The Gender Gap Has Flipped | Richard Reeves PT 2

Summary

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Impact Theory w/ Tom Bilyeu

Episode: “The Gender Gap Has Flipped” (Richard Reeves Pt 2)

Date: August 14, 2024
Guest: Richard V. Reeves
Host: Tom Bilyeu
(Note: Joe Rogan is referred to in the transcript for this Impact Theory episode, as he occasionally appears or is referenced in crossover conversations.)

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the conversation between Tom Bilyeu and Richard V. Reeves, a leading scholar on gender and society, delving into the so-called “gender gap flip.” The discussion explores why men and boys are struggling more than women and girls in key domains, the cultural narratives about masculinity, policy implications, and where American society seems headed regarding gender roles and expectations. The conversation is balanced, nuanced, and challenges both right- and left-leaning orthodoxy, aiming to move beyond zero-sum thinking around gender issues.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cultural Narratives and the Meaning Crisis for Men

[01:00–06:00]

• Tom Bilyeu (ref. Joe Rogan): Connects the crisis among men to “a slow march through the institutions” of progressive ideology, which pathologizes masculinity and leaves many men feeling unwanted and without purpose.
  • Quote: “If you want to put a human being in hell, rob them of meaning and purpose and don't let them kill themselves… Living without meaning and purpose is horrific.” ([03:11])
• Richard Reeves: Pushes back by citing historical examples, like Margaret Thatcher, to demonstrate overlap between masculine and feminine leadership traits, and urges nuance rather than binary thinking.
  • Quote: “A huge amount of our problems stem from people's unwillingness or inability to imagine overlapping distributions…” ([06:07])
• Emphasizes that gender differences exist on average, but there’s massive individual variation ("overlapping distributions").

2. Zero-Sum Framing and Political Polarization

[06:38–13:15]

• Reeves laments the way both political sides have weaponized gender:
  • Quote: “Both sides very often [are] playing a zero sum game… as if somehow for men to flourish, women need to do worse or vice versa.” ([08:04])
• Points to the negative direction of current debates, e.g., the rise of “toxic masculinity” and reactive anti-feminism.
• He shares Melinda French Gates’ recent decision to fund programs for boys and men, showing that a “rising tide lifts all boats” approach is gaining acceptance.
  • Quote: “It’s not good for women and girls if boys and men are struggling.” ([09:37])
• Reeves is “pleasantly surprised” by growing willingness to discuss issues facing men, with his new think tank (AIBM) gaining traction.

3. Election 2024: Will Policies Change?

[13:17–18:05]

• Tom asks if either political camp (Harris/Walsh, Trump) offers hope for a balanced approach.
• Reeves answers bluntly: “No. That's the short answer. Short answer is no, not yet. At a national level, I find politics to be pretty frozen in a zero sum position on issues of gender…” ([13:17])
• Notes Democrats court women’s votes with policy (reproductive rights, college debt), Republicans double-down on anti-feminist rhetoric to win disaffected men.
• Policies to support struggling men are largely absent at the national level, but some state initiatives (e.g., more male teachers, boys & men commissions) are encouraging.
• Gender Policy Council Example: Neither party is likely to broaden the White House “Gender Policy Council” to include men’s issues.

4. DEI, Equity, and Data-Driven Policy

[18:47–23:40]

• Tom expresses strong skepticism toward “equity” as equal outcomes.
• Reeves argues for empirically-driven DEI: If men are struggling, a real equity agenda would include them. Most DEI programs ignore struggling men, showing their ideological, not data-driven, roots.
  • Quote: “If you've baked into your definition of equity that it can't possibly include men, then you've just revealed your hand…” ([21:38])
• Irony: Even the small number of campus resources for men often get axed with the rest of DEI offices under new political pressure.

5. AI Companions, “Sex Robots,” and the Future of Intimacy

[23:40–34:32]

• Tom raises the “hardest question” about male loneliness and how AI partners/sex robots may soon provide intimacy for men otherwise left out.
• Reeves has “mixed feelings,” noting historically society has always wrestled with surplus single men. Tech, porn, and games have dampened social fallout–perhaps for better or worse.
• Quote: “If the counterfactual is men with good, healthy in-person relationships, then AI girlfriends... are worse. If the counterfactual is nothing, maybe better.” ([28:12])
• Both agree the rise in tech-mediated intimacy is a worrying symptom of social malaise and diminished real-world flourishing.

6. Monogamy, Polyamory, and Cultural Enforcement

[34:32–42:55]

• Tom challenges whether historical monogamy was, in effect, forcing women into relationships with men they found unappealing.
• Reeves distinguishes between short-term dating market dynamics (where women focus on a small pool of high-status men) and long-term relationship/family preferences.
• He argues instead that culture should focus on improving men so they're better prospects, not coercing women.
  • Quote: “We should create men that [women] will be happy with.” ([41:00])
• Growing gender/cultural mismatch is troubling, impacting both men’s and women’s life outcomes.

7. China as a Masculinity Role Model?

[43:16–49:13]

• Tom cites Chinese policies to counter the “feminization” of boys—more sports, male P.E. teachers, reduced screen time—and asks if this “draconian” approach will work.
• Reeves is curious as a researcher, supportive of the physical activity push, but skeptical of top-down social engineering.
• Instead, he points to the cultural pull of fitness gurus—Huberman, Attia, Goggins—showing organic, aspirational masculinity’s appeal.

8. Skills Deficit, Romantic “Deskilling,” and the Check-Out Men

[51:02–54:52]

• Romance novels are booming among Gen Z women, potentially signaling a lack of real-life romance and skill-building.
• Reeves: Earlier, awkward dating teaches crucial social-emotional skills; teens are dating less, leading to a “deskilled” generation ill-equipped for adult relationships.
• The biggest concern isn’t acting-out men, but men who are giving up or “checking out.”
  • Quote: “It's the checked-out men that we should be spending most of our time on, but it's the acting-out men who get the headlines…” ([54:13])

9. Diagnosis: Why Are Young Men Retreating?

[55:04–59:57]

• Many young men exit high school feeling like failures, with few alternatives (lack of vocational training).
• Evidence suggests employers see young men as riskier hires.
• Posits that men are harmed by a “long list of don'ts” with no positive script, fueling passivity and lack of motivation.
• Quote (on cultural messaging): “If we don't have stories and role models about how fantastic it is to be male… the resulting asymmetry is incredibly disempowering…” ([59:18])

10. Celebrating Positive Masculinity

[59:49–65:32]

• Tom asks: "Why is it awesome to be male?"
• Reeves: Male friendships, banter, camaraderie, physicality, desire, and a sense of protectiveness are all positives; we need more stories about how to be good men, not just not bad men.
  • Quote: “Could we not actually talk about how to show you how to be good and what it means to be a good man, not just how to not be a bad man.” ([65:01])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On overlap in gender traits:
  “A huge amount of our problems stem from people's unwillingness or inability to imagine overlapping distributions…” – Richard Reeves ([06:07])

• On societal messaging to men:
  “If we don't have stories and role models about how fantastic it is to be male… the resulting asymmetry is incredibly disempowering…” – Richard Reeves ([59:18])

• On solving for flourishing:
  “Paying attention to the problems of boys and men in a respectful and compassionate way does not mark you out as a frothing-at-the-mouth misogynist. We're winning, but we haven't won.” – Richard Reeves ([11:32])

• On what men need:
  “We should create men that [women] will be happy with.” – Richard Reeves ([41:00])

• On checked-out men:
  “It's the checked-out men that we should be spending most of our time on, but it's the acting-out men who get the headlines…” – Richard Reeves ([54:13])

• On positive masculinity:
  “For the love of God, could we not actually talk about how to show you how to be good and what it means to be a good man, not just how to not be a bad man...” – Richard Reeves ([65:01])

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Key Timestamps

• 01:00 – Cultural roots of male meaning crisis
• 04:07 – Margaret Thatcher as a counterexample to “only men lead”
• 06:05 – Overlapping distributions, complexity in gender differences
• 09:37 – Melinda French Gates' funding for men/boys
• 13:17 – National vs. state-level gender policy
• 18:05 – “Sexy center” politics; Harris/Trump and DEI
• 21:38 – The real blind spot in DEI
• 25:28 – AI companions and the end of loneliness?
• 34:32 – Monogamy, enforced or chosen?
• 43:19 – China’s masculinity policies
• 51:02 – Rise of romance novels; “deskilling” in dating
• 54:52 – Checked-out men: the real crisis
• 59:49 – “Why is it awesome to be male?”
• 65:01 – Non-toxic vs. positive masculinity

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Conclusion

Tom Bilyeu and Richard Reeves map out the complexity behind today’s gender gaps, refusing partisan tropes. They call for a new narrative about men, argue for data-driven gender equity, and warn against policy by ideology or backlash. Above all, they challenge listeners to rise above the zero-sum “battle of the sexes”—insisting that a thriving society means learning how men and women can both flourish.

For further insights, Reeves invites listeners to his new think tank, the American Institute for Boys and Men.

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Transcript

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[Joe Rogan]

well, so I have a hypothesis about what happened. It's something I'm sure you've heard about, a lot of the audience will have heard about. But you had a slow march through the institutions of a hyper progressive agenda to elevate marginalized, so called marginalized voices. And when you have 30, 40 years of putting students through that cultural machinery, well, on the other side is going to be a culture of people who believe that America is an oppressive nation, it was founded on oppression, that men are problematic, that men should feel bad about what they've done about, they should feel bad about their more masculine impulses and tendencies. And those things are bad. And that men are basically broken women. And if we're going to fix you, you're going to act more feminine. So people need a narrative. They need to understand the world around them and a large way that they get that education is through the school system. And so again, if you spend 40 years putting people through that system, that a system that is increasingly that because first they go through as students, then they come back as educators. So now the next batch of students has this sort of double reinforced thing. And it is not surprising to me that we've seen, despite the fact that men remain in politics, I would say largely because of biology. So I'm sure you've seen these studies where it's like if you show God, I can't remember if it's toddlers, but you show really young kids just pictures of a guy's face from a real election and they can accurately predict the person that's going to win just based on the features of their face. So it's like, usually the taller person wins. Like this not culturally inculcated stuff. This is your history is a red and tooth and claw thing. And when you want somebody to lead, you're going to want the person that's going to be out front of the battle, that has military intelligence, that knows how to take on a foe. And so that, that's just so ingrained in us in the same way that we're afraid of snakes, we turn to the bigger, stronger, more intelligent person to lead. It just is what it is. And I would say that the same march, the institutions that has painted this oppressor, oppressed narrative has also painted a picture of biology. Doesn't matter, we're a blank slate. It's just, it's, it's all discombobulating. It makes no sense and has led to the weird things that we see, which is, hey, it's still all run by men for the biological reasons that I just laid out. And men aren't thriving because of that shift of, like women, you don't have any position. All of your instincts, you're told, are bad. And so you do that and you just get the pulling back. No sense of meaning and purpose, not knowing what their role is. Which I think if you want to put a human being in hell, rob them of meaning and purpose and don't let them kill themselves. And I know that sounds terrible, but living without meaning and purpose is horrific. That's why people with no meaning and purpose commit suicide.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yeah. So the points, there's a point of disagreement and a point of significant agreement, I think, between us on this, number one is around the kind of leadership, leadership qualities, because we've been talking so much about the uk and I just have to go back to Margaret Thatcher when, when the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, every single man around her said, we cannot get them back. They're the other side of the world. It's just cost so much money and lives and, you know, it's just not worth it. Prime Minister, they, and, and one of her admirals, we'd have to send in the whole fleet. And she said, so send in the whole fleet, go get them back. So, you know, and that was a very impressionable time of my life. And so kind of seeing Margaret Thatcher, a woman, overruled all the military men around her to send the nation to war and to commandeer cruise ships to fill them with soldiers, to send them, in some cases, to their death to reclaim these barren rocks of Ireland. Because By God, they were British. Suggests that it's not only men that can have those characteristics and the distributions. At the very least, those distributions overlap in terms of those qualities. So that may be the point of disagreement.

[Joe Rogan]

I would agree violently with that. That's why I'm saying these are all proxies. I care about the outcome. So if Margaret Thatcher and a cabinet of women.

[Richard V. Reeves]

But she's bi. But you said it was biologic. You said it was biology.

[Joe Rogan]

Correct.

[Richard V. Reeves]

And she's obviously biologically correct.

[Joe Rogan]

That's. But you have to admit that's the exception, not the rule. So I am for sure not saying that women can't do it. 100 they can. It is possible for any woman to be better than a man at something. But once you start going on to the averages now, all of a sudden it's like the averages begin to matter.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Sure. And I think that's the point. One of the points of agreement is, and maybe this is a good way to kind of loop back some of the discussions we had earlier, somebody once said that a huge amount of our problems stem from people's unwillingness or inability to imagine overlapping distributions and to imagine. So when you say men are taller than women, everybody knows what you mean by that. They know that. What you mean is that on average, men are taller than women. Right. Not that all men are taller than all women. It means that very few of the people over 6 foot are women. I don't know what the number is, but it's a tiny percentage of people over 6 foot, but a significant minority. I won't say the number because I get it wrong. Of women are taller than the median men. The distributions overlap in terms of height. That's true of lots of the other characteristics we're talking about. There is a difference on average between men and women on a bunch of characteristics, and the distributions overlap. And actually on many of those characteristics, someone like Margaret Thatcher may have been more quotes male. Or in my case, I'm much more agreeable, which is more a feminine trait than my wife. She doesn't like me saying that on air. So just keep that between us and your listeners. But she's much more disagreeable than I am. She's more male, typically. And so the point being that the distributions kind of hugely overlap and that that's just something that people really struggle to get their head around. They either think men like this, women like this, or they think men and women are just the same and everything's socialized. We're tabula rasa. And the only differences between men and women are ones we learn. And that's crazy. I mean, anyone that's been around men or women or raised them, it's insanity to suggest that everything's socially determined as much as it is to suggest that everything's biologically determined. So if I sound frustrated, it's because it's just a stupid debate. Where I think I agree with you is that recent trends in a lot of political debate, especially around gender, especially on the left, have kind of framed this as quite zero sum and have in fact, kind of cast men as the problem rather than the system as the problem. And that's a real shift away, I think, from the best of the women's movement. The best of the women's movement was kind of looking at structures and rules and various ways in which kind of women's opportunities were being enhanced. And it was very much for women. And I think in recent years, it's become more framed, more negatively, and it's become more against men, obviously against, you know, smash, the patriarchy, et cetera. Mansplaining. The rise of the term toxic masculinity, I think, is a really good leading indicator of a very worrying trend where it was actually about kind of pathologizing certain aspects of male behavior. And so I think that's been a really unfortunate turn in politics. And I'd have to add, though, that the reactionary right has very often done the same thing in saying that, yeah, men are struggling because women are doing too well, and we have. Women have to get back, we have to go back on women in order for men to rise again. And so it's frustrating to see both sides very often playing a zero sum game, but just from different sides, right? As if somehow for men to flourish, women need to do worse or vice versa. Whereas actually, we have to rise together and we have to see it. Something interesting happened to me recently, which is that Melinda French Gates, who's one of the leading philanthropists around women's rights, tapped me to spend $20 million of her money on boys and men. And that's a surprising move. A lot of people were surprised by that. But as she said publicly, since it's because it's not good for women and girls if boys and men are struggling. And so there you have one of the world's leading feminists. I think she would accept that label, recognizing that we have to rise together and that women have a vested interest in male flourishing and vice versa. And I think the ice is really breaking around this now. I think people are over the zero Sum bullshit. And they're ready for a conversation which says if there is someone struggling to flourish. If we're losing 40,000 men a year to suicide, that is a massive problem. 40,000 every year, as many as we lose women to breast cancer. Different kind of problem, but in terms of scale and rising. The fact that suicide among young men has risen by a third just since 2010. The fact that we lose so many male lives to drug poisonings now and deaths of despair, et cetera, the fact that so many men feel unneeded. To come back to your point, being unneeded is death. It's either a social or literal death center. People are ready to really pay attention to those issues and they're sick of being told that they can't. Otherwise it would mean they somehow don't care about women and girls anymore. I've really discovered just in the last couple of years, even since we spoke last, I've really felt that the ground is moving here and that people are perfectly willing to have a conversation about boys and men. So I wrote about it and everyone said, be careful. Now I've created a whole new institute, the American Institute for Boys and Men. And initially people are not sure about that. Now they're like, yeah, sure, fine, it's becoming boringly normal now. Right? We do research, we do policy, we're worried about boys and men. Sure. And I think within a couple of years people will wonder why, will wonder why we didn't exist before. So in other words, the normies are winning on this stuff. We are winning. I'm a self declared proud normie and I just think that being able to think 2 thoughts at once and recognize that paying attention, real attention to the problems of boys and men in a respectful and a compassionate way does not mark you out as a frothing at the mouth misogynist. We're winning, but it's, it's, we haven't won. There's still a lot of obstacles to this. But I have to tell you, I've been pleasantly surprised by people's willingness to have this conversation.

[Joe Rogan]

I love that. It's great. On the surface it, I think we, we agree on most things, but I can tell you feel that there's a thing that we disagree on, which we do, to put a fine point on it. It is the base assumption of whether tinkering is going to lead us somewhere good or whether the second and third order consequences that can't be seen by default, you should just assume they're going to be problematic. I think that's where we disagree. But now that we've planted a flag, A because I'm extremely convincable and B even if you can't convince me, I'm still very sincerely interested as a self proclaimed policy wonk, somebody that is building an institute to think about these things. With the 2024 election coming, do you hear policies coming out of the Harris and Trump camps that make you optimistic about the future of a non zero sum game for men and women?

[Richard V. Reeves]

No. That's the short answer. Short answer is no, not yet. At a national level, I find politics to be pretty frozen in a zero sum position on issues of gender and I think that that is likely to deepen. But we'll see. Obviously Harris Walsh is new, but certainly all the signs I've seen so far is if anything it will deepen because actually the Republicans are attracting a lot more support from young men, whereas young women attending, even attending more liberal. Obviously the Democrats are running on a very kind of pro women agenda, not least around reproductive rights, etc. But even things like college, college debt cancellation is massively popular among women, not so much among men. And so there's lots of issues where they're kind of trying to really trying to win by turning out women's votes to a very significant extent, including suburban women around some of those issues. Meanwhile, there has been a move among men, young, as I said, young men, also black and Hispanic men. We'll see if that continues to the Republicans. And So you'll see J.D. vance in particular, but kind of Trump really doubling down I think on this kind of anti feminist rhetoric, you know, the childless cat lady stuff that we've heard from Vance and others. And they'll do that because they actually, you know, it's working to some extent. They're actually kind of if there are men out there who feel like things have gone too far or that men aren't being treated properly or they're not being respected, et cetera, then I think Trump and Vance can they have a certain affect and a certain set of messaging that can draw them. But when it comes to policy, there's just nothing on either side. I just think they're just dug in. And an example of that would be, I don't know if you know Senator Josh Hawley or his work at all. He's the Missouri senator. He's written a book called Manhood and he's really very interested in these issues. And what I find interesting is that when the bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed, which was the first major piece of legislation really helped working class men. Most of the benefit went to working class men because it's construction, transit. And the Democrats did everything possible to avoid that conclusion. When they were asked about it, they would really dodge the question. They wouldn't say this is good for working class men. They couldn't say that. And then Josh Hawley and I would say Trump, Vance, who say that they're on, on the side of working class men. A lot of them are against. And Josh Hawley voted against the infrastructure bill. And so there's this kind of weird issue here where the people who claim to be on, on the side of boys and men actually don't have policies to do anything to help them. And the people who are interested in policies, the policy wonks, more on the left actually just aren't right now addressing the issues of boys and men. That said, at the state level, at the kind of governor level at the state level, there's a lot more going on. You're seeing moves to try and get more men into teaching. Washington state is considering a commission on boys and men and they're obviously a more progressive state. The governor of Utah has created a task force on the well being of boys and men. And there are a number of governors and education secretaries who are kind of engaged in this. So once you get away from the national level at a state level, there's just a much better conversation going on. So I've been really pleased by the movement there. Let's see what happens after November. I'll give you one like, if super nerdy like this isn't just in the weeds. This is in the weeds, within the weeds. This is in the roots of the weeds. It's so boring. But there's something in the White House called the Gender Policy Council. It replaced the Council on Women and Girls, renamed itself, but only addresses issues of women and girls. So it's called the Gender Policy Council, but doesn't do anything about boys and men. Even when there are massive gender gaps going the other way, it just won't do it. It's baked in. That will only do it one way. I think it's quite likely that if Harris wins, she'll just keep it like that. And it's quite likely that Trump wins. He'll abolish it. He'll just say this is a bunch of woke nonsense. I'm getting rid of that. I can imagine that actually working for his based, he'd probably agree too because it's very tinkery. It's a gender Policy Council, for goodness sake. Is another piece of the government. I would want either of them to expand its remit to actually try and work across departments to tackle some of the issues facing boys and men. Right now. I don't see either candidate being willing to keep the Gender Policy Council but broaden its remit so that it actually looks at the problems of boys and men. I think the Democrats will keep it in its current asymmetric mode and the Republicans are quite likely to abolish it. I don't know. They haven't stated a position on that. And so I'll give you that as an example of what I would consider my sort of boringly moderate centrist tinkerer position on this, which is, say the Gender Policy Council would expand. It is unlikely to find favor at a national level, but that's exactly the kind of thing that's happening at a state level.

[Joe Rogan]

I like to think of it as the sexy center and as somebody who also finds himself pole dancing in the sexy center in the middle of the wire. Exactly. Um, so that's troubling. And it's troubling because it feels so accurate. But what do you think about Harris's historical? I don't know if she's going to update her thinking, but her historical hard push for DEI equity, that really turns me off. I am. I am wildly opposed to equity, meaning equal outcome. I don't think there's any way to do that except tyrannical top down control. Um, but maybe you have a different read. What do you think?

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[Richard V. Reeves]

Well, I don't do political punditry. The last senior politician I advised was Nick Clegg when he was deputy Prime Minister of the uk and after I advised him, his party went down to its biggest electoral defeat since World War II so my phone hasn't been ringing off the hook since then for political advice, and I'm genuinely nonpartisan. It's very easy to appear nonpartisan when you're actually nonpartisan, I've discovered. So I'm not. And so I obviously don't know what either campaign will say about this. But I do have views about DEI and equity. And my basic view on this is that if you feel as if this, I think, is consistent with our conversation, if you feel like the push for diversity, equity, inclusion, obviously you have to define what you mean by those terms. But if it's basically about trying to ensure more opportunities, leveling the playing field, reducing barriers, if you feel like that's being driven by the data, by the empirical evidence, rather than by a fixed ideology, then I think it doesn't run into some of the challenges that it's run into now. And so, for example, on college campuses, one of the things I will say to kind of college leaders, et cetera, they will sometimes find that their DEI programs, and this is obviously happening in a lot of states now, they're being shut down or defunded and so on. And what I'll often say to them is, well, we've seen your numbers, right? You have a huge problem with male enrollment, with male completion. Your own surveys show that men do not feel included on your campus. So where in your DEI strategy is the stuff for men? And if it isn't there, then it's reasonable to worry that your strategy is not actually being driven by your data. It's being driven by some fixed ideological views about who you should be providing equity to. And if you've baked into your definition of equity that it can't possibly include men, then you've just revealed your hand and you've shown that your agenda is not being driven by evidence, it's being driven by ideology. And that's a frustration for me because I do think that a lot of the arguments that are made around diversity, inclusion, and even equity, depending on how you define it, are pretty strong. It's just that it's not being applied evenhandedly. Where are the men's resource center? Where are the male success centers? Where's the outreach to men? What are you doing for men on your campus as part of your DEI agenda? And by the way, just from a tactical point of view, if you wanted to save your DEI office from being shut down by, it would be largely kind of Republican lawmakers. What if you could turn around to them and say, well, we're doing this whole thing for white rural men, because we've discovered that white rural men are not doing well on our campus. Do you make it a bit harder for them to shut you down? Wouldn't it? I'm not saying he wouldn't shut you down, but it would make it harder because you could say, look, we just go to where we've looked at our data, we've seen where we lack diversity, we've seen where we lack equity, and we've seen who doesn't feel included. And guess what? A bunch of them turn out to be men. And so a big part of that agenda is men. But that never happens. And so to some extent, I think so many of the people who are pushing the equity agenda are shooting themselves in the foot by not following the data. So for what it's worth, that's my current view on it. And that means, of course, that we might, a horrible cliche, throw the baby out with the bath water. And what I find interesting is that these very small efforts that we see on college campuses now to help men, they're usually out of the DEI office. So they're getting shut down as well, ironically. So even in the places where they have done it, it's too little. They're getting shut down as well.

[Joe Rogan]

That's really interesting, the idea of following the data, obviously, that is speaking my language. I'm really here for that. I just worry tremendously about trying to steer towards equal outcomes just because everybody is so different, even if just at the level of intellect, level of desire, like you're never going to get an entire population there unless you tell everybody to slow down to the lowest common denominator, which I very much don't think we want to do. But speaking to actually helping men, I want to put to you what I think is legitimately the hardest question in what's going on with men right now, which is through all of human history, we have averaged twice as many women having, or us having twice as many female ancestors as we have male. There have been times post agriculture where that number was as high as 17 women reproducing for every one male. Those numbers are terrifying beyond belief to me. And one solution that I see that will make it very clear how people think through this problem is AI companions and sex robots, and especially one coming together. Because now, for the first time in human history, we may be seven to 10 years away from every man being able to have a thriving sexual. They won't be able to reproduce, but a thriving sexual relationship with a companion that they can be intimate with. And. And no one need be left behind from that perspective. The reproduction part is different. But what do you think about that? Terrified or encouraged?

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yeah, I have mixed feelings, is the honest answer. And the twice as many ancestors want fact is one I like. I haven't heard the 17 to 11 before. I'd love to learn. Maybe you can send me something about that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Richard V. Reeves]

One of the things that I. One of the things that I. Actually, one of the things I find really striking is there's lots of discussion of AI girlfriends, not much discussion of AI boyfriends, which I think is pretty good evidence that there are differences between men and women when it comes to sex. But someone said, yeah, but said that there could be AI husbands. And then actually, I have a friend who got the AI to talk to his wife when she was having trouble at work. And she said, actually, the AI is doing a better job than you because he would get frustrated and just want to fix it. And he wanted to go and watch the ball game, whereas the AI was just had all the time in the world, was very thoughtful and just said, God, that must have been so difficult for you. Tell me more about that. And how did that make you feel? So he just left the AI playing while he went to watch the ball game. And so the intriguing idea is that AI might substitute better for husbands in terms of relationships, but substitute for men in terms of sex. So the reason I've mixed things about it is because I think that to go back a little bit, the problem of surplus men, which is the one you're pointing to with those statistics, is a problem that every society has had to deal with. What do you do with the men who are you not going to reproduce? And of course, monogamy, basically, as Joe Henrik shows, really kind of largely solved that problem by actually doing monogamy. It meant that most men would at least have a chance of mating if not reproducing. And that massively changed those numbers just in the last few centuries, but it's still been a problem. What do you do with the men? And we've had this growing problem of surplus men in the last few decades as well. Kind of men who are not marrying, maybe men who are not in the labor market, but that's coincided with the rise of technology and in particular video games and pornography. And so we may have talked about this before, but I think it's quite interesting that as we've seen more and more men at a loose end or without clear role, you would have predicted that we'd see a Massive rise in crime and antisocial behavior. But the opposites happen. With few obvious exceptions. But crime and disorder has gone down during the period where more and more young, young men especially have had less to do. In every previous era of human history that would have predicted more disorder and crime. Those men would have been acting out on the streets. It would have been, would be more like, more like Mad Max, you know, on the streets. But actually the opposite's happened. And I think part of that is because of games and they've had somewhere else to go. Somewhere else. In some ways quite attractive and quite enticing. And so you could, if that's right, if the screens have to some extent saved us from what would otherwise potentially have been some of the worst cultural consequences of male lack of purpose, redundancy, almost. Okay, maybe, maybe the counterfactual would have been a lot worse. Fast forward that to AI girlfriends. Well, what's the counterfactual? If the counterfactual is men with good, healthy in person relationships, then AI girlfriends, in my view, worse. If the counterfactual is nothing, maybe better. And I think that's a really difficult position to take. I would suggest though that if we do end up with massive demand for artificial forms of intimacy, including sex, but more generally, we should treat that very seriously as a symptom of a lack of human flourishing. To use your good. I don't want to be judgmental about it and I'm being quite careful what I say here, but I would say in general, the evidence would suggest to me that over the long run, especially that real human relationships are much more conducive to human flourishing than anything that you're likely to get with an AI. And so if human flourishing is the goal, that trend were that to happen, should really trouble us. And if we see more and more young men resorting to that, whilst it may not be bad in itself, I think it's a very bad sign.

[Joe Rogan]

It is a bad sign in terms of how many people are being left behind. But if, let's just assume that it's 50% and that the. Because the stat that I was talking about, I think they're being very careful to denote that before agriculture no one could amass resources because resources you had to go kill in real time to eat. But once agriculture comes along, now you can amass real wealth. And now suddenly one person. I've heard you say, I think it's utterly brilliant. You mentioned it, I think earlier. But would you rather be the third or seventh wife of Jeff bezos or the only wife to an unemployed steelworker. And that's what history is, is up until agriculture, it was probably 2 to 1 just given where we're at. And then at some point you're able to get these disproportionate. But it's really only in the last. Call it 10 to 12,000 years, which is a blink in the eye of evolution. Okay, so if it's a two to one ratio and that get.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yes, no, please, no. I was just saying that relates to the fertility question you raised earlier, which is that one of the interesting trends, and I'll just put the data point, is that until about 10 or 15 years ago, most of the decline in fertility was of people having fewer children. Right. So having two, not three, say. But since, since about 10, 15 years ago, it's been fewer people having children. Fewer. That's driving it. And that's a very different kind of issue. That's a big change kind of what's driving it. I wasn't so worried about it when it was kind of people having fewer children. I think it's a more troubling sign about human flourishing if it's more people not having children. Unless you had strong evidence that they didn't want children. And the evidence for that is not that strong. It typically is people who otherwise. Otherwise probably would have had children, but for whatever reason don't. And one of the reasons they point to is because there aren't any men around, that they want to have Chinoplas.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, yeah. That. That is probably too complicated for this interview. It's. It's worth an interview unto itself. But where I was going is if you have this two to one ratio, then forever. All throughout human history you've had this problem to deal with, and up until now there really hasn't been a solution. I don't think anybody except the most distressing among us would ever say, well, women should just marry a man that they're not into to make sure that that man isn't lonely. So assuming that no sociopaths are around, and we are not suggesting that.

[Richard V. Reeves]

It's a very bad sales pitch to women, isn't it?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, terrible. So assuming that. We're not talking about that now, you have, literally, for the first time ever, you have an ability for those people not to get left behind. And so for me, even though I live in perpetual terror of second and third order consequences, and I really cannot see around this corner, and of course it will never be all the people that they maximize themselves, did everything they could and they still can't find somebody that's interested in them. And so they turn to this. It will be for many people just going to be the default because the, the AI is not going to reject you, it's going to embrace you. So I'm ecstatic that for the first time in human history we have a solution. I'm terrified for all the questions that it begs, but let's find for the thought of a thought exercise or for the sake of a thought exercise, let me put it to you this way. How would you want the AI companion stroke sex robot to be programmed? So my wife, for instance, has shaped me and both through approval and disapproval. Would you want the AI wife, We'll just assume wife. Would you want the AI wife or husband to shape their significant other through encouragement and discouragement?

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[Richard V. Reeves]

To say that I'm out of my lane and comfort zone would be an understatement. I just want to say one other thing, maybe to buy a bit of time, but we did have a solution. It was called monogamy and it worked pretty well. So we had polygamy for in most societies and that caused this 50:50 ratio. Men only had a 50% chance of reproducing because you don't actually need that many men. So some men were doing a lot more reproducing with a lot more than one woman. Monogamy came along largely throughout the church and, and I'm just really channeling Joe Henrik's work here. And so for a long. That sort of is pretty good solve. And because women basically had to marry to survive then that lasted quite a long time as a solution, quote unquote to this the problem of surplus men. You didn't have surplus men because the women had to marry to survive and men were only allowed to marry one. So do the math. I think the issue is now is that we're entering a new phase. I talked to Joe Henrik a bit about this myself, which is that I don't think that we're going to go back to polygamy in any big way. I mean, obviously this discussion about polyamory. I think instead, what's going to come after monogamy is celibacy, a single life for both men and women, which is one of the reasons that we see this decline in fertility and which I do think in the long run, obviously there are lots of exceptions, but it's kind of bad for long run human flourishing. There's this phrase in the empty branches. I think it's either Japanese or Chinese. You get to old age and you just don't have any relatives. And that's just not great, especially for flourishing in old age. But to come back to a question, I just, I'm desperately trying to draw on any kind of, well, of knowledge that would allow me to kind of answer that, that question about kind of AI robots. And I just don't think I've got anything good to say about it. And so I think I'd probably better just duck the question altogether because I'll be honest and say just I can't help but not feel a little bit dystopian in even contemplating it. And so it almost gives a bit too much credence to the idea that we're going to be reliant on AI for me to feel comfortable with it.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, I'll see if I can draw you into those waters in a minute. But first, I'll take the bait of what you've handed me. So how is culturally enforced monogamy not forcing women to choose a man they would not otherwise be with?

[Richard V. Reeves]

Say that again.

[Joe Rogan]

So we had said earlier that neither of us would want to see women be forced to choose a man that they don't want.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Sure.

[Joe Rogan]

In a world where dating apps have proven that women just aggregate to sexual encounters with a very small number of men so that most men are not being successful on dating apps. And when I say successful, I mean penetration. Most men are not having sex with women, and most women are gravitating towards a much smaller subset of men. So one man is having sex with multiple women. So women are saying, when you give me this technology and the ability to choose, I would rather be with the popular guy with the access to resources and be the 17th girlfriend, then be the first and only girlfriend to somebody who I think is beneath me. So they. The question has been asked and answered. So now that we know the question has been asked and answered and you have men being forced into celibacy and you have women that are saying, no, I'll have these flings or whatever and I may not end up having kids Because I never find anybody to settle down with, but I'm certainly willing to have these sexual dalliances with these very high status males. Okay, so we are, maybe we're not calling it polyamory. Seems like it rhymes to me. But if, if that's where people left to their own devices, settle out, if we turn to monogamy and go, well, this was really a good solution, how would that not be in the modern context, forcing them to be with somebody they wouldn't otherwise be with? Now it's cultural enforcement. It is not governmental enforcement. It's not be done by physical force. But how is that not enforcement nonetheless?

[Richard V. Reeves]

Right. So I think that, I think it's a mistake to extrapolate from what's happening in dating apps and dalliances and very short term relationships, perhaps largely based around sex, to people's preferences for long term relationships. And so I think you've described, as far as I know, what's happening on dating maps very accurately. But I take at face value the fact that most people will say that they do want a long term relationship, that they do want to probably have a family, and that very often women say the problem's not on the demand side, it's on the supply side. And that they just can't find men with whom they are willing to have children. And that maybe they've expected men to do more than maturing before the relationship, before the marriage, than in the past where the men would mature through marriage. And so I actually do think there was something to the fact that kind of marriage kind of was a mech institution that helped to help men to mature, to kind of to be civilized, to use some other language that people use. Whereas I think now women are saying, no, no, no, I'm not civilizing you. You get civilized first. Right? You get mature first, you get your act together first, and then I might marry. That's a massive change. And I think that kind of a lot of men are really struggling with that shift, even if they don't think about it that way. And so no coercion, but take at face value, that is probably what most people want and do everything we can to help men to be better partners and better husbands and be better prospects. I mean, I do think there's something to the fact that improving the kinds of men that are on the market, to use this terminology, is a big part of it and that that will be. So I don't think we solve the problem by, in any way. I mean, you've made it clear. You mean Culturally, but even culturally, suggesting to women that they should marry men that they don't feel they want, that they are happy with, we should create men that they will be happy with. And so that brings us back to, I think where we started, which is the challenges that men are facing in their physical health, their mental health, their education, their sense of themselves, their efficacy. All of the things that men are really struggling with are not only hurting them, they're hurting the marital prospects of their female peers. And I find it super interesting that when I talk about these issues of men, middle aged women, sort of women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, they're like, really? Is that right? Because they face a lot of glass ceilings. Maybe that doesn't sound right. Women in their 20s, regardless of their politics, they get it straight away because I'm talking about that, we're talking about their peers. And so it's interesting that you don't have to do as much convincing of the typical 25 year old woman as you do the typical 55 year old woman that young men are struggling because it feels existential for those young women. And I presume based on some pretty good evidence, that most of those young women would actually prefer everything equal at some point to find a partner and have children with that partner and raise those kids together. That is still the stated preference of most young women. So I don't think it's a problem of what people's preferences are. I think it's a problem of finding someone who can do that. I do worry a lot that right now young women and young men don't feel very aligned in their interests. They feel, if anything, like they're separating not only kind of physically and romantically, but also, and we saw, and I said politically, but just culturally, I kind of think there's this kind of growing gap between young men and young women. And that really troubles me from all kinds of perspectives, not least family formation.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So I think that you've got your finger on a potential solution which is for men to rise up. Let me ask, do you think that China's policies are going to output men that women will prefer compared to what we're doing here in the US currently, which is letting them flounder.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Which policies do you have in mind specifically? You may know more about this.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, so this is utterly fascinating. In fact, I have a quote here that I pulled during my prep. So according to the BBC, a top Chinese official said and actually went and read this. So I will agree this is what it says. Uh, there is a trend among young Chinese males towards feminization, which would inevitably endanger the survival and development of the Chinese nation unless it is effectively managed. Uh, and so they're doing all kinds of stuff that there's like a whole list of proposed policies. I don't know how many of these they have or will implement. But this was the government, the educational body, making a proposal that they wanted the government to basically sanction. And they said we want more focus on physical education, getting the boys out there playing sports, being aggressive, getting physically fit. We want more former athletes as physical education instructors. They're putting huge limitations on the amount that people under 18 can play video games. And there was a couple other things designed basically to get the getting stars that are represent a very masculine, muscular physique so that people that are being celebrated to the country represent that sort of male, traditional male. They didn't say like 80s action hero and I doubt they mean something like that, but the images, at least in the article, were just guys that were ripped, they had muscles and they were in the middle of doing very physical things. But just they're just stating outright that they're worried that Chinese men are becoming feminized in and of itself. Is, is pretty interesting. And given that they are so prone to controlling their populace through policies that are very difficult to sidestep, like they'll just shut off your Internet or they won't let you spend money on things that they deem unworthy. So do you think draconian or not, that that will end up outputting men that women are more satisfied with?

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yeah, I mean, say they don't tinker the Chinese. No, they're not.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a little beyond that, which is,

[Richard V. Reeves]

I mean, at the very least, as a social scientist, I'm excited by the opportunity to research it.

[Joe Rogan]

Agreed.

[Richard V. Reeves]

And I. What I hope they'll do, what would be great is if they introduce these rules, say the Internet rules or the, you know, the gaming rules at different times in different provinces. So again, we get a nice natural experiment. There's this really good work showing the impact of the one child policy on the number of surplus men later. And they could do that because it was in the one child policy was introduced at different times in different Chinese provinces. And so you could literally time it till 18 years later. So look, I mean as you go through the list of things, and by and large, I don't think starting off by kind of telling men that they've become too soft and feminine is a great PR approach. So I would say that that's bad messaging. But in terms of like the specific things you've mentioned, like, I think it's quite hard to argue against most of them. Right. I don't freak out about video games like some people. I worry that it kind of pushes out some other activities. I worry a lot about the lack of physical health and physical boys. And this is true for boys and girls, but for kind of boys and men especially, I think kind of lack of physical activity seems to be particularly damaging. So I worry a lot about that. So more of that would be good. So on the face of it, some of this stuff looked interesting. Even the role model stuff seems okay. It's just that you don't want to do that. So here I'll end up agreeing with you. You just generally don't want to do that through kind of top down policies. And I think that if it feels top down, it's much less likely to succeed than if it feels organic. But one of the things I'm very interested in now, if you look at people who are online and the kind of the sorts of podcasts, perhaps including this one, that a lot of men might listen to or the sort of figures they turn to, of course you've got the kind of extreme manosphere men's rights types. But what I find it quite interesting is how many people are attracted to more of the kind of fitness types. And I'm thinking about people like Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia. You mentioned David Goggins earlier and so on too. Like these are, these are men who no one would think of as in any way kind of crazy or reactionary or anything. And they're all about like living well and a lot of fitness stuff. And so I'm very struck by how many young men are really into that kind of thing. And so I think what's happening there is that a model of masculinity, if you like, that's largely being refracted through discussions about physical health. And so it's not threatening to a lot of men, but they embody a certain way of being male that's very attractive and very aspirational to boys and young men. And that's good, right? We should want them to aspire to be physically healthy, to be strong. Right? That's good. That's just good for your health. And if those men are also just, they have a way of being in their conversation that's aspirational as well, that's amazing. And so I'm picking on Andrew Huberman. But you take someone like Huberman who's just all about. He's just geeky scientist, fitness guy, but he's also fit and he talks a lot about his own fitness and so on too. He has a huge following among young men. That's awesome. I don't think the Chinese government saying you should be like Andrew Huberman or whoever the Chinese Andrew Huberman is is a very effective strategy. I think what's great is if Andrew Huberman exists and millions of young men flock to him, awesome. That's happening organically. And it also shows you that that is really what young men are interested in. And will that help to create more marriageable men, more matable men? Let's hope so.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I agree. I think putting it out into the. Well, so let me state the answer to my own question simply. Yes. I think that by focusing men on an ideal that is more masculine, that will pay off in terms of creating men that women are far more likely to be attracted to. Now, if you leave out things like emotional intelligence, a desire to see your partner thrive, you're going to have problems. So if you're hearkening back to sort of caveman style, no, that's not going to work. But I think it is very instructive if men look at the female version of pornography, which is the romance novel. Sure, some people will take exception to that. Until you read one and then you realize it really is pornography for women. And that like that breaks into these just super clear cut archetypes of the pirate, vampire, werewolf, billionaire, doctor. And I think there's one other. But it's like that. Women just go cowboy. Yeah, basically women are going for it's the beauty and the beast archetype. They want to tame the untamable man who through their sort of feminine wiles and sexual prowess they are able to tame this all conquering beast that for nobody, nobody else could get access to this sort of inner gooey center of emotional communication and attachment. That's the female fantasy. And so once you understand, oh, you can actually become that. But you all, you have to be an integrated beast and have that gui center that can be accessed, that you can be articulate and loving and committed. And if you can find a path to that integration, then you've got a real shot. And if you can't, then you're going to be in trouble. All right.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yeah. I find those sort of fantasy things instructive and interesting as long as we always remember, of course, that they're kind of fantasies. But I was struck, I actually ran across a news article the other Day which said that romance novels are really booming among Gen Z women. So young women in particular seem to become turning to those novels. And I was frustrated with the way it was reported because then it kind of talks about the lack of diversity in the authors which I thought kind of missed the lead, which is how interested that kind of young women are turning to these kind of romance novels. And so I talked to some young women about it. This is one of my son's friends were over and they were like, well, it's because a lot of those young women feel they lack it in real life. Now of course you can have it in real life and still have want the fantasy and so on too. I'm not suggesting that they're accounter posed but. But nonetheless it was instructive to me that there's a danger that in some of our slightly antiseptic approaches to sex ed and to relationships and to a kind of risk aversion in some ways that we do take some of the romance out and that actually being able to successfully navigate those romantic relationships is part of growing up. We actually published a piece by Daniel Cox, who's a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute on why he's worried that teens aren't dating as much. So whilst it's good news that teen pregnancy's down and it may be good news that teens are having sex later, it's not good news that they're dating less. And the reason he believes that, and I believe this too, is that because it's through those earlier dating experiences that you, you learn a lot of those skills. Like it's hard, there's rejection, there's misunderstanding, there's kind of how do you, how do you like, it's, it's one of the most difficult areas of human life to navigate, right? That kind of, that entering the zone of kind of romance. And I do, I worry a lot about deskilling. I worry a lot the both young men and young women, but perhaps especially are getting deskilled around that. And then they hit the kind of world of romance, the world of dating in their. And actually Dan Cox is writing a book about this like in their mid-20s and they're still pretty unskilled, right? So they've maybe got the skill level of yesterday's 17 year old or whatever, whatever you want to say. And so they blunder and they don't really know what they're doing and they lack confidence and they get it wrong. And so anyway, it's a, it's a, a long answer, but I I'm, I'm, I'm really interested in what's happening to young people romantically and a bit troubled by the signs that there's been this progressive deskilling because it's difficult, right. And you know, I'm old and I'm in my mid-50s and like you learned this stuff the hard way by getting it wrong and learning how to take rejection and, and so on. And I worry that without the skills you just retreat. And so this maybe brings us back to where we were a while ago, which is the thing that worries me most about young men in particular. But perhaps men generally is not the ones who are acting out. There are a few of those, but not many. It's the ones who are checking in, it's the ones who are retreating sometimes online spaces. And I think it's that sense of male retreat. I think you maybe even use that term before just kind of backing away from the challenges of work, study, life, self improvement. Right. That is the most troubling of all. Right. It's the checked out men that we should be spending most of our time on, but it's the acting out men who get the headlines rather than ones who are just quietly giving up and sometimes most tragically giving up even on themselves.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you think they have in common? Have they imbibed an idea that's holding them back? Are they just getting clobbered in education system that's wildly female?

[Richard V. Reeves]

I think they're coming out of an education system that has not served them well and that has sent them the message that they're just not very good at this education system that has not provided them alternatives. I mean, this is a very wonky point to make along the way, but I think that I've written a lot about this, that the lack of vocational training, the lack of hands on learning opportunities has just been really bad news for boys and men because the last year or two of high school is just basically just a massive cratering waste of time for a lot of boys. And so they drop out. I mean they just, they fall off the end of the conveyor belt of the K12 education system having basically felt like they failed. And then they maybe try and get some sort of post secondary education. They really struggle in the labor market. Employers are actually a little bit less likely to want to hire young men than young women now because they see them as slightly riskier hires. They're struggling in the labor market.

[Joe Rogan]

Wait, can you say more about. I've never, I've never heard that before. People consider Mental.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yeah, we've actually, again, I'm just advertising, but we just published a piece by Matt Darling which had a really nice natural experiment in it where they basically made it a bit more expensive for employers to fire people in one state compared to another state. It changed the law around unemployment insurance. And what that's an experiment. And what that tells you is if you make it slightly, you make it a little bit riskier to hire people, then see what happens to hiring patterns. And what happened was by raising the cost of firing people, employers became less likely to hire young men than young women. And so the obvious conclusion there is they just see young men as a little bit riskier. Right. That's the natural conclusion is you just raise the kind of like, am I going to have to fire this person? And if so it's going to cost me more, Then you're going to be more careful who you hire. Right. You're not going to take a risk. And it turned out less like to hire young men. So you can look at Matt Darling's paper on that. So. But I think more generally there's just this sort of sense of de skilling passivity. And also just think back to this question that we've been, I think, talking about a lot in this conversation, which is a lot of young men will say to me something along the lines of I've been told a lot about the things I shouldn't do and the things I shouldn't say. So they've effectively given a long list of don'ts. Don't say this, don't do that, don't think this, don't be like that. It's a long list, largely negative and really no dos. It's back to this point we made earlier about not having a script. And so if they found themselves and their own sense of themselves as boys and men, if it's defined at all, defined largely in negative terms, but still nonetheless, being a man, I think that leaves them really underpowered, really risk averse, really uncertain about how to engage and really worried that if they engage and they get it wrong, that they'll be shouted down or they'll fail or they'll crash and burn, so better not to try. And so I do think that that kind of backing away from some of these challenging situations, which is really what you see, like young men, just young men are less likely to leave home than women, they're less likely to move away than women, they're less likely to study abroad than women. And so you're just seeing this kind of Sort of the idea of the kind of go west young man adventurer thing is just completely flipped in terms of gender. And it's great that women are doing that, but it's not great that young, you know, 24 year old man is 10 percentage points more likely to be living at home than a 24 year old woman. Like it's 34% versus 24%. And so there's just this failure to launch thing that's a trope, but true. And I think that's because we're not telling a good story. To come back to your point about how great it is to be a guy. Right. I'll risk saying that. Right. And if we're not telling, if we don't have stories and role models about how fantastic it is to be male and we have a lot of stories about what's bad about being male, the resulting asymmetry is incredibly disempowering, especially for men who maybe don't have the resources or the skills to navigate. And so we're navigating much, much more difficult waters now romantically and economically and socially and culturally. And the guys who have the skills to navigate that water are going to do fine, but the guys who don't are not going to do fine. And they're the ones I'm really worried about.

[Joe Rogan]

Why is it awesome to be male?

[Richard V. Reeves]

Isn't it?

[Joe Rogan]

I think it is.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Don't you think?

[Joe Rogan]

For sure. But I also grew up in the 80s, so I got a way better story.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Yeah, me too. Yeah. I ended up, well, I think about a lot of my male friends. I think first, like the, the way that male friendships work, the kind of banter and the just the kind of way we lovingly lay into each other. I think that's. And I have it with my sons now. I think that's beautiful. I think some of the kind of physicality of being male is great. Right. Of kind of love sports and just like that sense of. Yeah. Physical adventure. I think that's great. There's something about. I mean, obviously I can't put myself kind of in the kind of mind of a woman, but I think just male sexuality and sex drive, which is one of the kind of big differences I think obviously channeled appropriately, all the usual caveats. I think that's. It's great. It's kind of great to be interested in intersex and it's great to have desire. I think there's a lot of desire on the male side of the equation sexually. And so I think that's great. And I also think it's great to in some way feel like, because of the physical differences that there are between men and women, to feel like you can, to some extent still, if necessary, be kind of physically protective. Now, of course, fortunately, that's much less necessary now. Actually, I was on a panel recently with the Governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, and he said, I don't know if you know him, but he's a former paratrooper, US Paratrooper, huge guy, incredibly fit guy. And he said, my wife actually says she never feels safer than when I'm at home with her. And I said, it's weird because my wife never says that about me, but she would say that about you. Whereas if. Because he is a formidable physical presence. But that's not quite true, actually. And one of the things that I. I think that it's okay to say is that there is a male responsibility to look after those who are weaker or more vulnerable than themselves. And so one of the things I've tried to do, and I've said this in various places, so I apologize if you heard me say this before, but as I've raised my three boys, all now grown men, all in their twenties, I've tried to raise them to have the courage to. To ask a girl out, the grace to accept no for an answer. There's no entitlement there. And the responsibility to make sure that either way, she gets home safely. And so what's captured in that is a sense of like, being willing to put yourself out there, ask a girl out. Right? Just being willing to kind of just, like, go for it. And that's. That's not only, okay, it's good that you can win. But then the second bit of it is graceful. You have no sense of entitlement about that. There is absolutely, like, she can say no, it might not work out. Hopefully she'll say no gracefully. As long as you've done it gracefully. There's a grace to rejection, but that either way, like, you need to make sure she gets home safely. And I used to have an extension on their curfew. They could get. They could actually come home a little bit after their curfew. This is when they were teenagers. If I knew that was because they were getting someone home safely, usually a girl. And I'm sorry, but my sons are 6 foot 4 and, you know, they're big guys. And maybe that's. Maybe size is not the thing that matters there. But, like, if that meant getting someone safely, that's great. It's just a truth and Just very recently, I was at a conference and I was with a female colleague about the same age as mine and she was going to get her car kind of in a covered garage. And I went with her and I said, would you like me to. She said, thank God you asked. Right. But I think a lot of men now actually wouldn't even ask for sure. They'd be worried that that would be misconstrued. They'd be worried that you're being sexist or creepy or whatever. And she was like, thank you for asking. Right. Because she didn't want to go in there on her own. She just felt a bit safer to have someone go with her and do that. So anyway, I'm going on a little bit and answer your question, but there are some aspects of being kind of male that I've listed there that are just a little bit off the cuff and that are great. And you don't have to say them necessarily, but you just have to show them and kind of be them and make sure that we're again, not just not defining this in the wrong way. I just had this. There's a feminist philosopher called Kate man, and she just wrote something just today saying Tim Walls is got a model of non toxic masculinity. And I is that the best we can do? Like really like. And for her that was a concession, but like non toxic masculinity. Like, what an exciting vision that you could actually not be poisonous. You could actually not be a pathogen. Yay. You too. You too could be a non toxic male. I mean, talk about a bad PR campaign. And then we wonder why boys aren't attracted to those messages, which is like, we're going to teach you to not be toxic. And again, more deeply, you're just framing this whole thing in negative terms. It's like original sin. It's like we're just going to show you how to not be bad. Well, for the love of God, could we not actually talk about how to show you how to be good and what it means to be a good man, not just how to not be a bad man. And that's been a big problem in our cultural discourse over the last couple of decades. We've just done two. We have not done enough on how to be a good man. We've done too much on the how not to be a bad man.

[Joe Rogan]

I love it, man. I totally agree. I always love my time with you. Where can people follow you? Read your work.

[Richard V. Reeves]

I'd love people to go to the, to the brand new think tank. The American Institute for Boys and Men. And that's just a IBM.org and I'm on all the usual places with Richard V. Reeves and Twitter, et cetera. And that's my website address too. Love the conversation. Took as always, took us to places that were unusual and discomforting and illuminating. So I thank you for that.

[Joe Rogan]

Truly my pleasure man. Thanks for joining me everybody out there. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.

[Richard V. Reeves]

Peace.

[Joe Rogan]

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