Speaker 1: The sort of ideal body shape for men has like
Speaker 1: ramped up to this ridiculous proportions in the same way
Speaker 1: that the ideal body shape for women has kind of
Speaker 1: shrunk to the part where you know, if Barbie was
Speaker 1: sized up to a real person, she'd have a feeding
Speaker 1: tube and not be able to work.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 2: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: Ruth Whitman, a British author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. Her
Speaker 3: essays cultural criticism and journalism have appeared in The New
Speaker 3: York Times, Time Magazine, New York Magazine, The Guardian, and
Speaker 3: many more. Her first book, America The Anxious, was a
Speaker 3: New York Post Best Book of the Year and a
Speaker 3: New York Times Editor's choice. Ruth is a regular speaker
Speaker 3: at venues including ted Ex, Google, The Moth, and Somerset
Speaker 3: House in London. Today, Ruth and Eric discuss her newest book,
Speaker 3: Boy Mom, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity,
Speaker 3: and don't forget that The One You Feed podcast is
Speaker 3: now on YouTube, so you can watch some of your
Speaker 3: favorite interviews by going to the One You Feed pod
Speaker 3: on YouTube.
Speaker 4: Hi, Ruth, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 4: It's nice to have you back on. We had you
Speaker 4: on maybe four or five years ago, and I remember
Speaker 4: really enjoying the conversation, so I'm glad we're getting to
Speaker 4: do it again. We're going to be discussing your latest book,
Speaker 4: which is called Boy Mom, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age
Speaker 4: of Impossible Masculinity. But before we get into that, we'll
Speaker 4: start like we always do, with the parable. And in
Speaker 4: the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 4: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 4: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 4: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 4: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 4: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
Speaker 4: think about it for a second. They look up at
Speaker 4: their grandparent and they say which one wins, and the
Speaker 4: grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 4: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 4: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 5: First, thanks for having me back on the show.
Speaker 1: And so this parable, I think it speaks to the
Speaker 1: fact that we are all complex beings. We are all
Speaker 1: both good and bad. These qualities exist within all of us,
Speaker 1: and there's no point denying that. There's no point pretending
Speaker 1: that we're all virtue and there's nothing wrong, or that
Speaker 1: we're sort of better than everybody else. But I think
Speaker 1: it also points to the fact that we have some
Speaker 1: agency in our lives. That we don't have full control,
Speaker 1: and the other wolf will always be there, but we
Speaker 1: have some choices around how we live and what our
Speaker 1: values are.
Speaker 4: I love that you know these things are in everyone,
Speaker 4: and I think that's relevant to your book because it's
Speaker 4: a book about masculinity. But you can't really talk about
Speaker 4: masculinity without talking about femininity, right, They exist on a pole.
Speaker 4: And as I walked away from your book, the one
Speaker 4: thing that sort of landed on me, and it's something
Speaker 4: I've thought about a lot over the years, is that
Speaker 4: the ideal person really has a blend of those characteristics.
Speaker 4: They're not all masculine, they're not all feminine, and to
Speaker 4: force ourselves into being all one way is damaging to us.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think also i'd rather see us
Speaker 1: moving away from labeling qualities and traits with a gender.
Speaker 1: So whether we're talking about bravery or courage, or strength
Speaker 1: or physical toughness, which are associated with masculinity traditionally, or nurturing, caregiving, empathy, emotionality,
Speaker 1: you know, which are traditionally like feminine coded traits. In
Speaker 1: a way, I'd rather see a world where we're all
Speaker 1: able to embrace all of those things. They don't have
Speaker 1: a gender exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's an interesting way to think of it. It's
Speaker 4: so deeply conditioned to think of things that way, and
Speaker 4: obviously those didn't get made up in a vacuum. Right
Speaker 4: over the millennia that there have been humans, there's been
Speaker 4: observations made and it said, hey, you know, more men
Speaker 4: seem to have this and women have that. But I
Speaker 4: agree with you that maybe taking them out of a
Speaker 4: gendered context makes them more applicable to everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and more accessible to everybody, because I think, and
Speaker 1: I just want to state here, there's nothing bad about
Speaker 1: masculinity and there's nothing bad about femininity. They're both associated
Speaker 1: with all kinds of wonderful things. It's just that when
Speaker 1: we use that as a framework for, you know, a
Speaker 1: standard that we have to meet in order to be worthy,
Speaker 1: I think that's where the problem's coming. Whether that's if
Speaker 1: you're growing up as a boy and you feel you
Speaker 1: have to be you know, tough and strong and invulnerable
Speaker 1: and not show your feelings and not be like a woman.
Speaker 1: You know, that's quite an exhausting and kind of debilitating
Speaker 1: an unhealthy standard really to try to meet. Or whether
Speaker 1: you're a woman who has to feels they have to
Speaker 1: be demure and submissive and not have agency or pretty
Speaker 1: or you know, like an ornamental kind of object, and
Speaker 1: that is the standard you feel you have to meet.
Speaker 1: I'd rather that we just allowed everybody to embrace whatever
Speaker 1: sides of themselves they would like.
Speaker 3: To, right.
Speaker 4: Right. So the book is a personal book because you
Speaker 4: are sort of trying to balance a couple things inside yourself. Right.
Speaker 4: One is your deeply held feminist values, and the other
Speaker 4: is the fact that when you start the book, you
Speaker 4: have two boys and you're pregnant with your third boy.
Speaker 4: So there's this moment trying to embrace these feminine ideals.
Speaker 4: I've got boys. The culture is changing in such a
Speaker 4: way that some of the problems with masculinity around Me
Speaker 4: Too movement and all that sort of coming out, and
Speaker 4: you're trying to figure out, like, how do you raise
Speaker 4: boys in all of this. So it's a deeply personal
Speaker 4: book as you walk through it. It's also deeply personal
Speaker 4: in the challenges that you're having with your boys.
Speaker 1: The book is a mixture of memoir and reporting and analysis.
Speaker 1: But the memoir part of it opens in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: when I am eight and a half nearly nine months
Speaker 1: pregnant with my third boy, and the Me Too movement
Speaker 1: is just like bloading all around us. So you know,
Speaker 1: Weinstein's been exposed, and it kind of you know, as
Speaker 1: I write in the book, it seems to go within
Speaker 1: like a few days from Harvey Weinstein as a sex
Speaker 1: offender to every man on the planet is a sex offender.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like one after another after another.
Speaker 1: There like horror show of bad news about men, and
Speaker 1: like the whole conversation about men and masculinity and kind
Speaker 1: of harm that men have inflicted on the world takes
Speaker 1: on this like very new and very different flavor and
Speaker 1: kind of a scary flavor, and especially a scary flavor
Speaker 1: if you're about to give birth to your third boy, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it was this very conflicted moment for me,
Speaker 1: both politically and personally. You know, personally, I'm there going,
Speaker 1: how do I raise a good son? Are men just hopeless?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 1: Is it just that whatever I do, you know, it's
Speaker 1: inevitable that he's going to end up as being either
Speaker 1: some kind of predator or a school shooter or a
Speaker 1: you know, rapist or something like that. You know, That's
Speaker 1: the kind of angsty state of mind that I was in.
Speaker 1: But then like I'm like, I'm a feminist. I believe
Speaker 1: that so much of this is socialized, and we can
Speaker 1: do something differently. But there's part of me that's like
Speaker 1: very exhilarated and happy about the me too conversation.
Speaker 5: It's like, finally women have a voice.
Speaker 1: We can call out this bad behavior, we can finally
Speaker 1: speak to it, and people are listening for the first
Speaker 1: time ever. You know, I feel like pretty much every
Speaker 1: woman feels like they've been saying this stuff for millennia
Speaker 1: and nobody, nobody has been listening. So finally people are listening.
Speaker 1: Finally women have a voice. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, the mother part of me is like, I'm
Speaker 1: raising boys. I feel defensively, I don't want to think
Speaker 1: of them as being toxic or terrible or inevitably going
Speaker 1: to cause harm. So it was this very conflicted, very defensive,
Speaker 1: very complicated moment that the book opens, and it carries on,
Speaker 1: you know, the memoir part of the book lasts for
Speaker 1: the next five years until my youngest son goes off
Speaker 1: to kindergarten, and the whole time we're in the kind
Speaker 1: of shadow of this wider cultural conversation about masculinity, toxic masculinity,
Speaker 1: What is it? How do we do differently, how do
Speaker 1: we do better? And where are we going with men
Speaker 1: and boys?
Speaker 4: Yep. And I think that what you do such a
Speaker 4: great job of in this book is you said it's complicated, right,
Speaker 4: you keep the complicated in it because this becomes sort
Speaker 4: of a political issue, right, and each side I often
Speaker 4: think lacks the nuance to have conversations that are actually useful.
Speaker 4: And that's true of the way that I lean politically
Speaker 4: and the other side, and you do a very nice
Speaker 4: job of keeping that in there and the struggles with it.
Speaker 4: I thought maybe we could move into asking you about
Speaker 4: the title, right, reimagining Boyhood, But it's the last part
Speaker 4: of the title. I'd like to get you to say
Speaker 4: something about which is impossible masculinity? What do you mean
Speaker 4: by that?
Speaker 1: So this was a really interesting process coming up with
Speaker 1: that title because you know, what do we say here?
Speaker 1: And actually the British version of this book, they chose
Speaker 1: to replace the word impossible with the word toxic, and
Speaker 1: I didn't like that choice. I prefer the impossible masculinity
Speaker 1: framing of this rather than toxic because I feel like
Speaker 1: masculinity has become impossible from all sides. So on the
Speaker 1: one hand, like all of the old pressures of masculinity,
Speaker 1: you know, the manner be tough, be strong, don't express
Speaker 1: your emotions, don't be vulnerable.
Speaker 5: Don't be a woos, don't be a pussy.
Speaker 1: You know, those pressures are still very much in circulation
Speaker 1: for boys.
Speaker 5: They still have to subscribe to that.
Speaker 1: They still are living in fear of as I think
Speaker 1: many men are of like being exposed as feminine or
Speaker 1: as not a real man. You know, there's this standard
Speaker 1: that they feel they have to live up to. But
Speaker 1: now there's this sort of voice from the left, or
Speaker 1: a sort of newer voice, which is, you know, boys,
Speaker 1: you're toxic, you're harmful, you know, you're very being is
Speaker 1: you know, you're just kind of like a predator in waiting.
Speaker 1: Whatever you do, you're wrong. And it's also it's time
Speaker 1: for you to shut up. It's everybody else's turn. Don't
Speaker 1: speak to your pain, don't speak to your experiences, because
Speaker 1: men have been listened to for so long and it's
Speaker 1: time for everybody else.
Speaker 5: To ever go.
Speaker 1: So I think many men and boys that in this
Speaker 1: moment of just feeling like this is impossible, you know,
Speaker 1: from all sides, you know.
Speaker 5: Where do we go with this?
Speaker 1: You know, on the one hand, we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: so privileged and powerful, but we don't feel that way.
Speaker 1: We still have all of these old problems that nobody's
Speaker 1: really addressing or saying, and nobody really has any empathy.
Speaker 1: Like it feels like we have run out of goodwill
Speaker 1: for men and boys completely.
Speaker 5: We're done. And so I think what I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Capture with the idea of impossible masculinity was just it's
Speaker 1: kind of impossible from everywhere. We're in this moment in
Speaker 1: the culture wars where things are very complex and boys
Speaker 1: and men just don't really know how to be, And
Speaker 1: I prefer that to toxic masculinity. I think there's something
Speaker 1: about the phrase time masculinity, and I believe it was
Speaker 1: a really important phrase in its moment. I think it
Speaker 1: really spoke to very specific phenomenon which is really important
Speaker 1: to call out. But I think for this generation of
Speaker 1: boys who weren't the ones doing this stuff, I think
Speaker 1: they just see it as so shaming and so shutting
Speaker 1: down of conversations rather than opening them up that I
Speaker 1: kind of didn't want to perpetuate that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the book resonated with me in a lot of
Speaker 4: ways as a man, because I don't think the pressures
Speaker 4: you're describing are new and what I mean is I
Speaker 4: believe that in my generation might be the generation that
Speaker 4: first I think started to really face this a little
Speaker 4: bit more my dad's generation a little bit, but not
Speaker 4: as much, where if you were paying attention, you started
Speaker 4: to realize that the be a man story that was
Speaker 4: the traditional one was problematic. There was a lot of
Speaker 4: encouragement from it. And again I think this does start
Speaker 4: a lot on the liberal side and in communities that
Speaker 4: are more psychologically informed, spiritually informed, and I don't mean
Speaker 4: maybe not Christianity, but alternative spirituality, this idea that that
Speaker 4: way of being a man isn't right and it's problematic,
Speaker 4: so you should be different. And so that tension I
Speaker 4: have felt my whole life. Right, I grew up in
Speaker 4: a sense my father was very angry, very manly, and
Speaker 4: I grew up with I will not be like that.
Speaker 4: But that's a reaction to the standard, right, and it's
Speaker 4: still a way of like being in the box, so
Speaker 4: to speak. Right, it's just a slightly different box. So
Speaker 4: I just really resonated with a lot of that. I
Speaker 4: was surprised by how much I resonated with some of
Speaker 4: the in cells. Will get to that in a second.
Speaker 4: Really powerful book because I think I have wrestled for
Speaker 4: a long long time with what does it mean to
Speaker 4: be a man? And what do I do with these
Speaker 4: characteristics that again, maybe we get to a day where
Speaker 4: we don't gender them, but that are traditionally thought of
Speaker 4: as male, Those are in me, I feel them, those
Speaker 4: energies are there. To shove them away is problematic, but
Speaker 4: to let them just run wild is also, you know,
Speaker 4: can be very problematic. Right.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: One thing that I found when I was reporting and
Speaker 1: researching this book and talking to a lot of boys
Speaker 1: is one thing that I think is really hard for
Speaker 1: men and boys is that they don't have a very
Speaker 1: good vocabulary or sort of you know, just a good
Speaker 1: language and a good framework to really talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's all these ways in which
Speaker 1: men are sort of subtly socialized not to really talk
Speaker 1: about their pain in different ways, or not to really
Speaker 1: talk about their issues, and so it's like, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of boys are feeling like I don't know
Speaker 1: how to be Everything feels wrong, but I don't really
Speaker 1: have the framework to talk about it. And I think
Speaker 1: that we have done as a society a pretty good
Speaker 1: job over the last few decades of giving women and
Speaker 1: girls a vocabulary to talk about the issues that face them.
Speaker 1: So it's not that those issues have gone away. But
Speaker 1: I think like pretty much any fifth grade girl, say,
Speaker 1: has the ability to like look through a book or
Speaker 1: look through a magazine and be like, that's sexist, you know,
Speaker 1: to call it out, this is wrong, this is oppressing me.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I think these guys are so savvy to this stuff,
Speaker 1: and I think we've done a good job of giving
Speaker 1: them that framework to think about it and to call
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 5: Was I think with boys.
Speaker 1: And men, it's just they feel something's wrong, they don't
Speaker 1: feel like they have permission to talk about it, and
Speaker 1: they don't really have the tools to talk about it
Speaker 1: or the language. And so this is what I was
Speaker 1: trying to do in the book, was just give it
Speaker 1: a framework, give it a name, name the problem.
Speaker 4: Yep. So let's start with a core idea that is
Speaker 4: in the middle of all this, which is sort of
Speaker 4: gender essentialism, meaning boys have certain traits, girls have other traits.
Speaker 4: In the book, you say very clearly that it's possible
Speaker 4: to read the same research and come to two different
Speaker 4: conclusions that there are characteristics that are you know, built
Speaker 4: into boys, and there are characteristics that are built into girls.
Speaker 4: And you can find the research and read research and
Speaker 4: walk away completely convinced that that's true, and you can
Speaker 4: come to the exact opposite conclusion. And even if you're
Speaker 4: actually trying to get to the truth, which a lot
Speaker 4: of people just want to be confirmed of what they believe.
Speaker 4: But even when you're open to finding the truth, good lord,
Speaker 4: it's confusing.
Speaker 5: It's really confusing.
Speaker 1: And I think also, as I write in the book,
Speaker 1: I think that the whole thing becomes a kind of
Speaker 1: proxy for a different fight, which is like, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about is it nature or is it nurture?
Speaker 1: You know, are we really trying to find out about
Speaker 1: that or are we using this research to further an
Speaker 1: agenda that we already have.
Speaker 5: And that happens on both sides.
Speaker 1: I think there are people with very traditional gender beliefs
Speaker 1: who go through that research and they're like, look, it's
Speaker 1: all innate, it's natural that there's nothing we can do
Speaker 1: about it. Women are like this, men are like that,
Speaker 1: and women should stay in their place, you know, and
Speaker 1: men should stay in their place. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: a way to justify sort of regressive things, And on
Speaker 1: the other side of things, you have feminists who are like,
Speaker 1: this stuff is all socialized, it's all just you know,
Speaker 1: the only reason why that men and boys behave the
Speaker 1: way they do is because we socialize them into that.
Speaker 1: And if we socialize them differently, we'd have a totally
Speaker 1: different outcome. And I think, you know, I read through
Speaker 1: this body of research many times and I feel like, honestly,
Speaker 1: anyone who's really approaching it in good faith would say
Speaker 1: that this is a mix. You know, it is a
Speaker 1: mix of nature and nurture. We will never know in
Speaker 1: exactly what proportions. And these are always group level differences,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't necessarily apply to anyone individuals.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's like height.
Speaker 1: You know, most men are taller than most women, but
Speaker 1: you will find women who are six foot tall, and
Speaker 1: you will find men who are five feet tall. And
Speaker 1: that's true. But at a group level there are differences,
Speaker 1: I think. And also nature and natural sort of aren't
Speaker 1: really distinct. You know, there's the field of epigenetics, so
Speaker 1: what genes get turned on and off by how we
Speaker 1: socialize people. But what I ended up feeling was that, yes,
Speaker 1: there are some elements of this which are hardwired biologically,
Speaker 1: or tendencies which are biologically hardwired.
Speaker 5: But actually we use.
Speaker 1: That, we use the idea that you know, boys will
Speaker 1: be boys, or that you know, boys are just wired
Speaker 1: this way as an excuse to kind of not do
Speaker 1: anything about it, you know, to do less parenting, when
Speaker 1: actually those traits should encourage us to do more, you know,
Speaker 1: to step in more to help boys find and girls,
Speaker 1: you know, to help everybody find new ways to be.
Speaker 4: You tell a really compelling story near the end of
Speaker 4: the book about something you observed when you took Abe
Speaker 4: to his first day of kindergarten. Yeah, we want to
Speaker 4: tell that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is like a very very tiny story,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, I'm always slightly hesitant to
Speaker 1: tell it because it's the kind of thing that people
Speaker 1: to be like so minor, so nothing. But I think
Speaker 1: what I was trying to convey is that these kinds
Speaker 1: of very minor things add up, right, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a million million examples of the same thing. So what
Speaker 1: I noticed I took him to kindergarten. He's this tiny
Speaker 1: little kid, he's very anxious. It's his first day of
Speaker 1: school and we're going through the gate and there's this
Speaker 1: like big guy there. I think he might be a
Speaker 1: teacher or a volunteer. I'm not sure, but so right
Speaker 1: in front of my son in line, there's these two
Speaker 1: girls and the guy says to the first girl.
Speaker 5: Hi sweetheart, you know this little.
Speaker 1: Sweet voice, and then the next girl, Hi sweetheart, And
Speaker 1: then my son walks through and his voice goes down.
Speaker 5: An entire octavity.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, buddy, and gives him a high five,
Speaker 1: and it's like he has communicated in this tiny way
Speaker 1: that these girls are vulnerable, they're in need of protection
Speaker 1: and nurture, and that they have a right to be scared,
Speaker 1: they have a right to be anxious, and that adults
Speaker 1: are going to respond to that. And he's communicated to
Speaker 1: my son that he must tough enough, that he's a
Speaker 1: man now, he's in the system of masculinity.
Speaker 5: It's not really okay that he's.
Speaker 1: Scared and vulnerable and he has to kind of toughen
Speaker 1: up and get through it. And it's this tiny little moment,
Speaker 1: and it's very well meaning, and the guy was a
Speaker 1: lovely person. He's not trying to do anything wrong, but
Speaker 1: it's just having boys. You notice that like right from birth.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of research to support this that
Speaker 1: we kind of masculinize them in all these subtle ways
Speaker 1: that we project these masculine qualities. We see them as sturdier,
Speaker 1: we see them as tougher, we see them as less
Speaker 1: in neative nurture and protection, and we give them less
Speaker 1: nurture and protection as a result.
Speaker 4: And I think that's what the process of conditioning is.
Speaker 4: It's little things that add up. It's a thousand little
Speaker 4: experiences that grow into something bigger. So I found this,
Speaker 4: you know, Yeah, it's very little, and I think your
Speaker 4: point is important. The guy there was a kind, good
Speaker 4: person doing the best he could, right, And yet there
Speaker 4: is a message encoded in that, And it's interest because
Speaker 4: we tend to think of boys as being stronger, but
Speaker 4: you say that boys are by almost every measure, more sensitive, fragile,
Speaker 4: and emotionally vulnerable. Explain that, because I think it's easy
Speaker 4: for us to see the boys could be more aggressive
Speaker 4: or rambunctious, right, those boy things, But in what ways
Speaker 4: are they also sensitive, fragile, and emotionally vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was one of the biggest surprises to me,
Speaker 1: and it's actually really well established in the literature. It's
Speaker 1: not like some controversial thing that I've blacked out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: What is really surprising is that a baby boy is
Speaker 1: born with his brain. And when I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: right hemisphere of his brain, which is the part that
Speaker 1: deals with emotions, emotional self regulation, attachments, relationships, he's born
Speaker 1: with that part of his brain about a month behind
Speaker 1: a baby girl in development. So baby girl is born
Speaker 1: naturally more emotionally resilient and independent and with less need
Speaker 1: for a caregiver. And so you see that boys at
Speaker 1: birth are like a little fustier, like they find it
Speaker 1: harder to calm down. They're more stressed by difficult events
Speaker 1: like being separated from their mothers. And you can see
Speaker 1: that actually, any sort of bad thing that can happen
Speaker 1: to a baby, like any adverse event, like you know
Speaker 1: that the mom has postpartum depression and doesn't bond properly,
Speaker 1: or that you know he's neglected, or that he's abused,
Speaker 1: or he grows up in poverty, all of those things
Speaker 1: have been shown in the data to have a bigger
Speaker 1: effect on boys than they do on girls. Boys' brains
Speaker 1: are just naturally more vulnerable to disruption in those early years,
Speaker 1: and that carries on. But I think what happens so
Speaker 1: boys actually need a little more care and a little
Speaker 1: more support right from birth. But because of our stories
Speaker 1: about masculinity, we believe that a boy is tougher and
Speaker 1: sturdier and he needs less care. And you see all
Speaker 1: this research about how parents like handle baby boys differently.
Speaker 1: They rough house with them, they jiggle them, whereas they
Speaker 1: tend to give girls more of this kind of caretaking touch,
Speaker 1: you know, and they talk to girls more about their emotions,
Speaker 1: they use more words, they use more language, and you know,
Speaker 1: they just treat them in a slightly more nurturing and
Speaker 1: emotive way. And so I think this like combination boys
Speaker 1: need more that they get less really leads to some
Speaker 1: problems down the line.
Speaker 4: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 4: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 4: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 4: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 4: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 4: and refin. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 4: how can you put it into practice?
Speaker 3: In your life.
Speaker 4: Seriously, just take a second, pause the audio and reflect.
Speaker 4: It can be so powerful to have these reminders to
Speaker 4: stop and be present. Cant it. If you want to
Speaker 4: keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 4: I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 4: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 4: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 4: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 4: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 4: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 4: at one youufeed dot net slash sms and if you
Speaker 4: don't like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 4: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 4: from the one you feed community on the list, and
Speaker 4: we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on
Speaker 4: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 4: our good Wolves together. You quote somebody who works in
Speaker 4: this space as saying, you know, we have an epidemic
Speaker 4: of uncared for boys. No wonder we're seeing all this
Speaker 4: toxic masculinity when they grow up. The other thing that
Speaker 4: we're seeing is and again this is not controversial. This
Speaker 4: is very clear in the data. Boys are not thriving
Speaker 4: in the world today. Young men are struggling in many ways.
Speaker 4: Tell me about some of those ways.
Speaker 1: So, young men are struggling in education. They're falling behind
Speaker 1: girls in pretty much every measure from kindergarten to college
Speaker 1: through postgraduate degrees. They're enrolling in college in fewer numbers
Speaker 1: than girls. They're much more likely to drop out of college.
Speaker 1: Unemployment rates amongst young men are rising faster than in
Speaker 1: any other group. Boys and young men are not socializing
Speaker 1: as much as young women are. They're spending far more
Speaker 1: time on screens and far less time socializing in person.
Speaker 1: So the suicide rate for young men is about close
Speaker 1: to four times the rate for young women, even though
Speaker 1: we see in the data that young women are more
Speaker 1: likely to report that they're depressed. So boys and men
Speaker 1: are like holding this stuff inside until it's way too late.
Speaker 5: They're not seeking help.
Speaker 1: There's a serious mental health problem with young men at
Speaker 1: the moment, but they're not getting help for it, and
Speaker 1: they're not able to articulate it. So all these different
Speaker 1: ways boys are not doing well.
Speaker 4: And so I know there are a lot of theories
Speaker 4: about why this is, and you probably don't have an answer,
Speaker 4: but what are the theories that make most sense to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this voice from the mainly from the right,
Speaker 1: which is like, boys don't have enough masculinity. They just
Speaker 1: need to toughen out. What we need to sort of
Speaker 1: toughen them up more. And back in the good old days,
Speaker 1: they were tougher and stronger and they were doing better.
Speaker 1: But I think that is a misreading of everything that's
Speaker 1: going on personally.
Speaker 5: I think that what's going.
Speaker 1: On with boys at the moment is a combination of
Speaker 1: an old problem and a new problem. So the old
Speaker 1: problem is the old story that we've had for generations
Speaker 1: and generations, which is, you know, the tough en up
Speaker 1: that boys are undercard for in those sort of emotional
Speaker 1: and nurturing ways that they're meant to squash their emotions,
Speaker 1: and these things can lead to quite psychologically unhealthy mind
Speaker 1: So all of those old pressures of masculinity I think
Speaker 1: are really unhealthy for boys and men. Men used to
Speaker 1: rise just because they had privilege. You know, it used
Speaker 1: to be that they would rise to the top just
Speaker 1: because everybody else was kept down. But now we're taking
Speaker 1: away the barriers for everybody else. We're starting to see
Speaker 1: that the way that we're raising boys is actually really unhealthy,
Speaker 1: and that you know, without privilege, they're just kind of crumbling. Also,
Speaker 1: I think there are sort of more modern pressures which
Speaker 1: are like things like screens have given boys a real
Speaker 1: kind of option to avoid the real world in a
Speaker 1: way that they never really had before, And so I
Speaker 1: think that it's easier. For example, you know, it's never
Speaker 1: been a more fraught time to have sex and relationships
Speaker 1: as a boy or young man. And it's never been
Speaker 1: easier to get your phone and just watch porn, for example,
Speaker 1: And it's very fraught for boys socializing in the real world.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to be. It's never been easier
Speaker 1: to just get on a video game and like live
Speaker 1: out your heroic masculine fantasy.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: One expect that I spoke to in the book characterized
Speaker 1: it as a kind of combination of.
Speaker 5: Fear and ease.
Speaker 1: So it's like fearful being in the real world and
Speaker 1: it's easeful being on a screen. Yeah, So that's one
Speaker 1: part of it. And you know, there are also economic reasons.
Speaker 1: I think that the types of jobs that boys used
Speaker 1: to go into are in decline, you know, all of
Speaker 1: those kind of manufacturing roles. So I think it's a
Speaker 1: combination of all different kinds of things that are all
Speaker 1: coming together in this cultural moment that we're at.
Speaker 4: And when we talk about this, you know, you can't
Speaker 4: talk about it without talking about privilege, right, that men
Speaker 4: have had over time. There was something in the book though,
Speaker 4: that genuinely shocked me, and it was that black girls,
Speaker 4: many measures, are doing better than white boys.
Speaker 5: Yes, and that was really surprising to me as well.
Speaker 1: This was in the chapter about education specifically, So when
Speaker 1: it comes to success in high school, rates of going
Speaker 1: to college, rates of postgraduate degrees, on most of these measures,
Speaker 1: black girls.
Speaker 5: Are doing better than white boys.
Speaker 1: And so all of our understanding of systems of privilege,
Speaker 1: you know, of race and gender are being turned on
Speaker 1: their head. You know, if privilege leads to success, then
Speaker 1: you would think that white boys would be doing better
Speaker 1: than anyone because they've had every type of privilege, you know,
Speaker 1: racial and gender privilege. And black girls, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to hand it to them, you know, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: They have the same limitations, the same structural obstacles, the
Speaker 1: same underfunded schools, the same lack of opportunities as black boys,
Speaker 1: but they've managed to overcome all of those and you know,
Speaker 1: overtake white boys. And so I think what we're seeing
Speaker 1: is that something about the way we are socializing boys
Speaker 1: and particularly when it comes to education, is really harmful.
Speaker 1: One thing that I would say about this sort of
Speaker 1: modern moment that we're in is that, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got all the old pressures of masculinity that all our
Speaker 1: fathers lived with and our grandfathers, but also like this
Speaker 1: kind of flavor of masculinity is changing as well. So
Speaker 1: it used to be this kind of we had this
Speaker 1: model which was like be a tough guy, to press
Speaker 1: your emotions, but also be a family man, be a breadwinner,
Speaker 1: be a provider, and those stories were also like really
Speaker 1: part of masculinity. But our kind of model for masculinity
Speaker 1: is becoming like more of a kind of cartoon action
Speaker 1: hero kind of masculinity. You know, a kind of muscle man.
Speaker 1: You see these kinds of masculinity. Influencers are all kind
Speaker 1: of doubling down on this model. So it's like taking
Speaker 1: all the seeds of the old model, but just turning
Speaker 1: it into a cartoon. It's basically you know, muscles and
Speaker 1: guns and cage fighting all the way down. And so
Speaker 1: that is creating even more pressures around masculinity.
Speaker 5: For boys in this moment.
Speaker 1: I think it's even more ridiculous and even more hyped
Speaker 1: up than it ever was in many ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's interesting. My son and I've talked about this.
Speaker 4: My son is twenty six, so he's a young man,
Speaker 4: and we've talked about how there is lots of resources
Speaker 4: for men right out there, but they are overwhelmingly right
Speaker 4: wing and or very very Christian, which again that's not
Speaker 4: necessarily bad unless you're neither of those.
Speaker 5: Things, right, and then where do you go?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, And that is the question him and I've
Speaker 4: talked about, is it just doesn't seem that there's places
Speaker 4: to go to talk about what being a man is
Speaker 4: or masculinity is in a time where the social pressures
Speaker 4: around that are changing very rapidly.
Speaker 1: And I think boys are very fearful to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and rightly so, for being called out for being overprivileged
Speaker 1: or being entitled, or man's blending or taking up too
Speaker 1: much space, you.
Speaker 4: Know, exactly. And yet it's critical, right you talk about
Speaker 4: this idea, you say, we don't experience our lives or
Speaker 4: emotions as part of a political class, but as individuals.
Speaker 4: So the fact that men, for as long as we
Speaker 4: can go back, have been privileged and have had power
Speaker 4: is all true. And some of that trickles down to
Speaker 4: young men of today. Right. It's not that there's not
Speaker 4: some inherited benefit there, but I know that around young
Speaker 4: people today, in a lot of spaces, I think being
Speaker 4: a straight white man is possibly the lowest social category.
Speaker 4: It is just a category that nobody, like you said,
Speaker 4: nobody wants to hear from shut up, right, We've heard
Speaker 4: from you for long enough, right, And that's not tenable
Speaker 4: as an individual, right.
Speaker 1: And these boys who are growing up now, they haven't
Speaker 1: lived that context, you know, And that context is real
Speaker 1: and it's important and we have to remind boys and
Speaker 1: men of it. And so it's really complicated. My friend
Speaker 1: was telling me this story the other day about how Hassan,
Speaker 1: who's I think eleven, was at school and they had
Speaker 1: an affinity group for every sort of identity category. So
Speaker 1: it was like the black students affinity.
Speaker 4: Group, the LGBTQ girls.
Speaker 1: Affinity group, and the one that they didn't have was
Speaker 1: for boys. And it's like, well, boys have already had power,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is meaningless to an eleven year
Speaker 1: old boy. They defin look powerful in their own life,
Speaker 1: they have nowhere to process it. And the thing that
Speaker 1: kind of compounds it is that, yes, it is true
Speaker 1: that patriarchy has given boys and men access to power.
Speaker 1: That is a very real thing. But even in that system,
Speaker 1: boys and men have been deprived of some really important things,
Speaker 1: which is emotionality, intimacy, human connection. So, as I say
Speaker 1: in the book, you know, under patriarchy, boys and men
Speaker 1: have everything except the thing that's most worth having, which
Speaker 1: is human connection, access to human intimacy. And so even
Speaker 1: under patriarchy, it's not that men had all benefit and
Speaker 1: no harm. Patriarchy harms men and boys precisely, and so
Speaker 1: there's no way to talk about that.
Speaker 5: We've focused so heavily.
Speaker 1: Particularly, there is a rich tradition within feminism of recognizing
Speaker 1: that patriarchy harms men and boys. But it's like we've
Speaker 1: forgotten it all, you know, in this moment post me too.
Speaker 1: It's just like your privilege, you get everything you're lucky.
Speaker 1: Shut up, and that is not a healthy way for
Speaker 1: any young person to live or to grow right.
Speaker 4: And there's a couple different points in the book that
Speaker 4: you make this point that you know, what we're doing
Speaker 4: is we're trying to sort of push men down instead
Speaker 4: of sort of get everybody to the same level. That
Speaker 4: doesn't really work. And you say, you talk about this
Speaker 4: because what we're talking about you put it in one sentence.
Speaker 4: It's hard to square male privilege with male vulnerability. You
Speaker 4: have both those things happening at the same time. Men
Speaker 4: have had privilege, do have privilege to a certain extent,
Speaker 4: and yet men as a whole, younger ones in particular,
Speaker 4: are extraordinarily vulnerable right now to many different problems. And
Speaker 4: so I think you do a great job of walking
Speaker 4: through this. I wanted to turn a little bit now
Speaker 4: to something that I didn't really know about it. I
Speaker 4: had heard the term in cell, but I didn't honestly
Speaker 4: even know what that really meant. Yeah, before we go
Speaker 4: into it, share with me what that is.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 1: So the word in cell stands for involuntary cell of it.
Speaker 1: So it's a group of generally pretty young men on
Speaker 1: the internet and often adolescent boys as well. We're pretty
Speaker 1: young men who believe that they have been excluded from
Speaker 1: sex and relationships. They can't have sex, they can't find
Speaker 1: a girlfriend or a partner, and they're extremely lonely and
Speaker 1: usually profoundly depressed, and often have pretty toxic politics. Not always,
Speaker 1: but often have pretty toxic politics. So they are misogynistic.
Speaker 1: There's sort of links between in cells and like white
Speaker 1: supremacy and all kinds of like really repulsive.
Speaker 5: Ways of being in the world.
Speaker 1: Not all in cells are like that, and they have
Speaker 1: all these theories about you know, they believe that it's
Speaker 1: a kind of genetic inevitability that they will never find women.
Speaker 1: They believe that women are terrible and they're shallow, and
Speaker 1: they're only interested in men for their looks, And they
Speaker 1: congregate in these online communities, and at their most extreme
Speaker 1: they have this kind of violent fringe. So the in
Speaker 1: cells and sort of in cell adjacent men have been
Speaker 1: associated with several acts of mass violence, including mass shootings.
Speaker 1: Some of the very prominent school shootings have been traced
Speaker 1: back to men who have been associated with this movement.
Speaker 1: And it's a really complicated and scary and also fascinating
Speaker 1: and sad phenomenon. And in the book, I spend some
Speaker 1: time digging into this community. So I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time in their spaces online, in their communities and forums,
Speaker 1: and I go pretty deep into viewing a few of them.
Speaker 5: Two of them end.
Speaker 1: Up in the book, two of these interviews that are
Speaker 1: really quite lengthy and detailed with these two guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really quite an eye opening experience in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what I find interesting about it is there are
Speaker 4: many people who believe that you shouldn't even give these
Speaker 4: people any airtime, that they're not lonely sad men, that
Speaker 4: they're toxic, dangerous people. So that you've got that view
Speaker 4: of the world. Now, I tend to be of the
Speaker 4: view that generally that you know that phrase hurt people,
Speaker 4: hurt people meaning that like you're hurting somebody, it's because
Speaker 4: you are damaged right in many ways. And look at
Speaker 4: the in cell community. Was difficult for me because a
Speaker 4: lot of these men are feeling like they're not attractive enough,
Speaker 4: they're not tall enough, they're not strong enough for any
Speaker 4: women to desire them. I was a scrawny child and
Speaker 4: a short child, and it took me really till high school,
Speaker 4: before I was able to really have sort of any
Speaker 4: success with women. Is that even a useful phrase anymore?
Speaker 4: Did I just say something that people are gonna be like,
Speaker 4: you can't say that?
Speaker 5: But I don't know. I mean it didn't like for me,
Speaker 5: but you know, who knows, probably.
Speaker 4: Before I could have any relationships and go on any dates, right, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 4: So a lot of reading them with their complete belief
Speaker 4: that because of their physical looks they would never find
Speaker 4: a relationship was really saddening. And the thing that was
Speaker 4: most sad about the community to me and you talk
Speaker 4: about it is just the deep hopelessness in the whole thing.
Speaker 4: It's this belief that nothing could get better for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this sort of is in contrast to a
Speaker 1: lot of what we have come to call them manisphere,
Speaker 1: which is like the you know, all of these sort
Speaker 1: of masculinity people online, the masculinity influencers, the Andrew Tates,
Speaker 1: the sort of quasi self help masculinity groups on the internet.
Speaker 1: Because most of that sort of manisfhit is predicated on
Speaker 1: this idea that there is a thing called an alpha
Speaker 1: male and that if you work hard at it, you.
Speaker 5: Can become that.
Speaker 1: So They sell this like they sort of prey on
Speaker 1: these vulnerable boys by saying, we know that you already
Speaker 1: feel insecure about your masculinity.
Speaker 5: Yes there is an alpha male.
Speaker 1: Yes, this person is going to get all the women
Speaker 1: and all the success and all the status. And I
Speaker 1: can sell you exactly the model.
Speaker 5: To get together.
Speaker 1: So pumpey and and this, And the difference between those
Speaker 1: guys and the in cells is that the in cells
Speaker 1: they believe all this stuff. They believe there's an alpha male,
Speaker 1: they believe there's a hierarchy. They believe in this system,
Speaker 1: but they've given up hope of ever climbing that ladder themselves.
Speaker 1: And what's so interesting about them is that, so on
Speaker 1: the one hand, there's some of the most like it
Speaker 1: is toxic masculinity central over there. You go on those boards,
Speaker 1: there is misogyny that you just wouldn't believe. There's talking
Speaker 1: about raping and torturing women. There's like some of the
Speaker 1: most repulsive views that you could ever imagine on those boards.
Speaker 1: What there also is is this deep sense of vulnerability,
Speaker 1: belonging and connection like brotherhood. It's almost that because they've
Speaker 1: kind of given up on ever climbing the masculinity ladder,
Speaker 1: that they're freed from all of its pressures as well,
Speaker 1: so they don't have to mann up and be tough
Speaker 1: and strong and invulnerable, and they can actually express their
Speaker 1: emotions and their sort of love for one another in
Speaker 1: a way that most men can't. So it's like both
Speaker 1: the worst of masculinity and this kind of freedom from masculinity,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting.
Speaker 4: You say that the irony hit me hard. I'd spend
Speaker 4: all this time searching for a space in which boys
Speaker 4: and young men felt they could disregard masculine norms, and
Speaker 4: I thought I might find it in some kind of
Speaker 4: feminist affinity circle or a therapy group run by a
Speaker 4: soft spoken vegan. But instead I'd found it right here
Speaker 4: at the heart of manisphere, in Toxic Masculinity Central. It's fascinating,
Speaker 4: you say in cells are generally deeply preoccupied with their appearance.
Speaker 4: And I think this is interesting because the narrative that
Speaker 4: has been going on most of my adult life is
Speaker 4: that we have a culture in which women are body
Speaker 4: shamed and women are held up to these impossible standards,
Speaker 4: and one hundred percent true, I also believe that men
Speaker 4: have been too.
Speaker 5: And it's more socially acceptable.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean when I was reading comic books as
Speaker 4: a kid, right, one of the ads was the Charles
Speaker 4: Atlas Ads. And in the Charles Atlas Ads, he was
Speaker 4: a weightlifter. There was a little scrawny kid on the
Speaker 4: beach who was getting sand kicked on him, and none
Speaker 4: of the girls would look at him. He orders the
Speaker 4: Charles Atlas stuff, does the weightlifting, and comes back and
Speaker 4: takes over the beach.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: I mean that was being marketed to young boys fifty
Speaker 4: years ago, and it's.
Speaker 1: Only ramped up that pressure exactly exponentially worse on boys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I think that that is an important
Speaker 4: part of the story that often isn't told right, or
Speaker 4: another way in which men suffer that isn't talked about often,
Speaker 4: because if I were to sort of say that sort
Speaker 4: of thing generally to females, they would be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but nothing like we were not to the degree we were,
Speaker 4: And I don't know whether that's true or not, right,
Speaker 4: I think measuring degree doesn't matter because the level of
Speaker 4: suffering was great for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I think those pressures on boys, so
Speaker 1: it's like the muscleman, you know, the online fitness influences.
Speaker 1: You know, you can see the sort of ideal body
Speaker 1: shape for men has like ramped up to this ridiculous
Speaker 1: proportions in the same way that the ideal body shape
Speaker 1: for women has kind of shrunk to the part where right,
Speaker 1: you know, if Barbie was sized up to a real person,
Speaker 1: she'd have a feeding tube and not be able to walk.
Speaker 1: You know, there is no human that can look like
Speaker 1: the cgi superheroes, and you know, the online fitness influences
Speaker 1: and that culture has really changed. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the insults was talking to me about short
Speaker 1: shaming of men, for example, and you know, yes, body
Speaker 1: image pressures on women are terrible. You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up with diet culture. It's a generation of women have
Speaker 1: been damaged by that, or several generations of women.
Speaker 5: But it's like at this.
Speaker 1: Point, I feel like I would never talk about somebody
Speaker 1: as having like a fat girl complex, you know, it
Speaker 1: would just be unthinkable, But like to talk about somebody
Speaker 1: as having a short man complex is completely fine, you know.
Speaker 1: And this intel who was very short, was telling me that,
Speaker 1: you know, online there are women telling short men to
Speaker 1: kill themselves, that they would never have a short boyfriend,
Speaker 1: that they were shaming boys for being short. It's something
Speaker 1: they can't do anything about. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: somehow we've got this notion that if we shame boys
Speaker 1: and men, you know, that we're kind of punching up
Speaker 1: with joke. We have this idea that it's like okay
Speaker 1: to punch up, and it's okay to rib somebody who's powerful,
Speaker 1: and you know, whereas punching down is not acceptable. But
Speaker 1: at what point do we need to stop and say,
Speaker 1: is this really punching up to like body shame like
Speaker 1: whatever he was at the time, nineteen year old boy,
Speaker 1: you know, who has serious mental health problems, no financial
Speaker 1: or social capital. You know, these insels are like profoundly depressed, marginalized.
Speaker 1: Is it really punching up to call him short, to
Speaker 1: shame him for that? I believe not, you know, and
Speaker 1: I think we really need to look at that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a blind spot, and I think we need to
Speaker 1: stop body shaming boys and men agree.
Speaker 4: I mean, you shouldn't body shame anybody anybody, of course.
Speaker 4: I mean I remember clearly an incident in middle school
Speaker 4: of like girls laughing at me because I was too skinny.
Speaker 4: And again, these things aren't new. I'm not a young person, right,
Speaker 4: So I just think there's this sense that you're not
Speaker 4: punching up to you know, any time you're shaming anybody
Speaker 4: or making fun of anybody's appearance, you're being mean.
Speaker 1: You're being mean and you're harming that person. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: no punching up in there. And I think again this
Speaker 1: starts to get back to the thing we're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is like, do you experience your life as part
Speaker 1: of a political class or.
Speaker 5: As an individual.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, men have had power, but that makes
Speaker 1: no difference when you're body shaming somebody who's you know,
Speaker 1: anybody for anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you say this might be inching as closer
Speaker 4: to a quality, but it doesn't feel like progress right
Speaker 4: in the sense that like now men are being shamed
Speaker 4: at a level that women are. It's not progress, right exactly.
Speaker 1: We're not doing things better and we should be learning
Speaker 1: from what we did with women, what we got wrong.
Speaker 1: And I think also because things have historically been so
Speaker 1: bad for women in that area, we have now like
Speaker 1: a really robust, like body positivity movement. We have like
Speaker 1: language to describe it, we know how to talk about
Speaker 1: body shaming, we know how to call it out. We
Speaker 1: know how to like fight back, and I think the
Speaker 1: boys and men just did know how to even start
Speaker 1: to fight back, and they felt that when they did,
Speaker 1: they were shamed for you know, well, back in your box,
Speaker 1: you've got too much privilege. You know, women have suffered
Speaker 1: worse from you, don't, you know, don't call it out.
Speaker 1: And this, this insult was telling me. You know, he
Speaker 1: wanted to go to therapy and to find a therapist.
Speaker 1: I mean, partly he couldn't afford it, which is a
Speaker 1: huge problem, but also he was scared because he felt
Speaker 1: that if he articulated his problems to a therapist, they
Speaker 1: would shame.
Speaker 5: Him and say, you know, well, women have had it
Speaker 5: far worse than you. Now.
Speaker 1: I believe that a good therapist would never do that.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the fact that he's fearful
Speaker 1: of that speaks to something very real.
Speaker 4: It speaks to something very real, and it also speaks
Speaker 4: to the cultural messaging that he's getting from other men. Right.
Speaker 4: I mean, as I was reading about the insults, the
Speaker 4: layer upon layer of mistruth or misunderstanding was painful to read.
Speaker 4: And one of the things I was thinking about is like,
Speaker 4: there's a mistake that's being made there. And there's often
Speaker 4: something in psychological literature called the three p's, and it
Speaker 4: has to do with how you explain things, right. You
Speaker 4: take things to be permanent, you think they're personal, and
Speaker 4: you think they're pervasive, right, And what these poor boys
Speaker 4: are doing is they're taking the fact that some women
Speaker 4: only want tall men, and that is true, that is true,
Speaker 4: to mean all women only want tall men. They're taking
Speaker 4: these things to be pervasive, and that's the big mistake
Speaker 4: I think that's happening there is. It's not that they're
Speaker 4: not right some of the time. They're not right all
Speaker 4: the time, though. I mean, and that's just a general
Speaker 4: thing I think we do across the board, is we
Speaker 4: just take an incident of a person on the left
Speaker 4: acting badly and we say that's the left, it's pervasive,
Speaker 4: or somebody on the right doing that, and it just
Speaker 4: doesn't do any of us good.
Speaker 5: I think that's true.
Speaker 1: And I think we've just got to the point where
Speaker 1: we've just lost empathy for anybody.
Speaker 5: You know. It's just like, yes, I was talking to
Speaker 5: these insults and there was.
Speaker 1: Just layer upon layer of pain and trauma and terrible
Speaker 1: message and half truths and you know, all of these things,
Speaker 1: and these people are really suffering. And I think the
Speaker 1: more we say we're not going to talk to them,
Speaker 1: we don't want to humanize them. You know, this is
Speaker 1: a whole thing, you know, we don't want to humanize
Speaker 1: these people because you know, and there's this argument which
Speaker 1: is like, you know, if an Arab Muslim commits an
Speaker 1: act of violence, we call him a terrorist, and but
Speaker 1: if a sort of white man, we say he has
Speaker 1: mental health problems. And there's truth in that for sure,
Speaker 1: but like what we've decided is that we're going to
Speaker 1: do about that is this like race to the bottom.
Speaker 5: So it's like, okay, let's.
Speaker 1: Dehumanize everyone, you know, rather than trying to humanize the
Speaker 1: Arab Muslim and see, well, what's going on for him,
Speaker 1: and like how did he get to this place and
Speaker 1: why does he want to and you know, he's a
Speaker 1: real person who probably got into terrorism through poverty and
Speaker 1: terrible messaging and terrible ideas about masculinity as well. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's just dehumanize the white guy as well to like,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that is just this terrible mistake.
Speaker 5: It's a race to the bottom.
Speaker 4: Yeap, the other thing that you mentioned I thought was
Speaker 4: very interesting was that you say, a wide body of
Speaker 4: research shows that it's not masculinity itself that makes men violent,
Speaker 4: but the sense of shame that they are not masculine enough.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, wow, And I actually resonate with that personally also,
Speaker 4: not that I'm violent, but I can share a little
Speaker 4: bit about that in a minute, but say a little
Speaker 4: bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was really fascinating to me. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that you see in the research and
Speaker 1: it feels so profoundly true. Yeah, when you hear it,
Speaker 1: you're like, yes, of course, because there's this like impossible
Speaker 1: standard for masculinity that boys and men feel that they
Speaker 1: have to meet, and there's always going to be inadequacy
Speaker 1: built into that. No human man can be the kind
Speaker 1: of superhero, you know, the model that they're expected to be,
Speaker 1: so they will always fall short. But some fall more
Speaker 1: short than others, you know, and some people are more
Speaker 1: successful in this system than others. But it comes it
Speaker 1: with built in shame. And the research shows it's this
Speaker 1: measure called masculine discrepancies stress, which means that when a
Speaker 1: man believes that he falls short of the standard for manhood.
Speaker 1: He is far more likely, you know, when he feels
Speaker 1: shame about his inability to live up to masculinity standards,
Speaker 1: then he's more likely to commit pretty much all kinds
Speaker 1: of violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, you know what they
Speaker 1: call intimate partner violence, assault with a weapon, assault of
Speaker 1: all kinds. And you can see it's that anger, it's
Speaker 1: that shame, it's the shame cycle that.
Speaker 5: Just keeps going and going and going. It rangs so true.
Speaker 1: And this is why, you know, we talk about all
Speaker 1: these extremes, you know, the in cells, the manisphere that
Speaker 1: you know, the sex offender and everything. But I think
Speaker 1: this is so built into the culture at every level.
Speaker 1: We give boys right from the beginning this kind of
Speaker 1: superhero myth about who they're.
Speaker 5: Supposed to be.
Speaker 1: So all boys are operating with this impossible pressure, this
Speaker 1: impossible standard, and so I think, you know, we really
Speaker 1: need to look at what we're asking of men and boys.
Speaker 5: And that's why I.
Speaker 1: Don't like this masculinity framework, even when it's positive, even
Speaker 1: when we're talking about positive masculinity, we just keep on
Speaker 1: reinforcing this idea that the most important thing is to
Speaker 1: be masculine.
Speaker 4: I just am very non violent by nature. So I'm
Speaker 4: lucky in that way. But I resonated with this because
Speaker 4: again this is mostly stuff as a young man. You know,
Speaker 4: I wasn't quote unquote masculine enough, right that what I
Speaker 4: just did was I just got in lots of trouble.
Speaker 4: That was my way of being tough is I'm in trouble, right,
Speaker 4: I'm not afraid of the law, you know. And again
Speaker 4: it wasn't violent, but it certainly wasn't It wasn't pro
Speaker 4: social behavior, you know, it didn't help me or society,
Speaker 4: And it was this I can see it now, this
Speaker 4: semi conscious attempt to be like, but I am tough.
Speaker 1: To compensate, right, And so that's a sort of very
Speaker 1: minor and you know, relatively healthy example of the same
Speaker 1: thing that you see with say, school shooters. You know,
Speaker 1: when you read the manifestos written by these guys, it's
Speaker 1: this like utter shame. They've internalized this message that they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be this kind of glorious masculine hero and
Speaker 1: then the shame of like falling short and then something
Speaker 1: like a school shooting. It's like this very obvious, splashy
Speaker 1: trope of masculinity. You know, you get a gun and
Speaker 1: you shoot a bunch of people. It's like a way
Speaker 1: of reclaiming this masculine status. And that's like the most
Speaker 1: tragic and awful example of it. But you see it,
Speaker 1: you know, you see lesser versions of it everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think this is a good place for
Speaker 4: us to wrap up. You and I are going to
Speaker 4: continue talking in the post show conversation because we just
Speaker 4: didn't get to at all. What ways this has caused
Speaker 4: you to parent your boys differently? And so I'd love
Speaker 4: to take this into some actual practical examples. Listeners if
Speaker 4: you would like to hear this post show conversation and
Speaker 4: many other post show conversations which some people tell me
Speaker 4: are the best conversations, as well as ad free episodes,
Speaker 4: and to support podcast that you care about, you could
Speaker 4: go to one you feed, dot net slash join and
Speaker 4: become part of our community. Ruth, thank you so much
Speaker 4: for coming on. I thought the book was so well done.
Speaker 4: I mean your last book was too. You're just you're great.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you. It's been such a pleasure to get
Speaker 5: to talk to you again. So thank you.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 2: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 2: Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this
Speaker 2: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 2: It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 2: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 2: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 2: become a member of the One You Feed community, go
Speaker 2: to oneufeed dot net slash Join The One You Feed
Speaker 2: Podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 2: the show.