Widening gender divide? Blame Nick Fuentes.

In this episode, the doctors perform a clinical examination of the pathological messaging aimed at young men by right-wing influencers like Nick Fuentes. They dissect the misogyny spreading through social media platforms, with particular attention to the inflammatory rhetoric that leads to dangerous attitudes toward women. The prognosis? With a strong dose of media & gender literacy, recovery is possible.

• Touré’s fact checks on the Diddy doc (this & this); Jeff Pearlman’s insights. Keffe D is set to be on trial in 2026 for the murder of Tupac Shakur. If you go down this rabbit hole, let us know!
• More on fake email addresses created by boys to antagonize their classmates
• Pew data
• Arghavan’s viral video about the growing ideological gender gap
• International survey data showing Gen Z's disparate views on gender equality
• Jesse Mack Butler story
• Scott Galloway’s Notes on Being a Man
• Kristen Ghodsee’s Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Fact Check: Women were not able to have their own bank accounts or credit without a man until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. Here’s how the act came to be.

💊Take Two and Call Me in the Morning💊

Arghavan shared the Diddy dance trend

• Here is a video of Diddy’s performance at the MTV Awards (that inspired the trend below)
• Here are a few videos of folks making fun of Diddy dancing and supposedly mourning Biggie’s death from @the.only.v, @kidrawofficial, and @toolie_xo

Alyssa loves the reaction videos about the adversaries physicians face

• Physician Associate Yiannis K. gives his top 5 adversaries, football style

Activation Awareness: This episode contains discussions of misogyny, sexual v

Thanks for listening to The Present Illness with Drs. Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart!

Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @ThePresentIllness

Credits

• Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart
• Editing by Alyssa Burgart
• Theme Music by Joseph Uphoff
• Social Media by Arghavan Salles

Chapters

• 6:22 The Growing Gender Divide
• 10:35 The Rise of the Manosphere
• 16:19 Nick Fuentes and Misogyny in Modern Discourse
• 26:16 Feeding the Cycle of Violence
• 30:44 We are Not Here for Period Shaming
• 39:16 Gender Norms have Consequences
• 45:23 Raising Boys
• 51:15 Take Two and Call Me in the Morning

Transcript

Arghavan Salles (00:00)
periods exist because that's part of how we have our fertility. That's how we make babies.

I can't believe I have to say this to like a 27 year old and whoever his audience is. But I am here to say that I am not here for period shaming. we are, that needs to be behind us. know, like in the Lion King, put the past behind you. That has got to be in the past. needs to stay in the past. Like we are not doing that here in 2025, almost 2026.

Hey there, fellow nerds. Welcome to another episode of The Present Illness. I don't know if you've missed us, but we have definitely missed you. Our podcast is one where two physicians try to make sense of a world that is a little febrile and definitely underdiagnosed. I'm Arghavan Salles a surgeon scientist and your friendly neighborhood doom scroller in residence.

Alyssa Burgart (00:45)
And I'm Alyssa Burgart an anesthesiologist and ethicist who tracks news and health law cases like their EKGs, full of spikes and surprises. The present illness is where we dig into public health, politics, culture, and ethics with a scalpel in one hand and a meme in the other.

Arghavan Salles (00:59)
As always, we want to send a big shout out and thank you to folks who are listening and to those who follow and subscribe. And a warm welcome to anyone who has just stumbled in from watching that notorious Diddy documentary.

Alyssa Burgart (01:12)
Ugh, I have not watched it. Like, should I watch it?

Arghavan Salles (01:18)
You know, that is an excellent question. So here's my feeling for folks who are considering it. I think it is very interesting. What is most clear about it is that Diddy is a despicable person. Sean Combs is a despicable person in more ways than I think most of us even understood, unless you had some personal connection to him, perhaps. But there's a lot that aside from the freak offs and the sexual assault, et cetera, that he wouldn't, I know it's not our main topic for today, folks, but.

He wouldn't pay people routinely, would not pay people, would not pay the artists on his label. I mean, there's just a lot. ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (01:55)
Are you telling

me that when somebody's horrible in one domain, they're sometimes also horrible in multiple other domains? I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised.

Arghavan Salles (02:02)
Yes, are you surprised?

because you

know this. So that's if you're interested in understanding more about this man and his numerous flaws and abusive qualities, I think it's worth a watch. If you want to know like truth, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that it gives us that. People ought to know that the person who produced the documentary is a big time Diddy hater. ⁓ And that is his primary motivation. Fittyscent is the person who made this documentary. He has hated Diddy for like at least 20 years.

Alyssa Burgart (02:31)
Okay.

Arghavan Salles (02:36)
So make of that what you will. ⁓ I've seen various journalists who are involved in ⁓ or have reported on Tupac and Biggie and others who are part of the hip hop universe and were early on when Diddy was experiencing his rise. And so these journalists online have said, well, this part in the documentary was not true. Cause I interviewed this person at that time. Here's what they said.

And so, you I think it's probably some level of approximation to truth, ⁓ but it's not like a definitive telling of what happened to Diddy and Pac and Biggie and all the various survivors who were left in all of their wakes. And it's worth noting also that Finney Scent himself has had multiple cases and accusations around domestic violence and sexual assault. So it's not like he's some paragon of virtue. it's, you know, if you...

Alyssa Burgart (03:09)
Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Arghavan Salles (03:33)
Keep all those things in mind. I think it's interesting. It's certainly informative. It's hard for me to tell which exact parts that are storytelling are true versus not true or how much of it is true. ⁓ But it sure does give you a sense of how terrible this man is. So I think it does do that.

Alyssa Burgart (03:45)
Okay, but like.

Okay, well, I don't know. I'm not sure if I have the capacity to lean into that, but I'll think about it. ⁓ But thank you for doing the heroic work of watching it. ⁓ Well, folks, you did it for the people. Well, folks, whatever it is that you've stumbled in from, we are glad you're here. We're gonna get into it. ⁓ I wanna start first off by saying that we had a lovely comment.

Arghavan Salles (03:57)
Fair enough.

anytime. I did it for the people, you

Alyssa Burgart (04:18)
from Dr. Katie Schenck via LinkedIn. And she listened to our last show and she wrote, I found this episode really insightful and thought provoking. So Dr. Schenck, thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you.

Arghavan Salles (04:32)
As always, folks are welcome, as we'll remind you again later, to leave readings and reviews for us, especially if you like us. Okay, so what we're gonna talk about today is this growing divide between girls and boys and men and women in our society. I've talked about this myself for a couple of years now. I had a viral video a couple of years back about some data showing that there's a growing ideological.

divide between men and women, not just in the United States, but actually across multiple different countries, which seems to be mostly driven on average by women becoming more liberal and men staying the same or becoming more conservative. But it's really that women on the whole are tending to become again, on average, more liberal. So there was some Pew data that came out a few weeks back that garnered quite a bit of attention. And it was a survey of high school students.

And there are multiple points in that survey, but we're just gonna mainly talk about one. The question was, they had asked 12th graders, so high school seniors, how likely they were to want to choose to get married in the long run. And back in 1993, girls were slightly more likely than boys to want to get married. 83 % of girls at that time said yes, they wanted to get married and 76 % of boys. So pretty similar, both groups, the majority wanted to get married.

In 2023, which is the most recent data, girls now only 61 % of them want to get married. So that's a 22 point drop. Whereas for boys, 74 % of them said they wanted to get married. So from 76 % in 1993 to 74 % in 2023. So basically the same, right, for boys. But when you look at the figure, for those who listening, you won't be able to see it, but for video folks will add this in.

But when you look at the figures, so the lines are crossing where before you had girls being more interested in marriage than boys, and now girls are less interested in marriage than boys. And when these data came out, there were certain parts of the internet that were very upset about this because how dare girls, yeah, I know. How could anyone have predicted this? It was a lot of men, right? Conservative leaning men tending.

Alyssa Burgart (06:40)
Which parts? Which parts? Tell me.

Arghavan Salles (06:51)
to be the ones who were upset saying things like, this is a catastrophe, this is a disaster. Being very upset that girls would choose perhaps to not want to get married without what I found mostly lacking there was any introspection about why it might be that women would be less interested in getting married in 2023 compared to 1993.

And we can think of many things that have happened, right? Including greater independence for women. I mean, there's lots of things that we don't need men for. We no longer need a man to approve a bank account for us or approve a credit card for us or to buy a house, right? We are now allowed as of today, December 11th, 2025, mark my words, as of today, we are still able to do those things on our own. And so,

The need for a man to help us live a life is less.

Alyssa Burgart (07:51)
Well, and for context, when you're talking about data from 1993, what that's making me think about is those are folks who are being raised from folks who themselves came of age in the late 60s, early 70s for the most part, I would presume. And so in the 70s is actually when, was it 1968 that women got the right to have a credit card without a man's approval?

Arghavan Salles (08:16)
I do not remember the exact date. We'll look it up and put it in the show notes.

Alyssa Burgart (08:17)
I'll

yeah, I'll fact check it. I think it was 1968, but I'll check. ⁓ But just thinking about that, you know, my mother, when she became an adult, could not have a checking account by herself, and then, you know, or sorry, not a checking account, a credit card, for example, and now my mother can have that.

I have a kid who's a teenager and that means that the data set that you're thinking about, it sounds like it's largely people who have been raised probably by folks who are around our age. Does that sound about right? Maybe a little older?

Arghavan Salles (08:49)
Probably if they're 12th

graders, yeah, maybe a little bit older because they're 12th graders. These kids are 12th graders in 2023.

Alyssa Burgart (08:55)
Sure. So it's interesting because it also means, when you think about that generational, these generational changes that have happened over the last 50 years, you see that, of course, in like, how is it that teenagers are showing up into their adulthood? What have been their, you know, sort of formative experiences and all of that? So just thinking about that in context.

Arghavan Salles (09:14)
Yeah, no, I agree. And ⁓ I think the other side of it is if we no longer need men, and this is, of course, we're talking about heterosexual pairings, because that's what these data we're looking at, which is obviously a limitation. ⁓ But when we're looking at heterosexual pairings and heterosexual marriage, what's ⁓ the cultural aspect of it aside from the legal side? If we don't need men, then the question is, do we desire men? And what...

about men is desirable. And that's where I think a lot of these men who are upset were not connecting the dots, right?

So a guy named Brad Wilcox said, anti-nuptial turn among young women and adolescent girls is disastrous. ⁓ And this other guy, Adam Singer said, incredibly bleak chart has to be some combination of social media promoting a hedonistic lifestyle from a young age, which I thought was a very interesting one. And then many peers are incels or DGENs, so visibly not viable mates. So at least he picked up on that. Teachers are radicals.

No idea where he's going with that one. And then parents not instilling good values in relationships at home not great. And this other guy, Andrew Colvette says, something has gone terribly wrong. And that's where we agree, Andrew. Something has gone terribly wrong.

Alyssa Burgart (10:32)
And the kids, the kids are noticing.

Arghavan Salles (10:35)
Yeah, well, we've had, right, so we've talked about some of the legal things that have changed, but we've had a rise in the Manosphere, right, over these last, however many years since the internet, 20 years or so, ⁓ where people are getting, young people are getting directly to their phone views that are not conducive to a community, to building a community and to respecting each other. And specifically when we're talking about

boys and girls and men and women in romantic relationships. We've got all these folks like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate who are saying all sorts of terrible things. And even I would put honestly Scott Galloway into this category of folks who are, ⁓ Scott I think thinks he's doing good things, but he's saying actually a lot of harmful things. ⁓ Whereas Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, I think they know that they're doing terrible things.

Alyssa Burgart (11:26)
that.

Yeah, I haven't I haven't read Scott Galloway's book, but I I've seen some interviews and I read an excerpt and I was just like, bro, you are not helping. You have way too much confidence in your abject lack of understanding of gender. Like I don't understand how you thought you should write a book about boys. I don't get it.

Arghavan Salles (11:51)
No, it's clear. I haven't read the book either. I've just seen the clips online and it seems very clear to me that he does not understand what the root problem is here. And so he's giving advice that's quite bad. I mean, the one example I'll give in case folks haven't come across it yet is like when he's talking about how basically women should be building more relationships with men, right? The problem is men are lonely. What a novel idea.

Alyssa Burgart (12:12)
⁓ blame the women, blame the women. my gosh. Thank goodness someone's

blaming the women.

Arghavan Salles (12:20)
No one's ever done that before. So yeah, I mean, I think it's things like that where, yeah, men are lonely and it's because women aren't giving them a chance. Women aren't taking the time to build these relationships.

Alyssa Burgart (12:22)
⁓

But for context, the title of the book, and again, I'm not going to criticize the content of the book because I have not read the book, but the things that he's saying and the things that you're telling me, the book is called Notes on Being a Man. It's not Notes on Being a Woman.

Arghavan Salles (12:51)
an excellent point and yet he seems to have no problem talking about what women should be doing. But I think he's a lesser of the evils compared to the Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson types. Altogether though, they're putting out this message to young boys and men about what is normal in a relationship and how they should be interacting with women and girls. The messages are caustic.

Andrew Tate, I was just looking for something the other day for one of my videos and I came across a tweet from last year where he says, if you enjoy having sex with a woman, that's gay.

Yeah. Well, he also thinks everything is gay.

Alyssa Burgart (13:41)
⁓ my god! I purposefully try to not ever see anything from Andrew Tate, like that's something I do for me, but I'm just... I'm just trying to understand, like, so he doesn't want men to enjoy sex?

Arghavan Salles (13:56)
No, because women aren't valuable in any way. you can, I mean, I don't know if you've heard him, he says terrible, terrible things about women and how intimate, hate to use that word because I don't think he is intimate, but whatever, how sexual interactions with women should go. he talks about how to beat up women. I mean, that's like part of his brand.

Alyssa Burgart (14:00)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Arghavan Salles (14:24)
is devaluing and dehumanizing women. And so that's why he says things like that. I'll see if I can find the, oh yeah, here, this is the tweet I was talking about. is from April 24th, 2024. Andrew Tate says, sex is for making children. Any man who has sex with women because it quote unquote feels good is gay. Oh my peepee feels good, this is great. In fact, if you are 40, I know, I know it's.

Alyssa Burgart (14:46)
Our

gay men also, just screaming externally when they read this, none of this makes sense.

Arghavan Salles (14:58)
No, and I hope there are not a lot of gay people coming across this content because it's really offensive. ⁓ So he says, in fact, if you are 40 with less than five children, you're probably gay and all that feel good, pee pee sex and hardly any genetic legacy?

Alyssa Burgart (15:14)
What's sad is that there is clearly reactions to this that are not people just laughing at this person's incompetence as a human being. That's what's ridiculous.

Arghavan Salles (15:25)
Well, not just that,

I mean, I agree that that's ridiculous, but also that this guy's got a massive audience, right? Saying stuff like this. I mean, if you guys should go search, because I was looking for, I had remembered something like this, I was looking for it for a specific reason, but if you go search his Twitter for the word gay, which I think we all learned many, many, years ago is like, why are we still using that as an insult? That's very regressive and offensive.

But anyway, he says that for almost anything. Going to the grocery store, that's I mean, I don't know. just, that might be an exaggeration, but he uses that all the time because he doesn't have the sophistication to actually build an argument.

Alyssa Burgart (15:55)
Well.

Well, this is also, and this is for fellow kids of the late 80s, early 90s.

It's, it's all, this is also happening at the same time that the R word has come back, which is the word retarded,

It is, of course, incredibly regressive that we're seeing the use of these terms and these are happening in correspondence with this rise in the Manosphere, this inability.

to recognize and respect the people around us to your point. No interest in community because it's about dominance, it's about being domineering, about really, ⁓ I don't know, the constant protection of this very fragile version of masculinity is just terrible.

Arghavan Salles (16:49)
Right, and part of the reason I wanted to talk about it this week is that there was an interview, so Nick Fuentes, who I don't think most people would think of as being part of the Manosphere exactly, but definitely a right-wing influencer of sorts. I don't know because he's not really, well, I guess listeners, you'll have to tell us if you think of him as part of the Manosphere. I don't think of him that way because I think of him more as a political commentator. you know, Andrew Tate, I would say like 100 % of his content is bashing women.

Alyssa Burgart (17:00)
⁓ really?

Arghavan Salles (17:19)
you know what saying like that's the that's whole brand whereas nick is a almost like an equal opportunity hater you know he's racist against many different groups he says that hitler is quote very fucking cool ⁓ he thinks black people all belong in prison you know what i mean like he he's bigoted in many many realms

Alyssa Burgart (17:38)
use.

Yeah, I guess that's the thing is that one, I think there's a lot of things in the Manosphere that actually are very tied to all of those things, even though, because I think the massage noire is a massage, you know, I think that there's a lot of overlap there. And so I think that's part of where he very much strikes me as somebody who's been, you know, red-pilled in terms of not just politically, but also in terms of this. ⁓

anti-woman, anti-femininity, anti anything that has to do with, I don't know, respecting other human beings again. But yeah, I don't know how these, I don't know where the lines are drawn.

Arghavan Salles (18:17)
Yeah, no.

fair.

I don't either. what, but anyway, so Nick did this interview this week with Piers Morgan. And I've seen I've not watched the whole thing full disclosure. But I've seen multiple clips. And one of them brought to my mind another clip that I've seen from from Nick from a couple years ago. So I want to play that for you. And then I want to play a clip from the Piers Morgan interview. And then we can talk about it because this is a person who has a lot

And I want to just for listeners say, this is a person who has a large platform. That's why I think it's worth discussing because I've had people on other platforms saying to me, like, why are we talking about this guy? Because he has a lot of influence and he is direct to the phone in the hand of so many young people in this country. And so we really have to reckon with what he is telling people. OK, so this is the first clip is from, believe, his show in 2023. For some reason, I only saw it recently and it

popped into my head when I saw this Piers Morgan clip that I'm gonna play in second.

Here's the one from Nick's show in 2023.

Because I was always like the class clown. I was always like bullying women. women have always been like simultaneously charmed, but also like, ⁓ stop it. ⁓ you're so annoying. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. That's how women are with like this, with like my personality type. You're like a rascal. You know, you're like a bastard. ⁓

And they're kind of like, because I'm like a rule breaker and stuff. And so women simultaneously are intrigued by that, but they're also, they also have to pretend like they're not because women, it's sort of like how women, a lot of women want to be raped. And when I say raped, I mean like, that sounds bad when I say it like that. But there's like a lot of women that really want a guy to beat the shit out of them.

Alyssa Burgart (20:21)
Yes, it does.

Arghavan Salles (20:26)
Also they have to pretend, but part of it is they have to pretend like they don't. ⁓

Okay, so we can, that's a lot going on in that clip. The first time I saw that clip, was, yeah, I was obviously horrified. Like this is again, reminder, this is a guy with a huge platform. This is what he's telling people, mostly boys and men, that women want to be raped and beaten up.

Alyssa Burgart (20:39)
What? What?

Zuh.

I I mean.

will tell you the very first thing I noticed when he started talking is ⁓ when he self identifies as a class clown. Those are people who are inherently insecure. So that's what I find like his entire setup. mean, he clearly doesn't have very much insight, but like, those are those tend to be very insecure people who are trying to like gather security by gathering attention in unusual ways. So then that's very interesting. And what a horrible

place that he took that to. Like we went to, we went from, I was sort of a rascal, to women want me to beat the shit out of them. Excuse me? Women want to be raped? Go fuck yourself. What, I mean.

Arghavan Salles (21:33)
haha

Alyssa Burgart (21:42)
And it's an interesting narrative for him to tell himself and then to tell his millions and millions of especially young men who follow him that this is a completely normal, he is completely normalizing that idea.

Arghavan Salles (21:57)
Yes, and I think, look, we can say, hey, a lot of people seeing that would have the same reaction we did. A lot of people seeing that would realize that what he's saying is not true. And even if a small number of boys out there watch this and believe it, that is going to lead to real and significant harm. Like, I don't know if you've been following the case of Jesse Mack Butler,

Alyssa Burgart (22:07)
Not enough.

Arghavan Salles (22:24)
This is a guy who, when he was 16 and 17, had raped and strangled at least two girls and pleaded no contest to these charges.

That is the type of behavior that words like what Fuentes says in that clip that I just showed, that's the behavior that is enabled. And just a side note for folks who haven't been following that case, Jesse Mack Butler was originally tried as an adult and could have been sentenced up to 78 years in prison, but instead another judge came in and ruled that he could be sentenced as a youth and he got community service.

Alyssa Burgart (23:06)
I mean, he's white, I must assume.

Arghavan Salles (23:08)
Well, correct. His father, it won't surprise anyone, was involved with the football team at Oklahoma State University. That judge also had longstanding ties with the university. And so he's out in the world. He has done significant harm to at least those two girls. And our legal system, it's a sham to even call it that, but our legal system, ⁓ such that it is,

determined that he did not need to serve any time for that. ⁓ Okay, back to Nick Fuentes. The point I was trying to make is just that his words matter. Now I'm not saying that Jesse Mac Butler listened to Nick Fuentes, but this type of content drives that violence against women and girls. Fast forward to this interview that Nick Fuentes did this week with

Piers Morgan who I should just note. I don't think is a Paragon of virtue. That's not why I'm sharing this interview, but it is interesting. So here it is

Well, yeah, absolutely. So basically you're just a misogynist old dinosaur, aren't you? For a young guy. mean, I know I'm the boomer here, but actually you're a 27 year old dinosaur, you? Aren't you, Nick, for instance? All women are annoying. All women grow old. They all get fat. Have you ever had sex? No, absolutely not. Wow. Says the guy's never got laid.

Yeah, so that's why I played that clip because this guy is going around acting like he knows anything about women. And first of all, Piers, I never would have pegged for the defender of women, but I guess compared to someone like Fuentes, ⁓ he is. Anyway, he asked him the question and then Nick is like, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And right before this,

Alyssa Burgart (25:00)
Talk about shifting the Overton window.

Arghavan Salles (25:07)
If folks are interested, can find this online. There's a section where Piers is saying, but don't women deserve equal rights? And Nick is like, absolutely not. And he's like, so you don't think women deserve the right to vote? And he's like, absolutely not. That's what precedes this comment about like, so you're just an old dinosaur. But the point is, the reason I shared that specific clip is he doesn't have close relationships with women. Aside from perhaps his mom and his sister, I don't know the nature of those relationships, but he's not have.

intimate romantic relationships with women. He just said it himself. Yet he is confidently telling his very large audience what it is that women want and that women want violence and that we want to be dehumanized. And that's really, really dangerous. And however many boys and men believe this stuff is hurting our communities. It's hurting women and girls all over the world, I would guess. I don't know where all his listeners are, but.

I doubt they're contained within the landmass of the United States. So that's that. do want to play one more. Sorry, I'll pause and let you react to that if you have anything else to add to that. And I have one more clip I want to share.

Alyssa Burgart (26:16)
Well, yeah, mean, in relation to really both of these clips, ⁓ yes, this rhetoric is amplifying these very, very harmful ideas. And I think it's also important to recognize that these things are also not happening in a vacuum, right? So we know that ⁓ interpersonal violence is something that many, many children are exposed to. And so when that has already been normalized from often a very, very young age in children,

And then as you're growing up and you're trying to make your way of like, how are you gonna be in the world? You're showing up, you've got these ACEs, these adverse childhood experiences that we know have long-term impacts on ⁓ children as they go into adulthood. There's data showing that these negatively impact people's health into their 80s and 90s, for example. But separately, these are also things that contribute in general to the cycle of violence. So when you have ⁓ people who've been exposed to violence, they've been victimized by

people in their own home ⁓ witnessed or experienced interpersonal violence and then are coming into their adolescence and adulthood and are finding this information, this perception as an incredibly normalized like, this person has a lot of followers, they must be right, right? Like there's all of these like short hands I think that ⁓ young people and adults make.

Arghavan Salles (27:35)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (27:42)
that this is a reliable source of wisdom and I can see how that is just going to fuel that cycle of violence ⁓ and I can't imagine why nobody wants to sleep with Nick Fuentes. mean holy moly sir sir sit down.

Arghavan Salles (27:45)
Mm-hmm.

Well, he also says in the interview that

he finds women difficult. Anyway, ⁓ to your point, sorry.

Alyssa Burgart (28:05)
because there's so much

smarter than him? That must be really hard for him.

Arghavan Salles (28:09)
or maybe because they don't like being told that they should like being beaten. I mean, that's not exactly pillow talk, if you ask me. ⁓ But he also, or this is all happening, to your point, this is all happening when we have.

Alyssa Burgart (28:21)
Well,

Andrew Tate says you're not allowed to enjoy yourself anyway.

Arghavan Salles (28:26)
Yeah, I mean, you should not find any positivity whatsoever in women ⁓ except for like their ability to carry your baby. That's about it so that you can continue your genetic line since that's what really matters. That's what masculinity is, friends.

What I want to say in it, like building off what you were talking about for gender-based violence is that there was a big report that came out from the UN recently. It's about 140 women a day are murdered. And the majority of those are murdered by someone who knows us, either a family member or an intimate partner. And I think you already know, but our audience may not, that the number one cause of death for pregnant women in this country is homicide.

And so we definitely have a massive problem even today in 2025 with gender-based violence and people like this and Andrew Tate, by the way, because he's again, he explicitly talks about beating women up. And we all saw just harkening back to our short ditty conversation. I think many of us saw that clip of him kicking Cassie in the hallway of the hotel when she was trying to leave. So.

Gender-based violence to your point is like somewhat normalized, right, in our society. And then you have people like this with massive platforms doing it and talking about it and suggesting that it's normal and appropriate. So the last clip I wanna play, this is also from the Piers Morgan interview with Nick Fuentes earlier this week. Let's just listen to it and then we can talk.

You carry tampons in case your female friends get a period or something like it's crazy ⁓

So I saw this clip and I was like, how old is this person?

Alyssa Burgart (30:50)
I mean, he sounds like a child.

Arghavan Salles (30:50)
And

he sounds like a child and also period shaming.

Alyssa Burgart (30:55)
But

know what? But you know what? No. You know what? I'm gonna pause you because you know what? Actually, I'm raising a child. I am raising a boy. My son would not say that. I mean, this is ridiculous. This is less than... This is just so insane. Periods are just a normal part of having body ⁓ parts.

There's lots of things that are gross about human bodies and it doesn't change the fact that we need to take care of each other and like grow up. Did you not take like basic sex ed? I don't know what's, well, I don't know what state he's from. So I guess that's a good question.

Arghavan Salles (31:35)
Yeah, I mean, I my reaction to this was well, first thing that happened when I when I saw this was I was thinking back to when I was in college, I was dating a guy at the time and ⁓ we spent a lot of time at his apartment that he shared with a couple of roommates. And when I was on my period, one of his roommates complained about period products being in the trash in the bathroom. And it was like he actually had kind of like a tantrum about it. He didn't just complain like a tantrum about it and.

At the time, was, I mean, I was young and we were in a different era and it did make me feel bad, even though like what else was I supposed to do? There's nowhere else to put those things. ⁓ These are not flushable, the products that I was using, you know, like.

Alyssa Burgart (32:16)
Well, because somebody,

you were shamed.

Arghavan Salles (32:20)
Yes, and to that person's credit, actually a few years later, he came and apologized to me about that. But here we are, whatever, almost 30 years later, and we have this guy, 27 years old is how old he is, by the way, 27 year old guy saying tampons are gross. I'm not even sure, genuinely I am not sure if he could tell a tampon from a pad. I don't know if he actually knows what these products are. I don't know what he thinks anyone is doing with a used tampon.

because nobody is handing them to you, bro, unless you have some sort of kink, but like, why does the blood in a tampon matter to you?

Alyssa Burgart (32:57)
I mean, tell

me, it just is like, tell me you don't actually know any women or have any women friends. I mean, that's all this whole conversation is. And the fact that he's being platformed by these exceptionally, you know, already platformed people, it's just, I mean, at least Piers Morgan like pushed back on him being such a tool bag.

Arghavan Salles (33:18)
Yeah, I particularly love the high pitched, really? After he said like, you've actually seen them? Really? Like the incredulity ⁓ on Piers's side, I did appreciate that. Again, not a Piers Morgan fan, not defending him in general, but I did appreciate that. And like, how low is the bar if Piers Morgan is the good guy?

You know?

Alyssa Burgart (33:43)
It's

low. It is fucking low. How low can you go? How low can you go? How low ca-

Arghavan Salles (33:46)
yeah it's so low that it's that easily cleared.

so but the reason i wanted to share that is yes i agree he he clearly does not have close relationships with women and just the immaturity of trying to say having periods is gross i mean i think we all know right like that's

the reproductive cycle without menstruation. have, menstruation is a result of ovulation when the egg wasn't fertilized. If we don't have ovulation, then we can't make babies. If we don't make babies, we can't, ⁓ you know, continue the human race, which at sometimes I'm like, do we need to, do we want to? I don't know, that's separate question. But there's this whole like, you know, the Republicans saying we are under-babied and now he's trying to make

Alyssa Burgart (34:23)
But like, ew.

Arghavan Salles (34:32)
like periods, periods exist because that's part of how we have our fertility. That's how we make babies.

I can't believe I have to say this to like a 27 year old and whoever his audience is. But I am here to say that I am not here for period shaming. we are, that needs to be behind us. know, like in the Lion King, put the past behind you. That has got to be in the past. needs to stay in the past. Like we are not doing that here in 2025, almost 2026.

Okay, so connecting back to the Pew data, I wanted to share these examples so people can hear like what is actually being said.

like in the public sphere about women and girls and how impressionable young people react to that. So if you're a girl, I can just think back to myself as a youth, hearing this stuff, it's terrible. I don't wanna hear people saying that I wanna get beaten up, it makes me scared, right? And then to say that like my natural body functions are gross, it's also disparaging and demoralizing and it does not make me want to be close to men.

Alyssa Burgart (35:35)
I mean...

Yeah, I mean, I gotta be honest with you. What this all smacks of to me is my experience of being a teenager in the 90s. mean, these characters that you've brought to light, these personalities that are, they have these massive platforms that didn't exist in the 90s. But this rhetoric to me, this is late 90s anti-feminism that has gone and just skyrocketed.

Arghavan Salles (35:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I 100 % agree. And I think that's what these young girls are reacting to, at least in part. I'm sure they're seeing a lot of other information too. They're seeing the attacks on reproductive rights and the calls to, not just from Nick Fuentes, but from our government to revoke women's rights to vote, all these different attacks on women and feminism. I'm sure young girls are reacting to that too.

and then for these men to be like, no, what a disaster, is a little funny to me. Because like, what did you think was going to be the consequence of suggesting that women shouldn't have rights and that we shouldn't have jobs and that careers, women, yes, we've talked about multiple times, women are ruining workplaces. Like, what do you think is the consequence of all of that? Is that women don't want to be associated with people who don't see us as humans.

Alyssa Burgart (37:00)
feel like I guess if you haven't experienced a lot of consequences in your life you may not have seen these coming.

Arghavan Salles (37:10)
I know that it's like the consequences of our actions. There they are right in our face and yet we will blame everyone other than ourselves for them. And I think that's hard too. I think it's really hard for women and girls to see like, I don't know if you see these videos, but I see them on my algorithm, like all these young women and girls trying to date and the...

terrible, terrible experiences they have, not just on the apps, but out in the world with young men and boys. And they're just like, I cannot do this. It is not worth my time to do this. I wanna have peace. I don't wanna go out and meet someone with the hope of like, maybe there's something there and then just be disrespected and dismissed. Who wants that? Nobody wants that. And instead of taking that as,

Alyssa Burgart (37:59)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan Salles (38:03)
feedback, these kinds of folks who have platforms and are speaking, whether it's on Twitter or their podcast or whatever, are blaming women and girls for being less interested in these relationships instead of asking, why is this no longer desirable? Why are men no longer attractive to women who would self-identify as heterosexual? Instead of asking those questions of what has gone wrong,

they lean more into women are terrible, know, sex is bad, like whatever, all these things. Because that's what's available to them and that's what's easy and that's what the algorithms feed them. And that ultimately is creating this massive divide in our society. And I worry about it because I believe in community and I believe we all need community even outside of romantic relationships. But when

Half of the population is not available to you for that. That's very limiting. And it looks like to me a bleak future if we can't kind of figure out how to bridge across this divide.

Alyssa Burgart (39:09)
Yeah.

Did you, this is just reminding me of a book I read a while ago. Did you ever read ⁓ Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism? Do you read this book? It's by a scholar named Kristin Godse and ⁓ I'm not sure how to pronounce her name so I apologize if I've gotten that incorrectly. But it's about a bunch of research that was done between when Germany was still divided and so you had East and West Germany and so you had like the, you know,

Arghavan Salles (39:23)
I did not. Tell me about it.

Alyssa Burgart (39:45)
socialist and it's open in its criticism of socialism as well, but really saying like, know, between a capitalist approach in relationships and a socialist approach and how that impacts relationships. So how is it that like sort of the culture that you're raised in influences what your expectations are in relationships and in particular in, you know, cisheteronormative relationships? And so they talk about how, you know, under socialism, there are certainly a lot of issues that

that the book touches on, but that when your basic needs were met, didn't look, know, people weren't looking for a man because he had economic

Arghavan Salles (40:24)
you

Alyssa Burgart (40:25)
advantage, because he was going to provide. Your needs were met. And so the things that those folks were looking for in a romantic relationship and in a partnership were much more clearly like intimacy, partnership.

you know, positive relationship, respect, mutual respect and dignity. And so that when, it's fascinating when the wall came down, apparently, you you had this mixing of people who had been raised in such different economic cultures and the ways that ⁓ men who had been raised in this sort of capitalist expectation where their value was related to their economic offerings, that it was like,

Arghavan Salles (41:09)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (41:09)
their money, their job, their prestige, those were the things that were valuable, would then meet women who had been raised in the socialist context who were like, who cares? I don't need you for that. That's not what I'm looking for at all. And I feel like so much of this conversation around ⁓ gender and economic independence and trad wives and the sort of mystical ideal that were being sold that like somehow it was better off when

Arghavan Salles (41:23)
Yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (41:38)
you girls didn't have to have a job and it was so much better when a man provided for you and you were submissive. And I think that ⁓ women are, young women it sounds like, are noticing that those things don't make a whole lot of sense for them.

Arghavan Salles (41:55)
I think that's right.

Alyssa Burgart (41:55)
in addition

to obviously not wanting to get murdered.

Arghavan Salles (41:59)
I know how selfish. ⁓ there was, ⁓ when I was looking into this for a post I had made on Instagram, I came across an example that I think is really telling of kind of what young people are experiencing. So there was ⁓ a woman who posted, no, but here's an excerpt of a letter from the girls at my high school addressed to school administrators written one year before I started high school there. The sooner everyone accepts, I'm not endorsing the statement, the sooner everyone accepts that little boys are actual monsters, the sooner we can start problem solving. The reason she's saying that is,

What happened at her school was that boys had created accounts for their classmates, their girl classmates on Pornhub and other similar sites, and then made up usernames for them that ⁓ I'll see if I can say a couple of them. They're disgusting, but we'll share a link to this. ⁓

The usernames, this is what the email says, the usernames written for girls and LGBTQ plus students were particularly disgusting, attacking their physical appearance, religion, sexuality, race and gender identity. And then this is the letter that was ⁓ sent to school administrators that she was referencing. ⁓ OK, so they're terrible. I trigger warning. They're really terrible. So like one is ugly monster bitch. One is dirty ass whore. One is a

I'm these are terrible, dirty terrorists. ⁓ One is ugly forehead. I'm skipping the overtly racist ones. Anyway, so that's what a lot of girls are contending with. And so...

I want to acknowledge, I just want to acknowledge that things aren't great for boys either. Like I'm fully aware. I mean, I've looked at a lot of the data around this and I have long written about gender and said that we are not as a society doing service for boys. We're not serving boys and men well because of the rigidity of patriarchy and the definitions of masculinity that are outdated and rigid and make it hard for

Alyssa Burgart (43:42)
Well, yeah.

Arghavan Salles (44:11)
boys to know how to channel their feelings, right? We tell them as a society, we tell them the only appropriate expression of emotion for boys is anger. Whereas girls are allowed sadness, right? We're allowed frustration. We're allowed a wider range, even though we're treated terribly regardless, but there's a wider range of acceptable emotionality outside of the workplace. Of course, women aren't allowed to be emotional at all at work, because if we do that, then we're problematic. But boys... ⁓

We have such narrowly described views as a society about what it is to be a boy, what it is to be a man, that they aren't allowed free range of expression. And this is, some of these things that we're seeing are a consequence of that. So I do wanna for sure acknowledge that this isn't a conversation about how boys are terrible and let's start over, but it's what happens in our society as a consequence of these rules that we have constructed.

These are made up, right? There's nothing innate here. There's ⁓ inexorable about the way our society is. We have designed it this way, and this is the consequence of that.

Alyssa Burgart (45:23)
Yeah, and you know, again, as somebody who's trying to raise a boy to be a nice adult, ⁓ it is really hard to try to not, you know, it's so easy to fall into some of these things and. ⁓

It requires so much constant tending, I think also as a parent, and I think a lot of parents are not aware of these dynamics and are not, you know, the study of gender is not typical. We obviously are having a very difficult time in this country right now, having any sort of conversations around gender and what does that mean and all of these societal norms that you're referencing. And,

Again, when we think about the cycle of violence and what you said about boys having really only one acceptable emotion, you can see as well how that very easily ⁓ just throttles that cycle over and over again to just keep that wheel spinning and then generation after generation of harm happens.

Arghavan Salles (46:26)
Absolutely. then you have things like we've talked about before, ⁓ men on the aisle about to say their vows and they're holding up something that says, help me. the ways that those messages of ⁓ how men shouldn't want to be with women get reinforced in all sorts of different ways. And young girls and women see that too. Why would we want to put ourselves in a position where we're going to be humiliated at our own wedding? And then this person, ⁓

on Twitter had said, I miss the days when a wedding was the last time you'd see a woman in public. And it's easy to write off these things as, you that's just one person, why make a big deal about it? But these are messages that are repeated everywhere on every platform, everywhere you turn around. And for young girls, I think it's understandably disheartening to see that kind of stuff. And then you say, you know what, I'm just gonna stay in my safe place. I want one more piece of data and then we'll probably wrap up this.

conversation, there was ⁓ some survey data ⁓ for folks in a few different countries, Canada, Republic of Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. ⁓ and sorry, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and some other countries, for people of adults of various ages. And what they found looking by generation ⁓ was that the divide on these questions that they asked about gender was the largest for Gen Z.

than as compared to the previous generation. So they asked, for example, I define myself as a feminist, what percent of boys and girls or men and women agree. And for Gen Z, that was the largest gap, 32 % of men and 53 % of women. They asked whether men are being expected to do too much to support equality. And again, the largest gap being among Gen Z where it was 80, sorry, 60 % of...

male ⁓ respondents agreed that men are being asked to do too much, whereas only 38 % of female respondents said that. ⁓ And also they asked, we have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men. Men were far more likely than women to agree, especially among Gen Z. So, yeah, I know you're laughing because to us it's absurd, right? Because we study these things, we talk about these things.

all the time and so we fully understand how wrong it is to believe that men are expected to too much because the expectation is so low. We were just talking about how low the bar is. It's extraordinarily low. We're like praising Piers Morgan for saying women deserve equal rights. Like that's where the bar is. But that's the world that we're living in and it's terrible. It's terrible. And okay, the last thing I wanna say about this whole discussion is

Alyssa Burgart (49:13)
bad.

Arghavan Salles (49:20)
You when we were, when you and I were growing up, if you watched like rom-coms, you watched TV shows, right? The most common narrative about relationships was that women wanted to tie men down. Like it was the ball and chain, right? Marriage was a ball and chain. Women wanted these relationships and men were trying to escape them, right? Like they didn't want to be restricted by these darn women and trying to like catch them in some sort of trap. And the reason I mentioned that is,

At that time, nobody was saying it was disastrous if women were more likely to want to be married than men. Nobody said that. Nobody said it was bleak for society. But now that the data are swapped and women are less interested in marriage than our men, those are the words that are being used. Catastrophic, bleak, disastrous. So why was it okay for women to want something that men didn't want, but it's not okay for men to want something that women don't want?

Alyssa Burgart (50:13)
No, because it was...

Yeah, it was completely normalized, completely normalized that this is just, you know, love crazy girls. They're just looking for their MRS degree.

Arghavan Salles (50:32)
That's right. Yeah, I still haven't gotten an MRS. know, I'm 45. Maybe it'll still happen. I'm not vetting on it.

Alyssa Burgart (50:32)
Give me my medical degree.

Arghavan Salles (50:42)
Anyway.

I hope this was interesting to discuss. I think it's a massive problem that we're gonna probably revisit because it's just so integral to the dynamics of our society and affects every aspect of ⁓ things like including our political sphere and also what happens in healthcare and everything else that we care about.

Alyssa Burgart (51:12)
Well, Argavan, I think there's never been a better time than for us to say, take two and call me in the morning. What are you taking this week?

Arghavan Salles (51:20)
Okay, so what I've been really loving is, again, going back to our Diddy documentary conversation, there's a scene in the documentary where they show Diddy at the, I think it was the MTV Awards, after Big had died, Notorious B.I.G. had died. If folks remember that song, this was very popular when you and I were young, ⁓ where he uses, Diddy uses ⁓ Sting's...

music from every step you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you and makes it like a, it dedicates that song basically to Biggie about like how he misses him. If you watch the documentary, it comes off as quite disingenuous because there are theories that he was involved in the murder of Biggie. But this scene is at the MTV awards and Sean Combs is wearing an all-white outfit and he comes out with a series of very unusual

dance moves. And I don't know how else to describe it except for like, it's very jaunty and very, ⁓ it's really hard for me to find the words, but like much more chipper than you would accept, expect for a song that is about mourning someone. Okay. And so what people on the internet have been doing is filming themselves wearing white outfits, doing all sorts of things and using that music. And they're saying like,

point of view, your best friend just died, but you still need to make dinner. And so they go through Costco and they're wearing a white outfit and doing this sort of dance. And people are so creative and funny. The one that I just saw, hold on, which one was the last one that I saw? I have several screenshots because they're so good. And we'll put a link in the notes. I think it's on my other phone, I'm sorry. One was point of view, your scar celebrating Mufasa's death.

So good. From The Lion King.

Anyway, we'll put links in the show notes, but that trend, it makes me laugh every single time because people are so funny. And it is just such an absurd thing that he, anyway, that's part of the Diddy documentary situation. He capitalized off Biggie's murder in really terrible ways. Anyway, what's bringing you joy? Or what are you taking, I guess, this week?

Alyssa Burgart (53:45)
I don't know if you've seen it or not, there has been a clip that's been going around of this lawyer who's like, he looks like he's wearing a very expensive suit and he has like, you know, fancy glasses. And he's talking about how being a lawyer is so much harder than being a doctor. And it's so much harder than being a pilot because, you know, the law is so adversarial. And, you know,

when you're a doctor you don't have like an opponent and the clips that have been made to this are just delicious for one but the one that I think is my favorite is it switches and it's a stitch and it goes to this physician who turns on the like I don't know if it I'm not a football person but my husband watches a lot of football but there's this like da da da da da da da da and they're always playing it on TV when the

Arghavan Salles (54:32)
Da da da da.

Alyssa Burgart (54:36)
when the commentators are talking about the players. And so he's like, I'm going to give you my top five. And it's like, number one, long standing person in the game, RFK Jr. And, you know, just goes through his list of like the top five things that physicians are constantly battling against in the provision of care. And I just, laughed so hard, I almost peed my pants. So.

Arghavan Salles (55:01)
That's awesome. I think I did see that and I thought it was brilliant. And I also think this idea that like what profession is harder is just silly. I think they've all got their unique challenges and I don't know what the point of the whole conversation was. ⁓ Anyway.

Alyssa Burgart (55:13)
It's so silly.

Arghavan Salles (55:17)
That's it for this week's episode. If you didn't like what you heard, this has been the Huberman Lab. If you liked it, please don't forget to subscribe or follow The Present Illness, leave us a review or at least a rating and tell literally anyone you know to tune in.

Alyssa Burgart (55:33)
You can follow us on all the places we are on TikTok and Instagram at the present illness to stay on top of all of our TPI related news.

Arghavan Salles (55:41)
We will be back next week with more headlines, hot takes, and doom scrolling, hopefully wrapped in some laughs.

Alyssa Burgart (55:47)
Until then, agitate, hydrate, and take a nap. We'll see you next time on The Present Illness. Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart. Editing by Alyssa Burgart. Social media by Arghavan Salles. And original music by Joseph Uphoff. Don't take medical advice from random people on a podcast. This shows for informational purposes. It's meant to be fun, and it's certainly not medical advice.

So please take your medical questions to a qualified professional.