SIO80: The Red Pill: Debunking the MRAs, Part 1

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 80 and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Well, if you're like me, you thought I would be doing today's episode on the final part of the debunking of Trump's participation trophies, because I left a nice good number for the part three of three, for now, until they add to it. But yeah, no, something came up. So here's what came up. As you know, I talked to James Damore, the author of the Google memo, on Monday. And that didn't go exactly how I thought or wanted it to go. And I've, I've talked to some people. I think I, in general, I have a more negative view of how I did than than most people, which, that's good. That's where I want to be. I'd rather, I'd rather I think I did poorly and other people think I did well than the opposite.

0:01:17 Thomas: Uh, but no, it wasn't, I had all this research done, um, a ton that I didn't even get to that didn't end up really applying to what he was saying, which is fine. No big deal. That happens a lot, but it left me feeling a little unsatisfied. And I realized, I think a lot of the reason is that he was making a lot red pill claims. He was making a lot these MRA type red pill complaints that I actually didn't think would be where this would go. I actually envisioned the interview would be more about, okay, what's the science of women in technology kind of stick there. It branched off to these weird discussions on gender roles and stuff. And he even referenced the red pill. And I thought, you know what, because of this, I need to be more familiar with this so that next time if I face anybody like this,I will be more armed to face these arguments.

0:02:09 Thomas: I'll be more familiar. So at first I thought oh, I can do that later when I'm done with this Trump series. And then I realized in as you're hearing this in like two days, I will be interviewing one Sargon of Akkad, who it's, I would put it at pretty likely will probably bring up some of these kinds of MRA arguments. And so I thought, you know what? I'm already prepping for this Sargon interview. I'd better watch the red pill, do a lot of research just to make sure. So I kind of preempted part three of the Trump accomplishments and I'm beginning part one of debunking the MRAs. So sorry about it being a little disjointed, but when it's all said and done, we'll have have some nice series on both those topics. So thus I bring you today's commentary, which is I watched The Red Pill so you don't have to.

0:02:58 Thomas: And I did a lot of research and realized that I'd only done three of the claims of the film, and I probably already had more than an episode's worth. So it's becoming a series, but I'm going to begin that series. I'm gonna tell you what the film The Red Pill is all about. I'm gonna give you a little bit of what being a red pill person, and what that even entails, what it means, because I really wasn't familiar. So let's get to all that. That's the agenda for today's show. I hope you enjoy it.

0:03:34 Thomas: All right, so the red pill. There's some different terms we've got to get. First off, I'm sure everyone knows the reference from The Matrix. I'm annoyed that it's from The matrix because I actually really like that movie. So it kind of sucks that all these MRAs are appropriating a movie that I kind of like. But anyway, the red pill refers to, you know, you take the red bill and you find out all the truth and the blue pill, you go back to sleep and you can just continue living in ignorance. And what's annoying about that is pretty much any movement could describe itself that way. Like, you know, Republican, Democrat, feminist, anti-feminist, you know, Black Lives Matter or not. If you think you're correct and everybody else is wrong, you know, you think You've Taken the Red Pill and everybody else is taking the Blue Pill.

0:04:20 Thomas: So it's just a generic thing and it's kind of obnoxious that they put it that way. But anyway, there are two different senses of the red pill just so that you aren't confused. One is a movie that was made by a female filmmaker who started She allegedly started off as a feminist. She claimed she was a feminist before the video. So that's called The Red Pill, and she kind of goes into the MRA community. She interviews some of the leading MRAs on the internet, and that's what I'm going to talk about in that movie. But also I want to talk very briefly about the other Red Pill which is the Reddit forum, like r slash The Red pill. The filmmaker is Cassie J. In the movie, J says that the Red Pill forum, the Reddit Red Pill, doesn't always agree with the MRAs that she's interviewing, mainly Paul Elam, and he has a different website called A Voice for Men.

0:05:16 Thomas: So they don't always disagree. I think there's significant overlap, but they don't always agree. Their focuses are a little different. Now, I'll be honest with you. The Reddit red pill thinking is so beyond what I believe. It's so different from my perceptions of the world that I have a difficult time even conceptualizing what these people mean. It is weird, but I found a really good document, good in the sense that I think it is representative.

It was an awful document, but it is called Understanding the Red Pill, the Red Pill Constitution. I'll link to it, and I'm just going to read you a little bit to give you a feeling of what both the Reddit Red Pill people believe, and, I think, largely the MRAs from the movie The Red Pill believe as well. I think there's a significant overlap in a lot of this. If I were to try to summarize it, again, it's difficult because it's just like a whole different reality, but I think it's that they believe, these Red Pill men, and there's a few women, but it's mostly men, they believe that feminism is a tool women are using to gain an advantage.

So they think that women play the victim when it's convenient to gain an advantage and then where they don't have an advantage, so like where men are disadvantaged, they claim ignorance and they ignore it. And you heard, that's where you echo some of what James Damore was saying. Well, what about this? What about that? Their theory is that, well, women know what they're doing. It's a female feminism, and I'll read here. Feminism, quote, is nothing more

0:07:08 Thomas: So that's the logic there. It's that women know what they're doing. It's very intentional. Feminism is all bullshit. It's designed to just gain advantage. They think that women are fundamentally incompetent. And this is not me rephrasing there. They very literally think that women are fundamentally worse in so many areas than men. And they're using victim status to gain an undue advantage. Here, I'll read another little passage here.

0:08:03 Thomas: The rest of what I'm seeing from R slash the red pill is, is really, again, kind of incomprehensible dating advice. In a way, it's, it's, come, it's like this, almost this game theory, like, these men on the Red Pill, the Reddit thread, think that women, that you, they're, they're sort of relationship nihilists, like there shouldn't be relationships because women will just manipulate, or they're trying to get something from you, they can't really love you. This is very literally true. Again, this is not me trying to be unfair or exaggerate my characteristic. You can go find these posts. This is what they believe. And so therefore, you should just kind of take what you can get from women. You should try to get sex when you can, but don't bother being in a relationship because it's very weird.

0:08:54 Thomas: I'll get to more of it later. But that, that seems to be the Reddit Red Pill. Now, let's take a look at this film, which purports to be something else. The Red Pill film allegedly is supposed to be a just a documentary made objectively by a feminist who just want to kind of take a lookout, curious about men's rights activists and wanted to take a look at it. And Cassie J, the filmmaker, is pretty convincing in this. And I have to say that in my, this is, I'll switch to just my opinion, my speculation at what's going on here. I do think she was at some point a genuine feminist in her life. I don't think it's one of those fake, like, well, I used to be an evolutionist and then I read the Bible, that kind of thing.

0:09:40 Thomas: I don't think it's quite that. I think she actually genuinely was a feminist. She talks about some reasons why, and she was an actress who was getting typecast as kind kind of the ditzy blonde, and she thought that there's some sexism going on. She was a feminist for that reason. And she has some old footage of her, and it's pretty convincing that she was this. Her previous documentaries were on marriage equality and other pretty liberal things, where you don't think she's like a closet alt-righter or anything like that. But when I watch this documentary, I'm struck, because I'm just frankly appalled at the malice of forethought involved, involved in this propaganda piece. It's weird. It is so deliberate. It begins with her, again, trying to set it up neutrally. I just wanted to look into this.

0:10:25 Thomas: To spoil the ending, the end of the film is she does a little video diary where she says, I no longer consider myself a feminist because of all this. When she interviews these awful, awful MRAs who have said horrible things about women, she never once challenges them on the horrible things they've said. It comes up like once and then they give an excuse, like, oh, it was just a satirical thing, and then it never really comes up again. It's very clearly deliberate propaganda, because I want to say, if someone had just made a film that was a documentary that was like, well, I want to see what these people are about and tried to be objective about it, and didn't involve herself, like these video diaries where, in the end, she's converted, essentially, she doesn't say she's an MRA, but she says, I've, I've, I'm no longer, consider myself a feminist.

0:11:15 Thomas: She says this at the end of the movie. If someone had done it, left themselves out of it, and said, these are what these people are, like, here's what they've said, and they objectively covered also the awful things they've sad, and not just tried to paint a rosy picture of the things they said, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I don't have problem with Vice News, for example, going in and interviewing white supremacists, and kind of exposing the thinking and taking an objective view, the best they can, of these organizations in Charlottesville. I thought that was really interesting journalism. I thought it was expertly done, and it was valuable to gain insight into what these people think and why. But this isn't that. This is propaganda. It really is. So I'm asking myself, like, how did this happen? In. And in researching this, because I'm not, it's hard for me to buy the idea that this is 100% genuine. Like, you never know. Maybe someone is so feeble intellectually that they're convinced by MRA arguments after previously being a feminist. I mean, maybe. That's hard to believe. Could be. But this is my best guess based on what happened. This is, again, this is my opinion. I want to make very clear this part. Other times I'm discussing facts, figures.

Right now, this is my opinion of what I think happened. She set up to do this as a Kickstarter project. She set up a Kickstarter for her film on the MRAs. It went nowhere. It was dead on arrival. Nobody was supporting it because they didn't care. You know, like it was just kind of like, eh, whatever. You know? I think it might have been interesting, but it sounds like people just did not care enough either way until some really awful people took notice.

0:12:54 Thomas: For example, Mike Cernovich, a man so horrible Sam Harris won't even interview him, donated $10,000 by himself. And Milo Yiannopoulos, we all know how horrible Milo Yiannopoulos is, had her on his live stream, promoted the documentary, and the money was raised, the Kickstarter goal was raised twice over in a matter of like a day. So that's where the funding came from. This was very, there was no mystery as to where her funding came from.

I think it was something like a couple hundred thousand dollars, all told, all raised because of awful, horrible alt-right MRA misogynist, essentially. So I don't know, I would find it very hard to believe that that had no effect on her bias. I feel like what she might have done, again, I'm just speculating, you can come to your, your own guesses and conclusions. What she might have done was set about to cover it in an objective way, but then when the entirety of the budget was raised by MRAs and people who supported those causes, she might've said, okay, I'm not going to go so far as to like fully endorse these people, but you know, like I'm going to make it look okay. You know, I'm not going to hit him too hard. And, you know, in the end, I can say I'm no longer call myself a feminist. I don't know. That's what I think. I think it's something like that.

But I think It is very important to know and to get out there the information that the funding was by MRAs. This was funded by Cernovich and Yiannopoulos and their crowd. That's important because I've actually heard from people. Someone emailed me about this a while back or something. I don't know. I get a ton of messages in email. I can't always remember who it was. Sorry about that.

0:14:38 Thomas: But somebody emailed me and say, hey, I you should check out this documentary like someone started as a feminist. And, you know, by the end, they were kind of convinced and they bought into it earnestly and that you're free to do that. But I if if someone's going to buy into the earnesty of this documentary, they better do so with the knowledge of who funded it. You'd better at least know that's what happened, because this really is as though someone who was an atheist wants to make a documentary on young earth creationism, and it's entirely financially backed by Ken Ham and his followers. Would we be surprised at the end of that movie if they say like, well, you know, I'm not sure I'm going to call myself an atheist anymore. And there's just a lot of stuff to this.

0:15:24 Thomas: There's there really is something to this Genesis science. Who knows? That kind of thing. I mean, what would you think if that happened? Would you think, well, I guess they were genuinely convinced by this really good evidence about young Earth creationism? Or would you Think, okay, they were given a couple hundred thousand dollars by young Earth Creationists. It compromised them a little bit. That's what I would think. So with that as the backdrop as to what this movie is, I now need to talk about a framework. We need to have a framework for looking at what's going on at large in this movie. You actually heard James Damore, if you listen to Monday's episode, you heard him talk about this a lot. You heard him say, well, what the feminists are doing is taking a statistical difference and using it to cry discrimination.

0:16:11 Thomas: And that was very revealing. And I tried to battle back against that, and I said, no, that's not what's happening. But having collected my thoughts and watched this documentary, I could do a bit better job, I think, of stating what's going on. I think that is what these MRIs think. I think these MRAs think feminists are just looking at statistical differences and crying foul.

So then what that allows them to do is try to go look for everything where men are disfavored, or there's some statistical difference where something affects men more. So that's what they've done. They've gone and looked, and they found, for example, hey, men commit suicide at a way higher rate, as James Damore said. And as he admitted, he took it straight from this movie, and that I should watch this movie. Well, I did. It. But as I tried to tell him, and I'll state it, I think a little bit better here, historical context is the key. Let me just, just very brief cherry picked history here. Women have in the very recent past been strictly confined to gender roles, to a very specific gender role. For the love of God, it's only been a hundred years that women have been allowed to even vote. A hundred years.

That's not that long where they didn't even, they legally could not participate in our system. Title IX was 45 years ago. Roe v. Wade was 44 years ago, and by the way, I was looking into this Roe vs. Wade. Almost a third of Americans want to reverse Roe versus Wade. Now, here's something interesting. I found this. This blew my mind. The portion of Americans who want to reverse Roet v.

0:17:43 Thomas: Wade is going down since, say, 1992 is this poll that I looked at. It's going So you think, oh, that's good. More people are accepting of Roe v. Wade. Well, that sounds like great news, but actually that number going down is entirely because of Democrats. In 1992, 52% of Republicans wanted to reverse Roe vs. Wade, guess what that number is in December, 2016?

0:18:11 Thomas: 53%. It's gone up one percentage point. It's gotten up in 25 years, one percentage point, more Republicans want to reverse Roe v. Wade. Reverse Roe v. we're talking give states the ability to outright ban abortion at any age of the fetus. Another little factoid, it took until 1981 for the Supreme Court to rule that men weren't the head of the household with unilateral control over all the shared property in a marriage. 1981, the ban on women in combat positions in the military was only lifted in 2013. That's a second ago. This is just a tiny little smattering of facts, but I just wanted to bring them up.

That could be a different episode in itself, as just talking about the history of feminism, Of course, but I want to bring up a few things to establish there's a rock-solid case for discrimination in many fields, and there's a historical narrative that started where women had very few rights. They could not vote. They It was just absolutely undisputed that women would take care of the house, take care of the kids. They would do what they were told. Their husbands would make all the decisions, control the money. They would vote. They would be the politicians. That's where we started.

And you can look at the historical curve. And I think what happens is these MRAs and a lot of people, and this happens with race too, but we're just talking about feminism today for now. They want to say that, okay, sure, that's where we were, but we ended that. Once we gave women the right to vote, that all ended.

0:19:46 Thomas: And then once we gave Title IX, like the Civil Rights Act, that all ended, everything else. And now we're at even. And it is really naive to believe that just because some of these key legal decisions were arrived at, that that means magically all the bias went away and all the discrimination went away. And all the attitudes went away, so I've been reflecting on how I think personally, this is just, again, me, how I'm thinking about about discrimination. I think it really takes three things to establish a rock-solid case for a systemic discrimination in some field or area or something. I Think it takes this historical context. It takes first-person accounts of discrimination, you know, listening to people, hearing unfair treatment, that kind of thing.

0:20:33 Thomas: And it takes the data to see, okay, there's actually an effect. And I'm talking about systemic discrimination.I'm not saying you would need all that for any one individual instance of prejudice or unfairness. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying if you're trying to look at a system or you're trying to establish, is there a systemic discrimination? I think you need those things because if you are missing any one of those things, with perhaps if you were missing first-person context, you could still make a very data-driven case. So that one you don't necessarily need, but it really helps to paint the picture and put the human face on it. But if you just have a disparity and you don't have first-person accounts or evidence of discrimination, I don't really think you've proven a case. So let's take an example like the NFL. You don't see feminists complaining that the NFL ought to be 50% women. Or if you do, they're idiots because that's absurd. I can't imagine any real person believes that. Now, they might believe some other things like, you know, sports could be changed to to be more favorable for women.

0:21:36 Thomas: That's a different discussion. But if someone literally thinks that, oh, look, the gender gap, there is a gender gap. It's 100%, 100% to zero. That means there's 50% discrimination. No one reasons that way. That is not how the reasoning behind this feminism is working. It is not, okay, let's look at numbers. There is a difference, therefore bigotry. That's not how it works. There's context that informs this. So yeah, sure, let's change the facts. Let's say it's not the NFL, but let's say it's a field that in the past was 100% male. And let's say historically, women were barred from whatever that is. I don't know, competition, or maybe it's a field, and then only begrudgingly allowed in eventually. And then let's say we still hear stories of discrimination and women being made to feel uncomfortable for even trying to be a part of this industry.

0:22:25 Thomas: And then let's say we have the data that the gender gap still persists, then that's strong evidence of systemic discrimination. And that's the case I tried to make for programming because, yes, there are biological or other factors, there may be choice factors that aren't discrimination that could account for some of these discrepancies. Sure, they may exist, but here's what we have. We have a historical context in which, you know, women weren't even allowed in the workforce. Force. We've got a real evidence that this trajectory was on an upward slant until 1980, like four or three. And we've got all kinds of first person accounts of the bro culture and that kind of thing. And then we've also got this evidence that I could have given more examples of because there was a really great report that my wife, Lydia, actually found was where I was referencing the women were quitting more in tech.

0:23:16 Thomas: There's some good facts on there that they quit within the first two years. They leave for reasons that aren't because of what James Damore was saying. We have that evidence. They're leaving more than men are. And women are leaving more than they do in other industries. Twice as much, I think it was, than in other industries, which tells you, oh, it's not just, you know, women want to go home and be part of the family. No, that's not what it is. So all that evidence tells me that, you know, there's a problem in tech. And that's why I had the position that I did on that issue. You. And I still do. So it's with that kind of framework in mind that I think now let's take a look at some of these red pill claims. All right. Number one, did you guys know that 93% of workplace fatalities are men? 93%. That sounds really bad.

0:24:02 Thomas: All Right. Well, there's a lot to say here. First off, first thing I would say would be this. Democrats are the ones trying to push more safety regulations. So if workplace safety is a priority of yours, and certainly would be for me, then the Democrats would be the ones to support there. Trump is repealing all kinds of regulations, safety regulations, environmental regulations, and Republicans are the ones against all that. They would prefer that people just be able to have a private contract in order to endanger their lives on the job. So just right off the bat, if you were an MRA for this reason, you should vote Democrat. Second thing to say is without feminism, that 93% would be 100%. So without the drive of feminism for equality and throughout history, I mean, this is an older battle of feminism.

0:24:51 Thomas: I admit, and I certainly acknowledge that that particular fight in terms of having all women stay home and not work is pretty much won. But again, we're on a continuum though. This is a continuum. The fight started hundreds of years ago, a couple hundred years ago. We're on a continuum, but without feminism, this would be a hundred percent. It would be all men that are working and injuring themselves in this way. There's a lot in this documentary that talks about men as expendable. And in a certain sense, and this is common with a lot of the claims in in the red pill, a lot of these MRA claims. There are some examples in which they're right, that we do have certain attitudes toward men, but feminism is not in favor of those attitudes.

0:25:39 Thomas: Feminists are in favor or trying to overturn gender roles. They don't want anyone to be locked into a gender role. Another thing in response to men are expendable, we don't care when they die, that kind of thing. We honor the shit out of police officers or firefighters when when they die. Those are very male heavy occupations. We do make a huge deal about that. We, you know, we do everything we can to try to make sure they don't. But I suppose we just don't have quite the appetite or the attention span to be worried about things like truckers. Truckers, by the way, little segue, are the highest portion of these workplace accidents. And And the trucking industry is trying to recruit women.

0:26:24 Thomas: So this problem will not be as much of a problem anymore. That 93%, I think we could expect that to slowly decrease as more women are driving trucks. And ideally, the best way to fix this would be safer work environment, certain things being automated. That's a whole different discussion. Of course, it's going to put a lot of people out of work, but self-driving cars would fix a lot Of this. This. But yeah, that number should decrease as more women get involved in truck driving and the industry is trying to recruit more women. Here's one more thing that could have been at the start of this, but I wanted to save it for the end. 93% sounds bad until you look at the total number, which is 4,500. And of course, you know, any death is one too many. I totally agree. But we should put this number in perspective.

0:27:12 Thomas: You should care about this issue roughly as much as you care about asthma deaths or accidental drownings of adults. I mean, it doesn't mean you don't care. Certainly doesn't means you don't care, but it's not, I don't wake up every day and think what a crime that this many people are dying of asthma each year. It's just, you know, it's one of the, it's a very big number. It's nowhere near the top of the list of why people die at all. Whereas something like the gender pay gap, which we can argue about, I've talked about it before. It does exist, maybe if not in the exact way that sometimes it's popularized. It does exist. And in certain industries, it very much exists even more so. Something like that affects all women. Something Like These Sexist Attitudes and Not Getting Promotions and Not Being Hired to Top Position, that kind of thing affects all woman.

0:28:02 Thomas: If we're looking at workplace fatalities, if you are a forester or a truck driver or the family member of one of those, By all means, I absolutely understand that you would care more about this issue, but it's something that affects a small group of people. It's somethingthat, as I said, the trucking industry is trying to recruit women. That gap should decrease. And also, everyone's in favor of reducing workplace deaths and accidents. We're all in favor. I mean, feminists aren't against that. This is one of the key problems with these MRI claims, and we'll see it even more later on. They act as though feminists are fighting against this. That's where they crucially go wrong. They act as though, well, hating men is the reason why these men die. We send these men to die.

0:28:48 Thomas: We don't even care. No, not really. Feminists are A, they're in favor of bucking gender roles, for one. So that would affect some of these jobs, not all of them, but some of them. And also, I mean, if someone brings up a bill in Congress to increase foresting safety, you know, who's going to vote for that? Well, the Democrats will. Well. Typically the party aligned with feminists. So I find that argument quite weak. I don't find that to be really any of our concern. It's the kind of thing where it's like, yep, sure. If you got any policy ideas for how to make the workplace safer, sure, but I'll put it right up there with policy ideas für decreasing accidental drownings, which I would support. I'm not, I don't mean to say it's nothing. I'm just saying it's a, it should be around that level of concern for you and I, for the average person should be like, okay, yeah, sure.

0:29:37 Thomas: If there's any way we can fix that, hopefully we will. So that claim I think is fairly easily, not exactly dismissed, but just kind of disregarded. It's not a really big deal at all. Next one up is the male suicide rate. This is a fascinating one. Okay. So suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. This is A big problem. I do not at all want to lump this in with workplace deaths. This this is a problem. Suicide is a killer. It's a big issue. I'm sure it's something that has personally affected almost every listener, really. I mean, odds are a very high percentage of you have been affected by suicide. Big issue. Don't want to minimize it. And I also don't dispute, these facts are right. The males do complete suicide more often at a rate, something like, it varies depending on the source.

0:30:26 Thomas: I am looking at the CDC. I Am seeing something like three times times more male deaths. Now, since 1999, the rate has climbed a little higher for women. The disparity actually used to be more, but female suicide rate has gone up a little bit. And this is, I'm looking at all ages for this data. But here's what's interesting. Women actually attempt suicide more often than men. So it could be three times more often by some estimates. So three times more often they're attempting suicide, but they're way less successful in their suicide, oddly enough. And this might come down to gender roles. It's really interesting. Guns are a very effective way of killing yourself. Men tend to like guns more.

0:31:11 Thomas: They tend to, and it could be a, I don't know what the explanation for that is, but it could being a gender role type of thing. It could could be conditioning, could be societal, some amount biological, I don't know. But in some ways, if you have a big issue with the discrepancy in suicides, you're actually saying that women should be more successful when they actually try it because they do attempt suicide more. So it's almost like a weird thing to hope for that they be successful as much as men, or you could hope that men are less successful. But then you're just talking about the preferred method of male suicide. So that would be what you'd want to change. It's kind of a weird, it's one of those questions where, yes, this is an issue.

0:31:56 Thomas: This is a discrepancy. How do we solve it? And then the answer is like, well, we just, I mean, I prefer people commit suicide less. People should get more help, that kind of thing. There's no gender-based solution other than if we try to make men like guns less, prefer prefer guns less, then that would even out the numbers, but that's a weird, perverse kind of way to approach the situation. And there's actually another way that gender roles may factor in the success rate, and there is some evidence for the idea that women are less likely to choose methods that will disfigure them, i.e. not shoot themselves in the head, which is a very, of course, reliable method of suicide. And you know what? That's really fascinating. So So the gender role of needing to maintain your appearance, like the pressure that women feel in their appearance, would cause them to choose a method that isn't successful as often.

0:32:48 Thomas: They actually choose to try overdoses way more. That's the preferred way of suicide for women. So again, what are you hoping for there? If you're an MRA, what is the complaint that women ought to not use pills, they ought to use guns? Or I guess men ought to use pills instead of guns? This is why I talked about a historical context. This isn't really discrimination. Now, you could argue that some of it might be due to men facing more pressure when they lose their job, for example. But why wouldn't that mean that more men were attempting suicide? You would expect that if that were what were going on. If there's so much pressure on men, so they lose their jobs, they're instantly going to try to kill themselves. But really, it's the method that's the key.

0:33:35 Thomas: And this idea of gender roles, meaning that women want to do something that doesn't disfigure their appearance, you know what it reminded me of? It's a really morbid thought, but it's just so human and interesting. Do you remember when 9/11 happened? There was a really famous picture of a woman who was one of the really unfortunate few people that were forced to choose to jump because of how horrible the fire and the flames and that would be. So she chose to jump, and she, there's just this weird human moment where she holds her skirt so that, you know, her skirt doesn't fly up as she's jumping. And it's just one of those things where I just, it's so interesting to think about. Obviously, it's really depressing and sad, but I mean, also, it is just such a profound thing.

0:34:23 Thomas: Like, well, of course you would do that. I mean you're jumping to your death, so literally it doesn't matter, you know, at all. But of course, you would do that because societally that's what you've been pressured to do. And it just kind of reminded me of that. Like even when the stakes are life and death, these gender roles and these societal pressures are huge. They're enormous. Enormous. So, I guess to sum this section up, when it comes to suicide rates, given that women attempt suicide three times as often, I would want to know what the MRAs want. What do you want? Do you want men to use methods that don't kill them as often? I don't get how that would work. Like, I don't know what policy or something that we could do that would help. I mean, certainly, the gender stigma around men seeking help could be part of it, could absolutely be true that men don't seek help when they need it as much.

0:35:16 Thomas: They need to be tough. They need to have that toxic masculinity again. They need to go see a therapist, for example. That could absolutely be a factor, 100%. And any feminist, if you just asked a feminist, this is the test I want to do for some of these. If you were to ask a feminist, hey, are you in favor of men being less stigmatized over mental health? They'd say absolutely. Absolutely. They're not going to oppose that idea. So this whole framing of these feminists somehow being against these issues and stopping this issue, that's the biggest problem I have. If you're somebody who were just an advocate for one of these issues, if you were someone who's like, hey, we need to make truck driving safer, we can make forestry safer. Hey, we need to try to get men to get help when they need it.

0:36:02 Thomas: We need to make sure guns aren't as easily available. Anything that would actually solve these issues, and that was your focus, 100%, I do not have a problem with you at all. But when you watch this movie, and moreover, when you see not a whitewashed version of these people, when you See What They Actually Say online and how they act, it's women-hating. It's all it is. It's shrouded in these little statistical issues that they've tried to find, but that's not what the point is. The point is the women- hating, and then the justification diversification comes after, in my opinion. Otherwise, why on earth would the male suicide method lead you to say horrible things about women, which I could play a clip later on. They just say awful things about woman all the time. You can find countless examples of it.

0:36:49 Thomas: I don't, you don't even have to dig. So the next claim I'm going to look at is men dropping out of college and also not as many men going to college. Women are actually taking over a little bit in terms of both bachelors and graduate school. One thing that I find a little little bit funny about this claim. It has been 10 seconds. Not only is the gap virtually nothing. I mean, the gap is something like, depending on the source, 55, 57% women. So a little out of balance. And it's only been for like 10 minutes. Politically speaking, in terms of time, it was male dominated for most of history. And then it slowly started to become more female dominated. And now it's gone slightly over to where more women are getting degrees and men are losing their shit.

0:37:39 Thomas: I think that's kind of funny to look at that sensitivity. Second thing that is interesting about this, there is still a large gender pay gap in higher education. So this isn't one of those ones that you can explain away with, well, men work more hours. Those kind of jobs aren't the ones that are, you can put in the extra hours to earn overtime and all that. That's not that kind of job. And now that the student body is more female, you would think that it should be even more true that more women should get into these higher positions in the academy, and they aren't. They are still male-dominated, and men are still earning more money. So that's interesting. Another interesting thing, if we want to go with these numbers, since, you know, the MRAs brought it up, so why don't we look at it? Women are testing better than men at math, too.

0:38:25 Thomas: Not just like, oh, the typical stereotype, oh women are better at language. Nope. At one high school referenced in an article I will post, 77% of women tested proficient in math compared to 72% of men. Another high school had 67 of women test proficient compared with 57. So both a five-point difference in one school, 10-point different in another. Women are testing better, despite the fact that according to James Damore, they prefer people over things. So it's weird that they're testing better in math than men, but they are. So if you'd like to go on merely merit and pay no attention to demographics, be prepared for women to overtake you in universities. Now, I don't think we should do that. I don'T think we SHOULD let the balance get too out of whack for any demographic.

0:39:12 Thomas: I don't think it would be good if college was 80% women and 20% men, for example. I Don'T think that would be good, just like I don't think it's good that it's 80-20 men over women in tech jobs. And let's let's look at root causes. This is where, once again, this is why I brought up the historical narrative, kind of three things you need. You need historical context. If we had any evidence that admissions offices were preferring women for some reason, like they just were like, we don't like men, we want more women, that would be something to consider. If we had both the evidence that there were more qualified men and yet more women were getting in, for this is analogous to what we have in tech and other industries where there are plenty of qualified women, but they're not given a chance. If we had that counter evidence, we'd say, okay, we definitely don't want admissions to favor a group unfairly.

0:40:00 Thomas: But the causes of the discrepancy are, as we said, the test scores are trending in that direction. And another potential cause people are seeing is men are just, they're misbehaving more. So there's a portion of men that are having disciplinary problems that's disqualifying them from college admissions a lot lot of times. That could be another very gender role thing. I'm just speculating this is too big of a topic for this little sub point of the show. But that is one of the articles I saw, which is men are having more disciplinary problems. And so more women are graduating high school. So the pool is already skewed. So there's more women. And effectively at George Washington University, for example, you actually have a better chance of getting in if you're a man. So it's the opposite opposite of the popular narrative now.

0:40:48 Thomas: Because there are way more women applying, they accept fewer of them. So, if you are a man applying for college, you have a better chance relative to your fellow men to get in than women by not much, but about two points. It's worth noting. So, this attitude of, oh, I'm a white man, I'll don't even try going to college. They just let, you know, women, it's the opposite of that. And once again, I have to ask these MRAs, if they really do want to be held to this data, because if they do, they're going to see a lot of racial discrimination that they probably don't want to see. For example, Latinos. Latinos have the lowest percentage of their population which has achieved a bachelor's degree or more.

0:41:33 Thomas: It's very, very disproportionate. It is only 15.5% for bachelor's degrees and 36% for white people, 22% for Black people. So if, again, once you open up the Pandora's box of going by these demographics and crying foul, well, sure, but let's look at what's really happening in admissions and these numbers. Truth is, not enough Latinos are getting these opportunities. And not only that, there may be some conflicting or confounding thing going on, because I'm looking at the 2016 census. I've got a few different sources for this claim. And while most of the media sources, which are using some federal data to talk about enrollment, most of them are backing up the fact that there are more women in college. But if you look at the 2016 census, by age 25 and older, the percentage of men who have completed a bachelor's degree versus women is very, very close.

0:42:29 Thomas: It's within 0.4%. So that difference is not very much at all. And advanced degree is within 12%. So that's accounting for population 25 and older. So maybe those extra few years, who knows, maybe men are going back later and getting a degree. So that is making the number closer. But I just wanted to throw that in there so that data isn't exactly the same as the other data I am seeing. It is very even in the census data. Now here is what is even more frustrating about this claim. Despite women, according to some sources, again, completing and being enrolled in college getting degrees more, they're still getting paid less. They get paid more for a few years out of college. And then later on, as you look upward in the age groups, men start making more.

0:43:18 Thomas: So if anything, the gender pay gap could be a little understated in some ways if you control for education. Women are now graduating more often. If you look at the benefit, you know, they told you this in high school, like, oh, the benefit in earnings that you'll accrue if you go to college. That is actually not been going toward women. So men still, the increase, there's a particular graphic I saw, the increase in the marginal dollars more that you make if you graduate. I know it's a little complicated without looking at it, but it's how the change has been since 2006 of how many more dollars you make. If you get a degree that has been going up for men, it's actually gone down for women, meaning women who graduate are making closer to women who don't graduate from college.

0:44:06 Thomas: It's trending that way. I also want to point out that in 2014, Obama had an initiative called My Brother's Keeper, and it was a new initiative to empower boys and young men of color. It involved trying to get more boys and men of colour in college and in business and other things like like that. And if this were successful and put more men of color into universities, this gender college gap would decrease. And I'm sure that would be something the MRAs would want, right? They can't just want white men to be successful because they're men's rights activists, right, they're not white men's right activists. So shouldn't they be supportive of the Democratic Party, which wants to put more Men of Color into universities and that kind of thing. So there you you have it. So that should cover the university discrepancy, men to women.

0:44:54 Thomas: Interesting issue, some stuff going on there, but discrimination is not the problem. There are other issues. And if we want to work on initiatives to keep men graduating at the same rate as women, that might be something to look into. Something that I know no feminist I know of would oppose trying to help more people graduate from high school and college. But while we're at it, let's also try to address the fact that these women who are graduating in higher rates are still making less than men. Last claim here. This one's interesting. Last claim we have time for today. Male homelessness. I think this might have been one James brought up. But yeah, men are more often homeless or the rate of homelessness is higher for men because we hate men, right? We're misandrists. We hate men. We want them on the streets, damn it.

0:45:39 Thomas: All right. Well, first thing to look at here is be careful with this claim because there's some cherry picked statistics going on. They will claim sometimes, some of the claimants, I don't want to say everybody does it, but some of them in the documentary claim that men are 75% of homeless people, women are only 25%. That's not true. So if you look at, there's a great source for this and it's from HUD and it gives you all the breakdown you could possibly need on this. Men are 75 percent of single homeless people. So if it's just that rate, that's true. It's 75%. But what that ignores is families. When you look at the number for homeless with children, women make up 60.7% and men only make up 39.3%.

0:46:26 Thomas: So there's a female majority there by a little bit. And when you look at the total, then that brings the total and homelessness closer to parity, still a little more male, but there's some reasons I'm going to talk about for that. So, but first off, right off the bat, if you were to give me the choice, would you rather be homeless by yourself or homeless and you have kids that you're trying to take care of. I'd go with homeless by myself. That sounds a lot less stressful, but women are often left with these kids. And so there are more, they're expected due to many things, gender roles, which again, feminists are all about breaking. They're expected to takecare of these kids, men are more free to abandon their kids than women are typically in our society. And women, 60% to 31% to 39% are homeless with kids.

0:47:13 Thomas: So when you add that all up together, the total difference is 60% of homeless people are men, 39.5% women, and the rest transgender, which is disproportionate. Homelessness is a big problem in the transgender community, very disproportionate, so the problem is that the MRAs try to establish a straight line from misandry and feminism to homelessness, like to male homelessness. And it's just not clear to me how they're establishing them. They say it. I can link you the article on voiceformen.com where they say misandry is a big part of this. I'm not sure how that would work. I mean, men are making more than women. They're making more money. You would figure that that would be a critical ingredient in being homeless would be if you don't have enough money.

0:47:59 Thomas: Here's a factor. It turns out that homeless shelters do tend to prioritize families, and since, due to gender roles or whatever it is, women are the homeless people who have families more often, that number actually could be underrepresented because they get help faster. So that could be driving the discrepancy a little bit. But that's due to prioritizing families with kids, which it would be hard to imagine arguing against that. Because I mean, if you have X number of resources, are you going to prioritize a single person or a homeless family with minors? It's a tough choice, but I mean I would be hard-pressed to say you wouldn't want to if you could prioritize little kids and homeless families.

0:48:47 Thomas: That being said, ideally we would have enough resources to help everybody. And I don't know If you ask a feminist, again, let's apply this test. Ask a feminist. Do you want more men to be homeless? They would say no. Ask a feminists. Do you wanna help homeless people? They would yes. I mean, there's just no, you're coming up with a cartoon character. If you think that feminists are sitting there curling their feminist evil mustaches and saying that we're so glad that more men are homeless. So what is the policy issue here? And the policy is, now there's some of it that might be, again and gender roles, which of course, gender studies, feminism is a great way to look at gender roles and dispose of those myths. But gender roles could be part of it. It could be true that perhaps society helps women more and they make it so that men are more responsible.

0:49:39 Thomas: I mean, there could be some of that. I don't know how that would actually practically play out. But with a 60-40 split, there could be some amount of that going on. Given that drug addiction is a cause of homelessness, given that mental illness is a cause of hopelessness, if it's true that, once again, men aren't seeking help for drug addiction, seeking help for homelessness, if they aren't, if they are slightly disproportionately not seeking help, then they're not seeking help. For these things, that's something I would want to change. And if you asked any feminists, I guarantee they would want to change that, too. They would not want men to feel like they couldn't seek help. No feminist wants that. Toxic masculinity is what makes it so that men don't want to seek help, they have to act tough. They have be more responsible. And with a 60-40 split, that's not that big of a split.

0:50:24 Thomas: It's significant. It's not nothing. That's not big of it. Maybe that explains some of it, maybe that explains most of it—men not wanting to seek help for these problems. And then once they go down the path of mental illness or drug addiction, it becomes harder to recover, that kind of thing. I mean, that could be part of it but once again, this is where the MRA has opened up the Pandora's box. If we want to look at these numbers, we need to look at all the numbers. And if you really want to see just a sad discrepancy, just a very unfortunate, depressing discrepanze, look at how many black people are homeless relative to the population. Given a population something like 13.5% African American, they are 40% of the homeless population.

0:51:11 Thomas: That is a staggering percentage. So if, you know, if you're going to, again, if you want to live and die by these discrepancies, MRAs, be prepared to find out that really white men don't have it so bad. And actually a lot of this discrepancy could be because black men, so many black men are homeless. So, if you look at it that way, white homeless people is actually very in lockstep with statistics. So If you're a white man, you are not being disproportionately affected by homelessness. This doesn't mean it's okay that there are a lot of homeless people. I think homelessness is a huge problem in this country. I mean, once again, ask a feminist, what do you want to do about homelessness? And they will say, I would love to solve that problem. I would love it if zero people were homeless. That would be fantastic. There would be no discrepancy because it would be zero. And if you want to look at the political party, because what's so ironic about all this is these MRAs are Trump supporters.

They are huge Trump supporters because they hate women and they love that Trump said a bunch of horrible stuff about women and THEY LOVE THAT CULTURE WAR. But isn't it unfortunate that it's the Democrats who would want to do stuff about homelessness? It's the democrats who aren't the party of, oh, you know, help yourself, like God will help you if you help yourself kind of thing. That's directly against their own interests. So So I've been very blown away by the fact that, A, most of these problems are, there's no discrimination.

0:52:42 Thomas: There's some differences, but that doesn't mean discrimination. That's a straw man to say feminists think that. B, no feminists are trying to cause this problem. C, feminists, if you ask them, would try to solve this problem, actually. It's actually the opposite. And a lot of feminist theory, which deals with gender roles and toxic masculinity, accounts for some of these discrepancies. And D, or whatever number we're on, after all that, even if you're worried about these problems, it seems to me the Democrats, especially when you look at health care, health care is a major driver of homelessness, not having access to health care. Well, which party? Is it Trump who wants to take away health care from 20 million people? Yeah, it's not the Democrats. You know, it's amazing to me how many levels of misinformed these people are and just misguided.

0:53:34 Thomas: So that's the first few claims that I take. It looks like I tackled four distinct claims. They're pretty major ones of this red pill movie, but we're out of time. If you like this series, if you'd like me to look at more claims, Family Court is a big one. That might be one where there could be some bias against men. I actually wouldn't be surprised. I'm looking forward to looking into that one. I haven't done the research on that yet. If this is a series you would like me to finish, I will. Let me know. People do want me to finish. I want to finish the Trump series because I'm two thirds of the way done right now. It's been really fascinating. So I'll get back to that. But I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please go to patreon.com/seriouspod and make a pledge. It is a tiny amount for you, but it means a huge deal to me. It means I get to continue doing this and raising a family and still being able to have this be my job.

0:54:22 Thomas: It is a great privilege, and it's from supporters like you guys over on patreon.com/seriouspod. So thank you guys so much for that. And I look forward to seeing anyone who made the decision to go to Mythicist Milwaukee. I will see you guys there. Feel free to say hi. Feel free to approach me. I have no problem with that whatsoever.

And also, maybe I'll try to figure out a meetup if there's enough people there, if there is a time that I can do, maybe have a lunch, something like that, have a drink, find a bar. I'll figure that out. Um, hit me up, facebook.com slash thomas podcast is the best way to probably get a hold of me on like a messaging level, uh, for listeners.

So if you want to do that, if you wanna meet up in Milwaukee, uh, I'm looking forward to it's gonna be an interesting, uh, interview with Sargon, and I hope this Red Pill study will give me some fuel to, uh, combat any claims he might make along those lines. So thank you guys so much for listening, supporting over at patreon.com/seriouspod, and I will see you guys next week.