Trump Desperate to Keep This Hidden as His Facade Continues to Crumble

0:04Angie Sullivan:Joining me today on IHIP News is Robin Dembroff, an associate professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of the new book, Real Men on Top, that comes out this Monday. Robin, thank you so much for coming in studio. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy to be here. Okay. I want to talk about your background. You were homeschooled in an evangelical household and went on to study at Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Tell me about that journey. Yeah. Well, I grew up not only homeschooled in an evangelical community, but also in a very rural area. And my family lived out in the countryside.

0:48And so I spent most of my childhood either by myself or at church. Those are kind of the two worlds that I inhabited. And then I went to Bible college at 16 and got my minor in biblical studies, did a major in philosophy. And I think I ended up doing a major in philosophy because I could sense at some level that it had tools that I needed to survive. And shortly after undergrad, I was outed, I was excommunicated from the church, and I had to choose whether I was going to build a reality that I could live in or continue to try to fit myself into a reality that had no space for me. So I ended up going on my own and here I am now.

1:29What's so fascinating about that to me is it is implied very much right now by the Trump regime that kids need to be raised in Christian homes and that these labor unions of teachers are radical, and they're doing all of these terrible things to children. And in your case, you were raised according to the way the Trump regime would want, in a good Christian home,

1:56Angie Sullivan:homeschooled, went to Bible school, studied the Bible, and you're a non-binary person that they claim, purpled haired teachers union, uh, produce in some sort of public school in some blue state. That's a really interesting component because I grew up in the Bible belt as well. And obviously all of the gay people I know, or trans people that I know, or non-binary people that I know, their parents were big Christian Republicans. Oh, that's so funny. And they're totally surprising. Yeah. Yeah. I think when you grow up in that world, you learn how to be an outsider in some ways. And so by the time I came to know who I was more fully, not only in the sense of having access to the feelings in my body, but even more importantly, having access to the concepts that I needed to interpret the feelings of my experience and in my body.

2:55I think at that point, it was like I was so used to being on the outside. I mean, I was taken to protest in front of abortion clinics by the time I could walk, you know. And so when you're used to being in that place, you're kind of like, it doesn't feel like as much of a cost to stand out in another way because you've been standing out in some ways your whole life. Are you still religious or a believer? No, I stepped away from all religion and spirituality for a while after I was outed and I had to kind of reconstitute my stories of myself and figure out who I was. And at this point, I'm coming back around to a connection to something that is greater than me that I feel like as soon as we try to put words to whatever that force is, we always reduce it.

3:38And so I'm okay with just leaving it in the realm of the non-articulable. you know yeah i'm i identify as an atheist but i like the idea of thinking that there is something that you can't put words into because every time a higher power is described it sounds very human yes and i would like to think that if there is some force out there it's not us right

4:03Angie Sullivan:you know flawed and all of the things that we are how did you deprogram your faith and what was that process like? Did you feel grief? Did you feel like you lost a life partner? Yeah. I mean, I felt like I lost who I was in an important way. And I don't mean that in a negative way, though. I mean, we all tell stories to ourselves of who we are, and different components of those stories have more centrality than others. And for me, being evangelical, being Christian, being Republican, being a patriot, those things were all extremely core to my identity. You know, I protest in front of abortion clinics.

4:44I protested in favor of the Iraq war as a kid. You know, I was really in that world 120%. And so when it came to a point where I had to choose between everything about who I had been and who I had known, and the possibility of happiness and flourishing and family. There was a lot of grief. There was all the stages of grief, probably grief, anger, confusion. But ultimately, I think I trusted my sense of where the love was. It was like once I could see that the world that I had been told was demonic and evil and everyone was going to hell and they voted to Democrats, which definitely meant they are going to hell.

5:28Lots of problems with that. But as soon as I could tell that that was a lie and that actually this place that I've been told was hell itself was actually a place where people were welcoming me with open arms exactly as who I was, then the whole thing just started to crack and shatter. There's a lot of internal contradictions in the worldview that you have to hold when you're raised in that world. Yeah. I always thought I had so many religious friends growing up and they were also tortured like, um, about spiritual warfare and about like, they wanted to talk in tongues and their sole purpose. They were so consumed with remaining virgins.

6:09Of course, those are the ones that lost their virginity first. The atheist on the cheer squad was the last to go. Not that it matters, but, um, but do you think, because I feel this And I'm wondering what your opinion is. Don't you think it's abusive to emotionally blackmail kids like that about existentialism?

6:34Angie Sullivan:And I don't think the parents intend to do it because they're just doing what was passed down. But as I look back on a lot of my friends I grew up around, I feel like they were just so abused and emotionally blackmailed. And their autonomy was taken away from them at a very young age and finding their own life path. Yeah, there's a very narrow path that you're supposed to fit and it's a very conformist one. So yeah, I mean, I think people recognize all kinds of captivity. And I think one kind of captivity that people don't pay enough attention to is psychological captivity, spiritual captivity.

7:08And when you're raised in this world, like all things that operate close to whatever, people define cult in all sorts of ways. But one thing I think is definitely true of cults is that they create like a knowledge barrier, an epistemic barrier. You can only talk to people who are inside the walls and you not only aren't supposed to talk to, but you have to see as completely other than you, the people who are outside the walls. And that's how psychological captivity works, right? Because now you're cut off from information and you experience shame if you even go and look for the information. And I absolutely, I think that that is definitely abusive.

7:41You know, I tried to kill myself many times as a teenager and that even that in and of itself was also shamed. It wasn't recognized as a symptom of my environment. Instead, it was understood as a symptom of me, which only then adds to the feeling of there's something deeply wrong with me and I'll never flourish. in this life. Let's talk about that because that's something right now, something that really irritates me that some people in the democratic party are flirting with is throwing trans and non-binary people under the bus and allowing the right wing framing to capitulate to that. And when I, in the eighties, I was, I'm, I have a wonderful mother.

8:26She's very open-minded, perpetually curious, we had a trans hairdresser. And when I first went to them, it was Roland, male and rather effeminate. And I said, mom, what's going on with Roland? She's like, well, darling, he's gay. And I was like, well, why would somebody be gay? And she's like, all you need to know is nobody in the Bible belt would choose that. That would be insane. And then about a year later, my mother told me, we're going to go see Roland, but now they're a girl and it's Renee. And I was probably 12 or 13. And my mother just showed Renee radical compassion. And my mother told me years later that Renee had opened up to her about having a really abusive father who bullied her because she wasn't masculine or bitch enough and that she had suicidal ideation and really, really struggle because Oklahoma is incredibly, incredibly conservative and judgmental as a community.

9:28And so speak to me as well, as much as you're comfortable about the suicide and what goes on inside trans, non-binary, members of the LGBTQ plus community. The rates of suicide are so disproportionately so much higher for this group. And I think it's really important that we discuss it. Yeah. I mean, I think that the first thing I really want to emphasize is that when people condemn trans people, when they want to throw trans and non-binary people under the bus, what they're really doing is throwing themselves under the bus. Because I think what trans and non-binary people show us is that this very thick and restrictive and prescriptive mythology that we all live within of who's a man or a boy or a woman or a girl and what that means about how you should live.

10:19We're all in that psychological captivity. And what trans and non-binary people show is there's an escape hatch. There's a door that we can all walk through that will bring us into a way of being that will give all of us more freedom to be who we are and to form relationships that are meaningful to us. So the first thing I want to say is, you know, often in these political conversations, it's like, well, the trans people are the X percent, the 1 percent, the 3 percent, however you want to count it. And so they don't matter enough for us to stake our platform on them. And I think that's a fundamental mistake because I think it's just showing where we're all at, not where a small minority is at.

10:53But that's also wrapped up with the suicide piece. Because if you live in a world where everyone around you is committed to a deep denial because their own sense of self, their own existential attachments are all wrapped up in those stories, then they, by necessity have to shame you and exclude you and tell you there's something wrong in order to fortify their own stories of how they are right. And of course, that's going to create all kinds of mental illness and self-loathing and suicidality because you're being told that there is no place for you in a way that is cemented in other people's being, which gives you no real space to break through.

11:32Until they break through their own denial, there's going to be no space for you to live with them. It's just a lot of self-loathing because you feel a certain way and society's defining you in a way that you don't feel matches up. Right. That's simply a way to put it. For everyone, right? It's a matter of degrees. So one of the things I often say is, you know, there's this binary that a lot of people have now assumed there's the, there's the male, female binary, but here's another binary, cis trans, as if there's a binary among people who is cis and who is trans. And to me, no, the issue is that we all have our bodies interpreted through a certain mythology that says you are an ex and what it means to be a good ex.

12:11Let's say woman, you're a woman. What it means to be a good woman is different than what it is to be a good man. As soon as you've said that, you've split the moral universe, right? You've split people into two different kinds of morality, those who are supposed to be good women and those who are supposed to be good men. And I think that all of us in our own ways and in our own context, we chafe against those prescriptions and those expectations. And so I think what cis trans is really picking out is not a binary, but it's more of polarities and who is willing to go against those prescriptions and in what ways and how much it costs to go ahead and do that.

12:49You know, earlier you said something like no one would choose that in the Bible Belt. And I totally hear what you're saying. And I think there's a deep way in which that's true. But I also think think that when you're faced with a situation of, okay, either I can continue to try to conform in a way that undermines my basic well-being, or I can try to shore up my sense of self and form the communities that I need to be safe in order to try to forge a way of being. And that's something that, yeah, of course, it's a trans narrative, but it's also an everyone narrative. We all experience that. So one thing I really hope people will come away with is that trans is not a kind of person.

13:27It's a way of being where you allow yourself the freedom and honestly, the self-esteem to choose what you need to flourish instead of other people's expectations.

13:40Angie Sullivan:I love that. Okay. Talk to me about how you think about the patriarchy and how it has led to the problems that we're seeing today, particularly this fascist regime. Oh, man. The real man drag playing out in Washington. Oh, my God. And it has real world consequences, right? Like, it's funny. And I love to laugh at them because they hate being laughed at. But at the same time, their commitment to the idea of the real man is the figure of legitimate authority. Yeah. Causing global destruction. It's destroying people's lives. It's destroying men's lives. It's destroying men's well-being. And I think that's something that we really have to get clear about.

14:25Patriarchy is not about men versus women. Patriarchy, to go back to what I was saying before, it's a mythology. And it's a mythology that centers around a particular story of what the identity man is, where man is understood as this tripartite identity of the male human adult who is seen as over woman, over child, over animal. and it creates the moral grammar of legitimacy. If you are more of a man, you deserve more power. And if you have more power, you're more of a man. So who's that going to be in favor of? That's a stacked game. The people with the most wealth and authority are born into real man status.

15:02Right. And then that becomes also the excuse for their misuse of all of that power. And just to be kind of petty here, I just want to point out that the president is somewhat but exercises some non-binary type things. He wears a full face of makeup. He's very into things that we define women as being into, which I think is perfectly fine for men to be into interior design and projects like that.

15:29Angie Sullivan:But in the MAGA world, that's what women are interested in. And so we have this juxtaposition where we have this toxic type of masculinity that they want to project that the president has. But every time I turn around, he's talking about how hot he thinks men are. He's engaged in his decorating projects. He was telling this UFC wrestler, like, you're so good looking. Your muscles are so great. And I don't know if you remember on the campaign trail, he simulated with striking familiarity, a blow job on a microphone. And so it's just, I missed that thing. No, it's insane. He couldn't get the microphone on.

16:07Angie Sullivan:So then he starts acting like he's giving it a blowjob. So speak to that to me, that juxtaposition of this, to me, it's such a scam. This whole, like Pete Hegg said, like we're a lethal military and we're firing all the DEI. And it, to me, it's just such bullshit. It's just total bullshit. To me, it looks like weakness, trying to just put up some veneer of masculinity, because behind that, these men don't feel like that on the inside and they want to be that. Absolutely. They idealize that. Absolutely. Because yeah, that's the figure of legitimate authority in our society. I joke with my partner that there's a nearby possible world where Trump is very happily a gay interior designer.

17:02Angie Sullivan:Totally. He is not causing destruction and he is a very happy life. Unfortunately, that's not the world that we live in. But one thing I do want to note, and I think Ruth Ben-Ghiat talks about this in her book Strong Men, you know, Hitler used to cry all the time. Being able to show feminine qualities actually often enhances a strong man's power. Totally not undermines it. You know, there's another piece by a historian named Kuna about what masculinity looked like in the Third Reich. And he calls it a protean masculinity, because on the one hand, you had to be unfeeling and cold and able to shoot Jews against the wall.

17:37But you also want to be able to push your child around in the pram and be a good dad and and cry when your fellow comrades are fallen and so on. And I think that Trump is we're seeing a version of that again, where his ability to be emotional and over the top in these ways that might be coded as feminine in some ways also enhance. They make him seem more fully human. They make him seem emotionally connected to his base in a way that actually enhances his power. Pete Hegseth doesn't have the connection to people that Trump has because he isn't even able to do that protean masculinity. He's just trying to be hard all the way down.

18:14And that's not very appealing.

18:16Angie Sullivan:Yeah, it's not. It's not appealing at all. I want to talk to you about how the patriarchy hurts men too. And I want to talk about it in something I think is an important national discussion to have right now. So I believe that some of the men in the MAGA world, like this is just my opinion, that like Mike Johnson and probably Josh Hawley, I think they're very gay curious. Once I graduated from high school, I got away from all the evangelicals that were trying to recruit me and hung out with gay men for the rest of my life. Those are my best friends are gay men. So I have excellent gaydar. So I think there's a segment of the MAGA men that are in the closet.

19:01And typically I have a lot of empathy for people who are passively in the closet growing up in the Bible, but I know how difficult that journey is. And if they're passively doing that, it's nobody's business. But these men are ostracizing the LGBTQ plus community during the day and then fetishizing them at night. So I think there's that component. And I oftentimes on the podcast will go, oh, these old queens.

19:23Angie Sullivan:But at the same time, I want to be cautious that I'm not insulting the gay community when I do that, that I'm reducing their form of masculinity as some sort of critique like, oh, well, they're just closet gays. But I also think that this regime represents broken straight men, the breakage of heterosexuality, like Ted Cruz, that is just a broken, completely broken straight man. And so will you talk to me about that? Like how we navigate that? Because I do think there's a reality that a lot of these men are closet cases or when they're watching porn, they got a little bit more excited about the man.

20:05Angie Sullivan:Maybe they're bi-curious or something that they might be a little bit more sexually fluid. Sexual fluidity might be a little bit more common. And these guys feel that arousal and then they freak out. Oh my God, that was gay. And then you have these nuts out here with this regime. Can you speak to all of that for me and help me be a better messenger of that and my audience absorb that stuff better? Yeah. I mean, I always have the question. It sounds like you do too. Like, why do you care so much? You know, when they – Why is Grindr always crashing when you all are together? In the Republican convention, Grindr crashes, yes.

20:40Yeah. And the thing is the man box is not only small, it's always shrinking because masculinity is set up as a zero-sum competition. You have to be over women and in competition with other men. And so no matter, you're always looking for things that make you lesser than. And so for some men, it might be that they get sexually excited by other men. And that's the thing that they get down on themselves about. But it could be anything else. It could be the fact that they had a real emotional connection with a woman that makes the thing that then that's gay. So it's just like if it's not one thing, it's three others.

21:17Right. But I think the thing that we're seeing now that's really important to point out that's related to the breaking of heterosexuality is that when there are economic crashes, like we are seeing now, like we saw in the 30s, men lose faith in the marketplace as the place to prove their manhood. And so they often turn to what I call in the book heterosexuality crusades, which is not crusades of heterosexuals. It's crusades to reinforce heterosexuality as a way to say, I am a man because I'm not a woman. I am a man because I sexually dominate women. And part of that is about, I mean, this is why we're seeing all these men be obsessed with bodybuilding right now.

21:58The same thing happened in the 30s. During the Great Depression, all the businesses were crashing. Bodybuilding gymnasiums became a booming business. Really? Charles Atlas, Superman. They're all from the 1930s because it's free to bulk up. I mean, I know they pay a lot for steroids and stuff, but it's free to march in heterosexuality crusades and say, my maleness is what sets me apart. My maleness is what gives me dignity. And since I'm not proving my maleness with the amount of money that I'm making, I'm going to prove it in these other ways. And I think that even these rich men you're talking about, like Holly and so on.

22:32I mean, I don't know how much is in his bank account, but he's definitely, you know, he's fine. Yeah, yeah. But I think that this is the culture of masculinity that we're in right now, where even the men who have money are still swimming in that water of needing to bulk up, put women down, put children down, kill animals, show all the ways that they are not woman, child or animal, or instead this, you know, elite man figure. And this hurts men. Oh, totally. I mean, one of the things that I think we've been told about patriarchy and gender that I think is incorrect is that the prejudices operate at the level of biology.

23:08That men and women are what they are is defined by their biology and patriarchy helps men and hurts women. But for me, the way I see it is that patriarchy is fundamentally about this mythology that is biological storytelling, but it can be weaponized regardless of your biological features. So the way to think about it is you have kind of four identities that make up the framework of this mythology. You have man in contrast to and over woman, animal, and child in order to be the male human adult, right? That's supreme. And because it's set up that way, to be identified as or likened to woman, child, or animal, which is to say to be feminized, to be dehumanized, or to be infantilized, is a form of degradation.

23:54And those are forms of degradation because we've already degraded woman, child, and animal as identities. And men, of all people, know how easy it is to be feminized, dehumanized, or infantilized. You could have any body parts. And in fact, people do have any body parts and experience those forms of degradation. And men are constantly weaponizing these things against each other, calling each other a little girl, calling each other an animal, calling each other a boy. You know, they find all sorts of ways to undermine each other's manhood in the moral grammar of this mythology.

24:25Angie Sullivan:I think all of that stuff is so fascinating. Okay. What are your thoughts on this crisis of masculinity that we're seeing in this country? I mean, we hear this a lot, that there is a masculinity crisis. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. It's an economic crisis that is happening in a culture where economic status is masculinity status. I think it's really important that we remember that. The author Joseph Conrad, who is a guy who wrote about manhood all the time, said, a man is a worker. If he is not, then he is nothing. And that is the Puritan worldview that even for those people who are not Christians, who are not Puritans, is seeped into the culture of America.