https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MeYNmT0a68I
The Google boys a while back, the engineers, they did an analysis of women’s use of pornography. Men’s too. Well, so males use visual pornography, as everyone and their dog knows. But women prefer literary pornography, and it’s very tightly themed. Like, it’s very archetypically themed. So the typical protagonist is surgeon, werewolf, vampire, pirate, or billionaire, or some combination. Interesting combination of all of those attributes. And the standard plot is attractive young woman, all of whose virtues are not well known. So it’s like mousy librarian type, you know, the Hollywood beauty who takes off her glasses and you know exactly that. She attracts the attention of this more predatory male, let’s say, or at least a male with the capacity to be predatory, entices him into a relationship and helps him reveal his commitment and his good side. And it’s beauty and the beast fundamentally, which I really think is the fundamental female archetype. Like there’s a heroic archetype that goes along with the feminine as well, because women also confront the unknown and all of that. But it is the fundamental, it’s certainly the fundamental female sexual archetype. And so what that means, this is perhaps what struck a chord in your soul, is that you were enamored, you said, of the image of tough guy, right? And so that would be equivalent in some sense to a desire from the Jungian perspective of incorporation of the shadow, right? To make yourself into someone who’s capable of being stalwart and tough, a James Bond sort of figure, that’s a good example, in the modern age. But then you found that that should be allied with a purpose, right? And that rescuing of the maiden, that goes two ways, of course, the maiden gets rescued, but the fact that that dangerous hero rescues the maiden and is therefore attractive to her is also his salvation. Right. And I mean, it is the problem that young men have to solve, right? It’s the problem of power. We have strength, we have power, we have a kind of sexual power as well. And you start to think, well, if you don’t want to be the bad guy. I mean, at some point, every young man realizes that nasty guys get more sex, and they realize that people who push women around can be very successful. And you have to say to yourself, is that who I want to be? And I very much did not want to be that guy, but I did want to be successful with girls. And I also could perceive just in actual fact that the world is a corrupt place and it’s power that makes it corrupt. And Raymond Chandler has that famous, wonderful line, down these mean streets, a man must go who is not himself mean. And that just banged a bell inside me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So on that too, so the literature shows, so what the psychopaths and narcissists, the Machiavellians, and even the sadists do, the men, is that the false confidence of the narcissist is a mimicry of competence. And that can be put on very early. And young women are particularly susceptible to that camouflage. And that partly accounts for the differential success of bad boys, let’s say. Now it’s partly because the women are looking for the beast that can be turned into the ally, but it’s not easy for them to distinguish the beast who is beast right to the bloody core and should be stayed away from in every possible way from the potentially redeemable Philip Marlowe hero. And then there’s another complication too, to say something in favor of the more beastly man is that the other thing a woman doesn’t want, and no men really want to have around either, is a man who’s actually weak and unskilled, who pretends to be moral and kind, not only to cozy up to women, but also to parade his weakness as moral virtue. I’m not the mean guy, I’m not the bad guy. Well, the reason for that is you’re too god damn weak to manage that. And instead of just admitting that forthrightly and doing something about it, you parade it as a moral virtue. And I think that sort of man is actually a lower form of man than the outright bully. And there’s some evidence that other people think is too, you know, because the kind of anti-social bully types, especially in elementary school, aren’t unpopular. They’re ambivalently popular. Now what happens is that as their life progresses, if they continue with the bullying attitude, let’s say that sort of narcissistic and even callous attitude towards others, doesn’t work well as a long-term strategy. But the bullies are certainly more popular in elementary school, say, and even in junior high, than the bully victims are. I think it goes beyond that. I mean, I think this is why feminism has blown up in women’s faces so much, is when you outlaw masculinity, when you call it toxic, when you make people feel bad about their masculinity, only outlaws can be masculine. So if you look at the golden age of television we just passed through that lasted about 10 years from about 2020 to 2010 or 15, all of the shows were about bad guys, the Sopranos, the Shield, the Wire, all about guys who really cut the edge. This fellow, Andrew Tate, who is a buffoon and a pimp and just a terrible person, for a period, he was immensely popular, especially with teen boys. And he would tell people how to abuse women and how to get them into sex work for your profit. And I would look at that and I would say, the guy’s a pimp, what are you talking about? But they would say, well, you’re not hearing him, you’re not really understanding him. But I think I was. I think what they had lost was the idea of St. George. They had lost the idea that your power is a path to virtue. It’s not an obstacle to virtue if you use it correctly. Yeah, well, you know, and to give the devil his due, I mean, the thing about Tate is he is a complex character because not all of his bravado and posturing is false because he is a mixed martial arts fighter. He is a genuinely tough guy. And he is also someone who came up from the street, you know, and so you could imagine that within his soul, all sorts of different forces contend. And just, and I am not making excuses for him, because I think the electronic pimping aspect in particular is like, I think that’s unforgivable. It’s absolutely 100% unforgivable. There’s no excuse for ever having done that in your life, not even once. And it’s not even necessarily the kind of sin that you can recover from, not without like 20 years in serious hang your head repentance. But he is a complex figure because allied with his bravado is a genuine physical toughness. And it is definitely the case that, as you pointed out, something I learned about years ago is that, you know, if you think that like strong men are dangerous, you wait till you see what weak men are capable of. And if you demonize everything that’s positive, everything positive that’s associated with masculinity, you do drive it into the unconscious, you drive it underground. And then you do get this weird attraction, you know, like another element of that attraction is who is that there was a there was a show for a long time about a serial killer who decided to Dexter Dexter, exactly the same sort of thing, right. And you see the same sort of thing pop up, for example, in 50 shades of gray, which is again, an archetypal example of the feminine proclivity for a certain kind of structured pornography.