Malcolm and Simone examine if banning pornography positively impacts society, relationships, and mental health. Contrary to assumptions, research shows legalizing porn reduces assault and attitudes viewing women as sex objects. It correlates with happier marriages and less relationship discord. Most downsides link to believing porn is bad, not the material itself. Ultimately restricting porn access worsens outcomes without effectively limiting consumption. They argue conservatives should own male sexuality, not amplify suffering.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] The, Femboy alt right Catgirl. There's a meme around this, And this is where I think that our movement, this new movement was in the conservative party has in many ways become affiliated with cat girls. As yeah, you've got like cat girl Kulag who, we know, we've talked to personally and.

Malcolm: Elon talking about investing in catgirls in that one famous tweet, these are people who I consider very politically aligned with us and both of them have like weirdly talked about catgirls. So what's going on there? Why are they talking about catgirls?

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone! I am so excited for this topic today. When we engage with some other branches of conservatives, one of the things that I think we all agree on is that

Malcolm: sexuality isn't really handling itself well in society today. are a ton of men [00:01:00] and women that are turning to self gratification over real relationships. And this is likely to

Malcolm: expand in the future with AI and stuff like that. One of the responses to this that many people consider is we should ban pornography.

Malcolm: And some countries that are more conservative than us and trying to solve fertility rates have done just that, like South Korea. However, it does not have the effects you would think it would have. And it's generally a really bad idea. Let's talk about why.

Simone: So when we first started writing the Pravda's Guide to Sexuality, we were sure that we would find a lot of information that suggested that porn and masturbation were pretty damaging because. We saw on Reddit at that time, like no fap the subreddit was really big. People were like all about this is damaging me.

Simone: This is really harmful for me. So we're like, wow, this is, people must have looked into this and this must be it fits her

Malcolm: ideology. Like self-control is, oh, good [00:02:00] lack. Yeah. Control

Simone: is bad like that. Yeah. Like you need take a prish approach. Yeah. Yeah. This is, yeah. Don't indulge like that. That must be bad.

Simone: Lo and behold, we were wrong. And, we totally own up to that now. Basically it looks like masturbation in general for both men and women is good. It seems to be correlated with like more sexual empowerment and enjoyment on women's part. seems to reduce stress, improve self esteem, improve body image.

Simone: There's a lot, there's a lot to be said just for masturbation with or without porn. We also say in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, that masturbation may contribute to a decline in many social ills. UCLA researchers found that sex criminals on average consume less porn than the average person.

Simone: And started consuming it at a later age than the average non sex criminal. Take that for what it's worth.

Malcolm: But it's crazier than that. In countries that haven't allowed porn and then started allowing porn, rates of ape you guys can figure out what I mean. I'm trying not to get demonetized here.[00:03:00]

Malcolm: Rights of ape declined precipitously upon the legalization of pornography.

Simone: Yeah. So I can quote from our book on sexuality across nations, more pessimistic at it. Oh, sorry. And I'm going to use the word grape. Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. Great. Across nations, more. Permissive attitudes toward pornography are correlated with lower rates of grape and less violence against women.

Simone: A great case study of this can be seen with the Czech Republic, where porn was illegal under communism, then legalized when the party fell. This decriminalization of pornography caused, in one year, Grapes to decline over 37% in child abuse of the wrong no, it's all wrong. The child, what abuse fell by about 50% similar results.

Simone: We're seeing where porn laws were loosened in Denmark, Japan, China, and Hong Kong. So talk

Malcolm: about rates of internet expansion. Cause that's also really interesting.

Simone: Yes. For every 10% increase in [00:04:00] internet access. there's a corresponding regional decrease of 7. 3% in grapes, suggesting that the internet and its facilitation of masturbation may provide an outlet for sexual energy that might otherwise cause serious damage.

Malcolm: Consider how correlational that is 10% to a 7% drop a 10% rise in internet access to a 7% drop that 50% drop. So this is one of those things, right? Where it's something that ideologically I can be like, self control is good. This is bad, et cetera. But then I engage with the data and do I want to be one of those people, like the woke, where I throw out the data when it doesn't agree with my. Ideological predilections or do I adapt to the data? And I never want to be that type of person, especially when it leads to children to suffer like that. It was hungry, right? A 50% drop. And it's one of those horrible things a child could [00:05:00] experience.

Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. A 50% drop in that happening.

Simone: Yeah. We would prefer to live in a society in which porn is legal and masturbation is widespread because our children on the streets are going to be safer. Like that, just,

Malcolm: it, No, hold on, so it actually gets more interesting than this. We also found in the book that the negative correlates to porn consumption are almost entirely tied to how much you believe there are going to be negative correlates to porn.

Simone: Yeah, back to our theme of how you contextualize things, influences, whether or not, Exactly, so we'll

Malcolm: try to do this after the episode we recorded where we talk really deeply about how much contextualization we can. Matters to whether or not you experience something like trauma or something else, right?

Malcolm: Which is if you see something as negative you will experience it as negative now in porn This is really interesting because it means that porn has a much more negative effect on religious people's psychology Than it does [00:06:00] on non religious people's psychology or people who don't contextualize it negative psychology that is fascinating to me, but it also means that when people talk about how porn is hurting them, if they are somebody who believes porn will hurt them, they are not lying.

Malcolm: It really does have a panoply of negative effects on them. It just doesn't on the people who don't think it's negative. So in many ways, they're creating their own little nightmare.

Simone: Yeah. of adverse effects. And also, a big theme that comes up with porn that many, like feminists argue is that this is hurting men's perception of women.

Simone: It's causing men to objectify women. It's causing men to see women, especially as like less than human, as just objects of, for pleasuring oneself. But as we say in the pragmatist guide to sexuality. Despite what we had assumed, masturbation and porn consumption do not lead people to think less of women.

Simone: People who watch pornography hold views of women as more equal to men than those who do [00:07:00] not watch pornography. Consumers of porn are no less likely to describe themselves as feminists and actually express more egalitarian ideas about Both women in positions of power and working outside the home, according to the results of a study published in the journal of sex research.

Simone: So that also

Malcolm: seems intuitively true, typically the hardline religious people are probably going to consume less porn, . But yeah, so along almost every line it's worse to ban porn, right? But then you can say okay. What about relationship structures? Okay? Porn must negatively affect people in relationships.

Malcolm: Do we have any data on that? I'm pretty sure we do.

Simone: One study conducted on college students found that those who masturbate more actually have more sex than those who masturbate less. Another study found that people who masturbate more often have happier marriages and more satisfying sex within those marriages. Masturbating while fantasizing about one's partner has also been shown to improve the quality of relationships and reduce relationship damaging behavior patterns.

Malcolm: Wow. Yeah, [00:08:00] so we actually had trouble finding studies that suggested that Porn has negative effects on people who don't believe that porn has a negative a negative effect. .

Malcolm: Okay. So we found a couple studies that showed it might have negative effects. We couldn't find any study that showed masturbation alone had a

Simone: negative effect. Yeah, it's more with any sort of pleasurable activity it can be habit forming. So while it's not recognized institutionally as addictive inherently you can, I think, fall into patterns that are quite damaging.

Simone: Just like you could, develop a food addiction. It is totally possible. And many people do have addictions to porn.

Malcolm: Actually, this is a, but I also think let's ignore all of the research. Let's pretend that wasn't there. Yeah. I've been talking with some like Catholic integralists and they're like, okay, we need to enforce basically our ideology on other people and through that society can be made better, right?

Malcolm: If we remove access to porn, it will fix relationship dynamics and stuff like that. And here I am being like, what a sign. Of cultural [00:09:00] weakness that you cannot exist as a cultural group without at the government level banning access to certain things. The way I see it is anybody who can't motivate themselves to reproduce in an environment where porn exists probably doesn't need to be a part of the gene pool.

Malcolm: Because... Things like porn are going to exist within future cultural environments. And they are going to eventually seek in, unless you completely wall yourself off from society. And if you want to do that as a cultural group, go ahead and try. I'm fairly certain you will lose, because the groups that have tried that...

Malcolm: Losing unless they keep themselves completely disconnected from the world. So by that, what I mean is Amish groups that have adopted cell phone use, they've actually seen a precipitous fall in their fertility rates. Yeah, you can, you'll be okay so long as you're not engaging with technology.

Malcolm: But then how do you compete economically on a large scale? How do you matter? In terms of the future of our [00:10:00] species, the future of our species will be defined by people who have overcome these challenges, not people who engaged with them by isolating themselves from them. And finally, I actually imagine that a lot of the psychological benefits that people are reporting from porn restriction is actually the psychological benefits that come from just any sort of arbitrary desire restriction, meat restriction, or fish restriction, or I'm not going to eat between this and this.

Malcolm: Period of the day, like you would have with Ramadan.

Simone: Intervention

Malcolm: fasting, yeah. Arbitrary self denial rituals, as we always mention, strengthen the inhibitory pathways in your prefrontal cortex and make it easier to shut down our trees of thoughts, which can make it easier to force yourself to work, and you'll just generally be mentally healthier.

Malcolm: Great, but you see this. Anywhere you have this, you don't need it to be porn. And this is where I think that our movement, this new movement was in the conservative party that is much more, , open to ideas like this has in many ways become [00:11:00] affiliated with cat girls. As yeah, you've got like cat girl Kulag who, we know, we've talked to personally and.

Malcolm: Elon talking about investing in catgirls in that one famous tweet, these are people who I consider very politically aligned with us and both of them have like weirdly talked about catgirls. So what's going on there? Why are they talking about catgirls? Here is what I think is going on there and why I do think that you could call it catgirl conservatism.

Simone: Please let this be a new political

Malcolm: party. Ownership of male sexuality. The attractive cat girl is something that is both sexually deviant and that it's not approved by either traditional conservative society or the new progressive society, because it's seen as I don't know, dehumanizing of women or fetishizing or something like that.

Malcolm: So it's frowned on by both groups but it is also, I think, near universal. I think there's very few guys who aren't like, Oh, cute cat girls, [00:12:00] right?

Simone: You mean who are fine, cute cat

Malcolm: girls, aversive. Yeah, I don't think that's a norm. They're not grossed out. I think that there's a lot of, weird fetishes out there and stuff like that where it's sort of 50 50.

Malcolm: Yeah. Hot cat girls I get the off perception. It's 90 to 95 They're crowd

Simone: pleasers. They're not, They're not arm pits.

Simone: Well,

Malcolm: Like, Really furry style. I'm talking about, anime style. Two ears, and like a tail or something, right? Yes. So it's one of those things that is both subversive and nearly universal.

Malcolm: And I think it also, and I think this is really important is a reclamation of male sexuality, which is really open ground for the conservative movement right now because, traditionally the conservatives were sexually conservative and the progressives were, more sexually open, but as time has gone on The progressive movement has become more and more sex negative, especially in relation to male sexuality, [00:13:00] like male desire is something to be shamed.

Malcolm: And so we And create a movement which I think is appeals to ground that the progressive has voluntarily ceded. And that there is no reason why the conservative party, either ideologically, like, why are we creating a nanny state to protect people from themselves?

Malcolm: Ideologically that makes no sense. And the data, I think, also shows that you're not really getting a big advantage from this.

Simone: Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. A new way of being proud of male sexuality, which progressive groups would argue. How dare you ever try to be proud of that, that, objectifies and ruins, everyone, whereas actually, it has been shamed for quite a long time.

Malcolm: Actually,

Malcolm: there was this meme that I want to say

Malcolm: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's, It's The, the, the Femboy alt [00:14:00] right Catgirl. There's a meme around this, which is an increasing alt right movement in the femboy movement. But I think it's really organic when you think about it because this is a movement that is becoming increasingly common because I think of the biological changes to males that are happening because of environmental pollutants, the study we always cite is the

Simone: the TIDE studies that looked at first trimester. Blood levels of endocrine disruptors in mothers, and then things like anogenital distance and gendered play in children.

Malcolm: These are still people who have, I think, a lot of masculine mindset in terms of how they approach politics and stuff like that.

Malcolm: But the way that they self identify and relate to their own sexuality, it's very much more fanboy y. And I also think the Femboy identity is to some extent subversive these days, because in a world where you are expected to transition, if you don't immediately adopt a traditional [00:15:00] masculine sexuality proudly adopting a Femboy lifestyle, I can see how that would relate to the alt right movement to an extent.

Simone: Interesting. Yeah. How does, interesting. Interesting. What is adjacent to this or what I see discussed a lot in, in similar circles, just as, okay, maybe femboy cat girls are being celebrated female promiscuity and sexuality is being demonized. And I don't really understand why. Where I stand now is that there are different female sexual strategies and they make sense in different contexts.

Simone: So sure. Being really prudish or, limiting number of sexual partners or maybe not even having sex until marriage can make sense in some contexts. In other contexts being promiscuous, having as many sexual partners as you would care to have is advantageous, especially when you know the trade offs coming into it.

Simone: Why? Yeah. Walk

Malcolm: me through this. It actually damages the non promiscuous [00:16:00] group for the promiscuous group to exist. So suppose I'm a part of a Catholic commune or something like that, right? I try to go back to the way things used to be. I have built monogamous relationships. We ban divorce in our communities.

Malcolm: So if you existed in like old France or something like that, right? This was the way things used to be. You couldn't just leave your partner. The switching costs would be. Incredibly high. We can go to the switching costs episode on relationships where we talk about relationship structure and stuff like that.

Malcolm: So

Simone: if you were my husband, I wouldn't have to worry because who else could you possibly go to? Everyone else is married, right? Yeah

Malcolm: if you left me, you would have this huge social stigma against you within basically anyone else you could marry, which would hurt your chances to marry someone else, which artificially strengthens our relationship and makes divorce less likely.

Malcolm: But even if you isolate your community these days, a man could still just leave and go to a completely different like community in a completely different area. Every single promiscuous [00:17:00] girl in general society lowers the quality. Of every other relationship just from them existing and by that what I mean, it's a lower the quality of every other relationship where relationship quality is defined by how much an individual values their partner divided by the average quality of a partner they think they could get on an open marketplace, right?

Malcolm: And as we said, when somebody believes the average quality of a partner, they can get on an open marketplace is. Higher than the quality of their existing relationship, they're going to like their relationship. So there is a reason, there is a reason why somebody would be like, I don't like this, right?

Malcolm: However, I think it's a completely losing battle to fight, right? And I think it alienates potential cultural allies that do not need to be alienated. Like with Ayla, right? I always am trying to convince her to join our side. I'm like, you gotta join the conservatives. We've got your back or at least our group within the party has your back.

Malcolm: And then she has these horrible experiences with these [00:18:00] frankly insecure, quote unquote trad guys who think they're being cool by shaming somebody for, I don't know, being a deviant sexually. And it's whatever. Whatever, she's living the life that I think most red pillars would live if they were born in a woman's body.

Malcolm: Yeah. But

Simone: But you were just arguing that someone who is willing to,

Malcolm: no, so what I'm arguing is that it does hurt those communities, but no amount of shaming is going to remove people like that from the general marketplace at this point. Like they just exist now. There is nothing you can do to get rid of them anymore.

Malcolm: And thus, by going out there and making yourself a problem for these people, all you do is chase away potential allies at this point. I'm not saying they don't hurt your relationships, I'm not saying it doesn't have exogenous effects on your community, it does, but no amount of shaming that you're doing is making anything better, all it's doing is chasing away potential allies that, and you could be like, no, because if we consolidated [00:19:00] power within the conservative movement, we could ban porn.

Malcolm: So what you ban porn, who are you helping? You're helping the people who aren't in your cultural group, unless you're saying that like, and I was in Korea, you can get porn with VPNs and stuff. I don't know what you people think, like how good these porn bands

Simone: actually are. But isn't prostitution legal in Korea?

Simone: How does that work? I don't remember, but I do remember there was a lot of it. So yeah, I guess what I'm saying

Malcolm: is that porn bans just don't work that well. They, They work

Simone: less well. Well, What freaks me out though, and as we alluded to earlier in this podcast, like the more you ban access to porn, the more people are going to sort of right.

Simone: And then elsewhere,

Malcolm: 50% right. happening to kids. Yeah. That to me was just like, what even are you? So for some sort of like aesthetic, cultural victory, you're willing to let actual children suffer. [00:20:00]

Simone: Yeah. Not cool. It's not cool, buddy. I

Malcolm: don't like it when progressives pull that s**t and I don't like it when you guys pull that s**t either.

Malcolm: Yeah. What matters is. Is, it's the kids and not all kids. I can protect my kids, I can keep my kids out of the school system. Not everyone can do that.

Simone: Yeah, no, I I hope that a couple of minds have been changed about the

Malcolm: value.

Simone: But... Yeah yeah porn.

Simone: It's useful. Don't ban it. Thank you very much.

Malcolm: No, yeah it's useful and it may be useful to you to restrict yourself from it, but it's actually the act of the restriction, which is providing you as the benefits. If you, honestly, like

Simone: I, I, From the research, I think if you want to restrict something and develop your self denial pathways, your inhibitory pathways, try intermittent fasting it appears to have some pretty good, benefits health wise, [00:21:00] whereas as long as you don't have a problem a habit form based addiction to porn it seems to be that moderate and reasonable masturbation and porn use Has beneficial effects increase testosterone levels?

Simone: I think yeah hold on. I think even, yeah, one study suggests that abstaining from masturbation for seven days may increase testosterone levels, which could be useful. Okay. So I guess if you're trying to build muscle, then okay, yeah, sure like that too.

Malcolm: But if you do have an addiction to porn, which some people argue that it can't happen, whatever I'll say it can happen.

Malcolm: All right? Yeah. If it does happen, then use naltrexone. Yes. You just go to All Day Chemist or whatever, this is a site where you can order these pills from India, it's an opioid agonist take a pill, an hour later masturbate to porn, do this every day for a week, you will never want to masturbate to porn again.

Malcolm: I think

Simone: it takes longer than a week, the Sinclair method's six months. Maybe

Malcolm: a month, okay but if you do this for a month, you [00:22:00] will eventually lose that addiction I mean if other studies are anything to go on, 80% probability.

Simone: Yeah. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Porn good if you are addicted, porn bad but you can fix it.

Simone: And please don't ban porn for the children. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I love you. I love talking about all these crazy things with you and I'm looking forward to our next conversation

Malcolm: already. I love you too. I love you too. Bye.

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