Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E49: Is Manhood Under Attack? w/ Prof. Nancy Pearcey
Transcript
- 0:00The message from evolutionary psychology has been not only
- 0:03that men are naturally promiscuous, but they're
- 0:05naturally flesh obsessed pigs who are irresponsible, crime
- 0:09prone. We really need to counter the
- 0:10notion that men are just naturally, you know, beast at
- 0:13heart and come back to a vision of men made in God's image who
- 0:17are naturally oriented towards marriage and family and
- 0:21fatherhood. Is masculinity toxic?
- 0:28Are women usually the victims and men usually the villains?
- 0:33You're going to hear sometimes these sorts of scripts or
- 0:35narratives in popular culture today, but a new book by
- 0:39professor and best selling author Nancy Pearcey is
- 0:43shattering some of the misconceptions about
- 0:45masculinity. I'm really excited to have on
- 0:47the podcast today Professor Pearcey, who I'm a big fan of,
- 0:51and to talk about her new book called The Toxic War On
- 0:55Masculinity, How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes.
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- 2:16Thanks so much, Nancy for joining the podcast.
- 2:19Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
- 2:22So first of all, what you've written, book?
- 2:24You wrote the book Love Thy Body.
- 2:25You've written other books. You're a professor, you study.
- 2:29A lot of your study is of Christianity, masculinity,
- 2:32femininity. What inspired this book?
- 2:35The toxic war on masculinity. Well, my eye was caught first of
- 2:39all by the incredible hostility that has become socially
- 2:43acceptable to express toward men.
- 2:46For example, there was an article in the Washington Post
- 2:49that was titled Why Can't we Hate Men?
- 2:52And I thought really. In a mainstream publication, a
- 2:55Huffington Post editor tweeted hashtag Kill all men.
- 3:01You can buy T-shirts that say so many men, so little ammunition.
- 3:06And books have come out with titles like I Hate Men and No
- 3:09Good Men and Are Men Necessary? And even men have jumped on the
- 3:14bandwagon. There was a, a book written by a
- 3:17male, male author and the main sentence that's been quoted from
- 3:21that book is talking about healthy masculinity is like
- 3:25talking about healthy cancer. And you may have seen this, It
- 3:29was in the news just a few weeks ago.
- 3:30The director of the movie Avatar, James Cameron, said
- 3:35testosterone is a toxin that you have to work out of your system.
- 3:39So no wonder a survey found recently that almost half of
- 3:43American men, 46%, say these days society seems to punish men
- 3:48just for acting like men. And by the way, that's what that
- 3:52one's in the book. But there was a more recent one
- 3:53in Britain, 55% of men. So the number's going up.
- 3:57And whether you agree with that or not, that is a lot of men who
- 4:00now think that they're getting a bad deal in modern society.
- 4:04And so I wanted to get to the bottom of this.
- 4:05You you cannot really oppose the social trend unless you know
- 4:08where it came from and how it developed.
- 4:10And that was my goal in the Toxico and masculinity is to
- 4:13help people understand where it came from so that they could
- 4:16respond more effectively. So you do an amazing job in the
- 4:19book of sketching the history, sorts of sort of history of
- 4:23masculinity and how different cultures and, you know,
- 4:26especially the Western culture has viewed masculinity and kind
- 4:30of debunking some stereotypes. Tell us what your research found
- 4:33as you looked back at the history of masculinity.
- 4:37Yeah, this was an interesting because I think most people
- 4:39think the concept of toxic masculinity arose, say, in the
- 4:441960s with second wave feminism actually has much deeper roots
- 4:48and that's what we need to understand.
- 4:50You have to go all the way back to the Industrial Revolution.
- 4:53Before that time, men worked with their wives and children
- 4:56all day on the family farm, the family business, the family
- 5:00industry, and so the ethos for masculinity really focused on
- 5:04their caretaking role. You have to be gentle and
- 5:07patient 'cause you're working with your wife and kids all day.
- 5:10Even the concept of authority had a very specific meaning
- 5:13then. It didn't mean you get to do
- 5:14whatever you want, It meant you had responsibility for the
- 5:18common good. The idea being, you know, you
- 5:21look out for what's good for you.
- 5:22I look out for what's good for me.
- 5:23But who looks out for the common good?
- 5:25Whether it's the marriage, the family, the church, school,
- 5:29civil society and whatnot. And the favored word of the day
- 5:32was the person in authority was not was to be disinterested.
- 5:37Which means he was not supposed to look out for his own
- 5:39interest. He was supposed to look out for
- 5:41the good of the whole. So how did we lose this?
- 5:45The Industrial Revolution took work out of the home.
- 5:48And of course, men had to follow their work out of the home into
- 5:51factories and offices. And for the first time in
- 5:55American history, men were not working with people they loved
- 5:58and had a moral bond with. Instead, they were working as
- 6:01individuals with other men. And this is when you start to
- 6:05see the language change. Already in the 19th century, you
- 6:08see in the literature of the day, people began to protest
- 6:12that men were losing the caretaking ethos that they'd had
- 6:15in the colonial era, that men were becoming individualistic,
- 6:18self interested, egocentric. Look out for number one, get
- 6:22ahead at all costs, greedy and acquisitive, to use the language
- 6:26of the day. And so already back then for the
- 6:29first time, you start to see the male character described in
- 6:32negative terms. People people didn't like it,
- 6:35but they did say that our men are changing and they are no
- 6:39longer following. Well, either the colonial ethic
- 6:42or or the Christian ethic too, because this was when
- 6:44secularization really permeated American culture.
- 6:47As large public institutions emerge, the business factories,
- 6:52financial institutions, universities, banks, and so on,
- 6:56these people began to say that these large public institutions
- 6:59should operate by scientific principles, by which they meant
- 7:03value free. In other words, don't bring your
- 7:06private values into the public arena, which is what we still
- 7:10hear today. And since men were the ones
- 7:12getting that secular education and working in that secularized
- 7:15workplace, they became secular earlier than women did.
- 7:19And you see that in the literature of the day, too.
- 7:21People began to complain that men were not going to church as
- 7:24often. They were not governing their
- 7:26behavior by biblical ethics. They were losing a biblical
- 7:29sense of manhood. And so there were the two
- 7:32factors, you know, the economic factor, but also it became the
- 7:35catalyst for the secularization. So along this same time as men
- 7:41are kind of leaving that family farm and the tenderness and the
- 7:44sort of cooperative nature of that family business, right?
- 7:48They needed more maybe tenderness or gentleness, like
- 7:50you said. How is this affecting femininity
- 7:54or the experience of femininity for most women?
- 7:57Because if the men are leaving and going into the factories and
- 8:00into the office, how does this impact women and their living
- 8:04out their feminine role? Yes, good question.
- 8:07Because if values were kicked out of the public arena, where
- 8:10would they be cultivated? In the private arena?
- 8:13In the home and church? And who presided over the home?
- 8:17The woman. And so, for the first time ever
- 8:21in human history, women were said to be morally and
- 8:24spiritually superior to men. They were set up as the.
- 8:28I, I want to pause for a SEC because that statement is such a
- 8:31tremendous 1. And it's when I was reading your
- 8:33book, I thought most people do not know this history, but this
- 8:38what you just said that for the first time women were seen to be
- 8:40morally and spiritually superior.
- 8:42I think today, even among many Christians, Catholics, this idea
- 8:46that, you know, women are, you know, the, the, the level of
- 8:48womanhood is the measure of civilization.
- 8:50That's Archbishop Fulton Sheen. So it's a Catholic, you know,
- 8:54idea in Catholic world as well as in the evangelical world.
- 8:57You know, women are supposed to have these, like, are especially
- 9:00spiritual. They're usually more spiritual
- 9:01than men. But are you saying that that is
- 9:04actually more of a modern idea? Very much, very much so.
- 9:08All the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, people had
- 9:12thought that men were morally superior, stronger.
- 9:15The idea was they saw the insight into right and wrong as
- 9:19a rational insight, and they thought that men were more
- 9:22rational and therefore men were more virtuous.
- 9:25In fact, the word virtue comes from the the Latin VIR means man
- 9:31as in the word virile. So the very word virtue had
- 9:34overtones of masculine strength and honor.
- 9:38And so it was completely new in the 19th century when people
- 9:41began to turn to women and say, well, men are sort of losing
- 9:45their biblical moorings, their ethical moorings.
- 9:48So women, it's up to you now to be the moral guardians of
- 9:51society. And that had that had negative
- 9:53consequences because first of all, it created tension,
- 9:56obviously, between men and women.
- 9:58I mean, who wants his wife to be his moral overseer?
- 10:02But it also let men off the hook because essentially they said,
- 10:06well, men are not naturally oriented toward marriage and
- 10:09family. Men are not naturally virtuous.
- 10:12They're naturally more prone to stem and vice and temptation,
- 10:16sexual temptation in in particular.
- 10:19So it was and and I think what you're saying is very good.
- 10:23I had AI did an interview with a young Christian couple not long
- 10:26ago. So I turned around and
- 10:27interviewed them and I asked them, what do you think among
- 10:31young people today in the church is, is this double standard
- 10:34still there? And they said, oh, absolutely.
- 10:37It's, it's just thought that that boys and men dating, they
- 10:41were young married couple, but dating and married couples, that
- 10:44the man is more prone to pornography and sexual sin in
- 10:48particular. And that it's up to the woman to
- 10:51hold the line. It's up to the woman to to hold
- 10:54the man in check. So as you were saying, I think
- 10:57that double standard is still there in the church.
- 11:00And it does two things. It puts way too much pressure on
- 11:02women, but it lets men off the hook.
- 11:05And so I think that we need to call men back to a moral
- 11:10standard rooted in Scripture and persuade them that in fact, if
- 11:14this is their true nature, if we say that their true nature is
- 11:18not to be oriented toward marriage and family, well, then
- 11:20marriage and family seems to be an imposition, you know, imposed
- 11:24by women and, and not and contrary to their true
- 11:27character. And so I think that's a very
- 11:28dangerous point of view. And, and you're absolutely
- 11:32right. I think since you since the 19th
- 11:34century it it still exists today that same double standard.
- 11:39So it seems like part of your argument is that today's modern
- 11:42world, you know the office and you know, the urbanization of
- 11:46family life and you know that we don't have the factory as much
- 11:49anymore. But I guess there's like a
- 11:51little bit of a factory sense of just sitting at one's laptop all
- 11:54day, like a machine typing away. So that this has brought out,
- 12:00you could argue, the worst in men or it's not been healthy for
- 12:03men and especially in terms of family dynamics.
- 12:07Do you think that is the case today?
- 12:09I mean, I know it might be maybe was more severe when men had to
- 12:12leave the home for, you know, 12 to 16 hours to go into a factory
- 12:16or even live at the factory away from their family.
- 12:19But is today's modern society really not set up for helping
- 12:23the masculine strengths, the good things about masculinity
- 12:27flourish and instead draw out devices?
- 12:29That seems to be part of the argument that you're making in
- 12:32the book. But look at how fathers are
- 12:35treated in the media. Fathers are ridiculed, mopped,
- 12:38made fun of. You know the dimwit dad the
- 12:41doofus dad is. It populates all of our
- 12:45advertisements and and movies and animations from Homer
- 12:50Simpson on. Where did that come from?
- 12:53You know, we know most of us know that's the case.
- 12:55But where did it come from? Again, if you go back to the
- 12:58Industrial Revolution, when fathers were taken out of the
- 13:01home for the first time, they really were not deeply
- 13:04integrated into the family dynamics anymore.
- 13:07They didn't really know what the children were doing throughout
- 13:09the day. They were no longer sort of
- 13:13closely connected to their children's experiences and
- 13:15feelings. And already in the 19th century,
- 13:18you see people protesting again. First of all, they protested
- 13:21that. Here's how one columnist put it
- 13:24at the time. The Father who was meant to be
- 13:27the prototype of the Heavenly Father is not here, you know,
- 13:32all week. He's only here on Sundays.
- 13:34So people were in shock at the time, right?
- 13:37It was, it was we're we're used to it now.
- 13:39But at the time, they were really shocked by the the change
- 13:42in the family dynamics. But you also see in the
- 13:45literature of the time, people beginning to say, well, I guess
- 13:48the fathers are basically irrelevant, insignificant,
- 13:51disconnected and even incompetent.
- 13:53You know, the doofus dad already shows up.
- 13:56In the 19th century, people began to say, well, fathers
- 13:59really don't know much about what's going on in the family.
- 14:01So, you know, they don't have much to say.
- 14:03So if you want to reconnect the men to the children, well, this
- 14:08does give us a a clue to how to do it.
- 14:10I have a whole chapter on, you know, can we flex the workplace
- 14:13a little, even even after the Industrial Revolution to help
- 14:17fathers be more in touch with their children.
- 14:20And the pandemic had a very minor silver lining, which is
- 14:24that a lot of fathers said, hey, we actually enjoy being home.
- 14:28One survey found that 65% of fathers said they did not want
- 14:32to go back to the office full time, that they preferred to
- 14:35work at least part time from home.
- 14:37And The New York Times had a really fun article.
- 14:40The title was something like during the pandemic fathers got
- 14:44reconnected to their families and they don't want to lose
- 14:47that. So it does also give us some
- 14:50direction on perhaps practical things that we can do to
- 14:53reconnect fathers to their children.
- 14:56And that is after all, the long term answer to toxic behaviour
- 14:59in men is fathers raising their kids in a healthy biblical sense
- 15:05of masculinity. 1 psychologist put it this way, we're not going
- 15:08to have a better class of men until we have a better class of
- 15:11fathers. Fathers who don't run out on the
- 15:13job. So, you know, there's a, there's
- 15:17obviously the trope about toxic masculinity, which is can be
- 15:20real, you know, a very harsh, angry, lustful, domineering
- 15:26masculinity, right. But then I think some of them
- 15:29may be very conservative space or maybe hyper traditionalist,
- 15:32I'll call them sort of fundamentalist traditionalist
- 15:34would say, well, the they don't agree with toxic masculinity,
- 15:38but they say that, you know, men shouldn't be changing diapers.
- 15:41You know, men should be out there providing and leave the
- 15:44entire house to the wife and she should be, you know, have
- 15:48dominion over the household entirely.
- 15:50And his job is to bring in the money basically.
- 15:52And the more feminine tasks of caretaking of children,
- 15:55especially very young children is, you know, not masculine.
- 15:58These seem to me to be too very, too bad extremes.
- 16:02But what's your take on that? Yeah, I agree with you.
- 16:05By the way, Martin Luther had a wonderful quote that I ended up
- 16:10cutting from the book for space. But Martin Luther has a
- 16:12wonderful quote when he where he says if if a father is washing
- 16:15his child's diapers and doing some other mean task, that's how
- 16:19he put it, some other mean task for his child.
- 16:21And he is ridiculed as an effeminate fool.
- 16:24His own words that God with all his angels was looking down and
- 16:28smiling. So Martin Luther himself was
- 16:30very involved in washing diapers and doing mean tasks for his
- 16:33children. But so with the colonial
- 16:35fathers, Colonial fathers were expected to be just as involved
- 16:38with their children as mothers were.
- 16:40And in fact, they were. They were.
- 16:43Of course, mothers have a special role when the when they
- 16:45have infants, when they're nursing and so on.
- 16:48But it was expected that fathers would take the lead when it came
- 16:52to the spiritual and intellectual training of their
- 16:55children. And most books on parenting in
- 16:59the colonial era were written to fathers.
- 17:01You know, today, if you go in a typical bookstore, books and
- 17:04parenting are usually, you know, most of them are for women, for
- 17:07the mothers. But back then, whether it's
- 17:09sermon, pamphlets, advice manuals and so on, addressed the
- 17:13father because the father was seen to be just as deeply
- 17:18involved with his children as mothers.
- 17:20In fact, there's a word for it. They were called house fathers.
- 17:23Today we talk about housewives. That was actually a common word
- 17:26back then, house fathers. So fathers were expected to lead
- 17:30their lead the whole family in terms of family prayers, for
- 17:34example. So I think we've kind of lost
- 17:38touch with the colonial fathers when we today say, well, you
- 17:42know, men should not be involved.
- 17:44We've lost touch with well, most of human history because you
- 17:47know, pre industrial era is most of human history.
- 17:50The industrial world has been around since 18th, 19th century.
- 17:54And also, I would say this too, the idea that men find their
- 18:01true nature outside the home was also a late 19th century trope.
- 18:07What what happened is after the Industrial Revolution, when men
- 18:10were no longer being raised on the farm and, and young men were
- 18:15no longer Hardy, strong, you know, farm boys, people began to
- 18:20say men are getting soft. You know, they're, they're
- 18:23working at a desk all day. They're losing their
- 18:26masculinity. And and there was actually a
- 18:29word that entered the English vocabulary over civilized.
- 18:33The fear was that men, men and boys were becoming over
- 18:36civilized. And that's when we see the
- 18:38beginning of the notion that, well, to find you true
- 18:40masculinity, you've got to get away from the home, away from
- 18:44family, away from women in particular.
- 18:47And this is when, for example, in the literature of the day,
- 18:50Westerns became very common and and other literature that said
- 18:54the way to to find your true masculinity is get out with the
- 18:57Cowboys and rope cattle and sleep under the stars.
- 19:01And and, and you know, some of that literature is fun.
- 19:03I like westerns as much as anybody.
- 19:05But this the underlying message was, again, marriage and family
- 19:10are not true to the male nature. And to find his true self, he
- 19:14gets out mountain climbing and hunting and soldiering and
- 19:17sailoring. And that was a big part of the
- 19:19literature of the 19th century. And I'm concerned that today
- 19:22would sort of just taking that literature and baptizing it
- 19:24again instead of really thinking ourselves what is a true
- 19:29definition of masculinity. Well, it's, it's interesting
- 19:32because I think for people that have experienced it, they know
- 19:35it. You know, if they had a father,
- 19:37who was that house father? I mean, they were providing, but
- 19:40they were very much engaged in the home emotionally,
- 19:42physically, they it's easy for them to, you know, laugh off,
- 19:47you know, extreme versions of masculinity bubbling up in
- 19:49culture. But from the many of many people
- 19:52today didn't have that for whatever reason.
- 19:55And and that's where I think it's easy for them to fall into
- 19:58these extremes or to think that the extreme.
- 20:01Is correct. Another popular lie that I hear,
- 20:04Nancy, is that, and I believe it's a lie, is that men are not
- 20:08prone to monogamy, that, you know, women are prone to
- 20:11monogamy because they can carry a child.
- 20:14And so they, you know, having multiple sexual partners isn't
- 20:17as, I guess, helpful for them. But evolutionarily speaking, men
- 20:22are not prone to monogamy because they have this desire to
- 20:25impregnate as many women as physically possible and you
- 20:27know, have, you know, thousands of offspring.
- 20:30Biologically speaking. I don't buy that.
- 20:32I can give my take on it, but I really want to hear yours.
- 20:35Why? That actually isn't true about
- 20:37men, and it is a lie that men can't be happily monogamous.
- 20:43Well, yes, let me give you the bigger picture of the whole
- 20:45impact of of evolution on constants of masculinity.
- 20:49I mean, it starts with Darwin, obviously.
- 20:51So Darwinian thinkers began to say that the men who came out on
- 20:57top in the struggle for survival would by necessity be men who
- 21:00are rugged, ruthless, brutal, savage, barbarian, and even
- 21:05predatory. And this is the language that
- 21:07evolution sort of inserted into our vocabulary that to find your
- 21:12true self was to get in touch with the beast within instead of
- 21:17living up to the image of God in the in in yourself live down to
- 21:22the beast within. So this is for example, when the
- 21:24Tarzan books became popular and the the son of the author
- 21:28actually writes that his father wrote the Tarzan books to
- 21:31communicate a Darwin in worldview that we're just, you
- 21:34know, human beings are just part of nature, products of natural
- 21:36natural selection. And so Darwin so so Tarzan
- 21:40retains his inner wildness because he's been raised by the
- 21:44apes. And even though, even though he
- 21:46learns European customs and languages, he still at the end
- 21:50of the book, turns to Jane and says, I'm still a wild beast at
- 21:53heart. And so and, and, and by the way,
- 21:56there was also a much more serious literature also called
- 22:00it was a genre called literary naturalism, which was also
- 22:03explicitly designed to use fiction to to treat a Darwinian
- 22:06worldview. The best known being Jack
- 22:08London, who wrote about dogs. But of course it was the
- 22:12metaphor for humans because his, his his message was that humans
- 22:17are just products of genes and environment, natural selection.
- 22:22When he was a young man, London read books about Darwinism and
- 22:27experienced what 1 historian calls a religious conversion to
- 22:32radical materialism or naturalism.
- 22:35So that was in the in Darwin's day, it was called social
- 22:39Darwinism, but it's come back in our own day under the title of
- 22:43evolutionary psychology. The idea being, if your body has
- 22:46evolved, so has your whole psychology, your whole way of
- 22:49thinking. And these are the people who
- 22:51have popularized the idea that from from an evolutionary
- 22:56perspective, a man should spread a seed as wide and far as
- 22:59possible to get as many of his genes into the next generation.
- 23:03Of course, that doesn't even make sense biologically because
- 23:07why human infants are so fragile and needs long term care that if
- 23:13a man quickly moves on to his next sexual conquest, that
- 23:16infant is much less likely to survive and he won't get his
- 23:19genes into the next generation. So even from a scientific
- 23:23perspective, not even a moral one, it doesn't even make sense.
- 23:26But evolutionary psychology has popularized the idea that men,
- 23:31well, I'll give you another example.
- 23:33It was a best selling book. Best selling called The Moral
- 23:36Animal and the author says the human male is a possessive flesh
- 23:43obsessed pig. Giving a man a book on how to
- 23:47have a good marriage is like giving a booklet to Vikings on
- 23:51how not to pillage. So the message from evolutionary
- 23:55psychology has been not only that men are naturally
- 23:58promiscuous, but they're naturally flesh obsessed pigs
- 24:02who are irresponsible, crime prone.
- 24:04Yeah. There, George Gilder has a book
- 24:06called Men and Marriage in which he says a man's deepest impulse
- 24:10is to get on the road, you know, get his motorbike out on the
- 24:13road and again, get away from civilization, get away from
- 24:17women. But then he turns around and
- 24:19says, and women need to tame these men.
- 24:21It's up to women to civilize them.
- 24:24What really, first of all, men are a lot stronger than women.
- 24:27If they really are so prone to sin and vice and crime, what
- 24:30woman is going to be able to tame them and which what woman
- 24:34would want to? So I think we really need to
- 24:37counter the notion that men are just naturally, you know, the
- 24:40beast at heart and come back to a vision of men made in God's
- 24:44image who are naturally oriented towards marriage and family and
- 24:50fatherhood. Do you buy the analysis today?
- 24:54It's a more modern analysis that men are naturally more
- 24:57promiscuous now. I think it is a fact that, you
- 25:00know, men due to their size and their strength, you know,
- 25:04typically are the aggressive part, aggressive party when it
- 25:08comes to sexual violence. You know, I think that that
- 25:11literature is clear, that research is clear.
- 25:14But you know, I, I, I, I have, you know, one, one thing that I
- 25:17saw in your book a few times, it wasn't a huge focus of the book,
- 25:20but was a little bit of debunking of the idea that women
- 25:25are more sexually virtuous by nature.
- 25:27It's easier for women to choose sexual virtue, self-control,
- 25:31than it is men. No, I wouldn't deny that the
- 25:35sexist baby have somewhat different strengths and
- 25:38weaknesses. So I don't have a problem with
- 25:41saying that there may be some things that men are more prone
- 25:44to versus women, but the very notion that men are more
- 25:49promiscuous does come from those evolutionary assumptions.
- 25:53And like I said, it doesn't even make sense scientifically, let
- 25:57alone morally. So what I do in the book several
- 26:00times as I come back to what's called the cultural mandate, and
- 26:05half my students have not heard that term.
- 26:07So the cultural mandate is in Genesis 1, where God has created
- 26:12the physical universe. He's created the animals, and
- 26:14then he creates the first human couple.
- 26:17And what's the first thing he says to them?
- 26:19He tells them why he created them, what's their purpose,
- 26:22What's their job description? And he says be fruitful and
- 26:25multiply and subdue the earth. And in the highly streamlined
- 26:29language of Genesis 1, we can unpack several levels of meaning
- 26:33there. So be fruitful and multiply, you
- 26:36know, starts with the family. But historically, all of the
- 26:39other social institutions do grow out of the family.
- 26:42So it also means, you know, the extended family, the clan, the
- 26:45tribe, the village, the nation. And social institutions have
- 26:49started to for certain functions.
- 26:51You, you need a state, you need a marketplace, you need a
- 26:54church, you need a school. And so the word, the phrase in
- 26:58Genesis actually means build up all of the social institutions,
- 27:02build the entire social world, subdue the earth means harness
- 27:05the natural resources. So most, most civilizations
- 27:09start with agriculture, but then mining technology, invent
- 27:14computers, compose music. One of my students once asked me
- 27:19compose music. Really.
- 27:21I said, I, I play the violin. So I said, well, what's the
- 27:23violin made out of? Wood?
- 27:25What's the bow? Me of horsehair.
- 27:28So all of the transcendent beauty that we associate with
- 27:31music starts with harnessing the raw materials of nature.
- 27:35So I bring men back to this, the cultural mandate in particular,
- 27:40to counter the notion that men are naturally, like you said,
- 27:42promiscuous and wild. Wild at heart and you know, find
- 27:47their true nature driving off into the sunset like some sort
- 27:50of a Lone Ranger. No, that's not how they were
- 27:53created. They were created and they find
- 27:55their full greatest fulfilment rolling up their sleeves and
- 27:59getting deeply engaged with their families, with the social
- 28:03world and with creative and productive work.
- 28:08So it's the opposite of the idea that men should escape.
- 28:11It's though men find their truth fulfillment in in fulfilling
- 28:16their responsibilities. You know, becoming the becoming
- 28:19the house father that they used to be called, recovering that
- 28:23vision. And the secret to that, like you
- 28:26said at the beginning of what you just said, which is so
- 28:27beautiful, is the harmony between the sexes.
- 28:30It God gave the mandate of be fruitful, multiply and subdue
- 28:34the earth to a couple, to a man and a woman.
- 28:37And it's through their harmonization and bringing life
- 28:39into the world and their collaboration and building those
- 28:42social institutions and subduing the earth using the natural
- 28:46resources that makes the entire civilization that we we want to
- 28:50build the beautiful civilization.
- 28:51So it's the family and the marriage, the man and a woman
- 28:54doing this project together, that makes the whole thing
- 28:56possible. Yes, and, and the other side of
- 29:00it is I, I've been, I've been embroiled in a Twitter debate.
- 29:05My my book. Those are fun my.
- 29:07Book, my book. This book has proved to be more
- 29:10controversial than anyone I've ever written, which was kind of
- 29:13a surprise because Love Thy Body I thought would be more
- 29:16controversial. It just with issues like
- 29:18abortion and euthanasia, homosexuality, transgenderism,
- 29:22which is really cutting edge today.
- 29:24But this one has been more controversial.
- 29:26I'll give you some background that's not in the book.
- 29:28So I, I taught the manuscript in my classes.
- 29:32I LED several reading groups to get lots of feedback right, to
- 29:35find any rough edges. And when they would tell their
- 29:38family and friends that we were going through a book on
- 29:40masculinity, invariably the first question was whose side is
- 29:44she on? You know, with that tone, whose
- 29:47side is she on? Men tend to to assume I was
- 29:50probably some male bashing feminist.
- 29:53Progressives tended to assume I was some angry defensive
- 29:56reactionary. So I had to write the first, I
- 29:59had to rewrite that first chapter many times to sort of
- 30:01overcome that initial hostility. And, and, and so back, back to
- 30:07your question. Yes, on on Twitter right now, I
- 30:11was first attacked by more progressives.
- 30:14Now I'm being attacked by more conservatives who basically say
- 30:17I'm not giving adequate account of, you know, women's need to be
- 30:21domestic and in the home. And I'm like, wait a minute, I
- 30:24had a home birth. I did home schooling.
- 30:27I work, I work from home. I'm very focused on the home.
- 30:32So still both sides, you know, women and men were both called
- 30:37to create families and subdue the earth.
- 30:39They were both called to have the kind of the integration of
- 30:43life and work that they did enjoy through most of human
- 30:46history. You know, many people think,
- 30:48well, let's let's get back to the traditional family and they
- 30:50think to the 1950s. No, the traditional family, that
- 30:53wasn't pre industrial revolution, right?
- 30:58When I mean all, all through human history until that time,
- 31:01men and women worked from the home.
- 31:03All businesses, all economic enterprises were within the
- 31:06home. So both men and women were able
- 31:09to do economically productive work while raising their
- 31:13children. And so that balance is what I
- 31:15would like to see us try to recover today.
- 31:18I think you could write a book. Let me know this is a little
- 31:22controversial, but the feminist war on femininity or there could
- 31:25be a, you know, a companion piece to this because I
- 31:27understand, you know, some hardcore, you know,
- 31:30traditionalists, let's call them saying, well, what about the
- 31:32women's? You're saying men, you know,
- 31:34belong in the home too. Well, what about women?
- 31:36Because there is so much narrative today, ideology today,
- 31:40pushing women out of the home. You know the boss babe culture,
- 31:44you know the we know women empowerment world of not just
- 31:47get out of the home, but kill your baby in order to succeed,
- 31:50right? That's the whole pro abortion
- 31:52rhetoric is you need this choice to be empowered and the choice
- 31:55is to kill another human being, your own child.
- 31:58What do you think? Do you think that feminism is at
- 32:02fault in part for at least the toxic war and masculinity?
- 32:07And. Do you think it's also
- 32:09responsible for some of the toxic war and feminine
- 32:11femininity? Yes, in, in my book, I do I, I
- 32:16quote some of the early feminists like Betty Friedan,
- 32:20who said point blank that the married woman is a millstone
- 32:25around her husband's neck, that she's a Leech and a parasite.
- 32:31Because you know, the the woman by at that time, you know, was
- 32:35not doing any economically productive work.
- 32:37Well, she was not one of the first feminists though.
- 32:40She was a forties 50s feminist. Exactly.
- 32:44So I mean, the early feminists were mostly against abortion, so
- 32:47it's important to keep that in mind.
- 32:50But Betty, for Dan Simone de Beauvoir and others of that era,
- 32:55often, But that was you back up. When the Industrial Revolution
- 33:00took men's work out of the home, it also took women's work out of
- 33:02the home. That's the thing we need to
- 33:04understand because women did economically productive work.
- 33:07The household manufacturer was the only kind of manufacturer
- 33:11before the Industrial Revolution.
- 33:12So women were baking bread from scratch, doing all their cooking
- 33:16from scratch, making candles, making all their clothes from
- 33:19scratch. You know, women had a lot of, a
- 33:23lot to do in terms of, of economically productive work in,
- 33:26in terms of household manufacturing that was taken
- 33:28away from women. So I think that that is really
- 33:31why the feminist movement started because women said,
- 33:34well, wait a minute to to put it in biblical terms, women were
- 33:37called to fulfil the whole cultural mandate too, not only
- 33:41to be fruitful and multiply, but also to subdue the earth.
- 33:46Women were supposed to be able to use their, their talents and
- 33:49skills in economically productive work, which they had
- 33:53until the industrial revolution. And, and because they no longer
- 33:58did real work, quote UN quote, the, the feminists, like Betty
- 34:01Foudin said, well, they're childlike, they're dependent,
- 34:04they're parasites. She even, she even sympathized
- 34:08with men then divorcing their wives because after all, you
- 34:12know, who would want this millstone around their neck?
- 34:15So certainly a lot of the feminist rhetoric.
- 34:18And her, her feminine mystique book, it was all about the woman
- 34:21that is just bored to tears and has no meaning as a suburban
- 34:25housewife alone in her house. Her kids are off at school, her
- 34:27husband's working. She has a laundry machine, you
- 34:30know, her washing machine doing her washing work.
- 34:33She has a, you know, a refrigerator taking care.
- 34:36You don't have to go, you know, get the milk fresh from the cow.
- 34:38She has everything in the home. So she has no purpose anymore.
- 34:41I think that was kind of the she talked about this, this terrible
- 34:45sickness that was harming all these suburban women.
- 34:49And so therefore they need to leave the shackles of family
- 34:51life and go into the workplace and do what the men were doing.
- 34:55Yes. And, and I have some sympathy
- 34:57for that because men, women were created to fulfill the cultural
- 35:00mandate, both sides of it. But I think the answer is, of
- 35:03course, to bring work home again.
- 35:05And most women I know who are work, have children, do bring
- 35:09some kind of productive work home.
- 35:11I know many women who work from home in, in various ways, both
- 35:14pink collar work and but of course, knowledge work is
- 35:18especially easy to bring home. Consultants, IT consultants,
- 35:22writers, which is me. You know, I, I've worked almost
- 35:25my entire life primarily from home.
- 35:29And so I do think it's, it's valid to say how can we help
- 35:31women get a better life work balance by bringing work home
- 35:34while their children are young. But it's time to start asking
- 35:37how men can also bring their work home during the pandemic.
- 35:41I'll give you just one story because sometimes that anecdote
- 35:43sort of crystallizes it. But one of my graduate students
- 35:47husband was an IT professional and he came home during the
- 35:50pandemic. And because he was home more, he
- 35:53was able to be more involved with their families home
- 35:55schooling. He decided he would be the one
- 35:57to make lunch every day. He could take his kids to soccer
- 36:01and choir practice. And he was picking up so much of
- 36:04the family responsibilities that his wife was able to start a
- 36:07home, a part time business. But she was an opera singer and
- 36:11a student who was an opera singer.
- 36:13So she started a voice studio and the whole family benefited
- 36:16from the added income. So I interviewed her husband and
- 36:19he said our life is so much more balanced now.
- 36:22I am never going back to A to 40 hours in a cubicle.
- 36:27And then the final, final kicker was he said the time that I used
- 36:31to spend commuting to work every morning I now spend praying with
- 36:35my wife. Beautiful.
- 36:37So this is what can be done. And that's what I I give lots of
- 36:44anecdotes because there's no general principle yet, but lots
- 36:47of stories of people who did that during the pandemic and
- 36:50then said, I'm, I'm keeping this, this, I'm closer to my
- 36:54kids now. I'm more integrated into my
- 36:56family. You know, this is what I want
- 36:58for myself. So do you think then feminism at
- 37:01large was a reaction to this dramatic shift in the in society
- 37:07post industrial revolution, where basically the home was
- 37:10broken apart for many and there is this new kind of division or
- 37:15separation between the sexes. And so with feminism of people
- 37:19wanting to vote, people wanting independence, maybe, you know,
- 37:23having their own economic independence, it was because
- 37:26they were trying to sort of solidify some sort of equal
- 37:29equilibrium between what they saw as men now breaking apart
- 37:32from women because of economic reasons.
- 37:35Yes, yes, exactly. There's a, a huge split, a gulf
- 37:39was created between the private world and the public world.
- 37:42And of course, men had no choice but to go into the public realm,
- 37:46but women would then cut off from many of the opportunities
- 37:50that they had had when society was more integrated.
- 37:53You know, I, I mentioned Martin Luther earlier.
- 37:55Well, his wife, Catherine Keta, Keta is German.
- 38:00For Kathy Keta was very involved in raising the children.
- 38:05Of course, they had many children.
- 38:08She was very involved when her husband had theologians come in
- 38:11and they have theological discussions.
- 38:13Remember, they didn't have journals very much back then, so
- 38:16most of the professional consulting was personally
- 38:20visiting each other. So theologians would come into
- 38:23their home and stay for a while. And she was a very active part
- 38:25of these theological discussions.
- 38:27She had been a nun, after all. So she was very well
- 38:29theologically educated. She also ran several home based
- 38:34businesses. She ran a brewery.
- 38:36She she produced beer, she ran orchards, she ran farms, she
- 38:40ran, she had crops, she had livestock.
- 38:43I mean, she was a Proverbs 31 woman.
- 38:46So before the Industrial Revolution, women were not cut
- 38:50off from the best of society in the way that they were after the
- 38:54Industrial Revolution. And I do think that's a big part
- 38:56of feminism. You know, in so far as we want
- 38:59to say there was some real needs that feminine were responding
- 39:03to. I don't agree with their
- 39:04solutions, but there was some real needs that they were
- 39:06responding to. And that is that women,
- 39:09everybody left the home except women, right?
- 39:12You know, husbands, extended family.
- 39:17Women used to have help raising the kids with extended family
- 39:20and older siblings. And you know, the maiden aunt,
- 39:24which was which more common back then.
- 39:26Not everybody felt they had to marry so often they would live,
- 39:29live with a household. And suddenly women were cut off
- 39:32from all of that. Oh, and, and healthcare was
- 39:35often done at home, education was done at home.
- 39:39And all of a sudden women had none of that.
- 39:41It was just early childhood, early childcare and cleaning the
- 39:44house. So there was a huge we have to
- 39:48recognize women lost a lot at the Industrial Revolution.
- 39:52I think it's so powerful to know the history because it just
- 39:55answers so many of the questions about not just why we got to
- 39:58where we are with so much of the animosity between the sexes and
- 40:01extremes and even the rejection of femininity and masculinity.
- 40:05But it also just, I think, brings a lot of hope for there
- 40:09is a way to be fully man, fully woman in harmony.
- 40:13But it takes an intentionality about how do we set up our
- 40:15lives. You mentioned the knowledge
- 40:17economy earlier and that kind of gives you some hope because now
- 40:20people can kind of work from home more.
- 40:22And sort of incorporate their work with their home life more,
- 40:26both men and women. How do you see economically the
- 40:29future looking for especially American Society and for helping
- 40:34men sort of reclaim their house father role as women also
- 40:37reclaim their house mother role, which is also under attack?
- 40:43Yes, well, sometimes people say the industrial revolution took
- 40:46work out of the home. The technological revolution is
- 40:49bringing it back, but making it possible to bring it back.
- 40:53And now I want to clarify that sometimes I get pushed back by
- 40:56people saying, well, there's a there's an important social
- 40:59component to work that sometimes it's important for a person to
- 41:01be in the office. Fine, yes, I'm talking about
- 41:04when you have young children in the home.
- 41:06That's my concern. My concern is raising the kids.
- 41:10So I think that perhaps we should think in terms of work
- 41:12having stages, like when your kids are young, you find ways to
- 41:16work at least part time from home so that you can be more
- 41:19integrated into your family. And when your children are grown
- 41:22and gone, you have more options. You know, I'm not saying that
- 41:25home based work is the best for everybody.
- 41:28I'm saying it's the best for parents who are trying to be
- 41:30involved with their children. And I would like to see, by the
- 41:34way, I do quote a lot of CEOs during the pandemic who found
- 41:38that work from home did not take bring down productivity.
- 41:42We've got to convince business as well that this is good for
- 41:45them. I quote a couple who said,
- 41:48here's what one CEO said. He said we were afraid to let
- 41:51people work from home before the pandemic because we were afraid
- 41:55that productivity would decline. He said that fear was completely
- 41:58exploded during the pandemic. When people worked from home, we
- 42:02saw no decrease in productivity. In fact, sometimes we saw
- 42:05increases because people who work from home are not wasting a
- 42:08lot of time commuting and unnecessary meetings and so on.
- 42:13So I, I read several articles by CEO saying, you know, actually
- 42:17you have to be careful that people don't work too much when
- 42:20they work from home. They don't know when to stop.
- 42:22So it's a win win for both sides, but we have to make the
- 42:27case to to business and industry that they're actually going to
- 42:31benefit more. Here's how one CEO put it.
- 42:34She said if you give parents the time to be better parents, they
- 42:40actually end up being better workers.
- 42:42They, they do, in fact, they're happier, they're more balanced
- 42:46and they may not come in on Sundays, you know, the weekends,
- 42:51they may not come in on the weekends as much, they might not
- 42:53do as much overtime, but their time on the job, they're more
- 42:56productive. So I put a lot of those quotes
- 42:59in the book so that you can bring that to your boss, you
- 43:02know, and and and and make a case for working at least part
- 43:07time from home when your children are young.
- 43:09I I I love that vision and I think increasingly it's going to
- 43:12be possible. The key is helping persuade
- 43:15people, giving people the vision of what really harmony between
- 43:19the sexes can look like, you know, marriage, the beauty of
- 43:22the marriage of marriage and the family project.
- 43:24And then, yeah, it's in no way anti masculine to be very
- 43:28engaged in the home. And it's also as a woman, you're
- 43:32going to find reward, not just doing some work and creative
- 43:36work. And maybe you're economically
- 43:38providing for the family as well, which is, you know, common
- 43:41for many families today. But that the home too is just
- 43:44like for the man and more so when you're the mother of a
- 43:47young child, is a beautifully rewarding place to be when it's
- 43:51done in proper community. Right.
- 43:53Like you said earlier, if the woman is just all by yourself
- 43:55with the baby, it can be incredibly alienating.
- 43:57I think that's one of the reasons postpartum depression
- 44:00rates are so high is you just leave a woman with a newborn
- 44:02with no support system. The man is off back at work.
- 44:05There's no sort of system to support her emotionally and
- 44:08physically. Yeah, that can be incredibly
- 44:10difficult. And I don't think it's natural.
- 44:13I know we don't much more time, but I do want to ask you another
- 44:16question, maybe a little controversial about, you know,
- 44:19again, about masculinity. So men are obviously physically
- 44:22stronger than women. There is, I think there's been
- 44:26studies done about men and women and their IQ's and my
- 44:29understanding is they're largely the same at large, although at
- 44:32the end of the bell curve there are more male geniuses than
- 44:35women geniuses, but overall women are slightly smarter.
- 44:38Is that what your research shows?
- 44:42Well, I did find one study that said that, but I wouldn't want
- 44:45to say that I would go with a single study.
- 44:48Although women do test out higher on test of emotional
- 44:51intelligence. That's not quite so surprising.
- 44:55But, you know, if I if I can, I wanted to pick up on one thing
- 44:59you said earlier when you said it is masculine to be involved
- 45:01with your family. Because one of the things that's
- 45:06a bit unique about the book is people who try to encourage men
- 45:10to be more involved in their families usually take a scolding
- 45:13tone. You need you need to spend more
- 45:16time at home. I have a graduate student who is
- 45:20the leader of a large women's ministry in a, in a big Baptist
- 45:24Church. And she said on on Mother's Day,
- 45:28we hand out roses and tell the mothers they're wonderful.
- 45:31On Father's Day, we scold the men and tell them to do better.
- 45:35And so one of those things that was so unique about the book.
- 45:38I mean, I was surprised to find this.
- 45:39There's a lot of data showing that men benefit from becoming
- 45:43involved fathers. I'm not aversed to appealing to
- 45:46people's self-interest. So fathers themselves are
- 45:50reporting that they're that becoming a father enhances their
- 45:55sense of manhood. And it's even biochemical.
- 45:59We knew, we already knew that when a Mormon gives birth, you
- 46:02know, her oxytocin rises, right, which is a bonding hormone,
- 46:05which gives her a little bit of a biochemical boost in, in
- 46:09attaching to her infant. Well, it turns out that men's
- 46:12oxytocin goes up too when, when their baby is born.
- 46:16And the baby's oxytocin goes up when the father is it, it, the
- 46:20father has to be actively holding, playing with, cuddling
- 46:23his baby. It's, it's stimulated by tactile
- 46:26sense. So but when the father is
- 46:30holding us and playing with his child, his oxytocin goes up as
- 46:33well. His testosterone goes down, by
- 46:35the way. So he's a bit gentler, and his
- 46:38oxytocin goes up. And so men, too, are
- 46:41biochemically primed to be committed, attached, nurturing
- 46:46fathers. And the biggest surprise, this
- 46:49was the most recent data. It was by an anthropologist and
- 46:53she discovered that men's oxytocin is actually rising off
- 46:58through his wife's pregnancy. So for the nine months of his
- 47:02wife's pregnancy, if they're living together, his oxytocin is
- 47:05going up at the same time hers is.
- 47:07Nobody knew that. I guess nobody thought to test a
- 47:10man's blood during the his wife's pregnancy.
- 47:14But when they did, they found out that all those nine months,
- 47:17he is also being biochemically primed to be fully involved as a
- 47:21father. So fathers do.
- 47:24And there's even something called, a psychologist called it
- 47:27the dad brain. In other words, there's a nest
- 47:29of neurons that that fire when a man becomes a father, that don't
- 47:34fire if you don't become a father or if you're not an
- 47:36engaged father. So there's a psychologist who
- 47:39says, you know, when a man becomes a father, he is actually
- 47:43his, his brain activity actually increases.
- 47:46So men actually benefit greatly from becoming fathers.
- 47:49And so, you know, we can help them realize that they
- 47:52themselves will experience a a deeper sense of purpose, meaning
- 47:57and just fulfillment of when they become fathers so that we
- 48:02can appeal to them in a positive way and not just sort of a
- 48:04scolding tone, which I think is more common.
- 48:07I, I think it's a great point and I, I love what you shared.
- 48:10I think people don't usually get to hear that.
- 48:12And it's important to hear about the beautiful benefits of
- 48:15fatherhood for men. Where I was going with the last
- 48:17question about, you know, IQ or just physical differences
- 48:20between women and the IQ was a more of a little, almost like a
- 48:23joke. It's a another popular Twitter
- 48:25battle between, you know, some on the the left and the right
- 48:29and the red pill and the, you know, that whole world.
- 48:32But really, you know, these these biological differences
- 48:35between men and women, the fact that women can only women can be
- 48:39mothers, only men can be fathers.
- 48:41Men are physically at large stronger.
- 48:44Women alone can nurture. We gestate, we can lactate, we
- 48:48do these things. What do you think?
- 48:50You know, this is kind of Harkins back to your book Life
- 48:52by Body. What what are the lessons, the
- 48:55moral lessons about the the differences between the sexes?
- 49:00Yes. So of course, one of the first
- 49:02questions I always got when I was writing the book was and So
- 49:04what do you think are the differences between men and
- 49:06women? And so that had to go into
- 49:07chapter one right at the beginning because everyone's
- 49:10going to ask it. And, and you, you're right.
- 49:12Let's start with just biology. Well, psychologically, let me
- 49:16say this. Psychologically, men and women,
- 49:17of course, are more similar than they are different.
- 49:20And so if you even a trait, even a trait like aggression,
- 49:25surprisingly, you get a bail curve for women and you get a
- 49:28bail curve for men. And they overlap extremely
- 49:31closely. They, they differ mostly at the
- 49:33edges, at the extremes, which is why 90% of prison inmates are
- 49:37male. They're at that, at that extreme
- 49:41of aggression. So it is important to always
- 49:43remember we are more alike than different.
- 49:46You know, when, when Eve shows up in the Garden of Eden, Adam
- 49:49doesn't say, oh, somebody who's, you know, kind of different from
- 49:52me. No, he says bone of my bones and
- 49:54flesh of my flesh. You know, he's excited because
- 49:57it's somebody who's like him. So we want to keep that in mind
- 50:01even when we discuss, discuss differences.
- 50:03But let's go to biology. Obviously men are bigger,
- 50:06stronger, faster because of, of testosterone.
- 50:11They are tend to be more aggressive and risk taking.
- 50:14And it is time for us to just say these are good things.
- 50:17This is how God made men and we should be grateful for these
- 50:21differences, for these the uniquenesses of the sexes
- 50:25instead of denigrating them. I, you do see feminists, you've
- 50:27probably seen this, you have seen feminists who'll say, well,
- 50:30women could be just as strong as men if they would just work out.
- 50:33No, they, they won't be. And it's time, it's time for us
- 50:37to say these are good things. Now, here's let me give you
- 50:40another study. Though.
- 50:42The thing is, of course, what we do have to help men recognize is
- 50:45that their greater strength was not given them to get what they
- 50:49want. It was given them to provide,
- 50:52protect and cherish those who they loved.
- 50:56So there was an anthropologist who did the first ever cross
- 51:00cultural cross cultural concepts of masculinity.
- 51:04And what he found was no matter how they define masculinity,
- 51:08which does differ some from culture to culture.
- 51:11What they all agreed on was what he called the three PS that to
- 51:16be a man means you provide, you protect and you procreate,
- 51:21meaning have a family, you know, build into the next generation.
- 51:25He found that this was universal.
- 51:27And my take away is men are made in God's image and they do know
- 51:32that their strength was not given them to just overpower
- 51:35others, dominate others, control, get what they want.
- 51:38It was given them to provide, protect and be a good father.
- 51:43And this is it seems to be built into the male nature because
- 51:47this was this was cross cultural.
- 51:48This was among the globe. These weren't Christian cultures
- 51:52that he was investigating. Many of they were non Christian
- 51:56as well. I mean, people who didn't have a
- 51:57biblical background had that innate inherent knowledge of
- 52:01what it means to be a good man. They had a knowledge of what
- 52:04that that their strengths were given them for a purpose and
- 52:07that they would be most fulfilled when they live out
- 52:09that purpose. It seems to be a universal
- 52:13understanding that that men have that just, you know, like I
- 52:17said, it's an innate knowledge. How can we celebrate and
- 52:22encourage foster healthy masculinity, especially in boys
- 52:27and young men? You know, I think I'll give you
- 52:30one more study because this was another one I put at the front
- 52:34of the book because, like I said, people were asking what
- 52:38side is she on? Who's side is she on?
- 52:40And so I put this right at the beginning because it tended to
- 52:44defuse that hostility. It's a sociologist.
- 52:48He's not a Christian himself, but he's well known in his
- 52:51field. And so he speaks all around the
- 52:53world. So once again, we're getting a
- 52:54global perspective. And he so he came up with this
- 52:58clever experiment. He asked young men 2 questions.
- 53:01First, he would ask them, what does it mean to be a good man?
- 53:04If you are at a funeral in the in the eulogy, somebody says he
- 53:08was a good man. What does that mean?
- 53:11And the sociologist said all around the world, young men had
- 53:14no problem answering that they would jump right in with duty,
- 53:17honor, integrity, sacrifice, do the right thing, look out for
- 53:21the little guy, provide, be a protector, be a provider, be
- 53:25responsible, you get the picture?
- 53:27And so the sociologist would ask them, well, where'd you learn
- 53:30that? And they'd say, it's just in the
- 53:32air we breathe. Or if they were in a Western
- 53:35country, they would say, it's part of our Judeo-christian
- 53:38heritage. And then he would follow up with
- 53:41a second question. He'd say, well, what does it
- 53:43mean if I say to you, man up, be a real man?
- 53:46And the young men would say, oh, no, that's completely different.
- 53:49That means be tough, be strong, never show weakness, win at all
- 53:53costs, be competitive, get rich, get laid.
- 53:58I'm using their language. And the sociologist concluded
- 54:02that men really have these two competing scripts.
- 54:06And this is all around the world.
- 54:08On the one hand, again, men innately know what it means to
- 54:11be the good man. It's an inherent knowledge that
- 54:15all men have. But they feel cultural pressure
- 54:19to live up to the standard of the real man, so to speak, which
- 54:24does include the more toxic behaviours.
- 54:27Especially if it's decoupled from a moral vision of what it
- 54:31means to be a man, it can easily slide into dominance and control
- 54:35and entitlement and so on. And so I think this gives us a
- 54:40better way to deal with this issue.
- 54:41Because when we talk to men, well, they don't respond very
- 54:46well to being accused of being toxic, right?
- 54:48Nobody would. So a better strategy is to see
- 54:52if we can tap into their innate knowledge of what it means to be
- 54:56the good man. Can we affirm and encourage and
- 54:59support men in their innate knowledge of and and and their
- 55:04innate of aspiration? I think they aspire to be the
- 55:08good man. Most men do in fact, inspire,
- 55:10aspire to be that. Can we support them in that
- 55:14aspiration? And that gives us a much more
- 55:16positive way to deal with these issues.
- 55:20I love that vision and I think that there's, I, I would argue
- 55:24millions of people, parents already doing that with their
- 55:27sons. And I, I really hope, Nancy,
- 55:31you'll consider a book on femininity next.
- 55:34I would you think that might be in the cards?
- 55:37Well, yes, I, I did deal with it a little bit here, just because
- 55:40you have to, right? You have, if you're going to
- 55:42talk about men, you have to talk about women.
- 55:44So I did deal a little bit with the the things we talked about
- 55:47how the Industrial Revolution affected women and how how it
- 55:51did give rise to the feminist movement.
- 55:53But you're right, it needs a much fuller answer.
- 55:56I had a draft manuscript, more of an outline with a few
- 56:00chapters from almost a decade ago called Woman at War, the War
- 56:04on Femininity. And I, I'm looking for, you
- 56:07know, I don't know that I'm the person to complete that, that
- 56:09kind of a book. But after reading some of your
- 56:11books, I think you do a phenomenal job of it because
- 56:14that that that story I think needs to be told as much as the
- 56:18man's story. Because today, you know, as
- 56:21women are seen more as the victim and men as the villain.
- 56:23You know, women to be empowered is to be pro abortion.
- 56:27And all of these, all of this nonsense really about women, you
- 56:31know, infantilization of women on the one hand with the sort of
- 56:34reckless autonomy with no regard for anyone else on the other.
- 56:38It's a toxic femininity that exists and needs to be combated
- 56:42as much. So anyways, I'm so grateful for
- 56:45your work. It's been really powerful.
- 56:47I know you've you've got a lot of work in front of you and how
- 56:50can people find you and get get your book The toxic warm
- 56:54masculinity. Yes, so the book is available at
- 56:59all the normal places. Go to Amazon or if you prefer
- 57:02other places like christianbook.com or if you're
- 57:05lucky, you have a brick and mortar store, but you can also
- 57:08come to my website, my publisher redid, my website, very
- 57:12colorful. So come on over nancypearcy.com.
- 57:15And Pearcy is P/E ARCEY. So nancypearcy.com, you can
- 57:20browse my other books. And by the way, I should say
- 57:22Total Truth, one of my earlier books also has a chapter on
- 57:26women and the industrial revolution and women a little
- 57:29bit fuller than what I give in this book, Chapter 12.
- 57:33So look, Total Truth chapter 12 talks about women, but you can
- 57:38browse my other books. You can leave a comment.
- 57:40I do read the comments. So come on by, come on by my
- 57:43website. It'd be fun to talk with you.
- 57:46Thank you so much, Nancy. It's been awesome talking with
- 57:49you and thank you for all your work.
- 57:51Thank you for all your work. I really appreciate your work
- 57:54with live action and everything that you do.
- 57:56So it was good talking with you. Hey guys, thanks so much for
- 58:00listening to this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
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