Bonding, Biology, and Market Value in Relationships

Malcolm and Simone have an insightful discussion about how men perceive women's sexual histories and body counts. They talk openly and honestly about the biological and instinctual factors that make many heterosexual men care about a potential partner's number of past partners. Malcolm explains how different types of sexual encounters impact body count perceptions differently, like long-term relationships vs one-night stands. He also discusses how things like OnlyFans, being successful vs unsuccessful, and specific sex acts do or don't count in terms of market value and body count from his perspective. Overall they aim to help women understand these factors that men consider so they can make informed decisions.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] when women are like, yeah, I slept with him, but I didn't have an emotional connection with him. And it's that is a thousand times

Simone: worse. That's, yeah, that almost means you're more likely as, as the male partner to be raising a child that is not yours because apparently they just do not care.

Which is not. Yes.

Malcolm: The, I didn't have an emotion. If, if somebody cheated on me, I would a thousand times prefer they're like, well, I cheated on you because I had a strong emotional connection with him.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm. Hello,

Malcolm: Simone! It is wonderful to be chatting with you today!

Simone: Yeah, so you know, obviously one of my favorite people in the entire world is Ayla. And she does, when she does events, these live Twitter polls. Where she'll like, have people line up based on all sorts of things. You know, how recently did you poop?

Or to our subject today, what is your body count? And I lo that's one of my favorite One's that she, she lines people up about because you really see a very interesting logarithmic scale [00:01:00] when people line up. So it's like zero, like a couple of ones, and then it's two to five, like vast majority of people.

And then it's like 50, 112, 250, 300. Like it's crazy. It just gets like crazy

Malcolm: high. And I'm always at one end of these, obviously the really high end of the scale, but you're always at the really low end of the scale because we're exact opposites in that, you know, you being a virgin when we first met and me being just ridiculously high body count.

I remember recently I learned something new at these events because it wasn't something I had thought about before. I was at one end and usually at the really high end, it's, it's almost all male guys. Yeah. And one of the guys was like, wait, because previously they hadn't done the previous one.

They had one on how heterosexual are you? And I was like, it went the extreme end of heterosexual. No, I

Simone: think it hurts was, was how many different dicks have you had in your mouth? Oh, best of

Malcolm: what? So something like

Simone: that. Yeah.

Malcolm: How few men

Simone: had never had a dick in their mouth? It was like, what on earth? Very rare.

Malcolm: Yeah. So, so one of the [00:02:00] guys turns to me and he goes, wait. It's all heterosexual. And, and then all the other guys who are like at the extreme end of the scale were like, wow, impressive.

Simone: Yeah. So yeah, you also didn't realize is that high body count is often man to man. Yeah.

Malcolm: Yes. And I hadn't considered that.

So, so yeah, I was even probably more extreme than I had considered was in these contexts, but yeah. This is really interesting, because for me, when I met you I, I think it would be really disingenuous for me to pretend that you having a, an incredibly low body count wasn't a huge bonus to me.

And when I went out and would sleep with people, I specialize both in people with low body counts, virgins mostly, because that was just the pathway and the tactics that I was using in the sexuality video that we're not able to post here. But also because I personally found it really gross when I learned that a woman had a high body count.

And I think one of the big problems in our [00:03:00] society, when people talk about do body counts actually matter, It, it breaks down on a few fronts. So conservatives often will use arguments like a key that opens any lock, you know, or a lock that can be opened by any key, you know, and or you wouldn't want to use a shoe that a bunch of other people had used.

Oh yeah. And I think

Simone: Mormons use a chewed gum analogy. Yeah.

Malcolm: And all of these analogies. I don't really think sell the message like I was a young girl and somebody told me one of these analogies You know what? I would think is well times have changed and you're just an old person and you don't know how it is for My generation or that's you know an older mindset or That's not convincing.

To me, if I was a woman and somebody was like, well, you wouldn't want a shoe that a bunch of people had worn. Part of it would be

Simone: like, screw you, I buy like all of my shoes on Poshmark and I rent half of my shoes on Rent the Runway. So go

Malcolm: ahead. And I'd also be like, but why doesn't this apply to [00:04:00] guys?

And then people would be like, because the guy is the one going in the thing. It's the, it's the sword, not the sheath. It's

Simone: the, it's the foot, not the shoe. Right. And,

Malcolm: and the, the answer to that would be, wait, why does that matter? Why would that mean it doesn't matter for guys, but it matters for girls. And then when you talk to progressives about this, this.

inequality, they'll often answer well, it shouldn't, it is unfair that it matters. And therefore it doesn't matter. Or we can build a world in which it doesn't matter. You mean it shouldn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. Which is dumb as well. And so I think we need to have an honest conversation about where the actual costs are involved in this.

The effects it has on women and you know, just for our daughters or, or women listeners, so they can really contextualize this. Because I think the average woman in our society today. Dramatically underestimates how much partner count matters to guys. A great one, you know, speaking of AILA polls that you [00:05:00] had mentioned to me before was one where it was like, would you rather sleep with a hundred women or have your wife sleep with one other person?

And 90 percent or something said they'd rather their wife not sleep with one other person if it meant they could sleep with a hundred

Simone: women. Yeah. It was something along those lines. Basically you know, would you prefer to have a ton of partners and like your wife also slept with a decent number of people or not?

And yeah, apparently men care more about having a committed female partner who does not have a lot of. who does not have a high body count, then they care about body count, which is insane because the assumption, of course, is that men, no matter what, like sort of like number one priority. Is high body count, but no, it's, it seems to be more like high body count, but with low body count women, I guess.

Malcolm: Count women is what you're well. So, it, it

Simone: stands. I don't think they care. I think that it's totally fine to have a one night stand. If you have no commitment with a woman who has a higher body, [00:06:00]

Malcolm: I want to get to the point here because I think that this is just the larger point. If you're a woman and you're going to switch this off, the important thing to note, Is that many heterosexual men, biologically it is hard coded into their sexuality and I think this is what is missed by people.

They think it's a choice. If I could choose to not care that a woman had a high body count, it is not that it's an acculturation thing. It is, the motivation for this being biologically hard coded in me is there, and I think I'm the type of guy who... has enough self knowledge to be able to internalize when I'm doing something because it's been socialized into me, people should probably notice with me, I really don't, I, I try to go against the grain of society almost as much as possible when I can.

I get great pleasure in doing that. And so if this wasn't biologically hard coded in me, I don't think I would feel it so strongly. And Here's what I'm saying. So if women are trying to get okay, a guy right now who I feel is pretty honest with me on this [00:07:00] show, he's telling me how much it matters. I'll try to give you a curve of how much it matters because there's a few things that I think women miss with body count as well.

They think that any guy that they sleep with adds to their body count in the same way. And that is just not true. If you, if I was a girl and I know that she has been in. multiple long term monogamous relationships with guys like, yes, she slept with like maybe four different guys, but she dated all of them for two or three years.

I've met them. I like them and I respect them. To me. She's really not that different in terms of attractiveness than a virgin. I mean, okay, a virgin's wrong. Let's say somebody who slept with two people. Virgins are like a whole other tier of attractiveness when you're talking about guys who are sensitive to this.

But, if you go down from that just one tier, there really isn't that much difference between two and five when you're dealing with these sorts of women. When a woman has slept with a guy who I look down on.

Simone: Like someone you think is [00:08:00] gross? What do you mean look down on? Can you elaborate on that?

Malcolm: Yeah, I think it's gross. Pathetic. I think that they just play women. I think that, you know, And that you ideologically

Simone: don't agree with.

Malcolm: Not ideologically don't agree with that. I think as a lesser, like low quality mail.

Simone: So who you think reflects poorly upon the taste of the woman,

Malcolm: maybe.

Yes. And, but this could also be like a player, like if a guy is attractive, but he's, you know, kind of. I would say that almost immediately for me, for, for women who are trying to get a like feel of how much this matters for guys, I would find them so unattractive. I would be unable to sleep with it.

I would certainly be unable to date them. And I think that women don't understand the damage they take even with a low body count. If it is with a hookup they had at a bar or otherwise disreputable men. That women should be really, really sensitive to that. Yeah. And that once they enter that scene, often it's [00:09:00] only that kind of guy that they can really date and guys that have, for whatever reason, no biological sensitivity to body count.

And I haven't seen studies done on this, but anecdotally, from like me talking around men, my read is about 60 to 70 percent of men have a... Fairly high body count sensitivity and about 30 to 40 percent have very little to no body count sensitivity.

Simone: Okay. So this isn't as big of a deal then because like actually quite a few men don't.

Malcolm: Well, and then there's guys like me that have such a high body count sensitivity. That I cannot even masturbate to porn with real people in it because I know that they have slept with lots of people and I find that disgusting. So

Simone: you would, I guess it's a lot like pretty much any arousal or aversion pathway or like what we've seen in the research that both other people have done and that you've done in writing The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality.

that there is quite some variation that, that some people are like super, super turned on by something. Some people don't really care at all, et [00:10:00] cetera.

Malcolm: Well, and then it has a normal distribution within it. So there was some studies done in the weird thing is like they've been wiped from Google. Somebody pointed out recently, they're like, I've heard this before and I went and I tried to find it.

And I wasn't able to find it. And then I went and I tried to find it. And I tried to find it was AI. And I talked to other. Sexuality researchers. I know. And I was like, do you remember these studies used to exist? And they're like, yeah, studies used to exist. And then we went and we looked and we couldn't find it.

So I don't know what happened. It might be that they didn't fit the progressive ideal. And then somehow they got deleted from history, which sometimes happens if you're talking about like more obscure research that wasn't backed up in a lot of places. But specifically what they showed. Yeah. was that as women sleep with more men the amount of oxytocin that they produce while having sex decreases which is important.

And, and it also showed the effects of this. It showed that women who slept with more men felt less of a, Illogical forced attraction to the man they're sleeping with and so this is a really [00:11:00] important thing to note for like young girls or Girls who are thinking about this decision is the way that your body reacts to sex Changes when you have lots of partners and we've talked about this on other shows.

We suspect that this is actually a polymorphic behavioral change. So polymorphic changes like genetic polymorphism. This is when you have something like a locust, right? So a locust and a grasshopper are genetically the same thing. But if you rub the back of a grasshopper's leg with a q tip. It actually begins to express its genes differently and transform its shape and its behavior patterns, but you see these in, you know, mammals as well.

So like baboons at larger troop sizes, they change from like a matriarch. I think it's like a matriarchal is like one social structure to a patriarchal. It's like another social structure where it's I can't remember exactly what it is, but basically their entire social structure changes above certain populations or.

When they're in areas that have unusually high amounts of resources. And we should [00:12:00] expect that we likely have some similar sorts of like weird things within humanity. Well, we know from anthropology that humans can organize them themselves into either polygynous groups. That's one man, many women or monogamous groups.

Those are the two primary types of groups. Now all it's really a slider. All monogamous groups are polygynous. When you're talking about the wealthiest men in the culture, as we say, the most monogamous culture today when people think, well, what's like a trad cast?

What's the height of the trad cast empire? Louis the 14th, right? You know? So yeah, and he had a lot, a lot of women. So it's important to note that it's always a slider, but you know, it's mostly monogamous to. So this would allow for female biology to automatically adapt to her environment, even if she grew up in a monogamous tribe, but that tribe was like raided and she was captured by a tribe that now use her as like a.

You know, let's not get this demonetized. So, so what it does is it prevents a woman from without her [00:13:00] own willingness or without any sort of externality falling in love to somebody they're sleeping with. But women, and I've seen this, I've slept with a lot of virgins, they automatically begin to form a really strong sort of love connection or love reaction to the relationship.

Turns off as they sleep with more gods. Now this can have a few negative effects. One of the biggest negative effects happens when women want their later relationships to have the same spark as early relationships.

Simone: Or expect it. So when they get ready to get married, they will discount new partners they've met because they don't have that same love connection that they felt with their original partners.

And they assume that that's not because. These partners are, you know, that they've, they've had more partners, but it's because that partner is not good as, as good as the first one. So they keep looking when instead they may have found a really great partner.

Malcolm: So, yeah. Yeah. That's a really negative thing, but also keep in mind that and, and, and, and this is important that it can be good for if a woman doesn't want to be [00:14:00] illogically brainwashed by her biology into liking whoever she happens to randomly be sleeping with, this is actually really useful.

It's really useful for a woman who's sleeping around a lot. This system turns off. Yeah, I mean, she'll

Simone: be less she's less likely to be manipulated or exploited by the people that she's sleeping with because they will have less emotional control over her.

Malcolm: Exactly. Yes. So it's a very good system.

Even within our modern context, it can just cause problems when a woman expects to feel what she did with her early partners with later partners.

Simone: Well, yeah, that's what, I mean, that's why we, we just, we find it disturbing that the research indicating this appears to be disappearing because. If women just know that this seems to be happening, then they can plan around it, you know, this is a, a natural calculation that anyone can make.

And if they don't know about it, that's when the damage

Malcolm: is done. And it's something that anybody who sleeps with a lot of virgins would know this is a really unique thing with virgins. They weirdly bond to you. And a lot of women, you know, anecdotally, when I've mentioned this before, they've been like, yeah, that did happen to me with my first [00:15:00] partner.

Or my first two partners or something like that. And so this is something that you're actually losing when you, when you sleep with a lot of people and it's something that males, it's just not a system that seems to exist in males. Males do not like automatically fall in love with people they're sleeping with.

And that is. Unfortunate, you know, it's, it's unfortunate in that it is unfair, but it is worth keeping in mind. I mean, both in terms of men, in terms of how they're rating their partners and in terms of women, but you know, the decide to decide as a woman growing up in our society, I'm just not going to sleep with anyone because of how it hurts my market value.

It, when we say market value, you know, what we mean by this is. The quality of man that she can get was the understanding that market value changes based on individuals. So I'll put it this way, a fish, when I go to a grocery store, it can have a market value. That's like what the average customer is going to pay for it.

Right. But then some individuals might just have really like that type of fish and they'll pay a lot more for it. When you say market value, you're not saying this is the absolute value of the person has, [00:16:00] they can do some huckstering and get a sweeter deal. But just talking market value here goes down and is that worth it to me?

When I consider the dangers of being sexually inexperienced as a female and trying to secure a partner a lot of men, especially in the early days, you know, they won't even consider you unless you sleep with them by like date three or four, you know, they and this can, this can really hurt your ability to sort of learn how to date and stuff like that.

Right? I mean, I think it's still doable, but it's difficult. And another thing that women really have to worry about is guys signaling that they're interested in a longer term relationship than they actually are because they want a date, because they want sex. And, and this is really a difficult thing to navigate as a girl.

I think that the best strategy around it because, you know, women, As we say, the sex marketplace and the marriage marketplace are two very different things. And women are always more valued on the sex marketplace than the marriage marketplace. And so they can begin to conflate their value on the sex [00:17:00] marketplace with their value on the marriage marketplace, where it's much lower.

And guys are... The inverse is true. They're more valued on the marriage marketplace than on the sex marketplace. And so guys can benefit by pretending like they're interested in marriage or longer term relationships than they actually are. And through that get higher quality sexual partners than they would otherwise be able to get.

And it is very difficult for women in our current society to filter here. The, the core ways to filter is You know, Facebook official public signaling of your relationship before you engage with someone, signal it sexually. This is if you're not just going to wait until marriage, which is very difficult I think to do if you're, unless you're only dating was in like really religious communities.

And then the, the, the second strategy, and I think this is really important is to note. Does the guy seem to be really vetting you as a long term partner? So if, weirdly, the guy has all the same beliefs about the world that you have, he's probably just mirroring your beliefs. That should be a massive red flag.

If the guy disagrees with you in areas [00:18:00] and is willing to sort of debate those open and honestly, and, and, and looks that that's a sign that he's probably not just using it for sex. Genuine

Simone: disagreements or Hey, I want kids. And I know you don't want kids. That's kind of stuff showing up is probably a good sign in terms of genuine interest and

Malcolm: commitment.

Well, this is a big problem with searching for partners and sort of like feminist white nighty ecosystems. Is it men in these ecosystems are usually just single? I mean, most of them don't want to marry anyway, you know, because they're on the progressive side. And they're usually just signaling aligned ideology for sex.

Which means that if you are on the conservative side of things, because women are less on the conservative side of things regardless it's going to be really hard to find women. Unless you're in a hard conservative community where typically women outnumber men. So by that, what I mean is if you're in a hard religious community, women typically outnumber men, where if you're in like the conservative, secular community usually men just dramatically outnumber women to

Simone: the extent that...

I've heard, some conversations among women where [00:19:00] they view male body count very negatively. Do you think that that's a real thing or do you think it's performative because they're just thinking that's not fair that men...

Malcolm: Oh, it's obviously performative. Actually, there's studies on this, so you can look.

Women, great studies. If you take men and you have women choose between a man with a wedding ring and a man without a wedding ring, they'll choose the man with the wedding ring. There's lots

Simone: of studies. Well, but maybe men who are in committed relationships have lower body counts because they're in committed relationships.

Maybe, but just

Malcolm: generally what you see is Women will go after men who appear to already be in relationships over men who appear to not be in relationships, which to me signals the exact inverse of what you're talking about. Whereas with men you would very rarely see this outside of a few fetishes.

Or paraphilias, you know, which Trump seemed to have one of those from stories about him where he would try to get his friends wives to sleep with him. I can't imagine it. Look, I, I [00:20:00] like Trump politically, but as a human being Oh, I can't imagine betraying my friends that way. I take that really seriously.

Simone: I hear about that in fiction though. I, or like in history I wonder if that's just

Malcolm: like a trope. Well, no, I find the idea of sleeping with like the wives of people who I dislike really hot, like that's cool, but I, I would find the idea of an ally who has put their trust in me really uncool. Yeah.

And, and, and gross and not fun. But yeah. We were talking about male body counts of women. Yeah. So, no, I, I don't think so. I think it's all performative. And I, and I can also say as somebody who has been out there as Over the course of the time that I was trying to get women to sleep with me, as my body count rose, it got easier to get women to sleep with me,

Simone: not harder.

And I guess you were never, you never hid the fact that you had a high body

Malcolm: count. No, no. If anything, I bragged about it, but it actually got I'd say pretty dramatically easier after you get past like 10 to 20 people. And, and then [00:21:00] after that point, no, but also, you know, I'm learning, I'm getting better at it after that.

I'm developing more confidence. And I suspect that part of it could even be hormonal, like just knowledge of, I dunno so it could be that , I'm giving something off because I have a high body count because like my brain thinks, Oh, you're alpha of this area.

That is offsetting whatever logical thing these women have in their head that makes them think that they don't like men with high body counts. Yeah.

Simone: That makes sense.

Malcolm: Which is really interesting. And I, I find that really surprising, but another thing to note about this as a man, if you're going out there and you're having a high body count.

This also means that, remember I said not all men damage your body count the same way with other guys? Yeah. A guy like me probably damaged women's body counts in the perception of other guys uniquely highly because I was able to sleep around so much. Oh. But, you know, whatever, I, I, I, most of these were when I was younger, you know, progressive college girl type people, stuff like that [00:22:00] but I'd also say that the type of relationship I had with the girls, and this might also be the case for other guys, Is, is, was the, the ones who I liked, I did have longer relationships with, and I think me as an outsider, that would damage my perception of that stack on her body count more.

Just any period of Sexual experimentation, I think, would really highly damage my, well, that's what they call it, finding themselves, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, what is your sort of summation if you were going to give advice to our daughters on this? If you were going to give our advice to our,

Simone: in general, I would just be like, it's not worth it. Don't bother. But I think it really depends on their personalities. You know, if we find that we have a daughter with a high sex drive, like it's a really dumb thing to be like, yeah.

Probably shouldn't have sex like the cost is really high. We should, we should be really clear about what we believe the trade offs to be given the evidence that we've been exposed

Malcolm: to. Well, here's the question because I think this is interesting to me. Would I consider it a high like a an addition to a [00:23:00] woman's body count if she had used her sexuality to make a money off of men without having sex with them?

think OnlyFans, or something like that, right? Huh. Otherwise, they're a virgin, but they've used OnlyFans. Yeah, huh. I think if they were a pure virgin, it wouldn't hurt their value that much to me. If,

Simone: however If they, if if people seen everything,

Malcolm: Everything yeah, I suppose only if they were also really popular.

Simone: They were unsuccessful

Malcolm: only for if they had done it unsuccessfully, then I would think, oh, well you were judged by the community to be pointless. But if they were judged successfully and they were widely desired but had never slept with anyone, I'd consider that probably about the same as being a virgin.

Okay. I love that. Not, not exactly the same, but probably about the same. But if they had five body count or like 10 body count, like a medium level body count, but they also did that, I'd consider it probably, I don't know, it just wouldn't matter that much. It it matters a little, like it would matter more to me then, but it's certainly not the same as racking up an IRL body count.

However, I [00:24:00] guess I would take a woman who said that she had like a five or 10 body count, but also used only fans. As probably lying and she probably has a much higher body count than that it's just sort of a signal when the woman isn't otherwise like no one is being chased that the body count the real body count is likely higher than they're telling you.

Malcolm: Yeah, that's

Simone: fair.

Malcolm: So, and I also think that women think, oh, head doesn't count. Head is exactly the same from a body count perspective. Totally, yeah, totally agree. I, I don't know why a woman would think that it wouldn't count. I guess it's like magic, but, but Mormons

Simone: don't count it.

Malcolm: So position to them, which is actually kind of worse than even just regular sex.

Actually, one of the I heard a story, we had a friend in school remember this I won't name who said it, but you'll recognize the story as soon as I said it, so her roommate would do this where she would bring over guys and say, you know, eat me out or whatever they'd be into her.

And [00:25:00] they do it. And then as soon as she got herself off, she'd be like, okay, f**k off. Um, I don't

Simone: remember who this is, but it's better that I don't. Cause that

Malcolm: that's horrible. But I think as a guy, I wouldn't consider that in addition to a body count because she's not submitting to them. She's using them.

And I'm like, okay, whatever. These guys are not the same. Relationship that I have with you. These guys are beneath you. And I think that that's also why I wouldn't consider it additions to a body count. Something like only fans. Now, I don't know how representative I am of the average guy. I'm just trying to give as honest as a perspective of one guy who actually cares about this as possible.

So women can begin to calibrate. As they think about this increasingly new and different sexual landscape that we're dealing with. Yeah. Which is really interesting. I mean, there's some things I just couldn't do yeah,

Simone: continue. Okay, so, OnlyFans, okay for successful. Pathetic if you're not. Actual sex totally counts.

Head totally counts. Being eaten out but only using people. doesn't count. So I guess [00:26:00] like being a dominatrix professionally, you would say doesn't count as long as you're not having sex. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm: Okay. What I'm talking about here is none of this is like the way I'm socially conditioned. I'm just saying here, like what seems to trigger my biological, this body count matters instinct, which I imagine is probably pretty similar to many other guys.

Yeah.

Simone: Totally.

Yeah. I imagine this. I mean, it, it, it makes sense. Because also what you're looking at is, is I think it's a very instinctual dislike of the idea of finding yourself raising and using your resources on a child that is not biologically yours. Yeah. And the scenarios you're describing in which it's not really a problem are not scenarios in which a woman would be impregnated by another guy.

So.

Malcolm: Yeah. Pretty straightforward.

 The one counter example to this would be trans women, which for whatever reason, my body just instinctually recognizes is being the sexual equivalent of a woman who has slept with [00:27:00] a really, really, really large number of guys. , almost sort of a maxed out body count in terms of the instinctual response. I get to them. , and obviously this, if other guys have this same reaction, It would partially explain why dating is so much harder for trans women.

Malcolm: Well, and this, this actually brings a point when women are like, yeah, I slept with him, but I didn't have an emotional connection with him. And it's that is a thousand times

Simone: worse. That's, yeah, that almost means you're more likely as, as the male partner to be raising a child that is not yours because apparently they just do not care.

Which is not. Yes.

Malcolm: The, I didn't have an emotion. If, if somebody cheated on me, I would a thousand times prefer they're like, well, I cheated on you because I had a strong emotional connection with him. I cheated on you, but I didn't have an emotional connection with him. I'd be like, that is so much worse than the alternative.

Simone: Really bad. Really bad.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. This is a, I guess,

Simone: pretty valuable. stuff. Maybe instead of having the talk with our daughters, we can just send them to this video. Yeah. They can decide whether or [00:28:00] not to, you know what, actually we'll just send it to their friends and then their friends will tell them because they don't want to hear it from us.

You know, that's just gross. So we have a plan here. Glad we got this recorded. Good game. I love you.

Malcolm: Welcome. You're amazing.