Updating Our View On Gay: Is It A Kink?

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the evolving perspectives on sexuality, gender, and cultural norms. In this thought-provoking conversation, they explore the origins and functions of arousal patterns, the societal treatment of same-sex attraction, and how modern urban monoculture is reshaping the way we think about identity and pleasure. The discussion covers: * The biological and evolutionary roots of arousal and kinks * How same-sex attraction compares to other arousal patterns * The impact of societal norms and historical taboos * The role of technology and online avatars in shaping future identities * The intersection of pleasure, self-affirmation, and human flourishing * Parenting, cultural transmission, and the importance of non-arbitrary values Whether you’re interested in psychology, sociology, or the future of human relationships, this episode offers a nuanced and challenging perspective on some of today’s most debated topics. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth discussions!Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing my evolving views on the way that, at least within our family. But not just within our family, but I think society at large is gonna move in this direction, will think about same sex attraction in the future. Oh, and you as an audience. So if you, if you know me historically, I’ve always been very sort of pro-gay, right? Like, you know, they should be able to get married the way they want. They should be able to live life the way they want. And while I still think a lot of that, the qualifications I have around that. Have adapted pretty heavily, and you as an audience are gonna get to see something very fun, which is people ask, how come you and Simone always have like such similar beliefs about things or thoughts about things? And it’s because whenever one of us has like an update in our belief system, we share it with the other one to try to convince them, get pushback, and then we sort of [00:01:00] arrive at whatever the, the conversion. Okay. This is the new way of thinking about this thing. Simone Collins: Yeah. And it, it’s often a, a moderated or, or even totally new version of the idea. It’s not, it’s not always like Malcolm Williams. Yeah. Without moderation. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I’ll sort of describe my thought journey as to how I got here. And part of this I’ve been talking to you about already. Hmm. So the part I had talked to you about already was me trying to think through why we categorize same sex attraction. As significantly different from any other arousal pattern kink as you would call it that he is not meant to help us reproduce because predu, you know, presumably the reason why arousal evolved was to ensure that we had procreation and had children. And we also argue that parts of the arousal system were adopted for other things that are related to survival. So across mammal species, not just in humans you see, the [00:02:00] submission and dominant system co-opting arousal patterns to motivate it. You know, interestingly, where you, where I find one of my favorite examples of this. Is in most species animals, mammals, like social mammals will take on the position. A female of that species would to be mounted in order to show submission to somebody. So you will even see males do this and females do this to show submission to the part, not to their partner, no, not to their partner, but to another dominant person in their tribe or something like that. What’s really fascinating is in species where females are dominant, like the spotted hyena, the Wake Show submission is through an erection. And in spotted hyena, you know, the Simone Collins: way the females show dominance is through an erection, isn’t that? Malcolm Collins: No, it’s how they show submission. What? Oh gosh. Okay. I was Simone Collins: wondering, I knew they had Malcolm Collins: pin, pseudo penises, it’s called. So, so what she was thinking of is the, the females of the spotted hyena [00:03:00] actually have pseudo penises in order to show this, this trait. And so, because it’s a species with, with dominant females, the way that you show that you are submissive is to take on the role a male would take on right before sex. When in species where males are typically dominant, you take on the role that, all right. The reason I go into all of this is I’m pointing out that the arousal system is used for things other than just to motivate procreation. And that this might explain some of the kinks that humans have. Perhaps even same sex attraction. Although I think it is less likely that that motivates same sex attraction and we can get into what might cause same sex attraction number of potential things. Mm-hmm. With this being the case, there are now two broad definitions I could go for in my head that I think are good ways to divide sort of arousal patterns, arousal patterns that are serving their intended function versus arousal patterns that are not serving their intended function. Here, you may say, well, because arousal patterns are co-opted throughout social mammals for [00:04:00] dominance and submission displays, then BDSM is less of a kink than same-sex attraction. Because this is just completely not useful for, for survival in this one is. However, I, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a good way of doing division. I would go on and say that, probably in my head, the way that I would divide it is arousal patterns that are tied to reproduction and arousal patterns that are not tied to reproduction. And then you can say okay, well, but same sex attraction is totally different from any other kink. It’s you being attracted to who, who a person is fundamentally right. And it’s something that you are, you know, you have at a young age and you can’t easily change about yourself. And here I would ask you to go to, ALA has a great study on this. I’ll, I’ll put the graph on screen if I can find it. Where she goes over the average age that kinks first appear, and actually for a wide swath of kinks, they appear before. Same sex attraction does. And [00:05:00] not only that, but if you look at studies on this, they typically only look at things like BDSM and stuff like this. But if you look at user reports of the persistency of kinks it appears that the persistency of kinks is at around the same level as the persistency of same sex attraction, maybe slightly less for some specific kicks, like the dominance and dominance and submission ones. And I would also note here that same-sex attraction is not something that you necessarily have throughout your entire life. If you look at people who go on puberty, hormones, like, sex changing hormones like trans people do, you’re looking at a 20 to 40% change their gender of primary attraction . Malcolm Collins: And we also know of, we’ve done an episode on this of parasites that can change the gender that you are predominantly attracted to with things like toxoplasmosis being more likely to make you bi in order to help itself spread. And this is a, a number of studies have have like, like peer reviewed studies have shown this. Obviously this is, this is all very offensive territory we’re getting in here, but the reason I started to go through all this is, is I was like, [00:06:00] okay. All of these things. But there is one core area where same sex attraction and this is sort of where I had stopped on this before and sort of been like, I guess our existing societal norms are good. There is one area where, which is to say if you live in a society where you’re like, Hey, and this is broadly the rule we have in our society, and it’s a rule that like, I’m okay with like as a, as a social rule, as long as you don’t involve me in your kinks. Right? Like your unique arousal pathways without my consent. Like I didn’t go into a space where I knew that people were going to be doing this or I didn’t, you, you didn’t, you didn’t force me to participate in some fantasy you have or something like that. We’re, I’m okay with that, right? Yeah. So the problem with same-sex attraction and taking that is that then, then how do these people get married? Right? Like if, if A-A-B-D-S-M person doesn’t need to have a marriage in BDSM outfits , to get married, but there is no way a [00:07:00] same-sex attracted couple can get married without it very obviously being a same sex attracted couple on that stage. And so I started thinking about that and I was like, okay, I can see that and I can see why, because you don’t have any other kink like that. There’s no other kink that is societally accepted. I suppose if you were like a PDA file, it would be very obvious if you tried to marry the person. But that’s with a non-consenting individual. If you were a, a a a Beastie bestiality person and you decide to get married to a horse or a dog, it would be very obvious. But socially we don’t condone that. And no, I’ve, I’ve always found the reason we don’t socially condone that incredibly stupid. Which is that these animals can’t consent. And it’s like you eat animals like that, like you fat farm animals like that, you eat veal where you torture a baby cow. Like, what are you, what are you talking about? These animals can’t consent. Your dog is something that you bought, and then it is normal for you to [00:08:00] breed it and sell its offspring. Simone Collins: No, Malcolm Collins: what are you? Well, and you put it that Simone Collins: way, golly. Malcolm Collins: No, I, I, the, I think the reason why you shouldn’t have sex with animals is the same reason that almost every culture on earth has a taboo against this or many do, is that it spreads diseases and diseases are bad for populations. And so having prohibitions against it is good to prevent the spread of diseases. And then people can be like, well, does it same sex relationships spread diseases. Which we’ll get to, but I mean, historically it was true. I mean, look at the AIDS epidemic. The moment it became normalized, a lot of people suffered and died as a result of its normalization of diseases that didn’t spread in other populations. And if you look at our parasite video, we, we go over a number of, of, or some evidence that there might be some unknown pathogens, which could be motivating this behavior. Specifically we see different gut microbiomes in same sex attracted people who participate in, just different gut microbiomes, Malcolm Collins: No, I’ll note [00:09:00] here, , it’s not just gays, , or the kink that we would call gayness was this new taxonomy, , that changes sexual behavior. We noted in that episode having certain types of a yeast infection will make a woman more turned on by being eaten out because that’s how the infection spreads or that it appears that cucking behavior. , It, it really interesting, , one of the guys who listened to this with a prison guard and he was like, oh yeah, it’s true. , You know, first you’re the pitcher, then you’re the catcher. That’s what everyone says, , that that cucking behavior is literally like a honey pot for bulls that can then make them want to cuck. If you want to learn more about this, watch that episode, or we go into the science in detail, which just blew my mind. I guess, is what I’d say. I would Simone Collins: still, I would think the AIDS epidemic really spread well before same sex, relat, same, same sex attraction, normal. The Malcolm Collins: AIDS epidemic would not have spread if same sex attraction had not been normalized to the extent that it was, it wasn’t fully normalized in society. Like [00:10:00] it wasn’t totally cool by no means, but it was at the beginning of gay culture, like the moment in mass was in major cities. I won’t say the moment, I, I’m gonna say like within 20 years of like gay people beginning to in, in any sort of really large capacity participate in gay culture is when the AIDS epidemic started. And, uh hmm. I, I, I mean, are you denying that that is what facilitated both the incubation and spread? Obviously drug use helped as well. But yeah, I think Simone Collins: it was probably more a matter of drug use and. More social mobility, like more travel in between cities than it, than it was a product of the normalization. Well, you think the gays Malcolm Collins: helped it travel between cities and then drug use helped it spread within cities? Simone Collins: No, no. I think that there was more travel that took place like internationally in between cities than ever before. I mean, I know for a fact like everyone knows for a fact. Well, Malcolm Collins: no, I, I agree with that, but [00:11:00] I, if you had had the travel and you had had the drug use, but you didn’t have gay normalization or gay communities, the AIDS epidemic wouldn’t have been an epidemic. Simone Collins: I think maybe if it were still actively illegal. I mean it still was in many places at that time actually. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it’s just you had wide culture. And I wanna point out here, ‘cause I think that this is a really hard pill to swallow, but it is an accurate and realistic pill is when people talk about the shaming, that same sex attracted people got historically for acting on their arousal patterns. . And, and keep in mind there’s a big difference between saying like the shaming somebody got for having an arousal pattern. , That’s just the way you’re born and acting on an arousal pattern. There’s many arousal patterns we shame people today for acting on because they lead to negative externalities when acted upon. , But the, . You could be like, oh, it’s so horrible that they were shamed for this historically, that they were, you know, perhaps even subject to physical violence if they did that too overtly. , But then you consider that. The [00:12:00] fear that this created in , the same sex attracted community that led them to not act en mass on these behaviors meant that something like the AIDS epidemic did not start. In many ways that bigotry was , the gates that were holding back the flood of the horror of the AIDS epidemic and. In a way, it was through that gating behavior that the bigots were preventing the mass exposure and death of many same-sex attracted people to aids. And as that died down, that allowed for something like AIDS to evolve. Almost as soon as a proto version of this community was normalized and this behavior was being done in mass and in large amounts. Obviously that’s not relevant today, and that would not be a good reason to be against same sex attraction being acted on today, but it does matter in a historic context when you’re [00:13:00] contextualizing, , was this bigotry wholly a negative thing? Malcolm Collins: But the point I’m making is there were reasons historically to ban this and today most of the, the diseases potentially that are transmitted by same sex attraction are pretty much under control at this point. Yeah. And so, you know, I I, I don’t see it as, as much of an issue in, in that regard. Yeah. Now we don’t know how under control they are. As I’ve said, you can look at our parasite video on this. And so it could be that there’s, there’s some pathogens that we just aren’t investigating because they are long-term pathogens. And, and there is a little bit of evidence for this, but it’s not like super strong outside of like, well, and it is actually super strong because toxic plasmosis is much more common in men than women. And it in it looks like it’s beginning to be transferrable for males to males. And with within some strains, which is interesting ‘cause it’s not all strains. It’s one strain seems to be specialized in human transmission now. And you could really only get this when you consider that women own cats more than men [00:14:00] do, if it was transferring for some alternate pathway. But anyway, so that’s sort of where I ended up, which is just like, well, it’s needlessly cool to have one unusual arousal pattern that for whatever reason, can’t live out their life that way. Right. And, and of course we’ve said historically we don’t think people should be shamed for if they are same sex attracted to deciding to live as heterosexual people. Like that’s, that’s an okay thing to do. Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. ‘cause this came out of nowhere. We didn’t even talk about this this morning. Instantly want to do a podcast on this? I’m so Malcolm Collins: curious. So I had this thought experiment in my head, and this is, this is where it really got to me. Simone Collins: Okay. Malcolm Collins: If you look at the urban monoculture and the way that it’s begun to recategorize the concept of gender, right? And note here, I’m not saying I agree with this recategorize of the concept of gender, but this is the concept of gender in the way it is contextualized by the dominant culture in the West right now. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Gender is no longer something that you are born with, right? [00:15:00] Gender is something that you can choose or not. I mean, they wouldn’t say you choose it. It’s more like it fluctuates with that throughout your life, based on your personality and proclivities within any particular moment. I don’t even know. Find now, honestly, and it can be one of, you know, many different gender labels, right? Like one of probably like 35 or 40 or something like that. It depends on the table you’re using, but it’s this huge thing. And when you take this perspective of gender, many of the things that could have been used historically to say being gay wasn’t just a kink, IE well, you’re attracted to something that is durably persistent throughout the person’s life. And, and I point out if you’re talking about like, well, it’s attraction to like who they are, I’m like, how is that different from like, somebody who likes, like really muscular women or somebody who likes you know, really tall women or somebody who likes you know, obese people or, you know, and all of which we would consider kinks. We may even consider, you know, really [00:16:00] liking a slutty person, a kink, or really liking a, a nerdy person, a kink, or really liking a, you know, we, we would consider all of these things kink. But the point I’m making here is even with all of that, you could be like, yeah, but gender is just like a more innate thing in terms of who you are, right? Like, it just doesn’t easily change. But now that you’re a different position, which is that gender actually does change throughout your life and it changes based on the way you feel about yourself. So, I decided to, I was talking to an AI about this, and it was like, well, same sex attraction is different from a kink because same sex attraction is normal. And I was like, wait a second. Same sex attraction is actually way less frequent than a large number of kinks. And hold on, I’ll actually pull up I, I love how it responded to that when I was trying to think through this. Okay. Okay. So it says, globally surveys estimate three to 7% of people identify as primarily attracted to the same sex. And then it said, okay, let’s compare that to foot FET [00:17:00] fetishes. It found one study found 18% of heterosexual men habit. So, okay, three to seven. Percent to 18%, way higher than like the highest rates I’ve seen for, for same sex attraction. BDSM and, and note, I’m, I’m saying same sex attraction specifically here. Not all. LGBT I identities BDSM is 10 to 15%. Again, way more common than same sex attraction. Mm-hmm. And then despite eight, giving examples that were literally orders of more common than same sex attraction, he said, so is same sex attraction less prevalent? Not really. It’s on par or higher with many individual kids. And I’m like, but the numbers you gave was an order of magnitude more common. Simone Collins: Yeah, there’s gotta be something hard coded there because you’ve pointed out in, in your other AI research that. These chains, like when you’re chatting with an ai, it references the entire chain. Even if you’re asking one question within ai. No, no, Malcolm Collins: we, it said that within the same model response. Simone Collins: That’s so [00:18:00] strange. Again, it has to be hard coded. It has to be. Which, which, this was gr right? It was grok though. Grok is a more based one. Malcolm Collins: No, recently gr has been super woke. They did an update with this new thing like a week and a half ago. And I’ve had trouble even having basic discussions with it. Like it’s so woke that I asked it about our one civilization theory and it responded with an explanation that didn’t really include other civilizations like China and stuff like that. And I’m like, yeah, but does he argue at any point in the theory that those were not like real civilizations or that those civilizations accomplishments win matched for the, the position on the timeline were pretty poultry in comparison to the one civilization? And it was like, no, this is, Simone Collins: by the way, for context, the Malcolm’s one civilization theory is one in which he argues that basically there’s only really been one meaningful. Civilization contributing to innovation and the advancement of, Malcolm Collins: of, of inter, inter civilizational handover innovation. So some [00:19:00] other civilizations hit sort of like plateaus, but they didn’t do a good job of intergenerationally handing over culture to the next civilizational successor. It’s a very offensive theory. It’s called, there was Only Ever Rome theory. Go check it out if you want. It’s probably one of our best video, but I think this one’s gonna be one of our, our good ones too. It’s misleading Simone Collins: though, because it started with Greece, you argued, right? No, Malcolm Collins: I argued. It started with Egypt, then it went to, oh, Egypt emia. Then it went to Greece, then it went to Rome, then it went to Byzantium, then it went to the Islamic Republic, then it went to Europe then it went to England. Then it was spread around the world. But anyway, have it. To, to skip the one civilization theory. What the point I was making is it was incapable of seeing Simone. And you remember the transcript of that, that I had argued that the other civilizations were not particularly impressive. And it kept arguing that, no, actually I had made the argument, I had used other civilizations like China to show that this could happen in multiple places at once. Hmm. And I was like, no, I didn’t like, and I even [00:20:00] like asked it like four times, like, are you sure? Read it again. Like, are you sure I said that? So, so it couldn’t even see me as saying something offensive, which I love. Mm-hmm. But anyway, so I’m gonna continue going here with the way that this sort of breaks up. So I started thinking, okay, given this, let’s imagine a hypothetical other world, right? And in this world, you have attraction to gender, which can be along this, you know, giant gender spectrum that they have now in the urban monoculture. Simone Collins: Sure. Malcolm Collins: And you can have attraction to furries. Furries are completely normal in this world, and like gender, when somebody chooses a persona they might switch between a few, but in most people it’s pretty persistent. They they choose a persona based on how it reflects in the same way that like, when you’re choosing from a large number of sort of gender profiles, how it reflects the way that they see some sort of inner core of who they are. And individuals within the furry community have [00:21:00] attraction to specific species of persona. Right. And so then I started thinking to myself, okay, so from a first principle’s perspective in that world, right? And in that world you would have the same problem that we have in our world was getting married, which is in that world, you can’t easily just take off your persona. Your persona is something you wanna live with, right? You know? So you would get married in a persona and everything. I was like, how from a first principle’s perspective would you differentiate same sex attraction from Fursona attraction? And I’ll note here the reason why it becomes so problematic if same sex attraction is defined as a kink. Is then and note here, it’s all culturally normative throughout history. Like, like there isn’t like a definitive answer for this. What I’m trying to figure out is what is a practical answer to this? So throughout history there’s been plenty of different ways of relating to gender. And but what I can say is, is nobody’s related to gender the way the urban monoculture does. That’s for sure. And the way the urban monoculture relates to [00:22:00] the idea of transness, like that you could want to be under gender so much you would unlive yourself. That has never happened in any other culture, in human history. We have no recorded instances of that anywhere. We have cultures that allow for a variation of gender expression and gender fluidity, but never, this obsession was an alternate gender perspective to the extent where 50% attempt to 50 to 40% attempt to unlive themselves over it. And what I’m pointing out is you, you get, you get different norms around gender. And what we’re trying to do, or what I’m trying to do with this sphere is to think through, okay, what, what, what makes sense to have the norm here? So in, in furry world, I was like, okay, how do you categorize furries as something like your, the, the furry species you are interested in is something fundamentally different from same sex attraction or attraction to a specific gender profile, a urban monocultures, multi-gender profile spectrum. And this is where I just had this break and this realization that changed [00:23:00] everything for me. Oh, Simone Collins: okay. Malcolm Collins: There’d be no reason to specifically, what I mean is. As we move to this urban monocultural perception of gender, is this like completely fluid thing that you can choose on the day based on your emotional state? Simone Collins: Yeah, Malcolm Collins: that actually makes sense. That’s actually logical, given the direction that they are going, societally speaking and given the way that they structure their lives. So the core values monoculture, which we’ve talked about before, is to seek out pleasure and self-affirmation in so far as it doesn’t interfere with other people seeking out their own pleasure and self affirmation. If you have an entire worldview, both around seeking out pleasure and self affirmation and around helping other people seek out pleasure and affirmation, arousal and gender only matter insofar as they can be used to give you pleasure. Right. Or, or [00:24:00] affirmation. Yeah. And that’s the way that they have categorized. Sexuality and gender profiles for them. Same sex objection to be categorized as something fundamentally different from kinks. Because if kinks are something, because like you do a kink in public, It makes other people uncomfortable and thus violates their right to pursue pleasure. Malcolm Collins: right? Which is bad from an urban monocultural perspective. Obviously this perspective is in the urban monoculture has been eroded a bit, whether , you know, ‘cause now you do see a lot of very explicit kink stuff at Pride. You see the trans stuff where a lot of it, for a lot of people, obviously this is true for every trans people, but , it is very obvious this is true for some people who identify as trans, is that it’s about violating other people’s consent, , about forcing people to say and treat them in a way that that person feels uncomfortable with. . And, , you can watch our episodes or we document this behavior. I think anyone who’s trans or or knows the trans community is like, oh yeah, well it’s very clear that you know this, that some for some trans people, that’s what [00:25:00] it’s about. , , and we don’t like the people, but whatever, we’re not gonna talk about that right now. . But you can be like, oh, but why now is it okay to make other people uncomfortable? , And this is largely because, , the groups that are seen as more deviant are seen as more deserving of a search for pleasure because they’re seen as like higher morally. We have an episode on why this is the case in the urban monoculture. . But, , so, so they are allowed to violate other people’s, , consent in regard to this stuff. By the way, if you’re wondering if this episode is at all in relation to the Tucker Carlson interview, , or the new studies that have come out to show erosion of, , same sex marriage rights and stuff like that, this actually has nothing to do with that. We recorded this well before all that, and we were gonna release it over Christmas when we weren’t recording. , And. Now all that has come out. So we have to do episodes addressing that. And so this episode about us changing our minds on something has to come out before all of that. Malcolm Collins: Um mm-hmm. But if you say the same thing for same sex attraction, well now you have a huge category of people who can’t get married and everything like that, right. So you say, oh, well we’re gonna carve this out. Even [00:26:00] though two men kissing or two women kissing does make a large percentage of the population uncomfortable, especially people who are not in the urban monoculture, right? Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Although I would argue. Yeah, it probably makes a lot of them uncomfortable too. I, I say this as somebody who grew up with like a predominantly gay friend group. My roommate in high school was gay. My best friend in college was gay. My academic dad in college was gay. My best friend in high school was gay. I been around a lot of gay people and that’s also why I had some trouble. Really, you know, because I have so many gay friends being like, yeah, but I, I really want to rethink, like, like, try to rethink this from a first principal’s perspective. That’s not just about defending a status quo in which my friends don’t need to think about. Yeah, but is this really the best way to be doing things? And so, but I can’t say was all of that acceptance of gayness in my life, I still felt weird. I, I would never say it for fear of persecution but I still felt like a, ugh, when I saw, you know, two [00:27:00] guys making out or something like that. And I, and I think that that’s just probably a natural hardcoded thing in a lot of guys. And it might be hardcoded in a lot of women, but I, well, I mean, Simone Collins: think just being a kid, just seeing anyone do it, you’re like, Ugh. You know, it’s weird. Yeah. But I don’t think anyone kissing is weird. Malcolm Collins: I don’t necessarily feel that way when I see attractive males and females kissing. Simone Collins: Oh, I do. I I can’t stand the sound of people kissing. Okay. Malcolm Collins: But actually, this brings up a good point, because you have varying sexual profiles, and as we’ve always argued, discussed, should be considered a valid part of somebody’s sexual profile, even though it’s not right now. It’s not just what arouses you, what discuss you, and you’re saying that you don’t like seeing any PDA which makes Simone Collins: no, or even like on, on a movie, like the sound of People kissing. Oh, like just thinking about it. Malcolm Collins: But when I started thinking about it from the perspective of the urban monoculture, I was like, oh my God, this actually makes perfect sips, right? If life is about a pursuit [00:28:00] of pleasure not interfering with other people’s pursuit of pleasure, then it doesn’t matter whether arousal pattern is tied to procreation. It doesn’t matter whether a arousal pattern was tied to evolution or something that randomly happened to you. That would be a silly way to see things, because procreation is just not a particularly important part of life, right? Mm-hmm. And then I began to think about this within the next era that we are going into, and this is why the furry analogy really messed up my brain, right? Simone Collins: Because Malcolm Collins: I was like, okay, so we’re going into an era in which the people you interact with predominantly like is on Discord servers, is on YouTube is on comment sections is on Twitter, is on X, everything like that. And we are already seeing a large number of them, and this is true with people I interact with, with business or anything like that. Using avatars that are non-human to represent themselves. These avatars can be anything from [00:29:00] furries to anime characters to you know, custom whatevers. This has become completely normal. Yeah. When I think of some of my friends, the first image that comes to my head is not their face, but their avatar. So true. Even I know their face, I interact with them more through their avatar than through their face. And so that’s what comes to mind as we enter an era of ai. You. You guys have seen how good this technology is already. Imagine where it’s gonna be for our kids’ generation, right? They’re gonna be able to have. First don’t knows if they want them or anime characters or completely alternate biologies if they want them be the way that they present themselves to other people. And because of that when they’re, when they’re interacting with somebody online or they’re talking to somebody online those people will see them not necessarily as a gender, but would, would their gender even matter then? If they’re not gonna meet in person, right? And they’re just [00:30:00] getting off to other people online. From the perspective of the urban monoculture, if you can just change gender with a button, boop boop if you can just change to be a furry with a button, boop boop. And everyone’s like, well, we haven’t gotten nearly to the point where you’re gonna get hacked feedback from these sorts of scenarios. And it’s like. How long do you think that’s gonna take? If AI really does start to boom, like be realistic here. People, the, the, the, the, the pleasure pods, the digital realms are coming. Meta may have jumped the shark on that a little early. And even if it’s not within our kids’ generation, it will certainly be within our grandkids generation. You know, we’re just talking about you know, a few generations here, right? Like, and, and this, this changes if arousal is categorized in specific ways. And if the reason we had to carve out same sex patterns as being different than other patterns what the specific arousal pathways could be pursued. There’s no longer a reason to do that. Now. In fact, what you should do is, and I think we’re already seeing the left do this. I think that this is where the [00:31:00] proliferation of gender profiles came from. I think the proliferation of gender profiles was in the urban monoculture is a prelude to the normalization of alternate online pseudonymity. You know, and, and saying that is who I really am, right? Like, I really am Skylar the fox sometimes, and I really am, you know, Becca, the anime girl. Sometimes I’m not good at coming up with names like this, but you, you get the idea. So are you, are you following me so far? Like the urban monocultural trajectory actually makes sense that I think I can project where it’s going next, Simone Collins: just to like, if I’m getting this right, almost total abstraction and absurdity. Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it’s absurdity, it, it follows a logically consistent format from their perspective to them. Life is about the pursuit of pleasure and self-affirmation. So long as you do not interfere with others’, pursuit of pleasure and self affirmation. [00:32:00] And if you take that perspective and somebody wants to identify with a fox, right? Like character. Yeah. Like, how are you actually doing a good thing by saying no, you’re not allowed to do that. Okay. Especially when the technology makes it incredibly easy. Like think about the way that they would argue this if somebody’s like, Hey, you, you know, you know, you’re not actually that. And they’d be like, you know, I find that really dissociating when you say that. Like, it, it, it, it, honestly, it really hurts my feelings, right? You get a generation of argument around this and it’s the next big fad that goes big, right? You know? And we’ve, we’ve seen sort of prodromal stuff around this within like therians or other kin or like alternate sexual profiles. But basically I’m saying it’s going in that direction. Mm-hmm. Now it going in that direction left a lot of the same sex community behind. Right. Because when gender isn’t something you’re born with and a lesbian, which, you know, I believe some people are born was like discussed towards male genitalia. Because I have discussed towards male genitalia, so I, I, I would assume that some [00:33:00] women are born that way. Right. You know, and they say, I don’t like that. And then somebody’s like, yeah, but I identify as a woman and this is Lady D. Right. So you’re being transphobic by saying this. Like it has completely left behind that component of the community. It’s completely left behind the gay man who’s like. You know, if you can just identify as any gender you feel like in the moment, then the very idea of being gay or same-sex attracted no longer has a carve out among other kinks, right? Like there’s no longer a logical reason to carve it out in the way that we did historically. And so there, they’re sort of left behind and so we’ll address this community in a second. But then I started to think about it’s like, okay. That’s the way the urban monoculture is framing things. But of course, if you view life as a pursuit of pleasure and self-affirmation, eventually the cultures that do that are going to die out, right? Because there’s no way you can be above repopulation fertility rate and have those sorts of pursuits or, or, or interests. Right? And we’ve also seen the, and you can watch many of our episodes on this, the massive negative psychological effects living that type of lifestyle has you, the closer you are to the [00:34:00] urban monoculture, the closer you are to these sorts of groups and identifications the higher rates you have of mini negative psychological, whether it’s depression or, and alive rates, or self hatred or you know, mental illnesses or, or really anything else. Okay. Before I get to the next thing, any thoughts Simone? Simone Collins: No, keep going. Malcolm Collins: By the way, if I, have I convinced you so far, you think this is a good theory so far? Simone Collins: Plausible? Yes. Malcolm Collins: Plausible. Okay. So then I was thinking, okay, so when I’m raising my kids, right, because I’ve always been like, well, there’s same sex attracted, what we would say is, okay, well, you know, pursue same sex attraction if you want in so far as you can still have kids, right? Or a large number of kids. And you’ve pointed out that, you know, if we have a lesbian daughter, a lesbian can actually have twice as many kids if they make a rule that they only do insemination from their biological relatives. By this what I mean is they would be inseminated by their partners, brothers seamen their partners would. And they, well, no, that their partners would be by theirs. And when they’re pregnant, they’re inseminated by their partner’s brothers semen. So the kids are [00:35:00] all at least 25% theirs. Um mm-hmm. And this would allow ‘em to have kids at twice the rate. Mm-hmm. Because both women could be pregnant at the same time, presumably. Mm-hmm. And a lot of people are like, who would want that? If Simone and I were both women, we would both be pregnant all the time. Yeah. I, we would be puffing out kids so fast. You have no idea. If our kids have the same predilections we do. I remember now you would freaking Simone Collins: hate being pregnant so Malcolm Collins: much. One prenatal lesbian who was like, yeah, I was trying to explain the logic of this to my girlfriend, and she just thought it was really weird. And then we ended up breaking up. Aw. She’s like, no, but you understand, I understand. It’s my brother. And that’s weird from like societal standards, but it would be 25% my kid. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Simone Collins: Like it only makes sense. It’s, it’s so weird to me that. Lesbians who had siblings would have their partner, if their partner was being the, the gestational like egg donor and carrier consider [00:36:00] anything but the, the person’s brother if they have one. Right. Malcolm Collins: But we’re gonna ignore all of that for a second. Package that up. Put it to the side. Sure. If you’re building a culture for intergenerational transmission that is designed to be you, you, you, so if your culture treats people in a way that just feels fundamentally unfair to other people. Okay, so let’s now talk about the, the dangers of same-sex attraction prohibitions for a culture that wants to intergenerationally, replicate and survive. The biggest danger of same sex arou bans or you know, sort of prohibitions against this as a culture is it can feel arbitrary and cruel to youth growing up within that culture. And it can lead them to feel that that culture is not benevolent or caring, which can be used to deconvert them. Which you see a lot Simone Collins: with, with Malcolm Collins: Mormons. Oh, you see it with Mormons. Simone Collins: Even, even, and almost, especially when the Mormons themselves who deconverted and talk about [00:37:00] this are not gay. Which is really Malcolm Collins: interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Because they’re like, I had X gay for with a perfectly nice person. I didn’t understand. Why he was so shamed by my culture. Right. You, you have no, it’s Simone Collins: more like, oh, I saw that they said you should do this if you’re gay. And I can’t believe they said that. Which is also odd. I don’t know. Malcolm Collins: Right. But the point being is the urban monoculture has evolved to get, be very, very good at, and it’s one of the reasons why it focuses on all this weird gender stuff, which you might be like, why is it when gay, same sex attractive people are such a small percentage of the population? Why is the urban monoculture so obsessed with it? Why is it so obsessed with the trans thing? Yeah. And it’s ‘cause it can use those wedge issues to deconvert people by making your more traditionalist culture seem arbitrary and cruel. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: And so, you know, if you’re building a culture from scratch and you build what can seem like an arbitrary rule against, you know, same sex attraction. Like that, or, or categorization of it your kids can be like, Hey, that just seems like mean. Like I don’t wanna be part [00:38:00] of a culture that’s like that, right? Yeah. So be aware that there are, there are costs to this within a modern context that didn’t exist in a historic context. You can be like, you know, no, nobody in the medieval period was like, well, that just seems pretty mean. I’ve got a, you know, a gay friend Greg over here. Right? You know, so, this, this is where we are right now in sort of my chain of logic. So then I was like, okay, so what if I took a position that was completely alternative to the urban monoculture? And I was like, oh my God. As soon as I had the thought, I was like, this is the only meaningful sexual differentiator in humans. It’s not gay versus straight. And this is the way that we should view sexual differentiation in the future. Which is, is arousal and sexuality to you like the way that you have chosen to relate to it about procreation or is it about [00:39:00] pleasure and self affirmation? So what I’m saying here is actual meaningful differentiator between individuals is not whatever arousal profile they have to have been born with, or even the exact way that they choose to live their lifestyle. It is the way they relate to sexuality in the first place, the way they relate to arousal in the first place, because that is downstream of a chosen metaphysical or world perspective that no longer feels arbitrary. When you tell your kids, oh, we think lesser of people who adopt this style of living. Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: So if I tell my kids, you know, all of these things, these, these arousal profiles, this is how they work. This is how they, they are different within people. But at the end of the day, the way that we as a culture choose to relate to them is to say there are some that we can [00:40:00] utilize to motivate reproduction. Yeah. And then the rest are meaningfully kinks. Which is to say that within my context or within my culture, I would say, because I think that this is safer to do in terms of not having your kids pulled outta your culture. Instead of vilifying them, just be like. You may have them, you may not. Don’t let them determine your identity. Don’t let them get you into situations that could negatively affect your health or affect your career or life. And do not let them become obsessions for you. Okay. Yeah. They do become an obsession for you because some people are like, well, some people just can’t control themselves around porn. Then naltrexone, and you’ll be able to control yourself. Simone Collins: Yeah, totally. Malcolm Collins: Sinclair Method, you can medicate this. Yeah. So, the point I’m making here. Is to say I would tell my kids it is not necessarily same sex attraction that you are shaming. It is anyone who has chosen to live a lifestyle where sexuality is either a form of identity [00:41:00] because there is no reason to make your arousal profile your identity or a, a source of self-affirmation because there is no reason to search for self-affirmation in something that you didn’t personally choose. You know, if it’s just who you’re born as, then and, and you don’t have any sort of like, history with it, then it’s, it’s, there’s no reason for that to give you, you know, pride over other people. And is it what was the final one here? Is there something that that’s related to just pleasure, right? Because all of those things are downstream of the urban monocultures way. Of relating to sexuality and gender. Right. And then I would say and then on the other hand, you have people who have chosen to say. Okay, this, that arouses me. I may be able to, because as technology progresses, I may be able to utilize these arousal pathways to help me form a stable cohabitating family unit, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But in large part, it’s probably gonna be easier, at least with the technology that we have today. [00:42:00] Even if you are same sex attracted to be in a nons, same-sex attracted relationship. And if you choose to not do that that’s like a totally valid choice for my, in, in terms of like how I’d relate to my kids to not seem capricious in how I would lay down the rules, but understand that you are, you, like more is gonna be expected from you and the workload that you are going to undertake in exchange for the, the pleasure and compatibility you get to be as a partner who is maximally arousing to you which is a trade off that many men make. Right? Like, I’d be like, I, I would have no more. Disdain for you if you made these decisions than if your brother, for example, married some super hot girl who told him she was never gonna have any kids. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: And there’s a lot of girls like that out there, right? Like that’s a very common compromise that people make. If anything, if you marry a guy and he plans to try to have lots of kids that’s better than the [00:43:00] person who indulgent, marries a girl who says, I’m, I’m not gonna try to have any other kids. Yeah. But it’s, it’s probably better in most cases that you just. You know, masturbate when you’re gonna masturbate and, and suck it up in regards to your relationship. Simone Collins: Honestly, yeah, Malcolm Collins: does this rec categorization of sexuality into not gay versus straight but in regards to how you relate to your arousal patterns more broadly better because I think it, it, it, it better categorizes everyone who’s, who’s really on our broader team into one category and everyone who’s off our team into another category. And it also helps differentiate our category from the urban monoculture. So this doesn’t mean that you are not of this category if you don’t have kids, or if you choose a life where you don’t have kids. It’s more about how you relate to arousal and pleasure more broadly, you can decide that your life is better spent in service to the future of humanity. [00:44:00] Through, , taking on an endeavor or a pathway that prevents you from having kids but is still not dedicated to pleasure, it’s basically is your life dedicated to pleasure? Is pleasure how you identify who you are? Like is the things that give you pleasure, your core sense of identity? Or do you internally calculate them as vices that subtract from your purpose? And here what I mean is anything that subtracts from your mission in life to somebody with this mindset is a vice. You know, whether that is sleeping in or collecting war hammer cards or masturbating to frequently, or, , having sex and spending a large amount of time securing sexual partners. . Are the things that give you pleasure, your core sense of I, and, and what’s really cool about this is this means that somebody who primarily identifies as like a magic, the gathering hobbyist, would be seen as equally bad as somebody who primarily identifies a. As a furry, whereas somebody who does either of these things [00:45:00] recreationally and understands that they are wasting their time and that the short amount of time they have on earth while doing them, but is like, yeah, but I wouldn’t be able to focus as hard on the stuff that really does matter if I didn’t let loose. Occasionally, , you know, you can be totally, on this side of this divide. , While having a preference for either of these things. It’s just how you relate to them. Simone Collins: so if, if I were to articulate this slightly differently, it would basically just be like, okay, is your, is your. Are your sexual, is your desired sexual lifestyle gonna stop you from reproducing and having a flourishing family? If yes, we don’t support it. If No, go for it, buddy. Is that, is that kind of it? Malcolm Collins: I, I, I would say it’s a little like, that’s, that’s I guess the, the weakest way of wording it which is, you know, you’re saying, is it not going to be incompatible with what I would say is positive because the thing about kinks, right, [00:46:00] is. You know, you may use a kink to get off or something like that. Yeah. But that’s an indulgent waste of time. And you know, that, like, if you have a correct way of, of relating to what I’d say, like if you, if you relate to sexuality in the way that I would say is the correct way to relate to sexuality Simone Collins: mm-hmm. You Malcolm Collins: would understand that that’s just as bad as sitting in front of a sports game and having a drink or watching you know, anime or playing video games or arguing with someone online when you know you’re never going to change their mind. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Or troll posting when, you know, it’s not, it doesn’t, it doesn’t have like a specific agenda. Okay. Anything you are doing for the sake of, you know, pleasure or addictive pathways or anything like that. It’s, it’s, it’s all in that same category. Okay. Maybe not higher or lower, but it’s all in that same category. Yeah. An indulgence. Right. And to dedicate your life to, it an indulgence of that category. And this [00:47:00] is where I see, you know, a arousal patterns in life dedicated to them, probably pretty differently than a lot of conservatives where they might see a person who you know, dedicates their entire life to like, their, their fetish. And you know, they’re going to what’s that? Folsom Street Fair and, you know, the, all the, the weird fetish gear. And this is like everything about their life. And they see them as a significantly higher category of de degeneracy than say, somebody who spends all of their money in free time on war hammer paraphernalia and has a, a giant like war hammer set up in their room, or, or, yeah. The model train sets or equally audience here equally Simone Collins: objectionable. Malcolm Collins: Equally objectionable. Yeah. Because it’s something that has no possibility of contributing to civilization. So Simone Collins: instead of like spectrums of gay to straight, they are spectrums of, contributes to human flourishing versus doesn’t. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, not [00:48:00] contributes to, but that’s the way that they structure their, their lives in their relation to their own arousal and sexuality. Simone Collins: I don’t know what you mean exactly by that I mean ‘cause what does Warhammer have to do with. Malcolm Collins: Your relation to well, okay. Their lives and their own pleasure pathways. Simone Collins: Okay. Sort of what, what they do for, for fulfillment in life. Malcolm Collins: Yes. And then people can be like, well, what about like biblical stuff? Because we’ve said, you know, we, we, we follow biblical stuff as well. And I’d be like, yeah, but that’s like an additional category that I apply to my family, right? Like, the, the biblical perspective on things like when I’m telling my kids you shouldn’t do X or YI think if I over rely, I’d be like, there is a biblical argument for this, but we’re not gonna lean on the biblical argument for this because it will seem capricious was in a modern setting. We are gonna lean on this secondary argument for this and to live a life that is in line with biblical principles. Somebody can be like, well this is totally different from just saying, I’m gonna [00:49:00] live a life that’s in service to the next generation. Right. To me, I might say this person is like closer to my tribe if they do that. But I’m not gonna say that I am incompatible with aligning my objectives and goals with the other person. Or I would do something that capriciously impeded their lifestyle. So that would be my differentiator there especially as we move into an environment where the technology for having children changes the, the gender compatibilities of individuals. Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, in a sense it’s only gonna get worse, I guess you could say. Malcolm Collins: So. Well, no, it’s gonna get the, the, the, so I think you’re gonna see two things happen. Mm-hmm. The hedonistic pathway is going to become even harder to resist because of all of the new things you can be was in an online context. I actually think Time did a very good job of this when you’ve been watching so Simone Collins: much of that with the kids [00:50:00] Malcolm Collins: with BMO is in the you know, virtual world and everybody has their, like weird avatar and their, you know, upgrade it with points and stuff like this. And this is how they identify and themselves to everyone else. And it just becomes weird and abstracted and everything like you said. Right. Speaker 5: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who at these two system dumps into the chat room? Know what I’m saying?? Vinny, can you hook my friend up with some BMO brand s. Speaker 4: This super skid costs 15 million crypto coins. Give it to me, Vinny. Speaker 6: I’m beautiful. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it’s gonna become weird and abstracted because these people are still gonna be human and they’re still gonna have human arousal pathways and so they’re gonna act like and look like all of the sexiest things from the human. Yeah. A few of them will dress as weird, distracted, you know. To do, you know, the way, do, do, do you know the way to the what they to, to the devil or whatever? Speaker: Do you know the way? You have to have Ebola [00:51:00] to know the way. He doesn’t know the way. Malcolm Collins: What’s a I don’t think it was, it had to do with Ebola. I remember e Ebola. It’s a way so anyway, so the, the I think the vast majority of people are gonna dress as something that they see as arousing to other people. Because being human, they want to imagine themselves as arousing to the, the individuals who they have a sexual attraction to. Right. Like the, the gender they have a sexual attraction to. Yeah. And so, or the multiple genders or the whatever, right? But, but they’re, they want to see themselves as attractive to that. I often use AI to solicit feedback on my episodes, , and I absolutely loved one of the lines that it came up with. The urban monoculture already treats gender as a mood, not a chromosome. Once high fidelity avatars, haptic suits and eventual direct neural interfaces are normal. I’m a girl and I’m a dragon fox. With three tails and glowing neon genitals become functionally indistinguishable claims. At [00:52:00] that point, the old progressive argument, same sex attraction is not a kink because it’s an immutable orientation towards a natural category. Gender simply evaporates. Malcolm Collins: And so I think we’re not gonna see a total abstraction. We will see a total. Ization of avatar profiles, which I think in a large part, we, we sort of already have seen. I mean, look at the v tubers and stuff like that. Come on, man. Nobody, very few pit bull. But we have huge overlap with this one guy who does a vtu as a troll. He’s like a Romanian guy. He’s got a very Simone Collins: V Yes, yes. Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so that’s, that’s where I think that that culture’s going. Mm-hmm. And I think that broadly I can find common ground with anybody who is dedicating their lives and their actions to something larger than self-affirmation and pleasure. And I will find a degree of contention, as I’ve already mentioned. But I, I think it’s, it’s only, it’s, it is right now sort of long-term contention rather than [00:53:00] contention sort of for, for, for the person in the moment, alliances with, with individuals who are optimizing for something other than long-term human flourishing. But yeah. Thoughts? Simone Collins: I like this. I mean, I really, I think the important thing really is. Okay. I’m, I’m, I don’t think it’s logically inconsistent that people on a biblical basis object to certain sexual proclivities. That is fine. No, but I think in terms of our particular techno puritan religious framework, it has to, instead of being more necessarily to I think a lot of biblical norms, which have, are more like bits of dust that were picked up by the rolling meatball. That is the Bible. There’s lot of stuff, Malcolm Collins: biblical norms are meant to be understood. Why did these norms exist within their, well, a lot of things just got Simone Collins: tacked on to various religious texts over time as like, here’s this thing we do and also this thing, you know, helps to reduce [00:54:00] disease spread. This thing helps to do, you know, a lot of the things that got picked up as religious traditions got picked up because they. Largely helped to reduce disease spread or, or helps society in LA living in larger and larger civilizational formats, larger cities, et cetera survive. And I think if you wanna look at it from a techno puritan perspective, we’d take a look at this from a meta perspective and say, okay, what were all those things really for though? And they were for promoting long-term human flourishing and growth. So when we ask, is this particular hobby or indulgence or, or sexuality or whatever, good or bad, does it contribute to long-term human flourishing? No. I mean, Jesus plays Malcolm Collins: out any, anything that you do not do for, for God is a sin like anything. Well, yeah. And there’s also, Simone Collins: I mean, I think if you extend it to other sins like sloth or avarice or pride, you know, all these things are really related to that as well. I would say when [00:55:00] you were talking, for example, about excessive online commentary, just to try to like, you know. Change someone’s mind who’s never gonna change their mind. You know, all these things I think are, are you, you can kind of connect them to the seven deadly sins if you want to. And, and, and those really have to do with like, hey, you’re not, you’re not serving God, you’re not serving human flourishing or the future of humanity by doing this thing, I think was in the existing Malcolm Collins: world, the seven deadly sins. Well, they still can be useful in calling out. Like, Hey, maybe pride is not a good thing. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: It, a better framework is to understand whether or not you’re doing something to fulfill some sort of like, biological pathway, like some sort of opioid pathway, or are you doing it because it is in the best interest of, you know, we associate God with, with future human flourishing. Yeah. Because it is in the best interest of God, and, and obviously you can associate God with something else, but I almost like anyone. You know, when they’re arguing with somebody online and they know they’re never gonna convince the person thinks they’re doing that for God. Mm-hmm. [00:56:00] Or when they’re buying war Hammer figurines, or when they’re watching a sports game or when they’re, you know, we should mean all of those things they said. Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I like that. I mean, I, I, yeah, I, I I like that. It is good. It is favorable. So you’re saying that like if you had a son who was totally gay, you would probably recommend a heterosexual lifestyle and then just like gay porn and you know, bathhouses or whatever. And I’d say, well, minus the bathhouses, this isn’t that different than the way things were done from like the 1950s to, well, as far back as I’m aware in Western civilization, this isn’t like some radical idea. We were able to live fairly fine and same-sex attracted people were able to live fairly fine with this normalized. So I don’t have a problem suggesting that. . And so now you might be saying. Well, the urban monoculture just can’t deal with a concept like that. You know, a person not [00:57:00] having what arouses them, be given to them, they think it’s a right of people, and I’m like, no, no, no, no. They think it’s a right of attractive people. They think it’s a right of attractive men. The urban monoculture recognizes perfectly well. There are hundreds of millions of men who are just born not attractive enough or not intelligent enough, or without the social charisma to get a partner. And it derived them. It calls them. incells. And they don’t deserve to act on their arousal. And not only that, but they’re supposed to be fine and emotionally healthy. Why is it okay? And this is a much larger population than the gay population of the United States, the incell population. Why, why are we okay saying that they don’t need to have their arousal pathways fulfilled? And that’s perfectly an easy and okay thing for them to live with. But gay people know they have a right to have their arousal pathways filled. . And again, I’m, I’m, I take the position of if you want to culturally normalize this, do, it’s not my goal to get in your culture’s biz about this, but the [00:58:00] arguments that they make for why gays should be able to live this way should also apply to incells, and they often don’t. And the fact that they dehumanize in cells on top of all of this, that they. A population that is, by the way, sees a pretty woman, doesn’t act on it, doesn’t skeeze on them, , that is suppressing their arousal patterns that, that this population is degraded. , It’s shocking to me, but it shows that there is an inherent caste system where the urban monoculture really only considers attractive men. , It’s only when they are deprived of their past towards pleasure has a grave injustice taken place. And you absolutely see this, where they’re like, can you imagine what it would be like to go your whole life without being able to act on your arousal pattern? And it’s like, yeah, that’s, that’s literally this other group that you mock deride and dehumanize the incel population. Now people will be like, no, no, no. This is about love. And I point out here, no, it’s not about love. No, it’s not. You could love somebody [00:59:00] without them being arousing to you. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows that. In fact, we even laud that as a society. You know, somebody’s wife gets like burnt up in a fire and she’s horribly disfigured and he’s, he loves her. That’s, that’s amazing. Shallow Hall, you know, you’re, you’re with somebody despite the way that they look, not being arousing to anyone, despite just not being around to you. And it’s, it is actually sort of even gross to gay people to say this, that, a same-sex attracted person is only able to love. People love their own gender. , That’s not a thing. No. Love is not a gendered thing. You, you, you, the love emotion just doesn’t work that way. Even though they’ve made up all these, like a romantic whatever. Everybody knows you can fall in love with anyone. And this is because, and we have an episode on this with lots and lots of receipts. , Romantic love as an emotional set is mostly a myth. , And that the reality of the situation is, is that love is a choice. It is about the way you choose to treat the [01:00:00] other people in your life, and you choose to contextualize the other people in your life. Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I appreciate it. I love you so well. I, I just think you need to recontextualize a lot of this stuff with, in a modern context, if you want to keep your kids right. Yeah. ‘cause if things seem capricious, it’s gonna be very hard to keep your kids within your cultural context. Simone Collins: You bet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and, and I think more than ever, people have to think extremely careful about any rule that could be construed as arbitrary. Exactly. Or that like, I guess a very, very common and wise parenting advice is you need to very carefully choose your battles and choose what hill you wanna die on. And you can only choose like a couple, a very small number of things or a very, like, just a single or one or two op core operating principles and stick to them. And so I like this for that reason. It’s good. Malcolm Collins: [01:01:00] Yeah. Oh, by the way, something I always hate when people say, because n said this recently and I was a little disappointed. Oh Simone Collins: no. Malcolm Collins: This was his opinion on same-sex marriage, and he is like, well. I think same-sex marriage should be illegal because I think that marriage should only be a religious institution. Right? Like that it should only be through the church. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a Simone Collins: common argument. Malcolm Collins: No, it’s a common argument, but it’s a libertarian cop out because no, libertarian actually fights for that. I’ve never seen any serious politician actually fight to make marriage only and solely a religious institution. I believe it should be, but even if you made it only and solely a religious institution, it wouldn’t really change anything in our society because tons of Christian churches would be marrying gay people. Tons of Jewish churches would be marrying gay people. Tons of us would be marrying gay people. Yeah. You, you’re, you, you, you would functionally change nothing from society today to that society. So it allows you to sound like you’re taking the conservative position without actually taking a meaningful stance. Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. [01:02:00] Okay. I see. That is a fair point. Yeah. You can’t just be like, it’s religious because I mean like half of the religions that you would guess would not then marry gay couples have like pride flags. Not even pride flags. Progress flags. Yeah. Hanging outside them. So I mean, you, you have done nothing. Malcolm Collins: I, I generally like nothing, but I, I mentioned that because I was disappointed. I was like, come on man. That’s a, that’s a lame take anyway. Love you. Simone Collins: I love you too. Okay. I’m gonna really quickly fill his milk bottle. You look Malcolm Collins: great. And I just love that Ralph Lauren jacket. Jacket looked authoritarian. It goes with our vibe these days. Right. You know, gotta, Simone Collins: well it also, it’s very on trend, although, like in a, in the, not on trend way, because apparently the, the trend of Christmas day decor this year is Ralph Lauren Christmas, everyone on TikTok is on about the Ralph Lauren Christmas. You gotta throw away your gingerbread themed Christmas [01:03:00] decorations. ‘cause you’re doing Ralph Lauren this year. All these people who worked at Ralph Lauren stores or chiming in to talk about Ralph Lauren’s Christmas decorating rules because there were a lot of them. Really? Yeah. What are some of the, Rules? I mean, like no green wreaths no, no presents under the tree that were not boxes and. All of the same wrapping paper, either, you know, the reverse pattern or the main pattern. It actually does sound like Malcolm Collins: it’d be very aesthetically appealing. I’m Oh yeah, no, like it’s, Simone Collins: it’s all plaids and you know, matching basically like what a lot of pe people’s takes on this are is that Ralph Lauren Christmas is just like literally fricking traditional Christmas, like red and green and plaid and oh, you can’t do anything traditional. That sounds like it might Malcolm Collins: be for Nazis. Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because, well, there’s a lot of gatekeeping. People are, are shaming all the gray millennials and they’re like, you and your disgusting gray millennial house aren’t allowed to have Ralph Lauren Christmas. ‘cause [01:04:00] you chose your gray millennial house and there’s all these, you know, former Ralph Lauren sales associates, Ralph Lauren, Chris. Our, our home isn’t, it’s more like the home alone. Ho House is is is framed as the Ralph Lauren Christmas house look before they Malcolm Collins: destroyed it and made it gray. Millennial house. Simone Collins: Oh yes. That, oh man. The before and after photos are the most devastating, forget photos of Gaza people Malcolm Collins: Home Alone house. So what did you think of the video today? What, what was it? I mean, did you get, did you get chance? Today’s Simone Collins: video? I got the comments. Yeah. The, the most common comment, we got, like, at least four of these, it surprised to me is that people are saying that this is a 40 Trump move, a 40 chess move on behalf of Trump, in that he has explicitly stated in the past, and I, I do actually recall him saying this, that the Democrats are always gonna do the opposite of what he says he wants. And so, oh, so Malcolm Collins: he acted like he didn’t want the Epstein files release, so the Democrats [01:05:00] act themselves if he actually did that. And, and if the, if the Epstein files get released and there’s like literally nothing on him as it appears there is. It Simone Collins: could be. It could be, yeah. And then other people are like, yeah, and the only reason why he might have wanted to hold onto the Trump, or sorry, the Epstein files for longer, is because he would want to actually u we’ll say unh holster them during the midterms. There are definitely, there’s a narrative where this all makes a lot of sense. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Obviously we can’t know because we’re not in Trump’s mind, but I like, I like that. I like that. All right. Malcolm Collins: All right. Oh, how did the video do, by the way? Simone Collins: Not well. Eight Malcolm Collins: of 10. Eight of 10. Speaker 7: Simone, that turkey’s looking very nice. And it was our favorite price. Free, free coupon. Turkey coupon, Turkey. Look at that. Look at [01:06:00] that. So bad. Turns out Simone Green spices. So I’ve got bad news for you. You may be a tra wife because I’m making sourdough and Turkey. Yeah, I have my sourdough basket. Like what we have last night’s sourdough. Are you gonna, are you gonna show off your go? Well, the kids actually went through a lot of it, so I’m, I’m happy. Speaker 8: Good times. All right. Let’s get this bird back in, but it’s gonna be good, right? It’s couldn’t h your sauce, the butter boy and sauce that you found a recipe for. Yeah, I’m excited for that. We owe your mom for getting this. It’s nice of her. Okay. She goes,[01:07:00] Speaker 7: it’s so weird that you used to be like this hipster girl, and yet everything, you’re, this is what I wanted Now everything you’re doing now is so hipster. I wanted, yeah, I wanted the, the blue egg chickens and the sourdough and the. Yeah, all that stuff. And the really funny thing is that I, I would bake things on the weekends and then I, I wouldn’t want to eat them because I’m like, I don’t want to eat those stuff. Speaker 8: Like, I don’t, I can’t eat it all by myself, so now I just have a bunch of kids, like ravenous wild animals, mucks that. Speaker 7: It’s literally the sound they make when they eat. Toasty. Smells good though. Oh, yeah. I gotta show the fans we use. Uh, what, what did I use for this one? You know, one of the AI image sites for pictures of our kids. What? Oh, the AI board? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is where we used to film when the channel started. Speaker 8: Oh [01:08:00] God. You’re right. Yeah. You filmed down here. Yep. I like you. New spot. It’s better. I go upstairs then Loins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanksgiving. So dad’s with the kids all day. Oh my gosh. Are any of them still guys? Is this a mess? You’re so happy with yourself, girl. Titan Indy. Are you gonna get bopped Speaker 7: tyke? You are in big trouble. No, not again. Okay, sweetheart Indy, don’t do that. [01:09:00] I. Put them away, please, Titan. Why? I just come back? ‘cause Mommy’s gonna cook you up like a Turkey if you don’t. Thank you, sweetheart. I really appreciate it. I love you a lot. You did not tie your tongue into a, are you guys watching cartoons? Yeah, I found a Thanksgiving run from the 1996 commercials and all. What are you doing? Toasty. I’ve been doing Are you playing among us? Octavian, I’m not. What are you working on? Huh? I just want mom making my video. Oh, okay. Yeah. I’m play. I don’t know. I’m not. I love you buddy. [01:10:00] Love. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe