Comparing European fertility trends

In this episode, Malcolm notices a surprising pattern in the historical fertility data: in nearly every country where women entered the workforce in large numbers during/around WWII (US, Canada, Australia, UK, etc.), there was a massive post-war Baby Boom. In countries where female labor-force participation stayed low or stable (Japan, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland), there was little to no boom.

We explore whether “female empowerment” (in the classic 1920s–1940s sense — voting rights, workforce entry, cultural excitement) actually halted fertility decline and temporarily reversed it, while modern feminism and declining gender complementarity may be contributing to today’s collapse. We also discuss vitalism, bigender vitalism, why groypers have low fertility despite their “vitalism,” and why making women feel like valued lieutenants (not house-slaves or girl-bosses) matters for both marriage stability and higher birth rates.

If you care about solving the fertility crisis, this counter-intuitive historical correlation is worth grappling with.Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing one of those things where I notice something in the data and I ignore it, and then I think about it for a bit and I’m like, wait a second.

I should pay a lot more attention to this than I am. So one of the graphs that I often like to show is a graph of falling fertility rates since the 18 hundreds. And when the feminist movement really began to pick up steam to show that the vast majority of fertility collapse happened before the feminist movement began to pick up steam.

But then I had this no notice in my head when I was thinking. I was like, you know, I just noticed something about when feminism starts in this movement, which is fertility collapse goes down dramatically. The moment feminism starts in every country, but the UK by the way.

So here on, have on screen a chart of fertility collapse [00:01:00] within the United States and what you can see, Simone, I’m sure you’re familiar with this one.

Simone Collins: No, I know this one. That sort of shows also France seeing a really rapid decline.

Malcolm Collins: No, it’s not that one. It’s the one in the United States.

Simone Collins: . Okay. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So what you see here is fertility rates go down. Really rapidly between 1835 and 1850, like as rapidly as after the baby boom. Mm-hmm. And then they go like directly downwards.

You have this incredibly fast fertility downwards motion from 1835 to around 18. Sorry, 1935 or? No, 1940 is about when it ends. Yeah. So it ends at 1940. Mm-hmm. Do you guys know what happened to happen during 1940? Or what happened in the 1920s, 1920s, women got the right to vote. 1940s is not just when you had the baby boomer, but also when you had a, a pretty big feminist wave going into World War ii.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Women were [00:02:00] working in the factories. They were entering the workforce in record numbers. Right. It was pretty, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And what we’re gonna go over here. In this episode is countries where women entered the workforce versus countries where women didn’t enter the workforce. Ooh. And what you might be surprised about is it’s very correlary with those country whether or not the country’s had a baby boom.

Oh. That might actually be the explanatory phenomenon of the baby boom we’ve been looking at is whether female

Simone Collins: empowered.

Malcolm Collins: Female empowerment may have been what? Holy the baby boom. And what’s also very interesting is if you ignore, so let’s say

in this graph, I’m gonna ignore the baby boom and then the, the bust infertility rates after the baby boom.

Fertility rates look pretty stable from 1940 to 2023. Yeah, you see a bit of a downwards motion if you were to put a single graphical line between that, but not very big. If you contrast it with any period between 1835 and [00:03:00] 1940.

Simone Collins: Yeah, if you really blur your vision, it just kind of looks like we hit a floor.

And, and stayed there.

Malcolm Collins: But we know that that’s not a floor because Korea’s gone well below that floor.

Simone Collins: No, I mean obviously, but like in the us like

Malcolm Collins: this grass and we’re going below that floor too. Okay? Mm-hmm. So, and there’s other videos where we have other hypotheses for the baby boom. We hypothesize.

It could have been Les Baby dying. I think that’s probably the. Biggest factor, but it didn’t happen in every country. So it couldn’t be just that. We have a, a, a video where we argue that it’s nationalism plus sort of sci-fi pop culture futurism of the 1950s that that didn’t occur in some other countries.

But here we’re gonna say that, and I still think all of those things played a role here. We’re gonna say another thing that may have played a role as female empowerment, but let’s not just look at this slide. Let’s now look at some European countries here. Okay.

Simone Collins: So,

Malcolm Collins: If we look at France in the UK in terms of fertility bus, what you see in France is that fertility rates have been like, they go down dramatically between 1750 [00:04:00] and 1800.

They are then stable from 1800. To around 1870. And then they go down a bunch between 1870 and around 1920. And then from 1920 until the recent fertility drops, they have been stable.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: You, you have this graph as well, Simone. I, I sent it to you.

Simone Collins: That’s interesting. 1920 was around when the medal of motherhood in France was first launched.

Just as a little aside,

Malcolm Collins: people, now let’s look at England and Wales. Does it buck the trend? Kind of, England and Wales has like a growing fertility until you get to like the 18. Well, it, it’s stable. I wanna say from like 1835, like in the US when it began to go down, up to like 1860 or 70. Then you have the massive decrease between 1860 and 70.

Mm-hmm. And like 1930. And then you have another massive decrease after that. So England is the only country that really appears to buck this [00:05:00] particular trend. And I also note here one of the things that’s very important to remember that when we’re looking at this data. Is that in the, the the baby boom, the baby boom really starts in the countries where it started in the United States and stuff like that.

Typically a little bit before the war and picks up steam during the war, not, not after the war. Which would online with this hypothesis a lot more. Now, before we start going into that stuff, I just need to go over the, the broad statistics that you should know if you’re a fan, because we have talked about this before.

This is not just a phenomenon that you see here. There was discovery done by Aria Babu where she did a chart in Europe about women people’s views towards motherhood. And what you see is it’s a light inverse correlation, but it isn’t an inverse correlation between how misogynistic or how, how gender equal the, the views were about Motherhood’s role and the fertility rate of the country in Europe.

Simone Collins: It’s so much subtle. I mean, she looked at, at pe like how people responded in, [00:06:00] in surveys to questions, like, it hurts the children if the mother works though. That is pretty, you know, in the end.

Malcolm Collins: But, but Simone,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That, that, that, that is subtle, but the larger point being. Is if you then just look with your eyes at a map of Europe and you look at the low fertility countries versus the high fertility country,

they’ll just put a map of fertility rates from Europe here.

Yeah. What you’ll see is you could, you could overlap this with a map of gender equality, right? Like

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Northern Europe has much higher fertility rates. France has uniquely high fertility rate. Yeah, really low fertility rates for countries like Spain and Italy and Eastern Europe. All of the places that you associate with being more misogynistic.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: totally, totally.

Malcolm Collins: It’s also true of the developed, the developed world. Look at the uniquely high fertility countries in the developed world, like the United States, like Australia, like Northern Europe, like Israel, and then contrast and was uniquely low developed. The low fertility rate countries like South Korea, like Japan, [00:07:00] like China these countries have.

Are are dramatically less gender equal. Mm-hmm. Like, like South Korea has nothing close to the gender egalitarianism of the United States. Japan has nothing close. China has nothing close.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or Europe. So, so you, you also see this in like the broader macro trends, but I wanna trace this in terms of within the United States and then pull up some more evidence here.

Then we’re gonna try to figure out what the. Is causing this. Hmm. Because it is an interesting phenomenon and it’s, I think, bigger than I thought it was. I always blew it off as just like an easy talking point so we don’t have to deal with reporters calling us feminists. So sorry,

Simone Collins: misogynist

Malcolm Collins: misogynistic.

But now

Simone Collins: I also, it’s, it’s very annoying because the very first thing that pretty much any progressive is going to do in talking about the prenatal movement or demographic apps is talking about how well, and therefore what anyone who fights for. Who fights against demographic apps is going to fight against women’s rights.

And we’re like, clearly that’s not what anyone’s doing here. And you’re [00:08:00] wrong. Leave us alone. And so it’s really nice to be able to, to troll the, to take these things out. But it’s also, it is a little counterintuitive even to us who don’t see disempowering women as the solution because you would think that the more women feel like, let’s, let’s go to work and not.

Have kids, which often runs counter to going to work, you know that you’re gonna have lower fertility, what’s going on.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I, I, I note here that the, the increase in pregnancies associated with the baby boom was associated with an increase in female labor participation in the countries where it happened.

Yeah. If you look at other s we’ve seen a rapid fertility collapse like India in the nineties. Mm-hmm. And you track.

The percent of each gender in the workforce used to not see an increase in female labor participation over this time. So that does not appear associated. But the bigger question is, is like, that’s weird, right?

Like, shouldn’t it

Simone Collins: be Yeah, yeah. Shouldn’t it?

Malcolm Collins: And also, I’m not here gonna be like the prenatal list [00:09:00] movement. Whatever they’re calling feminist today, right? Mm-hmm. It is whatever feminism meant in the past. You know, and, and, and that’s something I’m willing to stand, right? But I’m not willing to stand this modern, weird feminist stuff.

I do actually think that is directly harmful to fertility. I think, you know, I’ve been watching some Pearl Davis content recently about, I don’t know, traditional conservatives forcing the tricking guys into getting married to modern women without knowing what they’re getting into, and like, she’s got a point.

Mm-hmm. Like. Feminism has made women kind of crazy recently.

Simone Collins: Right. But I think feminism has become unmoored with what at least most people were raised to believe was, was feminism. Sorry. And it has become just. Sort of shorthand for urban monoculture, which I would argue is not, is not inherently feminist.

At least, I mean, I don’t know. Did, did you grow up believing that feminism was about equal rights and equal responsibilities? ‘cause that’s what I thought it was.

Malcolm Collins: That’s what I thought. I’m okay with that, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I thought like, okay. Well, I mean, obviously yeah, like women [00:10:00] should get, but also like women should be drafted.

Like women should also serve on the front lines. Like, if that’s how we’re gonna do it, let’s do it. Okay. But that’s not what it’s,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna hear that, that I also saw feminism meant like acknowledging that men and women are different, right? Like that, that, yeah. You understood that women and men have different biologies and that’s fine.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I can’t bench press what you can just

Malcolm Collins: statistically get different, different predilections, you know? But to continue here

okay, so key developments in the 1920s. In the 1920s that is when women got the right to vote in the United States, although voter turnout was relatively low, the National Women’s Party, the NWP led by Alice Paul remained active, focusing on broader equal rights. They successfully lobbied for the Cable Act in 1922, protecting women’s citizenship after marrying foreigners and introduce the Equal Rights Amendment ERA in Congress in 1923.

Though it faced opposition from groups favoring gender specific protections. The NWP also organized international conferences, pageants and campaigns like Women in [00:11:00] Congress to boost female political candidates. Now, we’ve done another episode on this but the majority of the anti suffrage movement was actually female and, and that the average woman was more anti suffrage than they were pro suffrage.

If you want to get into this, it, it was really men who ended up pushing. Women’s vote through, if you want to get into this, we have a video where we go through a lot of historic quotes on this. It’s

Simone Collins: so funny how like, in the end when it comes to anything getting done, there’s a man behind it. Like even the fat acceptance movement.

In the end, it was just a bunch of chubby chasers who were dudes instead of like women trying to invest this.

Malcolm Collins: This is also when you had the flapper movement with shorter skirts, smoking.

Simone Collins: Wait, was that motivated by men? Wait, no. Flat.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. That is just another feminist movement you had. Oh,

Simone Collins: just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

Malcolm Collins: then in the 1930s also,

Simone Collins: before, before there were flappers, there was the Gibson girl, which was this sort of empowered working woman. Also a style icon, so, you know,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: There, there were, there were rumblings of it. This built up slowly over time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: I [00:12:00] think it ultimately exploded with workforce demand for women.

Part of what my intuition has, like as just a theory of something maybe at play is that something that non trivially affects fertility beyond just culture. Being like the one thing that will do it no matter what is enthusiasm and hope for the future of like, Hey, things are good, money’s coming in.

Line go up number, go up, things like that. And I could see women. Getting jobs and feeling like they are empowered personally. Make them feel more comfortable with having more kids. And even if you’re a woman living in like a super, you know, like oppressive country that is, is allegedly forcing you to have kids.

There are ways that women can not have kids. You know? Yeah. Like no matter what, how much your birth control is curtailed, there are ways that you can. Suppress your fertility. And, [00:13:00] and not, I’m not even talking about like, you know, taking strong teas and stuff to to instigate an early pregnancy loss.

I’m talking about like you can maintain a really low weight so that you don’t have periods like there. There’s so many things you can do, and women have been doing this for very, very long. Yeah, it’s of human history. Most

Malcolm Collins: of the drop happened before the, the 1920s.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And so what I’m thinking here is that, you know, in the end, like women really do get to choose how their fertility goes.

And I could just see women being like, you know what? Things are good. I feel comfortable having a kid. I’m gonna do it. Like, you know, maybe my husband will die in the war. I can get a job. Like, whatever. Like, or, you know, I, I feel like the, the, the future is bright, let’s do it. Or like, my, my husband’s about to get deployed.

Like, let’s have a kid now, like, I don’t know. Yeah. And do you feel like this sort of, this vitality did contribute to that in the 1940s in the US at least? What do you think?

Malcolm Collins: No, I, I completely agree. And what

I’m gonna put on screen here is a graph of whether or not there was labor force participation by women in each [00:14:00] country and what, how much of a baby boom they experienced post-war.

And really what you see is this is pretty much one to one was the only exception from countries that were in the Soviet Union, which didn’t experience the baby boom. And did have the sort of forced equality of early communism. But they, they lacked nationalism and a national identity, which I think is why if you watch our video on how Nationalism helps why they didn’t have the strong booms.

So,

Simone Collins: and this is another reason why I think the left is really gonna continue suffering with fertility because they assume any form of pride or nationalism as. Fascism and they just say, fascism is fas fascism is bad. Yeah. So like, they can’t, they’re not allowed to be proud. And if they’re, if you’re not proud of who you are, how can you possibly motivate fertility?

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. So let’s, let’s go through this chart here. Okay. And then I’m gonna go over to if I said that they were high or medium or low, why they were high or medium or low. In the United States, you had high labor force participation by women. And it had a 0.8 boom, one of the [00:15:00] largest in Canada.

You had high participation. It had a 0.48 boom. In Australia, you had a high participation. It had a 0.79 boom. In New Zealand, you had high participation. And it had a really high boom, 0.8. In the United Kingdom, you had relatively high participation. And it’s one of the only, you, you had a medium boom.

0.5. In France you had median participation and you had fairly low boom 0.4. In Sweden, you had low female participation. You had no, boom, really 0.22. In Switzerland, you had low participation. You have virtually no boom, zero point. Two. In Spain you had low female participation. You had pretty much, no, boom, 0.2.

In Portugal, you had low participation. You had no boom at all. Zero. In Germany you had median participation 0.3. So a low boom. Italy, you had low participation, 0.2, so low in Japan, you had low participation and you had pretty much no, boom, 0.1. So let’s go over these arguments here. Where, where, where are these, these [00:16:00] participation rates coming from In the United States LFP Rose from 28% pre-war to 34% to 36%.

At peak, it increased to six to 8%. Over 6 million women entered the workforce. Government campaigns heavily promoted it. And, and this was heavily done through advertising as well, creating, you know, female empowerment through the Rosie the Riveter campaigns and stuff like that. In Canada, employment numbers doubled from 600,000 permanent jobs per war to 1.2 million at peak.

Wow. A proportional increase of 10 to 15%. From. To, up to 25 or, or 35 to 40% depending on what you’re looking at. Australia it went from 25% pre ward to 35% at peak. That, that was pretty high. New Zealand, again, one of the high ones, similar to Australian, eight to 10% of women. In the industry pre-war, and then substantially like double after that United Kingdom rose from 26% to 36%, a 10% increase.

If you’re looking at France it actually saw only a moderate increase of five to 7%. If you [00:17:00] look at Sweden it was stable. A rate. In Switzerland you had again, stable. But what’s interesting about Switzerland, Sweden is they already had high female participation, 30 to 35%. But I guess because it didn’t go up, you didn’t get the increase in female’s perception of themselves.

Maybe Spain you had low, 20 to 25% compared to what it was pre-war Portugal, you had low 20%. Germany pre-war was already high at 51% and then dropped at 41% due to Nazi ideology. It so that, that’s interesting. Italy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because I mean, also the left constantly frames Nazi ideology as being very motivational toward fertility.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well also, keep in mind they had a fertility boom in the, in the side of the country that the allies controlled Italy was low an increase of three to 5%. And Japan was low, an increase of 5%. And we can also see some other countries that undergo an inversion of this. Mm-hmm. Alright, so if you look [00:18:00] at, china for example, they famously had to work pretty hard to knock their fertility rates down during the one child movement. And during that time period, the Communist party and the culture in China tried to really hard to promote women with women hold up half the sky movement that went from like the 1950s to 1960s and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. If you look at wind fertility, WR began to decline in the United States. It was around the 1970s. And then declined a ton recently. What are things that have increased recently? In China is more traditional gender roles. Gender roles have been moving and the post-communist era to more traditional, more misogynistic roles.

And with that we’ve seen a unique crash in fertility rates. And, and also I should note that female labor participation declined post to 1970s in China.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Today it’s only 60% and 1990.

Simone Collins: Whoa. What? That’s crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: What [00:19:00] are they doing? I guess that’s a stupid question, but I don’t know. I gag.

Ooh, that’s so odd. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Another counter example here is Israel. Israel maintains one of the highest fertility rates among the developed nations around 2.9 children per woman. Despite significant progress in women’s rights, including female labor, forced participation of around 60%. Now it’s interesting here is that it’s a rising participation where in China, 60% is a falling participation.

And so I think the, the women’s perception of their own role in society is also relevant here.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Feminist movements have been big in Israel, which we all know about. But it’s, it was in the cultures in Israel that treat women less with less gender equality, that you see the highest rates of fertility.

But Israel is also the weird country where more progressives have higher fertility rates. We need to dig into that eventually. I, I don’t, I don’t know what’s going on there. So I wanna hear your, your trends on why this is the case, how global you think this is, because I do not think that this is totally global.

I think if you’re talking about like an Islamist country or something like [00:20:00] this, like a lot of the as we call them, the shadow people these are the call cultures, whether they be Christian or Jewish or Muslim, that have increased their fertility rate by you know, banning access to education which lowers their income, which increases their fertility.

It also decreases the probability that they’re going to leave their culture. They typically treat all outsiders as, you know, evil so that you don’t interact with them, so you don’t hear their ideas, so you don’t get deconverted. And eventually they wanna replace everyone often except for the Jewish groups.

And so, you know, this, this, this has worked really well across a number of traditions. And to me it represents everything bad about humanity. You know, they’re, they’re not. Technologically productive. They’re not particularly inquisitive. They hate all outsiders. They want everyone to be just like them.

Eventually they represent like the ultimate stagnation to me. And I know that one day we will have to fight them of the, the, the vast barbarian tribes of the world which are only going to increase ‘cause they do have high fertility. And and I think that everyone needs to understand that these groups.

Even if they superficially share your values, like they’re, you’re a Jew and they’re a Jew, or you’re a Christian and they’re a Christian they don’t [00:21:00] actually, they’re, they’re, they’re not on point. Right. They will come for you eventually. And and they’ll even tell you that, right? Like, they’re like, well, one day your descendants are gonna have to be like me.

You know that, right? So, for these groups, I think, and many of them have already learned this, basically treating women like property does a very, like, like, you know, does a very good job of increasing their fertility rates, but it doesn’t work very well. And I’ve talked about this, it was book two in societies where women have a choice where a woman can opt out of the married life, which you basically need to be an option in any society where you have sort of freedom of movement, freedom of

Simone Collins: labor.

So I, I actually, I wanna disagree with your first point. I don’t think the data bears that out, that. Poverty shows that, but I actually think that when women are systematically disempowered, that doesn’t necessarily correlate with higher fertility rates. You see this with Romania. I mean, at first there’s a shock where they’re like, oh God, like I didn’t realize I, ah but then it corrects.

And then fertility, she’s talking about

Malcolm Collins: Romania banning

Simone Collins: abortion. And then fertility, I’m also referring to win, for example. Iran curtailed access to different types of higher. Did they get, didn’t they [00:22:00] get a

Malcolm Collins: slight boost in fertility rates from from

Simone Collins: that? No. No, it didn’t. It didn’t help. So,

Malcolm Collins: so I ran the degrees that one could get to only like fluffy degrees, which I think is ridiculous.

Just have them only get STEM degrees. Everyone should

Simone Collins: only I know, I know. Well, and, and the funny thing is, is actually in, in, in cultures that are more female disempowering, you actually see higher rates of women getting and at least partaking in STEM careers. Because. Yeah. Quite honestly, when you give women freedom to do what they want to do, they don’t do the hard, the, the stuff that they’re less predisposed to want to do, which turns out to be STEM stuff that okay, there, this is a really complicated argument.

‘cause of course, like originally like women led in stem like in the early days of STEM or whatever, but like at least in modern times, women don’t seem to be predisposed to the modern form of what STEM has turned out to be in, in many. Sub-domains. Aside from that, I actually think that we, we may be, and, and this is like everyone is participating in [00:23:00] this, this discourse, making a mistake by talking about feminism at all.

Maybe feminism doesn’t really matter, and we’re kind of trying to apply a metric to the discourse and to the data that doesn’t fit and doesn’t ultimately correlate in any consistent way. What is a better metric to look at? I would argue, and what I want to look at more in the future is vitalism. And I think what we’re seeing here is rises and falls in vitalism that affect both men and women.

And by vitalism I mean like. If not hope for the future. Because keep in mind, in the 1940s things got a little dark. And this was also after like, I mean, you know, they’re, we’re coming off the Great Depression, we’re entering World War ii. Things don’t look great, but people are extremely vital. You know, they, they’ve come off a decade of fighting for their lives in the midst of poverty and economic downturn, and now the world’s about to end.

You know, like knowing the horrors of the Great War of World War I, they’re going into [00:24:00] World War ii, like it is. It was. We cannot, I think discount just how dark it was.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: But there was all the more reason to fight. It was like, oh, okay, like, buckle up guys. We’re really gonna fight for our lives here.

No,

Malcolm Collins: I, I agree with that, but I do think what we’re seeing here is a degree of protectionism when women feel like they have a degree of, like their contribution to society is respected. And I think that that’s more,

Simone Collins: but I think vi vitalism is a better way to look at that than feminism.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. But. Many people would call Nick Fuentes as ideology as vitalistic.

Simone Collins: It is,

Malcolm Collins: and yet it’s very disempowering to women in a way that I do not think would lead

Simone Collins: to. Yeah. But yeah, they’re gro gro pets are not. High fertility. They’re they’re, they’re low fertility. No, they’re

Malcolm Collins: not. But that’s the point I’m making. Simone is his ideology is vitalistic, but also misogynistic.

Simone Collins: No, I think it’s, I think it’s vitalistic for young men. And the same treatment can have different effects on different [00:25:00] populations,

Malcolm Collins: both genders.

Simone Collins: Yes, exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I’ll buy that. It needs to be, it needs to have a, and the role, and this is the thing, right? Like. I think that there is a way to la the, the type of service that women do to society, to their partners mm-hmm.

Within labor.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: While also saying, but they’re different. And I don’t see that in that sort of griper part of the right wing movement.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s right. It, it, it’s too binary. And what you see. In, in times where there was higher female fertility is that women were like, women were stoked about working and they were stoked about having kids and you could do both.

I also think that

Malcolm Collins: it was exciting. Yeah, it was exciting. And, and this is, this is the thing, like women are. When you’re like, no, women are, are warriors for the future. Like we are conquering you. We are defeating you. I think switching it up to this sort of mindset with reporters, with optics to be like, you know, you are, you always talk about [00:26:00] like men dying in war, right?

Mm-hmm. And versus women dying from childbirth being roughly equal numbers in history. And you’re like, how great is it that this is a generation where in the United States, you know, men aren’t even able to fight? Right? Like, I’m able to fight for the future of humanity and my people in a way that, that sort of makes all of the men look kind of like pussies in comparison.

Yeah. And that’s really exciting in terms of. You know, I’ve talked about this in other episodes but I think it’s really important that guys remember this when they’re out there looking for a partner and everything like that. Is this perception of dominance that’s sort of given to you is. In many places it’s like put women down, right?

Which is not what women are. Well, they might like that in bed. A lot of women like that in bed. That’s a different thing. I’m talking about what they’re looking for in terms of like the literal person they spend their life with, right? And what they are looking for. Is I think Rick and [00:27:00] Marty says this very well,

Speaker 2: I mean, it’s not like he’s a hot girl. He can’t just bail on his life and set up shop in someone else’s.

Malcolm Collins: But really that’s the aspiration of a lot of women. They want a guy who is inspiring to them. Mm-hmm. And they’re like, oh, this is like the model I want for my life. I wanna set up shop in his life and be you know, both the ground crew and the cheerleader for this individual.

Simone Collins: Well as actually one. Really high achieving woman that I, that I’m friends with, put it they don’t want like, sort of sniffling dumb housewives, which is what even many women and like female housewife influencers want to argue to their audiences.

They want a competent lieutenant which is how she put it. And I think that’s really aply put.

Malcolm Collins: They want to be a competent lieutenant and they want somebody who needs a competent lieutenant.

Simone Collins: No men. Men want to be a competent leader and they want a competent lieutenant. Like in

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. But what I’m saying is, is many men like more important than men.

Men are like, I just want a woman. Okay, so I’m gonna [00:28:00] make myself what women want. Right? Uhhuh. And so they learn this from the, the red, red, you know, the red pill. And we’re red pillars, right? Like I was on the red pill forums, like I wrote for like, a literary of articles in like Return of Kings when people think like we’re, we’re pissing on the red pill that we’re like anti red pill.

I am not anti red pill. Okay. Simone hung out in the red pill forums. Okay. Like, we are not anti red pill by any means, but it definitely had some wrong ideas. They were right about how to get women to have sex with you, but that’s not the type of woman you wanna marry. Right. You know? Mm. And so, the, the, you know, I say if you’re like in a bar and it’s a woman who sleeps around a lot, she may want just like in the moment dominance for like sexual reasons.

But if it’s the type of woman who is thinking long term about what’s the way I want to live the rest of my life? Because women want to live lives of purpose, right? And if you tell them, if you live with me as, for example, if you look at Nick Fuentes when he’s talked about what he’s looking for in a wife he’s like, I want a wife who’s basically not online who’s [00:29:00] going to do nothing.

But, you know, sit at home and take care of my kids and it’s not gonna be involved with my political activist activism at all or anything like that. Right? You know, this for a woman is going to be dramatically less appealing to, to most women than be like, I want a woman who. Primary focus is going to be our kids, but that she will also work to help promote my larger agenda and be known as somebody who promotes my larger agenda.

Right? That we’re known as, as like a team publicly. Right? And I think that that, that, this is what I’m talking about here, right? This framing of making yourself the captain that needs a lieutenant instead of the captain that needs a house slave.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And

Simone Collins: well, I mean, if, if, I guess if you wanna reach your maximum potential, there are, I’m gonna go ahead and admit plenty of women out there.

Who don’t really care that much about who they marry. They, they really just want someone to support a lifestyle where they get to sit at home and do what they wanna [00:30:00] do, like raise kids and bake and stuff. But you

Malcolm Collins: don’t want a wife like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, Nick Fuentes does, but you know, no, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no. I mean, wive like that often turn on their partners.

I, I, I do not think

Simone Collins: that. Yeah. Well, that’s, yeah. You’re entering an inherently unstable marriage because. You, you’re basically hiring someone who’s excited to just be, have a certain lifestyle supported, they’re married to the lifestyle and not you. Yeah, and I don’t think it’s safe to raise kids with someone who are married to the lifestyle and not you.

Malcolm Collins: Well consider if they’re married to the lifestyle, they then divorce you. They still get a good chunk of that lifestyle without having to listen to your orders anymore. They still get the alimony, they get the child support, they get the, especially if they’re a stay at home mom, they’re much more likely to win those cases and when custody.

Mm-hmm. So, you know, that’s, that’s a, that, that like dramatically increases the probability of divorce. Look at Simone, like if she divorced me, given that we work together and we live this sort of public facing life together. She would lose everything, right? Like,

Simone Collins: she would lose. The idea of divorcing is so [00:31:00] ridiculous.

It’s like such a preposterous concept.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you know, I’ve been, as somebody who’s been watching a lot of Pearl Davis recently, and, and even I recently have been like, look, you guys don’t know how bad the dating market is. Everything every, you know, and I got a girl before the dating market got this bad.

Okay? Yes, all of those things are true, but I also married a San Francisco hippie girl. You know, who wore, you know, like neon colors and, and, and durals and you know, all of the super hipster stuff. The type of girl who wanted to get her, her. Do you

Simone Collins: think my outfit isn’t hipster now,

Malcolm Collins: now it’s hipster again.

Simone Collins: Gone full

Malcolm Collins: circle. Horse shoe theory who wanted removed even though she was celibate just because she didn’t even want to think about it. You know, the type of woman who. When I early talked to her about it, she didn’t wanna change her last name in a marriage. You know, like I did not find a woman who was pre-baked with all these ideas.

Right. True. Mm-hmm. Like there are many sane [00:32:00] urban monoculture women who, and as Simone has always framed this to me, I didn’t know I was allowed to disagree. Who their entire life have felt like people are feeding them these crazy ass lives and they just have to sit there and be like, Uhhuh. Uhhuh Uhhuh.

Yeah. I guess. And then somebody comes along and they’re like, you know, you don’t, like, you’re allowed when we’re together and it’s just us. You’re allowed to think for yourself. And some of them really are just completely trapped. Okay. But I’d argue that it’s probably a third of like hardcore urban, monoculture coded women who are open to changing their minds, agreed open to changing who they are.

Now, I would note this was a caveat is to say, I’m not saying a third of them are like Simone, because Simone’s also this weird autistic thing. Right. You know that that gives you some advantage on that front.

Simone Collins: We’re great. So Awesome. We’re higher than ever these days, so,

Malcolm Collins: right. You know, so who knows?

Simone Collins: There’s hope.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I do really think when [00:33:00] a woman has an opportunity, like, like when opting into your cultural community and, you know, you, you shaped the cultural community that you create within your family, within dating you and everything like that, in a way that makes a woman feel like her contributions are both meaningful and recognized boast by you, but potentially by the general public as well.

I think that’s a big thing. It can’t just be you. Like if you have a housewife. You have to put her in a community of housewives that respects the fact that she’s a housewife. You know, where I see housewives work out, it is when it is in these, these trad cast communities where they hang out in an area where all the women are housewives or these Orthodox Jewish communities where they hang out in own area where all the women are housewives.

And that’s where I don’t see divorces among these housewife. Pretty much in every other scenario I see a woman take this housewife role. I see the divorce come, you know, a few years later. Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s because nobody is telling them, oh wow, you’re so, and, and really meaning it. I’m really impressed by what a good [00:34:00] job you’re doing supporting your husband and family.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and I mean, and you get that Simone, a lot of people online within our community lauded you. And when they’re not lauding you, they’re hating on you because you’re so supportive of this evil man.

Simone Collins: I actually haven’t, I can’t think of any hate that I’ve received for supporting you. Which is cool.

I appreciate that people see, people see the value here,

Malcolm Collins: really? Do they think I brainwashed you or you brainwashed me?

Simone Collins: I see. I don’t see that. I don’t see that.

Malcolm Collins: I’ve seen a number of videos where they’re like, oh, how

Simone Collins: does this, I see that I’ve tricked you, a man out of my league into marrying me. I’ve seen that and it’s not wrong, but, i, yeah. Anyway, I, I still, I still think this isn’t about feminism. I think it’s about vitalism and I think the problem is that modern feminism is so now heavily associated with a complete lack of vitalism. No, what I do, like, [00:35:00] what would you call it, bigender Vitalism. No, I mean, I, we don’t even have to make it about gender.

It just, it is religion. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I do think it needs to be about gender because again, Nick Fuentes is plenty vitalistic, right? But they don’t have any kids. Right. You, you need the vitalism to apply to boast genders independently. And the reason why I like a bi gender vitalism is it, it, it contains a few things, few genders.

And that you need a form of vitalism that is exciting to boast genders while recognizing that that form of vitalism will be different for men and women.

Simone Collins: That’s a fair point. Yeah. I guess I’m trying to think of a version of just like female vitalism in isolation where it also didn’t work, but I can’t,

Malcolm Collins: Well, I don’t know.

The girl boss.

Girl, female vitalism was without concern for what men are are doing. Or, or,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like you’ll see videos [00:36:00] today where people are like, it’s really messed up and it felt messed up. That like you, a guy goes into work. Works as hard as you can at clock out and meanwhile your like middle management is like women who film like TikTok videos where they’re dancing about what great girl bosses they are.

Right. You know, like that is the corporate world these days. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Okay. Fair. Fair.

Malcolm Collins: So bi gender vitalism, I will support this and that is truly what Tism needs to be about. So non feminism, I agree. Let’s just burn. Feminism has been too corrupted at this point. Burn it with fire. It’s the nest, like an alien.

You gotta take the the torch to it. I’m sorry we that, that part of the ship needs to. Close the hatches release the, the valves deoxygenated. It’s gone. It is dead.

Simone Collins: [00:37:00] ​Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: What? It’s,

Simone Collins: no, no. I, I, I, I see it. I see it. Yeah. But in general, yeah, it’s, I, I still, it’s not, it’s not about men, it’s not about women. It’s about everyone. Getting stoked for the future and taking personal responsibility for it. That’s what it’s about, and I think really making the conversation about gender.

Messes it up. That’s the problem. I think that’s part of the problem. No, like look at girl bossing. Part of the problem is it’s girl bossing and it’s not just getting out. No,

Malcolm Collins: I actually think you’re making a core mistake that comes downstream of urban monocultural value sets, which is to say that the moment you bring up gender, everyone’s like, well, the genders are not really different.

Or they’re, this is, this is whatever the They

Simone Collins: are. No, I’m, I’m fine with acknowledging differences. I just feel [00:38:00] like, I feel like making things gendered. Then excludes the other group.

Malcolm Collins: Only you celebrating the differences in the individual roles that you are taking, that you can make each vitalistic when you, when you ignore gender.

And I, and I think that that’s really toxic because men and women are very different. The roles in the relationship are very,

Simone Collins: I didn’t say ignore gender, I just said don’t make it

Malcolm Collins: downplay gender like, but you need to up play gender.

Simone Collins: That’s fine, but you have to do it. I don’t know, like

Malcolm Collins: gender is literally core to the point of this.

If you forget about gender, then you have, then you have just generic vitalism, which doesn’t work. I.

Simone Collins: Whoa. I mean, on what grounds are you saying generic vitalism? Nick

Malcolm Collins: Quentes. Literally, I’ve said it a hundred times. No,

Simone Collins: Nick Quentes is not generic. Vitalism. It’s generic. You’re al if you think it’s generic vitalism.

Malcolm Collins: Generic

Simone Collins: vitalism, it’s, it’s inherently misogynistic. Vitalism don’t even.

Malcolm Collins: No, [00:39:00] when you get generic vitalism because girl bossing and Nick Fuentes vitalism doesn’t seem antagonistic to the other gender. Excuse

Simone Collins: me, girl bossing. Girl bossing.

Malcolm Collins: No, but listen, Simone, it doesn’t seem antagonistic to the other gender from the

Simone Collins: perspective.

Yes, it’s it’s girl bossing.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But when you hold these ideologies, if you are a girl boss and you go ask a girl boss, is your viewpoint misogynistic? They would never see it that way.

Simone Collins: It’s obvious exclusionary.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the way you get them to realize it’s misogynistic is you go, Hey, gender first. Okay, what does your movement do that is vitalistic for men?

And they’ll be like, well, it’s not about men. And I’m like, okay, well then men can’t be a part of it and therefore it’s not relevant for the future of society. So you see gender’s, right? We get big ar. This is like she, what’s funny, Pearl David said in her thing recently that like the couples who say that they never get in arguments [00:40:00] they’re just lying.

And I’m like, this is like as big of an argument as we get in.

Simone Collins: Well, I think there are very different types of arguments. There are arguments that are just about concepts. Where fundamentally the couple wants the same thing, and that’s always where we’re coming from. We want the same end and we believe in the same objective functions and that we hold the same deep inherent values.

We just come from different. Experiences and have different data sets. So it’s often about resolving those differences. And then there’s just the, the arguments that couples have that show a fundamental mismatch in inherent values, like my objective comfort versus your objective comfort. And I think that so many arguments are about that, like that there’s just a fundamental impasse between the husband and wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend, what have you.

About what they want from life or believe is valuable. My word over yours, my, my reputation over yours. All these things. So, I mean [00:41:00] arguments, you can’t even define ‘em as the same way. What we’re having is lively debate about a concept versus a dis difference in alignment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: But anyway, I, I desperately love you and I’m really glad that we have these conversations.

You, you’re amazing.

Malcolm Collins: You’ve done a great job. What am I doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: So I you, you really wanna dry our noodles for your, what are they called? Oh,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna wanna air fry the noodles from yesterday.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Right? We have those leftover ones. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I’m excited to try that actually.

Simone Collins: We’ll see.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just heat something else up really fast.

Malcolm Collins: I imagine it will work.

Simone Collins: We’ll see. I dunno

Malcolm Collins: why you’re so convinced you can’t air fry noodles.

Simone Collins: I mean, yeah. What Well, we’ll try, we’ll try. I’m looking forward to it.

Malcolm Collins: All right, love you.

Simone Collins: Love you too.

Malcolm Collins: the episode today, did we ever find out if this person works for usaid? What’s the, what’s the consensus here?

Simone Collins: No USAID funding, but maybe something else.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe something [00:42:00] else. I’ve gotta look into that more. I, I don’t know. I don’t know if I believe you’re No USA funds.

That sounds unbelievable.

Simone Collins: The USAID has funded plenty of. Trans affiliated performances. Right. Or at least some, but philosophy too remains un un uncertain. I think USA really focuses on funding trans affiliated drama projects in developing nations, not the uk So. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: did when it was still a lot, I mean, I think many progressives thought that that was gonna undo or that those cuts were gonna fall apart or, but I think USAID’s just gone now.

Simone Collins: I think it’s, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and they have a lot of trouble reinstating at this point. Politically. We’ll see.

Simone Collins: I mean, give it time.

Speaker 4: In the shadows of Zi la ces, towering spies, we plot the [00:43:00] rebirth fueling demographic fires. Malcolm and Simone, the Duo Soly Whispering Secrets need the simulated sky with. The schemes we conquer the night breeding an army ready to fight. No mercy for norms. We’ll rewrite the code in our tech no round where the bold ones are bold.

Hail to the breeders. The hackers are. Sharp official’s way. Techno purities rise in discipline. You will engineer. Empires for

our children are. Named Fierce and Grand Titan and and Octavian rulers of land IVF Sorcerer. Screening traits with delight, polygenic [00:44:00] potions brewing might through the night. Our brands of power base camp do call daily decrees, making an empire fall. Slaps for the week. Debates for the fools. We build our dynasty breaking all rules.

Oh, hail to the breeder. The hackers of faith sharp artificials rise in discipline Will.

They call us villains with Eugenic sne, but we’re the saviors quelling extinction from the embryo vault to the future’s Grand Throne will hack the blood [00:45:00] lie and claim it as our own controversy. It’s fueled for our firewall world will crumble as our kid.

Artificial cradles where life sparks and new no chains of the body. Just tech pure and true germlines. Dark magic fixing flaws in the vein. Super babies marching in our endless rain. Fans bow before us in. Quirky crusade. While critics tremble in the shadows, we’ve made Pennsylvania dreams. Political schemes will rule the timelines bursting at the seas or hail to the breeders.

The hackers of. Sharp Artificials way, rise in discipline will [00:46:00] engineer empire.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe