What is going on with choking and sex?
Millennial women would say, 'I don't like this. I don't know what's going on.' What we see with Gen Z women is that they will experience the same things, but they're more inclined to say that they like it, or they will ask a male partner to actually do it. They'll initiate it themselves.
Why are Gen Z women more likely to say they like it?
Because they grew up watching porn from a very young age, or they were exposed to porn at such a young age.
What do you say to the 25-year-old man who feels demoralized and behind?
Don't let that derail you. Put your head down and keep working. What's your alternative? If you're going to sit there and play video games and vape all day long, that will be your life in 20, 30 years. And I think the only thing worse than being where you are now is being in the exact same place 20, 30 years from now.
Not only are more young people opting out of marriage than any generation before them, they're opting out of sex. And the ones who are having sex, a disturbing number of young women report that it includes choking, roughness, blurred lines between consensual and coercive. Millennial women say they didn't sign up for violence. It just became normal. Gen Z says it's consensual, but only after growing up on unlimited high-speed pornography. Meanwhile, young men's testosterone is declining. Sperm counts are dropping. One in five college students is on antidepressants. Half of young adults say they probably won't have kids. And fertility clinics are marketing egg freezing like it's a Black Friday sale. So, the question isn't just why aren't people getting married. It's are we living through the first generation in modern history that is biologically and psychologically less interested in sex? And if so, why? Today I'm joined by Dr. Deborah Soh, neuroscientist and author of Sexinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. Dr. Soh specializes in human sexuality and the biological drivers of behavior. She earned her PhD from York University, spent over a decade as a scientific researcher, has spoken at the Oxford Union, and her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harper's, the Globe and Mail, and the Los Angeles Times. I have wanted to interview Dr. Soh for years, so this is a juicy episode. It does come with a listener advisory warning for little ears. I try to spotlight conversations that are outside of the box for most health and wellness podcasts. If you appreciate that, please leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It takes less than 5 seconds to leave a review and it really helps us show up on the charts. On this show, we bring expert guests on to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally, or spiritually. You can watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Please welcome journalist and author of Sexinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy, Dr. Deborah Soh, to Culture Apothecary.
You actually found out with your research that young people today are having less sex than ever before.
That's right. It was very surprising for me to find that. At first, when I started hearing about this sex recession, I thought it was overblown. There was one study in particular that came out in 2016. It was based on data from the General Social Survey. So, this is a nationally representative survey. And it was showing that across the board, Americans of all ages were having less sex than ever before. But particularly among millennials, they were the generation to be less likely to have had a sexual partner by the age of 20. So compared to previous generations, millennials for some reason were more sexually inactive than before. And this trend was expected to continue on to Gen Z. So we're finding that across a number of different data sets that roughly one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the last year, which is a large proportion of people. And on top of it, I mean, people are not even interested in dating anymore. There was one study from Pew that found over half of single people are not interested in dating at all right now. So this is a trend that's happening globally. It's happening in the West. It's happening in the East. It's happening among developed countries. And we're seeing similar trends in terms of lower marriage rates, birth rates. And I think also there's a larger divide happening between men and women politically that is also fueling a bit of this. But I was really excited with Sexinction to get to sit down and look at the numbers myself for the first time and really determine myself, is this something that's actually happening or is this a moral panic? I do think something very unusual and not stellar is happening in that it's not really a good predictor of where we're headed as a species if people are not interested in sex. Part of my interest in sexual inactivity is because I used to study sex scientifically when I was in academia. But now as a journalist and as an author, I really want to see, you know, like what is happening, what is taking the place of sex because it is a proxy for connection, intimacy, right? People feeling like they have a community, people feeling close to one another. And so if we're not interested in connecting in that way, what is taking its place? And so each chapter in the book goes into a different hypothesis I have or a different explanation I think as to why this is happening, a different form of technology that might be taking the place of sex and what it also predicts for the future, which is not good things.
You wrote that millennials grew up wanting love. We were seeking love and envisioning that for our life. Gen Z doesn't want to date. They want situationships. What changed psychologically?
I think, well, even for millennials like myself, or you're a millennial too.
Yeah. 93. We wanted love, but it's P or it's somehow there's something cooler about casual sex. And so now what you see with Gen Z is they're following the same trend, but they're not really calling it that. They're calling it a situationship where it's like a friendship with the sex, but it's not like with millennials where it was friends with benefits where you would have only sex and then not have any type of intimacy beyond that, where you wouldn't be calling each other every day. You wouldn't be meeting each other's families. Like it was very firm in terms of boundaries. I don't think casual sex is good for anyone, for men or women. I think less promiscuity is better across the board. But I think the unfortunate thing with Gen Z is that some of them, I think the younger Gen Zers are moving away from this idea that casual sex is empowering and they saw what it did to millennials and older Gen Z and they're saying that's kind of tacky and we don't want that. But I think there is a segment of Gen Zers who mistakenly go into these arrangements thinking that they can keep sex and emotions separate. But the weird thing is that they will do basically everything that you would do in a relationship, like go on vacation with the other person, have pet names and things, talk every day, text every day, spend tons of time together, and then of course, one person falls in love with the other person, and the other person says, 'Well, no, I didn't want that.' And I think it's also this lack of intimacy or not wanting to come across as vulnerable or needy. So, they don't go into it saying, 'I'm looking for a relationship or I want to settle down or I want to get married.' It's very much like, 'Let's just see where it goes.' And of course, it's wasting time, unfortunately. And then both people probably don't end up really getting what they want because I do think at the core most people, even young people, want that connection. They want something real. It's just not seen culturally as cool to want that. The majority of Gen Z isn't having sex at all. But those that are, it's within the bounds of this situationship type of deal. They see that as different than a casual one-night stand type of hookup as a millennial because they're like, 'Well, I know this person. I'm regularly seeing them, but we're not official. We're not even in a talking stage.' Like a situationship is even different than that. This is very confusing to Gen X, by the way. Gen X is like, 'I'm out. I don't even understand this at all.' Because, you know, for millennials, we had talking stage, then dating, then you're like in a relationship. Yeah. Then you're official. Um, so that was like our tier system. But is everything in Gen Z starting as a situationship? It seems that it just moves in that nebulous way, but it like they meet and they say we're, they don't even really know what they want. They don't want to know what they want. It's just about like testing the waters and having quote experiences, which I think must be so heartbreaking because I don't think it's possible for two people to spend that much time together and not have feelings develop at least a little bit.
And if you're not compatible, you're going to find out eventually you're not compatible and then you're going to have to go your separate ways. So, not only did you waste that time, but you're not going to be with that person anymore.
But it's also even different from friends with benefits. I think millennials are very familiar with friends with benefits and what that looks like, but that was serious boundaries. You were not for sure inviting them to go on vacation with your family and stuff.
Yeah. No. And you wouldn't even necessarily tell your friends that much about them because you know that this is just a sexual thing. So this is not your boyfriend. I've had many of my friends when we were younger who would have those types of situations and they would say very clearly they know that this is not like a girlfriend-boyfriend thing. And it's almost cringey to think of it that way.
What are the actual stats right now on men versus women wanting marriage and how far apart are they?
So, it's actually more men than women in terms of the younger generations that want marriage. Women are more likely to say that they think marriage is an outdated tradition, which is, this is probably the first time in history that this has become the case. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that young women are outperforming their male peers in terms of education and occupation. So young women are finishing high school, going to university, getting advanced degrees like masters, PhDs. They're becoming physicians, lawyers, professional degrees. They're far exceeding their male peers. So women are not financially dependent on men anymore. And so marriage doesn't really serve the same purpose when you think of it from a very pragmatic standpoint. I do think marriage has value in that it's commitment. It shows that especially with a man, he's going to stay with you because it's very easy for a man to get up and leave, especially after you have a child with him, potentially. So, I do think there's value there. It shows that both people are willing to see the relationship through. I write in Sexinction about how the concept of getting married has changed a lot and I don't think people necessarily take it as seriously as before. Nowadays, it's more like just something you do after a certain point of time because you want your family and your in-laws to leave you alone and stop pestering you about when you're going to get married. One big thesis of Sexinction is this idea that DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are not helpful for either sex. Because I think what happens with progressive women is they think we're doing so great as a sex. Like women are excelling in society. We don't need men. We don't need men financially. We don't need them emotionally. We're just fine without them. But if you do want a future with a partner, who are you going to settle down with? Because women are hypergamous. They're not likely to marry or date someone who is lower in status than they are. Women tend to date or marry at the same level or higher.
I feel like I see often on social media from the feminist progressive camps are they're still insisting that women have it harder and that we are so behind. I'm like, I don't know what planet you are on. Literally, we are exceeding in every single metric out of men.
Right. Yeah. I think part of it is whether they were indoctrinated in academia. There is this mindset that very much, yes, there is a history of women being held back in society. At one point we did not have the same rights as men. And I think part of that is that's just what they were taught over and over again in every class. It doesn't matter what you majored in, that's like a prominent way of thinking. Maybe they're afraid that women are going to be sent back to the kitchen if we let go of those ideas. But it's definitely not doing them any benefits. And now what I find interesting is instead of saying, 'Oh, you know, maybe we should allow men to succeed, maybe we should ease off on all of this weird discrimination against men in the hopes that that's going to somehow allow women to continue excelling to the point where we will not have to worry about, you know, sexism ever again.' But they're saying now it's cool or it's cringey to have a boyfriend.
Yeah. And they're trying to normalize this.
Or as you know, one of the other chapters I talk about egg freezing and IVF and reproductive technology saying if you can't find a man with whom you'd like to pair up with and have a child, just go on your own and do it. So I think this is a larger problem in society. Like the book very much talks about all these solutions that we are creating to try and fix this sexless problem or this loneliness problem, but it's not getting at the root cause.
You talked about how more women than men don't want marriage. What about having sex? Are women less interested in sex or men less interested in sex?
What I sense is happening is women, the ones who are sexually active, are probably all having sex with the same smaller pool of highly successful men. And then the men who can't get any partners very much have no options. In terms of the actual stats, like one in three men is not having sex versus one in five women over the last 12 months. So there are more sexless men, but of the men who are having sex, they're having very many more partners.
Why are there more sexless men than women?
Because they're not doing as well in society. When you look at college campuses, right? Because the sex ratio is so much skewed in favor of men in that there are so few men on campus versus women. Like in terms of university degrees, women are going to be getting degrees at twice the rate of men in the coming years. And in terms of graduate degrees like masters and PhDs, for basically the last 30, 40 years, women have been getting more of those advanced degrees than men.
Are the majority of CEOs in America women?
No. So that's something different though I think because when you get to that point, if women start deciding to have families, we can talk about that too. How there is a difference in terms of our biology. So if a woman does decide to have a family, become a mother, that's probably going to take her away from her career unless she goes above and beyond to focus on her career, but she probably won't be raising her children in that case.
Yeah. So in terms of when you have this smaller ratio in terms of successful men, those men do not need to settle down or pick one partner. They can have as many partners as they want because when they are that successful, they are much more attractive. So they can set the bounds in terms of how soon they want to be having sex, whether or not they will commit to someone, whether or not they will invest in a partner. And so that's why we see this with women. They're, like I said, they're all fighting for this smaller pool of highly successful men, and those men are not really incentivized to settle down.
So, when you see this massive group of 18 to 29-year-old men who are not dating by choice and they're absolutely not even interested, they're not even going out looking for women, nothing. I think a lot of people assume, well, it's because it's porn, like they get all of their needs fulfilled with porn, but your research proved that's actually not the full picture. It's not porn only that is causing this epidemic. So, can you kind of explain more about that?
Yeah, I do think porn and other technological stand-ins are playing roles because if you as a young man, especially if you're at the peak of your sexual interest, say late teens and early 20s, it's not like you're going to be sitting around just waiting. You're going to need an outlet. So, I think many young men are turning to porn. I do think porn can be very destructive because what happens is when someone is watching porn, they have an orgasm. So that helps to satiate them at least a little bit temporarily and that takes away from their desire or their drive to actually go out and meet women and to find someone and to better themselves and become successful so that they can have a real relationship. So it'll basically help them satiate their sex drive until, you know, the next time they want to look at porn. And if someone's looking at porn every day or multiple times a day, that really, I think, is setting him back because again, he's getting that sexual need fulfilled, but he's not having any motivation to go out and pursue something better for himself. I think also hormonally in terms of low testosterone, there's something going on with men's testosterone. I think also for women too, you know, we're all being affected by these endocrine disruptors. And so for men, especially if their testosterone levels are lower than they've ever been, that also affects their sex drive. It affects their motivation, it affects their mood. And so that as well as I think the birth control pill in women, it's doing something to the sexual signaling. So there's something that's changed in the dynamic between men and women hormonally. So men are less incentivized or interested in pursuing women and women are also less interested in getting involved with men.
I think even more shocking than just the fact that guys aren't even interested in hookups or dating is that you said that there is a large number of young men in this country who they're not even interested in working and there's no good reason for why they are not working. You said there's no reason at all. They're not on disability. There's nothing wrong with them. They just don't want to work. So, what did you find that those men who are just choosing not to work, what are they doing all day? What did they all have in common?
I do think part of it is the low testosterone. I think it's also mental health issues. 5% of the globe is depressed right now. So, depression is at an all-time high. I also think if you're potentially taking pharmaceutical medications like SSRIs or other things that are affecting you, endocrine disruptors as I mentioned, like that's going to affect again testosterone and just your overall sense of health.
Were most of them on prescription pills?
Many of them were on SSRIs. I don't want to blame SSRIs, but I do think that in terms... This is what I love about your show is that you're about getting to the root cause of what people are struggling with, especially with something like chronic illness that is so prevalent nowadays. What is happening, right? This should not be happening especially to young people. So to get at, you know, basic things like diet, exercise, mental health, improving the way you feel about yourself, improving like just living like a normal human being and not being behind a screen all day long, not doing most of your interactions with other people behind screens or with say AIs, something as simple as that I think is affecting people's overall approach to life. But with young men especially, some of them I do think feel like the world is against them because of feminism, because of DEI. They feel that the cards are stacked against them and they cannot be successful no matter what they do. So they just don't want to try, which I think is a defeatist mindset. And I guess it's easy for me as a woman to say that. But I do think, you know, it's your life and at the end of the day, you're the one that needs to choose how you want to live it.
What I think is interesting about the SSRI part of this is that you said one in five college kids are on an SSRI and one of the biggest side effects of an SSRI is anxiety and depression.
Anxiety, depression, and low sex drive.
Yes. Yeah. I feel like that's a huge key to this and I also agree with the low testosterone, the chemicals in the environment and the products that we are using in our homes, on our bodies, you know, deodorant going right into your lymphatic system. I think all of that has to do with it. I thought it was so smart that you put that in the book.
Thank you. And also with, you know, post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, which is something that's starting to get more attention now. The fact that children are being prescribed these medications and there isn't really a full understanding of how this is going to affect their sexual development. So of course I say for anyone listening, speak to your care team or your physician. You know, don't base your mental health decisions or physical health decisions on something that I'm saying on a podcast. But I do think it's worth questioning because there's something larger happening. I think in terms of the disconnection that we are feeling in society and I'm really concerned because I don't see it getting better until we address what's actually causing this as opposed to turning down these different pathways of band-aid solutions that make us feel better at the time, help us maybe self-regulate and emotionally deal with our problems, but in the end it's not going to be good for us.
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I've done episodes on post-SSRI sexual dysfunction. And I don't think a lot of people realize because the FDA doesn't require a black-box label on the product yet explaining this, that being on an SSRI for as little as a week, you can develop this disorder which completely numbs your genitals. You have an inability to orgasm. You also have an inability to just experience joy or any extreme range of emotions period.
Yes. And it doesn't go, there's no cure and people are not warned of this. There is no informed consent when they're being prescribed this. And OB/GYNs are the top person that are prescribing SSRIs. It's not even psychiatrists, which is really disturbing.
I think when you say that women now believe that marriage is outdated, is it only liberal women or are we seeing conservative women believe that as well?
That particular study did not break it down by political affiliation. I would imagine it's probably more so among progressive women that feel this way. My sense is conservative young women like in Gen Z still do want marriage, but again, if you're making more money than most men of your age cohort, even if you want that, it's going to be very difficult to find somebody. So you either are going to have to wait a bit longer until your male cohort catches up or date older, which there's nothing wrong with that. But I do think part of it is just what is available and also where we're moving culturally. Like even I think among conservative women, and this is the tension I see between conservative women and conservative men, whereas conservative men, of course not all, but my sense is many of them will say, 'I would prefer to have a stay-at-home wife. I would prefer that my wife not work.' And for some of them, I guess if it's more extreme, right, that red-pilly side that you mentioned might say it's because a woman who's educated is going to be promiscuous. She's going to have a high body count. She's going to cheat on you. All these things. She's going to be like a bossy person. She's not going to submit to you and all of this stuff. And I don't think that's healthy or helpful either. So, I think both sides, you know, the left and the right get it wrong in some ways. They get it right in some ways and they get it wrong in some ways. And I think for young women, it's great if you're ambitious and you want to balance both or you want to focus on motherhood, be a stay-at-home mom, if you want to just focus on your career or be a working mom, whatever. I do think that marriage has value. And I also think for women, this is a bit of an aside, but in terms of planning your life, you know, the chapter I talk about with reproductive technology, I think it's very important for young women to start making those decisions at a young age. I would say even just as you're going off to college if you are.
Have you read Suzanne Venker's books?
No. No. I've seen her on your show. She's great.
You would love her book that is all about this exact issue with how we need to start in high school and as girls are going to college talking about the statistics and the realities of the likelihood that eventually you will want marriage and kids and how we need to be thinking about our career choices with that in mind. So instead of doing them separate, like 'I'll have a family eventually, so I'm just really going to go gung-ho on my career' without even considering that I'm probably likely going to want that at some point and then how that will affect my career, is going into career thinking of like what choices and moves can I make that will allow for the integration of my family that will be easy to, you know, change my schedule to part-time or different things like that.
Right. I was going to say too with these technologies like egg freezing, they're being sold to young women as you can buy yourself more time. So, similar to being on the pill, which, you know, I think whatever people choose to do is their choice, but once you start delaying your fertility, it means that you're going to be playing catch-up later on. And also that these technologies are not sure bets. It's not 100% certain that it's going to work. So, my concern is that young women might be saying, 'Okay, I can focus on all these other things right now, freeze my eggs, then when I get to a certain point, I can use them.' But you don't know that necessarily you're going to be able to become pregnant using those eggs. And also you don't know that you're necessarily going to be able to find a husband at that point because it's already so difficult, right? So as you get older, there are only going to be fewer men available. So I think just to tell women, doesn't matter what your politics are, to be really honest with yourself and say, you know, I don't need to listen to what society's telling me to do because the left tells you, you know, motherhood is a burden. Don't bother with any of that. You don't need a man. Just focus on your career and grind it out. And then the right, not all, not everyone of course, but there's a sentiment of you don't need to have a career. Don't have ambition. Just, you know, work on a homestead, make jam, have six kids, make jam.
If there is this huge group of young women who are not even interested in marriage at all anymore, how do we convince them otherwise? How do we bring them back around?
At the core, I believe everyone truly wants love. There are many people who say nowadays that they've given up. They don't care. They're going their own way. They're never going to date again. Both men and women say this. I get a lot of this on social media. If you ever try, I'm sure you know, if you ever tried to speak on this, people love to come for you and tell you how you're wrong. And at the core, I think we as human beings are wired to want to connect with other people and to be in love and to find a partner. So, I think it has to start with the education system because that's where they get young women the hardest is when you're young and you don't know any better. I used to be very, very feminist myself. You know, I used to be very progressive and I do think part of that is because I was in academia for so long because everyone just thinks that way. It doesn't even occur to you that people think differently until you leave and you start talking to other people in the real world.
So, how did you break out of that?
Well, I left academia because I wrote this op-ed about gender dysphoria and the scientific research does not back that as the right approach for these kids. So, I knew that I would not be able to get a job in academia after that point. And that was really what started to, I guess, open me up to different ways of thinking because before then I thought, you know, there are no biological differences between men and women. I thought that was just sexism. Whereas now I understand that obviously there's a huge scientific literature showing that there are very clear differences on average between men and women, especially when it comes to things like the work-life balance and the way we talk about these issues. You have to take into account women's biology whereas in the past I would have said that's just sexism. You know, women can do the same as men. Now we have all these technologies that help us do the same things as men. But there's a cost to that. And I don't think that technology, as amazing as it is, can ever truly override biology or that it's meant to. So that was probably the start of it. And I remember when I was mobbed on social media as a quote transphobe or whatever, that conservative media came to my defense and I didn't think conservatives would ever care about anything I had to say because being in academia, almost everyone I knew was a liberal. So and then I started making friends with conservatives and I was like, oh, you know, we're really not that different at the end of the day.
Who was the first prominent conservative that reached out to you and said, you know, I'm a fan of your work and keep doing what you're doing?
David French was one of the first people to ever write about me for National Review. I don't want to speak for him. I don't know if he's still a fan of my work now, but I appreciate that. And Ben Shapiro also was very supportive very early on. And I met Ben actually at an event. I flagged him down and he was so nice. He was about to go on stage to speak and I couldn't believe I was just like, 'Okay, I just need to ask him a couple questions' because I was writing about the event and he spoke with me. Yeah. I've been very grateful for it.
Did you grow up in a conservative home?
My parents, I think immigrants are generally conservative. Yeah.
And where are they immigrants from?
Okay. And so what did they think of your transformation?
They love it. I mean, at first they were, you know, Asian parents are very much like horrified if you're not going to be a proper doctor, like a physician, like neuroscience is okay. But they're happy now. They're very happy. They're like, 'Okay, she's doing all right.'
I think what the left would say if they were arguing with you, if I may just pretend. I imagine that they would say, you know, the reason that educated women find it very hard to find a man today is because they don't like that they're so educated. It's the men who prefer them to be dumb and more docile. Is that really the truth?
Well, okay, I'll look at the research in terms of studies that exist. They do show that marriages in which women are the primary breadwinner, so they make most of the money, or are the sole breadwinner, so they make all the money, they tend to file for divorce at higher rates. They tend to experience domestic violence at higher rates. They tend to experience cheating, so their husbands are more likely to cheat on them over time. They also are more likely to do the majority of housework and childcare even though they are bringing in the majority of the household income. So looking at those stats alone, I totally understand why women would say, you know, men just don't like it when a woman is more successful. I do think that sometimes men, they feel it's emasculating if a woman is more successful than they are, they feel threatened by it, which I don't think they need to. I think that, you know, you can support your spouse just as she'll support you, hopefully. There is, I guess, a little bit of truth to what the progressive women are saying, but I don't think by and large that's the full picture. I try to give the other side as much the benefit of the doubt as possible. I think maybe for some men, they feel like they're not doing enough. They know as men they need to be the primary, they should be providing for their spouse or their family. And if they're falling in that or failing in that role, it probably on some ways eats away at them. And I write about house husbands in Sexinction and how there's this whole genre of men on the internet who love to take videos of themselves as house husbands. So they're running around the house all day long saying, 'This is what I do when my wife is at work and I'm at home.'
I'm going to tell you right now, my husband made a video like that. I'm drying right up.
And it doesn't really speak well to the fact that you're supposed to be so busy if you have time to be making videos for social media while your wife is busy making all the money.
That's giving me the ick.
So, it's basically kind of like stay-at-home dad type of stuff.
Yeah. I do think for those guys deep down they know they're not really fulfilling their purpose as men and they feel guilty about it. They feel shameful about it. So, this is why they need to make these videos and they get validation from millions of other women being like, 'Oh my gosh, you're so amazing. What a dream husband.' Blah blah blah. It's like he could do that and have a job.
So, I have had a long-held belief that one of the contributing factors to why so many young women do not want to get married is because they have been on hormonal birth control for a decade or more. What are your thoughts on that?
That's very interesting because I have a feeling there's something going on there. So, when, I'm sure your audience already knows this, but women when they're on the pill, they are not ovulating. It suppresses ovulation. When a woman is ovulating, that's when she's the most fertile. She can get pregnant. And so that is a very potent source of sexual inspiration. So if you basically knock that out of a woman's system, it's going to change her behavior. It's going to change the way she feels. You know, I was on the pill for a number of years, so I can relate to this. Definitely you feel very different when you're on the pill versus when you're not on it. I think if women want to be on the pill, that's their choice. That's great. But I do think also they deserve to know what the potential side effects are. Just like you were saying earlier with antidepressants, I don't think that women are getting all of the information about this. I don't think that most are even aware of how this affects their cycle necessarily because they're still getting a faux period, right? It's not an actual menstrual period, but because they're bleeding for a week during the month, they think it simulates a menstrual cycle. So, women may not even be aware of how this is really affecting them internally. And so when you're not ovulating, you're not going to be giving out the same sexual signals as you would when you are. Because when you're ovulating, your body wants you to get pregnant, wants you to pick the best man to potentially have a child with. And men can pick up on these signals. Research has shown that men can tell when a woman is ovulating based on her appearance, their behavior towards her. Men become more protective of their female partners. They are a lot more wary of other men. You know, they won't be trying to maybe swoop in and get her pregnant behind their back and cuckolding them, that type of thing. I think if women are not putting out the same sexual signals, men are going to be picking up on this as well. Men are also not going to be as interested in wanting to protect or provide for their partner because thinking, well, she can't get pregnant, if consciously or otherwise they're thinking that.
But I also think that being on the pill can feminize a woman's brain. Women prefer men who are less masculine. They prefer more caretaking, nurturing men. So I wonder is that also why so many young women demonize masculinity? And then in your case, what you're saying, why they're pushing away from men and saying we don't need you because, you know, I'm good.
