The Huberman files

Andrew Huberman is a viewed as a god by the manosphere, and they aren't letting him go

I don’t know Andrew Huberman. I subscribe to his podcast, and sometimes I listen. Not that often. He talks too much. But most of the men I know who are invested in health and wellness follow him pretty religiously. As far as I can tell, the information he offers on health is useful and seemingly solid. He reads as a likeable, approachable guy. Again, as far as I can tell, from a distance, across the internet.

The internet is abuzz after an expose of sorts was published in New York Magazine, purporting to reveal that the man behind the science podcast isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. On a personal level, at least.

The question seems to be whether that matters.

One might argue, reasonably, that Huberman’s personal life is irrelevant to his work. I might also argue that. Under some circumstances.

Under these circumstances, Huberman’s personal life may not have troubled me much. I am, though, a bit troubled by the response.

We are all, it’s fair to say, well over #MeToo. It became cringe, as Kat Rosenfield argued in a near-perfect essay for Unherd recently. The cycle of sometimes-believe-women-if-convenient to believe-all-women has circled back to don’t-believe-women-they-are-attention-seeking-whores.

Indeed, the phrase “believe all women” had turned out to be stupid, although its heart was in the right place. For so much of history women who spoke up about abuse and sexual assault were treated as vindictive liars — the jilted ex trying to get back at the man who left her — regretful sluts who went too far and don’t want to be accountable for that choice, or hyberbolic man-hating lunatics.

#MeToo has become so cringe I don’t even like writing about it. But I will say it began as hopeful thing… I do recall, very early on, feeling glad this reality was being talked about — that pretty much all women shared at least an experience, if not endless experiences, of yuck male behaviour, whether it be rape, abuse, or some kind of run-of-the-mill dicking around. It didn’t take long for the movement to become an orgy of online — often anonymous — accusations of, well, who even knows.

A man named Steven Galloway, who was once head of the Creative Writing department at UBC in Vancouver and an acclaimed Canadian writer, had his entire life, including his mental health, destroyed through an anonymous accusation of “abuse” that was never corroborated. To even ask for evidence of the claims, in feminist circles, was cause for cancellation, as I experienced when I questioned the claims and the demand I “pick sides” without even knowing what Galloway was actually being accused of, as did women like Margaret Atwood, who signed a letter at the time, advocating due process. This expectation and approach was applied to both the famous and not famous, as DJs were banished alongside journalists, professors, actors, and Harvey Weinstein, who seems to have deserved it.

Things went very quickly from “believe all women” to “believe every single woman or else.” Even today I struggle to determine if #MeToo did more harm than good. By lumping in bad dates with serial rapes the movement made a joke of women’s accusations, and many men’s reputations and careers were destroyed in the process.

The reaction to the New York Magazine piece, “Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control: The private and public seductions of the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist,” demonstrates how the tables have turned. Where feminism supposedly dominated, it is now viewed almost unanimously as the problem. But if one kneejerk does a 180, we’re not in much of a better place, are we?

The accusations against Huberman are flawed from the get-go as they are anonymous. And as much as I imagine this made sense, in order to protect the women — exes of the podcaster — from lawsuits, I don’t think it’s fair to make accusations on that basis. Speaking out, telling the truth, going up against the powers that be demands accountability in order for there to be genuine legitimacy to a challenge or claim. Of course it’s a risk, but that’s the point. Without the risk, there is little impact. What an anonymous Twitter user says should have significantly less weight than what a person with a name and a face and something to lose says.

So there is that.

I can’t tell you who Huberman is in his personal life. I don’t know the guy. I can assume the author of the piece, Kerry Howley, did her job, that she isn’t inventing things out of thin air, and that she trusts her sources, which may well outnumber even those included in the piece. Generally, in journalism, not everything makes the cut.

My response here is not, therefore, to condemn Andrew Huberman or to suggest he be cancelled. He is very clearly not going to be cancelled, based on the response to this big reveal, which amounts to little more than adolescent fist-bumping and Beavis and Butthead-style chuckling.

The general consensus is that

1. We should all stay out of this man’s private life, which is none of our businesses

2. It is so, so cool that this guy is getting so much pussy!

And if this were just a piece about a man who likes to sleep around I probably would have still enjoyed reading it (it was, if nothing else, a good read), but that’s not what it was about. It was about a narcissistic man who operates like a psychopath.