Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…I think the sign is smaller than we think it is. I think that there’s this tendency to assume that sexuality is something that we find and keep, and consolidate from our teenage years, maybe early 20s. You maybe get university thrown in, sort of if you get your experimental year as an undergrad. But then, you kind of have to choose. And that is a difficult requirement, I think, for a lot of people, because you can’t possibly know all of the things and all the people you might be interested in at that point. And we change in every other way. Why wouldn’t we change in this way? So I think giving ourselves also the ability to reappraise where we’re at with our own sexuality, our own desires, our own relationship status, all these things, is important to keep us happy and healthy, and to not run into issues that we know are faced by a lot of homosexual but also bisexual people. Research has found that bisexual people are more likely to self-harm. They’re more likely to be the victims of sexual violence, more likely to be isolated, more likely to be stalked. There are lots of different aspects of being bi that are negative, and the reason for that is mostly because bi people are least likely to be plugged into the community. So when you’re going through stuff like this, and you feel different, and you’re constantly being asked about your sexuality, if you’re open about it, or you’re hiding it, that’s also troubling. You’re going to have these negative consequences, especially if you don’t feel like the queer community is really a place for you. So that’s where also finding your people really matters. Since we’re on the topic of sexuality, one of the things you touched on in your book on evil was kinks, sexual fantasies. I think the point of describing that was that we often label that as evil or bad. What can you say about what you’ve learned from kinks and sexual fantasies from writing that book? The reason I included kinks and evil and sexual conversations in general is because it is so often thrown into the same conversation. So if someone comes to me and says, “Julia, I want you to help me explain why this person killed this other person.” And they’ll often say, “Did you know that he or she was also into,” insert kink here, or insert nontraditional relationship structure here, or insert whatever. And I respond to that by going, “Okay, so?” And I think people use these words like, “Oh, he was really into BDSM,” and think that that’s going to have this really important impact on me. Or, “Ooh, they were swingers.” And so… And again, I go, “Yeah?” That’s, you know, almost like, “And in other news, they were swingers.” It’s like that is not related to this crime at all, unless, you know, one of the partners was killed. But people see this as a defect of character, and kink is very much seen as a defect of character in many circles, especially in broader society. And that is wild to me because if you look at research on sexual fantasies and kinks, a lot of people have at least one. So a lot of people, BDSM being the most common, are engaging in or interested in BDSM. So things like choking or things like restraints or being degraded or doing the degrading of other people in bed, consensually of course, that is something that a lot of people fantasize about and a lot of people engage in. And so these kinks and these fetishes, they are much more commonplace than we sometimes think about them as. Now, on the other hand, we obviously need to be careful not to assume that because in pornography BDSM is almost ubiquitous, it feels, that that means everybody wants this. That is absolutely not the case, but we also don’t want to marginalize it and say it’s almost nobody. It’s somewhere in between, and the main thing is always just to ask and to have open conversations about what it is that people actually want in bed and to make sure you have things like safe words. So, you know, putting in the restraints to make sure that these interactions are safe and consensual and then being able to explore. And, I mean, there’s everything from, you know, pup play where you dress up as a puppy and you engage in either just general frolicking or sexual behavior to other things like blood play, which is when you pierce the skin to release some sort of blood. That can be scratching. That can be cutting. That can be of yourself or your partner. That can be this idea of, you know, I don’t know, it’s this taboo thing you’re doing together, and it’s sexy in its own way. And so everybody has their own versions of what they find attractive. And rubbing up against people, you know, sort of unsuspecting, pretending that someone’s sleeping. There’s this wide range of things, and I think people also feel often deeply ashamed about the things that they are interested in.…

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