The Extreme Crisis of Young Women - Freya India - #1090

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Why has your book got one star on Goodreads?

**Freya India** (0:04)
Because I'm being attacked by normally liberal women, I think.
So we sent out some galleys, some free copies to just avid Goodreads readers, and women who are not in our sphere thinking about things that we are. And I think also because the book looks like an anti-capitalist Marxist book, there's no indication that I would be skeptical of the mental health industry or talk about cultural trends like family breakdown. And so a lot of the reviews are women warning each other that this is not what you expect and you might be hit with a viewpoint you disagree with. And so it's a lot of girls who've got through the first chapter and then I've said something like about trans and they've just given up and warned each other not to carry on.

**Chris Williamson** (0:55)
You're horrendous. When did you start writing about women and girls?

**Freya India** (1:00)
I started 2021 So it's been a long time.
And it was mostly because I felt anxious and I wanted to figure out what was going on. And so I was trying to map it all out and it's taken me sort of five, six years to finally finish the book. So it's not only research that I've done, but it's basically years of my life. I've carried it through different phases and seasons of my life and this is where I've ended up.

**Chris Williamson** (1:28)
I was talking to William Costello. You and him wrote an article together in Quillette. And I think you were still in sixth form college.

**Freya India** (1:35)
It was so long ago. Yeah.
So I've been writing for a really long time. But part of the criticism against me is that I just picked a topic and I'm using it to sort of funnel in my right wing agenda. So it will be Freya just noticed that the mental health crisis was happening. And she's using that to spread her sort of fascist ideas.

**Chris Williamson** (1:57)
Yeah. Well, you're in good company here, because I'm a fascist as well apparently.

**Freya India** (2:00)
Honest.

**Chris Williamson** (2:02)
We often hear about a lost generation of young men, but research shows that young women are more pessimistic across the board. They are less likely to say they feel happy, ambitious, excited or fulfilled, and are more pessimistic about the prospect of being happy for their life generally.
Yes. What the fuck's going on?

**Freya India** (2:19)
So is this the new statesman piece? Yeah. So there was this huge new statesman piece, Angry Young Women, which made me an angry young woman.

**Chris Williamson** (2:28)
Why did you get pissy about the new statesman piece?

**Freya India** (2:30)
Because they reached a lot of conclusions that a lot of conservative women, conservative people have just been saying for a very long time.
As you said, they were saying that young women feel pessimistic, that they have more negative views of men than men have of them. All we've heard about for the last few years is the Manosphere and how men are getting radicalized. Ultimately, the argument in their piece was that women are getting radicalized by social media and particularly by Femosphere influences. So women warning them of other men and radicalizing them.

**Chris Williamson** (3:07)
All of the women reading your book.

**Freya India** (3:08)
Yeah, basically.

**Chris Williamson** (3:10)
Unhappily.

**Freya India** (3:10)
Yeah. So they came to the same observations as me and a lot of other people. But then after my book tour in the UK, I've had to put up with constant accusations of being misogynist, being far-right conservative for saying something is happening to liberal young women. They're not happy. Something is happening in their relationships.
They feel hopeless about the future. Even in the New Statesman piece, I've found that more privileged women felt even more pessimistic. These are things that I've been trying to argue very carefully and I hope with some compassion. But I've had to put up with constant smears and backlash.
It was very interesting to me that the New Statesman can reach the same conclusions, and it's celebrated and welcomed.

**Chris Williamson** (3:56)
I once spoke to Douglas Murray about this and I said, have you ever used your gay privilege card? He said, well, on other gay men, of course.
I said, well, you know what I mean. From a particular protected group, have you ever been able to cash in your status at some point?

**Freya India** (4:16)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (4:17)
He said, well, the problem is that I'm white and conservative, which makes me essentially an honorary straight guy.