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July 24, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:49
BARBIE: THE FREEDOMAIN MOVIE REVIEW!
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Alrighty, ready. Time to talk about the Barbie.
Very interesting, wild, chaotic, exciting, illuminating.
And, you know, it's not anti-woke.
It's not woke. It's, you know, kudos to the artist, to the writer, co-writers and the director.
That it manages to overcome its own propaganda to actually create a work of some pretty important human depth and understanding.
So I'm going to have spoilers here.
You name it is going to be going down.
So just be aware of that.
And I'm going to assume you've seen it.
If not, there'll be interesting stuff for you.
Okay, so let's start with the very beginning.
So at the very beginning, there's this tale, and it's sort of a rip-off of 2001 A Space Odyssey, where, oh, there's all of these dolls that girls play with, and the dolls are...
Just babies and the girls are only being trained to be mothers and so on.
And then into this situation, into this girls playing happily, preparing to be mothers with their dolls, in comes titanic skyscraper leg, Margot Robbie as Barbie.
She stands there, gorgeous, showing her legs, showing her fantastic figure, smiling coolly in her sunglasses and sun hat.
And she's just the coolest thing since the Fonz and sliced bread, and the girls look at her in wonder, and they smash their babies on the ground.
Okay, honestly, this is creepy.
It's really creepy and disgusting, and, you know, generally vile as a whole.
And look, this is the paradox that women face.
It's a challenge that women face.
It's a really, it's a devilish, if not downright satanic option that women have.
So what do girls do when they realize that they have sexual market value, right?
When they get older, right? What do they do?
They say, wow, I'm getting a lot of attention and resources for being pretty and sexy and desirable, right?
And what do they do? Well, they have a choice.
And that choice is to say, well, what I'm going to do, you see, what I'm going to do Is I'm going to use my attractiveness to get a quality mate so that I can raise healthy, happy children.
He's going to be a great dad. He's going to be a great provider.
And I'm going to do all this wonderful stuff in my life.
There's one thing. What's your sexiness for?
What's your sexiness for? Well, in the former case, at the beginning of the movie, the sexiness is for the children, right?
It's for the children. It's for kids.
So good. Enjoy that. Now, on the other hand though, Barbie comes along and says, no no no no no no no no no. No, your
sexiness is not for children.
Your womanhood is not for children.
Your motherhood, you're not here to be a mother.
You're here to be a career gal.
A career gal.
And... That's the temptation.
So they smash motherhood to pursue being attractive.
And that fork in the road, right?
The angels say, use your being attractive to create life, nurture life, raise life, be a mother, be a pillar of your community, do charity work, raise the next generation, be wonderful that way, have sunken comfort into your old age.
Because Barbie's eternally young, like that store Forever 21, but women ain't that way.
So sexiness has a short fuse life, a short shelf life, so to speak.
It's a short fuse. Because it's going to disappear.
So sexiness is there to found a family so that you have comfort and companionship into your old age.
That's what it's for. That's what it's for.
But Barbie, with her eternal youth, says, you can be forever sexy, you will forever get attention, you will forever be pursued, and it's a lie.
What is womanhood for?
What is sexiness for?
Is it for being taken on dates?
Is it for having things bought for you?
Is it for having the endless helium excitement of the male gaze and male pursuit?
Is it for your vanity? Is it for your money?
Is it for your... No.
It's for children.
That's what sexiness is for.
So the fact that the girls smash their babies in order to pursue the Barbiedom is wild.
And what a powerful analogy and metaphor for the modern world as a whole.
And this theme continues because there's a discontinued Barbie.
And the discontinued Barbie is the pregnant Barbie.
And she shows up occasionally and everybody just ignores her because she's been discontinued, right?
So motherhood has been discontinued in pursuit of what?
In pursuit of career.
You've got your president Barbie.
You've got your Pulitzer Prize winning writer Barbie.
You've got expert lawyer arguing her case in front of the Supreme Court Barbie.
You even have mermaid Barbie because we wouldn't want to get too realistic.
So... You trade in motherhood for a career, right?
This is the whole Barbie thing.
Rather than you being a mother and practicing with babies, you then bond with a svelte, sexy, attractive Barbie who's an astronaut and a lawyer and a brain surgeon and all of it.
But not pregnant. There's no pregnant Barbie.
She's been discontinued. That's grim.
Man, that's grim. One of the things that happens, just sort of very briefly, this is an aside, right?
Something I've noticed. One of the things that happens is, so the woman who co-wrote and directed this movie, obviously staggeringly talented, wild, inventive, creative.
She says she's been diagnosed with ADHD. She had a kid a couple of years ago.
She had another kid in February of this year.
Year, and I don't know who's raising the kids because she wrote this movie during the pandemic lockdown with her partner.
2020, 2021, she had the baby, I think 2019.
So yeah, she's got a little baby in the house.
I don't know who exactly is raising and playing with the baby when she's writing and preparing for storyboarding, directing, and all of this kind of stuff, a movie.
But one of the things, like if you sit on top of a volcanic eruption of staggering talent, yeah, look, I can understand.
That being a mom to little kids, babies and little kids, is not as exciting, stimulating, or fulfilling as, I don't know, say, writing, co-writing and directing a $150 million movie.
Okay, I get that. It's pretty exciting.
Get a lot of positive feedback, you make a lot of money, and you have a lot of prestige.
And so motherhood, if you're staggeringly talented, motherhood, It's not quite as exciting.
Now, well, it'll be fulfilling if you do it and so on, but, you know, she was a mother and clearly decided to write a movie and direct a movie and all of that.
So it's not like you can't do these things and still be a mother, but she co-wrote it with her partner.
So I don't know who's taking care of the kids.
So if you have this amount of talent, then what you want to do is you want to say, well, gee, I would be bored with motherhood.
So women as a whole must be bored with motherhood.
So I prefer a career because I have all of this staggering talent and ability and maybe a lack of capacity to bond.
I don't know, right? So I get more fulfillment out of a career than being a mother.
And so what you do is then you kind of blindly and selfishly...
I'm not talking about this woman, right? I'm just talking about things in general.
So what you do is then you blindly and selfishly promote career over motherhood because that's what you prefer.
And then you think, well, gosh, that's what women as a whole prefer.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Come on. Come on.
The number of women who can co-write and direct a $150 million movie is very few.
Like, that's one in 50 million.
Now, if you happen to be that one in 50 million, good for you.
Go make the movie. Great. But don't imagine that this is everyone.
Don't imagine. This is like Some guy born with an amazing voice saying, what?
Everyone should be a singer. It's like, no, no, no.
You happen to be born with a great voice.
Good for you. Go sing. I like it.
But that's not all of us.
And so what happens is these women promote these wild one-in-a-million careers.
Supreme Court, justice-arguing lawyer, astronaut, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, president.
They promote these wild career expectations for women.
And thus rob them, in a sense, of having kids, of having a family.
Now, spoiler, these women do not become president.
They do not become a brain surgeon.
They do not become an astronaut. They end up toiling in some corner office, taking angry customer complaints or wrestling with spreadsheets under fluorescent lights until the day they die.
Or want to, which is probably the second day on the job.
Most people are not staggeringly talented.
Most people are not brilliant writers or directors or fantastic movie makers.
No. So what happens is these people, I think it's very selfish, very selfish.
They say, well, I would be unsatisfied with motherhood.
Therefore, motherhood is unsatisfying.
I love my career more than being a mother as a whole.
And therefore, what I'm going to do is I'm going to convince other women to give up motherhood for their career.
But then the women don't end up with great careers and neither do they end up with children.
And it's a miserable, miserable life.
Now, the story as a whole is an analogy, it's a pretty clear analogy, for a woman's journey from childhood to adulthood.
From childhood to adulthood.
So at the beginning of the movie, Barbie is living a child's life.
She doesn't really work.
She hangs around and plays.
She dances. She basically has sleepovers.
She has little parties. And she doesn't understand the infrastructure, because the infrastructure is immaterial to her.
Like the infrastructure of the plumbing.
Like she pretends to shower.
It's not a real shower. Like, you know, Barbie in the dream house.
It's not a real shower. She pretends to eat.
It's not a real toaster. It's not real toast.
She pretends to drink.
She's not a real cup. There's no real water.
So she's living a child's life.
Fine. Appropriate for childhood.
And then what happens is she begins to have thoughts of death.
And she begins to fear cellulite.
And she begins to...
So she's basically starting to go into puberty, right?
The analogy would be. And then she goes from without genitalia.
This is a running gag throughout the movie.
She goes from without genitalia to having genitalia.
At the end of the movie, she finally goes to see a gynecologist because she has a vagina.
So she's going from sexual immaturity to sexual maturity.
She's going from finding boys icky and loud and gross and annoying to whatever, right?
So we'll sort of go through that journey.
So it's a childhood to adulthood journey.
And it's fine.
However, of course, she's an adult, right?
Now, an adult who lives in a childlike state is mentally ill in general, right?
And if you look at the Barbie world, the sort of pink place, nothing is real, nobody has any real achievements, even the water is plastic, nothing works, but everyone pretends it works.
Well, that's an insane asylum.
Like, no kidding, no fooling.
This is an insane asylum for seriously disturbed people.
I'm an astronaut!
Sure, sure you are. Here, take some meds, right?
I'm having a shower, she says, while there's no water coming out.
I'm drinking tea, right?
It's one thing to have a tea party when you're a little kid.
It's charming and fine. But, you know, Barbie is in her 30s, right?
The actress Margot Robbie, who, by the way, is stunning and gorgeous and a fantastically talented actress in just the whole package, right?
So it's one thing to be having a tea party with imaginary friends and imaginary tea when you're 8.
It's quite another thing when you're 33.
That would be a sign of a psychotic break from reality.
So the Barbie world is...
A childlike world of fantasy and delusion, but it's unfortunately inhabited by adult women with no kids.
No kids anywhere, right?
And everyone can just make up whatever they want to be, right?
There's no training. There's no education.
There's no hardship. It's just, oh, I'm a lawyer.
Oh, I'm a writer. Oh, I'm president, right?
It's all just made up and there's no struggle.
There's no challenge. So this is a world of insanity.
And I just want to sort of point this out.
I want to point this out. So this is a female gynocentric world, it's a matriarchy, and unreality is the rule of the day.
Now, this is partly because women and men are designed to work together.
We evolved to work together, we evolved to complement each other, we evolved to offload some resources and requirements to each other, males and females.
So as we evolved in the harsh strictures of nature, We offloaded some things.
Men offloaded a lot of the requirement to care, to feel, to women.
And women remind men to feel, to be emotionally available, and that's great.
And women offloaded a lot of reality processing to men.
And we sort of all know that when women get together, they trade fake compliments.
When men get together, we trade fake insults.
And men... We'll tell each other if they're fat.
Like the old joke that, hey man, am I fat?
Bro, I know five fat people and you're four of them, right?
Whereas for women it's like, no, you look gorgeous, slay, queen, beautiful, blah, blah, blah, right?
So the sort of mindless boosterism leads to unreality, leads to mental illness, right?
As women have turned more and more towards reinforcement from other women rather than from the blunt reality processing of men, women have gotten crazier and crazier.
Mental illness is up and so on.
And the women who tend to be more on the left tend to have more mental illness because they discount the reality processing of men that evolution placed.
Outside of women and inside of men so that we could specialize.
Women have to be very boostery, very positive, because women are having babies and encouraging children to learn skills.
And you do that with like, yay, and good for you, and well, good job, right?
I mean, if you're teaching a kid how to throw the ball and the kid drops the ball, you say, hey, good try.
Here we go. We'll do it again, right?
But if two men are out hunting and one of them throws a spear badly...
And it's just generally a bad spear thrower.
The other man doesn't say, hey man, good job.
Let's get that spear and let's try it again.
It's like you can't afford that because you've got to actually bring some meat home.
Like you can't afford that.
So women tend to be, you know, positive in a not particularly empirical way, which is great and perfect and fine for little kids.
Learning to walk and learning to tie their shoes.
Good job. Try it again. Rabbit goes around the hall.
Whereas men tend to be more reality-based and processed and so on.
So the fact that men have no reality, no authority, no presence really in the early Barbie world is why it's an insane asylum.
And literally, it is an insane asylum.
She believes that she's showering when she's not.
She believes that she can jump from the second story and float down to the ground.
That's a crazy person. No, she's crazy.
So, anyway, what happens is there's sort of a wake-up process.
She starts to think about death and her shower starts dripping real water and things are not working and so on, so she's starting to grow up, right?
So then, long story short, in the Barbie world, the construction workers are all women, but nothing works.
Right? Do you understand? It's kind of funny in a way, right?
All the construction workers in Barbie land are women, and nothing works.
Nothing has to work, right?
Because it's all fantasy made up.
It's all an asylum, right?
So then she goes to the real world.
Barbie and Ken go to the real world.
And all the construction workers are men.
But things work. Like, things actually work.
And it's pretty funny, like, I'm sure you know this, but like half of men work in infrastructure, right?
Keeping the lights on, keeping the electricity flowing as a whole, keeping the water flowing, keeping the roads running, keeping the factories and, right, the things that actually keep us alive.
Half of men work in those fields.
In construction, like 3.9% of construction workers are women.
Women are only 3% represented in the trades as a whole.
And, you know, There's lots of reasons for this, but women prefer to work with people rather than things.
Men prefer often to work with things rather than people.
And actually, my white studio was built by a friend of mine's wife.
She really wanted to do it, and I was happy to pay her to do that.
And she worked very hard at it and did a great job, but she couldn't move her arms for a month because it was so hard on her tendons and joints, right?
Now, in the insane asylum of Barbie Land, Ken's are oppressed, but they don't have any jobs.
They don't have any role. They just mindlessly sit around and they're like harem victims or something like that.
But men have no presence. They're completely excluded, oppressed, and whatever Ken wants, because he wants to date Barbie or whatever, and she's just like, I want you to go now.
I want you to go away. So she's dismissive and cold and kind of mean.
And none of the women ever think, gee, we should be more inclusive of the men.
So this is kind of like a revenge fantasy that, again, takes place in a functional insane asylum.
So the Kens are oppressed. Now, it's interesting, too, because early in the movie, when Barbie has a party, the men are excluded.
But later on, when Ken has a party, the women are welcome.
So Ken's world is much more inclusive, right?
So when Ken and Barbie...
Go to the real world. They learn about the patriarchy.
And it's very interesting because Ken then thinks, well, as a male or a white male or whatever, he's going to have everything he wants.
Everyone's going to defer to him and so on.
So then he tries to go and get jobs, right?
He tries to go and get a job as a doctor.
He tries to go and get a job in business.
He tries to go and get a job even as a lifeguard.
And everyone says, well, no, because you're not qualified.
You don't have any experience. You don't have any education.
You can't do this job, right?
So it's interesting. It's interesting.
So... In Barbie land, people can just make up whatever they want to do.
They don't need any qualifications. No education, no books, no library, no training, no struggle, no teachers, right?
So people can make up whatever they want.
The women can make up whatever they want to do for themselves, and it's fine.
Everyone just agrees and cheers, right?
There's no reality to any of this, right?
But then when Barbie and Ken go into the patriarchy, Ken finds out that the patriarchy is in fact a meritocracy.
Isn't that interesting?
The patriarchy is a meritocracy because he can't get a job because he's not qualified.
Isn't that wild, right?
Patriarchy is meritocracy.
And female achievement is imaginary.
In the movie. I mean, that's not me bringing stuff to you.
It's right there in the movie, right? Now, Barbie then meets a teenage girl.
She's, I guess, early mid-teens or whatever.
And she's dressed in black and she's very grim and dark and, I guess, a feminist and so on.
And she introduces herself sort of happily and says, you know, I'm happy to meet you.
I'm pleased to meet you. And this girl is vicious to Barbie.
Just verbally tears her apart.
Verbally abusive, destructive, horrible, mean.
Makes Barbie cry.
Just a real horrible, horrible girl.
And calls Barbie a fascist and that she's Promoting sexualized capitalism and mindless consumerism and marketing and so on, which is wild.
So, you see, marketing and sexualized capitalism is really, really bad.
The marketing of Barbie and the sexualized marketing of Barbie is insane.
It's on Krispy Kreme donuts, ruggable rugs, OPI nail polish, gap t-shirts, toothbrushes, luggage, pool floats, ice cream, frozen yogurt, makeup, cars, blankets, hairbrushes, and heels.
A dream house is on Airbnb.
Every publicist pushing sunglasses or sex toys has retooled their strategy around Barbie core for the summer.
I have never worn so much pink in my life.
That voice might have been taken over by the third person at some point.
And also, yeah, sexualized marketing is bad, but all of Barbie has been sexualized marketing, right?
Ken's abs and Barbie's butt in tight spandex as she rolled, but it's all sexualized.
So you're criticizing what exactly the movie is based on and sold by.
That's kind of boring and predictable and all of that.
So yeah, can't really do much about that other than Point it out.
And the mother, played very well by America Ferrara, the mother is exhausted and bitter, and it's a single mom.
Like, there's a dad kind of floating around, or a father figure floating around, but he's not present.
He's got no spine. He's just another one of these, I don't know, stereotypical idiot white guys who doesn't even know Spanish, man.
And so it's a single mom and a single daughter, right?
And she's exhausted, right?
She works all the time. So then who raised...
Raised her daughter, right? So what's really interesting is in this situation, right, there's two places where men have no authority, right?
And men are not present, right?
And by authority, I don't mean domination over, just any credibility.
Men have no credibility, right? The first is the insane asylum where nothing works and everyone makes up whatever they want to be called Barbie Land.
And the second is this family, the mother-daughter, no father, right?
No father in the flashbacks.
No father ever shows up to discuss anything.
So, in the first instance, there's cruelty towards Ken.
The Kens are marginalized and so on.
And in the second one, the mother and the daughter kind of hate each other.
And the daughter is unhappy and dysfunctional.
And the unhappiness and dysfunctionality of the daughter erupts, as she calls Barbie, a fascist.
That's really interesting. It's against cancel culture.
Because the... Bobby is not a fascist, obviously.
So the movie is clearly stating that people use political insults to mask their own deep emotional problems.
And in this case, the deep emotional problem is a lack of a father.
A lack of a father. So fathers are essential for teaching children how to manage their aggression.
Because that's one thing that men do continually.
What do we do? We manage our own aggression.
That's our gig. That's our job.
That's our life. And so this girl has no capacity to manage her own aggression.
It's completely horribly verbally abusive.
Just brutal. So, there is a speech that the mom gives.
Very interesting speech.
About, oh, just how awful and contradictory it is to be a woman.
And she says, you have to be thin, but not too thin.
And you can never say you want to be thin.
You have to say you want to be healthy, but you also have to be thin.
You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass.
You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean.
You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas.
You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time.
You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people.
You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining.
You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be part of the sisterhood.
But always stand out and always be grateful, but never forget that the system is rigged.
So find a way to acknowledge that, but also always be grateful.
You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.
It's too hard. It's too contradictory.
And nobody gives you a medal or says thank you.
And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
Right. Well, that's somebody in the wrong field, right?
Now, what's wild, of course, is that as I'm pushing 57, I've heard this speech approximately 10 million times over the course of my life.
There was a famous one about threesomes in Gone Girl.
So, yeah, the speech about how hard it is to be a woman.
Okay. You ever heard a speech about how hard it is to be a man?
You ever have a man? Like, I don't know what her partner was doing, trying to get the male perspective in or whatever, right?
But did you ever, this is like rank narcissistic, solipsistic self-pity is just brutal on the soul.
It's exhausting because there's no empathy in it.
I'm the victim. I'm the victim.
Life's so hard. To be a woman.
Do you think... I mean, I'm just...
To the ladies out there, I'm curious.
Genuinely curious. Do you think that men don't face any contradictions?
Not at all? Do you think...
We're not expected to make a lot of money but also be at home a lot.
You don't think we're expected to provide a lot of resources but also be very fit.
You don't think we're expected to go out there and be tough and then come home and be sensitive.
You don't think that we face this tightrope of share your feelings but not too much because that's too vulnerable and I'm losing respect for you and losing my desire for you.
Be emotionally available but don't show vulnerability because that's a turn off.
You don't think that men have any contradictions to live in this life?
That women say that they want a sensitive man and then buy approximately 12 billion copies of Fifty Shades of Grey, where a guy beats up a woman, which is fine apparently if you have a helicopter.
You don't think that men face any contradictions at all?
That you have to share your feelings, but never share your feelings about how tough it is to be a man.
Be honest. But no, no, don't be that honest.
I want to know what you think, but not those thoughts.
Come on. I mean, that's part of the fun of life, is having these contradictions.
But the idea that only women face contradictions, and most of these contradictions, by the way, are enforced by other women.
The sisterhood noise. You don't think that for a man, it's tough, because he can be blunt with his employees if the employees are male, but he has to be delicate and sensitive and tiptoe around female employees a lot of the times because they get too triggered.
You don't think it's tough?
We're supposed to respect women, but then women play the victim a lot, which is not something that men respect.
But if you point that out, then you're sexist.
Like, come on. I mean, the idea that only women have to deal with contradictions, it's crazy.
It's really, really sad. So here's the other thing too, right?
So unrealistic body expectations.
So when the girls were playing with dolls, then they are not thinking about their own bodies.
They're thinking about caring for dolls.
The moment that the girls bond with the Tower of Babel-legged sexy Barbie, then, oh, this is unrealistic body expectations.
Now, what's interesting is that nobody ever talks about the unrealistic body expectations engendered by the Ken doll, right?
Ken doll. It's really important.
Really important. You say, ah, yes, but boys don't play with Ken.
It's like, well, we know that girls play with Ken, and we also know that, you know, very tall and possibly slender, a thick head of blonde hair, square jaw, blue eyes, or whatever's going on with Ken's eyes.
I don't know if they're even painted. But that's a wildly unrealistic male body type.
I mean, forget the Masters of the Universe, He-Man, Thor, Conan nonsense, right?
Or, for that matter, Rocky or Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But the girls are bonding with Ken's Impossible Body Standards.
And that's wild, right?
Nobody talks about that.
Nobody ever talks about that.
Oh, no, no, because it's only the girls.
Now, the Barbie body standard is basically just don't be fat, right?
Don't be fat. And...
What's the big deal? Maybe it's not that impossible to not be fat.
So yeah, I just sort of wanted to point that out.
There's a sort of body standard.
Now, here's the thing too. They say, well, Barbie's body standard is impossible.
It's terrible and so on.
And basically, it's just don't be fat, right?
I mean, maybe you're not quite tall, not that slender or whatever, but just, you know, don't be overweight.
So apparently, saying to women, don't be overweight is like this crazy, ridiculous, impossible body standard, right?
However, saying to women, be president, be an astronaut, be a top lawyer, be a writer who wins a Pulitzer Prize, that's totally achievable.
Like, how insane is this?
It's saying that expecting women to not be overweight is completely unrealistic, but telling women they could be astronauts and presidents, totally realistic.
How about unrealistic career expectations?
Anybody talk about that?
Is that a thing at all? It's just wild.
Absolutely wild. We got President Barbie, Dr.
Barbie, Writer Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, even Mermaid Barbie.
But yeah, insanely unrealistic.
Career expectations is pretty wild.
And here's the thing too, right? This is crazy, crazy, crazy ideal female body expectations.
It's like, hello, have you looked at Ryan Gosling?
The man looks like he's photoshopped and an improvement on Michelangelo's David.
I mean, the guy has a completely gorgeous, almost flawless physique.
And yet, that's totally fine to have.
So, women can lust after men with a perfect physique, but the moment that men think that Barbie's attractive, that's a completely unrealistic body expectation.
Oh my god.
That's wild.
Absolutely wild, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You go and chase becoming president and then lose the ability to have children.
You'll never become president and you'll end up with no kids.
And for most people, like let's be democratic here.
Let's be like middle of the bell curve, right?
For most people, kids is the greatest creativity they'll have.
They can't create novels.
They can't create movies. They can't create enduring poetry.
They can't create video games, but they can create people.
And so you're robbing from people the most creativity that they're ever going to have and replacing it with completely insane, unrealistic expectations that will never happen, right?
So, let me just do a little speech here at the end.
A little speech at the end. So men and women evolved to be partners in the incredibly strict, death-filled, predator-filled, war-filled, disease-filled nightmare of evolution men and women held hands to make it through.
We evolved to be in partnership with each other.
We evolved to fit together as perfectly emotionally and spiritually as we do physically.
And that's just a fact.
We are the pinnacle of four billion years of evolution, all designed to have things work perfectly well together.
And I don't for the life of me know why there's such a market of disliking the other sex.
Why is there such a market for this stuff?
Oh, women have it too easy.
Oh, men are patriarchs. Why?
We evolved to partner.
We evolved to work together.
We are the perfect partnership of four billion years of evolution.
If there was a better way for us to partner, that would have happened.
It didn't happen. This is the best we can do.
This is the best there is.
This is the ideal platonic form of perfect compatibility.
And yet there seems to be just this wild market of turning the differences into horrible, hellish, terrible things.
Why? Why? Do you know why men are the way they are?
Why are men? There's still women out there.
Why are we the way we are?
Because that's how you chose us to be.
Throughout most of human history, far more women reproduced than men, which meant that women were choosing the men.
So why do we have 40% more upper body strength?
Because that's what you found attractive and that's what you chose.
Why is it that we're taller?
Because that's what you found attractive and that's what you chose.
Why do we have deeper voices?
Why do we have more testosterone?
Why are we more aggressive? Why do we prefer working with things rather than people?
Why are we less emotionally available?
Because that's what you all wanted.
We are the shadows cast by female desire, female acceptance.
We are as you chose us to be.
And I get that it's a mutual choice in all of that, right?
I get that. I get that.
The top tier of men got to reproduce with multiple women, and so women evolved to reflect what the top tier of men preferred and desired.
But we are as we chose each other to be.
And it's so bizarre to me that people rail against the results of choice.
Now, it wasn't our individual choice, but it was our collective choice as people.
How can you hate the perfect results of highly pressured evolution?
It just seems bizarre to me.
It's like railing against humanity because we don't have eyes in the back of our head.
Hey man, if it had been advantageous for us to have eyes in the back of our head, it probably would have evolved at some point.
But it didn't, so it isn't.
Now, I know evolution isn't perfect and all of that, but I mean, we got to the top of the food chain and we had pretty comfortable lives.
That's because we evolved to support each other.
We evolved to complement each other.
We evolved to love each other.
And yet there's this huge market for resentment and self-pity.
And maybe it's because you can't get the girl that you want, or maybe it's because you can't get the boy that you want, and so you just sour grapes and rail against it and so on.
Like, it's tragic, it's sad, it's horrible, it's horrifying, it strips people of love.
Gosh! We should celebrate the delightful incomprehensibility of the other sex.
And we should treasure it, and we should worship it, and we should love it, because that's where happy families, happy children, and a happy world comes from.
And this sowing the seeds of division, and you're oppressed, and women are bitches, right?
Ugh! It's terrible.
It's demonic, really.
It strips us of love. It says, well, give up that which is of most treasure in the life.
Children, family, love, connection.
Give all of that up for a paycheck.
For sitting in a cubicle, typing and listening to the creaky sounds of your eggs dropping and dying.
Oh, it's terrible.
Take money, lose love.
Take the world, lose your lineage.
Here's some leftover dollars from your taxes.
Go buy some boxed wine because you've got no children, no future, and no compatibility or love for the most part for the last 40 years of your life.
Oh, absolutely terrible and awful, demonic, wretched, monstrous.
Because where does Barbie go at the end of the movie?
She goes to live in the real world.
She goes to live in the patriarchy.
That's where she could go and live in the Barbie Asylum with all the other girls with their imaginary careers.
But no, she chooses to live in reality.
She chooses to live in the patriarchy.
She chooses to live in the meritocracy that the patriarchy represents.
Because remember, Ken goes to try to get all these jobs.
Can't get the jobs. Doesn't have the paperwork.
She chooses to live in the patriarchy.
She becomes an adult female.
That's pretty good. It's a pretty good choice.
It's a pretty good outcome.
Can we ask for more than that?
No. She grows up.
She leaves the asylum. Embraces masculinity.
And she tells Ken also, stop being a simp.
Right? So why Ken is funny, right?
All the men are called Ken. Because if you're a woman as beautiful as Margot Robbie, then all men kind of look the same because all men are trying to conform to what you want.
Trying to bed you, trying to woo you, trying to get you to be the girlfriend or wife.
So they're just trying to twist themselves into pretzels to please you.
And she's saying, look, stop trying to please me.
Right? Because this is the other paradox that men have to work with.
Right? That women want us to be ourselves.
Right? And also, bend over backwards to please them.
Right? No contradictions for men.
No, it's just simple. A to B. But she's saying to Ken, stop simping.
Be yourself. Because this is life, right?
You've got to be thoroughly yourself and see who wants to come along for the ride and see whose ride you want to go along with.
You don't bend yourself into nothing, into vaporware to try and please other people because then you neither please them nor yourself.
You cease to exist without gaining love.
You have to be loved for who you are and if you're changing who you are to try and get someone to like you, then you are simply saying that you're not likable by the person you want in your natural state.
Be yourself. See who wants to come along for the ride.
That's the essential part.
And there's a great speech towards the end.
A lot of sentimentality, right?
It's kind of funny, too, because the Mattel executives are all males, but in the real world, the woman handler, Ruth Handler, I think her name was, who invented Barbie, ended up having to quit in the 70s because of fairly significant financial fraud that she got a huge punishment for in terms of community service, like 5,000 hours, something, four years of probation.
That was something crazy, right? There are men in charge of Mattel, but when the woman was in charge, she almost torpedoed the whole thing with fraud and corruption.
I just thought it was kind of an interesting sidebar.
But yeah, there's a great speech at the end just saying, listen, don't...
Don't just try and be what I want.
Because that's manipulative, right?
And for Ken to become himself rather than just be the shadow of Barbie and what she wants, it's a good message.
It's a good message for men. Stop simping.
Stop simping. You cannot, you cannot ever be loved without being willing to be rejected.
Because if you change yourself to avoid rejection, you've already rejected yourself and nobody can accept you after that.
So it's worth watching the movie and it's wild, it's entertaining, it's cool.
When the women are in charge, the men are oppressed.
And then when the women get back in charge, the men are also oppressed again.
Like it's pretty brutal that way.
The men don't have any power.
Can we get a Supreme Court justice?
Just one? We're half the population?
Can we just get one out of twelve? No.
Maybe some lower court judge or whatever, right?
So the women are, you know, the women complain, the girl complains that Barbies are fascists, but the women are actually fascists in terms of, like, taking half the population and stripping them of all of their power.
So, yeah, because men learn how to handle power because there are direct consequences.
To the abuse of power for men, which is you get punched in the face, right?
Or something like that. For women, there's fewer consequences to the abuse of power.
And therefore, they tend to handle power less well in many ways.
So yeah, it turns out that the women are just as brutal, if not more brutal, than the men when all is said and done.
It's worth watching the movie. I think it's very interesting.
I'm certainly curious about what you think, and I'm very glad that the movie was made.
It's one of the most thought-provoking movies I've seen in a while, but that's pre-Oppenheimer, so we'll see what happens there.
Thanks, Emil, everyone, so much.
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Thank you so much. Lots of love.
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