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Dating in the UK and Female Separatism
32 Plays1 year ago
Savannah is joined by UK-based feminists Jen Izaakson and Hannah Berelli to explore the unique challenges and dynamics of dating in the UK and the female separatist movement.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the female dating strategy podcast the meanest female only podcast on the internet I am your guest host now Savannah because Diana and Rose are taking a very very well deserved week off from recording this week so I'll be your guest host on the main podcast
00:00:17
Speaker
But I am not alone and I am delighted to be joined by two extremely fabulous feminists and two women that I really, really wanted to get on the podcast for quite some time now.
00:00:29
Speaker
I think we conceptualized this episode probably over a year ago.
00:00:33
Speaker
So I'm really, really excited to get them on the podcast and to pick their brains.
00:00:39
Speaker
So joining me today, we have Jen and Hannah Borelli.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome, Jen and Hannah.
00:00:45
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:46
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:47
Speaker
Really glad to be here.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:00:51
Speaker
Red Femme on FDS, finally.
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:54
Speaker
I'm so excited to have you both on.
00:00:56
Speaker
And before we started recording, we were talking about some of the topics that we will bring to the show today.
00:01:02
Speaker
But before we get into it, Jen and Hannah, do you just want to introduce yourselves a bit?
00:01:08
Speaker
Tell us a bit what you're about and how you came across FDS.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm Jen.
00:01:16
Speaker
I have a PhD on Freud that I finished a couple of years ago.
00:01:21
Speaker
And then that thesis is getting turned into a book that is hopefully being published in the next year.
00:01:28
Speaker
And yeah, I guess I came across FDS...
00:01:33
Speaker
I think it was either on Twitter, on X, or I heard someone reference it.
00:01:39
Speaker
I think that it was something like that.
00:01:42
Speaker
I think it was like conversations, like people saying, like, have you listened to it?
00:01:45
Speaker
Have you listened to it?
00:01:46
Speaker
You know when they say this or you know when they say that.
00:01:48
Speaker
And so I thought, oh, this is a very popular podcast, so I should have a listen.
Discussing Modern Feminist Literature
00:01:52
Speaker
And then I thought, oh, this is very useful for straight women.
00:01:58
Speaker
We try to be.
00:01:59
Speaker
We try to be useful for straight women.
00:02:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm Hannah Borelli on Twitter at Hannah Borelli.
00:02:06
Speaker
I'm the co-host of Red Femme and editor of On the Woman Question, which is a blog that covers Marxism, feminism, radical feminism, how they intersect.
00:02:17
Speaker
I'm also on TikTok, where I talk about feminist topics.
00:02:22
Speaker
And yeah, that's me, soon to be coming to Substack.
00:02:25
Speaker
Nice.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I really think it's so great that there is so much, I guess, like radical feminist literature that's coming out in our modern time as well.
00:02:35
Speaker
I think the OG radical feminist, they did a fantastic job in terms of, you know, writing literature and also sharing think pieces as well.
00:02:43
Speaker
But it's also really, really good to get that in real time and also relating to the real issues that we are currently facing in 2024 as well.
00:02:51
Speaker
So I'm really, really excited about both of your books and also your blogs as well.
00:02:57
Speaker
I think it'll be a much needed positive addition to the ever-growing body of life.
00:03:02
Speaker
I suppose, in modern day feminist literature as well, because this is all part of history, isn't it?
00:03:07
Speaker
In 10, 20, 30 years time, people will be reading the stuff that we're putting out, just like, you know, we're reading the stuff of the feminists from, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago now.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting you mentioned that about original radical feminist literature and the second wave.
00:03:25
Speaker
When you read that stuff, it's really interesting in the ways in which you can relate to it and it resonates with you and the ways in which it doesn't.
00:03:32
Speaker
And I'm always surprised, actually, by how much it does resonate.
00:03:36
Speaker
I remember reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique for the first time.
00:03:40
Speaker
In fact, I listened to it on an audio book.
00:03:42
Speaker
And I thought this is about housewives in the 1950s.
00:03:45
Speaker
It's a bit of like a historical artifact from that time.
00:03:49
Speaker
It's a really important book in the second wave.
00:03:52
Speaker
I thought I'll listen to it because, you know, it's the thing to do.
00:03:56
Speaker
It's an important book, whatever.
00:03:57
Speaker
The way in which it kind of really jumped off the page, be living in a totally different time in a totally different circumstance.
00:04:04
Speaker
It was really, really fascinating.
00:04:07
Speaker
And I think what was interesting for me in that book was
00:04:10
Speaker
was Betty Fried was talking about how women in the 1950s and 60s, and I suppose the 40s, when they were children, were really raised with this idea that if you're not a mother and you don't want to be a housewife, that you have like a psychological problem, like there's something really deeply wrong with you.
00:04:26
Speaker
And we could laugh that now, that was literally what was taught, like you have a mental illness, if you don't want to be a mother and a housewife, that was really it.
00:04:37
Speaker
And how women would take on this lifestyle in their early 20s and even in their teens.
00:04:42
Speaker
And then when they're 35, 40, kind of have this feeling that something wasn't quite right, that they couldn't quite put their finger on.
00:04:49
Speaker
And how I really related to it was, I feel like our generation went through a very similar thing with liberal feminism, which is really a kind of anti-feminism, actually.
Societal Expectations of Women
00:05:01
Speaker
This idea that, you know, the more sex with men you have and the more sexually available to men you are, the more liberated you are, the more happy you are, the more whatever.
00:05:11
Speaker
And then women going through that process and just being totally unhappy, having no sexual boundaries, the idea that men and women are sexually the same sort of in every way was also a big thing that I was raised with.
00:05:23
Speaker
So yeah, it's really fascinating how these things work out.
00:05:26
Speaker
It's like,
00:05:28
Speaker
archetypes isn't it so in the 50s it was being a housewife and today it's like being a pornified sex pot yeah who's up for anything yeah but also it's interesting how you're going back to when you said that the young women were taught that if they didn't want to be a wife or a mother that they had a mental illness
00:05:49
Speaker
If it was possible to diagnose child-free women with a mental illness in 2024, I 100% believe it would be a thing.
00:05:57
Speaker
To some degree, they even say, like, you must be mentally ill, there's something wrong with you, you're defective if you just don't want that today.
00:06:04
Speaker
And I just fully believe that if there was, like, an illness they could diagnose women with,
00:06:10
Speaker
you know, if they wanted to be child free or to not be married to a man, they would 100% do it.
00:06:15
Speaker
And I wouldn't be surprised if in pockets of the world outside, even within the Western world, that that is an actual thing that they will find a mental illness to attach to a woman who is rejecting the idea that she has to be like a wife or a mother, especially given the state of men and dating today.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think instead, I mean, online, certainly, I don't know how much in real life, because I just wouldn't be in contact with people like that.
00:06:40
Speaker
But there's just this kind of social shaming, like positions you as if like that would, say, be your worth, or like, that's the only thing that would make you happy.
00:06:48
Speaker
And as if that'd be really hard to achieve.
00:06:50
Speaker
It's like, obviously, we could all be pregnant by 21 if we wanted, like, it's not difficult.
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:57
Speaker
It's always when people are like, oh, why are you married?
00:06:59
Speaker
I'm like, getting married to a man is not difficult.
00:07:03
Speaker
And you're right.
00:07:03
Speaker
If I wanted to be married by 25, I could have absolutely done.
00:07:06
Speaker
I could have even probably had a kid on the way or two by now.
00:07:10
Speaker
But it's really, really, really not difficult.
00:07:12
Speaker
If we all lowered our standards enough, you would find a man to shack up with quite easily.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:19
Speaker
Well, that's the thing, though, that it's hard to find.
00:07:21
Speaker
So what you want is a good husband and what you would want to like this thing about, you know, in the 50s, everyone should be a mother.
00:07:27
Speaker
It's like, OK, but if you're not in a position to be like a good mother or like a good enough mother, this concept by Winnicott.
00:07:33
Speaker
So maybe you're not mature enough or maybe, you know, yeah, you're going to resent having children because you've not done all the things you want to do when you're young.
00:07:40
Speaker
It's like.
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, lots of people think in the right circumstances or after I've done X, Y and Z, maybe I'd consider being a mother.
00:07:47
Speaker
But then there's just this idea that like, yeah, you shouldn't have any standards for being a mother or being with a man.
00:07:53
Speaker
But then at the same time, like you remember last week or maybe the week before now, Taylor Swift came out in support of Kamala Harris.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:02
Speaker
And then, you know, the internet was a bit awash with criticism and kind of saying, oh, you know, she's a childless cat lady at 34, as if 34 is old,
Successful Women and Relationship Dynamics
00:08:13
Speaker
by the way.
00:08:13
Speaker
And a friend of ours, this woman, Sal Grover, who runs the Giggle podcast, she basically responded saying, you know, I'm 38.
00:08:24
Speaker
I have a two-year-old, like the idea that Taylor doesn't have time.
00:08:28
Speaker
And then what it was is after you accept the premise of women should have children, it became a list.
00:08:33
Speaker
They were like, did you conceive naturally?
00:08:36
Speaker
Are you still married to the man?
00:08:37
Speaker
And if you are still married to the man, were you a virgin when you met him?
00:08:41
Speaker
So it becomes in the end, this like list of demands that once you give into the logic at all, just becomes like the classic question.
00:08:47
Speaker
women as property you know you need to reserve yourself for marriage with a man at a you know fairly young age and then have all these children but it's like so i thought oh yeah you can't win like if you've just slept with anyone before marriage actually you're out of the game so there's no point competing in the game
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just, and again, like, I don't know why Taylor Swift gets so many people's backs up.
00:09:11
Speaker
I don't listen to Taylor Swift, if I'm honest.
00:09:14
Speaker
But anytime I come across her on X or on social media, people are ranting about her for some reason.
00:09:21
Speaker
And it's somewhat amusing that she's deemed a childless cat lady when it's like, I severely doubt that Taylor Swift is hurting for company, given who she is and her age.
00:09:32
Speaker
I really, really doubt that she sits alone in her mansion in a rocking chair surrounded by cats.
00:09:38
Speaker
I really don't think that's her reality, just for some bizarre reason anyway.
00:09:43
Speaker
Well, I think she's hated because she's really loved by girls and young women.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
00:09:50
Speaker
Some men might find her sexy, or they might like her music, but really she makes music for girls.
00:09:54
Speaker
Like all her songs are about almost like adolescent heartache.
00:09:57
Speaker
And she doesn't try to pander to men at all.
00:10:00
Speaker
Like at all.
00:10:01
Speaker
I don't see anything about her image or her music that says, I want to be appealing to men.
00:10:08
Speaker
Her dancing, like, isn't sexy.
00:10:09
Speaker
It's more like sleepover dance routines.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yes, lots of young women love her.
00:10:17
Speaker
And I think she's also just hated because she's like a billionaire kind of off her own back, like her own talents got her there.
00:10:24
Speaker
And, you know, and the thing is, I mean, I haven't listened to a lot.
00:10:28
Speaker
Obviously, I've just heard and absorbed the singles that are on the radio when you're out and about.
00:10:33
Speaker
But...
00:10:33
Speaker
as far as I'm aware anyway, she's had various albums about, in fact, wanting to marry a boyfriend and then he wasn't interested.
00:10:39
Speaker
And then she thought, oh, you know, fine.
00:10:41
Speaker
I'm going to have to, you know, stop this now because you're not wanting to get married after so many years.
00:10:46
Speaker
Was that Tom Hiddleston?
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:50
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:10:51
Speaker
No, no.
00:10:53
Speaker
It's Joe Alwyn.
00:10:57
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:10:58
Speaker
I know she dated Tom Hiddleston, but then yes, Joe rings a bell as well.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think they were together for like seven years.
00:11:05
Speaker
And I'm just like, you fumbled that.
00:11:08
Speaker
I know.
00:11:09
Speaker
But I don't know.
00:11:09
Speaker
Do you think he didn't marry her because it was like very intimidating to marry a billionaire for a man like that?
00:11:15
Speaker
Because I think he comes from like British old money.
00:11:17
Speaker
And usually they're quite secure, though.
00:11:20
Speaker
They're usually quite secure about it.
00:11:21
Speaker
He was already well off.
00:11:23
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:24
Speaker
Like I have a friend, my best friend who is, yeah, like a very classically heterosexual, but unsuccessful sort of business woman.
00:11:32
Speaker
And so she's quite well off having run this business for like a decade and a half.
00:11:36
Speaker
And she would often have to hide
00:11:39
Speaker
on dates with men that she was a business owner.
00:11:43
Speaker
So she would just say, oh, I make jewelry.
00:11:45
Speaker
And they'd think, oh, that's sweet.
00:11:47
Speaker
This woman makes jewelry and sells it on the internet.
00:11:50
Speaker
And then when they'd find out that she runs the largest jewelry training center in the world,
00:11:56
Speaker
with like several million turnover a year and you know hundreds of thousand pounds worth of profit after paying all the staff and salaries and whatever a lot of them would sort of get intimidated because it's like they wanted to be the star at least in the career area and she was like she's like what a lot of men want is they don't mind if you're a bit successful like you could be the office supervisor but they don't want you to be the ceo
00:12:20
Speaker
Because then that takes the shine away from them.
00:12:24
Speaker
But then the other type she's come across is the parasite.
00:12:28
Speaker
The parasite!
00:12:31
Speaker
I love that.
00:12:32
Speaker
Types of low-value man, the parasite.
00:12:37
Speaker
Well, in behaviourist terms, this is what this is.
00:12:40
Speaker
Like, you know, they fully like that they're like, oh, I can be with a woman who's rich and I won't have to work again.
00:12:46
Speaker
I can sit in her, like, great house.
00:12:50
Speaker
The thing that's weird is a lot of those men, I guess because the way men are socialised, still don't think they have to offer anything.
00:12:57
Speaker
So you would think that that man would think, oh, I need to be a house husband.
00:13:00
Speaker
They just think that they just need to just bring the peen and just be male and that's enough.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, whereas you'd think that they'd sort of understand, like I think lots of women do that want to be housewives, that you're like the house manager.
00:13:13
Speaker
You're organizing everybody.
00:13:15
Speaker
You're making sure people are on time for their appointments.
00:13:17
Speaker
You're planning the holidays.
00:13:19
Speaker
You're planning the nice Christmas events.
00:13:21
Speaker
They really just think like, but my presence is enough.
00:13:26
Speaker
And it's like, well, no, because it still becomes, I think of like, who's contributing what.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, I just have so much contempt for men like that.
00:13:34
Speaker
It really is.
00:13:34
Speaker
I don't actually hate men.
00:13:35
Speaker
I'm not really capable of hating anyone, I don't think.
00:13:38
Speaker
But I have a lot of contempt for that kind of I'm a special little boy kind of man.
00:13:45
Speaker
It really does something to me.
00:13:46
Speaker
Like I would take like...
00:13:48
Speaker
any kind of really active misogynist like I think over that.
00:13:52
Speaker
It's almost like different chickens have come home to roots.
00:13:56
Speaker
Back in the day when a household could function on one income alone and it was easier to acquire things like property and you probably had a stronger village because people didn't tend to move hundreds and if not thousands of miles away from their family members.
00:14:12
Speaker
But women have
Household Roles and Dual Income Dynamics
00:14:13
Speaker
not only had to contend with the shifting dynamics in dating, you
00:14:17
Speaker
So for example, you know, needing to have a career of their own, going to uni, sometimes being the main breadwinner in the household now.
00:14:25
Speaker
I think we did a bonus content episode a few weeks ago where Patricia and I were talking and going through an article that said that more and more women are basically becoming either the heads of household, that sounds very royal, or the breadwinners in an increasing number of cases, basically.
00:14:44
Speaker
And so we now have a thing where women are not only expected to still take on the traditional 1940s, 1950s duties of keeping the house clean, make sure everybody's fed, being the house manager, but we're also expected and in some cases required now to also bring in additional money.
00:15:02
Speaker
And so I see what liberal feminism was trying to do in giving women expanded working rights, which I completely agree with, and equality in the law.
00:15:12
Speaker
But unfortunately, that didn't translate or it didn't take into account the ways in which that would change the dynamics in the home.
00:15:19
Speaker
Because if we're giving women equality in the workplace, okay, going 50-50, did that equality translate to essentially managing the home?
00:15:29
Speaker
Because even when women earn more money than the men, they end up doing majority of the housework still.
00:15:37
Speaker
Which is just like the biggest scam.
00:15:38
Speaker
Like what is even the point of having a man around if not only you're bringing in more money, but you're doing more work than him?
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, all the studies show that.
00:15:47
Speaker
And even ones where there is a house husband and the woman works full time, she does more domestic house worth.
00:15:53
Speaker
What?
00:15:56
Speaker
I think there's an unacknowledged, a kind of fact of life, but basically from men's perspective, I think women end up overvaluing what they bring to the table in terms of like willingness to cook, clean, whatever, because it's not that it's not valuable, but I don't think women want to acknowledge how much men are happy to live in filth.
00:16:17
Speaker
They really are.
00:16:18
Speaker
Like if I think about what even as a sort of not very feminine woman, my ideal flat would be like mattress on the floor, clothing rail, nothing comforting, a single chair, like a recliner in front of a TV, maybe something else for like a friend when they come around to sit on and then just like microwave meals.
00:16:40
Speaker
And I'd be like, oh, so streamlined, so simple, so nice.
00:16:45
Speaker
And then it's felt as disruptive that this feminine being wants to come into your house and put rugs everywhere and make things look nice and tidy up once a day.
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker
But it is actually better objectively for men's health, like men who are single and live alone, die so much younger, they do just live in filth, they do crap.
00:17:07
Speaker
And it's that they don't yet have the quote, unquote, nagging wife being like, do you not think you should do some exercise?
00:17:13
Speaker
Do
00:17:13
Speaker
you not think you should eat some vegetables?
00:17:14
Speaker
Do you not think you should take a vitamin?
00:17:16
Speaker
They actually, I think, end up in a worse place in terms of like mental health and physical health.
00:17:22
Speaker
But they don't acknowledge how nice it is to live in a nice environment as much as women do.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned like the, what we're talking about is the dual income household.
00:17:33
Speaker
You know, back in the day, single income households, even if you were a working class person, even if you were a lower working class man, if you were the bin men, you know, you were able to support a wife and child on that salary.
00:17:47
Speaker
And that has changed with the dual income household for about, apparently, I was listening to a podcast recently, and this guy was saying for about 10 years, it was great, you're making twice as money as everyone else.
00:17:58
Speaker
But unfortunately, wages adjusted and things changed.
00:18:01
Speaker
And I think what ends up happening is anti-feminists, they see that and they go, oh, see, feminism is a fail project.
00:18:08
Speaker
We did all the social change you want, and women are doubly unhappy.
00:18:12
Speaker
But what is not being acknowledged or thought about there is the kind of subjective...
00:18:17
Speaker
developmental socialization things that happen between men and women, which is yes, if we had a dual income household, and both parties cared as much about having a clean house, then we wouldn't have women doing still double the amount of housework.
00:18:31
Speaker
But it's exactly what Jen identified that men do not care, they don't want to do it.
00:18:35
Speaker
And that's that.
00:18:37
Speaker
This is also why my home is mail free.
00:18:40
Speaker
I will never live with a partner.
00:18:41
Speaker
Even if we're married, we're having separate houses and separate homes because I like my apartment to be tidy.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I think it's one thing, right?
00:18:52
Speaker
When it's your own mess, it's easier to clean because that's the mess you made.
00:18:58
Speaker
It's something else I couldn't imagine constantly picking up and cleaning up after somebody else because they couldn't be asked.
00:19:04
Speaker
The resentment that that must build is just incredible.
00:19:07
Speaker
I don't know how... We're talking about mental health, the kind of psychological burden of that on women is so huge.
00:19:14
Speaker
You can find some really clean men, but in my experience, they seem to be quite posh men that had very uptight posh mothers.
00:19:23
Speaker
Because I have lived with male flatmates who were like, why have you left the plate on the side?
00:19:28
Speaker
It goes straight in the dishwasher.
00:19:29
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, he's one of those.
00:19:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:33
Speaker
I have to do that.
00:19:34
Speaker
And I just adjusted.
00:19:35
Speaker
It was like, fine.
00:19:36
Speaker
I can, you know, not let plates accumulate.
00:19:38
Speaker
I'll put them all in the dishwasher right away.
00:19:40
Speaker
But they are exceptional.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
And they are.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think I've only met about three.
00:19:46
Speaker
Three.
00:19:49
Speaker
Three men that are like clean and tidy to the degree that the average woman is.
00:19:53
Speaker
And like they were in the military as well.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
I was going to say military can be quite neat.
00:19:59
Speaker
Exactly.
00:20:00
Speaker
Well, this is what it takes men to care about their appearance, their hygiene, their cleaning is a huge man screaming at them, calling them a fucking dickhead for about eight months in a training camp.
00:20:12
Speaker
Like that's not a joke.
00:20:13
Speaker
Like that's what it takes to care about.
00:20:15
Speaker
to get them to do that kind of thing.
00:20:17
Speaker
Like a marine demeaning you until you make your bed properly.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy.
00:20:25
Speaker
So then in terms of, I guess, like moving away sort of from the more historical context to the modern day, before we started recording, we were talking about just generally the lack of dating culture in the UK.
Differences in UK and North American Dating Cultures
00:20:39
Speaker
And Jen actually had a really good point in that dating doesn't really exist in the UK, I don't think, at least not in the structured way it does in other countries.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:51
Speaker
It's a very, very 50-50 culture that is the default.
00:20:55
Speaker
It's quite informal in a good and a bad way.
00:20:59
Speaker
I don't think traditional courting was ever really... I know it's a thing in royal circles, perhaps, or in the upper class, but it's definitely not a thing...
00:21:09
Speaker
for us commoners, at least not in my experience anyway.
00:21:11
Speaker
This is why I haven't dated many British men, maybe like one or two, but this is sort of why I sort of like ran out screaming from the British dating scene because the courtship or just the general dating culture just sits, you know, in terms of the effort, in terms of the structure just doesn't really exist.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, I would say as someone who's lived in both North America and in the UK, there is more ties to like a local community.
00:21:38
Speaker
Whereas in the US, a lot of people moved to the US and Canada, they were strivers, they moved away from their family, they did whatever, they're pushing against the frontier to make a new life or whatever.
00:21:49
Speaker
There's less, ooh, what does people in the village have to think about me?
00:21:52
Speaker
It's a more individualistic society.
00:21:54
Speaker
They're more open.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
So I think how it worked in England, probably until about 20 years ago, and it's probably is still how it operates in many places.
00:22:04
Speaker
You know, you would go to the local dance or, you know, the party after the rugby or the football or whatever.
00:22:10
Speaker
And your brother's friend was there and he was nice to you.
00:22:13
Speaker
And after you went on a few dates, you got married.
00:22:15
Speaker
And that was that.
00:22:16
Speaker
Oh, I think for pre boomers, it was literally marry your first boyfriend.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:20
Speaker
And then that was that.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:22
Speaker
I think for the boomers, it was more like you have maybe first boyfriend at university or, you know, a guy you met at work.
00:22:29
Speaker
But in terms of like, I think there's something about British culture and British people that we are more.
00:22:37
Speaker
it's almost a bit awkward or embarrassed about personal stuff.
00:22:41
Speaker
So I find that like if I was setting about a dating campaign, it would be to like set up dates that could be plausible, that have plausible deniability.
00:22:50
Speaker
So for years when we said, do you want to go for a drink to someone?
00:22:54
Speaker
It meant, do you want to go on a date?
00:22:56
Speaker
But if it doesn't work out, it's not a date.
00:22:58
Speaker
And we were really just sort of colleagues or friends or people that knew each other vaguely sort of meeting up to have a chat.
00:23:05
Speaker
So there was always this plausible deniability.
00:23:09
Speaker
And I think that, yeah, there's just such a sort of lack of openness.
00:23:12
Speaker
Whereas I feel like in America, at least in the major cities, from what women have told me from there, is that almost like every interaction with the opposite sex could be an opportunity to then end up on a date.
00:23:24
Speaker
So I remember working at the shop, the student union shop when I was at LSE, and this poor woman from New York was saying, why are British people so unfriendly?
00:23:34
Speaker
And I said,
00:23:35
Speaker
we're not, but it takes time basically.
00:23:38
Speaker
And she said, but I go out to bars and I try and strike up conversations with male strangers.
00:23:44
Speaker
And a lot of them were like, why is this woman talking to me?
00:23:47
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, they're not receiving, but it's an opportunity to have a talk with an attractive young woman.
00:23:53
Speaker
And she was like, Jen, when I was at NYC, whatever the university, NYU, whatever the university is called, she said, I didn't pay for a single cafeteria lunch.
00:24:03
Speaker
Because I would be in the queue and I sort of look around me a bit and like the four nearby men, one of them would take the opportunity of, oh, let me pay for your lunch for you.
00:24:12
Speaker
And then that was an excuse for him to sit down with me and sort of have a bit of a date where we could see if we got on and then maybe we'd go, you know, if I liked him, like maybe we'd exchange numbers and then maybe we would end up going out.
00:24:25
Speaker
And I was like, no, that would never happen here in a million years because we're just a lot more closed and private and inhibited.
00:24:34
Speaker
So I think that British dating has gone up a little bit with just the structure of dating apps, because you all know why you're on there, though I think a lot of the time men are there for sex and women are there for relationships.
00:24:46
Speaker
But at least with that, you know why you're meeting up and you know that if you just, if you know,
00:24:52
Speaker
there aren't the vibes, then, you know, you'll just be like, not meet up again.
00:24:56
Speaker
And I think that has helped.
00:24:57
Speaker
But by and large, it was always this thing of like, do you want to go for a drink?
00:25:01
Speaker
But my advice to the New York woman was, British people have to be so drunk, that you would have to wait in that bar until it became nightclub about
50-50 Dating and Relationship Effort
00:25:11
Speaker
midnight.
00:25:11
Speaker
And people were like five, six drinks in at least for venue to be able to talk to a stranger and then talk back.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:20
Speaker
I think the drinking culture has also spun or it's made dating a lot more stressful in the UK because yeah, like you say, it's going out to some degree can be a way to meet people or it can be a place to go on a date.
00:25:37
Speaker
Like, you know, let's go to the pub.
00:25:39
Speaker
I don't drink.
00:25:39
Speaker
So I always said no.
00:25:41
Speaker
But yeah, like you said, it does take a while.
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:44
Speaker
for the British nightlife to pick up if it ever even does like when I was out in Birmingham with some friends a few months ago the pub shut at 11 30 on a Friday night we were getting kicked out so yeah I'm not even sure if that's even a viable option anymore
00:26:02
Speaker
And people don't dance.
00:26:03
Speaker
No, they don't.
00:26:04
Speaker
They don't.
00:26:05
Speaker
They don't dance.
00:26:07
Speaker
Not really.
00:26:08
Speaker
It's like, why don't people dance in this country?
00:26:10
Speaker
She's like dancing away in a bar.
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, most people don't.
00:26:14
Speaker
They stay seated.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, or it's singing or it's a sing along.
00:26:18
Speaker
Or karaoke.
00:26:20
Speaker
Like sweet Caroline.
00:26:22
Speaker
I'll be like, what is happening?
00:26:24
Speaker
What is in nightclub gear?
00:26:27
Speaker
singing sweet caroline and i'm like there is what that's their version of joining in yeah in something collective that's going on you know but i'm interested in what you said about because i'm not straight so i don't understand but like so when you said it's less 50 50 in britain oh my god yeah so is it america that's so interesting tell me more about that i guess
00:26:50
Speaker
I don't know why it's so staunchly 50-50.
00:26:54
Speaker
Even women in this country, they would push for 50-50.
00:26:58
Speaker
And it's weird because Britain, I wouldn't say it's an entirely feminist country or it's entirely accepting of...
00:27:09
Speaker
of even like the liberal feminist ideals.
00:27:11
Speaker
Like I actually think that Britain is or has been increasingly becoming quite a right-wing country and becoming quite traditionalist or going back to traditionalism.
00:27:21
Speaker
But yeah, we have this strong culture where it's just asinine that you expect a guy to pay on a date, even more so than the US.
00:27:29
Speaker
I know there's pockets of people in the US that will say, or who don't believe in 50-50, but in the UK, it's like, that is the default.
00:27:38
Speaker
And it's weird because women will say, oh, I'm getting so many low effort men.
00:27:43
Speaker
They're not making an effort or they're just inviting me out or they don't put any, or they don't plan any dates.
00:27:48
Speaker
They don't put in any effort.
00:27:50
Speaker
But then they'll be advocating 50-50 and be saying like, you know, I don't want to be a kept woman.
00:27:55
Speaker
I can pay my own bills.
00:27:57
Speaker
Completely missing the point of why 50-50, at least at the dating stage,
00:28:02
Speaker
is a complete non-starter, generally speaking.
00:28:05
Speaker
From an FDS point of view, we've always maintained that if a guy really wants to impress a woman, and I've seen this from personal experience and from observation of the men in my life as well, I mean, picking up the bill is the easiest way for them to do it.
00:28:19
Speaker
And they will not hesitate if it's for a woman that they genuinely want to impress.
00:28:24
Speaker
It's an easy win for a lot of men.
00:28:26
Speaker
But I think, isn't it that on the other side, the woman is then worried that he then has expectations of like, not just like she owes me a kiss or owes me something else, but also because she's accepted this, it means she likes me.
00:28:39
Speaker
Whereas I would think, oh no, it just means she wants like a free dinner and she's playing along.
00:28:45
Speaker
like or something.
00:28:46
Speaker
I always think women don't want to allow to be paid for in case that sends a signal of like, oh no, I do like you or yes, I will sleep with you when they're still checking that out, basically.
00:29:00
Speaker
But then again, the 50-50 men, they still expect sex.
00:29:03
Speaker
on the first, second, third day.
00:29:05
Speaker
So you're not really escaping that because we've had that pushback before.
00:29:09
Speaker
And I think that it is important to maintain that line that just because you're paying for dinner, you are paying for dinner.
00:29:17
Speaker
That is it.
00:29:18
Speaker
If you want sex with a guaranteed outcome, that is essentially looking for cheaper prostitution, in which case you need to move on to somebody else or to find a prostitute.
00:29:28
Speaker
I feel like
00:29:30
Speaker
The 50-50 men, the cheap men, doesn't stop them from wanting, you know, like a blowjob or like, you know, sex in the car either.
00:29:37
Speaker
You know, they're just as sleazy and entitled.
00:29:39
Speaker
I mean, if they're that kind of man anyway.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure because I always say to Hannah, like, oh, like, I've tried to like just assert dominance or equality with taxi drivers in the past.
00:29:50
Speaker
I like sitting in the front seat.
00:29:52
Speaker
And thinking, oh, and then I just got sexually assaulted.
00:29:55
Speaker
But I thought seeing this one would make that less likely because it's like me and you geezer up front together.
00:30:01
Speaker
And it's like, no.
00:30:02
Speaker
Oh, bless you.
00:30:04
Speaker
So I'm not even sure you can assert equality with a man who doesn't buy into that anyway.
00:30:10
Speaker
And to me, I just feel like if a guy, if he pays for dinner and is expecting sex, that is a big red flag anyway.
00:30:17
Speaker
You know, you've actually weeded him out as somebody who is extremely entitled, who does covert contracts, who doesn't communicate because these men who try to utilize these tactics, they rely on women feeling that sense of obligation.
00:30:31
Speaker
If they were up front and said, if I pay for this dinner, I expect you to go home with me, then the woman can make an informed choice as to whether she proceeds with that.
00:30:39
Speaker
And majority of women they know will probably say no.
00:30:42
Speaker
So if they are going around making covert contracts and I'm feeling entitled just because, you know, they've paid for dinner, to me, that is also a vetting tactic.
00:30:51
Speaker
And you found out sooner rather than later that he's a scrope.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, I always think like, it's not exactly kind of mysteries, but I think men even feel sort of a raw deal on the other side, even though they're obviously getting a better deal than the woman.
00:31:06
Speaker
So like, I have quite a posh friend, let's call him Henry.
00:31:09
Speaker
This guy makes 27 grand a month, he pays 11 grand in tax every month.
00:31:15
Speaker
So very well off from a very well off background as well.
00:31:18
Speaker
I remember a few years ago saying, because he's married with kids now, funny, he's married a colleague of his who's quite a rough working class woman.
00:31:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:27
Speaker
Which is really the opposite of what he always claimed that he wanted.
00:31:30
Speaker
He was always really funny about women like that, but it's like, actually, he actually just wanted like a golden hearted, nice, normal woman.
00:31:37
Speaker
Anyway.
00:31:38
Speaker
Years ago, I said, oh, you know, have you been seeing anyone?
00:31:41
Speaker
And he said, oh, yeah, I took this woman on like three dates.
00:31:45
Speaker
And he was like, took her to this, like, what is it?
00:31:48
Speaker
The Shard in London paid for dinner at the time.
00:31:51
Speaker
I think that was only like £100.
00:31:52
Speaker
It's probably more like £200 now to go for dinner at the Shard in London.
00:31:57
Speaker
So he took on a nice date there.
00:31:58
Speaker
And then they went to some like swanky lounge for the second date.
00:32:00
Speaker
And it was obviously kind of like, you know, like the third date rule of like, if you get to the third date and you like each other, you sleep together.
00:32:07
Speaker
So they slept together.
00:32:08
Speaker
And then he was like, oh, anyway, he was like, it was rubbish.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I was like, you know, spent about 300 quid on her.
00:32:16
Speaker
I could have got a prostitute.
00:32:17
Speaker
And I was like, oh, I was like, well, you know, how have you conveyed that to her?
00:32:22
Speaker
So you can't say that.
00:32:23
Speaker
And he just said, oh, I just ghosted her.
00:32:25
Speaker
That light hump and dump thing that women receive, and then they don't know why, because they think this guy is interested in them.
00:32:32
Speaker
And he sort of is until he isn't.
00:32:35
Speaker
And I was like, okay, she'll be feeling pretty bad about that.
00:32:39
Speaker
Whereas he just was pissed off that he'd spent 300 pounds on an experience that actually he didn't really like.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think also the British 50-50 thing.
00:32:49
Speaker
I don't believe, like, no, I don't believe you.
00:32:51
Speaker
I don't believe the women telling you that they're doing it for feminist reasons.
00:32:55
Speaker
I don't think they're doing it for feminist reasons.
00:32:57
Speaker
Why are they saying that?
00:32:57
Speaker
I think it's about saying British people, you have a real thing about presumptuousness and you have a real thing about that plausible deniability thing.
00:33:07
Speaker
Because the second a man pays for a date, it's a date.
00:33:11
Speaker
But if it's 50-50, oh, I'll grab my own drink, you can always say no.
00:33:15
Speaker
And I think quite a few women are afraid of rejection.
00:33:19
Speaker
And so they think, oh, if I go on a date with this guy and he pays and it's like, oh, we're doing this dating thing.
00:33:25
Speaker
And then if he doesn't like me, I'll be like very hurt by that.
00:33:29
Speaker
Interesting theory.
00:33:31
Speaker
I do agree with you on that.
00:33:33
Speaker
I don't think everyone, because ultimately, I'm not saying every woman wants to have the bill paid for.
00:33:40
Speaker
But at the same time, it's like, it's ultimately a nice, you know, gesture sometimes, right?
00:33:46
Speaker
It's not interest.
00:33:47
Speaker
Like I would happily pay for a date.
00:33:49
Speaker
In fact, I'd be pleased to pay for first date or several dates with women I was interested in to say to her without having to say it in a cringe way.
00:33:57
Speaker
I am really interested in you and excited by the prospect of spending more time with you.
00:34:03
Speaker
I'm going to do everything to make that as easy for you as possible because I am interested rather than wearing a big hat that says I'm interested.
00:34:11
Speaker
You can do these gestures.
00:34:13
Speaker
Hmm.
00:34:14
Speaker
And that's the sort of opportunity.
00:34:17
Speaker
And then, so a friend of mine who, my friend Ross, who is like a kind of working class guy from Surrey, but like a kind of Marxist.
00:34:26
Speaker
And he's quite, he's sort of made himself radical feminist conclusions about men and women, but just because he's very smart, like he kind of did a PhD on Marx Oxford.
00:34:35
Speaker
He's just quite critically minded generally.
00:34:38
Speaker
And he said, I do prefer to pay, but if they kick up a fuss, I'll pay 50-50, but I have to offer.
00:34:46
Speaker
And I'm not offering because I want them to say no, but it's if they insist, fine, but I'm not very happy about it.
00:34:52
Speaker
And I remember him saying, dating's very easy for women because they don't have to plan anything.
00:34:58
Speaker
And he was like, that's actually the more difficult bit than just the...
00:35:03
Speaker
the paying because he was like, so you'll decide like a picnic in a park and then like a trip to a museum, but then you have to have a backup plan for like if it rains that day and the museum is closed.
00:35:14
Speaker
And I was like, yes, that's true.
00:35:16
Speaker
But most men don't make the effort he makes, I think, about his like A plan, B plan.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I think my only worry about that, because I think this is why it exists in terms of the world of dating, courtship, whatever, is...
00:35:32
Speaker
I want a man who can lead well, but then actually a lot of women don't want to be in a relationship where he leads, but they're looking for a man who can lead well if necessary.
00:35:44
Speaker
Or lots of women are looking to be led.
00:35:46
Speaker
I think a lot of women are looking for effort ultimately and somebody who is sometimes willing to put in a bit of graft to keep the relationship happy.
00:35:55
Speaker
And what you often find within the first three months, six months, 12 months is that the effort that they're getting from their partner starts to decline.
00:36:04
Speaker
And this is where the 50-50 thing goes completely out of the window because in the time that the effort is declining, it's then often the woman who is overexerting, overperforming,
00:36:15
Speaker
trying to keep the relationship afloat, right?
00:36:18
Speaker
So this is why I say that 50-50, it isn't just about the money 50-50.
Deception in Dating and Its Consequences
00:36:23
Speaker
It also can set a potentially bad precedent for the entire relationship because really relationships should be, you know, everybody putting their best foot forward and your best can vary day to day, depending on what happens, life happens, that's fine.
00:36:38
Speaker
But ultimately it isn't really possible to split effort down the middle.
00:36:43
Speaker
especially if you know you're in a relationship with somebody else you've got different needs you've got different you know for example uh wants and desires and even like your love languages i sort of hate how that term has been abused but let's just run with it now you know you've got those different things and you want your partner to be able to put in the effort to meet you where you are so you can put in the effort to meet him you know wherever that he is right and so this isn't always a 50 50 endeavor
00:37:09
Speaker
There's also just the fact that, you know, I think cause I'm gay men have had quite more honest conversations with me than they usually would sort of other women.
00:37:21
Speaker
A friend of mine, not my friend anymore, actually he's a terrible man anyway, a decade ago, sort of said, cause he said, you know, we were sort of talking about body counts and I was like, Oh yeah, I've sat with a few dozen women, which I don't think is very much.
00:37:36
Speaker
And he was like, Oh, and I was like, well, how many of you?
00:37:38
Speaker
And he said, seven.
00:37:39
Speaker
I was like seven.
00:37:40
Speaker
He was like, Mr. Like DM every girl in the socialist group, Mr. You know, like whatever, like trying on all the time.
00:37:49
Speaker
He said, the thing with women is they won't sleep with you unless you pretend that you want to be in a relationship with them.
00:37:56
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:37:57
Speaker
And that takes ages.
00:38:00
Speaker
And so I said, okay.
00:38:02
Speaker
And again, it was this thing of, you know, because he said it takes about three months to kind of convince them of that, that you're really interested.
00:38:08
Speaker
And then you sleep with them and then you can't ever speak to them again because then they go, right.
00:38:13
Speaker
So we boyfriend, girlfriend now.
00:38:15
Speaker
And then you'd go, no, I lied for you for three months.
00:38:17
Speaker
Then you avoid that conflict with them.
00:38:19
Speaker
So that's why you do the like, the honking and the dumping.
00:38:23
Speaker
And the thing is, though, is this guy did get in a lot of trouble.
00:38:26
Speaker
Like he had a he was basically the Sussex University drug dealer, only weed as far as I know, but it's not great.
00:38:34
Speaker
Right.
00:38:34
Speaker
So this is who he was.
00:38:36
Speaker
And, you know, he was in halls doing that.
00:38:38
Speaker
And he had a girlfriend who I think got pregnant and she decided to not keep it.
00:38:43
Speaker
It was a serious relationship with like a serious decision like that involved.
00:38:47
Speaker
And he cheated on her and somehow it got found out.
00:38:50
Speaker
But anyway, after the relationship, the kind of post-mortem was these two women got together and called the police on him.
00:38:59
Speaker
And his dorm room got raided.
00:39:01
Speaker
He had to be like a student with an angry woman.
00:39:04
Speaker
So this is the thing as well, like men who really mess around with women do often or can get themselves into trouble.
00:39:11
Speaker
Though I think now dating apps have alleviated that quite a lot.
00:39:14
Speaker
So you can be so anonymous and you can not just have women in your local vicinity that you're playing games with, but sort of a wider map and network.
00:39:24
Speaker
But yeah, I think that I understand that it's about really trying to measure if a guy is interested and you think, oh, if he's spent, you know, half a grand or a grand, then he must be meaning this.
00:39:35
Speaker
But I would say that because the standards are so on the floor, so like, yeah, my friend Laura that I was like, listen to FDS.
00:39:42
Speaker
What that meant, so she lives in like a, I don't think you mind me saying this, a shithole town in the north of England, like the one where I'm from.
00:39:49
Speaker
And she was like, round where I live, no man would go for dinner on a first date.
00:39:54
Speaker
It would be a drink.
00:39:56
Speaker
And the guy who she's with now, she did, I think, say, let's go for dinner.
00:40:01
Speaker
And they did.
00:40:02
Speaker
But she was like, he said that every date, quote unquote, he'd been on before was him literally saying to girls, why don't I pick you up in my car and drive around?
00:40:12
Speaker
And she was the first woman to say, no, I want to go for dinner.
00:40:16
Speaker
I want to be able to have drinks.
00:40:17
Speaker
I want to be able to have like a proper conversation with you in like a nice setting.
00:40:21
Speaker
And he was, you know, he was like, yeah, okay, fine.
00:40:24
Speaker
But a lot of women, unfortunately, if the standard...
00:40:29
Speaker
is like a normal working class woman is that you get in a car with a stranger and they drive you around for 45 minutes and decide basically whether they fancy you or not.
00:40:38
Speaker
Women are then very impressed by the dinner thing.
00:40:42
Speaker
And I think we've talked about this before in a space.
00:40:44
Speaker
So like a male friend of mine
00:40:47
Speaker
I mean, I've not seen him since 2016, but we stay in phone contact sometimes because he kind of calls me when he's in a pickle.
00:40:53
Speaker
But like, he's a very successful man sexually in terms of like, just turnover.
00:40:58
Speaker
So he will go on one to two dates a week, pay for dinner.
00:41:02
Speaker
He's like, you know, rich guy, has a successful career, he's on TV, he's on TV,
00:41:06
Speaker
And he has slept with hundreds of women through this almost like method.
00:41:12
Speaker
And he's like, you know, you go and you're really funny and you ask them questions and then you say something interesting, thoughtful about what they've said.
00:41:19
Speaker
And then like you invite them back to yours and then he takes them back to like his East London like swanky pad and he sleeps with them.
00:41:25
Speaker
And maybe that happens on the first or second or third day.
00:41:28
Speaker
But I kept thinking like, you know, why doesn't he just have a girlfriend?
00:41:31
Speaker
And the only women he's ever interested in are kind of the women that are quite reluctant.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:52
Speaker
But it's like those women are so impressed that a man is paying for dinner, even though it's nothing to him financially, is taking interest in them, is being funny.
00:42:01
Speaker
And then they go back to his like nice flat that he's built like a penthouse thing on top of.
00:42:07
Speaker
And unfortunately, they're so disarmed by it.
00:42:10
Speaker
And they're so like, oh, you know, this seems perfect.
00:42:13
Speaker
that then they sleep with him.
00:42:15
Speaker
And then he kind of palms them off in a nice way with like flattery being like, oh, so great to hang out with you.
00:42:22
Speaker
You're such an amazing person.
00:42:23
Speaker
I'm really busy over the next few weeks, but let's meet up soon.
00:42:27
Speaker
And then if they dare sort of get, if they don't read that as palming off and they get back in touch in a few weeks, he's just like,
00:42:33
Speaker
oh, I'm still really busy.
00:42:35
Speaker
But like, yeah, it was so nice to have spent time with you.
00:42:37
Speaker
It was great.
00:42:38
Speaker
Let's hang out some point in the future.
00:42:40
Speaker
But eventually they just stop asking because they're like, well, he's it's not happening, is it?
00:42:43
Speaker
And they tell themselves the lie defensively as he's busy now.
00:42:48
Speaker
It's so crazy how quickly I just say this man's five foot eight.
00:42:52
Speaker
All of the stuff online that women demand six foot.
00:42:56
Speaker
This guy's five foot eight.
00:42:58
Speaker
I literally tell men, literally just step outside and you'll see men of all heights, you know, being in relationships and happily married.
00:43:07
Speaker
There are some women who have a fixation on height.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yes, that is true.
00:43:10
Speaker
I am one of those women.
00:43:12
Speaker
But there are also plenty of women who will give the time of day to men of all heights.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker
I mean, I just think it's so crazy, this sort of horrible, just these really viscerally horrible experiences women have with dating apps.
00:43:28
Speaker
And this idea that we have in our culture that, you know, women have all the sexual choice and all the sexual freedom and you're so free and it's so wonderful.
00:43:37
Speaker
And it's going to give you all these wonderful, liberatory, amazing experiences.
00:43:42
Speaker
And then the reality is experiences like Jen just described of being like, oh, really nice guy with a good job and beautiful flat.
00:43:47
Speaker
And then he didn't get back to me.
00:43:48
Speaker
And I do something wrong.
00:43:50
Speaker
And then being like horribly psychologically tormented about this for weeks.
00:43:54
Speaker
And will he text me back when he's not busy anymore?
00:43:56
Speaker
It doesn't surprise me that like...
00:43:58
Speaker
Bumble, is that the one?
00:44:00
Speaker
And Tinder have to come out with ads directed at women saying like, you can't really be celibate.
00:44:08
Speaker
Celibacy is not for you.
00:44:09
Speaker
I even see ones that are directed towards me because sometimes my like AdSense on YouTube and TikTok will peg me as a man.
00:44:15
Speaker
Sometimes they'll peg me as a woman.
00:44:17
Speaker
And when it's pegged me as a woman, I get the Tinder ads and they even put it like, you can use our app to make friends.
00:44:21
Speaker
Like, please stop using our apps.
00:44:23
Speaker
Cause it's like, women are so, how like someone I know have had to go to like therapy, like after using dating apps for like a summer, just because like the experience is happening.
00:44:33
Speaker
been so universally terrible dishonesty right so it's like my technically successful friend he will sometimes sort of befriend these women probably partly because sometimes he'll think oh you know i can shag them if i'm having like a dry period in the future but a lot of them will be happy to stay friends and i say to him those women are waiting they want you at some point to be the nice boyfriend that you initially offered and
00:44:59
Speaker
And he will then sometimes get upset when they decide to cut their losses and they actually get a boyfriend.
00:45:04
Speaker
And I'm like, you told this woman, I'm not looking for a relationship right now, but I'd like to keep seeing you.
00:45:11
Speaker
I want to keep a haram, like, basically.
00:45:13
Speaker
And I want to keep...
00:45:15
Speaker
every option and it's like life isn't and sexual relationships are not a sweet shot where you're like i just want to be able to have one of every variety whenever i feel like but he will genuinely be like oh but now she doesn't want to hang out with me anymore she's got this boyfriend and then i'll be like you told her last month i'm not looking for a relationship clearly that's what she's looking for so she was like okay goodbye
00:45:37
Speaker
And it's like, I don't understand like the confusion.
00:45:40
Speaker
It's like, it's obvious why she skipped off.
00:45:43
Speaker
You said the words, I'm not looking for a relationship right now, which often just means I don't want a relationship with you.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:50
Speaker
The with you is always silent, but they'll never say that because like your friend, they hope that women will basically live in hope and delusion that it will turn into something more.
00:45:59
Speaker
Or it's harsh and like,
00:46:01
Speaker
You know, it is true that sometimes then you can get like abusive messages, even from women, if you are really clear about rejecting.
00:46:10
Speaker
It's the same way that men, when women sort of say to them, oh, look, you know, this isn't working out.
00:46:15
Speaker
They'll be like, oh, you're so cold.
00:46:17
Speaker
Women kind of do, I think, like immaturity basically comes in both the sexes.
00:46:22
Speaker
They will say, oh, you're such an asshole.
00:46:25
Speaker
I can't believe it.
00:46:26
Speaker
And it's like, well, he's actually just being up front with you.
00:46:29
Speaker
But the thing is, he should have been up front.
00:46:31
Speaker
Because I said, so you're just not looking for a relationship.
00:46:33
Speaker
And he'll say, I would, but it's almost like there's this mythical combination of women that is just not out there.
00:46:40
Speaker
So it's like you're not really looking for a relationship.
00:46:42
Speaker
Well, it's an objectification.
00:46:44
Speaker
What they want is a relationship that gives them all the benefits and none of the commitment or responsibility.
00:46:49
Speaker
And in their mind, there is this beautiful, wonderful object that gives them that.
00:46:54
Speaker
And she doesn't exist because obviously women are human beings with...
Female Separatism vs. Female Dating Strategy
00:46:57
Speaker
with some needs.
00:47:00
Speaker
So this woman is always constantly in the kind of periphery of the mind because women aren't actually objects.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:08
Speaker
Speaking of, we should talk about female separatism maybe now that we're... Yeah, I was going to say we've had a good riff about dating in the UK, which is an absolute mess.
00:47:16
Speaker
And we should, I would like to revisit it in a more structured way and perhaps see the comparisons between dating in the UK and dating elsewhere in the US and other places around the world.
00:47:25
Speaker
But yes, female separatism.
00:47:27
Speaker
So...
00:47:29
Speaker
One of the big reasons why I invited Jen and Hannah onto this, onto the podcast, was to give the real tea, the hot original tea on the female separatism movement.
00:47:40
Speaker
In the past, I'd say FDS has butted heads in more ways than one with the separatist movement because ultimately our aims are quite different.
00:47:48
Speaker
So the separatists, I'll let Jen and Hannah take the floor on this because they know far more than I do.
00:47:54
Speaker
What were you going to say?
00:47:55
Speaker
Just to say that I brushed alongside of female separatism.
00:48:00
Speaker
I never, I'm like, obviously I'm a lesbian.
00:48:02
Speaker
So kind of by default, like I have a relationship with my dad.
00:48:05
Speaker
I'm quite close with my dad, whatever.
00:48:07
Speaker
But you know, I don't have that many men in my life to begin with.
00:48:09
Speaker
I kind of brushed alongside of it as I came into radical feminism.
00:48:13
Speaker
But Jen fully descended.
00:48:15
Speaker
I was so yeah, I fully descended from
00:48:17
Speaker
for like probably 18 months to two years.
00:48:20
Speaker
But the headline is, the headline is, it does not exist.
00:48:26
Speaker
There is all of the little anonymous accounts online that argue with FDS.
00:48:30
Speaker
They're either girls that live at home with their mom and dad, or they just, it does not exist.
00:48:35
Speaker
There are not three female separatists in the world living together like a uni flatmate house share.
00:48:42
Speaker
There is not a single example of that that I can find across continents.
00:48:48
Speaker
Actually, maybe in South Korea, I'll explain a bit about being there.
00:48:50
Speaker
But it's like, it doesn't exist, basically.
00:48:54
Speaker
And there may be like two women that live together that are political lesbians.
00:48:58
Speaker
So basically friends pretending to be lesbians.
00:49:01
Speaker
But that's a couple like it doesn't, you know, lots of people live with their mom still, you know, for
00:49:07
Speaker
there are not three in the entire world and it would make in today's you know difficult economic times economic sense they do not want to do it like people actually only in life do the things they want to do and the things that they value much as they make mistakes with that and you know there's like you know whatever walk into situations they don't realize what it was they're not doing it anywhere on this planet
00:49:32
Speaker
And just to say, I think Jen and I are of a unique age and probably yourself as well, that we know what the internet is like.
00:49:40
Speaker
We know internet culture, but we also remember a time before the internet.
00:49:45
Speaker
And for us, for at least for me and probably for Jen, the internet is still more real.
00:49:50
Speaker
Life in real life is more real than what goes on in the internet.
00:49:53
Speaker
So what happens with these young girls who get into like female separatist communities online is that they imagine in their minds that there's this wide world of female separatist communities and political lesbian projects, or they just think this is on the internet, so therefore it's real.
00:50:12
Speaker
But Jen and I are of the age that when we figured out what female separatism was and got interested in it, we wanted to go discover the real thing in real life.
00:50:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:50:20
Speaker
So a lot of these girls who are attacking FDS online or attacking other feminists online, they have never interacted with female separatists in real life.
00:50:31
Speaker
Once.
00:50:32
Speaker
Not once.
00:50:33
Speaker
Not ever.
00:50:34
Speaker
They actually have no idea.
00:50:35
Speaker
I'll say to them, I'll say, where are these communes?
00:50:38
Speaker
I know all the female separatists in Canada.
00:50:40
Speaker
Like, I know them personally.
00:50:41
Speaker
There's not many to know.
00:50:43
Speaker
There's not many to know.
00:50:44
Speaker
No.
00:50:45
Speaker
They're probably about, how many women would you say in the Anglosphere? 2,000?
00:50:49
Speaker
Oh, that's a very liberal estimate.
00:50:51
Speaker
I would say a couple hundred, and by real life, I mean have been to an event ever.
00:50:56
Speaker
Yeah, I would say a couple.
00:50:57
Speaker
I know them all.
00:50:58
Speaker
So where does this exist?
00:51:00
Speaker
Tell me where this is.
00:51:01
Speaker
It doesn't exist.
00:51:02
Speaker
And I've had arguments with them where I'm like, where does it exist?
00:51:05
Speaker
And then they go, a village in Kenya, which was basically...
00:51:11
Speaker
There was one very talented woman who essentially set up a rape shelter, but a kind of Kenyan village centre.
00:51:17
Speaker
And some women stayed and they brought their kids with them.
00:51:21
Speaker
That includes sons as well.
00:51:22
Speaker
It's not separatism.
00:51:24
Speaker
I was going to say, I don't, I don't, from what I know of Kenyan culture, there's pockets of it that's quite matriarchal, especially given the high rates of femicide in the country as well.
00:51:36
Speaker
But I don't think they're casting out their sons for the sake of feminism.
00:51:41
Speaker
No, it's just huge, basically.
00:51:44
Speaker
And I like I've seen photos of it.
00:51:45
Speaker
It's just like a collection of kind of structures.
00:51:48
Speaker
And that's so cute.
00:51:49
Speaker
That's really cute.
00:51:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, it's a women's refuge.
00:51:53
Speaker
The other place they site is another women's refuge in northern Syria, where men aren't allowed to go, like, adult men aren't allowed to go there.
00:51:59
Speaker
It's for raped women.
00:52:01
Speaker
Raped women's, you know, domestic violence shelters are not separatist communes.
00:52:06
Speaker
No.
00:52:06
Speaker
And then there's like a bunch of caravans in Wales with about, like, maybe half a dozen women who kind of hate one another.
00:52:14
Speaker
There's one in Canada that I'm aware of.
00:52:17
Speaker
It's like two mentally alcoholic women that hate each other and don't interact.
00:52:21
Speaker
And then there's a thing in Australia that they call women's land, which I think it was in the 60s and 70s where some women went to hang out.
00:52:28
Speaker
It doesn't have running water.
00:52:30
Speaker
And they do, it's not a permanent residence.
00:52:33
Speaker
It's a camp.
00:52:34
Speaker
They run camps there.
00:52:35
Speaker
It's like going for a camp in a field and going, oh, we're outside patriarchy now because there's no men here.
00:52:42
Speaker
And it's like, they have a week usually of just conflict.
00:52:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:46
Speaker
Because it attracts often very dysfunctional and well women.
00:52:50
Speaker
And then it's about keeping up this like mirage, but it's like...
00:52:54
Speaker
This isn't anything.
00:52:55
Speaker
You've not built anything.
00:52:56
Speaker
You've not built civilization.
00:52:57
Speaker
You've not built a, not just not a society.
00:53:01
Speaker
There is not a home.
00:53:02
Speaker
Like where do three of you live together?
00:53:04
Speaker
You don't want to.
00:53:07
Speaker
Because I always thought the separatist movement was, I know you've got the 4B movement, which we can touch on in a little bit, but because I always felt, I'm quite surprised by what you're both saying.
00:53:20
Speaker
And I completely believe you both.
00:53:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:24
Speaker
it isn't in complete disbelief, but it's more from a position that I always thought that the separatist movement was quite active and quite strong.
00:53:33
Speaker
Um, again, as we've had our run-ins with them on social media, but I will admit I haven't even in the most staunchly, um, because I sometimes go to events in person and,
00:53:48
Speaker
in England around feminism and radical feminism.
00:53:52
Speaker
I will admit I haven't actually, I don't think I've ever come across a separatist.
00:53:58
Speaker
I think it's also quite interesting how some of them have conflated being a separatist with being a radical feminist, because a lot of the OG radical feminists were not separatists.
00:54:08
Speaker
And I started to side-eye the movement where they were basically kicking out OG radical feminists like Gayle Dines because she had a son.
00:54:17
Speaker
And I'm like, so she's been expelled from being a radical feminist because she dared to give birth to a son.
00:54:25
Speaker
Are you being serious?
00:54:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the first thing to say, and it's maybe an obvious point, but I think often bears repeating, is someone like Gail Dines is a professor who's written groundbreaking books and done groundbreaking research and has done legislation and lobbying.
00:54:50
Speaker
She's an incredibly serious, incredibly talented person.
00:54:54
Speaker
These people are a bunch of very dysfunctional, hyper online women who do not actually live these politics in real life.
00:55:03
Speaker
They're not feminists in the sense, let alone radical feminists, they're not doing any, they're not doing any feminism to speak of, let alone radical feminism, let alone separatism.
00:55:12
Speaker
They haven't even taken a step on the ladder.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:16
Speaker
Right.
00:55:16
Speaker
They're not even doing what some nice liberal feminists do around abortion or whatever.
00:55:20
Speaker
They're not doing anything.
00:55:21
Speaker
They're not doing anything at all.
00:55:23
Speaker
And the second thing is this term radical feminist gets very confused.
00:55:27
Speaker
There isn't a symposium that gets together and has decided what radical feminism is and what it isn't.
00:55:35
Speaker
it's important to keep in mind that the second wave of feminism included liberals, included left, left-wing women, and included radical feminists.
00:55:44
Speaker
But after the sex wars of the 1980s, which was about pornography and prostitution and BDSM and BDSM, um, liberal feminists, um,
00:55:54
Speaker
took over.
00:55:56
Speaker
The feminists that remained critical of sex, what we call sex-critical feminists, so anti-BDSM, anti-prostitution, anti-pornography, anti-surrogacy, they happened to be separatists.
00:56:10
Speaker
So they get to say, because they're the ones that hung on, that they now represent radical feminism.
00:56:17
Speaker
They don't.
00:56:18
Speaker
Radical feminism, and indeed feminism as a whole, was critical of all these things before the late 1980s.
00:56:26
Speaker
So it's just a historical fact that these are the people that held onto these lines.
00:56:30
Speaker
So they get to claim that they represent.
00:56:32
Speaker
I mean, Andrea Dworkin lived with a man, you know, for the most of her life.
00:56:37
Speaker
It doesn't, it's not true that these people, that separatism is in totality radical feminism.
00:56:43
Speaker
It's an accident of history.
00:56:44
Speaker
I think what happened as well is that they tried to change the idea of radical feminism and reduce it to a lifestyle so that it didn't matter that they didn't do politics.
00:56:54
Speaker
They could just go, the personal is political, and therefore we'd have to do politics.
00:56:58
Speaker
Politics is something else than the personal or a political view of the personal, and
00:57:03
Speaker
And I think that for them, they just sort of receded into this kind of bunter stands and they pretty much do socializing.
00:57:12
Speaker
And they like to say things like women's laughter is revolutionary as if like meeting up with your mates and like having a like laugh
00:57:19
Speaker
you are therefore doing revolutionary stuff.
00:57:22
Speaker
But I also should just say like the amount of lies, like I would find out that a so-called lesbian, so I just consider separatism, like they've tried to redefine the word lesbian to mean just not sleep with men, which often is just celibacy.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:57:39
Speaker
I've always had an issue with the term political lesbianism because it's like if a guy goes his own way, they don't say he's a political gay.
00:57:49
Speaker
And I think that the term lesbian is it needs to be more protected than it actually is.
00:57:54
Speaker
Just because you don't deal with men doesn't mean that you're a lesbian in any way, shape or form at all.
00:58:01
Speaker
Well, exactly.
00:58:01
Speaker
No one, because men's sexuality is considered real and men are considered to have boundaries and their own like real attraction, no one would think a group of like celibate, I don't know, say very religious men, like wanting to be priests.
00:58:15
Speaker
The Vatican, no one says they're political gays or religious gays.
00:58:18
Speaker
Like no one says that.
00:58:20
Speaker
no one would say, oh yeah, they're woman-hating political homosexuals and actually think that they were gay.
00:58:27
Speaker
It's like, well, no, because they know that, like, we all know that, like, being gay for men is like, they're exclusively sexually attracted to men, but it's
00:58:35
Speaker
It's actually the women who are so kind of heterosexual or maybe just lack the imagination of imagining what it would be like to be someone else that they don't really believe lesbianism is real.
00:58:46
Speaker
They don't really believe that two women or that women just really like some gay women just really fancy other women and really just want to have sex with other women.
00:58:55
Speaker
And they only develop romantic feelings for other women.
00:58:58
Speaker
That sort of just...
00:59:00
Speaker
seen as if that would be an impossibility, and they want to make it that a lesbian is simply a woman who, regardless of her attraction to men, denies herself that or something, and lives in celibacy or with a friend who she pretends is her girlfriend, or even some of them are a bit bisexual, as many basically straight women are, and might sleep with a couple women, but all of their feelings are
00:59:25
Speaker
All of their large feelings really are reserved for men.
00:59:28
Speaker
So one of the things that I found really strange, because I just as a lesbian thought straight women fancy men, but probably a bit indifferent to them.
00:59:36
Speaker
They're probably a bit like, oh, if he's nice, you know, otherwise I can take it or leave it.
00:59:40
Speaker
is that these women do not stop talking about men.
00:59:45
Speaker
And they will go on and on about, like, hating men.
00:59:48
Speaker
Men are all trying to rape us.
00:59:49
Speaker
And it's all just this idea of, like, wanting negative intimacy with men.
00:59:53
Speaker
And it's like, these women, a lot of the time, like, men don't fancy them at all.
00:59:58
Speaker
They almost kind of make that...
01:00:00
Speaker
kind of want that to be the case, right?
01:00:03
Speaker
So they'll start, like, there becomes this prohibition about, like, caring about how you look at all.
01:00:08
Speaker
And so I remember sort of people being suspicious about the fact that I would, like, put, you know, I use moisturizer or sunscreen or that I want to use deodorant because I don't want to stink.
01:00:19
Speaker
And they'd say, oh, it's because you want men to fancy you.
01:00:23
Speaker
And I'd be like, no, it's because I want women to fancy me.
01:00:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:26
Speaker
I do, and I don't want to stink.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's also just like a health thing.
01:00:29
Speaker
Like, I don't like the experience of myself stinking, but I'm not lying.
01:00:34
Speaker
Like, when people become political lesbians, conceptors, they do things like stop brushing their teeth.
01:00:40
Speaker
And I was like...
01:00:42
Speaker
do straight women really only brush their teeth because they're like, otherwise men won't fancy me.
01:00:48
Speaker
But it's not all straight women.
01:00:49
Speaker
It's those straight women who were so invested in men and then were so disappointed by the fact that not every man is a Prince Charming.
01:00:57
Speaker
And a lot of men don't fancy women over a particular age, whether it's
01:01:02
Speaker
30, 35, 40, 50, and whatever, at least that was their understanding.
01:01:07
Speaker
And so they do this kind of giving up on men, but all they talk about is like their
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, but they'll even talk about their exes and how wonderful they were.
01:01:17
Speaker
And I honestly thought that like, yeah, some men are nice than others, but some are, you know, dickheads, whatever.
01:01:22
Speaker
The stories I would hear about how sort of genuinely, and you know, these are the lesbian separatists, sorry, fake lesbian separatist, man-hating women.
01:01:33
Speaker
They would say like, oh yeah, I was with a man for 12 years.
01:01:36
Speaker
He was really great.
01:01:37
Speaker
But I read some Sheila Jeffries and I said, I don't want to have intercourse anymore.
01:01:41
Speaker
And he said, okay, fine.
01:01:43
Speaker
And, you know, he wanted to marry me and have a kid.
01:01:45
Speaker
And he'd, his parents had helped us buy this flat.
01:01:48
Speaker
And in the end, I said, oh, no, I want to break up and become a lesbian.
01:01:51
Speaker
And, you know, he was a bit upset.
01:01:53
Speaker
And then he moved out and he let me keep the flat and all the stuff that was, you know, all the furniture we'd bought together.
01:01:59
Speaker
And they will talk about, and I'll be like, oh, I've never come across men.
01:02:04
Speaker
I know.
01:02:05
Speaker
This sounds like, it sounds like, and they all clapped at the end.
01:02:09
Speaker
Well, but the thing that's weird is I thought, okay, so you met the best kind of man and it still wasn't good enough for you.
01:02:16
Speaker
But then lots of those women in private will like mourn that and they'll cry being like, why did I do this?
01:02:23
Speaker
You know, it's so difficult to be a lesbian at the time.
01:02:26
Speaker
I was so confused.
01:02:27
Speaker
I was like, what do you mean?
01:02:27
Speaker
It's difficult.
01:02:28
Speaker
Like it just is.
01:02:29
Speaker
Like I just fancy women.
01:02:31
Speaker
It's not really something I work at.
01:02:34
Speaker
But they, and so many of them, you don't understand, like, they have secret husbands.
01:02:39
Speaker
They will live with men.
01:02:40
Speaker
Like, the head of the WDI says she's a lesbian.
01:02:43
Speaker
She's married to her husband, who she lives with, and their children.
01:02:48
Speaker
Is this common knowledge?
01:02:49
Speaker
It's knowledge within the feminist movement, but because there's kind of this hierarchy and taboo...
01:02:57
Speaker
don't want to say but it's like even like a woman that I was interested in like turned out she was married and living in a one bedroom flat still with her husband and I thought hmm okay well I kind of know what's going on there you know you've not really separated like even if you say oh if we're not together we're not sleeping together well you neither of you have moved out so you're not really separated from each other
01:03:19
Speaker
And I just think that, yeah, these hyper heterosexual women that are so lacking in just imagining what it might be like to be gay, they think then that that ground that real lesbians occupy is theirs to kind of essentially like colonize and plunder and almost like usurp us.
01:03:39
Speaker
And then they, because they also don't invest in their personal life because often they're just
01:03:44
Speaker
single or they're in relationships, fake relationships they don't really care about with other women that are basically friendships, they have all this time to do feminist activity.
01:03:54
Speaker
So a lot of the time they run things and they're the heads of things.
01:03:57
Speaker
This is because they make it a lifestyle thing.
01:04:01
Speaker
And it's like they have a kind of return.
01:04:03
Speaker
A lot of them claim to be asexual.
01:04:05
Speaker
A lot of them will say, oh, I don't really have much of a strong sexuality.
01:04:10
Speaker
And there'll be all these ways to kind of offset and obfuscate that actually they are managing somehow to not...
01:04:17
Speaker
to deny themselves basically being with men, which is what they'd really want.
01:04:21
Speaker
It maybe is the case that it's just because they want a high standard of man, and that's really difficult to find.
01:04:26
Speaker
But that doesn't make you a lesbian, and it doesn't change your sexual orientation.
Critique of Separatism and Its Impact on Feminism
01:04:32
Speaker
And the key thing they deny is that sexual attraction is an internal experience.
01:04:37
Speaker
They like to go through, well, most lesbians have slept with men.
01:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, when they were young and they were figuring out their sexuality, or as an experiment, or as a...
01:04:45
Speaker
Or to try and get pregnant, it's that they like to deny that attraction exists.
01:04:51
Speaker
Between women, it's quite homophobic when you think about it.
01:04:54
Speaker
It's almost like exactly the same arguments that men will use to sort of discredit being a lesbian and what it means to be a lesbian.
01:05:04
Speaker
Oh, they just need to find the right man or they'd happily do it sort of thing.
01:05:09
Speaker
It's quite homophobic when you think about it.
01:05:11
Speaker
oh, it's super, super lesbophobic.
01:05:13
Speaker
The whole thing rests on sort of lesbophobic tenants and assumptions.
01:05:19
Speaker
And then you find out about people in the past, like Jill Johnston, who wrote Lesbian Nation, a boomer friend I was speaking to in Baltimore was like, oh, yeah, she used to leave the commune at night to go have sex with men.
01:05:37
Speaker
is it Sonia Johnson?
01:05:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:39
Speaker
Sonia Johnson, who was a Mormon woman, kind of got kicked out of Mormonism for being involved with feminism, declared herself as a lesbian.
01:05:47
Speaker
She wrote all these books, one's called The Ship That Came Into the Living Room.
01:05:51
Speaker
Ship means really relationship that came to the living room.
01:05:55
Speaker
And after that book, like a year later, she just said, oh, yeah, I've never actually been attracted to a woman.
01:06:01
Speaker
And it's like...
01:06:02
Speaker
Well, you know, like, what I've discovered through reading autobiographies and particularly Phyllis Chesler's, which is called a... Inconvenient feminist.
01:06:13
Speaker
Or is it a non... A politically incorrect feminist....a politically incorrect feminist, which is that a lot of the second waivers that we know of were kind of bullied into calling themselves lesbians, even though they weren't.
01:06:25
Speaker
Because I think it was in the same way that female separatism is just an idea without a practice,
01:06:30
Speaker
they sort of wanted to pretend as if the idea was real, as if then that would make it real.
01:06:36
Speaker
Again, like a kind of social constructionist approach, but a very idealist one that would never happen.
01:06:42
Speaker
So who's the one that went mad?
01:06:44
Speaker
Kate Millett.
01:06:45
Speaker
Kate Millett.
01:06:45
Speaker
So like Kate Millett was basically a bisexual woman who I think
01:06:49
Speaker
did have a girlfriend lived on a farm with her for a bit but she was bullied into saying that she was a lesbian Andrea Dworkin has never had a sexual relationship with a woman and in fact she was clearly in love with the gay man who she and then married she was bullied into saying she was a lesbian and that
01:07:06
Speaker
And that story about, oh, she married him for health insurance.
01:07:10
Speaker
I've never, for listeners who may be unaware, what the female separatists say when you say, oh, well, Andrea Dworkin, who is the best feminist writer of all time.
01:07:21
Speaker
Like there isn't actually competition.
01:07:25
Speaker
what they say is, oh, she married him for health insurance.
01:07:29
Speaker
If someone listening can provide me with a primary source for this piece of information, why would that be the case?
01:07:37
Speaker
They both worked for Ms.
01:07:38
Speaker
Magazine.
01:07:38
Speaker
They had the same employer.
01:07:40
Speaker
Why would he have access to health insurance and she won't have access to health insurance?
01:07:44
Speaker
She made more money than he did.
01:07:46
Speaker
Like the whole, the whole story makes no sense.
01:07:48
Speaker
But also I'm not saying that they were in a sexual relationship because he was actually gay.
01:07:52
Speaker
But the point is that like, as a lesbian, you just wouldn't really want to live with a man.
01:07:58
Speaker
No.
01:07:58
Speaker
Because there's so many.
01:08:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:01
Speaker
I know.
01:08:01
Speaker
And she was, and they apparently did try to have, there was some sexual contact there.
01:08:06
Speaker
Oh, really?
01:08:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:07
Speaker
How did he manage that?
01:08:10
Speaker
Very strange.
01:08:10
Speaker
They were like, we have to consummate this marriage, so we're just going to have to get blind.
01:08:16
Speaker
Well, Andrea Dworkin has lost her separatism radical feminist card, according to the X crowd.
01:08:23
Speaker
So there we go.
01:08:24
Speaker
And this is just, this is how just ridiculous it is, right?
01:08:27
Speaker
Because if we were...
01:08:30
Speaker
If we went through all the prominent feminists, the feminists that have actually, you know, massively built the house that we all live in, who've paved the way, who've made it a lot easier for us to openly talk about radical feminism and identify as radical feminists.
01:08:46
Speaker
If we were to go through them and look at it from a separatist purity point of view, there'd be no one left.
01:08:53
Speaker
There'd be absolutely nobody left.
01:08:54
Speaker
But the thing that's so strange is no other movements do this.
01:08:57
Speaker
And the purity thing, it's really just femininity.
01:09:01
Speaker
And I'm just like, why in feminism are we just not critical of this like femininity sort of purity nonsense and the idea that we all need to be ethical virgins or literal virgins or act like these kind of governesses that are all really anti-sex.
01:09:16
Speaker
And I...
01:09:17
Speaker
I think that, so I've had like correspondence with T. Grace Atkinson sort of extensively over email and I've had like Zooms with Phyllis Chesler.
01:09:27
Speaker
And from what I can tell is that they really invented radical feminism in the 1960s and from about 1971, it began to decline and it was really in crisis from 1975 onwards.
01:09:41
Speaker
The kind of boomers that exist in British radical feminism today, they are basically people who arrived at the disco after the music stopped, and they have a real vested interest in pretending it was a utopia and pretending it was wonderful and that they have all the answers.
01:10:00
Speaker
because they weren't really there for the main party.
01:10:03
Speaker
And it was T. Grace Atkinson who kind of, I think, sort of single-handedly, but maybe in tandem with other women, started this idea of political lesbianism, which had at its heart at the time a sort of nice idea in that lots of feminists were called lesbians just as a term of abuse, right, by, like, men walking past the protests they had.
01:10:24
Speaker
It was like, oh, you lesbian.
01:10:26
Speaker
And they wanted to be able to go, yeah, I am actually.
01:10:29
Speaker
And it was a little bit of a way to have this kind of riposte.
01:10:32
Speaker
And it was also this way of saying, having solidarity with real lesbians.
01:10:37
Speaker
However, basically it ended up again, like becoming a bit intractable and becoming this idea that your lifestyle choices, like whether you're a vegetarian or a vegan or whether you sleep with men or don't, they started to think all of that sort of kind of nonsense.
01:10:56
Speaker
And it's very easy to police, right?
01:10:58
Speaker
If you're all kind of in a friend group and you can all gossip and it can just become a big girly bun fight.
01:11:04
Speaker
That sort of replaced, I think, the political analysis of people like Dworkin and T. Grace Atkinson.
01:11:11
Speaker
And they became this lifestyle.
01:11:13
Speaker
And in the end, T. Grace Atkinson, like Sonia Johnson and Jill Johnston said, like T. Grace Atkinson said, like, you know, it didn't work out.
01:11:22
Speaker
We weren't lesbians.
01:11:23
Speaker
And that's fine.
01:11:24
Speaker
And indeed, at the meetings in the 60s, all of the women there were straight.
01:11:29
Speaker
And then all of them pretended to be lesbians.
01:11:31
Speaker
And it starts to be replicated.
01:11:33
Speaker
I know of a domestic violence place where in the 90s, all of the women were straight, all of them became political lesbians.
01:11:41
Speaker
And today, all of the women are straight, but because political lesbianism is out of vogue, they just carry on being straight.
01:11:48
Speaker
And they have to make excuses for why they won't date.
01:11:51
Speaker
They go,
01:11:51
Speaker
oh, I would like to date women, but it's just really hard in this city.
01:11:55
Speaker
And it's like, you could date each other.
01:11:57
Speaker
That would be happening naturally.
01:11:58
Speaker
Were you actually gay?
01:12:00
Speaker
It's okay to just not be gay.
01:12:02
Speaker
Like it's, you know, it's like having to say to the past that it was okay to be gay.
01:12:06
Speaker
Now we have to be like, it's okay not to be gay.
01:12:09
Speaker
And again, I feel like, again, you know, women or other lesbians, they shouldn't be seen as sort of the consolation prize because you didn't find a man, which would have been your first choice.
01:12:21
Speaker
That is deeply offensive.
01:12:23
Speaker
And I always rejected the argument and they were like, oh, you can just shack up with a woman.
01:12:28
Speaker
And it's like, but why are you seeing women as a consolation prize for men?
01:12:33
Speaker
That's deeply...
01:12:34
Speaker
Could you hear what you're saying?
01:12:37
Speaker
Oh, you can't find a man to just settle for a woman.
01:12:40
Speaker
And I think as well that a lot of straight women, because they don't think about sex with women, they kind of reinvent political lesbianism all the time.
01:12:47
Speaker
So like that comp het dossier that was going around.
01:12:51
Speaker
And I read it and it was all just about if you're dissatisfied with men, you might be a lesbian.
01:12:56
Speaker
And I was like...
01:12:57
Speaker
My, like, just fancying women, which is really just what sexual orientation is, is who do you fancy?
01:13:03
Speaker
Who do you want to sleep with?
01:13:03
Speaker
Who do you develop romantic feelings for?
01:13:06
Speaker
And those kind of attachments has nothing really to do with thinking about men at all.
01:13:13
Speaker
And so you can always tell who it is that is kind of this separatist political lesbian because their focus is so on men.
01:13:21
Speaker
And they spend most of their time showing kind of contempt for lesbian sexuality, trying to sort of like dislodge us as existing and saying that like women fancy each other is misogynistic because it's an objectification.
01:13:35
Speaker
And it's like, no, I get that men objectify women and maybe women do sometimes too.
01:13:40
Speaker
But there's nothing really here that's like, doesn't, you know, like women are not the equivalent of like, you know, which lesbians go to, you know, the strip clubs or which lesbians are using prostitutes.
01:13:54
Speaker
And I think it's also politically important
01:13:56
Speaker
to see, you know, to get all biblical, you shall know them by their fruits, to see where this stuff leads, which is very often rapidly into a kind of biological superiority.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:14:09
Speaker
That's often where it leads.
01:14:12
Speaker
And I don't think...
01:14:14
Speaker
Well, and I know men aren't, women aren't better than men, men aren't better than women, women aren't biologically superior.
01:14:21
Speaker
The idea that there's kind of any race or sex or kind of classification of human that is better than another is supremacist.
01:14:31
Speaker
We should be against that.
01:14:32
Speaker
We see what, we saw what happened with that.
01:14:34
Speaker
We had the Holocaust.
01:14:35
Speaker
Like it doesn't lead anywhere positive.
01:14:38
Speaker
It doesn't lead anywhere good.
01:14:40
Speaker
And very often what ends up happening is, is women end up, um, being in these kind of pseudo communities less so now, cause they don't really exist, but they end up being in these communities.
01:14:51
Speaker
They don't want to think or talk about like social construction, social socialization, because they're like, Oh, we've gotten rid of the men.
01:14:59
Speaker
So the patriarchy is gone.
01:15:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:01
Speaker
Wait,
01:15:01
Speaker
in the utopia or in the utopia now but they're still very feminine in their kind of destructive behaviors towards each other and they still love men so where that ends up going when you when you exclude the social construction because apparently you've done it by just excluding men it just becomes about biology and very often it turns into biological supremacy and then if a woman doesn't live up to being an angel which no women do yeah she's the devil yeah
01:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:15:28
Speaker
And it becomes very black and white, very sort of hierarchical, and just frankly, very weird.
01:15:35
Speaker
And one of the creepiest things that I found is that because these women were all heterosexual from like the onset of puberty, like 1415, they go back to a kind of pre adolescent state of being,
01:15:49
Speaker
So I know lesbian history groups that have fallen out and not had a meeting for six months because they had a dispute over what film to show on a Saturday night for their cinema night.
01:16:02
Speaker
And I thought I'd pitch that
01:16:05
Speaker
at about maximum age 11 behaviour, like immature girls squabbling and then not being able to resolve, you know, what film to show, maybe show all the films if you can't decide on one.
01:16:19
Speaker
And I remember hanging around with, again, like political lesbian female separatists, though at the time I just thought, oh, yeah, maybe women can go to some feminist camps and discover that they're actually gay.
01:16:30
Speaker
I just, because I wanted to see...
01:16:32
Speaker
I wanted to run the experiment in terms of observation.
01:16:36
Speaker
And it's sort of like women in their 30s having sleepovers like you do when you are a prepubescent girl.
01:16:44
Speaker
So it'd be like, yeah, you drink squash, you wouldn't ever drink alcohol.
01:16:49
Speaker
Maybe there'd be some music on, a bit of karaoke.
01:16:52
Speaker
You'd watch a film, there'd be a pillow fight.
01:16:55
Speaker
And I remember just thinking this was all a bit strange for women in their sort of mid thirties to be doing.
01:17:01
Speaker
And even the way they would talk to you, I remember sort of, I wasn't in a relationship with, but I sort of fancied and I thought, oh, you know, she clearly likes me back.
01:17:10
Speaker
Um,
01:17:11
Speaker
a political lesbian yeah it was my age so we must have been both about 33 34 and she sort of said to me when she said oh you know because we'd like kissed in bed and then she said oh I can't wait to be back in bed with you and I thought oh great we're gonna have a saucy chat now a bit and I said oh I can't wait either and she said I can't wait to do certain things with you and I thought wow and I said oh what is it you want to do and she said
01:17:39
Speaker
I want to build a fort with the duvet and read comics with a torch underneath it and eat sweeties.
01:17:46
Speaker
And I thought, I'm not a nunce.
01:17:49
Speaker
Like, what the hell is this?
01:17:50
Speaker
Like, I don't want to reenact the kind of thing I would have enjoyed when I was seven with the woman that I fancy.
01:17:55
Speaker
I thought she was going to suggest a certain act or say, oh, it'll just be really nice to snuggle and watch a Netflix film or something that is normal for an adult to do in bed.
01:18:05
Speaker
And I just thought this is so peculiar.
01:18:07
Speaker
They retreat to essentially pre the onset of their actual sexual orientation, which emerges at about mid-puberty in their teen
Social Media's Influence on Feminism and Lifestyle Choices
01:18:16
Speaker
years.
01:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just really important for feminists online, particularly young women, to keep in mind that the internet isn't actually real.
01:18:26
Speaker
Yeah, it amplifies things or it can create culture or can create cultural moments.
01:18:32
Speaker
But just because there's 100 or 200 or 500 or 1000 accounts online,
01:18:38
Speaker
on Twitter who are saying this kind of stuff.
01:18:41
Speaker
It's not real in real life.
01:18:43
Speaker
Like it doesn't, it doesn't exist.
01:18:44
Speaker
And the experiment has been run.
01:18:46
Speaker
Their books have been written.
01:18:48
Speaker
It's, it's, there's nothing new under the sun.
01:18:50
Speaker
This has all been tried.
01:18:52
Speaker
It's all
01:18:53
Speaker
It's also the case that so much of this gets given a theoretical understanding because for some reason radical feminism has tilted so much into idealism rather than materialism.
01:19:04
Speaker
So it's like when I heard about the radical feminist movement in South Korea, I was like, I want to go there, I want to research this.
01:19:09
Speaker
I was at the peak of my like, women can be separatist, any woman can be a lesbian sort of era.
01:19:16
Speaker
And it was so fun because of course I would think that because I'm gay and I'm just thinking, oh, I could just be like me, I guess.
01:19:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:23
Speaker
despite not having the same pathway it's like no you can't become gay through reading some feminism like I could become straight reading I don't know some manly books um anyway so I went there and then I interviewed 40 women involved with like 4b basically and then there were the 6b who were much more separatist and that was the two extra b's are like
01:19:45
Speaker
don't speak to women or don't do anything, like organize with women outside of 4B.
01:19:51
Speaker
And I can't remember what the other rule was.
01:19:54
Speaker
But a lot of these women were very young, sort of, I think there was one that was 30 that I met, but she was really just a sort of hobbyist, lifestyle, radical feminist.
01:20:03
Speaker
All the militant ones were young, of which probably the oldest was like 22.
01:20:08
Speaker
And the thing is, is what they explained is that because of the economic conditions in South Korea, which is similar to what we're having here, so many women were choosing celibacy anyway because of...
01:20:21
Speaker
well, basically not having enough money to set up shop with someone and then having a spare room for a kid.
01:20:26
Speaker
And they had to work all the time to survive.
01:20:28
Speaker
And that actually had been going on since 2011.
01:20:30
Speaker
There's a term for them, the something generation.
01:20:34
Speaker
And it's, again, like people in their 20s and 30s that were not having children.
01:20:39
Speaker
And then they also explained that in Korea, they don't have a...
01:20:43
Speaker
culture of chivalry like we might have here so they said you know if the titanic had been korean it wouldn't have been women and children first in the boats they don't have this idea of like male honor at all um so men are much more up front about the deal of like oh you're just going to be cooking and cleaning and i don't want to have to contribute much and then the women can optionally say okay that'll be a no then thanks very much
01:21:07
Speaker
So they said that men are bad at courting.
01:21:09
Speaker
But the thing is, is now I was sort of years on staying in touch with them.
01:21:13
Speaker
So many of them have left.
01:21:14
Speaker
And to be honest, if the radical feminist movement, they said it was about 50,000, only a few thousand of them anyway were doing 4B.
01:21:23
Speaker
And they were all... So I went to the South...
01:21:27
Speaker
of career and they were all basically living together but it was really whilst there were students and it was sort of this idea of like student households and the ones I know now have essentially sort of softened in or given it up but kind of softened in their approach whereby they're like oh I do talk to my dad again now and then I think the ones who get boyfriends just sort of drop off the internet and
01:21:50
Speaker
But a lot of them would say, because again, it was straight women reinventing political lesbian, they'd say, I'm a lesbian.
01:21:56
Speaker
But because I didn't understand what political lesbianism was at that point, I didn't know to say, so you only fancy women, because then they would have said, no, I'm choosing not to sleep with men.
01:22:08
Speaker
I have to say, I am almost speechless by these revelations.
01:22:13
Speaker
I feel like this could, we would definitely have to continue this conversation, especially in terms of how it just ties in with, you know, social media and the different feminism narratives that
01:22:24
Speaker
you know, that are running ramp on social media.
01:22:26
Speaker
Cause I feel like social media has been a godsend for feminism, but it's also been probably one of the worst things to happen to feminism because it means that people don't, or they feel that they don't need to actually read feminist literature before calling themselves a feminist.
01:22:42
Speaker
When previously most people, the two would call themselves a feminist.
01:22:46
Speaker
They would at least have to go out and read something that wasn't, you know, limited to 280 characters on, on Elon Musk's ex-
01:22:54
Speaker
account or sites yeah and it's just a final thought to end it positively it's just celibacy is like a pretty good life option like you can do it people have been doing it for forever historically about 10 of people have been celibate it's like 12.5 at least 12.5 of people historically is usually the average amount have been celibate
01:23:18
Speaker
Sometimes to the church or through religious organizations, sometimes not.
01:23:21
Speaker
It's actually like not a terrible option in life.
01:23:25
Speaker
And we have a culture, I think, because we live in a very capitalist individualistic culture that people think that the only way they can have a connection with another person is through romance and sexuality.
01:23:36
Speaker
It's not true.
01:23:36
Speaker
You can have a very meaningful, full life being celibate.
01:23:40
Speaker
And if you want to do that, you should pursue it.
01:23:42
Speaker
You don't need to call yourself a lesbian.
01:23:44
Speaker
You don't need to do anything.
01:23:45
Speaker
You can just be celibate.
01:23:46
Speaker
Lesbians are not celibate.
01:23:48
Speaker
I'm pretty sure if you thought like added up like the average body count of the average lesbian compared with the average straight man, we would be having a lot more sex with women over a lifetime.
01:23:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:01
Speaker
thanks both um and yeah thank you thank you so much for the conversation we've massively run over time but i think the conversation was absolutely worth it so thank you ladies very very much yeah thank you for having us and we can't wait to come back yes have us on again you must definitely definitely and that is our show thank you so much for listening queens and for all you scrotes out there
01:24:30
Speaker
die mad see you next week or see you soon actually i'm not sure next week because i keep forgetting i don't i'm not on the main podcast anymore but i will see you soon ladies on the main podcast again bye