Tilly Middlehurst Reveals How She Prepared to Debate Charlie Kirk at Cambridge University

Tilly Middlehurst, thank you for coming down. I appreciate it. >> Thank you for having me. >> Charlie Kirk recently came over to Cambridge to debate students as he often does and he gets to pone them and own them and publish them on his channel. And he didn't get what he was hoping for because at Cambridge there was lots of students, one of them being yourself, who was prepared, very prepared. >> Does tearing down statues correspond to some kind of smiles per capita data set that I wasn't aware of? >> Again, it's like it's a little bit of a oneliner. And so the situation was essentially watching him have a bad time and then move on to the next person and have a bad time. And because of his performance not going so well, there's been lots of clips going viral, lots of people covering the content, including myself. And although lots of the students did well, your performance in particular is one of the ones that people have focused on with just widespread praise essentially, including from myself. And although I've done an analysis of the exchange that you had, which is completely external, it's what I think was going on here. We have the incredible opportunity to get inside your mind to understand how was you so prepared? How did you have these notes in front of you? He brought up certain data and you were like, boom, let me just here's my notes. Here's the reputation. And so maybe there's something you can teach us with how to interact with conservative figures like him who do very well in that limelight normally, but it went so catastrophic in Cambridge. And so my first question really is when you decided I'm going to go and have this chat, have this exchange with Charlie Kirk, >> did you have a goal in mind? >> I did. I think one of the issues that the left tends to have is that the left are more likely to lean academic in some capacity. So the left are more likely to have attended university. you have a lot of left-wing university professors. That obviously does feed into the idea of leftwing indoctrination camps being universities, right? I obviously think universities are sites of positive change and that's not just coming from me as a leftist. It's because I do believe in certain norms about free speech and about platforming certain voices that are important to platform whether or not they're conservative. And one of the reasons that is because I think that things like debating chambers are really important context within which you can challenge ideas that have become dangerous in some to some extent. I think Charlie Kirk's ideas are dangerous. And so my goal was to essentially say academics need to come to the forefront of public life at the moment. I'm not necessarily a fully fleshed out academic because I'm still in the course of my undergraduate study. I what I kind of imagined was imagine if my Cambridge supervisor stood in front of Charlie Kirk. What would he say and how would that interaction go? And so that was what I wanted his channel. That was the goal. Is it like you've been watching and seeing that a lot of the intellectuals won't actually participate with people like Charlie and you're thinking this isn't actually going well. We do need people to be able to stand up there and play the rhetoric game to actually get involved to actually show the reputation so the world can see it. >> Yeah. I think for academics it's kind of a case of school's out for them. They they need to they need to leave their echo chambers. They need to enter the world of you know dangerous divisive politics. They need to kind of get their hands dirty a little bit and debate with figures who are not academics and not intellectuals in any capacity because that juxtaposition in and of itself is a powerful move. >> It is. Do you think that the academics are prepared for those kinds of discourse? So for instance, when they're having an intellectual argument, it's a very rigid set analytical framework. But when you're having a conversation with someone like Charlie, the dynamics are different. Rhetoric is more important. Winning the audience is more important. Do you think they're necessarily prepared for that or is that a different mindset that you need? >> I mean, you'd be surprised with the some of the charisma that I have seen just among some of my lecturers. I think that when you imagine an academic, it's some kind it's like an imaginary that doesn't necessarily manifest itself in reality. So, for example, when you have people like Charlie Kirk, what they will try and do is embody some some kind of stereotypical element of what it means to be an intellectual. So, he'll dawn a suit and he will say things like deoxo, whatever, you know, the full word for DNA. He will say that instead of just DNA, which nobody actually says. >> If you examine it under a deoxyorbucleic acid, >> and he'll say things like, "Oh, John Lock said Liberty is not license." And yeah, Betty Fredan, Gloria Steinum >> of Betty Fredan and Gloria Steinum and all these feminists. >> I mean, first of all, this is an incredibly outdated way to understand anything at all. He acts as these as if these ideas are like revolutionary and new and and dangerous. Um, so in one sense you have like the idea of an academic doesn't actually translate into what an academic means. So and and Charlie Kirk isn't the only example. You have Jordan Peterson who's excellent at this which is like this is an older white guy who's wearing tweed and he's and and he's saying what do you mean by believe? What do you mean by God? Like let's get into the semantics of what our words like what the language construction behind each thing means. And it's like that that's not real. That's fake. It's it's in your it's in your imagination. And academics can have a lot of disdain for that and they decide to push it away instead of saying here's what an academic actually looks like. It's someone who overwhelmingly tells is more likely to tell the truth, who is well researched, who has databased understandings of reality and who does have a little bit of charisma. Like if if you you have to capture the minds of students all day long, many of whom don't necessarily want to be there. Yeah. That's something that requires some some talent. It sounds like what you're saying is that in the absence of them putting themselves in that limelight of sinking that low, let's say, um they've allowed a co-op of what their image is to be dictated by their enemies. >> Yeah. >> So they're able to say, "Ah, these are like, you know, people that they're always getting semantic and they're fixated on sociology and gender or like they can just paint them in a certain way. Whereas if they actually got into the limelight, you would see the kind of situations which we saw just with the students and that is that here's the facts like let's go you know so like it's a matter of it sounds like you haven't seen enough of that. So you thought you know what I'll go do it. So you were very clearly prepared like so prepared that when Charlie was seeing that you were bringing up reputations immediately he was going oh can you just do it without looking at your phone >> and so without reading your phone and just like you know connecting >> because he would like bring up some statistics about like representation of women and you would immediately just go right here's the stats right in front of you incredible preparation at least it looks like it from an outsider's point of view including myself and I'm wondering what part of your preparation turned out to be the most valuable thing that you did and Is there anything in particular that you didn't prepare yourself for and had to act on the fly? >> The first thing to say is I wouldn't classify that as incredibly prepared. I checked my emails about 12 hours before going into the debate and saw that I'd been chosen to debate him. I was already familiar with his content and therefore I felt it was very easy to predict what he was going to say because one of the characteristics of conservative figureheads is that they are repetitive with their rhetoric so that it can be disseminated in a really effective way among huge groups of people. Because if you think about it, like even Zoran Mdani on the left did this really well. He was like fast and free buses, like cooperative grocery stores. Like I'm an English person who doesn't particularly care about what's going on in New York to the same extent that people who have a stake in New York would care about it. Except I knew Zoan Maddy's slogans off by heart because he was repetitive and he was efficient with it. So it was something that was quite easy to predict if you're familiar with that content like previously. So I didn't particularly have like tons of time otherwise I wouldn't have had notes, right? I would have just memorized it so that I could look as if I was on the same intellectual playing field as him. So that I didn't look like I had some kind of crutch. So but I was prepared in the sense of I knew what he was going to say and I had thought through my responses and and luckily he said everything that I predicted he would say. And is is it simply that you are ingrained in conservative mindsets so you were prepared to go I know what their talking points are so I've already equipped myself with he's going to bring up like suicide rates with women or he's going to like bring up you know this this or this and so that means that you you almost had a lot of the preparation there because you are someone that's you associate with the back and forth. know what their what their cards are. And as you said, they're very predictable. Like with Charlie, it was so predictable that as soon as you mentioned feminism, he was just like, "What is a woman?" Like he's got to hide it better in my opinion. Like he's got to play those cards a bit better. >> I I don't even want to take this detour, but can we both agree on what a woman is? >> Talking off uh feminism, that was an interesting opening from yourself. It was the first words that you said. You said, "Hey, I'm a feminist." And then you went from there. >> Oh, I'm a feminist. Um, >> this struck me as a quite an interesting opening gambit because saying that to a conservative or to his conservative audience, it's kind of like getting on stage and saying, "Hey, I'm woke." Or, you know, like another one would be, "Hey, I'm a communist." >> And what it does is it allows him to go, "Ah, enemy done. I can just get rid of you. I don't need to listen to you. I know you're my enemy from the from the beginning because of the tribalistic dynamics that happen." Is there a reason that you opened with this? Um, I'm curious. Yes, cuz Charlie thought I was a Republican and if he thought I was a Republican, he wouldn't go down the line that I knew he would go down. So, I had to make it clear that I was a feminist. So, I wore my America flag outfit. I was very friendly to him. I think he potentially cut this moment out, but I did go up to him and shake his hand and say, "It's nice to meet you." And he looked at my shirt and he went, "America." And he went, "America." That's what happened. And he laughed. I was like, "Absolutely." Like, it was this really strange moment. Then I went over and then I thought, "This is where he has his guard down. He's going to expect some reprieve. He's going to expect that I'm asking him for marriage advice." So I said I'm a feminist immediately. There was a second reason as well which is like way less strategic and it was just that uh previous the last thing that he had said before I walked up was that feminism is basically going to kill us all >> which is worst ideas ever which is modern feminism. >> So I walked up and I said so I'm a feminist and that's why everybody laughed because you know he literally just characterized white >> I'm the devil right so that's why it was a bit of a joke as well. >> Got you. to like a combination of the two and that's that's how that landed when it comes to the kind of debate formats that you was engaging in. Something that's quite peculiar is that you get to define the terms because each student comes up each person comes up and they get to ask the question which means you you kind of get to define what you want to talk about. That didn't work with Charlie. He took you exactly where he wanted to immediately which he was always going to do anyway. >> But your question specifically emphasized the role of women in public and private life and the material benefits of that. What should women's role in public and private life look like and what are the material benefits of that? >> And I'm wondering whether or not the words material is or the word material is something you specifically chose and why why that framing. >> It was specific framing because I feel like it will resonate with a lot of conservative women. So for example, if I said to Charlie Kirk, what's your advice for me as a woman? Then he might come up with something that's really poignant and he might say, "Start a family, have children, find your community, go to your local church, take root within some place that is important to you. You know, lean into your role as feminine." And what does feminine look like? It means that it means that you're nurturing. It means that you're compassionate. It means you have empathy. You can do things that men can't do. And I would say that's very compelling as a woman. That's very compelling to hear. However, if I said, "What does that look like?" And he said, "It looks like housework. It looks like it looks like submission. It looks like dominance from a man. It looks like you don't get to question him. You don't get to define your own terms. You get to follow a predetermined path that was set for you by a man, presumably a religious man who has certain interests that that don't coincide with your own interests, especially if he's taking some kind of fundamentalist approach to scripture. You know, if there's no room even for the hermeneutics game in evangelical Christianity, which we know." So it's like if I say to him, what does that look like to you? What are the material outcomes? What are the tangible things that women should be doing? And how does that benefit community? Then he doesn't have any room to add some purple pros to make it flowery. >> I see what you mean. So just to relay that back to you, it's you know that he has an answer that's going to sound emotionally compelling, but the actual materialistic elements of it is grotesque. So if you asked your question in such a way that he had to answer with the materialistic that forced him to be a to say something that he was never going to say which I assume you knew he's not going to be able to say he's going to have to pivot. He's going to have to do something because he's not going to give you the earnest answer of this is what it looks like because he knows it's not palatable to most people. It's not even palatable to most Christians in my experience. At least not in the UK. >> Yeah. I mean the moment he pivots as well that's that's he's down the track that I want because he's going to pivot to wiser women. Should transgender women be allowed in sports, immigrants, whatever? It's the same the the same spiel. >> So, is it that you knew that he would pivot and you wanted him to do it? >> Yeah. >> Interesting. Okay, cool. Talking of deflection, immediately he heard the word feminist and he bought it. You put the trap down and he went straight for it and he was like, "Oh, can we just agree on what a woman is? I don't want to take this detour, but can we just like take this detour?" >> I I don't even want to take this detour, but can we both agree on what a woman is? >> When did you clock that he wasn't going to engage? And it sounds like from what you're saying is that you knew from the very beginning because it's part of your preparation that you knew that he wasn't going to engage. >> There was a worry that that he would realize I'm coming to Cambridge and Oxford, therefore the students here might be a little bit more prepared than I'm used to. Therefore, maybe I should should do something materially to to change up the script. And so that's why I was a little bit worried. I was like, let me do everything within my capacity to ensure that he takes the details I want him to take so that I don't have to do that much preparation. So I was I was during my exam term so I didn't want to take that much time out to prep. >> Which when it comes to him and your worry about him being more prepared because it's Cambridge. >> Do you think that he did any more preparation? >> Tell me why. Why would he not do the extra research? >> Well, it's like if he thinks universities are left indoctrination camps, it doesn't matter if it's an Ivy or not or if it's Oxford and Cambridge or if it's like BYU. It doesn't matter like what kind of university it is. At the end of the day, it's a university and that's some kind of slight against God, right? So So it doesn't matter. Yeah. So, you felt like he just didn't need to prepare. In some sense, he's almost like a victim to his own propaganda and that's why he thought that it was going to be like, oh, it's going to be the same as debating at some, you know, small Christian college or something like that in Texas. When it came to explaining gender and the elements that are biological, the elements that are sociological, you gave the example of tribal tattoos. So let's say you're a member of a tribe and that in that tribe to uh you have the biological female anatomy and in order to become a woman in that tribe you have to also get a tattoo. That's a social experience that's mapped onto biological reality. >> This is what you chose to illustrate for social constructs. Why did you use that particular example? >> I used it because it feels far enough removed from people's everyday reality that maybe they'll be able to resonate with the analogy. So, for example, I could have got a lot closer to how we socially treat women versus men in society by saying, for example, if you saw someone walking down the street and you were unsure what their gender was, but she was wearing a dress and she had makeup on and she was speaking in a high voice and there were markers that you could see, potentially not necessarily directly biological, but there were a lot of social markers you could see. You would probably treat them as a woman. And therefore, what's the difference between treating someone as a woman and them being a woman if we agree that we can separate femaleness from womanhood, right? immediately, especially if they've already in that tribe, you have to get a tattoo to become a woman. That's kind of a social experience that's mapped onto your biology >> and sufficiently far removed. >> It's sufficiently far removed. >> That's interesting because that's that's what I do with so for example, when I bring up fallacies, I will give an example that is completely removed and it allows them to separate it and go, "Okay, I see the logical problem here. now I can apply it. So it's like it's interesting that you're using like a similar technique where it's like no let's go for something that's far enough removed that you can't really argue the point by conflating it or offiscating it with things that are in you know within our proxy within like our immediate vision. Now when you dropped the sociological perspective that you had Charlie just completely ignored it and he moved on. Do you think he he mentioned prostates? >> Can a woman have a prostate? which is to illustrate he wasn't listening to what you were saying because you were giving an example that is a socially constructed element not biological. Do you think that he genuinely didn't understand or that it's strategic on his part? >> It's strategic. He knows that there are social and biological markers that that make up womanhood because he doesn't he didn't check my chromosomes before he referred to me as a female. He didn't check my chromosomes before he implied that I would be a single cat lady and not a single cat non-binary person or a single cat man. So obviously he understands that the way we interact with gender is complicated. It's variegated. There's all kinds of things that go into it. But if he recognizes that, there's a few other things that he'll have to concede upon. Like for example, actually our biological differences aren't particularly compelling enough to then prescribe a whole bunch of roles that we ought to do. If your very makeup isn't designed by God such as to juxtapose with a man and vice versa, then what that means is maybe not all women are destined for housew like wifery for example. >> Yep. Exactly. Yeah. He need he needs that uh created by God framework. Yeah. >> Because without that there just isn't enough sexual dimmorphism in Exactly. And even if there was, you still can't do a normative claim on top of that. But so from his point of view, it's kind of smart in the sense it's like I can't follow you down that. I have to just make some joke and try and like strawman you or something along those lines. So, you expected it, but you still wanted to get the point out because it illustrates to the world that's listening that they can see it happen in real time. Would that be like a fair analysis of that? >> Yeah, I think so. I think my goal was potentially to just make it very clear that this is someone who doesn't really debate. This is someone who consistently pivots over and over again. And in so far as you can predict every single pivot because you know the things that they don't know, you know the rabbit holes that they can't go down. Otherwise, it would mess with their image. Then you you can follow them with. >> So, if you know your enemy well enough, you know where they can't tread. So, you can go around there and get a load of points. >> Yeah. >> And uh illustrate what you're trying to illustrate knowing that they can't actually. >> I just let him go there and that that's enough. >> That's fair. It's it's an observation that I've made from debating a lot of apologists, a lot of people like Stefan Molyneu for example. Like it happens in politics as well as religion. They almost have an incredible gift for not getting your point. And it's after so much time that I was like, well, this is either deliberate and in which case I'm accusing them of something nefarious or they're stupid or I'm really bad at communicating and after like so many times you're like, okay, it can't be the communication thing and I don't think they're stupid. So, it has to be that they are deliberately doing it. So, is that how you've come to like a confidence level of like I know that he's almost certainly doing it deliberately. >> He's obviously not an unintelligent person. I'm also never going to denigrate an opponent by saying that they're unintelligent. Like I would potentially say that they're illinformed or unprepared. I said at one point that Charlie Kirk is a drop out of community college and I got some flack for it, but it's just I'm stating a fact which is this is someone who's masquerading as an academic, but actually there are some requirements that you have to fulfill in order to have an academic background that's worthy enough for you to speak on certain things. And that's not that's not to be elitist. That's just to say, for example, if you're a doctor, you probably have to go to medical school. That's not an elitist. I don't want my brain surgeon to just to have done his own research. You know, >> it's actually an interesting one because like one way that's cashed out is it's poisoning the well. So like you just like before you even debate Charlie, you can point out this guy's a dropout. That he doesn't have any kind of credentials. And some people would look at that and go, "Well, that's just an ad homin, right?" You know, like that's that you're poisoning the well. >> But there's actually controversy around that in the sense that there's it's not clear that there's anything particularly wrong with that. as you said the example that you gave like if you got a surgeon you may want to know this information beforehand. So there's actually a debate around whether or not it's actually a foul at all. So it just like speaks to what you're saying there. At one point following this he said right so you're a feminist who also cares about men which to me is the critical moment of absurdity. Like it was so profoundly stupid. What was it like having him essentially say, "Ha, you you believe and practice what feminism has always believed and practiced." >> You're a feminist that actually isn't just fighting for women, you're also fighting for men. >> Was it bizarre or did you also expect that as well? >> I expected that because if you think about it, Charlie Kirk speaks to a specific type of person. So, for example, he'll go on podcasts and speak with young female students who maybe feel disaffected by what's happening in society. For example, young men are polling a lot more anti-feminist than even older men at the moment. They probably feel disaffected. They feel resentful and they'll come with emotional arguments because especially a lot of these podcasts are sold as conversational. So, for example, like Andrew Wilson's show is sold as a dating podcast. So, you have these young girls, a lot of them are on Only Fans. A lot of them like are just going there to promote themselves and they're not there for some kind of intellectual conversation or debate. They're say, "Well, yeah, like screw these men. I hate men. I can't stand them. I'm so pissed off with them." And then obviously Charlie Kirk will will see that and probably think this is what feminism means. This is what feminists are going to say if I say what you fight for men as a feminist. Maybe she'll laugh in my face and say no of course I of course I don't. But it's like that's not the realm of academic feminism. That's not policy proposals. There's not a bunch of like a bunch of Instagram influencers sat around a table at parliament thinking like yeah like we really [ __ ] hate men and like I really don't want to do anything about this. It's not reality like in terms of policy you know. >> Yeah. It's it's it's it's what's particularly interesting is that if say that I was debating Christians as I do and I was to go on stage and I was to make out that like oh wow you're a Christian that doesn't believe in creationism. Most Christians don't believe in creationism >> but I would be able to like take the worst of the worst and present it as if it's like the whole which is what he's essentially doing. Like you may find like some we wouldn't even call them feminists but you can get some people that are just they do hate men like straight up and he's make he wants to take that and elevate it. and as as you were saying with Andrew Wilson and he wants to make it so that looks like it's the norm. But if I was to get on stage and I was to make a statement like what he did, it would be embarrassing to me and I would get called out by my own side. But it's not something that happens in his echo chamber. He won't get called out from it presumably because his audience also doesn't understand the first thing about feminism either. Is that your experience? >> Yeah. If you ask this is the thing like I could have played this game myself and said, "Well, can you define feminism? Can you define this? Or you don't even know what feminism means. But I just think that makes me look a certain way and I don't want to look as though I'm lording it over someone too much. Especially because Charlie Kirk's title when he posted the video of our debate was Cambridge feminist resorts to insults. Personally, I don't think that I did that. I struggle to find and even some of his own fans are commenting saying this was a bit of a clickbait title. She didn't insult you at all. She maybe insulted your arguments. Maybe she laughed because you think sociology isn't realistically like you know I wasn't going to like particularly lean into this explanatory framework. I was rather just going to focus on the issues of what I care about. >> That's interesting because from my debate style I would look at it and I'd go I am going to wipe the floor with you on this. So I would be like standing there going, "Hey guys, this person, he goes around all of these universities. He stands up and he says feminism is terrible and he does it all over the world and yet what we've just had is a revelation that he doesn't know the first [ __ ] thing about it." Like how embarrassing. Like what the hell? Before we move on, Charlie, do you want to just do you want to just own that? Like that's such a profoundly ignorant, stupid thing that you've just said. And then I might like use an example which would illustrate it. And I was wondering why is it that you didn't want to capitalize that and humiliate him? You've kind of slightly answered it, but can you expand upon that? Like why did you not take the opportunity? >> I think it's partly because as a woman that's called being a [ __ ] >> Yes. So >> if if you're having an if you're having an intellectual discussion and with Charlie Kuck, if it was you versus him and you said, "This guy doesn't know the first thing about feminism," Charlie would probably say, "Absolutely not. You're so wrong. You don't know the first thing about feminism." And you would have that argument. Whereas if I said, "This guy doesn't know the first thing about feminism." A few people might roll their I mean roll their eyes and say, "She's kind of shrill. She's kind of annoying. She's she's so superior. She thinks she's so much better than him. He does this for a living. What does she do? She probably has cats. You know, she doesn't she probably doesn't have a boyfriend. She's probably so lonely. All these personal attacks come as as an onslaught." So it's really important when I stick to the issues. Like it's super important. >> That's fascinating. So it's basically a privilege that I have because I'm able to do it because because I can just do this whereas if you did exactly the same thing you you're aware of the dynamics where it would look different and so you have to play that game and you have to get involved in that sense. That's fascinating. Well, I actually think that like the technique that you did was particularly effective because what you kept doing is allowing him to push the conversation and you met him and gave him reputation. He moved on and whereas like my debate style would be I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. So, you're embarrassed and then we'll move on. I'll embarrass you again. You just like was just going down this path and he had to keep pivoting and keep going. And that obviously worked. It's one of the reasons I covered it. It's one of the reasons you got the praise. Like, was that deliberate? You just thought I will follow him with every single one and I will keep exposing. Is that is that the plan? Is that your debate method as in general? Like, can you speak to Yeah. Essentially that style and whether it was deliberate? >> Generally, no. But when it comes to people like Charlie Kirk, you have to think about how you imagine they are as a person. And because of Charlie Kirk's beliefs, i.e. that he believes there are specific biological differences between the sexes that you should respect and potentially enforce through some kind of theocratic autocracy, he's probably not going to view me as a woman as someone who's going to attempt this debate on the same ground as him as a man. So he's probably going to think she's going to allow me to take this conversation anywhere and that's how I'm going to win. And actually, I was leading him to a similar conclusion the entire time by allowing him to pivot and allowing him to believe that he'd won. >> It's interesting. It's like using his strengths against him or his perceived strengths. Like he thinks that he's like, I'm in control. And you're like, well, I know that you're going to think that way, so I can actually, if I play my cards right, lead you exactly where I want, which you did, which was why you were immediately ready with your reputations. If the patriarchy harms both men and women, which it clearly does, as you articulated to Charlie, why do you think that so many men still instinctively resist feminism? >> I think because what feminism seeks to do is to recognize the extent to which the personal is political. And given this, what that means is that now men no longer have a safe haven within the home through which they can take back some power. So for example, I think a lot of men have grievances that are valid and worthy of consideration. For example, income inequality, employment problems, inflation, financial burdens, emotional stigma, all of this stuff is totally worthy of of thinking about and a lot of feminists do think about it quite a lot. And the reason why how men gain their power in that system is by within the home having some kind of oppressive control over women. And that doesn't mean all men are oppressing their wives. What that means is that a certain framework of patriarchy that people like Charlie Kirk like to reinforce. For example, I mean, Charlie Kirk's wife speaks about how she wants to create a soft landing p pad for when he comes back home and about what her role is and how it's a really rigid role and specific one that she has to follow. So, in so far as all of this is like encapsulated within Charlie Kirk's ideology and an ideology that's becoming consist like more and more popular among young men, I think that's probably why they're going to resist patriarchy. patriarchy being harmful to them. Because at the same time as we have socially regressive things that are happening, workers rights are being decimated, the welfare state has been cut, you have neoliberal policy programs that basically aim to reinforce unequal relationships between men at the top and men at the bottom. The only people who would be below a man who's at the bottom would probably be a woman who's in the same position. And I think that when you have this like working class who feels so disenfranchised and the only place for them to turn where they can attain any kind of power is within the home, then maybe they're more likely to turn to people like like red pill or superch Christian or theocratic men. >> So do you think men are more susceptible to that than women? >> No. No. I'm not a bioessentialist. That's why I'm a feminist. >> Interesting. So So why would it be that men are the ones that are resisting it more? Because women are in the workplace, right? and women are experiencing these difficulties and yet like they're not necessarily resisting you know this egalitarian state um they want but but with men it seems to be that they are falling more towards pro- you know patriarchy is is there a specific element that describes that disparity or >> I mean I think it's just the way that society is composed people feel that they have to perform certain roles and functions and when that is mixed up in some capacity I mean what's happened because of feminism is Overall, women have gained more autonomy and more freedoms and they have had overall like a better experience. There are some things that haven't been better for them that are not because of feminism. Like for example, income inequality, like the reactionary conservative movements that have have made the world a pretty hostile environment for many women at the moment. There are tons of reasons why women's lives have got worse as well as better. But because of feminism, I would say that they've overall had more freedoms and autonomy. With men, it's not quite the same. Men feel that something has been taken away from them because they no longer have economic leverage. They no longer have sexual access all the time and that's something that that is hard to get used to. It's difficult. >> So it's a difference. It's like one of them is an elevation of rights and freedoms. And so obviously it's an easy thing to accept whereas the other one is you are losing some of your freedoms or losing some of the things you've enjoyed and that's not something that's easy to be able to take. >> Yeah. like freedom to exploit even if it's something that is a bad thing to have >> it can feel empowering for you to own it. >> So is it like conditioning essentially men have been conditioned to think this way whereas if they were born into a society that was truly egalitarian in your view there wouldn't be a difference in in the way that they look at it. Everyone would essentially just look at patriarchy and go that's that's not what we want. >> Yeah. And you have to think about who wins patriarchy because men overall don't win patriarchy. A poor man isn't winning patriarchy. A rich man is winning patriarchy. And feminism also when you think about the way that feminism has works alongside other movements like social democrat movements, like workers rights movements, like unions, then you think about who the real enemy is. I >> see what you mean. Once you look at that element, you can see the connectivity of it all. And that's telling you the broader story. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Charlie jumped from topic to topic to topic, right? So, as we as we've been saying, he went from trans issues, he talked about happiness, he talked about um religion and then immigration. He was just bouncing all over the place. Did it change your approach at all? >> I got throughout the debate, I got consistently more and more relaxed and excited because he was doing exactly that. And I thought there's no way that I am arrogant enough to get inside the mind of someone and decide that first they will talk about trans people, then they will talk about happiness, then they will talk about Muslims, and finally they will come full circle and make some kind of weird claim about importing the third world. And then when I had done it, I was like, I've pulled this off. This is fine. This is all fine. >> So I'm starting to get the sense that any questions of deliberation, the answer is yes, cuz it shows your preparation. You said that you weren't prepared, but I think this shows that you were super prepared. You knew what you were doing. You know, your your debate background coming into the show when you were discussing women's happiness data. You brought up Valium and you brought up brought up lobotoies, which is interesting elements cuz they're on the more extreme end. You changed the conversation because it was about were women happier? That's where he wanted to go. And you changed and flipped it so that um you were saying that women weren't allowed to express happiness. So I would argue that what you're calling unhappiness is actually visibility because now we hear women expressing dissatisfaction whereas in the 50s we prescribed them Valium and we labized. >> Was that a planned thing? Was you ready with that as a move? >> Well, I think one of the important duties that people on the left have to do is to explain what things look like. So, as I was kind of saying earlier, Charlie would probably never sit in front of me and explain to me what my duty as a wife actually would look like under his framework and in his world. Because then that would mean I could say, "Okay, there are two worlds here. There is your world and there is my world." And in my world, here is everything that is better and here is everything that happens and here is what my day-to-day life looks like. He doesn't want you to say, you know, you should probably submit to Greg. >> He wants you to say, "Submit to your husbands as unto the Lord," right? Because then you can make these big sweeping generalizations. it doesn't quite sound so so mundane and slightly dangerous as submitting to to Greg. Um, so I think in order to kind of express similar sentiments, you do have to to flip the language and you do have to think about what was it like to be a woman on the worst day of her life back then. >> And this seems to feed into your emphasis on material outcomes. So rather than allowing him to have the abstract where people get to fill in that stuff with their own whatever they see is a good thing, you're forcing it into the material where you're actually going it looks like the bottomies. It looks like volume. It looks like the inability to be able to express happiness. So okay, crazy that you know the stats might not bear out what you might want to see. And so it sounds like that is a general tactic that you used against Charlie. And is it a general tactic that you would recommend against people like Charlie? It's bring it from the abstract into the very real and use the examples that are going to make people like think, "Oh yeah, that's what it looks like materialistically." >> In debate, we use a term called characterization. And what that means is you characterize something. You characterize what it looks like and you get tons of points for it in a debate because it's very easy to sit there and say, um, okay, well, I think this introducing this legislation is a bad thing because it means the economy gets worse, whatever. What does it look like when the economy gets worse? How do people feel? How might people react? Would there be protests? Would there be riots? Would there be some kind of reactionary movement that will come about? Talking about what things look like is super important when it comes to engaging with the other side. >> That's fascinating. One thing that we learned in advertising is that you could say there are like 500 people starving >> and that's going to have some kind of resonance with people. But if you just show them one person, >> you have a far higher chance of actually getting them to be able to uh give money towards the charity or whatever the cause is. And it sounds like you're just applying that as character. Is that what it's called? Character in the debate format so that you could bring it into the tangible examples rather than the abstract. >> Yeah, it's the same when you talk about anything. Something I think I can't remember the exact the author who said this, but he said when you talk about war, you don't speak about hundreds of thousands of casualties. You talk about a child's sock alone on the ground because that's so much more resonant because it means that it speaks people's everyday experiences. So you came with studies and statistics, that information right in front of you in your head, and Charlie came with feelings and false claims, but confidently stated. How should progressives communicate data when the right is so effective with emotional storytelling? Yeah, I think that it's really intelligent that the right has managed to flip the script on the left because the left have historically been understood as whether or not you're thinking about political parties or interest groups or whatever as people who don't particularly have an emotional stance. You have some exceptions like you have the Soviet Union stuff and any kind of like ultra-communist movement people probably associate with a high motiveness, but generally when you think about the left, especially like postwar Britain's a good example of this. You had the the Kenzian um economists who were like objective and stuff and then you had these weirdo fascists who were harking back to a time that didn't really exist who were thinking about ethnic relations and not really examining how that demographic shift would probably work in society. You have people who have these like vast and wild imaginations. They were understood as the conservatives. And then you had people who were workers, people who, you know, who had careers and went out every single day and did the hard graft. And that was the left. And I think that the right did a really intelligent thing of flipping the script on that and saying the left, you guys are all, you guys have your academia, you guys are up in the clouds, you guys are up there with your stats, we're down here, you know, in the mud with our real life experiences. And obviously it's not true because what is a study? A study is a collated group of real life experiences that is then mapped onto a graph so that you can understand how something is going to affect a vast base like a swave of individuals. I think the left needs to to reclaim intellectualism as not something that's lofty and elitist as something that affects you and that you can learn. It's an accessible skill. It's something that everyone deserves to have access to. >> Do you think that's the key for the popularism as well? Like you need to actually meet people where they're at, but using their examples. That's what the right is doing very effectively and why they're co-opting that space. Whereas the left has become more dry and academic and more data and abstract. whereas they should absolutely get back to those roots is what I'm hearing you say. >> Yeah. There's a certain mentality among some leftists, especially in academic circles, that it's just over and that we need to retreat back to our safe spaces with our tweed and like not really look outside anymore because whatever's going on out there, that's too it's too late. And that's where I think people have that perception of elitism. And that's why I encourage academics to to not do that to resist that urge because it's a strong urge especially when those academics belong to minoritized groups especially when those those academics have worked hard at their craft and see it consistently become denigrated and devalued. The instinct to just retreat is like understandable but you can't do it. >> Would you say they have an obligation? >> Yeah. >> So as we know Charlie Kirk could be considered bad faith in the sense that it's very scripted. He knows what he's doing. Bad faith here could be defined in such a way as to be not authentic which to be fair pretty much every debate falls into that because there's an element of trying to even with yourself it's an element of trying to control the conversation but for him it's not about truth that's being aimed at it's very much like his pre beliefs his Christian nationalism for example what do you think about engaging with bad faith actors and giving them legitimacy right he got to speak at Cambridge University he's going to use that on his CV, if you see what I mean, like he's going to be able to present himself as I spoke here and you know, uh, what do you think about engaging with them? >> I mean, a few things. The first one is what the Cambridge Union did was take Charlie Kirk out of his natural environment and place him in a neutral third party space so that people could make him look like an idiot organically. The second thing is when you debate someone, you're not prescribing that their ideas are legitimate. Often times, I think it's the opposite. Debate is a formalized challenge to a set of ideas, preferably a set of ideas that are very prominent in society, that's why we're having the debate. I think if you are against challenging someone in a formalized context to a set of prominent ideas, then what are you for? >> At one point he's bringing up happiness data and you just like sarcastically quip back, oh, is there some smiles per capita data set that I wasn't aware of? >> They're they're the ones that actually have obligations. tearing down statues correspond to some kind of smiles per capita data set that I wasn't aware of. >> Again, it's like it's a little bit of a oneliner. >> And the audience laughs. Charlie visibly looks hurt. He's looking around. He's not having a good time. Walk us through that moment. What you were thinking at that moment. >> I mean, I was in my head. I was actually weighing up two options. The first option I was weighing up was, do I January 6 this? Because I could have said all these happy housewives breaking into the white breaking into the capital like like they're probably not that serene either. Like the vision of a bunch of Republican MAGA women shooting at the police and stuff and getting arrested on January 6th. It's probably a pretty powerful I I could probably have said to him like were those women who were involved in January 6 that you put on your bus on your six turning point USA buses to go and storm the capital. Were they happy doing their rights? But then I feel like he would get into was it an insurrection? Was it not? And I wasn't particularly interested in talking about whether or not it was an insurrection. So instead, I just said, "Where's this data, you weirdo?" >> Did you do all that on the spot? Like, did you think, "I could go with this angle," and you quickly went, "I'm not going to." Yeah. >> How do you do that so quickly? Like, what's going on in your head? How do you pick it up, decide there's the pros, there's the negatives, it's not worth it. I'm going for that option. Like, >> I never know how to answer this because I I just I have Yeah, I never have any idea of how to answer these types of questions. potentially it's just a lot of practice because I've debated a lot in the past and I know I I like to think that I'm not particularly arrogant so I know my own limits and I know where I would want to take a conversation. Charlie is really good at knowing where he wants to take conversation and that's a talent that he definitely has which is like think let's think really quickly about what pivot I want to take so that I can stay on track with what I want to do and if I >> I think for example if I were to start playing hermeneutics with Charlie Kirk that's the one thing he could win me on right >> I think the one thing I could that Charlie Kirk would win against me with would be the evangelical stuff because at his core he's a proitizer he's someone who in his if he was an ordinary guy he'd knock on doors and ask if we want to hear about God and like I'm not someone who knows the Bible cover to cover the same way that he would. >> It is like I've experienced it myself where it's a combination of preparation and intuition >> and the intuition part is like some people think that you you you've either got it or you haven't whereas my experience is no you can work on that. >> Mhm. >> So when you're on that spot like the intuition might think nope if I go there I'm stepping into the evangelical stuff and he may have a better standing so I can just go with this other pivot instead where I don't have that problem. But it was sharp. It was very quick. It was just, you know, you nailed it. Made everyone laugh. And this is where going back to like my style, it was humiliating for him. So, one of the reasons that it has went viral is it was so effective. But you also did it in a way now that I think about it where you didn't come across as a [ __ ] right? You just did it as like what were you on about kind of thing, which is a different framing, but it allows you to have the same hit. >> So, that's that's interesting to to see to hear the way that you were you were thinking at that moment. There was one point where he mentioned something that you weren't prepared for. I think it was something along the lines of the data shows that women who are married and have children, they're the happiest in the world. And you said, I don't know about that data. I need to look into it. And he immediately capitalized on your humility and was like, no, every study shows it. You would agree objectively that every study shows it. Did his eagerness to exploit your intellectual honesty surprise you at all? >> Um, no. No, of course not. I think it's it's it's it's interesting because this only works for someone if they can't think on their feet. So, for example, I didn't know what the data looked like in detail. I'd actually done a bit of research beforehand, but I wasn't going to spend a few hours trolling the internet. So, I just I saw a few different things that seemed inconclusive. Some of them were like married unmarried women over 60 are like the happiest people ever and they have the most sex and they're like having the best time of their lives and they're the richest. other studies were saying what Charlie was like purported to to call objective. So, I wasn't necessarily gonna gonna go there and and talk about the data because I also suspected he didn't particularly know about like the methodology behind these studies. He was just cherrypicking a little bit himself. I didn't want to return with well, I'm going to cherrypick my own data. Instead, I'll think, okay, what's the crux of this? >> Probably that self-reported happiness is the most flawed way to do any kind of survey and that you need to look at other metrics when you measure quality of life. When Charlie kept bringing up the happiness data and he kept running with it rather than meeting him on the data because you said not prepared, you actually said Charlie, you don't care about happiness. If you did, you'd allow gay people to just live their damn lives. >> So, I also don't think that happiness is a very good metric and neither do you because you think gay people shouldn't just pursue happiness by being gay. They have other moralistic considerations to be making. >> And essentially what you were running there is a reductio on his emphasis on happiness. You were basically saying you don't care about happiness. if you did, this would be a conclusion. But you don't have this. So, you're like reversing the logic to show that he doesn't care about it. This is something that I noticed a lot with your debate technique, at least in that style. You kept using a reductio. Is it one of your favorite methods? Is it something that you use specifically against Charlie? Uh, tell me about that method. >> Yeah, it is one of my absolute favorite things because it allows you to easily bring in humor into a subject. even if you don't necessarily have a joke, even if you're not necessarily a funny person, sometimes conclusions are funny enough that you can you can get some laughs and and you can have you can entertain people, but also at the same time it's quite rigorous in its logic. So, it it's something it's not particularly unique to my debate with Charlie. You're saying that it's one effective because you're able to very quickly just show that their their methodology is not working or they're not being consistent >> and two you can do it through the vehicle of humor which means that you ingratiate yourself with the crowd and actually it can serve that like maybe even like that humiliating aspect that's that's a part of these uh these kinds of debates without doing it from such a from a position of like attacking him. It's rather just really specifically on the argument. When Charlie asked about uh women getting married and having children and he was driving the conversation there and he asked you a question about it. This was the first time that you didn't actually answer him, but you asked him a question. >> Would you agree that it's a good thing that more women get married and have children in the West? >> I would ask you, would you say that a subsaharan African woman who's experienced female genital mutilation and checks extremely happy in a survey? And I also would check extremely happy in a survey. Who do you think would be objectively more happy even if they both check the same answer? >> I'm wondering was that a conscious decision that you decided at that point actually rather than meeting him where he's at which is what I've done throughout the entire discussion I am actually going to ask him a question. >> Yeah, it was cuz he told me to put down my phone. So I put down my phone and asked him a question instead. You know, I think the immediate immediately before I asked him that question, he said actually engage and don't look at your phone and and basically debate me properly. So, I'd looked up from my phone and I asked that question organically and I said, "Okay, I'll do exactly the same thing as you're doing so you can't get pissed off at me anymore since we're mirroring one another's actions like almost per perfectly." >> One of the reasons he asks questions, I think, is that whenever you put him on the back foot, he doesn't want that. He wants you to be the person that's asking it. So, you're saying that as soon as he got you to put your phone down because you couldn't access the data to be able to go, I'll meet you where you're at. Here's what I've got. You instead were just like, I'll ask you a question then. But it wasn't it wasn't quite that oh now I could no longer see my data. It was more so optically I knew that he was going to go down that path of oh she the only reason she's a good debater is because she has her phone and not because she's there with the arguments. Not because she can meet me on the philosophy, not because she's there with the data sets in her head as well. So my notes look like bookmarks that tell me what I'm going to say. Tell me what I'm supposed to say so I don't lose track. And because I was so far into this debate and because he'd now pointed out, oh, you're just there on your phone to attempt to delegitimize me. I thought I have to now engage with him in the exact same way that he's engaging with me so I can make the point. >> An extension of that is what do you make of the fact that they attack people that come with notes? It's a really peculiar thing from from my point of view, but what do you what do you make of that? Is that a legit move? Like what does it do in terms of optics? >> I think it's partly speaks to the speaks to the age demographic of who's engaging with the content. So for example, a lot of people who are a little bit older don't really see notes on a phone as the same as having notes in a notebook. So, if I was a bit more optically, if I had thought a little bit more strategically about the phone thing and just printed out an A4 sheet of notes, no one would probably have mentioned it. Whereas, if because I have a phone, people think, "Oh, she has the world at her fingertips and therefore anyone could win with a phone because it's this mystical thing." But it's like, if you're like 60 years old and you don't quite know how to use a smartphone and you just see your kids doing all this crazy stuff, like you're probably going to overestimate its capabilities. So really the tip there is after you got your notes just print them because it inoculates yourself from older demographics thinking that actually you're just I don't know using chat GBT or something when it's like no I've got notes that's what they're for. It's just we use phones cuz we're not 60. So >> print them out. >> Charlie often speaks about God and he and he speaks about how women have a role to fill. So it's like very much like this is what you're meant to do with your life. What is your response to arguments that natural roles should be socially enforced? >> Yeah, I mean the naturalistic fallacy is one of my favorites to deconstruct because it's also one of the most stupid and easy things, right? Like like some fallacies are intelligent, some things that people say are really clever, but the naturalistic fallacy is just super easy um to to deconstruct, which is you always have to to reckon with the missing premise within that within that argument. Why is it that a natural thing should be mapped onto a social thing? the the or claim is never like really justified. But the other thing is like there there are two avenues you can take it depending on who you're engaging with. So for example with Charlie Kirk, I would probably just ask him to justify the ought claim. But if I'm having an intellectual discussion with with someone who like really strongly believes in patriarchy bas some kind of biological thing, I would just ask them some some fun questions like why is it that gorillas have more sexual dimmorphism than humans, but they've not done patriarchy half as well as we have. >> So yeah, I'm a big fan of the of deconstructing that. >> Yeah. So yeah, that that Hume's razor, I forgot what it's called. Um, guillotine. Hume's guillotine, right? You know, you can just say is premise is premise. You don't get your >> But what's interesting about the theological angle is they they kind of do if you buy the background, right? Because under their rubric, it really is the case that we're made with certain purpose. So they have the ought from the very beginning. So they're deriving an from an or is the way that they look at it which means the conversation is much more difficult to be able to work with. Um so when you are talking with religious people and they have already got that all in place do you think there is things that like say men are meant to be or meant to be doing or women are meant to be or meant to be doing. How do you navigate that space? How do you talk with those people? >> Well that's when you stop speaking to them and you speak to their audience through them. So for example I can never communicate to someone who's religious in that moment. Let's say I've got 10 minutes with Charlie. Am I going to turn him atheist? Probably not. Would I even turn him slightly more of a liberal Christian? No, I wouldn't. That's when you start speaking to your audience. You say, "There's going to be atheists in this audience." And what they believe is is in like defining their own purpose. Maybe they're a fan of enlightenment rationality kind of stuff. Maybe they're they have their own ethical framework and they don't believe morality comes from God. You believe morality comes from God. That means that you justify women's roles in society based on the fact that they're following God's plan. How are people in the audience now going to justify that if they don't believe in God? Because most of the people who are patriarchy enjoyers and also atheists don't necessarily realize that they're using an or claim that comes from religion when they're prescribing people these types of roles. >> Oh, that's like a it's almost like a a dividing element. You can like illustrate to people that you may be like on his side, but you don't have the crucial premise that he has. >> Yeah, that's that's an interesting one. Medi Hassan's mentioned this as a tactic as well. You separate you separate the person from their audience. Yeah. And it sounds like that's that's what you're essentially recommending there. >> So zooming out to like the broader conversation that's happening. >> We have this growing distrust of particularly social sciences and it's coming from the right of course. It's particularly sociology and gender. They're the ones that are being attacked. How do you defend their validity in this day and age in in with this level of optics? >> I would say that Charlie Kirk, Jordan Peterson, and many other far-right or right-wing figureheads are social scientists who want to co-opt the discipline for themselves and push out people who disagree with them in any capacity. So for example, people like Charlie Kirk and others have definitions of gender and how different people should be interacting with each other, what society should look like, how people behave socially and what that means. That's sociology. They're doing sociology and they don't want me to do sociology. So they're telling me sociology isn't real and that gender studies is a [ __ ] degree while they're at home reading through their gender studies notes and they're looking over their sociology data set. They're reading Durkheim. I'm telling you, you know, like these people are not shying away from the sociological cannon, especially not if especially if they're denigrating it in public because they don't want the left to have any kind of ownership over it anymore as they once potentially did. >> Do you think there's an angle of maybe like changing our language up so we can always go, "Oh, you're using biblical sociology because then you're like forcing that language on them." And if anyone like as soon as you said that, I was thinking, "Yeah, of course that's what they're doing. It's full on sociology and it's it's extremely prescriptive rather than descriptive. >> Yeah. >> Like do you feel like tactics like that may be something we want to co-op? >> Yeah. And potentially just go even subtler by just saying okay well your sociological framework states this. My sociological framework illustrates this. Now you can defend your sociological framework. Is that coming from Durkheim? Is that coming from using it in the phrasing because >> they can't fight against it and they can't tackle you it because the second they mention it >> well you win because it is social and if they don't you just get to keep Okay. Yeah. Final question. >> When it comes to progressive content creators such as myself such as yourself uh link below by the way you can find Till's YouTube channel Tik Tok etc. What is the biggest change that we need to make? I think about this all the time. I think one of the biggest changes we need to make is to recognize that there's not one way to do politics and that most people on the left are probably correct about the way that they're doing it. So, for example, you'll have a lot of people on the left who will say only protesting is going to get us somewhere. And then you'll have people who are in t