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Hey. I'm so sorry. Have we met before? Uh, I don't think so. Do you want to meet me? Sure. Maybe. Would you want to? I mean, I'm not doing anything right now. What are you up to? Um, I'm just walking around doing nothing really. Do you want to grab coffee right now? Sure. Yeah, we can do that. Great. Let's go. I know a place over here. Okay. Dating has never been exactly easy, but in today's America, it may be more fraught than ever. There's now so many opportunities to meet the right person. And yet, for many Americans,
it's just not working. Almost half say that over the last 10 years, dating has gotten more complicated. Sex is at a record low, and about half of people under 30 are single, including a staggering 60 plus% of young men. In this series, we're taking a global look at what's gone wrong with dating. For this second episode, we're in the US. I don't really quite know how to navigate late 20s guys right now. They've been a little evil. It just seems like men and women hate each other. To meet the people who blame new turns in politics. I think what we're seeing is the backlash of like the me too movement.
I find liberal women to be inherently selfish. Like they'd be more than happy to have an, you know, an abortion. And talk to those pushing more traditional values. So what do you think the solution is to all this? The solution is Christ. I'm starting in New York City, a place with seemingly endless opportunities to meet the right person. How would you characterize dating in the United States right now? Very silly. A lot of people focus on a lot of external factors like, you know, how much money you have.
Women care more about like status and money. Very like materialistic things. What do you want out of dating right now? What's the goal right now? Um, definitely something serious eventually. I want to think about like when am I going to have kids and when am I going to get married? But I think a lot of men don't necessarily have to think that way. What for the goal of dating? I don't know. Marriage, kids, is that important to you? Yeah, I think so. Uh, I'm not in a rush, though. Do you all feel like it's better to avoid dating men right now?
Yeah, with men you don't feel that intensity or that romance at all. Even though I like I hate that I'm attracted to them honestly. Like it's really crazy. Like women have a tendency to group all men in one category. Both genders are like not willing to meet the other side. I honestly think a lot of it started with like the meto rhetoric and then the incel rhetoric. You're just going to have to train them like a dog. Yeah. He had to put a leash out of there's this concept called hetereroatalism which I think can be summed up with the joke that you know sexuality you know sexual orientation isn't a choice
because straight men and straight women hate each other. I feel like a lot of straight people treat their sexual orientation like a curse. The emergence of dating apps and their illusion of infinite constant choice seems to have deepened men and women's disappointment with one another. I've come to Brooklyn to meet Dora, a 27-year-old singleton. Hi, come on in. She has a successful career managing restaurants and even owns an in-unit washer dryer, a holy grail in New York.
I mean, who wouldn't want to date this? This is like as good as it gets. How is dating in New York City going for you? In some ways, it's really challenging and in some ways it's really easy. If I wanted to be having sex with someone tonight, I could probably figure that out because there's so many apps, there's so many people around and everyone is just like, if you're looking for something that's more serious or even just more connected, it's really hard to find that right now. Do you think that the emergence of dating apps has led people to be less serious, to play the field more? 100%. I for guy friendss of mine, they're like, "We're looking through these apps and it's like beautiful woman after beautiful woman and like the
minute you match with someone, it's like, well, I might there might be an even more beautiful person or someone that's even better for me right around the corner." Like with someone that I'm seeing right now, we've been seeing each other for 5 months. It feels like every time I um like say something sweet to him or like offer something that's like a little sweet or a little tender, literally he stops texting me for a month. I'm not even kidding. Like yesterday I was like, you know, I'm driving by your house. If you want to come over, I can pick you up and you can do your laundry at my place while we hang out. So nice.
I know. I thought it was a really nice offer. He went silent immediately after I said that and I was like, I don't think I'm going to hear from you for four weeks now. I really don't. And that is a very nice thing to offer. For the record, I thought it was pretty casual and ex literally I was like, I have in this oversaturated dating market, a new approach to dating is growing increasingly popular. Politically polarized apps like The Right Stuff are geared towards conservative people only based on the idea that they will agree on what men and women should want in life and from each other. The other night I went out with this guy and I was like, "What are your thoughts on kids?" And he said, "I'm not
going to have any kids. I feel like it's the worst thing you can do for the environment." Now in-person events are popping up, too. We're here on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to attend an event called Make America Hot Again. It's where young conservatives are hoping to meet and date other young conservatives in the city. For the people attending, this provides a, shall we say, safe space in a city renowned for its progressive youth culture and leftwing politics. You know, everyone always says conservatives are lame, conservatives are stuffy, and I'm trying to give it a chill, fun, welcoming vibe.
Why do you feel the need to do this here in New York City? It's kind of a famously blue place. Yeah, I really live for the drama. Honestly, it's just honestly I knew everyone would hate it and so many people comment being like, "Get out of here. You can't be here if you're conservative." The reality is that these are people who have to live in New York City and everyone says, "Well, leave. Go to a red state." Well, that's just not possible for everyone, right? You're still single. Sometimes you're sometimes single. What for you are your political deal breakers? What does a man have to do or have to believe in politically for you to be in a partnership with him? For me personally, there are certain things like the way I
want to raise my kids, you know, for example, I'm not pay I'm not contributing to the house. What do you mean? Like you pay for that. My money is for like shopping and fun things. Like my money goes towards a purse fund, you know. I think what we're seeing is the backlash of like the me too movement because me too did need to happen to some extent, but what happens is when you go too far in any direction, it's it's it's a slingshot, right? So it's almost it's going back this way now. here. That backlash means a return to what some might call traditional family values. I was on a date, for instance, with a woman who I thought was great. Checked off a lot of my boxes, but ended up, you know, talking about toxic masculinity
the entire date. And, you know, I ended up paying for the entire date. I'll just give it to you straight. I don't want a man that paints his fingernails. Like, I personally want like a masculine man. somebody who wants a family, somebody who wants uh to get married, somebody who wants a house with a white picket fence. Unfortunately, liberal women look at having family as a burden. Uh they look at marriage as part of like patriarchy or as some nonsensical rationale. I would like a man to have enough testosterone to be able to provide not only just financially but spiritually and just as that father figure. I find liberal women to be inherently selfish.
Like they'd be more than happy to have an, you know, an abortion if they so chose, which doesn't sit well with me. They have very stringent ideas about what gender should be and how people should enact being a man or a woman. And it's very difficult to live up to those very strict ideals. That's why there's an entire movement, several movements to loosen those ideals. Really, this isn't so surprising. In US history, any rapid expansion of women's rights and visibility has tended to trigger a backlash from the right. Over the last 50 years, women have become far more financially, culturally,
and politically independent. The Me Too movement then triggered a mass reckoning of the ubiquity of sexual violence, which is usually directed against women. American women used to have to rely on their husbands for money and protection. But now that they have far more power, the role of marriage and of now partners is no longer as clear-cut. It was time to get an expert opinion. Dr. Justin R. Garcia is an evolutionary biologist and the head of the Kinsey Institute, the world's preeeminent sex research center. I mean, one of the things that we've encountered in talking to people is that men and women are
saying that the other gender is just impossible to deal with at this time, which I think, you know, men and women have always said this about one another. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, etc., etc. But it does seem like there is in particular a like political frustration. In just a few decades, we have radically changed the gendered expectations around uh family formation, parenting, but that's also true of relationships and courtship. That extends to all aspects of our relationships. Uh what do you expect on a first date? Who pays for a bill? Overall, people still expect men to pay for bills more than women. But at
the same time, women are much more cautious than in the past about what that means in terms of any expectations. So maybe you paid for our dinner, but it doesn't mean I'm going to kiss you tonight. We're also seeing the expectations of the what you want out of your partner in a relationship. Do you want someone who's going to support you? Do you want someone who's going to support your career? Um who's doing domestic work? Who's that's that's changing and many people would say for great reasons. It's causing more egalitarianness in our relationships. Um, but it also poses challenges. We expect more out of relationships today than people have in past generations.
So, we expect that our partners are the person who desires us when we walk in the door. They're the person that wants to have sex with us. That they are going to fulfill all of our emotional needs. So, when you look to your partner to be the person who solves all of this, it doesn't matter if they're a man or a woman or you're heterosexual, you're gay or lesbian. What we see is that people of all sexual orientations are struggling with these same challenges. Outside of New York City, some communities are trying to solve the commitment crisis by rewinding the clock to a time when couples met in person and often in church. We have left New York City and we are in Georgia to go to a weekendl long event
called the cool Christian singles and Married retreat. A lot of the people attending this event have tried secular dating and found that it just wasn't working for them. A core message of the weekend is embracing traditional gender roles as prescribed by biblical verse. He's the head of the home not because he's smarter than you because there are many women smarter than the men. Not because he's stronger. Trust me, there are some men that can be beaten up by their wives. The only thing that makes us to head is because God said so. And remember that kind of submission does not mean subsient in a way that is so bad that you start becoming subjugated.
That's not what it means. Women sometimes blame their hormones. When your hormones are acting up, I get it. I'm not saying that you don't have pain, you don't have anything. I'm talking about this to women especially because I've heard that excuse so many times. I'm a woman. You know, I'm a woman. You shouldn't treat me. What they doing is playing the victim card at that particular time. We headed out for a workshop designed to help men with techniques on how to approach women on the street. The women, y'all got to approach a man the way that y'all would want a man to approach y'all. So, a lot of times when you made the
statement of why men in America don't approach because we don't want to feel overbearing. I'm a big guy. I'm 6'4", 248 lbs. Pulling up on a female that's this big is scary. My name Rico. What's your name? What's I call you beautiful. There you go. Thank you. I like that. Excuse me. Is that you text? Sweet. Excuse me. Hi. Yeah. You look really nice. You're welcome. Oh, thank you. You're beautiful girl. Really? Yeah. You're good. I want to get to know you. And then it was my turn.
Would you want to? I mean, I'm not doing anything right now. What are you up to? Um, I'm just walking around doing nothing really. Do you want to grab a coffee right now? Sure. Yeah, we can do that. Great. Let's go. I know a place over here. Okay, cool. As night fell, I went to speak with Nomi about the ideology behind his approach. Do you think that there's anything unique about dating and trying to get married in the United States today? Yes. Um, in the United States, there's a lot more freedom in some sense, and there's also confinement in that sense. So, it's like
I want to do something, but I'm a guy and I'm scared of so many things. And then there's the feminist movement as well, which comes in and models the world in terms of that. And there's the masculine movement as well in retaliation to that. Yeah. So there's that conflict. So the dating becomes mechanical. It becomes like a quick fix and we're gone. Quick fix meaning like a date or like sex? Like sex. Yeah. So just come have sex. Oh, okay. We're done with that. Let's move on to the next phase. Do you think the feminist movement has complicated relationships negatively?
Yes. Because then we've weaponized something that should have been sacred to women and that's not fair on the men. We're supposed to be complimenting each other. You're bringing your feminine energy into the whole thing. I know that the whole atmosphere of feminism, I've seen it thrown around even in the relationship setting and it's affected so many relationships itself. It sounds like Nami is explicitly saying what many people have tried to tell me that feminism is to blame for the state of modern dating. But to me, it sounds uncomfortably close to blaming women for speaking up about inequality.
Still, for the young people attending this weekend's workshop, leaning into traditional gender roles feels like the best route to finding a partner. The weekend's finale is a speed dating event. How are y'all feeling about tonight? I feel excited. I think that this is a beautiful experiment. I just like the sense of wanting to act it out and just like intentionally dress up. Does this feel like the opportunity to sort of turn any kind of flirting or interaction up to 11? Um, flirting, I don't know. Maybe more like signals.
I mean, hopefully I secure my man before next year. I can see why people want to retreat into tradition. It can make things feel simpler in a time of limitless choice, but it doesn't work for everybody, and it doesn't have to. Back in New York, there was one last person I wanted to catch up with. Hey. Hi. Nice to see you. You too. So, the last time we saw you, you were hanging out with a guy. Yeah. How did that turn out? You know, we are not talking anymore. He's in Europe right now like backpacking and finding himself. I was also in Europe for a second this fall and I kind of like put out an olive branch to see if he might want to hang
out. Radio silence. Some people seem to think that this commitment crisis, for lack of a better word, could be solved by men acting more like men stereotypically and women acting more like women stereot. Oh my god. I hope not. If having to dumb that part of myself down is what I would have to do to be with someone, I'm never ever going to do that in a million years. And I wouldn't want to be with that person anyway. I'd rather be like the strongest, most successful version of myself and single with amazing friendships and like deep relationships and filment fulfillment otherwise than pretend I'm this like very like docel subservient traditional Americana like
wifey figure. Um, just for someone to want me. I'm just going to hang with the girlies. it. Exactly. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm co-hosting a new Guardian show with Kai Wright. It's called Stateside with Ken Carter. We'll be interviewing big thinkers and Guardian journalists three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting May 13th. Catch us on YouTube or wherever else you get your podcasts.
