The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1062: Ruth Whippman | Raising Boys in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Young men today face a crisis of mental health and social connection. BoyMom author Ruth Whippman is here to explore causes and potential solutions. What We Discuss with Ruth Whippman: Boys in the West are going through a crisis, facing higher rates of suicide, mental health problems, loneliness, and academic underachievement compared to girls. Society sends conflicting messages to boys about masculinity, telling them to be dominant and make the first move, while also cautioning them not to overstep or be seen as creepy. This leads many boys to avoid relationships altogether. Boys receive less emotional nurturing and communication from parents compared to girls, which contributes to gaps in social and emotional skills as they grow older. The "incel" movement and extreme ideologies like those of Andrew Tate are symptoms of broader issues with how society socializes boys and sets unrealistic standards of masculinity. Parents and educators can help by providing boys with more emotional nurturing, teaching social-emotional skills, exposing them to diverse role models, and creating spaces for them to express themselves. With the right support, boys can develop into emotionally intelligent, well-adjusted men capable of forming deep connections. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1062 If you love listening to this show as much as we love making it, would you please peruse and reply to our Membership Survey here? And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Start your free trial today. This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies. An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that.

From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiruality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspiruality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. On the one hand, it's like, be masculine, be dominant, make the first move, be a real man. They're still being told all that. And the other one, it's like, don't ever overstep because you'll be seen as a creep. So I think a lot of them are just like, actually, it's just easier for me to just avoid this. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers,

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that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash starts or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, boys in America are going through a little bit of a crisis. There's masculinity, there's toxic masculinity, whatever that might be at any given moment. Feminism, a widening gap between academic and career success between men and women, a whole lot more. Today we'll discuss parenting, the difference in raising boys versus girls, schooling and education, the in-cell movement, and a whole lot more. no matter where you fall on the political slash parenting lines on these issues, I really think you're

going to enjoy this conversation. I know it gave me a lot to think about not just as a parent, but as somebody who, you know, exists in society. So here we go with Ruth Whitman. I'm glad somebody wrote this book because having kids was probably always complicated, but somehow today it seems even more complicated. And I will say older parents, they tell me, oh, I don't envy you having to deal with, you know, social media or the internet or this, that and the other, when somebody in the older generation finally admits that we, that our generation has it harder now in any way at all, we should probably believe them. It's true.

I know, because it's such a resistance to that, isn't it? Because the old narrative is like back in my day when we had to walk 20 miles to get water from the well. Uphill both ways. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, today, now we're looking at schools for the kids. And today they're like, oh, gosh, I just.

I don't know how you're going to do it. My son, he's 25 and we didn't really have social. It wasn't really a thing. Or my son's 35 and he never really cared about that. And now we see our 13-year-olds and 12-year-olds getting on Instagram. And I'm like, ugh. Yeah, it's tough. It's all to come.

It is tough. And there's so many different new things to do with. And no one's really got a blueprint for how to do it. No. So you're a self-described feminist, but also a mother of boys. And I would imagine when that happened, things got a little more nuanced. day? Yes, they did. I know sometimes I worry I'm like one of those, like, feminists always joke about these kind of like Republican senators who don't think of women as people until they have

daughters. And then they're like, oh yeah. And like, as a father of daughters, suddenly I care. And I sometimes worry that I'm a bit like that, you know, that I suddenly saw things in a really different way when I had sons. Well, isn't that okay, though? Look, you should see other people as people before you have little people of your own. Sure. But I also understand kids a lot more and little girls and little boys a lot more now that I have my own. But you're right, there is sort of the Dick Cheney factor, right, where it's like, oh, people can be gay and they're not just evil sinners with terrible parents because my daughter's gay. Let me change a bunch of laws. Right. Yeah. When it gets personal, it gets personal. But yeah. Actually, I don't know if he

changed any laws, but that's just one thing I thought of, because I remember he was kind of like one of the only ones. It was like, hey, you know, gay people, not all necessarily evil child groomers. My daughter, she's okay. Right. So. There's one. There's one good one. And the rest, yeah. Right. I don't know about the rest, but my, I didn't screw up my kids. Yeah, but it seems like, and I know that not all feminists hate men. In fact, I'm sure it's kind of the opposite. But it's, I'm sure it got less black and white once you had little boys of your own. Because you know, like, I got to raise good sons. Tell me what that was like for you. Well, so my third, so I have three boys. And the third one was born right at the time when the Me Too movement was kind of exploding online. And I think it brought up some really. conflicted feelings for me because on the one hand there was this feminist part of me that was like, yes, finally women have a voice and we're like calling out this like male bad behavior. But on the other hand, there was a big part of me that was like, oh, I'm a mother of three sons, you know, this whole conversation about men and boys being inherently harmful. You know, I'm pushing back on that

and feeling kind of defensive and protective of my own kids. Clearly we're doing something wrong on a kind of systemic level that is allowing this to happen, this kind of male bad behavior. But What is it? And having sons has challenged me in lots and lots of different ways in terms of nature versus nurture, in terms of my own views about whether gender is socialized, in terms of like the idea of male privilege and who has it easier and those kinds of things. I think that I've realized that these things are a lot more complicated than I had allowed for. It must have been interesting learning how the left viewed men versus how the right views men. I've found this quite enlightening, if you can say that, with respect to politics and men.

It's been, I didn't really expect that. I don't feel like I had that growing up. Yeah, I think there was always a sort of tendency in that direction maybe, but since the Me Too conversation and this whole sort of wider conversation about toxic masculinity, it is as if society kind of fractured a little bit on gender lines. And so it's not that obviously there are many individual like conservative women and progressive men, but as a cause, it's like the right kind of took up the cause of men and boys. When you hear people talk about men's issues or boys' issues, it has this like right-wing coded flavour.

And when you hear people talk about women's issues and girls' issues and supporting women and girls, it seems like a progressive cause that we're talking about. And so I am a feminist. I'm from the progressive left. And I sort of wanted to look at boys and men's issues through that lens and just sort of try to make it stop being such a partisan thing. So smash the patriarchy after rocking it gently to sleep, maybe?

Yeah, well, I have this line in my book. This is like when I have my third son in my arms. And I'm feeling all these really conflicted feelings because the feminist part of me is like smash the patriarchy. And the mother part of me is kind of really conflicted. And like, as I wrote in the book, I just want to wrap the patriarchy up in its blankie and read it a story. And I think by the end of my journey, like researching this whole thing,

I felt that actually those two things are not in conflict. I think the patriarchy harms both women and men, girls and boys. And the same system that oppresses women also brings a lot of harm and oppression towards men and boys as well. I actually think that smashing the patriarchy would be great for all of us. But I think that it is a complicated and nuanced thing. And I did have my preconceptions challenged in lots of different ways. So before people switch off this show because you said smash the patriarchy four times in a row, or five, if you count mine.

Tell me, though, I actually read the book. I really enjoyed it, I think, and I'm not a totally smash the patriarchy guy all the time, as you might. I don't think about it a lot, I guess. It's not that I disagree. I don't even know necessarily what that means. That's a topic for another show. But you say in the book that boys in America are going through a crisis, and I wonder what

you're seeing out there, because I would certainly agree, and you're not the only voice saying, hey, wait a minute, this isn't looking good. Yeah, so there's a lot of statistics. on how boys and men are doing at the moment, and it really isn't looking good. So boys die by suicide nearly four times as often as same-aged girls and women. There are serious mental health problems. Boys and men are becoming increasingly isolated and lonely. The statistics for loneliness are really shocking for boys at this generation of boys and men. They're spending more time on screens. They're not going to college in nearly the same numbers as girls. There's this whole failure to

launch phenomenon. I don't know if you've heard of this. Yeah, we'll get into that. Right. So it's this idea that, like, boys are, like, stuck in their parents' basement. It's a cliche, but it's grounded in real data where they're, like, stuck in their parents' basement, playing video games and watching porn and not finding partners, not going off to college, not finding a job, you know, just not launching into adulthood in the same way that young women are. Right. And they're underachieving in school. And so there's a lot of ways in which boys and men are not thriving at the moment.

Yeah, the college thing, I've seen there's a massive educational gap between boys. and girls, obviously, even in STEM, women have more AP classes now. Women are going to college in far greater numbers than men. I don't have the stats handy. I don't know if you happen to have those memorized or handy somewhere, but men are more likely to drop out. And like you said, that failure to launch, you can't drop out if you're in your mom's basement playing Xbox all day, right?

And watching porn, like you said. Right. That is not good. I mean, when you hear of one person doing that, you just think like, ugh, what happened there? But when you hear of significant numbers of people doing that, that is a recipe for disaster. Yeah, and it's very focused on boys and men. For the most part, girls and women are doing pretty well at this moment.

There are many barriers still in existence. There are many ways that the society is still extremely sexist and girls and women struggle. But in those sort of statistics where it comes to like college enrollment, finding employment, doing well in school, boys and men are the ones who are struggling at the moment. I read that parents spend more time teaching pre-academic skills to girls. Yeah. Look, first of all, girls will actually sit still for that. So I do have a little bit of sympathy.

I mean, I beg other people for their sympathy because that's me. I'm like, what am I supposed to do? He's moving all the time. But yeah, my daughter will sit there. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's this like real gap in the data. So there's this problem that by the time boys start school, they're less ready for kindergarten, both in terms of pre-academic skills and in terms of behavioral.

skills than girls are. And there's all this data that shows that like right from the beginning, right from the age of, as research has said, from six to nine months, parents spend more time, doing letters, singing songs, reading books, et cetera, et cetera, to girls than they do to boys. And I think part of that is to do with, yes, girls, the physical activity level of boys just is higher as a group, not all boys, not all girls, et cetera, but as a group, boys are just more active and less likely to sit still. So there is a piece of that. But I think there's also a piece of just like what we project onto boys and what we believe that they need, who we think they are and our own preconceptions about how to socialize them. So would boys get the message that learning is for girls or is that kind of an overstatement?

Yeah, I think boys are getting the message that school is kind of somehow feminine or feminized. And there's all these studies that show that by the age of five or six, boys have already internalized the idea that school is girly. that school is something for females. And I think you see it in popular culture all the time. Like you look at books and movies and stuff, there's this trope of the school-hating boy. Yeah. I don't know if you've got to that stage yet with your kids,

but all these books that I read my kids, it's always the boy who hates school and the boy who's, like, badly behaved and the girl who's love school. And, you know, Harry Potter, you see, Hermione is like this swatty kind of school-focused girl, and Harry's this slacker, genius, better slacker. that's tough to fight, especially when it's baked into the culture.

And I definitely want to get into that in a bit. There's a study, or at least data in your book, that shows the more a boy views himself as masculine, the lower his grades are in subjects aside from math, which is weird. Why, is math for boys? Yeah, so I think math is like a boy-coded subject. I think there is still this, like, cultural cachet to being good at math if you're a boy, but that is not when it comes to, like, reading or humanities or literature, you know, those kinds subjects. So I think there's all these kinds of ideas about how we deal with this underachievement

problem in boys' education. And one of them is we need to go more down the boyish route. We need to give them more like boy stuff and teach everything through the medium of weapons and competition or whatever it is. And actually, I think that those masculine stereotypes are actually damaging to boys in school because the more that boys conform to like masculine stereotypes, the less likely they are to do well in school. I've heard you say that you believe we need to do for boys what we did for girls with respect to the sexual revolution. So you're going to have to clarify that because last I checked, boys were getting it in anywhere they could since the dawn of time. So maybe expand on that a little bit. So I think this work is not finished with girls and women,

and I don't want anyone to think that it is. But I think we've done a pretty good job of looking at sexism and the ways that we've held girls and women back and we've boxed them into these roles. So now there's this whole idea that we talk to girls in this really inspirational way. you can be a scientist, you can be the CEO, you can be a Supreme Court justice, you know, you can be strong, you can be tough, you can take on all those traditionally masculine attributes. And we've done a lot of work looking at the kind of sexist messages that there are girls embedded in, like, books and in movies and stories and like calling them out. But I think for boys, a lot of that stuff is invisible.

We have not done the same work encouraging boys to be like emotionally literate, good at relationships, good at connection, all of those things. And I think it's partly a circular problem, like because our society is kind of sexist and we value masculine qualities more highly, generally. When a girl does a boy thing, we see it as a promotion. Whereas when a boy does a traditionally girl-coded thing, we see it as a humiliation, almost. Don't be a girl. It's like not a compliment. But like, oh, she's just like a boy, I think can be seen as almost an aspirational thing for girls. That's true. And it starts really young too, right? If your girl loves riding bikes and throwing mud pies at the guys in snowball fights, it's like, oh, she's a little bit of a tomboy. That's our

girl. Yeah. But if a guy is like really into dance and ballet and gymnastics, I think some people would be like, oh, that's kind of weird, huh? Is that worry you guys at all? Or have you tried soccer with him? Yeah. Or whatever. Right. It's a whole thing. And people feel really squeamish about it. And I think dads in particular for a really skirmish. And probably because they grew up knowing firsthand what it meant to do girly things as a boy, what the costs are. I think a lot of men and boys realize that there are real costs to boys for behaving in sort of feminine coded ways. And so they want to protect their sons from that. I can understand that.

I think it's a little bit misguided, but I can understand that. I mean, telling a kid not to do things he's interested in and enjoying because adults think it's kind of gay, bro, is really done. But that's a whole different tangent. Even down no emotional communication, my kids are so different in the way that they communicate, right? So Jaden, my son, he gets really frustrated and sometimes he'll hit if he's really pissed off, right? He screams.

Not that my daughter doesn't scream, she's too, but they'll get mad at each other and then she goes and gives him a hug or she wants to talk about it, even though she can barely talk. So she just kind of mumbles things and then goes and hugs people or tugs on people's clothes. it's very, very different.

Yeah. If she's really upset, she'll yank on your clothes till you get attention and scream, and he will just, like, throw something at the wall and make a loud noise. I mean, and this is, like,

when it's dialed up to 11. I'm not saying they do this every day. But you can really tell early on how kids communicate. I think part of that is what you would accept. I hate to say it. I hate to admit it, but I think if my daughter started

throwing things and doing what my son was doing, I would be kind of alarmed, actually. So I think it's a real combination of nature and nurture here. Boy's brains develop more slowly than girls' brains. We know this, especially in the areas responsible for emotional self-regulation. So that's that ability to calm yourself down, to like reflect on your emotions and behave in a way that's not throwing the thing at the wall and like hitting someone.

Right. And that starts at birth. Like a baby boy's brain is born about a month to six weeks behind a baby girls in terms of right brain development, which is that emotional centre. They start off at a disadvantage and then we compound that as parents by the way that we nurture and raise boys and girls. So I think that's both about sort of what we do do and what we don't do. So with girls, we tend to talk to baby girls more, like right from the beginning, you know, there's studies that show that like parents will chat back to those early sounds more when their baby's a girl than when their baby's a boy. And we kind of

roughhouse with boys more. So we sort of handle them differently. We jiggle with them and like throw them up in the air and say, all right, buddy, you know, hey little man and that kind of thing. Whereas we give girls more of that gentle, emotional and nurture right from the beginning. And it builds and builds and builds and builds. And so boys start off at a disadvantage with those emotional self-regulation skills. And then as time goes on, the gap widens and widens. Yeah, you can really see that my daughter, who's two years younger than myself, is way ahead of, in many ways, where he was at the same age. And we're actually holding him back a year so he can do trans-kindergarten, which means transitional kindergarten, calm down, Florida.

And it's something that he kind of needs, whereas I can't imagine she wouldn't be ready for kindergarten when the time comes. She's not even, you know, in preschool yet. She's just barely starting. But there's so much that she's good at compared to him when he was the same age as she is now. And so you can really see how boys are treated differently and how they start off with a little bit of a lag, if you will. Yeah. And I know that they're also at men, boys, are at a higher risk of serious antisocial behavior in adolescence.

Do you think that's because of the way they're socialized? Yeah, I think it's a combination. So I think they do have, like, I think there are some brain-based differences in the sense of like they learn that impulse control. They learn that emotional self-regulation later. but I think there's definitely a way in which we don't teach them those social emotional skills. And so they, together, the combination sort of leads to, I think we give girls an emotional vocabulary in a way that we don't give that to boys. I think we teach boys that to kind of code their emotions as anger.

So they tend to come out as behavioral problems rather than emotional ones. We can talk a little bit more about that in a minute because I know that that's kind of the default way we treat behavior in boys. Boys receive less nurturing and less emotional communication and care. And I agree with that statement. I find it hard to break this habit. You know, when my daughter winds, like, oh, I fell. Even if it's that fake cry, like, I hurt myself, you know, in the living room. Yeah. I give her that attention. And when my son pinches his hand on a Lego or something or a toy, like it's kind of a coin flip if I think he's hamming it up. Right. If I'm going to give him the same level of attention.

Yeah. It's totally unfair. And I used to think it was because of his age, but I really don't, I can't honestly say it's only because of his age. And I think part of it might just be because he's a boy. And I do find myself saying things like, suck it up. It couldn't hurt that bad in sort of a joking way, which I've never said to my daughter, ever.

Yeah. I've only got boys, so I don't have a girl to compare it to. But I definitely, like, find myself saying things to my boys that I'm like, I wouldn't say that to a girl. No. You know, just like I sort of dismiss his feelings a little bit. And I try not to do it. And obviously, I've been steeped in all this research for so long, and I see the harms of that. But yeah, it's so natural. We all live in this culture. We've all been socialized as gendered beings. We all have ideas about what a man is, what a woman is, what a girl is, what a boy is. So much of this is unconscious. It's really hard to shift. It always feels like I'm swimming upstream. You know, he was crying the other day. These kids are going to listen to this in 25 years and be like, why did you air all this dirty laundry? You were toddlers. It's fine. It's for your own good.

Try in the club. So I can't remember the exact reason he was crying, actually. I don't think it was even important. But I felt like Mr. Rogers because my gut was like, oh, gosh, it's so annoying. Quick crying. I didn't say that. But I was like, you know, it's okay to cry when you're upset. And I just felt like I could hear the music from Mr. Rogers just playing in the background

of my brain. Like sometimes we cry when we're sad and sometimes we cry when we're angry, even if we don't know if we're sad or angry or why. And I was saying this and I just was like laughing to myself. because it's so counterintuitive. It's so against my nature to say anything like that. It's so true. And I hear parents everywhere and myself, you know,

sort of using these weird scripts and I'm like, why am I talking like this? I'm not a person anymore. It's so odd. But I think it is a very real thing that boys, and I write about it in the book, that boys have this like little bit of undernurture that it's this kind of undercare,

which doesn't mean that they're neglected. The differences are subtle, but they're really real. So we do tend to like be much more physically active with boys and sort of wrestle them and roughhouse them. And we give girls this kind of emotional nurture and emotional vocabulary. And then also like the kind of role models that we expose them to. So just by default, they end up seeing so much content, which is about competition and battles and fighting and all of those sort of shows and video games and books that they have, which are kind of human interaction is like a competition. It's combative. Someone's a hear.

someone's a villain, someone wins, someone loses. Whereas girls get all this stuff, which is friendships and relationships and what to do when your best friend is sad. And by the time they're five or six and they get to kindergarten, the level of social and emotional skills is really different. My kids watch, I know I'm going to get some flack for this, but I don't care. My kids watch YouTube plenty. I think everyone's kids do, don't they?

Yeah, they do. And I'm not convinced on the screen time argument. I think I want to do a show about this, but my hunch is that, The reason that screen time, when it goes way up, there's behavioral issues, is because parents who just ignore their kids and put them in front of an iPad instead. Those are the people that have the highest amount of screen time, but they also have like. Right, they have all the other problems. Right. There's all this other stuff going on.

Like, they're completely absentee parents. Whereas, like, a kid who watches half an hour, zero screens and a kid who watches like an hour a day, are they really that different? And the research so far doesn't even seem to exist. It's such an interesting point. And I think I reached similar conclusions, which is like, at this point, in America, we need screens to parent because, to a certain extent, because parenting is exhausting and we don't have, you know, at least where we live, childcare is extremely unaffordable. There's no, we don't have social support.

We live far from family, you know, or many people do. And so I think screens become this kind of safety net for us in a way. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, except, as you say, to make sure that they're also getting all this real life interaction as well. The videos that are being surfaced for my daughter, based on her interests, right, kids playing together and let's cook together. And my daughter will say things I know she learned from YouTube where she'll go, let's go together.

And it's hold hands and then walk over there. Let's play together. Let's cook together. Daddy, do you want me to cook you some food? Meanwhile, my kid is like, whoa, big cars can crush little cars. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, watch. And it's just like the algorithm has figured out what my son wants.

what my daughter wants, and then they emulate that. So it's this weird. Right. That's not that weird. This reinforcing loop of cultural programming. Yeah. And so it's a combination of nature and nature, again, it's like they probably do want that stuff more in gendered ways, but then they get fed it more and more and more and more and more and more. And I think when it comes to our kind of cultural narrative about it, when we talk about girls and this type of thing, we do it in a quite different way. So I think with girls, we're like, oh, they like this stuff. So let's try and get them to like other things as well, that they naturally want this sort of princess staff or this kind of content. So let's expose them to like science or STEM or let's expose them to like more

stories about bravery and those kinds of things. Whereas I think with boys, there's this narrative of, well, that's what they like. So let's just give them more of it. Boys will be boys. So therefore, let's do nothing to change that. Let's not even try and expand their horizons. That's just what they like. So there's nothing we can do. And actually, it's probably better for them anyway that we don't do anything different. That's what I think we need to change. When you jump on the computer to write me an angry email about this episode, I would also love it if you'd take that opportunity to support the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers,

and creators every single week, it is because of my network. And I know networking is a dirty word. I'm talking about the circle of people that I know like and trust. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at six minute networking.com. The course is all about improving your relationship building skills, inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you. And the course does all of that in a super easy, non-cringy, down-to-earthway. It's not going to make you look bad, feel bad, just practical stuff that'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer. And it just takes a few minutes a day. And many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to this course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company

where you belong. You can find the course at six-minute networking.com. All right, back to Ruth Whitman. What about with toys? I buy a lot of Legos, mostly for myself, if I'm being completely honest. But I also buy Legos for my son, and they're kind of gender neutral-ish, like he wanted a car wash. That's not like a boy or a girl thing. They can both play with a car wash. Right. But I noticed that there are Legos that didn't seem to exist when I was a kid that look kind of girly.

It's like an ice cream store. And I think it's a whole line. I think it's called Friends. A Lego is a really interesting example of this thing that's actually a little. wider phenomenon. So toys have become more gendered. And I think this is very much to do with just money. You know, if you treat boys and girls as completely separate sets of consumers, then you can double sales or get more sales. Sure. So toys, since like the 70s and 80s, when a lot of things were kind of gender neutral, things have become more gendered. And with Legos in particular,

so what happened was, I think it was 2012. So Lego was kind of a quite a gender neutral toy. And then they decided they wanted more girl customers. So they started this new line, which was aimed at girls. And it was called Friends. It was like a beauty salon and it was a horse riding. So it was these kind of girly themes. And also like slumber party. And the theme was friendship. And it was all girl characters and the branding was pink. And it was very, very clearly set to be for girls. It's interesting that they chose like friends as the. Yeah, because guys don't have any of those. Unfortunately, starting to become true as adults, but yeah. We don't give boys this blueprint for how to have these kind of intimate personal friendships.

And I think that problem is getting worse and worse. We don't give them a model for it. So Friends is the Lego sets is this good example of that, that friendship itself is like feminized in that thing. And at the same time, while that was happening, the sets that were marketed towards boys became more and more violent. This data that shows that back in the 70s, like, I think it was a small fraction of the sets had any kind of weapons in them.

And they were basically this obscure medieval weapons that you had to kind of go. Yeah, you'd have a pirate. And the gun looks like a horn. It's got that big sort of wide opening. And it's one of those flintlock pistol things. And it's like, it's cartoonish, right? It's cartoonish. You'd have to Google the weapon to be like, how do you use this or what is it?

Yeah, the big gray sword that just sticks straight up and the guy stands there. Right. Or like nun checks or whatever. Yeah. But now it's something like over a third of the sets have weapons and they're almost all guns. So it's really changed. Like the boy toy universe has become more and more aggressive and violent. And there was this graphic that this author, I think her name is Crystal Smith, did this graphic where it was like the words that were in commercials marketed to girls and the words that were in commercials for toys marketed to boys.

And the girl word cloud was all like love, fun, friendship, those kinds of words. And the one to boys was weapons, enemy, battle, stealth, you know, and the only one that wasn't to do with violence was vehicles. Interesting. The only word in that word cloud. And so it's just we've made the boy universe more aggressive and more caricatured and more masculine in that sense over the last decade or so. I want to push back a little, because when I was young, I had so many toy guns.

And they looked real. And they stopped making them because kids were literally getting shot by the police. least because they would walk down the street with them and go to McDonald's and that somebody would think that they were going to rob the place with an Uzi. Right. I don't see any of that anymore. I mean, I see Nerf stuff, but it's, again, a cartoonish in color. It's massive and silly looking.

While we might have Lego Avengers and there's a laser pistol, we're not playing with literal rifles that just are basically the real thing without a firing pin. That's a very fair point. Yeah. I think that the landscape of toy guns has changed in that sense. What I'm talking about is toys, but also the sort of narrative universe that surrounds toys. So it's like the movies, the shows, the video games, the merchandise. You know, it's this idea that human interaction is this competitive, violent thing, basically.

And that's the message that boys get. It even shows up in bullying, right? Because boys, the way they, well, if memory serves, the way that boys bully or are bullied is usually physical, right? You're shoving each other down. Yeah. You're tackling each other with girls. It seems to be quite a different story. I mean, by the time girls are fighting, somebody's got the video camera out.

It's usually more subtle and, frankly, it looks way worse. I'd much rather get tackled on the playground and then everybody forgets about it and you got a little scrape than be getting hate mail on my phone when I'm at home. Really? I'd take the hate mail, I think. Really? Well, you're a woman and I'm a man. Maybe our bullying is... It's like appropriate for us.

Exactly. We all get the bullying we need. Yeah. the idea of being like beaten up on the playground is really scary to me, whereas the idea of cyber. Now, it's all awful. You know what? It's all awful. Yeah.

I guess so. I just, as a guy, it's easier for me to think about what it would be like to be attacked on the playground and then just kind of not have to worry about it anymore. But is that the case that you don't have to worry about it anymore? I think people do get repeatedly physically. Yeah, clearly this wasn't that bad for me or anyone else in my school. I shouldn't speak for other people. I don't really think I was bullied.

I just remember rough and tongue. play and like getting in fights. I remember that stuff. Yeah. But it couldn't really follow me home. Nobody was going to come to my house and do anything. But with the bullying now where it's like mostly online, it's really terrible. I can't remember who I was talking about this with, but there was a chat group.

This is from another book, but there was like a WhatsApp group. And it was called Everyone in the Class but Mary. And it was everybody in the class but Mary. And they did that because they don't like Mary and they decided to make her. I know, isn't that terrible? I remember that. I probably read that book a year ago. it was so awful.

God, that's heartbreaking. Poor Mary, right? I mean, there were some terrible stories of bullying. I think of all types, physical, emotional, or verbal bullying is a terrible thing. I'm only bringing it up just because it does seem like the differences that you would see in the toys are almost similar to the differences you see in bullying. So it really is baked into our culture and into our psyche. Speaking of emotional communication or emotional bullying, men seldom talk about depression or actual real problems. think boys are, we're subconsciously taught maybe that we don't really play a role in each other's

lives? I'm not totally sure. What do you think? Yeah. Well, so I think this is absolutely right. This is one of the biggest findings that I found that when I interviewed boys, so I talked to lots and lots of different kinds of boys. And one of the biggest themes that came up for them was loneliness. So this is sort of adolescent and above college age kinds of boys. Many of them were like really genuinely quite isolated at the moment. And there is like data on that that adolescent males are becoming more and more actually isolated. Sure. But many of them felt that they did have lots of friends.

They did have buddies, but they didn't feel that those relationships were very deep. They felt like they couldn't talk to them about personal problems, that they couldn't be emotionally vulnerable, that they couldn't be show any kind of weakness. And those friendships were kind of slightly competitive. And, you know, one of them described it as a hostile interaction disguised as a friendship. Oh, man. Yeah. Another guy described it as like an unsupportive support system, like his.

buddies. And I thought that they would say to me, but that's just the way we like it. That's just what we want. But actually, they weren't saying that. They were saying, actually, I'd really like to have deeper, more connected friendships and relationships. But I don't know how to do it. And I feel like they would laugh at me. And I feel like I can't really access that with my male friends. So if they wanted those kinds of friendships, they looked to women to provide them. So either girlfriends or female friends. Yeah, it's such a shame. It's a role we try to play for our listeners on Feedback Friday where people write in for advice. But obviously, parisocial relationships do not fill that kind of gap. And Gabriel, who's my producer and best friend, and he's a very sort of sensitive

feeling guy, you know, he's so emotionally intelligent, one of the most emotionally switched on people that I know. I've known it for a long time. We've worked together for a long time, too, and he would call and say, like, I just want to say that we really crush that episode. And I'm so glad. I'm so grateful to be your friend. And like the first, it is. It's lovely. It is. But the first time he did that, I was like, what do you, what's this guy want to raise or something? Like, what the heck is this? Right, right.

What's wrong with him? Yeah, what's wrong? And I remember being like, are you okay, bro? Like, don't do anything rash. And I realized he's just a really good person. Yeah. Who treats his male friends like the women in his life treat their female friends. And it's just like a whole new world that I was not used to at all.

Right. And it's rare. I think boys, yeah, are a bit like, oh, what do we do with this? And they don't know how to respond to it. And I think they don't have a model for it. It's all the stuff that I talked about, you know, the stories. Girls are getting a million stories. You know, one of the things that I write about in the book was that I went into the bookstore with my sons and I saw this magazine and it was like so

obviously aimed at girls. It had this pink, sparkly cover and it was like friendship bracelet giveaway on the front. And, you know, it's like, stay away, boys. Do not look at this thing. And then I opened it. And the main story was the story about this girl and she'd been invited to these two birthday parties that were happening at the same time. And she didn't want to disappoint either friends. So she was running between these two parties, pretending that she was a guest at both, and then sneaking out and going to the other house and doing the games there and then sneaking back to the other one. And it's like this real intense emotional labor to not let somebody down. And I related to it so strongly. But I was thinking, my boys will never see a story with a boy

doing that role as the main character. That just doesn't exist. No. You would choose the kid who's going to have the coolest stuff at the party, the best, whatever, and you would just go to that one You just go to that one and you don't care. Tough luck for the other kid. Right. And so they just don't have that model to see themselves in that role of somebody who has to care for others and think about their feelings and track them. A lot of women reading that story and there's this sort of pushback of like, oh God,

it's kind of a burden to do that much emotional labor. And I think a lot of women are getting fed up with that role. But it is like very much at the heart of being a connected human as well to take an interest in other people's feelings and to track them and to do things. for other people in that way. And I think we're seeing, like, down the line that men are in this loneliness crisis. They don't have the friendships that they want to have. They feel isolated.

They feel like they don't get the support from their friends. And they don't even know how to go about doing it. No one's taught them, you know. So there's barriers. It's hard, Ruth. When I imagine calling one of my guy friends and saying something like, I love you, man. You're an awesome person. I want to know what's really going on in your life.

I feel so intensely awkward. You feel so embarrassed, right? I'm physically cringing just. thinking about doing something like that to an imaginary person. Right. Yeah. I mean, but that just shows,

doesn't it? Like, what the barriers are. And the one hand, you're like not taught those skills. So it's like absent. But on the other hand, you're giving this really strong message like,

don't do that. It's gay. It's feminine. It's like there's, I don't mean you personally, but like in the culture. It's just culture. Yeah.

It's true. Because if I were 18 right now and you told me to do that, it'd be like, that sounds gay, bro. That's what I would have said, right? You don't say that anymore. Right.

I'm an adult now. We don't talk like that. But like maybe it's in there somewhere. It's in there somewhere. Yeah. Right. There's a comedian named Bert Kreischer and I was on his podcast a million years ago and I was telling him about texting people and keeping in touch.

And he texted his gun dealer live on his podcast and he, I don't know why he said this, but he was like, hey man, just thinking about you. He turned purple because he was laughing so hard. I was actually worried about him because I thought he couldn't breathe. This is how alien this stuff is to us, right? He was so incredibly awkward that he almost died. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't surprise me.

So here's an example. I have a book group. You know, it's like a mom's book group. And I feel like every mom in the area is in a book group. And we talk about the book for five minutes. And then we talk about our lives and our marriage and our whatever, whatever. And that's the way it goes. My husband was like, oh, maybe I'll join a book group too.

Maybe I'll start a book group. And one, there were no men who want to be in a book group. And then they did form this book group. And I think they just kind of stared at each other because I don't think they really knew how to like, what do we do? Did you read the book? Yeah, man. I read it. Pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was good too. Anyway, see you guys next week. All right. Let me go. Exactly.

And just like, and they just didn't know what to do. I think that men often are like, oh, well, I don't need that stuff. But actually, when I talk to boys, when you get past that barrier, they actually really do need that stuff. They really do. They crave connection. Of course. And honestly, a book club sounds fun. I would need somebody to facilitate that, though.

Because what do you read it? Yeah. What was your favorite part? I mean, I don't even. I talk for a living and I'm not sure what I would talk about in a book club meeting like that. Right. So if you can't do it, then who the hell can? Somebody's got practice.

Somebody's got a cheat sheet somewhere that I need to borrow. I know this is socialized out of us. We sort of covered that. But how drastic is this? I know that boys' ability to relate emotionally decreases as they get older. Do you kind of know when that starts and how, to what degree this happens? So I think it starts right from birth, actually, that process of like masculinization. and dessocialization. But there is research that shows that, like at age four, boys and girls

actually have similar-ish levels of empathy, but the gap widens and widens and widens as they get older. And so by adolescence, it's really quite a big gap. And that suggests that there's a big socialization piece to it. And I think what I've found since this book has come out in the world, I thought, you know, this book, it's called Boy Mom. I thought only women will read this book. I've just accepted this that it's got the word mom in the title, so no, men will read it. But actually, men have been coming to me. And I've been having a lot of emails from men saying, actually, I feel very seen by this. And I really want more connection in my life.

I didn't have the words to articulate it, but this has really helped me to understand what's happened. To be fair, the men reading your book, probably a bunch of nerds like me, but whatever, you take the sample where you can get it, right? No, it's true, though. there's really a lot in there where I was like, oh yeah, that definitely relates to me, relates to my kids, relates to my circle of friends. I know earlier we talked about failure to launch. So this is the guy in the basement watching porn and playing video games. Why is this increasing? What's going on here? So I think there are a lot of things going on there. And some of them are old problems and some of them

are new problems. So I think that sort of old problem is what we've talked about, which is like we don't teach boys those kind of relational social skills. And I think we give boys this notion that they're this main character syndrome, this kind of hero's journey, that they have to be this special, stunning, amazingly successful, emotionally bulletproof, physically tough, action hero. Yeah. And it's this like standard of impossible masculinity that they have to live up to. And I think it does two things. I think it makes them feel a little entitled. So I think it makes them feel like I'm too good and too special to do all the boring things like my laundry and study for my social studies test or whatever. So a little bit entitled, but also a little bit

inadequate, that feeling of like shame that there's this standard that they have to live up to that they're never going to quote me. And this was like a really pervasive theme with the boys that I talked to that they felt that there was this like gap. The standard that they were supposed to aspire to was impossible to me. And they were never going to get there. Any human, no actual human will ever get there because it's like a caricature. It's like this action hero, tough guy that, you know, there's always going to be this loss. And so I think partly boys are becoming more avoidant. So now we're in the digital era. So they have this other option to kind of avoid real life in that way, to avoid those sort of tedious things. They do have the option to like be in their room,

like playing video games, which they are able to live out those like hero fantasies in video games. It's not real, but they can embody that character, be that person. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about the video games replacing the real life hero's journey. I just thought it was like a, you know, escapist thing, which it is, but. I think it's both. It's like. It plugs in really well.

Yeah, it taps into those feelings of, I can't be this in real life. But here I have this opportunity to like be this thing that everyone's telling me that I'm meant to be. And also the digital, I think that we have a very difficult story that we're telling boys at the moment. So I call it this little microgeneration of boys, which is the boys who were going through puberty when the Me Too movement kicked off are now like 18, 19 college age. And so they've had their whole adolescence sort of in the shadow of this conversation about toxic masculinity, that they're harmful. I think we're in this state of flux.

So on the one hand, all those old expectations of masculinity and be tough, be strong, be dominant, make the first move, you know, all of that. they're still very much in circulation. But then there's this other whole way that they're supposed to be, which is be quiet, men, you've had your turn, time to be silent, you're so privileged. And also, you have to be extremely cautious, you must never come off like a creep. And it's so fraught for boys. I think they're just finding it easier to just, especially when it comes to sex and relationships, to avoid the whole thing altogether. They have the option to just watch porn in a way that no generation did before. And real world sex comes with so much cost and so many fraught feelings that it's easier just to avoid it. I think you're right. I mean, looking at some of the notes from your book about consent and stuff like that. I mean, obviously, sex should be consensual. I feel the need to put that disclaimer on here.

Yeah, but there's a lot of stuff that happened in college where I laugh about it. Like the women that I still am in touch with, we kind of laugh about it and stuff now. But I'm like, oh, you know, if we weren't totally well-adjusted normal people, one of us, could have said that sexually assaulted the other one. Because I remember, like, being really drunk and my girlfriend basically, like, just, you know, doing whatever. And then we kind of, like, laughed about it. But, you know, technically sexual assault. Right. You know, I'm technically a victim of sexual assault.

But, like, nobody cared back then. It was just kind of like, and. Yeah, no, I know. We didn't have the language for it. I mean, I look back similarly and, you know, something that absolutely would have been viewed as, like, a rape now. Back then was just, like, having sex. Right.

drunk sex, right? But if gender rules were reversed and it wasn't your girlfriend, it's like, okay. And then there's a lot of gray area that happens. And so I'm not arguing one thing or another. What I am saying is I can totally understand why a college age male who watches maybe his best friend lose his wrestling scholarship for something like that, which is what happened at my high school, you just go, I'm not doing any of that. I'm not getting involved in that.

Yeah. So that was a really big theme that came up with the boys that I interviewed. They were really scared of this. And in one sense, I absolutely support. Of course, I want to be so clear that of course it's important we teach boys about consent and that sex is consensual and it's enthusiastic and all of those things. But I think that they, in some ways, boys just don't know how to behave sexually or like in relationships or in the world because on the one hand it's like be masculine, be dominant, make the first move,

be a real man. They're still being told all that. And the other one, it's like, don't ever overstep because you'll be seen as a creep. Or you'll go to jail or lose you. Or you'll go to jail or lose you or whatever. And so I think a lot of them are just like, actually, it's just easier for me to just avoid this. So it's never been harder to have sex in the real world. And it's never been easier to like get it online.

So the combination. That's a really good point. Lots of focus on the negatives of masculinity as opposed to the positives. I'm not one of those guys who thinks, well, I think there's plenty of people who agree with me. I do not think manliness is inherently toxic. And I don't think. No, do I? I know you don't.

But here's sort of the. the straw man that I think a lot of people do is they hear the term toxic masculinity and they go, oh, so being masculine is toxic. Nobody said that, Mr. Reading comprehension. Nobody said that. But, you know, fine. But then they seize on that, right? And then it's like, oh, so I get it.

You just cut our balls right off, Ruth. You know, it's that kind of conversation. Right. And you want us to be women. Yeah. And I think it's a really bad faith read of what I'm trying to say. Because I think the phrase toxic masculinity in its moment, I think, was an important phrase that named a phenomenon that we all recognize the Weinsteins, all of the terrible things that came

up at the time of Me Too, that phrase sort of had its moment that named a problem that was very real and is still very real. But I think it's maybe outlived its youthfulness because I think it ends up shutting down conversations. And I think boys, especially like, you're talking about children, essentially, who are growing up in the shadow of this idea that they are inherently harmful, that they're just like these predators in waiting, that we're just wets. We're just waiting for them to, like, assault somebody. And, like, the best you can do as their mom is to, like, limit the damage. It's not a positive message. It's a harm reduction message. And I think that's a really psychologically unhealthy way to grow up. Hey, Incells, you might never be able to get

your hands on a woman, but you can get your hands on something from the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals.

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with Ruth Whitman. I know many people think we shouldn't focus on men at all, but on groups that have been traditionally marginalized. Okay, I'm sympathetic. to that a little bit, but then we're just marginalizing men. And it doesn't matter that men have had advantages throughout history. There's men suffering now as per the data that you present in the book. So like, what are we supposed to do? Be like, sorry, child who's maladjusted. Your ancestors

owned land in England. So fuck you, right? Right. Exactly. And also I think that, yes, male privilege is real and men have had advantages, absolutely. But that same system also brings harms to them as well. So what I said in the book is that men have everything except the thing that's most worth having, which is human connection. So it's like men have had access to power and to money and to status and all of those things, which are all important and we need to expand access to that. But they haven't had that deep access to that intimacy, emotionality, that kind of world. And so I think privilege and harm, they go together.

It's not a simple thing. And I agree with you. I think this idea of, okay, you've had your time to be quiet. It's not helpful to anyone. Raising emotionally healthy and well-adjusted men helps everybody. One thing that I noticed that maybe was around when I was a kid. I mean, we had He-Man and stuff, Superman. Body shapes for men have been changing in media.

And I know that women have been dealing with this since the dawn of television and film, right? Probably. Yes. Or pay the Renaissance. People were painting women's ideal body shapes. And I don't know if guys had that same problem, I'm sure. Sculptures. This was a real surprise to me.

When the guys started talking about this and when I looked at the research, I was like, oh, I didn't realize this. Because like you, I've been like, oh, this is a problem for women. You know, we've always dealt with these, like, body pressures. And every woman I know has some version of this. But yeah, so the kind of ideal body shape for men has been, like, pumping up and increasing and increasing. And like, now you see it in toys, like action figures.

You see it in like CGI superheroes on. screen that, you know, it used to be, you see it in online fitness influences, that it used to be like, G.I. Joe, that action figure, didn't even have defined abs back in the 60s, but now he's this, like, jacked huge muscles, this ripped physique. Same with the Marvel superheroes. And so I think boys now are feeling like more body image pressure than ever before. And there's all these online influencers that are saying to them, do this weight training regime. And they will never be able to look like a CGI superhero because that's not a human being. And so I think a lot of boys are developing versions of eating disorders and are having, it's this caricatured vision of masculinity that

is becoming increasingly normalized. Look, this stuff, if you think about it, it goes back more and more. Michaelangelo's David is, what, 500 and some years old. And that guy will make you feel insecure, depending on what part you're looking at, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So, So it's very interesting, though, to see this parallel with men almost at parody. I won't say we're quite there because I think women deal with this crazy amounts of this. Yeah. Even from other women, whereas guys, I think they might make fun of a guy who looks like a weakling, but I think it wouldn't ruin your life, really, especially if you were like a good rock climber,

but you were not as good. Do you see these guys like Liver King? Have you heard of this guy? No, I have not. Oh, man, let me do you a favor. Google Liver King. Yeah. I don't know if I want to get a...

This is a guy who eats raw organs, and he takes a shitload of steroids, but he lied about taking steroids, and he tells people that it's his supplement line that's giving him these muscles. I mean, this guy's like 50% parasites, and clearly some of them have rotted this man's brain because it's really obvious that he is doing a ton of steroids, but the whole idea, he's not the only one who's just looking like some kind of Frankenstein of a human,

like an action figure or a video game character. And it's really unhealthy. It's really something unhealthy to aspire to. It's really, really gross. It's so true. And obviously there's like a healthy version of it, which is like, gets to be strong, you know, get healthy, all of that. But there's all these masculinity influences and it comes with varying degrees of, like,

weirdness and varying degrees of misogyny and all these other sorts of things. But this is a very real, like, media landscape for boys who are growing up now. This is what they're expected to be. Well, the rise of Andrew Tate, this even. This even surprised me, and I've got a history of being online forever, and, you know, I was really at the forefront of the whole, like, pickup artist thing back when that was a thing. So you'd think I would have seen everything, but when I saw him, I assumed that it was satire. Me too, yeah.

It took me knowing somebody who knows him to swear to me after a couple of whiskeys that this was not just satirical nonsense and a guy playing a character, and he's like, no, this is real, He has a ton of followers. And I just thought this is completely ridiculous. And then it sort of made its way, I was a couple months before the real tsunami of Andrew Tate content. It shows me how lost men really are and how much hope men have lost. I'm not jumping on the Tate hate bandwagon here. I'm more worried about why some of what he says, even when taken out of context, if you need to do that, is resonating so strongly with a certain growing cohort of young men. I will be the first to admit that there's some things that he says about business.

or whatever, like, going for what you want in life that make perfect sense, fine. But there's a lot of just obviously misogynistic stuff. And it's, you would think guys would go, yeah, that's a bridge too far. But they're not. They're just swallowing. They're not. It's not a deal breaker. No.

And I think Tate is like a really good example of some of the things that we've been talking about because by the time, like, what we get to the like Tate age, they are primed to receive his message because they've already been told, you know, be a superhero. you need to be an alpha male, that you need to be this tough guy. He uses all these tropes of boyhood. So he uses like the superhero language all the time. I'm Batman. I'm in a bat cave.

This caricatured vision. And we've sold boys that idea right from the beginning that they need to be this thing. It's this impossible thing to achieve. They fail all this shame. Suddenly this guy comes along. He prays on their insecurities. He's like, you need to be this in order to have worth and I'm going to help you be it. And so they're like, yes, please.

because otherwise I feel worthless. And he actually, in his videos, he does this thing where he's like, men have no worth unless they do these things. And he says that explicitly. And I think it preys on this very natural insecurity in boys and young men that they need this thing in order to have worth. And therefore he's there to give it to them. And I think it's similar to the way that like diet culture often works for women is like,

you're told this myth, which is like, you need to be thin and have this perfect body in order to have any worth. And here we are and we can help you get it. And no one's challenging the basic premise that that is what gives you worth. They're just like, oh, okay, well, yes, if I can just have that diet or those supplements or whatever, then finally I will be worthy. He pulls out all of those tropes, all of those things that they've been primed to receive. I'm going to throw you a curveball.

What do you think Andrew Tate gets right? So what I think he speaks to is the thing that you said, which is this idea that things can be better. He gives hope. And mix in with his crazy misogyny. And I agree with you. There are some things that really do seem very sensible and make perfect sense. And you're like, what could we possibly argue with about that? He has some things about CBT. He has some things about emotional regulation. He has some things about agency and going for what you want. And all of which are very fine and sensible messages. But I think it's just embedded in this kind of partly ludicrous stuff, partly really harmful stuff. I feel like this conversation would not be complete without touching on the whole in-cell phenomenon. And ironically, not touching on in-cells is what creates incels in the first place. But let's define what an in-cell is.

I think a lot of people have heard of this, but surely some are new to the term. Yeah, so in-cell stands for involuntary celibate. So it's these guys who want to have sex, but they can't for whatever reason. It's an online movement. and at its fringes, it's been associated with a lot of really extreme violence. So the sort of violent fringe of this has been some of the major school shootings, some of the mass shootings. There was Elliot Roger who was went and shot a bunch of people outside a sorority house

at UC Santa Barbara. So there is that fringe. But mainly it's just a bunch of very lonely, very depressed guys who hang out online and talk to each other. I spent some time in-sell spaces online on their message boards and their servers and all the rest of it. And then I went deeper doing some interviews with Incells directly, two of which feature in quite a lot of detail in the book. It was a really interesting and challenging experience, honestly, doing those interviews. And I had my preconceptions challenged quite a lot

with it. Yeah, tell me how. Well, partly I think most of the Insol movement is not violent. They're way more likely to actually harm themselves than to harm anybody else. You know, They're very, very depressed and suicide rates are very high in this group. So they're like considered to be part of the manosphere, you know, they're sort of including like masculinity influences and the pickup artists. But the difference between the incels and those other guys is that the Andrew Tates of this world are all about hope, often false hope, but this you can be an alpha male, masculinity is this hierarchy and you can climb to the top if you just do all the right things.

Whereas the incels have just given up. They believe there is such a thing as an alpha male. They call him a Chad, but they have just like given up on any hope that they will ever climb the ladder themselves. And I think that that can go in a couple of different directions. So in some ways, because they have given up on being part of that hierarchy of ever climbing that ladder, in some ways they felt quite freed to behave in ways that men often don't behave in real life.

So what I was really surprised to find, so the in-cell spaces have a lot of toxic hate speech, misogyny, violent speech, whatever. But they also have all this like tenderness and brotherhood and support in a way that men often aren't able to be in real life. So the interviews that I did with individual insults both said that they found real like belonging and connection and tenderness in those spaces, like real brotherhood almost. In some ways it was like I had been searching, all these interviews with men are boys and I've been looking for a place where men could feel or boys could feel emotionally open with each other. And I did not expect to find it in like toxic masculinity central in the heart of the inside movement. But actually, in some ways, they were more emotionally open

than most men, which was really surprising. But the other thing that felt like was happening is that they were dealing with so much shame. You know, it's this idea of emasculation that they can never meet society's standards for impossible masculinity. And what I realized is that there is a lot of research on this that it's not masculinity that makes men violent, it's shame, the shame of not feeling masculine enough. And there's all these studies on it that men who suffer from what they call masculine discrepancy stress, so it's this idea that they're not masculine enough. Men who suffer from that are way more likely to be violent in all areas of violence. So intimate partner violence, sexual violence, assault with a weapon, all of these different

types of violence, they come from a core of shame. And I think you can really see that in the in-cell movement. The in-cell thing is quite, I had kind of a front-row seat to this because I did a show a long time ago that was exclusively about dating and it was like kind of at the forefront of the pickup artist thing. And my audience largely knows this, but we were kind of like the white hat guys where we're like, hey, these other guys are teaching you to lie. We didn't even say red pill because it wasn't really a thing yet. But it was like, the other guys are teaching you had to lie and pretend you have status. We're teaching you how to build status. As I got older and got married, it became far less interesting, as you might imagine, but the dating thing started there, but there were guys who

just, like, couldn't get it. And they were like, look, this won't work for me because I have a deformity, or I'm too short and too fat, or I have this thing going on that's just, or I've depressed, or I have mental health issues. So these guys retreated into this message board system. Yeah. And we used to monitor it for our names, because my name would pop up in there, and I would look, and it would be something kind of horrible. But then another person who I knew in the industry's name would pop up in there. Well, that's where Elliot Roger was hanging out online before he killed all those people. And they ended up shutting down the message board because I think the guy who ran it got a call from the FBI or something like that and freaked him out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's been happening a lot.

It has. Yeah. And so this, they call Blackpill ideology. So this is not Red Pill anymore where you see the truth. This is Blackpill, which is like, we hate women and we hate normal guys because then we hate ourselves just a little bit less. Yeah, it's this sort of hopelessness. So the red pill is this thing of, we've seen the like, men are the oppressed ones and feminists and they're the enemy. But the black pill philosophy, which is the in-cell philosophy, is basically like, this is all genetically predetermined.

Whether you're like an alpha male, this Chad, they call them, who gets all the women, or like a beta male, which is like second in line, or like an insul which is like down at the bottom, it's all predetermined by your genes. There's nothing you can do about it. It's like all founded on this. kind of hopelessness. And then also, women are terrible and the only people we can oppress are women, so we're going to do that. Again, it's the entitlement and inadequacy. It's both of those things going on. So it's like, we're entitled to women's bodies and women are terrible and they

should be giving us their desire and their sex, and they're not real people that might want to decide for themselves who they are attracted to. The shame violence connection is really interesting. I'm actually planning on doing, I think, a whole show about mass shooters, because as you may have noticed, they're usually male. Oh, yeah. But also, it's a whole thing, like, a way to regain status, which this is like the last way for them to get status because they're not going to ever get it in some other way, according to them.

Yes. And it's terrifying. And not just status. It's like masculine status. So it's like masculinity. And this was the thing with Elliot Roger and going back to the superhero tropes. Like his whole manifesto, his whole video was in this like superhero, supervillain language. And he even like has their like inflection.

He has this YouTube video where he's talking about, I am the true alpha male. I will reclaim that status. You've taken it from me. And he talks like he's a comic book supervillain. I think gun violence, people have very easy access to guns now. And so it's this idea that you've lost your masculine status and you can reclaim it in this like easy, splashy way that just takes care of it once and for all. And they have this fantasy.

It is based on shame. Again, we set up this impossible standard for them to. meet and then when they don't meet it, there is shame in that. The more I read about that case, the more interesting it gets. So his mother, I don't know if you've seen this, his mothers recently started speaking out about mass shooters, which is a very brave thing to do. And she's not deflecting in any way. And she's just talking about like signs I missed for other parents.

Really interesting. But when you read the timeline of what this guy did beforehand, he had dinner with his mom and sister and it was fine. And it was just like very strange. but there's a psychological element. There's an article in a magazine called Mother Jones, which is like this very sort of left-leaning article. It's really interesting.

It's fascinating. The reason he was so calm at that dinner, because his mom's like, oh, he's doing well. He's so much more relaxed. It's because he's accepted what he's about to do, which is kill all these people. But shortly before that, he had been at some place

and he had tried to push a girl off of a porch, but she flung him off the porch, and he fell and, like, everyone laughed at him. Oh, wow. So you can see. This shame title. Yeah.

You can see the villain origin story just taking shape. Yes. As this article in Mother Jones describes it. And then he just, that was like the turning point. You know, you can almost see if this were a movie, he's looking in the mirror and he's cutting himself or something. And then he starts laughing maniacally and goes out and buy his guns and plans how to kill his roommates and everything.

It's just totally bizarre. Right. It's fascinating. And I think what I found when I was interviewing these incels is like, it's not this fringe, weird phenomenon. It's just the sort of extreme, but kind of quite logical conclusion of a lot of the messages that we're giving to boys about impossible masculinity, about shame, entitlement and inadequacy.

It's all there in these incels, but it's just a very extreme version of what's been going on elsewhere. I don't know if you use Reddit, but there was at one time a whole subreddit full of notes from incels, and a lot of them were suicide notes. So one of the incels that I interviewed, he was like, Would you like to read these suicide notes? And I was like, well, no, not really, because that sounds awful.

But then at the same time, I was really compelled. Because I think what he was trying to say to me is like, these guys' last words are not generally, I hate women, women are terrible, even though there is a lot of that stuff on the boards. But it was really like, I hate myself. There was just this profound sense of depression and shame. And so I did read a bunch of these suicide notes. And it's the same things. It's the shame.

and it's the feeling of hopelessness, and it's also the feeling of brotherhood with these in-cell guys. They all thank their in-cell brothers. They're like, without you guys, I wouldn't have been able to go on as much as I have. So I think they're desperate for this belonging and connection. They're finding it there in these spaces. They're not finding it elsewhere. They've got these impossible standards of masculinity. They feel entitled to women, but they can't have them. So it's all of these things that are there in the wider culture is just a very extreme version of it. And I think with boys and mental health problems, this is a huge thing. Male mental health problems are underreported for exactly the same reason that they exist in the

first place, which is that men can't connect, they can't express their emotions. So when the survey taker saying, are you depressed? They're like, no, we're fine. So it gets marked down as somebody not being depressed. So there's this like invisible crisis of male mental health problems that we see in these online spaces. Ruth, thank you so much as a parent, of young kids, I do think this is a super important conversation for folks. Look, even people with older grown kids are certainly going to have thoughts and opinions on this as well because they've watched all this happen and maybe have thought, I've dodged this bullet or we had different bullets to dodge. And for those without kids, I guess this is what you have to look forward

to. So enjoy that. Do you want to leave us with something positive? Yeah. There's plenty of positive. Well, you know what? I thought, you know, there were many, many dark parts of reporting this book and many, many unhoateful things. But the thing that I found really hopeful, actually, was that when I spoke to the boys themselves, they were up against a lot of really difficult things, but I talked to many, many boys. And they were so smart and thoughtful and reflective and articulate. And they were so great. And they really wanted to talk. They wanted to share this stuff with me. I thought they would be these monosyllabic grunting lumps. They were not at all. They were extremely thoughtful. So they gave me hope for the future. I think they're willing to

talk. I think if we're willing to listen to them and hear them and not shut them down in all of these different ways, then I think that we can make some real changes. I felt hopeful that we can change these stories. It's complex. It's not simple. None of this is simple, but I think we can make some real change. Ruth, thank you once again very much. It's been such a pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show. Join us as Adam Gamal, a Muslim Arab American and former Egyptian refugee recounts his rise to become a key operative of one of the U.S.'s most secretive military units in this two-part podcast series. In part one, Adam delves into the high-stakes world of counterterrorism and covert operations, revealing the personal and ethical complexities of fighting

terrorism from within the shadows. I came to the U.S. to give me the right to dream. In Egypt, you don't have that option. It's not cliche. I'm not trying to recruit people to join the army, but I was like, here is a key, actually, to be as American as anybody can argue with you. and it was joining the military. You end up there by pure determination, by having grit, and by being a bit lucky. So we were basically getting our tasks from Secretary of Defense level,

joining Special Operation Command in charge of three main missions, counter-narcotic, counter-terrorism, and hostage rescue. I believe myself, if my dad did not push me towards getting the right education, then maybe I would have went in the room direction. So education is going to help,

people prosper, they're going to help people actually critically analyze the information they are receiving. So when somebody's bullshitting them about, hey, if you go to the bathroom with your right foot, not your left foot, you're going to hell. If you have an educated person going to look at him and say, you know what, man, this doesn't make any fucking sense. And then I believe to educating women is crucial because they are raising us. A lot of people spend more time with their moms than with their dad because they nurture us and they do all of these things. So if we have a population of educated women in the Middle Eastern and any of these countries, I think these countries will prosper. And it would be harder to convince these guys to become tourists.

Businesses war and business is good. When we give people the proper education, we all live a better life. Tune in to uncover his unique journey and critical insights only he can provide on episode 978 of the Jordan Harbinger show. There's a lot to think about here, man. Many schools are kind of complicit in this. boys, social or emotional issues as behavior issues, as opposed to kind of trying to develop them socially and emotionally. We actually give them discipline instead of care. Jen and I were really careful about selecting a school that was big on what's called social emotional learning,

especially with boys. It seems like for a lot of guys, and I'm talking about adults too, gaming really has replaced socializing. Young boys, this is obviously a bigger problem. It's not just screen time. It's chatting and gaming, not doing any real connecting, because the interactions are mostly focused on the actual game itself. Also something we didn't get to, which I kind of wanted to, the pornification of sex. A lot of men and women are complaining about this to me because a lot of men's kind of exclusive sexual experience

up to a point, and then the vast majority of it even after they're not a virgin anymore, is sort of related to porn, really. And man, I got to say this makes me feel old. We were just not doing that kind of crap. Well, not much of it anyway, winks directly to camera, But yeah, this is something that I just think is probably destroying relationships. And we're going to see some studies on this coming out pretty soon if they're not out already

that are going to show some serious damage from this kind of stuff, from overexposure to this kind of stuff at a young age. If anybody out there knows about this, I'm thinking about doing a show about this. So I am all ears. I don't know if I can do a show about it. I think I can. I got to do it in a classy way. But I got to do it because I think this is a really big deal. And, you know, as a guy who doesn't consume that kind of stuff, I think that that has only been good for me.

I got to figure out how to discuss that without grossing everybody out. So there you have it. All things Ruth Whitman will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show. All at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The whole point of this newsletter, we wanted to give you something specific and practical

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including Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends and you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who is a parent of young kids, boys or girls, interested in these sorts of topics, definitely share this episode with him. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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