My recent chat with Louise Perry
On the sex wars, internet derangement syndrome and raising kids neck deep in info hazards.
I went on my friend Louise’s excellent podcast, Maiden Mother Matriarch, and you should check it out:
We spoke about the online gender wars, how the internet encourages dysfunctional relationships offline, and how we should choose our children's peer groups in an effort to protect them from these effects. In the extended version of the episode, we also spoke about how our own politics has been changed – for good and ill – by being Very Online.
Here’s the YouTube version:
Let me know what you think in the comments →
Enjoyed the conversation -- Best of luck monitoring and managing screen time in your household as your children grow older. In our case it was a constant battle to limit it, and in the end we didn't fare as well as I would have liked. Things will only get more challenging going forward, and I suspect the battle may be harder than you probably can foresee at this stage. Regardless, all you can do is try your best.
This was, as ever, illuminating.
As I commented on ‘X’ recently, I was largely unaware of the toxic shift in discourse that has, understandably, led many women to reconsider their positions.
I can shed no light on why this is happening but resentment stemming from sexual frustration would seem like a good bet.
It’s not hard to imagine the mindset of a man-child who has been immersed in the porn-saturated online world with nothing to contrast it against.
I remember once in the late 90’s playing poker with my young cousin and a group of his friends. They had ‘come of age’ after the liberalisation of pornography laws in the UK (prior to which, fully explicit ‘hardcore’ content could not be bought legally) and were, as young fellas are wont to do, talking about girls.
They were describing, in graphic detail, what girls like, how to do such and such and generally being as young guys are when they’re full of beer and there are no girls around.
Nothing unusual there.
The difference was that none of them had ever actually ‘been’ with a woman.
Single virgins to a man (they were aged between 18-21), their entire worldview as it related to romantic intimacy was shaped by pornography.
Their ignorance of women was matched by their hostility to them. So much so that I would not have felt comfortable leaving a young female friend alone in their company.
Given what the ensuing years have produced, and where we find ourselves today, it’s no wonder that we are seeing this play out openly and at scale.