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The Opinions
America Has a Masculinity Crisis
00:40:25
A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.
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- [00:00]
Ruth Whitman
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- [00:32]
Nadja Spiegelman
this is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm nadja spiegelman, and I'm a culture editor for new york times opinion. If this is feminism, call men stupid in every possible way that you can. So my retainer gives me the weirdest lisp. It's so funny. Listen to me try to say the word trash with my retain men. And where does that leave men? I wanted to have a conversation about masculinity in a post. Me too world. So today I'm talking to Ruth Whitman, author of Boy, A book about raising young men, and Frederick Joseph, author of Patriarchy Blues. Frederick, Ruth, thank you so much for being here with me today to talk about masculinity. Okay, just a little table setting. Where are we now? How would you describe the state of young men in this country right now?
- [01:44]
Frederick Joseph
I think that we are in an abysmal state. I think the. The realities are we've always had patriarchy at the intersection of capitalism and white supremacy and how those things feast on one another and, and lift one another. But I think right now, more times than not, the role models that these young boys and young men have are not only divisive and toxic, but insidious and, and, and. And heinous. Disgusting, truly. I mean, the President of the United States is an alleged rapist. What does that mean? Right. What does that mean? You know, the popular thing that boys are watching is largely mma, right? So I think we're in a horrible place.
- [02:28]
Ruth Whitman
Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I feel like young men are kind of caught between these two, like, competing, but, like, both harmful narratives. Like, one of them is this kind of almost what you're describing. This, like, caricatured masculinity. This, like, you know, these things that have always been in existence. You know, this, like, tough guy, you know, bulletproof, but just, like, taken to this caricatured extreme. And you're Seeing it almost on the left as well as on the right, but then on the other extreme, like, more from the progressive left, I think you've got this, like, shut up narrative, which is just like, your problems aren't real. They don't matter. You have so much privilege, you know, you have everything. You know, time for everybody else to have a voice and for you to be quiet. And I think it's just really hard to navigate. I think they feel shut down from all directions.
- [03:15]
Nadja Spiegelman
Honestly, before we get deeper into things, I want to hear a little bit from each of you. Just sort of the, like, highlight, real nut graph of how you would approach a conversation about masculinity. So, Ruth, you've done a lot of reporting on the subject, and you also wrote a book about raising sons. Can you give us where you're coming from when you're talking about masculinity?
- [03:35]
Ruth Whitman
Yeah, I think when we talk about masculinity, we have to talk about patriarchy. And I think we see this as this system which harms everyone, including men. I think often people take a gender studies class in college or whatever, and they learn like, patriarchy harms men. And then they're like, well, great, okay, put that aside and then move on. Forget about it. And you know, and I know that when, you know, when we're kind of triaging these issues, like, is harm to men the worst abuse of patriarchy? No, probably harm to women and trans people and people of other genders is more urgent. But I think if we can see ourselves as part of a system of patriarchy that harms all of us, and we are allies in this fight rather than like, men versus women, men oppressing women, you know, then I think we can have a more productive conversation.
- [04:20]
Nadja Spiegelman
Yeah. Frederick, you wrote a book of essays and poems called Patriarchy Blues. You also spend a lot of time talking to men in the world. Where are you coming from when you're talking about masculinity?
- [04:32]
Frederick Joseph
Yeah, I think for me, I look at patriarchy in the same way that many people during the sort of 2020 moment we're looking at racism and white supremacy. You can't dismantle patriarchy without an anti patriarchy movement. Right. And the thing that we were telling people was largely that there was a return on investment for dismantling white supremacy. There was a return on investment for dismantling racism. And that's my argument as well for patriarchy. I tell young men all the time, you're not in these systems, allowed to be a whole human being. Right. You know, the thing that you are entitled to, they teach you is your rage. And then even that you're not really entitled to. They don't teach you how to cry, they don't teach you how to laugh, they don't want you laughing, they don't want you crying. Because they actually do sort of in capitalism, want to monetize that rage of yours. That's how you get the manosphere. And I think we oftentimes teach it as like, do you want to do sort of like charity? Like, you're not, you're not. This isn't charity that you're doing for women by, like, dismantling patriarchy. It's not charity by dismantling misogyny. This is actually the work of self.
- [05:34]
Nadja Spiegelman
Yeah, right. You know, I really. I really relate to that. I mean, I think, as you were saying, in my own thinking around white supremacy, I had to come to, like, this is just being a narcissistic millennial in the world. But what do I stand to gain from dismantling white supremacy? A system that seem to benefit me in so many ways. And for me, the answer to that is the fullness of my humanity. And I really was thinking a lot when approaching this conversation about how do we do the same thing for patriarchy? Because one of the questions I think a lot of young men have is what does positive masculinity look like? Like, I don't think that we've necessarily. I know the image that the manosphere posits of masculinity, and I think it's one that also encompasses a lot of misogynistic ideas. And I know so many men who are not misogynists and who want to be living in a gender equal world, but who are still men who still need an idea of masculinity that feels positive to them both. Have you sort of thought about this question and how to answer it? And how do we get to a place where there are so few answers for it?
- [06:44]
Ruth Whitman
For me, positive masculinity as a sort of framework is not my preferred framework for thinking about this issue or like, what to do for young men in the same way that if someone was trying to sell, like, hypothetical daughter, like positive femininity instead of feminism, I think I would push back on that as well. Cause I think it's already, like, set in the terms in quite a restrictive way that sort of ends up like slightly reinforcing gender stereotypes. So I think I would rather that we sort of move towards giving boys and men a vision of being a full Person like a full human. And rather than, like, gender equalities and being, like, these qualities are masculine and these qualities are feminine. And, like, how do we navigate and pick and choose between those? And, like, what's the sort of minimum amount of femininity that we can choose to in order to, like, not emasculate ourselves totally. I'd rather we're just like, okay, just be a person, you know, like, these are minimum standards and minimum qualities that we expect from every adult, and they don't need to be different ones for men than for women.
- [07:45]
Frederick Joseph
I think that. And I hear that. I think for me, you kind of have to have a sense of positive masculinity only because we do live in the boxes of the society that we currently live in. Right. I think that that vision would be beautiful if it wasn't for the fact that, like, we have femicide and all these different things. Right? And I think there is so much toxic masculinity. And I hear boys all the time say, I literally do not know what it means to be a good boy or man. Because a. I think on the one hand, all you see is these, you know, terrible role models who aren't role models at all. On the other hand, you have people saying what isn't good, but you have to tell people what can be good. Looking at race, right? And they're not a one for one. But you actually have to have positive sort of, like, ideas of what it means to be, like, a decent white person. Right. Like, and that was one of the things in my first book that I pushed heavily, is that you can be a decent white person. And being a decent white person is not gonna be the same as being a decent Persian or a decent black person or a decent Asian person, because the systems and institutions prop up and lift and are owned by, ran by and controlled by white people. So if the systems of patriarchy, while, again, like, you're 100% right, patriarchy impacts us all in various ways. But men are the. Men are. Men are the issue in large part. You know, men are the issue in large part with patriarchy. So I do think that we have to show what a. What a decent man is.
- [09:15]
Nadja Spiegelman
One of the things that made me really want to have this conversation is that I just feel like, I mean, everyone is siloed into their own social media spaces. But for me, when I'm looking at social media, so much of what I see online and so much of what I hear women say is men are trash. Sabrina Carpenter said the key to her Songwriting is just to call men stupid in as many ways as you can. I really understand where women's anger comes from. I. But I also feel so much tenderness for my brother, for other men. I know. And if I were hearing the same kinds of messages in reverse that were just women are trash, I wouldn't know how to begin to approach the world. And so I wonder, sort of how specifically on the left. Cause I think that there are different answers to this on the right, but specifically on the left, which is where I hear men are trashed the most loudly. What effect is this having on boys? Do they hear it? Do they feel it? And is it empowering for women? Is there another way to be approaching this?
- [10:26]
Ruth Whitman
I mean, I think from the perspective of raising. I have three boys, and I hear this all the time. We live in a very progressive community, and men are trash. Men suck is just in the water. And it's really, really hard when you're raising sons and they're young. They don't know the entire history of patriarchy, and nor do you want to explain that in every single moment. And it's like, the justification, you know, so they sort of like, in a way, it's supposed to be punching up, isn't it? Like, men have all the power, men have all the privilege, so it's okay to, like, call them trash. And it's not the same as calling a man, calling a woman trash, you know, which is punching down. But those distinctions are getting more and more, like, abstract, especially when you're, like, 12 years old and you've never heard women are trash. And you've heard a lot of, like, men and boys. And I think it's a really, like. I don't think this is helpful. I think it's really harmful. It's not equivalent to misogyny. They're not the same. But it is still, like, I think, a real problem. It's really, like, a terrible negative. And I think it's, like, incredibly psychologically harmful for this generation of boys to just go around hearing that over and over and over again.
- [11:38]
Frederick Joseph
I think the reality is that women are entitled to a righteous and rightful rage. And this makes sense to me, right? I think that I'm not a woman. I've never lived in, you know, sort of, like the throes of the worst, you know, iterations of patriarchy. Right? I don't have to deal with certain things. And so I just want to name that to begin with. What it reminds me of, though, is a lot of parents not wanting young white children to hear, you know, sort of about like the issues with like whiteness. Right. And the argument became, and I'm one of the people who made the argument, if, you know, black and brown children are old enough at any age to have to suffer racism, then I think white children should have to learn and understand their place within racism. And I guess that's the same way I feel about sort of the idea of misandry and whatnot. Is that my conversation with my. I have a younger brother, he's 14, we have a huge age gap, obviously. And I've been having conversations with him about who boys and men are in relation to women since he was probably about 6 years old. Right. Because I do know he's going to hear and see on the Internet, you know, men are trash. Men are trash. Men are trash. And I guess my answer or my response to that is I'm going to tell you why. Right. And so as opposed to putting sort of like the onus on, you know, women and, and, and whatnot, I'm. I'm placing it on myself and I, I suppose other men as well. I don't think that the owner should ever be on the victim. I get conceptually how we got here. And so I just sort of look at it like, I'll see the videos. This is not about me, right? This is not about me. You're not talking about me. I'm trying my best to be a decent man. I'm going to try my best to make a generation of decent boys to
- [13:21]
Nadja Spiegelman
go back just a step to like, if on the left what men are hearing is men are trash. And this is actually, I think related to what we were just saying. But if on the left what men are hearing is men are trash, doesn't it make sense then that the right is their safe space? And it makes me wonder, I mean, like, clearly, like there is an increasing gender divide about how people's politics fall. Left or right. Men are moving more to the right, women are moving more to the left, and it's only exacerbating these problems. And I think part of what I'm really interested in is how does the left bring men back into the fold?
- [14:00]
Ruth Whitman
I mean, when I was reporting for my book, I talked to incels in these incel communities and they absolutely felt like that. I mean, they really felt like there is nothing for me outside of this. There is like, I'm lonely and I'm lost. And like one guy that I went quite deep with in particular, he was really like, I would like to leave this community. I would like to seek help. I would like to find a therapist or talk to another person, but I'm just so scared of hearing your problems don't matter. You're a white man. Everything's great for you, so screw you. Basically from a therapist that I'm not even gonna look. And I think part of that was self justification, but I think there was something really real in that. And I think that he had been hearing those messages. And it's like, yes, it's not the same, but it's also very real. And I think it is pushing young men towards the right, for sure.
- [14:53]
Frederick Joseph
Yeah. I mean, the right wing is a very. They're an intelligent collective of people. Right. Like. And I think that they understand human nature better than the left. There isn't really a pipeline on the left to lead you to the left. And you don't ultimately have. Because of that and other things, you don't have an Andrew Tate of the left. You don't have, you know, someone similar to a Dana White on the left, Conor McGregor, all these different people. And so I don't think that the left has created a strategy at all for. We have lost a generation of boys, generations of boys and men. How do we get them back? What do we give them to believe in? And who do we give them to believe in is. I think that's also really important.
- [15:38]
Nadja Spiegelman
My friends who have very young kids have told me that. And this is so different from how it was when I was growing up, but they've told me that when they're reading books to their sons, a lot of the narrative of these books are there was a very brave, courageous girl and a dumb, dumb boy. And that, like, they. And that. These are. These are progressive books, and I understand where they're coming from. When I was growing up, I would only write stories with male characters because a male character was a blank slate, whereas a girl had so much to overcome just to begin to enter the story. But things have swung really far the other way. There are now a lot of books that sort of promote feminism at the expense of young boys. And I'm curious if you found that in your.
- [16:19]
Ruth Whitman
I mean, I think, like, I don't know if you know the movie franchise Inside Out. Have you seen it? It's like a.
- [16:26]
Nadja Spiegelman
Inside Out. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.
- [16:28]
Ruth Whitman
So that was a really good example. I was watching them with my son, and it's like this really complex story of this, like, young girl's interiority and her emotional life. And it's this great portrayal of Like a young girl's emotions and then you go inside her mom's head and they have this like complex interaction, you know, and she's tracking her and her mom's tracking her emotions. And it's incredibly sophisticated. I don't know if it was every time or if it just felt like every time that a male character appeared on screen in that movie, they were an emotional idiot. It's like you go inside the dad's head and he's like, ugh. And all the like emotion avatars have just got their like feet up on the desk and they're checked out and watching the game and that's the joke. And I'm watching this with my like, at the time six year old son and thinking, what are we telling him here? Like, everyone has a rich emotional life apart from you and you're an idiot. And I was like, that would never pass. Like, if that was a mainstream, like Disney, Pixar movie, whatever, that had like a sexist stereotype about a girl, then we would not stand for it culturally.
- [17:30]
Frederick Joseph
You know, I think that some of the issue, right, goes back or rather goes to this idea of a pendulum swing. Because when you're saying that, I'm like, you know what's so interesting? Cause as a Disney buff, we did have Snow White, right? And we did have, you know, Sleeping Beauty and know sort of like even like the not only misogyny, but the rape culture of something like Sleeping Beauty even. And so I think now what has happened is instead of us having a conversation in our society about like how we create something equitable, I think a lot of people are interested in, okay, I'm going to swing the pendulum the complete opposite way, right? It's like, you hurt me, I'm going to hurt you. And that you can see, I think directly in sort of like how, you know, the father or the boys are represented. You're like, well, yeah, I can represent you this way because look what she did with Sleeping Beauty.
- [18:17]
Nadja Spiegelman
Yeah. I mean, speaking of the pendulum swing and thinking about how did we get here? One of the things I really want to talk about is the legacy of MeToo, which I think was for me personally an incredibly important movement. I was working at the Paris Review when MeToo happened. The editor in chief left. At that moment, the culture of the workplace where I was working changed drastically. I have felt like an enormous benefit from that movement in terms of my ability to be taken seriously at work and to move through professional spaces. And I also think that there are a lot of things that we're feeling now in the culture that are the long tail of MeToo, and we're almost 10 years out. And I think it's worth talking about because I think that this is also the moment when women began to feel, and absolutely guilty of this, very empowered to speak very loudly about the things that men had done that had harmed them to a degree that perhaps now has just been sort of flattened down to just, like, all men are trash. And I'm curious, Ruth, in your reporting, I know you've written quite specifically about this, like, how you think about the long tale of MeToo.
- [19:28]
Ruth Whitman
Yeah, it's a really complicated thing because, like you, I was, like, thrilled at the MeToo movement. And it absolutely named something that was so real, in my experience, and this just, like, normalization of harassment and abuse and all the rest of it. And I think I understand it was just this, like, groundswell of rage, but, like, navigating that as a feminist while raising boys and thinking, you know, all we're hearing, like, there's this micro generation of boys that were kind of going through puberty around the time of the MeToo movement, you know, 2016, 2017, who are now, like, a voting age of college age. And they have spent their entire adolescence, like, in the shadow of this conversation, which has been framed very much as, like, men are predators, men are harmful, men are trash, which much of which is true and, like, so important to talk about. But. But I feel like there was this real piece missing in that conversation that has left a lot of boys feeling, like, shut down, rageful, disenfranchised, and, like, unable to really, like, find how they're going to make their way in the world.
- [20:32]
Frederick Joseph
You know, it's interesting, I think, that listening to the two of you reminds me how important it is to understand our different spheres that we're in. Right. My sphere is very progressive, but also very black centered, very, you know, brown centered. I've been lucky enough to be very, very much welcomed by deeply intersectional feminists, womanists. And so I think a lot of times the conversations that were being had in a more sort of, like, mainstream sense, which were largely led by white women. And then there was a reckoning around that because of Tarana Burke. And, you know, Tarana Burke having, you know, been the person who had. Who largely started a lot of this work in many senses of the word, I had been a part of those conversations. Right. I went to, you know, I was lucky enough. I went to Hunter College undergrad, where Audre Lorde went. So these were Not. I went to a very. Like, I think Hunter College is 70% woman. So I'm. I'm just lucky to have been in these spaces where I'm not the dominating person. Right. But I do think it's important to name, like, those conversations in the mainstream sense aren't the only conversations that are happening. Right. There was very much, in my experience, welcoming and thoughts around not only, like, how some men have been harmed, but how trans people have been harmed, how queer people have been harmed, and things like that.
- [21:56]
Nadja Spiegelman
I mean, I think that the conversations that I was hearing happen around me too, for me, were revelatory in the sense that I was realizing how universal the experience was of sexual harassment, of rape, of feeling held back at work based on the power dynamics around gender. And I mean, I think that was the moment for me in my life when I realized I didn't know any women who hadn't experienced this, which is what me too, the word is about. But that. That consciousness raising of, like, this is not an individual, isolated thing. This is happening so prevalently was enormously useful. And then at the same time, it left and it caused. I mean, I worked, as I was saying, I worked at a workplace where my boss left around this moment, and the culture of the workplace changed, but it left so many of my colleagues who were men, white men, who I really respected and who really, to me, it was obvious, respected women, confused about how to act. Like, I had one colleague who was like, I always take the interns out for drinks. Every year I take the interns out for drinks, but I can't take the interns out for drinks this year because it'll look like I'm trying to get interns drunk and I can't get interns drunk. And he was also like, and am I allowed to compliment your clothes because I like your clothes, but I don't want to get in trouble. And I could just see that he was really trying to figure it out. And I had real empathy for that because we were defining new rules, and the new rules left very little room for nuance. They were very strict rules. But this was something that I feel like anyone who has experienced any form of societal oppression understands that someone can compliment your clothes and you can know that they mean that they like your clothes and they can compliment your clothes in a way that makes you feel small. And it actually doesn't matter what words they say. It matters the entire behind how they say it. And I think across different forms of oppressed identities, this general thing can be understood. But how do you explain it to CIS straight white men who have never experienced this?
- [24:00]
Ruth Whitman
Yeah, right. I mean, I would say definitely for teenage boys, I think there's this, like, real fear among teenage boys at the moment, and I think it's contributing to this, like, sex, recession, dating recession, whatever you want to call it, where teenage boys do not. You know, I'm feeling very fearful of approaching girls. And in some ways that's good and right. And absolutely, you know, that it's a correction to a very real problem. But I think it also does come back on boys of color as well, especially on black boys. I found, like, in the university context, I did some reporting on these, like, Title 9 proceedings in colleges and, you know, boys who've been accused of sexual violence. And often these are really, really complicated situations. And I think that black boys are disproportionately accused of sexual violence by white women on college campuses. And often these accusations are found to be, if not unfounded, then very complex. There's a lot of racist maneuvering going on in that it's not just like the stereotype of, like, the white man who. Or like, boo hoo, white man can't, like, harass anyone he wants to anymore. But it's all this stuff is so layered and. And so complicated. But I really don't envy a teenage boy trying to date in this environment. You know,
- [25:21]
Frederick Joseph
it's interesting. I agree with so much of that, and I think that there is definitely institutional racism that ties to much of this. But what I would say is in terms of sort of like the white men at that time especially, I just, as a cishet man, I just feel like it's a. Not saying you, but I just. I'm not interested in infantilizing these people. Right. Like, you can run a Fortune 500 company, but you can't understand how to not do something, how to do something creative to take, you know, interns out who are women. I don't know. I just. I feel like a lot of white men suddenly became childlike during that time. Right. You. You took over the entire world. You. You can't understand how to navigate during the MeToo movement. I just.
- [26:08]
Nadja Spiegelman
Right, I agree. Also. I just feel like there were moments at the height of this movement when I would want to talk about nuance, because I do think that there was. There has to be nuance to this conversation. And the very word nuance was suspect. Like, if I said the word nuance, it was as if I was being a rape apologist, and I felt really confused by that. Because these don't feel like conversations that can be, to me, can be solved by, like, sort of the extremes of black and white. I mean, I did feel my little brother was in college at that time, and he came home being like, I'm really trying to get this right. But they've given us so many seminars, and they've said, like, if a woman is drinking, you cannot have sex with her. But we are drinking all the time. And so everyone is drunk always. And so, like, I don't understand, like, how to reconcile these two rules. And for me, I was like, it is. Is so much about your intentions. And so, like. And, like, it's very hard to put a very blanket rule on things. Like, you are smart enough to know if a woman is consenting or not. And we can really speak about what it looks like to have active consent. But instead, people were being given these very blanket rules that were unnuanced. And I feel like it has created a lot of confusion.
- [27:30]
Frederick Joseph
That comes back to, for me, maybe just because I went to school for this communication, right? I think, obviously, consent, so on and so forth. But I think we can't assume intentions necessarily, because I think intentions change depending upon geographic location, age, all sorts of demographic things, right? Like if. If I'm walking and I give a head nod to another man and he's black, we have an understanding what that means. If I do it to white guy, he's like, what the hell are you doing? I don't know. I communicate what I'm thinking. I communicate. Like, again, I'm not going to infantilize some of these men. I'm also not gonna infantilize women. If we're communicating, you can give me your opinion on what you think is not even taste, but safe, right? Like, even as we're sitting here across from each other from the beginning of the conversation, I originally said to you, I think you should go first. And you can tell me I don't think I should go first. And so in many instances, you have gone first. But I hope that I gave my communicating that gave you the latitude to say, like, I agree or disagree. And I think that that's the sort of, like, interactions that I. So it's not just like, consent. It's so much more than consent. It's also active conversation.
- [28:36]
Ruth Whitman
I mean, one thing that I will say, I think that we give boys in general a very, very poor grounding in relational, you know, in communication, in social skills, in emotional nuance, in picking up signals, in, like, you know, and that is something that starts from birth. There's, like, a real difference in the way that we socialize girls to, like, really track other people's emotions, to understand body language, to understand, like, what someone might be feeling, to see it as their role to act on what somebody else might be feeling. And these are things that are sort of baked in so early that then I think by the time that kids get to college, girls have this huge head start on this kind of communication and these relationships and understanding and caring what another person thinks and seeing it as their responsibility to kind of track that and respond to it. And so, yeah, it's something that has to start much younger. And I think patriarchy, right? Boys and men of that, you know, of those skills.
- [29:32]
Nadja Spiegelman
Christine Emba wrote this really wonderful article in the Washington Post called Men Are Lost. Here's a roadmap out of the wilderness that if people who are listening to this conversation are interested in, I would highly recommend as further reading. And part of what she talks about is specifically, how do we create a leftist counterpart to the manosphere? And what does that model of masculinity look like? And I know you both have thought about this a lot. Ruth, what do you think?
- [30:02]
Ruth Whitman
I mean, I think it's many, many different things. I don't think it's possible to just say, okay, here's the answer. You know, get a Joe Rogan of the left or an Andrew Tate of the left. Because I think those attempts often don't really feel authentic. I think it's many, many, many conversations and individual acts and, you know, people coming together to talk about these things. And I think it's possible. Cause like, I was just thinking pretty much any movie from the 80s or 90s, and you look at the things that they could get away with as completely normal when it came to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, which were just completely normal and that are not normal anymore, that we have moved on as a culture when it comes to those issues. By no means perfect. There's so much work to do, but we have moved on. And I think we can do the same for the way we think about boys and men. But I think it's like lots and lots of little things all the time. Lots of people doing the work, lots of people thinking, lots of confidence conversations like this, lots of work like, you know, Frederic does. And, you know, that just it's bit by bit by bit. I don't think there's one single solution to it.
- [31:08]
Nadja Spiegelman
And I also want to just follow up on something that you were saying earlier of Sort of how you think about. How you think about raising your sons to be good humans and how you want them to have tenderness, softness, these qualities that we generally associate with feminine traits. And I really. I really want that for men too. I want them to have friends, them to feel like it's valorous, to cry or be vulnerable. And at the same time, I think if we're fully honest, we don't really want a society where men are more just like women. Like, there is value to having a society where there are men and there are women, and they are able to be, in the grand scheme of things, different from one another. And so I'm thinking really hard about how. What other messages can we give men that aren't just be more like women? I wonder if you've. If you've thought about that.
- [32:02]
Frederick Joseph
Yeah, I mean, there are things that exist socially conditioned within men and women, but I think that, again, they are socialized and conditioned, right? So I don't think that, for example, tears, right? I cried during Hamnet, just like the two women next to me cried during Hamnet. Right? And I think that what we have been taught is that me crying during Hamnet is some oddity. And, and. And that's sort of what I rail against. And I don't think that we have done a good job of propping up the people who rail against that. Right. Like, I'll give you a really, a phenomenal example. There was a conversation recently and I about, like, people going to this website, right? It was like, all these men, and I think we're all very familiar with all these men.
- [32:49]
Ruth Whitman
I know what you said going to
- [32:50]
Frederick Joseph
this website, and it was like, teaching them how to rape their wives. And I was wondering, just as I'm watching all these, like, proper grievances by women and people, I'm like, like, all these men are garbage. Absolutely. And I was also like, where. Where's the counterweight? Like, what are we actually trying to. Like, I see all the rightful rage. What is the actionable thing here? Like, where are we leading people to? Because it's not enough to stop at the point of just saying, like, these men are dangerous. Absolutely. These men are frightening. Absolutely. These men are disgusting. Absolutely. What are we doing?
- [33:28]
Nadja Spiegelman
Yeah, what are we doing?
- [33:29]
Frederick Joseph
What are we doing?
- [33:30]
Nadja Spiegelman
Right?
- [33:30]
Frederick Joseph
And so. But if you just keep. If you just keep people in this perpetual state of anger, you can keep on writing about it, you can keep on making videos about it, you can keep on selling things pertaining to it, and people will click and people will talk and people will you know, you're feeding the beast. You do not want people getting healthy. It's the same thing with patriarchy. It's the same thing with white supremacy. It all feeds capitalism. If white people are not great and they keep on doing racist things, more people sell books, more people click on articles, more people go to websites, et cetera, et cetera. It's a perpetual cycle of bigotry.
- [34:01]
Ruth Whitman
Right. And also that whole Epstein commentary, There was no real mainstream discussion of patriarchy and how that informs that. It was a lot of people talking about class and about wealth and about money and about power, but there was very little naming of this systemic force and just talking about it.
- [34:24]
Frederick Joseph
And to that point, there was. Even with Epstein and everything that's transpired over the last few years, and maybe you've seen something different. I've not seen a major push to dismantle or unpack patriarchy, to your point. Right. And that's the thing I'm saying. It's not like, oh, we are so angry and frustrated and in disbelief and harmed and hurt by what these men did to these girls. Okay, so where are the conversations? Because this is not just wealthy white men flying girls to an island. This is happening in your neighborhood.
- [35:01]
Ruth Whitman
Right. This is the whole system. Why aren't we talking about it? I completely agree.
- [35:05]
Nadja Spiegelman
Yeah. So I know we've talked about this quite a bit in various ways in this conversation, but I wonder if we can just sort of quickly run through, like, what are things? What are traits and qualities, if not of positive masculinity, then of, like, the kind of masculinity the left should be promoting as a counterpart to what's in the manosphere. One of my colleagues has gotten really interested in the subreddit, our book where men just compliment each other. Men are like, shave it off. It'll look better. And then they're like, bro, you look great. You look amazing. And it is a very sweet corner of the Internet because it's one in which men just support and compliment each other through a difficult transition time in their appearance. And I'm curious, what are those other, like. So what are other qualities and traits of something that the left could be promoting as a vision for boys? Yeah.
- [36:01]
Ruth Whitman
I think that male friendship and male bonding, it's got such a bad name. Cause it's become associated with, like, locker room talk and, like, gross things. It's just that that sort of brotherhood, that, like, loyalty and courage and support for one another is something that's really lovely. And I think, you know, I'm from the uk And I think there is a real culture of male friendship there in a way that I don't see quite so much in the States. Maybe some of it is because of like alcohol and drinking and those kinds of things, which obviously brings up our whole new range of problems. But. And, and I think some of it is. Comes about from trauma, like boys being sent off to boarding school and that sort of thing. But I think there is this real culture of like male friendship and male bonding, which is very lovely that, you know, I'd like to say
- [36:47]
Frederick Joseph
I give you a good example actually right now, and I, I can't stand this team for various reasons. But the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are in the Western Conference finals of the the NBA playoffs, are comprised of a lot of Gen Z young men. And the ways in which they love on each other is such a positive sort of embracing of brotherhood, friendship and love for each other. I've literally heard them say, like, I love you. Thank you for showing up for me tonight. Thank you for this, thank you for that. And I think that we can be promoting that more, that there are great examples of young men and men in general who are not afraid to like, love on each other.
- [37:25]
Nadja Spiegelman
Before we wrap, I want to know one traditionally masculine quality you'd want your sons or your younger brother to take on and one that you wish they wouldn't.
- [37:39]
Ruth Whitman
Okay, sure. So I think for the, for the one. I mean, look, there's so many great qualities associated with masculinity, like courage and protection and strength and all the rest of it. But I think I'm gonna go for fixing stuff. So I would love for my kids to be able to like, have those skills, you know, those old school masculine skills. So that, and then there really wouldn't. I think it's gotta be emotional suppression. Just like that feeling that you cannot connect with your own emotions. I think that's so unhealthy and harmful. And I really hope that my boys will be able to connect with their own emotions and those of other people.
- [38:17]
Nadja Spiegelman
I love that.
- [38:18]
Frederick Joseph
In answer, I say, I think the first one would be being actionable. I think that we have this idea of men in our society historically, like this thing is happening. I'm going to, you know, jump in and try to do something. Can you be actionable about somebody saying, you harmed me? Can you be actionable about someone saying, I felt unsafe in this moment. So that sort of like ability to like jump in and do the thing. I'd love to see that in say, maybe more emotional and like social ways and then in terms of not passing down sort of like stubbornness. Right. I think that a lot of men have been taught that sort of this, like this personal manifest destiny, if you would, like, the entire world belongs to you and you just got to go out and seize it. And I kind of just want you to, like, stop and just listen to other people. Just like, stop. Just stop. Right? Like, just stop. Like, you know, you're the only thing I think that you're promised in this world is the person in the mirror and what you do with that. And so, so, you know, just stop and listen. Stop and listen.
- [39:20]
Ruth Whitman
Yeah.
- [39:21]
Nadja Spiegelman
That's beautifully said. Ruth, Frederick, thank you so much for being here with me today. This was a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it.
- [39:28]
Ruth Whitman
It was such a pleasure. Thank you.
- [39:30]
Nadja Spiegelman
Thank you. These episodes will also be playing on our YouTube channel. If you want to see the beautiful loft where we record this, find us on YouTube at New York Times. Opinion. If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darby, Victoria Chamberlain and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Gillian Weinberger, Jasmine Romero and Kari Pitkin. Mixing by Daniel Ramirez. Original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samuluski. The director of opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser. For those crazy busy, crazy hungry days when cooking family dinner is off the table, there's Applebee's all you can eat. A table full of unlimited favorites for just $15.99. You get all the tender signature riblets, all the crispy boneless wings, all the golden brown double crunched shrimp and endless classic fries at a family friendly price. Applebee's all you can eat for just 1599 per person per order. Now that's eaten good in the neighborhood. Limited time only, so hurry into your nearest Applebee's today.