Raising Boys in the Era of Incels, MAGA, and the Manosphere

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau Episode: Raising Boys in the Era of Incels, MAGA, and the Manosphere Release Date: July 17, 2025

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Overview

In this insightful episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau engages in a profound conversation with Ruth Whitman, author of Boy Mom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. The discussion delves into the complex challenges faced by boys and young men in today's society, particularly in the context of the manosphere, incel culture, the rise of MAGA, and the pervasive influence of technology and the internet. Drawing from Ruth's extensive research and personal experiences as a mother, the episode explores the interplay between societal expectations, emotional well-being, and the evolving landscape of masculinity.

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1. Introduction to the Discussion

Jon Favreau introduces Ruth Whitman and her seminal work, Boy Mom, highlighting how the book intertwines feminist principles with the realities of raising boys amid the MeToo era and shifting political climates. Ruth's exploration of masculinity seeks to unravel the systemic issues that contribute to the current crisis among young men.

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2. The Collision of Feminist Principles and Motherhood

Ruth Whitman discusses her motivation for writing Boy Mom, sparked by the rise of the MeToo movement and its impact on her role as a mother to three boys. She notes the conflicting pressures boys face:

Ruth Whitman [01:06]: "We never really fixed all the old problems of masculinity. So all these, like, old pressures that mean that boys are sort of shut down and not allowed to express their feelings and not allowed to be vulnerable... They just don’t really know how to be."

This duality—being encouraged to "man up" while also being told to "shut up"—creates a sense of confusion and emotional paralysis among boys.

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3. Systemic Issues Affecting Boyhood Today

Ruth elaborates on the broader societal factors exacerbating challenges for boys today compared to previous decades:

• Toxic Masculinity and Socialization: Ruth highlights how traditional notions of masculinity discourage emotional expression, leading to emotional suppression and difficulties in forming meaningful friendships.

  Ruth Whitman [14:58]: "If we just stop reinforcing those pressures... let's just talk about humanity."

• Biological and Social Influences: Contrary to popular belief, research shows that boys are biologically more fragile and emotionally sensitive than often portrayed. However, societal treatment reinforces the stereotype of toughness, neglecting their emotional needs.

  Ruth Whitman [12:24]: "Boys are actually more fragile and vulnerable and emotionally sensitive... than same-age girls are."

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4. The Impact of Technology and Online Spaces

The conversation shifts to the role of technology in displacing essential social interactions:

• Screen Time and Socialization: Boys spend significantly more time on screens than girls, often engaging in solitary activities like online gaming or visiting toxic online communities, which hampers their ability to develop interpersonal skills.

  Ruth Whitman [41:42]: "Teenage boys are now spending less than an hour socializing in person per week, whereas girls are spending six hours."

• The Rise of the Manosphere and Incels: Surprisingly, Ruth found that even within the toxic environments of the manosphere and incel communities, there exists a level of emotional vulnerability. These spaces, despite their negativity, offer a semblance of belonging and a place to express feelings that boys are often denied elsewhere.

  Ruth Whitman [44:05]: "They talk about their mental health, they talk about their feelings, they talk about suicidal thoughts... it was just this idea that they could be vulnerable with each other."

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5. The Influence of Political Movements

Ruth connects the struggles of young men to broader political shifts, particularly the rise of MAGA and Trumpism:

• Generational Shifts: Gen Z men, especially those whose formative years were marked by the pandemic and heightened political tensions, have shown increased susceptibility to extremist ideologies.

  Ruth Whitman [55:13]: "Boys are feeling very shut down and unheard of on the left... So someone comes along and says, 'I'm a strong man. Let’s go back,' and they’re primed to receive it."

• Failures of the Left: The conversation touches on how progressive movements have inadvertently alienated young men by not adequately addressing their needs and by sometimes adopting misandric tones.

  Ruth Whitman [56:41]: "There's this normalization of misandry... boys are feeling very shut down from all sides."

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6. Redefining Masculinity and Political Outreach

Ruth critiques existing attempts to redefine masculinity, such as "positive masculinity" or "aspirational masculinity," arguing that these efforts often reinforce unrealistic standards rather than dismantling harmful ones. She proposes a shift towards emphasizing humanity over gendered traits.

Ruth Whitman [28:30]: "Let’s just stop reinforcing those pressures... Let’s just talk about humanity."

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7. Strategies for Supporting Young Men

Drawing from her research, Ruth offers actionable insights for parents, educators, and policymakers:

• Active Listening and Empathy: Emphasizing the importance of listening without judgment, creating safe spaces for boys to express their emotions.

  Ruth Whitman [57:54]: "They just talked and talked and talked and talked... they were actually really thoughtful, really articulate, really great."

• Cultivating Emotional Intelligence: Teaching boys the skills necessary for forming intimate and emotionally healthy friendships.

• Political Engagement and Authenticity: Advocating for political figures who embody authenticity and empathy rather than rigid, stereotypical notions of strength.

  Jon Favreau [59:26]: "Barack Obama was comfortable in his own skin, and he was welcoming... authentic."

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8. Personal Reflections on Parenting

Ruth shares how her findings have transformed her approach to parenting, focusing on empathy and emotional connection rather than traditional notions of discipline and toughness.

Ruth Whitman [61:03]: "My job is to fill in the gaps when it comes to empathy and nurture... coaching them on those skills about how to have a friendship."

Jon Favreau echoes this sentiment, discussing his own journey towards more emotionally expressive parenting.

Jon Favreau [63:36]: "I cuddle the boys and hug them and give them kisses and just, like, talk to them, like, so much more than I ever got from my dad."

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9. Concluding Insights

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the interconnectedness of societal structures and individual well-being. Ruth underscores that dismantling harmful masculinity benefits everyone, not just women but men as well.

Ruth Whitman [51:58]: "Under patriarchy, boys and men get everything except the thing that's most worth having, which is intimate human connection."

Jon Favreau emphasizes the importance of authentic connections and the dangers of seeking belonging in toxic environments.

Jon Favreau [57:15]: "Every human is looking for belonging and connection. If you don't get it, you're gonna look for it in some pretty toxic places."

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Key Takeaways

• Complexity of Modern Masculinity: Boys today navigate a labyrinth of conflicting societal expectations that stifle emotional expression and healthy socialization.

• Role of Technology: Excessive screen time and toxic online communities exacerbate isolation and hinder the development of interpersonal skills.

• Political Alienation: Progressive movements need to engage authentically with young men to prevent alienation and susceptibility to extremist ideologies.

• Parenting for Empathy: Emphasizing empathy, active listening, and emotional intelligence is crucial in raising emotionally healthy boys.

• Redefining Social Structures: Dismantling patriarchal norms benefits all genders by fostering genuine human connections and emotional well-being.

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Conclusion

This episode of Offline with Jon Favreau offers a deep dive into the multifaceted issues surrounding boyhood in the contemporary era. Ruth Whitman's expertise and personal narratives illuminate the urgent need for societal shifts in how masculinity is perceived and nurtured. By advocating for empathy, authentic connections, and a reimagined understanding of masculinity, the conversation provides a roadmap for fostering healthier, more emotionally resilient young men.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Ruth Whitman]

We never really fixed all the old problems of masculinity. So all these, like, old pressures that mean that boys are sort of shut down and not allowed to express their feelings and not allowed to be vulnerable and aren't really taught those skills of friendship. But then there's this kind of newer narrative that kind of comes mainly from the left, which is like, you know, shut up. You're so privileged. You don't really have any problems. Like, time for you to pipe down and everyone else to have a voice, which I think comes from a good place. But I think that boys now, this sort of generation of boys just feel very shut down from all sides. It's like, man up on the one hand, shut up on the other hand. And they just don't really know how to be. You can see the downstream of effects of that night.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, I'm here with Austin and Emma. Howdy, John. For another episode.

[Austin]

Hello, John.

[Jon Favreau]

Hello. How you doing? I'm good. So we just got out of a taping with Ruth Whitman. Can you talk about who she is and why we had her on today? Ruth Whitman is the author of Boy Mom. Ruth is the Mother of three boys. And basically, the book is about, as she's having her third child, it's around 2017. And she has always. She's raised a feminist by feminist parents, and she's a feminist, and she felt her sort of feminist principles collide with being the mother of three boys in the middle of the MeToo era. And then she went on this research project that ended up being this book where she talked to boys all over the country, young boys of all ages, all different walks of life, all different political persuasions, everyone. You've been talking about this book in our meetings for months. At this point, I know you have boys yourself, two young boys. Can you talk about why this book resonated so much with you and why you wanted to have this conversation? So the recommendation came from Emily, who read this book a long time ago. And, like, every time I went to bed and she was reading the book, she was like, I want to read you more about this book. And this is great. And I had been since the boys were born, since Charlie was born, like, looking for good parenting books, because you just, you know, you have no fucking idea what you're doing, and so you want these. And there's a lot of bad parenting books out there. I can imagine. And there's almost no good parenting books for dads. And so I had been sort of like, oh, parenting book, really? And Emily's like, no, this is a good one. I'm like, even though it's boy mom, But I picked it up, read it, and it's the best parenting book that I've read. And it also doubled. Like, I thought I was just getting into a parenting book, but it sort of doubles as a book about masculinity. And it really connects to so many of the conversations we've been having, both on this show and on pod, Save America, and everywhere else, about, like, young men and their drift away from the Democratic Party and towards Donald Trump and.

[Austin]

Why it really connects so many of the things we talk about on the show. It's, like, incels. It's screen time. It's interpersonal relationships. It's so much more than just parenting.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, I thought it was. What did you think of the book?

[Austin]

Cause I knew I am not a boy mom. I'm not a mom. And I love this book. I mean, it starts out in a way that I found deeply challenging because it injects nuance into the MeToo movement, which I really just wanted to see in black and white for a really long time. And it just gets more Complex and more interesting from there. And the statistics that it cites are just staggering. The way that self proclaimed liberals, like well intentioned people, progressives are socializing their boys to live by these like toxically masculine ideals is really upsetting and concerning and totally subconscious. So I think it is an important read not just for people who are interested in offline themes, but also like dismantling the patriarchy.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, right. And basically, you know, the argument is that dismantling the patriarchy helps men a lot.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's like something, you know, and Ruth says this, like that's something she's like, you learn in college, right. That the patriarchy hurts men and women. She's like, but people don't really take the men part seriously because then the men become like bad and the women are like, the misogyny is real. So we're focused on misogyny, which is as we should. But there's also now that we're dealing with this crisis among men, like maybe we should think about that.

[Austin]

Yeah. Yeah. How did it make you feel as the parent of two young boys? Did it reassure you or did it make you more anxious for raising them?

[Jon Favreau]

It is the first thing that has reassured me more.

[Austin]

Really?

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. Because like when we watched social studies, that did not reassure me. It was very well done, but it sort of scared about like what's gonna happen in high school. It reassured me because it both reinforced some of the kind of parenting Emily and I are already doing, but then sort of guided me towards doing even more of it, which is, and it's like what we talk about in the show, which is the, like, the fundamentally most important thing to do with other people and especially your children, is to like form connections with them, to encourage them to have connection with everyone else with friends in their life and to also like be willing to be vulnerable. Talk about your feelings like those. If you raise boys like that, then some of the more ephemeral parts of masculinity or surface level parts of masculinity, like, are they going to be tough? Are they not? Are they going to get girl? You know, all that kind of stuff is secondary to. Are these people going to feel comfortable having open, honest conversations with other people in their life that they're close to, starting with their parents, but then moving on to their friends? And if they are comfortable, that's not going to fix all of their problems in life or lead them to be the perfect boys who are, you know, have the right feminist principles and aren't misogynistic. Like it's no assurance, but it's the best, sort of best gift you can give them is raising them that way. That sounds like a good place to take us into the show. Yeah. Well, this is my conversation with Ruth Whitman. Ruth Whitman, welcome to offline.

[Ruth Whitman]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Jon Favreau]

I love your book Boy Mom. Thank you. I picked it up because my wife, Emily, kept talking about how much she loved it, and I read it, and I think it's the best parenting book that I've read. Wanted to talk about it with you on this show for two reasons. Most important, I'm a father of two boys, 5 and 1. And also since the election, I think we've been having a lot of conversations on this show and elsewhere about the shifting politics of young men, and so wanted to cover that as well. But I know you started this book shortly after your third son was born, I believe around 2017.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

What made you wanna write about the challenges boys are facing today? And how did you go about conducting the research for people who haven't read it, that you needed to answer all the questions that you had?

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah. So my third boy was born just right as the MeToo movement was just kind of exploding. And we were like a year into the second Trump. Sorry. We were a year into the first Trump administration. Groundhog Day hit.

[Jon Favreau]

I know.

[Ruth Whitman]

And it really actually does feel like the same kind of moment now. But, you know, and we were just kind of launched into this, like, global reckoning around toxic masculinity. You know, it was this phrase that you'd never really heard much before. And then suddenly it's everywhere. And it was this really conflicted space for me. I'm a feminist. I've spent all this, you know, all this time and work in my career sort of advocating for the rights of women and girls. And then suddenly, like, the whole feminist discourse is quite negative about boys and men are terrible. And, you know, every time I look at my phone, there's another terrible thing that another terrible man has done. And it just felt like such a fraught time to be raising boys. So I just had all these questions about, you know, how did we get here? Where have we gone wrong? Like, at a systemic level in how we're raising boys, that this kind of thing has become so normalized. And, you know, how can we do better? And also just, you know, I felt like psychologically I had this real unease about the way that the conversation was unfolding. Cause I thought, you know, being a boy growing up, like, in the shadow of this conversation, hearing this felt like such a sort of psychologically unhealthy environment for boys, in a way. And, you know, I felt very conflicted as a feminist, as a mom, so I just sort of wanted to unpack it all. And, you know, I spent several years reporting the book. I went all over the country talking to boys of really very different backgrounds, different political affiliations, different geographic locations, different economic backgrounds, racial backgrounds, you know, just finding out about their lives. I went to all kinds of spaces where boys hang out. I went to schools. I went to therapy groups. I went to online spaces. You know, some really pretty toxic online spaces. And I just tried to listen to what they were saying and what they were telling me.

[Jon Favreau]

And you mentioned that a big theme of this book is sort of you being the mother of three boys sort of colliding with your feminist principles.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And at one point, you wrote you felt like you had walked into your own ideological trap.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

What did you mean by that?

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, it was a really sort of awful feeling. So I'd grown up with a version of feminism that, like, gender is entirely socialized. So, you know, the reason why boys and men behave badly is because we kind of socialize them into it and we enable it. We. We let them get away with things. You know, all these stories like boys will be boys. You know, it's just like this kind of weird coddling that we allow boys to kind of get away with things, and then that continues. And so, you know, by that logic, you know that we have a lot of control over, you know, what our kids do, what they're like. And I do believe that we do have some control. But then as soon as I had three boys, I went in with all this hubris, and I was like, my boys are gonna be different. They're gonna be these, like, feminist, sensitive, thoughtful. You know, they're gonna read bell hooks and they're gonna. You know. And then, of course, obviously, that was proved to be complete rubbish. And they were the wildest, the most, like, Nerf gun loving, hitting, like, every form of kind of junior toxic masculinity was unfolding in our home. And I think the ideological trap was that, you know, if gender is all socialized and if we do have that much control, then this kind of. That's involving in my house must be my fault, you know?

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Well, you found that, like, contrary to your prior belief and the belief of many, there are hardwired gender differences between boys and girls that aren't necessarily connected to how each individual child is raised. That come through at A very early age.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

What are some of those differences?

[Ruth Whitman]

Okay, so I wanna be clear that these are group level differences. You know, this is like statistical distribution rather than. And people always, you know, say, well, my girl is just as wild as any boy, or my boy is, you know, whatever. And that's all true, but at a group level. So boys are in general, more active, they play more physically. They're more prone to, like, rough and tumble kind of play. And you see that in other species as well. But one of the things that really shocked me when I started digging into the research on, like, hardwired gender differences or, you know, biologically rooted gender differences was actually almost like the opposite of the story that we tell about masculinity. You know, we sort of see boys as these, like, rough and tumble little kind of tough, aggressive little beasties. But actually, what the research shows is that they're actually more fragile and vulnerable and emotionally sensitive, you know, biologically, innately, than same age girls are. And that was a real shock to me.

[Jon Favreau]

That is wild. Yeah, I mean, I get it. Because our eldest, Charlie, who's about to be five next week, he is a very sweet boy. And so we're feeling very. For now, we're feeling very lucky, but, like, very active, very physical. And also, Emily and I noticed that at such a young age, we did not want to push him into play with trucks or don't play with. We sort of gave him everything, and it is fun. We're like, wait, he's gravitating towards the boys stuff, even though we have done nothing.

[Ruth Whitman]

I know. And like, one of the academics that I interviewed for this book, she said, you know, parenting turns everybody into this, like, rabid gender essentialist. Because it just sort of happens and it's unclear. And a lot of the time I was like, you know, am I socializing my boys into this? I feel like I'm trying to socialize them away from all this, you know, and if I am socializing them into it, it must be happening at this very unconscious.

[Jon Favreau]

So at some point, girls also get social and cultural messages that reinforce what women are supposed to be. Boys get messages that reinforce what men are supposed to be. So this happens very early, too. I think that's why, at least in my view, it's hard to sort of unpack what is hardwired in a biological way and what is just. You are socialized with cues that we might not even see at such a young age, like, which is which. But at some point, you know, they do get socialized into certain gender roles.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

What are some examples and like, how does this socialization affect boys and girls differently?

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, so I think some of the things that I picked out with boys, I think what ends up happening is there's this weird kind of double whammy that happens because there's this, you know, as I mentioned, there's this innate sort of vulnerability. A baby boy's brain is born. When he's born is about a month to six weeks behind a girl's brain in right brain development. So the kind of social emotional centers. So they need a lot of nurture, a lot of caretaking from parents. But our kind of stories about masculinity are such that we kind of see them as like tougher and angrier and more robust and we treat them that way. And there's lots of studies that show that there's like a gap in the way that we nurture boys and we nurture girls in the western world. It's different in different cultures, but broadly speaking, you know, we kind of handle baby boys differently. You know, we roughhouse with boys, you know, right from babyhood. And you can almost see it like when, if you think about this, you can play it out in your mind that a man gets hold of a baby boy or even a woman, and they're like, you know, hey there buddy, and like throwing him up and hey there, little man. You know, it's a different tone of voice, but there's lots of sort of psychological research that supports this. And then girls, we call them sweetheart, we talk in a tender tone of voice. Girls receive around twice as much of this like, caretaking touch as boys who receive much more roughhousing type touch. We talk to girls more about emotions. You know, there's all this research that shows that parents use almost, well, actually subtly different vocabularies when they talk to girls than they talk to boys. So they use more emotion related words when they talk to girls than they do with boys. And we give girls all these and books and movies about things like friendship and connection and kindness. And they all wear these T shirts that say be kind and be loving. Whereas boys, we're sort of giving them this message of like, be a battle hero, be a monster, be a vehicle lover, you know, and gendered toys, you know, the list goes on. So gendered socialization is very real and if anything, it's getting more and more sort of separated and extreme.

[Jon Favreau]

You mentioned sort of the battlefication of content and cultural, you know, things that our kids consume. And I totally have noticed that which is like, you know, he was into Legos and so we do Legos. But then all of the LEGO shows on television are suddenly about like, you know, battling and. Right. And I'm just like, how did we get here so fast?

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. And that's changed. Like, there was some. There was this sort of research that showed that in the 70s, I think like a negligible number of LEGO sets had weapons in them. And the ones that they did with these like obscure medieval weapons that you couldn't even recognize. And now like well over a third of sets have weapons and they are almost all guns.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Ruth Whitman]

So, you know, and I think it's sort of a trend that parallels the sort of princessification of girl childhood. You know, that girl childhood has got so pink and so princessy and so sparkly and so gendered. But the same process has kind of been happening on the other side, for sure.

[Jon Favreau]

You cited a study that I found fascinating and worrisome is from Judy Chu, who's at Stanford, and she conducted a study of four and five year old boys. She found that they were as capable as girls as reading emotions and forming close friendships. But by the time they reached first grade, they started to subscribe to more classic notions of masculinity and become more emotionally distant from friends. And interestingly, it applied only when they were around their peers and, and not necessarily with their parents.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you think happens between 4 and 5 and first grade?

[Ruth Whitman]

Well, I think kids go to school, so their peers become much bigger influence than they had been previously. And they, you know, I think what happens is two things. It's about both what we do teach boys and the messages that we give them and also all the things that we fail to teach them that we're not kind of teaching them. So I have this example, like when my boys were quite small, we were in the bookstore and, and I saw this magazine that was so clearly coded for girls. It was like, you know, pink sparkly cover and like her friendship bracelet giveaway and all the rest of it. And I took it down. It was for tween girls. And the first story was about this girl. She's been invited to these two birthday parties and they're happening at the same time. And she's really worried. She doesn't want to let down either of her friends. So she sort of does this elaborate ruse where she like shuttles between the two parties and she like runs out the back door to the other party, has the cake there, runs back to the other one. You know, this is like Very extreme emotional labor that this like 7 year old girl is performing. And I read this story in astonishment. You know, I've got three boys and I was like, my boys will never see a story like this. There will never be a story about some boy who's so worried about disappointing his friend that he's like going between two birthday parties. And I realized that, you know, in some ways we talk about emotional labor that we put on women as this real burden or this real bad thing, but it is actually those skills about like, tracking other people's feelings, seeing it as your responsibility to like enter into those kind of emotionally intimate friendships and see other people's experiences. Your responsibility. Those are the real, like, fundamentals of human connection. And we're not really teaching them to boys.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Ruth Whitman]

So I think, you know, they do lose out on these skills.

[Jon Favreau]

This influenced me in that at just Charlie's school, some of the parents come in like once a month and read a book to the class. And I had been talking to his teachers and they're like, yeah, we'd love you to have you come in. And I was like, should I read a book about, like age appropriate book about civics or getting involved? And Emily made fun of me instantly in the parent teacher conference. She's like, that's boring. We're not doing that. But I was like thinking about it and so I ended up reading because we like the rabbit listened to, which is this book about this kid who like his, you know, his tower of blocks comes down and all these animals come up to him and one of them's like yelling and the other one's like, let's knock someone else's down. And then finally the rabbit just shows up. And the rabbit just sits there and like listens to the kid.

[Ruth Whitman]

Oh, I love that.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's like. And he just gets to unload on him. And it's like about emotion. And it is, it's funny because it is. It's a book that I never would have read. Yeah. Or like read myself as a child. Right. Like, there's just. No, the fact that that book exists is like, you know, proves the point that there's so few boys, so few of them.

[Ruth Whitman]

And what's interesting is it's an animal. Right. Because whenever it's either an animal or a digger, like, you can only have an emotional life if you're a bulldozer or a like, dog. But the ones with real boys, I mean, there's almost none. And the ones that you see with like real boys and my kids are a bit older than yours and you see all these sort of like middle grade bits, like, you know, the wimpy kid or whatever, and they're almost like there's no sort of. It's not really when friendship comes up, it's almost like coded as this girly thing that we don't really want to acknowledge or like, you know, storylines about, oh, how embarrassing it is that we have like a best friend's bracelet or whatever. And it's like really lame. And so, you know, there's a lot of subtle messaging in there.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Ruth Whitman]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Ruth Whitman]

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[Jon Favreau]

Carl's Jr available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax not included. So these are obviously long standing challenges, but they seem to have grown more acute and urgent with this generation of boys and young men. Can you talk about some of the broader societal factors that have made life more difficult for boys in 2025 than say, 2015, 2005?

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah. Our kind of current, like, micro generation of young men are the ones that were kind of going through puberty, coming of age during the explosion of the MeToo movement, which was when I started writing this book. And they have spent their entire adolescence really in the shadow of this conversation about toxic masculinity, about male harm, and these kind of messages from the left. So in some ways, this is really important and really good. So this generation of boys are, like, very informed about things like consent and, you know, sexual violence in a way that previous generations just never really considered or thought about. So there are positive developments, but I think they're kind of caught in the middle of these two things. Like, we never really fixed all the old problems of masculinity. So all these, like, old pressures and old kind of prohibitions that mean that boys are sort of shut down and not allowed to express their feelings, are not allowed to be vulnerable, and aren't really taught those skills of friendship. So they're sort of shut down emotionally in that way. But then there's also all this kind of newer narrative that comes mainly from the left, which is like, you know, shut up. You're so privileged. You don't really have any problems. Like, don't take up too much space. You know, time for you to pipe down and everyone else to have a voice, which I think comes from a good place. But I think that boys, now, this sort of generation of boys just feel very shut down from all sides. It's like, man up on the one hand, shut up on the other hand, and they just don't really know how to be. And I think it's. You can see the downstream effects of that now. You can see that this generation of boys is, you know, they're moving rightward. They're very susceptible to these kind of bad actors. They're resentful, they're angry in a lot of ways, and they feel. And they're very avoidant as well, of real life.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I've talked about this as the messages can be, pass the mic. And also silence is complicity.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right? This is so true.

[Jon Favreau]

And you do get a second. You're like, okay, I'm not the right person to talk about this. But also I should say something.

[Ruth Whitman]

I should say something. But I completely said.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's tough because there's not a lot of. And I also think just the social media environment, the way the information environment is now, is that there was a time when even if this reckoning was happening, you could work it out and talk about it in these smaller spaces. With people that you know and trust. And now people are working it out in public with very little room for mistake.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, very little room for mistake or empathy. And I think it's sort of become very politically coded. It's almost like if you are on the left, you are on the side of women and girls. And advocating for boys and men has become this right coded activity. So this was part of the tension that I really felt around this. It's like, I'm a feminist, of course I support women and girls, but I wanna advocate for men and boys. But somehow you have to be so careful. Cause it starts to sound like this other sort of similar but quite different thing, which is just sounding like this rabid men's rights activist who sort of hates women and blames them for all the problems that men are facing. So it's a fine line.

[Jon Favreau]

Did you get criticism from the left from like feminists or progressives?

[Ruth Whitman]

A little bit. So not actually as much as I thought. I sort of anticipated getting criticism from both the left and the right. And it's been far more from the right, obviously, which is very validating and good. Excellent. I have had a little bit, like sometimes people sort of really buy into this narrative of like, you know, sort of, as it's almost the same narrative that you see on both the left and the right, which is it's this zero sum game, you know, whatever. You know, men and boys gain, women and girls lose and vice versa. So I have had pockets of that, but not, you know, not too much, thankfully.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, what I found fascinating is that by calling out sort of masculinity itself is the issue. Right. And you kind of talk about how toxic masculinity isn't very helpful as a way to talk about all this. But also positive masculinity or aspirational masculinity isn't helpful either. And you sort of land on a term, impossible masculinity.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Can you talk a little bit about that?

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah. So I think the phrase impossible masculinity I use to kind of capture this idea that it's almost impossible from all sides. You know, as I was saying, it's sort of the expectations of masculinity in and of themselves, which are like, be tough, be strong, be a man, never be weak, never show vulnerability, never, you know, never slip up, be a superhero. That's impossible. You know, obviously, just by definition, no real human is like that or can be like that. But then also there's this sort of impossible from the other side, which is like You're a predator, you're toxic, you know, you're terrible. And I think boys, and also I think they're sort of held to account for these two different ways of being in the world. So it's like they're still very much held to these old school masculine expectations. Like, those have not gone away. You still have to be a man, you still have to be tough, you still have to be strong, you still can't really show weakness. But you also have to be sensitive and cautious and like never overstep and never be a creep. And it's just. So that was where the impossible thing came from. The reason to your other point, the reason why, the positive masculinity. Honestly, this is the thing. I published a piece about this for the New York Times and I thought it was this incredibly minor semantic point that like, nobody would care about. And I was amazed they went for the article. And this has got me more abuse and criticism and death threats and rape threats and God knows what than anything that I've ever written in my life. Which was, I was saying when we say to like in these kinds of programs that we have for boys where we just sort of say, I, okay, it's time for some positive masculinity, these boys are already under a lot of pressure to be masculine anyway. So it's just sort of like, well, we can't possibly like call it femininity and we can't possibly just be human because that would be like emasculating. So, you know, we gotta say that everything, you know, whether it's friendships or being emotionally vulnerable, that's masculine too. But it sort of ends up reinforcing the idea that you have to. Right. That it just sort of becomes so self reinforcing. So I was like, you know, can we just like talk about humanity? Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with any of the, you know, with being masculine, with appearing masculine, with any of those like masculine coded traits. Great. But like, let's just stop reinforcing those pressures.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, it's also interesting how the difference between how we talk about feminism and how we talk about masculinity or being feminine like you mostly the discussion around feminism is having feminist principles and beliefs and it's, it's related to politics a lot.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And masculinity is not related to your beliefs about gender and all that kind of stuff. It's about how you are at how you behave, your characteristics, how you behave, how you look like all that.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And even I think you wrote that New York Times piece right before the election, and you talked about Tim Walls.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, right.

[Jon Favreau]

And it was. It's like, Tim Walls, to be a guy's guy, had to be like, okay, I'm gonna be nicer and kinder than the Republicans, but I'm gonna do it by showing, like, how much I still like, like sports, even if he doesn't really like sports, or I can hunt. You know, it was this sort of.

[Ruth Whitman]

Like, overstating it all the time, and you can see why. You know, poor Tim Watson. I don't want to thank him, but, like, it was like every other sentence, you know, it's your guns or your sports or your whatever, and it just became slight caricature. Whereas, you know, I think that we give boys so little space to be, like, fully human. Like, all of the best things in life, like, you know, friendships, relationships, you know, emotions, being vulnerable. They're all sort of slightly feminine coded. And, you know, sort of boys see them as being slightly gay or, like, a bit. So it's just like, we're narrowing the frame in which boys operate. And I think positive masculinity just sort of, you know, we wouldn't talk about, you know, if I had a daughter and someone was offering her a program in positive femininity instead of feminism, I'd just be like, oh, honestly, you know.

[Jon Favreau]

You mentioned being gay, and I remember there's one part in your book where I think a young man told you, like, if my friends or if I was gay, that'd be fine, but if you're gonna be straight, you can't act gay.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, Right, right.

[Jon Favreau]

That's the worst.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right? It was that. It was like, if you like guys, great. Like, so they're not homophobic. So I realized that, like, this, like, fear of being emasculated is actually more rooted in misogyny than it is in homophobia. That was the test.

[Jon Favreau]

No, it's true.

[Ruth Whitman]

Because it was like, actually, they were like, you like guys, fine, just don't be gay. Itch. Don't be a woman. You know, don't be a person.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and back to. Again, not picking out Tim Wallace, but the politics conversation. One takeaway from the election is like, well, we need Democratic politicians who can, like, you know, go on all these. On sports shows and talk about sports and drink beer and all those stuff. And it's like, yeah, except what if you don't like beer? Or what if you don't like sports? You can still hang out with men, Right? Exactly. And you can still, like, reach young men like sports and drinking and whatever and guns, like those aren't the only ways to reach young men.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And in fact, if we push people to do that, they are going and they actually like those things, they're gonna come off as inauthentic.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right? That's true. And I think there is this like really false note to it. There's sort of like this, you know, blend the broccoli into the cake kind of thing for a toddler. There's just something like really patronizing about it. And you know, and I think we're not used to seeing masculinity as something limiting. We're used to seeing it as something sort of that gives you agency and power and all the rest of it, which is great. But I think it can really put these huge limitations on boys and men's ability to be like fully psychologically healthy and emotionally functioning humans.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

I want to talk more about the friendship part of this, because I think it's really important you write about the decline of socializing among kids in general, especially boys who just have a harder time developing friendships where they can let their guard down, be vulnerable, talk about what they're feeling. I feel like this is also a problem that stretches deep into adulthood with men.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Why do you think that is? And why don't we pay enough attention to it or value it enough?

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, it's a really interesting point. So this was one thing. So I interviewed many, many boys and young men, many different situations. And this was, like, something that I think pretty much every single one of them mentioned to me at some point in slightly different ways. And some of these people were genuinely really isolated. And that's a real problem as well, like the growing material isolation of many young men and sort of this kind of migration online. But a lot of them, like, did have buddies to hang out with. They were, like, you know, social. They saw people. But it was this idea that they couldn't really, like, speak very honestly with their buddies. It was like this idea that they had to kind of perform this masculinity. It was, like, bulletproof. It was like banter. It was trash talk. It was, you know, and I think there's lots of reasons for it. I mean, it's cultural messaging. It's like it was this weird thing that, like, everybody wanted to break out of it, but nobody felt they could, you know, nobody. Like every single one of them, I think, wanted something different. I had imagined that they'd all be like, well, this is just the way we like it. You won't understand. You're a woman. You know, we're different, but they were all like, I would love to have these emotionally intimate friendships, but no one wants to kind of make the first move. They feel like they don't have the skill set, which goes back to what we were talking about. They're just not really taught. It's. And they have all this cultural messaging about, you know, being strong and being tough and having agency and, you know, being an individual and not sort of working in a community in that way. So I think there's a lot of, like, very subtle messaging around that, that boys get.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's interesting because I think boys and young men, especially as you're going through high school and college, you're almost around so many people, and maybe you have friends who are girls and you're still talking to your parents. Stuff like that, that you can kind of get through that, like, you are just playing around with your friends.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, Right.

[Jon Favreau]

You start to notice it more as you get older and you have your own family and like anyone else, like a lot of moms do, you want to, like, talk to other people in the same situation about what they're facing and talk about, like, how it's challenging and how you're, you know, it's tiring or this or the stresses that you're under, and it. You just have fewer male friends that you can really connect with. Like that. Like, I'm lucky. I've had, like, I have a few really good friends who I can just talk to about whatever, but it's not as many as I used to.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. It's hard. And I think that in order to have those kind of conversations, everyone needs to know what they're doing. Like, the person revealing the information needs to know how to reveal it, and the person sort of receiving it needs to know how to receive it. And I think that mentors haven't really been taught that skill set, and these are very real things. And I think it is seen as kind of emasculating. There's always this idea that we don't want to be girly or that sort of specter lurking around. But it is also just, like, a basic skills problem. I know that, you know, I had this book group. Like, every mom, you know, I was in a book group, and, you know, we talk about the book for five minutes, and then it was all like, you know, our marriages and our relationships and whatever. And then my husband was like, I want to have a book group. Maybe I'll ask some dads. And, like, the dads all kind of got Together, but they just didn't, like, they couldn't, like, cook it. Like, they just couldn't get that. They didn't know how to do it. And it was. It's really strange. And he's like, well, how do you get into those conversations? And I'm like, it's so intuitive. I don't even know. I couldn't, like, break it down at this point.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, I say this to Emily all the time because she's like, well, now Charlie's going to school. There's a bunch of dads in the class, like, being friends. And I'm like, I don't want to be friends with new dads. I don't know how to be friends with new dads. I have my friends, right? I'm 44 years old. How am I going to make new friends? And then, like, also have, like, talk to them about, like, vulnerable things. Like, that's a really hard thing to do.

[Ruth Whitman]

There's a lot of barriers. There really are.

[Jon Favreau]

So one thing you said, I think because of sort of the lack of friendships and connection that way, one place that young kids are going is online, right? And, you know, this is a topic near and dear to this show, which is how much time kids are spending with their screen. What's the difference between boys and girls here? And can you talk about. You see the problem as less about what they're watching and more about how much they're watching and what they're missing out on while they're watching.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. I mean, I think it is both. But so this. I think in the sort of debate about teens and screen time, the sort of gendered piece of it has got really lost in a way. But actually, you know, all teenagers are spending way more time online, obviously, and way less time socializing in person. And those are trends that are kind of across the board and have been happening for a long time. But this problem is significant. They call this displacement. So time that you would have spent socializing or sleeping or doing something else, but especially socializing, people are now spending on a screen. But that displacement problem is significantly worse for boys than it is for girls. Boys are spending around five hours more per week on a screen than girls.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, wow.

[Ruth Whitman]

And they're social. It depends how you count it. Cause they sometimes count sports as socializing. But if you take sports out of the equation, teenage boys are now spending less than an hour socializing in person per week, so 42 minutes, whereas girls are spending six hours socializing. So it's a really big difference. And then Also, boys and girls are using screens in different ways. I think for boys, a lot of social life has just kind of migrated online. So it's like these big online video games and those are kind of the new male social spaces. Also these kind of places like Discord where some quite toxic stuff happens. YouTube is huge. You know, watching YouTube. And then also these kind of like, you know, when we're talking about what they're watching. I mean, I think there are real problems with like toxic masculinity influencers and all these bad actors, grifters, et cetera online that are very influential with young men at the moment. But yeah, I think it's both problems.

[Jon Favreau]

I worry a lot about how AI is gonna supercharge that, because if you can start having relationships or the illusion of a relationship or a friendship with a chatbot, that's getting back to you all the time. And it's frictionless.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, right, right. And that's easy.

[Jon Favreau]

And that's easy. And it sort of. You don't have to then do the sometimes uncomfortable, clumsy work of meeting someone in person.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, man. Right. And even without chatbots, that's already happening. I mean, I think like, what happens, you know, we talked about impossible masculinity and it's so, so hard to be. It's so hard to be a person. But I think it's very specifically hard to be a young man right now in like how you're supposed to act in the real world. So all of those like. And they don't have the skills to kind of meet that challenge. You know, it's particularly hard challenge. So it's so easy to avoid it. And you know, online life is frictionless in that way. You know, you don't really have to do that, like hard emotional and social work. And so they're kind of becoming more and more avoidant this generation.

[Jon Favreau]

And the benefits are immediate. You get the quick dopamine hit and the drawbacks and the harms are sort of subtler and like just sort of build up a lot of times for a long time.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, right, exactly.

[Jon Favreau]

You spent some time with some incels.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes, I did.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think you came away with the reaction that sort of challenged your priors.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You wrote, I had spent all this time searching for a space in which boys and young men felt they could disregard masculine norms, take off the mask and be vulnerable with each other. I thought I might find it in some kind of feminist affinity circle or a therapy group run by a soft spoken vegan, but instead I had found it Right here at the heart of the manosphere in toxic masculinity central. Why did those boys feel. And men feel like they could be vulnerable with each other in that space?

[Ruth Whitman]

So this was one of the really biggest surprises, as you can see. So to be clear, there is a lot of, like, extremely toxic stuff in these spaces. You know, there's extreme misogyny, racism, white supremacy, anti Semitism, like, every.

[Jon Favreau]

It's all there.

[Ruth Whitman]

It's all there, and it's all very obvious. But what I hadn't anticipated was just this, like, level of emotional vulnerability. And they talk about their mental health, they talk about their feelings, they talk about suicidal thoughts, they talk about, you know, and what. So several people have written about this as well. And it's just this idea that I think incels, you know, the rest of the manosphere is all about kind of this idea that there's this kind of alpha male, and it's sort of holding out this hope, this, like, false hope to boys that they can kind of somehow get there. So, like, Andrew Tay and his kind of ilk are like, if you just do these 10 things and take these supplements and lift these weights and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and, you know, whatever, then you too, can become an alpha male. Whereas the incels have just kind of given up. Like, that is their whole founding philosophy. It's like they believe in this hierarchy of masculinity. They believe in this alpha male they call Chads. They believe this thing exists, but they've given up any hope of ever getting there themselves. And in a weird sort of way, it's, like, oddly freeing for them. So they've got nothing to prove. So, you know, I went very deep with these two characters, one of whom was actually very sweet, the other of whom was quite hard to like, to say the least. But they both said the same thing, which was just like, in real life, they always felt they had to kind of perform masculinity and appear tough, and then suddenly it's like, there's nothing to lose. We can just be vulnerable with each other. We just, like, say it like it is. And that was, you know, being out of that, like, hierarchy of masculinity was actually really sort of weirdly fraying for them.

[Jon Favreau]

It is funny because just from a political standpoint, there are so many times when Donald Trump has done something or then Elon Musk or any of these people, and I'm like, you know, they could have just used a hug, a couple more hugs at various points in their lives.

[Ruth Whitman]

So true.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, that Seems like what's missing.

[Ruth Whitman]

It's so true.

[Jon Favreau]

And it seems like everything in your book points in that direction.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, I mean, it's just this kind of under nurture. And like these guys, it was just really sad. Cause, you know, you talk to them and they have these toxic opinions that would like, last for about three seconds. And, you know, I hate women and they're to blame and like, you just scratch the surface and it's just this, like, well, of pain and trauma and loneliness and sadness and feelings of inadequacy and all the rest of it. And it was just like, it takes five minutes of listening for the tone to change, you know, and it's.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I think you write about this as well. It's. We talk a lot about. Rightly so, about like, these impossible beauty standards for women and what women have to do. And I think for the. Especially for the incels, they're like, well, in this world where, you know, you have to be a chad to get women. And when we look like this, what the hell? And they don't know what to do about that.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. And that was a huge thing. I hadn't. This was a surprise to me. I hadn't realized just, like, how much body image issues and like, pressure on how you look has, like, really sort of ratcheted up for men and boys and, you know, all these, like, fitness influencers and this, like, you know, just body shape. I think, you know, you can chart it with, like, CGI and Marvel superheroes. And they're just like, the ideal body shape for men is like growing and growing and growing as the ideal body shape for women is like shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And that's tough. And I think these guys were like, you know, and they felt that it was like, very acceptable to, like, body shame men in a way that it is no longer quite so socially acceptable to body shame women. So, like, a lot of them were short. That was a huge thing. And they're like, there's not much you can do about that. And it's totally fine for women to be like, kill all short men or I would never date a short guy. Or, you know, and like, why is this different?

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right. You had some pretty honest conversations with young men about sex.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Good for you. Good for them, too. Not an easy thing to do. I had two reactions to that part of the book. One, thank God I didn't grow up in the 2010s and 2020s. But then, two, I was like, oh, shit, my kids will have to navigate this increasingly fraught environment. What did you learn? What were your main takeaways from your conversations about sex and relationships?

[Ruth Whitman]

Oh, so lots of different ones. So boys are having less sex than ever before. And, you know, that's pertaining to some of the things we've already talked about about, you know, this very fraught world where they're very. Like, I hadn't realized how fearful boys were of, like, cancel culture of, like, me too culture. Of this idea of being accused of something, you know, And I think that, you know, it's been. It's really hard to date in real life and have sex in real life for boys right now. And it's very, very easy for them to watch porn, you know, So I think that has shifted. You know, if this trend of, like, displacement is happening anywhere, you know, its most extreme manifestation is in the world of sex and dating. You know, the replacement of real life relationships and sex with porn. So that was huge. And I think boys felt a lot of pressure around masculinity in sex in both directions. So this was like the impossible thing that they still felt that girls held them to this standard, which is like, be very masculine, like, be dominant, be aggressive, you know, and weird things. Like, you know, the trend for choking. Have you come across this?

[Jon Favreau]

I had not until, I mean, I sort of knew about it in the background. But until I read the book, I was like, oh, yeah, right.

[Ruth Whitman]

And so I'd always heard, you know, I'd heard about this trend towards choking, but the way that I'd always seen it framed was that, you know, it's something that boys are, like, inflicting on girls against their will, or they don't really want it, or girls kind of go along with it. But in the research and Debbie Herbernick, who's this great researcher on, like, college kids and sex, she interviewed tons of college students about their sexual lives. And she found that these kinds of rough sex practices are very, very normal. But they're as much coming from girls as they are from boys, you know, and it's almost like the girls are expecting this from the boys. They're holding them to these standards. Like, if he doesn't do this, he's not, like, masculine. He's not a real man, you know, And I think a lot of the boys were like, oh, God, I don't know how to. How to be, you know, do you want me to be dominant and aggressive? But, like, if I overstep by just a tiny smidge, then I could get, like, canceled and isolated.

[Jon Favreau]

It really does seem Like, a common theme here is that patriarchy and masculinity don't just harm women, though. They do.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

They also harm men.

[Ruth Whitman]

Harm men? Yeah, absolutely.

[Jon Favreau]

In a way. And it's, you know, it's not the men necessarily that we should that are bad or maybe they become that way, but it's these structures.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

These social structures that we've had for way too long.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. And I think people, like, often like feminists, have done a gender studies class in college and they learn like patriarchy harms men too. And they're like, great. And then they've kind of. But guessing, it's just like that's gone. And so, you know, and they don't really have any empathy about how that actually feels in real life and what it's like. I mean, I write this line in the book, which is like, under patriarchy, boys and men get everything except the thing that's most worth having, which is like, intimate human connection.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

You had a line about incel culture that stayed with me. In some ways, it all seems like the logical conclusion of the deranged nihilism and normalized hate speech of the Trump years. Incels are the collective ID of an America that has become lonely and individualistic, hypersexualized and furious. I thought that was a very insightful description of our politics over the last 10 years. You know, it's like, specifically about incels, but it is. It's bigger than that. Right, let's talk about the impact of Trump and Trumpism on men and boys. So demographic group that swung the most towards Trump in the last election was Gen Z men. There's even some evidence that it was younger Gen Z men who had their high school or college years interrupted by the pandemic and that some of the older Gen Z men were still voting more Democrat. Yeah, I've always thought this made sense. Now, having your read your book, I think it makes even more sense. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on why young men might have drifted towards Trump in the last election.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. I think it's a few things. So I think it is kind of failures of the left to kind of engage young men and to listen to young men. And I think there has been this, like, slightly misandrious tone to the rhetoric of the, you know, not coming from the actual Democratic Party, but like, from the kind of left broadly. I think there is this sort of normalization of misandry, which I think is hard on boys and men, you know, and it's, you know, it's not the same as misogyny. And, you know, we understand why this has happened and this like. But I think boys are feeling very shut down and unheard of on the left, and they're feeling like they've been kind of demonized. And so they're quite vulnerable to these, these bad actors. And, you know, I think that we didn't fix those old problems. You know, we. And so they're sort of already, like, from childhood prime to believe that their worth lies in their masculinity they hear it, they're being shut down from the left. And so then someone comes along and says, you know, I'm a strong man. I can make you masculine. Let's go back. You know, it's all women's fault. It's all immigrants fault. That message becomes. You know, they're already kind of primed to receive it and to blame, you know, or to sort of look for problems outside themselves that, you know, of their own feelings of inadequacy and lack of self worth in this moment. So I think it's coming from both directions, and I think those messages are like, really appealing. And somebody who's just talking simply and listening to them and telling them that they don't suck, you know, I think is a huge.

[Jon Favreau]

In your point about this sort of like, hyper individualized culture as well, because we've been talking so much about the value and need for connection and relationships. And I think that in some ways, whether it's certain podcasts or manosphere spaces or Donald Trump's movement, it's given people in general, and I think young men too, the sense of community and belonging.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's like every human everywhere is looking for belonging and connection. Like, that is just a fundamental human need.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And if you don't get it, you're gonna look for it. And you could be looking for it in some pretty toxic places, but you'd rather that than just be alone, right?

[Ruth Whitman]

Absolutely. I mean, I think there's this, like, wellspring of loneliness and sort of reclusivity and sort of feelings of isolation and being politically isolated. And then, yes, they do find belonging and they find a narrative, like a positive story about themselves, however flawed and toxic that story is. At least it's not like you're terrible, you're the problem, and your problems don't matter.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, if you were in charge of the Democratic Party's strategic outreach to young men, and believe it or not, there are quite a few people working on that these days.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Varying degrees of success and silliness. What would you do?

[Ruth Whitman]

So I think the most important thing is to listen. You know, I was really surprised when I first started interviewing teenage boys and young men. I imagined that these conversations would be, like, utterly monosyllabic. They wouldn't want to talk, they wouldn't want to open up. But what I found was like, they were these, like, tightly coiled springs. Like, they just. It just came out like it was just, thankfully somebody is listening to me and it's not judging me. And it's not telling me I'm terrible and just wants to hear what I actually have to say. So it's very simple. And they just talked and talked and talked and talked, and they were actually really thoughtful, really articulate, really great. Even the incels, maybe not that one guy, but in general. So I think listening is a huge thing. I think this sort of positive masculinity direction. We talked about this. I think it's just a bit kind of cringy and obvious. I mean, one thing that I've been thinking recently is young men love a conspiracy theory. We know this. And they love this feeling of sort of power and knowing something that other people don't know. So I think there's ways that the left could leverage that, because there are real conspiracies happening, like, right now, for real. So if they were able to sort of articulate that in a more direct way, I think that would be really helpful.

[Jon Favreau]

I've been thinking about this for a while, because I do think the last sort of male role model that young men liked in politics was like, you know, Barack Obama.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, right.

[Jon Favreau]

And I was saying I worked for him. So I was thinking about, like, what did. What did he do? It was almost just like, he didn't. He was comfortable in his own skin, and he was welcoming.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, really simple. And it was.

[Ruth Whitman]

Yeah. And he sort of brought change and hope. And I think there's this. So many feelings of hopelessness and. Right, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And. And I think being willing to be hopeful and wear that proudly and not have it seem like it's not a masculine thing or, you know, the truism in politics is, like, strong always wins. Right. You gotta be strong.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, Right. Yeah. Double down.

[Jon Favreau]

Hillary Clinton had to show she was strong. She was a woman. But then also, Trump is strong. So a Democrat, even a man that tries to go after Trump has to be strong. And everything's around strong. And I think if you just. You must have to, like, redefine what is valuable. It's like, does everything need to be strong?

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. And it's just sort of. It loses its power after a while. You know, if everyone's. I think young men love Bernie Sanders, for example, and that's just, like, clarity and like, this sort of, you know, no bullshit and just kind of clear messaging. And I think there's something about that.

[Jon Favreau]

And Bernie Sanders is not out there talking about sports or shooting guns or all the other.

[Ruth Whitman]

I don't think I've ever heard him say the word like.

[Jon Favreau]

But he can go on Joe Rogan for a couple hours.

[Ruth Whitman]

Right. And I think that was another thing as well. I think that authenticity and the Rogan thing, you know, they want to hear people who are real and authentic, and they have a really good radar for bullshit. Like teenage boys.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, for sure. How has the research you've done and the book sort of changed your parenting?

[Ruth Whitman]

Oh, yeah, it's changed it a lot, actually. And it's almost something quite fundamental. Like, people always want my, like, five tips and tricks to get the, like, feminist son you want. And it's sort of not really like that. I think it's something about just, like, a very basic reorientation in my relationship towards them, which is just this, like, coming from a place of empathy and listening. You know, I think all the research about kind of under nurture and the ways that society holds them to these, like, really rigid and high standards, you know, when it comes to, you know, like, not giving them this sort of very sweet, loving nurture as a general thing, I feel like I have to compensate for that. So I think that the. When you talk about raising boys, people often tell you that you need to be, like, tougher and more disciplined and more sticker charts and more, like, you know, wrestling. It's always like, you've gotta wrestle with them. And I'm like, they get so much of that stuff from the world already. You know, my job is to fill in the gaps when it comes to empathy and nurture. You know, the friendship thing, I think it's like coaching them on those skills about, you know, how to have a friendship, like how to talk to another person. Realizing that those skills aren't necessarily intuitive. You know, they're not getting them from the environment. So, like, trying to break it down with them, trying to get them to be interested in other people's emotions.

[Jon Favreau]

How has your husband changed his parenting, if at all?

[Ruth Whitman]

So actually, he has been the biggest convert to all this. It's been really lovely to see. I think that he sort of, you know, as you were talking about this idea of, like, male friendships being really hard in your, like, 40s, I think he realized, and he sort of. It helped him, like, trace the lines back to some of this parenting stuff in his own childhood. So I think he's really determined to change it. So actually, he's been the one who's done a lot of this, like, social coaching and saying to, like, you know, my middle son had this, like, conflict with a friend at school, and he was the one who was, like, saying, well, why don't you listen to what he has to say and, you know, why don't you do this? Or, why don't you ask him about his grandma dying? Or why don't you, you know? And he's done a lot of that as well, because he. I think he really feels it very intensely. Like, what can be lost.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Ruth Whitman]

Without it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's funny because the biggest change I've made, even, you know, and I had a great relationship with my dad. Still do. But, like, I cuddle the boys and hug them and give them kisses and just, like, talk to them, like, so much more than I ever got from my. From my dad. Because that's just not what people did.

[Ruth Whitman]

That's what people did. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, if you were a dad and a son, you wouldn't do that kind of stuff. But I'm like. And I also know that I'm. You know, at first it was, like, awkward for me to do this, but I'd be like, how are you feeling about this, Charlie? And now. Now he's, like, feeling a little sad today, but also a little angry. And now he just goes off now. Yeah. Now he has plenty of feelings everywhere. But I was just like. And it does feel weird to do at first because it's not like I had that childhood. Right, right.

[Ruth Whitman]

And so you haven't had it modeled in that way. It's like, it feels.

[Jon Favreau]

Even in adulthood, not a lot of people are asking you, like, how do you feel?

[Ruth Whitman]

Right, Right. And it can feel really kind of cringe, you know, it's, like, really excruciating sometimes to do. You know, you feel like you're going off a script. But I think if you. If people can do it in the way that feels, like, as authentic as possible without, like.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Ruth Whitman]

You know, that helps.

[Jon Favreau]

It is. It's funny, when I. When I. When Emily first had Charlie, and I was texting all my friends, and I was like, ugh, I am so fucked. This is gonna be so hard. New baby. Yeah. And my friend who has two boys who are, like, a couple years older than ours, he just said to me something that still stuck with me. He goes, it is hard. Now he's like. But pretty soon, he's like, you're gonna have, like, a best friend for life. Like, he's just gonna be your. He's gonna be your pal. He's gonna be with you everywhere. And it's funny, like, I started thinking about it like, that. Like, this is a very important relationship. Not just me as a father, but, like, try to form a connection with your kids, which I feel like you came to the conclusion too, as well, is like the more as parents, we can just connect with our kids and raise them as adults. Like they're about to be adults anyway. Like that is gonna be right.

[Ruth Whitman]

It's absolutely that. I think it's just like forming the most authentic connection you can with the actual child that you have in front of you, not the one that you think you want or the you're trying.

[Jon Favreau]

To shape that you're trying to shape.

[Ruth Whitman]

It's like the actual one that's right there in the most authentic way. And it sounds, you know, really simple. And it's the hardest thing sometimes, but.

[Jon Favreau]

It is, but it's rewarding. Ruth Whitman, thank you so much.

[Ruth Whitman]

Such a good.

[Jon Favreau]

The book is Boy Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. It is a fantastic book. Everyone who's a parent should pick it up. Even if you're not a parent, you should pick it up because it tells you a lot about sort of what we're dealing with today in society and especially what young men are dealing with. So thanks for coming on. It was great to talk to you.

[Ruth Whitman]

Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

[Jon Favreau]

One quick note before we go. Great new episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams this week. We've always believed that laughing through the pain of American politics is the only way to survive it. And this week, Stacey sits down with someone who understands that better than most. Amber Ruffin, comedian, writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of the Amber Ruffin show and have I Got News for your. They talk about how humor helps us navigate Trump's America. Why cracking jokes in dark times isn't just a escapism. It's a small way to fight back and remind us of our shared humanity. So tune into this episode and all episodes of Assembly Required now. Wherever you get your podcasts Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilic Frank. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Evan Sutton is our sound editor, and Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos. Every week, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America. The McDonald's snack wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap. Spicy snack wrap. You broke the Internet for a Snack Snack Wrap is back at Designer Shoe Warehouse. We believe that shoes are an important part of. Well, everything.

[Emma]

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[Jon Favreau]

From building pillow forts to building a.

[Emma]

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