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BETTINA ARNDT: Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux have just left Australia
after causing a big stir. Bureaucrats tried to stop Lauren from getting
a visa to enter the country and there were big demonstrations and one
State Government tried to bully the organisers of the tour with a $68,000.00
bill for police protection. Both of these Youtube heroes have done a lot
of good work. I’ve been following Lauren for many years ever since
she was a student. She was in some ghastly Gender Studies course and making
videos about some of the ideological rubbish she was being taught. And
Stefan is a very smart bloke. He makes thoughtful videos about all manner
of important topics.
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But I am fascinated by their take on promiscuity
and women’s early sexual activity. This is one area where I think
both of them go off the rails. But I should say something about where
I’m coming from here. My background is actually Clinical Psychology
and I started out as one of Australia’s first Sex Therapists back
in the 1970s, when there was a total double standard, with all the single
males getting all this kudos for seducing women, while females were always
at risk of losing their reputations and I’ve spent my whole career
promoting respectful, equal relations between men and women, although
in recent years, of course, I’m concentrating on the demonisation
of men and trying to stop that. So, with this sort of background, I hope
you’ll see why it is that it rankles, when Lauren Southern is calling
out promiscuous women, warning they’re going to ruin their chances
of stable marriages by bed-hopping from an early age.
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LAUREN SOUTHERN: Promiscuity has devastating effects on women’s
ability to pair-bond and form lasting, stable relationships that she needs
for her happiness. This isn’t a fact that I like. It’s not
a fact that I want to be true. I want people to be happy and free to make
all the choices and decisions they want, without consequences, but the
reality is there are lasting consequences and I can’t change that
and women need to understand the consequences of their choices and make
informed decisions based on that. And luckily that is already happening.
Women are starting to understand that maybe all this sexual liberation
wasn’t the brightest idea and that, in the long run, a rich family
life, surrounded by love and children, is preferable to being a cat-lady.
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BETTINA ARNDT: This is crazy stuff. Of course, too much casual sex can
take a toll on men and on women. In all the decades I’ve been talking
to people about their sex lives, I’ve come across many who end up
having sexual relationships that aren’t good for them, and of course
it’s a particular problem for women, who often find it much harder
to cope with sex without any emotional involvement. It’s hugely
disappointing for women who hope that sex is going to be the start of
something wonderful and then discover that’s all he wanted. But
Lauren has based her video on some really dubious research, which claims
to show this direct correlation between the number of sexual partners
and all sorts of really disastrous consequences, like failed marriage
or single-motherhood, sexually transmitted diseases – endless doom
and loom. She’s singing from the same songbook as Stefan Molyneux
and made a famous video called “The Truth about Sex.” And
that’s been seen by over ¾ of a million people. Youtubers
are always recommending it to me and I find it really shocking that so
many people have seen it and seem to think it makes sense, because it’s
simplistic, misleading nonsense. Here’s Stefan in his video about
“The Truth about Sex.”
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STEFAN MOLYNEUX: So, contrasted with women who began
sexual activity in their early twenties, girls who initiated sex at age
13 or 14 were less than half as likely to be in stable marriages once
reaching their thirties. If it’s 12 or younger, you have less than
a 19% chance of being in a stable marriage. If you started in your twenties,
66-68% likelihood of being in a stable marriage! This is very important
when it comes to choosing your partners in the future. This is the data
you need to know to make an informed decision.
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(A SLIDE HAS ON IT: The Harmful Effects of Early Sexual Activity and
Multiple Sexual Partners among Women: A Book of Charts. Robert E. Rector,
Kirk A. Johnson, PhD, Lauren R. Noyes, Shannan Martin).
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BETTINA ARNDT: Stefan is using data from a Heritage
Foundation report which is advocacy research at its worst. As he should
realise, it is not an informed decision to assume that the reason women
have unstable marriages is because they had sex really early.
He’s confusing correlation with causation and that’s something
that’s taught in Statistics 101. A smart guy like Stefan
should know the difference. I mean, he’s the one who’s always
telling us to look at the evidence. There’s a great website about
this sort of spurious correlations which explains which explains this
beautifully.
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(TWO SLIDES SHOWS GRAPHS) So the divorce rate
in Maine is correlated with margarine consumption. But do you really think
that spreading your toast with margarine is leading to divorce?
And what about the correlation between cheese consumption
and tangled bed-sheets? It’s all madness, of course! Think
about the women you know who started sex really early. I mean, proper
research tells us a lot about this group. We have decades of research
showing they’re more likely to be from lower socio-economic backgrounds,
they’re more likely to be poorer, less-educated families who also
tend to have higher divorce-rates or family break-up rates and many of
them don’t marry. They just have kids in de facto relationships.
So this kind of background is what is called a confounding variable. It
may be those unstable homes which mean they grow up with single mums and
poorer supervision, which lead to both the early sex and their own unstable
marriages. There’s also been decades of research showing that fatherlessness
is linked to early sexual activity in girls, teenage pregnancy, abortion
and future unstable marriages. It’s just one more possible confounding
variable amongst many. So the link between early
sex and unstable marriage is a spurious correlation, like those tangled
sheets and cheese consumption.
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Now here’s Stefan at it again, but this time claiming lots of
sexual partners lead to unstable marriages.
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STEFAN MOLYNEUX: So, look at odds. If you only have had sex with the
man that you get married to, then you have a greater than 80% chance,
when you’re over 30, of being in a stable marriage, or retaining
a stable marriage. If you had one sexual partner outside of your husband,
or future husband, then this drops from 80.5% to 53.6% chance of retaining
a stable marriage and, as you can see, this goes down and down and down.
It’s mostly dose-dependent, but not entirely. If you’ve had
16 to 20 non-marital sexual partners, your odds of remaining in a stable
marriage are only 17.8%, compare that with over 80% for zero!
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BETTINA ARNDT: Think about that one! Who,
these days, is a virgin when they marry? Chances are very high they come
from conservative, religious backgrounds – precisely the type of
background which also helps people remain committed in their own marriages.
So one of the confounding variables is conservatism or religiosity. At
the other end of the spectrum, the young Feminist who thinks it’s
only fair for her to behave like many men and enjoy lots of sexual relationships
is also precisely the sort of woman who’s also less likely to stay
in an unhappy marriage. It’s her Feminist attitudes that are more
likely to be the causal link to the break-up of her marriage – not
the fact sh has lots of sex beforehand.
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So these issues are really complex and Lauren and
Stefan aren’t doing anyone any favours by pretending it’s
all so simple and putting the blame on women’s promiscuity for all
sorts of social ills. We also need to think about what’s happening
for women, now that our society’s decided
to delay the age of first marriage. For the last 40 years it’s
shifted from the early twenties to the late twenties. I actually think
that’s been a real mistake, but it’s been largely driven
by women who were told by everybody that it was best to get educated and
established in their careers before settling down. That’s
led to plenty of women struggling to find mates in their early thirties,
during those critical years for their declining fertility. And that’s
been a disaster for many women and there’s a good argument that
women who want kids should try to find partners far earlier. But Lauren
seems to have bought into this nonsense that by 30 it’s all over
for women. Our sexual value drops through the floor, she says.
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LAUREN SOUTHERN: We’re extremely valuable and beautiful to a lot
of people. Now, if I just finished the sentence there, that would be a
truth than not a lot of people would be afraid to tell you. In fact, you’ve
probably heard it time and time again. But what people ARE afraid to do
is to finish that sentence. You’re extremely valuable, but that
value diminishes over time. And I don’t mean the value of your soul
or the kind deeds that you do, which can potentially be beautiful for
ever. But I mean your sexual market value and your desirability as a potential
partner and wife. And you can go ahead and blow that off as something
that you don’t care about. You don’t care about sexual market
value or what men think of you, but the reality that it is one of the
most important assets of our lives as females.
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BETTINA ARNDT: I’ve got news for you,
Lauren! Sure, most men find younger women really attractive and it’s
natural many would like to have one of them on their arm – but they
don’t get them, do they? Unless an older man
has serious pulling-power through having acquired major assets or power
or money or status, he’s going to end up only being able to attract
women roughly in his own age-group. Most of us don’t end
up stranded without a partner, even though our market value has declined
since we were cute young things. There are plenty of people in all age-groups
pairing up, and usually with partners their own age. According to the
2013 US Census stats, 66% of women in all age-groups are in marriages
with men somewhere between one and five years older than themselves. So
dream on, all you judgemental guys! You could decide to write off all
women over thirty, but chances are the gorgeous young things won’t
end up with you,
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Now, think what happens to the numbers of sexual partners when we delay
marriage for a decade. If you start your sexual relationships in your
early twenties, the numbers are going to stack up, aren’t they?
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What makes me really mad
is Lauren and Stefan seem to assume that a woman’s sexual history
is driven only by her own desires. All those sex-crazed nymphomaniacs
madly hopping into bed with men because they can’t get enough sex.
That’s so much rubbish! And of course there are young women who
are really into sex and have no problem with having lots of hook-ups,
like plenty of young men, but my long experience
is that with women these are a minority.
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Most women are looking for something more. For a start, most women know
that they’ll get very little sexual pleasure from going to bed with
a stranger. Look, there’s research showing
that women are less likely to reach orgasm in a new relationship. It
takes time for most women to feel relaxed enough to enjoy sex with someone
new, which is one reason why very few women choose to sleep around. There’s
no doubt an awful lot of women have more sex than
they want and that’s because they’re looking for a boyfriend,
or they’re trying to find a relationship and the only way they can
do that is by going to bed with a man. Sadly, that often won’t
work out and she’s left with another notch on her bed, but not necessarily
the one she wanted.
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Think about that, guys, all you out there, sneering at the women who
get caught on the cot-carousel. How about thinking about who’s doing
the pushing here? Many women end up with more sexual partners than they
want because they’re looking for a boyfriend, they fear they’ll
lose the guy if they don’t give in when he’s hassling her
for sex. I imagine there are very few women out there who haven’t
had the experience of a male who makes it very clear that, if you don’t
come across, he’ll move on. I spent years doing online dating coaching,
endlessly talking to women who felt under pressure to have sex with new
dates long before they were ready.
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Sure it’s true we need to help women resist
that type of pressure, but it’s coming from guys and it’s
not as if the women like it when the numbers start to stack up. If you
read the women’s magazines, you’ll find endless articles about
whether women should even tell men about the number of partners they’ve
had. Women know that many men are threatened by
a woman who’s had a lot of sexual experience and they’re
right to be nervous. This rubbish from Lauren and Stefan and others like
them simply makes it all worse.
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LAUREN SOUTHERN: A man’s worth is measured in accomplishments,
strength and resources and men are born ignorant, weak and destitute.
A woman’s worth is measured in youth, fertility and chastity and
women are born young, fertile and chaste. A man can accumulate wealth
and power over time, but a woman cannot become younger or more chaste.
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BETTINA ARNDT: So what are these people actually
suggesting? That women remain virgins until they get married? That may
have been good advice when everyone got married when they were young,
in their early twenties, but women staying chaste for another decade,
until they’re thirty? That’s just not going to happen!
And luckily there are a lot of sensible males up (sic) there who just
wouldn’t want it that way – males who don’t believe
the line these guys are pushing. Many males are happy to be with women
who’ve had their fair share of sexual experience and believe that
makes them more mature, accepting partners than naïve virgins. It’s
a wonderful thing that we live in a time when sexuality is a part of learning
to establish strong, loving relationships. Of course
there are risks that come with sexual liberation, but that just means
we need to learn to look after ourselves and treat our partners with respect
and kindness, rather than labelling and judging people.
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Stefan obviously doesn’t have a clue what’s happening in
marriages today.
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STEFAN MOLYNEUX: Now, sexual restraint, to be realistic and fair and
avoid the stigma of “You’re just a square, you’re a
prude, man, you just want us to not have any sex,” but the reality
is that people who are in stable, long-term marriages report the happiest
and best sex lives of everyone, so, when people are saying, “Well,
you know, it might be a good idea not to cast your sperm and eggs around
like you’re playing lacrosse, it might be better to wait and focus
on one person you’re going to have sex with for the rest of your
life,” nobody is saying. “And therefore don’t have sex.”
What they’re saying is, “That’s going to give you the
best sex. That’s going to give you the most sex, the most satisfying
sex and that is the reality of what the data tell us. So it’s not
anti-sexual, it’s not anti-pleasure. It’s not anti-hedonism-of-the-marital-bedroom.
What it is is it’s saying, “Well, look, if you wait, it’s
going to be better. I mean, you won’t have … you’ll
have much less chance of getting a disease, you’ll have much less
chance of having an abortion, you’ll have much less chance of having
a divorce and all of that will contribute to a happy tsunami of sexual
pleasure for your whole life.
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BETTINA ARNDT: Oh, sure, Stefan! “A tsunami
of sexual pleasure?” Tell that to the millions
of married men who aren’t getting any sexual pleasure at all, because
Feminists have taught their wives that, if they don’t feel like
it, there’s no reason to have sex. Married people, on average, have
more and better sex than single people is simply because most single people
are out there, trying to meet prospective mates, rather than madly leaping
into bed with them. There’s a huge problem in marriage today, with
a growing desire-gap between men and women and far too many sex-starved
men desperate for a tiny wave, let alone a tsunami, of sex. Look
at these graphs, showing a drop in sexual desire in newly-wed women and
the growing gap between men and women as they age. Both of these are from
US research which should be published soon. It may
be true that more conservative women are more likely to be sexually generous,
and believe in taking care of their husbands’ needs. I made
a video a while back with Karen Straughan, talking about how Feminism
has screwed sex for men by teaching women that, if they don’t feel
like sex, they should just reject their partners. But there are very experienced
women out there who also believe in looking after their men, just as there
are sexually naïve women who end up buying the Feminist message.
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Stefan and Lauren are smart, courageous people preaching some very good
messages about what’s going wrong in our society, but slut-shaming
isn’t one of them.
