The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic.
We must seek a revival of strong and healthy manhood in America.
We need men who will shoulder responsibility, men who will start and
provide for families.
While the left's assault on manhood has been sharp and prolonged,
it has not yet succeeded, and we must make it our business as
conservatives to see that it does not succeed.
>> Speaker 2: Men groups are forming across the country and are rejecting some
of what you just heard from Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican who has decided
to really laser focus on the so called masculinity crisis in the country.
Now, these men's groups aim to combat the loneliness crisis by
basically embracing men as they are,
men who might not buy into some of the traditional forms of masculinity.
And they are also trying to avoid propping up old school gender norms.
And I think that's really important because, I'm going to go to you right,
David, like, how do you even define masculinity, right?
When you say that men should be masculine, what do you think that means?
>> Speaker 3: Well, when I hear Josh Hawley talk about masculinity,
I start laughing, because this is the guy who ran out of the Capitol like a chicken
on January 6, the moment the mob started coming in,
after he gave them the thumbs up and saluted them.
So, for him to be speaking of masculinity is an absolute ridiculous thing.
I think the term masculinity has lost all of its meaning, in part because it's been
bastardized by so many people across the political spectrum.
The fact of the matter is, if you are a human being,
you should shoulder responsibility.
You should try to be in touch with your feelings.
You should try to be able to communicate.
You should be able to be responsible for your actions.
That has nothing to do, I think, with gender,
whether you're masculine or feminine,
it has to do with you being a complete- >> Adult.
>> And whole human being.
And to the extent that men are sort of getting together and
trying alternative ways, so I salute them.
Anybody who wants to try to find new ways to get in touch with their feelings,
to get in touch with how they can become a better human being,
I don't care what they call it.
Masculinity, femininity, whatever else they want to call it, fine by me.
The goal for me is for all of us to be better human beings.
>> Speaker 2: I totally agree with you on that.
So, look, there is a pretty serious loneliness crisis,
it's really impacting men.
I do want to also note that young girls and
young women are also dealing with increased rates of depression.
A lot of that has kind of been linked to social media use.
But going back to men, apparently earlier this year, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy
declared the country to be in an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
National suicide rates have risen in recent decades, and
men in 2021 died by suicide at a rate nearly four times higher than women,
according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Data also indicates that loneliness can increase the risk of premature
death to a degree comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and
also correlates with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia.
And as for why men are suffering, it really depends on who you ask.
So, for instance, psychology experts say that in part, the feelings of
isolation stem from a pervasive cultural belief that men should be self reliant and
hide their emotions like never express themselves,
especially when it comes to expressing themselves to other men.
Then there are people like Josh Hawley, whose book Manhood
the Masculine Virtues America Needs tries to basically keep those stigmas alive.
And he thinks that leftism and pornography are the problems, right?
So we have another video of Josh Hawley, let's take a quick look at that.
>> Speaker 1: The left's attack on America leads directly to an attack on men.
Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem,
that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing
into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games.
>> Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Do you think he might have a point about pornography and
video games, leading to some of the loneliness and
some of the crises that men are experiencing right now?
>> Speaker 3: Well, I don't always see idleness, pornography, and video games as
being a problem, but I can see how some people might have a problem with that.
And again, for Josh Hawley, to me this is all politics.
Josh Hawley recognizes that white males in particular in a place like Missouri where
he represents, that they tend to sort of be confused by the progress that
society has made, and particularly if they're uneducated or
don't have a great education, don't have a great job.
And so he's making a political play by talking about masculinity and
trying to recapture the identity of men.
I think the larger issue in all of this and my sense is that, yes,
there is more isolation, yes, there's more sort of frustration among men and
women, but I think it has to do with both the pandemic and that horrible year and
a half that we all went through of being isolated.
And the other part about it is society is changing so quickly before our eyes.
Half of the jobs that exist now are gonna disappear in the next 20 years because of
artificial intelligence and automation.
We don't even have names for the jobs that are coming online.
Things are changing so
rapidly that literally the ground is shaking underneath our feet.
And for a lot of people, I suppose, particularly men who grew up in an era
when maybe they were expected to be the breadwinner and
to be able to have a job and support their family, it's very confusing.
So I get that part of it, but again, I don't think it has to do so
much with your gender, your masculinity, your sort of feelings about sexuality.
It has to do more with economic instability and
feeling like there's not a place for you with how things are changing so quickly.
>> Speaker 2: Definitely, I mean,
I think that most people at this point are pretty atomized.
Back in the day, there used to be in local communities, there would be social groups
and hobbies that people would engage in real life, in person, together, right?
These types of social interactions, that is what we have evolved to rely on.
That's how human beings have survived, right,
by being part of these social groups.
And now increasingly, people are atomized working from home in a lot of cases,
people don't even go into the office, they don't see another human being for
weeks at a time, I think that that contributes to it as well.
But what you just said about gender roles changing in
society I think might have something to do with it as well.
I mean, if for generations men have been conditioned and
messaged to believe that their role in society is to be the breadwinner,
to be the person who provides for their families and
then you deal with a precarious economic situation along with a little
more equality when it comes to the genders in the workplace.
That could leave some men confused about what their role in society is.
Especially since, look, I don't really like some of the messaging that makes
it seem like women don't need men and they can be independent, they're not important.
I'm just gonna say the most surprising development in my life was that it
wasn't my career that ended up making me super happy and fulfilled,
it's actually my relationships with my close friends and my marriage.
That's what makes me happy, right?
And I think that, that message has kind of been stripped out of society.
There's just like a hyper focus on career,
accomplishing things, making a lot of money.
All of those things aren't necessarily gonna yield the results
that people think they will, at least that was my experience.
>> Speaker 3: No, I think your intuition is spot on.
And I think it's not just there are certain parts of the country where that
message about sort of the old fashioned masculinity has been reinforced by
conservatives mostly.
But also to a certain extent there have been some areas where Democrats have
also said, have bought into the celebrity culture or
media has embraced the idea that the more powerful you are, the more money you have,
the more prestigious your job that defines happiness.
And so there's so many currents pushing against what you just said in terms of
defining your happiness not by your money or your power, but
by defining it by your relationships.
I'll give you an example with me, and I work from home.
I used to play a lot of tennis when I was a kid and
I just started going to a men's tennis clinic every Saturday morning for
a couple of hours where guys roughly at the same age,
we all sort of knock around balls and chase each other around the court.
And so much of it,
and it's great for tennis but it's also great because there are other dads there.
There are other people who are sort of going through that sort of stage of when
you're in your 40s and your 50s and
your body doesn't work quite the way it did when you were younger.
And there's camaraderie there and
there's something kind of nice about it being just men.
I think if women were involved in this, I don't know how I'd feel.
But to me there is something about being connected and
feeling connected to other people who are going through the same thing.
Whether that is fatherhood, whether that is marriage, whether it's grandfatherhood,
whether it's feeling the aches and pains and
not being as physical as you once were, having that camaraderie is important.
But again, I feel like so much of this has been conditioned into us by society around
us, particularly by conservatives and also to a certain extent, by the media.
>> Speaker 2: So let's go back to these men's groups who are pushing back against
some of the messaging that we're hearing from conservatives.
So Mark Green is the founder of Remaking Manhood and he says that traditional
conceptions of manliness leave no room for vulnerability and that is a problem.
He says that if a boy expresses too much emotion or too much need for
connection is too giddy, is too joyful,
what we say to that boy is, what are you, a sissy?
What are you, a girl?
What are you, gay?
It's your job to dominate those around you and you will lose status and that will
increase the number of individuals above you who can dish out dominance to you.
And what we find is that in that system, in that structure men are constantly in
competition with each other and constantly driven by this sense of anxiety.
Also, you have Naomi Way,
a professor of developmental psychology at New York University who
said many boys are raised with what she called the cowboy mentality.
I can do it myself, I don't need others,
often perpetuated by the father wanting the son to man up and not be so soft.
The whole model of getting help is part of so-called femininity.
As a result, she said, women end up being the therapist for
their husband, and more are getting sick of it.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH] >> I don't agree with that last
part at all, at all.
Maybe some women are, I certainly don't feel that way.
I love it when those conversations take place.
But I'm curious what you think about that.
>> Speaker 3: Some of this, I think, is hardwired into us in part because of what,
for thousands of years, thousands of years, the men were the hunter
gatherers and the women took care of the children and baked or whatever it was.
And that only has changed in the last several hundred years.
It's only been, what?b100 and some years since women had the right to vote.
So, for most of our existence as human beings,
the roles have been pretty clearly defined.
I think it's only in the last 100 years where things have started to change.
I think they're changing for the good, but there is a certain amount of resources and
help that I think a lot of communities, a lot of families,
a lot of men need in terms of understanding that it's okay,
it actually makes you a better human being to be communicative,
to express your emotions, to show your vulnerabilities, to ask for help.
And there's a whole generation, I think, of parents now who haven't quite
had that experience reinforced with them that it's okay to be that kind of parent
that nurtures a sweet and vulnerable child as opposed to a strong, silent one.
So it may take, unfortunately, a couple of generations for
all of this to finally really sort of play itself out.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, I think that the important thing to keep in mind is,
no pressure.
If a man wants to be vulnerable, great, support that.
If he doesn't want to be vulnerable and is more of the stoic type, and
that's genuinely what he wants, support that as well.
This pressure to be super, traditionally masculine or
maybe even show your softer side, be vulnerable,
just let them be who they are and support them and meet them where they are.
I think that is the right approach.
And more importantly,
we really need to encourage people to get off the Internet and
go out into the real world and actually form relationships and bonds in real life.
I really do think that that would help, not just with men, but women as well.
>> Speaker 3: As, you know, it also goes both ways, right?
I mean, if your partner in a relationship wants you to take control of certain
situations and wants you to be the one who makes decisions, communicate that and
at least make the expectations clear, but it sort of goes both ways.
I mean, everybody involved in a relationship can help be part of making
that relationship work for that particular family or that particular couple.
>> Speaker 2: Absolutely, and for any of you watching who are curious about these
men's groups and are looking for any support,
there are fellowship organizations like Evryman spelled E-V-R-Y-M-A-N.
There's the Mankind Project and then there's also the Journeymen.
I just know through someone I'm very close with that every
man is fantastic, so I can vouch for them.
But I do love that there are these support groups and
you get to meet people, maybe build some camaraderie.
Check it out, I think it could be helpful to some of our listeners and viewers.