Sexuality, Religion, and Modern Norms

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the complex topic of sexuality from both scientific and religious perspectives. They challenge traditional interpretations of religious texts and explore how modern contexts might necessitate a reevaluation of sexual ethics. The discussion covers:

* The impact of pornography restrictions on society

* Masturbation and its effects on mental and physical health

* Biblical interpretations of sexuality and their modern applications

* The concept of separating pleasure from procreation in sexual ethics

* The potential benefits of a more nuanced approach to sexual morality

* Statistical data on sexual behaviors and preferences

* The role of technology in changing sexual norms and practices

This video offers a fresh, evidence-based perspective on a often controversial topic, aiming to reconcile religious values with modern realities and scientific understanding.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Why are all of these cultures like breaking apart ? It's because they have equated premarital sexual intercourse as exactly the same. I moral negative weight.

As masturbation, and that's really effing stupid. It made a lot of sense before porn existed, because if you look at the lines, and we'll get to in the Bible about this, they don't talk about masturbation, they talk about prostitutes. Seeing a prostitute actually is just as bad or worse than premarital sex.

You know, from a disease risk perspective, from a pregnancy risk perspective, there is a reason that historically you needed to warrant against all of this stuff. Right? But in a modern context,. when you put restrictions on porn, you increase the rate of sex crimes.

Speaker 5: Just saying, what works on planet Gelgamech isn't necessarily going to work for the rest of us here on Earth.

You see, that's the problem we're having here.

Malcolm Collins: For every 10 percent of increase in internet access in the U S there is a [00:01:00] corresponding regional decrease of 7.

3 percent of grape cases

Speed of light Trekkie! What are you doing? That's gross! Trekkie

Malcolm Collins: UCLA researchers found that sex criminals, on average, consume less porn than the average person and started consuming it at a later age than the average non sex criminal.

Within the Czech Republic, where porn was illegal , then legalized this decriminalization of pornography caused in one year grapes to decline by 37% and child sexual abuse by about 50%.

Similar results were seen when the porn laws were loosened in Denmark, Japan, China, and Hong Kong. Wow. Anyone who is pro pornography restrictions is functionally also pro child. Great

Simone Collins: So the [00:02:00] Bible

Malcolm Collins: says it's best, By their fruits you will know them. How do you know the correct interpretation? It works. If it leads to mass child grief and cover ups, It's not the correct interpretation.

The Bible tells us that. Easy peasy. Right, guys?

Speaker 5: I'm just trying to say that if we don't change then we might lose everyone to atheism. What exactly do you suggest we change, well, for one, no sex with boys.

Speaker 6: The

Speaker 7: holy document of law states that a priest, cannot get married, so where are we to get our sex?

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to have a fantastic episode. We are going to go deep into research around sexuality into statistics around sexuality into biblical theology, a bunch of lines from the Bible. We're going to go into the philosophy of sexuality, and we are going to be coming up with a model [00:03:00] for the way we will teach our kids to engage with their sexuality, because I think one of the biggest back doors, you know, when a person comes to me in a traditional religion and when they say, you know, when they hear me say, oh, you need to evolve this tradition or you are going to get creamed by the urban monoculture.

Like, well, what do you mean by that? One of the number one things I am going to elevate is Is the way that their religion relates to sexuality, sexual rules that evolved in a time period before basically free internet pornography was everywhere for contraception. When. STDs were running rampant when you had to worry about getting random people pregnant, like at a high level is going to create a very different optimal rule system than a modern system.

And people might be like, well, why not just be stricter? And it's like, well, because that causes really bad [00:04:00] externalities within a modern culture, but also leaves often a back door in a child's brain where you have not built a framework for how a part of the world works. that the urban monoculture can basically install a self replicating mimetic framework that can eventually eat their entire mind.

And that's what all the gender ideology stuff is. But first I want to talk about how. These old rules around sexuality keep going wonky in a modern context.

And why,

as we're going to be arguing here, I would argue that there should be, and I will teach my kids, no cultural restrictions at all around masturbation for pleasure, if it is to any image or video that doesn't use a real human.

I. e. anything that's AI generated or drawn or anything like that. And we'll get to why, if you make this set of [00:05:00] restrictions, it actually solves most of the problems the old restrictions solve, while also protecting against a bunch of the new problems. So, problem number one that you see is The Mormon swinger phenomenon.

Have you been following these scandals Simone? Of

Simone Collins: course I have. In short, a reality TV show, I think on Hulu, right? Came out detailing moms of TikTok, a TikTok group of Mormon mothers who also just happened to turn out to be swingers.

Malcolm Collins: The point is that it, this has become common within part of Mormon culture. And specifically what they do is it's not considered cheating if the husband or wife is in the room watching you, which is actually really weird to me because that would Cause a really like, there was a sneko drama where like he was in an open relationship and then he talked about watching his girlfriend sleep with another guy and people were like, That's being cucked.

And he's like, no, I'm in an open relationship. And they go, [00:06:00] yeah, like open relationships are normal. Watching is not. And, and the reason that other guys would say this, and it appears that just Niko either didn't have this part of his arousal pathway or had this part of his arousal pathway inverted.

is a normal male for obvious evolutionary reasons. It's going to get a very strong disgust reaction from watching a partner of his sleeping with another male. That would have been very evolutionarily disadvantageous. Now for women, it's going to be different because women might have existed in a harem environment or something like that.

But for men, this is one of the loudest disgust motivators a normal man can feel. And so I would have to guess that these men might also have had This sort of silenced or muted in them as an arousal pathway If I was going to guess why this would be uniquely common among mormons to have the the cucking arousal pathway silenced It might be a holdover from their sister wife ancestors where the wives who are okay with watching other [00:07:00] wives having sex or who got into that might have passed that down to some of their male offspring as well leading to higher rates of arousal from cuckoldry was in the Mormon community.

Do you understand the logic behind that Simone or do I need to explain it differently? So you're giving a face like you didn't understand.

Simone Collins: Oh, i'm just thinking about it. I mean in in most of the sister wife Arrangements i'm aware of it's the the sex part is not at all shared or communal. What did they tell

Malcolm Collins: you?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: No! They obviously wouldn't tell you. Like I don't even know what you're on about. Like you think that the sister wives who are trying to show how, and keep in mind the Mormons who still do this are the most religious of the most religious Mormons. Like you think that they are really gonna tell you, like, the things that are hot about the relationship for them?

Come on! Like Yeah, clue in here, Simone, but [00:08:00] anyway to I want to be clear here. This is not a Mormon specific problem. Okay. On the discord, we did a Catholic episode recently, and the first thing everyone was jumping on was like, Oh, all those Catholic girls, you know, acting like the, the butt stuff and the.

The oral isn't going to count when they get to heaven as premarital sexual intercourse.

Speaker: What's going on? I don't know. But do you think if I told him I had an incendiary device to run my niggers, he'd have a look?

Speaker 3: Some of them are, right? I'm willing to admit it.

Malcolm Collins: Because this is common among Catholic girls. Like I have slept with girls in this category myself. There is a common thing where it's like, well, oral doesn't really count. And I really liked a joke that one of them told us, like, you get to heaven.

And God's like, I'm sorry, premarital sex, you know? And then, and then the girl's like, wait, play that video back again. Stop. Zoom in. See, it was anal. And, and then God's like, ah, two heavens for you. That there's like these loopholes

Speaker 4: What in God's name are you [00:09:00] wearing? , I'm putting together my costume for the Halloween dance. , so you're going as a stripper?

No, I am a Catholic schoolgirl.

Thank God. Whatever you do, don't slag off the Pope. We're outnumbered.

Malcolm Collins: or and again, it's not just, you know, The Amish grape epidemic is really bad in the Amish community.

They're really strict rules. Or, you know, in, in the modern ultra Orthodox Jewish community people are breaking the Shoma Nega. I I'm pronouncing it. I'm butchering it. I can't speak other languages, which are their rules against like handholding and touching. Apparently it's really common, but they're supposed to be very, very strictly held.

And it's, Caused by like what leads to all of these rules being so feckless or other mormon stuff like soaking where they just leave themselves inside the girl or what's the other one where they like bounce on the bed?

Simone Collins: No, no, that that is soaking where technically because the male and female [00:10:00] partner Are not in leading the mechanical effort of thrusting for PIV sex.

And instead there is just placement with a very awkward friend, theoretically jumping on the bed to assist that that would work out. I still think

Malcolm Collins: High degrees of, of, of, of, of cuckoldering in the Mormon community. That just seems so apocryphal to me. It

Simone Collins: seems like a joke that somebody made up and it's really caught on because it's just such a funny concept.

Malcolm Collins: No, I think a lot of this stuff, like the oral and stuff like that, this is actually very common. No, the

Simone Collins: oral, the oral I know is super like common where it's like, well, yeah, we don't have sex, but we, you know. Oral doesn't count that I know for a fact. Yeah, oral anal

Malcolm Collins: don't count, you know, so fine.

Simone Collins: Well, I don't, I haven't, I think enhance,

Malcolm Collins: love that.

I think anals different.

Simone Collins: I think anals different. But I know that oral is a workaround. That is [00:11:00] definitely. So we're talking about

Malcolm Collins: why this happens. Why are all of these cultures like breaking apart here? It's because they have equated premarital sexual intercourse for pleasure as exactly the same. I moral negative weight.

As masturbation, and that's really effing stupid. It made a lot of sense before porn existed, because if you look at the lines, and we'll get to in the Bible about this, they don't talk about masturbation, they talk about prostitutes. Seeing a prostitute actually is just as bad or worse than premarital sex.

You know, from a disease risk perspective, from a pregnancy risk perspective, from a, you know, there is a reason that historically you needed to warrant against all of this stuff. Right? But in a modern context, if I'm like, in absolute terms. If it is a kid who is not allowed to masturbate, much more likely to engage in certain [00:12:00] types of premarital sex or engage in, when they're married, certain types of sexual exploration that otherwise they would just feel no desire to do, absolutely.

It is a huge moral failing of the way the rule set is working now. And then there's the secondary problem, which is outright bans on masturbation have a lot of problems. Specifically, if you tell somebody, don't think about X, it causes people to think about X. There have been a, this has been studied like extremely well.

So there is the a book on this if you want to read it, that's, that's pretty good called overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts. A CBT based guide to getting over frightening, obsessive or disturbing things. There is also the white bear experiments conducted by Daniel Weger in the 1980s. And these studies asked participants to avoid thinking about a white bear for five minutes.

And they were very, very bad at it. [00:13:00] Specifically when you ask somebody to not think about something, you are causing them to engage in a form of. Suppression or psychological suppression, which requires cognitive resources. It makes them bad at basically thinking about everything else. And the problem is that some people will be like, Oh, but recent research has shown that this doesn't work around things you're afraid of.

Okay. Yeah. It, it, it doesn't have the same effect if you're trying to get rid of like PTSD stuff or things you're afraid of, but it does. Still hold with sexual things. So here I'm going to read a few other studies. The rebound effect of thought suppression to this is I'm quoting from a study. And this study is called God.

I can't stop thinking about sex. The rebound effect in unsuccessful suppression of sexual thoughts among religious adolescents. I love

Simone Collins: when people who do peer reviewed research do good titles. It's

Malcolm Collins: just a

Simone Collins: thing of beauty.

Malcolm Collins: So the rebound effect of thought suppression refers to attempts to suppress [00:14:00] thoughts that result in an increase in In those thoughts. So in the thoughts that we're trying to be suppressed. The aim of this three study research was to investigate the suppression of thoughts and it's possible importance to cognitive model of predicted compulsive sexual behavior CSB among Israeli Jewish religious and secular adolescence.

The analysis indicates that religious adolescents are higher in CSB than secular ones, and that religious suppression and CSB mediate the link between religiosity and well being. So they actually lower the well being of these students and lower some of the positive effects of religiosity that these students would otherwise be experiencing.

And then a 2019 study reported in the Journal of Sex Research found that Found the attempts to suppress sexual thoughts can result in an increase in those thoughts. This is called the rebound effect. So, here I'm going to quote from our book, the pragmatist guide to sexuality, because we also go into this phenomenon a bit

Some claim that all [00:15:00] arousal patterns not tied to penis and vagina sex between a married couple arise when a society loses God.

Octavian: There

Malcolm Collins: is an element of truth to this when surveyed religious individuals claim to consume porn at lower rates than non religious individuals, though claimed porn consumption by religious individuals 1995.

This is as far as that element of truth extends, as all other data indicates that these individuals are lying. In fact, when Harvard educated Microsoft economist Benjamin Edelman investigated porn site subscriptions and Google searches for porn on a regional basis in 2009, he found that the more religious regions consume porn more than the less religious regions, with the highest rates of all being in Utah.

Specifically, Edelman found that subscriptions to porn based sites and online searches for sexual content were higher in states that had enacted laws to defend marriage. And in which statements like, quote, I never doubt the existence of God, in quote, quote, even today miracles are performed by the power of God, in quote, quote, I have old fashioned [00:16:00] values about family and marriage, in quote, and quote, AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior, in quote, were more prevalent.

This finding isn't limited to this one study, a 2015 study, Canadian researcher, Kara McGinnis and Gordon Huddleston, found that found that states with a higher percentage of individuals who self identify as very religious and consider religion to be important to their daily lives have higher rates of searches for sexual content on Google. Studies have shown that people who experience early life stressors and high religiosity may be more likely to exhibit sexually compulsive behaviors.

One study found that, quote, states with more evangelical protestant theists who profess beliefs in God or higher powers and biblical , literalists, those who report that they interpret the Bible as the literal word of God, are significantly more likely to have higher aggregate results of online searches for pornography.

States where people attended religious services more frequently were also significantly more likely to have higher rates of searches for online porn. [00:17:00] Finally, we find that states with higher percentages of residents unaffiliated with any religious group have significantly lower levels of searching for porn.

These findings are interesting because at an individual level, people who a Affiliate with evangelical Protestant groups, attend church, read the Bible literally, , or believe in God generally report much lower levels of pornography consumption, end quote. This quote is from an interview with Andrew L.

Whitehead of Clemson University in Psy Post. And we also just see this generally in the data. Once. A during a broadcast of good Friday mass from the Vatican. And this was at 2 a. m. The girls gone wild ad accidentally aired and they received right

Simone Collins: accidentally.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. They, they received a record sales for, for the girls gone wild.

That was, it was an old, like soft porn thing that existed for people who don't know, I remember girls.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess for the younger people,

Malcolm Collins: From a side post titled quote, A [00:18:00] conservative religious environment strongly increases the chance of adolescent porn viewing study finds in quote, quote, without controlling for individual religious identity.

However, it might be possible that those who have searched for porn and evangelical Protestant states are people who are not evangelical Protestants, but live in predominantly evangelical Protestant states. So they checked the individual level data from 3, 370 use and their parents allowed researchers to control for age. Religious service attendance, importance of religion in life, parental education attainment, and several other religious and demographic factors. Even after accounting for the confounding variables, the researchers found that county level religious adherence rates still increase the odds of watching porn during adolescence by 66.

53 percent regardless of religious identity. Similarly, youths were more likely to report viewing porn and continue to do so, with a higher share of conservative Protestants, especially among youths who were not conservative Protestants themselves. So a, [00:19:00] a, a 66. 53 percent interest that is insanely higher.

Like you are, and, and here are just note from the Bible, from your fruits, you will know them. Is this a good practice? So if I'm making a judgment biblically, I need to say, does it lead to the intended outcome? No, it leads to the opposite outcome. So it is not a good practice. But it gets even worse than that.

You are probably hurting kids more than you think by making these requests. It's specifically here. And if people are like, okay, well, from a religious system, then how do you handle this? You've got to really worry when you're building your religious system against a phenomenon called scrupulicity.

Scrupulicity is the pathological guilt and anxiety about moral issues. Although it can affect non religious people, it usually just affects religious people. So it's like when you become obsessive compulsive about following a deontological religious ethical [00:20:00] framework and it leads to extremely negative life outcomes.

So how do you avoid this? How do you avoid this focus on pornography and stuff like that? Well, what you do is elevate the types of thinking you want to elevate rather than suppress the type of thinking you don't want. And we'll get to how you can do that around sexuality at the end of this particular, I guess I'll call these lectures, whatever they are.

But Simone, do you want to give your thoughts before I go further?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know if you want to discuss this later, but I Think that also we're not trying to say shove Your kids into erotic material and tell them to have at it and that there are no problems if they start consuming it in excess consumption of anything in excess Is a sign of a problem and it's something I think we would discuss with our kids But within the broader context of excess of anything where you find that you are

Malcolm Collins: you might be surprised but excess [00:21:00] porn consumption Is incredibly rare outside of religious communities Secular porn addiction seems to be specifically related to moral bans on pornography.

Simone Collins: And that's a sign of a larger problem that appears to need to be solved. But I would just say that, that I wouldn't even warn our kids about consuming too much. I would warn our kids about anything where you start to change your daily habits and to prioritize. I agree, but this is like,

Malcolm Collins: so, so I would say that I would categorize porn consumption in the same category of immoral action as video games.

Simone Collins: Oh no, I was thinking exactly the same. Video games, food, even exercise. Basically anything where you are Other things in your life are suffering because you are so obsessed with getting in more of an action and it could be anything, then you have to worry about it. So we don't even have to have that conversation [00:22:00] around sexuality.

We have that conversation around addiction, period, or habit forming, period.

Malcolm Collins: And I, and I will note here, I love when people, when we have takes that are, because I know that this take is going to piss off a lot of our listeners, but it's just so based by the data, like the data on this particular subject is so overwhelming and they're like, well, you're not based.

And I'm like, well, We're not going along with the Urban Monoculture's framing on this stuff either, as you'll see. Our hidden conclusion is quite offensive to them. Being based doesn't mean agreeing with everything your group thinks. It means, you know, saying what is true, even when it might lose us subscribers.

As this episode probably will. But! That's how we keep from getting audience captured. You just got to keep plowing through.

Simone Collins: Keep pissing people off. That's the secret

Malcolm Collins: evidence isn't in their favor. And when the biblical text isn't in their favor, as we'll go over, it just very clearly isn't you know, it's important that we not only do what's best for our kids, but give other people the tools to do what's best for their kids in terms of the, the [00:23:00] way that they teach them about this stuff.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But it'd be quoting for the pragmatist guide to sexuality again.

Masturbation may contribute to a decline in many social ills. UCLA researchers found that sex criminals, on average, consume less porn than the average person and started consuming it at a later age than the average non sex criminal. Had today's sex criminals been able to explore their sexuality, through masturbation?

through their imagination earlier, perhaps they would not have felt compelled to commit their sex crimes later. So I should note here, when you put restrictions on porn, you increase the rate of sex crimes. In fact, the data bears this out for every 10 percent of increase in internet access in the U S there is a corresponding regional decrease of 7.

3 percent of grape cases suggesting the internet and its facilitation of masturbation may provide an outlet for sexual energy that might otherwise cause serious damage. Okay. Across nations, more permissive attitudes towards pornography are correlated with lower rates of grape and less [00:24:00] violence against women.

A great study of this can be seen within the Czech Republic, where porn was illegal under communism, then legalized when the party fell. This decriminalization of pornography caused in one year grapes to decline by 37% and child sexual abuse by about 50%.

Similar results were seen when the porn laws were loosened in Denmark, Japan, China, and Hong Kong. Wow. Anyone who is pro pornography restrictions is functionally also pro child. Great. Period. We have seen this happen multiple times. When you implement those laws, the result is children getting raped.

Simone Collins: I forgot just how striking the data was.

It's insane that people are still, that there's any ambiguity here. It just seems so obvious. There's no

Malcolm Collins: ambiguity at all. I mean, regardless, [00:25:00] if you, if a person wants to, at an individual level, say they believe in restricting access for them or their kids to pornography, I'm like, okay. I can get behind that, but when somebody begins to push laws around this at the state level, they are now, in my mind, around the same category of morality as a child trafficker. Because they just, Or somebody who facilitates laws that facilitate that because they just show that they do not care about the actual results of what they're doing and they do not care about the actual Children who are going to suffer because of the choices that they are making for essentially virtue signals.

And we, you know, we've seen this within some conservative events in the UK, and it's like the 1 thing where I just want to like. Oh my God, or even that when Project 25 suggested pornography bans in the United States, I just wanted to slap the person who wrote that. I was like, do you understand the consequences, the consequences of the laws that you are suggesting be [00:26:00] put into place?

But they don't care. They don't care. These, these, these virtue signalers do not care. Everything for them is this bizarre virtue spiral.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily put it as not caring. I would put it as not thinking about it and not orienting around truth or evidence based decisions because humans aren't nether, there's a portion of us.

That's the, of our ourselves, I would say our prefrontal cortex, which is all about evidence based decisions, but that thing came last and that thing comes online fully last. And most of us barely get out of like our limbic system. So can you blame us? We have the potential, but it's not the default. So I don't blame people for, for, for virtue spiraling and focusing on social conformity.

Malcolm Collins: You, you say you don't blame people, but the result, you've always said things happening to kids is your line. Yeah, no, that's

Simone Collins: my line. Well, and also I see the only thing that makes us human as our prefrontal cortex. So at the same time, I don't blame them, but I also [00:27:00] dehumanize them because I think that they're reverting to that, which is less human.

But I still understand, I guess I should reword it to, I understand why they do that. They're, they're failing to rise above, but they are doing what the default is. So.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they're acting like animals, and I believe people who act like animals should be treated like animals.

Simone Collins: Well, okay.

Malcolm Collins: And thought of as animals, because they are not rising above their animalistic instincts to think through and look through what are the results of the stuff that they're proposing.

And I think people often are surprised, like, why are we so viscerally against porn bands? And that is why. Because of the consequence.

Simone Collins: Well, which is kind of ironic because what people think of when they think about indulging in porn is people succumbing to their animalistic instincts. And indeed that is a part of it, but it's more like acknowledging that they're presently.

Is not a convenient way around these animalistic instincts, at least for some [00:28:00] people of certain hormonal profiles. And of course there are things you can do that can suppress that, but they have side effects that can be dangerous. So if we have to live with these instincts, the better thing to do is to grab control of them and exercise them in ways that are minimally damaging, which per our policy around erotic material, no human actors.

And in moderation, it is 100 percent the most optimal way to deal with these urges. It makes perfect sense. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: without any of the negative externalities. Exactly. Because when you remove human actors, then you remove the, the any trafficking problems, you remove any problems with prostitution, you remove any problems with impressed labor, you remove any problems, like, you remove Pretty much all of the moral quads.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So when I model the argument of someone who's opposing us, what they're trying to say is, Oh, you say we're supposed to rise above with evidence based thought, but we're trying to rise above our basis, human instincts by simply abstaining [00:29:00] from all of it altogether. I think what we're saying is you can't do

Malcolm Collins: that.

Yeah. It doesn't work. Yeah. It

Simone Collins: clearly doesn't work. And when you try to do that, it backfires. So what we need to do is acknowledge where our limits are. Yeah. Prepare for our limits, build around the limits and then rise above in more meaningful ways until we can fully extinguish this. And we've in other podcasts even talked about how when it gets to be possible to safely suppress human sexual instincts, we will 100 percent do so.

And already all of our kids have even been created in the complete absence of, of actual sexual intercourse. I mean, like we have But our kids are not created using sex because we feel that there are better ways to do that.

Malcolm Collins: There are ways to already mute sexual impulses. Well, there are.

Simone Collins: It's just that the side effects, like, for example, me starving myself as a teen 100 percent worked because it just took my entire, entire hormonal system offline.

And then I had the hormonal profile of a prepubescent child, essentially. So there are ways to do it. I just think the side [00:30:00] effects. And also like you can go on you can, you can delay you can, you can go on gender affirming care and delay.

Malcolm Collins: It obviously works. It has almost no side effects.

Simone Collins: But would now, now truck zone.

Stop, not stop arousal for the

Malcolm Collins: government mandating naltrexone. But what I am saying is technology already exists, but

Simone Collins: naltrexone, that, that deals with, with addiction pathways, not with arousal. I can

Malcolm Collins: very, if, if, if I was to masturbate while on Naltrexone for like three days in a row, I would stop wanting to masturbate.

Simone Collins: Would you stop having interest in?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. You had stop having interest in women? Yes. That's the way naltrexone works. It works on your opioid pathways and removes

Simone Collins: Arousal is just 100 percent on that system, you're saying?

Malcolm Collins: 100 percent on that system. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. Okay. Fair point then.

Malcolm Collins: We already have the tools for doing this, but [00:31:00] do I think it's ethical to mandate everyone take something like this?

Or even pressure our kids to take it? No, I would say it's an option if they think it's the best way to control a certain impulse. But no, I'm very against mandating any of this stuff. All right, now back to what I'm reading here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Other studies reinforce these results, such as one in aggression and violent behavior that found a weak inverse correlation between porn consumption and violent behavior towards women, specifically grape and sexual assault.

The study's findings suggest that the more porn a man consumes, the less likely he is to commit these violent acts against women.

Despite what we had assumed, masturbation and porn consumption do not lead people to think less of women. People who watch pornography hold views of women as more equal to men than those who do not watch pornography. Consumers of porn are no less likely to describe themselves as feminist and actually express more egalitarian ideas about both women in positions of power and working outside the home, [00:32:00] according to results of a study published in the Journal of Sex Research.

We did, however, find a study showing that men who were low on the trait of agreeableness did increase already existing sexist attitudes when exposed to pornography. So basically, you need to get incredibly in the weeds to show any, when you have these individuals, like Louise Ferry, who I love, but you know, I think she has some stuff like porn causes men to think poorly of women, or like do these derogatory sex acts towards women, and it's like, that is factually untrue.

And I will never, never get over these women today, because I hear this in conservative spaces. They're like, men choke women during sex because of porn and then women learn to like it because of that. And I'm like, we did not make you all turn Fifty Shades of Grey into a best selling book. That stuff is coming from women.

As a guy who has slept around a lot, that stuff is coming from women. Okay? That's not coming from the male side of the sexuality spectrum, [00:33:00] and you can see this in our data. It is the women who aren't consuming as much of the traditional pornography who are more desiring of the violent category of, of sexuality.

You are just denying their experiences, and likely haven't felt them because it appears, and people can watch our other videos on it,

That that form of female sexuality might be triggered by a high body count But I don't want to get into that if you want to get into that you can go to our video on What's a good one on this?

I I believe it's like raider versus homesteader sexuality

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: I'll try to quickly and briefly explain how the theory works here. So essentially we argue that in a historic context,

Women could have found themselves in multiple scenarios for which a different arousal profile would have been optimal specifically. They could have found themselves in a monogamous cultural group. They could have found themselves in a polygynous cultural group, or they could have found themselves as a, well, essentially a [00:34:00] slave taken during a raid or a war or something like that.

We argue that women evolved a changing arousal pattern. Based on specific environmental conditions. And that we can actually see this in the data and know what those conditions are specifically when a woman hasn't slept was a lot of people. she will. Have a release of oxytocin during intercourse, which causes a. Involuntary, you could almost argue bonding with the person she is sleeping with.

I E she is very likely to fall in love with that person. Just because of the act of sex, , and that sex modulates, it makes it much faster that she forms a love bond with an individual. But that this no longer happens, the more partners she has, and we can see this from a lowering of oxytocin. , during sex when women have had lots of different partners.

And this is because in an evolutionary context, that would have only happened in a polygynous society. ,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: In a monogamous society. [00:35:00] It is very advantageous for a woman to fall in love with and build an emotional bond with the individual she is sleeping with, but in a society where she is sleeping with a large number of men, this is not advantageous.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: and if you're talking about a very large number of partners, that would only happen if she was a slave. , now in that letter case, we actually see, and this is backed up by data that ALA collected that women who have lots and lots of partners actually get turned on by violence, much more than women who have had few partners. , and that. This would make sense if this hypothesis that we have is true.

And so when these women say, , I can't imagine any woman being turned on by this. , and they are a low partner count woman. It's like, well, that's in part because you are a low partner count woman that you can't imagine that.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: But it's leading you to misdiagnose where the things are entering our culture from it is not from a men. It is from a women. And through [00:36:00] that misdiagnosis and putting the blame on pornography, you put children at risk.

Malcolm Collins: All right And now back to reading. We did recall reading about a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute showing that intense porn consumption in men was associated with lower gray matter volume in the brain. So we went back to the study only to realize that what it actually found was that men who consumed lots of porn had lower amounts of gray matter in a specific part of the brain, the right striatum.

The problem is that this part of the brain is also involved in reward processing. All the study says is that men who have deficient reward processing pathways consume more porn. Well, and this is very similar to

Simone Collins: people Who, who are overly addicted to social media or video games and all you have to do at that point is don't they call it dopamine fasting where you just sort of stop it for 30 days?

The point

Malcolm Collins: I'm putting is if you have a broken reward pathway, it's very likely that you're going to become addicted to behavior [00:37:00] patterns that are meant to satisfy that reward pathway. This doesn't show causality. It shows causation. It shows people born with a broken reward pathway follow that reward pathway in a broken fashion.

Simone Collins: What I read from that, are you sure? Because what I read from that was it indicated that maybe they'd been overexposed to the point of numbness because they

Malcolm Collins: No, it didn't match. So you're assuming that what it's showing is that when men consumed more porn, Their gray matter decreased, which isn't what it showed.

It showed when their gray matter decreased, they consumed more porn.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: in exactly the part of the brain, you would expect this to happen.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But there's actually data that this isn't correlational. Because we're going to get further here. A study conducted on college students found that those who masturbated more actually had more sex than those who masturbated less.

Another study [00:38:00] found that people who masturbate more often have happier marriages and more satisfying sex within those marriages. Masturbating, well Fantasizing about one's partner has also been shown to improve the quality of relationships and reduce relationship damaging behavioral patterns. Studies have even shown that the concept of building up tolerance to vanilla porn, suggesting that that is why some people go into increasingly weird porn, is false.

And this is something we were formerly certain was true. So we are quite excited to learn that we were wrong. Specifically, people who like weird porn still get turned on by vanilla porn at an even higher level than people who prefer vanilla porn. Statistically speaking, of course, this isn't true for every single individual.

 Essentially, escalating weirdness in porn tastes may be a product of a higher affinity for porn in general. The underlying arousal patterns experienced by weird porn aficionados don't shift in response to [00:39:00] exposure to weird porn. They merely are able to tolerate more obscure content.

Octavian: We

Malcolm Collins: do not start to see Any consistent negative effects for masturbation and porn consumption until we get to studies looking at masturbation three or more times a day, and even those seem a little cherry picked.

One study found that pornography negatively affects working memory, though the effect holds only while one is watching it. Thanks, Captain Obvious. We'll be sure to remember that the next time we decide to take a test while masturbating. We also found some studies showing that when a woman knows her boyfriend is masturbating, it can hurt her body image.

And some studies indicate that poor masturbation technique in men gripping too hard can lower a man's sensitivity. Still, none of this really seems to paint even fairly frequent masturbation as being bad on the whole. And the thing that gets me is just like everything they're saying, like, oh, if you masturbate, you'll be worse It's like, well, Factually, that's untrue.

People who masturbate were rated. It's also like

Simone Collins: saying, well, if you, if you run poorly, [00:40:00] you know, and, and you have bad running shoes, then you're going to, your ankles will become injured chronically and it's like, well, yeah, true technique is important with anything. Moderation is important with anything.

And I think the whole female body image thing has more to do with culture. And quite frankly, the toxic culture and discussion around porn that makes women feel bad about it. This is also, this is somewhere else in the prime goodness guide to sexuality, but the data that we found when doing research for the book also found that women who consume porn tend to be more sexually comfortable and enjoy sex more.

So in general, as a female, even getting into porn seems to just be a purely additive to your sex life and your confidence, which is, I mean, it makes sense when you actually look at porn that's designed around women. But I think given the toxic discourse around porn as it stands, yeah, it makes [00:41:00] sense way.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and this, and this is unfortunately being perpetuated by some of our friends. Which is, is very frustrating to me that they don't just look at the research, you know? Well, it could also

Simone Collins: just be an audience capture thing because when we went, for example, to the ARC conference in London last year, which was supposed to be like the conservative Davos, that subject came up so much.

And it was such a crowd pleaser that it was hard to I mean, it would be really difficult for these people who are trying to rise as conservative thought leaders, especially in the United Kingdom and Europe, which has that sort of curmudgeonly form of defeatist form of conservatism that you can't take the other stance because you would be shadow banned from those communities.

You would not be invited to speak. They don't have a choice.

Malcolm Collins: Well, thank God we're not there. They're all going to die out anyway. I really care very little about them because they're so obviously going to die out. They don't have the fighting spirit to get [00:42:00] through for the valley of the lotus eaters. Well, it's true these people who are up there Whinging about banning porn have like no kids like i'm like, okay Clearly you don't like have good solutions to this.

Do you? Anyway, all right. Okay. Okay. Okay, but what about addiction masturbation addiction is destroying the lives of millions of young americans, right? You The answer here is a resounding Anecdotally, masturbation is not recognized as addictive by the American Psychological Association, APA, and was not categorized as a mental health condition in the latest standard diagnostic manual, DSM 5.

We readily admit that this seems a little weird that there isn't much research showing masturbation can be addictive, as it seems to affect opioid pathways, i. e. the brain. The naltrexone thing. And most things that affect opioid pathways enhance one's ability to learn a behavior and thus cause addiction in a subset of the population.

Think gambling, alcohol, morphine, etc. Because porn affects opioid pathways, it causes the [00:43:00] parts of the brain to light up when exposed to opioids. So people often be like, do you know that that porn also affects the parts of the brain that are affected by You know, what, you know, like, opioid addictions, right?

It's like, well, yeah, that's because it affects opioid pathways. That doesn't mean you know, this also does that for me. Okay? You know, a lot of things we do on a daily basis. The question is, is, are you susceptible to addictions to that particular chain of opioid pathways? And it appears that masturbation addictions outside of individuals who are banning masturbation, which means it's likely something other than a standard addiction, so if you don't have a religious thing against it, are astronomically worse.

It seems that your brain essentially down regulates a desire to masturbate if you are doing it two or more times a day. But anyway, back to the, the topic here. Instead of being thought of as an addiction, the current consensus seems to be that frequent masturbation should be categorized as a compulsion.

This is the same categorization Given to what is [00:44:00] colloquially called a quote unquote sex addiction. In this case, there doesn't seem to be anything Neurologically speaking at least, that differentiates someone who has a quote unquote addiction to masturbation versus sex. Meaning the negative effects resulting from masturbation too much would arise after too much sex.

Even then, calling masturbation addiction seems tenuous. For more on this, read The myth of sex addiction by David Lee, PhD. Now it gets worse than all of this. Like when you're talking about the benefits of masturbation, there's a great paper the role of masturbation and healthy sexual development perceptions of young adults.

This came up in 2011 and showed that frequent masturbation was associated with higher educational outcomes. So you get more sex, you get higher educational outcomes. You get well I can go through other things. It has been shown to improve sweet sleep quality it has been shown to reduce the probability of prostate cancer has been shown to relieve menstrual cramps It has been shown to reduce the risk of urinary tract infections.

It has been shown [00:45:00] Muscle tension has been shown to improve the immune system

Simone Collins: Well, I I think I highly associate it with vitalism too in general like if someone And you see this in, in characters in history, like King Henry, the eighth and Winston Churchill. These are people who were voracious on all fronts, right?

Heavy drinkers, heavy eaters, heavy sportsmen, heavy romantically, right? That just on, on everything. I think that there's something to do with leaning into Everything and going all in and being very passionate and that being associated with high achievement, like intuitively and culturally, it makes sense.

Whereas being someone who abstains, I mean, it's a very Buddhist thing, you know, this discipline, this stepping back, but that also doesn't make sense. Correlate with achievement, you know, it correlates, I guess, with virtue from that perspective of a monk, but monks are not [00:46:00] really famous for changing the course of history.

I mean, even the Dalai Lama, we all love him, but he's not.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and I would say that I don't it's when people are like do know not November or something and like a note benefits from it The key benefit they're getting is from denying an impulse There are other impulses you could deny that aren't gonna cause intrusive thoughts other than masturbation That's the problem like It's not that you're not going to get benefits.

Like all people get benefits from denying impulses.

Simone Collins: But gosh, there was some famous, maybe he was a physicist or researcher or something like that. There was this amazing quote from him because he, some friend bet him that like, he couldn't, he was too addicted to some form of amphetamines to even stop them for a month.

And he did, and he had no problem. He was fully able to do it. And he's like, and you said back my field. Significantly for a month, you know, like the world is at a loss because I stopped doing this just to do it.

Octavian: Yeah, the

Simone Collins: act of trying not to think about sex, the act of [00:47:00] trying to quit coffee, the act of trying to hold yourself back and all these things take so much time and effort and for what?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, okay, so, now an individual might be like, okay, well it might be good for your physical state, but it's not good for your mental state. Well, here's the problem. With regards to benefits to one's mental state, masturbation has been shown to release sexual tension, reduce stress, improve self esteem, improve body image, and lead to higher self reported rates of happiness.

Some studies have shown this may not be the case in adolescent women, but lateral longitudinal studies suggest this was due to confounding factors. So, neener. Like it's just like a strict negative thing to be against. Like though this wasn't true historically when you didn't have modern porn, like before you had AI and drawn pornography and stuff like that.

And you had to rely on the porn industry that used real people. There was a thing though, is, is that honestly was

Simone Collins: a pretty short lived [00:48:00] thing. So from this, like when the first photographs were made until maybe five, 10 years ago. Yes, there was this weird short period where photos and video of sexual acts was pervasive.

But before that, there was so much drawn porn. There was, it was all drawn porn. You could, you see it going back forever and ever and ever.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, people who think that like, rule 64 porn, like drawn cartoon characters in, in porn stuff is new.

They were in MacBooks in the 1920s. If you go back before that you will see drawn characters , of gods and stuff like that.

Clearly in pornographic positions fictional characters. Oh, they were referred

Simone Collins: to as like political cartoons, but think about all of the sexualized cartoons of Marie Antoinette and other historical figures. This was just. It's fine. It's what we do

Malcolm Collins: wonder why people sexualize these sorts of characters.

It's likely because we have a system [00:49:00] that increases our arousal pathway to any character. We have a parasocial or social connection to and many people build social connections to them. Two characters that they hear about or see a lot more so than a random person who might be appearing in a, in a porn video.

Now also we've got to talk about just how negative sex was in a historic context that you could accidentally get somebody pregnant.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Well, in syphilis, let's not

Malcolm Collins: forget about syphilis or syphilis. It would drive you crazy or that there were giant gangs of orphans from this in places like London or that they would randomly leave.

You can close your ears. Simone.

Simone Collins: Okay. Wave your hands when you're done.

Malcolm Collins: Hey, there are, there are reports of people stepping over babies being very common dead babies in London during this period because it was just so common to have children out of the wedlock and leaves them for exposure.

Extramarital and premarital sex was genuinely horrific in a premodern [00:50:00] context, but we are not in a premodern context and our children are being lost in droves. All right, you can, you can come back. You can come back.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Like, this wouldn't be a thing that I'd be going on about if it had no negative consequences, if it didn't lead to the

Simone Collins: bad

Malcolm Collins: things, the bad things I mentioned before that I

Simone Collins: don't that we do not talk about around Simone because Simone can't afford to cry all night.

Thank you. But I mean, also like women, I mean, even even sex within marriage was a pretty big risk because the number of times you could expect a friend or family member to die in childbirth was.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. And women, I don't know if you know that they lost a tooth on average with every pregnancy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, pregnancies were rough on women, but also just this idea of, well, maybe I'll die.

Maybe I'll get a baby. I don't know. Worth it. Let's give this a roll of the dice. You know, it was dangerous. Even when, even in the best of contexts, you have all the resources, you have the best medical [00:51:00] care. Yep. Yep. I mean, I might still die. That

Malcolm Collins: is not the context. We need to motivate sexism. Today, very different context today.

Totally different. So now we're gonna go into Bible stuff for people who are like, what? But, but. Somebody who hadn't read the Bible told me the Bible said, and I'm like, well, let's go into what the Bible does say, okay?

Because I know

what a lot of the things that people think are in the Bible just aren't and it always surprises me.

So, I'm gonna go into all the times the Bible might be talking about masturbation. Genesis 38, 9 through 10. The story of Onan is sometimes Associated with masturbation because Ohan quote spilled the seed on the ground in quote to avoid providing an air for his deceased brother which God condemned.

However, it seems like

Simone Collins: that was the dick move. It wasn't the masturbation was about

Malcolm Collins: not providing an air for his brother. Yeah. About the masturbation. So for people who don't know this, this [00:52:00] was a very important rule in Jewish traditions, which is that if a wife's husband died, she was supposed to marry his brother.

This makes a lot of sense from a genetics perspective. It's actually like a very fair thing. It is something I would want to happen to my wife if I died before our first kid was born, because if she inherited all of my money. Who do I want that money going to but a close genetic relative to me who is a good close genetic relative to me?

Well, my brother's kid would be it might not be 50 percent me, but it's 25 percent me Like that's a really sensible law to decide not to do that That is a D move in the extreme and God was right to condemn him But that has nothing to do with masturbation Okay, that has to do with masturbating and then not putting it in the woman.

If he had taken that and then put it in the woman, God would have been chill. That's like, he didn't even need to have PIV. Well, or if

Simone Collins: he had done that, but then the next day had sex and produced the air, then it will also would have been, [00:53:00] it seems like the act of, of sticking it to his brother was the problem.

Malcolm Collins: So now we're going to deal with, Matthew 5, 27 through 30. And so for people who understand the context of this, this is when Jesus goes through a bunch of old commandments and then just updates them to be like more extreme.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-9: Basically in this section, he is emphasizing how easy it is to sin by listing examples, that show that, , people were too strict about putting sin into categories where, well, only when you do this big thing, are you actually sending not when you do this little thing, are you actually sending, here I'll give you some examples. , in this category, he says,

you have heard it said. To the people long ago, you shall not murder. And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who said to a brother or sister Rocca is answerable in court, and anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fire of [00:54:00] hell.

So here he is saying you have ever called someone a fool that is in a way equivalent to murdering someone. , and I agree with this, it is sinful to be derogatory. Cory of other people, but it is also something that we all do. The point being made here is that everybody lives a life of sin. For example, in another category here. He says.

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not break your O's, but for Phil. The Lord, the vowels you have made, but I tell you do not swear an oath at all, either by heaven for it is God's throne or by earth for it is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king.

Do not swear by your head . For you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need is to say simply yes or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. So again, here, he's saying that like, it is a sin too. Make promises to other people to swear to [00:55:00] other people, to even sign a contract with apple when you're using an apple store. All you're allowed to say is yes or no.

That is the only way you can prevent yourself from sending.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: There is also a part here where he says. And if anyone wants to Sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat to them as well. So again, he's saying here, well, it would be a sin. If somebody decides to unrightly, you know, here, this is right after the, even anyone slaps you on the right cheek, then turn the other cheek also.

So he's saying. You know, when, when somebody attacks you or is unjust towards you, gives them the thing that they're asking of you and to not do that is a sin. So we've. Anyone has ever accused you of something or sued you of something you are supposed to immediately capitulate the lawsuit. And give more to them than whatever they were asking for. Not doing that. Is the same category as lusting over someone who's not your wife.

Lusting over someone.

Who's not your wife within this part of

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-11: Matthew

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: Here is [00:56:00] in the same category of sin as signing a apple user agreement. It's in the same category of sin. Of calling someone else a fool. It is. Absolutely a sin. You know, see track aid, anything that's not done for the glory of God is a sin that's made very clear in the Bible. But it is. , of the same category of sin, where we're just supposed to remember that it is impossible to live a life without sin. , and to strive to be a good person in spite of that, it is not of the same category of sin. Of murder or something.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-11: And this is incredibly clear when you're reading this section of Matthew. To the point where. I would say anyone who is using this line to argue. something else was meant by this and like not putting it in the context of, this is also the part where you're never supposed to make any oath or promise to someone. Other than saying yes or no. , this is the part where you are supposed to never call someone a fool.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-12: Where you're never supposed to get angry [00:57:00] with your brother or sister., , where you're supposed to immediately capitulate any suit brought against you and give the person more than what they're asking for.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-11: and they're not, they're not including that when they're like, oh, he said, you know, don't lust after anyone.

Who's not your wife. That they're being intentionally dishonest with you. They are intentionally using the Bible in an attempt to manipulate you. By presenting something out of context and hoping that you are. , well, too dumb to go look up where this is set in the Bible. And I would then put that next to all of the other stuff they're teaching you about the Bible.

All of the other stuff they're saying, well, the Bible says this or the Bible says this because if they were willing to use the Bible to mislead you in this area, where else are they willing to use the Bible to mislead you?

Malcolm Collins: You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery within his heart.

If your right eye causes you to [00:58:00] stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And for your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you to Throw the whole thing at hell.

So do you really think Jesus means for you to rip out your eyeball because you accidentally looked at a woman with lust? No, do you really? Do you really believe that's the rule being set in place here? No,

Simone Collins: it sounds like he's clearly trying to point out that Humans are wretched, flawed, sinful beings, and, and that to try to be perfect is kind of ridiculous, right?

Yeah, he's trying

Malcolm Collins: to show you the ridiculousness of trying to follow these rules in that way. If you don't believe that that's what's being said here, If you believe Jesus is actually commanding you to rip [00:59:00] out your eyeball, if you have ever looked at a woman lustfully, go ahead, right, take out those eyes, put them on the table, because I know you have, I know everyone has.

Jesus knows you have. Don't be an f ing moron in the way you read things to argue for some deontological approach that was clearly not meant in the original text. Jesus did not actually want every man who had ever looked at a woman lustfully to rip out their eyes. Okay and I would note here that even with this framing, we are still not saying that people should break it.

Because we are not saying look at a woman lustfully, we are limiting guilt free masturbation to only AI and drawn stuff. So you're not looking at a woman lustfully, so it doesn't break

Simone Collins: the rules. Yeah. Well, also, it just, especially these days, it's more dangerous than ever to [01:00:00] be involved or, or get into a relationship.

We'll say live action erotic material because that's more moving in the direction of OnlyFans and Other sites that have you interacting directly with a live person and developing a parasocial relationship and that actually becomes quite a very real financial relationship in which you are undergoing a huge opportunity cost to invest in.

What starts out is basically. Porn consumption and masturbation and then becomes a relationship in which you are being basically a sugar daddy to someone else and also getting this feeling like you are getting a girlfriend experience and being in a relationship when you're not so you are just throwing away.

Your, your mental processing power for relationship you're,

Malcolm Collins: you're making now the, the, there's like, that's part of why we have this additional restriction, no real girls. So you don't form [01:01:00] these Leviticus 16, quote, when a man has an emission of semen, he must base his whole body with water , And he will be unclean till evening.

And any clothing or leather that his semen is on must be washed with water, and it will be unclean till evening. When a man has sexual relations with a woman, and there is an emission of semen, both of them must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. So what is this saying?

That a man having an emission, because it's categorizing two different instances here. One in which a man, has an emission of semen, one in which man has an emission of semen with a woman. And they are both categorized as the same type of uncleanliness. So it is saying that masturbating is just an unclean act as sleeping with your wife.

Now, if you read earlier in this same chapter, It talks about an additional level of uncleanliness. This is someone you like shouldn't talk touch. You shouldn't interact with. These are people who have [01:02:00] blocked their emissions. Now I will note that this could be read as a disease because it talks about unusual emissions or blocked emissions, but you could read this as saying that blocking emissions, i.

e. not regularly masturbating as a young man. makes you more unclean than regular sex or masturbation. And makes you the type of person people probably shouldn't be interacting with, which I agree with. Leviticus, way to go. Now, let's go with Corinthians 6. 18. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body, end quote.

Except, it is very clear in context that this is not talking about all forms of sexual impropriety, but prostitution specifically, that comes immediately after the line, quote, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?

Never. Do you not know that? That he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her [01:03:00] body. For it is said, the two will become one flesh, but whoever is united with the Lord will be one with him in spirit. And yes, prostitutes are a unique form of sin, especially in ancient times, because you risk getting them pregnant and creating an unwanted child.

Quote, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? End quote. Except your body is not Christ's body. So what is this talking about here? This is talking about the intergenerational Concept of martyrdom, in which case, yes, you are literally Christ's body. But also consider the line, do you.

No, that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her body, for it is said that the two will become one flesh, but whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Except you are not one body with a prostitute when you have sex with her, that's a ridiculous thing. You don't become one body with someone if you, like at what point are you one body when your penis goes in her when you're, you know, like, obviously not.

However, you do become one body with her, and one soul with her, if you create a child with her. [01:04:00] This isn't warning against sexual immorality from the perspective of sexual release. It's warning against sexual immorality where you become one body and one soul with somebody else, i. e. create a new human being.

The Bible isn't stupid, okay? The Bible would be stupid if it thought two people became one person when they were having sex. Because that obviously doesn't happen. But it obviously does happen that two people having sex have the potential to create one new unified whole. Finally, a note on killing through masturbation that I want to go to through here.

Because so when somebody says to me that an embryo is a human life, they often leave out one little caveat here. They go an embryo is a human life when you put it in a woman's womb. And it's like, well, yes, that's true. And then they're like, well, sperm and eggs aren't really a human life yet. And it's like, well, I mean, but [01:05:00] they are when you put them in a woman's womb, right?

So the asset that turns Things into life that creates human life is the woman's womb, right? You're playing a little trick. So either you have to admit that both sperm and egg are equally as human as an embryo because they both become humans when you put them in a human's womb. Or you have to admit that they both fall into a secondary category of things that might become human if put in a woman's womb.

Well, here is where this becomes a problem with arguments against things like IVF. If I turn the sperm that my body might produce and the eggs your body might produce and I create embryos for them, which are now in the same category of sperm versus eggs in Catholic world, because they're saying, no, okay, I'll categorize these things as the same thing.

Well. I can create more children per emission than [01:06:00] they can. I could masturbate once and then that single masturbation can become 20, 30 kids, you know, when you're using IVF, right? And so they would have a moral mandate if they actually believed this to only use IVF. But of course, they don't really believe that.

They don't really believe they're killing millions of humans every time they masturbate.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): So if this line of argument with a little difficult for you to follow, I will use different words to explain it.

Essentially, what I'm doing is I'm explaining a third hypothetical position that an individual might take. An individual might say that it is immoral to masturbate because you are producing semen, which might one day become a human being. In the same way an embryo might one day become a human being. If it was placed within a woman's womb.

So the first part of the argument here is I was actually arguing for their position. I was saying, if you argue that anything that might become a human being when put [01:07:00] in a woman's womb should be treated as murdering a human being. I E. Some individuals are like, well, an embryo could eventually become a human being.

If put in a woman's womb, therefore we should be treating it. As if terminating an embryo is the same as terminating .

A living thinking. Fetus.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Then you are forced into the ethical position. That both sperms and eggs, because they also like an embryo become a living thinking fetus when put in a woman's womb. Are things of. Value equivalent of a fetuses or adult humans life, or, , maybe like half that value or something. I don't know. However, you're doing the equation, but however you do it with the equation.

You're still like half murdering someone. Well, if you believe that, then you sort of end up getting forced to use IVF because it means when you're having PIV intercourse. There are millions of individual sperms dying which you could prevent through just [01:08:00] masturbating once, collecting your semen, using it to fertilize, a series of embryos and planting those embryos.

And they never masturbating again in your life. Now.

This seems really silly to me, which we'll get to why in just a second, but that is the position you are forced into.

Malcolm Collins: So,

so, to take me, If I do every F every time my wife can do a cycle over a period of say 10 years, I will have eight kids. That's eight lives I created because I used the resources God gave me to carry out his command, which was to be fruitful and multiply.

And said, well, okay, I know you gave me a miracle that allowed me to have more surviving children, but I'm going to turn that down.

I am fully responsible for those children who didn't get to come to exist.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: Where'd this a bit differently.

The actual asset, which determines how many humans come into the world. Is it not the sperm and the eggs. It is the woman's uterus. If you [01:09:00] use that uterus. In a way that is inefficient. You prevent. Humans. Soul's if you believe in them from entering this world that otherwise would have been here. So, for example, if I inefficiently. I'm jest.

Dead fast on not using IVF.

My wife is very likely to get pregnant much fewer times than she would get pregnant if we are using IVF because IVF allows you to have healthy pregnancies much, much later. Now, I would note IVF allows you to have heavy pregnancies much later if. The embryos were created. We in both of you were young. As we did with our embryos. Because of this, I'm likely going to be able to have probably around double the number of kids I would have been able to have if I was only having a regular PIV sex.

 Now for us, it's, it's different because she can only have children was IVF. But I'm just saying hypothetically, if this wasn't the case, , If we tried to [01:10:00] sort of max, the number of kids we were having was in her fertility window. , we might end up having. Four or five kids. If on the other hand, uh, I'm using IVF.

We end up having 10 kids will. The problem , is by making the indulgent choice to only create children through PIV intercourse. I have chosen a timeline in which those additional five humans never come to exist. There was additional fetuses as additional children. , the lives that they live never come to exist.

And we would argue that you are morally responsible for this. Indulgence. You don't get to shirk off the moral responsibility for it

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Now you might say you cannot bear moral responsibility for a human that doesn't exist yet because they have no moral weight yet. However, Jeremiah, one five says that God knew us

before we were in our mother's womb, which shows that that's the way that [01:11:00] God looks at these moral calculations. That we exist before we are in our mother's womb. We exist at the point that there is a potentiality that we could come to exist..

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: So there were those who would argue that when we say something like in our framing of sexuality or when life begins. That we are moving in the direction of the urban monoculture in a way from strict interpretation that the Bible, when actually the opposite is true, we are trying to move for a stricter interpretation of the Bible, which instead of moving away from the quote unquote. Conservative traditionalist Christian standpoint towards the urban mono culture. Is going in a completely orthogonal or maybe even opposite direction. In that what we believe is required of a person is actually much, much stricter than what they would think is required of an individual.

These interpretations around when [01:12:00] life begins are much more onerous in terms of the sacrifices you have to make as an individual. Didn't the old interpretations. They are just also efficacious, , and, , inline with what's actually in the Bible. And I think that that's also really important here is that it matters. That nowhere in the Bible.

Does it say that you shouldn't masturbate? And in fact there are several lines that would make it seem that it's actually quite bad to not masturbate. , for example, the line about individuals with blocked emissions, , being extra, extra, extra unclean, and the line that says that, , a man.

Issuing an emission. , without a woman around is of the same moral weight as him. Issuing an emission with his wife. , that to me seems pretty clearly to state that these things are of the same moral weight.

And so if God wanted strict rules around this stuff, , why didn't he ever mentioned it anywhere in the Bible, anywhere in the Bible? And then you have to say, oh, well maybe somebody else wanted strict [01:13:00] rules around this stuff. And it's like, aha. Yes, because it used to be important to have strict rules around this stuff when you're dealing with like a medieval prostitutes and stuff.

But that is not the world we live in today. And by the way, that stuff was warned about in the Bible

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: , when you demarcate masturbation is having the exact same negative, moral weight as sleeping with a prostitute or premarital sex. You create a scenario in which when a young person is like, well, I'm going to break the rules.

Anyway, they end up breaking them in horrifyingly, more dangerous ways than they otherwise might. And so we instead would advocate for kids. ,

For our, , offspring to. Focus their useful sexual energy on something that is not going to accidentally get somebody pregnant or accidentally put them in a dangerous legal situation. Or. Lead them to making very bad decisions around who they marry. I E marrying [01:14:00] somebody because they think they're hot..

Malcolm Collins: So the final rules around masturbation is masturbation to generate pleasure in human. Using human simulacrums, like drawing things and stuff like that, that's okay. Images, books, text chats, etc. But real women should be avoided.

Premarital or extramarital sex should only be had for reasons benefiting one's objective function and never for pleasure as the primary motivation. So that's where we are much stricter on sexuality than traditional Christian frameworks. Which is to say that you can have sex, but you need to be having it for a reason other than just pleasure.

Now, that reason can be bonding with your spouse or that reason be something more Machiavellian, but it, it, it has to be for a reason. Sex for pleasure is sinful, but you have this additional access category. Now this creates a lot of positive externalities. We have released the moral negative externality of the prostitution.

It released the probability that somebody will try to control you through sexuality.

All right, Simone. So we didn't really get a chance to discuss the [01:15:00] long term consequences of these new rules at the end of this. But this new framing, I think, is really important for modern technological context. So I want to explain it more. Okay, why? Because a lot of people could see this as a loosening of restrictions, but it's actually a Strengthening of a specific set of restrictions while loosening another set of restrictions to make that strengthening realistic Specifically we are strengthening the restrictions on never having sex purely for pleasure

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and somebody could be like what's the advantage of that and how does this other system help?

Why is it okay to saturate like why is it okay to say all the porn you want so long as it's not using real people well one You do not appear to be able to turn off anyone's, like, instinctual desires. So, for example, if I am same sex attracted there is nothing that appears to be able to lessen that except for one thing.

Do you remember what that one thing is, Simone?

Simone Collins: Oversaturation.

Malcolm Collins: Oversaturation. So, if I am same [01:16:00] sex attracted, I should be able to be able to happily live a life as an opposite gender individual, If I can masturbate all the time, if I can textualize the point of the marriage as not being about who I merit, like, like the sex, right?

Like they could be gay as well, or they could be you know, but the kids themselves, and somebody can be like, that's horrifying. It's horrifying from the perspective of the urban monoculture, because if you are a parent, like whiz kids, if somebody asks you, and I guarantee every parent here could say this, Okay, you get a choice.

You either never get to have sex again, Or we take away your kids.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: No one!

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No one! Is gonna settle for sex!

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Actually, well, don't say no one. People are very disappointing.

Malcolm Collins: Weird psychopath. But what I'm saying is, is like. Largely speaking, you realize is a sexual part of your life is just one stage of your life.

[01:17:00] And it's not the way once you have kids, your biology sort of changes and you begin to reorient around the next generation and the way you think of yourself, the way you think about pleasure, all changes. And this framing will begin to make perfect sense. You're like, Oh yeah, that's why you do that. And it, and again, I'm not saying that, necessarily for my kids, I'd be against gay marriage, but I would recommend to them, even if they are gay, that they consider that it might be much easier just from a cost perspective to be heterosexually married and masturbate their sexual instincts through like, well, literal masturbation.

And somebody can be like, well, how dare you tell somebody to not do whatever turns them on, whatever it turns them on. And I'm like, well, I mean, you've got to consider that actually a huge chunk of the population is turned on by like, Um, and I'll add the statistics here but like, should they do, and they're like, no, of course.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-13: So to put the numbers, I'm about to read in context in a 2021 survey, 3% of the global population identifies as gay and around. [01:18:00] 5.5% of the us population identify as LGBT. So. What percent of.

Women are turned on by seeing somebody humiliated. 15%, 20% for men, for women, it seeing a person portrayed as disposable 8%, 8% for men seeing a person, dehumanized women, 11% men, 13% seeing a person betrayed women, 11% men, 8% seeing somebody be a slave. , 16% for women, 22% for men seeing a. Be consumed by another person or thing 2% for women, 3% for men.

So there you're getting around like global gay rates, a snuff, seeing somebody die. 3% for women, 4% for men. So again, equivalent to global rates of people who identify as gay now. Just because somebody thinks it's hot when somebody is a slave or dies. Does that mean that they should have the right. For that to happen?

No, , for some, for more numbers here. A female [01:19:00] crying, 14% of women, 13% of men. Actually a little surprised that number is higher for women than men. That's interesting. , causing physical pain, 13% for women, 17%. For men. Humiliation 15% for women, 20% for men. So again, you can see here. Just because something turns on a large group of people doesn't mean that we should just go out and do that thing.

It doesn't mean that we should have a societal mandate for that thing to be acted upon.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-14: No. If you were the type of individual who doesn't have any of these arousal patterns, And you're looking at these numbers and you're horrified something like would commit to you from the research that we've gone over today is EBU remove the types of pornography that are designed to masturbate these specific pathways.

It is very clear in the data that people will find other ways to masturbate these pathways using real human beings. That's why it's so important to not put restrictions on [01:20:00] these types of pornography.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-16: Now as a side note here, you might say, well, how dare you compare this to being gay? Because being gay doesn't hurt anyone. And it's like, well, being gay doesn't hurt anyone when you're still able to bring your children into existence. But. If being gay makes it impossible for you to have kids denies people who otherwise would have had the chance to live their right to exist, then yeah, it does hurt other people.

So I'd say that, , my relationship was the morality of Gay relationships is both due to. , tied to the amount of resources as individuals have, , and the amount of technology that we have access to at any given time period that allows them to still have kids or not have kids. And you might look at this and be like, how could you value the w you know, somebody who's not born yet?

And it reminds me of one of my cousins where she was like, well, if you have fewer kids, If you stop having kids now, your existing kids will get to go on more vacations and do more fun stuff. [01:21:00] And I was thinking, I hope she remembers that as she gets to meet the kids who she wished never existed. As they go to family reunions as they grow up, as they start college, those are human beings that she will form relationships with.

And she will realize the genuine harm that she was wishing on somebody. She now has a relationship with this moral framework where we just discount 80 one's wellbeing just because they haven't been born yet, I think is a really, really harmful.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-15: And if you find this type to data, interesting, we go over way, way more than this. And the pragmatist guy does sexuality and it retails for like a dollar on Amazon. We don't really make any money on it. All that goes to our nonprofit, which is working on the school and stuff.

Th the, the pitons that we do make, , it's, , you know, just for data nerds, I guess.

Malcolm Collins: And I'm like, well, should they be allowed to like masturbate? And a lot of people are like, oh yeah, of course. Like do that through, through masturbation. Right. And it's like, well, like what the F is the [01:22:00] difference here? Right. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's how, how inappropriate is this for society or how much did this like mess with, with society?

Yeah. I mean, what are your thoughts on this? Simone, the idea of reframing, because if you reframe sexuality around rather than pleasure, sex, just for pleasure is a bad thing. Then you, as a married partner might actually end up in a dead bedroom scenario, less likely someone could be like, wouldn't this cause dead bedrooms?

And I'm like, actually it would lead to dead bedrooms less because the wife understands that her duty towards sex is not. For the pleasure that she may get for it, even if she finds it unpleasurable, it's for the chemical bonding that it creates between the couple.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, you and I may find this just so normalized already, because we've already completely separated, out of necessity, the concept of, Procreative sex and the concept of, of like couple [01:23:00] bonding sex because we have to do IVF to have our kids.

Well, none of our kids were created

Malcolm Collins: by 2060, 50 percent of the people in the developed world are going to be infertile. Like,

Simone Collins: well, and a lot of, a lot of couples we know who can absolutely have kids naturally are still choosing to, to have their kids at IVF. And there's a lot of reasons that people might want to do that.

Like health related reasons for even just the children. So like, you know, you're going to, your kids are going to have better outcomes sort of health risk wise, if you create them with younger eggs and sperm, then with older eggs and sperm. So it makes a lot of sense, even for perfectly like

Malcolm Collins: a technophilic family.

And you want like a really large number of kids. You are always better doing IVF and taking like a year to just do like five cycles of IVF and just create tons of embryos and then use those in the future. Although if

Simone Collins: you, all the single guys listening to this who may not already have a partner and may not have the ability to create embryos, embryos now, freeze your sperm, freeze your sperm.

This, it is only going to get worse. It's only going to go downhill. Actually

Malcolm Collins: frozen sperm and [01:24:00] eggs don't do very well. It's almost a scam.

Simone Collins: Well, no, frozen sperm does better. Think about all the people who've created embryos using sperm donors.

Malcolm Collins: So the poster child of IVF, it was this woman who was in all the newspapers and she did an IVF cycle and she got something like 12 eggs from the cycle.

Not unusual for an IVF cycle. Yeah. And then when she was 40, she decided she wanted to have kids. And none of them worked out. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: women, women, it's harder. And also, yeah, 12 eggs is, is nothing.

Malcolm Collins: No, you really, if you're a woman, you need to do like five or six cycles. So do you, yeah, no, if you're

Simone Collins: a woman, but I said all the single guys, I didn't say girls.

I said free sperm, not

Malcolm Collins: eggs.

Simone Collins: Oh, sorry. I'm not mad. Oh, I'm not mad.

Malcolm Collins: And by the way, for people out there, Oh, you're monsters, biblically speaking for creating lots of embryos. Cause the Bible says life begins at conception. It absolutely does not. It says, I knew you before you were in your mother's womb. It says that life begins before conception.

And if you lower the number of kids you're having, you're denying people the right to exist that otherwise would have existed based on your choices. I'm just saying, [01:25:00] we talk about this all the time, but anyway,

Simone Collins: back to the topic though, I really do think that separating things, these things out. Not just when it comes to human sexuality, but almost all aspects of life makes so much more sense.

Like, even just, just do what makes most, the most sense in whatever context, you know, don't do something because everyone else does it, do it because it seems right to you. Don't Like if eating breakfast at like 2 a. m. in the morning is what works for you, do it. And just, it seems really weird to me that one partner is supposed to be just everything to a certain extent, to the other for life.

I

Malcolm Collins: also think that this rule around well, you're allowed to have sex, whether it's premaritally to like, I don't know, maybe learn how to get better at sex because you think you will be able to secure better partners. That allows for a changing context where you're like, okay, I'm having sex premaritally, but I'm not doing it for pleasure.

I'm doing it to improve technique or seduction ability. And that means that when [01:26:00] I am doing this, I am focused on those elements. Which is actually what I was focused on when I was doing it. I was like, okay, I need to get really good at this to secure a good partner. Was one of the things that was always had in the back of my head.

But then the, the second thing is that it makes it so that. You are, there's less loopholes. So like an individual could say, okay, so somebody holds a gun to your head and they say, sleep with this person other than your wife, or I will kill your wife and kids. If you go with the traditional morality, you're like, okay, I can't do that.

But if you go with this moral framework, where it's like, you are allowed to have sex with other people. But. If it's for the best interest of like your family's objective, but also

Simone Collins: think, think about the number of marriages that are created on really thin and bad ground because they're really created for sex and not for partnership.

And if people were to just completely un parse, Sex from partnership and I, and I like what you were saying there with regard to sexual [01:27:00] orientation as well. What I was actually thinking was there are probably quite a few like, straight women who would also love to have kids. Who, if they could just find the right partnership with another straight woman, but not make it about sex or marriage or romance, just make it about kid raising partnership.

Could just do a great job. Like that. They're just, no. We'll have

Malcolm Collins: another video on single Parenthoods Gay Parenthoods going over all the statistics. I just haven't collected all the data yet. Oh, okay. Okay.

Simone Collins: No, we should definitely do that. But yeah, I just feel like we could piece together. So many really optimal situations that are customized to people's unique circumstances.

If we just decoupled some things and to a certain extent, I'm really against to these days, the concept of atomization, you know, the fact that to a great extent, modernity and progressive culture and the government and bureaucracies have atomized the human and separated them out from their support network, separated them out from their communities and religions and everything.

I think that's bad. But I also [01:28:00] really do love piecing together life on an a la carte basis and not doing stuff just because, Oh, well we always have to do this together and we always have to do that together. It doesn't make sense.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, you see this in our relationship. I mean, we sleep in different rooms of the house, right?

Like, yeah, because it makes no sense and you wake up at 5 am and I don't want to interrupt your sleep schedule. Right. So, well, and

Simone Collins: for example, like when we go on vacation, we don't actually eat out at restaurants. We saved that for home because one, the prices are lower and then we enjoy restaurants more while we're at home.

Whereas on vacation, we're already out. We're already staying for a place we paid for that is nice. Like, why would we waste additional money? Yeah, we go to the local grocery store,

Malcolm Collins: which is different, and we eat there. So it's, it's, it's about separating things out in a way that makes sense instead of pairing them thematically the way that we are taught to as a society.

And I would go so far as to say that, I would actually be okay. So people know that I think that one day when we have the genetic technology, we should maybe remove human arousal patterns. If it turns out we can build a stable society where people [01:29:00] learn to only indulge in their arousal patterns around things that have no negative externalities, then I would be okay with humans keeping their arousal patterns.

I'd say, yeah, that's fine. Found a social technology that allows that. But when I look today at groups that are supposed to be suppressing all this, like the, the Amish, for example, and we see this horrible grape epidemic, or, you know, the, the Catholic preachers, and we see this big problem with lots and lots of you know, situations.

You know, probably shouldn't be situationing. It doesn't look good for anyone involved. I mean, if we just said, okay preachers are allowed pornography, the number of children who have to go through this would be decreased by so, so, so much. Those are human beings, every year who are being spared this, that are We have to deal with this because we are dealing with maybe evil interpretations of the Bible that just don't necessarily work for our current time.

Speaker 5: I'm just trying to say [01:30:00] that if we don't change then we might lose everyone to atheism. What exactly do you suggest we change, well, for one, no sex with boys.

Speaker 6: The

Speaker 7: holy document of law states that a priest, cannot get married, so where are we to get our sex?

Speaker 5: Okay, maybe we just need to forget about the Gelgamechs for a second and focus Forget about the Gelgamechs? Just saying, what works on planet Gelgamech isn't necessarily going to work for the rest of us here on Earth.

You see, that's the problem we're having here.

Malcolm Collins: And I want to say also how beautiful this is that the Bible was written in a way that its interpretation was the most ethical behavioral set of rules for every era. During the medieval era, it really was good to not be lusting after women other than your wife. But in a modern era where you know, you have AI and drawing stuff and everything like that.

Well, it's not against the rules, and it's not against the rules of biblicals, but the Bible can be interpreted two ways for two different technological contexts, and isn't it a [01:31:00] miracle that it was written in a way where it could be interpreted these two ways? Almost supernatural. But it was written in that way.

Anyway, I love you to decimum. Any final thoughts?

Simone Collins: Just that I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Any interpretations about this interpretation?

Simone Collins: No, honestly, no. It just, it just makes so much more sense and leads to so much less sin. That I think in the end, when, when in doubt in interpreting scripture or general concepts, look at the consequences.

If one interpretation leads to more corruption, more harm, and more sin, then It's the wrong interpretation. So the Bible

Malcolm Collins: says it's best, By their fruits you will know them. How do you know the correct interpretation? It works. If it leads to mass child grief and cover ups, It's not the correct interpretation.

The Bible tells us that. Easy peasy. Right, guys? I love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you, too. [01:32:00] Okay I'm gonna run down. What do

Malcolm Collins: But the most important thing and Octavian, you can come join us here. It removes the possibility that you might end up. Marrying someone because of how hot you thought they were. And that, and, and so when you're thinking about marrying them, all you're thinking about is, are they going to make good kids?

Octavian: You're not saying like and subscribe. You're not saying like and subscribe.

Say I'm like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.