00:17:52.200Although they later became lovers and even lived together, he never seemed really in love with her, and her insecurity about the relationship never went away.
00:18:51.720So this is the sort of thesis statement of this section of the book where they're talking about how to attract men, how to get men attracted to you.
00:19:00.720And we're going to we're going to dig into this a little bit.0.81
00:19:02.860So they say it's easy to rationalize women's aggressive behavior in this day and age.
00:19:08.740Unlike years ago, when women met men at dances and coming out parties and simply waited for0.97
00:19:13.500one to pick them out of the crowd and start a conversation, today many women are accountants,
00:19:17.640doctors, lawyers, dentists, and in management positions.0.99
00:19:20.560They work with men, for men, and men work for them.
00:19:23.520But even if you're making the same amount of money as a man you're interested in,0.97
00:20:53.120The place we're going to start is with an anecdote from the book that was allegedly
00:20:57.820uproarious. This is a story that went around in the 1920s. She says, one day, the story goes,
00:21:04.240a young man asked a city girl if he might call on her. We know nothing else about the man or the
00:21:09.860girl, only that when he arrived, she had her hat on. This is like a hilarious, like knee slapping
00:21:16.540story. What this is getting at is the slow shift from the previous norms around dating, which were
00:21:24.660all based on this idea of gentlemen callers. That's like where we get that term. All of the
00:21:30.080dating basically happened in the private sphere. So if a girl liked you, she would invite you over
00:21:35.560to her house and then you'd like hang out with her basically in her living room. And as opposed
00:21:41.100to later dating norms, it was mostly controlled by women. So it was often the mothers that were0.85
00:21:46.120doing this. It was the girls themselves who were deciding which boys they were going to invite
00:21:50.960over. She quotes an advice column from 1909 where a boy writes in and he's like, I really like this
00:21:57.440girl. Can I ask her out? And the sort of Ann Landers type answer is like, no, no, no, come on,
00:22:02.820come on. You got to wait for her to do it. If you want her to invite you over, you can like sneak to
00:22:08.100one of her friends and be like, hey, can you ask Lucy to ask me over? But you could never just like
00:22:14.540declare interest in a girl. You got to get runes and then make her want to invite you over.
00:22:20.960Knock and leave runes. So what then starts happening, starting in the 1880s with industrialization,
00:22:27.840women start entering the workforce. They're exposed to many more men kind of independently
00:22:32.380of their parents. People are also moving into cities where they have much less living space,
00:22:37.540and they just kind of like can't have people over. We also get the invention and the mass
00:22:42.180adoption of the automobile. There was massive, like decades-long moral panic about young people
00:22:46.880having access to cars, because that meant that they would have private space just with each
00:22:52.040other, right? They would have a way of getting to places away from the watchful eyes of their
00:22:56.340parents and also a place to have sex, which is like how a lot of people lost their virginity
00:23:01.000in like the early 1900s. Another really big one is the invention of kind of mass media,
00:23:06.740right? We get the penny press, we get large circulation magazines, many of which are like
00:23:10.400magazines for women. We also get radio and TV and Hollywood, which start establishing the script
00:23:17.940for like normal dating, right? Like dinner and a movie. And, you know, this takes place over like
00:23:22.32060 years and it's a slow and kind of stuttering process. And you don't want to say that anything
00:23:26.980is like this kind of binary shift. But over time, what this does is it shifts dating from a private
00:23:34.240activity that takes place in people's homes to a public activity that is happening in, you know,
00:23:38.940restaurants. It also becomes much more controlled by men. She says in the book,
00:23:43.680the conventions that grew to govern dating codified women's inequality and ratified men's
00:23:48.720power. Men asked women out. Women were condemned as aggressive if they expressed interest in a man
00:23:54.040too directly. Men paid for everything, but often with the implication that women owed sexual favors
00:23:59.420in return. The dating system required men to always assume control and women act as men's
00:24:04.960dependents so apparently if a man couldn't afford to take a woman out she would discreetly give him1.00
00:24:12.060money before the date like slip him a little bit of cash so he could take her out and like pay on1.00
00:24:18.200the date and like maintain this theater of you know oh i'll get the check wow so to return to
00:24:23.060the hat anecdote the reason why it is allegedly funny is that the man goes over to her house
00:24:29.340expecting they're gonna like stay in in the parlor and talk and she has a hat on indicating
00:24:34.840she is expecting to go out like these two things were existing at the same time fellows don't you
00:24:41.260hate it when you show up to her front porch and she's wearing a hat but then what's so interesting0.92
00:24:45.340is obviously all of these norms are completely fucking fake right there's nothing like biological0.58
00:24:50.320about dinner in a movie you could easily like go on a walk for your first date this is something0.96
00:24:53.840you hear in like conservative political discussions too right where they're talking
00:24:58.940about returning to like a natural order by doing X, Y, and Z. And it's like, there is no fucking0.98
00:25:04.140natural order. Yeah, it's all fake. All of these norms are constantly evolving and shifting.0.98
00:25:08.340Exactly. And the previous order was also fake. Actually, I disagree. The one true God given
00:25:12.800order is where you have to hang out with her parents in a parlor, texting my boys like I'm0.99
00:25:18.460crushing it. They're giving me more tea. What's also really interesting about the creation of
00:25:23.600these like totally fake norms is that people immediately start chalking them up to biology.
00:25:28.940In the book, she says, contrast these strictures with advice on dating etiquette from the 40s and 50s.
00:25:34.880An advice book for men and women warns that girls who try to usurp the right of boys to choose their own dates will ruin a good dating career.0.99
00:25:42.920Fair or not, it's the way of life.0.97
00:25:44.860From the Stone Age, when men chased and captured their women, comes the yen of a boy to do the pursuing.
00:25:51.120You will control your impatience, therefore, and respect the time-honored custom of boys to take the first step.
00:25:57.340So this is this is all about honoring a literally ancient time when men captured and presumably raped women.
00:26:07.340That's the norm we're trying to adhere to implicitly here.
00:26:23.980And on some level, it's a little bit obvious that like, yeah, the shit that they're saying in the rules in 1995 is like, yeah, horrific dating advice to women in the 1940s and 1950s.0.95
00:26:33.640But I read another really interesting article called The More Things Change, The Rules and Late 18th Century Conduct Books for Women by Barbara Darby, who says this whole thing of like women these days are too aggressive.0.90
00:26:48.180People were literally saying this in like the 1770s.
00:26:51.640like she quotes letters from erasmus darwin it's like we're basically in this constant state1.00
00:26:58.380of fretting about i like women these days right they're just too aggressive and envisioning an0.99
00:27:05.400era where everyone was just like a little more prim and proper and and upright return with a v0.52
00:27:11.260yes so the next section of the book is about how to act on the first date how should you behave
00:27:18.440to ensure that you get to the second date with this gentleman.
00:30:08.580They also say, on dates or in phone conversations, don't use the words nurturing, relationships, bonding, or talking about getting your needs met.
00:30:18.700You don't want to sound like a walking relationship book.
00:30:22.600In the early stages of dating, staying light is essential.
00:30:26.380Do you have this like magic word thing?
00:31:43.580Even if the person loves you, they love someone who isn't you.
00:31:47.160I almost feel like with books like this, like you mentioned how specific these rules are, and it feels like the operation of that is just to make it such that no person could actually follow them such that any failure can just be chalked up to the failure to adhere to the rules.
00:32:03.760And also a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is very qualitative, right? Like be funny, but not too funny.
00:32:09.320It's like, well, how do you even follow a rule?
00:32:10.560Right. Oh, I was too funny. I made that sarcastic remark.
00:32:13.420So the next section of the book is about sort of dates two through five, like this kind of early dating stage where you're still not totally sure if you like each other, but like, you know, you're seeing more of each other.
00:32:23.940We're still two years from having sex.
00:32:29.020So this this is really the part of the book where it really tips from like whatever, a little bit of flexibility into full on just inconsiderate and manipulative behavior.
00:32:40.020So rule five is don't call him and rarely return his calls.
00:32:45.940Rule six is always end the phone call first.
00:32:50.160They recommend getting a literal timer because it's the time before smartphones.
00:32:54.740So you set an actual kitchen timer for 10 minutes.
00:32:57.540I guess when it dings, I don't know how he's not going to hear the ding.
00:33:00.360But when it dings, you're supposed to say something vague like, oh, got to go and just
00:33:05.500Again, you should always leave him wanting more.
00:33:07.980every phone call ends with like my pie is ready gotta go i wonder how much of this is like from
00:33:14.780a time when if you were dating you would have like one person you were interested in and that
00:33:22.220was it right right because you could only meet people at like events and shit like that now if
00:33:27.260you're on bumble you're messaging with five people at once if some of them yeah if one of them is
00:33:33.700showing markedly less interest they just fall off the map i i do think that an unfair criticism of
00:33:40.400this book would be to hold it to the standards of now when like the the paradigm of dating has
00:33:46.200actually shifted a lot yeah like a huge amount of the book is about like answering machine etiquette
00:33:51.960and like it would be fun to dunk on that but also it's like whatever of course it's written with that
00:33:57.600in mind like that's the way that people were dating at the time yeah yeah but they've they've
00:34:01.320updated the book so there's like the rules for online dating and there's like not your mother's
00:34:05.500rules which is really silly because it's actually like your grandmother's rules but in the modern
00:34:09.920iterations of this they say you should always wait four hours before texting back obviously you
00:34:15.680should never message a guy under any circumstances don't like leave a star or like a poke or whatever1.00
00:34:21.120they have on these websites bumble the the app for dumbasses yeah ladies get on hinge they're0.64
00:34:27.760actually very anti-bumble, like very explicitly. I saw a thing they did on CNN. I love that.0.99
00:34:32.180They say you should wait 24 hours to respond to any email that you get on a dating website as
00:34:37.660well. So it's the same kind of thing, even though we don't really call each other anymore.
00:34:40.820Okay. Rule eight is don't accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday. They explicitly say
00:34:47.180that if you don't have plans on Friday or Saturday, you shouldn't answer the phone.
00:34:52.760And if you have roommates or whatever, then they should be like, oh, she's not here. But like not
00:34:57.640give any more reason so you're explicitly lying you're also like immiserating yourself like yeah
00:35:04.360you're not even having fun on fridays and saturdays anymore rule 12 is always end the date first
00:35:11.420gotta go yeah imagine imagine dating someone who's just like constantly hanging up on you
00:35:19.880and just running out of dates and you're like wow she is a beautiful and mysterious woman1.00
00:35:24.980They also some of this stuff is true sociopathy. They have like a list of tips. One of them is when he asks you out silently count to five before saying yes, it will make him nervous. And that's good. And then this one is so fucking cold. It's when walking down the street, drop his hand first ever so slightly.
00:41:21.180My work shows that playing hard to get may only be attractive to target partners if optimal levels of perceived uncertainty and difficulty are achieved.
00:41:29.940In other words, individuals who are too easy to get or too hard to get are perceived as less attractive than individuals who are moderately difficult to attract and moderately uncertain about their interest toward the target partner.
00:41:41.300All of these dating books that have all these strategic things of like how long to wait after texting, whatever, all of them are making the same mistake as nudge where they're favoring like structural elements over fundamentals.
00:56:10.080It's this total inversion of the kind of this is for self-esteem and confidence message that they start the book with.
00:56:16.760This isn't the prescription of someone who's confident.
00:56:20.040This is the prescription of someone who's really scared and who's so afraid of forming adult relationships with someone that everything is about holding yourself at a distance from other people and never risking anyone getting to know you and like, oh, I just want to keep it light.
00:56:36.760i'll tell you i'm a recovering alcoholic but like not in like a way that makes you feel
00:56:40.400uncomfortable right they're they're pursuing like love in this completely detached abstract where
00:56:48.460it is missing the part of it that's fulfilling right like the part of it that is good and
00:56:55.960reducing it to like someone else is paying constant attention to me yeah which is not love
00:57:03.580that's infatuation it's almost less than an infatuation it's like i'm someone's pet right
00:57:11.060or vice versa i mean yeah yeah there's just there's just so little in this about how to have
00:57:18.980a healthy and fulfilling dynamic with another human being the only saving grace of this part
00:57:25.240because i'm like how could a 36 year old and a 38 year old write like this how could you think this
00:57:29.840And I'm like, well, maybe they're just doing this cynically and they're telling women what
00:57:50.560But a lot of men say that the game was a response to the rules.0.98
00:57:55.980It's like, well, if women are going to play games, then we're going to play games.
00:57:59.340bad objectively not true yeah tricked women into sex for like a lot longer than like 1995 literally
00:58:04.460forever so it's not true but it is a narrative that i think was very convenient for men right
00:58:10.100it's like they're all conniving we can't trust anything they say we can't trust the way that
00:58:14.480they look because they're wearing makeup etc to be fair these women are wearing makeup while jogging
00:58:19.300so true sociopaths yeah uh do you want to do you want to see the bad parts peter of course i want
00:58:25.740to see the bad parts that's why i'm here all right here's here's as bad as it gets this is toward the
00:58:30.040end so this is right after they say what you will get if you follow the rules this is where they
00:58:35.660talk about what you won't get still another incentive for doing the rules is what you won't
00:58:40.140get no messy divorce he'll take care of you when you're old he really really loves you a rules
00:58:46.380marriage is forever no outside counseling he has no interest in couples therapy that thing that
00:58:54.540guys always want to go to when you do the rules he doesn't have big issues with you he doesn't
00:59:00.060wish you were this that or different his love for you is unconditional no physical abuse when you do
00:59:07.080the rules he treats you like a fragile delicate flower he cups your face rubs your back when
00:59:12.760you've had a hard day and strokes your hair as if it were silk you don't have to worry about being
00:59:17.700battered this is not me like taking this out of context to dunk they mentioned this numerous0.99
00:59:24.680times what the fuck they say later they say abuse doesn't happen in a rules relationship0.98
00:59:31.120because when you play hard to get and he works like hell to get you he thinks you're the most1.00
00:59:36.280beautiful wonderful woman in the world even if you're not he treats you like a precious jewel0.99
00:59:42.060this is fucked up it's super fucked up dude this is one of those things where like i i feel like0.99
00:59:48.700we shouldn't have to like debunk it per se but like i will do it for the sake of it like0.99
00:59:53.460abusive people are not abusive because they like don't love you enough or some weird shit like
01:00:00.560that and you can't like craft a certain type of love uh that will resist abuse the other part of
01:00:07.660this is that like the last excerpt we read was like he will get angry when you don't pay attention
01:00:12.940to him i'm sorry but like these things don't comport in the rule where they talk about how
01:00:19.180you're not supposed to have sex with him on the first date they say like oh you know he might
01:00:22.660you know try to invite you to his house or something and you'll say no and they're like
01:00:25.540well he might get angry that you're not giving him sex they say but don't worry anger indicates
01:00:31.340interest and you might be surprised for he will probably call you again jesus they say this0.99
01:00:36.380numerous times that like if he's mad about all these arbitrary fucking rules like why didn't0.71
01:00:42.720you call me i've been calling you all week just means he likes you also the prior bullet is is0.94
01:00:47.540like they get to like the oh he won't physically abuse you bullet and you forget that the prior
01:00:53.560one was also just absurd like oh you won't need counseling because his love for you will be
01:00:59.680unconditional but no first of all no you have created the conditions of his love the whole
01:01:05.420book is about manufacturing the conditions where he loves you it's not unconditional all there's
01:01:11.060no such thing as unconditional love it's fine it's just it's a silly concept yeah when people
01:01:15.580say unconditional love what they mean is like he loves you even though you have diarrhea it's not
01:01:19.900like you can be whatever type of human being you want to be but yeah the whole book is premised
01:01:27.520on creating a fake persona that he will fall in love with so you can't then say oh he loves you
01:01:36.380for you this is also the part of the book where you realize that this is not a dating guide they
01:01:42.640want you to do this forever right rule 21 don't tell him what to do rule 22 let him take the lead
01:01:50.680rule 23 don't expect a man to change or try to change him what rule 44 even if you're engaged
01:01:58.640or married you still need the rules starting right now don't call him don't beep him and
01:02:04.680don't stay on the phone for more than 10 minutes when he calls you don't initiate sex even if you0.65
01:02:10.220want it badly let him be the man the aggressor in the bedroom a lifetime of misery a lifetime
01:02:17.480lifetime i also don't understand how these align like there was a thing that's like you won't be a
01:02:24.620football widow right and then it's like actually you're going to do whatever he wants to do to
01:02:28.820create less friction in his life it's not funny but it's like kind of funny they have this whole
01:02:32.780thing of like learn to compromise and they're like he likes scary movies and you like romantic
01:02:38.000movies maybe you'll learn to enjoy the scary movies after all that's not compromising you're
01:02:43.780giving him his way you are trying at all times to emulate a hot mannequin and he's trying he's
01:02:51.760talking to you and you're not saying anything back and then uh and then you will eventually
01:02:56.860get married and uh he's just carrying you around the football games and make i mean this is another0.68
01:03:02.560thing that just made me so fucking sad right we've we've talked about these other like best-selling0.99
01:03:07.760self-help books from the 1990s and they're just fucking garbage right it's like they pretend to0.98
01:03:11.900be like a communication guide for couples and then men are from mars is just like this is how women0.99
01:03:16.020should ask men to do the housework like tricking him into actually like being an active partner in
01:03:20.400the relationship and this book which is written by women and and cast as this kind of like breezy0.96
01:03:26.240fun dating guide is word for word the same thing yeah right don't try to change him don't nag him0.62
01:03:32.980don't make it difficult they have a whole thing of like if he comes home and he's tired and you've0.77
01:03:37.900cooked a nice dinner for him and he like doesn't care, then like, don't worry about it. The reason
01:03:42.780he's at work so long is so he can take care of you. And it also feels like maybe built into this
01:03:47.640is this belief that like, okay, yes, there are these sort of like unfair gender norms and like
01:03:54.740things that are asked of women that are not asked of men. But we will overcome that by adhering to
01:04:02.060it so rigidly by like by doing it so perfectly that everyone will like us yeah there's something
01:04:08.520like deeply sad about that like i will like i i will do everything that everyone has ever asked0.83
01:04:14.960of women all the time i i read a lot of reactions to this because like thank fucking god this book
01:04:19.600was extremely controversial when it came out and a lot of like very good articles have been0.55
01:04:23.600published about like just how poisonous this book is and one of the things that a lot of the like
01:04:30.300actual like feminist responses to this book point out is that like there's really no such thing as0.97
01:04:34.620like a dating advice book right because you can't give people meaningful advice unless you know0.99
01:04:39.700their situation so essentially all of these dating advice books what they really are is
01:04:44.620the expression of a worldview about how men and women should relate to each other in the world
01:04:50.020that's what they're doing right they're presented as on the surface oh you should do this don't call
01:04:54.720back too fast what they're really doing is like this is how we think men women should be yeah and
01:04:59.680And so we talked in the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus episode about how in the early 90s, there was this heightened visibility of sexual harassment due to Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas.
01:05:10.140And, you know, a lot of women were elected to Congress.
01:05:12.000There was kind of this extra visibility of feminist issues in the early 1990s.
01:05:16.340And the rest of the decade, there were all of these like gender essentialist, basically backlash books.
01:05:21.900Yeah. And the best way to understand this book is a way for women to sell this anti-feminist1.00
01:05:28.880backlash back to women. Yeah. Right. They're saying we're feminists, right? Oh, we don't1.00
01:05:33.820have any real problem with feminism, but it doesn't work. Right. Or just like feminism1.00
01:05:39.000designed as like, yeah, you can have a job, but men will rule over you in every other component1.00
01:05:46.580of your life. Yeah. And of course, as a man, I would love to, I would love to blame women and1.00
01:05:51.000and be like, you know, men obviously want to embrace feminism, but it's women who are stopping1.00
01:05:55.740us. Well, you're one of the good ones, Peter. No, but I do, I do wonder how much of like,0.98
01:06:00.760how much of that dynamic where you have women prominently critiquing feminism is because they0.99
01:06:05.180are like effective vessels for the critique, right? For the anti-feminist movement, right?0.99
01:06:10.240To be able to say that the critics themselves are women has value to the broader, to the broader
01:06:16.060reactionary movement also another thing that i realized researching this episode and i i've
01:06:21.920i've updated my views as a result of the research for this episode i for the last kind of 10 years
01:06:27.840i've been sort of like fretting about the rise of online dating it seems like a paradigm that is
01:06:33.000is very similar to like shopping in ways that make me uncomfortable people have this this perception
01:06:39.640of infinite choice that makes them discard other people very quickly and it seems like there's just
01:06:45.160a lot of consternation and a lot of like hurt. And, you know, there's just a lot more rejection
01:06:49.480associated with dating now. And I've always been like, oh, I don't know if this was like the best
01:06:53.060thing. But another one of these kind of perpetual crises is like the end of courtship. Yeah. Like
01:06:58.820you've been getting these takes since the 1890s when like kids started going to like diners with
01:07:03.960each other. You had the same thing. Oh, kids don't court each other the way that they used to.
01:07:08.200And I think that like the shift to online dating is really worth noting, right? Like we're
01:07:13.760basically speed running this paradigm shift that happened in 60 years at the end of the 1800s we're
01:07:19.900doing it in like 10 years now yeah but also i was looking at the numbers the other day like how
01:07:24.380people meet and like in 1940 60 of people met through their family or met in elementary middle
01:07:32.540or high school that was bad like that was it was basically quasi arranged marriages and a huge
01:07:40.380number of people getting married very young, either because it was like shotgun weddings or
01:07:44.620something, or just because like that was expected of you and you had a high school steady, you would0.96
01:07:49.380get married at fucking 19 and you end up in one of these awful loveless marriages because like0.98
01:07:53.980women couldn't get bank accounts and there was no no fault divorce. I am less pessimistic about1.00
01:07:59.740this stuff than I was before I started researching this episode. I will say this. I was one of the
01:08:05.260guys who did great on the apps and it's for one reason and one reason only uh in my profile i said
01:08:12.480that i had an in-unit washer dryer and if you live in new york city that is a killer profile line i
01:08:20.100think the only reason you did well is because you weren't a podcaster yet that's and if you're like
01:08:23.720i'm a podcast bro in brooklyn like no uh i'm in queens for do not denigrate me
01:08:30.500my wife met me five years ago and uh she she met and started dating a corporate lawyer and she's
01:08:40.440about and and now she is married to a full-time podcaster yeah that's the kind of thing you can't
01:08:46.120anticipate and had she followed the rules it wouldn't have happened i know if if only she1.00
01:08:50.060had treated you like shit it's never too late0.99