Woman; Sexual Suicide

Oh. Good evening and welcome to woman my guest this evening believes that unless men have

ties to women they become a menace to society and to themselves. With me tonight is George Gilder author of Sexual suicide and most recently naked nomads. Welcome to the show. How did you come from. And if marriage and family really are the indispensable institutions of civilized society as I maintain and social suicide than single men and women just couldn't be in this splendid condition that all these magazines suggest So it seem to me likely on theoretical grounds that the Playboy meth for example that the Playboy Philosophy was a myth but I didn't know it and so I went to the National Bureau of

Health Statistics and to the Census Bureau to find out what the facts of the single condition really were. And I discovered something somewhat to my surprise to tell the truth that single men were not just slightly worse off than other people in the society they were overwhelmingly worse off. And this seemed to me to be an interesting fact to discover. We think society is really a critique of marriage. In what way. Go go into little more detail. Well I think much of the culture really reduces to a critique of marriage. I would say that 80 percent of the magazines on the newsstand for example the ones that are most widely purchased anyway celebrate the life of single people. You know it's I think of all the Playboys in there and list imitators of magazines for women like new women and cosmopolitan. Even the new women's magazines like Playgirl and they all seem to celebrate

a kind of life that's completely inconsistent with the long term ties and commitments and responsibilities of marriage. So it seems to me that this part of the culture is implicitly a critique of marriage. Then you look watch television any evening and how many heroes are married you know to watch television you'd think that doctors were all single men almost no doctors or single men they all get married right away. And yet to watch them on television you'd think that they were all sort of barely suppressed playboys and the just completely at variance with reality. But it's a powerful message that is propagated by the culture. Well how do you account for the divorce statistics then. I mean if marriage is so terrific that you know what's happening something's wrong. Yes something is wrong. And part of what's wrong is this cultural propaganda for singleness and for independence and freedom and sexual diversity. But

beyond that I don't think the divorce statistics are so sensational as is often suggested. For example in 1972 for the first time the divorce rate exceeded the divorce rate in 1947 and this was despite the fact that during the 60s we had the largest generation of marriageable young people and our whole history impacted by this long and complicated and problematical war and every war produces a lot of precipitous marriages and a lot of turbulence in human relationships and a lot of divorces afterwards. So part of the divorces and instantly the highest rate of cancer comes among young people married as teenagers just reflects this demographic situation. But also there are other divorces and which derive I think from this single mythology to some extent you have in the worst

case in my judgment the phenomenon of older men leaving their wives and marrying young women. They're lured by the new venue. I think they're partly lured by the meth and they're lured but the kind of fetishism for you and our current society. I think one of the problems of single men incidentally is they lack a sense of the phases and seasons of life that you grow older and your relationships to people change. And when you have grandchildren and children and your connections to society evolve and you assume new roles and new positions as you grow older. But in modern societies this evolution of a kind of fabric of life which I think is the very substance of life itself is lost. And so when people grow older they clutch after any young body to affirm their youth when in fact they're growing older and it's kind of a pathetic spectacle.

Let's talk more specifically about the myth and the reality of bachelor hood. What do you think people think Bachelor star. I think there's the Playboy meth is very influential. For example most people imagine that single men get a lot of sex. I mean this if US the average person who. Yes Barbara Walters. She would tell you that single men as pretty sexy bunch. I think that but the fact is that single men get only one fifth as much sex as married men. And they only get half as much sex as single women do. How do you find that out and to it this is the play this Playboy itself went out to find a sexual revolution last year and it published a book called Sexual Behavior in the 70s and they couldn't find any sexual revolution. All I felt was a lot of this frustrated single men in general. Who are looking for this revolution that doesn't isn't there and and not finding it turn chiefly to alcoholism. And the other thing they found which I found rather interesting was.

That. The increasing tendency to premarital sex among teenagers. Has had. A completely different effect than is usually imagined. What's happened is a reaffirmation an intensification of monogamy. So that although the women of the Kinsey Report 1948 or something tended to pad with eight or nine different men before they settled down with one unmarried and today's teenagers sleep with their first boyfriend and don't pet with anybody at all and then tend to marry him. Fifty four percent of the Kinsey sample married the first men they slept with 53 percent of this revolutionary Playboys sample. Sleeps with the first men the first men they sleep with. So it's you know this revolutionary change that everybody's talking about is chiefly a reaffirmation of monogamy that increasingly early age people are making their

their commitments to their final partner at 16 rather than at 19. Why do we all think there's been this sexual revolution. Because because you send a reporter out to get a story on the sexual revolution it comes back and says All right. And the editor kicks and out of his office. I mean it's it's just it's sensational copy. And that's the chief reason in my judgment I don't think there's that the changes have been significant. It's actually the very literature of it is all a reflection of frustration. People don't buy penthouse and Playboy and all these magazines and pornography by the. Tome. If. If they're having a happy sex life that's all an index of frustration and. Failure. And that's what the sexual revolution is it's partly designed to sell products like books and magazines. And it's also. Designed to titillate that there's almost no delivery at all.

What are some other discrepancies between the myth of The Bachelor and reality is it true that bachelors have more money. As single men make only a little more than half as much money as married men of the same age and qualifications. Single men make less money during their lifetimes than single women do single single men are the bottom. List and any index of success or achievement or. Or health. Or. Stability. And the only kind of. Index that they lead to incarceration and mental and mental institutions and prisons they're there right at the top and they don't they don't seem to have the same pressures that many men with a family and being responsible for you know supporting a family and having a high powered job that reflects the greatest mass of human psychology today. It's the notion that what you really need in life is

freedom independence and sexual diversity. And what one discovers is what makes people happy is responsibility. People who have responsibilities are healthier and happier. And that's the reason why marriage is such a valuable and crucial institution. You once said that that the male sex drive is on selective. What do you mean by that. Well. I make a distinction between love and the male sex drive the male sex drive is very impulsive and short term it doesn't lead anywhere. It can be aroused by any kind of naked body it's it's a kind of short term impulsive drive and you can't establish a. Stable society or even a stable personality on the male sex drive and that's another reason why single men have such a hard time dealing with modern society. The woman's sex drive on the other hand. Evolved during 35 million years when she was chiefly responsible for children. And you can't be

responsible for children. If you're erratic and impulsive and if you're inclined. To. Run away and pursue any passing entertainment you have to have a sense of the future in order to raise children. And so it seems to me is part of the deepest evolutionary character of woman. You have a greater sense of the future greater emotional stability and seems to me that's why single women don't show any of these afflictions that are exhibited by saying. What you're saying is then that we have to institute the male sex drive right through through marriage. What changes the male sex drive. Is love. And love. I believe is best embodied and finally embodied in children this is not the only way it can be embodied. But surely the greatest fulfillment of love for another person is to have a child in which both of you have a genetic part.

And it's not a centric male centric point of view though in a sense you're saying male ego centric it's the it's the woman who bears the child after all the woman. Men don't have to be anywhere around when the kid's born. It's really discipline. This is why I love. You. Represents a tribute to female sexual female superiority because the woman obviously plays the crucial role in procreation and procreation is absolutely indispensable. The process of human life. And actually it seems to me. On the basis of this research that. It's psychologically the profoundest of our drives and. And the profoundest source of our humanity is our love for the next generation. And so so I don't think it's it's not egocentric at all it's it's the love for the woman by the man he speaks in terms of

forever he's he aspires toward the future love is the sun and that of the future it's the sentiment of commitment it's the it's the sentiment of responsibility. And. An aspiration together. And it's a tribute to the woman you think Meredith is necessary and it's good for women as you're saying it is for men. I think marriage is necessary for women as it is for men. It is. Clear that single women are according to polls at least are less happy than married women are by a decisive margin. However at the same time it's true that because women are more stable and because marriage is really based on a submission of the short term compulsive somewhat promiscuous male sex drive to the maternal concerns of women because this is the very substance of marriage. The woman is less changed by it than the man has. Changed. Yeah I think that to bear a child I gather is.

It is an act that. Changes a woman's whole attitude toward the world. I mean it really it gives her a sense of having. Committed herself and some permanent and irretrievable way that corresponds to some extent with the kind of commitment which men make in marriage. And so even though it doesn't change your health. So much as it does the math even though it doesn't change her. Lung or stability the way it does and that none the less it changes the very nature of her role on earth. What do you think makes marriage work. I think that what makes marriage work and. Is the creation of new masculine roles. That affirm the man. And thus relieve him of this compulsive need to prove himself sexually all the time. And this is why the role of provider is not some optional part of marriage it's really

pretty indispensable to it. There are other things that the man can do that can make him feel manly but in general across the whole society men have to be providers. They have to contribute something substantial to the marriage in some way comparable to the. Great woman's contribution through children which really is the essence the real purpose of the marriage is to provide a loving environment for children. The woman's role in it is necessarily more important. And so. The man has to do something and this isn't simply a product of capitalism or Western society or United United States as Margaret Mead has put it. The notion that a man has to give something to the woman in exchange for her enormous services to him is universal in human life. The man has to pay some tribute. In the usual ways to become a provider. How many threatening letters that you've

gotten to watch hundreds if. Well I've got. The fact is people don't write when they're mad they don't normally write me personally they write the TV station or the publisher or something of this sort. But. I've received thousands of favorable letters. I mean literally. I mean that's been one of the astonishing aspects of sexual suicide. Well obviously you get tremendous amount of hostility within the feminist movement. I mean that up in Canada was on a program where. As were the feminist I was supposedly debating turned her chair around on the stage and wouldn't respond any questions unless they were. Directed from the moderator. And. I had a good time with her main career though less last month. That was she was really fun. She's she's she's less secure she's more secure than most of us I guess and she and we had a good time. She made me pay for the dinner though which I thought was just didn't have any money. After a 27 day tour the other day some $60000 she just didn't have any.

But I was delighted to pay. Did you say that her ability to care deeply. Why is that. I think again it's partly evolutionary. I think that. For thirty five million years of human evolution none of been dispensable. They've been the ones who the society could do without. And. You know if if the women if some women get destroyed. The society ends. You know that's that's the end of the game. But. You can lose almost all and none can be wiped out. And if they're just a couple and the women survive this society continues to. Impregnate a whole tribe and it goes on. And so men of always been assigned the most dangerous tasks in the society they've always been the ones who fought and hunted and expose themselves to. The environment so.

It seems to me that. As part of their very nature as men they're more volatile less responsible. More violent more radically less emotionally stable and more aggressive and stronger. And these. Are derived from 35 million years of of hunting chiefly in male groups. And so. Without long term connections to women. And men as hunters really. Become a sort of. Dispensable I mean gangs of hunters in modern society don't. Have much of a role so they become gangs of criminals and whatever family life really disintegrates. What you get is bands of naked nomads who perpetrate for example almost 90 percent of all violent. You say that single women prefer it.

It's really peculiar isn't it you read a book for example which is influential magazine for young single women. And you discover they're chiefly preoccupied with married men you know divorces wife. How can you tell. His plan and how do you persuade him to. Leave his wife I mean it just endless. Articles in Cosmopolitan on this subject. And it seems to me that. The reason is. That. Young single women in America are quite successful they're more successful than single men are. And yet women still do what men to contribute something some kind of achievement some kind of strength and stability that they earn in the world of men in some sense. And. So. Women's liberationist don't. Lawyers for example don't marry flower children they marry other lawyers.

And. Since there are very few successful single men in America just in credible there are more single men than there are single women but very few of them are six successes. The single women's eyes necessarily. Will. Go in other directions and they go towards successful married men. And the problem is. That particularly with the liberation of divorce laws and the idea that that marriage should be. Forever. And. What happens is these two strong groups in this society which are single women young single women and older married Ben. Can get together. And they can. And the older married the victims of this process of course are the older. Married women they leave because an older woman when she loses her husband she is over 40 only has about one quarter as good a chance of

remarrying as a as a man does. And. Whenever one of these married men leaves an older woman and marries a young woman he deprives single men of the chance to. Have a wife. Who can bear children. And so. So this is a very destructive process when you think infidelity is really dangerous. Well I think that I think infidelity is less dangerous than divorce but divorce really sexual liberal sexual liberation does not create equality at all that's nonsense. What it creates is. Opportunity for those who are most powerful. To have their own way. What happens to the divorced man when he becomes single I mean if he is much of a menace to society you know the divorced men and the widowed men incidentally immediately fall into a pattern that indistinguishable from. The pattern of single men of the same age. The divorced men at this point also becomes. Much more

vulnerable to sickness and neurotic behavior and mental illness and his income drops. He. Comes to resemble crime rate increases too it comes to resemble a single man. And this was very interesting to me because. One of the obvious questions that my theory raises is whether it's singleness that makes men this way or whether it's. Men who are already flawed neurotic. Who can't marry and thus remain single. That's clear. It's a question of which comes first. And obviously if somebody is really psychotic they're going to trouble getting married so it so this has an effect on the statistics. But at the same time the fact that people don't choose to be single widowers exhibit the same pattern is as people who've never been married and divorced men who don't choose to be single in the same sense also display this single syndrome. Suggests that singleness is

bad for men. And I think that what is to me. Physical symptoms you talk about single men being less help they single men have six times as many heart attacks for example as single women. This whole idea that heart attacks are a product of the terrible burdens of the breadwinner are just nonsense. The people who are breadwinners don't get heart attacks and nearly the numbers people aren't. It's the people who don't succeed as breadwinners who don't have responsibilities who get sick. And there's a recent issue of TIME magazine a while back devoted to hypertension. And this is one of the. Cases in point because hypertension is peculiar a combination of physical and mental symptoms. Which events as itself and high blood pressure which in turn produces a wide range of. Diseases. And. And

it's also the characteristic single male problem. What about the crime rate. You say single men commit more crimes what kinds of crimes do they most likely do depends on the age. But at every age. They commit more violent crimes than anybody else. Fourteen percent of the population is above age 14 is. Single hasn't been married. They comprise 60 percent of all criminals and perpetrate almost 90 percent of all violent crimes. And contrary to popular belief this these proportions have not changed in recent years. Newsweek recently had a story of supposedly showing that women were committing far more. Violent crimes and a lot of publicity about that issue for a while now which And it's wrong these very statistics that they presented showed that

crime has been increasing in all areas it's been a great increase in crime. And take the tache murders for example in the past. There are about twenty three or four murders by men. For every one murder by a woman. As the Newsweek figures show the murder rate for men increased by about one hundred forty percent. While the. Murder rate for women increased by a hundred sixteen percent. So it became. Forty six to two of them. Are forty eight rather than twenty three to one. But. There has been a great absolute increase in criminality by women and a huge increase in shoplifting. Some 300. Percent increase turn around a lot of things now. Do you have any answers.

One of my answers is. That. No government programs can really meet our social. Problems unless they reinforce family ties and in general my program you know to sexual suicide has several chapters devoted to. Programs. That it can do to respond to this problem. One of the things I think could be most valuable would be child allowances most. Countries have. And they mean that somebody is not penalize for having children. And I think this would be very valuable it would reinforce marriages. What about the population explosion so-called. Well it will not affect the population as has been tested in many countries and just don't increase population. We are out of time. Thank you very much very much I've been talking with George Gilder author of nakedness and sexual suicide. See you next week. Reduction funding provided by public television stations Foundation

and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. You. You.