Does Psychology Have A Negative View Of Masculinity? - Dr John Barry

1. 0:00 – 0:18

   Intro

   1. JBDr John Barry0:00

      Men are shockingly misrepresented in the media and academia, and the way that people presume that men are things a million miles from the ... We take the examples of the worst possible man, the worst possible behavior, and we generalize it, uh, to all men. And then we go around to schools warning boys to not be that guy.

2. 0:18 – 8:09

   The Need for a Centre for Male Psychology

   1. JBDr John Barry0:18

      (whoosh)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:18

      Why did you found the Center for Male Psychology?

   3. JBDr John Barry0:23

      There's a couple of reasons. One is the, the general need for more accurate information on men's psychology. Um, and, uh, the other was, uh, because we had to, uh, uh, already got a male psychology section of the British Psychological Society that was, uh, facing the professional, uh, people dealing with psychology and men's mental health. Uh, but we also needed to have something that was more public-facing because I found over the years, we've been doing this about 10 years, 12 years now, um, that there's actually a lot more interest and awareness, funnily enough, about men's psychology in the general public than there is within the profession of psychology. Uh, I was quite surprised when I started to understand this. But not only are people outside psychology more interested in male psychology or men's mental health, but they're, uh, seems to have more insights than a lot of people who are in psychology. I say that, and I feel a bit embarrassed for, for my profession.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:20

      Why do you think that is?

   5. JBDr John Barry1:23

      Uh, well, I think that there's a ... It's a lot of it is the "education," in inverted commas, that we get about gender, especially, um, in psychology. Part of it is that we, uh, there's a bit of a blind spot in that we don't really even focus on men as, as a topic of interest, uh, eh, wh- at any level of psychology education. Uh, the one exception now is, um, the University of Sunderland who's got a module, an undergraduate module on male psychology, which gets brilliant feedback, but it's, it's the one, um, piece of, of a, a, a module in the world that, that focuses on male psychology. So we have, um, on one side a blind spot to, to even looking in that direction. Uh, but also when we do look in that direction, we often have a, kind of see it through a particular lens that sort of distorts, uh, what people see. So, we, we tend to, um, see men as, as being y- really the architects of their own problems. Um, there's n- uh, there's f- a fair bit of what you could call victim blaming that happens. So if, if men have mental health problems and they fail to seek therapy or any kind of help and they don't speak to people 'cause they're too manly and stoical, well, it's their own fault, kind of, if, if they end up, um, you know, ending their own lives. Uh, and there's that kind of ... I mean, I, I actually, i- on my undergraduate, uh, degree back in the '90s, um, when we were discussing male suicide, which was a f- uh, uh, it was discussed w- i- in the space of about two minutes compared to, to talking about, um, lots of other topics i- in mental health, including women's d- depression, which we des- uh, really went into s- quite some detail. When it came to explaining male suicide, um, given that women are twice as likely to have, um, uh, uh, severe depression than men are, um, but men have three times more likely to commit suicide than women are. Um, but, uh, the explanation given was that men are better at DIY, so they just construct better methods of getting rid of themselves. And, uh, i- in my seminar group, that got a little kind of ripple of, uh, laughter, and I was kind of, I was sitting there thinking, "Well, you know, I'm not h- I'm, I'm here to learn, um, but I'm just, I'm not really sure I'm, I'm learning anything very good here." There's no theory behind here. It's almost like we've just had a little bit of stand-up. And outside afterwards, um, uh, we had a break and someone came up to me and said, it was a woman, she said, uh, you know, "Well done. I don't know how you managed to sit there through that and say nothing." And I, and, uh, I mean, I just, as I said, like, y- and lots of students have, I think, the same. You know, you're, you're there to learn. You're, you, you absorb this information. You think, "A- it's a professor telling me this. It must be true." And, uh, you know, so we, we just don't get enough accurate information about men's psychology.

   6. CWChris Williamson4:18

      We hear, especially when it comes to medicine and vaccines and such like, that the male default, that there is a form which is used, most drugs are optimized for the men, uh, th- the male body, most vaccines are optimized for the male body. We have different immune responses, so on and so forth. Are you saying that this male default or whatever hasn't been ported across when it looks, uh, it comes to studying psychology?

   7. JBDr John Barry4:42

      Oh. Yeah. Most definitely. Um, especially when it comes to, to therapy then you, you very much get a female default. But i- in terms of, um, uh, examining men at all, no, it doesn't. And in terms of medicine, I mean, I, I think it's, it's sometimes unfairly character- characterized as being, well, it's a man's world, so, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, medicine for men by men type of thing, which is not really true. I think, uh, when it comes to, um, testing experimental medication, uh, it's a bit like being an experimental, uh, pilot of an experimental fighter plane or something like that. You know, it's a dangerous thing. You don't know what's gonna happen. There's some horror stories, like recently or, well, 10 years ago there was, um, the, what they call the, the guy who's, I think they called him the Elephant Man because he's, he took some experimental drug that was supposedly okay but his, his head kind of expanded up to, to some very terrifying, um, shape. Um, now, men go in for lots of dirty, dangerous jobs, and I think being the, the guinea pigs is one of them. And there's a good reason for that too. I mean, like, uh, nobody ... I mean, I think men tend to be protective of women, so, so there's that. But there's a good reason. I mean, it's very often a woman who's of child-bearing age doesn't know, necessarily know when she's pregnant. If she's taking a medication that no one really knows what the effects are, that might damage the fetus, and we have no idea what the consequence of that might be. So there's very good reasons why, uh, you know-... me- uh, women should be protected and their, their unborn children protected from that sort of process.

   8. CWChris Williamson6:19

      Why is there a difference in psychology studying the female brain when medicine appears to be studying the male form? Like, what's the reason for it being th- that way round?

   9. JBDr John Barry6:30

      (smacks lips) Uh, well, I, I don't think we're studying the female brain. It's, it's not so much a biological thing. It's, it's a lot about, um, behaviors more than brain. I mean, if you're, you're trying to go on a, a fishing expedition to, to find all the differences between men and women in their brain, that, that can be a really subtle and, and controversial trip. Um, but what we're looking at more is the way that... For example, in, in, uh, in terms of therapy, the, the ways men and women tend to respond differently to, to stressful situations and that, that's a really key thing. So we have the, we've got the, the model th- that really applies quite well for women, so um, when we think about somebody who's depressed, we think about somebody who maybe cries and kind of, you know, they feel sad and down and, and, uh, and they might wanna, uh, talk to people about how they're feeling. Um, and that applies more so to men than women, and of course we have to do the caveat here of, you know, there's different distributions of behaviors and things and types, and not all women are the same and not all men are the same. But by and large, um, I think it's important to recognize that, that what we do when we're dealing with patients, uh, u- um, in, in therapy tends to, to be more modeled on what women like and respond to than what men do. And, uh, so women do tend to fit into this, and it could be, you know, some people suggest it might go back to, say, when Freud, who... His client group, uh, were almost all women and, uh, s- and that kind of model, uh, um, has sort of just become the default from there. I mean, uh, how true that is, I don't know, but it's certainly one that we have to this day.

3. 8:09 – 16:05

   Does Male Gender Blindness Exist?

   1. JBDr John Barry8:09

   2. CWChris Williamson8:09

      Is this what you call the male gender bias?

   3. JBDr John Barry8:12

      Yeah. This is, um, this is part of... Male gender, uh, blindness in, i- is, is something that Martin Seeger, cl- consultant clinical psychologist who, who really started the, the male psychology movement in, in, uh, in the UK, um, he coined this, uh, phrase male gender blindness, which e- uh, k- it tells you about, um, just this, uh, cognitive, um, distortion really that we have. Like, i- it's, it's not something that people do intentionally, and people might be very fond of, of men in general, but they tend to have a, a sort of a, a blind spot to being able to see when men are having problems, or even when boys are having problems. We see it much more readily when, when it's, uh, problems are happening to women or girls than we do men or boys. So, and I think this, this is borne out quite a bit actually, and this is... The, the... As a psychologist, o- obviously I'm interested in, in psychology and, uh, and where male blindness, m- male gender blindness tends to, to be most obvious is in, uh, in the therapy room.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:14

      What's beta bias and gamma bias?

   5. JBDr John Barry9:19

      Right. Um, so I, I th- well, I'll start with alpha bias. Alpha bias is, is something... Uh, it relates a bit to what we were talking about with, um, um, trials of, um, medicines. Um, it was... has been said and it is still said quite a lot that there's a bias in favor of, of looking at, at stuff, um, from a man's perspective. And alpha bias in, in research and psychology was said to be, um, the tendency to look for sex differences in any research that you do. This, this was, uh, a focus of interest and, and magnifying differences between men and women and kind of male rats and female rats. Th- you know, that was, that was bi- a big thing, so... And, uh, then beta bias is, um, uh, the, the opposite really. It's minimizing differences between men and women and that's what we've got really. Uh, and it's another way of expressing male gender bi- blindness is we have a tendency to minimize any differences that we see between men and women. So, w- when we have a therapy and it works well for women, we don't really, uh, question whether it might not work for men because we're, we're, we're saying, "Well, there's no real differences between men and women." And in fact, you know, the, the, the saying about this is there, there are more similarities than differences between men and women, which is absolutely true, I mean, absolutely true. But then again you could say that genetically there's more similarities between men and, or, or pe- uh, humans and, uh, mice. Um, there are. There's... Like, we share 95, f- 95% of genes. Um, but there are differences and those differences make all the difference, and I think that's what gets missed with this. There's, I think, in many mays- way- many ways a well-meaning, uh, view of, of people. Like, there's men and women are, are more or less the same, so we shouldn't treat them differently. And the fear is that if you do treat men and women differently, that you're going to... Uh, you know, you're gonna lead people back to the days of patriarchy and s- uh, things, ideas like this. It's gonna, it's gonna end up disadvantaging women. Um, and I, I just don't think that's true at all, and I, I think that we've, we've come to the point when we have to discuss things in terms of, um, the fact that, that men are committing suicide at three times the rate that women are and, and all sorts of other problems that, that suggest that men are having unresolved mental health issues, like men, um, uh, you know, substance abuse at two t- twice the level that women do, and homelessness, uh, much, uh, you know, uh, rough sleeping, much more... The prison population, you know, 95%... Well, there's, there's many ways in which you, you see that, that men are having issues that aren't being dealt with, um, by psychologists or therapists. They're, they're going, um... They're, they're, they're being overlooked and, uh, a lot of it is, um, male gender bi- blindness and this beta bias that we have. And gamma bias is then, uh, a kind of an elaboration of, of the idea of beta bias, and again Martin Seeger, um, i- is the person who identified gamma bias. Um-... and this is the, the tendency to, uh, for example, when, uh, when people do things that are good, um, sort of things that, that, uh, you know, you would normally applaud and, and, uh, you know, think that they might get prized and things like that, uh, we tend to, when it- it's, uh, done by a woman, we tend to emphasize the fact that this is a woman achieving this award or, um, or doing this great thing. But if a man does it, we tend to, to, to not, um, emphasize his gender so much. It's just kind of, like, it kind of goes in the background. If it's a woman though, it's, "Oh, look at this brilliant woman." Um, and this, uh, it becomes more of a serious issue when i- it happens, uh, in terms of, um, negative things, like for example, uh, a topical thing is violence. When violence is done by men, we tend to, to emphasize the fact that it's a, a man, it's a violent man. Uh, but if violence, uh, um, is done by a woman, we tend to play down that like it... uh, you know, somebody got, um, stabbed or something like that. The, the fact that it's a woman might kind of disappear to the end of the story if it a- appears at all. And th- there's... uh, this, this is quite important I think, um, i- in many different ways, but because we, we then I think as therapists, um, we, uh... One, one very important thing in therapy is to have empathy for your client, and if we're, uh... if, if we basically don't like our client all that much because we're presuming really negative things about them, I think that's very likely to interfere with what's called the therapeutic alliance. And one of the, the, the things that makes, makes the difference between therapy being successful or not is therapeutic alliance. It, it's, it's the thing that m- most consistently explains the difference between therapy that works out and ther- therapy that fails. And if you have people who presume that they... if your client is, is male, they, they've got male privilege, they might have had an easy life, much easier than women. If, if they... and if they say something, and this is not uncommon, if, if, if their, if their... this, my client says that the reason he's there is because he's depressed, and, "Why depressed?" "Well, you know, uh, you know, I get into fights with my wife." Well, right, it's very easy to presume these days that, that, well, you know, he's, he's the guy who starts the fights. Or, or if she's hit him, why, what did he do to deserve it, you know? What's he done? You know, uh, people fall into this sort of mindset, and, uh, I, I think it's really important that, um, f- especially for therapists, I mean, if, if we're supposed to be trying to, uh, understand people, meet them where they're at, um, not try and, uh, kind of impose the idea that they should be able to talk about their feelings more than they might want to. Uh, uh, you know, for therapists, we, we should be able to, to make a much better, um, uh, you know, day's work out of dealing with men than I think that we do. And I, I think it's not surprising that men don't turn up for therapy because lots of men just... they, they, they understand this, that it's, it's fairly obvious to them.

   6. CWChris Williamson15:34

      Is that the gender empathy gap? Is that another, uh, way of describing it?

   7. JBDr John Barry15:39

      Yeah, gender empathy ga-... all of these, these ideas are, are kind of overlapping. I mean, they, they... it's one of these sorts of things where you've had different people in different places come up with a similar sort of idea and, and get it, gets a slightly different an-... but the gember- gender empathy gap is, uh, the name of a very good book, uh, but also, um, describes, um, this, this kind of condition that we, we tend to sympathize with, with women when they have problems more than we sympathize with men.

4. 16:05 – 22:39

   What Therapists Are Taught About Traditional Masculinity

   1. JBDr John Barry16:05

   2. CWChris Williamson16:05

      Yeah, I me- I mean, it's a difficult one because we want to try and get... to encourage men to open up. You want to try and give women the opportunity to achieve parity in education and employment and independence and financial achievement and so on and so forth, and it's difficult to not have that done at the cost of, um, accusing males of, of tyranny and patriarchal oppression and stuff. And I saw you share something about the guidelines from the APA and dangers of traditional masculinity.

   3. JBDr John Barry16:39

      Yeah. Um, so there, there's the... one of the things that's, that's been quite controversial in recent years is the, the American Psychological Association released, uh, guidelines on, uh, uh, doing therapy with boys and men. And, uh, a lot of people were very pleased that these came out, um, (laughs) until they read them. And then, uh, th- there's... I mean, broadly speaking, they're quite good. There's 10 guidelines in there. Most of them are good. Guideline number nine, which is about how to do therapy with men, is actually really good. I mean, I would stand by that. But there are a couple of guidelines there, um, that, that really mess up the rest, th- th- the whole of the guidelines. Um, it's one of these, uh, things where, you know, um, it, it, it, it... oh, okay, so I'll describe them. So guideline one is, um, about, um... it makes the presumption that, that masculinity is, um, is a social construct, which i- is a very popular idea and it seems to make sense. If you look at the way men behave and dress around the world, th- you know, men behave and dress and talk differently, you know? Um, on the other hand, there are some commonalities there, um, uh, which tend to get overlooked. I mean, b- so w- we're told that, that the reason men, uh... or any differences between men around the world are due to socialization. Um, so f- if you're, uh, uh, you know, if you're in a country that tells, uh, men that they should have long hair, well, then they have long hair th- and because they're socialized to have long hair. And if it's short hair, a c- a culture that tells them short hair, well, you know, uh, uh, people just fit into those sorts of things. But there's, um, there's a lot of evidence. I mean, and, uh, and it's very unpopular to bring this up, um, in social sciences these days, mainly because we've spent about the last 30, 40 years, um, w-... you know, talking about all the ways in which, um, socialization of man has been bad for men and bad for women. Um, but we overlook, um, th- you know, th- some really obvious, um, evidence, ve- very hard evidence actually, that, um, the, the, there's biological correlates to, to lots of things about, uh, man's behavior. So there's things about masculinity that are hard to, to get away from the biological, um, influence of. So for ex- if we take, um, something like, um, uh, the impact of testosterone on fetal development, um, i- this, this completely, uh, uh, week 13, the, the Y chromosome, uh, triggers the release of, uh, surge of testosterone. And so the, the fetus, um, will experience a similar levels of testosterone to, uh, an adolescent boy, so high levels of testosterone. Um, and this changes the, the, uh, the, the, the fetus entirely, so th- they are programmed then for the development of things like, um, a different bone structure, larger muscle mass. And, and then br- I mean, there's other psychological things that, that, that are kind of more controversial but may well be true, like they, they may well be programmed for, um, a, a, a better ability at, um, mental rotation of things. In other words, a kind of ability to, to see things in three-dimensional space a bit b- better than women do. Um, certainly in adults there seems to be, um, some differences there and some studies have found correlations with testosterone in adults.

   4. CWChris Williamson20:02

      I found, uh, from a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with David Putz, at the age of three, there is a 50% accuracy disparity in throwing precision, at the age of three.

   5. JBDr John Barry20:15

      Right. Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson20:15

      So if you get toddlers, boys and girls, you split them into two groups and get them to throw - this isn't to do with power, this is before testosterone from, uh, puberty's kicked in.

   7. JBDr John Barry20:23

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson20:23

      This is exclusively due to that, and it seems like this predisposition toward mental rotation. Now, what women seem to be better at was, um, remembering the location of things within a smaller area. So this would've made sense, this would've been adaptive, right? If you're a forager-

   9. JBDr John Barry20:38

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson20:38

       ... and you need to know, let's say you've got a, a one kilometer radius around wherever the current tribe is situated, and you need to remember where's the good root, where's the bad root, where's fresh water, where's bad water, where's the bush that's got lots of berries, where's the bush th- that's got less.

   11. JBDr John Barry20:52

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson20:52

       Um, and it kind of plays into the trope, but, like, lots of cliches are born out of genuine biological predispositions. It's why, uh, guys always lose their keys but women can't remember the directions to get to their, their office or whatever. It's like when-

   13. JBDr John Barry21:05

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson21:05

       ... you're talking about a broader range of things, a b- a broader distance, men appear to have a better ability at being able to remember that. But when you're looking in a smaller area, like around the house perhaps, uh, they seem to be pretty useless, and the converse is true for women.

   15. JBDr John Barry21:19

       Interesting. Yeah. I mean, th- the throwing thing, I mean, th- there's the prenatal surge at, at, uh, 13 weeks that goes on for, for several weeks. Then there's a postnatal surge too in boys, uh, again, a v- for another v- very high surge of testosterone, um, that happens, um, in the months after they're, they're born. Um, I don't know how much that has an effect on, on throwing ability. But there's loads of these things that we think of as being stereotypes and tropes, uh, that are, in fact, true. They're real. I mean, th- the stereotype comes about for a reason in lots of cases. And so, like, people... I mean, I hate to say, use the term, I, I... you probably didn't use, bro, uh, throwing like a girl. I mean, d- did, did any... but 'cause instantly now I've loads of people just turned off. They've just stopped watching the video. Um, but th- there's something to that. I mean, you know, th- and people shouldn't get worked up or feel bad about it unless they want men and women just to be exactly the same for some reason.

   16. CWChris Williamson22:17

       Yes.

   17. JBDr John Barry22:17

       I, I don't see any problem with, with just people valuing differences completely. Tol- totally no problem. I also have no problem at all with, with everybody, uh, being allowed, given opportunities to, to do whatever they can do in their life. So if they want to be... if a, a girl wants to be a pitcher, uh, in, for the New York Yankees or something that, she should absolutely have every opportunity to do that.

5. 22:39 – 29:00

   Dr Barry’s Thoughts on the Term ‘Toxic Masculinity’

   1. JBDr John Barry22:39

   2. CWChris Williamson22:40

      What do you think about the term toxic masculinity?

   3. JBDr John Barry22:43

      Uh, obviously... Well, not obviously, okay? Because a lot of people think that it's perfectly reasonable to use this term. Um, th- there is a, some sense to it, but I think, uh, what's happened is a, a term that was o- originally used, um, by some, um, uh, the, the mythopoetic, um, uh, type of, uh, guys back in the '80s and '90s, uh, they started using this term to describe young men who had not been initiated into the tribe. And if, if for whatever reason a young man was not... didn't go through the initiation ceremonies which would help them to become a member of the tribe, um, they would kind of go off and kind of go a bit wild. They, they wouldn't d- kind of feel any affiliation with the tribe. They'd be a nuisance. And so this was called toxic masculinity. And, you know, there, there was, you know, different suggestions of how to, to rein them back in. But basically, they were, um... there was... it kind of made some sort of sense. However, this, this term is being used out of context and it just becomes... like, it gets thrown around in the media, uh, um, quite a bit. Um, and, uh, it just gets used in a generic way to describe any behavior that men do, like, you know, so-called manspreading or whatever it might be, or even s- men staring at women on the Tube, which is now illegal in London. Um, you know, and-

   4. CWChris Williamson24:06

      Men staring at women on the Tube is illegal in London?

   5. JBDr John Barry24:09

      Okay. So if-

   6. CWChris Williamson24:09

      We need to dig, we need to dig into this, John.

   7. JBDr John Barry24:12

      Yeah. If you, um... actually, it's one of the articles in the Male Psychology magazine, which is on the, the Center for Male Psychology website. A very good article, uh, written recently, um, by Jenny Cummings-Knight, she's a psychotherapist, um, over here in England. And, uh, she, uh, she's written a very good piece, lots of people have, have liked it. Um, it's a, it's pointing out th- the, the, the-... idiocy, really, of having a- a law, an actual law, that can put men in prison for as, uh, looking at women in way that's interpreted as being, uh, sexual harassment. Now, this is a very subjective thing, obviously. Like, uh, and, and so Jenny points out all the different ways in which, um, a man might be staring at a woman, or apparently staring at them. He might, he might be blind. Actually, somebody came up with a, with an example of, of this, where uh, uh, a blind guy was, was in the gym. And he got h- uh, he suddenly found some woman was, was shouting in his face about, to stop staring at him. And he's saying, um, "Look, sir, I'm blind. Uh, uh, you know, I'm not staring at you." You see, it's, "Stop sir, if you don't stop." And she brought the manager over, and he was saying, "Look, I'm blind. (laughs) I'm not staring. I can't," ex- showed them his card. Because, uh, and, uh, and still, he- I, uh, you know, uh, people just presumed that that's the, he was doing something bad, because he was apparently staring at this woman. Well, in London, on the- the London Underground and other public transport, it is, you can now go to jail if you're a man and you do that.

   8. CWChris Williamson25:41

      A- a senior police officer has urged everyone who witnesses intense staring on the London Underground to report it, amid concerns it could be an early sign of unhealthy sexual behavior. Posters have nee- uh, uh, now been placed in the Tube train stations across the capital, stating, "Intrusive staring of a sexual nature is sexual harassment, and is not tolerated."

   9. JBDr John Barry26:03

      Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I mean, uh, there- there's so many ways in which it can go wrong. For example, I mean, uh, I had someone from Spain saying, and actually Jenny wrote about it in the article, um, that, that in Spain you can stare at people; it's not considered to be threatening or, or sexual harassment at all. People just oft- just stare at each other all the time. It's just, eye contact is not a bad thing. On the London Underground, I mean, of course, um, you know, prob- probably the same, lots of confined spaces. It- it- it does feel a bit more intense and intrusive if- if people look at each other, especially if they're looking in- in- right in- directly in somebody's face. So, I can understand that people would feel uncomfortable about it. But, uh, in- in the current climate, I think that the, of, of, um, of really I think that there's a lot of just, you know, this idea of toxic masculinity. Um, all men got... And this is one of the problems with the term toxic masculinity is, is that it's- it's- it sort of tars all men with the same brush. And- and although people say, "Oh, no. We don't mean all men. We just mean the men who do these things." Well, when you use a term like toxic masculinity, it's, when you- you tag toxic onto masculinity, it- it- inevitably just- just it- it poisons the whole, um, the whol- anybody who's possessing masculinity gets poisoned, which is men, basically.

   10. CWChris Williamson27:23

       Well, by design it's a catchall term.

   11. JBDr John Barry27:25

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:25

       Right? It's a catchall term for any behavior by a man that you deem to find distasteful-

   13. JBDr John Barry27:32

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson27:32

       ... or objectionable. So, Richard Reeves was on the show a little while ago, and the school that his kids went to in Washington DC, there was a, um, an incident that occurred where some of the boys in class had created a ranking system of all of the girls in class, from most attractive to least attractive. And that had been deemed as something that was toxic masculinity. You go, I mean, it's distasteful, but let's not forget that that's literally the website that Facebook was built off of the back of. Like, Facebook was that very website incarnate-

   15. JBDr John Barry28:07

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson28:07

       ... and now it's one of the biggest companies in the entire world.

   17. JBDr John Barry28:09

       Absolutely.

   18. CWChris Williamson28:10

       Like, is it toxic masculinity for boys to ra-... Like, if girls did it, would that be toxic femininity? I don't think it would be. Um, but yeah, it's- I- I understand. The concept creep of wanting to, um, create a label, the desire to memefy anything in the modern world and be able to bring it under an umbrella. Because it makes it sound more official, it makes it sound like, uh, something that's got legitimate, uh, scientific, rigorous, intellectual, academic backing. Yet, it's-

   19. JBDr John Barry28:36

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson28:36

       ... it's not. It's just, it's just a term that you've decided to use to smear any behavior from guys that you don't like.

   21. JBDr John Barry28:43

       Yeah. And, uh, uh, I mean, I think one of the problems with this is that we don't know what the impact is on- on boys growing up of- of, uh, hearing about th- these sorts of labels, and this general narrative about men being bad, or at least potentially bad.

6. 29:00 – 40:38

   How Society’s View of Masculinity Impacts Male Well-being

   1. CWChris Williamson29:00

      Didn't you do... You did a new report about the factors that predict wellbeing of 4,000 men, and that had some tie-ins with their views of masculinity. What did you learn from that?

   2. JBDr John Barry29:11

      Yeah. Um, uh, so this was on men rather than boys. Uh, I mean, um, I am more concerned about the effect on boys, 'cause I think it might be a more, have a more powerful negative impact. But this was on, um, uh, uh, you know, 2,000 men in the UK, 2,000 men in Germany, very similar results in both countries. And, uh, we found that, or I found that, um, that some of the most, um, significant predictors of their mental wellbeing, uh, were, uh, how they thought that masculinity affected their behavior. So, the men who thought that masculinity, um, made them recycle less and be less environmentally friendly. This sounds sil- silly, but, um, men who, uh, uh, men who thought that- that masculinity made them inclined to be more violent to women, and made them less inclined to talk about their feelings, um, these men, uh, th- this- this kind of, uh, set of ideas was strongly correlated with them being, uh, having a less positive mindset. And this, uh, when I say less positive mindset, this, uh, this- this, um, questionnaire that I used, the Positive Mindset Index, is- is itself strongly correlated inversely with, um, suicidality. So, when you say somebody has lower, uh, a lower positive mindset, you're saying th- they're probably gonna be more suicidal in their thinking. So basically, men who think that masculinity has a bad effect on their beha- behavior are...... you know, have worse mental health, you could say, in a nutshell. And we found the converse was true. Um, but only in the German sample significantly. Um, that men who thought that masculinity was good for their behavior, so it made them more protective of women, made them, um, want to be better, um, dads and, uh, you know, better providers in their home, these men had better mental health. Um, so I, I think, you know, of this, this probab- although we're talking about a correlational design here, there is some reasonably good smoking gun evidence that's, that's h- having been exposed to a neg- to a negative, um, narrative about masculinity, and, and internalizing that then and thinking that masculinity is a bad thing is gonna make you feel worse. And one of-

   3. CWChris Williamson31:29

      Well, why, why wouldn't that be the case? You know, you, you're kind of born... It's like the, it's basically the same as original sin. It's the same concept as original sin. You know, you're born as this fallen creature. There is something innate and in you that is a part of you that you didn't choose, but is also somehow toxic or-

   4. JBDr John Barry31:45

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:46

      ... damaged or insufficient.

   6. JBDr John Barry31:49

      Yeah. I mean, at least with, um, original sin, there's redemption, you know? You can... I, I mean, I guess certain therapists might think that they can redeem you, but I'm not sure. I just... I, I'm very worried about the, the impact on boys. Um, I th- a lot of people are too. We did a survey a couple years ago, um, that found that I think 82 to 85% of people thought that... were concerned that, that the narrative around toxic masculinity would have a negative impact on boys. We really, like getting back to psychology as a profession, we need to be more interested in this. We're not even a little bit interested in this. Th- this is, this is one of the terrible things. We're interested in finding out all the ways in which masculinity is bad for men and bad for, for society. We're not interested in, i- in really examining that idea and seeing whether this idea of toxic masculinity or hegemonic masculinity, any of these ideas are, are really just, uh, social constructs that psychologists and sociologists have come up with that we impose on people's behavior, and then all we see is, uh, evidence that confirms, um, our preconception about them being bad and, and, uh, and having this masculine original sin. Uh, we, we really need to be more like scientists and investigate these things, challenge hypotheses, look outside our, our usual, uh, what's called a kind of narrow, um, paradigm fixation, which has been used to describe the way that a lot of research in masculinity has been for the last 30 odd years.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:24

      You also found personal growth, age, and health satisfaction as some of the other most important factors that impacted the well-being of men in that sample. Just what's, what's that as a high level? What are those things?

   8. JBDr John Barry33:37

      Uh, well, so personal growth i- is, um, just an interest in your, your own personal development was the strongest predictor of mental... men's mental well-being. Um-

   9. CWChris Williamson33:46

      Wow. That seems... I mean, I didn't know that... Is that kind of like being your own doctor in a way? Is that... that you're taking a greater appreciation for the fact that you should be improving your... more of a self-assessor when it comes to what are the areas of my psychology, my health, my relationships that are insufficient and that I need to work on?

   10. JBDr John Barry34:07

       Yeah. Basically, yeah. So it's kind of... I mean, I'm overlooking this. I mean, there's lots of things in this report that suggest that men are anything but toxic. Like, the thing that makes men happiest is when they're satisfied with their own personal development. Um, another thing, um, we did in that survey was ask men what core values they thought was, were most important. Um, so the core values of being adventurous and being, um, athletic were at the bottom of the list of things that they thought were most important. The things they also thought were most important were being honest, reliable, dependable. And this was the same across, uh, UK and Germany. We'd asked men previously in the States, 5,000 men in the States, exactly the same result. I mean, this is... talk about curing the replication crisis. Exactly the same results, uh, when we... And again, when we asked, uh, 2,000 men in the UK in 2017, the same results. Th- these are... these are the things. Men are not... Men are, you know... They're desperately trying to be the best that they could be, which is actually, funnily enough, a g- a tagline for a Gillette ad back in the day, the best that a man can get. Um, but, you know, it's, uh, it's, um... I think sh- men are shockingly misrepresented in, in the media and academia, and th- the, the way that people presume that men are, I think, is a million miles from... We take the, the, the examples of the worst possible men, the worst possible behavior, and we generalize it, uh, to all men. And, and then we go around to schools warning boys to not be that guy, and not realizing that these sorts of campaigns, they very easily backfire. Like, the, the psychology is full of these unintended consequences. You, you take this, uh, what I would say is half-baked idea, an idea that's not properly researched. You, you've got the best of intentions. Everyone says, "Hooray, sounds like a great idea. Let's go out there and do it." You do it, and actually you find that... Um, so in the... in, um, student populations in the States, they've tried th- these, these sorts of things where you, um... like, don't be that guy. Don't be the guy who goes around sort of harassing women and being nasty. And what they found is that, um, overall it seems to work. Yeah, overall, on average, it seems to work. But actually, if you look down, drill down into the data a bit, uh, a bit, you find that the guys who already were the nice guys are, are just as nice as they were before, maybe a bit nicer. The guys who, who weren't impressed with any of this stuff in the first place have now got worse. So you've just made the problem worse. You've just... you've g- you, you, maybe-

   11. CWChris Williamson36:45

       How would it be the case that you would get-... good outcomes from this kind of a campaign if the good guys got better and the bad guys got worse? If the good guys weren't going to do anything in any case, how would you get-

   12. JBDr John Barry36:57

       Because-

   13. CWChris Williamson36:57

       ... better outcomes?

   14. JBDr John Barry36:58

       ... because 95% of, of the, the people in that study are good guys. So, when they all improve, these guys kind of get worse. It's, it's these, the, the bad guys get kind of, um, uh, you know, th- they disappear in the data because on average, everybody has improved a bit.

   15. CWChris Williamson37:15

       Oh, I see. Well, I mean, this was the insight from David Buss's Men Behaving Badly, right?

   16. JBDr John Barry37:19

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson37:19

       That was one of the, the, the big insights from that, which is that almost all sexual assaults that are conducted by men, perpetrated by men, are done by a very small number that are repeat offenders, you know?

   18. JBDr John Barry37:31

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson37:31

       You have a, a small number of guys that are complete arseholes.

   20. JBDr John Barry37:34

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson37:34

       And then you have this big wealth of, of guys that, that behave i- in a perfectly acceptable manner toward women, and the problem is that when you do take this broad-strokes brush, you end up causing most men, most of whom are well-behaving, to feel, uh, fearful, ashamed, guilty, disgusted, whatever, about their own masculinity. I remember I, I was reading an article that you shared a little while ago, uh, and this, I think, was in Ian Brower College in Australia. "Parents and male students were left mortified after the school forced them to stand in assembly and apologize to their female classmates for sexual assaults committed by males. Brower College in southwestern Victorian town of W- Warrnambool..." I'm not even gonna try and say that properly, uh, "... held an assembly on Wednesday where boys were told to stand up in a symbolic gesture of apology to girls and women. 'My 12-year-old has no idea about rape and sexual assault, and he was made to apologize, and he doesn't understand why.' Earlier, 12-year-old Levi, who had only been at the college sin- since the start of the year, said he was forced to apologize to many of his classmates who he hadn't even met. 'They told us to stand up and turn to a girl in our class and say sorry,' Levi told Current Affair. 'I don't think it's okay to be sexually assaulted. I felt a bit under pressure to stand up, and if I didn't, I'd feel like I was a bad person.' Another student named Vinnie said that there were several girls in the assembly hall that began crying because they'd been revealed in front of everyone as having been victims. 'I had girls behind me crying because they'd basically been exposed to the entire school and we had to apologize for stuff we didn't actually do.'"

   22. JBDr John Barry39:13

       What a mess. I mean, what an absolute mess, and this, behind the... I mean, so, uh, th- the mayor of London is rolling out workshops to, to sort of help boys be better people around women and be less sexist and everything like that. I mean, I don't know what's in these workshops, but if it's anything like what you just described, who's it gonna help? I mean, who's gonna benefit from any of that? W- nobody. It's, and it's-

   23. CWChris Williamson39:37

       It's public struggle session.

   24. JBDr John Barry39:39

       Exactly. A- and, uh, uh, you know, the worst thing is, of course, the, the guys who are already going in that direction, they've just, you've just justified them being, you know, as bad as th- they want to be. They, they just, they, they hate the whole thing now.

   25. CWChris Williamson39:51

       Well, I mean, you see this. I, I, you know, this is an n of one, but I see this online on the internet, the guys that spend the most amount of time learning about gender dynamics are the ones that want to push back hardest against this sort of, um, whatever you want to call it, like, hyper-egalitarian or hyper sort of, um, uh, e- equal, uh, view of the world because they do. They feel like they're being preached to. They feel like they're being told how to behave, and if in that cohort of people you have some people that were already, some men that were already going to be arseholes, they're going to feel, I don't know, like, um, v- virtuous backlash or, or that you're gonna have that, that sort of, uh, rebound effect, so to speak. When

7. 40:38 – 44:14

   When Did Psychology’s Negative Bias Towards Men Begin?

   1. CWChris Williamson40:38

      did this negative view of masculinity start in psychology? Has it always been there?

   2. JBDr John Barry40:43

      No, not at all. Um, i- it's... I mean, it used to be, like, as I said, men haven't really appeared very much in psychology, uh, over the years until around the '80s and '90s, and then, uh, from, uh, sociology really, um, came this idea of hegemonic masculinity. Um, started up in the '70s, reached, um, uh, psychology around the, the '80s and '90s. And hegemonic ma- masculinity kind of casts men as being, uh, very competitive, very aggressive, um, kind of domineering, uh, o- you know, uh, misogynistic, uh, homophobic, and, um, a- and this was adopted in, uh, by some people in the States, uh, and, uh, and we developed then, well, you know, it just snowballed from there. So, men went from being, uh, considered as being athletic and, uh, energetic and, and domineering and, and aggressive, uh, you know, physically aggressive to being then all these things, like they became homophobic and, and, uh, sexist and things. And so, we, we have definitions of masculinity that are used in psychology now. Not, not everyone in psychology uses it because it's still sort of a, it's not a mainstream part of psychology and the media has picked up on it a lot more. Um, governments have picked up on it unfortunately. The- the, uh, you know, including the UN, um, and associated organizations like the World Heal- Health Organizations. They, they tend to have adopted this negative, uh, view of men and because the media have run with it, people, like, it's, it's just a general thing. It's become part of our atmosphere that we, we tend to think of that there's something wrong with men, that, you know, there, there's, they're, uh, at the very least privileged if they've, if they've got wealth, they haven't really earned it, you know, they've, they've had a f- a kind of a, you know, head start o- over women. I mean, it's, it's, it's a recipe for just poisoning, um, people against each other which I think is awful. And another bad thing is that, that, of course, it's, you know, for these guys who do engage in these horrible, uh, sexual behaviors and, uh, bad behaviors, um, it doesn't solve that problem by just saying that, that, that it's caused by masculinity. You're not gonna solve the problem by, by saying it's masculinity. You'll only solve the problem, um, by actually getting to the roots of the problem, and the roots of the problem are usually, for people like this, um, uh-... early trauma, chil- childhood trauma, um, sometimes sexual trauma, like for, for sex offenders, sexual trauma. And, um, and there has been some research by, uh, Naomi Murphy, who is a, a, a, uh, cl- clinical psychologist who worked with prison populations with some very serious offenders, um, that, uh, some of the, the very worst, um, sex offenders, um, they did have, uh, as their, their, th- the kind of the background to their offending, uh, being sexually abused by, um, female adults when they were children. So you have th- so... But who wants to look at that? I mean, you know, we're, we're so far away from being able to dea- to deal with that reality. Uh, we'd much rather... Uh, and it, and it, I guess if you're a politician h- you know, how are you gonna change somebody's childhood like that? It's so difficult, and the therapy takes an awful long time. Um, but how are you gonna change the circumstances which could involve social deprivation, um, what Warren Farrell calls dad deprivation, like lacking a, a, a father figure to steer people so that they're, they, they kind of, uh, you know, they, they're socialized more easily? Um-

   3. CWChris Williamson44:13

      What's the, um, what's,

8. 44:14 – 47:19

   Outcome of Boys from Fatherless Homes

   1. CWChris Williamson44:14

      what, what are the in- the outcomes of fatherlessness? 'Cause obviously, you know, I can hear all of the wives' tales and, and sort of myths that I want, but what, what are the kind of outcome changes that you get for boys when they grow up in a fatherless home?

   2. JBDr John Barry44:30

      Uh, and again, so we have to start off saying not everyone is affected in the same way. Everyone's different. Uh, some people might thrive from that and, and lots of people will have very good experiences with, you know, positive, uh, you know, role models who are women in, in their lives. Um, but if, uh, th- there's, there certainly seems to be evidence that if you don't have some sort of, like, not having a father... Actually, the research is interesting, because they never, um, make a distinction between, um, fathers and stepfathers or/and father figures. But if you, if you don't have a, a useful sort of father figure or o- absent father absent families basically have more likelihood of having, um, delinquency. You know, so y- and, and this, this applies to women to some extent too, but certainly for, for men. It can, uh, it can be something that you, um... People drift into a life of crime. Well, some- it's often not a life of crime. It's often a, a c- a decade of crime or, you know, up until their 20s before they grow out of it and start learning to control themselves a bit more. But, um, yeah, the, uh, the risk. I mean, there's plenty of evidence that the risk of, of boys in families that don't have dads, um, are more likely to drift into, to delinquency. And loads of them don't. Um, um, but unfortunately, th- th- it's, uh, true. I mean, like, you know, it's w- a- again, when people talk about smash the, the patriarchy, um, y- you know, you have to kind of wonder what they're talking about smashing. Because th- there's... I mean, th- the patriarchy, if it exists, uh, in the UK or the States or Australia, Canada these days is, uh, the worst, most useless organization ever. Because I mean, I'm not sure what the, the advantages are that, that men have these days. So like y- with boys seem to be failing in education at a, a terrifying rate. I mean, men are, are kind of, um, you know, drifting, uh, uh, uh, you know, into homelessness, um, you know, into, into prisons at, at an alarming rate. Uh, suicide levels, drinking themselves to death. You know, th- there's th- the p- the patriarchy doesn't seem to have done very much, uh, good for anybody. So when you're talking about smashing the patriarchy, uh, you know, who, who is the target? I mean, uh, I, I know that people aren't saying smash the, the dad in your family. But I think that that's, that's the only patriarch that's really left. And, and, uh, I think a lot of dads, I mean, they get depicted in the media as being, you know, silly or pointless and things like that. I think th- that the- there's just so much that's, that's kind of, uh... Again, as I say, uh, I worry about children growing up, um, you know, with dads or without dads in a culture that, that really is so happy to demean anything to do with men.

   3. CWChris Williamson47:18

      What

9. 47:19 – 57:16

   Unique Challenges for Men in Managing Mental Health

   1. CWChris Williamson47:19

      challenges are particularly unique to men when it comes to managing mental health?

   2. JBDr John Barry47:25

      Uh, I don't know if th- there- anything would be particularly unique, um, but, uh, uh... With th- there's, there's, um, barriers that, that men have to overcome a bit more than women. So, I think a lot of men already, they, th- they... Um, we've done some research on this and it's borne out by other people's research too. Men, when they've got, um, uh, mental health issues or they feel distressed, um, they... The first thing that they want to do is, is not necessarily talk to somebody about how they feel about it. In fact, they, they might not really feel very much like doing that. They want to fix the problem. So if it's, um, that they're depressed because they haven't got work, they'll want to find money somehow or other. You know, they'll want to fix the problem. They won't want to fix their depression about not having work. They'll want to, to go out and get money somehow or other. Um, and whereas women, and we're back to our kind of, uh, the, the way that the therapy, um, our, our m- our style of therapy that, that's on offer for people these days is more suited to women. Because in general, when women are distressed, they'll, they'll want to talk about their feelings. They'll, they'll want to do that. Um, and, and it will help them. And actually, men, uh, can be helped a great deal by talking about their feelings too. But, uh, it's not the first thing that they want to do. And, uh, when they look around for, for somebody to talk to, you know, s- you know, i- it's not hard for them to, to, to, to realize that, that it's th- you know, they can't just talk to anybody. For example, getting back to, to, um, a male victim of domestic violence, and about a third of, of victims of domestic violence are men, um-Who is he gonna talk to a-about this? I mean, a lot of, of therapists, unless they, they have knowledge or experience of this, might presume that if he's involved in domestic violence, that he started it, uh, you know, that he's the problem. And, of course, the police traditionally are very similar. Actually, th- this is starting to change thanks to, to people like Mark Brooks and the ManKind Initiative and, uh, and other people who are, uh, uh, you know, spreading, uh, better information, like, uh, you know, Mark Brooks is very good at getting, um, onto the television and telling people about the f- the facts about domestic violence. And, um, so if a man is suffering from domestic violence, he knows that he can go to the ManKind Initiative, and he can ph- phone their hope- uh, their helpline, and he knows that he's not gonna be presumed to be an offender. He knows that when he talks to somebody there, they will, they will accept that, that, that he, he may, you know, he, they, they will not presume that he's, uh, doing anything other than telling the, the truth about his experience. Um, but a lot of, uh, of other places that men can go, they, they can't necessarily make that assumption. And lots of men know this. I mean, like, uh, I have to say, I mean, I'm a bit embarrassed, uh, I, I, I have tended over the years to, to end up doing research on things that, actually, most of the general public already knew about, so when I did my research finding that, that, uh, w- when, when distressed, women want to talk about their feelings and men want to fix the problem, no one was surprised except psychologists who I talked to. It's like, you-

   3. CWChris Williamson50:38

      (laughs)

   4. JBDr John Barry50:39

      ... and there's, there's so many other things. I mean, I, you know, but, uh, but-

   5. CWChris Williamson50:42

      Well, isn't that strange? Isn't it strange that you're having to reverse engineer an ideology out of the discipline which is supposed to know what the public is already aware of?

   6. JBDr John Barry50:53

      I, I, I, again, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's terrifying in one way. I mean, we're supposed to be the ones who kind of know, aren't we, really, you know?

   7. CWChris Williamson51:01

      Yeah, you're supposed to be-

   8. JBDr John Barry51:02

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson51:02

      ... the tip of the, the tip of the spear and downstream from that is the general public that are learning off the back of... I mean-

   10. JBDr John Barry51:07

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson51:08

       ... I... it's, it's a, it's a, a strange one. I, I suppose especially when we're talking about men getting into therapy, I had this guy Adam Layne Smith on the show, a psychotherapist from the Midwest, and he was, he really sort of red-pilled me about this, about saying, "Look, men want to be able to fix the problem. Men want to be able to feel capable and in control, and you want to give them the, uh, path out of it." Now, women are happy to talk about their, um, their emotions, but that doesn't really make men feel any more capable, you know? It might make them, uh, help them to open up and understand what's going on, but it doesn't fix the fundamental sort of listlessness, vulnerability that is, um, I guess a cause of a lot of shame. And around this, you see... I don't know, like, if a, if a guy is to open up about something that he's struggling with, um, a man who is going through a difficult breakup, let's say, uh, is sort of told that they should get on with things. A woman that's going through a difficult breakup is deserving of sympathy. Now, that's not to say that, uh, again, on average, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't seem to help the situation. It doesn't seem to help the situation massively.

   12. JBDr John Barry52:19

       No, it doesn't. And i- it's... I mean, uh, a- again, like when you mentioned the, the red pill community, I mean, th- there's all sorts of, of places online that, that are kind of... You know, they're, they're ahead of, of psychologists in this. They, they know it. And, and guys know it. Like, they, they will gravitate to these places. Uh, they might not always get the best help that they need, you know, from these places. I mean, th- so what we need, we need some sort of combination of what a psychologist can offer in terms of, of the years of... Because psychologists are v- are usually very good at dealing with a, a, a lot of issues, I have to say. Just when it comes to, to men these days, it's, it's, it's not worked out so well. But they do need to, to, to be, um, to be more open to, uh, to, to what they're hearing from the internet and not dismissing it as being the manosphere and things like that, and-

   13. CWChris Williamson53:11

       Well, the problem, the problem that you have if you don't have a, an authority which is not necessarily regulated but is more rigorous with its methods and stuff, if you don't have that available for men to go to, they will go to-

   14. JBDr John Barry53:27

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson53:27

       ... Reddit communities and Discord servers and, uh, You- YouTube channels and stuff like that.

   16. JBDr John Barry53:32

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson53:32

       And that's great up until the point at which audience capture and the incentives of audience capture encourage those creators to make ever more outlandish claims that can become toxic in their own right.

   18. JBDr John Barry53:42

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson53:42

       There are 100% incredibly toxic negative areas of the red pill, manosphere, black pill-

   20. JBDr John Barry53:50

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson53:50

       ... incel community online that are w- the world would be better if they didn't exist, right?

   22. JBDr John Barry53:56

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson53:57

       Now, the problem is, and it's the same reason as to why, um, when people ask about, "Well, how come the right appears to have captured most of the conversations aro- around men?" It's like, well, because the left doesn't care. The left isn't having a conversation with men about what it means to be a man. They're not presenting any positive role models for either men to grow up into or for masculinity as a concept generally. So, you've just left this world open, and it's the exact same dynamic that I'm seeing with regards to psychology and the manosphere as y- if you want to call it. It's, like, one just big group. Psychology and psychologists haven't spoken to men in a way that gives them s- a firm footing for them to stand on that helps them to understand their own programming, their own nature. So, w- well, I'm gonna go somewhere. I go to this place on the internet, but then we have a lot more, uh, uh, perverse and contra-incentives that are going to cause those people to, uh, take information and run, play liberties with what it is that they can say. They're not beholden to, you know, any rigors of academia or, uh, anything. There's no regulations at all. And that is how you end up with this sort of intensity spiral that creates a- an ever more, um, aggressive, uh, and sometimes negative community.

   24. JBDr John Barry55:11

       Yeah, absolutely. A- and psychology has failed there. I mean, we, we should have never adopted this negative view of masculinity. Um, we should have, uh, been always more open to what men need when they've got mental health issues. For some reason, we've just, um ... I mean, as Martin Seligman described it, male gender blindness, we've just not been able to see it. Uh, w- we still, even though we have a male psychology section of the, the British Psychological Society and it's out there and it, it's, it's, um, you know, it's, it, it's giving the right messages, I mean, who's listening? I mean, I, I, I just really, really wish that more people within psychology would pay attention and, uh, and be open. I mean, un- unfortunately, I mean, uh, you know, there's a lot of people who will just, as soon as you mention helping men, they switch off.They, they think that that's, uh, you know, it's like, um, you're suddenly gonna go back to caveman days when men dragged women around by the hair or whatever cavemen supposedly did. Uh, but it's not about that. It's ... If, if you leave men who are mentally unwell to their own devices, they're gonna be not very productive members of the community, to say the least. If ... Uh, you know, so the cure for toxic masculinity, if you want to call it that, is to, to actually listen to these guys, to help these guys, to be open to these guys, to understand what the cause of their problems is, and not be afraid to do that. I mean, 'cause it's a big challenge, a big challenge. L- like, your peers might reject you for wanting to help men. But also it's a big challenge, um, like, when you're face to face with, with some guy who's angry, who's, who's hurt. He might want to hurt you. He might reject you entirely. That's a big challenge. Uh, like forensic psychology is one of the, the, the, the biggest challenges that anyone can get involved with. I have huge respect for people who are working in these areas, uh, but we really need to, to, to, to get real, be realistic. Uh, not fall for, for the, the, the, the narrative and the ideology that we've been fobbed off with for too long.

10. 57:16 – 1:06:59

    The Rise & Consequences of Loneliness in Men

    1. JBDr John Barry57:16

    2. CWChris Williamson57:16

       How worried are you on this rise of sexlessness and loneliness, uh, l- lonely single men?

    3. JBDr John Barry57:25

       Yeah. Uh, it, it's not gonna go anywhere good. I mean, so, f- um, a couple of the previous, uh, reports that I've done have looked at, um ... Have found that, that men who are in stable relationships are, like, much happier than men who are single. Okay? So, so this is, uh, this is borne out by lots of different studies. So being in a stable relationship makes you happier, whether that's marriage or, or just being, uh, going steady over a period of time. But, uh ... So being single, uh, I mean, it gives you some opportunities for dating. But, I mean, actually most guys don't do that well on dating apps and things like that. It can be pretty tough. Um, so what do you turn to? I mean, like, there's porn and stuff like that. I mean, a lot of men turn to porn when they're distressed. We- we've done some research on, on this too. It's a kind of, uh, a way, way of dealing, way of coping. Like, women tend to, to comfort eat more and men tend to go to, to porn more for ... To relieve stress. And, um, no, it's not gonna go anywhere good. I mean, it's, it's ... I'm ... You know, we as a society are stupid to think that this isn't something that we should be paying more attention to. And not in a punitive way, but actually just help these guys a little bit. And I'd say one of the first things we could do is, is recognize that a lot of the messages that, that we're, um, sending to men through our ... You know, th- through things like laws, like about men staring at women on the London transport, or things like talking about toxic masculinity or headlines like, "Why it's okay to hate men." Or o- on the internet, this idea of, like, kill all men, like this b- you know, kind of, uh, phrase that, that's, uh, flies around. I mean, it's ridiculous to think that this is not gonna have a bad effect on, on men. And it's also naive to think that this is not gonna rebound on all of us at some point.

    4. CWChris Williamson59:17

       Well, it'll rebound on women as well because fundamentally-

    5. JBDr John Barry59:20

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson59:20

       ... women require a partner who is worthy of them. You know, women, 50.1% of women for the first time in history are childless by 30. A report that came out by Reuters a couple of months ago said that for the first time ever, 45% of prime working aged women between the ages of 22 and 45 will be single and childless by 2030. All, all of these stats suggest that women are struggling to find a mate that they can contend with and are attracted to. And I went out, uh, maybe a year and a half ago with a friend and we were in, uh, a bar in, in London. Uh, and he's single and I sort of nudged him and pointed to a group of girls over the far side near the bar. And I was like, "Oh, why, why, why don't you go over and, and talk to one of those?" And he looked like I'd suggested that we go and dismember one of them. He's like, "I've been told that I should never approach a woman in a bar. That, that, that's, that's incredibly dangerous for me to do." And he's Gen Z, so he's what, maybe 12 years younger than I am. Uh, and for me, coming from the background that I had, which is like post- uh, back end of lout era, like Larry British lad culture in sort of 2006, 2010, um, that, that would be just unheard of, right? There was no, absolutely no concern 'cause you didn't have this panopticon of technology constantly surveilling you, you know?

    7. JBDr John Barry1:00:36

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:00:36

       Uh, but then on the other side of this, I can see why you could say, um, that era that I was in where men were going up to women would have meant that women had more approaches from men, that they had more opportunities to find a good mate. You know, evidence seems to suggest that women want to be approached by men. But then you also get negative externalities, you know? A, a woman that says no, that rebuffs a man one times in X many hundred or thousand is going to end up in a situation that she feels very uncomfortable. And then you have the Me Too, uh, renaissance that was absolutely needed. Uh, but then what happens when you overshoot?

    9. JBDr John Barry1:01:10

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:01:10

        And it's this, it's this very, um ...... a black and white sort of, uh, mono view of the world that it, everything is good or everything is bad. It's significantly easier to see people in those regards. One of the things I wanted to actually mention that I've, I've come to realize or believe over this year that was kind of interesting is, um, there's often stories about how when you have societies with a high preponderance of single men, men without partners, that that is just before some huge instability that causes its downfall, right? And there's some evidence throughout history that seems to suggest men get into a relationship, testosterone drops, men have a child, testosterone drops again, they are part of a community, blah, blah, blah. They're domesticated essentially by their partner and their family. Um, one of the questions that I was toying with for the back end of this year is, where are all of the incel killings? If it is the case that we have the highest rates of sexlessness amongst men aged 18 to 30 ever in history, why aren't there roving bands of miscreants outside pushing over granny and spray painting stuff and causing havoc? And I've come to believe that what's happening is that rather than those men going out with a bang, they're going out with a whimper. They are being sedated through porn and video games into retreating away from that status-seeking behavior that may have got them a little bit of attention, which ultimately could have led them to get a partner or, or raise up in their standing within this- the community, um, and I, I don't think, you know, whatever, fif- five years ago or so, some of the concerns, the Elliot Rogers of the world, you know, we're going to see this happening more and more and more. We just haven't. You know, it is, it is not going up in line with the, uh, the rates of sexlessness and singleness amongst men. So, you have to presume that something else is happening in order to be able to sedate men out of that behavior, and I think that it is this porn and video games thing. Now, if you were to give me two worlds, one in which you have constant mass shootings done by disaffected guys, and another in which that doesn't happen, like, I'll take the one that it doesn't happen. But that- that's, you can't say that the, uh, number of men playing Call of Duty and smoking weed is in any way also, like, useful. That's, that's, that's still not good, it's just less, less bad than them taking the gun from the video game into the real world.

    11. JBDr John Barry1:03:35

        Yeah. As I said, it's not going to end up well for anybody. You love these guys who will have unfulfilled lives. Um, people who would have been their partners will have unfulfilled lives. Um, I have worked in, uh, in the field of women's mental health too and, uh, one of the things that, that I saw a lot of was, um, how distressing it is for, for women, men also, but how distressing it is for women to have problems with their, with, um, conceiving a child. I mean, like the, the amount of money that's spent on IVF and how much stress th- they will go through is unbelievable. And th- I- it's, I mean, it's hard to appreciate when you're younger how, how much stress you're going to have when you get older because it's, I mean, again, we're back to tropes and stereotypes, but like this, it's the idea of the biological clock for women is, I mean, in my experience of, of dealing with women in these situations, it's, it's true, and it's a tragedy, and we, we should, we should be trying to help everybody, I think, to, um, to, I mean, in an ideal world, you know, we would have people kind of meeting up in a kind of an effortless way, um, and, and, and kind of matching off with each other and having happy lives and happy families. I think that would be a good result for everyone. But we're, I think we're, we're scaring women away from, from men these days and, and men are just sort of feeling rejected and backing into a corner and, and that's not good.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:05:00

        No, and I wonder whether a world in which most of your experiences of the real world can be mediated by social media and news, you actually end up experiencing many other lives, right? The stories that you hear about other people's lives, as opposed to your own. And if we've got a world in which remote work and more social isolation comes through, what you actually end up doing is getting your model of the world, especially relationships between the sexes, and you take that from news, but news isn't a representative sample of the things that are happening. By design, the news articles that come out are the ones that are the most egregious. It's the woman that divorces the man and takes his brother and leaves him for dead and all of his money's gone and she's taken the dog and the dog won't even see him again. Or the, the reverse, you know, a woman says no to a guy in a, the copy room at work and she ends up being chopped up and put in the freezer and he eats her for chili and stuff. Like, those are the sorts of stories that you hear and if you have fewer and fewer interactions in the real world that can disprove that, what do you end up with? Well, you end up with that being your model of the world, which feeds into the anxiety, which makes you less social, which means that you've got less real world experience to disprove the stories, and the cycle just continues.

    13. JBDr John Barry1:06:12

        Yeah. I mean, in a way everyone needs to get out more, you could say, and talk to each other more too. Like there's some, some really good things happening like, uh, in terms of men's mental health, Men's Shed is a, a really good idea. Just getting men together, putter around, do X, Y, Z activity, it doesn't really matter what it is, and they get to just chat a little bit and that's brilliant for their mental health. And there's sort of Andy's Man Club and things like that where men get together and these things, you know, kind of getting outside, being out in the real world, finding out the reality is not as bad as it is. And the same for women too. Like, men are really not as bad as you might think. There's loads of brilliant guys out there that might be stuck on their Xbox at the moment but, you know, just dust them off a little bit, they'll be brilliant.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:06:56

        (laughs) Look, Dr. John, I really appreciate you. Um, where should people

11. 1:06:59 – 1:08:05

    Where to Find Dr Barry

    1. CWChris Williamson1:06:59

       go if they want to check out the stuff that you do online?

    2. JBDr John Barry1:07:02

       Um, best place is probably the centerformalepsychology.com um, and uh, we've got, uh, they can sign up to our newsletter which is free and they'll get the monthly magazine, um, which you've talked about a couple of the articles in there. Yeah, we've got, they're very popular, very good. Um, if you're a psychologist, go to the male psychology section website on the British Psychological Society and you'll find that there's some... Oh, The Center for Male Psychology too is a great place. We've got loads of articles there, academic articles too, as well as sort of more general magazine articles. So, um, and we have questionnaires that you can lo- use like the positive mindset index and things like that. So yeah, go, go to those places.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:07:44

       All right, John. Thank you. What's happening people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:08:05