just the absence of the father, but it's what is being fed to the child about men as a whole.
Or about, yeah, I mean, specifically that man, but also men.
And then They'd be much better off doing what you first said, which is just acknowledging that you screwed up.
I picked this bad man, but he doesn't represent the average man.
I messed up.
I'm sorry.
It's amazing how far that would go for children to have their mothers or fathers, whatever the case may be, apologize to them for having messed up so that they don't come away with a whole negative view of that gender as a whole, which is just making it worse.
It's a terrible problem.
So let's, I mean, I want to give you the last word in terms of, believe it or not, a lot of women listen to this show.
I know it's shocking, but they do, because we talk about the very important issues for both men and women.
But Suzanne, if there's your Sermon on the Mount for young women, you know, before they set the dominoes in motion that can so often determine the course of their life, what is it that you most – no pressure now – what is it that you most want them to understand and to synthesize about the view from your 40s versus the view from your teens?
That you have a very, very, very long life.
And you can't and don't need to accomplish everything at one time.
We live very long lives.
Women live longer than ever and longer than men.
And you have the time and ability to plan things accordingly to get everything done that you want to get done.
Not everything, but many, most.
And you have it even better today because Of the way we live with technology.
It's no longer clocking in at 9 and coming out at 5.
The world functions very differently, so you have so much flexibility.
So that's one thing, is understanding that life is long and you don't need to do everything at one time.
But you need to get comfortable with the fact that when you're not living life according to what the culture tells you, which is getting a paycheck, when you take that time out, That you have to understand the value of what you're doing because the culture isn't going to give it to you.
So you have to find a way to either do your own research, do your own digging, or find it within yourself to understand that your value is not tied to your paycheck and that you are replaceable in the workforce, though nobody wants to tell you that.
You're not so special and so great that nobody can ever replace you there, but you are so special and so great in your home.
With your children.
And you are irreplaceable.
Nobody could possibly...
I mean, that's power.
That's huge power.
And your stamp on the world is so much more significant there than it would ever be outside of the home.
So that's another piece.
Alright.
Go on.
And then just shifting your complete mindset about men and understanding that whatever your paths are with your dad or your previous boyfriends does not mean that...
You can't find what you're looking for if you open yourself up and you're more vulnerable instead of combative with the men in your life, which is ultimately what's going to undermine it if you're combative.
Combative is a problem because that's not what it's about.
It's not what it's supposed to be about.
It doesn't work.
All right.
Well said.
So, obviously, thank you so much for the time of the very, very enjoyable chat.
I just wanted to remind people, Suzanne, S-U-Z-A-N-N-E-V-E-N-K-E-R, SuzanneVenker.com.
We'll put links to your books below.
You had mentioned before we started, you've got a book coming out in February.
Yes.
Which we'll, of course, keep tracking and try and help promote as best we can.
I really, really appreciate your voice in the discussion of gender issues.
And, of course, I invite feedback.
You know, we'll check in at the comments below.
Get people's feedback because we really need to have a clarifying, long-term discussion about gender.
Things have kind of got a little crazy.
Over the past couple of generations, but nature has designed us to be compatible and complementary, not combative and escalating.
And this shouldn't be that hard to find our way back to a proper balance.
And these conversations, I think, are essential for that.
