Episode Details

Dive into a provocative discussion with Malcolm and Simone Collins as they debunk two major myths: the idea that female-led societies are inherently peaceful, and the romanticized view of bonobos as gentle, utopian apes. Drawing from their book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality and fresh data from studies (including 2024 research on bonobo aggression), they explore how matriarchal structures—both in history and among bonobos—often lead to more violence, coercion, and hierarchy than expected. From evolutionary psychology on women’s submission fantasies to historical queens waging wars, this episode challenges progressive narratives about “natural” societies and argues for building better futures through pragmatism, not nostalgia.

Key highlights:

* Why bonobo society is a nightmare of sexual coercion and aggression.

* Data showing female rulers are more likely to start wars (27% higher in historical Europe).

* Evolutionary insights into gender dynamics and power.

* A rant on rejecting “hidden utopias” and advancing civilization.

If you enjoy data-driven takes on culture, evolution, and society, subscribe for more episodes from Based Camp! Check out our books and join the conversation.Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be going over two persistent myths in society, dissecting them, looking at the actual data to show that no. One female led societies historically are, and actually in modern times because we’re gonna be going into new data, not just the old data that we had in our book, the Pragma Guide to Sexuality are, are more violent than non-female led society.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, sure, of course

Malcolm Collins: that makes sense. But also the myth of the peaceful bonobo is where we are going to start because Bonobo society is actually. Horrifying.

Simone Collins: I don’t understand why people have this vision of the Gentle Ape. All, all apes and monkeys terrify me more than Pelicans, and there’s nothing scarier than a pelican.

Malcolm Collins: So we’re just gonna go over a bunch of data, mostly drawing from a chapter from the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality about why. You shouldn’t let women run [00:01:00] things. And not just that, but how the progressive movement and the progressive part of the academic movement has this tendency to create these con conflation or confabulation of, unique examples or cherry picked data to try to say that we should go back to some earlier way of doing things or some earlier way is natural.

Simone Collins: Ah, the

Malcolm Collins: old sapien argument, fix it Dawn. Where they’re like, well, our ancestors were polyamorous. Look at the gentle bonobo. Look at the tribal they are. And I’m like, well.

First of all, that’s not true of all tribal groups, and it’s certainly not true of the more successful ones. You just chose one that fit the society that you wanted. You’re like, okay, where’s the most communist, the most matriarchal, the most? Okay. We will say, this is the model for early humans. Yeah. When that’s not actually the predominant evidence that we have, and we can do a separate episode on that.

But it’s the same with you know, with with [00:02:00] Bonobos. They go, oh, what, what? There was a period where like some researchers really romanticized Bonobos. And now we know that they basically made a mistake and they created, it is true that Bonobos do have a matriarchal society. It’s just not true that it’s a benevolent, matriarchal society.

So let’s go into this. All right.

Simone Collins: I wonder. Yeah, and I, I, I’m very curiou