From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Can Male Influences Save Masculinity?

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Today, Sean and Rachel have a conversation on masculinity in the modern era, and how parents can take back their power from the state and vast left-wing forces. They jump off the conversation with a story of a man whose children were taken to the doctor's office for a routine check-up and immediately discussed gender identity.  Plus, they are joined by their daughter and Federalist Staff Writer, Evita Duffy, to discuss the roots of how these new trends have made their way into the societal mainstream. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Thank you, Sean. It's so fun being up here in Northern Wisconsin doing the podcast from Round Lake, Wisconsin. I've been waiting to not do this at the kitchen table, actually from our cabin in Wisconsin. I've been yearning for like months to get up here and we're finally here and have the pleasure of looking out over the lake on a cloudy day. But a beautiful day.

Actually, it's kind of fitting because the first time we started doing these together we did them first on facebook and we did it from up here we did um so we started here we're back here at the lake and we're loving it so we're loving it so we're in conversation today about the attack on men and it's become more and more prominent as you know it's just every day we get confronted with another thing here's the latest oh this video makes me so mad i'm just gonna play for you or we'll come back on the other side she's gonna have to phone my wife who took my nine and seven year old boys to the doctor today to get physicals for type of football and school next year and all that

the first my nine-year-old son went in first, and the first thing this woman asks him is if he identifies as a boy, a girl, gender fluid, or non-binary. My son, he's never heard of any of that s*** before. You've been dealing with him your whole life. He is clearly a boy's boy. So what are you trying to plant a seed in his head?

The only thing I can be thankful for is that my wife took them instead of me. And props to my wife because she said something. And if she didn't, they would ask my seven-year-old son the same damn question this is ridiculous and to the people out there to think that there's nothing wrong with that and i'm just uh a transphobe or all that you're fucked up this is bullshit and there's something wrong with you i think he speaks for a lot of parents. Right. So one, this is at a doctor's office and this is not talking to a 17, 18 year old, you know, young individual about their sexuality because the doctor might have some inclination.

I don't even think that's the job of the doctor. I'm sorry. I don't even think that's the job of the doctor. I'm sorry. I don't either, but I'm saying that might be one realm, but we're talking to a nine-year-old and potentially a seven-year-old about their sex in a doctor's office. It's not just in schools. This is so pervasive through all part of the professional class that you can't feel safe bringing your child to the doctor and feel secure leaving them alone in the doctor's office. You have to stay with your child to make sure this crap doesn't happen to your little one. Well, first of all, I've been facing

this at pediatricians' offices for years in terms of that they are constantly trying to separate me from my child in the doctor's office, in the pediatrician's office. And they want to ask them questions about their sexuality and if they're having safe sex and they want to be able to talk to my kid about that and me not know it. I have always had a problem with that. I've always said, no, you can't talk to my kid without me because I just think that that's wrong. And but now we're reaching now we're understanding this is worse than asking a kid if he's sexually active and somehow not informing the parent who has a right

to know. But now we're asking little tiny kids, grade school kids, whether they are boys or girls or non-binary or whatever the heck it is, I understand this guy's anger. I can't tell you I would be on fire. So as a 50-something-year-old man who was a young boy going to the doctor, but also as a father bringing my children to the doctor, your children might have an interaction or when you were little, you had an interaction with your doctor maybe once a year and maybe for 15 minutes at the most with your doctor. It's not some deep personal relationship that you have with a doctor or a nurse as a young person. You have a really good relationship with your parents. You know your parents well. Who in the hell do these people think they are that in that 15 minute a year relationship they have with your child, that the child is going to open up to the doctor

when they wouldn't open up to their mom or their dad about very personal things? And again, it goes to this point where Joe Biden says it, the Democrats say it all the time that they believe that they're our children, not your children. And so as agents of the state, they're there to facilitate the our children mentality and say, as our children, we need to talk to them about issues that we, the state, think are very important. However, you, the parent, are like, this is completely inappropriate. And I think the conversation also, Rachel, shows their lack of understanding of children and where children are at and what's an appropriate conversation with a child. Because the state cared about children.

If you had any doubt that those, the progressives, the people on the left, those who want more control over our lives, want to grow the state, want to control our children, they don't care about children. Look at COVID. They didn't give a damn about kids during that period of time. It was all about pushing this agenda, pushing control and and children be damned. And you saw it with the teachers unions. You saw it with the with the public health officials. You saw it with every other institution that was pushing covid mandates and covid and authoritarianism all over us. This this is another case where you see that this ideology has permeated everything. The reason why this is happening in the doctor's office

is because the American Association of Pediatrics, everything has been consumed by this gender, sex ideology, and your kids will be subjected to it unless you take them out of these kinds of situations, and you really have to be very much on it. This is a, this is a warning to parents with this guy went through. Every parent is going through this.

This went from asking your kids about whether they're sexually active to asking whether they're boys or girls. And I think this is also part of a greater agenda, Sean of, of the war on boys. And there is a desire in our culture to emasculate boys in particular to elevate female characteristics and virtues and values and and and strengths and suppress what what boys inherently have. And that's why you hear terms like toxic masculinity. I want to get into this because I think that's the bigger question.

Well, we're going to talk about that in just a little bit about the attack on boys through bathrooms and urinals. But I want to stick on this for a moment because this is not just happening in medical school across the country. It's happening in law schools across the country. And I think just like you have to vet your school system because actually they spend eight hours a day with your child, you do also have to vet your doctor. And what kind of values do your doctors have and do they share your values? Do they think they're the true parent and guardian of your child? Or do they understand that, no, you are the parent and the guardian. And if they want to ask very sensitive questions, those questions should first be approved by you, the parent, questions, those questions should first be approved by you, the parent, before they sit down with your child and engage in sensitive material with your young child. I want to get

more take on this because as we're at the cabin, as you mentioned, Rachel, we're here with our daughter Evita, who's hanging out with us and helping us with all the kids, but also enjoying herself as well. Evita, what's your take on what's happening? Again, you have a father. By the way, I love men's men who will basically go, listen, you are damn lucky that I didn't bring the kids to the hospital because some bad things would have happened.

In our case, it would have been, if I had been in the doctor's office. Rachel had been there, yes. I had the i had been in the doctor's office rachel had been there yes had the same reaction sean what's your take so there was a great article i was trying i work at the federalist so i'm reading all the articles there was a great article in the federalist that said that if if you believe all teachers are heroes you're part of the problem and i think there's something with this professional class where you have the doctors during COVID or teachers just in general, where we think they're always heroes and they're never wrong. And there's a type of arrogance that comes with that to think that you're a doctor in

a doctor's office and your job is to really to look out for the health and well-being of a child. And you're going to take it upon yourself to ask them about a radical and in most people's opinions, a harmful ideology on someone else's child, I think is really ridiculous and awful. And the same thing is true of teachers where they're inserting social emotional learning in the classroom. is true of teachers where they they're inserting social emotional learning in the classroom and and despite laws in florida telling that they're not allowed to insert things like critical theory um and and it's it's so arrogant and it's and it shows that they really believe that they own your children that they are they are in charge that they are the ones who have a right to do this because you you are you're either a bigot or you're not enlightened enough. And so it's our job to take it upon ourselves to indoctrinate them in certain

ideologies, whether that be at the doctor's office or in the classroom. Well, I think what's interesting to that point is that when these professionals, whether they're a teacher or a doctor, when they're in school, they're instructed, they're taught that this is their realm. And this is how you're supposed to engage children in the classroom. You should engage them in critical theory. Or doctors are now taught when you engage children in a family practice, these are the questions you're required to ask. You need to talk to them about sex and sex preferences and all of these crazy things

that most parents object to. They're taught that this is what they are supposed to engage a young child with. And when you talk about the hero class, teachers being heroes, I think that's the phrase you used, Evita. I mean, I understand where the goodness comes from that. I think that there is a history. If you look back, doctors were held up, go back 30 years or 40 years. And so were teachers. I look at my teachers. They weren't, I mean, maybe there was some indoctrination, but I had really good teachers in my public school that I thought they loved America. They wanted

these kids to get a good education. They left politics out of the classroom. And if they brought it into the classroom, they let you know that they're bringing in their own personal belief, that they weren't teaching that as truth. And they allowed discussions of both sides and sort of acted more like moderators instead of enforcers. Yes. And that goodwill from 30, 40 years ago has carried over into today when you actually have teachers and doctors that are not behaving at the same standard of those former professionals. And again, when I look at some of these videos of teachers in the classroom and whether they're someone who's transitioning and they're trying

to push trans on kids in the classroom, or they have orange hair and piercings all over. And I'm like, listen- All these libs of TikTok teachers. Thank you. Libs of TikTok video. I'm like, these people would have never been hired in the Hayward school system when I was in school. And now that's the norm of who's coming out of these teachers colleges. And these are the people who are teaching our children, which by the way, most of them, I wouldn't let them babysit my child, let alone now we're saying you're going to have eight hours with my child in the classroom. So again, I think the slide that's happened. Yeah, and there's something coming out of the teacher's colleges, Sean, where they're being instructed to go, your job isn't just to teach math or science. Your job is to form kids, right? It's not just your job is to form kids. your job is to form kids. Even if there's not an explicit lesson about critical theory in a classroom, simply by the person that they are, they're able to indoctrinate kids. You sent me

this a while ago, and I know this just from being in college, that the vast majority of students now in colleges, or at least half of them, identify as LGBTQ. And it might be even more in the teachers' colleges because you don't have the STEM majors who tend not to be as, as wokey as some of the other majors. So what the point I'm saying is that a lot of them actually will go, there'll be a kindergarten teacher and she might not have a whole lesson on critical theory, but her pronouns are, are he, him, and it's a woman. And how do you explain that to a bunch of kindergartners? And they ask questions and the tick, the tick tock teachers will actually talk about it and say, you know, I don't I don't like to indoctrinate kids.

I don't know what conservatives are talking about, but, you know, if they do ask me, you know, my pronouns, I'll tell them. And if they ask me what I am, I'll say, well, I'm just me. I'm not a man or a woman. And that makes a kid really, really confused. And it's it's a way of of indoctrinating. That's very sly because the teacher just says, well, that's just who I am. I'm sorry. I just have to do this because it's the way that I am. And so it's really insidious and difficult to address because so many of them

are identifying as these weird genders or sexual orientations that weren't like that a while ago. And I think to that point, you're right, Evita, this is happening all over the map. And as parents, we have to know that our children are coming into contact with these ideologies, and therefore we have to talk to them. We have to get, and again, this is having dinners, whether it's every night or a couple nights a week, where we're finding out what, you know, that actually one of your second grade teacher who's a woman is using he, him pronouns. That comes out at the dinner table.

And then you can sit and explain to your child what's going on, that that's actually a little bit odd. And there's some deep programming that you can do as a parent if you know what's happening um and you don't know but that is why we take our kids out of the public system because i don't want to spend my dinners deprogramming my kids i want to spend my dinners enjoying my family and not trying to figure out what values my school system is trying to undermine and go ahead no but but just to that point rachel if you can't get your kids out and you should if you can out what values my school system is trying to undermine. And go ahead. No, but to that point, Rachel, if you can't get your kids out, and you should if you can, if you can't, you do have to deprogram your kids.

You do have to spend the time, can't you? Think about moving, because it's that important. Right now at Brown University, half of the students- 40%. 40%, Almost half. 40% of the students now identify as LGBTQ. At my college dorm, only 10% of the students. At UChicago, we had houses. It was basically just our floor.

10% of the students in my house were straight. 10%. That's unbelievable. All the rest of them were identifying as bisexual or whatever. And so, yeah, I mean, it's a huge problem. I will also say that we talk about what solutions do we go through? And we say, we'll homeschool or we'll send them to a classical education. Most people don't have that option, to be honest. And if we're going to change America, you really can't just be thinking about your own kids, though. I think

that's the most important place to start. You also have to think about everyone else's kids, because a lot of them can't afford to send their kids to a different school or don't have the time to homeschool. And how do you fix the school system now? And the answer isn't just the school system. It's not the school board. Great places to start, and it's good. But the problem is you're going to be in a perpetual battle with the teachers and with the parents and then with the school board. And the only way to fix it is actually to address the teachers' colleges and the accreditation process. And that happens through governors, by the way. Governors have a huge role in rooting out this cancer in the teachers' colleges.

Yeah, they're a little Marxist indoctrinated. I mean, you could actually get really good young people who go into teachers' colleges. You're right. It tends to attract more liberal people. However, you may actually get good kids who just end up getting indoctrinated in the college system as well.

But I also think school choice is the other part. We must all be fighting for school choice. When parents have the money that belongs to their child's education and they have the power to use it in the way they see fit, that will happen. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, you know, you talked about the school districts and this perpetual battle. I have six girls, but I have three boys. I'm just so worried about what they're doing to boys in school. People may not realize it, but now we have school districts pushing bans on urinals. It's unbelievable because I guess standing

up to go pee, which is the natural way for boys to to, you know, go to the restroom is, you know, somehow. I mean, we kind of try to figure out what was the reason, Evita. I mean, it was sort of like it could be offensive to or make trans people feel uncomfortable. I mean, what are the what are the what are the reasons? Because it's not coming from the students. By the way, there was a New Hampshire school district that was trying to ban urinals, and the kids themselves were saying,

there's no, nobody here is asking for this. No students are asking for this. This was coming from the teachers and the school boards, these liberal progressives who were trying to push this agenda. And I think it's a way to emasculate men. Yeah. I make sure they sit down like girls to blur the differences between men and

women at a very young age and really to reprogram them because naturally you would be, I have a bunch of little siblings and the boys play different than the girls and they're interested in different things and they, and, and the, the gender separation is, is biological, but it's also societal. It just in the way we used to have the classrooms and we used to even separate men and women for for gym class. Yeah, I remember that some schools still, but most of them don't separate men, women in general, boys, boys, schools and girls schools.

And now it's blending them together because they don't believe in gender differences. And it's become really, really insidious. What are the let's talk. This is what I really want to talk about on this podcast is what are the the social and social emotional learning? What are the social and emotional impacts on young men when we have no gender differences? And what are the greater impacts on society at large? So first, can I talk about something very practical? This is about peeing. Boys peeing in a urinal.

Yes, there might be some splashing and splatter. But for the most part, the boys pee in the urinal, especially I'm thinking of like first graders, kindergartners, sixth graders, you make boys pee in a toilet. Now I have boys in my house. I don't have urinals in my home. I have toilets. Sometimes I wish I did. And I'm like to my six year old, I'm like, Oh, see now seven. I'm like, come on, Patrick. Now we lift up the toilet seat because I'll find pee on the toilet seat all the time. What a disaster to have boys pee. You're just talking from a hygienic point of view and a clean up point of view. Yeah, the practical matter. It's like they're going to pee all over seats in the toilet, so they're going to be filthy. And I'm like, yeah, just as a hygienic point,

it makes sense to let boys pee in urinals. So then why would they do this if the only reason you would introduce this in a school system is ideology. Exactly. This is not practical. This is not hygiene. This is about saying there's no difference. We don't want to have a distinguishing bathroom. Teacher in the bathroom, yeah.

Boys can actually stand up and pee because of their genitalia in a urinal, and girls actually can't do that. They are sitting down on a toilet. They don't want to distinguish between the two. This is one step closer to everyone being gender neutral. And if you look at the consequence this has on a culture, listen, God made us, men have certain traits and women have certain traits. And the societies that have those distinguished roles actually are pretty strong. And those that say men can be women and women can be men and there's mass confusion get to be, I think they're going to be very weak.

They'll be prone to being conquered. um you can't be great as a country if this is the ideology of your country where you're a country where we're going to take down american flags and we're going to put up pride flags pride being gay means more than being american that's bizarro stuff but that's what's taking over america which means i again we've said this before this is this is the end of an empire stuff that we end of a civilization we're living on the fumes of a once great society. What's interesting is a great capitalist society. And because you're still have wealth and prominence and some respect in the world and you still have nukes and a strong military, you can do these stupid things, but you can't do it for very long. Well, our enemies aren't doing it, by the way.

Our enemies are not confusing gender roles the way we are evita we see the we see have seen the impact of this sort of gender bender stuff going on its impact on on girls sports right um that's pretty obvious we're destroying women's sports and and sadly sadly, girls don't even feel comfortable speaking out for themselves. And I mean, that's why we know names like Riley Gaines is because she's one of the few who has withstood the arrows of standing up for women's sports. The parents aren't standing up for it. And the girls are afraid of being called names if they do. But the impact on both genders. Yeah. I will say as a young woman in 2023, I feel very sorry for men. I feel really bad for them.

Explain that. I think it's all men, but I especially feel bad for really young men, men that are middle school and high school age. Because when I was in elementary school, when I was going through elementary and middle school, when I went to better schools, but two, I don't even think that the war on men had reached the heights that it's at now. Every part of their being is demonized and they're over-medicated. A lot of them are just being boys and they're told that what that is is ADHD or ADD or whatever.

Toxic. Toxic and oftentimes it's not. It's almost like a secret underworld for boys now if they even have that. It's what I've learned from my husband and from my brothers where they're able to sort of be themselves a little bit in the locker room or on the football field amongst each other.

But they really have to self-censor a lot of of their of just who they are really in the classroom or in social settings because they're afraid of being labeled toxic. I knew in college, there would be so many boys who would agree with me politically, who were who were afraid and would tell me over social media, like quietly or like literally in like whispering to me in the gym telling me, oh, I really like that piece of yours. But they wouldn't they wouldn't be outwardly talking about their their beliefs because they're afraid of being not being able to get a date with a bunch of liberal women on campus. Women are ruling the world right now at school and in the workplace, and men are extremely suppressed. And a lot of times, especially for the younger men, that's why I feel really bad for them is they don't even know what's happening to them or what's happening in our society. And

so they can't pinpoint why they feel so frustrated with the world. It's why we're seeing, I think, what you call the manosphere. So for those who, because you can only suppress yourself for so long, or there's only so many people who are willing to be suppressed. Can you explain what the manosphere is to those who don't know what it is? The manosphere is sort of a Internet subculture where men are able to talk about really their frustrations, but also, you know, how do you fight back against the the yeah, the the feminization of society. And so they will talk about working out, talking about being mentally tough, physically tough, eating right, and being a strong individual and resisting the sort of neutering that most of society wants men to do. Who are these people that are sort of the thought leaders in this manosphere. It's good and bad. So you have in the manosphere, you'll have people like Jordan Peterson, who are who are very philosophical, who are very intelligent and thoughtful. But then you also have people like like Andrew Tate or the liver king who are much more brazen, who are not very well loved by both thought leaders on the right, more more well accepted thought leaders on the right and left. They get a lot of criticism.

But the point is there is a vacuum for people who are talking directly to men and especially young men. And I think what's happening with young men is they're drawn to other strong men, other men who will double down on masculinity, say it's okay for them to be boys. They may want to wrestle. They may be hyper. They may tell inappropriate jokes. And yes, you need your parents to go, that's an inappropriate joke, but they'll still tell them, right? That's what young boys actually do. They do dumb stuff all the time. And I find, was it was it the FBI who just identified that one of the signs of of maybe domestic terrorism is men who go to gyms. What is what I wouldn't be surprised if it was the FBI, but it was actually CBS. But yes, they all agree. Well, CBS.ba yeah they basically said that that working out and getting into it being healthy and fit is a pipeline to right-wing radicalism so and this probably came from a report that the fbi gave to uh cbs but again it begs the question for a culture where in human history has a culture demonized men, emasculated men, feminized men,

and that culture then has thrived, has grown, has been a society to be reckoned with? There's no example of that because it doesn't work, right? Those societies actually will crumble and they will fail because men play a very important role in families. They play an important role in protecting their communities, their countries. They grab guns, they put on uniforms, they fight wars, they die. They're willing to do a lot of things to the point of ultimate sacrifice to protect their community and their loved ones and their way of life. And if you don't have a group of men that are willing to do that because they're girly men, or you now are going to look to women to fight wars, that doesn't work because,

I'm sorry, men are stronger. I don't see women saying you know what i'm as strong as a man i'm gonna i'm gonna cage fight in the men's category and not get the crap kicked out no pretty strong cage fighters oh no there are but against other women yeah put them in a cage with with a man and see what happens it's not i know we put them in the pool we put men in the pool with women and wonder why they win. And by the way, Leah Thomas tied with Riley Gaines. So Leah Thomas was a very mediocre male swimmer. He got his ass kicked.

Yes. And then he decided to switch over. And he could do well as a woman swimmer. So again, I mean, I think as a culture, we have to truly think about what we're doing. And then the question becomes, why? truly think about what we're doing. And then the question becomes, why? Why do we have people who are pushing this ideology, who are very smart, that know that this will ruin the American culture? I think the answer is, it's a group of people who hate America, who have never loved it, but want to destroy it. But it's global, Sean. I mean, you see this in England, you see this in

a lot of other places as well. In Western, Western societies. I'll say this just as a to put a to put an exclamation point on your on your point, Sean, of how much we're pushing. masculine, chiseled, buff guy that graced the covers of romance novels. Well, now the publishers of these cheesy romance novels are now making the heroes and the cover guys just a little softer. They call them cinnamon roll guys or kind of like squishy golden retrievers or golden retriever guys. You know, they're not your typical, these are all by the way, words or

descriptions used within that genre of guys. So the strong knight in shining armor, you know, warrior type guy is not they're putting that forward as not the typical guy. Here's what I want to get back to Evita, because I thought what you said was so interesting, how sad it is. Imagine being 12 or 11 or 13 and who you intrinsically, biologically

and evolutionarily are as a man, you're being told in so many different ways that it's toxic, that it's not good, that it's bad. What just for that individual boy, what does that do to them? This is immutable. Men, young boys behave a certain way and they can't stop it. They can't help it. That's the way their genetic makeup has made their little beings. And that if you are talking about who they are, how they behave, even when they're good little boys, but they just play different.

They have different energy. They are little dragons. And when they behave that way and you say that they're toxic, that becomes really confusing, really demoralizing, really depressing for a young boy. And no, we have so many young people with mental disorders and they're taking drugs and they this. I mean, it's not working as as a culture. And again, it goes back to my point. There's a purpose behind all of this. There's an ideology behind all of it that I think is intentional. And if you love this place, and if you love your kids, you love your boys, we have to intentionally fight back and push back on

it. Evita, how much do you think this is about, you know, feminism and the patriarchy and taking down sort of just power roles within society? And I made it a two-part question because I'm fascinated in what young women want. So back when I was young, women wanted more buff men, more manly more men's men more athletic men roles and and and golden retrievers yeah and i wonder now do are women okay with the little nerdy soft you know latte drinking you know soy sipping boy or do they want the guy that's you know what

i've i've worked on my body a little bit. I'm a little athletic. I'm smart, you know, but I'm a, I'm a, I'm a man. I'm a boy. Like I, I, I, I, I might wear baseball hats and I can throw a football and a baseball and, you know, I'll drink beer, which is what boys do. Um, what are, what are these girls? Do the girls like the, the, the like the fema male? I watched a really interesting TikTok a couple of days ago of this woman who said, I want a man who's strong and I want a man who will provide for me. And I want a man who is manly, but I don't want to be conservative. conservative. Right.

She's like, and it was, saw that video. And it was in all seriousness. She's like, I, how do I find a man like that? And one of,

one, you, you can't, but the, but the point of me saying that is that women, she wants a conservative is what she wants. Right. She doesn't know it. You know,

we, we talked about this on Fox and friends and will said his assessment of this video was she wants, she wants to declaw the cat. So she wants a tiger to be able to emasculate him. He thinks that kind of woman wants... She likes the process of emasculating. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's interesting.

So I think what's interesting is that liberals and feminists like to talk all the time about society and deprogramming society, which has put us into these gender role boxes. And in reality, they actually don't want those gender role boxes. And when a woman is, because she's supposed to want the really feminized man, the really liberal man, the soy boy. But she doesn't and she doesn't she's not interested in that. So I think it's really interesting to see who's really the one that's being reprogrammed and who's really the one that ends up unhappy because they they like to talk all the time on TikTok. on TikTok, all these TikTok feminists about conservative women who adhere to gender roles and who take a masculine man are going to end up really upset with themselves and slaves to

patriarchy. And in reality, they're the ones who are depressed. If you look at the data about- The liberal woman's depressed and the conservative woman who married the masculine man, they're pretty happy. If you look at the data, the most happy people in society are conservative men. And the second most happy are conservative women. And the least happy in all of society is liberal women. We'll have more of this conversation after this. I'm Ben Domenech, Fox News contributor, editor at large of The Spectator and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter. I'm inviting you to join in-depth conversations every week on the ben dominich podcast listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com i've seen polling coming out of the university of chicago happiness studies that

show that conservative women were the happiest and then next conservative men and that the least happy were liberal men so um but but third was well we just know that whatever the study was i've seen a lot of them actually the consensus is conservatives are way happier than liberals and are you saying you think are you both saying you think it's because of the gender roles i well at first i think it is because of gender roles, of course. And I think that we are, there's a certain structure in which makes people happy, which is why we have that structure. It's been developed over thousands of years of humanity. And we've evolved into doing things that are the most productive, makes us the most happy.

And this is the structure in which we've developed and we've developed it not because it doesn't work. We do it because it actually does work. And if it made us really unhappy, we wouldn't do it. But Avita, I want to go back to a point that you made. You said that when you were talking about the articles that you write at Chicago, conservative masculine boys would come up to you and go listen i love what you wrote they'll maybe whisper it to you let's tell you in the gym send you a note on social media privately but they didn't want to be out in proud conservatives because they couldn't date women or is it because they think they might get either academically or professionally punished

for coming out as a conservative because i think that young people, that's a big, that is a huge factor. My question goes to do liberal women or liberal thinking women, if they are confronted with a masculine, handsome man who's a conservative, will they actually date them? Could they be wooed over? Could they be like, you know what? I actually like that. He's funny. He looks like he's strong. He could take care of me. And I might not like that thought intellectually, but somewhere internally, I actually like a guy like that. Can they win over these liberal chicks or not really? So, so a couple of things, there have been studies that say women, women report in surveys that they will not date a conservative man, liberal young women. And they put it in there when they do online dating, they'll put it in their profile like

no Trump support. It's like a prerequisite for sure. But there are a lot of other studies that say when a liberal woman gets married, she becomes more conservative, which indicates to me actually that they're willing to be with conservative men and that they end up changing their minds i i've seen now i'm this is all anecdotally speaking go ahead i was gonna i was gonna say that the re and the reason that these women are thinking this way and the reason that they change their mind when they do end up getting married or having a serious boyfriend is because and camille pal says this, that single women are replacing men with the government. Right. Yeah. So the government becomes the baby daddy or the

provider in many ways. I was just going to say that anecdotally speaking, my experience, and this goes to the power of women. I mean, you can go back to Adam and Eve to show the power of women over men in many ways. But my anecdotal experience in seeing those, because by the way, your dad and I are very much on the record as saying that Democrats and Republicans should not date that you that politics is values. And you should if you're a conservative, you should find a conservative husband. If you're a liberal, you should find a conservative. There are no no conservative women anymore. But let me just finish this. Yeah, there are red states, but let me just finish this.

My point is that when I have seen liberal women marry conservative men, I have found that the men tend to become more liberal and not the opposite. Maybe because they weren't strong men to begin with, which is why they married a liberal woman. That could be the man's fault. The sample is tainted because you have little girly men who are saying they're masculine men marrying a liberal and then becoming liberal themselves, which is where their true hearts were all along. So I'm not going to buy into that study or that observation. It's true. It's true. I have seen lots of men become more liberal because of their wives. If Jocko was to marry a liberal woman or Dan Bongino was to marry a liberal woman, I guarantee you the women would become more conservative. Those two would not become more liberal. It's the kind of man we put in our sample group.

Fair enough. Fair enough. sample group. Fair enough. Fair enough. I just wanted to make one point about all of this and what is behind it because leftists always talk about deconstructing, right? And they think that they're helping society by deconstructing everything in it. And in reality, as we've demonstrated in this conversation, it just makes people more confused and it makes them more unhappy. And who does that benefit when people are confused and unhappy and don't feel secure in themselves and also in their families?

It benefits the government. It benefits the government, right. It benefits the state. I 100% agree with that. And by the way, when we say all this, I don't mean like that there can't be, there could be a family where, you know, the husband is just the better cook. And I believe in and I studied economics in college.

And so I'm very much a believer in the law of comparative advantage that we should all do what we're best at. So when we first got married, Sean, we lived in a house where we had to reuse wood to heat our home here in Wisconsin. And Sean would go out and chop wood. And you were very buff at that time. You're buff now, but you were super buff back then. And if I had gone out to chop wood, we would have, you know, died of cold. I would cut the wood and split the wood and stack the wood and haul the wood. I did it.

Yeah, I did it all. And I'm a better cook than you, but not every, I don't think there has to be this rigid thing like that. I think that there are situations where, you know, in, in some cases where the woman is able to go out and make more money and, and maybe that arrangement works for them, or maybe somebody's better in the kitchen and he's a man that I don't have a problem with that. But what I don't like is what you talked about Evita, which I think is such a great point, the point of deconstructing for the sake of deconstructing. Oftentimes, the agenda behind this, and we saw the taking down of the patriarchy goes all the way back to the 1700s. We see books being written about this. books being written about this. And a lot of it were people who had very sort of libertine sexual appetites and they wanted free love. And if you could break down some of these social mores, these social standards, that would allow for that more. And then later on, you saw people like,

you know, the communists attach themselves to the feminist movement. There was a lot of reasons to do that because you could create unhappiness, as you said, Evita, this sort of discord. And you needed people to be unhappy with whether it's the patriarchy or the economic system or whatever, because you need agitators in order to make that kind of social and economic transformation. You needed activists, people who were disgruntled. You need revolutionaries for the revolution. You need revolutionaries for the revolution. You need revolutionaries for the revolution. To your point, go ahead, Evita. Well, I was just going to say that I had one of my favorite professors from college was a medieval historian.

And she said one of the ways that they were able to pacify all of the serfs and the people who felt really honestly very dejected. They didn't own their own property. They had these outrageous taxes. Ter existence and they were importing tons and tons of sugar into britain and that would the effects of sugar on your body are like are wild um and you should she has amazing articles on this by the way she does but she said that it was a way to pacify the masses. This is Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown, who we added on the podcast as well about a year, year and a half ago. We talked about what? Mary. Her stuff on sugar is fascinating. I thought we did talk about the sugar but the point is that that is a tactic

of governments throughout human history is what can we do to make you pacified and to make you confused or to make you more disgruntled and become a revolutionary so there's both right so in the case of the feudal system it was

that they wanted to pacify you so you would remain on the feudal system in the case of communism i think the idea was to make you really unhappy with the way the class system which was just by the way very unfair at that time that was feudal that that idea of making you class just dissatisfied with the sort of classes didn't work in america and then they turned to race which is why we have cultural i'm going back to dating, though, because I'm stuck on this. And so I'm thinking about these poor young talk about dating to conservative men who can't find a good conservative spouse. Now, I know I think about this as a as a parent. And what role do I have in helping my young man find a good mate? And I might think, well, listen, the school that I send them to

matters because they might actually meet other good conservative young girls in the school that they go, number one. But number two, I should probably think about what, whether it's church, we go to church and we see other young families that have kids that are my kid's age that they'll meet other like-minded kids from like-minded families, but also what friends do I have that might have kids that are my kid's age that share our values? And maybe making those connections, who knows how those relationships or friendships develop as they go from seven-year-old to 17 to 27, how those could develop into maybe a love story. But the parents can play a role in helping shepherd relationships, as opposed to just turning your child over to the wolves of

the university and all the liberal women there. We can be a little more thoughtful. Or the dating apps. Or the dating apps, yeah. I do think, and again, I don't want to get too philosophical because I do love talking about dating, but I think part of it is- Sugar. No, yeah. I do love that about dating, but I think part of it is sugar. No, I do love that. Dating and sugar,

dating and sugar. I do think understanding how feminism has, it continues to shape the minds of women and ultimately women end up, you know, making these decisions about what man they're looking for and what they decide that they want out of a relationship. And so I think that understanding feminism, understanding how it impacts

what girls think they want in a relationship is important. Yeah, I think so too. I also loved what Dara was saying about setting your child up for success. You are who your friends are is like a very true, true, true phrase.

And so either having like a, a little co-op homeschool thing or, or having your kids go to a classical school or having really good friends with like value values is so important. But ultimately the college matters a lot. And it does. And into setting your kid up for success, the college does matter. I think I ended up marrying somebody from my high school. So I mean,

that wouldn't have been a problem. But had I not met and married somebody from my high school, I would not be with anyone right now. I didn't meet anybody in college. I didn't like anybody in college. I mean, I was dating somebody, but I would say there were no options because I didn't like anybody in college. I was dating somebody, but I would say there were no options because the type of man at my university was very bad. And I think that's the case at most schools. I think if you're really thoughtful about your love life, which mom always says is one of the most important things you can think about, thinking about the kind of college you go to or the kind of college you send your kids do is so important. But even the guys you met at the gym or the guys that would come up to you at the party that say, I love the article of Vita, couldn't agree more. And none of those, again, obviously you were dating Michael and you ended up marrying Michael. So I don't mean to have you,

but those, if you weren't dating someone, those are not potential interests that you could have dated in school. You know, and you know why? It's interesting because there were men who definitely flirted with me, who said, I liked what you wrote, but I would never be with them because they weren't Catholic. So they would have some,

there were some like, you know, maybe economically conservative points of view, or they were sort of more free speech than some of the other communist kids on my campus. But in terms of like real values and some of the important religious and more importantly, just like socially conservative, right? Because a lot of them, they might be claimed to be conservative, but they also want to sleep around a lot. And that's irrespective of the type of political affiliation the guy has. Also, there are guys who didn't feel strong enough to voice and i i have a lot of empathy for guys who feel that way on campus they're trying to protect their grades there

could be long-term professional consequences i mean you you we've met professors who have stepped out and said things even at your own university who have faced massive um professional consequences for stepping out and even saying the most, a lot of very benign things. So we'll have more of this conversation after this. But it also goes to this point. And again, I use the 70% of Americans don't think that biological men should be competing in women's sports.

Yet that's happening across the country. And if you listen to the voices, you would think a vast majority of Americans think that men should compete in women's sports because the minority is incredibly loud and the majority has been shamed and blamed into silence. still believe in free speech. They still believe in some, they still love their country. They still believe in basic tenets of what this country used to be, but they don't say it because the minority is, is cowing them, is silencing them and shaming them. And they've gotten some power here where they can exact retribution on people who don't buy into the group think of this new liberal woke agenda. I think ultimately what we're looking for, for our children and for society in general is we want young people to grow up feeling that they are edified in who they are born to be and who are healthy

and happy emotionally and socially. And they end up meeting, you know, other people and going going on having productive lives and i think as long as we have it's really sad to see at younger and younger ages we're introducing things that are confusing kids and making that just setting not helping to set them up to be happy because we keep confusing them introducing these really adult ideas and themes and theories and deconstructing things. And in the end, we have a young population that's so unsure of itself, just lacks confidence and lacks that sort of happiness.

No, I think you're right. And so again, if you have a school that wants to take urinals out of your bathroom, fight like hell to keep urinals for little boys. Get them out of there. And God bless men who are willing to stand up and fight for their kids in the doctor's office, which is the first video that we played. It matters. And again- Some of these guys on the manosphere who are at least providing some sort of voice for again as avita said they're not all positive but if there has to be an outlet for young men who maybe don't have dads or enough influence in their life to feel like they can sort of reflect back who they are and And at least that's happening somewhere.

And it's a problem for the wokesters that want to change the culture completely. Those who are providing this traditional male viewpoint to young males is a real threat to the transition that they want the country to go through. And so, again, these young boys are finding this all on themselves because they're drawn to other strong males that don't see males as toxic. There's not toxic masculinity. There's just masculinity that can be improved upon, that can be honed. This is how men behave.

We do go to the gym. We do take responsibility. We do work hard. And we're not afraid. We're willing to defend our families, our girlfriends, our wives, our kids. All of those things are really inspiring for young men because, again, that's the way God made them. God made them. We have a little terrier, Skippy, who I love. That damn dog will run around and start chasing frogs and rabbits and dig, dig, dig, like trying to get. Ship monks.

Try to dig them out. Like he was bred to be like a little digger hunter. And he's bred to like behave like he's 200 pounds when he's 11 pounds. That's the way he's made. You can't take. We don't do this, but you could spank him. You could try to chastise him. You can't. That's who he is.

He's a terrier. He's a terrier. God made him a terrier. God made men boys. And boys will be boys and terriers will be terriers. And how do you hone and craft the healthy male as opposed to suppressing it. And so beautifully said, Sean. And we talk a lot about the influence of social media. And I guess I want to end with this, Evita, and your thoughts on this. You know, social media is powerful

and it has a lot of influence. By the way, it's really what drove this trans movement with young people in so many ways, these disaffected young people going on TikTok videos and YouTube videos and seeing all this transitioning and feeling like they could be part of something and be special. Anyway, we know the influence of that. Do you think that the influence of these other social media influencers in the manosphere, these men who are, is there enough of a backlash against the feminization of our society, the shaming of men and masculinity? Is there enough happening on social media to fuel this backlash? Or do you think the other forces are more powerful?

I'll say about the manosphere, I think it's actually an indictment on fathers, to be completely honest. Good point. I think if you had a really strong dad who was telling you how to be a masculine man and making you confident in your masculinity, you wouldn't need Andrew Tate and you wouldn't need the liver king. So I think it's a reasonable reaction to the society and to the lack of strong men,

and particularly in a lot of places, absent fathers. in a lot of places, absent fathers. I think it's overall a positive thing, but I think it's also a sign that fathers really need to stand up. I mean, Sean, we've been talking about the fatherless problem as the source of basically every social ill. No, it is. But it's like, you could say, well, if I'm a conservative, I don't need Rush Limbaugh. Well, I'm a conservative and I love Rush's point of view. So I do think you can still have a strong, good father, but also men can be drawn to go. I like to hear what other people are saying about masculinity and about what I need to do because they have different maybe perspectives than their father. And so it's maybe a supplemental. But I'll say this.

It's not supplemental because you don't listen to these young men and even young women on the internet are not just listening to rush limbaugh for an hour or whatever after work it's all day consuming them 10 hours on their phone and it's that's all that's all they get it's the other mother the wieb radio network was three hours of that was no I never I didn't listen to Russia I know anyway but I get what you're saying that listen I mean yeah I get what you're saying that it is a lot more so again you didn't answer the question okay I get I get what you're saying that this is indictment on fathers but and there's a backlash to what is being told to men because like you said Sean the terrier wants to be a terrier. Young boys want to be young boys.

We've been watching our son, you know, Patrick all day long playing by himself, running around. I mean, he's just like, he just moves all day long and in a different way than his sister, who's very close in age to him. That is who he's meant to be.

But so is this backlash, is there enough behind this backlash, enough of these social influencers to stave off the other influences? No. And that was my point, that I think, one, I think if you think somebody like Andrew Tate has been deplatformed on everything. So in that sense, if somebody has too much influence, the matrix, as Andrew Tate will say, will strike back and you'll be gone. But I think the only way to really help our society

and save our society and help boys is not going to be an internet influencer. I think it can be helpful, but I think oftentimes it's going to be your family. And that's where the real change needs to be seen. I agree with that, Avita, but we're playing around the edges. If the social media can destroy, social media can also fortify. And I was surprised that- Edify. You can't win big techs as corrupt as it is. No, that could be true. But I was surprised we had some, you know, young men over at our house

and we were asking them about, because I don't know who, I don't follow Andrew Tate. I don't know, I didn't really know who he was or any controversy around him. Call me a dinosaur. I'll take that.

But I asked the boys if they... They all knew. They all know who Andrew Tate is. They all know, you know, what he says. They all know Jordan Peterson. It's a different way know what he says. They all know Jordan Peterson. It's a different way of doing it. And from all different parts of the country,

they all know who these influencers are. The one that was the old guy? David Goggins. Yeah, that was an extraordinary. I never heard his name before, and all the boys knew who David Goggins was. So again, what's happening with males and men is penetrating into middle schools and high schools because there's a yearning for it. And again, that doesn't mean that dads don't have a role.

Dads are the main role. Dads are the first role. Um, but if they're seeing things online, I would prefer that they're seeing things that might back up masculinity as opposed to tear it down that tell them there is no gender. So I think it's important, which Evita brought up though about school, about her university experience, which is you can edify and fortify the boys. And I think obviously there's a huge need for that, but we also have to train girls to desire good things in men and to appreciate the wonderful things that men bring. And to understand, I think, ultimately the complementarity of the sexes that, you know, by design, we were made to complement each other, to love each other, to support each other, that not to dominate over one another, but to complement each other, to love each other, to support each other, that not to dominate over one another, but to compliment each other and to, and to appreciate that we each bring different skill sets to marriages. And that's going to obviously vary depending on who the two people

are together and how that works. But that there, as you said, Sean, there, there, that by design, you know, there are strengths that men sort of generally have and women have. But if we allow men feel like they have to self-censor because they are afraid they're not going to get women. And that's for a good cause because women are trying to reprogram men to be something that they themselves biologically don't even want. And you're right. You have to teach women to want good men and desire good men. And it's social, right? So you have to tell women, this is what a good man, a strong man looks like. This is what's going to make you happy in life, not a soy boy,

but also keeping them off birth control because we know that that has had a huge impact on the type of flame that, because I think that's a really interesting topic that a lot of people don't understand. That should be a different podcast, but just touch on it. Touch on it.

Spark notes is just that there's been a lot of studies that show women who are on birth control are attracted to less masculine men than when they're not on birth control. And it has to do with the hormones and the chemicals that are put in their bodies. Okay. So we'd have to do a whole podcast on that because that is so interesting. That is very interesting. I'd love to see that study. But I i look at women and again when i go to we've had women on birth control for i don't you know decades now so we've had generations of women being attracted

to potentially not the like to potentially less masculine and potentially not the best providers or protectors or whatever than reprodu reproducing. Right. But when I go to New York City for my show, The Bottom Line, it's 6 p.m. Eastern on Fox Business. So if you don't see that, you should actually tune in. That's a serious plug. That was a shameless plug. I will see families and I'll see usually men with a baby on the front pack and a man pushing the stroller.

You see yourself. men with a baby on the front pack and a man pushing the stroller the and the workload of the man toting the family around the city is more than the workload of the woman i also think that when women are in trouble whether it's a fire they probably want the burly man to show up um not the i don't know when i'm in or third. If there's if there's a threat in your home and you need a police officer, you want the masculine man to show up, not the chicky woman, because they're going to keep you safe. They're going to keep you safe. They're going to save you when there's a threat at your doorstep from another nation. You want manly men to stand up and defend you when you're in your home. I don't know how many of these feminist women, when there's a noise outside, you know, grab a broom handle and go downstairs and leave the man in bed. He grabbed guns. I know. But how

often do they grab the gun? The liberal women don't have guns. That's why I said the broomstick. Do they go downstairs with the broomstick and leave the man upstairs? Hell no, they don't. They wake up their boyfriend or their husband and say, get your ass downstairs and figure out what's going on. Femininity goes out the door when threats are at the door. It's the man who still goes downstairs because they go back to that very age-old genetic makeup that says, men protect, and they protect me, the woman. And again, in our house, I don't grab a broomstick. I grab a gun, and I go downstairs because Rachel wakes me up when she hears something. And I think whether you're a liberal or conservative, that is how houses

still work because that is still the genetics of men and women. No matter what philosophy class you've taken, no matter how you've been indoctrinated, when the shit hits the fan, it's the men who stand up and the women who expect the men to stand up. And by the way- Like that liberal TikTok lady

who thought she wanted feminism, but in the end wanted someone to protect her. Maybe that liberal woman, when she tries to get her man to go protect her and she married a soy boy, he may run in the closet and lock it. I don't know. And he won't be there for her. But most good men will grab the broomstick or hopefully they have a gun and do their, do their duty, stand their ground. And with that, do you have a final comment you want to make on my great analogy? No. Okay. Thank you. So listen, I, I, I appreciate.

Evita at the cabin podcasting on a cloudy day, wind blowing in maybe some rain on the horizon and a day for us just to let you know that we're going to underscore masculinity in the house with the boys that we have over. We're going to go shoot- A bunch of cousins. There's like 15 kids here. It's crazy. And the boys, and maybe even girls if they want, we're going to go shoot guns with Uncle Didi. So Wisconsin. So Wisconsin. I'm not going to tell you the firepower we have, but we have a new montage of guns and ammo,

and we're going to shoot. On that note. On that note. Thanks for joining us on this podcast from the kitchen table, actually from the cabin in Hayward, Wisconsin. We hope that if you like our podcast, you will rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribing is always important.

You'll get a notice when our podcast comes out. And just as a reminder, as we come into September, we're going to go from three days a week, which were Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We're going to be blasting to five days a week every single day from the kitchen table so you can get your dose of Rachel and a little Sean every day of the week.

So again, thanks for joining us at the kitchen table. Bye, everybody. Listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription and Apple podcast. And Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. This is Jimmy Fallon inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at foxacrossamerica.com.