DSO Reacts: Joe Rogan and Dr. Jordan Peterson Talk About "Enforced Monogamy" and Incels

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Hello everyone, DSO here from dadstartingover.com. A little something different today. I thought I would, uh, try my hand at one of the popular, uh, or the, uh, the popular trend that I see on YouTube now of what are called reaction videos, where you literally watch somebody reacting to watching somebody. So some guy's watching a music video and you watch them. I, um, I subscribe to one guy in particular. Shit, I can't remember his name. Michael's his first name. And he does an excellent job of watching music, guitar players in particular, and he breaks down exactly what it is they're doing, what key they're playing in, and the changes, and what they're thinking, and the scales, and so forth. That's what I call a good reaction video. So I thought I would do something similar, not as good as what Michael does obviously, but, um, play some videos that I think can pertain to my audience that you will find interesting and kind of break them down and give my opinion on my perspective. For what it's worth, YouTube and their almighty algorithm has done an excellent job of pushing videos at me that really hit home in the DSO world. And a lot of those videos are obviously— if you've not been living under a rock, you know who this guy is— Dr. Jordan Peterson. Dr. Peterson is from Canada. He's a psychologist, clinical psychologist. He's really made a name for himself over the last few years. He has some political stances which are somewhat controversial to some people, but he is an excellent, excellent teacher, an excellent presenter, very well-spoken, very well-read man. He has hundreds of hours of lectures that you can watch on YouTube. They have millions of views. Highly recommended if you haven't checked him out yet, Dr. Jordan Peterson. Well, probably his most popular appearances online have to do with the, um, his appearances on The Joe Rogan Experience, Joe Rogan's popular podcast. I think it may be the most popular podcast in the world at this point. Well, Jordan's been on there several times, and YouTube pointed out that I may like this conversation they had on the topic of incels, which we'll get into, and the concept of enforced monogamy. So I watched a little bit of it and said, you know what, let's try out this reaction video thing and see how I do. So here goes nothing.

Then when they can find anything that you say that could, without further explanation or definition, be misconstrued as appealing to this definition of you. Like, for instance, when all this, uh, when this— what I guess they call themselves, incels, involuntary celibates— when all this stuff went down with this guy drove his car into a group of people, it's a horrible tragedy.

Um, let's stop there. Um, let's define it again. Involuntary celibate, incel for short, is a term that, uh, some mostly young guys on the internet have given themselves. I believe they gave it to themselves. I don't know if it's— it was an insult or not, but basically it means, uh, I'm involuntarily celibate. I would love to have sex. I would love to have a romantic relationship with a person, presumably of the opposite sex, but For whatever reason, by virtue of my bad lot in life, my bad biological hand that was dealt to me, everyone in the world being out for me, whatever reason it may be, um, that life, that, uh, carrot dangling on the end of the string that is a relationship and sex with a, with a woman, has eluded me. And I don't like that. It's not my choice. I'm celibate, but involuntarily so. And Joe's mentioning there's a guy, um, who— I think this was several years back now— was famously online talking to a lot of these guys, fellow incel types, and they compare notes and they get more and more angry and they lash out at the world. Um, a lot of your mass shooting type guys belong to this club in some way or another. And, uh, that guy in particular ran his car into a group of people. And I remember he jumped out of the car at the end of that and said, yelling for the police to please shoot him. So it was kind of a suicide by cop kind of thing. So that's what they're talking about when they say incel.

One of the things that you talked about with incels is that, and this was a part of the— what was it? The New York Times hit piece?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You said one of the cures for this is enforced monogamy. People decided, and you know, I had never heard that term before, quite honestly. And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? It's a psychological term, and what it means is enforced by culture, that it is a good value.

Monogamy, yeah, because polygamous societies tend to become ultra-violent. Yeah. And that's been known in the anthropological literature for 100 years, and certainly leftist anthropologists were among those who discovered it. Like, she knew, the journalist knew perfectly well what I meant by enforced monogamy. She's not stupid.

It's a— you use it as if everybody would understand it because you're an intellectual and because you're a professor and this is what you do.

It was also too 2 minutes out of a 2-day conversation. You know, it's like, so it was something we just glanced over. Well, it's so fu— that was funny in some sense, because my sense is if you want to pillory someone, you should attribute to them views that someone somewhere has had. And the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to, you know, take nubile young women at the point of a gun under state enforcement and deliver them to useless men. It's like no one has ever believed that.

All right, I'll stop there. And, um, as much as I may disagree with the general tone of a lot of what the New York Times may or may not say, um, I think the woman in that interview had a point. Um, you know, we're living in very interesting times these days where we are stripping away, if you will, a lot of the societal norms rules, morals, whatever you want to call it, that through generation after generation, we've assembled these rules as a foundation for general societal behavior and expectations. This is what we expect of our society and of our people. This is what makes everything run as smoothly and as less chaotic as humanly possible. And we've determined that Monogamy. You one man and you one woman, you two together for the rest of your life. Stop going around screwing everybody, basically is what we're saying. And we've determined that this is the best course of action. And we have seen over the years that when it veers in the other direction, specifically Jordan mentions polygamy, which is one man, many women, all hell tends to break loose. So that's what he's talking about. Now back to the New York Times reporter. Why, why would they be so upset by this? Because the— what we're basically saying is, from that reporter's point of view, I'd assume a woman saying— we're saying to women, all right, look, here's the deal. These men in this pool of candidates for a future husband, they may not be your dream. In fact, they may be pretty far from it. But as far as society is concerned, the best thing for all of us, maybe not you specifically right now, as far as you can tell, but it's probably for you in the long term, for your future children, definitely, and for society as a whole, uh, you need to get married. That's what we're talking about with enforced monogamy. Um, but somebody may take that and listen to it and say, oh, you're trying to tell me, a woman, You're holding me at gunpoint, so to speak, and saying, uh, go marry that incel type over there? I don't think so. That's where that reporter was going with that, and that's what Jordan recognized.

But it sounds like that. It's a real— the optics of that, that statement are very bad. But the, the question is, why didn't— why wasn't there follow-up questions? And if there was follow-up questions to get you to define what you mean by enforced monogamy—

well, there were. They just didn't make it into the piece.

Well, that's a real problem.

Yeah, it's a real problem.

That's a real problem because that's— that, that is It's so ridiculous because it's an inaccurate definition of who you are.

Well, one of the things I've said continually, I mean, and this is on record in multiple places, it's like, okay, so you're a young man and all the women are rejecting you. Who's got the problem? It's not all the women. That's a bad road to go down. If all the women are rejecting you, it's you.

We both—

oh, that's a big one. And I agree 1,000% here. This is a tough, tough thing for a lot of guys to hear, especially those incel types. It's you, buddy. And to the credit of some of these incel types, I think a lot of them hear that and say, yes, but there's nothing I can do. You know, I've studied this and look at me, I'm a horrible looking person, I'm a horrible acting person, whatever it may be. I have some kind of mood disorder, I don't know what it is, and I'm out of the mating game. So to them, It feels hopeless. And well, these are also the same guys— is what Jordan's hinting at— are also the ones that say, and oh, by the way, all women are whores, all women are terrible, all women are mental, etc., etc. No, dude, if you're a guy and you put yourself out there and say, hey, I'd like to enter the dating world, and they're all ignoring you, it ain't them necessarily. If you finally do get with women and 10 out of 10 were absolutely batshit crazy, well There's something to that, isn't there? Where's the common denominator here? So, but I see where this conversation is going between Jordan and Joe is one of battling back and forth where he's saying— where Joe is saying, I presume, it doesn't sound good what you're saying, Jordan, with this concept of enforced monogamy. It does sound like you're saying holding ladies at gunpoint and saying you better get with this lower status man. Um, but then Jordan comes back and says, well, listen, I've gone on record as saying men need to improve themselves. It's your problem, dude, the fact you're not getting chicks. Um, get with the program here. But, uh, we're going in circles here because if in fact all men were— and I'm jumping ahead possibly here, um if all men were in fact taking on that mindset of self-improvement, and I need to climb the ladder to get to the top of the dude pyramid, as I call it, um, then we wouldn't really have a need for much of this enforced monogamy, would we? Well, hold on to that thought. Not so fast. Let's continue on.

Agree on this, but why is enforced monogamy the solution for people that are involuntary celibates?

Well, it's the solution to the— it's the solution to the relationship between men and women. Fundamentally is monogamous social norms.

Yeah, but these men are unattractive. If these men are unattractive—

Oh, what's the solution to them?

But if these men are unattractive to women, I don't mean just physically unattractive, I mean women aren't seeking them as mates, they need to become men.

Yes, they certainly do. That's the solution.

That's the solution.

Absolutely.

And we both agree on this.

And there we go. That's the solution. To become better men. So where does enforced monogamy as a concept fit into that? I think that's where we're going here.

Yes, but they need to do that in a society where monogamy is the social norm.

But isn't it the social norm anyway?

Well, that was partly my point, although to the degree that we deviate from that, we tilt towards a more violent society. I was making a very minor point.

I don't think they're related, quite honestly. I don't think that involuntary celibates— I don't think that having enforced monogamy as a part of our cultural norm is going to help those people.

It does, it does.

How's it going to help them?

Well, because what happens is if a polygamous society develops, which is the alternative, then a small minority of men get all the women.

That's okay. Now we're getting into the meat of the matter here. So Joe makes an excellent point. I'm kind of siding with Joe on this. I see where the argument's going. Um, the— is this not in fact the natural order of things, so to speak? We're always going to have this guy over here is better and gets— you know, I'm trying to think of a way to put this, and I've mentioned this in another podcast when talking about MGTOW, men going their own way, um, the Pareto principle, the old 80/20 rule as it's known. You know, I don't care what the, um, the realm of expertise is or the skill or the competency, if you will— that's a better term to use— whether it's being a plumber or being a potential mate, husband, boyfriend, whatever it is. If you were to put 100 candidates together in that, whether it's a plumber or whatever it is, 80 of those people will be kind of losers, not very good at it, whatever it is, not very good plumbers, not— they don't make a living at it. They probably have to do 2 or 3 other jobs just to scrape a living together. Plumbing is kind of a side thing, and they never quite were able to make that their big thing. Well, 20 out of 100 will say, yeah, I make a living at it and I love plumbing. It's awesome. It's been great for me and my family. So it— what's funny is, and it's not always exactly 80/20, it's not like it's some weird universal mathematical rule, but it— we do see enough of a trend where we have a name for it, the Pareto Principle, where no matter what it is, the majority of people within that realm and that competency will not do too well. The small minority of people get most of the results, is what I'm trying to say. And that's what we see here as well with the— in the realm of relationships. Um, so if that's the case, then the natural order of things kind of dictates in the relationship realm chaos, doesn't it? If this one dude at the top of the pyramid gets all the chicks, and all the people at the rest of the base of the pyramid are left going, "Hey, where's mine?" All hell breaks loose. So we have what we call this enforced monogamy rule, where as a society over generations we've recognized this and we say, "You know what? Guys and gals, listen up. You need to hook up together and make babies and start a family. If we let you all go do quote unquote naturally what you're supposed to do, all hell breaks loose." But I'm repeating myself, so let's continue on.

What happens?

Okay, that's all—

that's the only point that I was making.

Theoretical world where polygamous societies exist en masse, and then you do have this problem where there's a small group of men that are fucking all the women, but that's not what we're talking about.

And also making the women unhappy, right? Because the women don't have any access to a genuine intimate one-to-one relationship over any long period of time.

Which is what the women want. It's the whole idea is that the women want that. Right, sure.

Now we're getting into some, a little bit of hairy stuff here. Because it's, and this is where some of the more traditional conservative stuff kind of leans towards, which rubs your lefty types the wrong way, which is kind of this patriarchal, if you will, use that buzzword, feeling of, hey sweetheart, I know you want to go with the, uh, you know, 6-foot, 200-pound Adonis over there who, uh, you know, looks like a movie star and has 20 other women in his wake, or 20 other women in his harem, I should say. But you need to stay away from that guy. We know what's— we society know what's best for you. I know your biology and everything is telling you go get Mr. Hunky Man over there, but, uh, He's at the top of the dude pyramid, and if you get with him, you're one of 20 and you're nothing special, and all hell's gonna break loose. So we know what's best for you as a society, Miss Single Gal, and we've developed this structure called marriage. So here you go, and hope you're happy with the guy that we've selected for you, so to speak. So I can see how that kind of rubs people the wrong way if you have children, right?

Um, but I don't— I still don't think that that is why these men are involuntary celibates, and I don't think it's the solution to that. I think the solution is that they need to become attractive to women.

Yes, that is the solution. There's no doubt about that.

I don't think the two are related.

Well, the only— I was making a minor point. The minor point was that one of the ways that societies around the world have figured out that you keep young male aggression under control is by enforcing monogamous standards, because it gives everyone a chance in some sense.

Well, there you have it. One part of this whole equation is that when you men don't get a lady, you tend to go a little nutty, you go a little crazy and cause death and destruction all around you, violence. And the concept of enforced monogamy is one that kind of, if you want to think about it, it's kind of a sexual welfare, isn't it? One for you, one for you, one for you, one for you. And Joe is playing the part of the you're more conservative type who's saying, well, hold on a second, time out.

Why are you—

why are you dishing out all this to everybody? I don't like this sexual welfare— welfare thing. It should be more of a, um, competency-based reward system. If hunky man over here gets all the girls, then so be it. And that will in turn presumably, hopefully, get those on the bottom of the pyramid to kind of wake up and go, oh, I see how it's done. We need to be more like Mr. Playboy up there, Mr. Hunky Guy. Okay, cool. We will change our ways to play the game better, so to speak. Which in turn, usually once you really dig into what this game's all about, it's becoming a better man. And, you know, kind of going in circles here.

That's the only point that I would make. Meaning it clears more more women will be available for one-on-one relationships rather than one guy who is some, you know, whatever, for whatever reason. Yeah, well, you see this figure in society.

Well, you see this happening in universities where women outnumber men, so the men hypothetically have more sexual opportunity, but that isn't what happens. What happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity, a fairly large minority of men don't, and The women are unhappy because they can't find a committed relationship. It's bad for most of the men, and the men who have all the sexual opportunity get cynical.

And there you have it. That, uh, what he just explained is kind of a microcosm or a small laboratory experiment in the university days, which presumably is what, um, not the time of life for marriage, is it? It's a very young, single sowing my oats kind of age, especially for young men. It's feeling life out and see what it's all about. And the mating game is kind of unbridled, if you will, because none of these people presumably in this early 20s are ready for marriage or ready to have kids. They're studying, they're building themselves up for a future career. So we are seeing there, when you strip away, you know, society saying get married, get married, have kids. When we set that aside temporarily, look what happens. Mr. Hunky Man gets all the women, and the majority of the guys are unhappy, and the women aren't happy, as Jordan says. So he says the women aren't happy. Why? Because, man, I just wish I had a man that would, would, um, settle for me and only me and not run around to all these women. Well, By virtue of their behavior, the women, their actions speak louder than words, doesn't it? Because they're still going back to Mr. Hunky Man, even though they full well know that he's with 20 other women. Yet they keep going back. So again, is this kind of a patriarchal patting the little ladies on the head saying, "We know better than you. Stop screwing around with all these men." I don't know.

Isn't this in some ways against your whole idea of equality of outcome? Because you're talking about equality of sexual outcome. Come now. If these men— if you have a guy like LeBron James, that's a dominant basketball player that just kicks everyone's ass, this is the— this, this is a guy who succeeded at the highest level, right? Well, there's going to be people like that sexually. There's going to be people that are better at finding mates, and that this is what they enjoy.

There you go, Joe is nailing it.

Enjoy having many mates. They enjoy being Yes, but, but if this is what they enjoy, if it's a man who doesn't want a family and enjoys dating multiple women, and now Joe's tiptoeing towards a more progressive mindset of, hey Jordan, this marriage kids thing ain't for everybody.

And by pushing this social narrative of the enforced monogamy, It's not really very realistic for some of us because some of us don't want to do the marriage and kids thing. And to— the whole concept of this enforced monogamy really is to have a better society overall. And more specifically, as you drill down further, it's to have kids and a family that is strong. To which Joe is coming back saying, yeah, but what if you don't want kids? What if you don't want a family? Then what?

Why is that bad?

Hm? Well, I think the fundamental reason it's bad is 'cause it's bad in the long run for children.

And this is where Jordan makes a big oops, by my estimation.

Is that—

he just kind of skipped over where Joe says, "Not everybody wants that." And he— Jordan comes back with, "Yeah, but it's still best for children and families." No, kind of going on a loop here. And by the way, so you don't misunderstand, I, I am a married man with 4 children, so— but I, I still understand the other side of this, which I'll go into further here.

It's bad for children if he chooses to have children.

Yeah, well, that's it. But that's it. That's the fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned, right? And then I think it's the answer— look, to give the journalist credit, that is the point she was making, you know, apart from pillaring me and caricaturing my perspective, that was the point she was making. Well, first of all, I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies. Like I already said, that, you know, the proclivity of a hierarchy is that all the spoils go to the person at the top, right? And that can destabilize the whole structure. Yes, we have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that.

There you go. That's a very important point. As much as we want to, like with Joe's earlier point, in your more conservative viewpoint of All the spoils should go to the person who has the highest level of competency in any kind of endeavor. Jordan's point is that, yes, but you can prepare yourself for a lot of destabilization. And he uses the— notice he uses the symbol of the pyramid as well. And I like where he says, the steeper it gets, the more unstable it gets. And the more we have the tippy-tops get everything, whether it's economically, sexually, whatever, things just start going a little haywire. So we need something to remedy that. And it's much like, you know, if you were to take economically a lot of the entitlement welfare programs away, oh boy, you better boost your police force. 'cause it's gonna get pretty ugly in a hurry. Much like if you were to take away this enforced monogamy, by Jordan's estimation, oh boy, you better step back and wait for the chaos to break out, 'cause it's not gonna be pretty.

How could you possibly rectify that if one man is— like, say if we've got one 6-foot-5 beautiful man who's got a perfect body and he's brilliant, and he just wants to date a bunch of women.

Yeah.

And all the rest of the people are 5'1" and they're fat and they're lazy and like, this guy's gonna— if this is the competition, he's going to win.

Yep. Yep.

There's no way around this. And even if you decide to have enforced monogamy where it becomes a popular thing, the women are gonna be more drawn to him if he chooses to date them. They might decide, I would rather have him sometimes than never at all.

Ooh, Joe hit on a good point there. And this is something I've been noticing through my own observation, through friends, friends of friends, and so forth. Yeah, no matter how much we have this structure of this enforced monogamy, arguably patriarchal thing of, well, ladies, we know better. This is what you need to do. And we have the system in place. Nature finds a way, doesn't it? These women are still going to find a way, and they will also make the excuse of, I know Mr. Hunky Playboy— in Joe's example is the 6-foot-5 Adonis— I know he's not necessarily a long-term potential partner, but knowing all that, I still, still, if all things being equal, I'd much rather be with this guy than with— and they'd turn around and look at the giant crowd, you know, the 80 crowd. When talking about the 80/20 Pareto principle, they look at the 80 crowd and they go, "Yeah, I don't think so. No." And you know what's funny, talking about the 80/20, um, we have data that kind of backs this up in the sexual realm. We looked at data in terms of online dating and what are women looking at, which, which, which accounts in online dating do women rank as being attractive, average, not attractive. Women find 80% of the men online in the online dating world to be below average, unattractive.

Be—

right away, that just makes people go, what? Yes, men have a much more average, quote, fair distribution of who's, uh, who's, uh, who's below average, average, above average, and so forth. You know, kind of a parabola that you would expect. But with women, it's all stacked over in the unattractive, below average. We've known this for ages. Women have high standards. They, they want the best. They don't always get it, so they quote settle. But, um, if we strip away a lot of these societal norms and so forth, um, women tend to hang on for the best that they can get.

It's actually what does happen.

But what is wrong with that?

Well, what's wrong with it is that it destabilizes society and it's bad for children.

And we go back again to this, the circular argument here. Um, what if we were to leave nature, let nature take its course, and, uh, let the men battle it out in the arena, so to speak? And Jordan keeps coming back with children, children, children. This is becoming less and less of an issue as the birth rate goes down, as the— and this is no coincidence, this coincides with or correlates with the changing dynamics in the, uh, in the, in the world of money, financial world. Uh, women are making more, more than ever. And as due to this, and I have a podcast, um, uh, episode titled Hypergamy if you want to listen to that. But this is just a— it's not a bad word, it just means the, the observation that women tend to pair up with men that are, uh, above them, at least equal to them, but usually above them on the social hierarchy, on the strata, on the, a woman who is the CEO of a company is most likely not going to marry her janitor at her company. You know, we kind of chuckle at that 'cause it's obvious, right? On the other hand, would the male CEO marry his pretty secretary? Not unheard of. But kind of getting ahead of myself here. Um, Jordan keeps bringing it back to family, family, kids, kids, and that is slowly going away. Whether that's good or bad, it is what it is. So we are left with the guys, you know, a couple of gladiators fighting it out in the, uh, in the arena. And to Joe, who's a typical— not typical, he's, you know, as far as manly man masculine archetype goes, and Joe's it, and he's looking at this going, uh, you know, sneering his nose and saying, I don't think so, I don't like this sexual welfare stuff you're talking about.

You said that. Yeah, but what if they don't want to have children? But there's a lot of people that don't want to have children. There's a lot of people that choose to go their entire life without having children. There's men in their 30s— I'm one of— some of my friends have vasectomies.

Yep, there you go. Just as I said, this is becoming more and more, uh, common. Men having vasectomy, I hear that as well.

On children.

Mm-hmm.

So why, why would that help in any way, these involuntary celibates?

Well, I think you tilt the society so that it serves the interests of— well, that's a good question.

Do you see my point?

I do, I do. Look, I see your point, there's no doubt about it.

You're almost having— you're almost forcing an inequality of outcome.

I know. That one, that was her point too. To the degree that she had a point, that was her point. Now, and, but I, but it's not, doesn't run contrary to my opinions that the issue of outcome has to be addressed. I already said there needs to be a reason for the left and the right, and then the problem with hierarchies is they can get too steep and destabilize everything.

Right.

That does happen. That particularly happens in the sexual domain, and there's plenty of anthropological evidence for that. But you still might say Well, who cares? Because the men who are, who are winning should be allowed to win, and the women should be allowed to choose. It's like, yes, except that there's the problem of children. And so society steps in on behalf of the children. And you can say, well, lots of people don't want to have children. Yes, and that's truer now than it used to be, although many of those people end up having children anyways. You know, the guys who are sleeping around all the time, so that doesn't circumvent the problem. But the issue here for me isn't the men or the women, it's the children. We're trying to set up societies where the probability that children will be raised in something approximated an optimal environment is optimized, and that's going to mean sacrifice of opportunity and choice on the part of adults. It's necessary.

Very well put. Jordan makes an excellent, excellent point. The whole purpose of this, uh, us getting together and doing the hanky-panky, let's be honest, is to procreate. Um, yes, I know there's the pill and other methods of birth control that have kind of circumvented that and completely changed and warped the whole sexual landscape, But in the end, on a very primal biological level, the whole reason we're, you know, getting naked and rubbing our parts together is to make babies. Mr. Playboy, who runs out and has 20 different women, has a much higher chance of doing that with multiple women. And that's not good for society as a whole, and it's not good in particular for those babies. They— we know for a fact they fare well, these kids, when mom and dad is under the same roof. And as well as an extended nuclear family there to take care of them. And that doesn't fit well within the mold of this woman, uh, this woman and 20 other women running off to, uh, Mr. Playboy guy.

I agree with you, but I think that what we're talking about mirrors what we're talking about in sports. It mirrors what we're talking about in business. It's everything else. There's going to be people that are better at all different aspects of life. There's going to be people that are talented in terms of like getting women to like them.

Yes.

And Joe was taking a very, very typical, very understandable, and one that I personally can relate to stance of, hey, I'm a winner in fill in the blank, why can't you be too? It is an attitude that gets results, which is, hey, if you want to join me in the club of winners over here, here's how you do it. But if we're being honest, in the 80/20 rule. Um, what percentage of those guys in the 80 group are going to— will— are going to be willing to put in the work to claw their way to the top? And let's be honest, some of them do not have the ability to claw their way to the top in any given hierarchy, in any given competency. Um, yeah, I will never ever in a million years be an NBA basketball player, no matter how hard I work at it, my body just says, that ain't you. And that kind— it sounds simple, but that kind of, um, simplistic look at things applies to a lot of different things. I may not have as high of an IQ as this guy over here, as good of a body as this guy over here, etc., etc., and therefore I'm not going to be high up on the ladder as him in whatever endeavor it is we're talking about. So Joe's view, while I may agree with it, I also am cognizant enough to know that it's somewhat simplistic and it doesn't take the complete picture into mind, which I think is what Jordan's getting at. It's like, Joe, you don't get it. That may be fine for you, but it's not fine for most. And if it's not fine for most, we got a real problem here. We have to address it in some way.

That's true.

Well, that's why also, look, you see this, right? Women are hypergamous. Which means they mate up and they mate across and up.

There we go, hypergamy.

And so if you're a male who's successful in a given hierarchy, the probability that you're going to have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high. It's an unbelievably good predictor of that.

That hypergamy is a very uncomfortable discussion.

Yes, it certainly is.

It certainly is, um, judging by my emails and comments on the Facebook and so forth. Yeah, it's a very uncomfortable subject.

Well, there's plenty of uncomfortable discussions to be had.

That's a big one though.

It is.

The idea that it defines women's sexual choices by the fact that they want bigger, bigger, better. They want someone who's more, more successful, someone who's so higher on the social ladder than what they're accustomed to or what they have.

Yeah, well, what women do is like— mate choice is a very difficult problem. So how do you solve it? Well, here's how women solve it. Throw the men in a ring, let them compete at whatever they're competing at, assume that the man who wins is the best man, marry him. Yes, it's a brilliant solution.

This sounds familiar. He's not the first to come up with this concept. Maybe I read it somewhere else, but, uh, yeah, that's, that's basically how it works. Let the men battle it out.

The market-oriented solution. It's actually the solution that appears to have driven our evolutionary departure from chimpanzees.

It's a biological solution.

It's a biological solution, but it has a cost.

What is the cost?

Well, the cost is— the cost is polygamy. And so we rein that in with enforced monogamy, and we do that in order to provide stable circumstances for children.

Is polyamorous— is a polyamorous society just as unattainable as this utopian Marxist idea?

Yes, I think so, because it looks like This is another point I was making that didn't get covered in the article, although I wrote about it somewhat extensively on my blog, is that societies tilt towards monogamy across the world. It's human universal. Now that doesn't mean that people don't have polygamous or polyamorous tendencies.

That's a huge point. It's one that as the human animal, we tend to migrate towards pair bonding. And an example I often give is that picture of the most manly, masculine badass there is, like a total, uh, you know, outlaw biker type. And he tends to have a woman on his back, doesn't he? It's just something we naturally gravitate towards. But just as Jordan says here though, that doesn't necessarily negate, um, the biological foundation underneath all of this. That while we may say you, I like you, I want to be with you, that doesn't necessarily just wipe the slate clean and say, therefore, I'm wiping out all of my partner's hypergamous urges, or my partner's urges to mate with 20 other women next week. Those, um, those urges are still there, and they always will be there. That's why marriage in part is tough.

They certainly do. And it's certainly also the case that one of the women— ways that women gerrymander this system is that Like, the number of women— children who are in a— say, say you're married and you have children with your husband, but you also have an affair. So you have a child by another man. That's more common than anyone suspected. So part of the way that women solve the problem that you're just describing— and I'm not saying anything for this or against this, this is a purely factual biological claim— is they pick a monogamous marriage and they cheat with high-status guys.

Oh boy, talk about a touchy subject. They're really touching on a lot of different stuff here. This is a good one. Um, yeah, this is, um, this is the ugly side of, uh, human sexual relations, isn't it? At least from a male perspective. Um, some have, uh— this isn't a novel concept that he's coming up with. As he said, this is something we've known forever. Um, a common term for this is dualistic mating strategies, and there's thought as, uh Is this in fact true cross-culturally? Are we seeing this for every woman? Not necessarily. I've heard thoughts to the contrary or evidence to the contrary. But it seems that it's enough to warrant further investigation is that, yeah, we're seeing this dualistic mating strategy of Mr. Provider, as I call in my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. By the way, check it out, dadstartingover.com, and check out my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. You can find it at all the major retailers. But This strategy of Mr. Provider provides the safety, security, domesticity, whatever you want to call it. He's a for sure thing, and I need that as a woman, speaking as a woman. But I also need, quote, need Mr. Playboy, high status guy, if you want to call him that. The erotic side, the lover side. Provider and lover is the vernacular that I commonly use, because if you want to drill down even more into the ugly biological side, I may use Guy A for the resources, and I may use Guy B for the genetic material to pass down my lineage further, you know. Further down the genetic line. In other words, uh, Mr. Provider Man over here may very well be raising some other kids, uh, some other dude's kids, not even know it. Is that super common? No, but it is not unheard of. And that's what, uh, Jordan's getting at here. This is, um, it's funny because the more Jordan— they're talking in circles here, the two of them, and I completely see both sides of the story here. And, and But, you know, kudos to Jordan. He's not avoiding the ugly stuff that really kind of makes a lot of people look at this enforced monogamy and say, "Oh, hell no." Well, he's showing all the cards here. So good for him.

Now, you know, obviously in the confines of the marriage, that's a terrible thing. But—

That's a very uncomfortable subject though, for women in particular.

Uncomfortable subject for everyone.

Right.

It's a terribly uncomfortable subject.

They don't like the idea that this is a common thing, that women choose a safe man that is willing to be monogamous with them, and perhaps maybe they're above him in a social class or sexually, and then they'll cheat with someone who is above them.

It's common, but it's not the norm, right? It's still the norm not to do that. The norm is fidelity, right? But there's plenty of exceptions.

And this is enforced monogamy, culturally the norm.

This is the very definition of it. Well, enforced monogamy is this. It's like, okay, so my son's getting married in September. And so, so let's say he comes to me in a year and he says, hey Dad, guess what? I've had 3 affairs in the last year and they've all been successful. I haven't got caught. Aren't I a good guy? What am I going to say to that? No! What the hell are you doing? That's not what you're supposed to be doing. That's enforced monogamy.

You know, this kind of taking the conversation on a left turn, not to get on a soapbox here, but we're also kind of missing a bigger picture here. By my estimation, and it's one that, you know, if Jordan's— if my son came to me and said that, I, you know, "What the hell are you doing?" would be followed by, "Dude, you need to pull this fiancée aside of yours and tell her, 'I'm not ready for this marriage thing.' You know, save yourself all a bunch of heartache." Which, this is where Jordan and his like kind of, falter a little bit. This is where they felt their argument kind of falls apart because I think Jordan's— by Jordan's estimation, it would be keep going with the marriage. Because for society overall, we need you two to hook up together and make babies and you and only you and her and only her. And that's it, just you two together. Otherwise, all hell breaks loose. So please keep getting married. And that's where guys like me sit back and go, oh God, no, please don't. No, because how ironic, the whole purpose of this enforced monogamy is to prevent this chaos, as Jordan calls it, and this for all hell to break loose in this polygamous society. But by doing so, you may in fact be creating even more chaos for a big chunk of the population, not for everybody, obviously. But if his son were Well, let me put it this way. I speak to all kinds of guys, and there's a small minority of men that I speak to who are these former Playboy ladies' men types who screwed all kinds of women throughout their whole young adulthood. And then for whatever reason, sometimes it's by virtue of saying, "Oops, I knocked up this girl," or they're pressured by their friends, family, whatever, they decide I really love this one in particular, and I'm gonna make it work with her and only her. To hell with my old playboy ways. And, uh, they get married, it lasts years, and they have kids, and they just can't scratch that itch within a marriage. They, they gotta go back to the old them. You know, I miss the days— this is the guy talking— I miss the days of having, um, 3 different women in 1 week. Oh God, that was living. I haven't felt alive since then. Since this marriage, I get sex maybe once a week. 'all my friends are telling me I'm lucky, but Jesus, this is— no, this ain't cutting it. I can't live like this.' And I would contend like, 'No, dude, you just may not be wired for this by virtue of your biology or your— the baggage, you know, the emotional baggage that you bring to the relationship. This just may not be for you.' While the Jordan Petersons and their like may say, regardless if it's, quote, 'for you or not, dude,' It's what you need to do because the society as a whole, we can't have you run around screwing a bunch of women. It's just bad. Um, for the majority of guys that I talked to, the scenario was one where the man has very little sexual experience, if any, with women, and he meets a woman who has a great deal of experience and probably has all kinds of emotional baggage to go with it. She was very promiscuous as well as former addictions and two kids by two different men. And you know the drill, all kinds of horrible emotional baggage from childhood, etc. And she brings it to the relationship and all hell breaks loose there. And they get married because they both want to, quote, settle down and do what's right. And next thing you know, divorce later and half his money gone. And now he's raising kids because mom took off and Well, who knows? Just all kinds of hell breaks loose. So I guess to the— you know, I'd love to ideally to speak to Jordan about this. Who knows, maybe one day that might happen. You never know. But, um, my contention would be, um, where's the— is there a solution to this, um, oh, this dilemma, I guess, is a good word for it, between, uh, are we forcing people into something that will just lead to more chaos We do want to lead some people to this life because I am in full agreement that, yeah, we have all the evidence that shows that this is the best course of action for children, and subsequently for society as a whole, this monogamous relationship thing. But at the same time, I'm also one to recognize it ain't for everybody. So I don't know where the happy medium there is.

Enforce monogamy, meaning the people around you try to guide them in a way that you think is going to lead to a harmonious family life.

Built deep into the cultural norms, and if that starts to destabilize, then there's trouble. And that doesn't mean that it's not prone to all the problems that you laid out. Look, there isn't a bigger problem than successful reproduction. It is the big problem, and all of the solutions that we've generated for it are full of flaws. Like, here's an example: the gender pay gap. Okay, there's no gender pay gap, there's a mother gap. There's other reasons too, but I'll stop there because the video is almost done.

And then it comes to an abrupt halt here, and he kind of goes off topic into the gender pay gap, which is a whole other ball of wax, isn't it? But, um, I, I like the end there. It's a good way to wrap it up that there's, there's a lot of holes in this, um, because what we're basically doing here is we're butting heads up against a very primal, uh, nature-driven, that tens of hundreds of thousands of years of programming in our little caveman bodies telling us to do this over here, which is, hey guys, battle it out, the best one wins and you get all the chicks, and the rest of you get the scraps. That seems to be the natural, quote, order of things. But in, uh, you know, in historical, uh, perspective, uh, in the— in a blink of an eye, we have decided to lay on top of this old caveman code way of being, um, these societal norms and these, uh, things such as enforced monogamy, which is, you know, we've taken a look at the old caveman way and, oh, Jesus Christ, we just end up bashing each other's heads in and all hell breaks loose. We've noticed that everybody tends to act a lot better when, um, we pair bond with each other and get married. So, um, but then again, you're always fighting against that code, aren't you? So, um, I don't— good fuel for a discussion here. What do you guys think? Where's the happy medium here? If in fact we did take on my, um, my thought patterns, which tend to be, hey, it ain't for everybody, this marriage thing. Let's stop beating around the bush and let's stop kidding ourselves. Let's, let's push it on people who it would benefit. For the rest of them, let's, let's demonize them for not being married, for goodness sakes. Let's show that there are alternative ways of living and being a productive human. If we did that, would in fact chaos break out all to hell? And would we say, oh shit, never mind, back to the marriage game again for everybody? Don't know. Uh, you know what, I have a feeling though that time will tell, because I think that's exactly where we're headed to. So thank you guys so much for listening. If you like this, please let me know, and I'll be doing more of them as, uh, YouTube does its job of showing me some videos that they think I will enjoy. I will be sure and take some notes and do more of these videos. So thanks again, guys, for listening, and you have a great day.