[SPEAKER_00]: 34% of nearly 5,000 women killed in the United States in 2021 died at the hands of their intimate partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: 94% of far-right violent and nonviolent extremists in the United States between 1948 and 2021 are men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Men commit 98% of mass shootings and commit at least 94% of sexual abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of all mass murders in the United States in 2021, 83% of the offenders had a history of prior violence against women.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are just a few of the disturbing stats revealed in Cynthia Miller Idris' new book, Man Up, the new misogyny and the rise of violent extremism.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Eric Swarzinski.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the host of the Pre-Choice Podcast, and I'm a former fundamentalist who sheds light on the dark side of the church from the pulpits to the pews, and today I'm diving into the topic of misogyny and violence against women with Cynthia Miller Idris.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cynthia is a leading expert on the topic of extremism.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a sociologist and professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University where she's the founding director of the polarization and extremism research and innovation lab
[SPEAKER_00]: or peril.
[SPEAKER_00]: In her book she asks, what are the two things that most mass shooters, terrorists or violent extremists have in common?
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of us know the first.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are almost always men or boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the second?
[SPEAKER_00]: They are almost always misogynists, homophobes or transphobes, even if they are also motivated by racism, anti-Semitism or xenophobia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, despite all evidence, the bright red thread of misogyny, running through these attacks is barely acknowledged by the media, or even experts, and this failing leaves his powerless to stop the violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today on the show, I sit down with Cynthia for a conversation to talk about her research, and we dive deep into a few of the heavy truths that she has uncovered.
[SPEAKER_00]: She addresses the quote unquote male loneliness epidemic, why men fear women having equal power and freedom?
[SPEAKER_00]: How to facilitate better conversations between young men and women exploring these topics?
[SPEAKER_00]: And even examine recent harrowing stories of violence against women, like the Atlanta Spa shootings in 2021.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very important conversation, and I hope you'll take the time to listen to the entire episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the meantime, grab a copy of Man Up, wherever books are sold, there's a link to it in the show notes of this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for now, here's my conversation with Cynthia Miller, Idris.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ain't nobody safe In the web hole and up
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're really welcome back to the show, Cynthia, thank you so much for joining me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for having me, it's great to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked up your book, I'm trying to remember who referred it to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I probably should have checked before I started saying, I checked out your book because, but someone referred it to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reached out, got a copy of it, and...
[SPEAKER_00]: I was I had to go to a laundromat because a washer wasn't working that day and I I was just tearing through the book and so it's a perfect thing to know in a laundromat right and everyone's looking at your topic like what yeah but yeah right through the book and.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think two, three days and thought it was really fascinating, really horrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want you to take me back to writing the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what was the kind of prompt to say, hey, I want to sit down and talk about this topic?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, it's a great question because I, you know, this is my fourth book that's like so authored and on these issues around violent extremism and prevention, and I didn't get to it till now.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's a really fair question of like why I didn't notice this problem earlier, frankly.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I sort of feel like I kind of opened the book with an apology to the field sort of like I should have gotten to this earlier.
[SPEAKER_03]: I should have noticed I've been interviewing boys and men.
[SPEAKER_03]: in and around violence scenes and observing them in school settings like my whole life as a you know my whole career.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would ask them a lot of things about what attracted them to violence, like they're belonging, the sense that you have a tribe, a group that you're a part of, the wanting, you know, desiring to be something
[SPEAKER_03]: bigger part of something bigger, better than yourself, like all of those things and these compelling kind of aspects to identity, but I never once asked them how they treated women, how they've treated women in their lives, or the kind of gender policing or bullying that they'd been through, homophobic bullying, that a lot of boys go through, you know, that changed the way they relate to other boys and young men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it just, it took me a long time to see it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I finally
[SPEAKER_03]: almost every mass shooter at some point you start noticing there's either a gender dimension or they have a history of personal violence against women or the LGBTQ community in their prior histories.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it was really like Gretchen Whitmer's kidnapping plot that kidnapping and execution plot of the sitting governor that was so misogynistic in the language that was used
[SPEAKER_03]: And then in the trial, the defense attorney's just said it was big talk or blowing off steam.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just got really annoyed.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, okay, I think between that and the fact that the Biden administration had released this classification system for violent extremism that put gender and sexuality in this category called all other extremisms.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, as if there's no real motivation there, no ideology, no, even though that's, you know, basically every case has some sort of
[SPEAKER_03]: or sexuality-based motivation at some point, whether it's because of false rape crimes statistics, like in the Charleston case, or obsession with white women's reproductive capacity and the great replacement conspiracies, or the attacks on the sort of progressive politicians, as the liberal media even called it in Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_03]: even though that was about abortion, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ issues, so all these motivations over there, or you have a ton of more than half of mass shooters with a history of domestic violence themselves and their own personal history.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I just, if it sort of built up on me, it's like sitting in a, you know, that frog in the water who doesn't realize the heat is going up and the finally I was like, oh my gosh, it's boiling.
[SPEAKER_03]: and I felt like I had to write it.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the way I work through things is to write about them to research them and so I kind of was explaining it to myself and my own work in the prevention field too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's so many paths we could go down just from some of the inspiration, but I want to talk about how this does often get, you know, minimized and like it's it's the other and or the et cetera categories in different documents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you start chapter one with a quote from Sarah Mercher where it says, when is terrorism, not terrorism, when the political motivations are misogyny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you give some context as to how that quote landed for you when you read it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it's a beautiful framing of the book itself, which is probably why it's in chapter one.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what does that mean to you and how have you seen that reflected in your research?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think, you know, we have gradually in the field.
[SPEAKER_03]: I put as the center chapter.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I so first of all, I should say I defined misogyny, not as hatred of women, which is its colloquial usage, but as a kind of,
[SPEAKER_03]: broader law enforcement arm of the patriarchy, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's the definition that Kate Man uses.
[SPEAKER_03]: I take that definition from her.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's a philosopher basically says patriarchy's which are systems of distribution of power that distributes power unequally are held up by two pillars, one of sexism, which is set of attitudes and the others misogyny, which is policing of behaviors that don't be expected norms or how people are supposed to behave.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that mostly affects women.
[SPEAKER_03]: and girls, but it also affects boys and men and women also do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: They do it toward boys and men.
[SPEAKER_03]: They do it toward women.
[SPEAKER_03]: They police the behaviors that are expected by saying, man up, we can't cry or expecting women to be certain kinds of ways and then acting out violently often when those behaviors aren't adhered to.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you're not
[SPEAKER_03]: sufficiently supportive of a husband and he reacts with violence, right, in a domestic violence case or something that would be misogynistic, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're not living up to this expectation.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, we don't see misogyny as a hate crime.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't define it as a hate crime in this country.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is in some other countries, but it's not in the US and it's not seen as a political motivation.
[SPEAKER_03]: even though it's sometimes very identity-based, you know, it's an identity-based act of violence, generally speaking, or some other form of harm, like harassment, stalking, belittling, that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, when the political motivations are misogyny, we see it as a personality problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, that Atlanta-spot shootings case, I think,
[SPEAKER_03]: the clearest example where that was, you know, nine people were killed, six women were targeted, and three other people died as collateral damage, but six women who were spot workers, he killed because he was, he felt he was entitled to live a life without the sexual temptation that they created for him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's a classic, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's like a,
[SPEAKER_03]: an ideological motivation right like they are inferior they deserve to be eliminated in order for him to live this life but it was only ever it was never identified as you know a supremacist attack as any kind of ideological attack I mean to me that's the clearest example of male supremacy that you could you know he believed he was entitled to live and they were not entitled to live because he wanted his life to be absent that temptation
[SPEAKER_03]: and it was just described as like a guy who literally had a really bad day.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the quote from the sheriff like the spokesperson on the day of the attack.
[SPEAKER_03]: This guy had a really bad day.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know he killed nine people.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's often written off as like mental health or you know personality problems or big talk and blowing off steam even if it's part of the motivation.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my friends T.A.
[SPEAKER_00]: Leving shared a quote recently, and it was, you're not powerful enough to, I'm going to mess up her quote, but it was something like you're not powerful enough for everything to be your fault.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was thinking I was doing it in every other day, and they were asking me some questions about women grant and religious environments, which I talked about obviously often.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of echoed the sentiment of that quote, which is that women in these patriarchal systems are held responsible for everything, but also hold no power.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like one of those things is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like either have all the power and you control everything or you have no power and you shouldn't be responsible for, you know, a 21 year old mass shooter that comes into a spa because you're tempting him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do want to take a pause really quick and ask this because you talked about like, oh, you wish you had gotten into the sooner.
[SPEAKER_00]: You wish you'd research this before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there any piece of it where you were waiting for a male figure to address his own camp?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there a piece of that or was it somewhere where it's really interesting?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not so much that I was waiting for someone to like own it or address it, but it was the case that I felt that, I mean,
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, I often describe like I came up as a professor of comparative education and as a sociologist which are mostly women-dominated fields.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I kind of came to a full professor in a leadership position without having to kind of fight my way through whatever type of
[SPEAKER_03]: things might be happening in the security side of the field where when I started spending time in the security world that is almost all men and it's almost all men who are former law enforcement and military so a very certain kind of masculine energy I was often the only woman in the room and you know there was definitely a way in which even when I thought it right I was like
[SPEAKER_03]: I would occasionally mention like masculinity or maybe identity or maybe we have to talk about, I never brought up misogyny, but you know, it would fall flat in those spaces and so there definitely was a reluctance and I sensed a real reluctance in the field to address it and it's tiresome to be the woman that has to bring it up and so there was a way in which I felt like I'm not going to
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to push this issue.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to keep working on the things that I know really well, which are youth, youth culture, young men, why they're attracted to violence and and the kind of keep looking past it, but then it kept coming up in the media and all these cases and I felt like, okay, this is this is now.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and I also felt like I'm not an expert on gender, really.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't feel like an expert on gender.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm an expert on youth and education.
[SPEAKER_03]: I happen to be a woman.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I also just didn't feel like it was my lane, exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was one of the things I was really nervous about writing this book was that plenty of people have been seeing this for a long time, especially on the domestic and intimate partner final, you know, as a balance side, and also from Black feminist who've written about this for a long time about these connections between
[SPEAKER_03]: intimate and interpersonal violence and mass violence and they've been saying it, it just hasn't been listened to on the national security side of the field.
[SPEAKER_03]: So part of what I'm trying to do is elevate that work and connect it now that I do have an opening in the national security side of things for people to pay attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is one thing that I've noticed have been reading more and more about gender and masculinity, and as I'm unpacking my own religious upbringing, because I don't know if you've noticed but religious circles are often very patriarchal as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: You may not know, I'm also a preacher's kid, so I think you mentioned that you mentioned that in the book, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, but no, it's a reading book that you're a sippin' to awful, but I've noticed there's like a real,
[SPEAKER_00]: like lack of men addressing these issues and and anything in the phrase in my question like I'm by no means saying man I wish a guy would write read a write the book on it but but I think to me it does speak to some of the issues is like there's it does affect men in a negative way but there seems to be a lack of male authors who are not on the back end of it selling a course on how to be a certain kind of man or are going the
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, like a Scott Galaway approach where it's like here's this pretty much this repackage like here's what it means to be a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I mean, are you stunned that there's still such a lack from the male side?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I know even when I'm creating content about masculinity, I know my audience, like my target audience is usually women because I know the guys aren't kind of listened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really weird, it's a weird thing to wrestle with.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'll say, you know, the things I was in two two groups that I was insecure about writing this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: One was sort of like, I think of as like classic feminist activists, people who have been waving this flag for a long time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other was meant, really, so I felt like, how am I going to, I want to make sure this is a book that's read by man that's discussed by man that's
[SPEAKER_03]: championed by men and doesn't just become confined to kind of a women's issue so I did a lot of outreach as soon as I turned in the book you know it takes like a year for the book to be in production so I had turned in the book in September 2024 and the first people I reached out to were some women in the
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, space who work on women's equity and feminist issues and then men in the men's wellness world.
[SPEAKER_03]: I reached out first to Mark Green and then he did a bunch of introductions to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to know Jackson Katz and, you know, folks at November and a call to men, Ted Bunch and I've done just a bunch of conversations or talks now with Zax Eyler and Mark Green
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, men have really, I think, responded, and I mean, so a feminist.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I've been welcomed by both groups, basically, to my surprise.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so like, it was reassuring that my own insecurities about sort of stepping on the toes or not being heard didn't come true.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like actually, you know, the question is how many other men are listening.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's a big question, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But there are a lot of men
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, who have hosted me on their podcast now, Brad Gage, right, others, the, um, mankind project, right, like all of these different groups of men who are trying to forge a different Sean Harvey, like different ways of being and, and more expansive.
[SPEAKER_03]: ideas of masculinity, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, um, that include a full range of human capacities and don't, you know, don't confine men to this kind of man box culture as, as Ted Bunch and Mark Green have called it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I feel like I've been, I've been surprised in the opposite way at how many opportunities there've been.
[SPEAKER_03]: And also, of course, um, probably this is also patriarchy, but what
[SPEAKER_03]: in the conversation with me, and so from the audience is perspective, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it still is true that, you know, I was in Seattle last week and, you know, 150 people in the audience, probably only 10 of them are men, and it was me being interviewed by a woman.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when, you know, when I've spoken with men, you know, in conversation, I think that that gets received a little bit differently and it gets a broader audience among men.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I hope that that's the case also with interviews and podcasts that there are ways to reach men who maybe are used to a more finger wagging approach or judgmental approach, not so much
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's like I said, I'm a man myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm often just being my head against the wall where I'm like, let's have this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you let your analytics and you go, we're not having this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah, right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's helpful, I think, in just the framing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think your book is vilifying men.
[SPEAKER_00]: In many ways, it's a call to a better,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, it's like a better way of living.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I want to start just with it with this piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's start with the guys for a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about the suppression of emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, you mentioned your book and then another book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just read recently points out the stats that
[SPEAKER_00]: Most mass shootings are by straight white men.
[SPEAKER_00]: The highest number of suicides is also demographic.
[SPEAKER_00]: One guest just mentioned, you know, it's suicide directed outward.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can look at mass shootings that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess first and foremost, when men are dying within these systems, and are feeling harm in these systems, why is there such a resistance to trying a different path?
[SPEAKER_00]: When what's been going on hasn't been working for so long.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the only way I can understand this from the men I've talked to, and I also tried to make it clear, married to a wonderful man, I have a great dad, I lived in a house in college with 10 guys, I have had a bunch of men in my life who've been
[SPEAKER_03]: who've helped me see that there are other ways of being, and so this is not like men as all men, but I think there's a culture that all men experience in our society, whether they reject it or accept it or find some other way to get through it.
[SPEAKER_03]: that you know has been explained to me and interviews and in lots of conversations one of coming to realize that the world sees you as dangerous and that you know that comes as soon as they're like 16, 15, 16 years old and that you know the young man will talk about that of feeling like they're perceived as inherently bad and also that they've had to kind of
[SPEAKER_03]: they had a slice-off pieces of themselves in order to survive and then kind of enter their 20s like so they become more stoic, they may end up, they don't cry, they, you know, the pressure from other boys and also sometimes from girls and women to be a certain kind of way, to be stoic, to be ready to be violent, to be ready to defend your friends or a girl or whoever.
[SPEAKER_03]: uh is part of this like definition of manhood that they experience and then suddenly recently in their 20s and 30s they start to be told that that's toxic, that's unhealthy, that's leading to bad outcomes for them and their health and they should be more connected, they should make more friends right and they've they basically like cut those parts of themselves off and I think
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, one of the things I often think of is how much less time teenagers spend with each other in person now than they used to, and I think that affects boys much more.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not just that they're more lonely because the data is bad on girls loneliness too.
[SPEAKER_03]: But girls do still have intimate friendships with other girls.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we know from Naomi Wey's work and others that boys lose that.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I often think of it as like, something so simple is like, at what point do kids stop cuddling up with each other and a sleepover to watch a movie?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like at what point would you not let your legs be entangled with another kid's legs on the couch?
[SPEAKER_03]: Girls never lose that.
[SPEAKER_03]: right like I still do it with my girlfriend so I could come to town sleep over like we'll just you know you can be physically intimate in a pajama party kind of a way um all the way through bachelor parties or whatever boys lose that they lose that starting at like age 10 or 11
[SPEAKER_03]: And they lose it because they're afraid of being called gay, they're afraid of the homophobic bullying, the policing that happens around the performance of masculinity, even more than the sexuality, the performance of masculinity, not being flamboyant, not being to a feminine, even if they're gay, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it's, it is very strong.
[SPEAKER_03]: The data on that is really, really strong.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that a lot of what
[SPEAKER_03]: I hear from men and from teenage boys is that they haven't even had a chance to reflect very often on how much they've been shaped by that culture until much later in life and until they start to realize like maybe they're a little bit cut off from things or from other human connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then they don't have the tools to we know that yeah, yeah, I want to talk about the, I didn't have it anywhere in my notes, but I'm curious because you've mentioned like the homophobia, which is such a, I mean, especially in the religious circles, huge issue, but culturally, I mean, it's so funny, like watching shows from like the early 2000s and it's just like so casual and everything and
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think it was Liz Planks book for the love of men she talks about, um, like homophobia is also a form of misogyny in sexism because it is hating the feminine in the man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I heard that I was like, yeah, it's like so many different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I mean, what have you seen in terms of like how
[SPEAKER_00]: homophobia plays out within male circles and like the way that that is in extricably linked to this despising of the feminine, of crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I know my wife was told we met in high school and I know there were teachers that said Erick's very emotional and feminine and like that was like such a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like the only acceptable emotion in those environments was like a pastor getting up and yelling about something like that anger was Right, anger becomes the thing that you can communicate through, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's acceptable.
[SPEAKER_03]: The only acceptable expression of emotion, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, I mean, I think there's there's a couple of different things that come to mind one.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's very much true as I argue in the book that like
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, in modern patriarchy, men get assigned more power and have more rigid constructions and definitions around acceptable performances of masculinity, women get less power, but more flexibility to express femininity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the feminine in these less valued and so it becomes the feminine is less valued.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so therefore you get to it's more expansive.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I just learned a couple of weeks ago that, um,
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, it wasn't always the case.
[SPEAKER_03]: Feminine needs to be much more police, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So women weren't allowed to wear pants.
[SPEAKER_03]: I learned recently that the U.S. added gender categories into passports in the 1970s after women started wearing pants because the, something was, this would be so confusing.
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
[SPEAKER_03]: This would be so confusing.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to know who's a man or a woman anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to have short hair.
[SPEAKER_03]: They have pants like we're not so clearly identifiable.
[SPEAKER_03]: The feminine has expanded, but basically like yeah, into the 80s, you would never have seen a woman in pants in the workplace much less, you know, school and that changed, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So even just those gender expressions became more flexible for women short hair long hair, whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's much more rigid for men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that expressions of feminine, femininity are more police with it when they happen in men than more masculine expressions among women who are just allowed to express a broader range of being a tomboy or being a sort of, there's still police, of course, and you share this all the time in the C-suite that like women have to walk this very thin line of
[SPEAKER_03]: being supportive and empathetic but also assertive and not too assertive because then you can be difficult right like it's it's much harder to To walk that line then it is for men in leadership positions, but still I think there's definitely something about and this is the theory and also on why trans women get so much violence
[SPEAKER_03]: compared to trans men is that it's this rejection of like the why you know someone who's who's who's opted to become a woman right so this the lesser valued is so offensive to give up the idea for some men you know men who would be violent against trans women so they just they get so much more of the violence and the hatred and bear a lot of the brunt of it
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, one of the things that I talk about the book, my favorite study, that I read for the book, is a study by the sociologist, Joel Middleman, who studied American high school boys, and found that they have increasingly come to accept same-sex relationships, among their peers, as long as you're really brow about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so like the language they use, this is their actual phrase, so it has a slower in it, you know, excuse me, but it says, it's okay to be gay, it's not okay to be a fag, basically like it doesn't matter who you have sex with, but you cannot be flamboyant or feminine about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to be really kind of broy about it, and then it's just sex.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that to me says, you know, sexuality might become more fluid before masculinity becomes less rigid like that's really interesting right like masculinity is like the last bastion of rigidity right in terms of like the thing that is the last thing to go in.
[SPEAKER_03]: in a kind of modern system of social norms.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so to me, one of the questions is like, why do we hold onto that so much?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, why is it so important that we not let go of those rigid boundaries?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because even though it's men are dying earlier because of it, they're having worse health outcomes or having three quarters of the deaths of despair, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Alcohol fueled deaths and suicides and overdoses.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's not working out that well for men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that very isolated and often relying on their spouses for social engagement, but also not getting married at very high rates right now, I think it's less than half.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, you can see that it's not working out, but I think that's, you know, one of the most interesting questions that the book raises is, you know, why are we so committed to this rigid definition, and then how does that rigidity create vulnerabilities to influencers who are saying like, look,
[SPEAKER_03]: Men and boys are suffering.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm the only one that will talk about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: The answer to this is to like double down on those things, seize control, regain status, you know, physically abuse women who are speaking out, you know, make sure you get control over them and teaching those kinds of tactics as mechanism of reasserting dominance and embracing that kind of aggression.
[SPEAKER_00]: So right now there's a big a lot of talk from the influencers like that about like the male loneliness epidemic and that's talked about constantly you're obviously dressing pieces of that in your book in depth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know when I talk to my wife about an influence that pops up, complain about the male loneliness epidemic or guys are feeling alone or women won't talk to guys or whatever that looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: you major bad sleep in it and this is self-inflicted or the male loneliness epidemic in air quotes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on some level, I struggle with empathy because like being a decent human being is not hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, like, like, like, there are, but on the other hand, though,
[SPEAKER_00]: These are systems that were raised in that teach us to be a certain way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like there is responsibility to be had, but also systemic issues that create men to be a certain way and feel a certain way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're dealing with the ramifications like we've talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: For you, do you default toward
[SPEAKER_00]: empathy for, like, what do you hear male lonely subidemic to go, like, a brother, like, here we go, or do you feel this thing where it's like, yeah, these are victims of the system too?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I have a lot of empathy for men.
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, you know, I recently was accused by a feminist, who host a man or proud guess of having too much himpathy, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the way she described it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and so I think there's a risk to that, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's, but, but I, my argument is look, it's not a zero-sum game, and I think that kind of critique comes from people who feel like, hey, it's true that women's that we still have a huge pay gap, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: They're still a gender.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's not gender equity in, you know, in really most fields.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you also have, like, we bear more of the violence and the outcomes of,
[SPEAKER_03]: of mail rage and our safety right like just those basic things raising daughters in this world is different than raising sons right you have to think about their safety think about how at what point do you tell your kid how to navigate public transportation so that they don't get grouped right like that's just a
[SPEAKER_03]: it's about 11 or 12 right and you know you could start getting cat called like this is this stuff is talking around you know talking to parents a lot the parents of daughters just navigate that in a different way and so you know that is frustrating and and it's and you have to hold that right and hold that part of it but it doesn't mean that you dismiss the loneliness crisis I think
[SPEAKER_03]: the other thing to be aware of is that like the data most recent data does show that girls and women are also very lonely so you know i think but it doesn't again it's not zero sum and to me if the loneliness high levels of loneliness and isolation among men and a kind of lack of agency i think there's like that's part of the story too
[SPEAKER_03]: The affordability crisis, the lack of agency, the lack of an ability to kind of pursue a life that they feel not only through social pressure should allow them to be providers for a family, but also to be successful in the way that
[SPEAKER_03]: A capitalist society says they should be, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: These are all things that affect their ideas of being a man, according to the interviews that I have done.
[SPEAKER_03]: In a different way, then women, I think, who have a different set of pressures, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Less about providing a more about motherhood or about beauty or the standards of beauty, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: There's all kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's not zero sum, but it is,
[SPEAKER_03]: It is, I think, a vulnerability factor for the type of propaganda, the conspiracy theories, the anti-feminist ideas, the anti-woman ideas that come out, that blame and scapegoat women as the source of problems or position women as inherently manipulative or deviant or transactional in relationships.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then that's what you're talking about, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because now we hear these stories of like,
[SPEAKER_03]: I just heard somebody say they were in a grammar school, a private school, in the UK, like a, you know, with teenagers, all-girls school, and they just said they've totally cut off the all-boy school next door from any social events because they were starting to spout so much misogyny.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, that becomes us now that Boy School has a bunch of grievances about the girl's schools won't have dances anymore or won't go out on dates.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that's part of the problem, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you just mentioned, like, there is so much vitriol toward women right now, especially in the hemisphere, and I could name a married of examples in that space, but everyone's already thinking probably the same ones that I am or someone else who's in that description.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, like you just mentioned, there is still major disparity in workplaces, there's still pay gaps, there's still cultural limitations placed on women like women are not the primary powerholders in our society.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you mentioned the book, like if feminist gains are perceived to come at the expense of men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's this backlash that is very preemptive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we feel the tides are shifting this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We feel that things are moving in a direction that's scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the fear that you're seeing in the research when people go like, oh, women are voting more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And women are getting more C-suite level jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what's the concern?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so what I hear from men is I think there's a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_03]: One is my observations and then one things I've actually heard.
[SPEAKER_03]: So one is that men fear being irrelevant.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that which is this idea that, well, are we not going to be needed?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we not going to have the status?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we not going to be important because if you've been defined in a society by these measures of hierarchical success and then those become erased in some way or invisible.
[SPEAKER_03]: or that you have to give up some of that power for more equitable thing, that you're not a real man in some way, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that's, you know, it's very hard, if you still have this box that is the gauntlet that teenagers report, they're still going down.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, but then there's this equalizing forces that supposedly are happening later in the workplace or elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's very hard to think to balance those two things of the pressures that you're still feeling, to be a provider, to be a protector, right, these sort of tropes that are tropes, but they're still very real for a lot of men, and then, but then feeling like, oh, I'm also supposed to do have the household tasks or whatever, right, I think that there's some of that, like this fear of being irrelevant or not necessary or not needed or not important, right, and that's like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, that's a really very, very real feeling and, um, and I, I hear a lot about the, you know, just something I can't personally understand, but it's so interesting as a researcher.
[SPEAKER_03]: I hear a lot about, um, this perception that,
[SPEAKER_03]: a lot of young men have that that they're regarded as inherently dangerous.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they present that, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: This kind of feeling that it came out so much in that viral bear versus man thing last summer, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like this feeling that like they're being blamed, like that not all men hashtag, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: This they're being blamed for the bad actions of of some men are is is come back on all men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, it feels inherently unfair.
[SPEAKER_03]: They feel like, like, you know, one guy told me, like, I'm the good guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'm the one that will defend you and you're treating me like, I'm the bear.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm more dangerous than the bear.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I remember I said something like,
[SPEAKER_03]: But how is a woman supposed to know if you're the good guy or the bad guy, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, you can't possibly know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so many women have met one of the bad guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, of course, they're going to choose the bear that's inherently more predictable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, I think there's that kind of, I think that type of thing is going on too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, in terms of,
[SPEAKER_03]: grappling with the very real and very bad actions of some men who have been publicized.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, in that French trial, some are, right, this horrific stories of so many ordinary men who participated and that has led a lot of women to feel like, well, maybe it is all men, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, because the data shows that it's a lot more men than you think.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's a hard thing I think to grapple with as a man too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's the old thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like if it's three and five women are sexually harassed or assaulted, and then the the question that people have been asked on the back side, which is if three out of five women are sexually harassed or assaulted, how many men are sexually harassing or assaulting women, you know, which, which obviously, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: there's ways you could respond to that too in terms of many predators have multiple victims and so like it's not it's not five out of five men you know but it also does point to a very real thing like it's more men than we want to admit you know I watched I watched a video the other day with a guy who was a child abuse detective for years and he said he was asked what's the biggest takeaway you've had from the job and he said that
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, I'm by no means a detective who's done this for 30 years, but I know just from covering the stories I cover and talking to hundreds of victims, I relate to that feeling of like there's a lot of bad out there, and it's really scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of drill down what you were just talking about where you said this idea that men are told that they're violent or inherently uncontrollable and dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: A dangerous was the word that I was trying to find.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know for myself, just to share my own
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, dealing with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way that we were taught in our religious context was, you know, men need sex, men want sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women don't really need sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need emotional attachment, you know, the old kind of trope.
[SPEAKER_00]: And very much what we were taught explicitly was that guys have these uncontrollable sexual desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: they get married really young to be able to express those in a biblical okay way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women's job is really to not stir up those lusts in men.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's covering cleavage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's wearing skirts below the knee.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not having your hair wet, so they're not thinking about you showering and all those sorts of things that got thrown out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way that that landed for me going into marriage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got married when I was 21.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so scared that I was going to, you know, hurt my wife on accident, that I was going to be too sexually aggressive, that I was going to be too debate and to a point where like it was like an.
[SPEAKER_00]: which of the two extremes of the guy that goes like, this is all for me, and I want this, you know, like the rather guys fault on the other side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it still is a really negative impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, as much as, like, there might be a women saying, oh, guys are dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think guys are also taught, like, you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you are this uncontrollable sexual beast and like, and I'm seeing it now it scares me because I'm seeing this outside of the religious context and like just the general pop culture and it's really, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is like, you know, that the probably the most uncomfortable thing that I bring up in interviews every time is this, which is which is the impact of violent porn on on this right and so because we also have this.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, 85% of 18 to 24 year olds now say they learn about how to have sex from pornography and pornography is like so much more violent than it used to be, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: The statistics are just off the charts even so much that in the UK they've banned choking from online pornography from the display, you know, you can't show choking anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's so ubiquitous and it's become such a part of the culture that the stroke rates among women under 40 are, you know, have skyrocketed and so like these actual and so the majority of women in college saying that they've been choked and and then men and interviews saying they thought that's what they were supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like this, you know, the stress around like what's the right way to engage and not to kink shame anybody who that's what they do, but like
[SPEAKER_03]: but the fact that there's not conversations happening around pleasure and consent that have to do with violence, right, and intimate relationships.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that, I think, is also messing with a lot of kids' heads.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a DC school that just held a porn summit for parents.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like, I went to it, you know, out of interest.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was like,
[SPEAKER_03]: So awkward a bunch of 50 year olds, but basically learning about like, how can you talk to your kids about this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because, you know, as Ted Bunch once said, and we're on a panel together this fall, he runs a call to men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said, people ask them all the time, when should I get my kid a phone?
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said, when you're ready for them to be porn?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so like it's gonna happen and so and if it is so much more violent so it's the whole culture right it's like the messages you get religiously the message you get from your parents or not right most parents don't talk about the stuff at all from your peers but also from what you consume that comes across your phone in an uninvited way often or from a peers phone that is just shaping the way that we interact and so I think that kind of
[SPEAKER_03]: The dominance all comes out in those ways, too, as a pressure to be a certain way in intimate ways and in non-intimate ways that is messing with guys heads to be honest and again not to dismiss the very real violence that women are are experiencing but
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when I had a 16 year old come up to me after a talk and he said, you know, we're talking about, he said what are some things you've learned about boys and men from all your interviews that you think that people don't know and we talked about that and I said, well, what do you think people don't know about what it is to be a 16 year old boy.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said, like, without missing a beat, I don't think people understand what it's like to suddenly realize the world sees you as dangerous.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was talking about, like, just walking through the mall with his friends and suddenly realizing they're being followed by security, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So that kind of danger, but also, like, that you're a threat now.
[SPEAKER_03]: that if you're walking down the street behind a woman, she might cross the street or turn around and look and it hadn't even occurred to him that he could be perceived as a threat to somebody else.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's still nervous walking down the street too, that he could get jumped right, it's at night.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you're holding both things, you get jumped by some guys who want your phone, but also some woman in front of you's nervous that you're the threat.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it couldn't believe that someone could see him as a threat.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that, I think, is like something obviously parents of black boys have known for a long time, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And have talked about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we don't talk about each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the last thing I'll say that really interesting and after he said that, right next to him, there's a 16 year old girl who said, well, I don't think boys understand what it's like to suddenly realize the world sees you as a sexual object.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, look, I think the two of you should be having this conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the most remarkable thing happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: They said, could we start a club?
[SPEAKER_03]: to have these conversations.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, if you start a club, I'll come back to the school.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so actually in the spring, Mark Green and I are going back to that school together to spend a day.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, I think that kids really want to talk about this stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like what gender content comes across their screens, the messages they're getting, the experiences they have.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we just haven't really, maybe these things would have happened more organically in the past.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they don't spend any time together now.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they're not really having those conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there need to be more people like you that are going, you and you should talk to each other and not go to an online forum and come lean about each other, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or go with your friends and yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it just escalates or the misunderstandings in the anger and the scapegoating of each other, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: For those experiences because they're each having experiences of
[SPEAKER_03]: being regarded as dangerous or as a sexual object by the other sex, by the other gender.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, so let's have a conversation and disrupt that and talk about what that means and build empathy between each other, for each other's experiences, that, again, is like, what I grew up with by having so many male friends.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, they would frustrate me too and then I would be like, you can't treat a girl like that on a date or, you know, like, we learn from each other, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think if you're not in those interactions and there's not that kind of way to have conversations, it becomes just all, you know, online reply guy kind of comments and influencers shaping how you think about these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the lack of conversation is the biggest issue because I grew up, I was writing about this today, but I grew up, I was born in 95, so I grew up through, like from the time I was like, I could remember access to the internet and screens was there, and you know, so my first encounter with pornography was I was probably eight, and that was that was on TV, which was
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I was like 10, it's like, it's at your fingertips, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the background, very sexually repressed environment where like you don't talk about sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what was really interesting for me to think about is like, you know, I was sitting in the fuse hearing very gendered, patriarchal messages about how
[SPEAKER_00]: implicitly or explicitly, depending on the message, women are inferior to men, men are powerful, men need this, you know, women are there to serve the men.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, watching mainstream pornography, which is male-focused,
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... focused on male pleasure is not an act of depiction of how women should be treated within these context like in a weird way the puritanical messaging of the church and the hardcore porn messaging complemented each other and was basically saying like they're both saying women are objects are both focused on male pleasure
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if your only sex ad is pornography and then all you're being ties out, like it's a really perfect cocktail.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm forcing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and then you add to that like AI chats, which are, you know, right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't grow up with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we didn't grow up up right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Imagine you're 13 and and these, the ubiquitous right now, like how many kids are looking for advice in chatG BT?
[SPEAKER_03]: are developing what they think of as like, you know, AI girlfriends.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you have these, like, weird relationships, parasocial relationship with some sort of AI that is actually like, you know, for therapy, right, they're using the for therapy for advice for all kinds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something that will never tell you now.
[SPEAKER_03]: exactly something that will never tell you know that will never there's only really like sick of fantic right that's only you know giving you what you want and telling you you're amazing and being supportive and no challenges, no emotional needs of yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's owner her own right and so that to me is like you get that that's like the trifecta right that You get the patriarchal upbringing and the messages from let's say church or from parents Then you get the ubiquitous and a violent porn which is you know now or 85% of teenagers Which saying they get their sex education from and then you get a adichats where they're just not gonna learn how real relationships work Yeah, and so that's where we have to counter this as much as we can with
[SPEAKER_03]: conversation, education, real talk, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Real hard talk that builds relationships about what relationships are, what consent is, what pleasure is, what equality is between, in a relationship.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like that's a real worry of mine that we're gonna lose that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I feel like the generation before mine was going, I can imagine growing up at the internet and like how horrible that was, and I'm like it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: the AI situation, I feel like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I feel like I'm going down, going like, back in my day, we didn't have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what are you going to do with this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so terrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the people that are, that it's pulling from are more and more, you know, it's the manifest, so like if you search,
[SPEAKER_00]: mail loneliness like the experts on mail loneliness are the grifter course creator, you know, I know we're, I always feel like we're cooking and then we're like oh man we're 10 minutes left.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got I got to ask you this question though because yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always fascinated by kind of the stepford wives phenomenon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I understand why men uphold the patriarchy, although I would fight, you know, bare knuckle fight over the fact that like it's not beneficial for many, they're, um, I understand why men hold up male dominated systems as much as I read about it as much as I get answers and why keep asking the question, I am so.
[SPEAKER_00]: blown away by the people who are female, who push patriarchal systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: The spokespeople at rallies, they stand up in churches and hold it up even when they're allowed to speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the motivation of conservative women holding up patriarchal systems?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that I think it's really hard to overstate how much many women, not all women, but many women feel their primary identity is how good the job they have done as a woman in terms of being a mother and a wife, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so like being a support, like that same pressure that men face as adolescents, like we get
[SPEAKER_03]: in all kinds of ways through the media of like especially the good mother, especially around motherhood, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like how to be that that's your ultimate goal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Even if you want to be a career woman too, you're going to do that and right?
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not going to let this other side of your
[SPEAKER_03]: Goodness, right, disappear.
[SPEAKER_03]: I certainly felt that like tremendous pressure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Something I still struggle with is like feeling I failed somehow on that front and he kind of flaws on being a mother or much harder than any other part of my life, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that, you know, I haven't studied girls and women in the same way that I studied boys and men because I'm interested in prevention of violence and so that is 96% of the
[SPEAKER_03]: time at the hands of men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, on the mass violence side, so it's the, it's where I've done the empirical research, but from my personal experience from all my friendships and the women I've grown up with and my sister, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I can say that this is just a lot of the pressure is around that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that, and that, so the patriarchy in that sense also sends all these expected norms and values to women.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some women will, you know, break out of that and really try to reject it or try to reframe it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But still struggle with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And some of them just embrace it because that's where you get also some you can get power you can get a very reinforced particularly if it's religious.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, idea of doing the right thing that this is God, you know, this is God.
[SPEAKER_03]: For told, right, this is religiously.
[SPEAKER_00]: ultimate trump card, you know, it's like God said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's true in a lot of religions, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are saying like you're that you're the hand made in, you're the support player, you're the subservient one.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is how you achieve goodness.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is how you achieve a righteous home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that even if you're not religious to yourself, you've often grown up in a religious way, or you know, been been shaped and affected by that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will say like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Last thing on that point though, the Tradwife phenomenon, which is kind of interesting right these influencers who promote that kind of lifestyle that is submissive subservient right like primarily about childbearing but also are like
[SPEAKER_03]: content creators themselves and are trying to make it more than there has been exactly right with like a ton of caregivers there to take care of those children while they're producing these you know these clips that have like beautifully curated scenes and makeup and whatever but what's really interesting is Evian Leidig who's a researcher in the Netherlands has documented that for the biggest tradwife influencers
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of cases, the vast majority of their followers are men.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's not actually, like, there's a lot of conversation about like, tradwives influencing women, but actually it might be like a fantasy or men too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was curious if you were going to say, like, because my wife notices, the most disturbing thing on social media is you can see what people like on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we notice there's people
[SPEAKER_00]: There's people from our pastor people that we know a lot of guys and they like a lot of treadwife content where it's like cooking it's this right and I was like it's almost like fetishistic it's like it's fantasy it's a fantasy it's like even though the content is feminine quote and quote it's obviously catering to right
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and it's in this idealized world if you feel you're supposed to be able to provide and support a family of however many babies and right and have this wife that's going to meet you with the glass of whiskey at the door or whatever right like that's the fantasy right and so if you're and so you could see how that would feed you know a very traditional idea of being a man too in terms of that fantasy so it is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I did a smoke cigar and drink some whiskey as I finished up your book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kept my masculinity in touch with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Excellent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, um, I am curious, like, I mean, your book, you were, I've obviously more come for the last couple of years and, and as come out, um, but like you mentioned the book, there's a lot, and if you just in here, there's a lot that's happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: During the writing where I'm sure you're like, that's a chapter and then there's a lot that's happened since where I'm sure you could write a new forward every other week and you mentioned even after the election day, you know, 4,000% increase in the terms your body, my choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get back in the kitchen on the social media platform X like and so much more has taken place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just the administration loan currently, you could be writing a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since you've written the book where you go, I hate that the book came out before this moment, because I wish I could talk about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you could write now, update a forward and say, like, this just became a lot more relevant because what would you want to touch that?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, you know, I think,
[SPEAKER_03]: probably it's just more examples of the normalization around things like Mark Zuckerberg saying we need more masculine energy in the tech sector and headsets saying we need male standards in the military and then Trump you know just things like quiet piggy right like this kind of reinforcement
[SPEAKER_03]: which he said to a woman journalist, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like this, who was just asking him a question.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, that he didn't like.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this kind of reinforcement in the corporate sector and military sector and among from our presidential leader, like that was always there, you know, in Trump's history, but like to see it just so normalized and not,
[SPEAKER_03]: make people mad really like people did get mad about the quiet piggy stuff, but it's the the masculine standards, the male standards and the military, that kind of language or the you know, bandits, praise of Charlie Kirk's assassination or his memorial service as being kind of like a display of something like Christian muscular patriotism or something like that, right, like this idea that it's like
[SPEAKER_03]: The muscularity being in there was a part of it, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that it's this evoking of what manhood is as part of the nation.
[SPEAKER_03]: This part of national standards or corporate standards.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like I don't think I quite captured that because it just caught me off guard a little bit that it was so mainstream and normalized.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, reading your book, you mentioned Hitler's three pieces for the home, which if you have top of mind for you, so I'm a kitchen church and children, they all start with the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wasn't going to try to do the German for sure, but yeah, kitchen church, children, and then I read that either right on the heels, I forget which came first.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I read it right on the heels of the Charlie Kirk Memorial where Benny Johnson said, get married young as possible, have more kids than you can afford, and like, and I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, this is so similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was so curious, really, because I know for me, even doing these weekly episodes, I'll have a conversation and then some new story breaks, I'm like, why did I already record?
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait for this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I appreciate it and thanks for having me as a great conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I said, I feel like we're like start really rolling and I could have six thousand more questions and then you hit the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope you come back on at some point to pick out the spot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's great to talk and thanks for doing this on the forward to sharing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're listening, be sure to grab a copy of Man Up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll put a non-blurry screenshot of it up in the video.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grab a copy is a link in the show notes of this episode Cynthia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you again so much for joining me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for having me, Eric.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to the Preja Boys podcast hosted by Eric Swarzinski.
[SPEAKER_00]: The intro music, Bible Belt, was performed by Lou Rithley.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, we are gathered here today To praise the Holy Father, fill the glory of His name Anyone can worship here so long as you act straight Pay your ties and follow rules even the ones God didn't make any Bible