What A Feminist Has To Say About Masculinity - Christine Emba

1. 0:00 – 2:31

   Christine’s Controversial Article

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You wrote an article a week ago that I'm guessing you didn't intend, or didn't expect to get quite as much attention as it did.

   2. CEChristine Emba0:09

      I really, really did not. I had been working on the article, Men Are Lost, for a couple of months beforehand, and I knew that there was sort of growing discussion about the crisis of men in general. You know, I'd read Richard Reeves' book, I'd been following Scott Galloway and others on their podcasts. But it seems like the piece was almost the permission that some people needed to finally talk about the issue out in the open, um, and they were like really surprised to see it in a mainstream publication too. And also, at length. I will admit that it is quite long. (laughs) Um, but I've been really excited by the response.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:48

      I think the reason that it needed to be so long is because having this discussion is so far away from the typical cultural zeitgeist that you have to take people there one step at a time. You know, Richard Reeves talks about this. He has to prostrate himself on the, "We're not saying that women shouldn't have the focus on them, and we- we are not trying to take away any... And we must remember that the problems of the LGBT trans community are also..." And finally, after we've gone through this big rigmarole, we can actually get to the conversation of talking about men. So there is no such thing as having a short article about the crisis of modern men, because it leaves so many holes that people who want to interpret it in, uh, an ungenerous light are just immediately going, "Oh, so you think that such and such..." It's like, no, obviously not.

   4. CEChristine Emba1:36

      Yeah. Yeah, you have to leave space for all of the caveats and the like, not necessarily shout-outs to different groups, but like, "And we're acknowledging that this kind of man and, like, that kind of woman..." Et cetera, et cetera. But I mean, it was all so long, for me at least, and honestly, it was longer, my editors (laughs) did cut it down, because there are just so many different threads, um, that are coming together in this question. Uh, another columnist at The Post wrote to me and she was like, "You know, it almost feels like you could draw a dotted line from just, like, this question of what's happening with men, to kind of everything that's happening in our moment, whether it's like politics or religion or like all these different trends." So, there are just so many kind of angles to this question and sources of discontent and maybe solutions, that it's hard to fit it into one piece. I guess that's why Richard wrote a book. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson2:29

      What is happening with men nowadays?

2. 2:31 – 9:54

   What is Happening to Men Today?

   1. CWChris Williamson2:31

   2. CEChristine Emba2:32

      Well, we... (laughs) I mean, we throw around the phrase "the crisis of masculinity," um, but I- I actually do think that there is a crisis. I mean, explaining it out is also a long process too because, again, so many factors. But basically, we can start by saying that society has changed a lot over the past 30 to 40 years, and many of those challenges have been great for some groups, for women especially. Um, but they have not necessarily been so great for men, especially working class men. Um, but men of all kinds seem to be feeling a sort of malaise. I mean, we can tick off a couple of statistics, right? When it comes to education, first women were finally allowed to go to college, which is great. Um, very supportive of that. But right now, in most colleges, we're seeing that women, you know, outnumber men hugely. For every 100 undergraduate degrees, bachelor deg- bachelor's degrees that women get, men only get 74. And you know, we saw a huge wave of kind of college dropouts, basically during the COVID-19 pandemic. When you look at the data, 70% of those who just sort of like gave up and left school were men. Um, you can look at health statistics. So, you know, we've talked about deaths of despair, deaths from suicide, alcohol-induced illness or drug overdose. Three out of four deaths of despair are men. Um, you can talk about, you know, wages and workplace achievement. Um, so wages have stagnated for men since basically the 1970s. Either stagnated or fallen for all men but the men at, you know, the top of the economic ladder. Um, and I think that this has just huge ramifications for how men feel about their place in the world, or rather, don't feel about their place in the world. Women are thriving. The economy is moving away from sort of labor-intensive jobs towards jobs that reward soft skills and social skills and credentials, and many men are feeling a little bit lost, like they are not sure what role they play, especially when, you know, there are these kind of traditional archetypes that men used to play in our society of, you know, protector, provider especially. And now 50% of women say they make as much as or more than their partner. Um, women can have children (laughs) by themselves through artificial reproductive technology. Um, and then, of course, the LGBTQ movement has achieved more acceptance in society, but it also seems to have kind of made the question of gender even more unclear. If you can change your gender, if sex doesn't really mean anything, what- what does it mean to be a man, actually? And so a lot of young men especially are feeling, as I said, lost. Um, like they don't know where to fit, and they're kind of looking for role models of what a man should be or could be in this moment, and coming up short except for...... some pretty bad examples, (laughs) which I also talk about in the piece.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:44

      Yeah, there's an interesting one-two punch, I think, that has kind of happened, the first being a structural change that has disadvantaged young men, or at least meant that they have been able to take advantage of their, uh, talents quite as much. You mentioned we've gone from a brawn-based to a brain-based economy. Uh, credentialism is much more important now. Conscientiousness skews female. Girls are better at sitting still through the time that they're teenagers and adolescents, and remembering to get their homework in on time. Two-to-one, basically, females to males completing a four-year US college degree. It gets even worse if you look at master's level. Seven times more men dropped out of college during COVID than women did. So, you know, all of these things on top has created, um, a- a- a structural environment in which men aren't exactly thriving. And then, the s- sort of second punch has been a loss, culturally, I think, of their position of, what does it mean to be a man? You know, if gender is up for debate and if your biological sex and the person that you show up as in the world is available to be discussed, then what does it mean to be a man? Like, literally, that question. You know, there's a very famous documentary called What Is A Woman? but "What is a man?" is an equally valid question when we're talking about the roles of men. And it's not just, "I am a man who has this sort of physical, biological manifestation." It's the symbolic r- representation of, what does it mean? How should I show up? What are the archetypes and the virtues and the values that I should rely on? What are the things that, when times get tough, I should believe in myself? You know, wha- what is greater than me, the grand narrative that explains my life as a male? And it's that one-two that I think has caused a lot of men to feel very dispossessed. They- they feel like they're not really getting much sympathy. Um, I think y- you have this really, really great quote where you say, uh, "Many young men feel their difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don't feel a part of." And it definitely seems like modern men are sort of being made to pay for the sins of the advantages of their fathers and grandfathers, whilst not really feeling like they get any themselves now.

   4. CEChristine Emba7:56

      Yeah. Uh, that was a big part of what I wanted to talk about in this piece, because I think another factor that's making men feel dispossessed or not sure of what they belong is that our culture has also shifted. Um, and I think many of these shifts have been good things. Again, like it's- it's great that we've recognized that, you know, sexual assault is real, that you need to get consent. The Me Too movement was a good thing. Um, it outed a lot of predators. At the same time, I think especially in- in media culture, um, and in progressive spaces, frankly, there's been this reflexive push to say, "You know, the future is female. Men suck." (laughs) Like, "Men are garbage. Masculinity is toxic." Um, those are kind of acceptable things to- to say now. And, you know, telling somebody that the person they are, like that they are toxic, um, obviously doesn't make them feel good, obviously doesn't make them feel accepted by, uh, society. And you know, when you say, "Okay, men are toxic, men are toxic, masculinity is toxic," what's- what's the alternative? Like, what does a good masculinity look like? And that picture isn't really being made very clear. I mean, you look at media representations of men in, you know, even popular TV shows, and I feel like the most common archetype right now is like the male schlub. He lives in his mom's basement and just smokes weed all day. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson9:20

      Homer Simpson, Pete Griffin.

   6. CEChristine Emba9:21

      Right. Yeah, they're not like father figures that one looks up to or respects. They're sort of people you would make fun of or look down on. Um, and I feel like this- this comes at, I think, the expense of a productive dialogue, actually. It pushes men out of the conversation and opens up a space of vulnerability that, you know, is- is often filled by bad actors. It's also not really, I think, fair, actually. (laughs) Um, but you were gonna say something?

   7. CWChris Williamson9:52

      Yeah, just that, Richard Reeves,

3. 9:54 – 16:39

   The Term ‘Toxic Masculinity’

   1. CWChris Williamson9:54

      again, talked about this. He taught me about this over a year ago now, uh, where he said that as soon as you throw out the term toxic masculinity, it causes so many men to just check out of the conversation. If you're going to tell me that there is something in me which is like original sin and it needs to be expunged from me, I need to- I need to be exercised of my toxic masculinity, what do you think? What, like, uh, you're really going to allow m- y- you really expect men to engage in a conversation after the first thing you've done is say that a c- a core part of them is something that's inherently toxic. And yeah, you know, putting forward the, um, a- a- a positive view for men has been as, uh, the- the decrease in that has been the same, I would say, almost perfectly in line with the increase in what I would class as a patronizing view of women's success. So, uh, the difference between the two Mulan films is a perfect example of this. In the first one, she's small and- and- and not as strong, but she's crafty and she- she works harder and she overcomes and she uses her size to her advantage, and through hard work and determination, she tells a tale of someone with a disadvantage that overcomes it to now be as good or even better than people who had more advantages than them. You look at the most recent Mulan film, and she's just born to be perfect. She's more talented. The only restriction that she ever faces is that the men don't believe in her enough and that there's some sort of oppression out there. Or the second Doctor Strange film where the, uh, Central American daughter of a lesbian couple g- uh, has the most power in the entire world, and the only reason that she doesn't have it is because she doesn't believe in herself enough. Like, that to me is not an inspiring story to tell young women either. Like, uh, you know, we need to be able to build a society with resilient girls who have archetypes that they can look up to, too, who overcame difficult things, who don't expect the world to bend to their every whim, and that if they do encounter any sort of difficulty, that this is like an aberration, that this is the sign that there's something wrong with the world. It's like, no, this is baked into what the world is. The world is a series of challenges. So I think that we- it's been this very interesting like-... men and women have almost sort of like passed each other and high-fived, or maybe not high-fived, on the way past-

   2. CEChristine Emba12:09

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson12:09

      ... um, where the role models for men have become increasingly less inspirational. Ostensibly, the role models for women have become more inspirational, but I don't actually think that they are. I think that it's like a very fragile, thinly-veiled form of, like, um, pedestalization.

   4. CEChristine Emba12:24

      Yeah, that's, that's such an interesting example. I mean, I did a lot of interviews with young men for this piece, um, and one thing that a guy, who I mention at the end of the piece, his name is Ronan Bray, said to me, really stood out. You know, he was talking about role models, um, and where he saw messages about how to be a man. And he was like, "You know, I see all this stuff for women now, like, 'Women, you can be astronauts, you can be scientists (laughs) . You can be race car drivers. You can do everything.'" And that's really cool, but at the same time, I s- I hear as a man, like, "Men, this is what you shouldn't do. (laughs) Get out of the way."

   5. CWChris Williamson13:03

      Oh, interesting.

   6. CEChristine Emba13:04

      "Stop talking over women and holding them back," but there's no like kind of positive, like, things that you can be for men. It seems to have all transferred. And then also, I think you're onto something too, when you talk about this sort of almost thin, thin veneer that is on some of these aspirational messages that are, that are given to women. I think one other thing that we see in our, our moment, our modern moment, is an ethos of gender neutrality, um, an idea that actually gender doesn't matter. We shouldn't talk about it. Women can do anything that men can do. Men can do anything that women can do. Really, you don't need to be a good man or a good woman. There's no such thing. Just be a good person. We're all kind of the same, just be a good one. And I find that rather grating because I- I simply don't believe that's realistic or that useful. A, most people don't want to live in an androgynous society where everyone is the same, but B, I think that there is something specific about the embodied existence of being a man or a woman, and there is lots of overlap in sort of personality traits and physical traits and things that the, the two sexes share. But there are also differences, and part of being a good man or a good woman, in my opinion at least, is kind of recognizing those differences and recognizing one's strengths, weaknesses, skills, et cetera, and figuring out how to use those specific to you traits well. And so if you're a man, like, it's likely that you are probably stronger than women and old ladies. So being a good man, you know, would suggest that you figure out what your duties and responsibilities are when it comes to that thing about being a man, not just being like, "Well, we're all... Just be good. It's fine."

   7. CWChris Williamson15:01

      Yeah. It's- it's so, uh... Y- you're right to say as well that this is a- a commonly rolled out criticism of people that say, "Ah, men and women, they're more similar than they are different." And you go, well, if you look at s- some traits on their own, yes, yes, there is tons and tons of overlap in the middle of the distribution. Some of them, like strength, for instance, hand strength, it basically, they don't touch. That like the weakest man and the strongest woman on average would be like bas- they, even they wouldn't be close to each other. But when you actually fold them all together, when you look at the suite of traits overall, when it's not just aggression, but it's also height, and it's neuroticism, and it's extroversion, it's conscientiousness, and it's da da da da da da, the- it- these things just separate out. And this isn't because of socialization. This is because of in-built, innate, biological differences. Now, are they perpetuated through culture? Yeah, absolutely. But where do you think the culture came from? Culture wasn't just created out of nothing. It was built off the back of a biological framework. And you're right as well, it- it is the difference between trying to make men and women equal and trying to make men and women the same. It's aiming for androgyny rather than equality, and that has been a very rapid slippery slope to say, "Well, there are no differences." And because men held positions of, uh, esteem and advantage for quite a long time, what I think it made was almost like an echo that almost taught women or people that were pro-women that because men had held these positions, the way to get those positions of advantage was for women to emulate the men things-

   8. CEChristine Emba16:37

      Like men.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:37

      ... that men were doing. Yeah, precisely.

4. 16:39 – 22:20

   The Failings of Modern Feminism

   1. CWChris Williamson16:39

   2. CEChristine Emba16:39

      (laughs) Yeah, so I wrote a book, um, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. It came out last spring. Um, and it was basically about our sexual culture and our relationship culture and questions of consent and sexual ethics. But this is one thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about in the book, actually, this idea that the feminist movement kind of shifted over time in a way that I don't necessarily think was positive. You know, original feminists were, what they said really was that, you know, "Women are important. Women should be respected as much as men are respected. Women should be allowed to partake in society as much as men are, but women should also be respected as women for being themselves." And then slowly over the years, we've shifted through this kind of like playboy to girlboss culture where it's like, okay, well, men have a lot of power, and in fact, honestly kind of the worst men tend to have a lot of power. To be a successful woman, just be more like the most powerful man, who's often like the worst kind of man. So it's like, women, be a girlboss, which is still a boss. Like, instead of being a playboy, you're just a playgirl. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson17:51

      (laughs) Yeah, so yeah.

   4. CEChristine Emba17:52

      (laughs) You're just like picking up the same things instead of being respected for like your, your actual self, and that hasn't been healthy for women either. Um, but when the same thing is asked of men, you know, it's not healthy for them-... themselves.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:06

      No, I think modern feminism told women that true freedom was achieved by working like your father and having sex like your brother.

   6. CEChristine Emba18:15

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:15

      I think that that's... And I know that you're friends with Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, um, and I was chatting to both of them a lot over the last year about this very topic, and you know, the, the, the failings of modern feminism. What it really hasn't given to women that it, it maybe had the opportunity to, and then how it's also, you know, to s- bring it back to the men conversation, I think a lot of men see feminism as overreaching from equali- uh, f- from beyond equality into, uh, retribution.

   8. CEChristine Emba18:43

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:44

      I think that they f- they feel like feminism, uh, and even, it seems to me like there is a, a good amount of, like, women out there who would class themselves as feminists that, uh, uh, are almost looking to get one over on men because now there are, um, uh, uh, upper hands culturally that, that could perhaps be used to push, uh, a, a particular sort of narrative. And it doesn't surprise me that, that men feel like dispossessed from that movement too, which creates this like recursive antagonism between the sexes, that men feel like that they're being mistreated and women are the only ones whose problems are being seen. So I'm going to either retreat or f- become more misogynist, which means that I'm going to retreat further, which means that they're gonna dislike me more. And it keeps on going and going and going. So what, g- going back to sort of the, the conversation, the cultural milieu around this, why, why are people struggling to advocate for the problems of boys and men so easily?

   10. CEChristine Emba19:39

       Well, so really quickly, just there are some data points that actually totally support your thesis about this, this retributive, um- (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson19:46

       I knew it. I knew it wasn't just bro science. I knew it wasn't.

   12. CEChristine Emba19:49

       (laughs) Yeah. No, I mean, a recent survey came out that showed that, um, among Gen Z men right now in America, fewer than half of them would say that feminism has been good for American society, which is a pretty startling statistic actually. And-

   13. CWChris Williamson20:06

       For Gen Z, the, the like, soy boy, blue-pilled cook, cook generation.

   14. CEChristine Emba20:11

       The woke (laughs) generation.

   15. CWChris Williamson20:11

       Yeah, precisely.

   16. CEChristine Emba20:12

       Yeah. And then there was a survey done by Ipsos. It was a global survey about sort of the state of gender relations around the world. But you can isolate out countries. And in the United States, I think it was 43% of men agreed with exactly the statement you made, that the push for women's equality has gone so far that it has turned into discrimination against men. And so almost half of men in America apparently think this, which is something that should be maybe a little bit alarming to women and to (laughs) uh, progressives, to anyone who wants cooperation between the sexes. Um, but that kind of leads to, to your next question. You know, why is this discourse so hard to have in society? Um, you know, that was one of the tough things about writing this piece in a way, 'cause kind of as you were saying at the beginning, like, you want to respect all sides and you also don't wanna be read as something other than what you are. Um, I think that there is, first of all, an unfortunate tendency in politics, in American politics specifically, to view things as very zero sum. Um, you know, like, okay, well, we have spent some time helping women. You know, the feminist movement has succeeded in some ways, but the gains are still really fragile, you know, as we saw, uh, when the Dobbs decision came down and abortion rights were rolled back. Um, we saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic, like women had entered the workforce and then they just started dropping out because they didn't have support during COVID-19. So there's this feeling that like, okay, we've kind of just started moving forward for women. If we turn our attention to men now, then I guess we're, just women are over, like women are not gonna get anything anymore. (laughs) We're not going to focus on them. And so there's a resistance to changing the focus because it's viewed like we can either help one sex or help the other. I don't think that's true. In fact, I think that the sexes rely on each other to, to support each other. And if one is in its flop era, the other one's gonna be in trouble too.

5. 22:20 – 25:20

   Why the Right Adopted Men’s Issues

   1. CEChristine Emba22:20

      Um, I also think that there is an unfortunate like mixed association. So the right has really, um, like the political right has kind of been first to the men question. Um, and sort of right leaning or right coded influencers have been the ones to talk about men's issues the most. And unfortunately some of them have used, you know, talking about men's issues as an excuse to say like, "Well, what we really need to do to help men and to give them jobs again is to put women back into the home (laughs) ," you know? And you know, it's actually, it's a bad thing that women can provide for themselves right now. So we need to like make sure that women have to get married to be (laughs) economically successful, like that sort of thing. And no one really... Progressives, I think, many people, moderates don't want to be associated with that. And there's a feeling that if you start talking about men, there's kind of like a sideways look that one gets where it's like, "Oh, are you like, oh, you're one of those?"

   2. CWChris Williamson23:25

      Yeah. There's, there is 100%...

   3. CEChristine Emba23:27

      "Those guys? The manosphere guys?"

   4. CWChris Williamson23:27

      Yeah. Yeah. There is 100% a branding problem for men's advice-

   5. CEChristine Emba23:31

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson23:31

      ... at the moment. I mean, it's one of the advantages, uh, of being a Black woman that, you know, you are able to maybe say things without, uh, jumping through quite so many hoops or caveats than I would with the way that I present, right? I, every single time that I, that I come on to have a conversation like this, someone in the comments that has never seen my stuff before and doesn't actually know what I talk about will accuse me of being a budget Andrew Tate.

   7. CEChristine Emba23:55

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson23:55

      I'm like, "Look, I am, I am so-"

   9. CEChristine Emba23:57

      That's rough.

   10. CWChris Williamson23:58

       "I am so blue-pilled in the eyes of manosphere that I'm a cook. Uh, but I'm so bigoted in the eyes of Guardian readers that I'm unspeakable." So, uh, really, really managing to, to slice through the middle there. But that's another reason why even though I've spoken about-... men, women, the problems that, that we're facing at the moment with masculinity and dating for a long time. Never ever once identified with the manosphere, despite the fact that, like, ostensibly I should do, right? Like if the-

   11. CEChristine Emba24:26

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson24:26

       ... manosphere means anything, it means people talking to men online about the problems that men face and, like, how to be a good man.

   13. CEChristine Emba24:32

       You are literally doing that. (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson24:34

       And yet...

   15. CEChristine Emba24:35

       Yet.

   16. CWChris Williamson24:35

       Branding problem. Massive branding problem.

   17. CEChristine Emba24:38

       Yeah, totally. And, (laughs) I mean, that was an interesting thing about publishing this piece too, right? Like I kind of began to feel that. I, I honestly do think that it is, that you're totally right. It is the case that someone like me kind of had to write this piece to be taken seriously. Um, but at the same time, I kind of am feeling a little bit of blowback from men who read the piece and are like, "What? A woman talking about men's business? She has, she knows nothing. I'm not gonna read this." And it's, it's like funny to get that response from, from both sides. So it's, I can only imagine actually trying to be taken seriously on this topic. (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson25:14

       This is the male disadvantage, the male disadvantage that you're facing here. Some toxic-

   19. CEChristine Emba25:19

       Oh, man.

   20. CWChris Williamson25:19

       ... toxic misandry.

6. 25:20 – 30:54

   Why Male Issues are Represented by Women in Mainstream Media

   1. CWChris Williamson25:20

      Yeah, so-

   2. CEChristine Emba25:21

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson25:21

      ... here's, this is something that I've noticed a lot, right? Um, especially over the last couple of months. Why is it the case that the conversation about masculinity in mainstream media is being so dominated by women? It's a comment on the state of discourse that most of the voices are being given mainstream platforms about masculinity. All of them, almost all of them are women. There was that, the masculinity issue that got released by Politico. Did you read that?

   4. CEChristine Emba25:44

      I did, and it's all women. Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:46

      Yep. No, it's like seven articles, seven different essays. Not a single man anywhere on there. Like, w- you know, and also the fact that your piece has resonated so much suggests this is an issue. To anybody that doesn't think that there is a problem with men at the moment, explain to me why this article of yours has exploded. But yeah, wh- what do you think is going on here? Is it just the, the softly, softly acceptable fluffy face of being able to talk about men's problems-

   6. CEChristine Emba26:15

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson26:15

      ... without being accused of being a budget Andrew Tate? Is that, are you the thin end of the wedge so that this conversation can get started?

   8. CEChristine Emba26:20

      Am I the soft manosphere?

   9. CWChris Williamson26:22

      (laughs)

   10. CEChristine Emba26:23

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson26:23

       You are. You're a gateway drug. You're a gateway drug. Yeah.

   12. CEChristine Emba26:26

       I don't, I don't... I hope not, but maybe. I don't know. Um, that's a, that is a really interesting question, um, and it's something that honestly I wanna sit with in more detail. I have a... Okay, what I'm gonna say now is theoretical. Um, so this is just like me spinning on a cloud here.

   13. CWChris Williamson26:46

       Girl science. That's fine. That's the best type.

   14. CEChristine Emba26:48

       (laughs) Chick science, girl science. Um...

   15. CWChris Williamson26:52

       Whatever you find.

   16. CEChristine Emba26:54

       Yeah. Uh, so I think that when you're looking for examples of positive masculinity, um, the best and most positive masculine examples or men are usually not just out there talking about themselves and their problems in the public square. Like, that's kind of not what they do. They're just sort of, they go about their business. Um, so that's one thing. And often the people in the manosphere, like the loudest people, the Andrew Tates and to some extent Jordan Peterson, who really, you know, started from a place where it was like, "Oh, interesting," and now is maybe a little off the rails. Um, you note that they are kind of unusual, rather attention-wanting figures, and that is, that is why they are in public. Um, I would also say perhaps that it has something to do with just media culture overall. Um, I think media is a slightly more feminized space maybe, or at least like, like almost soft commentary space. Like when we're talking about questions of, like, society and social cues and social norms. Um, that space seems to be heavier on the female lens than other spaces might be. Um, and then, let's see. What was, what was my last, my last take on this one? Um, I mean, in general, I also think that not, not necessarily in the media space, but in general, um... And sorry if this is very gender essentialist of me, but I do think that women spend more time thinking about these sort of like social cues and gender cues and not necessarily taking them for granted. You know, there is sort of a whole sphere of academic study now that's, that's women's studies, and it's just about how identities are formed, what they look like. Um, and my sense is that men don't spend as much time thinking in the abstract about like, "What do our friendships and communities look like? Like, what is the space here?" Um, and so like that sort of analysis often falls to women. And then the last thing, actually, and maybe this is most relevant to me, but, you know, I started thinking about this question a long time ago, but my thinking about like, "Wait, what is going on here?" was supercharged when I started writing about sex and relationships and dating culture, which women, I think, definitely talk more about and have more space to write about. And I think that is the place where the issue of like, "What is going on with men exactly? We need to figure that out because they're really kind of either acting up or not acting at all," (laughs) like became very obvious to women who are, like, trying to date men and being like, "Why is everyone so terrible all of a sudden, or not all of a sudden? Something has changed. What is it?" And so women maybe started thinking about this earlier, in some sense.

   17. CWChris Williamson30:07

       Well, there's some, there's some incredible percentage of psychologists that are female. It's like, like 70-plus percent, I think, of psychologists are female. And broadly, the, the closest area I think that we're talking to around this is in the world of evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. It's social sciences. You know, it's the integration of...... what we are and the world culture, how does that all work, and, you know, that, I guess, maybe is even in terms of academia dominated by women. I would, I wouldn't disagree that women probably do have a, uh, predisposition toward thinking about people rather than things, and I think that this, even though it's kind of a things abstract conversation, is more people-y than it is thing-y. Um-

   18. CEChristine Emba30:52

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson30:53

       But, I-I also agree

7. 30:54 – 37:16

   Are Conservative Men Are More Attractive?

   1. CWChris Williamson30:54

      that the, the conversation about dating was what got me into thinking about masculinity and men's issues too. And you touch on this really, really well in your piece, which is, um, to the extent that any vision of non-toxic masculinity is proposed, it ends up sounding more like stereotypical femininity than anything else. The problem being that even the women who support this narrative probably don't want to have sex with the men who are following it, and there is an issue that the men who women are hoping to date kind of aren't there, even why, while those same women may be sort of carrying the cards and the placards saying that they want more of them around. It's a very odd sort of, um, juxtaposition. There's some, definitely some cognitive dissonance going on there, I think.

   2. CEChristine Emba31:41

      Yeah, totally. I mean, I even say in the piece that, you know, when Scott Galloway said something like that, I cringed in recognition. (laughs) Um, and this is something that's come up as I've, as I've discussed the piece, even with men, where it's like, "Okay, well women do want, like, men who are sensitive and aware and, you know, et cetera, et cetera." Then the guys are like, "Do you? Really? 'Cause it kinda seems like women always date bad boys." Um, and I don't actually think that that's exactly true, but there, (laughs) there is something to this-

   3. CWChris Williamson32:13

      There's limits.

   4. CEChristine Emba32:14

      ... do as I say, not as I do. Maybe that's not-

   5. CWChris Williamson32:18

      Yeah.

   6. CEChristine Emba32:18

      That's not exactly-

   7. CWChris Williamson32:19

      It's do as I do, not as I say.

   8. CEChristine Emba32:21

      Yeah, basically. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson32:22

      Yeah, do as I do, not as I say.

   10. CEChristine Emba32:24

       That, that is definitely something. It's funny. There's... (laughs) Um, a friend of mine who's a writer, uh, for a conservative magazine and I have, like, joked about this, where she's like, "You know, I meet all these liberal women who say that they want a guy who, like, opens doors and, like, is, works out, whatever." It's like, "Maybe you need to start dating conservatives." (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson32:44

       That's what a con- that's what a conservative's called, yeah. Well, you saw-

   12. CEChristine Emba32:46

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:46

       ... that article went, uh, super viral a couple of weeks ago, which is, like, a liberal girl realized that the only guys that she found attractive had the opposite set of political beliefs-

   14. CEChristine Emba32:57

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson32:57

       ... to the ones that she did. And, you know, there's a really great study from Katherine Salmon, uh, she looked at the, um, front cover models of dark romance. Um, you know, you have 50 Shades of Gray comes out, it kind of breaks open this entire new literary genre. I'm someone who's been on the cover of, like, 10 or more dark romance novels, so I can speak from this as a, a position of authority-

   16. CEChristine Emba33:20

       Wait, really?

   17. CWChris Williamson33:22

       Um, yeah. Yeah. I, I went through a brief period of-

   18. CEChristine Emba33:25

       Fascinating. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson33:25

       Went through a brief period of that. Didn't realize, before I actually did it, I didn't realize that that person wasn't just a cool image on the front, but is actually supposed to be the protagonist. And then, after I got my first one and it got USA Today, something something Kari Lake, it's called Ricochet if people wanna google it. Um, there's a lot more, I'm not gonna give you those. But my mum-

   20. CEChristine Emba33:44

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson33:44

       My mum asked me for a copy of it, and I was like, "Mum, like this is not Harry Potter." Like, I don't think she knew... She was like, "Oh, my son's on the front cover of a, of a novel. Like, that's so amazing." I'm like, "No. Mum. I'm not having you read this dark romance thing with me on the front cover."

   22. CEChristine Emba34:01

       Pictured your son. (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson34:03

       Anyway, we are sidetracked by a disgusting image.

   24. CEChristine Emba34:07

       (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson34:07

       Um, they tried during... So you have 50 Shades breaks everything open, dark romance comes out. Then in the early 2010s, there is a pushback against, "Why do we need to have these, you know, lumberjack men or like the, like big buff policeman or whatever or the billionaire on the front cover? We should put more sort of feminized, more agreeable men on the front cover." And they did, and the books didn't sell. The books didn't sell well, because even though that might be publicly what is popular for, um, women to uphold and pedestalize, that's not necessarily what they're attracted to. There is a caveat here to add in, which is the thing that you want to fantasize about is not necessarily the thing that you want to marry.

   26. CEChristine Emba34:50

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson34:50

       And there's a big difference there, you know. Like, men too. Like, she's for the streets is all well and good if it's not for a one-night stand, right? Like, she's not for the streets if she's ready, willing, and able, so both men and women, um, fantasize sexually about things that they don't necessarily optimize for when it comes to a long-term relationship. So it's not strictly true, right? Like there are certain things that women may even optimize against, like the hypermasculine side. The super disagreeable man may be very sexually arousing but not super, uh, useful to be in a long-term relationship with because it would probably do your head in. Um, but yeah, my point being that stated and revealed preferences sometimes clash up against each other.

   28. CEChristine Emba35:32

       Yeah, and there is something interesting too about sort of subtle and ambient pressure to state a certain preference that you may not even hold, right? Um, I think, you know, we talk about our society and there is a sort of a bias towards... And I think in, in some ways this can be a good bias, towards inclusivity, towards a sort of non-gendered, like open-rolled, uh, positive, inclusive atmosphere where anyone can do whatever they want. And so, even if you are a woman who, like, I don't know, wants a, a super masculine looking, you know, like cover boy hunk, like... To be a good feminist, say, or to feel like a, a good modern or a good progressive or something, you'll probably still say in public, like, "Yeah, I wanna f- I wanna date another f- I wanna date a feminist." You know? Like, "I, I want to date someone who is evolved." (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson36:26

       (laughs)

   30. CEChristine Emba36:26

       "I need to date a man who goes to therapy." (laughs) Is that actually true? You- you- may not be true, but like, who is gonna go out there in public and say like, "Yeah, I wanna, I wanna date like a throwback. I wanna date a caveman. That's my preference as a modern woman," and worry about being looked at sideways again? Going back to the sort of like people who talk about like the men problem, it's like, "Oh, are you one of... Hmm, questionable."
8. 37:16 – 46:17

   Why the Left Are Ignoring Men

   1. CWChris Williamson37:16

      yeah, you- you nail it, I think. I had a really great conversation that I'll send to you once I'm done, it'll be up, um, later this week with a guy called George who runs The Tin Men on Instagram. British g-

   2. CEChristine Emba37:27

      Oh.

   3. CWChris Williamson37:27

      British dude, um, unapologetically from the left. Uh, presents in a, a like not super masculine way, uh, but is absolutely like vehemently pro-men. And it's so interesting talking to someone that's a card-carrying liberal who also is unforgiving in how pro-male he is, talking about the problems with male suicide, homelessness, incarceration, family court, all of the things that you should not be talking about. And I spoke to him, like, "Why is it that the left don't want to kind of acknowledge this problem?" There's like either an inability or an unwillingness for mainstream media and the left in general to advocate for men. And you nailed it, you had this really great quote where you say, "Many progressives have ignored the opportunity to sell men on a better vision of what they could be." And it is the point that if you do not like the current role models that are being put up for men, you need to offer them something else. It's not just a case that you can leave the vacuum and then start throwing your toys out of the pram because, "Oh, Andrew Tate's Bugatti, like, I can't believe he smokes cigars and drinks bottled water." Like, you can't complain about that unless you're going to say, "And here is something that I propose instead of that," because men are going to find someone. They need someone. Simply abandoning them is precisely the reason why the right has dominated this conversation.

   4. CEChristine Emba38:49

      Right, that's the thing, and I say this often in this, in this sort of conversation. In the fight between something and nothing, something is always going to win. Like, it may be a very bad something, but like you're not offering anything else. Then of course people will go to what's on offer. Um, and yeah, what's on offer right now is like pretty bad. It's not even, I mean, when you talk about Andrew Kate, it's, or Andrew Tate, it's not just that you talk about his Bugattis. It's that he's a literal sex trafficker. But again, if it's Andrew Tate or nothing-

   5. CWChris Williamson39:21

      Alleged sex trafficker, alle- allege- alleged sex trafficker, Christine.

   6. CEChristine Emba39:23

      Sure, that's true. That's true. I am a journalist. He is an alleged sex trafficker. Um, and also admits it in his own words. But um, yeah, who is, who is the opposing figure that you're telling men to- to go out and seek? Who are you providing if you're from the left and think that that's a bad option? And just sort of like closing your eyes and wishing that these people would go away is unfortunately not going to do it. I mean, another conflict I think too, and I've heard this from, uh, a lot of commenters from the piece and people who have written to me, is the idea that, okay, well, if you define masculinity and femininity or define masculinity first, you're, isn't it that you're kind of saying that the good things about being a man, say men are more risk-taking or men are more competitive or stronger, are you saying that, you know, women don't take risks and can't be strong? And if men are interested in leadership, does that mean women have to be followers? And I think people are perhaps justifiably afraid of putting people back into boxes that they've only recently broken out of. And then, okay, if you have this one definition of masculinity that's all about, say, aggression and risk-taking and sex drive, et cetera, what about the men who don't fit into that, you know? And I had a great debate with, um, my colleague, Jonathan Capehart, and he was like, "You know, in this masculinity debate, like, I'm a gay married guy. Like, this traditional masculine... Like, I'm not John Wayne. I was never going to be John Wayne. So sometimes when this debate is going on, I feel like it's not for me. Like, that one model of maleness is not capacious enough." And so actually, one of the things that I think will be key going forward for those who want to put forward like a better view of manhood and masculinity and better role models is also to have not just one role model or one vision of masculinity. Like, ideally there are many good ways to be a man, as many ways as there are men. And by having more and different role models of masculinity, like more people can find a way. But you still have to have those models, right? You can't just be like, "Be good," and that's all.

   7. CWChris Williamson41:35

      Yeah, so this is a really important point that I think we need to get into. I- I'm not convinced that there are as many ways to be a good man as there are men. And this came out of a- a debate...

   8. CEChristine Emba41:49

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson41:49

      ... that I had in Qatar a couple of months ago. I flew to Qatar, uh, to debate, uh, a gentleman who is a member of the LGBT community but he's also a Kuwaiti-born American that's pro-Palestine and I th- think religious in- in some form as well. So it was an interesting sort of blend of-

   10. CEChristine Emba42:06

       Yeah, wow.

   11. CWChris Williamson42:07

       Yeah, exactly. And I could see, he had this concept called the man box, uh, that I thought was really interesting. And he said that basically the man box is this prescriptive way of describing what a man can be. If you're within this, you are a man. If you're outside of this, you're not a man. And if you make the box too narrow and if you make the walls a bit too rigid, it ends up causing many people who sit outside of the box in terms of their predisposition to feel like they're dispossessed, they're not included. And this is a guy who, um, wanted to dance.... as a kid who, growing up, at least with some of the influences of an Arabic culture, would've absolutely felt dispossessed, uh, uh, and displaced, right? I can totally see that.

   12. CEChristine Emba42:44

       Yeah, totally.

   13. CWChris Williamson42:45

       What I came to realize is that, yes, there isn't just one way to be a good man, but there can't be an unlimited number of ways either. Because the problem of breaking open the expectations of being a man so much that there are no longer any, provides zero guidance on, for men's and boys on, uh, men and boys on how to behave. There has to be some limitations, because you are defined by the boundaries of whatever it is that you're going to do. If being a good man means that you can be anything, if you can continue to redefine and redefine and redefine, that means that it's the same as it being nothing. There is no definition if the definition can be anything.

   14. CEChristine Emba43:24

       So, yes. Actually, I do think that's right, so I, I should revise that, I would say. I mean, when I say things that there are as many ways to be a good man as there are to be a man, it's like any person is capable of being a good person, and like what it looks like to be a good person as you specifically is different from what it looks like to be a good person as me specifically. But it's also clear that like you're a man and I'm a woman, so there's, those are just gonna be different. I think it's really important to recognize that people do actually need boundaries, and need role models and norms that are specific, especially when they're younger. And so this is an interesting thing, um, that I found reading responses to this piece. Like, we only had comments open for three days, and there were 10,500 (laughs) comments on this piece, which is-

   15. CWChris Williamson44:12

       Did you see-

   16. CEChristine Emba44:12

       ... nuts.

   17. CWChris Williamson44:13

       Did you, uh, sort it by most liked or most commented? Did you see what that top one was?

   18. CEChristine Emba44:19

       Um, I haven't today. What, what's the top one?

   19. CWChris Williamson44:21

       The top one today, it seems like it's been around for a long time, so I'm gonna guess that you'll have seen this one-

   20. CEChristine Emba44:26

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson44:26

       ... was, um, "I don't know what you're talking about. This doesn't resonate with me at all."

   22. CEChristine Emba44:30

       That, yes, so that is what I was going to say. They're like a, comments from, I think, more like older men, not old men, but like men in their maybe 40s and 50s. So many of them are like-

   23. CWChris Williamson44:42

       Dadas.

   24. CEChristine Emba44:42

       ... "I don't know what the problem is with masculinity, like I'm fine." And it's the younger man who's like, "Oh, this really resonates. Like I've been struggling with this too." And I think, I actually do think what's happening is, is specific to younger men, because when you're younger, you simply don't know as much. And so, you kind of need a road map or a path to start from, like at least a basic norm that you start from acknowledging. And then, as you grow up and you get more experience and you figure out where you fit in the world, it's like you sort of begin to expand and like figure out how that norm fits you, right? Like, there's a path, and like as you become your own person, you branch out. Um, but there has to be a starting point, you know? There, what is a man? Like there is kind of a basic starting point that you need to start from.

   25. CWChris Williamson45:30

       When you f- yeah.

   26. CEChristine Emba45:30

       And then as you figure it out, you become your own person. But there has to be at least some baseline, some original norm. And so, I think that's what I'm saying. Like, there, there needs to be like a baseline, "Okay, a man is X." Like, "How do you be a good man? Like, it includes these things." And what does that look like in your own life? Like, that may vary depending on your profession, whether you're married, et cetera, et cetera. But you start from here. And I worry sometimes that, you know, the push is that like, "Well, everyone is so different." Like, there is no baseline, exactly what you're saying. And then-

   27. CWChris Williamson46:04

       Be a good person, not a good man.

   28. CEChristine Emba46:05

       Yeah, that doesn't tell you anything.

   29. CWChris Williamson46:09

       Yeah. No, I, I, I think you're right, and it's... it's a shame that

9. 46:17 – 52:32

   Recognising Female Success & De-gendering Male Success

   1. CWChris Williamson46:17

      we've got this thing called gamma bias, did you come across this? You describe it in the, in your piece, but I don't know whether you came across the term.

   2. CEChristine Emba46:23

      I didn't, no.

   3. CWChris Williamson46:24

      Okay. So, I, I, I think that you explain, um, if there is something which is ardently pro-female, it's very heavily gendered. If there's something that's ardently pro-male, it gets desexed, right?

   4. CEChristine Emba46:36

      Hm.

   5. CWChris Williamson46:36

      And the reverse is also true. So, um, a male killer, male serial killer, if, if it was a female, whi- which it probab- almost certainly wouldn't be, but, um, if it was a female, it would, it regularly gets desexed. This is by John Barry from the Center for, um, Male Psychology, and he calls it gamma bias, which is that the successes of men are de-gendered, and the successes of women are sexed to, because that's, we're still living in a world where the culture presumes that success of women is a- an outlier or an aberration. What?

   6. CEChristine Emba47:08

      Successful women serial killers. (laughs) Sorry.

   7. CWChris Williamson47:10

      Successful woman serial killer, yes, exactly. That's what it is.

   8. CEChristine Emba47:12

      We, we need more role models for women. Women can be serial killers too.

   9. CWChris Williamson47:16

      They can, I know.

   10. CEChristine Emba47:17

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson47:17

       They j- can't, where's the, where's the fucking parade for that? Um...

   12. CEChristine Emba47:20

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson47:22

       Yeah, but y- you end up with this situation in which, uh, there is a, a, a vacuum of, uh, positive examples of masculinity. He used this, this really great example where, um, Sarah Everard, do you remember that case?

   14. CEChristine Emba47:38

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson47:38

       It was in the UK, it was this, uh, woman who was horrifically, uh, sort of followed home and, and killed by a British-

   16. CEChristine Emba47:44

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson47:44

       ... police officer. And there was, you know, candlelit vigils and people in the streets, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, and horrific, like absolutely horrific story. The next week, a man jumped into the Thames to try and save a woman that was drowning, and it didn't even say man in the headline. And it was like, "Person jumps into river to try and save woman. Dies." Um, so-

   18. CEChristine Emba48:09

       Okay.

   19. CWChris Williamson48:09

       ... again, uh, John seems to have done the work to have been able to s- show that this is replicated, and I don't really think that there's a broader conspiracy here other than it's commonly applauded in the media to be like, "Yay, women!" And kind of less popular to be like, "Yay, men!" So, what do they do? Well, they just lean into what they presume is going to be popular, and that seems to make sense. You know, we've ex- explained today how many different hurdles you had to jump through to make sure that you didn't trigger any of the different trip wires and defense mechanisms that would've potentially caused your article to be misinterpreted. So i- it's evident that these things still exist. But I do worry that...... by doing that, what- what is left as a- a positive role model for men? And as you said, the formative years are formative for a reason, right? Like, these are the times when you're looking for, like, "Okay, what- what should I do? I'm confused."

   20. CEChristine Emba49:02

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson49:02

       And for the, you know, the gentleman that commented on your piece saying, uh, "I don't know what you're talking about. All I spend my time doing is going to work and looking after my kids and- and, you know, like, I- I get up on time and I do the things."

   22. CEChristine Emba49:15

       I'm happy for you, I guess. (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson49:16

       Yeah, but, th- where do you think that you got those rules and guidelines from? Like, okay, i- i- it's not about your problem right now. The goal of much of sort of men's education and general life education overall is to get yourself moving to the stage where you can kind of pedal on your own two feet. It's okay-

   24. CEChristine Emba49:33

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson49:33

       ... and now I have some of the advice. The stabilizers have been taken off and I can kind of weave my own life path, uh, with the understanding that I've got this- these foundations behind me.

   26. CEChristine Emba49:44

       Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, also one of the things that, uh ... So I interviewed Richard Reeves and Scott Galloway, among other sort of experts for this piece. And one of the things that Scott said really resonated with me. He said that this is ... First of all, that this is an ongoing problem that's not going to be fixed overnight. And part of it, unfortunately, or not unfortunately, but just truthfully, is a problem of responsibility. Like, men do have to decide to be better and to, you know, work on themselves. That said, it's also the responsibility of older men and community role models. Like, the 50-year-old guy who's like, "My life is great. I'm a great man." Okay, cool. Like, go teach (laughs) another young man how to do that. Um, because so much of this learning is also ... And I think this is, I think that this is different in some way for- for men almost than it is for women. Uh, much of it does come from role modeling, from having someone to look up to. So, like, there's research that I cite in the piece, um, from this landmark study by Raj Chetty. And it was actually about economic mobility, um, in different neighborhoods. He studied this by zip code. But there were a lot of sort of interesting side findings in the work. And one of them was that for Black boys specifically, economic mobility tended to be much lower. And actually, a lot of the difference in economic mobility by race between white and Black was due to the kind of poorer performance of boys who are Black. But he found that if these boys lived in a neighborhood that had more fathers present, not even their own fathers, just like more dads around, somebody else's dad, whatever, they were far more likely to achieve economic mobility. And so, like, the- just the presence of role models had a huge effect. And there's other research showing that boys are just much more affected by the presence of good figures in young age, too. There's a sort of daisies versus dandelions model, where, you know, girls, even when they're brought up in adverse circumstances, tend to be pretty resilient and can bounce back. You know, they're da- they're dandelions. They grow through the cracks. They just, like, make it work. But actually, and perhaps unexpectedly, little boys are daisies. If they have adverse experiences, if they don't have good role models when they're younger, they're much less likely to bounce back. They just wilt. And so to raise good men, like men, other men, older men, men who have been successful and are comfortable in their masculinity, need to take it upon themselves to be part of the solution.

   27. CWChris Williamson52:30

       Really amazing point. First

10. 52:32 – 1:00:43

    Is the Masculinity Crisis Impacted by Absent Fathers?

    1. CWChris Williamson52:32

       thing that come up- comes up for me is, so interesting that that guy that commented that said that everything in his life was fine, "I don't know what you're talking about," his first port of call was to go to atomized individuation. He was talking about me-

    2. CEChristine Emba52:47

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson52:48

       ... I'm okay. As opposed to, wow, maybe there's some truth to this, and maybe as somebody that feels comfortable in their own masculinity and, like, he's got his life together, I shouldn't reach out and say, "Can't believe that this is happening. Would love to try and help someone that's a young man that's suffering, because I feel like I've managed to find my place in the world." Second thing being, I'm increasingly certain that a lot of the problems that we're seeing, especially amongst, uh- uh, misbehavior, um, but also when it comes to academic outcomes, especially Black inner city youths, are very, very heavily laid at the feet of single parent households. It's like many of the problems we're seeing are fatherless problems as opposed to culture problems or ... Well, I guess fatherlessness could be born out of culture, but you know what I mean.

    4. CEChristine Emba53:32

       Mm-hmm. For sure.

    5. CWChris Williamson53:33

       Like, yeah. Like, that ... And I wonder whether part of the masculinity crisis is downstream from an increasing number of single parent households. I wonder if you could conduct a sufficiently big study to work out are men or young boys who grew up in a two parent household more or less likely to str- say that they, uh, don't know what a real man is, that they struggle. It would be insane if it wasn't the case. It would be absolutely wi- ... That would be a much more shocking revelation than it was, but until we've got the data, it's just bro science. But yeah, I think, um, it ... The single parent problem, the lack of strong father figures, again, is exactly why we need good role models out there, which is why, you know, uh, in a age of social media ubiquity, you are going to gravitate towards someone. I know that I found this. You know, I got toward the end of my 20s, probably a little bit late to try and stop being an adult infant, but I get to, you know, 27, 28, 29, and I've achieved a good bit of success in the way that society tells a young man that he maybe should, but I didn't feel like I understood myself. I didn't feel like I had a good conception of who I was or what I really should do. I didn't have a firm foundation on how I should show up in the world. And then I see this old, like, wizened druid-looking Canadian psychology professor on a bald MMA commentator's podcast and I go, "Oh, wow, this guy's telling me to tell the truth."Wow. What a, what a radical idea to actually not lie to try and get things that you want out of people, but to focus on telling the truth instead of X and Y and Z. And then you speak to like people like Sam Harris or Alain de Botton from The School of Life. You know, all of these different interesting people who had insights that weren't necessarily about masculinity, but were about psychology and were about the world and the way that the world shows up. And from that, you infer what being a good person and being a good man is. And, um, yeah, it's, it, I, I, one of the things I'm most interested in, especially given that you've written this and now you've got all of this sort of attention, you must have been able to look at the current landscape of how these conversations are being had previously because it's not like you're the first person ever to talk about this. What do you think most commentators are missing when they try to talk about the problem of boys and men?

    6. CEChristine Emba55:55

       Oh, boy. Well, (laughs) I could go on at length. Um, I mean, first kind of does tack back to what you were saying about single-parent households. Again, I think in modern society, progressive spaces especially, there is this bias towards inclusivity. Everybody chooses their own life path, and that's okay. They're all great. They're all of equal value. Um, we don't wanna stigmatize anyone. But actually, I'm, I feel quite certain that maybe the question, the specific question is like, the specific question, "Are you unsure of your masculinity?" (laughs) may not have been asked, but there are so much data that shows that children in single-parent households, and especially fatherless households, tend to do worse, and especially boys when it comes to exactly what you're saying about discipline and academic achievement. Like, the data does show this very clearly. Um, but there is a reluctance, I think, among many commentators to say that, um, or to point out that that could be a problem because it's seen as stigmatizing. You know, like-

    7. CWChris Williamson57:00

       It's not inclusive to the single-parent households.

    8. CEChristine Emba57:03

       Yeah, and I mean, that comes from sort of over-sensitivity and also maybe just a, a sort of acceptance that this seems to be more common, like this is the way things are, I guess. Um, and so, like that, it's not offered as a solution (laughs) that men should be better fathers and stay with their fathers and that there should be more two-parent households. But that is just an, an obviously important part of this problem. Um, I interviewed, as I said, a bunch of young men for this piece, and almost all of them said that, you know, "Oh, like one thing about this is like, I had a really crappy relationship with my dad. Like my dad (laughs) was a terrible person or he wasn't around, and actually all of my friends, like very few of us can say that we had good relationships with our fathers. And so like, maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know." And you know, they're not sure, but it, it seems very clear. And actually like, there is one young man who I spoke to, and I didn't get to include this part, um, in the essay, but he was like, "Yeah, I had a shitty relationship with my, my dad actually, and I was kind of a lout. Like I was not a very good man. And actually what changed for me was when, um, this priest (laughs) in my neighborhood, uh, who officiated my dad's funeral actually just sort of took me under his wing and like taught me how to cook and just like hung out with me as a man. And that was the role model I needed to become, you know, a better person, the person that I am today." But that was somebody who just sort of saw a lost young man and was like, "I'm just gonna care for him and be a model to him and teach him how to grow up." Um, so I think, I do think that that is one thing that commentators are either missing or purposefully not speaking about, and I think that that's a real problem. And I do think that when people try and speak about it, you know, like Barack Obama had the sort of My Brother's Keeper program and had several speeches about dads and missing dads, and he was often sort of shouted down for being a scold, even though he was right. Um, I think also that this question of representation is important actually. And actually this has become kind of a buzzword in progressive and liberal spaces, the idea that representation is important. Like women need to see themselves in spaces, like people of color need to see themselves in spaces. But when you look at what the data shows about men in formative spaces for men, um, there are very few male, uh, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers. There are actually very few male nurses. Um, as you said, male psychologists. And imagine if you're, you know, a boy growing up in a single-parent household, you're raised by your mom, you go through the average public school system, average public medical system in the US, like you may really never see a, a man in a position of teaching authority until (laughs) you know, you're an adult. What does that do really? And so perhaps a policy solution might be to kind of acknowledge that and try to figure out how to get men into some of these spaces. And some of the problem there is that these spaces are considered feminized because there's so many women in them and that makes it harder to recruit men to those spaces. But I don't know, there has to be some way to do that there. Um, yeah, I mean those are, those are just two things actually. There are a number more, but the family situation-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:00:39

       I wonder whether, um...

    10. CEChristine Emba1:00:39

        ... the role modeling, yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:00:40

        Both of those are huge. Um, a couple

11. 1:00:43 – 1:09:05

    The Need for Single-Sex Spaces for Male Bonding

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:43

       of the conversations I've had, one with, uh, Max Rudd last year. Um, this is a guy who was going to get married and I think he'd gone ... He's always had female friends, um, but he tended to have more girl friends than guy friends. And he went to get his suit fitted, I think, or something like that, maybe get fitted for the ring that he was gonna wear. And uh, the girlfriend that he was with said, "So who's gonna be your best man?"... and he said, "Uh, uh, uh, it'll come to me, don't, don't worry." And he got home and he realized, "Fuck, like, where are all of my male friends?" He didn't have any ma- he didn't have a guy that could be his best man at his wedding. And one of the things that he discovered, uh, it was more to do with the loneliness epidemic for men there, but that, um, men's only spaces were seen as these sort of vaulted holes of power that was exclusionary to women specifically, and this means that we need to break open the doors because, you know, I'm a female barrister, and I want to make sure that there isn't a secret boys club somewhere so that I can be included, because I also want to become a judge or some high-up sort of legal person. But like, okay, y- that, that's true, but if downstream from that, like, working men's clubs and stuff, and, and-

    2. CEChristine Emba1:01:59

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:59

       ... men's sheds, which is this initiative coming out of Australia where men, older men, um, fix shit together, and fixing shit together in a, in a shed (laughs) literally called Men's Sheds. I'm sure it's coming out of Australia. They just fix stuff. So, e- there'll be a, a bench or a car or a b- l- lawn mower or something, and these guys just come together because men bond over doing stuff. You know, I see this in my own life. I, uh, one of my best friends, one of my longest standing friends was my old business partner from my, my nightclub days. We're still incredibly close. I was a groomsman at his wedding, all of this stuff. But now that I do the podcast full-time, our relationship is in a different bucket. It, it's, it's one of, of nostalgia and, uh, a huge amount of love, but it doesn't have that same sort of dopamine and that kind of rush that I do with my editor, Dean, for instance, who's been with me for five and a half years, and it's every single day, it feels like going to war with someone. It feels like standing shoulder to shoulder. In fact, that's a Richard Reeves thing, right? Where he says-

    4. CEChristine Emba1:02:55

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:02:56

       ... that, uh, what is it? Women, women bond face-to-face, men bond shoulder-to-shoulder.

    6. CEChristine Emba1:03:00

       Men side-by-side. Yeah. No, that is, that is actually the right third point that I was kinda forgetting. It's, that is kind of a cliché, the side-to-side versus shoulder-to-shoulder thing, but I mean, it's a cliché because it does seem kind of true. And this also, I think, sort of throws it back to the question of why aren't, why are there so many women commentators on this problem, in a way. Uh, I do think that women spend more time face-to-face sort of therapizing about like, the problems, where men may have the same problem, but they're just doing stuff together. Like, they're not like, "Tell me about your problems." Like, "Let's just like, look at each other over some wine, and like talk about our problems."

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:38

       (laughs) The lawnmower. (laughs)

    8. CEChristine Emba1:03:39

       (laughs) Yeah. Dangerous, for one thing. Um, but this, the single, the single spaces question I think is a really interesting one and a really touchy one in this moment, and I think it is a really important one too. Um, so I, I think the last big conversation about it was when the Boy Scouts, um, became open to all sexes instead of just being the Boy Scouts. And I actually think that we may look back on that, um, and realize that it was a mistake. So like, one of the reasons why it would be helpful to have more, uh, male teachers in primary and secondary school is because male teachers often end up being the coaches for boys' sports, and boys only sports, and often those are the places where like, young men are sort of side-by-side, I don't know, moving stuff around, doing activities. (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:29

       No one wants to learn rugby from a woman. No guy, no boy, seven-year-old boy wants to learn rugby from a ... They wanna get covered in mud and get pushed over by a, a big dude.

    10. CEChristine Emba1:04:39

        Right. (laughs) Yeah, I think that's true, actually, for sure. But I mean, there is a, a continuing like, lack of and dismissal of the need for those spaces. And so one of the things that I wrote about in the piece, I cite the sociologist David Gilmour, who did this big survey of masculinity over like, a broad number of cultures on multiple continents. And so he came up with this sort of protector, provider, procreator paradigm. Like, this is sort of the, the understanding that almost every culture shares about what it means to be a man. And being a man is different from being male. Um, and that was the other thing. Like, you can be born male, but you have to become a man. And in most societies, it seems like there's almost a kind of initiation process into becoming a real man that's led by older men in your community who sort of like, would take a boy away and like, teach him how to be a man, and then he does stuff with them and he comes back an adult. And that happens in male only spaces or on the sports field or at war. And we have fewer and fewer of those like, specifically male only bonding spaces right now. And you know, it's easy to say, "Well, well, that's good." Like, exactly as you were saying. We can't just like, have all the men go to the strip club and bond together, um, and leave women out. (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

        (laughs) I've seen them try. I've s- well, the women are involved. The women are heavily involved in the strip club. I don't know how many strip clubs you've been to, Christine.

    12. CEChristine Emba1:06:07

        (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:06:07

        The women are a, a fundamental part of that process.

    14. CEChristine Emba1:06:10

        Hm. I'll take your word, I'll take your word for that.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:06:13

        (laughs)

    16. CEChristine Emba1:06:13

        For, for a future podcast, perhaps. (laughs)

    17. CWChris Williamson1:06:15

        Okay. Okay. So, um, I learned this in-

    18. CEChristine Emba1:06:18

        Um, but yeah. There, yeah, you're right. There, there aren't as many of those spaces and that is actually maybe a major loss, and we have to think about what it would look like to rebuild that process of initiation, that process of role modeling.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:30

        Hm. Yeah, I think the other thing as well is that men's friendships are, uh, more flimsy in terms of the one-on-one than women's are-... um, m- men's friendship groups will have someone come and go. You know, Jim has been coming to the pub with you and your three mates every Friday for the last decade, but Jim's gonna move to Thailand, so Jim's gone and now Mike's in. Mike, you're the new Jim. Like, hope you like it. And that's the way that men's friendships work. That's literally the way that their friendships work, because ancestrally, if you were going to go out with a small cohort of your guys and try and take down a wildebeest or a wooly mammoth, and one of you gets gored, you're gonna be very sad for quite a while, but you can't be completely despondent forever because you need to keep cracking on and doing the things. Whereas for women, if you're alloparenting, if you're doing shared, uh, child-rearing between you and your girlfriends, you need to make damn sure that you trust them. You need to be incredibly tight, and the likelihood of that cycling through would have been significantly less.

    20. CEChristine Emba1:07:27

        Lower, mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:07:28

        Interesting in a, um, (clears throat) like, patra- patrilocal, uh, society. I actually wonder how that would have worked, because obviously women were often sort of, um, uh, picked up and moved to the new husband's location. So that, that actually kind of throws a spanner in it. But the, that insight is from Robin Dunbar, and this one is for, as well, talking about the shoulder to shoulder or, or face to face thing. So, the next time that you go to a party, if you look around, if it's like a house party and people are just sort of talking or whatever, look around at the way men and women are standing. So if you look at the angle-

    22. CEChristine Emba1:07:58

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:07:58

        ... of the feet that women have, it's almost exactly perpendicular, right? So it, it's the same, essentially. If you look at the angle that men stand at, on average, they stand at the angle of 120 degrees. So you could draw a line-

    24. CEChristine Emba1:08:11

        Huh.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:08:11

        ... like that. It would be like this. And men do, they blade. So you stand kind of like this, and the other one's standing kind of like that.

    26. CEChristine Emba1:08:19

        That's fascinating.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:08:19

        And, uh, Dunbar's, Dunbar's argument is that really the only time that guys stand face to face is if they're going to fight.

    28. CEChristine Emba1:08:27

        Uh-huh.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:08:28

        Because you're able-

    30. CEChristine Emba1:08:29

        Yeah.
12. 1:09:05 – 1:20:56

    Who is Trying to Provide a Solution for Men?

    1. CEChristine Emba1:09:05

    2. CWChris Williamson1:09:05

       So, so obviously one of the things that we kind of danced around so far, and you make a big deal of in the article, which I think is, is really important, is that the writing around the crisis of masculinity firmly stops at the diagnosis stage. They refuse, either purposefully or, uh, uh, just through, like, uh, ignorance, to try and put forward a concrete vision for what men should be.

    3. CEChristine Emba1:09:30

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:09:30

       Why do you think it is the case that the diagnosis stage is as far as anyone's prepared to go?

    5. CEChristine Emba1:09:35

       Yeah, I mean, Richard Reeves talked about this in the article, and he makes the point that we talked about earlier that there is kind of a branding problem if you spend too much time, like, thinking about men and, like, trying to fix the men problem. You get the kind of like, hmm, questionable, what are you up to, do you have, like, some sort of hidden misogynist agenda, um, thing. But then also there is the, also what we talked about, this idea that, you know, we don't need to have special roles for men, you know? We just need to be good people. No one wants to be prescriptive about what a man should be for fear of not being inclusive enough and leaving someone out or offending someone else, um, just like nobody really wants to take the risk. Um, but actually one of my interview subjects, um, made the point that I think is, is really important and really hard, and one that I think we're gonna have to think about for a while, which is that these problems didn't just start overnight, and so the solution is not going to be overnight. Like, there's not just going to be a fix for this. You know, the problem of, or maybe not a problem, but just the fact of globalization, de-industrialization. Like, that happened. It took years, um, and now, like, this has really shifted the economics of being a man, especially a working-class man. To figure out what comes after that is a big question. You know, this question of, uh, single-parent homes and fatherlessness or a lack of role models. You can't just grow a father overnight, you know? It's, it's not as easy as just like, "Uh, well, we're just gonna plop a strange man in your community and now you have a role model." Um, this is a problem where, you know, kids have grown up fatherless, and maybe their fathers who are now missing had negative father figures themselves who didn't really teach them how to be a man, and you know, it's, it's kind of like we've cut off sort of patriarchy and these old norms off at the knees, and now there's sort of like an open field of what are we supposed to do? But growing back a, a tree in the field is not something that happens overnight. These are generational problems. And to come up with a better idea of masculinity, or even just an idea of what masculinity is period that fits in this moment, it's just going to be a norm shift, right? And norms are society-wide, and they take time. The women's movement achieved a ton, but the women's movement has also been sort of at work for the past 60 years, you know? And those gains have come over time, not overnight. So I think, (sighs) I think it's hard to prescribe... I mean, I think that the short term is that it's hard to prescribe because people are frankly scared to say... And I write about this more broadly in my work. I think people are really scared of norms, of saying that, like, there is a right way to do something and there is a wrong way to do something, or there is a good, there is a bad, or there is male and there is female, because someone is always in between and nobody wants to hurt anyone's feelings. But also it's just...... it's complicated, and it's about relationships, and you can't sort of, you can't really policy fix relationships, you know? Like, Joe Biden isn't going to pass a law that suddenly fathers have to go back to their homes. Relationships are things that you build from the bottom up.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:13:06

       Yeah, the inclusivity definitely seems to be at odds with its instructionality in this regard. Uh, that the more inclusive you make, again, it's the man box, you expand it out sufficiently and you, you actually have nothing left. There are no guide- guidelines at all. I do wonder about the, like the cultural, uh, nudges. Something that's really interesting is, if you look at what the feminist movement, first and second wave, were really trying to do, they were trying to change culture so that they could achieve something structurally, right? That we need women to be accepted in the workplace so that women can go to the workplace. What's happening with masculinity is that men have been displaced from the workplace, and now need to find a place in the culture. Do you understand?

    7. CEChristine Emba1:13:59

       Yeah.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:13:59

       Do you think this makes sense? The, the c- it's almost like the reverse of what the civil rights movement, "We want to have the equal rights for people of color so that they can work, because that's the thing that we're trying to get." And the- they both occur at the same time. Whereas this conversation around masculinity is actually more like the bra- brawn-based to brain-based economy change, the increased use of credentialism when it comes to jobs, and boys, um, disadvantage, uh, predisposition disadvantage that they have around that, means that culture is now trying to reverse engineer reversion of masculinity to fit this new structure.

    9. CEChristine Emba1:14:37

       To fit the change, yeah. Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:14:40

        Yeah.

    11. CEChristine Emba1:14:40

        And I- I think we have a lot less experience with doing that. And also our culture continues to move super fast, actually. So almost as soon as we have identified one problem, like, a new one crops up. Like, even if we were thinking of, "Okay, oh, here are men. They seem to have a lot of time on their hands because the economy has changed. What do we do with them?" Then suddenly it's super charged by like, oh, porn, it's everywhere, video games, like, the internet and new role models have also changed the way that we shape personalities and shape people. So like, what do we do with that? In addition to catching up with this old problem. Um, so yeah, I think the routes too towards, the routes towards teaching are different. Is it going to be through schools? We don't, I think, invest as much authority in our schools anymore. It used to be through perhaps religious institutions. People are increasingly becoming less religious, and like less involved in their community organizations. So like, where do you even go to start? And I think, I think those are questions that, that we'll be weighing in on, too.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:15:45

        One thing that I would definitely say is a starting point, you know, having spent a lot of time, a- a good chunk of the audience is male, a good chunk of them are in that age bracket who do still probably need a good chunk of guidance. The first thing I would say, the first prescription is to stop talking about men and the problems of boys and men in a way that causes them to check out.

    13. CEChristine Emba1:16:08

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:16:08

        Because regardless of what you try to do downstream from that, this is the gateway drug that opens all the rest of them up. If the, uh, cultural temperature is that men have always had it great, therefore the men of today need to pay for the sins and advantages of their fathers and grandfathers, basically, uh, "You've had it good for so long that we don't really need to worry about you," or anything that you do is toxic, or any, whichever different permutation of that happens, it causes men to check out. So regardless of what you try to do in terms of structure, you know, we've got these interesting initiatives and we've got so on and so forth. I- I don't think that's going to work. The second part is that when pretty much any group has a problem in society, we don't tell them that they fix it by trying to open up about their problems. We spend billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer money to try and work out what's going on, to create initiatives and incentives, u- uh, and to change structure so that it actually warps the world around them. If any other group has a problem, we say, "What can we do to change the world to fix it?" But if men have a problem, we say, "Why aren't men fixing themselves?"

    15. CEChristine Emba1:17:19

        Go fix it. Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:17:19

        Yep. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, boyo. It's time to go and get it done. And the problem is that, you know, a lot of masculinity and a lot of men, that is an attractive proposition, you know? The sovereign, highly sovereign, agentic individual that can forge his own way. "I'm a pioneer, I'm a lone ranger, I can go and do this." And you even see this get caricatured. You know, the sigma male lone wolf meme that's been, the GigaChad like sigma male meme-

    17. CEChristine Emba1:17:46

        (laughs)

    18. CWChris Williamson1:17:46

        ... that- that floats around the internet-

    19. CEChristine Emba1:17:48

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:17:48

        ... is precisely that taken to its extreme, right? "I'm go-" That's what MGTOW is, that's what Men Going Their Own Way is. It's, incel is the, similar but in reverse where, "I'm just gonna cast away from the world." That's still you going out on your own, but you're- you're putting it into a direction that typically wouldn't have been seen as productive. So yeah, I think we need to be very, very cautious around pointing the finger at men. In fact, men- men would be happy, I think, to have the finger pointed at them, and say, "You guys can do better. You can do better, and we're gonna help you do better." But if you say you can do better and you feel like you've been dispossessed and cast out from society, castigated from society, you're gonna go, "Yeah, fuck you." Like, "Okay, yeah, I'm useless and toxic and cool, whatever. Like, I'm just gonna wank and smoke weed and play Call of Duty."

    21. CEChristine Emba1:18:39

        (laughs) Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:18:39

        Like, "That's what, that's what the rest of my years got in store for me."

    23. CEChristine Emba1:18:42

        Yeah, that's, that's a really important distinction, too. Um, I think that a positive vision of masculinity has to be aspirational, right? Like it has to be...... positive meaning it's, it's something you're, you're achieving, something that you, like, go out and find, and that it's good for you to find. And I feel like one of the things that makes the Jordan Petersons and, uh, Andrew Tates of the world feel sort of exciting and, like, people who you want to follow is that they actually make manhood feel like something good, and achieving it is kind of like a quest that you go on. And then at the end, you have this good thing. It's not like, "Fix what's broken about you." It's like, "No. I'm calling you to more. I'm calling you to higher, and I have high expectations for you, and you're gonna meet them."

Episode duration: 1:26:57