What A Feminist Has To Say About Masculinity - Christine Emba

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 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 Reeves book I've been following Scott gallo 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 like really surprised to see it in a mainstream publication too and also at length I will admit that it is quite long um 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 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 going oh so you think that such and such it's like no obviously not yeah yeah you have to leave space for all of the caveats and the like not necessarily shout outs to different groups like and we're acknowledging that this kind of man and like that kind of woman etc etc but I mean it was also long for me at least and honestly it was longer my editors did cut it down because there are just so many different threads um that are coming together in this question uh 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 moments 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 Richard wrote a book what is happening with men nowadays well we I mean we throw around the the phrase the crisis of masculinity um but I 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 um but they have not necessarily been so great for men especially working classmen 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 um 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 bachelor's degrees that women get men only get 70 before and you know 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 and left school were men um you can look at health statistics so you know we've talked about deaths of Despair that's from suicide alcohol-induced illness or drug overdose three out of four deaths of Despair are men um 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 men at you know the top of the economic ladder um and 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 sort of 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 you know there are these kind of traditional archetypes that men used to play in our society of you know protector provider especially and now 50 of women say they make as much as or more than their partner um women can have children by themselves through artificial reproductive technology um 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 what does it mean to be a man actually and so a lot of young men especially are feeling as I said lost um 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 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 Brawn base to a brain-based economy credentialism is much more important now conscientious and excuse female girls are better at sitting still through the time that the 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 Masters level seven times more men dropped out of college during covert than women did so you know all of these things on top has created um a structural environment in which men aren't exactly thriving and then this sort of second punch has been a loss culturally I think of their position of what does it mean to be a man you know if gender is Up For Debate and if you're 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 do 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 you know 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 they feel like they're not really getting much sympathy um 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 manner sort of being made to pay for the sins of the advantages of their fathers and grandfathers whilst not really feeling like they get any themselves now yeah I 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 set our culture has also shifted um and I think many of these ships have been good things again like it's it's great that we've recognized that you know sexual assault is real but you need to get consent the metoo movement was a good thing um it outed a lot of predators at the same time I think especially in in media culture and in Progressive spaces frankly there's been this reflexive push to say you know the future is female men suck like men are garbage masculinity is toxic um those are kind of acceptable things to to say now and you know telling somebody that the person they are like that they are toxic um obviously doesn't make them feel good obviously doesn't make them feel accepted by uh society and you know when you say okay men are toxic men are toxic masculinity is toxic what's what's the alternative like 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 schlub he lives in his mom's basement and just simply something 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 um and I feel like this 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 is often filled by Bad actors it's also not really I think Fair actually um but you were gonna say something yeah just that Richard Reeves again talked about this he taught me about this over a year ago now uh 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 I need to be exercised of my toxic masculinity what do you think what like 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 you know putting forward the um a positive view for men has been as uh 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 uh the difference between the two Mulan films is a perfect example of this in the first one she's small and and not as strong but she's crafty and she she works harder and she overcomes and she uses her size to her advantage and through hard work and 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 Milan 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 doctor strange film where the uh 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 it's been this very interesting like men and women have almost sort of like passed each other and high-fived or maybe not high-fived on the way past um 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 um pedestalization yeah that's that's such an interesting example I mean I did a lot of interviews with young men for this piece um 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 um and where he saw messages about how to be a man and he was like you know I see all of 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 I hear as a man like men 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 on to something too when you talk about this sort of almost thin thin veneer that is on some of these aspirational messages that are that are given to women I think one other thing that we see in our Our Moment our modern moment is an ethos of gender neutrality um 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 one and I find that rather grating because I 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 and there's lots of overlap in sort of personality traits and physical traits and things that the 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 yeah it's it's so uh you're right to say as well 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 but 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 basically 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 its extroversion it's conscientiousness and it's 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 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 men and women equal and trying to make men and women the same it's aiming for androgyny 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 uh esteem 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 yeah precisely yeah so I wrote a book um rethinking sex a provocation it came out last spring um 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 girl boss 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 men 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 you're just like picking up the same things instead of being respected for like your your actual self and that hasn't been healthy for women either um but when the same thing is asked if 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 and I know that you're friends with Louise Perry and Mary Harrington um and I was chatting to both of them a lot over the last year about this very topic and you know the 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 equal from Beyond equality into uh retribution I think that they they feel like feminism uh and it seems to me like there is a 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 um upper hands culturally that that could perhaps be used to push uh a particular sort of narrative and it doesn't surprise me that that men feel like dispossessed 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 going back to sort of the the conversation the cultural milieu around this why why are people struggling to advocate for the problems of poison men so easily well so really quickly just there are some data points that actually totally support your thesis about this that's retributive I knew it I knew it wasn't just Bro Science I knew it wasn't yeah no I mean a recent survey came out that showed that um 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 so gnz the the like consideration 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 um but that kind of leads to to your next question you know why is this discourse so hard to have in society um 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 um I think that there is first of all an unfortunate tendency in politics and American politics specifically to view things as very zero sum um 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 really fragile you know as we saw uh when the Dobbs decision came down and abortion rights were rolled back um 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 covet 19. so there's this feeling that like okay we've 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 going to get anything anymore we're not going to focus on them and so there's a resistance to changing the focus because it's dude like we can either help one sex or help the other I don't think that's true in fact I think that the Sexes rely on each other to to support each other and if one is in its flop era the other one's going to be in trouble too um I also think that there is an unfortunate like mixed Association so the right has really um like the political right has kind of been first to the men question um 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 it's 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 it's one of the advantages uh of a black woman that you know you are able to make say things without uh jumping through quite so many Hoops or caveats then I would with the way that I present right every single time that I 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 Andrew Tate I'm like look I am I am that's right so I am so blue pilled in the eyes of manosphere that I I'm a cook but I'm so bigoted in the eyes of Guardian readers that I'm unspeakable so really really managing to to slice through the middle there but that's another reason why even though 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 despite 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 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 began to feel that I 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 to be taken seriously um but at the same time I kind of am feeling a little bit of blowback for men who read the piece they're like what a woman talking about a men's business she has she knows nothing I'm not gonna read this and it's it's like funny to get that response from from both sides so it's I can only imagine actually trying to be taken seriously a male disadvantage the male disadvantage that you're facing here some toxic misandry yeah so this is something that I've noticed a lot right um especially over the last couple of months why is it the case that the conversation about masculinity and 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 no it's like seven articles seven different essays not single man anywhere on there like you know and also the fact that your piece has resonated so much suggests 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 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 Andrew Tate is that are you the thin end of the wedge so that this conversation you're a gateway drug you're a gateway drug yeah I don't I don't I hope not but maybe I don't know um that's a that is a really interesting question um and it's something that honestly I want to sit with in more detail I have a okay what I'm gonna say now is theoretical um so this is just like me spinning on a class no science that's fine that's the best fight chick science Girl science um whatever you find yeah uh so I think that when you're looking for examples of positive masculinity um 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 like that's kind of not what they do they're just sort of they go about their business um so that's one thing and often the people in the manosphere like the loudest people the Andrew Tates and to some extent Jordan Peterson who really you know started from a place where I was like oh interesting and now is maybe a little off the rails um you note that they are kind of unusual rather attention wanting figures and that is that is why they are in public um I would also say perhaps that it has something to do with just media culture overall um 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 um that space seems to be heavier on the female lens than other spaces might be um and then let's see what was what was my last my last take on this one um I mean in general I also think that not not necessarily in the media space but in general um and sorry if this is very gender essentialistic 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 that's women's studies and it's just about how identities are formed what they look like um and my senses that men don't spend as much time thinking in the abstract about like what do our friendships and communities look like like what is the space here um and so like that sort of analysis often false women 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 like what is going on with men exactly we need to figure that out because they're really kind of either acting up or not acting at all like became very obvious to women who are like trying to date men and being 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 started thinking about this earlier in some sense there's some there's some incredible percentage of psychologists that are female it's like like 70 plus percent I think of psychologists to female and broadly the the closest area I think that we're talking to around this is in the world of evolutionary psychology it's behavioral genetics it's social sciences you know it's the integration of what we are and the world culture how does that all work and you know that I guess maybe is even in terms of Academia dominated by women I would I wouldn't disagree that women probably do have a uh 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 than it is thingsy um but I I also agree that the the conversation about dating was what got me into the thinking about masculinity and men's issues too and you touch on this really really well in your piece which is um 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 why that while those same women may be sort of carrying the cards in the placards saying that they want more of them around it's a very odd sort of um 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 Galloway said something like that I cringed in recognition um and this is something that's come up as I've 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 etc etc and then the guys are like do you really because it kind of seems like women always date Bad Boys um and I don't actually think that that's exactly true but they're there there is something to the limits do as I say not as I do maybe that's not that's not exactly as I do not as I say yeah basically yeah it's funny there's um a friend of mine who's a writer uh 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 opens doors and like is works out whatever it's like maybe you need to start dating conservatives that's a conservative that's what a conservative is called yeah well you saw that article when uh super viral 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 salmon she looked at the um front cover models of dark romance um you know you have Fifty Shades of Gray 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 I went through everything really 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 it'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 um 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 like that's so amazing I'm like no mum I'm not having you read this dark romance thing with me on the front of your son anyway we are sidetracked by a disgusting image um 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 you know Lumberjack men or like the like big buff policemen 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 um women to uphold and pedestalize 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 you know like men too like she's for the streets is all well and good if it's not for a one-night stand right like she's not for the streets if she's ready willing and able so both men and women um 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 right like there are certain things that women may even optimize against like the hyper masculine side the super disagreeable man may be very sexually arousing but not super uh useful to being a long-term relationship with because it would probably do your heading 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 um I think you know we talk about our society and there is a sort of a bias towards and I think in in some ways this can be a good bias towards inclusivity towards a sort of non-gendered like open rolled uh 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 wanna I wanna date another I want to date a feminist you know like I I want to date someone who is evolved I need to date a man who goes to therapy is that actually true you you may not be true but like who's going to go out there in public and say like yeah I want to 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 this sort of like people who talk about like the men problem it's like oh are you one of questionable it's a branding problem that's what the manosphere fundamentally doesn't need to do more YouTube live streams what it needs is to hire a marketing agency that's to have 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 yeah you 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 um later this week with a guy called George who runs the Tin Men on Instagram British British dude Unapologetic from the left presents in a like not super masculine way uh 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 like 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 like 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 in this sort of conversation in the fight between something and nothing something is always going to win like it may be a very bad something but like you're not offering anything else then of course people go to what's on offer um and yeah what's on offer right now is like pretty bad it's not even I mean when you talk about Andrew Kate it's or entertain it's not just he talked about his Bugattis it's that he's a literal sex trafficker but again alleged sex trafficker Christine sure that's true that's true I am a journalist he is an alleged sex trafficker um and also admits it in his own words but um yeah who is who is the opposing figure that you're telling men to 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 you're 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 and sex drive Etc what about the men who don't fit into that you know and I had a great debate with um my colleague Jonathan capart 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 mentalness 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 masculinity and 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 masculinity 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 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 in some form as well so it's an interesting sort of blend of yeah exactly and I could see he had this concept called The Man box that I thought was really interesting and he said that basically the man box 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 um 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 right I can totally see that yeah totally 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 for 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 is me specifically but it's also clear that like you're a man and I am a woman so there's those are just going to 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 um that I found reading responses to this piece like we only have comments open for three days and there were ten thousand five hundred comments on this piece nuts Did you sort it by most liked almost commented did you see what that top one was um I haven't today what what's the top one the top one today it seems like it's been around for a long time so I'm gonna guess that you'll have seen this one was um I don't know what you're talking about this doesn't resonate with me at all that yes so that was what I was going to say they're like comments from I think more like older men not old men but like men in there maybe 40s and 50s so many of them are like I don't know what the problem is with masculine like I'm fine and it's the younger man 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 is specific to younger men because when you're younger you simply don't know as much and so you kind of need a road map 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 it's 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 um 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 you'll 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 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 etc etc but you start from here and I worry sometimes that you know the push is that like well everyone is so different like there is no Baseline exactly what you're a good person I'm not a good man yeah and that doesn't tell you anything yeah no I 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 the in your piece but I don't know whether you came across the term no okay so I I think that you explain um if there is something which is ardently pro-female it's very heavily gendered if there's something that's oddly Pro male it gets desexed right and the reverse is also true so um a male killer male serial killer if if it was a female which you probably almost certainly wouldn't be but um if it was a female it would it regularly gets desexed this is by John Barry from the center for um 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 too because that's we're still living in a world where the culture presumes that success of women is a an outlier or an aberration what successful women serial killer um yeah but you you end up with this situation in which uh there is a vacuum of uh positive examples of masculinity he is this this really great example where um Sarah everard you remember that case it was in the UK it was this a woman who was horrifically uh sort of followed home and killed by a British police officer and there was you know candlelit vigils and people in the streets and 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 um 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 uploaded 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 you know we've ex 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 what is left as a a positive role model for men and as you said the formative year is a formative for a reason right 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 and you know like I I get up on time and I do the things 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 the stabilizers have been taken off and I can kind of weave my own life path with the understanding that I've got this these foundations behind me yeah yeah yeah no exactly I mean also one of the things that uh so I interviewed Richard Reeves 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 that this is 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 you know 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 um 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 um from this Landmark study by Raj Shetty and it was actually about economic Mobility um 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 poor performance of boys who were black but he found that if these boys lived in a neighborhood that had more fathers present and 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 the 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 a sort of daisies versus dandelions model where you know girls even when they're brought up in adverse circumstances tend to be pretty resilient and can bounce back you know their date they're dandelions they grow through the cracks they just like make it work but actually and perhaps 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 an older man Mal 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 come up 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 uh 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 father listeners 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 are 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 why that would be a much more shocking Revelation than it was but until we've got the data it's just bro signs but yeah I think um it 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 a age of social media ubiquity you are going to gravitate towards someone I know that I found this you know I got toward 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 wizard Druid looking Canadian psychology Professor on a bald 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 speak to like people like Sam Harris or a land about on 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 we're 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 um yeah it's I I 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 well go on at length um 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 want to stigmatize anyone but actually I'm 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's so much data that shows that children in 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 um but there is a reluctance I think among many commentators to say that um or to point out that that could be a problem because it's seen as stigmatizing you know to the single-parent households yeah and I mean that comes from sort of oversensitivity and also maybe just a a sort of acceptance that this seems to be more common like this is the way things are I guess um 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 an obviously important part of this problem um I interviewed as I said it 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 crappy 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 you know they're not sure but it it seems very clear and actually like there was one young man who I spoke to and I didn't get to include this part um in the essay but he was like yeah I had a shitty relationship with my 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 um this priest in my neighborhood uh 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 gonna care for him and be a model to him and teach him how to grow up um 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 you know like Barack Obama had the sort of 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 um I think also that this question of representation is important actually and actually this has become kind of a buzzword in Progressive and liberal space is 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 um there are very few male uh Primary School teachers and secondary school teachers there are actually very few male nurses as you said male psychologists and imagine if you're you know 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 U.S 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's so many women in them and that makes it harder to recruit men to those spaces but I don't know there has to be some way to do that there um yeah I mean those are those are just two things actually there are a number more but the role modeling yeah both of those are huge um a couple of the conversations I've had one with uh Max Rudd last year um this is a guy who was going to get married and I think he'd gone he's always had female friends um but you tend 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 going to wear and uh the girl friend that he was with said so who's going to be your best man and he said uh uh it'll come to me don't don't worry and he got home and he realized [ __ ] 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 um 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 at some higher sort of legal person but like okay that's true but if Downstream from that like working Men's Clubs and stuff and and men's sheds which is this initiative coming out of Australia where men older men um fix [ __ ] together and fixing [ __ ] together in a in a shed literally called men's sheds I'm sure it's coming out of Australia they just fix stuff so there'll be a a bench or a car or a lawnmower or something and these guys just come together because men Bond over doing stuff you know I see this in my own life I one of my best friends one of my longest standing friends who's my old business partner from my my nightclub days I'm still Incredibly Close I was a groomsman at his wedding all of this stuff but now that I do the podcast full time our relationship is in a different bucket it's it's one of 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 Richard Reeves thing right where he says yeah that uh what is it women women Bond face to face men Bond shoulders side by side yeah no that is that is actually the right third point that I was kind of forgetting it's that is kind of a cliche the side to side versus shoulder shoulder thing but I mean it's a cliche because it does seem 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 uh I do think that women spend more time face-to-face sort of therapizing 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 your problems like let's just like look at each other over some wine and like talk about our problems [Laughter] dangerous for one thing um but this the single the single spaces 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 um so I think the last big conversation about it was when the Boy Scouts um became open to all Sexes instead of just being the Boy Scouts and I actually think that we may look back on that um and realize that it was a mistake so like one of the reasons why it would be helpful to have more uh 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 Rook beef from a woman no guy no boy seven-year-old boy wants to learn rugby from they want to get code 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 like 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 that 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 procreator Paradigm like this is sort of the 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 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 a man and then he does stuff with them and he comes back an adult and that happens in male only spaces is 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 you know it's easy to say well well that's good like exactly as you were saying we can't just like have all the men go to the strip club and bond together um and leave women out 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 I'll take your word for that for a future podcasts okay okay so um yeah you're right there there aren't as many of those spaces and 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 um yeah I think the other thing as well is that men's friendships are uh more flimsy in terms of the one-on-one than women's are um men's friendship groups will have someone come and go you know Jim has been coming to the pub with you and 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 gym 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 ancestrally if you were going to go out with a small cohort of your guys and try and take down a wildebeest or a woolly mammoth and one of he gets gored 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 aloe parenting if you're doing shared uh 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 um like Patra Patra local uh Society I actually wonder how that would have worked because obviously women were often sort of um pick picked up and moved to the new husband's location so that that actually kind of throws a spanner in it but that Insight is from Robin Dunbar and this one is for as well they're talking about the shoulder to shoulder or face-to-face thing so the next time that 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 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 kind of like this and the other one's standing kind of like that buzz dunbar's 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 if you're a guy you can prove this to yourself the next time that you go to a party try and close that whatever 60 degree Gap and try and stand front on and it's either going to lead you out weird and weird the guy out yeah it looks like you're either gonna fight him or kiss him those are the two options and they're both kind of weird in the moment yeah yeah but if you try and do it it just feels like oh yeah this is I can't this is natural so so obviously one of the things that we kind of danced around so far and you make a big deal of in the article which I think is is really important is that the writing around the crisis of masculinity firmly stops at the diagnosis stage they refuse either purposefully or just through like uh 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 Roose 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 like thinking about men and like trying to fix the men problem you get the kind of like um questionable what are you up to do you have like some sort of hidden misogynist agenda um thing but then also there is the also what we talked about this idea that you know we don't need to have special roles for men you know 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 um just like nobody really wants to take the risk um but actually one of my interview subjects made the point that I think is is really important and really hard and one that I think we're gonna 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 de-industrialization like that happened it took years um 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 uh single parent homes and fatherlessness or a lack of role models you can't just grow a father overnight you know it's it's not as easy as just like uh well we're just gonna plop a strange man in your community and now you have a role model um 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 you know it's 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 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 at work for the past 60 years you know and those gains have come over time not overnight so I think 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 are things that you build from the bottom up yeah the inclusivity definitely seems to be at odds with its instructionality in this regard uh that the more inclusive you may again it's the man box you expanded out sufficiently and you you actually have nothing left there are no guide guidelines at all I do wonder about the like the cultural uh nudges something that's really interesting is if you look at what the feminist movement first and second wave we're really trying to do they were trying to change culture so that they could achieve something structurally right that 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 a place in the culture do you understand do you think this makes sense that the con 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 broad-based to brain-based economy change the increased 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 version of masculinity to fit this new structure to fit the change yeah yeah and I 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 and 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 supercharged 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 shape people so like what do we do with that in addition to catching up with this old problem um so yeah I think the roots too 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 like less involved in their Community organization so like where do you even go to start and I think I think those are questions that we'll be weighing it on too 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 the 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 I 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 go to so on 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 yeah pull yourself up by your bootstraps bio it's time to go and get it done and the problem is that you know a lot of masculinity and a lot of men that is an attractive proposition you know the Sovereign 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 you know the sigma male Lone Wolf meme that's being the Giga Chad's like Sigma male name that floats around the internet is precisely that taken to it's extreme right I'm go that's what mgtow is that's what men going the runway is it's in cell is the similar but in Reverse where I'm just going to Cast Away from the world that's still you going out on your own but you're 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 gonna go [ __ ] 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 um I think that a positive vision of masculinity has to be aspirational right like it has to be positive meaning it's it's something you're 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 Petersons and uh 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 and calling you to hire and I have high expectations for you and you're going to beat them and I think we need more of that energy in our masculinity discourse not like you're toxic stop being 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 that was really surprising about or surprising to me in the response to my article was the number of people who described it as empathetic and we're like it kind of seems like you'd like like men it's like actually I do 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 well it 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 [ __ ] you're I'm in love with you thank you so much yeah um so talking about that what we mentioned that your piece has got an author it's only been out just over a week it's got an awful lot of attention more after this episode as well um thanks what has been the feedback or the the criticisms that you've got from the left or from the more Progressive side of the aisle huh um 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 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 um 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 the section who shouldn't have made it responding to I know it's it's my fault I'll self-blame um but who are like men men again we're still talking about men screw men you know like 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 uh like uh 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 figure out what's going on for anyone that thinks that this isn't a big deal please explain to me why this post has had so much popularity like if it wasn't a big deal why would anybody be bothered about reading it and sharing it um 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 uh 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 are 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 worldview I can't change the I I can't change the reality around the situation and this one of my friends said it to me the other day that basically uh it 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 caveat and there are going to be a huge number of people especially given a large enough audience that are going to take massive offense to whatever it is that you've said so I think that you've done a good job of of really trying to um dance through the Minefield of tripwires on on both of the different sides um you know I 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 of 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 you know but you need to have at least a couple that you probably can afford to love and not everyone needs to agree but like okay again that conversation I had in Qatar I asked the gentleman sad opposite me um 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 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 um 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 asks men about these questions and who is their role model and so much of so much of our discourse is politicized that I think men who might objectively be good Role Models whether it's like a Barack Obama or a Mitt Romney um people just like don't want to say that because it might be seen as like rooting for the other team somehow and that's and that's not allowed and also again the 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 uh there's pushback to the idea that like there are masculine traits but again we can't warp the world to fit people's beliefs like unfortunately I 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 Ember ladies and gentlemen Christine I really appreciate you uh 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 where should they go alas you can find me anywhere so um you can follow me at the Washington Post um I'm on Twitter threads Instagram as Christine emba uh just my full name and I will shortly be launching a sub stack um so you can also follow that at christinemba.substack.com good stuff Christine I really appreciate you thank you so much for having me great conversation if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best 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