Inside The First Natalism Conference: Gossip & Impressions With Diana Fleischman

We recap the first major international natalism conference hosted in Dallas with special guest Diana Fleischman. Topics covered include apprehensions going in about trad attendees & racism accusations, demographics breakdown of attendees including 50% with 0 kids, speakers dynamics & highlights (Brittany Benjamin, Peachy Keenan), bonding between sexes, unconference sessions for solutions brainstorming, targeting overlooked populations like furries, comparisons to effective altruist movement origins & attraction of autists, likelihood of future growth trajectory & longevity of the movement.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] hello everyone. You may see a familiar face with us today because we are rejoined by the one and only Diana Fleischman, who we saw in Dallas recently we saw in Austin recently.

For the natalism conference, the, the first really major like non national based pro natalist conference out there, which we did not organize, but thoroughly enjoyed. Now if you can't remember Diana Fleishman can be found on Twitter as a sentientist. She posts a lot and really interesting, thoughtful stuff, a good mix.

So definitely check her out on Twitter. Also. She, you know, could go to dianafleischman. com or check out the podcast interviews that she does with Aporia. But we are here to talk about the natalism conference, all the gossip, all the fun, because it was interesting. It was not, we didn't know what to expect, right?

Malcolm Collins: I can say I went to it with a lot of apprehension because I know the brand of pronatalism that we push on our show. But, you know, when I look at the Articles that are attacking us. [00:01:00] They're always saying, Oh, you know, the pronatalist movements, just like a bunch of like crazy racists and like great replacement theorists and stuff like that.

And I assumed going to the conference, like there was a part of me that was like, Oh, it's just going to be like a bunch of like. crazy people who are primarily motivated by race politics who you know, are just extremely, extremely, extremely off the reservation or like classic. So sometimes when you go to a conservative event, they'll just be like a bunch of hucksters, like trying to sell you on stupid, whatever scams or whatever.

I saw neither of that at this conference at any sort of large level. It was predominantly like if people were like, what's the. Category of people. It felt very much like the early effective altruist movement, but much more religious. And I literally couldn't have asked for a better thing in terms of what I saw there, but I'd love to hear your

Diana Fleischmann: thoughts.

I was also a little apprehensive when I joined because well, I think it's fine to say this. [00:02:00] It was not beautifully and competently organized from the beginning. Like they originally reached out to me and Jeffrey and then Jeffrey and I were not thrilled with the lineup at that point, the lineup got totally shuffled around.

There's a lot of people that changed at that point. And unsurprisingly, they invited many women who ended up not being able to come because they had all children that they had to take care of. So, I also asked them if they would be able to provide childcare and they said, You know, we have no plans to provide childcare.

As a side note, they did end up providing childcare and I can understand their apprehension given that the conference is running at a pretty big loss for the first year.

Diana Fleischmann: I thought that that was kind of short sighted, although Kevin Dolan later said that he didn't see a lot of interest from other people and he left his six kids with a flex at home. I also was a little apprehensive from going because I'm kind of a poser in this space. I only have two kids. I may only ever have two kids.

I donated eggs a lot, which is kind of like being a cuckoo more than anything else. Does that

Simone Collins: technically mean you've had more than two kids? Yes,

Diana Fleischmann: it does technically mean that. But it also [00:03:00] means that I have refused to care for them in the way that trads would appreciate me doing. I still

Simone Collins: very pronatalist.

Diana Fleischmann: It is, it is pronatalist. That's also narcissistic. So, so that's the other reason. And then when I saw the hip pieces that came out about it, I was thinking, you know, are we going to have. Antifa show up and there was a little bit of information security. They didn't tell anybody, even us until the very final minute, what, what floor things were going to be on.

It was, there was a lot of security. But you know, what I found out going to tons of conferences over 20 years is that if you invite smart people. It doesn't actually matter that much. What else you do if smart, it doesn't matter. I mean, the amenities were really good. And the scheduling, just cause the schedule didn't really finalize until the very last minute.

And I met a lot of cool people. Again, you know, when we were there, you guys are more tech focused, you guys are more kind of effective altruist and tech focused. And I was also thinking, you know, like for example, our mutual friend [00:04:00] Ayala was saying, well, I would come to a party there, but I wouldn't be welcome.

And it's true that she probably wouldn't have been welcome. There were people there who disliked her. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it was interesting. There were some, one of the really interesting things was seeing how unwelcome, so there were some people who went there that were like old school style racist, like there was this white nationalist famous whatever guy, but they seem to be pretty what's the word I'm looking for?

Like, sad guy in the corner that no one's really interacting with? They, they had some people, like, I, I know that they, they, they just were not, I think they went, and it was a really interesting thing I noticed, where if I looked at people who were there by age the, the old people were typically operating on older ideologies that they thought would get them a lot of followership among the young people, but the young people were much more interested in messages, like the messages that you had.

Diana Fleischmann: Yeah. So like, let's, let's [00:05:00] try and divide it up. Let's think about, so, so Brit. Britt Benjamin, who is there with her four year old. By the way, there were only a handful of kids there. There was my daughter. I know there were surprisingly few, right? Yeah. There was an, there was a one year old who was getting into everything.

It was very cute. There was a four year old and then Emma Waters brought her eight month old, which made me really grateful that my daughter is not yet that age. Cause it's very hard to keep them entertained. Yeah, as far as the the divide, you know, you guys were saying you thought it was gonna be more 70 percent trad, 30 percent techie, and it ended up being more like 70 percent techie, 30 percent trad, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And like deep techie too. Like, I, you know, I have a tech VC background. And the companies that they were working on were actually like really impressive often.

Diana Fleischmann: There were a lot of Mormons and a lot of Jews there. What other, I mean, I

Simone Collins: didn't know. Like a decent number of like Baptists, but not, not, I expected to see a bunch of trad cats and there weren't

Malcolm Collins: really that many.

There were some trad cats. I was surprised that I didn't see any ultra [00:06:00] Orthodox Jews.

Diana Fleischmann: Mm.

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