Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss a surprising realization about why many leftists accuse pronatalists of having a “breeding kink.” They explore how some in the trans community appear to structure major life decisions around arousal patterns and identity fulfillment, leading to projection onto families who have many children (often via IVF).

Topics include: why breeding kinks don’t actually drive real family-building, the difference between fantasy and daily life, identity-maxxing vs. objective function living, Techno-Puritan sins, power dynamics in kinks, furries, Lia Thomas, and much more.

This episode dives deep into psychology, sexuality, culture wars, and how different worldviews shape behavior.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about basically a very weird phenomenon that has happened to us repeatedly, and I didn’t understand it until today, and I had this, like, shocking realization when I was just thinking through this today, and I was like, “This explains so much of a leftist mindset that I didn’t fully understand before.”

Which is when we initially would go viral people would say, “Oh, like, why do they have to, like, bring us into their weird breeding kink?” You know, and this was a common... I, I’d say it’s, like, 1/5 or 1/8 of comments whenever we used to go viral.

We, we had a journalist come to our house recently, so, like, a trans individual who’s a journalist, and he was interviewing us or she, whatever. I, I, I never know with these people. She was interviewing us over, And by the way, if, if you’re trans and annoyed by that, just know how annoying it is for the rest of us when we can’t tell, we don’t care, and you act like it’s the biggest effing deal in the world, [00:01:00] and yet you dress and act in a way that intentionally makes it hard to tell, right?

Like, I would gender you right if it was obvious to me, right? I’m not, I’m not, like, out there actively trying to be a... But you are intentionally dressing in a way to make it difficult for me to know, right? So why am I supposed to... You’re just being a jerk to people. You have made your existence a jerky existence to other people.

But anyway, so the, the, she comes here and she gives us an interview, and in the interview she asks us something along the lines of, like... And, and this was the thesis of the interview. Like, is this all really just a kink? Like, is there a kink that’s motivating you guys to want to have lots of kids?

And I was just, like, sitting there like, does, do they really believe that, like, I would have five kids because of a kink, right? Like, the amount of my life I would have to dedicate [00:02:00] to something as simple as, like, something you masturbate to, right? Like, a, a simple arousal pattern would be genuinely astonishing to invest so much that I have five kids over it.

And I, I was just thinking today, like, do they really think that I’m doing all this? ‘Cause I was, I was, like, playing with my kids. I’m like, do they really think I have kids over a kink?

Simone Collins: Well, and then they get super, super shocked when they discover that we’ve produced all of our kids with IVF.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that we produced all of our kids with IVF.

They’re like, “Oh, that... Well, that undermines the entire thesis.” But- They they, th- which they were very confused about, right? Like it, is it... And, and, and then today I had this realization. Oh my God, I assumed that they just didn’t understand, or they were trying to cast aspersions on us, or they were trying to be edgy in some way about this.

[00:03:00] But then when I started to think about it more, I was like, but wait a second, this is a trans person. If they’re trans over a kink, which a good portion of the trans community appears to be in their own stated things. They’re like you- if you go to the, you know, trans Reddit and stuff like that, they’re like, “Well, of course, like arousal is part of this,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Now they have tried to define it as not a kink, tried to define it, but if you look at the actual written experiences of trans people going through gender transition many of them talk about it as something that is partially arousing to them. This is incredibly well documented in trans people talking about their own lives, right?

And in addition to this, we have entire trans communities where when you ‘cause I actually read like the Transmaxer Manifesto, right? Trying to get people to Transmax. And this is clearly a, a, a gender transition modification transformation kink in, in, in even the way it’s structured. It’s like, wouldn’t it be so hot if X, Y, and Z, and D, right?

You know. So [00:04:00] I read through these things a- and I’m like, if this person transitioned over partially an arousal pattern, yeah, that’s actually how they live, right? They really are living their entire life, their entire reproductive future, which I guess to me, I think of as like one of the core impacts you have with your life, was decided potentially downstream of an arousal pattern.

And I saw this and I was like... I had just never considered to take what they were saying at face value. It just seemed so insane to me that an individual could say all of this, that it didn’t enter my mind as, no, they might actually mean this. And I think once we accept that yes, they do actually mean that, you can begin to understand so many other things about modern [00:05:00] leftist philosophy.

Thoughts before I go further, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, although I am curious if this ties in with your concept of the techno-puritan sin of, of living to fulfill an identity versus living to maximize an objective function.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think it’s, it’s both. I mean, transness is obviously it breaks, like, all of our sins.

I mean, one, they’re living to fulfill an identity and other people’s perception of them, which I see the fundamentally fai- vain way to live. You can just, you know, choose to live however you wanna live, right? And, and say, “What matters is my effect on the world, not whether or not I appear a certain way in other people’s minds.”

Like, obsessing over that, we argue is sinful, where sinfulness are just things that f**k up your life in the long run. But second it’s sinful in that it’s... And, and I think that it- it- it’s, it’s living your entire life after an arousal pattern. Like, we don’t even, we don’t even put into our sins living your whole life in the pursuit of [00:06:00] happiness because we say happiness is a choice, right?

So you don’t need to pursue it. It’s something that you should sort of grab and subdue. You choose how you interpret the things around you in life. And when you realize that this sort of, like, higher form of happiness, like am I content with myself, am I moving forward, that it’s a choice, well, then the only sorts of happiness you have are the basal forms of happiness.

You know, this is, like, eating whatever food you want all day, every day, right? Or just having constant orgies or engaging in huge life-changing behavior to fulfill arousal patterns, right? Which are just a, a basal sort of breeding thing in the background of all human biology that really shouldn’t affect any sort of a daily choice.

And this is where it all got really interesting for me. Because if I am listing, like, my unusual arousal patterns or kinks or anything like that and I have argued in the past that a breeding fetish is about the only thing in the world that is not actually a fetish.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: [00:07:00] It’s what the entire arousal system is built to get you to do.

About anything else that arouses you is ancillary and something misfiring.

Simone Collins: All non-procreative sex is a fetish. Or some kind of weird kink, I guess.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, of my list of, like, things that really turn me on, the wider category of breeding fetish content is actually one of those things for me. It’s not my top thing but it’s probably number two.

But with

Simone Collins: that being- Well, based on its popularity, like, if you look at just sort of top ranked tags and stuff in erotic material, for men specifically, that’s kind of the thing. In women, I just don’t see it that much, actually, for, like, female content, which is interesting.

Malcolm Collins: And do you not see it a lot in female content?

Mm. I mean, sort of being forced to breed you see in female content, like, Not

Simone Collins: really,

Malcolm Collins: actually ... in The Handmaid’s Tale and stuff like that, like the-

Simone Collins: No. Because even then if you actually look at the [00:08:00] books most or most if not many of the men are themselves infertile, so-

Malcolm Collins: Oh, really?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like, there are issues with, like, some of the doctors being like, “Well, I will.

I will inseminate you ‘cause I know for a fact this guy is infertile and he doesn’t know it. But, you know, you should just therefore let me F you,” and then, yeah. So it’s, it’s a whole thing, actually. Wait, but

Malcolm Collins: isn’t that a kink in itself? Isn’t that part of the breeding kink?

Simone Collins: No, I don’t think so. Yeah, anyway, I, I don’t- Does,

Malcolm Collins: does, does she go with

Simone Collins: the doctor?

Does she- In Handmaid’s Tale I just don’t think that... I haven’t read the books. I, I only know from, like, some summaries and stuff that I’ve heard.

Malcolm Collins: Of what?

Simone Collins: But, like, there’s not a lot of actually getting pregnant going on. Like, some, some of the ancillary characters go through pregnancies and stuff, but-

Malcolm Collins: I guess it, it, it, like, once you get pregnant and have a kid, all of the sexy stuff after that

Simone Collins: begins to- Pregnancy is, yeah, that’s, that, that is where for m- m- maybe a majority of women, I don’t know, like, sort of arousal and, and, like, stuff being sexy just dies with [00:09:00] pregnancy and with newborns being around.

So typically with female erotic material, it is, there are-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but especially if it’s, like, multi-books ... no

Simone Collins: children around.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, if she gets pregnant in book one and now in book two she’s raising a newborn, like, all of the other sexy stuff starts to get weird.

Simone Collins: Well, and you have to keep in mind pregnancy is while a beautiful thing, often very uncomfortable.

Like, you’re not aroused when you want to vomit. You’re not aroused when you have intense nerve pain. You are not aroused when you feel incredibly large and when your- Right ... legs are swollen and when you look like, you know, a, a watermelon, right? Like, noth- there’s nothing. Like, now first, I’m sure there’s always exceptions, right?

I’m sure there’s some women who feel incredibly sexy and have really high sex drive and everything when they’re pregnant and when they have newborns and whatever, right? Like, all these things are possible. However no. Like, and I’ve, I’m, I’ve c- I’ve consumed, like, so much erotic material both targeted at men and targeted at women.

Women, it’s power dynamics. It’s getting high-powered men. It’s high-status men. It’s and, and, [00:10:00] and a lot of, like, just the more general focus i- like, really hot men, Yeah ... men who’ve always had a crush on them, men who really like pleasuring them. It’s never, “I’m going to get you pregnant.” Like, that actually if anything could possibly be on average a turn-off for women, which is really interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, so- but yeah, I, I do not, like, it’s super common in male-oriented stuff, not in female-oriented stuff.

Malcolm Collins: That, that makes sense. That makes sense. So the, point I was getting to here is even as somebody who like would just admit if you consider the idea of impregnation being hot a kink, right? Or your partner being pregnant a kink, right?

Like, I, I always think she looks better when she’s pregnant. If you consider that a kink and I’m saying me, even as somebody who would have both of those things being in like my kink category, they have never activated around my actual children’s birth, right? Like-

Simone Collins: That’s true, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They, they have [00:11:00] never, because I don’t like, even

Simone Collins: me- Well, no, and then I, I will point out, and this is maybe getting a little bit too TMI, but like even before we realized we had to do IVF and we were just, you know, timing and trying to get pregnant naturally- Yeah

like it actually felt kind of unsexy to, when we were actually trying to get pregnant- Oh, oh ... ‘cause it was like, oh God, this is like the ovulatory window, like we have to do it now. And

Malcolm Collins: like- I, no, I completely agree. It was- Yeah ... really unsexy. Like-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: having sex to conceive is like-

Simone Collins: Stressful and not sexy

Malcolm Collins: yes, you’re on a schedule.

Simone Collins: Super

Malcolm Collins: not sexy. You’ve gotta work it into unusual times.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You’ve gotta like, it is, it is

Simone Collins: actively- It’s typically like women aggressively like when men aren’t ready for it, being like, “I need you to like come inside me now,” and like just getting really intense about it. And like I, you, you, like even I remember your, m- again, not TMI, but like I remember your dad at a steakhouse being like, “Yeah, like it was really stressful when your mom was trying to conceive ‘cause she’d just be like call me up and be like, ‘You have to come home from work now.’”

And like, just like it’s not [00:12:00] fun for the men. Like it’s very clearly not fun for anyone involved.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s not. But I’m, the point I’m making here is even with somebody with all of the layered kinks that could be associated with a breeding kink, right? Mm-hmm. Never was that process unusually arousing for me.

Mm. If anything, it went in the exact opposite direction. Because-

Simone Collins: Ironically ...

Malcolm Collins: it, it fell into, and this might have been a competing like anti-kink I have of, of the long procedures and everything like that- ... and a lot of you know-

Simone Collins: Anti-kink ...

Malcolm Collins: but whatever the point being is it never- Yeah ... influenced me or wanting to have kids.

Even though I may feel like my wife looks even more beautiful when she’s pregnant-

Simone Collins: Aw ...

Malcolm Collins: right? That would never, ever in a billion years factor into my decision to get her pregnant. Because that’s just like a minor modification into how attractive I find her. Maybe like a I find her 10, 20% more attractive for nine months, and then- She has [00:13:00] a child I need to raise for the rest of my life.

Simone Collins: Right. Like, and then, and then 18 years and she-

Malcolm Collins: That would be f*****g insane.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

And just to hammer this home further, even though I find her more physically attractive when she is heavily pregnant, I do not have sex. We do not have sex when she is heavily pregnant. And people can be like, “Oh, it’s totally safe for the baby,” whatever. I’m like, “Mm, actually, there have been cases where baby has, have died or suffered injuries during it.”

It is incredibly rare, but it is absolutely possible. Um, and I would never in a million years forgive myself. In a million years. Imagine you knew that. Like, I, I’m not going to do something where I might have to live with the fact for the rest of my life that I know I killed one of my kids because I wanted to get off, and she couldn’t even get pregnant that day.

What are you talking about? That’s so disgusting. Um, I, I know some people are like, “Well, I just wouldn’t have sex if I [00:14:00] couldn’t have sex with my wife all the time when she’s preg-” Whatever. Okay? I’m just pointing out here that it’s actually instances in which I cannot have sex with her because I’m worried about the safety of my children.

Even if it’s a one point zero zero zero one thing, I’m not taking that chance

Malcolm Collins: That would be absolutely insane.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But then weirder than, and I, and I actually, like, I want to communicate this to these people, and I w- I, when I originally was thinking through this, I was like, well, think of it this way.

Like, even if you have like some BDSM related kinks. Personally I’m aroused by being in a dominant position when I’m with my partner. We’re like getting a list of kinks I have today. Oh,

Simone Collins: boy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I’m aroused. I have never been aroused by being a boss, right? I have never been aroused by having to fire someone.

I have never been aroused- ... by being in a real world position of authority over someone.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: For the vast majority of kinks, to activate them, you need to engage in scenarios that are so [00:15:00] divorced from anything that actually happens in real life that they’re not gonna accidentally activate during normal daily stuff.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think a, a lot of people would get this, right? Like, when I talk about the BDSM thing, most people, I think most people probably have some level of arousal to submission or dominance.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, that, in, in our research, that was just so- Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: like

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: vast- ... pervasive. So if you’re one of our followers and you’re aroused by submission or dominance, have you ever actually been aroused by, like, being someone else’s employee-

or being someone else’s boss? Yeah, someone’s

Simone Collins: like, “Go clean the toilets.” Oh, yes. Say that again, slowly.

Malcolm Collins: Y- you’re like a f- yeah I mean, surely somebody is. But I realized- Yes ... what’s different for me in them-

Simone Collins: Yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: is there are ways that some people with submission fetishes or dominance f- fetishes relate to being an employee or boss that [00:16:00] is sexualized.

Like, we do see people engaging in relationships with their boss where, like, that’s clearly a component to it. No,

Simone Collins: but that’s, it, it’s the power dynamic. It’s not the bossing, it’s the, the fact that he is the boss and I’m the secretary. And there are definitely plenty of female fantasies around that in terms of, like, the material that’s popular.

That is certainly common in female- Or- ... or in general erotic material ... you see this in the

Malcolm Collins: case of, like, teacher-student, right? Like, where a teacher is in a relationship.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, teacher-student, boss, and... Well, and, and you see it w- with male erotic materials, too. A common one, of course, is nurse, right? It’s, it’s one of those places where it’s acceptable for a man- Well, no,

Malcolm Collins: but that,

Simone Collins: the,

Malcolm Collins: the point I’m making is I’m not talking about in erotic material, I’m talking about in real life stuff.

Simone Collins: Oh, sure. Or- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But what I realized is that these people who are actually aroused because of this position they have relative to somebody who they are the boss of- Hmm ... or who are in a submissive position because they’re [00:17:00] somebody’s employee, they relate to their daily duties in a way that is totally foreign to the way I relate to my daily duties.

Simone Collins: Oh, sure.

Malcolm Collins: It would never accidentally arouse me to be somebody’s teacher, right? I would never mistake that for this other type of relationship.

Simone Collins: Yeah, good point.

Malcolm Collins: And then I realized, oh my God, it’s not just in those instances. It’s also likely in the instances of how these people like the whole trans thing, the, the idea that, like- Oh, well you couldn’t possibly just do something every day all day that’s primarily intended to arouse you, right?

The idea of transition itself as being in that category, right? It’s like this is why they do all this weird fetishy stuff all the time that I have found so confusing, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I’ve always been like why, why, why do we have, Who is the, the, the swimmer? [00:18:00] The trans swimmer? Lia

Simone Collins: Thomas.

Malcolm Collins: Lia Thomas.

I always talk about Lia Thomas. I’m like, why did the trans community support her flashing male genitals at girls in the girls’ locker room when neither male or female locker rooms is it normal to fully undress yourself, and it hasn’t been for the past 20 years. It wasn’t when I was in school. It’s definitely not today, and we’ve been drifting further in that direction.

So that means that this is somebody who is intentionally flashing people. I was like, why did the trans community make this person a role model for the community, stand this individual, make them the figurehead when they were clearly acting in a way that I would think is a bad action? And then I realized I didn’t understand it.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Lia Thomas made every moment about what aroused her. Walking into the locker room and being like, “I am gonna make my entire life a sexualized reframing,” is actually very, very normal to people with this mindset [00:19:00] And I’ll note here, I think we see this in the conservative side as well. In the conservatives who are just doing this conservative LARP and don’t seem to have actual, like, values.

They’re just like, “I’m the most conservative person out there.” And that’s why when people try to, like, front on you with this stuff, like, “Oh, I’m more conservative ‘cause I’m more...” whatever thing they wanna push on you. Like, “I hate the gays more, the Jews more,” the, you know. And it’s like, come on, the communists did that stuff, too.

You’re bad at being a conservative. You’re an idiot conservative. But the, the the conservatives who, who go with that, “I’m a more trad version of a Christian. You’re just, like, really involved in being a scripture nerd. So, like, what are you? Some nerd about study- the trying to get the exact right words in a way that makes sense?

Why can’t you just believe whatever I was told Christianity was when I was growing up?” And I’m like, “Well, because I actually wanna believe what’s true.” And they’re not interested in what’s true. They’re interested in what fits this theming, and then we see it affect in their actions. [00:20:00] Like the couple, the famous conservative couple where their marriage was blessed by the Pope and she was cheating with her boss the whole time, right?

Simone Collins: Blessed by the Pope.

Malcolm Collins: Blessed by

Simone Collins: the Pope. Apparently, though, there, it’s... What, what happened actually in that case is apparently you can, like, show up in a certain place when you get married, like, at, at, at, in the Va- in Vatican City, and the Pope will be there and, like, bless a bunch of people all at once.

So it’s not like they made some kind of special appointment with him. They like- Well,

Malcolm Collins: right, but

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: was

Simone Collins: still a very performative- ... showed up. It’s like showing up at a Mardi Gras parade and getting Mardi Gras beads thrown at you. Just, just to, like, put that in context for

Malcolm Collins: our listeners. No, no, no, no. I, I, I...

Look, and again, I wouldn’t even... As much as I might be anti-Catholic, I’m not gonna besmirch the Pope for accidentally blessing somebody who wasn’t true to their belief system, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: He had

Simone Collins: no way of knowing. Well, plus with the Catholic Church there’s always redemption, so don’t worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: Right, right.

But I’m just saying even, even if it was personally organized, I would still... That, that’s not... But the point is is it was still a big show of, “Look at [00:21:00] how X I am.” Mm. And what I realize is that actually when you live your life based around maximizing an identity rather than a consequentialist value system, you can be aroused by these sorts of positions even if you’re a conservative, right?

Mm. The reason why a teacher may be aroused by being in the role of a teacher relative to a student or the role of a boss relative to their employee is because they are maximizing and they identify as teacher. That’s what they’re doing. I’m trying to be the most teachery teacher right now. And so that allows me to, if, if that’s what’s hitting the arousal pathway, then that hits it for me, right?

But if I’m going out there and as a boss, as I’ve always done as a boss, my job is to make money for my investors, right? Like, never, and, and, and not screw over customers and not screw over my employees, but like that’s always the calculation running in my head. It’s [00:22:00] never, “I’m a boss.” I, I can do the, you know, I’m a, I’m a boss song here.

Speaker 9: Direct workflow. Like a boss. My own bathroom. Like a boss. Micromanage. Like a boss. Promote synergy. Like a boss.

Malcolm Collins: But like I, yeah, I’m never thinking like, “I’m the bossiest boss.”

Speaker 2: Hey, I’m Buddy. I’m the boss.

That’s my sister, Grace. She’s not the boss. I’m the boss.

Malcolm Collins: I’m the boss.” But anyway, for making, about making cakes. But anyway it, it’s never how I perceive myself in those moments. I’m just a tool of trying to achieve a specific outcome.

And I realize that I think many progressives, so there’s sort of two people here who get sucked into this in ways that were, one, before foreign to me, but now make a lot more sense. One is the progressives who just like intentionally are pleasure maxing their lives.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I think you see this sometimes as conservatives, but it’s fairly rare.

Just like the [00:23:00] only thing I live for is what arouses me and what makes me feel good. Yeah. And if, if, and these people can fall into various categories. Obviously if they are most impacted by arousal systems, they may go down the trans pathway, they may go down some other lifestyle pathway, like the furry pathway or something like that.

Simone Collins: The furry pathway.

Malcolm Collins: Or they may go down, you know, all these various things that they could go down. And actually this is an interesting point to me, which is really important for me in terms of how I see something like furries. When people tried to, the left tried to take Lola Bunny and make Lola Bunny less sexy, there was a big online outrage that predominantly happened on the right.

And what that showed me is A lot of people find anthro characters attractive, right? Like apparently this is normalized enough that like right-wing influencers were like, “How dare you desexualize Lola Bunny?”

Simone Collins: Is this true? I mean, it just... They, they made a humanoid character sexy. Like, [00:24:00] how is that... A sexy character- Well, so the point I’m making here-

that’s humanoid is sexy. Like I, how is that... It’s not like people are into animals

Malcolm Collins: The point I’m making... Well, yeah, they dr- that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to make the character activate the part of your brain, for at least people without very strict counter systems look like a slightly modified version of a human.

Yeah. And because people like diversity in sexual partners, which we’ve actually seen from genetic selection events that happened in environments where mate selection was really important, like in Northern Europe. We have another episode where we go more into this, like are redheads monster girls.

But like, in

Simone Collins: these- Forgot about

Malcolm Collins: that ... in these environments you begin to have these really unusual dimorphic traits, like bright red hair and different eye colors. Which by the way you don’t have in most of the world. You do not have varying hair colors, you do not have varying eye colors. You only have these in these very explicit Northern European environments.

Mm-hmm. And because of that, or that just shows me that, you know, [00:25:00] historically, at least within populations that I’m related to liking somebody who looked in some way novel. Like a ginger looks very novel. Mm-hmm. You know, to, to a, a Roman, you bring a red-headed ginger in and th- they wouldn’t look any more different from the average human woman than a, a girl with horns or elf ears.

In fact they probably would’ve looked more different from the average human woman to a Roman who captured a red-headed slave with, with, that was a ginger than your average elf in fantasy fiction looks to your average human in fantasy fiction. But the point I was making here is that there is something very different from just saying like, “Oh, something’s arousing to me.”

Like, that’s a category of like anthro figures is arousing to me, and being a furry. Because it’s how you’re relating to this arousal pathway. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: When you’re a furry you’re saying, “This is going to be my identity. I’m gonna go to cons around this, I’m gonna invest a ton of money in this, I’m gonna incorporate [00:26:00] this thing that arouses me into my core idea of who I am.”

And I would say of, of the list of techno-puritan sins, let’s definitely add this one as, like, one of the higher sins you can commit of, of trying to incorporate a, an arousal pathway. Well,

Simone Collins: no, I think trying to incorporate any emotional pathway into your identity is- Right.

Malcolm Collins: True ...

Simone Collins: toxic. It- that’s not the point.

Your identity should be something that is meant to maximize your objective function. That’s it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But there are two, ... Well, by the way, for people, when she talks about objective function, that means the things that you believe have intrinsic value. Mm-hmm. Like a weighted list of things you think are good for humanity or that you’re commanded to do by God or, you know, whatever else, right?

Like, you have a, a, a thing that you as a human are made to do, and you believe that, right? Mm-hmm. And even, even if you think the thing that you’re meant to do as a human is maximize your own pleasure- Pursuing [00:27:00] pleasure in the way that these communities do rarely maximizes your own pleasure. Actually, like let’s look at furries as an example of this.

If you look at the suicidality risk you look at the unaliving risk among furries, it’s incredibly high. You look at the depression risk, it’s incredibly high. When you do this form of hedonism maxing, it ends up eating away at your actual contentedness because it’s just not how humans were designed to live.

Mm-hmm. It’s like even if I enjoy candy, if I do nothing but eat candy every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I am going to feel much worse. You know, like pleasure maxing, even though candy make me feel good, candy not route to long-term pleasure maxing.

Simone Collins: Well, in fact, when it, when we discussed like is there a cure for gay in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, from what we could see in the research, the only way you could really make someone not want [00:28:00] to indulge in any same-sex activity is to just inundate them so much with gay sex that they like just can’t take anymore.

Malcolm Collins: No, no now obviously same sex attracted people can suppress this arousal pathway. Yeah. Right? Like, there’s arousal pathways I suppress all the time, but the, the point I’m making here is we’re, we’re building out three categories. So category one is the people who are captured by an identity, and this identity can be tied to an arousal pathway or not.

Mm-hmm. But I think even if you don’t go into it as tied to an arousal pathway, like the Christian influencer who saw himself as like a boss or a superior to this person, and like the big tough Christian influencer guy, he became captured by this identity in a way that ended up trow- triggering arousal pathways that made him move against his core moral thesis, right?

Or his objective function as we would say. But then the second category is the true I’m gonna eat candy every day person, and this is, this is where you get, you know, the, [00:29:00] the haze influencer. This is where you get the healthy at every size people. This is where you get the ex- the, the trans extremists, right?

Where it’s just I’m gonna live my entire life based around whatever can make me... This is where you get the people crashing out on Twitter because the government won’t give them, Pre, pre... We had a whole episode. It was one of our craziest- Oh, PrEP. PrEP, yeah. We learned about how much the government pays on PrEP, which is only useful if you’re having orgies.

Like if you have a, a monogamous partner, because of how good anti-AIDS medication is now, but PrEP’s just largely

Simone Collins: irrelevant. Well, yeah. So not, not exactly orgies, but more specifically, like, a lot of one-off partners, new partners who you can’t really vet who you can’t necessarily trust to say, “Yeah, I’m taking the correct medication,” et cetera.

Yeah. Then that’s what PrEP is for. Yeah, it’s for, like, the most unsafe and irresponsible form of sex that you could have, regardless of your orientation. And the fact that the government’s paying for that is somewhat annoying.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, government isn’t paying for it, you’re [00:30:00] paying for it. You, the viewer of Base Camp, are paying for it.

Simone Collins: Well, if you live in the United States, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think most of Europe gives PrEP too, for free. You

Simone Collins: think? Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You know. Thanks. De- definitely need to cut PrEP. And people are like, “Well, the, these people can’t control them. They should be able to control themselves.” And then they’re like, “And what if they get AIDS?

And we shouldn’t pay for that either, then they can die,” right? Like, w- w- whatever can happen to consequences, right? Like, don’t do X thing because it can lead to Y thing, right? Like, that should be on them to know, “Oh, gee, I shouldn’t have the orgy. I should just step back from the orgy,” right? Like, a little less orgying.

But yeah thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I’m, I’m trying to reconcile this in my head with the stated purpose of becoming trans, which is, you know, you feel like you’re born in the wrong body, and you’re just trying to resolve severe body [00:31:00] dysmorphia. The, the mainstream opinion on the left, as I understand it, is that this has nothing to do with your sexuality and it has everything to do with who you feel you are, which I guess we would probably say is a misnomer.

Like, your identity doesn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t matter who you are. You should just make the most of whatever you’ve been dealt and optimize it around your objective function. And if you’re suddenly born tomorrow, or, like, you wake up tomorrow and you’re totally different, it’s not like, “Okay, well, I need to fix, fix this to, to how I feel.

I need to just live,” like, and, “Okay, this is my body now,” like, “Okay, now I’m a rabbit person. Okay, then I’ll just do that.” In fact, I think you could argue that everyone has to do this throughout their lives, because one day you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna be 40. And I think a lot of people are, like, trans young, right?

Like, they’re 40, and they act like they’re 12. And that’s just not, not ideal. You know, they should be leveraging the identity that they’ve woken up [00:32:00] in, in an optimal way. And I think- Nevertheless what the argument is with identity and, and being trans is that they feel like they’re in the body of someone with a different n- natal sex, and they have to fix that.

That it has nothing to do with sex. And I’m

Malcolm Collins: trying to- Yeah, nobody ever, like, the, the, it’s, it’s like, it, it’s very normal to not feel like you’re an adult, right? Like, this is a normal thing. Just because I don’t feel like- Yeah,

Simone Collins: or to not want to be an adult. Like, I mean, all the women who are getting elective cosmetic procedures to look younger are trans young.

You know? They, they are also getting gender affirming surgery and, and youth affirming surgery.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and identity affirming surgery,

Simone Collins: right? Uh-huh, exactly, which again, we would say is sinful. But I don’t, I, for, for women, I, m- many would, you could argue, oh, they’re doing it for sex ‘cause they wanna attract partners.

I don’t think they’re doing it for sex. I, so I don’t know if, if the trans thing is really about sex. I mean, so I’m trying to parse that out. ‘Cause also there’s this very common thing in, in, like, trans [00:33:00] discourse to say, “No, being trans is not expressing autogynephilia. They’re totally different things.”

There’s almost this, like, disavowal of people with autogynephilia. Like, it’s not a sex thing.

Malcolm Collins: There, there is not at all a disavowal in the actual trans community. So, this is something that they, that they signal very loudly to outsiders. But to insiders, it’s widely accepted.

Simone Collins: Okay, but you don’t deny that it’s signaled loudly to outsiders.

Malcolm Collins: No, it is signaled loudly to outsiders, but if you actually hang out on their forums, they’ll talk about this arousing them all the time. In fact, there was even a giant fight within the trans community like 10, 20 years ago, so, like even before it blew up between the the people who said, “Being trans is about gender dysphoria,” and these were called true scum, and the people who said, “No, being trans is about whatever I want,” which is the people who are called the two Qs.

And the whatever I want, while it often wasn’t explicitly laid out, was generally autogynephilia. Or some [00:34:00] form of kink or arousal pathway, right? Like, if they, that, that was well understood if you look at the leaders of the whatever I want community and the stuff that they were caught with, whenever they had leaks or anything like that, right?

You know. But yeah. What was the point you were making around this? I mean, my, my point is, like, the, the community- That

Simone Collins: it’s not about sex. That you’re saying, well, a breed- people who have a lot of kids don’t have a breeding kink. But people who are trans have a kink that they’re exercising every day, which is why they think that people who have a lot of kids have a, a breeding kink.

And I’m trying to push back and say, “I don’t know. I don’t know if people who are trans think it’s very sexual at all either.” In fact, I would argue that especially people who are- Read the forums ... male to female trans are, if anything, experiencing a significant drop in sexual arousal because it’s testosterone- They, we just read a thread about this yesterday

that’s the huge sex driver, and they’re, like, trying to kind of nuke that out. Have

Malcolm Collins: you read, have you read or spent any time reading, like, the trans subreddit or any community which would- Not

Simone Collins: in a very long time, to be fair ... talk to other

Malcolm Collins: [00:35:00] trans

Simone Collins: people? Not for a

Malcolm Collins: long time.

Simone Collins: It’s,

Malcolm Collins: it’s very common to talk about this in those communities, and they are not shamed for talking about this in those communities.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: It is seen as a normal part of transition, and people would say it’s very wrong to shame somebody for being aroused due to something tied to their transition. And they’ll always say, “Well, like, of course we don’t signal this to outsiders, but within the community, we know what’s up.” Right? Like, I think that to, to over-buy into this externalized like the too cute versus true scum war obviously happened.

If you do a, an internet search, it obviously happened. It’s, it, it, it’s one of the biggest parts or cultural fights within the growth of modern leftism and the movement that came out of Tumblr, right? And pretty much no one denies that the, the true scum lost. True scum now are seen as adjacent to TERFs, right?

Like, they’re, they’re seen as sort of similar in the same way that, like, [00:36:00] TERFs were sloughed off by the feminist movement as the wrong kind of feminists, the true scum were sloughed off by the trans movement as the wrong kind of trans. So I, I think that y- yeah, they’re aware that this is for them, and this actually even came up in the conversation with the journalist.

And I was like, “You know, obviously I wouldn’t wanna live my entire life just to maximize the amount of pleasure I, I, I s- feel.” And they said something along the lines of, “Well, you know, speak for yourself,” implying that, like, this is actually how they structure their life.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So even in that context, Simone, you saw the individual doing this.

Simone Collins: That’s fair. That is fair. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I think that the, the, the thing is, is even if, or the, the wider context here, even if somebody has all of the fetishes around th- that presumably this lifestyle should be activating, it doesn’t work to activate them. It’s a very ineffective way. If you out there as an individual are [00:37:00] thinking, “I wanna have a lot of kids because of a fetish,” there’s places for that.

There’s, like known sperm dono networks appear to be primarily fetishes from what I’ve seen.

Simone Collins: Oh. Yeah, that’s true. That is true. Yeah, the people who just make themselves available for sperm donation. Totally.

Malcolm Collins: That seems to be about a breeding kink. I like Elon. What he’s doing seems to be partially potentially motivated by a breeding kink.

Just the way that he’s doing it. Instead of doing it all with one woman and surrogates, which he could do if he wanted to he does it with lots of women who he treats as disposable, which is often part of a breeding kink, right? So that looks like... I- I know he doesn’t treat all of them as dispo- but some of them he clearly does.

Like, it’s like I hit up a girl on Twitter, she’s interested, I impregnate her. There’s other ways he could achieve the same scale with significantly less legal liability with the money that he has, right? So there’s something motivating this outside of just logic. That said, maybe he’s, like, ideologically [00:38:00] against using using w- w- what’s the word?

Simone Collins: Surrogates?

Malcolm Collins: Surrogates. Yeah, ideologically against surrogates. No. No? Okay. So, yeah. ‘

Simone Collins: Cause he’s known to have used surrogates, so.

Speaker: Like if I had Elon level money, I would have a, uh, uh, like a facility in some third world country, like in India, I don’t know, South America, Brazil, something like that. Um, that’d be like Ender’s Game, raising like 50 kids per year, , in the best conditions I could afford for them, but at scale. , Which is obviously very different than the path Elon has taken

Malcolm Collins: Or maybe it allows him to operate at a scale that, like, even we’re unaware of that would make this make sense. I don’t know. But the point I’m making here is- is that the- the breeding kink is generally not tied to and then you raise a family of like 10 kids.

Very

Simone Collins: true. And

Malcolm Collins: I, and I, and I’d actually point this out to the trans community, like the trans community that is watching this and crashing out over me saying this. You kn- you kn- like, breeding kinks are common in the trans community. Like for example, Ana Valens had a, a [00:39:00] breeding kink. Remember? She wanted to like, she, she- There were,

Simone Collins: there were so many.

There were so many things ...

Malcolm Collins: This is a writer who w- dunked on Leaflet and Kirschner. But anyway, so Ana Valens was like, “Oh, I have this fantasy where I free use women and impregnate them.” Like, that means just having sex with lots of women and impregnating them. Oh. And then tran- trans women should have free access to cis women to just use them and impregnate them.

Now, this is clearly a breeding kink, but it is antithetical to and then I raise those kids. It’s, it’s the exact opposite of that. Breeding kinks are, at least from what I’ve seen in terms of like what’s out there, almost always tied to and then I move on.

Simone Collins: It’s almost more a correlated with sneaky copulation than it is Like anything you do with a partner, a long-term partner, pure bond partner Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Where that stuff is often much more motivated by “I really like kids and let’s make the kids,” right? Like that’s, [00:40:00] that’s the point of the sex, and then the sex is all schedules and everything like that. And as we’ve said, then you, then you basically get to a point where, you know, having a nanny is just like a prostitute by proxy, right?

Because- Yeah.

Simone Collins: It, it might be different for religious couples who are just open to having kids, meaning that like every time you have sex, you’re not necessarily trying to have kids. You know, God chooses, right? Jesus takes the wheel on that front, and then it’s not stressful in that way because you’re not trying to make it happen.

You’re just open to it happening when it’s meant to happen.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: In which case perhaps then it’s- More s- of a turn-on for the... I don’t know. Because I b- they also like, people who are you know, open, open to having kids and, and having families in that sort of very natural way tend to also not talk about what arouses them and their sex lives.

So who knows what’s going on in their heads, right? Like-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well- ...

Simone Collins: who knows if they find it a turn-on or not. But I [00:41:00] think what, when you also look at just sort of how it’s described biblically, like becoming one, which really just means, like, as we interpret it, combining your genetics with someone and basically taking what feels like to us shards of our soul and, and, like, seeing them in children combined.

You know, really you see yourself, both of yourselves in one person after you have a kid, in that person. You do become one in that kid. I think that’s more, like, where you see the expression of love. It’s not really in the sex act itself or the sex act itself- Well, I also know here where- ... has more to do with sort of increasing-

a

Malcolm Collins: trans person may push back and say, “Well, it’s not just breeding kinks.” You know, you say that the breeding kink is never associated with a wanting to raise a child, right? And they’re like, “Well, what about, like, daddy dom little girl stuff,” right? You know, that’s tied to wanting to raise a child, and I push back super hard on that.

I, I would bet even, even people maybe we could get Shu on head sometime because we know that she was into this kink for a [00:42:00] while and now has a kid. I would bet to anybody who’s ever been into that kink, th- this is not one of the kinks I’m into but for anybody who’s ever been into that kink, having their own kids has never been arousing to them.

Like interacting- Yeah ... with their own kids. A, a, a one, the western mark effect is super strong. That’s the thing that makes you unaroused by anyone who sort of is growing up around you at certain developmental milestones. But in addition to the western mark effect which is usually with siblings, but also affects parents, because I mean, there, there, there is something that tells you and needs to tell you from a biological perspective people can have hot daughters.

Like, people can have daughters that are just objectively attractive, and you need to know at some sort of internal level, “Oh, I shouldn’t be procreating with this thing that happens to be

Simone Collins: my daughter.” That system doesn’t seem to work in everyone.

Malcolm Collins: And when you... Well, no. Where people end up with their daughters most frequently, it’s because you’re also more attracted to people you’re genetically related to, is when the father didn’t raise the daughter.

Oh. And this one we actually see [00:43:00] quite frequently is when a daughter raised by

Simone Collins: a dad gets called. Yeah. And, and when, when you have people raised separately because they both have the same, like, father through IVF ‘cause their, their father is a prolific sperm donor.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But, but even more than that is when the dad, like, divorced the mom young or something like that anyway.

Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We’re not gonna talk about that right now. The point I’m making here is the daddy dom little girl fetish is very obviously to me in the category of fetishes of power exchange. This would be the ex- same as, like, a nurse fetish or a teacher fetish or, like, a I’m in control over you in some other way fetish and you have less control than me.

This is about signaling submission and dominance, which is not actually something you do with your kids very frequently. I, I think that people would be surprised about that. Signals of dominance are just not a part of n- normal interaction you have with your kids because there’s almost this, like, intuitive understanding with children, until they’re teenagers at least, and that’s, you know, that’s a whole other thing, right?

[00:44:00] That the, the parent is in the authoritative position that it doesn’t need to be signaled. It’s not, it’s

Simone Collins: not part of your relationship. Well, it, basically if you have to signal it, that means you’ve, you’ve failed already, right? Like, you know, the, it’s a show, don’t tell kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So, that, that was sort of my wider thought.

It, it just made me realize, like, oh my God, they actually see the world this way, and I had just always bro- brushed it off as, like, a-

Simone Collins: Yeah, very confusing. Yeah. Genuinely ...

Malcolm Collins: it was either confusing or, like, they didn’t... And, and they’re, oh, you know they’ll clip this and see, like, he admits it, that, you know, the whole breeding fetish thing is something that, that turns him on.

I mean, yeah, of course. It’s what the entire arousal system is meant for. But I also have been very clear, and I think we’ll get other people in the comments who will mention this around whatever fetish they’ve experienced, that there is a big deal difference between something that is a conceptual fetish and something that’s [00:45:00] going to be accidentally activated by your daily life.

Mm-hmm ... and I doubt... I, I, w- w- I mean, one of the easy ones, ‘cause this is even... Anyone who’s into, like, the daddy dom thing ever accidentally been aroused by that with one of their kids, right? Like, presumably it should, if it, that’s the actual system you’re trying to activate. But I don’t think it is. It’s the authority figure non-authority figure system, which isn’t really the relationship you have with your kids.

The relationship I have with my kids is nothing like the relationship I’d have with, like, a pupil or something like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No. That’s, it’s a good point. I’m, I’m glad you brought it up, ‘cause that, that has always kind of befuddled me, and I’m just like, I don’t know, I don’t know what to say. I just, it’s not.

But this was worth going into. I love you. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins: love you, Simone.

Speaker 13: He’s really good at alligators[00:46:00]

What do you think, buddy?

Thanks, friend

Speaker 11: Yeah, you know to push with your knuckles, right? Yeah. Why? So you don’t get your fingers dirty, because you eat with your fingers

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