 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Thursday night. Hope everybody's having a fantastic week so far. And you ready for the Iran Brookshow number four in a row? Hopefully, you're taking full advantage of all these shows. Francis says, why don't you bring back, I need a hero for one time, for old times sake. I need to see if I still got the rights to play it. So the problem with music played for show entries and stuff like that, you have to have the rights. I'll find out if I have the rights to play it. If I do, maybe I'll once in a while play the hero theme, particularly when the topic like today is about heroes. So today we'll talk about the revolution in Iran. I don't know if it's a revolution yet, it's hard to know exactly what to call it right now. The demonstrations, the fighting for freedom that is happening right now in Iran, we're going to talk about that. We'll also talk about masculinity and femininity, just because it got me thinking. And I've been reading a lot, I've been seeing a lot of substacks and people writing and talking about the crisis we have in this country around boys. And Bradley Thompson has talked a lot about this, but the crisis of, I think there really is a crisis of masculinity in some ways more than a crisis of what is femininity. And of course, the fact that the revolution in Iran is for the most part a women's revolution just brought this more to the forefront. So we'll definitely be talking about, we'll talk about that as well. We'll start with Iran and then we'll talk about masculinity. What is it, right? The two topics are not the same. The two topics, the topic of the revolution and masculinity are different topics that will be motivated differently and they'll have something different to say. But anyway, so we're going to talk about Iran. Those of you who, you know, want to ask questions, you can do so here on the super chat. We've always got a goal. I don't see Catherine today, so who knows how we'll do with the goal today without Catherine. It's rough. I won't be reminding you of that goal, but there is a goal of $650, so you can use the super chat for that. Thank you for all my supporters on Patreon, Subscribestar and PayPal for the monthly supporters. I really appreciate your support. Just quickly, just some updates on Elon Musk, you know, buying Twitter. We'll do this quick. He seems to be serious, so there seems to be serious negotiation going on. A lot of problems though. You know, he has to come up with $44 billion. Not easy when his stock is down quite a bit. Not easy. It turns out because some of his backers, I know a couple of the private equity, one of the private equity backers and one other backer have backed out. So he's got a bit of a hole to fail. And then the banks, the banks that have promised, I think, $11 billion of debt financing are struggling to justify this because they're going to lose a lot of money. Now they have contracts. I don't know if they can back out of the contract, but they have contracts. So we'll see if they'll be able to hold them to those contracts and we'll see if you'll be able to actually bring the banks on board. So right now, I think Musk is struggling with the fact that the price is so high, given the decline in technology stocks that has been over 20%, and yet he priced it at the peak. He's struggling with the fact that the banks, if they give him a loan, they can't repackage it and sell it, and they're going to be hesitant to provide him with the financing. And, you know, he's struggling with the price. But on the other hand, he signed a definitive agreement to buy the company, and if he doesn't go through with it, I have a feeling the court is going to force him to go through with it. So maybe there's some kind of out if you can't get bank financing. So it's going to be interesting. In the next few days, as a finance guy, I find this stuff interesting. You know, how much is the banks going to lose? You know, they might be losing a half a billion dollars if they do this deal. Will they hold on to the debt? Will they try to sell it? What exactly is going on? How does he find the capital? How does he replace the private equity funds that are not going to be there? Private equity companies may be holding back on capital given the market conditions. I think everybody realizes that at this price Elon Musk is overpaying for Twitter, given the decline in the NASDAQ in tech stocks. A lot of interesting stuff going on in the world right now, if you're a finance guy, and it's fun to watch. So I'll try to fill you in as we go along in terms of what's going on. Just a quick one on Elon Musk and Gary Kasparov. I just saw a tweet from Gary Kasparov. Elon Musk said, hey, what have you ever done except tweet to Gary Kasparov? Which is comical if it wasn't absurd, ridiculous, and unjust. And Gary Kasparov just put up, he says, you know, if only there was Twitter back in 2007 when he was dragged away by Russian police after demonstrating against the Putin regime being dragged away to prison. Of course, you know, he couldn't tweet back then about it. So I guess it doesn't exist. I guess Elon Musk doesn't know it exists because it wasn't tweeted. So I find Musk's back and forth with Kasparov very revealing about a certain aspect of Musk's character, which is clearly childish and ignorant. And you'd think he'd apologize after he'd realized, oh, God, I just, I said this about Gary Kasparov. It's how stupid I mean, but I don't think Musk is an apologizer. So anyway, it is what it is. Jeffrey, he says by 2032, I will be able to give more than $20 at a time. I'm going to count. I'm going to call you on that one. 2032, you know, that restaurant empire will be well established and, and, and yes, hopefully you can do more than the $20 and Apollo Zeus says masculinity. Thumbs up. We'll talk about that. Thanks Apollo Zeus and Brenda with 25. Ria says my car seat is worthless compared to the dollar. Sorry. I get it. I was just in Brazil. I have to say everything was so cheap in Brazil. It was amazing. Had phenomenal meals for a third of the price I would pay for them in the United States. So I enjoyed the strength of the dollar. I'm heading off to Europe. We'll have another an opportunity to spend my very expensive dollars on on food and other fun stuff. All right. Let's see. We want to talk about so I think we've talked about kind of the outline of what's going on. In Iran, it's good to remind you the Iranian regime which came to power in 1979 by deposing the Shah of Iran. It is a it's a theocratic regime. It's a regime that from the beginning has crushed its opposition. It's interesting. Again, I don't know how much you know about Iranian history. But when the Khomeini came to power originally, he allied himself with the left. He allied himself with the socialist left and he promised social reform. He promised a welfare state. He promised to help the poor. And many on the left, including many French intellectuals of the left supported Khomeini as he came to power. And the left, the secular socialist left was actually very powerful in Iran. And many of those students who were demonstrating, who were supporting the revolution or out there were not Islamist nuts. They were actually secular leftists. But of course, as soon as Khomeini achieved power, he immediately made sure to eliminate that element of you called it his coalition for power. And he basically killed, murdered many of these Iranian leftist leaders who had supported him and had helped the revolution come about in Iran. Khomeini instituted an authoritarian dictatorship, a theocracy, a theocracy where he, Khomeini, was the supreme leader who was supreme leader for life. There were nominal elections, but the candidates for the elections had to be approved by a council of clergymen, a council of Islamic imams. This is still true to this day. So only those who were approved by the religious authorities could run for president. They were chosen to election. There was a parliament, again, where all candidates were approved by the theocrats, by this council of clergy, by the council of imams. And for 40, what is it now, 43 years, this has been one of the most brutal, one of the most authoritarian, totalitarian, one of the most oppressive barbaric regimes on planet Earth. They have, you know, tortured, imprisoned thousands and thousands of people. They have murdered. They used to actually have in their budget, in their official budget, they used to have a delight item called terrorism, international terrorism, where they would fund international terrorist groups around the world. After they were sued in the United States over terrorist activities, they took that line item off, but they have been the largest fund of terrorism in the world for decades since really the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. Iran has been, and you know, George Bush called it the axis of evil. It has been the most, I would say, evil regime in the world for the last, over the last 40-something years. I mean, it's a close call with North Korea, I guess. There are no, there's no freedom of speech. There's certainly no freedom of religion. There are no economic freedoms. Basically, the country is a totalitarian, authoritarian nightmare, and it has been so for 43 years. 43 years in which the West started out by loving, you know, many Western intellectuals really admired the Islamist ideology partially because of its implicit socialism partially because it was a rejection of the Shah, which was viewed as a right-wing authoritarian, and the Shah of Iran who was there before the Revolution. And then later on, as the West might have condemned some of the so-called excesses of the administration, they continued to negotiate, they continued to trade, they continued to treat Iran as a regular member of the so-called global community, world community. Iran has often been, I guess, a chair of the Human Rights Commission of the UN. The Iranians have been treated just as any other country in the world. In more recent times, there had been sanctions against Iran, sanctions go in and out over time. The sanctions were imposed in Iran primarily because there was evidence that the Iranians were developing nuclear weapons, and they were hiding this fact and not allowing the various regulators of nuclear power to come in and check. So sanctions were imposed on Iran, but then there were negotiations, sanctions were lifted somewhat, and then were imposed again, and on and off we go with no principle, no guiding principle, no idea of what you're dealing with. And it continues today. Every few years, every few years, there is an attempt within Iran to reject the authoritarian regime, to reject the totalitarianism imposed on them, whether it is a student rebellion, as there was in the late 2000s, early 20s, particularly during the Obama years, or whether it is economic, as it was during the Trump administration, where millions and millions of Iranians went out into the street, I think it was 2019. Every few years there is, and of course there was, there were demonstrations early on in the Khomeini administration in the early 1980s, early 1980s, those were crushed brutally. The grandmothers of the kids that are demonstrating today were killed and brutalized and imprisoned. Back then it was already very much a woman led kind of movement, partially because a lot of these religious Islamic dictates affect women more than they do men. And then every time there's been an uprising, the authorities let it go on for a few weeks, and then they clamp down, they shut them down, they kill as many people as necessary, they are brutal. In 2019 it is thought that about 1500 Iranians were killed in the streets. And generally the West's attitude towards all of these has been, you know, mealy-mouthed, general vague notions of support, and at the same time business as usual, negotiating, buying oil, treating Iran as again a civilized part of the world community, or in an era of sanctions, continuing to deal with them while Donald Trump in both sanctions in Iran took the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal, which was a good thing. He then spent most of his administration's time in terms of dealing with Iran and trying to get them back to the negotiating table because Donald Trump is the great negotiator and he thought he could cut a better deal. So there was no, there was none of this idea of we don't deal with evil, we don't negotiate with evil, any deal we have with these guys would be a disaster. And indeed when the 2019 demonstrations were happening in Iran, it wasn't like the Trump administration was cheerleading and supporting them and maybe sending them, I don't know, stealth weapons or whatever. You know, the easiest best thing for America would be an internal revolution in Iran to get rid of a regime, a regime that is not just being hostile to its own people, but a regime that's being hostile to Americans, being hostile to American interests, but more importantly hostile to American lives. This is a regime that has killed Americans over and over and over and over and over again. And we do nothing about it. We do nothing about it. And then we don't support the demonstrators who could actually save us a war by actually getting rid of this regime and replacing it. But no, we don't want to take too strong of a moral stance on issues like this. Anyway, one of the requirements of Sharia law as interpreted by the Mullahs in Iran is that women should not be seen in public exposing their hair, their, you know, their hair, their head, they need to be covered. They don't require the covering of the face necessarily, but they do require the covering of the head and the hair. It turns out, this is, I think, based on scientific evidence that the Mullahs and the sheiks in Iran have referenced, that when men see women's hair, they go nuts, their sexual appetites go through the roof, and they tend to rape those women. And of course, it's not the men's fault. They're just like that. You know, we're just wired to rape and pillage as soon as we see a strand of a woman's hair. So it is the women's responsibility to cover up as to prevent us animals as we are from going berserk and raping them. Now, you might laugh at all this. You might think this is pretty ridiculous. But this is the way they rationalize this. And by the way, it's the way ultra-orthodox Jews rationalize the same thing. You know, you're not supposed to shake hands with a woman. You can't even sit on a sofa with a woman. And it's not because of anything the woman has done. I mean, there is some issue about women maybe have a period and therefore they were unclean and you don't want to touch a woman who's, quote, unclean. But mostly it's to prevent men from doing something they might regret because they touch the woman or because they saw a strand of her hair or God forgive an ankle or knee or something like that. Yeah, ultra-orthodox Jews, ultra-orthodox. No, orthodox a little better, but even orthodox Jews are pretty crazy about this stuff. It's the ultra-orthodox Jews who have their women cover their hair as well. They always have a kind of, they either wear a wig. When you see ultra-orthodox Jewish women not without a hair covering, they're wearing a wig. So they have to have some covering. Anyway, the whole thing is bizarre. But a lot of it has to do with this notion of men, of women as being fundamentally seductresses and women fundamentally bringing out the sexual in the man, which I guess is true, some men anyway. But women being the seducer and men being unable, weak to resist the temptation and goes back to the Garden of Eden where the woman is seduced by the snake to eat the apple, Eve and then she goes to Adam and he can't resist. He'll charm and eats from the apple and commits this great sin of knowledge. So it all goes back to Eve. The Garden of Eden is after all the founding myth of so much of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition. But yes, so in Iran women have to cover up. They have to go to school, cover it up. When they go to work, they have to be covered up. When they walk in the streets, they have to be covered up. Now, there's no question that Iran has a pretty modern youthful culture. Their parties, they're often held by senior people within the state where women are dressed sexually and women dress in all kinds of ways that are not reflective of this. But that's done so-called in secret. That's not official. That's in the underground. And theoretically, the punishment for that is severe. So a woman by the name of Masa Amini who was occurred was not clear exactly how much of her hair she was revealing, but she obviously did not wear the book according to the way the authorities would require it. She was arrested. She was beaten. She was murdered by the state authorities. That murder has sparked a whole series of protests around Iran. In the beginning, it was primarily around her murder and it was primarily around the idea of a booker. And it was primarily women demonstrating against the nature of this regime as oppressing them. But this group and women and girls, and you can see stunning videos of girls from Iran demonstrating at schools and universities and in the streets where they're taking off their bookers. And now it's beyond just let me wear what I want to wear. How dare you murder a young woman she was 22 for showing a little bit of hair? How dare you? Now it has become death to the tyrant, death to Khamenei, the successor supreme leader to Khamenei, death to the regime. It has now become at least a call for revolution, if not a revolution itself. It has become about liberty, about freedom, more than just what women can wear, what women can say. It has become what we as individuals can and cannot do. It has become about individual liberty. And again, primarily women are demonstrating, primarily girls are demonstrating. I mean the courage of 15, 16, 17, 18 year old girls in high school taking off their hijab on video, sometimes cutting their hair, yelling and screaming about the need to change a regime. We're talking about a totalitarian regime, a regime that will kill you. And indeed, seeing a number of videos of 15 and 16 year olds who have been killed, who the regime had taken into 15, 16 year old. The story is, I mean it's hard to verify these things, but the story is that she was arrested, raped repeatedly, beaten to death and buried. Her body was never recovered by her family because the regime did not want the family to see the brutality with which she was treated. We're talking about a 15 year old girl. Think about those of you who had kids, your daughter. Think about your sister, think about you yourself. 15 year old children are being raped, brutalized, murdered, because what? Because they want liberty, because they want freedom. Girls are disappearing regularly. Hundreds have been killed already. And girls are disappearing regularly. Many girls are protesting but with their backs to the camera so that the camera doesn't capture their face because the regime takes those photographs, finds them, arrests them. And as I said, treats them with the worst kind of brutality possible. I mean, I know why anybody is surprised here that they would be raping. After all, they're just doing what men do when women tempt them. That's their ideology. That's their belief system. That is the barbarism, the sheer barbarism of dogmatic religious belief, the sheer barbarism of Islam in Iran today. This is a barbaric ideology, a barbaric religion. And these girls are getting killed. These girls are getting raped. These girls are disappearing. And what is the world's attitude? I mean, there's a little bit of condemnation here and there. Some French actresses have gone on video and cut their own hair in solidarity. And I appreciate that. And that is good for them. That brings attention to the issue. But where are the world leaders? Where's Macron? Where's whoever runs Germany these days? Where's Joe Biden? Where's the Republicans? Where are the voices of the political leaders of the world condemning this, telling Iran to go to hell, shutting them down? I think the Biden administration today put sanctions on seven Iranian officials. I mean, what does that even mean when we've had sanctions on Iran for decades? And I don't know. I'm not saying we should go to war over this. But where's the moral outrage? Where's the bully pulpit? Where's the... We won't have anything to do with Iran. We won't have anything to do with the regime that treats its own people this way. Where are the Republican women? Where are the leftists? I mean, I have to say that looking at Twitter, and now this is not scientific, this is me just scrolling down Twitter, I barely see any condemnation from anybody famous. And if I do see condemnations from the left, not from the right, and it's from women, not from men, what the hell? Where's the outrage? Where is the condemnation? Now, I get it. So, Larry Elder in California, he used as an opportunity to slam the leftists, the Democratic leftists who are not speaking out. What do they call those four, the four congresswomen? What do they call them? Not the gang, the something, you know? And they're not condemning it. So, Larry Elder used this to slam them for not condemning it. But okay, fine. But where are the Republicans condemning this? Where's everybody? Where are the voices? The squad, the squad. I get it that the squad is not going to condemn this because the squad are half of them are Muslim and sympathetic to Islam. But where's everybody? Why isn't Congress outraged? Why are political leaders speaking up? Biden doesn't want to piss off the Iranian regime too much because he's negotiating a treaty with them, a deal, right, around nuclear weapons. Really? Talk about disgusting and offensive. This is a regime in response to what they're doing right now. Any decent half human political leadership would say, we don't want to have anything to do with you. We're not going to negotiate anything with you. We're not going to negotiate a nuclear deal with you. Go to hell. And by the way, if you start building nuclear weapons, we will bomb them out of existence, whatever the cost. But no. The fact is that we live in a world where if you don't slot it in nicely into left or right issue, nobody cares. Nobody cares. I mean, if this was leftist doing it to conservatives, everybody would be outraged. If this was conservatives doing it to leftists, everybody would be outraged. But it's not clear. It's Islamists. And of course, nobody wants to criticize religion. Everybody's afraid of criticizing religion, particularly the religionists, who should be the most outraged people of all, right? Supposedly, they're supposed to be moral. They're supposed to want to protect women. Evangelicals, Catholics. Where are they? Evangelicals and Catholics. Where are they? Condemning this to hell. I don't see it. I scan Twitter. I scan Twitter every day. I'm looking for it. Where's Elon Musk? Where's anybody? Anybody? A voice. A voice to defend these young girls. 15, 16, 17, 18-year-olds and women. Todd, thank you. Todd, $500. Wow. That's amazing and generous. He says, thank you for my three daughters. I am disgusted. Good for you for being disgusted. We should all be disgusted. And we should all be demanding, well, on every issue, but better from our political leaders. It is so disheartening. I mean, I get it that nobody did anything about Hong Kong. I kind of get it. It was China. They've got nukes. They're a powerful country. We trade with them and we don't want to piss them off too much. It was stealth and they didn't rape and pillage and kill people. They just took away their liberties quietly, quickly, effectively. But Iran, why does anybody care? Why is anybody afraid of them? It truly is one of the most, if not the most barbaric regimes on the planet and we don't speak up. I encourage you to watch the videos. Go to Twitter. Find the videos of the demonstrations. Like them. Retweet them. Show your support by liking and retweeting and getting them out. I'm liking and retweeting a lot of the videos. And I hope when you see them on my stream, you'd like and retweet them and keep them going. There are all kinds of videos. I mean, the videos of the morality police in Iran trying to arrest somebody and a woman kind of stepping in and saving him and him running away. And other men come and help him out and fight with the police. There's some real examples of some fantastic acts of courage that are showed in these videos. There's these women who are in the streets, in their schools, taking off their hijabs, cutting their hair and yelling to end this regime and death to the dictator. It's so inspiring to see young people standing up for their own freedom, for their own liberty. You know, we are so spoiled in a sense in the U.S. We take our liberties. We take our freedoms of granted. We quibble and argue about the smallest of things. I mean, often important, but the smallest of things. And here are women fighting for the real, for actual elementary, the basic freedoms. We should support them in any way that we can. And one easy way is to like and retweet the videos and the expressions of their courage. It's inspiring. So I encourage you to watch it. You know, what you're going to see in the next few days, I expect, is a lot of death. It was already 80-something people were killed in, you know, I think in a province in Iran where the security forces opened fire on a demonstration. I think man are going to join the demonstrations, but people are going to just get killed. And it's going to be really, really, really, it's going to be horrific. And we'll see. The good thing is that in spite of the Iranian regime trying to block the Internet in Iran. I did get last time I talked about this and I said Iran is shut down the Internet in Iran. Iran has no access to Internet. Somebody sent me an email from Iran. He says, I listened to your show, Iran. And you usually wait, but unless you were wrong, we all have VPNs. We figured out ways around this. We have servers. We have this. We have that. We are getting the Internet. We're getting stuff out there. And of course, these videos are testament to the fact that people are using their phones, taking videos, putting them up online, finding ways to put them up online. And it's an amazing thing. And, you know, their courage is amazing. And it's going to get very, very brutal out there. So it would be amazing, amazing if this turned into a real revolution, if this regime was overthrown. I just don't see it. When you go back and you study what happened during the Shah, three things happened with the Shah that made his overthrow inevitable. One, he was weak. He came out and said, I understand the demonstrators. They've got a point. And then he didn't really, you know, push out the security police to brutalize them. So he was weak. Second, oil workers in the oil fields of Iran stopped working in support of the Islamic revolution, right, in a position to the Shah. So the money spigots were shut down. There was no oil produced. Third, the markets, not financial markets, but the markets, the physical markets where trade has happened, the merchants shut their stores. They went on strike in support of the revolution. Today in Iran, the oil fields are controlled by the military, by the national guard, by the Iranian national guard, Republican guard. It's hard to believe that they will go on strike. The consequences to them would be horrific. The marketplace is religious. The merchants are religious. There's no indication that they're going to join this. This is primarily young people. This is the next generation. This is their time. But do they have the capacity, the political leverage? Do they have support within the military, within the police, within somebody in government? Is there support somewhere that can help overthrow the regime? I just don't know. I just don't think so. I think this will be another wasted moment. And of course, given that they're not getting the support, they're not getting the encouragement, they're not getting the moral encouragement from the West. It's hard to see. It's hard to be hopeful for them. It looks pretty futile. It's their future. They'll fight for it. But how long, how much, how many people have to die? All right. So I thought it was interesting that this was a, to such an extent, a women-led revolution, and to a large extent, a very young women-led revolution, a girls' revolution, a revolution of teenagers from the high schools. They are the leading voices. They are the inspiration of this. And they are also the victims of this. So of the response of the regime. Let's see how it plays out. I wish them well. I can't think of a better outcome on the global scene than this. This is, in some ways, would be more inspiring than the Ukrainians beating the Russians. The only thing I think bigger than this would be student rebellion in China overthrowing the Chinese regime. But yeah, don't hold your breath. Don't hold your breath. All right. So now let's shift topics to the issue of masculinity. And here I know I'm going to get into trouble with somebody, I'm sure. But what the hell? Right. So, you know, I read a lot. I see a lot of stuff about, you know, the problem with boys. We hear a lot from the left about toxic, so-called toxic masculinity. We hear a lot from the right about men have to be men again. And we get a lot of men, you know, hating on women because they don't get them. They don't understand them. So you have insoles. You have men going their own way. You have a whole manosphere. I mean, a really huge issue is made of masculinity in men and the inability to relate to women these days. Colleen says, thanks for taking on topics that you know will not raise as much money. It is very important to talk about it. Thank you, Colleen. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the support. That's $100. Thanks for taking us over our goal today. So thank you. And so I've been thinking a lot about this, and I know I've talked about it in the past, and we've talked about it here on the show a number of times, many times maybe. But I wanted to bring up, and I've talked about this aspect, but I want to bring it up more explicitly. If you wind back the clock 200 years or 1,000 years or 2,000 years or 5,000 years, it doesn't really matter. The pre-capitalist world, the pre-capitalist world, there was a clear division of labor between men and women. It was just unequivocal. Men are generally stronger, they're generally suited for manual labor. And survival, the survival of the family, the survival of women, the survival of children was dependent on these two aspects of masculinity of men. Men, their ability to do physical labor and their ability to fight, their ability to go to war and fight, without those two, humanity just disappears. It doesn't exist. Women's responsibility, therefore, were primarily to take care of the home, to take care of children, to manage those part of the household that did not require primarily physical labor. But the reality of a few hundred years ago was, the reality in which human beings, if you will, evolved, was that physical labor was the way we survived. Physical labor was the only labor, or the dominant labor. Physical labor was how we made a living. There was just no other thing. We were either farmers and out in the field using physical labor or workmen or small industries, the wrong word, but artisans. And it was all involved physical labor, hard physical labor, swinging axes and hammers and not suited for a weaker sex. And therefore the divisions were very clear. And once in a while, a woman, you know, maybe was interested in arts or was interested in science or was interested in intellectual activities. But the scope and the realm of these intellectual activities was so narrow, was so small. Troy, wow, thank you. Five hundred Australian dollars, thank you, really appreciate that. The scope of such activities was small for everybody. There were just not a lot of men doing intellectual activities, not a lot of women doing intellectual activities. Because of that, and of course, men were pretty protective of those jobs and they kept women out. So women, again, stayed at home. There was that movie about a woman in Venice who, the only way she could engage with intellectual activities, the only way she could escape kind of the model of just being stuck at home and having a boring life was to become a courtesan. It was to become a prostitute in a high-end prostitute. And they were expected to be able to entertain men. And, you know, this is in rich Venice. And therefore she was a woman of letters. The movie's called Dangerous Beauty. And it's about this amazing woman who does that. She's willing to engage in prostitution, not the most pleasurable, I'm sure, profession, in order to be able to study, to learn, to be exposed to books, to have time to do all that. You can't do that on the farm. And again, the same with men. Men had no time for these kind of pursuits because they were busy farming, or they were busy in whatever activity they were in. That was all physical and almost nobody knew how to read or nobody knew how to write. And 95% of the population were physical manual laborers. And everything was clear-cut. And what did it mean to be masculine? It meant to feed your family, to provide. We still get that, right? Men are the providers. It meant, and it meant to be physically capable of defending your family, of going to war, of not just defending yourself, not defending your family at war, but defending your family from, I don't know, cooks and criminals and whatever. This is a time of anarchy. This is not exactly a time of strong police forces and a strong judiciary system. So again, the roles of what it was to be masculine, what it was to be feminine, and what the responsibilities were, and what the assignments were, and what the jobs were was clear-cut. The split was easy. And it's hard to object to that split. I mean, the feminists can talk about the patriarchy all they want, and the patriarchy was around for a reason. But capitalism changed all that. And certainly capitalism in the 20th, in the 21st century has changed all that. Because what has capitalism done? Capitalism has liberated us from manual labor. Capitalism has made it possible for us to earn a living from thinking without relying on muscle. And indeed, most of us men who want to build muscle have to go to the gym, because we're not going to get it at work. Not standing in front of the computer. I'm standing, by the way, not sitting. So what really liberated women is not both control, although that had a big role to play ultimately. What liberated women was changed everything, what changed everything. And everything about the relationship between men and women was the fact that muscle no longer matters. It just doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter that much when it comes to warfare. Because warfare today, and this is why women, it's reasonable to have women in the military. I'm not a big fan of it, but it's reasonable to have women in the military. Why? Because they don't have to rely on wielding a sword. They can take a, you know, an M16 and shoot the bastard. And to pull a trigger, you don't have to be that strong to fly an airplane, to fly a helicopter, to drive a truck, to do the many, many things that you do in the military. You just don't need as much muscle as you did a thousand years ago. Now it's mostly about logistics. It's about weapons systems. It's about smarts. It's about, you know, piloting drones. You don't even have to get into an airplane. You can pilot a drone. Yeah, good point, Richard. Women can pilot drones. And of course, once capitalism makes it possible to earn a living by using your mind, not your muscle. And actually earn a better living by using your mind than using your muscle. Suddenly, it's not clear that the man must provide. Why? Women have brains, minds. Women can reason as well as men on average, right? It turns out that the average is very similar. Men, there's more dispersion. They're more brilliant geniuses and they're more really, really dumb at dumb people. Women, it's the distribution is smaller, at least around IQ for whatever it's worth. I'm not a big supporter of that kind of stuff anyway. But as soon as both men and women can make money, a lot of money, more money than anybody could dream of a thousand years ago from using their minds. And war becomes remote, not physical, or less physical at least. Then what, and this is the challenge of identity, women, it's easy for them, right? But I can use my mind. This is great. How can I pursue? I can now pursue intellectual pursuits. I can become an artist. I can become a program. I can do what I want to do. I can get the job I want to get. I can use my mind. I can make my own living. I can be independent. I can be my own person. I'm not dependent on anybody. It's what a boon to women this is. But for men, it's now a challenge. What is your role, Qua man? What do you do with it? You no longer the provider, because a woman can provide for herself. If you're not longer the defender, what good is all that testosterone and all that aggression? So, you know, there's a real crisis, and it's not a crazy crisis. It's a real crisis, just a crisis that men need to come to terms with and need to think it through. So, what is left of masculinity? If masculinity traditionally has been considered, I don't know, marked by a certain stoicism, removal from emotion, competitiveness, dominance, aggression, well, maybe masculinity needs to be reoriented. Rand talked about masculinity as the orientation towards reality, conquering reality. Well, conquering reality is still out there. It's still an issue. It doesn't require physical force anymore. It doesn't require muscle anymore. But it does require a certain attitude. An attitude that generally men have more than women. An attitude about entrepreneurship, about risk-taking, about a willingness to take on huge risks to change the world. No longer in the realm of the physical, now in the realm of the intellectual. And men need to find how to express that, how to find that within them to preserve their masculinity. Because look, the reality is, the fact is, the men and women are different, and they'll always be different. We cannot experience the same things. We have a different biology. The idea that biology doesn't have a psychological impact or a temperament impact or impact on how we think about the world or how we feel about the world is absurd. Of course, it has a difference. And it's part of the reason why even trans, when they do surgery, they can't really be the other sex. Because they can't really experience the other sex. Women have periods. Women have different hormones. Women can give birth. These are things that change your perspective on the world. And they're things that make it impossible for a man to really fully appreciate what it is to be a woman. Now, it's absolutely true that as the world has become more dependent on the intellectual, as the world becomes more dependent on the mind, on reason, these differences between men and women manifest less in the workplace, manifest less in much of life, but they still manifest themselves. They're still different. And the fact is that the differences between men and women are not good versus bad. That is, they don't represent a value system. You can't say masculinity, good, femininity, bad, or the other way around. They are what they are. And what we need to do is have a better understanding of what they represent, particularly in a modern world, particularly in a world guided by reason rather than a world guiding by muscle. What does it mean to be masculine? What does it mean to be feminine? And this is where thought needs to be put, and psychologically we need to figure this out. How do these differences between men and women manifest themselves in relationships where men and women maybe make the same amount of money or women make more than the men, or both have jobs, or both do the same kind of jobs? I don't know, and I don't have necessarily the answers. I think issues related to risk taking on entrepreneurship are one way in which these men manifest themselves. There is still something about men that is protective of women. There's a desire to protect that comes from this idea that we are stronger, we are responsible somehow. And that needs to be respected. But we're not in a position to protect anymore. That protection is not necessarily needed anymore. So how it actually plays out, it's tricky, it's interesting, it's fascinating, it's fun to explore these kind of ideas. It's not threatening, it's not dangerous, it's not scary. And what we need is to have a real conversation about these and bring in real experts who really know about this stuff. And of course, the most important thing to remember is no matter the boy or the girl, the man or the woman, they're all individuals. They get to manifest masculinity and femininity in different ways, a different extent. They are feminine men and masculine women. And there's nothing wrong with that. We need to stop trying to conform all men into one model and all women into a model or all men and women into the same model. It's nonsense. We're individuals. We're different. It's a beautiful thing. And as individuals, we need to, yeah, we need to introspect, we need to look inside ourselves. We need to find as men what that experience of being a man means, what it applies to, how it manifests within us as individuals, you as an individual, and the same for women. They need to do the same thing. But it's hard to do in a politicized environment like we have today. We can't talk about these issues. Left and right won't allow you to talk about these issues. I mean, I see the right constantly now making fun of effeminate men. You know, Tucker Carlson celebrating the fact that the Chinese authorities are banning effeminate men from being on television. I mean, that's sick. So if we're individuals, a fundamental basic moral code is the same for men and women. The virtues are the same. The values are the same at the moral level, at the level of morality. But because we're individuals, they're going to manifest itself differently in choices of professions and choices of sexuality and choices of just clothes and choices of lots of things. So, you know, so I think the point is that I think it's important for everybody to realize how the shift over the last 100 years in particular is a real shift. It's not a pretend shift. It's not made up. It's real. Men are struggling with it, I think primarily because they're being raised to be wimps. They're being raised not to think about their masculinity. They're being raised to suppress the natural, you know, natural tendencies that they have as men, as boys, to be a little aggressive, to be risk-taking. There's no risk. Helicopter parents don't allow for risk. And there's no aggression. Aggression is always bad, even wrestling it out with a bully once in a while, which might be good for a guy, for a boy, is not allowed. Tomboys for girls are not allowed, because obviously they must be trans if they're behaving like a tomboy. I mean, the whole debate about women and men has gone nuts, but it has been for a long time. It has been for a long time. And out of this has come what looks like a whole generation of men who are confused. They don't know their place in the world. They don't know what it means to be a man. They don't know what it means and how to manifest it in a modern world and how to use it and how to relate to women who are now... They're equal in the workforce because the workforce is about the mind. One of the things that is happening is men are not going to college. And partially it's because I don't think they understand their role in the world. They don't know how they belong. They don't know what they should be doing. They have no conception of self and no conception of self as a man. And I watch all these people talking about dating and how to pick up women and how to be masculine and pick up women. But it's not about dating and picking up women. It's about living with yourself. It's about knowing how to live with yourself, how to guide your life, how to establish your life, how to make something of your life. Dating will flow out of that. But if you don't make something of yourself, if you don't have the self-esteem that comes from making something of yourself, making something of your life, then yeah, dating is going to be a challenge. So I think it was inevitable to have a crisis because capitalism threw us into this very, very quickly without us really having an opportunity to think it through. But the left's insanity around gender identity and around previously it was about there are no differences between men and women now. The differences, but you can change from one to the other, all kinds of stuff like that. So on the one hand, they have thrown it for a loop. And then on the other hand, the right being reactionary, the right kind of longing for the role of a man from a hundred or a thousand years ago, both of those views are so corrupt and so wrong. And what hasn't, we haven't had an opportunity to do is really rethink it all, taking into account our nature, rethinking what it actually means to be a woman, to be a man, how we relate to one another, and how we make the most of our lives for ourselves as having a particular sex. So yeah, I think it's a massive, I think it is a significant challenge. It's how do we figure out how to raise boys to be masculine without the expectation that they're going to use their muscle for some physical labor, without the expectation that they are going to have to be the protectors in some grand scheme of things? How do they manifest their masculinity differently? In what ways? I'm convinced it can be done again. I have a sense that it's around entrepreneurship and it's around risk-taking. But whatever, that conversation, that discussion, that debate, that thinking needs to happen. And not enough of it has happened. All right, that's my spiel. Do with it as you will. It's just the beginning of a conversation because I'm not offering any answers here. I'm really saying these are the kind of questions that need to be asked and we need to go search for these answers. All right, let's see. Let me just thank you again. Let me thank Todd. $500, that's fantastic. Let me thank Troy, who, on a regular basis, gives us $500 Australian every few weeks. Colleen, thank you for the $100. So thank you all for huge support today on the show. It's greatly, greatly appreciated. All right, let's jump into some super chats, particularly ones that are relevant to what we're talking about. I observed that part of the culture dealing with this has sex as defining anatomy and gender as a set of traits that society deems masculine or feminine. I don't know if I agree with that, but those concepts are fundamental to identifying as man and woman. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I do think gender is more associated with the traits that are associated with masculine or feminine. But again, I'm not an expert on these things and I haven't really thought them through. You need somebody who really can delve into psychology, the psychology of sex, the psychology of gender, and really give us a better indication of how to deal with these concepts, of how to deal with these ideas. And particularly in a world where, again, I think because muscle matters so much less, I mean, the main reason for muscle today is health, you know, is aesthetics and health. The reason I work out is because it's healthy for me. It's not because I need to fight the bad guys. It's not because I need to fight the monsters. It's not because I have to go and, you know, and build a hut tomorrow. It's just because it's healthy. Arguably, it might be even fun. And, you know, there's an aesthetic aspect to it, but that's it. All that wasted muscle. It used to be, it used to be that the muscle was required for survival. Couldn't survive without it. Just an interesting perspective, historical perspective on how the world of men and women has changed. All right, Hopper Campbell. I don't think most men are intimidated by a woman who makes more money than them. I think the term strong independent woman is used to justify bad behavior and masculine traits, anti-genji identity, nihilism. Not sure if I follow, but I don't know. You know, I think there is a bias against, I think there is a bias against strong independent women. I don't think that's used to justify bad behavior. And masculine traits are fine. There's nothing wrong with masculine traits in a woman, as long as she also has feminine traits. And of course, even if she doesn't, then she is what she is, right? You judge, again, the morality is universal. The balance of different traits and so on is, the morality is objective and universal. These balance of traits is individual, is individual to the individual person. And does not say anything about morality. Bad behavior is bad behavior. It's bad behavior when it's done by men, when it's done by women. It's just bad behavior when it's done. The anti-gender identity nihilism. I definitely think there's anti-gender identity nihilism out there. There's just general nihilism, and it manifests itself through these, in the whole issue of gender. Thanks, Hopper. Let me see if there's any... I guess, what's my view of women in combat? I'm not a big fan of women in combat. For two reasons, because it's still true that at the margin, strength matters in the military. And the second reason is that I still think men are going to be protective of a woman in combat. And I think the orientation, instead of being oriented towards killing the enemy, is likely to be towards protecting the female on the team. They're likely to be less risk-taking. They're likely to be less aggressive when there's a woman around them. So I think there's certain psychological barriers to it. But look, the more combat becomes removed from actual being under fire, the more combat becomes more intellectual and less physical, the more women will be part of it. So I have no problem with women piloting drones and blowing up stuff. No problem with that. No problem with women in the military. Generally, it's just in combat where physicality matters. I don't think they belong there. Alright, let's see. Vadim has, how would you help a child with physical bullies? Do you tell them to fight or do you intervene? What if it's always a situation of five against one? I tell them to fight. Look, you can't keep running to mommy. You've got to stand up. Now, don't put them in a position where they're going to get beaten up and draw blood or whatever. You're not going to be brutal. But kids need to stand up, learn to stand up for themselves. They need to learn to stand up to bullies. They need to learn sometimes to take a beating because they're outnumbered. You take a beating, but you stood up to them. That'll make a big difference. Then once you take the beating, then it's okay for parents to intervene, school to intervene and all this other stuff. So I'm big on you've got to be physical and stand up to bullies. Now hopefully you don't have bullies in your school or whatever. But if you do have bullies, you've got to stand up for them. Don't get physical unless they get physical. But if they get physical, don't just call mommy. You've got to stand up. Not because you'll win. You'll probably lose. But because you have to show the bad guys you have the courage to stand up against them. Jennifer says, I know I can shoot a gun, but I would still expect and want my husband to do it if someone broke in. Is that an unhealthy attitude? No, I don't think so. You know, I think that generally, again, there are exceptions, men are physically stronger and more our temperament and our, I think, general sensitivities, sensibilities, sensitivities are more tuned to physical action. So the expectation is that we will act when we are threatened. And I think that's a very reasonable expectation. Now you want to be able to shoot a gun because your husband might not be there when the breaking happens or something. But yes, I would expect my wife, I would expect her to expect me to take the lead on violence. Yeah, you shouldn't be afraid to ask that. You're absolutely right. Alright, Daniel says, how would you prioritize investment in HSA, Roth IRA, 401K for someone in the mid-30s? Well, HSA is the best deal. HSA is a fantastic deal because you don't pay taxes at all. You don't pay taxes when you put it into the account. You don't pay taxes when you take it out. And there's always going to be health care expenses. And the worst case is at some age, so you don't use it for health care, use it for something else, and you pay the taxes. So there's no downside to maxing out on your HSA every single year. I think generally Roth IRAs over the long run pay off better than a 401K. Because of Roth IRA, you're going to make more money by saving on the capital gains taxes on future earnings than you are on not paying taxes and income. So Roth IRA, you pay taxes on your income that comes in, but you don't pay taxes on your capital gains. A normal IRA, you don't pay taxes when the money comes in as income. You pay taxes at an income rate when you take it out much later. So generally, Roth IRAs are better. But what happens is HSA is a capped, Roth IRA is a capped, and then everything else should go into a 401K in terms of your long-term saving. And again, not all savings should be long-term saving and not all income should be saving. So you want to have the right balance between long-term saving, medium-term, short-term, and what is the total amount you want to save? All right, Michael asks, if you had dinner with Ayn Rand, would you be nervous? Yes. What if she asked you to stop doing the show? I don't know. Well, it depends why she, I mean, she just said it, she demanded it, she gave good reasons. It depends. Everything is depends. Mr. Remorseless, hey, Iran, what are your thoughts on government hiring private militia? Must the militia always have a morally clear history first? I don't think government should hire private militias, period. Law enforcement, military is the job of government. It is not the job of government just to finance it, it's the job of government to do it. That is the one job. It's, in a sense, their only job. They shouldn't have to rely on a separate entity in the relationship between the two. It's tricky and it creates so many problems. You saw that in Iraq and Afghanistan when the United States relied on private militias. It was just not the right way, you know, if the private militia kills civilians out of, you know, when it's unnecessary, how do they prosecute it? Is there a contract? What is the contract? It's just, it's not the way it's done. War is an activity of government, not a private activity. Michael asked, you notice determinists are quite militant. They think it's somehow cool of religious to hold people accountable for where they end up in life. Yeah, but they also are cool and intolerant towards you having a different opinion than them, even though your opinion is as determined as their opinion is. It's full of, determinism is full of contradictions by necessity. All right, finished early today. Not a lot of questions. Thank you. I appreciate our mega supporters who got us to well over $1,000 today. And thank you for all the superchatters and whatever lever you support us. And of course, thank you for all of the monthly supporters who support the show through Patreon, subscribe, and you run bookshow.com slash support. Thank you guys. And I will see you all on Saturday, probably three o'clock in the afternoon, Eastern time, Saturday and then Sunday at 8pm. And then after you up again.