Jen Gerson sits down with Toronto writer Phoebe Maltz Bovy, who has just completed her new book on gender norms, dating in the online world, and much more.
Being part of a 'successful' longterm domestic partnership that feels alive and generative many decades in is actually a highly unusual circumstance (whatever one's orientation or preference). Anyone who considers that 'boring' or 'conventional' clearly hasn't experienced it. Be who you are, love where you love, form families in the way you desire. In my observation, 'how' someone does those things does not make them objectively more interesting or 'feminist'.
I did get a bit of a sense that there's a bit of a "gosh, I guess (at least some of) the conservatives were right about a few things". And I suspect there's a bit of a reluctance among some people to admit that. After all, admitting they were right about those things might give them reason to insist they're right about other things.
Maybe the conservatives were right that hookup culture was bad.. and that sex without commitment is bad for people... maybe single motherhood is bad for kids and women... maybe divorce is bad for kids... maybe getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant is irresponsible and destructive... And if they're right about that, what else are they right about? What about things like kids doing best with a mother and a father, not two mothers? What if that has social policy implications around adoptions that make us uncomfortable?
I realize that a lot of this will *sound* heartless or sexist, but I don't care because it's neither of those things. It's no more heartless to say those things than to say that maybe a man working 65 hours a week to dominate the C-suite isn't something our culture should admire and praise, because that's just a bad Dad who puts his own ambition ahead of his children and we should shame that not reward it with power and fame. Maybe this is just me being a few years older than Matt & husband of the pod, but it does seem to me like the conservative with (small L) liberal Canadian running through it upbringing I had was right about a lot of things our culture decided over the last 25 years was stupid. Maybe we should let people live their own lives in ways we dislike without trying to make everything illegal. Maybe we should retain the judgement to discern right from wrong without automatically turning that into legal condemnation. To say "that's wrong and you should feel bad" without slapping the cuffs on them or firing them in the hopes that they starve.
The other thing I notice that "conservatives" contains groups with very different beliefs about these things. Yeah, there are conservatives who think women should remain chaste, but "boys will be boys and men need to sow their wild oats". I think those conservatives are fake and I'd "no true Scotsman" them if I could. The conservatives I'm a part of shame such men because their actions are shameful. (Not illegal, just shameful.)
But going back to the interview, I do appreciate that if society admits that my people were right about some things, it might have policy implications a lot won't like... and others will use those admissions to turn the tables in ways that aren't good.
I'm still trying to figure out out what 'the discourse' mentioned a bazillion times actually represents. It's not my discourse. It's not the discourse of most of the people I know and interact with. It's not the discourse I hear out in the wilds of the dysfunctional urban jungle. It seems it may be some upper class urban/influencer notion temporarily trending on certain social media feeds. But it has no depth or meaning. It's like a bunch of lost teenagers wondering what being a grown up could possibly mean and so they settle on a mutually acceptable fiction and then claim 'everyone's doing it'.
Same. I found this interview bizarre and hard to follow. I actually listened to it twice trying to understand what they were trying to say. 🤷🏼♀️ I was also raised by a single mother and I can’t imagine anyone trying to romanticize this. Etc etc. I think Jen and her interviewee spend way too much time online, which is their prerogative, but then why complain about the resulting “discourse” and its disconnect from reality? Duh, it’s the internet. If you want to engage with reality, go ahead and do so.
If people need proof that journalists, writers and the greater intelligentsia are their own social class in Canada, here it is.
As for older men and young women, this is pure evolutionary. Older men want to pass down their genes and women want to have kids with the most high status and good father that they can. Older successful men are proven, have connections and are more likely to have the means. That's straight biology. There is also the young guy who couldn't "pull tens" when he was younger and now he can factor. I know enough successful guys in my circles who do way better in their 40s than they did in their 20s.
As for the trad wife thing, having a 3 child trad family is expensive, especially in a big city. You're not pulling that off in the Instagram way in Calgary as a man and keeping up with the Joneses without either inheriting, parental help or pulling in $250k/yr. (and grandparents helping out monetarily or otherwise is a big thing). It's a status thing for both the husband and the wife. Needless to say, it's way more common in wealthy/hot relationships.
Anyone who expects women in their early 20's to only date men in their own age group is being laughably stupid.
There is a huge disparity at that age. Most women in their early to mid 20's are at the absolute peak of their attractiveness and even a somewhat-above-average looking woman this age is desired by every man with a pulse. Most men at that age are still goofy awkward immature boys with typically few resources or immediate prospects, and are utterly unimpressive.
50+ year old men who troll for college aged girls are creepy, sure, but I can see how a woman with unlimited romantic options would prefer a man in his 30's or even 40's who is mature, confident, established, successful, and can take her interesting places and do impressive things for her. And on a more mundane level he's less likely to behave like a child she has to look after.
We're really as you suggest, fighting biology here.
It's odd how people seem increasingly prone to believe that what they see on TV represents reality. Jen's point about people assuming that dysfunctional relationships are the norm is one example; another strand are the many "Look what they took from us!" memes that angrily assert people used to live comfortable middle-class lifestyles with a 4 bedroom home and stay at home wife based on the income of a single lower middle class or working class man. No, people at the time *didn't* regard that as "normal" and take it for granted. Rather, it was taken for granted that the life of TV characters was *unrealistic*, which was part of the draw.
The real question seems to be whether people truly don't understand that TV is make-believe, or whether the problem is they *want* to believe that it's true even though they know it's false. I think Jen is more on point with her claim that people are trying to make their lives more exciting than her guest's interpretation that they're just trying to show they're tolerant/accepting.
It's simpler than that, it's entitlement. I'm almost positive you know that. Folks think that the life of their parents or that of past generations is entitled to them. The world moves on yet they think the world owes them someone because they played by yesterday's rules.
The boomer generation was an aberration in world history in it's level of safety, security and abundance. We are back on our historical track in human development and folks need to look at their great grandparents if they want to see attainable lifestyles.
That said, Canadians are much too comfortable with mediocrity in the name of equality. A bit more ambition, work ethic and envy (rather than spite) would do wonders.
Entitlement is thinking that you should consume all the benefits of the luck in your life with and have no responsibility to pass on better things to the next generation. Entitlement is even thinking you have the moral right to do so. Expecting to see improvement over time is a perfectly reasonable assumption for people to make because knowledge, technology and production accumulate over time. This expectation can be unrealized due to unanticipated setbacks, (war, famine, asteroid impact etc.) but it's still entirely reasonable to expect improvement because of accumulation over time.
But a generation deciding that not to build for future generations or to consume the product of their lucky circumstances is not an acceptable unanticipated setback. (It is unanticipated, because human beings have generally built for the next generation over our history.)
The boomers have been incredibly lucky while also building on the massive contribution of their parents, grandparents and ancestors. But I think boomers often forget the word "luck" and how much that is the real source of their success. The man metaphorically born on third base insisting he deserves to enjoy and consume 100% of the rewards of hitting a triple (and even believes he did hit a triple) isn't something to admire or emulate.
This is not to say that the boomers didn't work, innovate and produce. It's just to recognize that as a generation, they have failed in one of the primary responsibilities every generation of human beings has: to leave things better for the next generation. They haven't failed that task in every way of course.. but they have failed it in significant ways.
At the same time recognizing that fact won't change it. The thing for my generation to do is to not replicate that failure with the next generation.
In 2010, I would have never believed that outsourcing all of my needs to applications could be so dystopian. My wife and I (also early 40s) played Stardew Valley and lived in la-la-land while our tech mediated culture ate itself up.
I have hope for the next generation. Phones will phase out like Furby and the shared misery of the Reddit thread will give way to something more optimistic. Fads come and go.
Reddit is only real life for neck beards and basement dwellers. There is a reason why even with all their success they have had trouble monetizing. Advertisers don't like poor, lazy, spiteful young males living with their mom.
Reddit is more like a community board and so each thread only attracts those who are particularly interested in that one subject. No single or even related threads represents 'the discourse' beyond the niche subject covered so I see Reddit generally as a community service than a product than can be monetized but I do think its users are quite disparate, which is unhelpful for targeted advertising.
While I'd agree with that in regards to the main subreddits, the niche communities attract all types and continue to.
Reddit can't monetize because they rely on free labour to do most of the work.
Frankly, I'd be happier with an internet where more community volunteers and non profits built and owned web listed (see 1990s - 2010). While that's not returning anytime soon, I do see Reddit as the last vestige of the internet for people still mourning it's death.
Reddit is completely fucked and as a former user I strongly recommend that anyone who spends more than a couple of minutes a week there delete their account and stay the hell away.
Toxic obsessives wasting half their day arguing with strangers who might be bots, paid engagement farmers, or 12 year olds. Every community with their lame in-jokes and acronyms. You know when everyone is passionately weighing the pros and cons of PDBRC vs CDBRQ and insisting 'hilariously' that each other send pictures of "their broccoli" that you are way too far down somebody's rabbit hole. I just randomly made those up but they are representative.
I'd say there is some useful information on niche topics to be found there among the piles of manure, but AI has already combed their entire database and probably gives better advice based on it at this point.
My life has noticeably improved across the board since I stopped using Reddit and Twitter.
Being part of a 'successful' longterm domestic partnership that feels alive and generative many decades in is actually a highly unusual circumstance (whatever one's orientation or preference). Anyone who considers that 'boring' or 'conventional' clearly hasn't experienced it. Be who you are, love where you love, form families in the way you desire. In my observation, 'how' someone does those things does not make them objectively more interesting or 'feminist'.
This was a great interview. Thanks for this.
I did get a bit of a sense that there's a bit of a "gosh, I guess (at least some of) the conservatives were right about a few things". And I suspect there's a bit of a reluctance among some people to admit that. After all, admitting they were right about those things might give them reason to insist they're right about other things.
Maybe the conservatives were right that hookup culture was bad.. and that sex without commitment is bad for people... maybe single motherhood is bad for kids and women... maybe divorce is bad for kids... maybe getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant is irresponsible and destructive... And if they're right about that, what else are they right about? What about things like kids doing best with a mother and a father, not two mothers? What if that has social policy implications around adoptions that make us uncomfortable?
I realize that a lot of this will *sound* heartless or sexist, but I don't care because it's neither of those things. It's no more heartless to say those things than to say that maybe a man working 65 hours a week to dominate the C-suite isn't something our culture should admire and praise, because that's just a bad Dad who puts his own ambition ahead of his children and we should shame that not reward it with power and fame. Maybe this is just me being a few years older than Matt & husband of the pod, but it does seem to me like the conservative with (small L) liberal Canadian running through it upbringing I had was right about a lot of things our culture decided over the last 25 years was stupid. Maybe we should let people live their own lives in ways we dislike without trying to make everything illegal. Maybe we should retain the judgement to discern right from wrong without automatically turning that into legal condemnation. To say "that's wrong and you should feel bad" without slapping the cuffs on them or firing them in the hopes that they starve.
The other thing I notice that "conservatives" contains groups with very different beliefs about these things. Yeah, there are conservatives who think women should remain chaste, but "boys will be boys and men need to sow their wild oats". I think those conservatives are fake and I'd "no true Scotsman" them if I could. The conservatives I'm a part of shame such men because their actions are shameful. (Not illegal, just shameful.)
But going back to the interview, I do appreciate that if society admits that my people were right about some things, it might have policy implications a lot won't like... and others will use those admissions to turn the tables in ways that aren't good.
I'm still trying to figure out out what 'the discourse' mentioned a bazillion times actually represents. It's not my discourse. It's not the discourse of most of the people I know and interact with. It's not the discourse I hear out in the wilds of the dysfunctional urban jungle. It seems it may be some upper class urban/influencer notion temporarily trending on certain social media feeds. But it has no depth or meaning. It's like a bunch of lost teenagers wondering what being a grown up could possibly mean and so they settle on a mutually acceptable fiction and then claim 'everyone's doing it'.
Same. I found this interview bizarre and hard to follow. I actually listened to it twice trying to understand what they were trying to say. 🤷🏼♀️ I was also raised by a single mother and I can’t imagine anyone trying to romanticize this. Etc etc. I think Jen and her interviewee spend way too much time online, which is their prerogative, but then why complain about the resulting “discourse” and its disconnect from reality? Duh, it’s the internet. If you want to engage with reality, go ahead and do so.
If people need proof that journalists, writers and the greater intelligentsia are their own social class in Canada, here it is.
As for older men and young women, this is pure evolutionary. Older men want to pass down their genes and women want to have kids with the most high status and good father that they can. Older successful men are proven, have connections and are more likely to have the means. That's straight biology. There is also the young guy who couldn't "pull tens" when he was younger and now he can factor. I know enough successful guys in my circles who do way better in their 40s than they did in their 20s.
As for the trad wife thing, having a 3 child trad family is expensive, especially in a big city. You're not pulling that off in the Instagram way in Calgary as a man and keeping up with the Joneses without either inheriting, parental help or pulling in $250k/yr. (and grandparents helping out monetarily or otherwise is a big thing). It's a status thing for both the husband and the wife. Needless to say, it's way more common in wealthy/hot relationships.
Anyone who expects women in their early 20's to only date men in their own age group is being laughably stupid.
There is a huge disparity at that age. Most women in their early to mid 20's are at the absolute peak of their attractiveness and even a somewhat-above-average looking woman this age is desired by every man with a pulse. Most men at that age are still goofy awkward immature boys with typically few resources or immediate prospects, and are utterly unimpressive.
50+ year old men who troll for college aged girls are creepy, sure, but I can see how a woman with unlimited romantic options would prefer a man in his 30's or even 40's who is mature, confident, established, successful, and can take her interesting places and do impressive things for her. And on a more mundane level he's less likely to behave like a child she has to look after.
We're really as you suggest, fighting biology here.
It's odd how people seem increasingly prone to believe that what they see on TV represents reality. Jen's point about people assuming that dysfunctional relationships are the norm is one example; another strand are the many "Look what they took from us!" memes that angrily assert people used to live comfortable middle-class lifestyles with a 4 bedroom home and stay at home wife based on the income of a single lower middle class or working class man. No, people at the time *didn't* regard that as "normal" and take it for granted. Rather, it was taken for granted that the life of TV characters was *unrealistic*, which was part of the draw.
The real question seems to be whether people truly don't understand that TV is make-believe, or whether the problem is they *want* to believe that it's true even though they know it's false. I think Jen is more on point with her claim that people are trying to make their lives more exciting than her guest's interpretation that they're just trying to show they're tolerant/accepting.
It's simpler than that, it's entitlement. I'm almost positive you know that. Folks think that the life of their parents or that of past generations is entitled to them. The world moves on yet they think the world owes them someone because they played by yesterday's rules.
The boomer generation was an aberration in world history in it's level of safety, security and abundance. We are back on our historical track in human development and folks need to look at their great grandparents if they want to see attainable lifestyles.
That said, Canadians are much too comfortable with mediocrity in the name of equality. A bit more ambition, work ethic and envy (rather than spite) would do wonders.
I disagree.
Entitlement is thinking that you should consume all the benefits of the luck in your life with and have no responsibility to pass on better things to the next generation. Entitlement is even thinking you have the moral right to do so. Expecting to see improvement over time is a perfectly reasonable assumption for people to make because knowledge, technology and production accumulate over time. This expectation can be unrealized due to unanticipated setbacks, (war, famine, asteroid impact etc.) but it's still entirely reasonable to expect improvement because of accumulation over time.
But a generation deciding that not to build for future generations or to consume the product of their lucky circumstances is not an acceptable unanticipated setback. (It is unanticipated, because human beings have generally built for the next generation over our history.)
The boomers have been incredibly lucky while also building on the massive contribution of their parents, grandparents and ancestors. But I think boomers often forget the word "luck" and how much that is the real source of their success. The man metaphorically born on third base insisting he deserves to enjoy and consume 100% of the rewards of hitting a triple (and even believes he did hit a triple) isn't something to admire or emulate.
This is not to say that the boomers didn't work, innovate and produce. It's just to recognize that as a generation, they have failed in one of the primary responsibilities every generation of human beings has: to leave things better for the next generation. They haven't failed that task in every way of course.. but they have failed it in significant ways.
At the same time recognizing that fact won't change it. The thing for my generation to do is to not replicate that failure with the next generation.
In 2010, I would have never believed that outsourcing all of my needs to applications could be so dystopian. My wife and I (also early 40s) played Stardew Valley and lived in la-la-land while our tech mediated culture ate itself up.
I have hope for the next generation. Phones will phase out like Furby and the shared misery of the Reddit thread will give way to something more optimistic. Fads come and go.
Reddit is only real life for neck beards and basement dwellers. There is a reason why even with all their success they have had trouble monetizing. Advertisers don't like poor, lazy, spiteful young males living with their mom.
Reddit is more like a community board and so each thread only attracts those who are particularly interested in that one subject. No single or even related threads represents 'the discourse' beyond the niche subject covered so I see Reddit generally as a community service than a product than can be monetized but I do think its users are quite disparate, which is unhelpful for targeted advertising.
While I'd agree with that in regards to the main subreddits, the niche communities attract all types and continue to.
Reddit can't monetize because they rely on free labour to do most of the work.
Frankly, I'd be happier with an internet where more community volunteers and non profits built and owned web listed (see 1990s - 2010). While that's not returning anytime soon, I do see Reddit as the last vestige of the internet for people still mourning it's death.
Reddit is completely fucked and as a former user I strongly recommend that anyone who spends more than a couple of minutes a week there delete their account and stay the hell away.
Toxic obsessives wasting half their day arguing with strangers who might be bots, paid engagement farmers, or 12 year olds. Every community with their lame in-jokes and acronyms. You know when everyone is passionately weighing the pros and cons of PDBRC vs CDBRQ and insisting 'hilariously' that each other send pictures of "their broccoli" that you are way too far down somebody's rabbit hole. I just randomly made those up but they are representative.
I'd say there is some useful information on niche topics to be found there among the piles of manure, but AI has already combed their entire database and probably gives better advice based on it at this point.
My life has noticeably improved across the board since I stopped using Reddit and Twitter.