Modern Wisdom - #664 - Christine Emba - Talking To A Feminist About Masculinity

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Christine Emba is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post, journalist, social commentator, and an author. Christine wrote one of the best articles on modern masculinity that I've ever read and it absolutely broke the internet. But it begs the question of why it's come down to a woman to raise the topic of men's issues. Expect to learn why making men and women equal is good but overreaching into making men and women the same is terrible, whether Christine thinks it is harder to be a man in 2023, the biggest issues that boys & men are facing, why it is women who are dominating the narrative on what it means to be masculine, why the only "non-toxic" suggestions for masculinity just look a lot like traditional femininity and much more... Sponsors: Get $150/£150 discount on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 10% discount on Marek Health’s comprehensive blood panels at https://marekhealth.com/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Christine Ember. She's an opinion columnist at the Washington Post, a journalist, social commentator, and an author. Christine wrote one of the best articles on modern masculinity that I've ever read, and it absolutely broke the internet a couple of weeks ago, but it does beg the question of why it's come down to a woman to raise the topic of men's issues in the mainstream media.

Expect to learn why making men and women equal is good, it's come down to a woman to raise the topic of men's issues in the mainstream media. Expect to learn why making men and women equal is good, but overreaching into making men and women the same is terrible. Whether Christine thinks it's harder to be a man in 2023, the biggest issues that boys and men are facing, why it is women who are dominating the narrative on what it means to be masculine, why the only non-toxic suggestions for masculinity look and offer a lot like traditional femininity and much more. Christine is fantastic. Her article on masculinity was really, really great.

And if you enjoyed this episode, you should check it out at the Washington Post once we've finished. You might have noticed I've been doing a little season of modern masculinity over the last month or couple of months. I think it's a very interesting space. At the moment, it is dominated by people who see men and women as enemies on both sides of the fence. And I'm trying to find people who are interesting

and also bridge that gap who don't see men and women fundamentally as adversaries or enemies, but as collaborators and compatriots that need each other. And yeah, I think it's an important redress to a lot of the really bad messaging that we're seeing. Both in mainstream media and in alternative media at the moment. I really hope that you're enjoying it. It's very, very interesting to me, and I'm loving breaking this stuff down with cool, insightful people.

If you do enjoy it, then please make sure that you hit the subscribe button, because it's the best way to support the show and it means that you'll never miss an episode when it goes up. So go and press the button. Thank you. In other news this episode is brought to you by 8th Sleep. The most important thing that you can do for your health, your longevity and your performance is get a good night's sleep and unfortunately at the moment it is ridiculously hot in Austin, Texas, which means I'm slowly being kept alive

exclusively by my eight sleep. The pod cover by eight sleep fits on any bed like a fitted sheet. The cover improves your sleep by automatically adjusting the temperature on each side of the bed based on you and your partner's individual needs. It can cool down and warm up. It adjusts based on the phases of your sleep

and the environment that you're in. It tracks your resting heart rate, your heart rate variability, your sleep efficiency, your sleep consistency. It is a complete game changer. If you sleep too hot or too cold or if your partner does, this is the solution for you. Also you can get a $150 discount by going to 8sleep.com slash modern wisdom, that EIGhtsleep.com slash modern wisdom for $150 off, and they ship to the USA, Canada, the UK, selected countries in the EU, and Australia. In other, other news, this episode is brought to you by Element. Every single morning for over three years now, I've started my day the same way, which is with Element in water. You do not need to have coffee first thing

when you wake up because caffeine acts on your adenosine system and your adenosine system isn't active for the first 90 minutes of the day, but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system. Element contains a signed back to electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium with no junk, no sugar, no artificial ingredients or any other BS. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while stopped optimizing

brain health, regulating appetite and curbing cravings. But most of all, it tastes fantastic. The orange flavor, first thing in the morning in a cold glass of water, is an absolute dream. And they have a no BS, no questions asked, refund policy, so you can buy it 100% risk-free. If you do not like it for any reason, at any point after buying it, you can just tell them, they will give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Head to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors

with your first box. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. And in final news, this episode is brought to you by Marik Health. I wanted to get my blood work done in America, and I did a lot of research. Marik Health came back as the best and most comprehensive company that I could find.

So good, actually, that I reached out to the owner because I wanted to partner up with them. Stop guessing when it comes to what is going on inside of your body. You need to get your blood work done to work out exactly what is happening to you. Health optimization is incredibly individualized. For one person, it might be lifestyle changes or over the count of supplementation that you need. Other people might need pharmaceuticals or hormone optimization to look and feel better. So whether you're looking to know where your blood markers are at or receive treatment forms like HRT, TRT, sexual health medication, hair loss treatment or anything else,

Marick Health is where to go. If you are not performing in the gym or the bedroom or life, the way that you want, this is the first place to go. Head to marichealth.com slash modern wisdom and use the code modern wisdom checkout to get 10% off your first lab order that's mairekhealth.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A check out. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Christine Ember. You wrote an article a week ago that I'm guessing you didn't intend or didn't expect to get quite as much attention as it did. I really, really did not.

I had been working on the article, Men are lost for a couple of months beforehand, and I knew that there was sort of growing discussion about the crisis of men in general. You know, I'd read Richard Reef's book. I've been following Scott Gallagher and others on their podcasts, but it seems like the piece was almost the permission that some people needed to finally talk about the issue out in the open. And they were really surprised to see it in a mainstream publication too. And also at length, I will admit that it is quite long.

But I've been really excited by the response. I think the reason that it needed to be so long is because having this discussion is so far away from the typical cultural zeitgeist that you have to take people there one step at a time. You know, Richard Reeves talks about this. He has to prostrate himself on the, we're not saying that women shouldn't have their focus on them and we are not trying to take away any and we must remember that the problems of the LGBT trans community are also. And finally, after we've gone through this big rigmarole, we can actually get to

the conversation of talking about men. So there is no such thing as having a short article about the crisis of modern men, because it leaves so many holes that people who want to interpret it in an ungenerous light are just immediately go, oh, so you think that such and such? It's like, no, obviously not. Yeah, you have to waste space for all of the caveats and the like, not necessarily shut us to different groups, like, and we're acknowledging that, this kind of man and like that kind of woman, et cetera, et cetera.

But I mean, it was also long for me at least, and honestly, it was longer. My editor just did cut it down because there are just so many different threads that are coming together in this question. Another columnist at the post wrote to me and she was like, you know, it almost feels like you could draw a dotted line from just like this question of what's happening with men to kind of everything that's happening in our moment, whether it's like politics or religion,

or like all these different trends. So there are just so many kind of angles to this question and sources of discontent and maybe solutions that it's hard to fit it into one piece. I guess that's why Rickard wrote a book. What is happening with men nowadays? Well, we, I mean, we throw around the phrase the crisis of masculinity.

But I actually do think that there is a crisis. I mean, explaining it out is also a long process too, because again, so many factors. But basically, we can start by saying that society has changed a lot over the past 30 to 40 years. And many of those challenges have been great for some groups, for women, especially. But they have not necessarily been so great for men, especially working class men. But men of all kinds seem to be feeling a sort of malaise.

I mean, we can tick off a couple of statistics, right? When it comes to education, first, women were finally allowed to go to college, which is great. Very supportive of that. But right now, in most colleges, we're seeing that women, you know, outnumber men hugely for every 100 undergraduate degrees, bachelor's degrees, that women get, men only get 74. And we saw a huge wave of kind of college dropouts,

basically during the COVID-19 pandemic. When you look at the data, 70% of those who just sort of like gave up in less school were men. You can look at health statistics. So we've talked about deaths of despair, deaths from suicide, alcohol and dust illness or drug overdose, three out of four deaths of despair are men. You can talk about, you know, wages and workplace achievement. So wages have stagnated for men since basically the 1970s, either stagnated or fallen for all men, but

the top of the economic ladder. I think that this has just huge ramifications for how men feel about their place in the world, or rather don't feel about their place in the world. Women are thriving. The economy is moving away from labor intensive jobs towards jobs that reward soft skills and social skills and credentials. And many men are feeling a little bit lost

like they are not sure what role they play, especially when there are these kind of traditional archetypes that men used to play in our society of protector, provider, especially. And now 50% of women say they make as much as or more than their partner. Women can have children by themselves through artificial reproductive technology. And then, of course, the LGBTQ movement has achieved more acceptance in society, but it also seems to have kind of made the question of gender even more unclear if you can change your gender

if sex doesn't really mean anything. What does it mean to be a man, actually? Until a lot of young men, especially feeling, as I said, lost, like they don't know where to fit, and they're kind of looking for role models of what a man should be or could be in this moment. And coming up short, except for some pretty bad examples, which I also talk about in the piece. Yeah, there's an interesting one-two punch, I think, that has kind of happened. The first being a structural change that has

disadvantaged young men or at least meant that they have been able to take advantage of their talents quite as much you mentioned. We've gone from a brown based to a brain based economy. Credentialism is much more important now. Conscientiousness, skews, female, girls are better at sitting still through the time that their teenagers and adolescents and remembering to get their homework in on time, two to one, basically females to males, completing a four year U.S. college degree, it gets even worse if you look at master's level, seven times more men dropped out of college during COVID than women did. So, you know, all of these things on top has created a structural environment in which men

aren't exactly thriving. And then the sort of second punch has been a loss culturally, I think, of their position, of what does it mean to be a man? If gender is up for debate and if your biological sex and the person that you show up as in the world is available to be discussed, then what does it mean to be a man? Like literally that question, you know, there's a very famous documentary called What is a Woman, but what is a man is an equally valid question when we're talking about the roles of men. And it's not just I am a man who has this sort of physical, biological manifestation. It's the symbolic

representation of what does it mean? How should I show up? What are the archetypes and the virtues and the values that I should rely on? What are the things that, when times get tough, I should believe in myself. What is greater than me, the grand narrative that explains my life as a male? And it's that one too that I think has caused a lot of men

to feel very dispossessed. They feel like they're not really getting much sympathy. I think you have this really, really great quote where you say, many young men feel their difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don't feel a part of. And it definitely seems like modern men are sort of being made to pay for the sins of the advantages of their fathers and grandfathers, while not really feeling like they get any themselves now. Yeah, that was a big part of what I wanted to talk about in this piece, because I think

another factor that's making men feel dispossessed, or not sure of what they belong to, is that our culture has also shifted. And I think many of these shifts have been good things. Again, it's great that we've recognized that sexual assault is real, that you need to get consent. The Me Too movement was a good thing. It outed a lot of predators. At the same time, I think especially in media culture,

and in progressive spaces, frankly, there's been this reflexive push to say, you know, the future's female men suck, like men are garbage. Masculinity is toxic. Those are kind of acceptable things to say now. And you know, telling somebody that the person they are, like that they are toxic, obviously doesn't make them feel good. Obviously,, doesn't make them feel good. Obviously, doesn't make them feel accepted by society.

And when you say, OK, men are toxic, men are toxic, masculine is toxic. What's the alternative? What does a good masculinity look like? And that picture isn't really being made very clear. I mean, you look at media representations of men and, you know, even popular TV shows, and I feel like the most common archetype right now is like the male schlaub he lives in his mom's basement and just-

Almost seems so griffin. Right. Yeah, they're not like father figures that one looks up to or respects. They're sort of people you would make fun of or look down on. And I feel like this comes at, I think, the expense of a productive dialogue, actually. It pushes men out of the conversation and opens up a space of vulnerability that, you know, is often filled by bad actors. It's also not really, I think, fair, actually, but you were going to say something. Yeah, just that Richard Reeves again talked about this. He talked about this over a year ago now, where he said that as soon as you throw out the

term toxic masculinity, it causes so many men to just check out of the conversation. If you're going to tell me that there is something in me, which is like original sin and it needs to be expunged from me. I need to be exercised of my toxic masculinity. What do you think? Well, you're really going to allow, you really expect men to engage in a conversation after the first thing you've done is say

that a core part of them is something that's inherently toxic. And yeah, putting forward a positive view for men has been as the decrease in that has been the same, I would say almost perfectly in line with the increase in what I would class as a patronizing view of women's success. So the difference between the two Mulan films is a perfect example of this. In the first one, she's small and not as strong, but she's crafty and she works harder and she overcomes and she uses a size to her advantage.

And through hard working determination, she tells a tale of someone with a disadvantage that overcomes it to now be as good or even better than people who had more advantages than them. You look at the most recent Mulan film and she's just born to be perfect. She's more talented, the only restriction that she ever faces is that the men don't believe in her enough and that there's some sort of oppression out there. Or the second Dr. Strange film where the Central American daughter of a lesbian couple has the most power in the entire world. And the only reason that she doesn't have it is because she doesn't believe in herself enough.

Like that to me is not an inspiring story to tell young women either. Like, you know, we need to be able to build a society with resilient girls who have archetypes that they can look up to too, who overcame difficult things, who don't expect the world to bend to their every whim and that if they do encounter any sort of difficulty, that this is like an aberration, that this is the sign that there's something wrong with the world. It's like, no, this is baked into what the world is. The world is a series of challenges. So I think that we've been this very interesting, like, men and women have almost sort of like passed each other in high five, or maybe not high five on the way past, where the role models for men

have become increasingly less inspirational. Ostensibly, the role models for women have become more inspirational, but I don't actually think that they are. I think that it's like a very fragile, thinly veiled form of like, pedestalization. Yeah, that's such an interesting example. I mean, I did a lot of interviews with young men for this piece. And one thing that a guy who I mentioned at the end of this piece, his name is Ronan Bray, said to me, really stood out. You know, he was talking about role models and where he saw messages about how to be a man. And he was like, you know, I sealed this stuff for women now, like women, you can be astronauts, you can be scientists,

you can be race car drivers, you can do everything. And that's really cool. But at the same time, I hear as a man, like, man, this is what you shouldn't do. Get out of the way. Stop talking over women and holding them back. But there's no like kind of positive, like things that you can be for men.

It seems to have all transferred. And then also, I think you're onto something too when you talk about this sort of almost thin, thin veneer that is on some of these aspirational messages that are given to women. I think one other thing that we see in our moment, our modern moment, is an ethos of gender neutrality, an idea that actually gender doesn't matter. We shouldn't talk about it. Women can do anything that men can do. Men can do anything that women can do.

Really, you don't need to be a good man or a good woman. There's no such thing. Just be a good person. We're all kind of the same. Just be a good man or a good woman, there's no such thing. Just be a good person. We're all kind of the same. Just be a good one. And I find that rather grating because I simply don't believe that's realistic or that useful.

A, most people don't want to live in an androgynous society where everyone is the same. But B, I think that there is something specific about the embodied existence of being a man or a woman. But B, I think that there is something specific about the embodied existence of being a man or a woman. And there is lots of overlap in sort of personality trades and physical trades and things that the two sexes share. But there are also differences.

And part of being a good man or a good woman, in my opinion at least, is kind of recognizing those differences and recognizing one's strengths, weaknesses, skills, etc. and figuring out how to use those specific to you traits well. And so if you're a man, like, it's likely that you are probably stronger than women and old ladies. So being a good man, you know, would suggest that you figure out what your duties and responsibilities are when it comes to that thing about being a man, not just being like, well, we're all just be good. It's fine. Yeah, it's it's so you're right to say as well that this

is a commonly rolled out criticism of people that say, ah, men and women, they're more similar than they are different. And you go, well, if you look at some traits on their own, yes, yes. There is tons and tons of overlap in the middle of the distribution. Some of them, like strength, for instance, hand strength, it basically they don't touch that like the weakest man and the strongest woman on average would be like, they, even they wouldn't be close to each other. But when you actually fold them all together, when you look at the suite of traits overall, when it's not just aggression, but it's also height and it's neuroticism and it's extra version, it's conscientiousness and it's the, the, the, the, the, these things just separate

out. And this isn't because of socialization, this is because of inbuilt, innate biological differences. Now, are they perpetuated through culture? Yeah, absolutely. But where do you think the culture came from? The culture wasn't just created out of nothing. It was built off the back of a biological framework.

And you're right as well. It is the difference between trying to make a men and women equal and trying to make men and women the same. It's aiming for Androgeny rather than equality. And that has been a very rapid slippery slope to say, well, there are no differences. And because men held positions of a steam

and advantage for quite a long time, what I think it made was almost like an echo that almost taught women or people that were pro women that because men had held these positions the way to get those positions of advantage was for women to emulate the men things that men were doing yet precisely. Yeah, so I wrote a book, Rethinking Sex, A Provocation, it came out last spring. And it was basically about our sexual culture and our relationship culture and questions of consent and sexual ethics. But this is one thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about in the book actually.

This idea that the feminist movement kind of shifted over time in a way that I don't necessarily think was positive. You know, original feminists were what they said really was that, you know, women are important. Women should be respected as much as men are respected. Women should be allowed to partake in society as much as men are, but women should also be respected as women for being themselves. And then solely over the years, we've shifted through this kind of like playboy to girlboss culture where it's like, okay, well, men have a lot of power. And in fact, honestly, kind of the worst men tend to have a lot of power to be a successful woman, just be more like the most powerful man, who's often like the worst kind of man.

And so it's like, women, be a girl boss, which is still a boss. Like instead of being a playboy, you're just a playgirl. Yeah, so yeah. You're just like thinking of the same things instead of being respected for like your actual self. And that hasn't been healthy for women either. But when the same thing is asked of men, you know, it's not healthy for them themselves.

No, I think modern feminism told women that true freedom was achieved by working like your father and having sex like your brother. I think that that's... I know that your friend is Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, and I was chatting to both of them a lot over the last year about this very topic. And the failings of modern feminism and what it really hasn't given to women, that it maybe had the opportunity to, and then how it's also, you know, to bring it back to the men conversation, I think a lot of men see feminism as overreaching from beyond equality into retribution. I think that they feel like feminism,

and it seems to me like there is a good amount of, like women out there who would class themselves as feminists that are almost looking to get one over on men because now there are upper hands culturally that could perhaps be used to push a particular sort of narrative and it doesn't surprise me that men feel like dispossessed from that movement too which creates this like recursive antagonism between the sexes that men feel like thatossessed from that movement too, which creates this like recursive antagonism between the sexes, that men feel like that they're being mistreated and women are the only ones whose problems are being seen. So I'm going to either retreat or become more misogynist, which means that I'm going

to retreat further, which means that they're going to dislike me more. And it keeps on going and going and going. So what, going back to sort of the conversation, the cultural milieu around this, why are people struggling to advocate for the problems of boys and men so easily? Well, so really quickly, just there are some data points that actually totally support your thesis about this, this retrofitive. I knew it. I knew it wasn't just pro science. I knew it wasn't. knew it. And it wasn't just pro science. I mean, yeah, no, I mean, a recent survey came out that showed that among Gen Z men right now in America, fewer than half of them would say that feminism has been good for American society, which is a pretty startling statistic actually. For Gen Z, the like, soy boy, you killed, cut generation. Yeah, precisely.

Yeah, and then there was a survey done by Ipsos. It was a global survey about sort of the state of gender relations around the world, but you can isolate out countries. And in the United States, I think it was 43% of men agreed with exactly the statement you made that the push for women's equality has gone so far that it has turned into discrimination

against men. And so almost half of men in America apparently think this, which is something that should be maybe a little bit alarming to women and to progressives to anyone who wants cooperation between the sexes. But that kind of leads to your next question question, you know, why is this discourse so hard to have in society? You know, that was one of the tough things about writing this piece in a way, because kind of as you were saying at the beginning, like, you want to respect all sides and you also don't want to be read as something other than what you are. I think that there is, first of all,

an unfortunate tendency in politics, an American politics specifically to view things as very zero sum. You know, like, okay, well, we have spent some time helping women, you know, the feminist movement has succeeded in some ways, but the gains are still real fragile, as we saw when the DOBS decision came down and abortion rights were rolled back,

we saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic, like women had entered the workforce and then they just started dropping out because they didn't have support during COVID-19. So there's this feeling that like, okay, we kind of just started moving forward for women. If we turn our attention to men now, then I guess we're just women are over,

like women are not gonna get anything anymore. We're not going to focus on them. And so there's a resistance to changing the focus because it's due to like, we can either help one sex or help the other. I don't think that's true. In fact, I think that the sex is rely on each other to support each other.

And if one is in a tflop era, the other one's gonna be in trouble, too. I also think that there is an unfortunate, like mixed association. So the right has really, like the political right has kind of been first to the men question and sort of right leaning or right coded influencers have been the ones to talk about men's issues the most. And unfortunately, some of them have used, you know, talking about men's issues as an excuse to say like, well, what we really need to do to help men and to give them jobs

again is to put women back into the home, you know, and, you know, it's actually a bad thing that women can provide for themselves right now. So we need to, like, make sure that women have to get married to be economically successful, like that sort of thing. And no one really, progressives, I think, many people, moderates don't want to be associated with that. And there's a feeling that if you start talking about men, there's kind of like a sideways look that one gets where it's like, oh, are you like, oh, you're one of

those? Yeah, there is 100% a branding problem for men's advice at the moment. I mean mean it's one of the advantages of a black woman that you are able to say things without jumping through quite so many hoops or caveats than I would with the way that I present, right? Every single time that I come on to have a conversation like this, someone in the comments that has never seen my stuff before and doesn't actually know what I talk about, will accuse me of being a budget-and-retake. I'm like, look, I am so blue-pilled in the eyes of manosphere that I'm a cook,

but I'm so bigoted in the eyes of guardian readers that I'm unspeakable. So, really, really managing to slice through the middle there, but that's another reason why even I've spoken about men, women, the problems that we're facing at the moment with masculinity and dating for a long time, never, ever once identified with the manosphere. Just by the fact that like, ostensibly, I should do, right?

Like if the manosphere means anything, it means people talking to men online about the problems that men face and like how to be a good man. You are literally doing that. And yet, branding problem, massive branding problem. Yeah, totally. And I mean, that was an interesting thing about publishing this piece too, right?

Like I kind of begin to feel that. I honestly do think that it is, that you're totally right. It is the case that someone like me kind of had to write this piece, it'd be taken seriously. But at the same time, I kind of feeling a little bit of blowback from men who read the piece and are like, what a woman talking about men's business, she knows nothing, I'm not going to read this. And it's like funny to get that response from from both sides. So it's's I can only imagine actually trying to be taken seriously. It's a male disadvantage. The male disadvantage that you're facing here. Oh man. Oh man.

toxic misandry. Yeah, so this is something that I've noticed a lot, right? Especially over the last couple of months. Why is it the case that the conversation about masculinity in mainstream media is being so dominated by women? It's a comment on the state of discourse that most of the voices are being given mainstream platforms about masculinity, all of them, almost all of them are women. There was that the masculinity issue that got released by Politico, did you read that?

I did and it's all women, yeah. Yep, it's like seven articles, seven different essays, not single man anywhere on there. And also the fact that your piece has resonated so much, suggest this is an issue. To anybody that doesn't think that there is a problem with men at the moment, explain to me why this article of yours has exploded. But yeah, what do you think is going on here? Is it just the the softly softly acceptable fluffy face of being able to talk about men's problems without being accused of being a budget

Android tape? Is that are you the thin end of the wedge so that this conversation might have soft I don't, I don't, I hope not, but maybe I don't know. That's a, that is a really interesting question. And it's something that honestly, I want to sit with in more detail. I have a, okay, what I'm going to say now is theoretical. So this is just like me spinning on a cloud. Cross science. That's fine. That's the best. Chick science, girl science. Whatever you find. Yeah.

So, I think that when you're looking for examples of positive masculinity, the best and most positive masculine examples or men are usually not just out there talking about themselves and their problems in the public square. That's kind of not what they do. They go about their business. That's one thing. Often the people in the manosphere, the loudest people, the Andrew Tates, and to some extent Jordan Peterson, who really started from a place where I was like, oh, interesting. And now is maybe a little off the rails. You'd note that they are kind of unusual, rather attention-womping figures.

And that is why they are in public. I would also say, perhaps, that it has something to do with just media culture overall. I think media is a slightly more feminized space, maybe, or at least like, like, almost soft commentary space. Like when we're talking about questions of like society and social cues and social norms, that space seems to be heavier on the female lens than other spaces might be. And then, let's see, what was my last take on this one? I mean, in general, I also think that not necessarily in the media space, but in general, I'm sorry, this is very gender essentialist of me, but I do think that women spend more time thinking about these sort of like social cues and gender cues and not necessarily

taking them for granted. You know, there is sort of a whole sphere of academic study. Now, that's women's studies. And it's just about how identities are formed, what they look like. And my sense is that men don't spend as much time thinking in abstract about like, what do our friendships and communities look like? Like, what is the space here? And so like that sort of analysis often falls swim in and then the last thing actually and maybe this

is most relevant to me, but you know I started thinking about this question a long time ago, but my thinking about like wait what is going on here was supercharged when I started writing about sex and relationships and dating culture, which women, I think, definitely talk more about and have more space to write about. And I think that is the place where the issue of what is going on with men exactly, we need to figure that out because they're really either acting up or not acting at all, because they're really either acting up or not acting at all. Like became very obvious to women who are trying to date men, I think like why is everyone so terrible all of a sudden, or not all of a sudden?

Something has changed, what is it? And so women maybe sort of thinking about this earlier, in some sense. There's some incredible percentage of psychologists that are female. It's like 70 plus percent's some incredible percentage of psychologists that are female. It's like 70 plus percent, I think, of psychologists are female. And broadly, the closest area I think that we're talking to around this is in the world of evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, its social sciences.

It's the integration of what we are and the world, culture, how does that all work? And that, I guess, maybe is even in terms of academia dominated by women, I would disagree that women probably do have a predisposition toward thinking about people rather than things. And I think that this, even though it's kind of a things abstract conversation, is more people-y than it is thingsy. But I also agree that the conversation about dating was what got me into thinking about masculinity and men's issues too. And you touch on this really, really well in your piece, which is to the extent that any

vision of non-toxic masculinity is proposed, it ends up sounding more like stereotypical femininity than anything else. The problem being that even the women who support this narrative probably don't want to have sex with the men who are following it. And there is an issue that the men who women are hoping to date kind of aren't there, even while those same women may be sort of carrying the cards and the placards saying that they want more of them around. It's a very odd sort of juxtaposition. There's some definitely some cognitive dissonance going on there, I think. Yeah, totally. I mean, I even say in the piece that, you know, when Scott Galway said something like that, I cringed in recognition. And this is something that's come up as I've discussed the piece, even with

men, where it's like, okay, well, women do want like men who are sensitive and aware and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then the guys are like, do you? Really? Because it kind of seems like women always date bad boys. And I don't actually think that that's exactly true. But there, bad boys. And I don't actually think that that's exactly true. But there, there is something to this. Do as I say, not as I do. Maybe that's not exactly what I do, not as I say. Yeah, basically. Yeah. It was I do not as I say. It's funny. There's a friend of mine who is a writer for a conservative magazine, and I have like joked about this where she's like, you know, I meet all these liberal women who say that they want a guy who like open stores and like is works out, whatever.

It's like, maybe you need to start dating conservatives. That's what a conservative is called. Yeah. Well, you saw that article when Superviral a couple of weeks ago, which is like a liberal girl realized that the only guys that she found attractive had the opposite set of political beliefs to the ones that she did. And you know, there's a really great study from Catherine Sammon. She looked at the front cover models of dark romance.

You know, you have 50 shades of grey comes out. It kind of breaks open this entire new literary genre. I'm someone who's been on the cover of like 10 or more dark romance novels, so I can speak from this as a position of authority. Wait, really? Yeah, yeah, I went through a brief period. I went through a brief period of that. Didn't realize before I actually did it, I didn't realize that that person wasn't just a cool image on the front, but he's actually supposed to be the protagonist. And then after I got my first one and it got USA Today something, something Kerry Lake, it's called Ricochet if people want to Google it. There's a lot more I'm not going to give you those.

But my mum, my mum asked me for a copy of it. And I was like, mum, like this is not Harry Potter. Like I don't think she knew. She was like, oh, my son's on the front cover of a novel. That's so amazing. I'm like, no, Mum, I'm not having you read this Dark Romance thing with me on the front cover. It's your son. Anyway, we are sidetracked by a disgusting image. They tried during, so you have 50 shades, breaks everything open,

Dark Romance comes out. Then in the early 2010s, there is a pushback against, why do we need to have these lumberjack men or like the big buff policeman or whatever or the billionaire on the front cover? We should put more sort of feminized more agreeable men on the front cover. And they did. And the books didn't sell. The books didn't sell well because even though that might be publicly what is popular for women to uphold and pedestrianize, that's not necessarily what they're attracted to. There is a caveat here to add in which is the thing that you want to fantasize about is not necessarily the thing that you want to

marry and there's a big difference there. Men too, she's for the streets, is all well and good if it's not for a one night stand. She's not for the streets if she's ready, willing and able. So both men and women fantasize sexually about things that they don't necessarily optimize for when it comes to a long-term relationship. So it's not strictly true. There are certain things that women may even optimize against, like the hypermasculine inside the super-disagreable man,

maybe very sexually arousing, but not super useful to be in a long-term relationship with, because it would probably do your head in. But yeah, my point being that stated and revealed preferences sometimes clash up against each other. Yeah, and there is something interesting too about sort of subtle and ambient pressure to state a certain preference that you may not even hold, right? I think, you know, we talked about our society and there is a sort of a bias towards, and I think in some ways this can be a good bias towards inclusivity, towards a sort of non-gendered, like open-rolled, positive, inclusive atmosphere where anyone can do whatever they want.

And so even if you are a woman who, like, I don't know, wants a super masculine-looking, you know, like, cover boy, hunk, like to be a good feminist say, or to feel like a good modern or a good progressive or something, you'll probably still say in public, like, yeah, I want to date another, I want to date a feminist, you know, like I want to date someone who is evolved. I need to date a man who goes to therapy. Is that actually true? You may not be true, but who's gonna go out there in public and say, yeah, I want to date like a throwback, I want to date a caveman, that's my preference as a modern woman, and

worry about being looked at sideways again, going back to the sort of people who talk about like the men problem, it's like, oh, are you one of, hmm, questionable. It's a branding problem. It's a's branding. It's a branding problem. That's what the Manusphere fundamentally doesn't need to do more YouTube live streams. What it needs is to hire a marketing agency. It needs to hire a really, really good rebranding agency. And if you manage to do that, then all of the typically masculine guys would be getting laid more as well because they wouldn't be so besmirched by whatever the sort of culture is saying about them. But yet you nail it, I think. I had a really great conversation that I'll send to you once I'm done.

It'll be up later this week with a guy called George who runs the Tin Men on Instagram. British dude, unapologetically from the left, presents in a, like, not super masculine way, but is absolutely, like, vehemently pro-men. And it's so interesting talking to someone that's a card carrying liberal who also is unforgiving in how pro-male he is talking about the problems of male suicide, homelessness, incarceration, family court, all of the things that you should not be talking about. And I spoke to him, like, why is it that the left don't want to kind of acknowledge this problem? There's either an inability or an unwillingness for mainstream media and the left in general to advocate for men.

And you nailed it. You had this really great quote where you say, many progressives have ignored the opportunity to sell men on a better vision of what they could be. And it is the point that if you do not like the current role models that are being put up for men, you need to offer them something else. It's not just a case that you can leave the vacuum and then start throwing your toys out of the pram because Oh, Andrew Tates Bugatti, like I can't believe he smokes cigars and drinks bottled water. You can't complain about that unless you're going to say, and here is something that I propose instead of that, because men are going to find someone. They need someone. Simply abandoning them is precisely the reason why the right has dominated

this conversation. Right, that's a thing. And I say this often in this sort of conversation, in the fight between something and nothing, something is always going to win. Maybe very bad something, but you're not offering anything else, then of course people go to what's on offer. And yeah, what's on offer right now is pretty bad. It's not even, I mean, when you talk about Andrew Tate, it's not just he talked about his Bugatti's, it's that he's a literal sex trafficker.

But again, if it's an Andrew Tate, or that thing, a alleged sex trafficker, Christie. Sure, that's true. I am a journalist, he is an alleged sex trafficker and also admits it in his own words. But yeah, who is the opposing figure that you're telling men to go out and seek?

Who are you providing if you're from the left and think that that's a bad option? And just sort of like closing your eyes and wishing that these people would go away is unfortunately not going to do it. I mean, another conflict, I think, too. And I've heard this from a lot of commenters from the piece and people have written to me is the idea that, okay, well, if you define masculinity and femininity or define masculinity,

first, isn't it that you're kind of saying that the good things about being a man say men are more risk-taking or men are more competitive or stronger. Are you saying that, you know, women don't take risks and can't be strong? And if men are interested in leadership, does that mean women have to be followers? And I think people are perhaps justifiably afraid of putting people back into boxes that they've only recently broken out of. And then, okay, if you have this one definition of masculinity, that's all about, say, aggression and risk taking in, sex drive, etc. What about the men who don't fit into that? You know, and I had a great debate with my colleague, Jonathan K. Partt, and he was like, you know, in this masculinity debate, like, I'm a gay, married guy, like, this traditional masculine, like, I'm not John Wayne, I was never going to be John Wayne. So

sometimes when this debate is going on, I feel like it's not for me, like that one model of meleness is not capacious enough. And so actually one of the things that I think will be key going forward for those who want to put forward like a better view of manhood and masculine, the in better role models, is also to have not just one role model or one vision of masculinity. Like ideally there are many good ways to be a man as many ways as there are men and by having more and different role models of masculine to be like more people can find a way, but you still have to have those models, right?

You can't just be like, be good. And that's all. Yeah, so this is a really important point that I think we need to get into. I'm not convinced that there are as many ways to be a good man as there are men. And this came out of a debate that I had in Qatar a couple of months ago. I flew to Qatar to debate a gentleman who is a member of the LGBT community, but he's also a Kuwaiti-born American that's pro-Palestine, and I think religious in some form as well.

So it is an interesting sort of blend of, yeah, exactly. And I could see he had this concept called the Manbox that I thought was really interesting and he said that basically the Manbox is this prescriptive way of describing what a man can be. If you're within this, you are a man. If you're outside of this, you're not a man. And if you make the box too narrow and if you make the walls of it too rigid, it ends up causing many people who sit outside of the box in terms of their predisposition to feel like they're dispossessed and they're not included. And this is a guy who wanted to dance as a kid who growing up at least with some of the

influences of an Arabic culture would have absolutely felt dispossessed and displaced. I can totally see that. Yes, probably. What I came to realize is that, yes, there isn't just one way to be a good man, but there can't be an unlimited number of ways either, because the problem of breaking open the expectations of being a man so much that there are no longer any provides zero guidance on men's and boys on men and boys on how to behave, there has to be some limitations, because you are defined by the boundaries of whatever it is that you're going to do.

If being a good man means that you can be anything, if you can continue to redefine and redefine and redefine, that means that it's the same as it being nothing. There is no definition if the definition can be anything. So, yes, actually, I do think that's right. So I should revise that, I would say. I mean, when I say I think that there are as many ways to be a good man as there are to be a man, it's like any person is capable of being a good person and like what it looks like to be a good person as you specifically is different from what it looks like to be a good person

as me specifically. But it's also clear that like you're a man and I'm a woman, so those are just gonna be different. I think it's really important to recognize that people do actually need boundaries and need role models and norms that are specific, especially when they're younger. And so this is an interesting thing that I found reading responses to this piece. We only have comments open for three days and there were 10,500 comments on this piece. Did you see nuts?

Did you sort it by most liked or most commented? Did you see what that top one was? I haven't today. What's the top one? The top one today, it seems like it's been around for a long time. So I'm going to guess that you've seen this one. Was I don't know what you're talking about. This doesn't resonate with me at all. That yes.

So that is what I was going to say. I don't know what you're talking about. This doesn't resonate with me at all. That, yes. So that is what I was going to say. They're like, comments from, I think, more like older men, not old men, but like men and they're maybe 40s and 50s. So many of them are like, I don't know what the problem is with masculinity. Like, I'm fine. And it's the younger men who's like, oh, this really resonates. Like, I've been struggling with this too.

And I think I actually do think what's happening is specific to younger men who's like, oh, this really resonates. Like, I've been struggling with this too. And I think I actually do think what's happening is specific to younger men, because when you're younger, you simply don't know as much. And so you kind of need a roadmap or a path to start from, like at least a basic norm that you start from acknowledging. And then as you grow up and you get more experience and you figure out where you fit in the world, like you sort of begin to expand and like figure out how that norm fits you, right? Like there's a path and like as you become your own person, you branch out.

But there has to be a starting point, you know? There, what is a man? Like there's kind of a basic starting point that you need to start from and then as you figure it out, you become your own person. But there has to be at least some baseline, some original norm. And so I think that's what I'm saying. Like there needs to be like a baseline. Okay, a man is X. Like how do you be a good man? Like it includes these things. And what does that look like in your own life? Like that may vary depending on your profession, whether you're married, et cetera, et cetera. How do you be a good man? It includes these things. And what does that look like in your own life?

That may vary depending on your profession, whether you're married, etc., etc. But you start from here. And I worry sometimes that the push is that, everyone is so different. There is no baseline, exactly what you say. You're a good person, not a good man. Yeah, that doesn't tell you anything. Yeah. doesn't tell you anything. Yeah, no, I think you're right. And it's, it's a shame that we've got this thing called Gamma bias.

Did you come across this? You describe it in your piece, but I don't know whether you can. No, no. OK, so I think that you explain if there is something which is ardently pro female, it's very heavily gendered. If there's something that is ardently pro-female, it's very heavily gendered. If there's something that's ardently pro-male, it gets desixed, right? And the reverse is also true. So male killer, male serial killer, if it was a female, which it probably almost certainly wouldn't be, but if it was a female, it would regularly

get desixed. This is by John Barry from the Center for Male Psychology and he calls it Gamma bias, which is that the successes of men are de-gendered and the successes of women are sexed to, because that's, we're still living in a world where the culture presumes that success of women is an outlier or an aberration. What? Successful women serial killer. Successful women serial killer. Yes, exactly. So it is more role models for women women to be serial killers too. They can. I know.

I know. If we can't, where's the, where's the fucking parade for that? Yeah. But you, you end up with this situation in which there is a, a vacuum of positive examples of masculinity. He is this really great example where Sarah Everard, you remember that case? UK, it was this woman who was horrifically sort of followed home and killed by a British police officer.

And there was candle lit vigils and people in the streets and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and horrific, like absolutely horrific story. The next week, a man jumped into the Thames to try and save a woman that was drowning and it didn't even say man in the headline. And it was like person jumps into river to try and save woman dies. So again, John seems to have done the work to have been able to show that this is replicated. And I don't really think that there's a broader conspiracy here

other than it's commonly applauded in the media to be like, yay women, and kind of less popular to be like, yay man, so what do they do? Well, they just lean into what they presume is going to be popular and that seems to make sense. we've explained today how many different hurdles you had to jump through to make sure that you didn't trigger any of the different tripwires and defense mechanisms that would have potentially caused your article to be misinterpreted. So it's evident that these things still exist. But I do worry that by doing that, what is left

as a positive role model for men. And as you said, the formative year is a formative for a reason. I mean, like these are the times when you're looking for like, okay, what should I do? I'm confused. And for the, you know, the gentleman that commented on your piece saying, I don't know what you're talking about. All I spend my time doing is going to work

and looking after my kids and, you know, like, I get a bunch of ideas. I'm taking free of ideas. Yeah, but where do you think that you've got those rules and guidelines from? Like, okay, it's not about your problem right now. The goal of much of sort of men's education and general life education overall,

is to get yourself moving to the stage where you can kind of pedal on your own two feet. It's okay. And now I have some of the advice that stabilizers have been taken off and I can kind of weave my own life path with the understanding that I've got these foundations behind me. Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, also one of the things that, so I interviewed Richard Reams and Scott Galloway

among other sort of experts for this piece. And one of the things that Scott said really resonated with me, he said that this is, first of all, this isn't an ongoing problem that's not going to be fixed overnight and part of it, unfortunately, or not unfortunately, but just truthfully, is a problem of responsibility. Like men do have to decide to be better and to work on themselves. That said, it's also the responsibility of older men and community role models. Like the 50-year-old guy who's like,

my life is great, I'm a great man. Okay, cool, like go teach another young man how to do that. Because so much of this learning is also and I think this is I think that this is different in some way for for men almost than it is for women much of it does come from role modeling from having someone to look up to so like there's research that I cite in the piece from this landmark study by Raj Chetty. And it was actually about economic mobility in different neighborhoods. He studied this by zip code. But there were a lot of sort of interesting side findings in the work. And one of them was that for black boys, specifically

economic mobility tended to be much lower. And actually a lot of the difference in economic mobility by race between white and black was due to the kind of poorer performance of boys who were black. But he found that if these boys lived in a neighborhood that had more fathers present, not even their own fathers, just like more dads around, somebody else's dad, whatever, they were far more likely to achieve economic mobility. And so like just the presence of role models had a huge effect. And there's other research showing that boys are just much more affected by the presence of good figures in young age, too. There's this sort of daisies versus dandelions model, where girls, even when they're brought up in adverse circumstances, tend to be pretty resilient and can bounce back.

They're dandelions, they grow through the cracks, they just make it work. But actually, unexpectedly, little boys are daisies. If they have adverse experiences, if they don't have good role models when they're younger, they're much less likely to bounce back, they just wilt. And so to raise good men, like men, other men, older men, men who have been successful and are comfortable in their masculinity need to take it upon themselves to be part of the solution. Really amazing point. First thing that comes up for me is so interesting that that guy that commented that said that everything in his life was fine.

I don't know what you're talking about. His first port of call was to go to atomized individuation. He was talking about me. I'm okay. As opposed to, wow, maybe there's some truth to this and maybe as somebody that feels comfortable in their own masculinity and like he's got his life together I shouldn't reach out and say can't believe that this is happening would love to try and help someone That's a young man that's suffering because I feel like I've managed to find my place in the world second thing being I'm

Increasingly certain that a lot of the problems that we're seeing, especially amongst misbehavior, but also when it comes to academic outcomes, especially black inner city youths are very, very heavily laid at the feet of single parent households. It's like many of the problems we're seeing are fatherless problems as opposed to culture problems, or I guess fatherlessness could be born out of culture, but you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like that, and I wonder whether part of the masculinity crisis

is downstream from an increasing number of single parent households. I wonder if you could conduct a sufficiently big study to work out our men or young boys who grew up in a two-parent household more or less likely to say that they don't know what a real man is that they struggle. It would be insane if it wasn't the case. It would be absolutely white. That would be a much more shocking revelation than it was, but until we've got the data, it's just proscience. than it was, but until we've got the data, it's just proscience. But yeah, I think the single-parent problem, the lack of strong-father figures, again, is exactly why we need good role

models out there, which is why, you know, in an age of social media ubiquity, you are going to gravitate towards someone. I know that I found this. You know, I got to the end of my 20s, probably a little bit late to try and stop being an adult infant, but I get to, you know, 27, 28, 29, and I've achieved a good bit of success in the way that society tells a young man that he maybe should, but I didn't feel like I understood myself,

I didn't feel like I had a good conception of who I was or what I really should do. I didn't have a firm foundation on how I should show up in the world. And then I see this old, like, whiz and druid looking Canadian psychology professor on a bold MMA commentators podcast. And I go, oh, wow, this guy's telling me to tell the truth. Wow. What a radical idea to actually not lie to try and get things that you want out of people, but to focus on telling

the truth instead of X and Y and Z. And then you used to be like people like Sam Harris or a land of botan from the School of Life. You know, all of these different interesting people who had insights that weren't necessarily about masculinity, but were about psychology and were about the world and the way that the world shows up and from that you infer what being a good person and being a good man is. And yeah, it's, one of the things I'm most interested in, especially given that you've

written this and now you've got all of this sort of attention, you must have been able to look at the current landscape of how these conversations are being had previously. It's not like you're the first person ever to talk about this. What do you think most commentators are missing when they try to talk about the problem of boys and men? Oh, boy. Well, I could go on at length. I mean, first kind of does tack back to what you were saying about single parent households.

Again, I think in modern society and progressive spaces, especially, there is this bias towards inclusivity. Everybody chooses their own life path, and that's okay, they're all great, they're all of equal value. We don't wanna stigmatize anyone, but actually, I feel quite certain that maybe the question, the specific question is like, the specific question,

are you unsure of your masculinity, may not have been asked, but there are so much data that shows that children and single parent households and especially fatherless households tend to do worse and especially boys when it comes to exactly what you're saying about discipline and academic achievement. Like, the data does show this very clearly, but there is a reluctance, I think, among many commentators to say that, or to point out that that could be a problem because it's seen as stigmatizing. That's not inclusive to the single-parent households. Yeah, and I mean, that comes from sort of oversensitivity, and also maybe just a sort of acceptance

that this seems to be more common, like this is the way things are, I guess. And so like that, it's not offered as a solution that men should be better fathers and stay with their fathers and that there should be more two-parent households. But that is just an obviously important part of this problem. I interviewed, as I said, a bunch of young men for this piece and almost all of them said that you know, oh like one thing about this is like I had a really crack your relationship with

my dad like my dad was a terrible person or he wasn't around and actually all of my friends like very few of us can say that we had good relationships with our fathers and so like maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know and And you know, they're not sure, but it seems very clear. And actually like there's one young man who I spoke to and I didn't get to include this part in the essay, but he was like, yeah, I had a shitty relationship with my dad actually. And I was kind of allowed. Like I was not a very good man. And actually what changed for me was when this priest in my neighborhood, who officiated my dad's funeral, actually, just sort of took me under his wing and like taught me how to cook and just like hung out with me as a man.

And that was the role model I needed to become, you know, a better person, the person that I am today. But that was somebody who just sort of saw a lost young man. And was like, I'm just going to care for him and be a model to him and teach him how to grow up. So I think I do think that that is one thing that commentators are either missing or purposefully not speaking about. And I think that that's a real problem.

And I do think that when people try and speak about it, Barack Obama had my brother's keeper program and had several speeches about dads and missing dads. And he was often sort of shouted down for being a scold, even though he was right. I think also that this question of representation is important actually and actually this has become kind of a buzz word in progressive and liberal spaces. The idea that representation is important.

Like women need to see themselves in spaces. Like people of color need to see themselves in spaces. But when you look at what the data shows about men in formative spaces for men, they're very few male primary school teachers and secondary school teachers. They're actually very few male nurses. As you said, male psychologists. And imagine if you're a boy growing up in a single parent household, you're raised by your mom, you go through the average public school system, average public medical system

in the US. You may really never see a man in a position of teaching authority until, you know, you're an adult. What does that do, really? And so perhaps a policy solution might be to kind of acknowledge that and try to figure out how to get men into some of these spaces. And some of the problem there is that these spaces are considered feminized because there are so many women in them, and that makes it harder to recruit men to those spaces. But I, I mean, those are just two things, actually. There are a number more,

but the same situation, the role modeling. Yeah. Both of those are huge. A couple of the conversations I've had, one with Max Rudd last year, this is a guy who was going to get married. And I think he'd gone, he's always had female friends, he tended to have more girlfriends than guy friends. And he went to get his suit fitted, I think, or something like that, maybe get fitted for the ring that he was gonna wear. And the girl friend that he was with said,

so who's gonna be your best man? And he said, it'll come to me. Don't worry. And he got home and he realized, fuck, like where are all of my male friends? He didn't have any, he didn't have a guy that could be his best man at his wedding. And one of the things that he discovered, it was more to do with the loneliness epidemic for men there, but that men's only spaces were seen as these sort of vaulted halls of power that was exclusionary to women specifically. And this means that we need to break open the doors because, you know, I'm a female

barrister and I want to make sure that there isn't a secret boys club somewhere so that I can be included because I also want to become a judge or out some higher sort of legal person. But, okay, that's true, but if downstream from that working men's clubs and stuff, and men's Sheds, which is this initiative coming out of Australia, where men, older men, fix shit together, and fixing shit together in a shit,

literally called men's Sheds, I'm sure it's coming out of Australia. They just fix stuff. So it'll be a bench or a car or a lawnmower or something. And these guys just come together because men bond over doing stuff. And I see this in my own life. One of my best friends, one of my longest standing friends

was my old business partner from my nightclub days. I'm still incredibly close. I was a groom's minute is wedding, all of this stuff. But now that I do the podcast full time, our relationship is in a different bucket. It's one of nostalgia and a huge amount of love, but it doesn't have that same sort of dopamine and that kind of rush that I do with my editor, Dean, for instance, who's been with me for five and a half years,

and it's every single day, it feels like going to war with someone, feels like standing shoulder to shoulder. In fact, that's a with me for five and a half years, and it's every single day. It feels like going to war with someone. It feels like standing shoulder to shoulder. In fact, that's a Richard Reeves thing, right? Where he says, what is it? Women bond face to face, men bond shoulder to shoulder. Side by side. Yeah, no, that is actually the right third point that I was kind of forgetting.

That is a cliche, the side to side versus shoulder to shoulder thing. But it's a cliche because it does seem kind of a cliche, the side to side versus shoulder to shoulder thing, but I mean, it's a cliche because it does see the kind of true. And this also, I think, sort of throws it back to the question of why aren't, why are there so many women commentators on this problem in a way. I do think that women spend more time face to face, sort of, about like the problems where men may have the same problem, but they're just doing stuff together. Like they're not like, tell me about your problems. Like let's just like look at each other over some wine and like talk about our problems. Yeah, dangerous for one thing.

But this, the single space is question, I think is a really interesting one and a really touchy one in this moment. And I think it is a really important one too. So I think the last big conversation about it was when the Boy Scouts became open to all sexes instead of just being the Boy Scouts. And I actually think that we may look back on that and realize that it was a mistake. So like one of the reasons why it would be helpful to have more male teachers in primary and secondary school is because male teachers often end up being the coaches

for boys' sports and boys' only sports. And often those are the places where like young men are sort of side by side, I don't know, moving stuff around. No one wants to learn rugby from a woman. No guy, no boy, seven year old boy wants to learn rugby from what they want to get COVID in mud and get pushed over by a big dude. Right.

Yeah, I think that's true, actually, for sure. But I mean, there is a continuing lack of and dismissal of the need for those spaces. And so one of the things that I wrote about in the piece, I cite the sociologist David Gilmore, who did this big survey of masculinity over like a broad number of cultures on multiple continents. And so he came up with a sort of protector provider,

per creator, paradigm. Like this is sort of the understanding that almost every culture shares about what it means to be a man. And being a man is different from being male. And that was the other thing. Like you can be born a male, but you have to become a man. And in most societies,

it seems like there's almost a kind of initiation process into becoming a real man. That's led by older men in your community who sort of like would take a boy away and like teach him how to be real man. That's led by older men in your community who sort of like would take a boy away and like teach him how to be a man and then he does stuff with them and he comes back and adults. And that happens in male only spaces or on the sports field or at war. And we have fewer and fewer of those like specifically male only bonding spaces right now. And it's easy to say, well, that's good.

Exactly as you were saying, we can't just have all the men go to the strip club and bond together and leave women out. Say no, cry. Well, the women are involved. The women are heavily involved in the strip club. I don't know how many strip clubs you've been to, Christine. The women are a fundamental part of that process. I'll take your word for that. For our future podcast. to Christine, the women are a fundamental part of that process.

I'll take your word for that, for future podcasts. Go on. No, it's just like, yeah, you're right. There aren't as many of those spaces in that is actually maybe a major loss. And we have to think about what it would look like to rebuild that process of initiation, that process of role modeling. Yeah, I think the other thing as well is that men's friendships are more flimsy in terms of the one-on-one than women's are. Men's friendship groups will have someone come and go, you know, Jim has been coming to the pub with you in your three mates every Friday for the last decade, but Jim's going to move to Thailand. So Jim's gone and now Mike's in. Mike, you're the new Jim. Like, hope you like it. And that's the way that men's friendships work. That's literally the way that their friendships work.

Because, ancestral, if you were going to go out with a small cohort of your guys and try and take down a wilderness or a woolly mammoth, and one of you gets gourd, you're going to be very sad for quite a while, but you can't be completely despondent forever because you need to keep cracking on and doing the things. Whereas for women, if you're alloparenting, if you're doing shed, a child rearing between you and your girlfriends, you need to make damn sure that you trust them.

You need to be incredibly tight. And the likelihood of that cycling through would have been significantly less. Interesting in a like patro, patro local society, actually wonder how that would have worked because obviously women were often sort of picked up and moved to the new husband's location. So that actually kind of throws a spanner in it, but that insight is from Robin Dunbar and this one is as well.

The talking about the shoulder to shoulder or face to face thing. So the next time you go to a party, if you look around, if it's like a house party and people are just talking or whatever, look around at the way that men and women are standing. So if you look at the angle of the feet that women have, it's almost exactly perpendicular, right? So it's the same, essentially. If you look at the angle that men stand at, on average, they stand at the angle of 120 degrees. So you could draw a line like that. It would be like this. And men do, they blade. So you stand at kind of like this. And the other one standing kind of like that. And Donbass, Donbass argument is that really the only time that guys stand face to face is if they're going to fight.

Because you're able to fully size them up. It also makes you look the widest. And if you do it, if you're a guy, you can prove this to yourself. The next time you go to a party, try and close that whatever 60 degree gap and try and stand front on. And it's either gonna need you out with your weird, the guy out.

Yeah, it looks like you're either gonna fight him or kiss him. Those are the two options. And- Both kind of weird in the moment. Not for all guys. In the middle of it, yeah, throw your, keep your progressive credentials. Keep your head up, yeah.

Outfronts, Christine, yeah. But if you try and do it, it just feels like, oh yeah, this is, I can't. This needs to- There yeah, natural. So obviously one of the things that we've kind of danced around so far, and you make a big deal of in the article, which I think is really important, is that the writing

around the crisis for masculinity firmly stops at the diagnosis stage. They refuse either purposefully or just through like ignorance to try and put forward a concrete vision for what men should be. Why do you think it is the case that the diagnosis stage is as far as anyone's prepared to go? Yeah, I mean Richard Reaves talks about this in the article and he makes the point that we talked about earlier that there is kind of a branding problem. If you spend too much time thinking about men and trying to fix the men problem, you get the kind of questionable, what are you up to? Do you have some sort of hidden misogynist agenda thing? But then also there is also what we talked about,

this idea that we don't need to have special roles for men. We just need to be good people. No one wants to be prescriptive about what a man should be for fear of not being inclusive enough and leaving someone out or offending someone else, just like nobody really wants to take the risk. But actually one of my interview subjects made the point that I think is really important

and really hard and one that I think we're going to have to think about for a while, which is that these problems didn't just start overnight. And so the solution is not going to be overnight, like there's not just going to be a fix for this. You know, the problem of, or maybe not a problem, but just the fact of globalization and deindustrialization. Like that happened. It took years. And now like this has really shifted the economics of being a man, especially a working class man, to figure out what comes after that is a big question.

You know, this question of single parent homes and fatherlessness or a lack of role models. You can't just grow a father overnight. You know, it's not as easy as just like, well, we're just going to plop a strange man in your community and now you have a role model. This is a problem where, you know, kids have grown up, fatherless and maybe their fathers who are now missing had negative father figures themselves who didn't really teach them how to be a man. And it's kind of like we've cut off sort of patriarchy and these old norms off at the knees. And now there's sort of like an open field of what are we supposed to do, but growing back a tree in the field is not something that happens overnight.

These are generational problems. And to come up with a better idea of masculinity, or even just an idea of what masculinity is period that fits in this moment, it's just going to be a norm shift, right? And norms are society-wide. And they take time. The women's movement achieved a ton, but the women's movement has also been sort of outworked for the past 60 years, you know, and those gains have come over time, not overnight. So I think it's hard to

prescribe. I mean, I think that the short term is that it's hard to prescribe because people are frankly scared to say and I write about this more broadly in my work I think people are really scared of norms of saying that like there is a right way to do something and there is a wrong way to do Something or there is a good there is a bad or there is male and there is female Because someone is always in between and nobody wants to hurt anyone's feelings. But also it's just it's complicated and it's about relationships and you can't sort of you can't really policy fix relationships you know like

Joe Biden isn't going to pass a law that suddenly fathers have to go back to their homes relationships with things that you built from the bottom up. Yeah the inclusivity definitely seems to be at odds with its instructionality in this regard. The more inclusive you may, again, it's the man box that you expanded out sufficiently, and you actually have nothing left. There are no guidelines at all. I do wonder about the cultural nudges, something that's really interesting is,

if you look at what the feminist movement, first and second wave, were really trying to do, they were trying to change culture so that they could achieve something structurally, right? We need women to be accepted in the workplace so that women can go to the workplace. What's happening with masculinity is that men have been displaced from the workplace and now need to find their place in the culture. Do you understand? Do you think this makes sense that? It's almost like the reverse of what the civil rights movement. We want to have the equal rights for people of color so that they can work because that's the thing that we're trying to get. And they both occur at the same time, whereas this conversation around masculinity is actually

more like the brown based, the brain based economy change the increase use of credentialism when it comes to jobs and boys disadvantage predisposition disadvantage that they have around that means that culture is now trying to reverse engineer a reversion of masculinity to fit this new structure. To fit the change, yeah. Yeah, and I think we have a lot less experience with doing that. And also our culture continues to move super fast, actually. So almost as soon as we have identified one problem like a new one crops up,

like even if we were thinking of, okay, oh, here are men. They seem to have a lot of time on their hands because the economy has changed. What do we do with them? Then suddenly it's super charged by like, oh, porn, it's everywhere. Video games like the internet and new role models

have also changed the way that we shake personalities and shake people. So like, what do we do with that? In addition to catching up with this old problem. So yeah, I think the roots towards the routes towards teaching are different. Is it going to be through schools? We don't, I think, invest as much authority in our schools anymore. It used to be through perhaps religious institutions. People are increasingly becoming less religious and less involved in their community organizations. So, where do you even go to start?

And I think those are questions that we'll be weighing in on to. One thing that I would definitely say as a starting point, you know, having spent a lot of time a good chunk of the audience is male, a good chunk of them are in that age bracket who do still probably need a good chunk of guidance. The first thing I would say the first prescription is to stop talking about men

and the problems of boys and men in a way that causes them to check out because regardless of what you try to do downstream from that, this is the gateway drug that opens all the rest of them up. If the cultural temperature is that men have always had it great, therefore the men of today need to pay for the sins and advantages of their fathers and grandfathers. Basically, you've had it good for so long that we don't really need to worry about you, or anything that you do is toxic, or any whichever different permutation of that happens. It causes men to check out, so regardless of what you try to do in terms of structure, you know, we've got these interesting

initiatives and we've got a son and so forth. I don't think that's going to work. The second part is that when pretty much any group has a problem in society, we don't tell them that they fix it by trying to open up about their problems. We spend billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer money to try and work out what's going on, to create initiatives and incentives and to change structure so that it actually warps the world around them. If any other group has a problem, we say, what can we do to change the world to fix it? But if men have a problem, we say, why aren't men fixing themselves? Pull yourself up by your bootstrapped bio. It's time to go and get it done. And the problem is that a lot of masculinity and a lot of men, that is an attractive proposition.

The highly sovereign, agentic individual that can forge his own way, I'm a pioneer, I'm a lone ranger, I can go and do this. And you even see this get caricatured. The sigma male lone wolf meme that's being the giga-chads, sigma male meme that floats around the internet is precisely that taken to its extreme, right? That's what make towers, that's what men going their own ways. It's in cell is similar but in reverse where I'm just gonna cast away from the world, that's still you going out on your own but you're putting it into a direction that typically wouldn't have been seen as

productive. So yeah, I think we need to be very, very cautious around pointing the finger at men. In fact, men would be happy, I think, to have the finger pointed at them and say, you guys can do better. You can do better and we're going to help you do better. But if you say, you can do better and you feel like you've been dispossessed and cast out from society, castigated from society, you're going can do better and you feel like you've been dispossessed and cast out from society castigated from society You're gonna go fuck you like okay. Yeah, I'm useless and toxic and cool whatever like I'm just gonna Wank and smoke weed and play Call of Duty like that's what that's what the rest of my years got in store for me Yeah, that's that's a really important distinction too. I think that a positive vision of masculinity has to be aspirational, right?

Like it has to be positive, meaning it's something you're achieving, something that you like go out and find, and that it's good for you to find. And I feel like one of the things that makes the Jordan Peterson's and Andrew takes the world feel sort of exciting and like people who you want to follow is that they actually make manhood feel like something good and achieving it is kind of like a quest that you go on. And at the end you have this good thing. It's not like fix what's broken about you.

It's like no, I'm calling you to more. I'm calling you to higher and I have high expectations for you and you're going to meet them. And I think we need more of that. And our general masculine discourse, not like your toxic, stopping so toxic. But like actually men are good. Like a good man is a good thing. And like you can do that. Go do that. One of the things that was really surprising about or surprising to me in the response to my article was a number of people who described it as empathetic and were like it kind of seems like you like like men. It's like actually. Yeah, like I like men. I want them to be better because like I want people, all people, but my male friends, like romantic partners,

family members to be happy. And I think just like the sheer impact of having a piece that wasn't like men are terrible and here's why. But like framing it is like, what's the problem? How can we do better? Just like being even slightly like neutral to positive instead of neutral to negative seem to have a huge impact. Which shows how low the bar is for positive male discourse online for it to be, oh my god, like you didn't call me a piece of shit. I mean, I love you. Thank you so much. Yeah. So talking about that, we've mentioned that your piece has gotten all fat, it's only been out just over a week. It's got an awful lot of attention more after this episode as well. What has been the feedback or the criticisms that

you've got from the left or from the more progressive side of the aisle? Huh. I mean, again, this, the sort of like the box is too narrow. Question has come up again and again. Like, whoa, well, if you say that we have to be masculine or like manhood, what are you, what are you calling manhood? Maybe I don't fit. Maybe people don't fit. What about those people?

Which, I don't, on the one hand, like I don't on the one hand like I get it, I get that as a pushback, but everything isn't for everyone. Like there's no prescription that fits every single person. I'm sorry, that's just the world. So there's that. There are still a number of reflexive responses from I think people who didn't finish reading the piece or maybe haven't gotten to this section who shouldn't have made it so long. I know it's my fault. I'll self-blame. But who are like, men, men again, we're still talking about men. Screw men. You know, the piece is kind of about how we need to stop doing that. And yet that is still a response and I'm getting to this piece

Like oh, we've already talked about the crisis of masculinity like we don't need to keep going there But it's a real crisis. So we're gonna keep going there Until we think what's going on? For anyone that Thinks that this isn't a big deal Please explain to me why this poster has so much popularity. Like if it wasn't a big deal, why would anybody be bothered about reading it

and sharing it? And yeah, you know, I'm part way through this, this book writing process at the moment where I'm tackling an equally icky topic of the mating crisis. And we are, I'm finding myself falling over my own words in a desperate attempt to not try and trigger some of the antibody responses from different groups, because I really think that it's an important discussion and I really want as many people as possible to have their

eyes opened, to what we're talking about. And yet, there are upper bounds that I'm just unprepared to cross when it comes to writing the piece. So I know for a fact that there's going to be an awful lot of criticism and very, very upset news articles online, because I can't warp the facts to suit everybody's world view. I can't change the reality around the situation. And this, one of my friends said it to me the other day that basically, no matter what you say,

it's impossible to please everybody. Regardless of what you try and put out, you can put out the most well-meaning, well-reasoned, heavily-caviated, and there are going to be a huge number of people, especially given a large enough audience, that are gonna take massive offense to whatever it is that you've said. So I think that you've done a good job of really trying to dance through the minefield of

tripwires on both of the different sides. You know, I definitely do think that the next stage for this will be making it culturally accepted to talk about the fact that men and boys are struggling. Once you do that, you can include them in the conversation. You then need to try and put forward something that looks like a positive vision. That includes actual role models. That includes famous people and people in positions of renown who have lifestyles that are both

aspirational and inspirational that men can look up to, that they can pedestalize and that they can try and follow. You don't need to love all of them, but you need to have at least a couple that you probably can afford to love. And not everyone needs to agree, but okay. Again, that conversation I had in Qatar, I asked the gentleman, sad opposite me,

I know that you don't like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan as examples of what you think a man should be. Can you please give me an example of someone that you don't like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan as examples of what you think a man should be Can you please give me an example of someone that you do and it took 10 seconds for him to say my brother-in-law And I said well, how about somebody that we all know and it it was a mean comment But I think it was important to really drive home the fact that it is difficult to If you are from a certain political leaning to put that point forward. Yeah, no, that's, that's something that I experienced too, actually. Like, when I also sort of went out on the streets, like, there's a video that goes with the article and asked

men about these questions and who is their role model. And so much of, so much more discourse is politicized that I think men who might objectively be good role models, whether it's like a Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, people just don't want to say that because it might be seen as like rooting for the other team somehow and that's not allowed. And also again, the specificity question, I do think that that, the sort of like, we don't need to be, we don't need a good masculine, we just need to be good people. There's pushback to the idea that like there are masculine traits, but again, we can't work the world to, if people's beliefs, like unfortunately, I just do think that there are. And to be able to

make a prescription, we have to recognize those facts and speak to them. Christine, Amber, ladies and gentlemen, Christine, I really appreciate you. Let's have another conversation at some point soon about rethinking sex as well. I think that would be absolutely fascinating to talk about the fallout from me too and consent and ceilings and flaws and whatnot. But if people want to check out more of the stuff that you do, why should they go? Alas, you can find me anywhere, so you can follow me at the Washington Post. I'm on Twitter, Threads, Instagram, as Christine Ember, just my full name, and I will shortly be launching a sub-stack. So you can also follow that.

of that