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- [00:01]
Deborah So
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, They've got answers.
- [00:06]
Jonathan Kay
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru? Lima.
- [00:09]
Deborah So
How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish? Donde esta Alvano? Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich? Technically, no. Spiritually, yes. Hey Meta, what should I do with my life? That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think? Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.
- [00:30]
Jonathan Kay
Welcome to the Quillette Podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Kay. If you like what you hear, please Visit us@quillette.com the site where free thought lives. For essays, news and more podcasts, sign up for our newsletter and become a member@quillette.com that's Q U, I double L E double T E dot com this week marks a special occasion for me because my guest is the person who helped me start my career in podcasting almost a decade ago. I'm guessing a lot of you don't know this, but before I came to Colette, I spent a few years co hosting a Canadian show called Wrongspeak, which turned out to be a sort of early training ground for the kind of classically liberal and science based material I ended up covering here at Quillette. That podcast was put together by a Montreal based producer named Dan Delmar, who paired me up with a then up and coming Toronto based PhD neuroscientist and sex researcher named Deborah. So following those early podcast adventures, I went on to join Quillette and Deborah went on to journalistic fame as a columnist and author. Just a few months ago, Simon and Schuster published her second book titled Sextinction, the Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy, which is the subject of today's episode. As you'll hear, Deborah isn't arguing in her book that our society has become too sex negative. Just the opposite. We are now bombarded with sexualized messages and services on the Internet and propagandized with so called sex positive messaging from kink obsessed academics and activists. But in the process, the very idea of sex has become commoditized and stripped of its connection to real human intimacy, which is what most people really want in the long run, even if they don't think that's what they want when they're swiping mindlessly through dating profiles on hookup apps. In many ways, in fact, sextinction isn't really a book about sex. It's a book about the sense of alienation caused by the mismatch between our brain's sexual wiring and the nature of modern society. The fact that many people aren't having sex, or at least aren't having emotionally satisfying sex lives, can be seen as a symptom of that larger issue. For instance, it's great that women are now earning more money and dominating university campuses, but as a result of their skyrocketing fortunes, many women have fewer opportunities to date men who match them in earning power. As Dr. So discusses, this is a tendency that grates against the natural female preference for what's known as hypergamy, which is to say the evolutionarily learned female preference for mates who have superior earning power, which in turn can be invested in resources for any potential offspring. So when Debra looks around downtown Toronto, where she and I live, she sees lots of women with great jobs and nice apartments but very limited dating prospects. Meanwhile, the few men who do have the steady job and sex appeal that women tend to be looking for are enjoying what's essentially a seller's market, playing the field in a world of perpetual adolescence. There's no sextinction for that small group of people, but they're in the minority. Along the way, we'll also talk about the perils of bdsm, sex dolls, politicized, quote unquote sex, positive research, and something called phubbing. That's with pH and polyamory. And on that latter score, I've got to apologize for an error I made in the interview you're about to hear. At one point, about halfway in, you're going to hear me talk about longhorning, which I describe as the practice whereby a woman in a polyamorous relationship uses clever tactics to push out all the other women hooking up with her man so that she ends up in what is essentially a monogamous relationship with her nominally polygamous mate. In other words, it means getting rid of the competition, which is a real phenomenon in the polyam community, apparently. Except it's not actually called longhorning. I don't know where my brain got that term, but apparently I made it up. The real term in polyam culture for this kind of practice is called cowgirling, the metaphor being that the successful woman is a kind of rodeo star who uses a lasso to incapacitate all her rivals and get the guy all to herself. Again, it's called cowgirling, not longhorning. Now, in fairness to me, I guess both words have a kind of rodeo cowboy culture connotation, so maybe my confusion has some reasonable basis. But still, I hate getting things wrong in these interviews. And so, on behalf of Colette, let me say that I deeply regret the error and I would like to extend my sincere apologies to both cowgirls and their haplessly dumped victims. With that out of the way, please enjoy my interview with my former Wrongspeak Co host, Deborah so, author of the 2026 Simon Schuster book, Sextinction the Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. Deborah so, my old partner in podcasting crime. Thank you for joining the Quillette podcast.
- [05:41]
Deborah So
Well, thank you for having me, John.
- [05:43]
Jonathan Kay
The book is called Sextinction the Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. The somewhat apocalyptic title reflects my observation that when experts talk about sex, it's often the least sexy thing in the world. Because generally speaking, when people talk about a crisis in human sexuality, they're talking about bad news, right? They're talking about dysfunction, people having too much of it or not enough of it. What's interesting about you is you come by your expertise scientifically. I remember when we first met, you were spending a lot of time looking at brain scans. Could you talk about that work?
- [06:22]
Deborah So
Nowadays, I find the term sexuality expert can mean many different things to many different people. Also, depending on the person speaking how they're referring to themselves as that form of expert. For me, my PhD is in neuroscience, and as you mentioned, the work I was doing previously in academia as a scientific researcher was using brain imaging to better understand human sexuality in the brain. I was using four different types of brain scans. That includes functional mri, structural mri, and then two other forms of MRI to look at the gray matter and white matter, basically the cell bodies and also the connective tissue in terms of their structure. So is the anatomy and also their function, the activation or how these parts of the brain work and how they're connected and how they basically work together during sexual arousal. And it was a very expensive study. The lab I was working in got a $1.2 million grant, and I loved it. It was really, really fascinating. So basically, if anyone's ever had an mri, it's a giant donut that you will, in this case, your head goes into. And then it takes both static images and images in real time of blood flow in the brain. So you can see what's being activated when someone's doing a particular task or when they're looking at particular images and videos and things like that. So in the cont, how I made the switch from that to writing Sextinction now, which is my newest book, as you mentioned, my first book was looking at gender ideology and questioning these narratives or mainstream ideas about gender. And then I felt the next logical step is to question myths or narratives around sexuality. Because I had been hearing about this sex recession and I was very skeptical initially because I thought this was hyperbolic. I thought it was really a moral plan, a panic. I thought it was maybe one study where it was showing people were having less sex, but that things would go back to normal over time and that it would just wash out in the data. But what I found since then. So that first study came out in 2016 and since then there have been additional data sets showing that yes, this is a trend that's happening not just in North America, in the U.S. canada, not just in the west, but it's happening in the east as well. It's happening in all developed countries. And that people are having less sex than ever before. This is particularly the case for younger generations, including millennials and Gen Z. And this is especially case for young men. So my interest in writing Sextinction was to understand why is it people are less interested in sex, why are they having less sex? And my concern is also because a disinterest in sex or sexlessness is a reflection of a lack of interest in emotional connection as well and emotional intimacy. And so that's a bigger word. Some point I would say, because when you look around, I think everyone can relate to the sense that everyone is always on their phone. People don't really talk to strangers, people don't meet in real life anymore. But you know, going back to my original experience in academia, I definitely found when I was in academia that there's a left leaning bias and I would say especially within sexuality research. And so with this book I had the chance to question what are some of the things that I might have internalized or believed that were not actually based in scientific research. And so having the freedom now being a science journalist and as an author, I'm able to question those narratives because when you're in the field it's definitely, it's not just frowned upon. You will get kicked out, essentially, you might potentially lose your funding, you might lose your collaborators. There is so much misinformation and misrepresentation about human sexuality. I'm very critical of so called sex positivity in the book because I don't think it's actually good for people to follow those ideas. And in many cases they are why dating is so difficult nowadays, why people having, are struggling really in their relationships and marriages. And I offer a different perspective to say what you're feeling or experiencing or seeing is very legitimate and, and mainstream institutions or narratives don't want to talk about that because it's not politically correct to do so.
- [10:05]
Jonathan Kay
I don't talk a lot about sex on this podcast. Like I've literally done more podcast episodes about the Byzantine Empire than I have about sex.
- [10:15]
Deborah So
It's the first time for everything.
- [10:17]
Jonathan Kay
Again, it's very important that we establish your, your scientific bona fides here because remember the story from a couple days ago, I guess maybe a couple weeks ago now, where this activist lunatic went up to an American legislator who himself was very progressive, who was at the trans march in San Francisco and harassed him. And this legislator had to go home because the activists thought he wasn't pro Palestinian enough. And then it turned out later that this activist in question called himself a sex expert and a masturbation coach.
- [10:53]
Deborah So
Lord help us.
- [10:56]
Jonathan Kay
I'm pretty sure that he doesn't have a PhD in neuroscience. Sorry, I can't get this question in my head which why I have to ask about it. Like, I'm claustrophobic. So if you put me in the giant donut, I wouldn't be able to provide any reliable data in regard to arousal because I'd just be thinking, get me out of this. Were you actually able to get people into their, call it like normal everyday sexual mindset when they were in this huge piece like, have you ever done an mri? It's like something out of severance. Were there participants who just said, look, I can't do this, I'm claustrophobic?
- [11:39]
Deborah So
Yeah, well, to your first point about the activists, that's exactly what I'm trying to get away from. And I really hope that people within two seconds of hearing me open my mouth realize I'm not one of those so called masturbation experts or whatever they want to go by in terms of some of these so called experts. I mean, there's not really a lot of rigor in terms of who gets to call themselves a sexuality expert nowadays. There are definitely legitimate people in the field and I have many friends and colleagues who are still working in sex research, who are legitimate scientists, who are not biased by ideology, who are not political activists. They just want to do good research to understand human sexuality and they're not interested in having their work twisted or to go out and be picketing lawmakers or making fools of themselves. So this individual, I can't really speak to what their motivations were.
- [12:23]
Jonathan Kay
Just to be clear, he wasn't harassing the legislator on a pro masturbation agenda. He was harassing the legislator on a Middle Eastern geopolitical agenda, but just so much better. The detail came out in his bio and everyone was on social media was like, well, of course he's a masturbate. Like, it just kind of. I guess when you present yourself to a publisher for a book like this, one of the first orders of business is saying, hey, look, I'm an expert in neuroscience. I'm not here to write something they can find on social media or whatnot.
- [12:54]
Deborah So
Well, they'll still try to. I remember when I first started working as a journalist, people said, she doesn't actually have a PhD. Her, her doctorate's in philosophy. You realize that a doctorate in philosophy is a Ph.D. or they'll say, my Ph.D. ph.D. Is not actually in neuroscience.
- [13:08]
Jonathan Kay
There was a woman from, I think she was a University of British Columbia who completely humiliated herself attacking you on that basis. I think you got her. She, like, was so embarrassed she left Twitter because she. I think if I'm this like five, six years ago, she accused you of not having a PhD. Do you have to deal with that all the time? People thinking that you like run a call in show or something like that
- [13:27]
Deborah So
all the time, or they say that I'm terrible with my patients. I don't work with patients. People just make, I'm sure you, you experience the same thing. People just make things up. But thankfully, one of the benefits of the Internet is that people can do their own research and see that you legitimately do know what you're talking about. And I think too, it depends on what side of the political aisle you're on.
- [13:44]
Jonathan Kay
I want to wait on the politics a bit.
- [13:46]
Deborah So
Well, I could actually speak to the donut part. What you're saying, did patients ever get uncomfortable? Some did. I mean, I was very stringent with the people who did my research and that I wanted to make sure that they would be comfortable. We would do a full. I would do a full assessment. I would do a four hour assessment before they would do the study. In terms of making sure it would be safe for them, physically and emotionally safe for them. I would do full. Now, to be clear, like I said, I don't do clinical work anymore. I don't work with patients anymore. But back then I would do a full assessment in terms of mental health, in terms of trauma, in terms of sexual behavior. The people who made it through all of those criteria were comfortable enough to do the mri because as you said, it is very loud, it is very small in terms of the space you're in and you have to stay very still for the images to be Clean so that you can use those data. Because if someone moves, especially if you're looking at fmri, functional MRI can be very messy because the brain is activated.
- [14:35]
Jonathan Kay
There's all kinds of like middle school jokes that are asserting themselves in my brain and I'm absolutely not going to make because I'm talking to an esteemed scientist. But like, I don't mind. Well, no, but it's. I. We have to move on. At the beginning of your book, you have this. I'm going to read it here. It says it. Some of you may already have working hypotheses as to how we got here. Porn, smartphones, feminism, narcissism, social media, the declining morals of contemporary men and women. And it's, you know, as I was reading, I was like, yeah, I've read a lot of essays about how those are to blame. Yeah, but in your book, it's not like you disabuse people of the idea that these aren't factors. Your book suggests to me that all of these things are at play here. It's not just, well, if you put a porn filter on your browser, everything's gonna be fine. Right?
- [15:23]
Deborah So
Right. So there are so many different things that are acting as a confluence to, as to why we're having less sex. And I think part of it is yes, as I mentioned, the smartphones and the Internet and digital media, social media, dating apps that aspect pornography as well. Basically each chapter in sextion goes into a different hypothesis or reason as to why I think people are having less sex. A lot of this technological distraction or self soothing. Also we see sex dolls and sex robots becoming increasingly popular. AI girlfriends and boys.
- [15:58]
Jonathan Kay
Like the sec. The AI girlfriend thing I get because it's just like an app, like any other app. But the sex doll thing. This sounds stupid, but like it's a thing that you have to order from Amazon or whatever and it sits in your house and people are gonna see it or it's gonna be hard.
- [16:17]
Deborah So
John, they're not sitting at the dinner table.
- [16:18]
Jonathan Kay
No, I, but I assume that the kind of. This is a stereotype. The kind of guy who's using this is some 23 year old with like 6 roommates and he lives in a frat house and he has no privacy. And it's not like he has a special, I don't know, boudoir for his sex doll. Is the sex doll thing really a thing? Like, is it actually like a mass consumer phenomenon?
- [16:42]
Deborah So
I mean, if there are guys living in a frat house and they're young, like that they're probably all sharing the doll. Really?
- [16:47]
Jonathan Kay
Okay, let's move on. No, no, you killed it.
- [16:53]
Deborah So
Well, in that chapter, in that chapter, I detail, one company told me how much money, how many millions of dollars they made in sales over the pandemic alone. It is wild to me. I didn't realize the market was that large. And these dolls are so realistic. I went on a little escapade in terms of investigating what the level of sophistication is within sex dolls and sex robots, and it blew my mind. Honestly, I wasn't expecting them to be so realistic. And then also with the AI chatbots, I made dozens upon dozens of chatbot boyfriend and girlfriends and combined. I am really concerned about where this is taking us because when you see more and more young men, especially, turning away from dating and relationships, and they're saying, I'm going to get a sex bot and put my girlfriend, my AI girlfriend brain into my sex bot and I'm not going to have to deal with women ever again.
- [17:36]
Jonathan Kay
Okay, that is horrifying. But it also makes a certain kind of dystopian sense to me what makes less sense, and I think what would make less, well, makes more sense after I read the chapter on it. But let's talk about these dating apps, because, look, let's say if I told you no one is using carpools, and I've created an app that will allow people to find each other so that they carpool to work together, you know, oh, you live in this neighborhood, I live in this neighborhood. We were each driving to work in our own car, creating lots of traffic and using lots of gas. However, using this app, I've located other people in my neighborhood who work in the same place and live in the same area, and voila. You would expect that app to increase the number of people who curpool. You know, whether it's 1% or 5% or 10%, you would think the existence of that app is going to make people have more and better carpools, I guess. Explain to me why dating apps, which for a lot of people, maybe they're supposed to be sex apps, actually decrease at least the amount of high quality commodity that they're supposed to be supplying.
- [18:53]
Deborah So
I like this analogy to carpooling apps because if such a thing existed, I imagine people, the criteria you're, you're selecting your carpooling friends on are different from the criteria used to find.
- [19:03]
Jonathan Kay
But those apps exist. You might doubt that they're effective, but you would never say, well, it's going to reduce the Amount of carpooling. Right. Like that would be crazy. But it seems that at least in terms of high quality, emotionally satisfying sexual relationships, dating apps have actually reduced the quantity of the thing they're supposed to provide. Is that accurate?
- [19:22]
Deborah So
Right. Well, but people aren't going on carpooling apps, I'm assuming for a self esteem boost or they're not going on there for, out of boredom to just swipe on people and say who they might like to carpool with.
- [19:32]
Jonathan Kay
That'd be weird because pretty bored.
- [19:34]
Deborah So
Because they just want that interaction or that little joy of seeing, oh, this person wants a carpool with me too. Okay, well, too bad for them. I'm going to keep swiping. Whereas dating apps for some people, I mean there's a literature around people who have something called problematic dating app use where they will be on there all hours of the day and they're not even really on there to date, they're just there for the validation and for the interactions. And so they're swiping on people, they're matching people, they may not even necessarily talk to these people or even go on a date. And so for the people who are actually on these apps looking for love, who do want to find somebody, it can be really demoralizing because I'm sure everyone has had this experience by now. If you're on there where you match with people and it doesn't go anywhere, either the conversation is really dull or one sided, the person doesn't put effort in or you match and then the other person won't in initiate with you. I think men should always initiate. So if you as a woman are on this, these apps, you might match with all these guys, but men are not initiating conversation with you. Or some men will say to me, well, I do initiate with her, but she just talks about herself the entire time. And then how many of those matches actually then go on to having an in person date? And of those in person dates, how many lead to a second date, a third date, and eventually a relationship and marriage? Very, very few. And in the meantime, so you're sitting there on these apps spending potentially hours swiping, thinking that you're doing something productive and that you have a chance with each of these people? Because that's, that's, I guess, how an optimistic person would view it.
- [20:53]
Jonathan Kay
Statistics. Yeah. If you throw enough darts at the dartboard, you're going to hit a bullseye eventually, right?
- [20:58]
Deborah So
Yeah, but realistically, I mean there's, there are studies showing that the majority of men on these apps are are married or in a relationship. So that really hinders your likelihood of finding luck on them. And then the other part is that you can only tell so much about a potential partner from their bio. So what they choose to write in text, their photos, usually it's very curated. They may not have a personality that matches with what they seem to have, either based on their bio or when you actually message with them on the app. So all of this, I mean, this process leaves people really fatigued, exhausted, feeling, losing hope, I think in the turn in terms of what they can find and even if they do go on a date, dating today is such a mess. And the dynamic between the sexes is so hostile and horrible that it has become really inhospitable for some people, I think, and especially for young people who may not have as much experience being around the opposite sex, being friends with the opposite sex and just interacting with them on a day to day basis. They may take all of their expectations from social media or these experiences on dating apps that are negative and really apply that to everybody in the opposite sex. So in terms of carpool apps, I don't think they're going to polarize the sexes as much or polarize, say, people in terms of the carpooling community. Like, I do think dating apps could have been a wonderful way for people to find their soulmate potentially. But it's a very tricky technology because it is introducing a context or say, a, an online environment that is not reflective of what we would have ever experienced in the past. And so our minds are being fooled in some ways because when you're sitting there and you're swiping through hundreds of people, it's exhausting. It may not feel like that, but your mind can't register that many people in one sitting. And then when you do, you start to think, okay, there really is nobody out there for me.
- [22:39]
Jonathan Kay
I don't know how this turned into, like how to meet men and how to meet women, but because I'm older than you, so the single people I know in my life tend to be looking for second marriages. The dog run seems to be a successful place because men and women of a certain age who take their dog to a dog run five or six times a day because that's the main emotional focus of their life, tend to find each other there. Yeah. Well, you say awe. That's very patron. I know.
- [23:08]
Deborah So
Oh, it's sweet. It is nice.
- [23:10]
Jonathan Kay
There's a bunch of points in your book where you talk about the evolutionary science, right? And evolutionary science is what it Is. And it. Evolution doesn't care about your politics and it doesn't care about your pronouns. It's the wiring of our brain. And there's a couple of points, well, more than a couple, where you have to pause and say, hey, look, I'm not saying this is how we would design humans if we had to. But then there's other points in the book where you're. You wear your politics on your sleeve. At one point, you use the term cringe to describe the practice of women pursuing men romantically.
- [23:43]
Deborah So
Because it is.
- [23:44]
Jonathan Kay
No, but that's, That's a political judgment.
- [23:49]
Deborah So
Is it though?
- [23:49]
Jonathan Kay
Is it cringe like, you know, I, I'm sure we all have friends whose. Their relationship is based on the woman originally being like the suitors.
- [23:57]
Deborah So
And how long do those relationships last?
- [24:00]
Jonathan Kay
I don't.
- [24:01]
Deborah So
I'll say. Not for everyone. I'm sure there are some marriages and relationships for whom that's not the case. But I, I have thought a lot about this because I see young women advocating to other women, you should be the one to pursue if a guy. Especially nowadays with the dating pool, because it's so slanted in favor of highly successful men. Because women are outperforming their male peers in terms of education and in the workforce, so women are very financially successful. And because women prefer to date up or marry up. Because the hypergamous.
- [24:28]
Jonathan Kay
Hyper. And that's the word I was going to ask. It's hypergamy.
- [24:31]
Deborah So
Hypergamous. Yeah. Or hypergamy.
- [24:33]
Jonathan Kay
And that means basically the secretary marrying her boss.
- [24:36]
Deborah So
Yeah.
- [24:36]
Jonathan Kay
Going back, by the way. That's a dated, stereotypical 1950 year, which I do not condone.
- [24:40]
Deborah So
John Case says that all women should not can only. The only way women are going to get married is that they're the secretary.
- [24:46]
Jonathan Kay
So this is in the mad Men generation. That's what hypergamy would look like, right?
- [24:50]
Deborah So
Okay, yeah. But it's just even in very successful women, that's still the case because it's benefited our ancestors, our female ancestors.
- [24:57]
Jonathan Kay
The millionaire wants to marry. The billionaire wants him.
- [24:59]
Deborah So
Yeah, exactly. To always want someone who has more provisionary status. And so when you as a woman, even if you are more successful. Right. Men don't care so much about your financial success unless he's going to try and use you for your money for the most part. Because you'll see this happen where there are guys who. These, these poor women are super, super successful and they'll date guys who are basically layabouts and they will live off of these women. So again, not to say this is the case for every single person, but just in terms of generalizations and trends we see more broadly, women do prefer to, to marry men who are more financially successful. And so these men, because they are not as interested in a woman's financial success, they care more about beauty and fertility and health. So they basically have their pick of women and they'll have a rotation of number of women whom they're sleeping with. And they have no incentives to settle down because they're enjoying their time. And men's timeline is also longer in terms of the reproductive window than women.
- [25:56]
Jonathan Kay
The 35 year old female Vice President is competing with the 30 year old female Office Manager and the 25 year old female grad student for the same guy.
- [26:05]
Deborah So
Yeah.
- [26:06]
Jonathan Kay
Women have had more opportunities in society to get good jobs. And as you said, it's kind of arithmetically, it's gone kind of overboard. Universities, some university campuses are 2/3 female. The men who are successful, it's kind of like an elephant seal phenomenon. Right? Like it's not quite harems per se, but what you're describing is harem adjacent.
- [26:27]
Deborah So
Yeah. I mean, in say, very large urban cities, I do hear stories of that, where men basically have a rotation of women and none of the women can really ask for a relationship because he'll just replace them with another woman who doesn't.
- [26:41]
Jonathan Kay
And that guy is not suffering sextion.
- [26:44]
Deborah So
No.
- [26:45]
Jonathan Kay
But for every guy like that, there's a whole bunch of other guys who are lower stat. Maybe they haven't graduated from university. And that gets a sense of the, the incel phenomenon. Politically toxic extrapolation of the phenomenon you're describing. Yes.
- [27:00]
Deborah So
Yeah. But what I would say going back to why women shouldn't pursue, is that men know that they are supposed to be the ones to pursue. They know. And again, because of our wiring, our biological wiring, there is a greater investment and there's greater risk with sex for women than for men. So if a man is not required to pursue or put effort in or to show that initial interest, he knows that she was the one who bent over backwards for him, essentially because I have seen this happen in so many people where they are in relationships or marriages now where the woman was the one pursuing him the entire time and she basically is an afterthought and it's really sad. So I don't say this to try and shame women who do this or to say to men that, you know, they should put all the effort in, but I think there needs to be a recalibration of the fact that, yes, sex comes with a different cost for women. And, and if you as a woman require this, it's going to be easier for you to actually vet your partners because a man who can't do something as basic as approach you or ask you out on a date is not someone who's probably going to invest in you long term. I think the solution to that is, as I say in Sextunction, we really need to help support young men who are struggling, those who are maybe not done education yet, or some of them are not even interested in pursuing an education or having a job. Some of them are happy to sit at home watching porn all day, smoking weed, online betting, and they don't really have plans for the future. And I really feel for them and I don't think it's fair that society penalizes them and holds them back. But at the same time, I don't think that should come at the expense of taking away women's rights either, because some of these men, as you said, like the incels, will say, well, women don't deserve equal rights because look what happens when you give women equal rights. They trample all over us. Now they are being sexist toward men. And then again this, this feeds into this further dynamic where the sexes hate each other.
- [28:40]
Jonathan Kay
In a way, your book really goes against the grain of progressive career adv advice to women, if only implicitly. At one point you say unmarried women are more likely to have high educational and occupational status, while unmarried men are more likely to be unemployed and poor. At least implicitly. The advice here is the opposite of lean in. It's kind of like lean out because it summons to mind the idea of a woman who's highly successful, has a corner office, but she's 40 and makes half a million dollars a year, but finds it almost impossible to find a guy she wants to date because the only men who have more money and status than her are either taken or gay or. Or there's like a dozen other women that they're dating. Do you think the whole lean in thing was misguided?
- [29:29]
Deborah So
No, no. I think I want to be clear that I definitely celebrate ambitious women. I think it's wonderful that women are doing so well in their careers and financially. I think it's important for women to have their money, to make their own money, for your own independence, and also to help prevent you getting into a where you are financially dependent on someone who may or may not be abusive toward you. And the same for men as well. But I do think there has been Really a glossing over of biology in terms of say, women's work, life balance. That's a bit of a different point from what the one you're making. But I do have a chapter, the final chapter of the book is about reproductive technology and that I feel women, especially young women, are being sold this, this lies and she. That they can extend their reproductive freezer eggs for as long as they want. Yeah.
- [30:09]
Jonathan Kay
Which would, I mean, to be fair, for some women it is possible and it happens.
- [30:13]
Deborah So
Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's not that it doesn't succeed, it's not a success for everyone, but I do think it's being oversold. This idea that you start with the pill, then you can freeze your eggs and if you can't find a man, you can just have a baby on your own by using the available technology. Which was crazy to me because in terms of writings, extinction and the investigation I did into buying sperm on the Internet, you really can't do this. You really can buy sperm and pop it in you and have the baby nine months later. So I don't think that gets at the underlying issue, which is that if you as a woman, not everyone has to get married and not everyone has to have children. But if you do want those things, it's important to be aware that your biological timeline is set and for everyone it can be slightly different, but there is a limit there and women's biological window is going to be smaller than men's. So it's not sexist to acknowledge that. And I think it's actually more empowering for women to recognize that you can achieve all of these goals in these different areas of your life, but you just have to be very strategic about it. So for me, I mean my, my role now as a former scientist and as a science journalist and as an author, I feel I need to be brutally honest with my readers about what I find in the data because there are too many voices, I would say, that are happy to placate, I guess, a more progressive view on sexuality that isn't helpful. If you say to a woman, keep working, make as much money as you want. And then if you. They don't really tell women. The reality is that there is a shortage of men and if you can't find someone, you can just date a 20 year old. That's what they're telling them now. Like date younger. Which if you. As a woman. Yeah, as a successful woman.
- [31:44]
Jonathan Kay
I can't come out tonight. I have to play video games with my friends. Like, I mean really, like most people my age, can barely hold it together in terms of maturity.
- [31:51]
Deborah So
They're trying to glamorize. And if you as a woman like to date younger than power to you. But realistically, if you get a gap where you're 20 years older than a guy, what are you going to have in common to talk about?
- [32:01]
Jonathan Kay
I'm looking back, I know it's an ancient show by modern standards. Sex in the City, everybody listening to this knows at least something about the show. Sort of glamorizing the idea of having boy toys and stuff like that, which makes for a great TV plot. But I'm guessing in real life leads to like five minutes of good sex, but then an emotionally barren existence after that.
- [32:21]
Deborah So
Right. And I'm thinking of the character Samantha because she was the one, from what I remember, she had the younger boyfriend, who I believe was a model. So he's lots of fun. I mean, her character was very much about having lots of promiscuous sex and not getting attached to. But the reality is that's not how it is for women. Women do become more attached after sex than men do. And that's because of the difference in hormones that are released during sex. And that it benefited women from an evolutionary perspective to become attached to a partner. Because if you bear that man's child, you should want to ensure that that child is taken care of and that you know, you, you love that child. And so this narrative has been, I think, very damaging, especially for young women who aren't aware maybe that there are these differences. And if they feel or they feel attached after having a one night stand or casual sex, that there's something wrong with them and they feel that they're not doing it properly or they're for whatever reason different from their female peers who can sleep around. But usually for women especially, I would say, who are less interested in having an emotional connection with sex, usually it's because there was something unfortunate that happened to her to lead her to separate those two things. So I think it's important for we again that we talk about this honestly so that people can get help and heal from whatever unfortunate experiences they've had. But I do think that's been a really damaging myth to young women to say you should go out and just have as much promiscuous sex as you want. And then once you reach a certain age and you want to settle down, then you can. Because by that point, most of the men whom they're going to be interested in will be married or still in their Playboy phase. And it's going to be very difficult for these women to find a man, get married, have kids by 35. Not to say that 35 is the absolute cutoff, but that's when a woman's fertility drops in half on average. So many women don't even know that, unfortunately. And then they end up in a situation where, yes, they're wondering, okay, well, what can I do now? So then you also see this other narrative popping up in society saying that, you know, you can have your erotica. There's actually a more PC term for erotica, romantasy. I think, have your romantasy, have your AI boyfriend. Having a husband or boyfriend is embarrassing anyway, and you're better off this way.
- [34:28]
Jonathan Kay
It's bourgeois. Yeah. Okay, so before I had a carpool analogy, I'm now going to introduce a real estate analogy. I had a real estate agent friend and he said, you remember like 10, 15, 20 years ago, there was this big wave of real estate shows where it was just couples looking at houses. You're staring at me blankly. So I guess, you know, I'm thinking
- [34:55]
Deborah So
of the Home Reno shows, which is.
- [34:57]
Jonathan Kay
No, no, this was kind of like home buying shows. Like they'd show them three houses and they had to decide which house to it. And of course, like, obviously the most popular shows were like, they're buying gorgeous mansions on, you know, South Pacific islands and stuff. But the idea was that my friend was saying it makes it kind of tough because from watching these shows, everyone goes into a house and they expect granite countertops, they expect a three car garage, they expect the perfect sort of home they saw on tv. It's not entirely a figure of speech when they talk about real estate porn. Like, it seems to activate the same kind of unrealistic expectations. And I thought of this because at one point you talk about maybe women who have unrealistic expectations impeding their ability to connect because the great becomes the enemy of the good. Can you tell us what the three sixes are? Possibly the four sixes. Keeping in mind this is a family podcast.
- [35:57]
Deborah So
Yes, of course. So the three sixes refer to a man who is over six feet in height, makes over six figures annually in income, and is has either a six pack and or is greater than six inches below.
- [36:12]
Jonathan Kay
Got it.
- [36:13]
Deborah So
Okay. So that is basically the prototypical or the highest tier male specimen that you as a woman should pursue and you shouldn't waste your time on anyone who does not possess those three or four sixes. That's what the lore is.
- [36:25]
Jonathan Kay
And the arithmetic as you go through it is if 20 to 30% of men fall into each category, 20% times 20% times 20%. You're chasing like 2 or 3% of the male population, right?
- [36:38]
Deborah So
Yeah, it's a tiny, tiny percentage. And that you need to also take into account, is he married, is he gay, do you have things in common, is there chemistry? And does he have a good personality? So all of these things basically whittle down the percentage of matches. We'll say appropriate matches in terms of three sixes men to less than 1% of the population. And even if someone checks all those boxes, it doesn't necessarily mean that your relationship is going to last either. So there are other metrics that would be more helpful in terms of prioritizing in dating. So things like, as I mentioned before, personality, like agreeableness, being willing to prioritize your partner, sense of humor, common interests.
- [37:16]
Jonathan Kay
It's an extension of the like thing. You spend your whole day on social media seeing how many likes things or retweets things have. So you learn to see your own happiness in terms of commodities and quantities.
- [37:27]
Deborah So
Yeah, and I think it's a way too, for some people maybe to just avoid the dating process because if they're holding out for this perfection or status that doesn't actually exist, then that allows them to say, well, I haven't found the right person yet. But I mean, most happy couples I see, the men don't necessarily meet all of those metrics and the women also don't necessarily meet the stereotypical Instagram perfect body, perfect proportions, highly worked on face with all the injectables and what have you. And if people want to, if men or women want to undergo cosmetic work, that's their right. But my concern is when it's taken to such an extreme that people feel, especially young people, feel that they need to undergo some form of plastic surgery in order to be ready to date or in order to be found attractive by the opposite sex. Because like you said, again, they're on social media so much that there is this particular aesthetic that's been burned in their minds for both girls and boys. They think they have to look this way otherwise no one's going to find them attractive, no one's going to love them, no one's going to be interested in them. But that's, that's not the reality.
- [38:30]
Jonathan Kay
One of your many caveats. I point this out not to shame women, but instead to offer a realistic depiction of the mating market. There's a lot of these caveats that said the Section. I was reading about polyamory, you were maybe having more difficulty disguising your disdain for this, this kind of relationship. What percentage of polyamorous relationships are one man with multiple women? Because you say the opposite exists, but it's usually like more of a fetish situation, like a cuckold fetish.
- [39:03]
Deborah So
It tends to be actually higher value women with men who tend not to like themselves very much. And that would make sense because again, these are generalizations. It's not the case for everybody, but by and large, it tends to be men who. My purview as a former expert in paraphilia is men who have sexual masochism. So they like being humiliated. So as I mentioned, cuckolding, that's basically watching your partner have sex with other men and enjoying it sexually, or just hearing about the details of your female partner having sex with other men, seeing her going out on dates in some cases. Maybe this is too graphic. I'll try to say this as a family friendly way as possible, but sometimes these women will go out on dates and come back with, we'll say, the memory of the man that they were just with.
- [39:49]
Jonathan Kay
Got it. Yeah.
- [39:50]
Deborah So
The, the partner, the male partner will enjoy, you know.
- [39:54]
Jonathan Kay
Yeah, right, right.
- [39:56]
Deborah So
But in terms of what I think people who go down this route expect, they think that it's going to be both sexes enjoying an unlimited number of high value attractive partners and that it's going to be super easy breezy. No one's going to get jealous. And if they do get jealous, well, you can talk to a therapist about it and work through those feelings. And there's actually an entire industry of therapists and schedulers who will help polyamorous couples both in terms of making time for each other, making time for dates with other people. And then therapists will help them work through jealousy, which I don't think is something you should work through. It's very normal to be jealous if your primary sexual partner wants to sleep with other people or be in love with other people. That's not going to feel good to you if you're emotionally healthy. And so what happens?
- [40:40]
Jonathan Kay
It sounds like gaslighting in the sense, like, well, how can we help you get over these weird feelings you're having?
- [40:45]
Deborah So
Like, yeah, there are some people who are less jealous than others. Right. They call it compersion, where some people will experience joy at their partner having sex with the people. But yeah, but I do think that is a little bit of sexual masochism and there's something going on. I think gay men are the Only ones who really have an easier time with this, because men can separate sex from love a lot more easily. So when it's two men, there's less of the jealousy, there's less of that dynamic, and there's more. A greater understanding between both of them that this is just sexual. But when. When it's women, and understandably, women are not going well, men also not going to want to share their women with other men because you have to worry about if she becomes pregnant, how are you going to. Before DNA testing, it was very difficult to determine who the father would be. So if a man doesn't know whether that child is his, he's not going to invest. And that poor child is going to grow up now with less parental investment. But then what happens in the modern dating market is that because there is this, we'll say, lack of higher status successful men, those men are the ones who are going to be calling the shots in terms of their dating life and their dating lives and how many partners they have. So these men are more likely to be. It might not be an agreed upon polyamorous situation, but these men are going to have many more women, and the women are going to have to be fighting for this. Men. And so they're really. The women who think that polyamory is a great idea. I would say of, you know, Gen Z especially, they are. They lean toward this because I guess they grew up in homes in which divorce was very common. If they didn't experience it themselves, they saw their friends, parents getting divorced and how painful that was. And so they think, okay, well, there's no such thing. There's no point in monogamy. Everyone cheats. Everyone gets divorced. So we'll just have sex with everybody at the same time. But that's not the reality of it. Especially for women in this climate. It's gonna. They're gonna be really at a disadvantage.
- [42:26]
Jonathan Kay
Have you ever heard the expression longhorn as a verb in polyamory?
- [42:32]
Deborah So
Do I want to know what this is?
- [42:33]
Jonathan Kay
No, it's not like a sex thing. It's. It's like. It's more like an evolutionary psych thing. No, I'm not gonna, like, do some gross urban dictionary thing, but because somebody I know who's formerly polyam said that there's this expression within the polyamorous community where a woman is in a polyamorous relationship with a guy, and the guy's having sex with lots of women, and she gradually finds ways to push the other women out so that a year later the guy looks around and says, hey, I'm monoam. How'd that happen? She's not literally stabbing the women, although I guess that would be an effective attack, but. But in effect, she's trying to get to a traditional monoam situation without telling the guy, hey, you have to be faithful to me. She's just like undermining the other women.
- [43:21]
Deborah So
I feel for women like that too, because I think they've bought into this messaging that you have to, as a woman, if you are enlightened about sex, you're open minded, you have to be okay with your man sleeping with other women. And if you aren't, you're uptight, you're a prude, there's something wrong with you, right?
- [43:34]
Jonathan Kay
You're colonial or what did you like? Literally, there's this book that came out like six months ago by this famous. God, I forget her name. She's like a household name among a certain kind of intersectional feminist. But she's a white woman, extremely progressive in her politics. She just published her memoir six months ago, as I said. And her boyfriend is a black guy who wanted to sleep around and convinced her that it was like a racist colonial mentality to prevent him from sleeping around. People get gaslit by their partners in all kinds of ways. But what was exceptional about this case is she actually wrote it in her book and wrote about her own decision to permit him to sleep around. Approvingly. She talked about how wonderful it was for her to get into bed with her boyfriend and the woman who her boyfriend actually wanted to sleep with and they would treat her like a child and tell her when to take a shower and stuff. Oh, no, the whole thing was awful, especially since this woman wasn't some random mentally ill person. She was kind of like a sort of political intellectual celebrity on the left. Neither of us can remember her name, which maybe is a good thing. You go on at some length about men who try to convince you or others that they're perfectly happy just being a house husband wearing an apron, welcoming home their high achieving woman every, every day with. With a kiss and pan of freshly baked muffins. It says you write the over the top enthusiasm they express when sharing their house husband itinerary. We're talking about Facebook posts where it's like, oh, you know, I had to pick up the dry cleaning and then it's home to.
- [45:13]
Deborah So
Have you seen these? So, John, there's. There are tons of these videos of these men who. I'll. I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I have this well, you say it's
- [45:20]
Jonathan Kay
a coping mechanism, an overcompensation for their feelings of inadequacy. It's kind of like. I mean, you kind of go deep into the psychoanalysis. You say, deep down, even the laziest of house husbands knows. Knows is italicized, that refusing to work and relying on a woman's income betray a lack of integrity. Pretty strong medicine there. Like, it almost sounds like you're talking about a guy who. You know or something. Like, is this. Is this inspired by a true story or something? Because. Yeah, it's very specific. Yeah.
- [45:51]
Deborah So
Yeah. My issue with it is when I see narratives in society being pushed on men or women, and it's just. And I see how both sexes try so hard to contort themselves to accepting it and. And feeling like if they don't accept that, there's something wrong with them, that's what gets me worked up. Because in this case especially, I see so many women who are very successful. And so we'll say in terms of marriages in which the woman is the primary breadwinner, so she makes all of the money or most of the money, that's one in seven American marriages. And those marriages are also at a higher risk of divorce, things like domestic violence. I list in sex addiction, all these other awful things that they're associated with that you're not supposed to talk about. This wonderful narrative is being promoted that if a man wants to stay at home and not work and raise the children, and the woman is out being the primary or the sole breadwinner, that's totally wonderful. We should celebrate that. And I would say, yes, we should. But at the same time, if that makes women uncomfortable or if women start to feel resentful, I think that's okay, too. I think if women say, hey, actually, no, I want my husband to contribute to our income, that's okay, too. And I see this as one of those solutions, proposed solutions to this mating gap that we see where, like I said, if women are doing so well economically and men are not to simply say, okay, well, women don't be hypergamous, then just marry a guy who is less financially successful, and you can make it work that way. But the reality is, especially once children enter the picture, children are going to have a preference for their mom, especially in the early age, because women's bodies are basically the food source for these children, so they're going to be more attached to her. And that's not to say that fathers don't play an important role, but especially when the child is very Young, they're more dependent on the mother. So I see many women going down this route where they think, okay, I can do it all. I can do it all at the same time. I can be the primary or sole breadwinner, I'll just take time off to have the child. I'll get back to work right away, and my husband can be the one to raise the child, do the housework. Right. Do the other associated responsibilities. But what we find when we look at the data is that not only these women, so if they are the sole breadwinner or the primary breadwinner, they are making all or most of the money. They also do more housework and they also do more childcare than their spouses, which people say, how's that possible? So they go to work for eight plus hours a day, they come home, and then they do another shift, essentially of more work, but this time it's labor in the house and raising the children. If people find my commentary on these issues to be harsh, I'm harsh across the board. I'm as honest as it gets. So, you know, some weeks, some weeks, men might take issue with me, but the next weeks is gonna be next week it's gonna be women taking issue with me.
- [48:28]
Jonathan Kay
So I've known you for a while and we did the podcast, and I know it pushes your buttons in terms of politics. And I know that you actually have a lot of tolerance for anybody who's very candid about having a problem or an issue or frustration. Like if somebody says, I'm turned on by this and I wish I weren't turned on by this, or I have to deal with this, like, you're actually very understanding and tolerant. Your anger, which comes out like clockwork, both in print. Anger is the wrong word. Exasperation is coping mechanisms that turn into politicized narratives that treat things that are bad and lead to hurtful outcomes and try and reinvent them as things that are good, you hate that. Whether it's from politics or people who are just self deluded to some extent, your book is a catalog of that. Take polyamory. It's kind of predictable how polyamory is going to end, right? It's not going to end with three people living in the castle happily ever after. It's going to lead to one woman longhorning the other one. Or the guy's just going to say, hey, I'm going to ditch both of you because I found this better woman. And you know what? This woman is so good that I'm actually gonna be monoam with her because she's demanding it and she's worth it. So bye bye, ladies. A lot of these things cross politics because in progressive circles, the narrative around polyamory is a narrative of like, oh, isn't it great? We've even seen some preliminary efforts to get, like, the P into the LGBT spectrum.
- [50:01]
Deborah So
Oh, dear. Well, pee usually is in pedophilia. When they say pee.
- [50:04]
Jonathan Kay
There's some certain brand confusion there that maybe I'll work on. But the point is that it essentially often describes relationships that are extremely exploitative and patriarchal and which take advantage of women who have very few options in relationships. And you put. You stick a progressive package around it that is exasperating. It's not exasperating that women have so few options romantically that they have to settle for half a guy or a third of a guy or a quarter guy. That's sad. And it shouldn't be criticized, but celebrating it or trying to, like, say it's not a problem because if you turn it around, it's like this amazing progressive thing that seems to be an issue for you. Am I reading your exasperation correctly that comes through in your book?
- [50:47]
Deborah So
I would say so. I think underlying all that is the science denial. So whether it, like, because we were talking about politics earlier, whether it frustrates the political left or the political right, for me it's more so an issue of who is hiding the truth. I really dislike when people try to shove the truth under the carpet and pretend it's not there. And like you said, do a little dance, sing a song, and say everything is great. And in fact, here's a better way to do things. We don't need to look at this under the carpet. Here's a better way. Listen to me and I'll tell you the better way to do it. But that doesn't make reality change. It just makes people suffer because they are not aware of why they feel the way they do, because they are operating and living in reality, but they're not aware as to how these ideas are not actually reflective of the real world. And so that's what I've tried to do from day one with my journalism, is to say, here are. Here's some information that is considered controversial for whatever reason, I don't think it should be. But if you want to live a potentially happier, healthier life, these are things to be aware of. And with this extinction, especially because I. I see how all of this progressive science denial is really funneling people into making bad decisions. Around dating.
- [51:58]
Jonathan Kay
When you say science denial, you mean evolutionary psychology denial, Basically denial of biology, Denial of.
- [52:04]
Deborah So
There's just that there are differences between men and women in terms of our sexual behavior or our sexual preferences, or that even something as simple as hypergamy. You mainstream media, institutions, legacy media, whenever they talk about hypergamy, they frame it as something that scientists made up. I think they see it as sexist to think that women actually want men who are successful because that to them means that women aren't capable of being successful on their own, or that women in some ways are reliant on men, which of course I don't agree with. But the reality is, yes, women are going to be very reluctant to marry someone who is not as successful as they are. That's just the reality. And that's not due to. Purely to social conditioning. I do think there is like a socialization aspect in that, yes, if you as a woman are very successful and you are dating someone who is not as educated or as successful, yes, your friends might judge you, but that's not the prime primary force driving women to seek out men who are high in status in terms of being partners. So something as simple as that. And when you deny that, so when you say mainstream institutions say, oh, hypergamy is not real, it doesn't exist, that's just sexist people who think that what happens is. Then you get these manosphere men's rights activists who say, actually hypergamy does exist because there's a scientific literature that documents it. And look, this is why women can never be trusted.
- [53:24]
Jonathan Kay
Before I let you go, I have two more questions for you. One is, I want you to explain what phubbing is. P H U B B I n G. And by the way, this is not like a super gross urban dictionary thing. And I say that because I was writing a blog post about baseball and I was talking about how some player was a double threat. And I made the horrifying mistake of making sure I was using the term double threat correctly. And I wound up on the urban dictionary explanation of double threat, which absolutely nobody in the universe should look at because it's the most horrifying thing. I couldn't even. Anyway, so I'm just saying phubbing is not in that category.
- [54:01]
Deborah So
Is it like. Is it like, oh, I don't know if I should say this.
- [54:03]
Jonathan Kay
Don't even spec. It's. Whatever you're thinking of is like 1/100th is disgusting. But fubbing is not a sex. It's kind of an anti sex Practice. What is fubbing?
- [54:12]
Deborah So
To be clear for people listening, so I wrote Sextinction. I know it's a book about sex, but I wrote it to be family friendly. So I would say even you could, as a parent, give this potentially to your child, maybe teenage aged, if. If you're comfortable with discussions about sexuality.
- [54:25]
Jonathan Kay
The three sixes is about. Is about as R rated as it gets.
- [54:28]
Deborah So
Clinical. Yeah, it's very much like a biology text textbook the way I wrote it. And I don't swear either. So in terms of fubbing. Fubbing is when a person ignores their partner by being on their phone. So it's a portmanteau of snubbing and phone.
- [54:42]
Jonathan Kay
That is an excellent use of portmanteau
- [54:45]
Deborah So
or sexting, I guess.
- [54:47]
Jonathan Kay
Yeah, I guess sex tinction is a portmanteau. Portmanteau is a plenty here, by the way. That is a good time. I mean, it is a little dystopian, but it is a good title. So. Because fubbing, unlike a lot of the other stuff, like many people listening to this, probably majority aren't polyamorous, but I'm guessing most people are either guilty of or have been victimized by fubbing.
- [55:10]
Deborah So
Yeah. Oh, for sure. I'm willing to bet every couple has. I see that all the time when I'm out in public with people I don't know even I see young couples who look to be in love both on their phones, staring at their phones.
- [55:20]
Jonathan Kay
They're mutually fubbing. It's a mutual fub off.
- [55:23]
Deborah So
And then if they do, if they do have a non fubbing interaction, it's to show each other what they're looking at on their phones. Or sometimes they're both video calling different people, so they're both having conversations with other people simultaneously. It's wild out there. So with phubbing, it has actually been shown in research to be associated with having less sex per week.
- [55:42]
Jonathan Kay
Well, no, no, no kidding. I mean, you don't need, you don't need an egghead to tell you that.
- [55:46]
Deborah So
What's also, I would say a turn off if, say, one person in the couple does want to engage, you know, sexually, but your partner won't get off their phone.
- [55:53]
Jonathan Kay
I want to ask one more question because you, you kind of touched on it earlier, but I want to maybe hit on it more explicitly. As I alluded to earlier, you and I did a podcast. This was like 10 years ago. Both of us were just kind of like wading our feet into the medium. And I remember you were at a phase of your Life, your career, where it kind of reminds me of Colin Wright a little bit. Some people listening to this probably are familiar with Colin Wright. He's got the swipe right. Social media account, does a lot of evolutionary psych. He was, I think it was a PhD or postdoc, and he just became alienated with. I think he was a pen with the political environment and became more of a journalist and a commentator. If you wanted to go back to that world and you said, you know what, I really want to do postdoc work, would you be able to go back into that world or would you be excluded based on your political heresy?
- [56:45]
Deborah So
Post extinction, there's no way I could go back, nor would I want to.
- [56:49]
Jonathan Kay
But what would be the biggest heresy? Like, let's say you were sitting in front of the star Chamber at a Canadian university and they were explaining why they can't have you making people feel unsafe on campus. Is it the gender stuff? Although you don't really talk about trans stuff in this book. But like. But what is it? What would be your biggest heresy from this book? That they would read and say, that person is not our sort?
- [57:14]
Deborah So
Probably from sextion, probably being critical of kink, critical of pornography and just sex positivity more broadly, because those are big no nos in the field.
- [57:24]
Jonathan Kay
So you're saying there's like a total reluctance to judge any kind of kink addiction?
- [57:30]
Deborah So
Yeah, not even an addiction. Just the practice at all of any unusual form of sexuality, sexuality that may be harmful to oneself or one's partners. There's this idea that within sexuality, so long as a behavior is consensual, so as long as both partners, quote, consent to it or agree to it, then it's no one's place to pass judgment or question it. And the research that comes out, you won't see really very much, if any research calling into question whether these practices are healthy or what is leading an individual to choose to enact this in their life. And I have heard from so many people who have had negative experiences, either with a partner who is into, say, BDSM or kink, or young people especially, who are encountering this in pornography. The chapter I wrote on pornography in sextion is very critical of childhood exposure to porn because I think it's very damaging for children. And I think it's playing a big part in terms of why young women and men are so disinterested in dating nowadays and why young men are struggling in terms of their motivation in life more broadly. So to criticize these things are just seen as so distasteful for some academics that that would probably be the biggest thing they would say. How can she call herself a sex researcher if she doesn't go along with these ideas? That's not really sex research, or that's not the type of sex research they want produced. And I, to be clear, when I started out as a journalist, I was fresh out of academia. So the many of these ideas were once I held myself because coming from the field, I thought, well, people I trust, research I've read supports these ideas, so why would I question them? But it's in spending more time as a journalist and starting to really interrogate basically anything that I had been taught in economics academia is when I started to realize a lot of these ideas don't really make sense. Having conversations with people who view things differently from I did made me say, okay, well, I really need to know, what does the latest research say? And are there pockets of research that disagree? And maybe I've been overlooking them because being in the field puts you in a state of mind, I guess, where you are sympathetic to these communities or you do want to be on the, quote, right side of the. Where you're an ally.
- [59:37]
Jonathan Kay
You want to be an ally.
- [59:38]
Deborah So
I don't say history, but, yeah, exactly. So I think. So I think they see you as a traitor if you go against it. And again, my reason for pointing these things out is not because I want these people to have terrible lives. I want them to suffer. It's more to say you are probably struggling in some ways. And I think it's important that we recognize that and help you find ways to heal and feel better and not hurt other people potentially as well. Because in these situations, many of the people who get involved in these relationships say where it's, quote, a consensual abuse. But I don't think people should or can consent to abuse. And I do think some people leave those relationships. I mean, again, there are studies showing this people leave the BDSM community and tell awful stories of how they were horrifically abused by their partners and they consented to all of these things. But, oh, this is so dark. So. But yeah, just to say, I try to shine a light as much as I can on information that I think will help people.
- [60:31]
Jonathan Kay
Deborah so's new book, which I will now hold up, is called Sextinction the Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. It's a good read, Deborah. It's wonderful to be doing a podcast with you again, even if it's only one episode. And congratulations on the book. What's the best website they can go to if they want to find out more about not just the book but
- [60:51]
Deborah So
you, they can go to drdebraso.com so that's spelled so S O h. You can get sextion everywhere you get books, including my website, Simon and Schuster's website, Amazon. The audiobook is read by me.
- [61:05]
Jonathan Kay
Oh that's fun.
- [61:06]
Deborah So
As was my first audiobook. And you can get them both for free using a link at my website which is again drdebrasseau.com and thank you very much John. It's so good to see you again.
- [61:16]
Jonathan Kay
Take care. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Quillette podcast. If you like what you heard, please Visit us@quillette.com the site where free thought lives. For essays, news and more podcasts, sign up for our newsletter and become a member@qualet.com that's Q U I double L E double T E dot com.