Video summary
The podcast explores a paradoxical trend where young women, despite facing fewer structural barriers than their male counterparts in some areas, exhibit higher levels of financial cynicism and victimhood. Data presented indicates that while unemployment rates for young men are rising, white middle-class women are significantly less likely to believe they will out-earn their parents compared to young men. Furthermore, the discussion highlights a cognitive bias where society is more inclined to view women as victims and men as perpetrators in instances of harm, making it cognitively easier to sympathize with female suffering while dismissing male struggles. This dynamic creates an environment where assertive or dominant behavior by women is often penalized for lacking warmth, whereas similar traits in men are viewed differently due to gendered expectations regarding agency and kindness. A central theme involves the concept of "leveling strategies" described by researcher Joyce Benenson, who argues that women may feel compelled to downplay their success or adopt a martyr-like persona to maintain social standing within female-dominated ecosystems like academia. The speakers suggest that when individuals lack tangible threats in their lives—such as economic instability—their psychological threat detection systems become bored and latch onto trivial issues like microaggressions, gender identity politics, or dietary choices (e.g., oat milk) as sources of conflict. This phenomenon is likened to an immune system reaction where the body creates allergies to harmless substances when faced with no real danger, leading women to scrutinize themselves and their partners for flaws while pathologizing normal personality traits. The conversation also addresses the "pretty privilege" hypothesis, noting that attractiveness functions as a significant status currency for women comparable to physical dominance in men. Research cited suggests that women are generally perceived as more attractive than men across various datasets, granting them substantial social resources and deference from other women similar to how men defer to formidable peers. However, this advantage comes with costs; being unattractive carries severe penalties, while even high attractiveness can lead to assumptions of promiscuity or judgment by female peers. The speakers argue that society is reluctant to acknowledge beauty as a form of privilege because it contradicts the narrative of oppression women face, yet they must navigate these aesthetic pressures without explicit recognition from others. Finally, the discussion examines how modern social media has shifted reproductive and relational priorities for young women. Evolutionary psychology suggests humans evolved mechanisms to attract mates rather than specifically to have children, as reproduction was historically a byproduct of sexual activity before reliable contraception existed. Today, relationships are often treated as "brand partnerships" displayed online to optimize mate value and gain status among other women on platforms like Instagram. This shift creates a mismatch where the desire for high visual presentation overrides biological drives, leading many young women to view having children not just as a life choice but as a threat that disrupts their optimized product-like image. Consequently, despite data showing parenting can increase meaning in relationships, particularly for mothers, the fear of losing beauty and social status remains a powerful deterrent against reproduction among privileged demographics.
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Young men are now more likely to be
unemployed than young women, yet young
women are far more financially cynical.
21 points less likely than young men to
believe they will ever out-earn their
parents. White women are more likely to
feel the country is racist than their
non-white women middle-class partners.
>> Yeah, white women are awful.
>> [laughter]
>> I I wonder how much of that is like
related to that finding where the only
way that women could be agentic was like
on behalf of someone else. So, like the
more successful that you are or the more
that you have going in your favor, the
only like way that you can be agentic is
to like be so deeply caring.
Um there are some ethnographies on
adolescent girls and the only ones that
were allowed to be popular were if they
were super super nice. And so, they had
to like
kind of over-deliver on like kindness in
order to be allowed to be popular. And
so, it feels a little bit like that same
pattern that like
perhaps women do this so the
the envy or resentment of other women
won't bring them down. Um Joyce Benenson
has this um
>> Hero, friend of the show.
>> Oh, she's the best. I'm obsessed with
her. Um she has this paper on leveling
showing that like women are more likely
to use a leveling strategy where they
say like, "Oh, we should all be equal."
when someone is surpassing them. And so,
I wonder if like
once you have all of these things
operating in your favor, you kind of
have to be like a martyr in order to
like continue on, otherwise people might
not like you.
>> your victimhood points from? Uh I won't
say who said it in our group chat, but
someone replied to Rob Henderson
bringing this up and said, "Middle-class
hay fever, Rob. When there's no high
load of parasites, people's immune
system gets bored and starts looking for
things to react to and you get allergies
to dust and pollen. When the middle
class has no threats, their threat
system gets bored and starts looking for
trivial things to blow out of
proportion. White privilege, gender
identity, ultra-processed foods, it's
all pollen. You don't have oat milk,
you're traumatizing me. No explicit
segregation and blatant racism,
sensitivity to microaggressions
increases.
>> That's what I was going to say is I
think it's more time to introspect and
ruminate because you have girls and
young women not just picking up on X in
their partner and like scrutinizing them
and looking for flaws, but then doing
that to themselves. So, constantly
pathologizing, diagnosing themselves,
wondering what's wrong with them,
overanalyzing their personality traits.
And so, I do think it's just more time
and less
bigger problems, like say having
children, where you put your
neuroticism, you funnel it into
something productive. And instead it
then turns inwards or also against your
partner.
>> But there is status afforded to women
doing that in that ecosystem, in that
social system of higher education, where
women are
dominating now. They're rewarded for
espousing views like that. So, you know,
they're showing that they know the
ideology of the leading status people in
their world.
>> This is me showing fealty to the cause.
I understand this thing. What's the data
around men and women being demonized and
seen as victims?
>> So, we have some studies showing that
like we have this like kind of cognitive
heuristic of victim and perpetrator. And
when men and women are like involved in
any instance of harm, we're more likely
to see women in the victim role and men
in the perpetrator role. We're more
[clears throat] likely to blame men
and more likely to have sympathy for
women.
And so, it would suggest like perhaps
some of the reason we don't see a lot of
sympathy for men is it's like
cognitively harder to see them as
victims. And then for women, the same
it's just cognitively easier to see them
as victims. And so, we feel that
sympathy. But this is it kind of sucks
for both sexes. So, in the domain of
harm, men are disadvantaged and they're
not seen as victims. But for women in
the domain in other domains where you'd
want to be the agentic person, like a
if you're deciding on a CEO or a
president, women aren't seen as as
agentic and as capable. So, it's not
like one sex is clearly doing better
than the other. They're both facing
these like
>> One doesn't get sympathy and one doesn't
get belief.
>> Mhm.
>> Yeah. I guess that's one of the
challenges I think that women face when
they go into the workplace that they
feel like if they need to be assertive
and dominant, they have to temper the
struggle a bit a little bit for fear of
being
They don't want to be a right? Or
a diva.
>> Yeah, I feel like there's like a agency
warmth continuum and women are expected
to be here and if they go farther along
agency, they're seen as low in warmth,
But the same is true for men.
They're higher on the agency side and so
if they show warmth by crying, they're
not seen as as competent. So, like we're
both encouraged to stay in our lane.
>> But if women show too much warmth,
they're seen as pliable and not
competent because it's seen that people
that are a little bit more brusque are
seen as higher competence, right? Warmth
is negatively associated with
competence, I think. And And I just
think this
kind of protectiveness that we have
about women,
it just gets repackaged as oppression in
a way. And I get that you could be
paternalistic and overly And a lot of
kind of, you know, abuse of women does
occur under the guise of for their own
good and protection. But it is
astounding the extent to which we are
more protective of uh women than men, I
think.
>> You have to really contort yourself into
a lot of knots, you know, to
see the women are wonderful effect and
think of it as oppression toward women.
Like, can you Do you know much of the
stats around the women are wonderful
effect? Like all of the different ways
that people prefer women to men?
>> I know one study that looked at this
kind of where they looked at job hiring
discrimination and it's gone down
against women, but people overestimate
its presence. And so, they assume it's
still there, even though the data
suggests clearly it's not. So, it's like
we're almost like just sensitized to
detect it even if it's not there.
>> And even when you learn about some
discrepancy, if it's against women,
people are up in arms about it, but if
it's against men, it's like no biggie.
>> Is is attractiveness under acknowledged
as a kind of privilege? Oh, I think so,
yeah. So, on both ends of the spectrum.
So, the pretty privilege, which also has
its costs. There's costs associated with
being seen as pretty.
Other women in particular see you as
more promiscuous and things like that.
But, there are enormous benefits across
the board to being attractive, male or
female. But, then at the other end of
the spectrum, there's enormous cost to
being unattractive. And there is new
research that shows that we're not
readily able to recognize this form of
privilege.
>> We acknowledge other forms of privilege,
but attractiveness we're reluctant to
acknowledge that it even exists.
>> Why?
>> And we also have evidence that women are
far more attractive than men. It's not
just one OKCupid study. Loads of data
unpublished from our lab finds this
attractiveness discrepancy. There's tons
of data. Women are just more attractive.
So, arguably a feminine advantage in the
domain of attractiveness, when that can
be
translated into so many resources,
there are studies to show that beauty is
status for women. Women defer to more
beautiful women in the way that men
defer to more formidable
men.
So, this is an advantage, and it could
be another thing that's actually a less
acknowledged point about what's putting
women off having children is that they
hear these horror stories.
>> hit.
>> They literally have to take a massive
beauty hit, and that's just there's no
way around that. It's less than they've
ever had to take, but it's still there.
>> It's so funny that um
having
kids would impact your beauty, but the
effect of pretty privilege is denied and
hidden.
>> Yeah.
>> It's like, well, you if that is playing
into it, you have to admit the fact that
it's there.
>> Yes.
>> You know?
>> Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I think people
would acknowledge at face value that's
one of the reason Well, you do see them
sometimes women are like I'm not
sacrificing my body for that and you
know, it we have new data come out that
shows that relationships having being a
parent uh
similar levels of happiness to not being
a parent, greater levels of meaning to
for the parents, especially for women,
but lower relationship satisfaction for
the parents. So, it does take a toll on
the relationship, but certainly on the
woman's mate value thereafter. Having
the kids, the toll it takes on her
beauty. So, you can kind of see why
women, if there's all these benefits
they can translate their beauty, which
is their status, into they'd be
reluctant to to sacrifice all that.
>> Yeah, I mean this is kind of what we
were talking about before, which is that
I think social media platforms have
incentivized women to see themselves
less as human and less and more as
products. And so, their life becomes
about marketing themselves and
optimizing themselves. And so, I think
yeah, having a child disrupts being the
perfect pristine product. But then we're
in this really weird scenario where
don't you want to look good in order to
reproduce and have children at base
level, but now Instagram comes along and
Instagram it gives women so much
dopamine and status that then that
becomes their higher priority.
>> Yeah, because it's a misconception about
evolutionary psychology that we have
these fitness optimizing mechanisms. We
actually have we're adaptation
executioners. So, it's not like it's
just that behaviors that over
evolutionary time would have resulted in
more offspring
uh are passed on. So, women still have
the desire to have sex for the most
part. We People don't come into the
world with oh I I really want to
increase my reproductive success. I want
to have offspring, but they do want to
be seen as a high mate value to others,
have sexual urges, and over time those
things would have resulted in
reproductive success. So now it's a bit
of a a mismatch. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Joyce Benenson, she has this like
cross-cultural study where she shows
like among young people, one of their
primary goals is finding a romantic
partner.
>> Yeah. But one of their lowest goals is
having kids.
>> Yes.
>> And so she makes this argument that like
we probably evolved a desire to attract
a mate.
>> Mhm.
>> But we didn't need to evolve the desire
to have kids because as long as you were
having sex, you were having kids.
>> Exactly. You didn't have reliable
contraception.
>> Yeah.
>> It's a hugely evolutionary novel
technology that's really just thrown the
whole thing up in the air.
>> I think also in young women sometimes
the relationship becomes an accessory to
display online.
>> What was your line about that in the
episode that we did a couple years ago?
It was uh relationships are just brand
partnerships now.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's It's something to
display.
>> Mhm.
>> And so the characteristics that maybe
you'd select for before social media are
very different now.
>> It's
>> Mhm.
>> presenting it to other women and how
other women will react.
>> Mhm.
>> Seeing your Yeah, your launch of a
partner online.
>> Yeah, the soft launch.
>> Yeah.
>> Hard launch.
They're not about this though.
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