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Speaker 1: When it comes to the issue of race and gender,

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Speaker 1: when it comes to the issue of masculinity, there are

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Speaker 1: few people that hold more credentials on this subject matter

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Speaker 1: than my next guest. This is Gavin Newsom, and this

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Speaker 1: is Jackson Katz. You've got a new book coming out

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Speaker 1: at least overseas, and we'll see who comes out here.

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Speaker 1: It's called every Man. But I mean that's interesting. Obama

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Speaker 1: Renegade's Springsteen. So tell me a little bit more about that.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, my book was just published in the UK

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Speaker 2: in February, but it's coming out in September in the

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Speaker 2: United States the American version. It's called every Man, Why

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Speaker 2: violence against women is a men's issue and how you

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Speaker 2: can make a difference.

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Speaker 1: And Jack, just so for people that don't know you,

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Speaker 1: you've been at this issue, been talking about the issue

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Speaker 1: of intersection between gender race violence for decades and decades.

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Speaker 1: I mean you've been in this space talking about the

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Speaker 1: issues of masculinity, what's happening to young men and the

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Speaker 1: relations between the sexes for twenty five plus years.

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Speaker 2: Right, Oh, yeah, since I was a college student really,

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Speaker 2: which is a long time ago.

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Speaker 1: And what what what what originally inspired all of this

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Speaker 1: and ultimately what inspired this book all these decades later,

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Speaker 1: building on what the work you've been doing.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, as a young guy, and I was

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Speaker 2: a big, you know, athlete in high school. I was

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Speaker 2: an all star football player, and I was I came

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Speaker 2: from a blue collar family, you know. If my stepfather

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Speaker 2: was a truck driver and an army veteran of World

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Speaker 2: War Two. My father was a medic in Germany and

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Speaker 2: France in World War Two. I came from a family

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Speaker 2: where you know, well, you know, it was a blue

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Speaker 2: collar family, and and and and yet education was a

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Speaker 2: big emphasis. And and when I was in college, I

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Speaker 2: started taking courses in subjects that related to you know,

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Speaker 2: gender and race and other things. And I was learning.

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Speaker 2: I thought I was smart when I was a young guy,

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Speaker 2: but I realized how little I knew, especially about how

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Speaker 2: other people lived, because I, you know, I came from

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Speaker 2: a kind of a white suburban background just north of Boston.

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Speaker 2: And when I started taking classes on gender related topics

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Speaker 2: and started hearing about women's experiences of violence, and I

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Speaker 2: started seeing women organizing around the fear that they have

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Speaker 2: so often, especially at night, you know, because that was

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Speaker 2: the beginning of the take back to Night movement where

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Speaker 2: women were marching to say, we have the right to

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Speaker 2: walk outside at night. And I remember thinking when I

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Speaker 2: saw these women, you know, sort of organizing for better

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Speaker 2: lighting on campus, I remember thinking not that these women

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Speaker 2: hated men, but that they felt like they had the

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Speaker 2: right to walk across campus. And I felt like that

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Speaker 2: was what leadership looked like. I was inspired by it.

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Speaker 2: I was a young student journalist at the time, and

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Speaker 2: I was inspired by women standing up and speaking up

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Speaker 2: for themselves, just as I was inspired by African Americans

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Speaker 2: and what we used to call, you know, the in

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Speaker 2: the gay what used to be called the gay rights movement,

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Speaker 2: which is now the LGBTK.

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Speaker 1: And just put us in context of what year, roughly

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Speaker 1: would we be talking.

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Speaker 2: About, Roughly around nineteen eighty, So it's like, you know,

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Speaker 2: I'm a little long in the two, but I've been

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Speaker 2: doing this work so since I started speaking out then,

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Speaker 2: and because I had this background in traditional male culture

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Speaker 2: as a as an athlete and pretty successful, I knew

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Speaker 2: that I had a platform. I knew that people were

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Speaker 2: interested when I started saying, hey, you know, sexual assault

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Speaker 2: and domestic violence, this is wrong, guys, this is like

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Speaker 2: wrong and women should be able to shouldn't have to

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Speaker 2: worry constantly about their personal safety and how would you

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Speaker 2: feel if you were a woman, and how to live

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Speaker 2: like that? I remember thinking, why aren't more men saying

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Speaker 2: these things? Why aren't more men speaking out? Why is

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Speaker 2: it always you know, women having to organize and speak

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Speaker 2: out and push for, you know, reforms of the laws.

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Speaker 2: Why aren't men doing this? And I know most men

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Speaker 2: are not abusive, but yet most men don't speak out.

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Speaker 2: And so because I knew I had a platform, I

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Speaker 2: started speaking out. And honestly, I'm doing today, Governor, what

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Speaker 2: I started doing as a you know, nineteen year old.

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Speaker 2: I always say my hair is a lot shorter, not

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Speaker 2: by choice, right, And I have nicer clothes than I

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Speaker 2: did when I was a you know, a nineteen year

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Speaker 2: old guy. But it's the same message. And you know,

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Speaker 2: my book every Man, you know why violence against women

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Speaker 2: as a men's issue is like what I've been saying

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Speaker 2: for forty years. It's just because of my work and

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Speaker 2: other people's work and the way the culture moves. There's

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Speaker 2: you know, there's an energy now, there's a receptivity to

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Speaker 2: talking about this, thinking about this. With the exception of

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Speaker 2: the backsliding that we're doing in our country right now,

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Speaker 2: which is a really dramatic series of steps backwards. And

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Speaker 2: you know, we can talk about that as well.

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Speaker 1: So what I mean when you look back forty years,

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Speaker 1: I mean, did you really feel like you were the

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Speaker 1: lone voice back then? I mean, were there was there

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Speaker 1: any organized movement or recognition or was there any political

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Speaker 1: leadership with men in this space to call out that

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Speaker 1: violence against women? Or is it primarily would you describe

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Speaker 1: as the feminist movement that was really organized behind the

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Speaker 1: women's rights in this space or.

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Speaker 2: At least yeah, it was definitely a sort of multi racial,

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Speaker 2: multi ethnic feminist women led movement, and there was a

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Speaker 2: tiny number of men. I mean I was, you know,

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Speaker 2: I was kind of an early adapter as they would say,

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Speaker 2: or adopter, like when I was twenty. I mean, there

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Speaker 2: was not that many men doing this work, and now

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Speaker 2: there are. I mean, there's no question that my work

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Speaker 2: and a lot of other people's work over the last

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Speaker 2: couple of generations has made a difference in terms of

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Speaker 2: normalizing this kind of conversation. But political leadership very limited.

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Speaker 2: I'm not saying it didn't exist, but it was very

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Speaker 2: limited and in the public space, it was very unusual

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Speaker 2: to hear men talking about any of this subject matter.

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Speaker 1: And the fact that you started to say this is

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Speaker 1: a man's issue, I mean, what do you mean by that?

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Speaker 1: And how was that received by women that were expressing

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Speaker 1: themselves and leaders in the feminist movement? Was it well

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Speaker 1: received in that respect? Was it understood when you started

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Speaker 1: talking initially about this being a man's issue?

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Speaker 2: Generally speaking? I would say yes, because what feminist leaders

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Speaker 2: were saying back then and they say this now, is

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Speaker 2: that the role for men who are really know, concerned

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Speaker 2: about these matters, which, by the way, all men should be.

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Speaker 2: It's not something that should be a specific to me

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Speaker 2: or a small number of men yourself, but a lot

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Speaker 2: of the you know, a lot of the women leaders,

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Speaker 2: including Bell Hooks famously, the African American, the sadly late

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Speaker 2: African American feminist scholar and writer and activist, would say,

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Speaker 2: would she and others would say the proper role for

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Speaker 2: men in this work is to educate, organize, and politicize

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Speaker 2: other men. It's not to it's not to go in

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Speaker 2: and save women or even to work with women. It's

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Speaker 2: to go into male culture in every racial and ethnic

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Speaker 2: you know, community and every it's a global These are

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Speaker 2: global problems, not local problems. I mean they're manifest locally,

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Speaker 2: but their global problems. The proper role for men is

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Speaker 2: to is to like, yeah, with their guys, you know

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Speaker 2: what I mean, like their their friends, their colleagues, their peers,

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Speaker 2: and adult men need to be providing much more over

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Speaker 2: it and explicit leadership to young men. And if you

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Speaker 2: stay in that lane. In other words, I think that's

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Speaker 2: what women are asking. It's, by the way, it's very

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Speaker 2: similar to what people of color have been saying for

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Speaker 2: white people who are whether you call them allies or collaborators.

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Speaker 2: It's like, you don't need white people going to black communities.

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Speaker 2: You need white people organizing white people and speaking out

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Speaker 2: and using the platform of influence that they have within

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Speaker 2: their own sort of you know, culture or spheres of influence.

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Speaker 2: It's a simple concept. It's not even that complicated.

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Speaker 1: So you say, I mean for forty years you've been

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Speaker 1: at this and obviously there was you know, you've had

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Speaker 1: an incredibly successful career, had a lot of influence in

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Speaker 1: this space. But you referenced yourself that this is there

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Speaker 1: seems to be a door that's opening now in this space.

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Speaker 1: But they're also a door closing, and we'll get to

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Speaker 1: that in a minute in terms of some regression. But

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Speaker 1: the door that's opening in terms of what consciousness in

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Speaker 1: the space, a recognition of the crisis of young men.

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Speaker 1: The political side of this, how do you describe from

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Speaker 1: Is it a policy framework that you see shifting or

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Speaker 1: political framework that's shifting.

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Speaker 2: It's both, I would say, I would say I would

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Speaker 2: say there's a shift in consciousness that's been happening over

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Speaker 2: the last couple of generations. Really it's not a really,

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Speaker 2: you know, brand new thing. I mean, whole generations of

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Speaker 2: men and young men have grown up with feminist mothers,

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Speaker 2: with women in the workplace as equals, with girls and

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Speaker 2: women sitting next to them in school, in the professional world.

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Speaker 2: I mean, my parents' generation didn't have those experiences. It

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Speaker 2: was much more sex segregated, and women were excluded from

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Speaker 2: mainstream sort of competition with men in so many areas.

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Speaker 2: But there's a whole generations of men who have come

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Speaker 2: of age in a way that it's been normalized, you know,

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Speaker 2: and a lot of men have much more likely to

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Speaker 2: have female friends and colleagues. And take that as just

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Speaker 2: obvious as opposed to something that some radical new, you know,

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Speaker 2: development that they have to adjust to. But at the

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Speaker 2: same time, I think there's a whole lot of men

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Speaker 2: who have done very little speaking out about men's violence

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Speaker 2: against women, and a lot of men get really uncomfortable

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Speaker 2: about this subject. And I think a lot of men,

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Speaker 2: including powerful men, who are really incredibly articulate about a

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Speaker 2: whole range of subjects, but when it comes to this subject,

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Speaker 2: they are like, oh my god, I don't I don't

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Speaker 2: want to go near this, or I don't know exactly

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Speaker 2: what to say, or they become inarticulate. And so what

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Speaker 2: ends up happening for a lot of men, including powerful men,

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Speaker 2: I'm serious, Uh, what they'll do is they'll either remain

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Speaker 2: silent because they don't want to screw it up, or

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Speaker 2: they're or they're just so uncomfortable, or they'll defer to

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Speaker 2: women and women's leadership. And I think on one level, fine,

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Speaker 2: we need to, we need to, you know, uplift women's leadership.

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Speaker 2: But in a sense that's that's not fair. It's not

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Speaker 2: what it's not why why is it women's responsibility? It

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Speaker 2: should be men's. That's that's that's a way of hoisting

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Speaker 2: off of you know, putting onto women what should be

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Speaker 2: what men should be carrying, especially those of us who

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Speaker 2: have you know, cultural, political, economic, you know, power and influence.

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Speaker 2: And so I think, I think one of the big

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Speaker 2: challenges of our time is getting more men who are

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Speaker 2: already there in the sense that we're uncomfortable with other

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Speaker 2: men's abusive behavior. We don't like it, we know it

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Speaker 2: when we see it, but we don't either know what

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Speaker 2: to say or we feel uncomfortable around it and don't

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Speaker 2: know what to do, and so we retreat. And I think,

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Speaker 2: I think what we need to do is not that

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Speaker 2: we have to quote unquote convert the men who are

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Speaker 2: the most deeply you know, misogynists and angry at women.

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Speaker 2: It's that we have to talk to men. I mean,

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Speaker 2: that would be a good thing, but I mean that's

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Speaker 2: not where I spend my time. I spend my time

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Speaker 2: with men who are already knows that, who already know

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Speaker 2: that gender justice, gender equality, reducing gender based violence are

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Speaker 2: important things, but they don't really know how or what

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Speaker 2: to do about it. My goal is to empower them

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Speaker 2: and to give them, both conceptually and practically the tools

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Speaker 2: to be better leaders. And to be better partners, be

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Speaker 2: better you know, fathers, uncles, you know, teachers, coaches, youth workers,

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Speaker 2: you know, religious leaders. There's so many men who are

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Speaker 2: good men in positions of influence, especially with young people,

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Speaker 2: who could be doing so much more than they're doing

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Speaker 2: right now.

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Speaker 1: Contextualize the issue for and just sort of, you know,

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Speaker 1: bring us in a little bit on you know, one

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Speaker 1: of the trend lines we've seen in the last few decades.

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Speaker 1: I mean, when you started this work, was sort of

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Speaker 1: was that an apex of the anxiety in this space?

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Speaker 1: Was it? Was there just little data, a little research

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Speaker 1: in this space. Are we seeing a diminution and violence

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Speaker 1: perpetrated against or against women? Are we seeing a return

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Speaker 1: to a little more misogyny? And has it been impacted

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Speaker 1: by culture? Social media, has been impacted even by our

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Speaker 1: politics today.

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Speaker 2: All of that, I think, I think you've touched on

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Speaker 2: a whole bunch of really important developments. It's a complicated thing,

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Speaker 2: like social change itself is really complicated. So we're making

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Speaker 2: all kinds of forward progress. There's reforms in the laws,

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Speaker 2: There's a level of consciousness that seeps through, whether it's

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Speaker 2: through the education system, through media. There's so many powerful

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Speaker 2: and empowered women that are vocal and thoughtful around this

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Speaker 2: subject matter to a lesser extent men. But at the

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Speaker 2: same time, yes, we have had an enormous backlash against

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Speaker 2: some of this progress, and I think, honestly, I think

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Speaker 2: right wing populism in the United States and in Europe

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Speaker 2: and other parts of the world. But a big part

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Speaker 2: of it that doesn't get enough sort of discussion is

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Speaker 2: that it's not just resistance to racial integration and immigration

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Speaker 2: and the increasing you know, sort of racial and ethnic

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Speaker 2: heterogeneity of some of these societies that had previously been

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Speaker 2: pretty white. That's a part of it I'm saying. I mean,

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Speaker 2: part of it, clearly is right wing populism feeds on

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Speaker 2: that energy, that sort of racial grievance. But I think

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Speaker 2: it's also a lot of men who are really put

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Speaker 2: off by and decentered by feminism and by the LGBTQ revolution,

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Speaker 2: which decenters sort of heteronormative heterosexual men in particular, And

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Speaker 2: I think that has to be part of the conversation.

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Speaker 2: I mean trump Ism, for example, me trump Ism is

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Speaker 2: so much of that is about not just white backlash,

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Speaker 2: but white male backlash against forward progress by by by women. Basically,

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Speaker 2: and this is tricky stuff because you know, can I

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Speaker 2: also say I also, I think it's really important that

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Speaker 2: I say. People like me who have been doing the

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Speaker 2: work that I and we have been doing, have long

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Speaker 2: made the connection between men's violence against women, men's violence

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Speaker 2: against other men, and men's violence against themselves, because you know,

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Speaker 2: suicide is violence turned inward. So the idea that sometimes

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Speaker 2: men will say, well, well you talk about violence against women, yo, okay,

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Speaker 2: what about violence against men? You know you'll hear this,

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Speaker 2: And I write about this in my book, of course,

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Speaker 2: because this is so predictable. It's like, well, I've thought

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Speaker 2: about that. Of course, we've all thought about we all

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Speaker 2: understand this. My friend Michael Kaufman, who's the co founder

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Speaker 2: of the White Ribbon Campaign, which is the largest global

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Speaker 2: movement of men working to end men's violence against women.

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Speaker 2: It's in like sixty something countries and it's a great thing.

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Speaker 2: It started after the Montreal men massacre in nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 2: where a man, a twenty five year old man, lined

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Speaker 2: up fourteen women in the Institute of Technology and murdered

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Speaker 2: them in cold blood. This is in nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 2: and he left a suicide note that said feminists, you know,

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Speaker 2: blaming feminists for having ruined his life, and he was

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Speaker 2: going to take revenge. Well, a group of men created

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Speaker 2: the White Ribbon campaign, which is this big public display

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Speaker 2: two years later where a man, you know, at the

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Speaker 2: end of November every year, men wear white ribbons, Michael

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Speaker 2: to say that they're not going to condone men's violence

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Speaker 2: against women, be silent in the face of it. Michael

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Speaker 2: Kaufman wrote this essay in nineteen eighty seven where he

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Speaker 2: connected men's violence against women to men's violence against other men,

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Speaker 2: to men's violence against themselves because they're all connected, and

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Speaker 2: so no thoughtful person in the twenty first centuries who's

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Speaker 2: looking at men's violence against women fails to see that

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Speaker 2: all kinds of other things in men's lives are also connected.

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Speaker 2: In addition, by the way, look at all the men,

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Speaker 2: I mean, who have women in our lives who have

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Speaker 2: been assaulted by other men. Who look at all the

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Speaker 2: men adult men who have you know, partner partnered with

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Speaker 2: women who are sexual assault survivors or domestic mind and

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Speaker 2: full disclosure.

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Speaker 1: You know, well, my wife who's been very vocal about that,

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Speaker 1: and I am what occurred with Harvey Weinstein.

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Speaker 2: She has been, and she's been an incredible brave leader

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Speaker 2: on this subject. And I love her leadership on this

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Speaker 2: and her bravery, and I love working with her on

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Speaker 2: these matters absolutely. But I'm saying there's so much I

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Speaker 2: don't know what your point. Yes, I don't know any

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Speaker 2: man who doesn't have women, So.

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Speaker 1: I imagine you go to audiences all the time and

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Speaker 1: just ask people to raise their hand.

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Speaker 2: Or or or yes or just in terms of my

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Speaker 2: social networks and the people that I know, I mean,

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Speaker 2: I'm I'm surprised if I meet a man who doesn't

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Speaker 2: have women in his life who have been assaulted by

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Speaker 2: other men. It's it's not some esoteric subject matter that

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Speaker 2: affects some small.

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Speaker 1: Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?

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Speaker 2: Again? It's a complicated question. I think we've made enormous

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Speaker 2: progress until the current regime, and the level we've made

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Speaker 2: enormous progress.

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Speaker 1: I'm curious. I mean, you just you just put out

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Speaker 1: a report that can really quantify that in terms of

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Speaker 1: research dollars that are rolling back. Obviously, advocacy in the

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Speaker 1: DEI space, which is not I think so much of

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Speaker 1: what people focus on DEI is around racial issues, but

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Speaker 1: A big part of the movement was a gender issues

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Speaker 1: and obviously that's that's under assault. But what else I

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Speaker 1: mean is the actual statistics in terms of acts of

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Speaker 1: violence perpetuated against women. Is that increasing, decreasing or is

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Speaker 1: those research dollars drying up? And we're going to finally

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Speaker 1: not really have any understanding of that.

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Speaker 2: All of the above, I would I would say we

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Speaker 2: have been making progress. There have been some there has

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Speaker 2: been some data that showed that we have been making

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Speaker 2: progress over the past, you know, twenty five thirty years

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Speaker 2: in reducing the incidents of domestic and sexual violence. But

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Speaker 2: the flip side is you don't know fully because of

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Speaker 2: the vast majority has never reported. And then when you're

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Speaker 2: effective at raising consciousness, when you're effective at providing services

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Speaker 2: to victims and survivors, when you create an environment in

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Speaker 2: an institutional setting, whether it's in a corporation or obviously

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Speaker 2: in a school or some other in the military or

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Speaker 2: at some other setting, if you create an environment where

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Speaker 2: people feel comfortable coming forward to access services or to

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Speaker 2: say that this has happened to them, then they're going

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Speaker 2: to come forward. But if you create an environment where

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Speaker 2: the institution is non responsive, then they're going to remain silent.

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Speaker 2: And so when all these programs are being cut, one

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Speaker 2: of the effects is people won't come forward because they'll

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Speaker 2: be scared that or they'll be doing a cost benefit

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Speaker 2: analysis they'll say, you know what, it's not worth it

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Speaker 2: because why why do I want to be re injured

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Speaker 2: by the system not being responsive to my needs and

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Speaker 2: put myself even more in more position of vulnerability. So

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Speaker 2: it's complicated in terms of the back and forth. But

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Speaker 2: also I do have to say the social media is

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Speaker 2: sort of the digital revolution has created a whole new

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Speaker 2: set of challenges. It's also created new possibilities obviously for

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Speaker 2: connection and for solidarity and community and people connecting with

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Speaker 2: each other from their isolated, you know, silos. There's no

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Speaker 2: question that it's a mixed bag in terms of this

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Speaker 2: subject matter. But the porn culture, the pervasiveness of like

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Speaker 2: deeply misogynous, the complication.

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Speaker 1: Of women, the objects ownership.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and the complete sexual degradation of women in the

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Speaker 2: mainstream porn culture that a lot of young people growing

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Speaker 2: up with it are seeing that as normal. They're not

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Speaker 2: they're not seeing this as like some oh my god,

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Speaker 2: some radical you know, uh, you know, new development. They're

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Speaker 2: more like, this is what sex is supposed to look like.

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Speaker 2: It's it's some of it's just incredibly abusive and cruel.

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Speaker 2: We're not talking about sexual expression here. We're talking about

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Speaker 2: cruelty and misogyny enshrined in the sexual act. And a

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Speaker 2: lot of young guys, I mean, who think that that's

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Speaker 2: supposed to be that's normal. What ends up happening in

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Speaker 2: some of these relationships is guys are doing things to

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Speaker 2: women like in heterosexual relationships, non consensually. They're you know,

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Speaker 2: they're starting to strangle them during you know, consensual non

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Speaker 2: consensual strangulation during consensual sex and things, thinking that it's

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Speaker 2: normal and it's unbelievable. Have you seen adolescens?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't have the guts. I mean, I back

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Speaker 1: to my wife Jen, she wanted me to see it,

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Speaker 1: and I did the opening scene, realizing the depths of it.

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Speaker 1: As a father, you know, I've.

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Speaker 2: Got I mean at this age, right.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've got We've got four young kids, two

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Speaker 1: boys and uh and social media is just encroaching upon

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Speaker 1: their lives and our lives.

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Speaker 2: And it found way well I appreciate that, and I

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Speaker 2: and I'm going to say this is a spoiler alert.

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Speaker 2: But but I have to say that the main actor,

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Speaker 2: or one of the one of the main actors, Stephen Graham,

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Speaker 2: the British actor, who is also the uh one of

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Speaker 2: the creators and the co writer of the piece, brilliant.

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Speaker 2: This guy is brilliant, right, I mean he talks about

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Speaker 2: this publicly. He talks about it on Jimmy Fallon. So

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Speaker 2: I'm not giving away something that isn't like a mainstream

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Speaker 2: sort of you know, uh sort of plot point, but

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Speaker 2: one of the I think one of the most powerful

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Speaker 2: things about the story and one of the reasons why

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Speaker 2: I caught on so much. I mean caught on like

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Speaker 2: in the way that I think it might be the

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Speaker 2: biggest Netflix uh my success ever and in the UK

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Speaker 2: something like half the population I've seen the thing. Okay, Anyways,

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Speaker 2: the point is the storyline about the father and his

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Speaker 2: feelings of failure for having failed to protect his son,

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Speaker 2: and he thought he was doing a good job. In

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Speaker 2: other words, this was a you know, a heterosexual, heteronormai family,

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Speaker 2: blue collar family. He's a plumber, thought that he was

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Speaker 2: doing what his father didn't do for.

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Speaker 1: Him and and just just quickly it's a thirteen year

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Speaker 1: old kid.

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Speaker 2: Thirteen year old boy who is who murders his classmate?

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Speaker 2: And and what's in the background of the whole piece.

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Speaker 2: They don't really foreground it, but it's certainly always there

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Speaker 2: is the manisphere, the misogynist manisphere. That's the Andrew Tait

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Speaker 2: world where this young boy had been in his room,

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Speaker 2: so his parents thought he was safe. He's in his room,

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Speaker 2: he's you know, he's there. They're doing their job, and

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Speaker 2: meanwhile he was immersed in that whole world. The reason

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Speaker 2: why I think that so many people resonate with this film,

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Speaker 2: including man and myself. I'm a father of a son.

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Speaker 2: I have a young son. You know, he's in his twenties,

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Speaker 2: but he's, you know, young young guy. I think it

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Speaker 2: resonated with a lot of men because of the father's

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Speaker 2: pain and how badly he felt he had let down

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Speaker 2: his son, as well as of course the girl and

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Speaker 2: her family because she was the primary victim.

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Speaker 1: No, I mean it's look, I mean it well, it

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Speaker 1: speaks with unpacking all of that, and I want to

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Speaker 1: get back to this mano sphere and I think, I mean,

432
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:35,080
Speaker 1: you alluded to it in the context of social media,

433
00:21:35,320 --> 00:21:37,560
Speaker 1: but even unpacking that a little bit. You've made a

434
00:21:37,600 --> 00:21:40,119
Speaker 1: point and reinforced a point today in a report you

435
00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 1: just put out that there is now a big setback.

436
00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:44,840
Speaker 2: In this space.

437
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:48,960
Speaker 1: I mean there's a very intentional, organized effort now with

438
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:53,320
Speaker 1: the current administration, the Trump administration, to vandalize a lot

439
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:54,520
Speaker 1: of the progress in the space.

440
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:58,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, and it's disgraceful. Let me just say, I'll

441
00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 2: just use that word. It's disgraceful and it's harmful to women,

442
00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:03,080
Speaker 2: but it's also harmful to men. I'll give you an

443
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 2: example the military. I've been working with the military. I

444
00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:09,360
Speaker 2: created the first gender violence prevention program in the United

445
00:22:09,359 --> 00:22:11,960
Speaker 2: States Department of Defense nineteen ninety seven. We started out

446
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:15,800
Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps. And I and my colleagues have

447
00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 2: been working in that space for a long time, twenty

448
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:20,040
Speaker 2: seven years or something. And there's all these great people,

449
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:24,360
Speaker 2: men and women, and you know, uniform military and DoD civilians.

450
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:27,440
Speaker 2: And I was on the US Secretary Secretary of Defense

451
00:22:27,480 --> 00:22:29,520
Speaker 2: Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military. This is

452
00:22:29,560 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 2: back in two thousand. I mean, there have been so

453
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:37,080
Speaker 2: many different talented people, including uniform military leaders, who are

454
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 2: on board with knowing how important it is to talk

455
00:22:39,520 --> 00:22:43,080
Speaker 2: about this stuff. To have programming to create it's for

456
00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:46,760
Speaker 2: morale purposes, for mission readiness purposes, for all these reasons.

457
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:50,200
Speaker 2: Having this kind of educational process within the military space

458
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:53,680
Speaker 2: is really important, and it's being all just radically cut back,

459
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:57,159
Speaker 2: and it's just it's absolutely disgraceful. And I'm saying this

460
00:22:57,200 --> 00:22:59,439
Speaker 2: as somebody who's been working in that space. And if

461
00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:01,719
Speaker 2: anybody thinks that it's somehow anti mail, this is what

462
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,119
Speaker 2: this is the subtext of all this, right, that somehow

463
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 2: it's anti mail to like talk about sexual assault or

464
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:10,359
Speaker 2: domestic violence. This is BS. This is byes.

465
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: They frame it in the wokesm just more woke.

466
00:23:13,320 --> 00:23:15,960
Speaker 2: BS right and there and there and that's and I'll

467
00:23:15,960 --> 00:23:18,679
Speaker 2: call BS on that because there's so many good people,

468
00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 2: including really powerful men in that space. I mean, I've

469
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,760
Speaker 2: worked with so many powerful military leaders from the from

470
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:27,119
Speaker 2: the you know generals and colonels and admirals at the

471
00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:30,000
Speaker 2: highest level of you know authority. But also like when

472
00:23:30,040 --> 00:23:31,560
Speaker 2: I started in the Marine, working in the in the

473
00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:34,960
Speaker 2: Marine Corps, we were working with it was called a

474
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 2: Sergeant's Major Initiative. It was an enlisted leadership initiative. We

475
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:40,960
Speaker 2: were training sergeants. These are these are generally men. In

476
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:42,720
Speaker 2: you know, the Marine Corps about ninety four percent male,

477
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:44,760
Speaker 2: so there are women, but it's very much a male

478
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 2: dominated space. Let's be clear. Most of the you know

479
00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 2: sergeants are in their twenties and they work directly with

480
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,480
Speaker 2: the young troops, these you know, the eighteen nineteen, twenty

481
00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 2: year old troops, and so providing the leadership, providing the

482
00:23:57,560 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 2: leadership training for them for how they can leadership to

483
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:03,760
Speaker 2: the younger troops. This is to me such a basic thing.

484
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 2: It should be. It should be not only should it

485
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,880
Speaker 2: not be rolled back, it should be expanded and deepened.

486
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 2: And it's what's happening is the exact opposite. Under the

487
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 2: name of supposedly caring about warrior culture, this is just

488
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:20,720
Speaker 2: total bs. And I think under the name of anti wokeism,

489
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 2: some of the most some of the most forward thinking

490
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 2: and and sort of useful educational and other consciousness, you know,

491
00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 2: shifting strategies over the last generation are being undermined.

492
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:35,720
Speaker 1: And you've seen this happening also in sports, because I

493
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 1: know you've been not just working a military but you've

494
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,360
Speaker 1: represented a lot of good work in many different venues

495
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 1: as it related to athletics as well.

496
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 2: Well again, the program that I created, the Mentors and

497
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:49,360
Speaker 2: Violence Prevention Program MVP, was the first nineteen ninety three

498
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:51,359
Speaker 2: at a place called the Center for the Study of

499
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:55,560
Speaker 2: Sport in Society. That's an institute that was created by

500
00:24:55,680 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 2: Richard Lapchick, doctor Richard Lapschick, who's a pioneer of combining

501
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:00,920
Speaker 2: sport and civil rights activism. Father. There was Joe Lapchick,

502
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 2: one of the pioneering players and coaches in the NBA,

503
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 2: who was a white guy. Joe Lapchick, He's in the

504
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame. I mean, this is an NBA guy.

505
00:25:08,359 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 2: He ended up as the coach of the New York Knicks,

506
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:11,880
Speaker 2: and he was the coach of the Saint John's men's

507
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 2: basketball team. This is the father. He was also a

508
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,199
Speaker 2: white guy who was for racial integration, way ahead of

509
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 2: the curve. The son was an activist, like a sixties

510
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:23,480
Speaker 2: era activist who wasn't an elite athlete, but he was

511
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 2: passionate about civil rights and sports. And he created this

512
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:30,000
Speaker 2: institute in nineteen ninety In nineteen eighty four, and I,

513
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:33,400
Speaker 2: as a graduate student in Boston, came over to his

514
00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 2: institute pitching the program to train college male student athletes

515
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 2: to speak out on these matters. This is in nineteen

516
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:42,280
Speaker 2: ninety three, and my thinking was not that there was

517
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 2: a problem in athletics of male athletes assoulting women, although

518
00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:47,679
Speaker 2: there was such a problem and continues to be. My

519
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:50,400
Speaker 2: thinking was, where are we going to find young men

520
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,919
Speaker 2: who have the status, the self confidence, and the platform

521
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:57,400
Speaker 2: of influence to break the silence among men and young men,

522
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:00,160
Speaker 2: Because I was thinking, lots of guys are uncomfortable with

523
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 2: abusive behavior and misogyny around them, but they don't speak up.

524
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 2: As I was saying earlier, so we need more men

525
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,359
Speaker 2: who have already have some confidence because it takes guts.

526
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why guys don't speak up on

527
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:12,960
Speaker 2: these matters is it takes guts, it takes strength, it

528
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 2: takes self confidence. And not just twenty year olds, but

529
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 2: for fifty year olds. A lot of men get a

530
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 2: little they're anxious, and you know what they're anxious about.

531
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 2: They're anxious about other men, and they're anxious that other

532
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 2: men are going to think that somehow they're soft or weak.

533
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 2: And it drives me. I have to say, it drives

534
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:33,160
Speaker 2: me crazy because I watch on people on the right

535
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 2: mock and ridicule men who speak out about domestic violence

536
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 2: or sexual assault. Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, These people mock

537
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:43,679
Speaker 2: and ridicule. Andrew Tate is even more exaggerated in what

538
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 2: he in how he mocks, in ridicules men who stand

539
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 2: for gender equality and gender justice, as if we're somehow

540
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 2: soft and weak. And I often say, and I so

541
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 2: appreciate the opportunity to say this to you here in

542
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 2: this in this setting, if you're a guy, being one

543
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 2: of the guys takes nothing special whatsoever. Just going along

544
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 2: with you boys, It's like that takes nothing special. What

545
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,159
Speaker 2: takes something special if you're a guy, is turning to

546
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:08,960
Speaker 2: your friends and saying, hey, dude, that's not cool. The

547
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:10,920
Speaker 2: way we don't do shit like you know, we don't

548
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,280
Speaker 2: do stuff like that here, yeah, or we don't treat

549
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 2: women like that, or that's not you're my friend, But

550
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:17,920
Speaker 2: the way you're talking to your girlfriend, I'm concerned. That's

551
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:21,159
Speaker 2: not cool, dude. That takes so much more strength and

552
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,120
Speaker 2: guts and self confidence. And yet the guy who does

553
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 2: who says it is a is a beta, is a

554
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 2: woos is a soy boy, is a virtue signaler, and

555
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 2: so many young guys have grown up in a media environment,

556
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 2: a social media environment where like me, I know that's

557
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:40,120
Speaker 2: what's going to happen is when people watch this, there's

558
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 2: gonna be people that, who's that, who's that? Beta. It's

559
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,480
Speaker 2: just so embarrassing to me because it's like literally the

560
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:49,880
Speaker 2: opposite of the truth, right And so anyways, that's why

561
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 2: I started working with in the athletic subculture. And my

562
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 2: program was the first large scale program in college athletics,

563
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 2: and that was the first program in professional and I

564
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:58,400
Speaker 2: have to say, you know who are first the first

565
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,440
Speaker 2: team we work with in professional athletics, New England Patriots.

566
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 2: And then and then we work with the Red Sox

567
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,640
Speaker 2: because you know, we're in Boston, right, So we had

568
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:07,399
Speaker 2: the Patriots in the Red Sox and at one point

569
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 2: the Patriots had won like three out of the first

570
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 2: like five years we were working with them. The Patriots

571
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:14,479
Speaker 2: had won the Super Bowl and the Red Sox had

572
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 2: won the World Series for the first time in eighty

573
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 2: six years right after they started working with us. And

574
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 2: so I said, I would always say, as a laugh line,

575
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,880
Speaker 2: I would say, you know what about the Yankees, I'm sure,

576
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 2: well that's true. Well, that's true but but it was

577
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:29,439
Speaker 2: even more self serving, I said, I said, you know,

578
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 2: I'm not going to claim that the Red Sox and

579
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 2: the patriots working with us was the reason why they

580
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 2: won incredible championships. But you can't prove disprove it either.

581
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 1: Wi.

582
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 3: Hi am Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications

583
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 3: and Wall Street financier. You might have caught me on

584
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Speaker 3: a recent episode of This is Gavin Newsom. If you

585
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Speaker 3: like that, I think you'll enjoy my own podcast, The

586
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Speaker 3: Rest Is Politics US. Alongside journalist Caddy k we go

587
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Speaker 3: behind the scenes of politics, from the chaos of the

588
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Speaker 3: West Wing to the forces shaping the world's most powerful economy.

589
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Speaker 3: I was in the Trump White House for eleven wild

590
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Speaker 3: days and Caddy's been reporting on US politics for nearly

591
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Speaker 3: a few secrets you haven't heard before. Search The Rest

593
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Speaker 3: Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.

594
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Speaker 2: Hope to see you over there.

595
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: So back to the manospeare because you mentioned Joe Rogan,

596
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 1: you mentioned Joe Peterson, obviously mentioned Andrew Tay, who you know,

597
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: respectfully need not be mentioned much. I mean he's I

598
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:46,800
Speaker 1: mean even by extreme standards. He's a unique spectrum. That said,

599
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: he's also been embraced by members of the Trump administration

600
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: and Trump himself, which full disclosure. But talk to me

601
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: about the manos speirre, I mean, what is it?

602
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 2: And who?

603
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: By the way, who are some of these fun I

604
00:29:57,360 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: mean people I think I have heard of. Joe Rogan.

605
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,480
Speaker 1: Average person may not have heard of Joe Rogan then

606
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,000
Speaker 1: obviously heard something about him when it came to Kamala

607
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:08,480
Speaker 1: Harris not deciding to go to Austin to go on

608
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: his podcast, though few people likely were first to learn

609
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: about him with that alone. But Joe Peterson's someone not

610
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: everybody knows who else in this mano sphere? What is it?

611
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 1: How do you define it? And when did you start

612
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: to see the emergence of it? And how real inconsequential

613
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: is it is? Is it in the context of this

614
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: gender conversation.

615
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 2: Well, it was certainly a small sort of dark corner

616
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 2: of the Internet for a number of years where men

617
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 2: who were many of them really angry at women, at

618
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 2: feminism more generally, and at women. Many of them were

619
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 2: men who were divorced, who had custody battles, you know,

620
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 2: who were really angry at both the courts in some

621
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 2: cases their you know, their wives or their ex wives

622
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 2: because they didn't have access to their kids. And some

623
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 2: of those men were abusive, some of them weren't abusive.

624
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 2: It's it's a complicated picture. And when it comes to

625
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 2: the you know, the messiness of relationships, I mean, i'm

626
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 2: you know, who knows, you know. But so there was

627
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 2: there was a sort of men's rights movement which was

628
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 2: organizing itself. And then when the Internet came came into

629
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 2: the picture, they were organizing through you know, through connecting

630
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 2: with each other through the digital universe. And it was

631
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 2: called the manosphere. And it was again a small sort

632
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 2: of corner of the Internet. It's become completely mainstream now.

633
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 2: So and and you know, Donald Trump's election in twenty

634
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 2: sixteen was a big accelerant to the to the mainstreaming

635
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 2: of the Manisphere. And now a lot of young people,

636
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 2: young boys in particular, but not exclusively, but certainly young

637
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 2: boys and young men get drawn into the manisphere. And

638
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 2: by the way, not necessarily because they're you know, ideological.

639
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 2: It's not because they have like a critique of feminism

640
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 2: or something or anything, or masculinity. It's more like the

641
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 2: algorithms draw them in and maybe.

642
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: Maybe learning on a YouTube version of a video game

643
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: they like, and all of a sudden there's an ad

644
00:31:56,360 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 1: that's right, it's you know, with a Bugatti or something,

645
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: and they click onto that. All of a sudden they're

646
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: part of some university's right, and then all of a sudden,

647
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 1: two months later, they're in a conspiracy theory.

648
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, and and and and part exactly

649
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 2: and part of the conspiracy is that is that men

650
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 2: are being taken advantage of, and that men are being disadvantaged,

651
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 2: and that you know, feminists are uh anti mail and

652
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 2: that and that you as a man need to stand

653
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:22,479
Speaker 2: up and speak up and fight back because you know,

654
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:25,719
Speaker 2: that's the whole red pill idea. Like somehow, somehow you're

655
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 2: now consciously seeing that the world is lined up for women,

656
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 2: and which is, by the way, again talk about a

657
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 2: topsy turvy understanding of the way the world works. Right

658
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:37,240
Speaker 2: And by the way, a lot of these men, as

659
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:39,200
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of these men have never they've

660
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 2: never taken a course on you know, gender. You know,

661
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:46,200
Speaker 2: they've never read a book about it. They've never attended seminars,

662
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 2: they haven't watched you know, long YouTube videos or even

663
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 2: even Ted talks like my Ted Talk or other people's

664
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 2: Ted talks. They haven't had much exposure, but they have

665
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 2: heard that, you know, feminists hate men and especially white men.

666
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 2: Let me just say this is one of the things

667
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 2: that I think is really great about you doing this

668
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 2: podcast and the kind of people that you've been interviewing.

669
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 2: You're having a dialogue. I think I think a lot

670
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 2: of young guys don't hear any conversation like this whatsoever,

671
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 2: and certainly if there if all they're listening to is

672
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 2: the Jordan Peterson's of the world and the and Joe Rogan.

673
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 2: And by the way, Joe Rogan has enormous, enormous influence,

674
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 2: and he's not particularly ideological, although he does platform people

675
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 2: right of center, and he's very conspiratorial in the way

676
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 2: he thinks.

677
00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: So not long ago he was he was platforming in

678
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, I mean, on the other side of the

679
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: political spectrum in that respect.

680
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But he's also he's a smart guy, even

681
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:41,520
Speaker 2: though he's you know, I think he's a little bit

682
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 2: you know, he he goes in different directions and sometimes

683
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 2: I think, oh my god, he's so insightful, and other

684
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 2: times he says things that I'm like, oh my god,

685
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 2: But he does you know, he interviews you know, theoretical physicists,

686
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 2: and he has thoughtful conversations and my son and others

687
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 2: that I know, and I enjoy listening to him. So

688
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 2: I'm not this isn't just a complete, you know, sort

689
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 2: of dismissional of Joe. Yeah. I do think the Democratic

690
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 2: Party has done a horrible job of outreach to men.

691
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 2: And I think it's not just about Kamala Harris failing

692
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 2: to go on Joe Rogan. Although I think that was

693
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 2: a mistake. I don't think that that's unique to Kamala

694
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 2: Harris and her campaign, right, I think the Democratic Party

695
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 2: as a party has done a really poor job for

696
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:20,359
Speaker 2: fifty years at outreach to men.

697
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: So I want to talk. I want to unpack that

698
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: a little bit, because I mean, it connects to the

699
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: manto sphere, and it connects to what's happening with podcasts

700
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: and how media is now consumed. And that's been again

701
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: an expertise of yours. It's sort of the it's the

702
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 1: intersection of race and violence and gender, but also the

703
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:40,160
Speaker 1: intersection of gender and media. But there's this larger trend

704
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 1: line that also connects, and that is men are not

705
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: doing well right. I mean, suicide rates four x, the

706
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: addiction rates three x, twelve times more likely a man

707
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: to be incarcerated. You look at obesity rates, dropout rates,

708
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 1: you look at graduation rates, you look at discipline, you

709
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: look at all these larger issues you've been focused on

710
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: in terms of violence. I mean this, this is a crisis, arguably.

711
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: I mean this is a serious, serious crisis the state

712
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 1: of men. And it's not just white men, it's young men.

713
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,320
Speaker 1: I mean, what is going on in this space? And

714
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: what have you?

715
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 2: I mean you've you've.

716
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 1: You've talked in terms of hyper masculinity. You and my

717
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:22,359
Speaker 1: wife full disclosure, were part of a film you guys

718
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 1: worked on together around women and girls called Misrepresentation. But

719
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: then you followed up a decade ago in this space

720
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: with a film called The mascul Living about masculinity, hyper masculinity.

721
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 1: Man up, be a man, you know, and you called

722
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,279
Speaker 1: out in that film a lot of these stats a

723
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: decade plus ago, And so I think you're right to

724
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 1: call out the Democratic Party. Where the hell have we

725
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: been on this topic? We see where the Republicans have

726
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: gone with it and to exploit, I think a little

727
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: bit of it, not necessarily to solve for some of it.

728
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: But what are these trend lines? What do they mean

729
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 1: to you? And what have you gleaned from? And what

730
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: the hell is going on with young men in this

731
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: country and maybe around the world.

732
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,480
Speaker 2: Sure well, I mean, there's no doubt that there's all

733
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:08,719
Speaker 2: kinds of indict you know, indications that a lot of

734
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 2: young men are not doing well. And then you just

735
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:13,359
Speaker 2: name some of those statistics. And some of your other

736
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:16,839
Speaker 2: guests have talked about this subject and and thoughtfully and

737
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 2: and you know, and it's all good. By the way,

738
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 2: I do want to say one of the things that

739
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:26,680
Speaker 2: that is frustrating to me is that feminism is not

740
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 2: the enemy of men.

741
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:28,399
Speaker 1: Right.

742
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 2: It's like, if you want to help men, if you

743
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:32,399
Speaker 2: want if you want boys to thrive, if you want

744
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 2: boys to have better lives, better relationships, better self regard

745
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 2: and self care to take care of themselves, feminism is

746
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 2: not the uh antithesis of that. Feminism is giving giving

747
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:46,959
Speaker 2: a pathway. Can I also let me just a related point,

748
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 2: the men's health movement, which is a small but growing

749
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 2: movement of of of people who are looking at ways

750
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 2: in which cultural ideal ideas about manhood. And this is

751
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:58,800
Speaker 2: again around the world, it's not just in the United States,

752
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 2: but have contributed to men's health problems, both in terms

753
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:06,359
Speaker 2: of risk taking behavior and certainly in terms of health

754
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:08,800
Speaker 2: seeking behavior. In other words, men not going to the doctor,

755
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,320
Speaker 2: men not going to the dentist, men not going to therapy,

756
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 2: you know, dealing with self medication rather like through the

757
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 2: bottle or through drugs, rather than going to get you know,

758
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:21,560
Speaker 2: professional health like therapy, because that's unmanly to do. In

759
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:24,239
Speaker 2: other words, in other words, the impediment to doing that

760
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 2: is a belief about manhood. Like a real man sucks

761
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 2: it up, a real man just deals with it. The

762
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 2: men's health movement, which is an important movement to say

763
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 2: the least, is directly connected to the feminist led women's

764
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 2: health movement. In fact, one of the major events in

765
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:44,720
Speaker 2: the women's health movement was the publication in nineteen seventy

766
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 2: two of a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves, published by

767
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 2: the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, which was one of

768
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 2: the first interventions into the public conversation about how women's

769
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 2: health was affected by gender. You know ideas about femininity

770
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 2: and how the healthcare system was set up for men

771
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 2: and for women. Anyhow, the men's health women Some of

772
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 2: the major figures in it, including my friend and colleague

773
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 2: Terry Reel, who wrote the first major book about men's

774
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:10,800
Speaker 2: depression called I Don't Want to Talk about It, Overcoming

775
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:14,080
Speaker 2: the Secret Legacy of Male Depression in nineteen ninety seven.

776
00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 2: People like Terry Reel talk openly about how his ideas

777
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 2: were informed by feminist you know, intellectuals and activists and

778
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 2: practitioners in the women's health space, in the therapy space.

779
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 2: And yet the average guy who cares about women, you know,

780
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 2: men's health, and who or listen or listens to manisphere

781
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 2: figures talk about how feminists hate men. They have no

782
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 2: idea that some of the most thoughtful things, you know,

783
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 2: thoughtful people about men's health are direct products of feminist

784
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 2: ideas and feminist activism. And I think the reason why

785
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 2: I think that's important is because we have we have

786
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 2: too much artificial division between men and women. And I

787
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 2: think the Right thrives on this division, and it's it's

788
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 2: it's dividing people from each other rather than bringing them

789
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:01,719
Speaker 2: to And I think part of what I do in

790
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 2: my work, and I think you do it as well.

791
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:04,799
Speaker 2: But I think certainly what I do in my work

792
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 2: is because I come from a fairly traditional background, and

793
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 2: I have all this experience in sports culture, in the

794
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 2: military and working with traditional men. In fifty I've been

795
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 2: all fifty states, you know, I work in Red States.

796
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:21,240
Speaker 2: I work with really traditional men in every you know sector.

797
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 2: You can imagine men can have these conversations and with

798
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:29,120
Speaker 2: each other. With women, it's not like it's not so polarized.

799
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 2: But I think if you go into these manisphere spaces

800
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 2: or the political spaces, or Fox, or you watch Fox,

801
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:37,399
Speaker 2: or you listen to talk radio, conservative talk radio, which

802
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 2: I've been listening. I started listening in Rush Lombard like

803
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,399
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety. I know this stuff really really well.

804
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 1: We had on one of the OJEZU was the number

805
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 1: two on radio, Michael Savage, was that right where you're

806
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 1: sitting just a few weeks ago on the podcast.

807
00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 2: That's right about that history as well, that's right they

808
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 2: and by the way, these guys created a formula that

809
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 2: made a ton of money for them and a lot

810
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:01,799
Speaker 2: of other people, and dividing people and and making caricatures

811
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 2: of people that they don't agree with Rush Limbaugh did

812
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:09,080
Speaker 2: it fabulously and ridiculed and mocked, you know, feminists and

813
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:11,400
Speaker 2: women who are trying to be treated with respect.

814
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 1: So you're basically, I mean, so this goes I think

815
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 1: this is This is the real dialectic right on this topic.

816
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 1: It's a difficult one because the people to see it

817
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: it's one or the other. It's a binary that somehow

818
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: it's a zero sum game, that that you are somehow

819
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: diminishing the feminist movement if you're trying to elevate young men,

820
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,719
Speaker 1: or if you're elevating or the opposite. I mean, what

821
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: how do you start to there's more of an abundance mindset.

822
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:37,880
Speaker 1: What's good for the feminist movement is good for young men.

823
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: Is the point I guess you're making. Is that the

824
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: point you're making?

825
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but it's all I have to say. It's

826
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 2: complicated because people can say, well, there's only so many jobs,

827
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 2: and if women are getting those jobs, then there's going

828
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 2: to be harder you know, competition for the men. But

829
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 2: you know what, if you believe in merit, if you

830
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 2: believe in democracy, if you believe in fairness, and you

831
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 2: believe in fairness. I think fairness is to me the

832
00:40:57,120 --> 00:41:00,319
Speaker 2: governing issue, right. I believe in fairness plat out women.

833
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:02,760
Speaker 2: If women are smarter than men, if they work harder,

834
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 2: if they're more talented, then they deserve the job. It's

835
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 2: like you don't deserve the job.

836
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: Just because aristocracy in that respect is certainly showcasing itself

837
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:13,399
Speaker 1: an education system, and certainly higher education, which women are

838
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,520
Speaker 1: on pace in half a decade to be two to

839
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: one of college graduates in that that's right.

840
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 2: And by the way, anti intellectualism is deep in American culture,

841
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 2: especially among men. The idea that if you're somehow smart,

842
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 2: you're a wimp, or you're condescending because you're educated, you're

843
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:33,720
Speaker 2: condescending to people who don't have an education. And I

844
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 2: appreciate that certain members of of you know, the educated

845
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 2: classes can be clunky, to say the least in terms

846
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 2: of the way they communicate with people like with with

847
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 2: with a less you know, less pedigree in terms of

848
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 2: their education. I don't think I'm like that, but I

849
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 2: do think that that's a real thing. But the idea

850
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 2: that being somehow intellectual, being you know, somebody who reads,

851
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 2: who engages with ideas is somehow makes you weak and

852
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 2: soft as a man, or less than a real man.

853
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 2: This is the most self defeating idiocy that I could

854
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 2: ever imagine, and yet it's fed daily in the in

855
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 2: the popular discourse, especially in you know, right wing talk radio.

856
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:14,160
Speaker 1: So what the hell is going on with young men?

857
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 2: Then?

858
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: What's going on?

859
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 2: Well? I think it's a complicated world. I think I

860
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 2: think a lot of women, for example, have been pioneering

861
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 2: new ways of being women in a in a in

862
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,480
Speaker 2: a in a very diverse and changing you know, sort

863
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 2: of historical social you know context, And I think a

864
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:34,320
Speaker 2: lot of men are as well. We're just trying to

865
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 2: figure it out, Like what does it mean to be

866
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 2: a good father? What does it mean to be a

867
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:38,839
Speaker 2: good husband? What does it mean to be a strong man?

868
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 2: If the historically being a strong man meant you're a

869
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:44,440
Speaker 2: protector of your family and a provider. But then you

870
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 2: know your wife, say you're a heterosexual man and you're married,

871
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 2: what if your wife is like making more money than you,

872
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 2: what does it mean to be a provider at that point?

873
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Like, I mean, what does

874
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:56,240
Speaker 2: it mean to protect your kids? When people are dropping

875
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 2: off their kids at school and they're worried that their

876
00:42:57,719 --> 00:42:59,280
Speaker 2: kids are going to get shot in a school shooting.

877
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 2: So are we protecting our kids effectively or are we actually,

878
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 2: through bad policy, making our kids more vulnerable. So I

879
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 2: think I think guys want to do the right thing.

880
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 2: They want to be respected, they want to be strong,

881
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 2: but they don't really know exactly how to go about

882
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 2: doing it. And because because of the changes in women's lives,

883
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 2: And again I'm making a wildly general statement, and it's

884
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:22,719
Speaker 2: complicated by class and race and ethnicity and all these

885
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 2: other categories. I appreciate that intersectional thinking is not just

886
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 2: a that's not just a slogan. It's real. It's like

887
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:34,280
Speaker 2: people have complex identities, right, and they occupy complex social positions.

888
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of women have been doing

889
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 2: incredible things to sort of upend centuries, millennia of tradition,

890
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:45,280
Speaker 2: and as a result, a lot of men are completely

891
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 2: dissentered and are still trying to figure out what does

892
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 2: it mean? What do I mean? What does it mean

893
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 2: to be me? What does it mean to be strong?

894
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,280
Speaker 2: And I think some men are drawn to And again

895
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 2: I'm not dismissing this. I think it's okay. You know,

896
00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 2: some men are drawn to more traditional ideas about manhood

897
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 2: in part because they're they're they're simpler, and they're they're

898
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:10,279
Speaker 2: they're they're they're they're they're they're less comp they're just

899
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:13,840
Speaker 2: less less complicated, like so, for example, celebrating physical strength,

900
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:16,399
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, and by the way, Trump in

901
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 2: his you know, his way, he's no, you know, he's

902
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 2: no intellectual, right, but he's he has a visceral understanding

903
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 2: of some of this. And so and the Trump campaign

904
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 2: how how they go to UFC fights and then Trump

905
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 2: walks into a UFC fight and everybody's cheering. It's like yes,

906
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 2: and it's like that re establishes that Trump is the

907
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 2: man's candidate. The Republican Party is the men's party. And

908
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,279
Speaker 2: they just doubled down. The Republicans double down on this

909
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenty for r NC. And it was like,

910
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:45,680
Speaker 2: to me, it was like a cartoonish, hyper masculine spectacle.

911
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 2: It was I was embarrassed by it. But it were

912
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,359
Speaker 2: shirt yes, yes, and and and Dana White saying he's

913
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:54,439
Speaker 2: the best, you know, he's the biggest badass. And one

914
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 2: person after another going up and saying Donald Trump is

915
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 2: the strongest man I've ever met, and it's just I

916
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 2: was just embarrassed by this. But it worked, worked, It worked,

917
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:02,839
Speaker 2: especially for young men.

918
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 1: But you knew it was going to work because you

919
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 1: wrote books on this. Yes, you wrote a book about

920
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:10,439
Speaker 1: Clinton and Hillary I mean about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

921
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 1: You wrote a book about masculinity and leadership.

922
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 2: I did. Yes, I saw this coming decades ago. I

923
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 2: mean it wasn't. And by the way, Reagan, I mean,

924
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 2: how do you think Reagan was marketed to the I

925
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 2: mean what your predecessor as governor of California. How Reagan

926
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 2: was marketed to the to the American population was he

927
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 2: was a cowboy riding in from the West to save

928
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 2: a degenerated, you know, liberal establishment that's soft and weak,

929
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:36,359
Speaker 2: and and you know the Iranian hostage crisis, and rom

930
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 2: Reagan was going to come in. John Wayne wasn't available

931
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan, and and it started. It didn't start there,

932
00:45:43,320 --> 00:45:46,799
Speaker 2: but it accelerated with the Reagan administration and then for

933
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:49,120
Speaker 2: the last forty plus years. One of the biggest challenges

934
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 2: that the Democrats haven't risen to is how do you,

935
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 2: on the one hand, represent the interests of the ascendant

936
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:59,399
Speaker 2: classes of women and people of color and LGBTQ and

937
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 2: hang on to the one of the key parts of

938
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:04,839
Speaker 2: the New Deal coalition, which is, you know, blue collar

939
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:07,239
Speaker 2: white men and how do you do that at the

940
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:09,960
Speaker 2: same time. And it's really a complicated challenge.

941
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 1: So what's the.

942
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 2: Answer to that? Ha ha?

943
00:46:11,719 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 1: I mean, because I mean it goes back to the

944
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. It's interesting Democrat at the DNC, they didn't

945
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: necessarily platform. They platform pretty much every group, but they

946
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:23,799
Speaker 1: didn't platform a group that's struggling and struggling to be

947
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 1: heard and identified as struggling, right, that are looking for

948
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 1: meaning and purpose and mission that you, for a long

949
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:35,120
Speaker 1: period of time have recognized are feeling these pressures. There

950
00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:38,399
Speaker 1: are these macrol pressures. I mean, what is I mean,

951
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: why do you think the Democratic Party did not meet

952
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,840
Speaker 1: that moment? Do you think the Democratic Party is waking

953
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: up to that moment? Maybe it goes back to my

954
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: question a little while ago about what does this moment

955
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: in this conversation mean? Why do you feel like is

956
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 1: there a political is it because the political opening in

957
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:01,879
Speaker 1: the space, more people are having this conversation about men

958
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: than they have in the past. That's actually illuminating even

959
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:06,279
Speaker 1: more of your work as well.

960
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:09,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many pieces to that. I would say,

961
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:13,839
Speaker 2: I would say the crisis of right wing populism and

962
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 2: trump Ism is focusing a lot of people's minds. I

963
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 2: think a lot of people who were kind of asleep

964
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:21,880
Speaker 2: at the switch a little bit, and they thought, you know,

965
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 2: the Democrats could just keep going without really addressing this

966
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 2: complex set of identity issues, especially involving men, without being

967
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 2: seen to somehow be you know, selling out women, you know.

968
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 2: And I think the consultant class, I think I think

969
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,600
Speaker 2: a lot of political consultants haven't been on this. They

970
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 2: haven't understood this dynamic, the dynamic of men and speaking

971
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:48,759
Speaker 2: two men and how I mean Steve Bannon, one of

972
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 2: your formal guests, Steve Bennan says, everything is narrative. This

973
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 2: isn't about ideology. It's about narrative. And I mean, I'm

974
00:47:58,040 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 2: one of the co founders of an organization called the

975
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 2: Young Men Research Project, right, and we've been doing we

976
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 2: started in early twenty four and way before the election,

977
00:48:05,600 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 2: trying to push the Democratic Party, but not just the

978
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,479
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, journalists, people in the media to think about

979
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 2: the young men's vote, to think about how to speak

980
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 2: to young men because we were worried about the slide

981
00:48:16,080 --> 00:48:18,360
Speaker 2: over to the to the right of young men. And

982
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 2: by the way, young women move into the left and

983
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 2: you know, politically and young men moving to the right.

984
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 2: But it's not ideological. In other words, the same men

985
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 2: who voted for Trump, but young men, many of them,

986
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 2: they're pro choice on abortion rights, and you've been a

987
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:33,799
Speaker 2: strong leader on abortion rights and unapologetically, which is by

988
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 2: the way, what we need. We need unapologetic leadership from

989
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:40,439
Speaker 2: the Democratic side on things like women's rights. But when

990
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:42,360
Speaker 2: it comes to you know, strong labor unions, when it

991
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 2: comes to action on the climate crisis, when it comes

992
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 2: to increase of minimum wage and the issue after issues,

993
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:49,279
Speaker 2: young men are progressive.

994
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,360
Speaker 1: Way though there's some interesting state wide elections overwhelming they

995
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:57,480
Speaker 1: went for Trump but supported a portion of reproductive freedom

996
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 1: and supported minimum wage increases. That's right, same exact voter.

997
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 2: Because it was about identity, not ideology. In other words,

998
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 2: there the identity politics. This is what identity politics are

999
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,959
Speaker 2: always The Democrats are already are always accused of playing

1000
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 2: identity politics when they talk about issues relating to you know,

1001
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:17,439
Speaker 2: women or people of color or LGBTQ or something. But

1002
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 2: the Republicans have been playing identity politics with white male

1003
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 2: voters for fifty years. Richard Nixon started playing identity politics

1004
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:25,360
Speaker 2: when he started talking about the forgotten man, and you

1005
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:28,320
Speaker 2: know they and that silent majority queens.

1006
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:30,360
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they've only been playing those.

1007
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 2: Games exactly identity politics. But it worked again in the

1008
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 2: twenty twenty floor election. And I think a lot of

1009
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 2: young men and a lot of young men were basically

1010
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 2: being told that the party that cares about you and

1011
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 2: the party that is the men's party is the Republican Party,

1012
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,640
Speaker 2: and Trump is the man's candidate, and the Democrats are

1013
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 2: the party of women and non masculine men, right, And

1014
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 2: that's that. That was the mainstream message to young men

1015
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,879
Speaker 2: and young men who were low engagement voters. In other words,

1016
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 2: what does that mean? Low engagement voters? It means they

1017
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,359
Speaker 2: don't pay close attention to politics. They don't read, they

1018
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:09,399
Speaker 2: don't engage in political discourse, they don't you know, read

1019
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 2: think pieces in the Atlantic. You know what I'm saying.

1020
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,960
Speaker 1: They're not where I am every night on MSNBC or

1021
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 1: Fox or you know, Newsmax or CNN.

1022
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 2: No, but they're but then, but they're hearing on and

1023
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:20,279
Speaker 2: by the way. One of the things that we do

1024
00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 2: in the Young Men's Research Project is that you we're

1025
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:25,320
Speaker 2: looking at all these different ways that the media ecosphere

1026
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:28,880
Speaker 2: that young men are inhabiting are not necessarily overtly ideological.

1027
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 2: In theres a lot of them. They're just talking about comedy,

1028
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 2: they're talking about working out, they're talking about you know,

1029
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,719
Speaker 2: eating healthy and good, you know, relationship sports. But then

1030
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 2: they throw in some politics, like like they're throw in

1031
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:41,280
Speaker 2: a little bit of politics, and like, yeah, Trump, Trump's

1032
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 2: a guy, He's a guy's guy, you know, and then

1033
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 2: this fight fight fight, which is you know, by the way,

1034
00:50:45,160 --> 00:50:46,760
Speaker 2: let me just say I was impressed.

1035
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it was shot that was extraordinary

1036
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:50,440
Speaker 1: in the moment, yeah.

1037
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 2: Knowledge, yeah, and so good good for him. It's like,

1038
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 2: but but then Charlie Kirk comes out and says, if

1039
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 2: you're a man, after this, after the after the assassination

1040
00:50:57,239 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 2: attempt and Trump's response to it, if you're a man

1041
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:00,799
Speaker 2: and you don't vote for Trump, you're not a man.

1042
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,479
Speaker 2: That to me is that's embarrassing to me, Charlie Kirk,

1043
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sorry, that's embarrassing.

1044
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we had him on the show as well

1045
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:09,719
Speaker 1: as you know, yes.

1046
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:11,839
Speaker 2: No, no, And again let me say also, I think

1047
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 2: it's great talking to people, having dialogue with people I

1048
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:17,399
Speaker 2: have arguments with and discussions with people that I don't

1049
00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 2: agree with all the time, including men, you know, around

1050
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 2: some of this fraught subject matter. It's fine, good, let's go,

1051
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 2: let's go, let's have a discussion.

1052
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:34,040
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about just the me too movement.

1053
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 1: You know, this sort of sendency of consciousness in this space,

1054
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,920
Speaker 1: and then there were action to it. Do you think

1055
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:46,360
Speaker 1: there was there's been an overreaction to it. Do you

1056
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 1: think there's been appropriate reaction to it? Do you think

1057
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 1: people have understated the power of the me too movement?

1058
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:58,120
Speaker 1: Where are you, I mean, just on that spectrum of observation, acuity, interest,

1059
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: your own activity in that space. Where do you come

1060
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:05,240
Speaker 1: out in terms of just your experience with that movement

1061
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: and with where we are today?

1062
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 2: Okay, I think I think we need to, like one

1063
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:12,600
Speaker 2: way to think about this is kind of widen the

1064
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 2: aperture a little bit and think about this in the

1065
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 2: longer terms. For thousands of years, men assaulted women in families,

1066
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 2: in relationships, in marriages. Marriage was leg you know, rape

1067
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 2: was legal within marriage, including in the West until very recently.

1068
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 2: I mean in the UK it was only allowed in

1069
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,359
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one rape within marriage, And in the United

1070
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 2: States as late as the nineteen eighties, there were six

1071
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:35,800
Speaker 2: states where it was still legal for a man to

1072
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:38,840
Speaker 2: rape his his wife. I mean seriously, I mean, we

1073
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 2: weren't so long ago cleaning up some statute language on that,

1074
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,799
Speaker 2: even in California. So I completely understand what you're saying, right,

1075
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 2: So there's still some language in that space exactly, and

1076
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:52,560
Speaker 2: to this day. And there's hundreds of millions of people

1077
00:52:52,560 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 2: who live in countries where it's still legal for men

1078
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 2: to rape his own wife. So there's been thousands of

1079
00:52:57,080 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 2: years of men brutalizing women and getting away with it

1080
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 2: within absolute impunity. And finally, you have in the in

1081
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, you have a movement, you know, whether

1082
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:10,799
Speaker 2: it's the women's movement more broadly and then more specifically

1083
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:14,359
Speaker 2: the anti sexual assault movement that started really taking off

1084
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:16,880
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies and eighties, as well as the

1085
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:20,000
Speaker 2: anti domestic violence movement. So these are very recent movements.

1086
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:21,960
Speaker 2: I mean, for somebody who's twenty years old, the eighties

1087
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:23,799
Speaker 2: might sound like a long time ago, but let me

1088
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:26,400
Speaker 2: just say, it's not that long ago. You know. I

1089
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 2: was just listening to us like a mixed list from

1090
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:30,799
Speaker 2: the eighties, and I was like, that was my I

1091
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:32,680
Speaker 2: was in my twenties during the eighties, and I was like,

1092
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 2: I can I can say I could I know every

1093
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:38,399
Speaker 2: word to these songs anyhow. Anyhow, the point is, it's

1094
00:53:38,400 --> 00:53:39,720
Speaker 2: not that long lack of seagulls.

1095
00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:43,440
Speaker 1: Just Duran, Duran, I won't die anyway. That's another conversation.

1096
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, but the point exactly. But the point is

1097
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 2: you have these movements organized against something that's been going

1098
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:53,759
Speaker 2: on for thousands of years, and finally, you know, giving

1099
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 2: a voice to women, reforming the laws. And then because

1100
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:00,240
Speaker 2: of the Internet, because the you know, the incredible digital

1101
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 2: technology that allowed the voices of women to be heard

1102
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 2: in a way that they had never ever had the

1103
00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 2: opportunity to be heard. One of like the Me Too

1104
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:11,160
Speaker 2: movement happened in part not just on the ground because

1105
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 2: of women coming forward, but it became possible because of

1106
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 2: the technology of communication and the digital revolution. So many

1107
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 2: of the women who came forward to say, this is

1108
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:22,520
Speaker 2: what happened to me, this is my truth, this is

1109
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,840
Speaker 2: my experience. Yes, those women were speaking not just for

1110
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:29,720
Speaker 2: themselves but for literally literally billions of women and girls

1111
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 2: who had never ever had a voice for thousands of years.

1112
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 2: And so was there were there examples where it went

1113
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 2: over the top and there and where where you know,

1114
00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 2: due process for men who were accused of crimes, you know,

1115
00:54:42,160 --> 00:54:45,200
Speaker 2: was was not taken seriously. Yeah, I'm sure there was,

1116
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:47,279
Speaker 2: and I and I'm empathetic, and but I always say

1117
00:54:47,280 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 2: this because I do gender violence prevention education. I've been

1118
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:51,960
Speaker 2: doing this for a long time. If you're a man

1119
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:55,080
Speaker 2: who has been, you know, falsely accused of some crime

1120
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 2: that you didn't commit, it's a horrible thing. And there

1121
00:54:57,640 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 2: but for the grace of God, go I and other men.

1122
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:02,839
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying it's okay, it's horrible and it's unacceptable.

1123
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 2: But you know, the vast majority of sexual assault is

1124
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:08,719
Speaker 2: never even reported, much less falsely reported. So I think

1125
00:55:08,760 --> 00:55:11,080
Speaker 2: a lot of men have this falsely inflated sense of

1126
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:15,480
Speaker 2: their vulnerability to false accusations. And what ends up happening

1127
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:17,719
Speaker 2: is that this narrative develops that all these women are

1128
00:55:17,719 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 2: coming forward, all they can ruin a guy's life easily.

1129
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:24,319
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, we know how how much, how difficult it

1130
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 2: is for a woman to come forward, and how unlikely

1131
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 2: it is that she's going to call that upon herself

1132
00:55:30,040 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 2: unless it really something really happened. Now, having said that,

1133
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:35,759
Speaker 2: I do think there were some excesses, and there were

1134
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 2: some statements, certainly by women and others, that were dismissive

1135
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:44,360
Speaker 2: of men's concerns about being unfairly targeted or falsely accused

1136
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:46,239
Speaker 2: or what have you. But I think that I think

1137
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:50,919
Speaker 2: overall it was a step forward. But it's messy. Life

1138
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:53,520
Speaker 2: is messy, and social change is messy, and I think

1139
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:55,080
Speaker 2: we have to give these and I'm just going to

1140
00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:57,520
Speaker 2: say this. I mean, I'm not, you know, bizarre who

1141
00:55:57,520 --> 00:56:00,000
Speaker 2: can make these, you know, issue these kind of edicts.

1142
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 2: But I would say we have to give each other

1143
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 2: a little bit of a break. I mean, we're all

1144
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:06,200
Speaker 2: struggling to try to be treated with respect and dignity,

1145
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:10,080
Speaker 2: try to live you know, lives of you know, you know,

1146
00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 2: of dignity and in relationships, and with all these complexities

1147
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:18,720
Speaker 2: of race and gender and and and and sexuality swirling about,

1148
00:56:19,280 --> 00:56:21,880
Speaker 2: it's not easy and navigating that space. And so I

1149
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:23,400
Speaker 2: think what's happening with a lot of young men is

1150
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 2: that is that they're really confused, They're really be fuddled.

1151
00:56:27,400 --> 00:56:29,200
Speaker 2: And I think of a lot of adult men are too.

1152
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 2: So it's not just the young guys are befuddled. And

1153
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:33,439
Speaker 2: so part of the reason why so many young guys

1154
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:36,080
Speaker 2: are befuddled is because the men, the adult men that

1155
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:40,759
Speaker 2: they look to for guidance, are themselves often bill bewildered.

1156
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:42,240
Speaker 2: What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed

1157
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:44,359
Speaker 2: to My wife wants me to be strong, she wants

1158
00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:47,200
Speaker 2: me to be powerful, but but but I'm also vulnerable.

1159
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:50,719
Speaker 2: And when I express vulnerability then she's uneasy about that

1160
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:52,719
Speaker 2: because she wants me to be strong, and I'm not

1161
00:56:52,760 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 2: sure what to do. And what you know this is,

1162
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 2: this is you know therapists. You know, for example, couples

1163
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 2: therapists deal with I'm not a therapist, right, but I

1164
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:05,359
Speaker 2: know that couple therapists deal with this every day. And

1165
00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:08,239
Speaker 2: and and Terry Reel, who's this brilliant you know couple therapists. He's,

1166
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:10,960
Speaker 2: by the way, Bruce Springsteen and Patty his wife, Patty's

1167
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,719
Speaker 2: couple therapists. And I'm saying that because Bruce Springsteen wrote

1168
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:17,680
Speaker 2: the literally wrote the forward to Terry Reel's latest book,

1169
00:57:17,680 --> 00:57:20,960
Speaker 2: which is called we it's about relationships. And Bruce Springsteen

1170
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:24,160
Speaker 2: is is like he's like a guy's guy, Like he's

1171
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 2: like the prototypical American guy, right, he is, but he's

1172
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 2: also extremely self reflexive and vulnerable, and he's it doesn't

1173
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:35,680
Speaker 2: make him any less of a of a of a

1174
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:38,640
Speaker 2: sort of alpha rock star to be able to say,

1175
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 2: you know, he needed therapy, and he needed therapy for

1176
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 2: his own stuff with his own father and his relationship

1177
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 2: with his wife, and you know, and it was really

1178
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:49,160
Speaker 2: important to have support in this in the sort of environment.

1179
00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 2: And this this notion that vulnerability is somehow weakness, This

1180
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 2: is one of the biggest lies that young men get sold.

1181
00:57:55,680 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 2: But there's the pressure on young men to be sort

1182
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:00,920
Speaker 2: of sucking it up and pretending that they've got it

1183
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 2: all going on because of because of the narrative that

1184
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 2: they're hearing. Is that a real man does that. And again,

1185
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:08,520
Speaker 2: some of those manisphere of figures that we've been talking about,

1186
00:58:08,560 --> 00:58:10,960
Speaker 2: including by the way, Donald Trump, who says it all

1187
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:12,840
Speaker 2: the time, you know, you don't admit weakness, you don't

1188
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:16,960
Speaker 2: acknowledge mistakes. To me, that's that's a sign of total

1189
00:58:17,040 --> 00:58:21,160
Speaker 2: insecurity rather than strength. But I think we need adult

1190
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 2: men to model strong adult men to model vulnerability, not

1191
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:28,880
Speaker 2: as weakness, but as I'm confident enough to say that

1192
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 2: I don't have it all figured out. I'm confident enough

1193
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:34,400
Speaker 2: to say that, you know what, I make mistakes too,

1194
00:58:34,560 --> 00:58:36,120
Speaker 2: but I'm going to I'm just still going to get

1195
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 2: back up on the on the horse. I'm still gonna

1196
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 2: do my thing, and and and hearing professional athletes say it,

1197
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the reasons why it's so

1198
00:58:42,560 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 2: powerful to hear like professional male athletes in this case

1199
00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 2: who have mental health challenges, who will say, you know what,

1200
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:49,760
Speaker 2: I have panic attacks. I'm a I'm a I'm a

1201
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:52,760
Speaker 2: great professional athlete, and you know, look at me. I'm

1202
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:55,080
Speaker 2: you know, I'm I've succeeded at the highest level in

1203
00:58:55,120 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 2: my sport, but I have issues and and I and

1204
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:01,920
Speaker 2: I and and that's so okay. Michael Phelps, the greatest

1205
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 2: swimmer men's swimmer of all time. This is really a

1206
00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 2: powerful part of this. And last thing I want to

1207
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 2: say about all this, I appreciate again, I appreciate all

1208
00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 2: the opportunities you're giving me to say these things. Sometimes

1209
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 2: people will say to me or to other men who

1210
00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 2: talk about the issues in this way, they'll say, you're

1211
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:22,880
Speaker 2: trying to make men soft and weak. And if you

1212
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:25,880
Speaker 2: listen to Fox's News, they say it all the time,

1213
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:28,600
Speaker 2: the worsification of America. These the liberals are trying to

1214
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:31,080
Speaker 2: worsify America. They're trying to make men soft and weak.

1215
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:33,560
Speaker 2: And it's to me, it's a cartoon. It's like watching

1216
00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 2: a satire. But I reject the idea that I and

1217
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 2: others are trying to make men soft and weak. I

1218
00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:45,400
Speaker 2: think I want to be strong. I think I'm a

1219
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 2: strong man. I think that I want my son to

1220
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 2: be a strong man, and he is a strong young man.

1221
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 2: The question is not whether we want men to be strong.

1222
00:59:52,360 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 2: The question is how do you define strength? And how

1223
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:57,440
Speaker 2: do you define strength? Is it this cartoonish ability to

1224
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:02,200
Speaker 2: impose your will on another person and dominate? Is that strength? Really?

1225
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 2: In the twenty first century, are we supposed to take

1226
01:00:04,120 --> 01:00:07,600
Speaker 2: that seriously as the definition of strength? What about moral courage?

1227
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 2: What about courage to do something even though there's going

1228
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 2: to be a consequence for you that's negative because it's

1229
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 2: the right thing to do. What about social courage, which

1230
01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:17,920
Speaker 2: is to say, speaking up in the face of you know, abuse.

1231
01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:20,320
Speaker 2: You know, it's whether it's you know, your friends of

1232
01:00:20,320 --> 01:00:23,640
Speaker 2: yours making derogatory comments, or online spaces where guys are

1233
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 2: being really disrespectful to girls or women and calling them

1234
01:00:26,640 --> 01:00:28,960
Speaker 2: out and saying, hey, that's not cool. What about you know,

1235
01:00:29,040 --> 01:00:32,200
Speaker 2: resilience in the face of adversity. These are all these

1236
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 2: are evidence of strength and courage and positive, you know,

1237
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:40,360
Speaker 2: positive positive qualities. I think we need to say to

1238
01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:43,520
Speaker 2: young men and older men, we want you to be strong,

1239
01:00:43,560 --> 01:00:45,720
Speaker 2: but we want you to expand your definition of strength.

1240
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:47,920
Speaker 2: And the reason why that's so I think so helpful

1241
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:52,280
Speaker 2: is because it's positive and aspirational. It's calling men into

1242
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:55,400
Speaker 2: good behavior rather than calling them out for bad behavior.

1243
01:00:55,520 --> 01:00:57,280
Speaker 2: And I think if you call them into good behavior

1244
01:00:57,280 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 2: and say, we need more men with the guts to

1245
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 2: speak up, we need more young men who the courage

1246
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:06,240
Speaker 2: to say misogyny is not cool. Treating women with disrespect

1247
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 2: is not going to get you my respect. It's not

1248
01:01:08,240 --> 01:01:11,200
Speaker 2: going to get you my admiration because you know what,

1249
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:13,840
Speaker 2: you've got some issues. If we had more men who

1250
01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:15,680
Speaker 2: are willing to say that, and young men willing to

1251
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:18,240
Speaker 2: say that, then we would we would begin to counteract

1252
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 2: some of these harmful things that are happening in men's lives.

1253
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of young men seek connection,

1254
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:26,440
Speaker 2: they want relationships, they want intimacy in their lives. But

1255
01:01:26,480 --> 01:01:29,760
Speaker 2: if they're going down the route of hardening up, getting tough,

1256
01:01:30,160 --> 01:01:33,840
Speaker 2: you know, being sort of you know, hiding in their shell,

1257
01:01:33,920 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 2: if you will, and inhabiting this angry world of the

1258
01:01:39,120 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 2: manisphere and the sort of the right wing populist movement,

1259
01:01:43,680 --> 01:01:45,560
Speaker 2: that's not going to get them what they want. That's

1260
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:47,160
Speaker 2: not going to get them the love and the connection

1261
01:01:47,240 --> 01:01:49,960
Speaker 2: and the intimacy that they crave. So I think we

1262
01:01:50,040 --> 01:01:52,080
Speaker 2: have to say it in terms of men's self interest

1263
01:01:52,160 --> 01:01:55,200
Speaker 2: and boys self interest. It's in women's self interest. Gender

1264
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:58,000
Speaker 2: equality and gender justice is obviously in women's self interest,

1265
01:01:58,200 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 2: but it's also in men's self interest. And I think

1266
01:02:00,560 --> 01:02:03,080
Speaker 2: if people can hear that, I think we have you know,

1267
01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:04,360
Speaker 2: we've made a lot of progress.

1268
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:07,720
Speaker 1: Jackson Katz, thanks for joining us in this podcast A

1269
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 1: hell of a way and close out this podcast. Thank

1270
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:13,480
Speaker 1: you for your work, thank you for your advocacy, thank

1271
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: you for your clarity, your conviction, and thank you for

1272
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:19,320
Speaker 1: being at this for decades and decades.

1273
01:02:20,160 --> 01:02:22,160
Speaker 2: Thanks Governor, and thanks thanks so much for giving me

1274
01:02:22,200 --> 01:02:25,320
Speaker 2: this opportunity and for having these conversations right on. I

1275
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:29,240
Speaker 2: really appreciate that, that leadership and that thought leadership and

1276
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 2: your commitment. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you,