Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, Please welcome. That's the parrel.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, My pleasure. There are so many
Speaker 1: people who have seen your Ted talks about relationships. There
Speaker 1: are so many people who have radio articles about sex
Speaker 1: and the way we see sex in the world and
Speaker 1: how it applies to our daily lives. When you look
Speaker 1: at everything that has happened post Harvey Weinstein, what do
Speaker 1: you think we're learning about sex and power? Sex and
Speaker 1: power are interdependent, They are interconnected. There is power insex,
Speaker 1: and power can be sexy. But there's a difference between
Speaker 1: power two, which can be liberating and enhancing and affirming,
Speaker 1: and power over, which can be oppressive and hurtful. And
Speaker 1: the meaning what we are seeing today are abuse of power,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's a very different situation. When I
Speaker 1: write about infidelity, I write about a consensual story. When
Speaker 1: I look at assault and harassment, I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: criminal story. Those are very different realities. What has changed
Speaker 1: is less the accused and more the power of the accuser.
Speaker 1: Whenever people, children, women have been violated, they've worried that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be believed. And what it takes is people
Speaker 1: who have enough power to withstand the forces of denial. Wow,
Speaker 1: if you if you look at the conversations around sex
Speaker 1: and denial and the ideas that we all face. You know,
Speaker 1: some people would say sex is a subculture of what
Speaker 1: we do as human beings. You have an interesting view,
Speaker 1: and that is you. You see, our cultures and our
Speaker 1: society is through the lens of sex. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means that every culture, it's most rooted traditional archaic
Speaker 1: values are surrounding sexuality, t and its beliefs and attitudes
Speaker 1: about sex, and the most progressive radical changes also take
Speaker 1: place around sex. Every civilization tries to control sexuality, license
Speaker 1: and abstinence. You need some sex or there won't be
Speaker 1: a species. You can't have too much of it, or
Speaker 1: nobody shows up for work. But now, when when when
Speaker 1: you talk about the state of affairs in the book,
Speaker 1: especially infidelity, it's such a powerful topic, especially in America.
Speaker 1: You know, you just recently we saw a congressman where
Speaker 1: a tape came out of his infidelity and people asking
Speaker 1: questions around what does it mean? And you know, obviously
Speaker 1: he had said different things in public, but it really
Speaker 1: is a powerful position where the story was then flipped
Speaker 1: and people like is it about the woman or is
Speaker 1: it about the man? You speak about? How in many
Speaker 1: ways infidelity and the issues we're learning about now displayed
Speaker 1: to us the power dynamic and the way women have
Speaker 1: been oppressed for so long. How how do we learn
Speaker 1: that or how do we see that? So the first
Speaker 1: thing is infidity has never been a gender equal proposition.
Speaker 1: Men have practically had a license to cheat with all
Speaker 1: kinds of theories that justified why they have. It's in
Speaker 1: their nature to rome and women have faced dire consequences
Speaker 1: and still have nine countries where they can be killed.
Speaker 1: So this is about sex and power. Actually, Um, that's
Speaker 1: one of the big differences. Is what is changing today
Speaker 1: actually is that women are rapidly changing the infidelity gender gap.
Speaker 1: How how how are they? How are they doing that?
Speaker 1: And is that a good thing? Well, what it tells
Speaker 1: you is that women have basically behaved by virtue of
Speaker 1: the dire consequences of what could happen to them ostracism, pregnancy, destitution,
Speaker 1: and even death. And so once she has more economic independence,
Speaker 1: once she has no full divorce, once she can control
Speaker 1: her own reproduction, and she's no longer worried that the
Speaker 1: baby is going to come out nine months from now
Speaker 1: that whose color hair doesn't resemble hers, she may be
Speaker 1: more like you. You may learn more about her desire
Speaker 1: than you actually have learned about her throughout history, which
Speaker 1: has been her compliance. Now m hm. You hear stories
Speaker 1: of people saying like A good example is Mike Pants.
Speaker 1: Before the Harvey Weinstein scandal, everyone laughed at how Mike
Speaker 1: Pence would always bring his wife to a meeting if
Speaker 1: there was another woman, and he said, I won't be
Speaker 1: alone in a room with women, and people said this
Speaker 1: is this is madness. And then after Harvey Weinstein, people
Speaker 1: came out and said, well, you see, this is why
Speaker 1: he's doing it, to protect him from infidelity, to protect
Speaker 1: him from making these mistakes. Is that a good argument
Speaker 1: in how we should tackle these scenarios? But what what
Speaker 1: is the what is the argument? The argument is an
Speaker 1: age old argument that says men are biological creatures in
Speaker 1: perpetual in search of an outlet. They can't control themselves,
Speaker 1: and it is the woman who has to be his border,
Speaker 1: his boundary, and his full stop. The women's bodies need
Speaker 1: to be covered, hidden, haircut, your name it in order
Speaker 1: for him to be able to control his lustful urges,
Speaker 1: and she is helping him to do so because the
Speaker 1: poor man can't do it on his own. You know,
Speaker 1: if he's traysed, it's because of her, because she was
Speaker 1: so seductive, she was the temptress. You know, it's the
Speaker 1: poor man. He's never in charge of anything. He's got
Speaker 1: power of gallore, but he's never in charge of his
Speaker 1: own urges because she has to control them and not
Speaker 1: do what she didn't do a good job at it.
Speaker 1: That's that's an interesting point because I mean, we saw
Speaker 1: that in the election, you know, we saw people digging
Speaker 1: back into the world of bull and Hillary Clinton, where
Speaker 1: people went Hillary, she didn't leave her man, She's stuck
Speaker 1: with him. And and you talk in the book about
Speaker 1: how the shame has always shifted, but it is always
Speaker 1: on the woman. Shame used in what ways. So it
Speaker 1: used to be that divorce carried or the stigma. Today,
Speaker 1: especially for a woman, choosing to stay when you can
Speaker 1: leave is the new shame. So not only are you
Speaker 1: betrayed and you're ashamed of being cheated on, but on
Speaker 1: top of it, you have to lie about it because
Speaker 1: if you were to reach out to people, and especially
Speaker 1: if you choose to stay with that person, you are
Speaker 1: tripled under the triple accused. And it is more of
Speaker 1: a pressure on women because today that we choose their
Speaker 1: one and only, that notion that it shouldn't happen. I
Speaker 1: waited so long, I picked my soul made. When you
Speaker 1: deceived me, lye on me, cheat on me, etcetera, you
Speaker 1: shattered the grand ambition of love. It means I'm not
Speaker 1: your one and only after all. And affairs have always
Speaker 1: been painful, but now they have become traumatic. When when
Speaker 1: you talk about the State of Affairs in the book Rethinking,
Speaker 1: infidelity is a blasphemous term for many human beings. People
Speaker 1: will say as to how can your infidelity is the
Speaker 1: worst thing that could possibly happen. Anyone who cheats, anyone
Speaker 1: who's in a marriage where it ends because of cheating,
Speaker 1: is the worst human being possible. You argue something slightly different,
Speaker 1: not condoning, but arguing that they can be a good
Speaker 1: that comes from this. How So, I wrote The State
Speaker 1: of Affairs because I think that we need a new
Speaker 1: conversation for the oldest sin. Any audience, I could ask here,
Speaker 1: have you been a child whose parent was unfaithful or
Speaker 1: left for somebody else? Have you been the offspring of
Speaker 1: an illicit love? Are you the friend too that somebody
Speaker 1: has been weeping on, Are you the confidante? Or are
Speaker 1: you one of the three primary protagonists. In the end,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of dis audience will say that they have
Speaker 1: been affected by the experience of infidelity in their lives.
Speaker 1: So it's not a few bad apples, and for that
Speaker 1: we need a conversation that's more caring, more compassionate, and
Speaker 1: doesn't just reduce everything in black and white, which doesn't
Speaker 1: mean to say it's good, but it does mean to
Speaker 1: say that it is complex, and it has this that
Speaker 1: since marriage was invented, and so to the taboo against it,
Speaker 1: as as somebody who deals with couples, as somebody who
Speaker 1: deals with powerful men, as somebody who deals with a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories. I don't know if there's any
Speaker 1: right answer, But how do you see a way forward?
Speaker 1: You know? You see, like people go Harvey went to
Speaker 1: rehab and then checked himself out, and Kevin Space also
Speaker 1: went to rehab, and everyone's going to the same rehab.
Speaker 1: And in Congress they're investigating themselves and then they don't
Speaker 1: find anything, or they do, but it's done, and it
Speaker 1: seems like there's a quandary that people are now going like, well,
Speaker 1: what is the way forward? Is the rehabilitation? Should it
Speaker 1: be complete ostracization? Just from your point of view, do
Speaker 1: you think that there is something that we could be
Speaker 1: doing in society to restore power balance? Is there something
Speaker 1: that we could be doing to to to equalize how
Speaker 1: women are treated in all of these environments? But let's
Speaker 1: establish something the rehabs. There is no rehab for infidelity,
Speaker 1: you know. And this is a way of kindaby. We
Speaker 1: used to be in ful. Today we have illness and
Speaker 1: it is the new frame. So we can pathologize our behaviors,
Speaker 1: you know, and make ourselves be sick suddenly. But what
Speaker 1: is it? What is it actually that it's going to
Speaker 1: be treated in that place You're you're acting as criminally
Speaker 1: and you're going to get helpful. So um, I think
Speaker 1: that we have to separate these two and not the
Speaker 1: same reality the story of infidelity. What of the very
Speaker 1: important changes to this, you know, Interestingly, affairs have accompanied marriage,
Speaker 1: regardless of the model of marriage. They were part of
Speaker 1: the patriarchal marriage, they were part of the romantic marriage,
Speaker 1: they're part of the new self factualization. It always has existed,
Speaker 1: and it involves for us to ask questions about the
Speaker 1: transgressive nature of desire, not just about power. You know,
Speaker 1: I I when we think affairs, it's quick to think
Speaker 1: about your Congress guys. But I get a letter today
Speaker 1: of you know, my spouse has MSS. My spouse is bedridden.
Speaker 1: I'm taking care of my partner. I will never leave
Speaker 1: my partner, and I've had an affair for the last
Speaker 1: four years. That's a very different reality of infidelity. And
Speaker 1: to just make it be about people with no conscience
Speaker 1: and narcissistic people or people who, amongst the many things,
Speaker 1: have also been unfaithful doesn't help us understand the complexity
Speaker 1: of this very multifaceted experience of of of our humanity.
Speaker 1: Thankfully you wrote a book because it's one of the
Speaker 1: most fascinating conversations, So thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: on the shows. Is available now to draw your minds.
Speaker 1: We can also listen to cs thos podcast Where Should
Speaker 1: We Begin? On audible as the for All Everybody, The
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Speaker 1: Central podcast.