Why Can Women Talk About Men Like This?

Who was better in bed, Jennifer Aniston or Megan Fox? >> Oh my god, it's making me uncomfortable the trouble you'll get me in if I even attempt to answer that question. >> Sorry that I'm I'm digging into your personal history. Pretty awkward for you. >> Well, I'm flattered that you dig bring up my exes that way, but yeah, that kind of question if a man is to give an answer, it kind of makes people uncomfortable, right? But there's been a recent incident where the kind of exact mirror incident has happened where a woman has been asked and it's total crickets in terms of controversy except for my fire tweets. [laughter] I come in to record an episode with you and then 1 hour after leaving I write a tweet that becomes my most viral one of all time except maybe Ali Morris incident and classic so it's got me back in here again before my flight back to Ireland. >> All right, let's let's let's see this clip. >> Who was better in bed? That is really hard because like Brad was like the sort of major chemistry love of your life kind of like at the time, you know, and then like Ben was like technically excellent. >> [laughter] >> Holy I can't believe my daughter's listening to this. Technically >> Yeah. >> excellent. >> Yeah. >> So I mean I think she finessed the question pretty well. She handled it. That could have gone so much worse, but my tweet in response to this clip was imagine Brad Pitt just jumping onto Modern Wisdom or jumping onto Joe Rogan or Andrew Huberman and discussing who was better in bed Angelina or Jennifer. You know, it just would have a visceral reaction. The internet would explode and you know, it's just a huge glaring double standard and when I say that she finessed that pretty well it could have been a lot worse. Like she could have There could have been a clear winner. One could have Like, that would be really bad, you know? [laughter] Like, at face value, it's not too bad to have both guys described pretty well. But, it was funny. A couple of guys in the responses to my post uh said, "Oh, imagine how embarrassing it would be to be Ben Affleck there, that you had to work to put in effort of technical skill, whereas Brad Pitt had the raw passion without even having to try." And it's like, come on, how much of a precious princess do you want to be? But, ultimately, the whole thing just brings in a huge double standard. >> need to break down someone's sex skill like Bill Belichick, like, that's fine. But, I think if you were to ask women how much they think that guys talk graphically about sex, they would be surprised at how much we never ever ever talk about sex. To every single woman in the world, your boyfriend and your guy friends do not talk about sex graphically with their friends at all. If you started talking about something that you got up to with a girl that wasn't funny. If it's a funny weird story, you ended up yourself when you were asleep after a one-night stand or you were drunk over or whatever whatever. Okay, that's kind of newsworthy. But, if you tell me in like deep depth what you get up to, it it sort of turns this ick switch inside of me that is really horrible. >> Yeah. But, that's a sex difference anyway, in terms of how much detail women share about all aspects of their social life. They go into a lot of detail, whereas men are more surface-level. Like, you'll come home from a evening out with your guy friends, and your missus will ask you all of these questions about your friends. How's the baby? And it's like, baby? Didn't even realize You know, it just They go into so much more detail, and that includes uh sexual exploits. So, that is a surprising sex difference. And look, the There is a a sex difference in how harmful it might be. Uh, you won't hear me, a member of the Buss Lab who, you know, researches sex differences and sexual conflict all the time. Uh, we know that there it is much more harmful. Sexual violence and sexual harm towards women is more harmful towards women than it is, uh, to men. It's like, but it probably warrants a bit more discussion because I think the way the question was phrased is not something most men would enjoy. I don't think most men would enjoy that direct comparison. And also, this type of comparison, a lot of people have said to me, "Oh, well, Howard Stern has been doing that since the '90s." And I'm thinking, Howard Stern is universally regarded as like gutter kind of locker room talk at at best. Call Her Daddy is one of the most popular podcasts in the world and listened to by loads of women. And, uh, it kind of speaks to maybe this larger meta point of the, you know, so much is said about the negative influence of manosphere influencers or male podcast bros, like yourself even. Your episode with Steven Bartlett on Diary of CEO, you got in massive trouble over it. Whereas, you know, the Call Her Daddy podcast, I'm not a massive expert on it, but as far as I can tell, it does promote, uh, a lot of women to enjoy casual sex and be kind of engage in that life and kind of trivialize it a little bit and makes it into kind of an entertainment and encourages women to almost, uh, make their life an entertaining story like that. And from a, you know, mating psychologist perspective, that is a hugely harmful message to young women. Uh, we know, the data are very clear that it's vanishingly few women who benefit psychologically from casual sex. Most women have a terrible experience. In fact, one study found uh, that the only predictor of uh, a positive experience during casual sex in a large study was being male. So, it's like a >> [laughter] >> It's a you know, it Louise Perry always talks about all this hookup culture benefits the unrestricted sociosexual people. And those are predominantly male, overwhelmingly male, and vanishingly few women. So, you know, this the larger kind of meta point is uh what is the influence of some of these female influencers? In our In our previous episode, we talked about angry young women. I'm not saying that Call Her Daddy are making women angry, but when I reposted um uh the clip and made the comments that I did, there was this one comment from a female lawyer or law student that said, "If Brad Pitt did do that, you'd have an army of young men uh laughing along with them and relishing it." And that kind of opinion can only take hold if you're extrapolating the behavior of the edgiest edge lords on the internet and using that to think that's how men are like writ large. And it's just not the case. And it just kind of made me sad to think that she would come to that conclusion. And it's that type of thing that does make a generation of young women really angry at men or hate men or have a really low opinion of them. >> Why do you think it is that that sort of conversation, if you're talking quite openly about stuff that I mean, it's Again, Gwyneth played it off pretty well, apart from the Bill Belichick bit. Is that not kind of like a cultural equivalent of sharing a nude? Like to talk about what happened intimately between you and somebody else, is that not kind of supposed to be done in a sort of confidence? >> Yeah, absolutely. And there's no consent. Like we hear an awful lot about consent, but there was no one consented to that as far as I'm aware, unless Brad and Ben have privately given consent. And it can cause an awful lot of problems outside of just the obvious to personal embarrassment. And you might think, "Oh, well, a lot of men would enjoy that." And it's kind of, you know, advertising their prowess to others. But it could cause a lot of conflict for their current or future relationships. So, you know, "Oh, tactically great. Were you tactically great in bed?" Right. "Tactically great in bed with Gwyneth Paltrow, were you?" Exactly. "What were you doing for her? You're not doing it for me." Absolutely could cause an awful lot of conflict there. Um but also, there might be a lot of variability that yes, a lot of men might enjoy that type being spoken about in these terms. But a lot of men don't. Like these are like on average group differences. And we have data that men you know, don't perceive being sexually harassed in any way near as harmful as women perceive it. But there's a lot of variability. There are some men who really would hate that. I did a poll one time on Have you heard of Hot Dudes Reading? >> Yes. >> So, this is a Were you ever caught in in the act? >> Uh no, I don't read publicly that much. And I'm not hot enough. I don't >> Okay. Well, anyway, it's this kind of candid photo group of hot guys who are caught reading. And this is very sexually exciting to a lot of women. So, there's a whole page for these guys. And I ran a poll to say I think I saw somebody, maybe George Ten Men, commenting about how this is, you know, an invasion of their privacy. And I kind of thought that that was a little bit of a reach. And I thought most men would absolutely love to be featured in such a Hot Dudes Reading. Yeah. It's a great It's a great boost. But I did the poll. And I think it was something like 16% of men said they would hate it. And you know, that it kind of there there is a lot of variability in how men might perceive being spoken about. And again, the key thing is the comparison. Men don't typically like to be compared to. And maybe that's one reason why they don't want to have these discussions all that much is because women compare prowess. And I think the main point to drive home is how little guys talk about this stuff with their bros. Around the dinner table, I've never had a conversation like that. I think guys might talk a little bit more about sex sort of on the front end. I hooked up last night. I slept with this bird last night. Oh, what happened after you went out da da da da da da. But way less on the back end of what were the sort of nitty-gritty details, what happened graphically, what do you and your girlfriend get up to, what do you and your long-term partner get up to. Women, I think would be much more likely to hide what they do on the front end. If you have a one-night stand, have to assume that they would be less likely to tell their friends than the guy would, but seem to be much more open about what they're getting up to on the back end. Now, maybe it's the How do you say? Like charitable interpretation is, well, if you're paying compliments to the guys that you've been sleeping with and you don't have a male brain, but you think you know what a male brain wants, you go, "Well, if I'm saying something good, that that's just bigging him up, right? He's hot dude reading." This is the sex equivalent of hot dude reading. Apart from the fact that it causes all sorts of problems if this gets back to somebody that they're now dating. And also, I don't know whether every guy does want their Bill Belichick game play analyzed. Yeah, and it like I said, only for Gwyneth really finesse the question, it may not have gone that way. It may have been, "Oh, yeah, Brad was great, but Ben did this horrific thing" or whatever. It could have easily gone that direction. So, the the question was designed to cause friction and conflict. So, it wasn't planned, you know, that it would be so gracefully handled. But I do think you're you point out something interesting in the way that women exchange information like that and the reasons why they do. So, in female friendships, it's very important for women to show vulnerability to each other so they're not seen as threatening and being a bit overly promiscuous or having an embarrassing story or a sexual exploit is kind of seen as information that women share and expect similar information shared in return. So, I was talking with my girlfriend about this and in female friendship groups, if one person shares a story like that, they're almost waiting immediately for the return story. You know, rally it back to me, give me an embarrassing story or a sexual story from your perspective. And if it doesn't >> assured destruction. >> Yes, and if it doesn't come, then that person is seen as, oh, not a good ally, is not willing to play by the rules here. >> Were there any other weird responses that you got to that or any other surprising responses? >> They really went ballistic. Went absolutely interstellar. And I think we're going to see more of this as uh Steve Stewart-Williams' new book comes out, Building Your Own Sex Differences, uh as the talk about the differences between men and women becomes less taboo because kind of the more woke super progressive overreach of 2020's dropped away, these sorts of conversations and maybe some double standards are going to get called out more and more and that's going to mean that people are going to have to face this. But I I don't know whether there was anything else that you thought was interesting that you came up against. >> Yeah, I mean, the the main sentiment was a lot of people saying, "Oh, well, it is different and men and women are different and just get with the program," which I thought was kind of ironic to be told that by the internet given that our our lab focuses so much on sex differences. So, in my supervisor, David Buss, in his book, he uh either begins it or finishes it with a quote from intersectional feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw, which I thought was a really clever move. But it she's quoted as saying, "Treating different things the same can generate as much inequality as treating the same things different." I thought it was really smart move. But it's exactly right, you know, that it's not quite the same. Men and women aren't the same. They perceive sexual harassment and sexual harm very different. We have data on that. Um, but, like I said, that hides a lot of the variability. Um, so, you know, yeah, you're right. It is uh you know, it's it's it's interesting that people who ordinarily would rail against sex differences were so quick to invoke them when it suited. It's like >> [laughter] >> oh, you know, they'd usually rail against sex differences and then suddenly it suits them to do so and they're like, "Oh, no, it's not the same." So, yeah. >> What do you think would have happened if a guy had done that but in reverse? >> I think it would be huge scandal. I really do think it would be like cancellation level stuff and perhaps you might say rightly so. It's a it's a bit ugly. I don't enjoy it when I see it too much. I can't think of any other example. Some people in the comments were saying that John Mayer had an example where he apparently said that Jessica Simpson it was like crack. He was addicted to it, couldn't stop. Again, complimentary but perhaps is not perceived as such but um, I can't recall a similar incident because I think we would all recognize it as really kind of >> I'd feel lucky I'd feel lucky if I saw that. I'd it's I don't know man. This is it's so funny to think about, you know, guys, the highly sociosexual Lothario, misogyny sort of red pill consuming manosphere types and then if you start to talk deeply about this sort of stuff, everyone gets a little bit sheepish and shy. >> Yeah, we're not good on the detail. We're like it it either happened or it didn't. Don't go >> Don't go too deep like you said. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. >> Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink and that is why I'm such a huge fan of Timeline. 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