Dating, it used to be pretty simple.

In the olden days, your father would match you with a nearby landowner and if you are lucky,

you might live to the age of 30 before dying in childbirth.

Alas, these days of romance are long gone.

For real though, today we're talking about love, and you might think this is a bit frivolous

or trivial compared to everything that's going on right now.

And look, nobody is saying that dating is up there with the climate crisis or the cost of living.

But let's be honest, finding love, keeping love, or learning how to live without it is a really

big part of all of our lives. And how that happens from the liberalisation of divorce to the rise

of dating apps has transformed in just a few short decades. The ground on which we meet people

try to make relationships work is radically different. Politics isn't just something that happens

out there in parliament and workplaces and on the tally, it's also what goes on in the most

intimate aspects of our lives, and I think that's worth examining.

There's also the matter of the manosphere. In the last year, whether you like it or not,

you've probably heard of Andrew Tape. Right now, he's detained in Romania while police

investigate him and his brother for sex trafficking. He's been accused of multiple rapes here in

the UK. And despite the fact that he looks like a peanut, and he talks like a very stupid person's

idea of an intelligent man, he's immensely popular on social media. He's managed to build up an

army of loyal fans, mostly young men, by telling them that the only way they'll be able to have

any kind of worth is by ruthlessly dominating women. And I don't think that he'd be able to pedal

any of this bullshit if it weren't for real underlying problems that he was able to exploit.

Loneliness, resentment, feeling like you're unable to get anywhere in the sexual marketplace

...