Speaker 1: When it comes to the issue of race and gender,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the issue of masculinity, there are
Speaker 1: few people that hold more credentials on this subject matter
Speaker 1: than my next guest. This is Gavin Newsom, and this
Speaker 1: is Jackson Katz. You've got a new book coming out
Speaker 1: at least overseas, and we'll see who comes out here.
Speaker 1: It's called every Man. But I mean that's interesting. Obama
Speaker 1: Renegade's Springsteen. So tell me a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, my book was just published in the UK
Speaker 2: in February, but it's coming out in September in the
Speaker 2: United States the American version. It's called every Man, Why
Speaker 2: violence against women is a men's issue and how you
Speaker 2: can make a difference.
Speaker 1: And Jack, just so for people that don't know you,
Speaker 1: you've been at this issue, been talking about the issue
Speaker 1: of intersection between gender race violence for decades and decades.
Speaker 1: I mean you've been in this space talking about the
Speaker 1: issues of masculinity, what's happening to young men and the
Speaker 1: relations between the sexes for twenty five plus years.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, yeah, since I was a college student really,
Speaker 2: which is a long time ago.
Speaker 1: And what what what what originally inspired all of this
Speaker 1: and ultimately what inspired this book all these decades later,
Speaker 1: building on what the work you've been doing.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, as a young guy, and I was
Speaker 2: a big, you know, athlete in high school. I was
Speaker 2: an all star football player, and I was I came
Speaker 2: from a blue collar family, you know. If my stepfather
Speaker 2: was a truck driver and an army veteran of World
Speaker 2: War Two. My father was a medic in Germany and
Speaker 2: France in World War Two. I came from a family
Speaker 2: where you know, well, you know, it was a blue
Speaker 2: collar family, and and and and yet education was a
Speaker 2: big emphasis. And and when I was in college, I
Speaker 2: started taking courses in subjects that related to you know,
Speaker 2: gender and race and other things. And I was learning.
Speaker 2: I thought I was smart when I was a young guy,
Speaker 2: but I realized how little I knew, especially about how
Speaker 2: other people lived, because I, you know, I came from
Speaker 2: a kind of a white suburban background just north of Boston.
Speaker 2: And when I started taking classes on gender related topics
Speaker 2: and started hearing about women's experiences of violence, and I
Speaker 2: started seeing women organizing around the fear that they have
Speaker 2: so often, especially at night, you know, because that was
Speaker 2: the beginning of the take back to Night movement where
Speaker 2: women were marching to say, we have the right to
Speaker 2: walk outside at night. And I remember thinking when I
Speaker 2: saw these women, you know, sort of organizing for better
Speaker 2: lighting on campus, I remember thinking not that these women
Speaker 2: hated men, but that they felt like they had the
Speaker 2: right to walk across campus. And I felt like that
Speaker 2: was what leadership looked like. I was inspired by it.
Speaker 2: I was a young student journalist at the time, and
Speaker 2: I was inspired by women standing up and speaking up
Speaker 2: for themselves, just as I was inspired by African Americans
Speaker 2: and what we used to call, you know, the in
Speaker 2: the gay what used to be called the gay rights movement,
Speaker 2: which is now the LGBTK.
Speaker 1: And just put us in context of what year, roughly
Speaker 1: would we be talking.
Speaker 2: About, Roughly around nineteen eighty, So it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a little long in the two, but I've been
Speaker 2: doing this work so since I started speaking out then,
Speaker 2: and because I had this background in traditional male culture
Speaker 2: as a as an athlete and pretty successful, I knew
Speaker 2: that I had a platform. I knew that people were
Speaker 2: interested when I started saying, hey, you know, sexual assault
Speaker 2: and domestic violence, this is wrong, guys, this is like
Speaker 2: wrong and women should be able to shouldn't have to
Speaker 2: worry constantly about their personal safety and how would you
Speaker 2: feel if you were a woman, and how to live
Speaker 2: like that? I remember thinking, why aren't more men saying
Speaker 2: these things? Why aren't more men speaking out? Why is
Speaker 2: it always you know, women having to organize and speak
Speaker 2: out and push for, you know, reforms of the laws.
Speaker 2: Why aren't men doing this? And I know most men
Speaker 2: are not abusive, but yet most men don't speak out.
Speaker 2: And so because I knew I had a platform, I
Speaker 2: started speaking out. And honestly, I'm doing today, Governor, what
Speaker 2: I started doing as a you know, nineteen year old.
Speaker 2: I always say my hair is a lot shorter, not
Speaker 2: by choice, right, And I have nicer clothes than I
Speaker 2: did when I was a you know, a nineteen year
Speaker 2: old guy. But it's the same message. And you know,
Speaker 2: my book every Man, you know why violence against women
Speaker 2: as a men's issue is like what I've been saying
Speaker 2: for forty years. It's just because of my work and
Speaker 2: other people's work and the way the culture moves. There's
Speaker 2: you know, there's an energy now, there's a receptivity to
Speaker 2: talking about this, thinking about this. With the exception of
Speaker 2: the backsliding that we're doing in our country right now,
Speaker 2: which is a really dramatic series of steps backwards. And
Speaker 2: you know, we can talk about that as well.
Speaker 1: So what I mean when you look back forty years,
Speaker 1: I mean, did you really feel like you were the
Speaker 1: lone voice back then? I mean, were there was there
Speaker 1: any organized movement or recognition or was there any political
Speaker 1: leadership with men in this space to call out that
Speaker 1: violence against women? Or is it primarily would you describe
Speaker 1: as the feminist movement that was really organized behind the
Speaker 1: women's rights in this space or.
Speaker 2: At least yeah, it was definitely a sort of multi racial,
Speaker 2: multi ethnic feminist women led movement, and there was a
Speaker 2: tiny number of men. I mean I was, you know,
Speaker 2: I was kind of an early adapter as they would say,
Speaker 2: or adopter, like when I was twenty. I mean, there
Speaker 2: was not that many men doing this work, and now
Speaker 2: there are. I mean, there's no question that my work
Speaker 2: and a lot of other people's work over the last
Speaker 2: couple of generations has made a difference in terms of
Speaker 2: normalizing this kind of conversation. But political leadership very limited.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it didn't exist, but it was very
Speaker 2: limited and in the public space, it was very unusual
Speaker 2: to hear men talking about any of this subject matter.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you started to say this is
Speaker 1: a man's issue, I mean, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: And how was that received by women that were expressing
Speaker 1: themselves and leaders in the feminist movement? Was it well
Speaker 1: received in that respect? Was it understood when you started
Speaker 1: talking initially about this being a man's issue?
Speaker 2: Generally speaking? I would say yes, because what feminist leaders
Speaker 2: were saying back then and they say this now, is
Speaker 2: that the role for men who are really know, concerned
Speaker 2: about these matters, which, by the way, all men should be.
Speaker 2: It's not something that should be a specific to me
Speaker 2: or a small number of men yourself, but a lot
Speaker 2: of the you know, a lot of the women leaders,
Speaker 2: including Bell Hooks famously, the African American, the sadly late
Speaker 2: African American feminist scholar and writer and activist, would say,
Speaker 2: would she and others would say the proper role for
Speaker 2: men in this work is to educate, organize, and politicize
Speaker 2: other men. It's not to it's not to go in
Speaker 2: and save women or even to work with women. It's
Speaker 2: to go into male culture in every racial and ethnic
Speaker 2: you know, community and every it's a global These are
Speaker 2: global problems, not local problems. I mean they're manifest locally,
Speaker 2: but their global problems. The proper role for men is
Speaker 2: to is to like, yeah, with their guys, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, like their their friends, their colleagues, their peers,
Speaker 2: and adult men need to be providing much more over
Speaker 2: it and explicit leadership to young men. And if you
Speaker 2: stay in that lane. In other words, I think that's
Speaker 2: what women are asking. It's, by the way, it's very
Speaker 2: similar to what people of color have been saying for
Speaker 2: white people who are whether you call them allies or collaborators.
Speaker 2: It's like, you don't need white people going to black communities.
Speaker 2: You need white people organizing white people and speaking out
Speaker 2: and using the platform of influence that they have within
Speaker 2: their own sort of you know, culture or spheres of influence.
Speaker 2: It's a simple concept. It's not even that complicated.
Speaker 1: So you say, I mean for forty years you've been
Speaker 1: at this and obviously there was you know, you've had
Speaker 1: an incredibly successful career, had a lot of influence in
Speaker 1: this space. But you referenced yourself that this is there
Speaker 1: seems to be a door that's opening now in this space.
Speaker 1: But they're also a door closing, and we'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a minute in terms of some regression. But
Speaker 1: the door that's opening in terms of what consciousness in
Speaker 1: the space, a recognition of the crisis of young men.
Speaker 1: The political side of this, how do you describe from
Speaker 1: Is it a policy framework that you see shifting or
Speaker 1: political framework that's shifting.
Speaker 2: It's both, I would say, I would say I would
Speaker 2: say there's a shift in consciousness that's been happening over
Speaker 2: the last couple of generations. Really it's not a really,
Speaker 2: you know, brand new thing. I mean, whole generations of
Speaker 2: men and young men have grown up with feminist mothers,
Speaker 2: with women in the workplace as equals, with girls and
Speaker 2: women sitting next to them in school, in the professional world.
Speaker 2: I mean, my parents' generation didn't have those experiences. It
Speaker 2: was much more sex segregated, and women were excluded from
Speaker 2: mainstream sort of competition with men in so many areas.
Speaker 2: But there's a whole generations of men who have come
Speaker 2: of age in a way that it's been normalized, you know,
Speaker 2: and a lot of men have much more likely to
Speaker 2: have female friends and colleagues. And take that as just
Speaker 2: obvious as opposed to something that some radical new, you know,
Speaker 2: development that they have to adjust to. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, I think there's a whole lot of men
Speaker 2: who have done very little speaking out about men's violence
Speaker 2: against women, and a lot of men get really uncomfortable
Speaker 2: about this subject. And I think a lot of men,
Speaker 2: including powerful men, who are really incredibly articulate about a
Speaker 2: whole range of subjects, but when it comes to this subject,
Speaker 2: they are like, oh my god, I don't I don't
Speaker 2: want to go near this, or I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what to say, or they become inarticulate. And so what
Speaker 2: ends up happening for a lot of men, including powerful men,
Speaker 2: I'm serious, Uh, what they'll do is they'll either remain
Speaker 2: silent because they don't want to screw it up, or
Speaker 2: they're or they're just so uncomfortable, or they'll defer to
Speaker 2: women and women's leadership. And I think on one level, fine,
Speaker 2: we need to, we need to, you know, uplift women's leadership.
Speaker 2: But in a sense that's that's not fair. It's not
Speaker 2: what it's not why why is it women's responsibility? It
Speaker 2: should be men's. That's that's that's a way of hoisting
Speaker 2: off of you know, putting onto women what should be
Speaker 2: what men should be carrying, especially those of us who
Speaker 2: have you know, cultural, political, economic, you know, power and influence.
Speaker 2: And so I think, I think one of the big
Speaker 2: challenges of our time is getting more men who are
Speaker 2: already there in the sense that we're uncomfortable with other
Speaker 2: men's abusive behavior. We don't like it, we know it
Speaker 2: when we see it, but we don't either know what
Speaker 2: to say or we feel uncomfortable around it and don't
Speaker 2: know what to do, and so we retreat. And I think,
Speaker 2: I think what we need to do is not that
Speaker 2: we have to quote unquote convert the men who are
Speaker 2: the most deeply you know, misogynists and angry at women.
Speaker 2: It's that we have to talk to men. I mean,
Speaker 2: that would be a good thing, but I mean that's
Speaker 2: not where I spend my time. I spend my time
Speaker 2: with men who are already knows that, who already know
Speaker 2: that gender justice, gender equality, reducing gender based violence are
Speaker 2: important things, but they don't really know how or what
Speaker 2: to do about it. My goal is to empower them
Speaker 2: and to give them, both conceptually and practically the tools
Speaker 2: to be better leaders. And to be better partners, be
Speaker 2: better you know, fathers, uncles, you know, teachers, coaches, youth workers,
Speaker 2: you know, religious leaders. There's so many men who are
Speaker 2: good men in positions of influence, especially with young people,
Speaker 2: who could be doing so much more than they're doing
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Contextualize the issue for and just sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: bring us in a little bit on you know, one
Speaker 1: of the trend lines we've seen in the last few decades.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you started this work, was sort of
Speaker 1: was that an apex of the anxiety in this space?
Speaker 1: Was it? Was there just little data, a little research
Speaker 1: in this space. Are we seeing a diminution and violence
Speaker 1: perpetrated against or against women? Are we seeing a return
Speaker 1: to a little more misogyny? And has it been impacted
Speaker 1: by culture? Social media, has been impacted even by our
Speaker 1: politics today.
Speaker 2: All of that, I think, I think you've touched on
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of really important developments. It's a complicated thing,
Speaker 2: like social change itself is really complicated. So we're making
Speaker 2: all kinds of forward progress. There's reforms in the laws,
Speaker 2: There's a level of consciousness that seeps through, whether it's
Speaker 2: through the education system, through media. There's so many powerful
Speaker 2: and empowered women that are vocal and thoughtful around this
Speaker 2: subject matter to a lesser extent men. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, yes, we have had an enormous backlash against
Speaker 2: some of this progress, and I think, honestly, I think
Speaker 2: right wing populism in the United States and in Europe
Speaker 2: and other parts of the world. But a big part
Speaker 2: of it that doesn't get enough sort of discussion is
Speaker 2: that it's not just resistance to racial integration and immigration
Speaker 2: and the increasing you know, sort of racial and ethnic
Speaker 2: heterogeneity of some of these societies that had previously been
Speaker 2: pretty white. That's a part of it I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 2: part of it, clearly is right wing populism feeds on
Speaker 2: that energy, that sort of racial grievance. But I think
Speaker 2: it's also a lot of men who are really put
Speaker 2: off by and decentered by feminism and by the LGBTQ revolution,
Speaker 2: which decenters sort of heteronormative heterosexual men in particular, And
Speaker 2: I think that has to be part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: I mean trump Ism, for example, me trump Ism is
Speaker 2: so much of that is about not just white backlash,
Speaker 2: but white male backlash against forward progress by by by women. Basically,
Speaker 2: and this is tricky stuff because you know, can I
Speaker 2: also say I also, I think it's really important that
Speaker 2: I say. People like me who have been doing the
Speaker 2: work that I and we have been doing, have long
Speaker 2: made the connection between men's violence against women, men's violence
Speaker 2: against other men, and men's violence against themselves, because you know,
Speaker 2: suicide is violence turned inward. So the idea that sometimes
Speaker 2: men will say, well, well you talk about violence against women, yo, okay,
Speaker 2: what about violence against men? You know you'll hear this,
Speaker 2: And I write about this in my book, of course,
Speaker 2: because this is so predictable. It's like, well, I've thought
Speaker 2: about that. Of course, we've all thought about we all
Speaker 2: understand this. My friend Michael Kaufman, who's the co founder
Speaker 2: of the White Ribbon Campaign, which is the largest global
Speaker 2: movement of men working to end men's violence against women.
Speaker 2: It's in like sixty something countries and it's a great thing.
Speaker 2: It started after the Montreal men massacre in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: where a man, a twenty five year old man, lined
Speaker 2: up fourteen women in the Institute of Technology and murdered
Speaker 2: them in cold blood. This is in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: and he left a suicide note that said feminists, you know,
Speaker 2: blaming feminists for having ruined his life, and he was
Speaker 2: going to take revenge. Well, a group of men created
Speaker 2: the White Ribbon campaign, which is this big public display
Speaker 2: two years later where a man, you know, at the
Speaker 2: end of November every year, men wear white ribbons, Michael
Speaker 2: to say that they're not going to condone men's violence
Speaker 2: against women, be silent in the face of it. Michael
Speaker 2: Kaufman wrote this essay in nineteen eighty seven where he
Speaker 2: connected men's violence against women to men's violence against other men,
Speaker 2: to men's violence against themselves because they're all connected, and
Speaker 2: so no thoughtful person in the twenty first centuries who's
Speaker 2: looking at men's violence against women fails to see that
Speaker 2: all kinds of other things in men's lives are also connected.
Speaker 2: In addition, by the way, look at all the men,
Speaker 2: I mean, who have women in our lives who have
Speaker 2: been assaulted by other men. Who look at all the
Speaker 2: men adult men who have you know, partner partnered with
Speaker 2: women who are sexual assault survivors or domestic mind and
Speaker 2: full disclosure.
Speaker 1: You know, well, my wife who's been very vocal about that,
Speaker 1: and I am what occurred with Harvey Weinstein.
Speaker 2: She has been, and she's been an incredible brave leader
Speaker 2: on this subject. And I love her leadership on this
Speaker 2: and her bravery, and I love working with her on
Speaker 2: these matters absolutely. But I'm saying there's so much I
Speaker 2: don't know what your point. Yes, I don't know any
Speaker 2: man who doesn't have women, So.
Speaker 1: I imagine you go to audiences all the time and
Speaker 1: just ask people to raise their hand.
Speaker 2: Or or or yes or just in terms of my
Speaker 2: social networks and the people that I know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm surprised if I meet a man who doesn't
Speaker 2: have women in his life who have been assaulted by
Speaker 2: other men. It's it's not some esoteric subject matter that
Speaker 2: affects some small.
Speaker 1: Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?
Speaker 2: Again? It's a complicated question. I think we've made enormous
Speaker 2: progress until the current regime, and the level we've made
Speaker 2: enormous progress.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. I mean, you just you just put out
Speaker 1: a report that can really quantify that in terms of
Speaker 1: research dollars that are rolling back. Obviously, advocacy in the
Speaker 1: DEI space, which is not I think so much of
Speaker 1: what people focus on DEI is around racial issues, but
Speaker 1: A big part of the movement was a gender issues
Speaker 1: and obviously that's that's under assault. But what else I
Speaker 1: mean is the actual statistics in terms of acts of
Speaker 1: violence perpetuated against women. Is that increasing, decreasing or is
Speaker 1: those research dollars drying up? And we're going to finally
Speaker 1: not really have any understanding of that.
Speaker 2: All of the above, I would I would say we
Speaker 2: have been making progress. There have been some there has
Speaker 2: been some data that showed that we have been making
Speaker 2: progress over the past, you know, twenty five thirty years
Speaker 2: in reducing the incidents of domestic and sexual violence. But
Speaker 2: the flip side is you don't know fully because of
Speaker 2: the vast majority has never reported. And then when you're
Speaker 2: effective at raising consciousness, when you're effective at providing services
Speaker 2: to victims and survivors, when you create an environment in
Speaker 2: an institutional setting, whether it's in a corporation or obviously
Speaker 2: in a school or some other in the military or
Speaker 2: at some other setting, if you create an environment where
Speaker 2: people feel comfortable coming forward to access services or to
Speaker 2: say that this has happened to them, then they're going
Speaker 2: to come forward. But if you create an environment where
Speaker 2: the institution is non responsive, then they're going to remain silent.
Speaker 2: And so when all these programs are being cut, one
Speaker 2: of the effects is people won't come forward because they'll
Speaker 2: be scared that or they'll be doing a cost benefit
Speaker 2: analysis they'll say, you know what, it's not worth it
Speaker 2: because why why do I want to be re injured
Speaker 2: by the system not being responsive to my needs and
Speaker 2: put myself even more in more position of vulnerability. So
Speaker 2: it's complicated in terms of the back and forth. But
Speaker 2: also I do have to say the social media is
Speaker 2: sort of the digital revolution has created a whole new
Speaker 2: set of challenges. It's also created new possibilities obviously for
Speaker 2: connection and for solidarity and community and people connecting with
Speaker 2: each other from their isolated, you know, silos. There's no
Speaker 2: question that it's a mixed bag in terms of this
Speaker 2: subject matter. But the porn culture, the pervasiveness of like
Speaker 2: deeply misogynous, the complication.
Speaker 1: Of women, the objects ownership.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the complete sexual degradation of women in the
Speaker 2: mainstream porn culture that a lot of young people growing
Speaker 2: up with it are seeing that as normal. They're not
Speaker 2: they're not seeing this as like some oh my god,
Speaker 2: some radical you know, uh, you know, new development. They're
Speaker 2: more like, this is what sex is supposed to look like.
Speaker 2: It's it's some of it's just incredibly abusive and cruel.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about sexual expression here. We're talking about
Speaker 2: cruelty and misogyny enshrined in the sexual act. And a
Speaker 2: lot of young guys, I mean, who think that that's
Speaker 2: supposed to be that's normal. What ends up happening in
Speaker 2: some of these relationships is guys are doing things to
Speaker 2: women like in heterosexual relationships, non consensually. They're you know,
Speaker 2: they're starting to strangle them during you know, consensual non
Speaker 2: consensual strangulation during consensual sex and things, thinking that it's
Speaker 2: normal and it's unbelievable. Have you seen adolescens?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't have the guts. I mean, I back
Speaker 1: to my wife Jen, she wanted me to see it,
Speaker 1: and I did the opening scene, realizing the depths of it.
Speaker 1: As a father, you know, I've.
Speaker 2: Got I mean at this age, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got We've got four young kids, two
Speaker 1: boys and uh and social media is just encroaching upon
Speaker 1: their lives and our lives.
Speaker 2: And it found way well I appreciate that, and I
Speaker 2: and I'm going to say this is a spoiler alert.
Speaker 2: But but I have to say that the main actor,
Speaker 2: or one of the one of the main actors, Stephen Graham,
Speaker 2: the British actor, who is also the uh one of
Speaker 2: the creators and the co writer of the piece, brilliant.
Speaker 2: This guy is brilliant, right, I mean he talks about
Speaker 2: this publicly. He talks about it on Jimmy Fallon. So
Speaker 2: I'm not giving away something that isn't like a mainstream
Speaker 2: sort of you know, uh sort of plot point, but
Speaker 2: one of the I think one of the most powerful
Speaker 2: things about the story and one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: I caught on so much. I mean caught on like
Speaker 2: in the way that I think it might be the
Speaker 2: biggest Netflix uh my success ever and in the UK
Speaker 2: something like half the population I've seen the thing. Okay, Anyways,
Speaker 2: the point is the storyline about the father and his
Speaker 2: feelings of failure for having failed to protect his son,
Speaker 2: and he thought he was doing a good job. In
Speaker 2: other words, this was a you know, a heterosexual, heteronormai family,
Speaker 2: blue collar family. He's a plumber, thought that he was
Speaker 2: doing what his father didn't do for.
Speaker 1: Him and and just just quickly it's a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old kid.
Speaker 2: Thirteen year old boy who is who murders his classmate?
Speaker 2: And and what's in the background of the whole piece.
Speaker 2: They don't really foreground it, but it's certainly always there
Speaker 2: is the manisphere, the misogynist manisphere. That's the Andrew Tait
Speaker 2: world where this young boy had been in his room,
Speaker 2: so his parents thought he was safe. He's in his room,
Speaker 2: he's you know, he's there. They're doing their job, and
Speaker 2: meanwhile he was immersed in that whole world. The reason
Speaker 2: why I think that so many people resonate with this film,
Speaker 2: including man and myself. I'm a father of a son.
Speaker 2: I have a young son. You know, he's in his twenties,
Speaker 2: but he's, you know, young young guy. I think it
Speaker 2: resonated with a lot of men because of the father's
Speaker 2: pain and how badly he felt he had let down
Speaker 2: his son, as well as of course the girl and
Speaker 2: her family because she was the primary victim.
Speaker 1: No, I mean it's look, I mean it well, it
Speaker 1: speaks with unpacking all of that, and I want to
Speaker 1: get back to this mano sphere and I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: you alluded to it in the context of social media,
Speaker 1: but even unpacking that a little bit. You've made a
Speaker 1: point and reinforced a point today in a report you
Speaker 1: just put out that there is now a big setback.
Speaker 2: In this space.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a very intentional, organized effort now with
Speaker 1: the current administration, the Trump administration, to vandalize a lot
Speaker 1: of the progress in the space.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, and it's disgraceful. Let me just say, I'll
Speaker 2: just use that word. It's disgraceful and it's harmful to women,
Speaker 2: but it's also harmful to men. I'll give you an
Speaker 2: example the military. I've been working with the military. I
Speaker 2: created the first gender violence prevention program in the United
Speaker 2: States Department of Defense nineteen ninety seven. We started out
Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps. And I and my colleagues have
Speaker 2: been working in that space for a long time, twenty
Speaker 2: seven years or something. And there's all these great people,
Speaker 2: men and women, and you know, uniform military and DoD civilians.
Speaker 2: And I was on the US Secretary Secretary of Defense
Speaker 2: Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military. This is
Speaker 2: back in two thousand. I mean, there have been so
Speaker 2: many different talented people, including uniform military leaders, who are
Speaker 2: on board with knowing how important it is to talk
Speaker 2: about this stuff. To have programming to create it's for
Speaker 2: morale purposes, for mission readiness purposes, for all these reasons.
Speaker 2: Having this kind of educational process within the military space
Speaker 2: is really important, and it's being all just radically cut back,
Speaker 2: and it's just it's absolutely disgraceful. And I'm saying this
Speaker 2: as somebody who's been working in that space. And if
Speaker 2: anybody thinks that it's somehow anti mail, this is what
Speaker 2: this is the subtext of all this, right, that somehow
Speaker 2: it's anti mail to like talk about sexual assault or
Speaker 2: domestic violence. This is BS. This is byes.
Speaker 1: They frame it in the wokesm just more woke.
Speaker 2: BS right and there and there and that's and I'll
Speaker 2: call BS on that because there's so many good people,
Speaker 2: including really powerful men in that space. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: worked with so many powerful military leaders from the from
Speaker 2: the you know generals and colonels and admirals at the
Speaker 2: highest level of you know authority. But also like when
Speaker 2: I started in the Marine, working in the in the
Speaker 2: Marine Corps, we were working with it was called a
Speaker 2: Sergeant's Major Initiative. It was an enlisted leadership initiative. We
Speaker 2: were training sergeants. These are these are generally men. In
Speaker 2: you know, the Marine Corps about ninety four percent male,
Speaker 2: so there are women, but it's very much a male
Speaker 2: dominated space. Let's be clear. Most of the you know
Speaker 2: sergeants are in their twenties and they work directly with
Speaker 2: the young troops, these you know, the eighteen nineteen, twenty
Speaker 2: year old troops, and so providing the leadership, providing the
Speaker 2: leadership training for them for how they can leadership to
Speaker 2: the younger troops. This is to me such a basic thing.
Speaker 2: It should be. It should be not only should it
Speaker 2: not be rolled back, it should be expanded and deepened.
Speaker 2: And it's what's happening is the exact opposite. Under the
Speaker 2: name of supposedly caring about warrior culture, this is just
Speaker 2: total bs. And I think under the name of anti wokeism,
Speaker 2: some of the most some of the most forward thinking
Speaker 2: and and sort of useful educational and other consciousness, you know,
Speaker 2: shifting strategies over the last generation are being undermined.
Speaker 1: And you've seen this happening also in sports, because I
Speaker 1: know you've been not just working a military but you've
Speaker 1: represented a lot of good work in many different venues
Speaker 1: as it related to athletics as well.
Speaker 2: Well again, the program that I created, the Mentors and
Speaker 2: Violence Prevention Program MVP, was the first nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: at a place called the Center for the Study of
Speaker 2: Sport in Society. That's an institute that was created by
Speaker 2: Richard Lapchick, doctor Richard Lapschick, who's a pioneer of combining
Speaker 2: sport and civil rights activism. Father. There was Joe Lapchick,
Speaker 2: one of the pioneering players and coaches in the NBA,
Speaker 2: who was a white guy. Joe Lapchick, He's in the
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame. I mean, this is an NBA guy.
Speaker 2: He ended up as the coach of the New York Knicks,
Speaker 2: and he was the coach of the Saint John's men's
Speaker 2: basketball team. This is the father. He was also a
Speaker 2: white guy who was for racial integration, way ahead of
Speaker 2: the curve. The son was an activist, like a sixties
Speaker 2: era activist who wasn't an elite athlete, but he was
Speaker 2: passionate about civil rights and sports. And he created this
Speaker 2: institute in nineteen ninety In nineteen eighty four, and I,
Speaker 2: as a graduate student in Boston, came over to his
Speaker 2: institute pitching the program to train college male student athletes
Speaker 2: to speak out on these matters. This is in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and my thinking was not that there was
Speaker 2: a problem in athletics of male athletes assoulting women, although
Speaker 2: there was such a problem and continues to be. My
Speaker 2: thinking was, where are we going to find young men
Speaker 2: who have the status, the self confidence, and the platform
Speaker 2: of influence to break the silence among men and young men,
Speaker 2: Because I was thinking, lots of guys are uncomfortable with
Speaker 2: abusive behavior and misogyny around them, but they don't speak up.
Speaker 2: As I was saying earlier, so we need more men
Speaker 2: who have already have some confidence because it takes guts.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why guys don't speak up on
Speaker 2: these matters is it takes guts, it takes strength, it
Speaker 2: takes self confidence. And not just twenty year olds, but
Speaker 2: for fifty year olds. A lot of men get a
Speaker 2: little they're anxious, and you know what they're anxious about.
Speaker 2: They're anxious about other men, and they're anxious that other
Speaker 2: men are going to think that somehow they're soft or weak.
Speaker 2: And it drives me. I have to say, it drives
Speaker 2: me crazy because I watch on people on the right
Speaker 2: mock and ridicule men who speak out about domestic violence
Speaker 2: or sexual assault. Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, These people mock
Speaker 2: and ridicule. Andrew Tate is even more exaggerated in what
Speaker 2: he in how he mocks, in ridicules men who stand
Speaker 2: for gender equality and gender justice, as if we're somehow
Speaker 2: soft and weak. And I often say, and I so
Speaker 2: appreciate the opportunity to say this to you here in
Speaker 2: this in this setting, if you're a guy, being one
Speaker 2: of the guys takes nothing special whatsoever. Just going along
Speaker 2: with you boys, It's like that takes nothing special. What
Speaker 2: takes something special if you're a guy, is turning to
Speaker 2: your friends and saying, hey, dude, that's not cool. The
Speaker 2: way we don't do shit like you know, we don't
Speaker 2: do stuff like that here, yeah, or we don't treat
Speaker 2: women like that, or that's not you're my friend, But
Speaker 2: the way you're talking to your girlfriend, I'm concerned. That's
Speaker 2: not cool, dude. That takes so much more strength and
Speaker 2: guts and self confidence. And yet the guy who does
Speaker 2: who says it is a is a beta, is a
Speaker 2: woos is a soy boy, is a virtue signaler, and
Speaker 2: so many young guys have grown up in a media environment,
Speaker 2: a social media environment where like me, I know that's
Speaker 2: what's going to happen is when people watch this, there's
Speaker 2: gonna be people that, who's that, who's that? Beta. It's
Speaker 2: just so embarrassing to me because it's like literally the
Speaker 2: opposite of the truth, right And so anyways, that's why
Speaker 2: I started working with in the athletic subculture. And my
Speaker 2: program was the first large scale program in college athletics,
Speaker 2: and that was the first program in professional and I
Speaker 2: have to say, you know who are first the first
Speaker 2: team we work with in professional athletics, New England Patriots.
Speaker 2: And then and then we work with the Red Sox
Speaker 2: because you know, we're in Boston, right, So we had
Speaker 2: the Patriots in the Red Sox and at one point
Speaker 2: the Patriots had won like three out of the first
Speaker 2: like five years we were working with them. The Patriots
Speaker 2: had won the Super Bowl and the Red Sox had
Speaker 2: won the World Series for the first time in eighty
Speaker 2: six years right after they started working with us. And
Speaker 2: so I said, I would always say, as a laugh line,
Speaker 2: I would say, you know what about the Yankees, I'm sure,
Speaker 2: well that's true. Well, that's true but but it was
Speaker 2: even more self serving, I said, I said, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to claim that the Red Sox and
Speaker 2: the patriots working with us was the reason why they
Speaker 2: won incredible championships. But you can't prove disprove it either.
Speaker 1: Wi.
Speaker 3: Hi am Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications
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Speaker 1: So back to the manospeare because you mentioned Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Joe Peterson, obviously mentioned Andrew Tay, who you know,
Speaker 1: respectfully need not be mentioned much. I mean he's I
Speaker 1: mean even by extreme standards. He's a unique spectrum. That said,
Speaker 1: he's also been embraced by members of the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and Trump himself, which full disclosure. But talk to me
Speaker 1: about the manos speirre, I mean, what is it?
Speaker 2: And who?
Speaker 1: By the way, who are some of these fun I
Speaker 1: mean people I think I have heard of. Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: Average person may not have heard of Joe Rogan then
Speaker 1: obviously heard something about him when it came to Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris not deciding to go to Austin to go on
Speaker 1: his podcast, though few people likely were first to learn
Speaker 1: about him with that alone. But Joe Peterson's someone not
Speaker 1: everybody knows who else in this mano sphere? What is it?
Speaker 1: How do you define it? And when did you start
Speaker 1: to see the emergence of it? And how real inconsequential
Speaker 1: is it is? Is it in the context of this
Speaker 1: gender conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, it was certainly a small sort of dark corner
Speaker 2: of the Internet for a number of years where men
Speaker 2: who were many of them really angry at women, at
Speaker 2: feminism more generally, and at women. Many of them were
Speaker 2: men who were divorced, who had custody battles, you know,
Speaker 2: who were really angry at both the courts in some
Speaker 2: cases their you know, their wives or their ex wives
Speaker 2: because they didn't have access to their kids. And some
Speaker 2: of those men were abusive, some of them weren't abusive.
Speaker 2: It's it's a complicated picture. And when it comes to
Speaker 2: the you know, the messiness of relationships, I mean, i'm
Speaker 2: you know, who knows, you know. But so there was
Speaker 2: there was a sort of men's rights movement which was
Speaker 2: organizing itself. And then when the Internet came came into
Speaker 2: the picture, they were organizing through you know, through connecting
Speaker 2: with each other through the digital universe. And it was
Speaker 2: called the manosphere. And it was again a small sort
Speaker 2: of corner of the Internet. It's become completely mainstream now.
Speaker 2: So and and you know, Donald Trump's election in twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen was a big accelerant to the to the mainstreaming
Speaker 2: of the Manisphere. And now a lot of young people,
Speaker 2: young boys in particular, but not exclusively, but certainly young
Speaker 2: boys and young men get drawn into the manisphere. And
Speaker 2: by the way, not necessarily because they're you know, ideological.
Speaker 2: It's not because they have like a critique of feminism
Speaker 2: or something or anything, or masculinity. It's more like the
Speaker 2: algorithms draw them in and maybe.
Speaker 1: Maybe learning on a YouTube version of a video game
Speaker 1: they like, and all of a sudden there's an ad
Speaker 1: that's right, it's you know, with a Bugatti or something,
Speaker 1: and they click onto that. All of a sudden they're
Speaker 1: part of some university's right, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: two months later, they're in a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, and and and and part exactly
Speaker 2: and part of the conspiracy is that is that men
Speaker 2: are being taken advantage of, and that men are being disadvantaged,
Speaker 2: and that you know, feminists are uh anti mail and
Speaker 2: that and that you as a man need to stand
Speaker 2: up and speak up and fight back because you know,
Speaker 2: that's the whole red pill idea. Like somehow, somehow you're
Speaker 2: now consciously seeing that the world is lined up for women,
Speaker 2: and which is, by the way, again talk about a
Speaker 2: topsy turvy understanding of the way the world works. Right
Speaker 2: And by the way, a lot of these men, as
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of these men have never they've
Speaker 2: never taken a course on you know, gender. You know,
Speaker 2: they've never read a book about it. They've never attended seminars,
Speaker 2: they haven't watched you know, long YouTube videos or even
Speaker 2: even Ted talks like my Ted Talk or other people's
Speaker 2: Ted talks. They haven't had much exposure, but they have
Speaker 2: heard that, you know, feminists hate men and especially white men.
Speaker 2: Let me just say this is one of the things
Speaker 2: that I think is really great about you doing this
Speaker 2: podcast and the kind of people that you've been interviewing.
Speaker 2: You're having a dialogue. I think I think a lot
Speaker 2: of young guys don't hear any conversation like this whatsoever,
Speaker 2: and certainly if there if all they're listening to is
Speaker 2: the Jordan Peterson's of the world and the and Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Joe Rogan has enormous, enormous influence,
Speaker 2: and he's not particularly ideological, although he does platform people
Speaker 2: right of center, and he's very conspiratorial in the way
Speaker 2: he thinks.
Speaker 1: So not long ago he was he was platforming in
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, I mean, on the other side of the
Speaker 1: political spectrum in that respect.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But he's also he's a smart guy, even
Speaker 2: though he's you know, I think he's a little bit
Speaker 2: you know, he he goes in different directions and sometimes
Speaker 2: I think, oh my god, he's so insightful, and other
Speaker 2: times he says things that I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: But he does you know, he interviews you know, theoretical physicists,
Speaker 2: and he has thoughtful conversations and my son and others
Speaker 2: that I know, and I enjoy listening to him. So
Speaker 2: I'm not this isn't just a complete, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of dismissional of Joe. Yeah. I do think the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party has done a horrible job of outreach to men.
Speaker 2: And I think it's not just about Kamala Harris failing
Speaker 2: to go on Joe Rogan. Although I think that was
Speaker 2: a mistake. I don't think that that's unique to Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris and her campaign, right, I think the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: as a party has done a really poor job for
Speaker 2: fifty years at outreach to men.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk. I want to unpack that
Speaker 1: a little bit, because I mean, it connects to the
Speaker 1: manto sphere, and it connects to what's happening with podcasts
Speaker 1: and how media is now consumed. And that's been again
Speaker 1: an expertise of yours. It's sort of the it's the
Speaker 1: intersection of race and violence and gender, but also the
Speaker 1: intersection of gender and media. But there's this larger trend
Speaker 1: line that also connects, and that is men are not
Speaker 1: doing well right. I mean, suicide rates four x, the
Speaker 1: addiction rates three x, twelve times more likely a man
Speaker 1: to be incarcerated. You look at obesity rates, dropout rates,
Speaker 1: you look at graduation rates, you look at discipline, you
Speaker 1: look at all these larger issues you've been focused on
Speaker 1: in terms of violence. I mean this, this is a crisis, arguably.
Speaker 1: I mean this is a serious, serious crisis the state
Speaker 1: of men. And it's not just white men, it's young men.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is going on in this space? And
Speaker 1: what have you?
Speaker 2: I mean you've you've.
Speaker 1: You've talked in terms of hyper masculinity. You and my
Speaker 1: wife full disclosure, were part of a film you guys
Speaker 1: worked on together around women and girls called Misrepresentation. But
Speaker 1: then you followed up a decade ago in this space
Speaker 1: with a film called The mascul Living about masculinity, hyper masculinity.
Speaker 1: Man up, be a man, you know, and you called
Speaker 1: out in that film a lot of these stats a
Speaker 1: decade plus ago, And so I think you're right to
Speaker 1: call out the Democratic Party. Where the hell have we
Speaker 1: been on this topic? We see where the Republicans have
Speaker 1: gone with it and to exploit, I think a little
Speaker 1: bit of it, not necessarily to solve for some of it.
Speaker 1: But what are these trend lines? What do they mean
Speaker 1: to you? And what have you gleaned from? And what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on with young men in this
Speaker 1: country and maybe around the world.
Speaker 2: Sure well, I mean, there's no doubt that there's all
Speaker 2: kinds of indict you know, indications that a lot of
Speaker 2: young men are not doing well. And then you just
Speaker 2: name some of those statistics. And some of your other
Speaker 2: guests have talked about this subject and and thoughtfully and
Speaker 2: and you know, and it's all good. By the way,
Speaker 2: I do want to say one of the things that
Speaker 2: that is frustrating to me is that feminism is not
Speaker 2: the enemy of men.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like, if you want to help men, if you
Speaker 2: want if you want boys to thrive, if you want
Speaker 2: boys to have better lives, better relationships, better self regard
Speaker 2: and self care to take care of themselves, feminism is
Speaker 2: not the uh antithesis of that. Feminism is giving giving
Speaker 2: a pathway. Can I also let me just a related point,
Speaker 2: the men's health movement, which is a small but growing
Speaker 2: movement of of of people who are looking at ways
Speaker 2: in which cultural ideal ideas about manhood. And this is
Speaker 2: again around the world, it's not just in the United States,
Speaker 2: but have contributed to men's health problems, both in terms
Speaker 2: of risk taking behavior and certainly in terms of health
Speaker 2: seeking behavior. In other words, men not going to the doctor,
Speaker 2: men not going to the dentist, men not going to therapy,
Speaker 2: you know, dealing with self medication rather like through the
Speaker 2: bottle or through drugs, rather than going to get you know,
Speaker 2: professional health like therapy, because that's unmanly to do. In
Speaker 2: other words, in other words, the impediment to doing that
Speaker 2: is a belief about manhood. Like a real man sucks
Speaker 2: it up, a real man just deals with it. The
Speaker 2: men's health movement, which is an important movement to say
Speaker 2: the least, is directly connected to the feminist led women's
Speaker 2: health movement. In fact, one of the major events in
Speaker 2: the women's health movement was the publication in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two of a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves, published by
Speaker 2: the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, which was one of
Speaker 2: the first interventions into the public conversation about how women's
Speaker 2: health was affected by gender. You know ideas about femininity
Speaker 2: and how the healthcare system was set up for men
Speaker 2: and for women. Anyhow, the men's health women Some of
Speaker 2: the major figures in it, including my friend and colleague
Speaker 2: Terry Reel, who wrote the first major book about men's
Speaker 2: depression called I Don't Want to Talk about It, Overcoming
Speaker 2: the Secret Legacy of Male Depression in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: People like Terry Reel talk openly about how his ideas
Speaker 2: were informed by feminist you know, intellectuals and activists and
Speaker 2: practitioners in the women's health space, in the therapy space.
Speaker 2: And yet the average guy who cares about women, you know,
Speaker 2: men's health, and who or listen or listens to manisphere
Speaker 2: figures talk about how feminists hate men. They have no
Speaker 2: idea that some of the most thoughtful things, you know,
Speaker 2: thoughtful people about men's health are direct products of feminist
Speaker 2: ideas and feminist activism. And I think the reason why
Speaker 2: I think that's important is because we have we have
Speaker 2: too much artificial division between men and women. And I
Speaker 2: think the Right thrives on this division, and it's it's
Speaker 2: it's dividing people from each other rather than bringing them
Speaker 2: to And I think part of what I do in
Speaker 2: my work, and I think you do it as well.
Speaker 2: But I think certainly what I do in my work
Speaker 2: is because I come from a fairly traditional background, and
Speaker 2: I have all this experience in sports culture, in the
Speaker 2: military and working with traditional men. In fifty I've been
Speaker 2: all fifty states, you know, I work in Red States.
Speaker 2: I work with really traditional men in every you know sector.
Speaker 2: You can imagine men can have these conversations and with
Speaker 2: each other. With women, it's not like it's not so polarized.
Speaker 2: But I think if you go into these manisphere spaces
Speaker 2: or the political spaces, or Fox, or you watch Fox,
Speaker 2: or you listen to talk radio, conservative talk radio, which
Speaker 2: I've been listening. I started listening in Rush Lombard like
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety. I know this stuff really really well.
Speaker 1: We had on one of the OJEZU was the number
Speaker 1: two on radio, Michael Savage, was that right where you're
Speaker 1: sitting just a few weeks ago on the podcast.
Speaker 2: That's right about that history as well, that's right they
Speaker 2: and by the way, these guys created a formula that
Speaker 2: made a ton of money for them and a lot
Speaker 2: of other people, and dividing people and and making caricatures
Speaker 2: of people that they don't agree with Rush Limbaugh did
Speaker 2: it fabulously and ridiculed and mocked, you know, feminists and
Speaker 2: women who are trying to be treated with respect.
Speaker 1: So you're basically, I mean, so this goes I think
Speaker 1: this is This is the real dialectic right on this topic.
Speaker 1: It's a difficult one because the people to see it
Speaker 1: it's one or the other. It's a binary that somehow
Speaker 1: it's a zero sum game, that that you are somehow
Speaker 1: diminishing the feminist movement if you're trying to elevate young men,
Speaker 1: or if you're elevating or the opposite. I mean, what
Speaker 1: how do you start to there's more of an abundance mindset.
Speaker 1: What's good for the feminist movement is good for young men.
Speaker 1: Is the point I guess you're making. Is that the
Speaker 1: point you're making?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but it's all I have to say. It's
Speaker 2: complicated because people can say, well, there's only so many jobs,
Speaker 2: and if women are getting those jobs, then there's going
Speaker 2: to be harder you know, competition for the men. But
Speaker 2: you know what, if you believe in merit, if you
Speaker 2: believe in democracy, if you believe in fairness, and you
Speaker 2: believe in fairness. I think fairness is to me the
Speaker 2: governing issue, right. I believe in fairness plat out women.
Speaker 2: If women are smarter than men, if they work harder,
Speaker 2: if they're more talented, then they deserve the job. It's
Speaker 2: like you don't deserve the job.
Speaker 1: Just because aristocracy in that respect is certainly showcasing itself
Speaker 1: an education system, and certainly higher education, which women are
Speaker 1: on pace in half a decade to be two to
Speaker 1: one of college graduates in that that's right.
Speaker 2: And by the way, anti intellectualism is deep in American culture,
Speaker 2: especially among men. The idea that if you're somehow smart,
Speaker 2: you're a wimp, or you're condescending because you're educated, you're
Speaker 2: condescending to people who don't have an education. And I
Speaker 2: appreciate that certain members of of you know, the educated
Speaker 2: classes can be clunky, to say the least in terms
Speaker 2: of the way they communicate with people like with with
Speaker 2: with a less you know, less pedigree in terms of
Speaker 2: their education. I don't think I'm like that, but I
Speaker 2: do think that that's a real thing. But the idea
Speaker 2: that being somehow intellectual, being you know, somebody who reads,
Speaker 2: who engages with ideas is somehow makes you weak and
Speaker 2: soft as a man, or less than a real man.
Speaker 2: This is the most self defeating idiocy that I could
Speaker 2: ever imagine, and yet it's fed daily in the in
Speaker 2: the popular discourse, especially in you know, right wing talk radio.
Speaker 1: So what the hell is going on with young men?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Well? I think it's a complicated world. I think I
Speaker 2: think a lot of women, for example, have been pioneering
Speaker 2: new ways of being women in a in a in
Speaker 2: a in a very diverse and changing you know, sort
Speaker 2: of historical social you know context, And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of men are as well. We're just trying to
Speaker 2: figure it out, Like what does it mean to be
Speaker 2: a good father? What does it mean to be a
Speaker 2: good husband? What does it mean to be a strong man?
Speaker 2: If the historically being a strong man meant you're a
Speaker 2: protector of your family and a provider. But then you
Speaker 2: know your wife, say you're a heterosexual man and you're married,
Speaker 2: what if your wife is like making more money than you,
Speaker 2: what does it mean to be a provider at that point?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Like, I mean, what does
Speaker 2: it mean to protect your kids? When people are dropping
Speaker 2: off their kids at school and they're worried that their
Speaker 2: kids are going to get shot in a school shooting.
Speaker 2: So are we protecting our kids effectively or are we actually,
Speaker 2: through bad policy, making our kids more vulnerable. So I
Speaker 2: think I think guys want to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: They want to be respected, they want to be strong,
Speaker 2: but they don't really know exactly how to go about
Speaker 2: doing it. And because because of the changes in women's lives,
Speaker 2: And again I'm making a wildly general statement, and it's
Speaker 2: complicated by class and race and ethnicity and all these
Speaker 2: other categories. I appreciate that intersectional thinking is not just
Speaker 2: a that's not just a slogan. It's real. It's like
Speaker 2: people have complex identities, right, and they occupy complex social positions.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of women have been doing
Speaker 2: incredible things to sort of upend centuries, millennia of tradition,
Speaker 2: and as a result, a lot of men are completely
Speaker 2: dissentered and are still trying to figure out what does
Speaker 2: it mean? What do I mean? What does it mean
Speaker 2: to be me? What does it mean to be strong?
Speaker 2: And I think some men are drawn to And again
Speaker 2: I'm not dismissing this. I think it's okay. You know,
Speaker 2: some men are drawn to more traditional ideas about manhood
Speaker 2: in part because they're they're they're simpler, and they're they're
Speaker 2: they're they're they're they're they're they're less comp they're just
Speaker 2: less less complicated, like so, for example, celebrating physical strength,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, and by the way, Trump in
Speaker 2: his you know, his way, he's no, you know, he's
Speaker 2: no intellectual, right, but he's he has a visceral understanding
Speaker 2: of some of this. And so and the Trump campaign
Speaker 2: how how they go to UFC fights and then Trump
Speaker 2: walks into a UFC fight and everybody's cheering. It's like yes,
Speaker 2: and it's like that re establishes that Trump is the
Speaker 2: man's candidate. The Republican Party is the men's party. And
Speaker 2: they just doubled down. The Republicans double down on this
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenty for r NC. And it was like,
Speaker 2: to me, it was like a cartoonish, hyper masculine spectacle.
Speaker 2: It was I was embarrassed by it. But it were
Speaker 2: shirt yes, yes, and and and Dana White saying he's
Speaker 2: the best, you know, he's the biggest badass. And one
Speaker 2: person after another going up and saying Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: the strongest man I've ever met, and it's just I
Speaker 2: was just embarrassed by this. But it worked, worked, It worked,
Speaker 2: especially for young men.
Speaker 1: But you knew it was going to work because you
Speaker 1: wrote books on this. Yes, you wrote a book about
Speaker 1: Clinton and Hillary I mean about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: You wrote a book about masculinity and leadership.
Speaker 2: I did. Yes, I saw this coming decades ago. I
Speaker 2: mean it wasn't. And by the way, Reagan, I mean,
Speaker 2: how do you think Reagan was marketed to the I
Speaker 2: mean what your predecessor as governor of California. How Reagan
Speaker 2: was marketed to the to the American population was he
Speaker 2: was a cowboy riding in from the West to save
Speaker 2: a degenerated, you know, liberal establishment that's soft and weak,
Speaker 2: and and you know the Iranian hostage crisis, and rom
Speaker 2: Reagan was going to come in. John Wayne wasn't available
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan, and and it started. It didn't start there,
Speaker 2: but it accelerated with the Reagan administration and then for
Speaker 2: the last forty plus years. One of the biggest challenges
Speaker 2: that the Democrats haven't risen to is how do you,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, represent the interests of the ascendant
Speaker 2: classes of women and people of color and LGBTQ and
Speaker 2: hang on to the one of the key parts of
Speaker 2: the New Deal coalition, which is, you know, blue collar
Speaker 2: white men and how do you do that at the
Speaker 2: same time. And it's really a complicated challenge.
Speaker 1: So what's the.
Speaker 2: Answer to that? Ha ha?
Speaker 1: I mean, because I mean it goes back to the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. It's interesting Democrat at the DNC, they didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily platform. They platform pretty much every group, but they
Speaker 1: didn't platform a group that's struggling and struggling to be
Speaker 1: heard and identified as struggling, right, that are looking for
Speaker 1: meaning and purpose and mission that you, for a long
Speaker 1: period of time have recognized are feeling these pressures. There
Speaker 1: are these macrol pressures. I mean, what is I mean,
Speaker 1: why do you think the Democratic Party did not meet
Speaker 1: that moment? Do you think the Democratic Party is waking
Speaker 1: up to that moment? Maybe it goes back to my
Speaker 1: question a little while ago about what does this moment
Speaker 1: in this conversation mean? Why do you feel like is
Speaker 1: there a political is it because the political opening in
Speaker 1: the space, more people are having this conversation about men
Speaker 1: than they have in the past. That's actually illuminating even
Speaker 1: more of your work as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many pieces to that. I would say,
Speaker 2: I would say the crisis of right wing populism and
Speaker 2: trump Ism is focusing a lot of people's minds. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people who were kind of asleep
Speaker 2: at the switch a little bit, and they thought, you know,
Speaker 2: the Democrats could just keep going without really addressing this
Speaker 2: complex set of identity issues, especially involving men, without being
Speaker 2: seen to somehow be you know, selling out women, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think the consultant class, I think I think
Speaker 2: a lot of political consultants haven't been on this. They
Speaker 2: haven't understood this dynamic, the dynamic of men and speaking
Speaker 2: two men and how I mean Steve Bannon, one of
Speaker 2: your formal guests, Steve Bennan says, everything is narrative. This
Speaker 2: isn't about ideology. It's about narrative. And I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: one of the co founders of an organization called the
Speaker 2: Young Men Research Project, right, and we've been doing we
Speaker 2: started in early twenty four and way before the election,
Speaker 2: trying to push the Democratic Party, but not just the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, journalists, people in the media to think about
Speaker 2: the young men's vote, to think about how to speak
Speaker 2: to young men because we were worried about the slide
Speaker 2: over to the to the right of young men. And
Speaker 2: by the way, young women move into the left and
Speaker 2: you know, politically and young men moving to the right.
Speaker 2: But it's not ideological. In other words, the same men
Speaker 2: who voted for Trump, but young men, many of them,
Speaker 2: they're pro choice on abortion rights, and you've been a
Speaker 2: strong leader on abortion rights and unapologetically, which is by
Speaker 2: the way, what we need. We need unapologetic leadership from
Speaker 2: the Democratic side on things like women's rights. But when
Speaker 2: it comes to you know, strong labor unions, when it
Speaker 2: comes to action on the climate crisis, when it comes
Speaker 2: to increase of minimum wage and the issue after issues,
Speaker 2: young men are progressive.
Speaker 1: Way though there's some interesting state wide elections overwhelming they
Speaker 1: went for Trump but supported a portion of reproductive freedom
Speaker 1: and supported minimum wage increases. That's right, same exact voter.
Speaker 2: Because it was about identity, not ideology. In other words,
Speaker 2: there the identity politics. This is what identity politics are
Speaker 2: always The Democrats are already are always accused of playing
Speaker 2: identity politics when they talk about issues relating to you know,
Speaker 2: women or people of color or LGBTQ or something. But
Speaker 2: the Republicans have been playing identity politics with white male
Speaker 2: voters for fifty years. Richard Nixon started playing identity politics
Speaker 2: when he started talking about the forgotten man, and you
Speaker 2: know they and that silent majority queens.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they've only been playing those.
Speaker 2: Games exactly identity politics. But it worked again in the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty floor election. And I think a lot of
Speaker 2: young men and a lot of young men were basically
Speaker 2: being told that the party that cares about you and
Speaker 2: the party that is the men's party is the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: and Trump is the man's candidate, and the Democrats are
Speaker 2: the party of women and non masculine men, right, And
Speaker 2: that's that. That was the mainstream message to young men
Speaker 2: and young men who were low engagement voters. In other words,
Speaker 2: what does that mean? Low engagement voters? It means they
Speaker 2: don't pay close attention to politics. They don't read, they
Speaker 2: don't engage in political discourse, they don't you know, read
Speaker 2: think pieces in the Atlantic. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: They're not where I am every night on MSNBC or
Speaker 1: Fox or you know, Newsmax or CNN.
Speaker 2: No, but they're but then, but they're hearing on and
Speaker 2: by the way. One of the things that we do
Speaker 2: in the Young Men's Research Project is that you we're
Speaker 2: looking at all these different ways that the media ecosphere
Speaker 2: that young men are inhabiting are not necessarily overtly ideological.
Speaker 2: In theres a lot of them. They're just talking about comedy,
Speaker 2: they're talking about working out, they're talking about you know,
Speaker 2: eating healthy and good, you know, relationship sports. But then
Speaker 2: they throw in some politics, like like they're throw in
Speaker 2: a little bit of politics, and like, yeah, Trump, Trump's
Speaker 2: a guy, He's a guy's guy, you know, and then
Speaker 2: this fight fight fight, which is you know, by the way,
Speaker 2: let me just say I was impressed.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it was shot that was extraordinary
Speaker 1: in the moment, yeah.
Speaker 2: Knowledge, yeah, and so good good for him. It's like,
Speaker 2: but but then Charlie Kirk comes out and says, if
Speaker 2: you're a man, after this, after the after the assassination
Speaker 2: attempt and Trump's response to it, if you're a man
Speaker 2: and you don't vote for Trump, you're not a man.
Speaker 2: That to me is that's embarrassing to me, Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sorry, that's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we had him on the show as well
Speaker 1: as you know, yes.
Speaker 2: No, no, And again let me say also, I think
Speaker 2: it's great talking to people, having dialogue with people I
Speaker 2: have arguments with and discussions with people that I don't
Speaker 2: agree with all the time, including men, you know, around
Speaker 2: some of this fraught subject matter. It's fine, good, let's go,
Speaker 2: let's go, let's have a discussion.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about just the me too movement.
Speaker 1: You know, this sort of sendency of consciousness in this space,
Speaker 1: and then there were action to it. Do you think
Speaker 1: there was there's been an overreaction to it. Do you
Speaker 1: think there's been appropriate reaction to it? Do you think
Speaker 1: people have understated the power of the me too movement?
Speaker 1: Where are you, I mean, just on that spectrum of observation, acuity, interest,
Speaker 1: your own activity in that space. Where do you come
Speaker 1: out in terms of just your experience with that movement
Speaker 1: and with where we are today?
Speaker 2: Okay, I think I think we need to, like one
Speaker 2: way to think about this is kind of widen the
Speaker 2: aperture a little bit and think about this in the
Speaker 2: longer terms. For thousands of years, men assaulted women in families,
Speaker 2: in relationships, in marriages. Marriage was leg you know, rape
Speaker 2: was legal within marriage, including in the West until very recently.
Speaker 2: I mean in the UK it was only allowed in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one rape within marriage, And in the United
Speaker 2: States as late as the nineteen eighties, there were six
Speaker 2: states where it was still legal for a man to
Speaker 2: rape his his wife. I mean seriously, I mean, we
Speaker 2: weren't so long ago cleaning up some statute language on that,
Speaker 2: even in California. So I completely understand what you're saying, right,
Speaker 2: So there's still some language in that space exactly, and
Speaker 2: to this day. And there's hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 2: who live in countries where it's still legal for men
Speaker 2: to rape his own wife. So there's been thousands of
Speaker 2: years of men brutalizing women and getting away with it
Speaker 2: within absolute impunity. And finally, you have in the in
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, you have a movement, you know, whether
Speaker 2: it's the women's movement more broadly and then more specifically
Speaker 2: the anti sexual assault movement that started really taking off
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies and eighties, as well as the
Speaker 2: anti domestic violence movement. So these are very recent movements.
Speaker 2: I mean, for somebody who's twenty years old, the eighties
Speaker 2: might sound like a long time ago, but let me
Speaker 2: just say, it's not that long ago. You know. I
Speaker 2: was just listening to us like a mixed list from
Speaker 2: the eighties, and I was like, that was my I
Speaker 2: was in my twenties during the eighties, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I can I can say I could I know every
Speaker 2: word to these songs anyhow. Anyhow, the point is, it's
Speaker 2: not that long lack of seagulls.
Speaker 1: Just Duran, Duran, I won't die anyway. That's another conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, but the point exactly. But the point is
Speaker 2: you have these movements organized against something that's been going
Speaker 2: on for thousands of years, and finally, you know, giving
Speaker 2: a voice to women, reforming the laws. And then because
Speaker 2: of the Internet, because the you know, the incredible digital
Speaker 2: technology that allowed the voices of women to be heard
Speaker 2: in a way that they had never ever had the
Speaker 2: opportunity to be heard. One of like the Me Too
Speaker 2: movement happened in part not just on the ground because
Speaker 2: of women coming forward, but it became possible because of
Speaker 2: the technology of communication and the digital revolution. So many
Speaker 2: of the women who came forward to say, this is
Speaker 2: what happened to me, this is my truth, this is
Speaker 2: my experience. Yes, those women were speaking not just for
Speaker 2: themselves but for literally literally billions of women and girls
Speaker 2: who had never ever had a voice for thousands of years.
Speaker 2: And so was there were there examples where it went
Speaker 2: over the top and there and where where you know,
Speaker 2: due process for men who were accused of crimes, you know,
Speaker 2: was was not taken seriously. Yeah, I'm sure there was,
Speaker 2: and I and I'm empathetic, and but I always say
Speaker 2: this because I do gender violence prevention education. I've been
Speaker 2: doing this for a long time. If you're a man
Speaker 2: who has been, you know, falsely accused of some crime
Speaker 2: that you didn't commit, it's a horrible thing. And there
Speaker 2: but for the grace of God, go I and other men.
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying it's okay, it's horrible and it's unacceptable.
Speaker 2: But you know, the vast majority of sexual assault is
Speaker 2: never even reported, much less falsely reported. So I think
Speaker 2: a lot of men have this falsely inflated sense of
Speaker 2: their vulnerability to false accusations. And what ends up happening
Speaker 2: is that this narrative develops that all these women are
Speaker 2: coming forward, all they can ruin a guy's life easily.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, we know how how much, how difficult it
Speaker 2: is for a woman to come forward, and how unlikely
Speaker 2: it is that she's going to call that upon herself
Speaker 2: unless it really something really happened. Now, having said that,
Speaker 2: I do think there were some excesses, and there were
Speaker 2: some statements, certainly by women and others, that were dismissive
Speaker 2: of men's concerns about being unfairly targeted or falsely accused
Speaker 2: or what have you. But I think that I think
Speaker 2: overall it was a step forward. But it's messy. Life
Speaker 2: is messy, and social change is messy, and I think
Speaker 2: we have to give these and I'm just going to
Speaker 2: say this. I mean, I'm not, you know, bizarre who
Speaker 2: can make these, you know, issue these kind of edicts.
Speaker 2: But I would say we have to give each other
Speaker 2: a little bit of a break. I mean, we're all
Speaker 2: struggling to try to be treated with respect and dignity,
Speaker 2: try to live you know, lives of you know, you know,
Speaker 2: of dignity and in relationships, and with all these complexities
Speaker 2: of race and gender and and and and sexuality swirling about,
Speaker 2: it's not easy and navigating that space. And so I
Speaker 2: think what's happening with a lot of young men is
Speaker 2: that is that they're really confused, They're really be fuddled.
Speaker 2: And I think of a lot of adult men are too.
Speaker 2: So it's not just the young guys are befuddled. And
Speaker 2: so part of the reason why so many young guys
Speaker 2: are befuddled is because the men, the adult men that
Speaker 2: they look to for guidance, are themselves often bill bewildered.
Speaker 2: What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed
Speaker 2: to My wife wants me to be strong, she wants
Speaker 2: me to be powerful, but but but I'm also vulnerable.
Speaker 2: And when I express vulnerability then she's uneasy about that
Speaker 2: because she wants me to be strong, and I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what to do. And what you know this is,
Speaker 2: this is you know therapists. You know, for example, couples
Speaker 2: therapists deal with I'm not a therapist, right, but I
Speaker 2: know that couple therapists deal with this every day. And
Speaker 2: and and Terry Reel, who's this brilliant you know couple therapists. He's,
Speaker 2: by the way, Bruce Springsteen and Patty his wife, Patty's
Speaker 2: couple therapists. And I'm saying that because Bruce Springsteen wrote
Speaker 2: the literally wrote the forward to Terry Reel's latest book,
Speaker 2: which is called we it's about relationships. And Bruce Springsteen
Speaker 2: is is like he's like a guy's guy, Like he's
Speaker 2: like the prototypical American guy, right, he is, but he's
Speaker 2: also extremely self reflexive and vulnerable, and he's it doesn't
Speaker 2: make him any less of a of a of a
Speaker 2: sort of alpha rock star to be able to say,
Speaker 2: you know, he needed therapy, and he needed therapy for
Speaker 2: his own stuff with his own father and his relationship
Speaker 2: with his wife, and you know, and it was really
Speaker 2: important to have support in this in the sort of environment.
Speaker 2: And this this notion that vulnerability is somehow weakness, This
Speaker 2: is one of the biggest lies that young men get sold.
Speaker 2: But there's the pressure on young men to be sort
Speaker 2: of sucking it up and pretending that they've got it
Speaker 2: all going on because of because of the narrative that
Speaker 2: they're hearing. Is that a real man does that. And again,
Speaker 2: some of those manisphere of figures that we've been talking about,
Speaker 2: including by the way, Donald Trump, who says it all
Speaker 2: the time, you know, you don't admit weakness, you don't
Speaker 2: acknowledge mistakes. To me, that's that's a sign of total
Speaker 2: insecurity rather than strength. But I think we need adult
Speaker 2: men to model strong adult men to model vulnerability, not
Speaker 2: as weakness, but as I'm confident enough to say that
Speaker 2: I don't have it all figured out. I'm confident enough
Speaker 2: to say that, you know what, I make mistakes too,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to I'm just still going to get
Speaker 2: back up on the on the horse. I'm still gonna
Speaker 2: do my thing, and and and hearing professional athletes say it,
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the reasons why it's so
Speaker 2: powerful to hear like professional male athletes in this case
Speaker 2: who have mental health challenges, who will say, you know what,
Speaker 2: I have panic attacks. I'm a I'm a I'm a
Speaker 2: great professional athlete, and you know, look at me. I'm
Speaker 2: you know, I'm I've succeeded at the highest level in
Speaker 2: my sport, but I have issues and and I and
Speaker 2: I and and that's so okay. Michael Phelps, the greatest
Speaker 2: swimmer men's swimmer of all time. This is really a
Speaker 2: powerful part of this. And last thing I want to
Speaker 2: say about all this, I appreciate again, I appreciate all
Speaker 2: the opportunities you're giving me to say these things. Sometimes
Speaker 2: people will say to me or to other men who
Speaker 2: talk about the issues in this way, they'll say, you're
Speaker 2: trying to make men soft and weak. And if you
Speaker 2: listen to Fox's News, they say it all the time,
Speaker 2: the worsification of America. These the liberals are trying to
Speaker 2: worsify America. They're trying to make men soft and weak.
Speaker 2: And it's to me, it's a cartoon. It's like watching
Speaker 2: a satire. But I reject the idea that I and
Speaker 2: others are trying to make men soft and weak. I
Speaker 2: think I want to be strong. I think I'm a
Speaker 2: strong man. I think that I want my son to
Speaker 2: be a strong man, and he is a strong young man.
Speaker 2: The question is not whether we want men to be strong.
Speaker 2: The question is how do you define strength? And how
Speaker 2: do you define strength? Is it this cartoonish ability to
Speaker 2: impose your will on another person and dominate? Is that strength? Really?
Speaker 2: In the twenty first century, are we supposed to take
Speaker 2: that seriously as the definition of strength? What about moral courage?
Speaker 2: What about courage to do something even though there's going
Speaker 2: to be a consequence for you that's negative because it's
Speaker 2: the right thing to do. What about social courage, which
Speaker 2: is to say, speaking up in the face of you know, abuse.
Speaker 2: You know, it's whether it's you know, your friends of
Speaker 2: yours making derogatory comments, or online spaces where guys are
Speaker 2: being really disrespectful to girls or women and calling them
Speaker 2: out and saying, hey, that's not cool. What about you know,
Speaker 2: resilience in the face of adversity. These are all these
Speaker 2: are evidence of strength and courage and positive, you know,
Speaker 2: positive positive qualities. I think we need to say to
Speaker 2: young men and older men, we want you to be strong,
Speaker 2: but we want you to expand your definition of strength.
Speaker 2: And the reason why that's so I think so helpful
Speaker 2: is because it's positive and aspirational. It's calling men into
Speaker 2: good behavior rather than calling them out for bad behavior.
Speaker 2: And I think if you call them into good behavior
Speaker 2: and say, we need more men with the guts to
Speaker 2: speak up, we need more young men who the courage
Speaker 2: to say misogyny is not cool. Treating women with disrespect
Speaker 2: is not going to get you my respect. It's not
Speaker 2: going to get you my admiration because you know what,
Speaker 2: you've got some issues. If we had more men who
Speaker 2: are willing to say that, and young men willing to
Speaker 2: say that, then we would we would begin to counteract
Speaker 2: some of these harmful things that are happening in men's lives.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of young men seek connection,
Speaker 2: they want relationships, they want intimacy in their lives. But
Speaker 2: if they're going down the route of hardening up, getting tough,
Speaker 2: you know, being sort of you know, hiding in their shell,
Speaker 2: if you will, and inhabiting this angry world of the
Speaker 2: manisphere and the sort of the right wing populist movement,
Speaker 2: that's not going to get them what they want. That's
Speaker 2: not going to get them the love and the connection
Speaker 2: and the intimacy that they crave. So I think we
Speaker 2: have to say it in terms of men's self interest
Speaker 2: and boys self interest. It's in women's self interest. Gender
Speaker 2: equality and gender justice is obviously in women's self interest,
Speaker 2: but it's also in men's self interest. And I think
Speaker 2: if people can hear that, I think we have you know,
Speaker 2: we've made a lot of progress.
Speaker 1: Jackson Katz, thanks for joining us in this podcast A
Speaker 1: hell of a way and close out this podcast. Thank
Speaker 1: you for your work, thank you for your advocacy, thank
Speaker 1: you for your clarity, your conviction, and thank you for
Speaker 1: being at this for decades and decades.
Speaker 2: Thanks Governor, and thanks thanks so much for giving me
Speaker 2: this opportunity and for having these conversations right on. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate that, that leadership and that thought leadership and
Speaker 2: your commitment. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you,