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Does that happen in your social life?
Really? Are there men who, like, won't go near you because you won't go? The same thing they say with me, and I'm not... because I'm saying that girls shouldn't be cutting off.
Yeah. That's right. Just because...
Oh, thank goodness about this place. How you doing?
You remember being on Real Time?
You say it's like, was it bad?
One of my favorite memories.
Yeah, my hair got darker. I'm not a natural blonde, actually.
I'm not a natural blonde.
Okay. How dare you? But, well, sit back, enjoy yourself.
Oh, good. I'm thrilled to have you. Did you, by the way, see the sex doll in the bathtub? The Whitney Cummings sex doll.
Yeah. I was telling your team, I love it.
Because you're the first sex neuroscientist we've had on the show. The first one I've ever heard of in life. I mean, that's it's right on the cover of your book, Sex Neuroscientist. That's quite a title.
Yeah. And thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for reading the book.
Oh, yes. It's very, very topical. I mean, there's certainly a lot of wrong things going on in the world. So, I don't know if people think it's indulgent to put sex right at the top of the list, but it could be. I mean, the kids aren't... I did last Real Time with our comedy bit in the middle was about spring break and, you know, I keep reading these articles that, you know, I said they're like the pandas. We can't get Lingling and Chuch-Cha to... I never thought I'd be reading these headlines about kids aren't...
Yeah. But I guess that's what you're... I mean, that's really the whole thrust of your, help pun intended, of your book is, you know, why aren't people like they used to?
The wild thing too is not just are people not having sex, but they take pride in it. And they're saying like, women are saying we don't need men, we're fine on our own. And men are saying the sex robots are coming, we have our AI girlfriends, so we don't need women either. And so they're actually taking this like a point of pride instead of saying there's something really wrong going on here. We need to fix this problem.
Right. I mean, there is... Yeah, you're right. There's... I mean, there were certainly always times when people didn't for whatever reason. I mean, if you had met me in high school or college, you'd have met, you know, I was... I was not an... Well, I guess I was what they would call an incel now because incel stands for involuntarily celibate. It certainly was involuntary on my part. I didn't want to be celibate. But I certainly, maybe at the time not so much, but I think even then, certainly not that much later, understood that the reason why I wasn't getting laid was me. I didn't... Today it seems like what goes on is this hostility that I'm not getting laid because you're a... or I'm not getting laid because you're a... loser. And that kind of hostility about it is, I think, a new dimension. Maybe you know the history, I'm sure you do better than I.
I think social media is a big part of it. But what's really good about, say, your situation is that you recognize there's something about you, or maybe that you wanted to work on things to attract the types of partners that you wanted to have. I mean, well, look at you now, right? I'm sure you have no issues at all. And whereas you look at the younger generation in particular, or I would say the men, when you come to the table with that type of animosity, women are definitely not going to want to be sleeping with you. And again, with women, if you're coming in and both sexes are blaming each other, that's not going to make people want to have sex with you, have a relationship with you, and then it's also not going to make you have the insight to say, 'What am I doing wrong here?' Instead, you're just going to keep doing the same thing. And then with social media feeding you this constant stream of content that is further polarizing the sexes, this is why I think it's gotten to the point where it is so bad. Then you have these replacements like you're mentioning, the sex robots, the sex dolls, the AI companions, pornography, and then women are doing so well in society economically that they're saying, 'Oh, I don't need a man either. I can just work and buy my own things.' I think, you know, that's great that women are doing so well, but another thing I talk about in the book is this issue with hypergamy and how that clashes with diversity.
Yeah, it's that women tend to like to marry up.
Yeah. I don't remember that word. That's funny. When you... they say when you don't know a word, you go past it. Once you learn it, then you see it like 10 times in the next week.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're going to be hearing it all the time now.
Hypergamy. That's a great word. So, marrying up. Well, yes. I mean, how can you marry up with this? I mean, look, I completely understand women's complaints about men today. I mean, I hear the complaints from women I know, you know. I mean, if someone says to me, 'What's your secret with women?' My answer is other men. It's not hard to look better. I mean, these kids, they couldn't find the with an app and they need one. I did a thing on this show, YouTube tutorial. I did a TED talk, not a real one. No, it was a... it was a, you know, a bit we did, but I dressed, you know, just like they do with the sneakers and it was really funny. And you know, 'What if I told you...' because that's how they always start those. 'What if I told you that you could get laid?' And then I was just instructing the younger men, game. They don't have game. They don't know. They don't even know what it is. I don't know if they even aspire to it, you know, but just basic things. Don't wear shorts, right? You know, like iron your shirt. That would be my... a collar. Yeah. You know, trim the hair in your nose. Just like basic, you know, it's such a basic thing that the basic things that they don't seem to think they need to do. They think they can be this slovenly person and that... I don't know, what is... what's that term when guys like purposely kind of are mean to girls?
Negging. It's when they insult a woman with the belief... this is like red pill ideas where the men think that if they insult women, that the women are going to like them more.
Well, I don't know where they got that word, but I'm not going here. Okay. I know the world I live in, Deborah.
Okay, I can say it for you. Every time you want me to say it, but I've seen them... I've seen people go after worse or better or what have... I don't... I don't need trouble. I got Trump up my ass again this week. I don't need... I don't need... I don't need more beef. But I was going to say part of that I do believe is porn and the fact that Gen Z in particular, so Gen Z is roughly aged 31 and younger, 31 to 13, they were exposed to porn at such a young age and everything they know about sex is from watching porn, online pornography, which is very different today from say, you know, back in the day in magazines or even online porn that is not so extreme like what we see today. And so when you have that and that is how you learn about women, say, or some women are learning about, or girls are learning about boys that way. So they think, well, I can have an orgasm, I don't have to go through the process of talking to someone, approaching strangers, especially post-MeToo. They don't have to, like you said, you know, trim their nose hair or look decent or have social skills. And it's a very, you know, it could be a replacement for sex and that you're still getting that gratification.
Trust me, no one knows better than I do from my formative years when I was too shy and lame to get with a girl. It is a substitute for sex. Thank God it exists, masturbation, or else I would have just exploded. I mean, during my most horny years, that's all I was doing was masturbating the whole time at Cornell. Cornell was a terrible place for...
Would you go to... would you be like looking at it in class? Or I'm just kidding.
No, that's what boys are doing today though. I barely had anything to look at. I don't even remember getting... I didn't think I had Playboys. I mean, that's what we had back then, Playboys. But I didn't... I don't... I don't... no, I wasn't... I didn't have the money to go to the newsstand, which didn't exist as I recall, and buy a Playboy in Ithaca, New York. No, I think I was doing it from just what I saw around me. You know, you didn't need a lot. You know, your dick would get hard if the wind blew.
So, could you get like a catalog, even like a PG catalog? I've heard men in the past would do that, you know, because it wasn't like so easily accessible.
Now, look, I would be a perfect... here, please use me as a case study because I can take you all the way from the late '60s when that's all we had was Playboys. And Playboys barely showed... I mean, they were starting to show... I mean, there certainly in the '50s, that's before my time, or early '60s, very often they would just show a girl kind of from the side. I mean, we show more now in perfume ads. But by the time I was looking at it, like maybe I was 12 in 1968, okay. They had... but no pubic yet. You half went through this in the early '70s. He was going... he had to make this decision. He was, you know, it was mostly advertiser-driven. It's a magazine in the '70s. He was going to lose the American car accounts. Ford and Chrysler were not going to advertise the Skylark in a place that showed pubic hair. There are just some things American industry will not stand for. Standards. But eventually he had to give in because he was being challenged by Penthouse, which had no qualms about that. But so I would go back to, you know, when I was first looking at it. It was just once somebody stole... a neighbor kid stole from their father and we looked at it in the woods and we buried it really like... like badgers or something. We buried them, then we'd dig them up. They'd be all wet from the rain. But we would see... and the littlest thing that we saw... and that's to all the way to now, which, you know, like any normal red-blooded American male, I look at Pornhub, but even that's fairly recent in my life. I stuck with the magazines a lot longer than most people because I was kind of afraid, like, if I go on this Pornhub thing, will they know? Is there a cookie in there? Can they come and say I...? And then of course I gave in. But that's really within the last 10 years, maybe even five years. So, but I see what's on there and it is astounding to me, some of it. But I know this whole... this whole history. So you can ask away at anything. I'll tell you the difference between now and then.
Yeah. Well, I should say, because when I was on your show last time, I was a columnist for Playboy.com and it was one of my first regular columns. And I will always be grateful to Playboy for the opportunity because, you know, I was just starting out and my views about pornography were very different back then. And I still think to some extent for someone who grew up pre-internet porn, probably not as affected by it as say these younger kids now who they are looking at it quite... I've heard cases of kids at age four seeing this. Usually it's by accident, they come across it the minute they get a smartphone, they can see it. And so even before their first sexual experience, before they even have really crushes or their first kiss, they're seeing this and it's terrifying for many children, but they think this is what sex is. They know it's taboo. They have a vague idea of what it is. And so then kids are learning from it what they're supposed to do during sex, how they should treat the opposite sex. It's also leading to young kids having all these cosmetic procedures to make their bodies look more like porn stars. But I'm curious for you, the first time you started... I'm sure you've seen more of the extreme stuff and what is...
I don't think... I don't think... I think there's much more extreme stuff. I mean, certainly anything German, and I've never gone there. I mean, and again, I think this is because I started at such an innocent place. I mean, you mentioned Playboy in the same breath as pornography. I guess, yes, technically it is, and certainly in its day it was the tip of the spear, to use the term, of pornography. But now it's... I mean, please, it's just... it's the tamest thing. It was just the girl next door and, you know, she's happy. She looks like she's happy. And there were no men in the picture. I mean, I certainly even remember from the magazine era of the '90s. We're going back 30 years and you could go to the newsstand. Certainly when I lived in New York, there was still newsstands in the mid-'90s when I started doing Politically Incorrect and I lived in New York for a few years and the newsstand was there... there was like dozens and dozens of porn magazines of every... I mean, I remember going to Larry Flynt's office and he had on his desk like all the... he had many publications beside Hustler and they were all like laid out on his desk very neatly and there had to be 30 different brands, you know, Jugs and Gentry and Shaved Asian and, you know, Motorcycle Girls, every sort of niche thing had its own... Yeah, had its own magazine. And so like you could go to the newsstand almost every night and buy another stroke book, you know. And but it was... and even then in the '90s they started to put dicks in ads. I think they just had a photographer on the set of porn movies and they got the stills and that became... but I mean it was, you know, but it was still a picture, you know, and it... you could only get so disgusting or rapey or, you know, abusive. But the videos... I mean, I've said it for years as someone who is a known libertine. I don't think porn is benign at all. I mean, I am totally with you on this because I see... and again, I don't think I've gone near the frontier of it. My stuff is very vanilla, but I see... first of all, I see what's... and I guess it must be like anything, an algorithm where they feed you what you like and they know what I like. I just like hot chicks, you know? I don't want to see them abused. In fact, I don't want to see the guy in it at all. Very often it's just a girl acting sexy for the first five minutes and then the guy comes in. Once he comes in, I'm out. Like, I, you know, I don't need the guy and the penises for Bill. I'm the guy. Who is this guy with my girl, honey? I thought we had something going and then this guy walks in the room. You know, it's ridiculous.
I've heard you ask aloud in another episode why guys are into women abusing them, and we can talk about that too in terms of like women putting on high heels and stepping on them or why men like having penis...
You're talking about dominatrix and... well, I certainly can't relate.
It's mas... it's sexual masochism, so it's people who like being humiliated.
Yeah. No, I mean, there's things about being 70 that aren't great. But, you know, one of the greatest things is we're not nuts. You know, we really aren't. We grew up in a great time. We're lucky. My head is screwed on straight. Good things make me happy. Bad things make me sad. That's it.
You don't... you don't want to strangle women.
I used to do a whole bit about that. Like, even in my fantasies, I'm not doing anything weird. Even in my fantasies, I don't want to do all these things that people do. Yeah, it's just... it's just basic because again, that's how I was raised or that's where I... you know, I feel like I had a fairly healthy... frustrating adolescence, but fairly healthy. I think where people go wrong is they get too jaded and that's when you have to go to the high heel in your neck because you did everything else by the time you were 14 or something, you know.
Or usually those men have a, we'll say, difficult relationship with their mother. So if their mother was abusive or something, that's what they eroticize, that type of behavior.
Let's leave my mother out. No. And I did... I had a wonderful... another thing I'm lucky about, you know, normal parents, normal, you know, it was... I had a very Leave It to Beaver upbringing as lots of people did in my era where, you know, there was... there was not even any divorce. People didn't get divorced. People, families stayed together. I'm sure there was stuff going on like abusing, you know, children that was just so covered up that it just was not talked about. So it wasn't in my head. It certainly wasn't put in my head, 'You might be in the wrong body.' Now, I'm sure there are some, very few, but some kids who are quote-unquote in the wrong body. And it's... and it's also not fair that in that era they had nowhere to turn to say, you know, 'I really don't feel like a girl.' I don't... I want to grow a mustache. But in general, I feel... I think you agree with me, we've gone way too far.
Right? Way past way too far in constantly putting it into kids' heads. Again, what I would teach kids is there is a default setting for humans. But if you're not in that default setting, that doesn't make you bad or worse, but there is a default setting. That's not what we teach.
It's not in California anymore.
No. No. But I would also say for those kids, you know, that even if it's okay to feel differently, like if you're a girl and you're more like a tomboy or if you're a boy and you're more feminine, that's totally fine. So that was my first book, The End of Gender.
Right. That's what you were on for, The End of Gender. And I remember you... you were interviewed by New York Times magazine after I was on and they were asking you about me and you defended me. So I really appreciated that. And I really... Yeah, they were going after you. You didn't throw me under the bus.
No, I wouldn't. Why? Why were they going after you?
Because there was... on the show I said... because you... I said that some parents are letting kids transition because it's the easier thing, because these are... it's part of this is social contagion. Obviously, it's not even controversial that they can't even admit that. Yes, part of it is... I could admit that it's a real thing. Not that you have to make me admit it. It's just... that's just life. It goes back to ancient times. They called them hermaphrodites or, you know, there's variation. Not everything is the default setting. Just most stuff, you know, and some stuff like pregnant men just belongs in Ripley's, believe it or not. You know, it's just like if you saw that in...
Ripley's because they're biologically women, so it's not even really like a thing. It's just like this is a woman who's taking testosterone, but they turn it into a thing.
Yes. Oh, and if you... and if you dare to say that there's any difference at all...
Between a biological woman and a trans woman, you are an evil person. You are... you are a racist even though race has nothing to do with it. You're a bigot. And you just...
That's why they should be allowed in our locker rooms and our bathrooms.
Yeah. Right. I mean, you know, it is amazing to me the way the far-left morons just work their way back to positions that are actually hurting the people they pretend that they're championing.
Women used to be one of their big causes.
Yeah. Title IX was one of their big achievements and then it was like, Title IX, women should have an equal thing in sports and we're gonna throw the man in the pool.
It's just... they just are thinking, at least out here, not what their big thing is. I'm glad to see it being turned around though. I do think like the most unhinged of the trans activists are going to continue doing their thing till the end of time. I think no matter how much the public is saying, 'We're done. You guys need to stop this,' they're going to keep going because they're so personally invested and I think they also have a lot of shame about their own transition or their own... because for very many of them it's a sexual thing. So their desire to transition to female if they're born male is because they find it erotic to have a woman's body or the idea of having a woman's body and they have a lot... they feel a lot of guilt and shame around that. So that's why they're pushing this on the public to say, you all have to affirm me, quote, affirm me as a woman to make me feel more legitimate about my own feelings. And this is why they're putting it on the kids. And I think also for many parents who have transitioned their children, they need everybody to go along with it because they want their child to have the best possible life. So I feel for these kids obviously, you know, they're being misled and it's not their fault. Especially with social media, that's another part of it.
But the... I mean, just... I think bugs me the most about it. And you're talking to someone who's never had kids and doesn't even like them. So why I'm deputized to be the one to defend them just shows how far off this has gotten the trail. But...
You were one of the first liberals to like have the guts to call it out.
Absolutely. Because I love the truth and I don't believe... me, I welcome their hatred, the people who are... who are just out there. I mean, first of all, they all left a long time ago. But to use children as cannon fodder...
In this culture war, that to me is a little low. Even the mafia doesn't bring in the family.
Yeah. There are boundaries there.
There should be some boundaries. And that's absolutely what they did. They brought in the kids and said, 'If you don't agree with this, this very sudden, very sudden reversal of what we've always believed...' Now maybe some things it's true, some things we've always believed are wrong, but to be suddenly just planting your flag down here in a place to the left of where every other country is, every... including the liberal ones that we look up to as liberal, including to the left of them, far left, as far as transitioning kids by their own diagnosis at any age.
Yeah. Without telling the parents.
Yeah. Without telling the parents. This is far-out stuff. And to sort of plant your flag and say like, yes, this is extremely new and extremely radical. And also, if you don't go along, you're crazy and wrong. And it's like, wait a second. This is new stuff. I'm not crazy or wrong to say slow down. And that's what every other country did. They just said, 'Whoa, you know what? This might not look good in the future. Maybe we should slow it down a little bit.'
Yeah. Well, also, I mean, the fact that parents don't get to say they're transitioning the kids. Even if the parents do find out, they can... they will take the kids away and put them in sanctuary states if they want to leave, right? That... that to me is the most terrifying thing. If you have a child and you don't even get to have the final say in terms of the medical interventions they're undergoing. So I'm hoping all of that stuff is finally going to be done with.
Well, I'm glad I didn't throw you under the bus. I wasn't expecting you to. You will find none of my friends under that bus. Couple of my enemies maybe, but no.
But I like, you know, I know you'll call me out too if you think I'm wrong about something because I've seen you do this with other people. I respect that.
I do. I will. I mean, you cannot bribe me and you cannot incentivize me. You know, Trump, I mean, you know, I was his most virulent critic. Had dinner with him, told everybody that, you know, he's very different in person and he's not as crazy as he seems, but kept right on criticizing where I thought. And then he got mad at me again and now he's pulled other stuff. But I still supported the idea of going into Iran. Not that we want to get into that, but just to the point of like, you cannot bribe me or incentivize me. While he was attacking me, I was... I was saying, 'No, I'm one of the few liberals who thinks, yeah, we needed to do this with Iran.' And this is with every subject. And it's very, very liberating.
It's so liberating not to have to check what your opinion is supposed to be.
And I'm, you know, are you still getting from the left for some of your views? Does this book get...
Yeah. So it's... let's... let's... let's tell the people, like I'm a good proper host... stoners who work here. I don't know who they are, but sex... great title, Sextinction. Yeah, Extinction of Sex: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. Debra Soh. Okay. So I did my job very well, I feel. And it is a great book. Very interesting on every page. Not too scholarly, but scholarly enough.
Yeah, I do my best to write in a way that someone with no scientific background can still understand my writing.
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No, I have... I mean, I'm not an idiot about science, but it was never my subject, so I do need it explained.
I mean, and I don't fault people for that. The only reason I understand the studies is because I've, you know, I went to school for it. But other people, you know, people have jobs. They're trying to pay their rent and take care of their family. So I figure if I can give you as much information as possible and make it as easy as possible to understand and apply it in your own life. I have all the citations, have over 400 citations in the book too, so people can...
You must have been way ahead always through school. You must have been that, no offense, that Asian kid who like the white kids were cheating off of and was like, you know, on the 11th grade level when you were in sixth grade.
It's so funny because I ran into one of my friends. Um...
No, piano though. I do. See, it's always one or the other. Not a physician though. I'm a neuroscientist, so we were close. But one of my childhood friends, I ran into him actually at a gay bar like years in my 20s and he said, 'You know what I remember the most about you is when you used to hand...' I signed a copy for you and I can show you my handwriting now. I write like a serial killer, like... but the letters, they're all like all over the place. It looks like when people cut up, you know, they give out letters. Yeah. He said your handwriting was so impeccable and you would always write in the margins. So, but like with my first book, you know, I wanted that to be a guide for parents in terms of how to protect your kids from this ideology that's basically going to try and take them from you. And with this book, it was very much with the goal of helping parents anticipate what is coming down the line in terms of not just social media and screens, which we're seeing how devastating that's been for children especially and adults, but then also these other technologies and these other social changes that are happening. Because I don't think... one, I don't want to see society go through the same thing that we've gone through with social media, which is that it seemed benign at first, but now I mean I think it's done so much damage. And I think there are some... obviously some positives to social media and the internet, and it's allowed us to be connected in some ways, but I really think it's done a lot of damaging things to mental health, to the relations between men and women, like with the sex recession. It's affecting everybody, whether you're single or married, doesn't matter what age you are, if you're in the West or in the East or any developed country. And then also I wanted anyone regardless of whether they're married or single to be able to take something away from the book as well. So I wrote it from that perspective of I think this is something that's going to affect everybody. Even if you don't want to date and you are perfectly happy with your sexlessness, there are still other things going on beneath the surface that are going to affect people and hormonally too, because I know you're a big health freak like I am, and things like endocrine disruptors and toxins.
I mean, drinking and smoking pot. So, I mean, freak is a little...
But you said you were in a gay bar.
Is that where you hang out? Are you gay?
No, I'm not gay. When I was younger, all my friends were gay men. I used to work in the makeup industry. That's why all my friends were gay men. But no, I'm straight.
Okay. Yeah. I don't understand the masturbation thing with the boys because like, yes, it was always a great backup plan, but I never didn't understand to this very day that sex is better. It seems like that's a big change also that they've transitioned to this moment where it's not the backup plan, it's the plan.
And maybe that's because if you've never had sex, maybe you don't know that it's better. And I mean, where does that line lead to on the historical chart?
Well, I think where we'll start with where it comes from. I think again like the early exposure to pornography, but then also Gen Z in particular has such a high rate of anxiety. So basically like all of Gen Z has an anxiety disorder. Over half of Gen Z has a mental health diagnosis and of them 90% have anxiety. So if you are super self-conscious, you don't have a lot of confidence, especially if what you're seeing online or in real life, your experiences with the opposite sex aren't positive, and you... especially for boys, they're terrified of being MeToo'd, having their lives destroyed if they approach the wrong woman, or having a woman get really angry and disgusted with you and, you know, just to make you feel badly about having the guts to go and talk to someone, they're going to say, 'Okay, well, why am I going to bother doing this?' And then you also have these male influencers who are having their moments saying, 'Oh, don't, you know, feminism is terrible.' I do think feminism has gone too far in some ways, but of course, women are equal to men. So, but they're saying like, you know, women don't deserve any equal rights or whatever. Like, you just have a harem of these ladies and they should stay at home and serve you. So these...
Tate, that type. Yeah, they're a bunch of them.
What do they... what do they call it?
Right. Okay. But I mean, so they're putting out the idea that guys should have a harem because it's not easy to get a harem.
What's funny too is that they... it's not funny actually. But they draw on evolutionary psychology and biology to justify their ideas. Like so basically like men like lots of sex with lots of women, so they should be able to sleep with as many women as they want. Whereas women, their chastity, their sexual chastity is the most important thing. So women, you know, you as a man can sleep with as many women as you want, but your woman needs to be a virgin and, you know, she just needs to pop out babies for you. And so that I think is adding also to this dynamic because if you have young boys who are taking this, internalizing this ideology, and say they don't have a father or a strong male role model in their life, they think this is what healthy masculinity is. And if you have feminism and the education system telling them that men are toxic and men are bad, and they say, 'Well, I'm a boy. I don't want to be bad, so I'm gonna listen to anyone who's telling me that masculinity is good,' even if it is such an extreme interpretation of it. And so then what you see is when they are dating, they're going to treat their female partners a certain way. The women are going to say, 'I don't like this,' right? And understandably, I think feminism has done something to young women too, which has made them hate men. So in terms of the feedback to Sextinction, I was not expecting this at all because trans activists are a whole other level of lunacy. I was not expecting that type of backlash from both men and women. So I feel like I did a pretty fair job in terms of calling out both sexes and saying when they're being ridiculous in the book and saying, you know, you guys are taking this too far or you're going this too far on this.
You're always doing the right thing when you're getting it from both sides.
And that goes for sex, too. No, I'm joking.
Well, I mean, that is one thing apropos to this discussion that I think cannot be emphasized enough and maybe cannot be understood ever by a woman, just the way we can't understand you fully, but the difference between how much we are okay with many partners and that is just not what your biology leads you to. And that, I mean, that is I guess the danger of pornography. Now maybe if I say, look me in the eye and tell me, am I... is it unhealthy for me to look at pornography at all? Even though what I look at is fairly benign, fairly vanilla, it is still the idea that there is, you know, this inexhaustible supply of attractive women acting extremely sexy and, you know, no real life could live up to that.
Yeah. I mean, but I wouldn't trade my real life for that.
I understand that. I mean, for me, I feel like I can live side by side with that. Let's call it a hobby and my reality. But maybe you would... I've also read people who say, 'No, you should give up porn altogether because as long as you have that idea in your head that this exists, this harem of hot women who...
are just there to please you, and you know that's what I mean. Foreign girls, they're just like hookers. They're trying to make you come, you know. Um, that's their sole purpose. That's their sole purpose, and they're good at it, and it would be impossible for any woman or literally any group of women to live up to that.
So I could see how a young mind that could be bad. Now maybe you tell me it's also bad for me. I feel like I can live with that dichotomy, but maybe I'm wrong.
I would say, I mean, the fact that you had your first sexual experience prior to porn or online porn is a positive thing, and it doesn't sound like it's affecting you in your day-to-day life or your relationships. I would say for men now more broadly, and I don't do clinical work anymore, so for people listening or watching, you know, talk to a mental health professional. Don't base your relationship decisions on what I'm saying on Bill Maher's podcast. But I would say, you know, if your partners are giving you feedback that they are either uncomfortable or they're not, you know, enjoying sex with you, or I mean, these are some things I hear from women who say like they are having sex with men who are, they use the term porn sick. So basically men consume way too much porn. These men are trying things during sex like I mentioned, you know, strangulation, which is very common with Gen Z, or they are doing abusive things like spitting on them, calling them names, and women are like, 'What are you doing? That's awful.' And if you as a man are doing these behaviors and you don't think that you should maybe ask or just not do them in the bedroom, or you think that this is something enjoyable, to ask yourself, where did you get these ideas from?
I think it's deeper than that. Why do you like it? Like I was saying before, again, this is one of my specials. This was the ending bit about how even in my fantasies, I just, you know, choking, I don't get it. Like, oh, you can't breathe, sexy. No, I don't get death or like even, but I never even like, I would never want to like tie somebody up.
Tie somebody up? No, I want your hands on me.
Yeah. Let me hip you how that's going to make this better. Let's use those hands. It's not like I don't need to tie you up to control you. I can do that with my dick as I should. The only way a woman should ever feel pain in bed, and not a terrible pain, just, you know, oh baby, it hurts so good. Yeah.
Sometimes love don't feel like it should. Well, I talk in 'The Sex' about how, you know, for people who genuinely do enjoy being abused during sex or abusing their partner, usually that stems from some form of abuse in childhood, in that it's unresolved trauma that they're living through or going back to because they're trying to either make sense of what happened or feel like this terrible thing that happened to them was not so bad. But in terms of say choking, I mean, it is potentially fatal. And people like it because when you cut off the airflow to the brain, you get a high, right? Because you have brain cells dying. That's what it is. And even if you don't pass out necessarily, like that's not good for your brain. There are actually studies showing that choking during sex can lead to inflammation of the brain, which is associated with mental health issues down the road. And just to give your audience an idea of how common this is, so among female university students, let me get these statistics right. So half of them have had an experience of being choked during sex. A third of them were choked the last time they had sex, and a third of them have been choked more than five times during sex, versus that's only 7% of university men. So this is very much more like a men doing this to women. So many men will say, 'Oh, women want it.' But I think they're just doing that from porn.
What that is, it's not what women want. What women want is the guy to like them. Yeah. They do things because, you know, they're young and they want this guy to be into them. Trust me, I've heard this many times. Women saying, uh, you know, 'I'm into girls.' And I always say, 'No, you're not. No, you're not. You're just saying that because you think I want to hear that.' Because if they're with a guy who says, 'I'm not into that.' If a guy says, 'I'm not into that,' then they're like, 'Okay, I'm not into it.' You know, right? And the choking thing, you know, yes, okay, I guess there could be real serious physical problems down the road, but the problem is much more, why do you find that attractive? And by the way, let me just say, choking is different. Putting hands on someone's neck is not choking them. The neck is a very erogenous zone. I mean, I think every square inch of a woman is. I mean, I'm a flaming heterosexual. Um, so, you know, to put your hands on somebody's throat, but that's not choking. That's the same as you would caress them anywhere. But if you actually get pleasure from giving pain, that's a problem. That's where to me the ref has got to throw the flag because there's something wrong with you. Then there's something, you are there not for the pleasure. Sex itself should be the pleasure. You know, you shouldn't need this extra dimension. Ooh, it's sex and I'm making someone cry, you know.
Yeah, it depends on the intention because I think there are some men who do it also because they have had female partners in the past who have said they liked it. So they think, well, I'm not really into this, but women seem to like it, so I'm going to do it. And then the women, those women were lying because they thought the men wanted to hear that, which is so crazy because this whole trend is really about both sides pretending that they want something that they don't actually like.
Well, I mean, look, men are the seed of the bad, I would absolutely concur, but women could do a better job too of this kind of thing. I mean, you know, you let down the whole gender when you pretend that you like this stuff, because that is going to encourage the guy to think, 'Oh, they do like it.' I mean, he's young, dumb, and full of cum. I mean, he literally doesn't know his ass from his elbow, so he's probably going to buy that and think, 'Oh, they do.' And then of course they see it on porn, and you know, there is a lot of spitting in porn, which I hate. I don't like spit to begin with. I don't know what the, I mean, I get it that it's involved with sex in some ways, but I have to look at it, you know? I've never been a fan or engaged in like food. Some people, you know, mix food and lick off each other. It's like, I wouldn't even have food before sex. That's my big rule. Sex first, then food. People do it backwards in this country. I've said it on this show many times. They do it backwards. You shouldn't eat dinner and then. It's disgusting. You're nauseated. Your body is spending all the energy digesting the food. You should do it after. That's when it makes sense. You've earned it, you know? But then the problem is the men are probably going to be like, 'I'm going to go home now. Forget dinner,' right? I mean, you have to have somebody who you want to have dinner with after, but you know, it's funny because we do talk about all these changes, but then we also do see a lot of society doing what they always have done. I mean, Deborah, The Bachelor is still on.
Or maybe it's not. Didn't they just cancel it? The chick was like throwing chairs or something. What?
But you know what I mean? Like there's still a lot of very traditional, even like the celebrities who everybody looks up to, you know, they basically like, you know, they get married to the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, you know, they're just not... it's the gravitational pull of who we actually really are. What we want is a very strong antidote to the craziness. I mean, you can say gender is just a, what's the term? Nonbinary or spectrum? Well, a cultural or socially constructed, so a construct. But you know, we are who we are, and it is biology, and it is science, and it is lizard brain, and it is there, and you can just kind of argue your way out of it so far, and then we are who we are, and that's when you see, oh look, you know, put a ring on it, and you know, like they just, it's like, you know, water goes downhill, that you're just going to fall back into what you, you can't escape most of that.
Yeah. And that's the other thing I think with a lot of the technologies around dating and relationships. I think also a lot of the ideology promoted by wokeism or feminism, it helps in the short term in that it helps us to self-soothe when we're stressed out, like the distraction of being on screens or being on dating apps. It makes you feel like, okay, I'm doing something to help my personal life or to meet people or to connect. But the reality is it's not the same as actual in-person connection. It's not the same as actually hearing someone's voice or having a face-to-face conversation. And so I do think that's why people feel even worse after, right? Where you feel even more lonely, you feel more disconnected, more alienated. And so even though these distractions help us short term, I think long term, this is why we're in a place where we're so divided now. But I wanted to ask you, and not about your personal life, but just more broadly being in Hollywood, what is dating like here? Because I know in large cities like say New York, I've heard it's just atrocious. Like it's so difficult. And I imagine especially being in entertainment and being in this ecosphere, like it must be so much harder because I hear from people around the world about how hard dating is nowadays.
I mean, I certainly hear it from every woman I know. Yeah. Not the men though. I mean, do I know a lot of men who are dating? I mean, you know, most of my friends are married. I mean, I'm 70. A lot of them have grandkids. I'm the one who's still single, but I'm not actively, I mean, I'm not dating. I mean, I'm happy. I don't get specific about my personal life. I'm good. I'm good. But I'm not out there trying to hustle up, you know, dates. So, I don't know. What I know is what I hear from so many women who, yes, their complaints are legion and just appalling. It's appalling. I think a lot of it is, we talked about social media, but the actual dating apps. I mean, the idea that you could scroll through like an inexhaustible supply of women. I mean, from someone who was, when I was out there like trying to meet girls in bars, I mean, first of all, there was no targeting of the audience. You went to a bar, maybe there's somebody in that bar who you would get along with, maybe there's not. I mean, it was just complete pot luck. Now it's like, I guess somewhat targeted because you can see them and you can read their profile, whatever. But the idea that you can just like scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll is just, it's the human brain can't do that. Certainly not the male brain. And so I don't, I mean, the fact that they can do that, that it's that easy, to me, what the stories I hear from women indicate to me that there's too much supply, shall we say, of women. So guys don't feel the need to treat women with any sort of respect or, you know, 'I'll just scroll to the next one. You know, I just met you. Do you want to go home with me? No. Okay, I'll scroll to the next one. Maybe I'll do better there.' It's just this numbers game. Yeah.
That seems completely crazy. That's what I hear, because to me, that's my sense with many large cities, especially when the sex ratio is imbalanced and there are more women in that city than men. Because when there are fewer men, they are going to be calling the terms in terms of the relationships or how things are going to go, basically. Like you said, if they want casual sex, they're going to say, 'This is what I want. If you're not going to give it to me, I'm going to go elsewhere.' And then I think also, I imagine, and the men in this city are so financially successful that they also have their pick of the lot. So that adds to it, where now you have more women, and then all women are fighting for this very small pool of successful men.
That's the big problem. And I think that's always been a problem to a degree and ever more so, which is that, yes, it's nature. And when walruses mate, you know, I'm picking on walruses. I'm sure you know this better than I. You probably took biology more seriously than I did, but some species, or maybe many of them, the males fight and the females of the species, they want the alpha. You know, that's just nature. And here you can be alpha in a place like LA because you're great-looking, because you know we suck all the great-looking people out of the country. People in LA are so beautiful. Whenever I come home, I'm always like, 'Oh, yeah.' Yes. I mean, because people in Indiana, when they're beautiful, they go, 'I got to be in LA,' you know, and the models are in New York. And yeah, so it's crazy like that. And there's also like tens of zillions of rich people. I mean, everybody wants to live here. We got the weather, man. You know, as much as we try to fuck up this state, you know, you just cannot put a price on sunshine in February, you know. And also everybody already lives here. You know, people who don't have to live here live here. Yeah. Like the really big stars can live anywhere. They don't have to see their agent every week. Trust me, if Jay-Z wants to do something, they'll come to him. He doesn't have to live in Bel Air. He chooses to. They all do. It's LA, man. So yes, there's just a lot, and there's so many nepo babies and nepo wealth and passed-on wealth, and you know, so it's, I don't know, when you go out in this town, it just doesn't look like anybody's really unhappy when you're in a restaurant, but they also look like they're all on the make in some way, and it's just this big game of musical chairs, you know, and good luck finding that right hookup because, you know, maybe you will, but it just looks like everybody is sort of superficially trying to match with who on paper they would like the most. You know, your book, you talk about the sick three sixes, guys.
Yeah. Three sixes rule. So, it's this idea that women should strive for a man who is over six feet tall, makes over six figures annually, and has a penis that is larger than six inches. So, this is used as an illustration in the book, but you know, as Meat Loaf said, don't be sad because two out of three ain't bad. Um, no, I don't think height, I mean, there's an evolutionary reason for that, but I don't think height is a determination.
Did you see that movie? It was quite good. I liked it. Um, I can't remember the name of it now, but um, Dakota Johnson played like a...
No, no, no, not that one. No, she played like, you know, someone who, I forget the word for it, but she hooked people up. You know, she wasn't a madam. They weren't...
Matchmaker. Yeah. A modern kind of matchmaker. And one of the plot points in the movie is that men these days are having operations on their legs.
Oh yeah. Because they want to get up to the six level. Yeah. And that women, because they've seen or read, I've certainly read this, that some astounding number of women will immediately swipe left on anyone who's not six foot tall, which...
Well, they set the filter there so they don't even see those profiles.
They don't even see them. Okay, so for all the women who are like always up our ass about how superficial we are about big tits and ass, fuck you. Legs are our tits. Okay, you're no better, obviously, and you used to be.
Yeah. And I don't think most women are like that, but maybe that's just the women who are on social. I think there's an extreme, but that standard in terms of wanting the highest top-tier male specimen in terms of whom you're willing to date, I think that broader mentality has spread. Because if you ask, research for the book, you know, and I'm asking, I will ask men, I was asking men and women about their experiences with dating, and men will typically reference their height. Um, you know, it's funny. I've never smoked before, and I think this is starting to affect me.
No, no, it's totally fine. I knew it's totally fine. I'm just, if I'm stumbling with my words,
You're hardly stumbling with your words. You haven't even sat back. I mean, I don't think you're in danger of going nuts here, Deborah. I really don't.
I just told you, too. I want to do a really good job with this interview. So,
Oh, you're doing a great job. This is heroin, by the way. Anyway, go ahead.
I'm going to have a great night after this.
Really? You think you could get a contact from this? I do. I can barely get high from smoking it anymore. Um, that's awesome. I wish I was a virgin like that.
Um, but yeah, men will reference their height in comparison to six feet. Instead of saying like I'm 5'10" or 5'11", they'll say, 'I'm almost six feet tall.' Whereas a guy who's actually six feet tall or taller will say I'm 6'1", 6'2". So, I've noticed this trend, and it's the same like with women and how we feel the need to minimize, you know, our dress size or, you know, say we'll say, what was I going to say about this? I was going to say, well, because...
I don't know, stoner, what were you...
In the last week, I will say in the last week, people have been wondering if I had breast implants, and I know it's called a push-up bra, just for people watching, but to say we'll emphasize certain body parts.
Yeah. What's the difference between a push-up bra and the Miracle Bra? Because I remember when the Miracle Bra came out. Do you remember when the Miracle... Did you have a Miracle Bra?
It was more of like a cone, I think. Right.
I feel like it wasn't a miracle. I feel like we pushed the tits up and together, and that's the miracle. Like there's only so many ways you get like, that's what we do. It's not a miracle. We push the tits together. That's really it. Greatest invention of all time, really.
But yeah, so I think women are allowed to want what they want just like men are allowed to want what they want. But in terms of those standards, if you're going into the dating pool and saying, 'Okay, I'm not even going to look at men who are not this height or who don't meet these criteria that are not necessarily reflective of happiness in a relationship,' you're doing yourself in, right?
Or, you know, look, men, if you said to me, like, if I was in the dating pool and you said, well, you have to look at women up to every age, I wouldn't do that either. I mean, we do also have the right to want what we want. You know, when you're in a restaurant, you have the right to send it back and say, 'No, I wanted it well done,' you know, or I wanted it rare. Sorry. Whatever it is. I mean, so part of me is quick to condemn and say, 'You superficial hussies.' And the other part is like, you know, you got to get what you like or else you're going to have to like what you get.
Yeah. And the problem is there aren't that many here. Here's the real problem, isn't wanting the perfect guy. The real problem is I feel like this attitude, and again, maybe this is just LA, among women who you don't have that much to offer. You know what you have to offer. You're cute.
That's it. And you think that's all you need. You're not smart. You're not cool. You're not that interesting. You're vapid. And there's a thousand million chicks out here just like you. And you think you deserve like the upper-echelon kind of guy. Read a book.
Okay. Yeah. You know, I hear that from men a lot too, where they say, you know, women are so entitled. They think, you know, they give these women a number and they say, 'These women think that they deserve tens or that because they can hook up with a rich guy once that they're going to marry the type of guy when really they were just a hookup, you know, they can't actually attract that status of a man.' So I say that, and I have advice in 'The Sex' for both sexes, and I say it for women, you know, like definitely be a kind person and have a personality, and just like men, be kind and, you know,
in the correction to when we treated women horribly, which is true and it certainly has been needed and certainly needs to keep going. But in that correction, there's been a lot over the last few decades of just blowing a lot of smoke up their ass about what an ethereal perfect creature you are.
Well, body positivity, that was an outrageous, you know, extension of that idea. If you're going to say a man needs to be over six feet tall, you also got to be bringing it, right? But I mean, women were just told just that, just by being, you're awesome. Just you, perfect the way you are. Just you, don't want to hear anything more. You're just fucking perfect because you're you. I mean, that attitude, I'm not exaggerating that. And no, no, that's certainly not what my generation thought about either sex. You know, you're just not born perfect. Okay, get over yourself. You know, make yourself, you want to be with interesting people, make yourself interesting. Yeah. You know, you want to keep up with this conversation. And I mean, honestly, the number of women you could go out with, and again, this is LA, but I know New York is supposedly somehow the greatest mecca of intellectualism. I lived there twice. I didn't see any difference as far as like the younger people and how smart they were, and they were into the same shit. Okay. They're the same superficial glitter monkeys everywhere. Yeah. And, you know, okay, you can complain about it, but you're not really doing a hell of a lot to make yourself all that interesting. And again, the number of women that I've seen in this town who are under 40 who can keep up in a conversation, it's not a lot.
A few, but not a lot. And they all do seem to think that they should be with, you know, the CEO of, you know, some trillion-dollar company and, you know, be flying on private jets and, you know, that it's very much like American Idol, you know, let's skip past the part where I have to learn how to play music and get to the idol part. Let's just skip past the part. Give me the record deal. Let me just marry the guy and then, you know, I'll learn. And then when we have a conversation, when he's talking to his boss, you know, I'll know what an IPO is. Because right now I think it's some sort of UTI test.
I write in the book about plastic surgery and how I think combined with social media and reality TV and just the fact that everyone is hyper-competitive among their own sex and they're trying so desperately to get the best partner possible. People are going through countless procedures now. Looksmaxxing is very popular in...
I mean, maybe, I don't know what looksmaxxing is, but isn't looksmaxxing what people have always wanted to do, which was just, I mean, I feel like my whole life I've been looksmaxxing. I know it doesn't look like it, but like I can't think of a time, certainly past when I got to puberty. Okay. When I was a kid, I cared about baseball cards and that was that. But once women were in the picture, I did everything I possibly could to look my best. Now, sometimes I was wrong and it was stupid, and you know, in high school, I grew a beard and it didn't look good, but I could, so I did. But it was in my mind, max your look. Yeah. You know, be the best-looking version of yourself you can be.
The beard shows testosterone, so you were on the right track.
Well, yeah. If only I knew how to talk to a girl, maybe it would have helped. But what's different now with looksmaxxing? Just the surgery?
Well, it's hyperfixated on traits or physical features that are seen as masculine or associated with high testosterone. So, a very strong brow ridge, very strong jawline.
No, no, for men. For men. Women do this.
Looksmaxxing is only for men.
Mostly young men. Yeah. And boys in some cases, prepubescent.
Yeah. Oh, that's even worse than I thought.
Yeah. Whereas I do find most of the plastic surgery, like I see young women, like in my hometown, I see plenty of even teenage girls who have a lot of work done, which is crazy to me. You know, they have a lot of injectables.
Yeah. That's so ridiculous because... sad. Well, because you're perfect at that age. You have to work hard not to be cute at 19. Really? I mean, there are people who have done it. Don't get me wrong. I've seen it done. But like you can look at people sometimes who we come to know later in life, famous or not, and you see them like in middle age and you know they're no great lookers, you know, and then you see a picture of them at 19 and you go, wow, they were cute. They actually were cute, you know, it's just nature. It's just our bodies are constantly making replicated cells of ourselves. Each time they make them, they make them a little worse.
Well, that's really what aging is, right? Aging, the reason we look our age as we get older is because it's the body signaling to other partners that reproductive health is going down with age, right? Because you are not as fertile.
I mean, and this is certainly something about the psychology that must be going on in women's minds that I've thought about many times, which is so much, no matter how much they try to say we've reinvented humans, we haven't. And it is deep in the DNA of a woman to always be thinking men are interested in the looks.
Because they are. And as I age, that diminishes. Now, I always try to tell my women friends, you know, you're worrying about nothing. There is a, this is a different world we live in. The cougars do very well out here, and lots of young guys like women who are 40. But I understand what they're talking about because I've often thought, I mean, I was a funny kid, you know, I started doing comedy. I'm getting paid to be a comedian. Very funny, funny, funny, funny. What if as I got into my 30s, I got less funny? What would that do to my mind knowing that as I got through my late 30s, now I'm into my 40s, people don't just find me that funny anymore? And you can never get back to being as funny as you were in your 20s, no matter how hard you try.
Right. There's no comedy surgery.
And even if there was, it doesn't really work. Yeah. You know, as Fran Lebowitz brilliantly once said, nobody looks at someone who's 75 with plastic surgery and goes, 'Who's that 35-year-old person?'
And I get it. It's unfair, you know. And I imagine, especially in this town,
because I don't get less funny. I get more funny.
Yeah. And similarly for women who get more rich, I mean, if anything, it makes it harder for them to find a guy, right? Because women tend to appreciate a man who gets richer over time.
Maybe it's harder to find a sincere guy.
Well, okay. Yeah, that's... I think it gets harder to find a guy.
I think money, one thing I've learned about life, people like money. They really do. Like you walk into a place, like when I was a kid, like I always wanted to be, you know, James Bond or like some cool guy like that. And one of the great things about this time of my life is, you know, handing out like $50 tips to like people when you're, it's like the greatest feeling in the world. I mean, it makes them feel good, but it makes me feel like, 'Oh, wow. That is like the coolest arrival thing I could do is just be that dude who like gives the maître d' a little something on the sly, you know?' It's just people like money. They really do. I've never seen it not bring a smile to someone's face. So, you know, if a woman has money, I don't think that's a detriment. I think it's just you have to do exactly what men do when we have money, which is always keep one eye open, that is, is this why this person likes me? And by the way, I've certainly met and know men, I am not one of them, but I know them who are like totally okay with that. That doesn't insult them at all. In fact, their view of that is, I feel good about that because I achieved this status with money, and so it's kind of an affirmation of my success that they like me for this. And I mean, to me it's still, I mean, a fuck is a fuck, Deb.
But I imagine for most women who make lots of money or make more than their male partners, they're keeping track in their mind for sure. Like you said, they have one eye open. They're also not necessarily as attracted to those men as a man who makes more money than they do, because when you see marriages in which women actually make more money than their husbands, there's a higher chance of divorce. There are all these other awful things that are associated with it that I discuss in the book. Yeah. Like there's more and more common cheating on the male part. Yeah. No, it's becoming more common. One in seven marriages are actually women are primary breadwinners now. And also they're kicking ass in college in a way men aren't. Men have checked out.
Yeah. You know, there's, you talk about, what's the word? I don't know, for like marrying up.
Exactly. I was testing you. Um, hypergamy, which is the square root of the hypotenuse, by the way, for kids who are watching this doing their geometry homework. No, hypergamy is involved here because the more men check out as far as academia. Yeah. They graduate much less, much fewer men now. Yeah. I mean, men are the ones who need affirmative action now in college.
