Most women are straight—why do we pretend otherwise?

0:00Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd, causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami. They all heat the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger Donner's into the specimen. And Digger is gonna dig a top. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant. What would happen if I stopped moving? You stole! You freeze the dead! That's what! With great power, comes great deniability. I'm not the Earth, Danny. Digger, see the Traylon law. Only two years until we're second. Wait a door. Under 17, I'm in without parent. I'm Megan Murphy, host of the same drugs.

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3:14Megan Murphy.ca and clicking that shop tab. Thank you so much for supporting conversations outside the algorithm. Today on the show, I'm speaking with Phoebe Maltz-Boby, author of The Last Straight Woman. Phoebe, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. How are you? I'm well. Thanks for having me on. You are the author of The Last Straight Woman. Guilty as charged. Are you actually The Last Straight Woman? It's intended very literally, absolutely literal. Send out the fact-checkers. Yeah, very literal. It's you. It's the founder. You say in your book that you're reclaiming man-needing as a feminist pursuit. What does that mean? It means that what I've observed happening in the last several years is this kind of horse shoe theory, like horse shoe purity culture, but of the left. Basically,

4:18this idea that like it became very unpopular and very sort of conservative-coded to slut shame and all of this. But then this got kind of rebranded as a progressive thing of like that you shouldn't need a man, right? And when I say as a feminist pursuit, I mean, in the very basic sense of women as human beings with desires, most women are straight, most women are attracted to men. And if you say, well, like, but just don't be, I don't think you're saying something all that progressive. So, yeah, that's basically it. And I think that it became controversial in recent years to say what you just said, which is that most women are straight, the vast majority of women are straight. Yeah, I mean, it became controversial. It also, so part of the title, which the last straight woman, this is a lot of books, it's not the authors choosing, but like this was something

5:19I came up with because I just like it kind of as a joke, but also straight women started to be a smaller percent of the population because mainly so discourse wise, everybody is very fixated on like somebody who's queer identified and uses she day or demisexual, statistically really marginal. That's not a big phenomenon in the population. It's mainly women identifying this bisexual, mainly having male partners though. So yeah, there are fewer straight women in a sense, still the lots of straight women, lots of functionally straight women, even more functionally straight women. So yeah, it did become controversial and it's weird because sometimes people will say, like, ooh, this is controversial, like, but is it, though, like it's not actually all that hot button, but somehow, anyway, we'll find out. Yeah, and I remember being amused by that trend back in

6:24like the early to mid-Auts, maybe where these women would claim to be bisexual, but they'd be married to a man. And they can be, they can be, it's like so there are bisexuals married to same or opposite sex partners, and it's not that they're not bisexual. What I observed, and this is something I wrote about for the Globe and Mail, probably, I would imagine this was like after finishing writing the book before the book came out, was that I think how people defined bisexual had started to change. So you would get cases where a woman was sort like she would identify as bisexual because she wasn't opposed to waking up and being bisexual, which to me, that's not it, you know what they mean? Like you would have to actually be attracted to women and to men for that. Just anyway, but you know, people can say whatever they want, and if nobody's required to believe it. Yeah, and I mean, there is also connected to that. I mean, I do think that there was,

7:26I mean, you're right, I mean, okay, you could be married to a man and be bisexual, like you could be in your relationship with a man. Yeah, but there's also, you know, I remember, I think even when I was in high school, you know, like maybe in the sort of mid to late 90s and then for sure again, in the early odds, where like I do think that it was a trend to say you were bisexual and it became sort of a thing that girls young women did to be, you know, at the bar and to make out with another girl because they knew that would turn the boys on. Do you remember observing that? Yes, the I kiss a girl and I liked it, Erra. Yeah, although, I mean, that song obviously would have come after that era, but yeah, and I think in so far as that's what it was, or even when it was just like even if it's just to be trendy, I don't think that matters because it's like, I'll put it like this, I'm not a social conservative and I don't have any stake in what percent of the population has

8:31any sexual orientation, I really don't care. What I do think though, where it gets to be a problem, is in this kind of glib sanctimonious, just date women, just stop dating men, that you get from a lot of contemporary feminism, which I just think is, it ignores the reality of who most women are and who most women have the capacity to be attracted to. And there's been a lot of sort of pseudo science myth making about this that women could just date other women, that women all sort of, that women don't actually even really want to be with men, that it was all pure pressure. And I don't know, I've just been following this informally at first for a while and then, as research and just thinking like this does not square with my own experiences, I never felt pure pressure to like guys, it just, you know, it happened and here we are. Yeah, I think that squares with my experience as well. How old were you when you got your first

9:34crush on a boy I'm curious? So I write a little bit about this in the book. I went to an all-girl school. So my first crushes were on like guys from the local French school because that was co-ed and they would be on the same public bus that I was on in the mornings. This was in New York City in Manhattan. Or sometimes on teachers and I'm not like I've not in later life been a big sort of professor crush type person, but that would be like the only male around, you know. But my first celebrity crush was that there was a poster on the wall in my cabin at summer camp that had a Wayne's World poster and I found Dana Carvey is garth for some reason. Interesting when I was eight years old and I don't see it anymore, but I it sparked something. Yeah, yeah, how about you? One was your first crush. Oh, I've been obsessed with boys for so long. I

10:38remember having a crush on a boy in kindergarten and I remember like I have a very vivid memory of this for whatever reason. I remember when I was in kindergarten there would be like a portion of the day where you would sort of have free play and you get to choose which section of the play room you want to play in so you could go play with the blocks or go play with the dolls or go play with I don't know it was like I would always choose the boys toys like the boys section because I had a crush on this boy and my female friends at that age clocked it and made my room like you always go to play in the boys section. And because you have a crush on so and so and I remember being very embarrassed about the whole thing. Maybe that's why I remember it so clearly it was like a humiliation because I thought I was being subtle in my crush just hanging around. It's amazing. So I missed out on so much. I started co-ed school when I was 14.

11:40So the whole world of going to school with boys it's interesting. It must be interesting. Oh yeah I was always that was my whole world with being in love with boys and having crushes on boys in my class and then also being in love with like Joey from New Kids on the block and Charlie Sheen Michael J. Fox. I mean yeah yeah I mean trouble. Charlie Sheen I know. Well you know what I started with Garth right so I mean yeah yeah I liked I have some that were sort of sophisticated and retrospect like Duncan Sheep the singer I thought was very attractive and he's a minus. You can google him and he he was genuinely attracted and kind of a cool person to have a crush on but I also I liked Keanu Reeves and then I actually saw him in New York City when I was in grad school you know as he and I absolutely very close. No he was

12:45in a coffee shop I think while filming a movie and it was memorable it was memorable. I mean at what point do you think it became uncool to be straight like it became boring I suppose to just be a regular straight woman. Well so I saw all these kind of phases of this so first and this is something that I wrote about in like I think it was 2012 or 2013 or so for the Atlantic's website and like the kind of hand-wringing personal essay feminist personal essay by a woman who's getting married but she's not gonna wear a white dress it's very different. Her dress is gonna be a crew you know it's gonna be extremely different she's not going to be dieting for her wedding she will be trying to get strong via a diet of protein and weightlifter whatever and it just seemed all very silly and like oh there are also a lot of like I don't believe in marriage but I just want to get married for the benefits and by and while we're doing it let's have a large party and invite all of her

13:46friends and family because you know and I just I gathered a bunch of examples of these things and I'm sure alienated whoever was in those examples for decades to come by being snarky I was young and snarky now I'm old and snarky but yeah but it had nothing to do they weren't saying they weren't straight they weren't I was nothing like that they were just gonna be differently straight they were not like the other girls then I think it did start to be like this was a very easy way to kind of claim to be a bit different you know what I mean like to claim whether it was about wanting to seem marginalized or just have some kind of specificity I think what happened was we kind of lost well we lost two vocabularies we lost vocabulary for just sort of eccentricity that wasn't linked to sexuality and we lost the language of like an ally right you know like probably when we were growing up there such things like a gay ally you remember this sort of concept that just kind of one

14:47away and if you were the proverbial straight woman at the gay bar suddenly you were doing a cultural appropriation you weren't an ally you were invading a space not for you and I think what started to happen is you couldn't be a kind of more eccentric person or an ally without identifying yourself as like it just needed to be a tiny tiny tiny bit that could just put you over the edge into like over the barrier into queerness right and it didn't really matter in what way you didn't even have to specify you could just say queer and leave people afraid to ask of which sort you know and yeah I think the exact year I don't know I mean like late 2010s I'd say probably but but it came out of that earlier phenomenon that was happening just within straightness yeah and there is also this thing I mean you talk about this of course but I've noticed it for some time and it makes me really

15:53annoyed to be honest personally where people assume that female sexuality is fluid in a way that they don't assume that male sexuality is fluid you know of course there are some people who might relate to that descriptor I personally don't but I get tired of you know like my male friends telling me oh well you know women are different because you know they are they are they're also attracted to women you know like they also can appreciate women's beauty sometimes they'll say that which essentially to them I think means you know they're more inclined to have a threesome as like a big kind sorry I'm always like they're just doing that to impress you like they're just doing this to try to like turn you on because they you know want to hook up with you or whatever not that it's not hard to hook up with men but you know like men don't go around trying to hook up with

16:55women and impress women by acting like they would also be in the sexism. Well maybe after heated rivalry there was just that L I think it was article about the women leaving their husbands because they've watched because not because they the husbands because they the wives have watched heated rivalry and I'm sure somewhere that woman exists but but yeah I know what you're talking about this book the last straight woman is for anybody who has found that frustrating over the years because I debunk it basically it's based on pseudoscience on shadi or misinterpreted evidence and what I mean by that is a couple things so most famously there is Lisa Diamonds 2008 book female sexual fluidity this was controversial for reasons totally unrelated to the topic at hand that I'm going to bracket and I'll talk about that because it's sort of it's very I guess essentialist in ways and Mr. President my company formed the explosion on our react on October 2nd

18:01causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami they all heat the blame all me Tom Cruise is digger donner center this mess and digger is gonna dig a top from the director of bird man and the revenue what would happen if I stop doing you stole you freeze to death that's what with great power comes great deniability I'm not the earth then digger see the tree long on only years until we're second rated R under 1790 without parent Yamabah Resort and Casino at San Manuel is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage break taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th enjoy Ralph Barbosa's dry humor on September 18th and the 19th and don't miss Nikki Glazers on apologetic comedy November 19th tickets on sale now at Yamabah theater dot com only at Yamabah Resort and Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary you in must be 21 to enter 2008 was a long time ago and you can imagine you can fill in the blanks of why people would be

19:04annoyed at her you're no what was the book that it was it's called female female female sexual fluidity okay and it's very much about like the inherent sexuality of women versus men okay and what what she writes about is that she does a study of a hundred I believe it's a hundred people a hundred women and I think it's something like 90 of them are gay or bi-identified at the start of it and I think then like she later decides to add on approximately 10 straight identified women these are students in her gender studies class so basically she's barely looking at any straight women and she comes to the conclusion that female sexuality is inherently fluid not that there exists women like Cynthia Nixon in the world but that like that is just what it is to be female that this notion we have of sexual orientation is kind of a male-based one

20:10and her evidence for a straight women being sexually fluid is basically she arrives at it by defining desire so strangely it's like and I have a part about this in the book that it's basically like if you have ever had a close female friend that's you're on the spectrum towards lesbian it's like no that's just not how it works and so that's one piece of it I don't want to have sex with my friends well exactly so that's it it seems like and I quote that sex in the city where Charlotte really she really makes she makes these lesbian friends and she thinks they're fabulous and they're like but do you have sex with women she's like sexually and it's in the end but I really support you and they're like you're just you're not a lesbian like go away because I think that that is something that's been kind of lost but then so the other piece is these studies that

21:12have involved and there's always a new one um basically putting electrodes on the genitals and seeing when there's a physiological response and as the researchers themselves point out this is not actually telling you for women what women want sexually it's showing women's bodies preparing for a sexual situation and perhaps a violent one right so it's not that if you respond physiologically to a sexual scene that that's something you want you know what I mean like because it's sort of saying like well you can test what makes a man get hard and therefore like you could just trans those that on to women and it doesn't really work like that so those are two of the ways and then the third sort of logical fallacy rivers that you get a lot of researchers in this area very few so like my novelty here is being a straight woman studying straight womanhood because there aren't that many people looking at straight woman womanhood but

22:16of those they're very very rarely straight women or straight generally and what you get are women who say basically they're a bunch of instances of this that they have had relationships with men and women have chosen to only have relationships with women therefore and you can too you know what I mean and I don't think that makes any sense the fact that they have that capacity doesn't mean that all women do it doesn't make any sense that that would extend that way so basically what I'm getting at is no there is no official thing where women are sexually fluid meanwhile yeah male sexual fluidity diversity whatever you want to call it is probably understated precisely because a man you know has a microseconds worth of thought about another man and suddenly he's gay in our culture often so yeah I think it's just done if you know but I don't think there's something where women are

23:17inherently sexually fluid and just one more thought on this and I've been talking a while but it ends up screwing over lesbians as well because they're not really believed either and people think well you know it's nice that you're lesbian and all but female sexualities fluid why don't you just sleep with men too you know and that that's not so right right or maybe you just haven't met the right man right right i'm Megan Murphy you are still here which means and I hope I'm not being too presumptuous that you were enjoying this podcast I hope I'm right I work independently I produce and host this podcast all by myself this allows me to say what I believe and speak to whoever I want but the only way I can continue to do that is with your help I rely on paid subscribers and donors to sustain my work that's where you come in becoming a paid subscriber on sub stack allows you exclusive access

24:22to all my articles as well as early and exclusive access to all of my video interviews this means you can hear interviews just like this one before anyone else just head over to www.meganmerfi.ca to subscribe it's just five dollars a month to become a paid subscriber and it means everything to me if you're not quite ready to become a paid subscriber an even easier way to support this podcast is just by heading over to the same drugs podcast page on Spotify and clicking that follow button it's cheap easy and free and helps keep a good thing going thank you ever so much for listening and for your support now back to the interview I mean there are I do know quite a few women who were married to men and then at a certain point realized they were lesbians and divorced their husbands and became lesbians so I guess you know that is a thing that happens that probably contributes to

25:27this idea that women sexuality is fluid or that somehow you could just choose lesbianism if you wanted to and you know if you're a real feminist maybe you would sure um so what I think about that and I also write about this in the book is I think there is this myth that women do not feel anything sexually effectively that women that the default status of a woman is a sexuality so what you get are cases where a woman is sort of going going through to motions for however long however many decades with her husband with however many men prior to that whatever and not liking it not getting much out of it but not thinking she should be because she's been taught that women don't like sex and that sex is something you do sort of transactionally even within a marriage that this is just something to appease your husband and then they need a woman or maybe they made a bunch of women whatever and they're like wait a second actually i lesbian I think if there

26:35weren't this myth that women weren't experiencing desire there would be more of an understanding that if you're not attracted to any men maybe you're a lesbian maybe that's not just being a woman yeah this is something else that frustrates me a lot as a genuine straight woman who does like sex with men um I you know there's there's a variety of places that that kind of discourse has come from I have a long history in radical feminism um before becoming you know a far right whatever they say I'm now but you know like I I was very engaged with the radical feminist community and you know and in terms of my understanding of feminism a lot of it had come from second wave feminism and from radical feminism and within radical feminism there's a pretty large contingent of women who do say

27:37either you can or even that you should choose lesbianism and they'll call it political lesbianism somehow and that can mean you're a lesbian that's not having sex with women but you've chosen just to have a life without men or it can mean what you were talking about earlier which is that you know you've just been told and you've been taught that you must be heterosexual and actually you don't really like it and if you try this you'll realize that this is better yeah so this is something that sort of I should give my own um background which is that I have a PhD in French I did not do like gender studies in the sense of all of this and I self-taught basically in this area to do this book and just because this topic interests me and I was stunned to learn that political lesbian didn't

28:40mean what I had thought it meant which is like a lesbian out there marching you know that meant that you were politically a very not going to yes I just assume like you know a lesbian um in parliament or whatever you know in any Democrat whatever um you know and I was stunned to learn that it meant that you just were politically not going to have sex with men and you might never have sex with anybody else ever because it wasn't about and that just surprised me and I found interesting just in the way it does really like return to just like why is it bad if you're if you're told that for religious reasons you should be chased but if you're a political lesbian with zero interest in women that's progressive to me this just doesn't make sense and this pure pressure thing I just find so fascinating because it really does seem to be this lack of curiosity about other people's experiences because it just always reminds me of the idea

29:44that like the only reason anybody ever has alcohol is because they were pure pressured into it and that it could have nothing to do with the you know you don't have to have that glass of one you know it's exactly and I just it's just there's something about this that I'm sure it feels that way if you're not interested in men I'm sure that's what it looks like and I think what's been so interesting about this um one right about it is how much has been written from the perspective of women who just simply do not know what it know what that is to be that attracted to men and they don't get it and they don't see why other people would have trouble giving it up because or they don't know what it is to be attracted to men but also are at least as attracted to women so it's not a big deal you know and there's one example from this leads feminist thing I write about from I forget if it's the 70s or the 80s I'm sorry I finished the draft of book a while about this

30:50point but um where somebody saying that you could give up men that it's like switching like that it's like boycotting South African apples like that it would be similar to switching apple variety I was like it may be to you like what about to everybody else I don't even like it and it just it seems so odd to me that this has been absorbed as like a progressive message and yeah I mean the other piece is also I mean in terms of the timeline would be with me too and the idea that like men are just disgusting to women which that's that the whole other yeah I do want to talk about that aspect of the book as well I I want to I want to talk a little bit more about because this part this part fascinates me just because again I was engaged in these conversations and debates for quite a long time and I do remember going through a period where I thought maybe I should try to be a lesbian and of course I just couldn't do it because I have

31:53zero sexual interest in women you know like I'm not into the gynas and there but yeah it was around so many women who were talking about separatism you know like there should be these women only communities and you should only be around women and you should totally reject men from your life and I was like I don't want to reject men from my life I like men I like men as my friends I obviously like men as my sexual partners or you know my boyfriends and it's like it's such a strange form as you say of pure pressure and I I do think it probably does come from the kind of woman who really you know maybe really genuinely wants that life and can't imagine a woman that would not and so just kind of doesn't believe us I mean to me a woman only community sounds like hell that's

32:54the last thing I would ever want I'm like a woman only bar they're like heaven it would be a woman only bar with no men there and I was like why would I go yeah I mean that is something that I found very strange during me too and that's why me two figures into the book so I mean me two obviously many many different things I'm not gonna pick a part you know the good the bad the so-so the specific thing I'm talking about now is just this idea that the the typical woman wants all situations to be sort of lacking in any kind of sexual charge so not only is it a problem if somebody sexually harasses or assaults certainly at work it's a problem if there's forecation it's a problem if you know you go out at night with your friends and you meet a guy through your friends because your friends and common and isn't that a bit concerned you know what I mean like it got to be this kind of ever greater definition of the things that women would find

33:56intrusive and unwanted that just didn't really square with I think what most women actually want and I think that's why there has been so much backlash to this because it just didn't turn out to be accurate Mr. President my company for me the explosion on our rig on October 2nd causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami they all heat the blame all me Tom Cruise is digger donner center this mess and digger is gonna dig that's out from the director of bird man and the revenue what would happen if I stop you start you freeze the death that's what with great power comes great deniability I'm not the earth then digger see the tree long long only years until we're second rated are under 17 out of middle without parent this has never happened before five players 26 cases each one million dollars on the line for every player on September 25th Yamavar resort and casino at Sandman well makes history with deal or no deal live hosted by me howie mandel plane September for your chance to take the stage at

34:58Yamavar theater and answer the ultimate question deal or no deal details at Yamavar calm must be 21 please gamble responsibly right and I think part of what came out within that era and this even predates me to but this idea that women are being constantly sexually harassed like to be a woman moving about in the world means you're constantly being hit on and creeped on and sexually harassed and it's you know it's not just annoying but it's you know like it ruins your life you know you can't function normally in society because men are constantly praying on you and I remember hearing these conversations and being like I don't know where you live but Vancouver's not like like certainly in some countries it's like that and probably maybe in some states and cities

36:04there's more of that that happens but in Canada not so much Toronto it's everybody's under a parka you know what I mean yeah I mean yeah exactly but I grew up in New York City right so yeah there was more cat calling there certainly and I studied in Paris and it was weird because I was there when I was about 26 27 and at that point cat calling had kind of fallen off like I was very cat called from probably like 11 to maybe like early 20s and then by sort of mid late 20s not really but then in Paris it was constant and it had to do with like which area I was in of Paris whatever it's obviously very very location specific but what I think happened is yeah there started to be and yes it absolutely predated me too this thing of talking about being a woman as the state of being

37:05hit on constantly and this was supposed to be feminist to say and what I'm trying to do with this book is point out that for most of your life as female you are not being hit on constantly even if you are spectacularly good looking that's you know only going to be a certain number of years and for some people it's never right for some women that's never going to be the case and I think what's ended up happening is that in the name of feminism there's been this sort of definition of woman that's like an in-cell definition you know that saying a woman is a person man or man everywhere dying to have sex with and I'm saying that's not most women and indeed most straight women are going to be like more noticing of men than noticed and I feel like that's a kind of apparently a very radical thing to say and also it's gotten this weird thing where like sometimes people talk about this as being like a book for the ugly women like no it's a book for like nearly all women because

38:10very few women are 20 year old supermodels you know like even the 20 year old supermodels are only 20 year old super supermodels for so long well and being done isn't inherently a bad thing you know that's a whole other point too yeah I mean I for the most part like I like flirting like being hit on doesn't bother me for the most part unless it's a man who's super aggressive and predatory but for the most part most people know how to operate in a way where they can flirt and hit on you in a way that isn't pushy or scary or offensive yeah I think me too kind of encourage something that definitely predated it where you couldn't really talk about attracting male attention except in this vaguely humble brag way of describing it as creepy which is a problem because sometimes it is creepy and I think there should be a way of distinguishing like I'm a middle-aged lady I am

39:1543 years old I was at a three car stop not that long ago and a man and a kind of isolated spot and a man wasn't stopped talking to me and it was unnerving and I don't remember if I ended up like getting a taxi to go whatever it was it was unnerving I don't think it would be right to talk about a situation like that in the same way as like you know like another time even though I'm you know not 18 a young man at the gym said hi I'm so and so what's your name that's an ego boost you know what I mean that's good on me the street cart thing was very unnerving you know what I mean and I feel like it became the thing where you would talk about both of those types of situations in this kind of like horrified way and there I don't think they're quite the same right there's that trend of late of women posting on tiktok and instagram videos of their butts at the gym there's other videos of them

40:21working out but you know specific angles I would say and specific outfits I would say um and essentially complaining via look servia the text that they add to their videos about men looking at them at the gym so they're posed they've got their camera up they've got their little bra on and their butt scrunched bank shorts on and they're acting like oh can I just work out in peace all these men are staring at me or yeah there's a man there's a man looking at me the horror the horror I'm not on tiktok I think I'm probably not on tiktok either actually but I see this man this guy Joey swole posts a lot of these videos on twitter this is how I see them and I see them sometimes on instagram as well but it's like a real trend I think I know that because of the discourse because on x um there've been men who push back against it and being like I mean he's not doing anything to you he's not harassing you you're at the gym okay he looked at you

41:25yeah I mean this is what I'm trying to do with this book is just kind of like have women just think a bit more about what we want and a little bit less about who's looking at us and what it all means you know what I mean which is different I'm not saying to make light of things that are actually dangerous I'm saying just rather than thinking of female sexuality as that which and this is why I do consider it a feminist book rather than thinking of female sexuality as a thing that's inspired in a thing that men are noticing it's a thing that's happening within women and it's what's happening when women are noticing other people typically men in your introduction you say that most men are sorry most women are not particularly sexually appealing they don't get much attention from men they're mid and I think this actually flies in the face of what most internet men think the female experiences you know the other side of this kind of discourse that we've been talking

42:28about from women is that I think there's a lot of very online men who think that women are constantly being hit on and they're constantly getting attention and therefore it's so easy for them yes absolutely so going by well the best way I think this manifests itself is when I don't know if you've experienced this too but where you're having some kind of debate online and it becomes clear that the man you're having that argument with thanks you're 22 effectively and and in a way I want to be flattered you know but it's not that they physically it's not that it's seen a picture of me and think I look like I'm 22 it's that they cannot conceive of women as existing all earths middle age or you know even late 20s you know what I mean like it's all sort of there there are these women and they exist within this very limited age and hotness range and yeah yeah it's just I mean I thought this just about the whole in-sell concept that like yes I'm

43:35sure there are men out there who truly cannot find a woman at all but there are also men out there who are defining woman narrowly as particularly attractive women within a very narrow age range and that's who they're not able to get and I feel like that is yes what you get in this course this idea that like well if you're a woman there are these I mean there was this tablet article that I write about in the book from some a few years ago where it was William and I did record my own audiobooks so I at one point knew how to pronounce this last name it was like deraise so what's it's anyway whatever tablet article called unfuckable hate nerds and in it the writer saying that like any reasonably attractive young woman is basically fond over by men constantly given all kind of professional perks and all of this and there was this kind of big response to it I was not the only person responding being like how horrible looking must I be or must I have been in my 20s that this

44:39was not my experience and it seemed like he was describing being a supermodel and saying that's how it is if you're a not hideous young woman and that's just that's not it and yes there is a lot of distortion online because I think you can just only see what you want to see you know and I think you get a lot of men who they are not interested in women they're not sexually attractive so that they just have some kind of blinders on where they're not registering that is that it's existing yeah well and I think a lot you know what I keep realizing and re-realizing and then having to remind myself of is that you know like you say like if you're engaging online you're dealing with a lot of men who are very young like in their early 20s maybe even younger I don't know and spend way more time online and engaging online than they do engaging in real life so I'll realize one that when these men are talking about dating and male attention versus female attention

45:41and who's getting the most attention and who's so privileged in the dating world and who is not they're really just thinking about dating apps and what happens on dating apps they're not thinking about how normal men and women interact in the outside world and like you say they're assuming everyone is really young you know I'm 46 and I actually do I do me a lot of men and I don't have trouble meeting men but that's I've never have ever used a dating app it's that's just because I'm out in the world talking to people it's not necessarily because I'm you know walking down the street and men are just hurling themselves at me or whatever it's just you know like I have a social person so I talk to a lot of people and that's a foreign concept to them too you know they don't understand that anybody out of the age range you know let's say pre 25 years old is experiencing attraction and dating I was listening to sorry I'm kind of changing the subject a little bit mid sentence but I was listening to an interview that you did with Tara Henley I think

46:46and you were talking about Lindy West recent book where she comes out as you know she's in it when she had already come up but she's talking about her polyamorous relationship and why she chose it and she's so evolved and yada yada yada and she's talking about her marriage and why she got marriage and one of the reasons that she lists is that you know she wanted to show people that a fat woman could be could you get a husband essentially I'm sort of paraphrasing here and I I think like you was like fat woman get married all the time what are you talking about like yeah yeah my friend yes my friend and the podcast co-host cat was in field wrote a great thing about this about like sort of has she how she been to them all before I don't remember exactly how she put it I mean any chain restaurant no but like yeah and I do think this question of and I but I

47:47think this is an interesting question in its own right and it's a little complicated because Lindy West is a woman in her for these for self so I don't it's a little bit stranger in her case but for younger people they were home during lockdowns right they were their lives were very online by necessity like they were not allowed to go to school or socialize for depending where they lived different stretches of time they like really seems to me too although their technological and cultural reasons explaining this they really did become this big shift towards not only that it's possible to meet somebody on an app but that it's sort of kebhu not to that hitting on somebody in person even if you're very respectful even if you take no for an answer is suddenly like not cool anymore so I think like it used to be that a lot easier to be dissonance of people for being sort of too disembodied too online but I think that's just kind of where they're at and all

48:50that can be done is sort of to encourage gently push them outside you know and encourage them to not be that I will say like I mean I have kids they're an elementary school they are not very online they're not at all online so I do think it's possible that like there will be a generation now that's like not so like there may be enough pushback against the whole sort of screen thing that maybe maybe there's help I don't know I hope so I feel like I've heard inclings of this of you know people I guess you know teenagers who are sort of mocking they call them iPad kids you know the two online they grew up looking at screens and therefore they're kind of weirdos or losers or socially inept so hopefully that kind of bullying will work what do you make of this this thing that has been much talked about online and in the media

49:58wherein you know there's some kind of sex crisis with the younger generation like this idea that Gen Z isn't having sex so that predated COVID which is kind of interesting because the big Atlantic cover story and that was from 2018 that about the sex recession that maybe I think there has been this kind of this idea that like it's bad even before any pandemic stuff entered the picture it was like getting together with your friends unsupervised became like I think it really was phones that like suddenly you could be trapped everywhere you went like when I was in high school cell phones existed but certainly not smartphones not everybody had a cell phone um I remember going to like hate phones to say I'll be home later you know what I mean and it was just a different level of supervision and I think probably it's the sort of thing of always being

51:02tracked I would imagine has some impact on this I don't but I'm not like I guess this is where there are people who are on the kind of like people need to have more sex be people need to have less sex be like I think people should have as much sex as they want to be having I think if people are unhappy that's a problem and I think uh living life too much online it I think it sorry this is just coffee alerting me that it's gone off um yeah I think what is bad about the two online thing is that you end up with people with very distorted notions of like what it takes to get a mate or the sort of mate you could get so that could be anything from men who read enough discourse about how older men are inherently attracted to younger women and then they can't figure out why women in their twenties are not flinging themselves at these very ordinary men in their fifties you know what I mean

52:04and things like that yeah um so yeah I I don't know I don't I'm not like a sociologist of the youths um but when I go outside in the evening which is not that often they do seem to be out Mr. President my company for me of the explosion I'm not rigged along to per second causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami they all heat the blame all me Tom Cruise is digger goddess into the specimen and digger is gonna digger stop from the director of bird man and the revenant what would happen if I stop the story freeze the death that's what with great power comes great deniability I'm not the earth digger see the tree long line only years until we're second rated R under 17 I'm in without parent Yamavar resort and casino at San Manuel is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage break taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th enjoy Ralph Barbosa's dry humor on September 18th and 19th and don't miss Nikki Glazer's unapologetic comedy November 19th tickets on sale now at

53:06Yamavar theater dot com only at Yamavar resort and casino celebrating its 40th anniversary you in must be 21 to enter and having a nice time so I don't know hard to say. I had speed. Thank you so much for talking with me today I think this topic is super interesting and I appreciated your book exploring the long lost straight woman. Thank you for those listening Phoebe's book is the last straight woman on Desiring Men can you tell people where they can find you online and the book. Sure I'm on all well so first the book book stores everywhere at least in Canada everywhere. Indigo's small book stores you know Amazon usual places please get a coffee

54:10get a ton of coffees wherever you know and then as for me I am on substack in a couple of different capacities I have a newsletter and can just to say blog close reading the reruns I have a podcast with cat rose and field feminine chaos I'm also the opinion editor at the Canadian Jewish News so you can find my columns there once a week and podcasts as well. I'm on X as bovey malts I'm on blue sky as I don't remember what maybe maybe the same maybe not I'm I'm around I'm on Instagram as Phoebe Malts bovey yeah yeah I've got a lot of handles and I'm not always looking at all of these things but substack probably would be the best place yeah okay perfect and I'll link to many or all of these things in the show as well thank you so much yeah thank you so much for making the time it was great to talk with you I appreciate it thank you so great okay take care bye bye

55:15hi I'm Megan Murphy host of the same drugs thank you for tuning in I produce and host this podcast all by myself and rely on individual donors and subscribers as opposed to say the Russians to sustain my work this is all me and you the listener if you want to keep episodes free as well as free thinking please consider signing up on patreon at patreon.com slash Megan Murphy becoming a paid subscriber on substack at Megan Murphy dot c a or donating directly to support this podcast via paypal at paypal dot me slash the same drugs another great easy way to support the podcast is just by adding over to the same drugs podcast page on Spotify and clicking that follow button while there you can choose to subscribe to gain early access to episodes and video content as well as bonus episodes every little bit counts and ensures I can stay independent thank you so much for supporting conversations outside the algorithm

56:37you