Is There A War on Men?

24:48No, I love him. And I think you were mean to him. I wasn't mean to him. I actually... He probably heard a podcast about how women love it when you fix stuff. I actually do love when you fix stuff. But I sometimes would just check the availability of the handyman for the next day. So we could have like a day of play that we say... I know. Tina Brown says this is what women do so wrong. It's just right. I mean, it's not for me to say, but that destroyed your relationship. So I did say. Yes, you did say. Okay. Okay. I don't like the word crisis. That's one thing. And because I think there's too many crises and the trouble is the word loses its meaning.

25:25I would say that the rise in suicide among young men is worthy of the label of a crisis. The general proposition, I see men are in crisis, the crisis of men. I get why a lot of women would react to that because A, there are still so many gaps disfavoring women, especially in the workplace, especially at the top of society. Only 25 % of our members of Congress are women. Still only 10 % of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, only 2 % of venture capital money goes to female founders. So it's not like there aren't huge challenges still facing women. So I get it. But it can also be true that there are real problems facing kind of many men.

26:00And I think part of this is back to the zero sum thing. I think that too many people have been invited to think that if they admit that there are problems facing men, that somehow means they have to deny that there are still problems facing women. Whereas, of course, both things are true. Yes. Although I'm leveling a different kind of argument. It's less about the zero sumness of it. And it's more, and I completely agree with you, suicide, high cost. We should scream that from the rooftops and that is worthy of that label. It's more about like, do we allied the real structural universal issues by talking about it as men or women?

26:31Are we unnecessarily? Because they're everybody issues. Yeah. Because they're everybody issues. Yeah. Are we unnecessarily gendering the impact of modern capitalism? them? That's a great question. And it's a good challenge to my work. It's also a great challenge to the work of many women's organizations, of course. Take loneliness as an example. Actually, we've published on this now, the evidence for a gender gap in loneliness isn't very strong at all. There's a big class gap in loneliness. But actually, the difference between men and women on that, if you look at all of the surveys and you look hard at them, it just doesn't look like there's a very big gender gap in loneliness.

27:06There is one in social isolation, which is a different measure. Loneliness is more of a subjective thing. So you can be alone without being lonely. You can also be lonely without being alone. Exactly. Exactly. So I've changed my own view on that because the evidence has changed. And I'm a former journalist as well. I was at The Guardian for many years. And C.P. Scott, who was the founder of The Manchester Guardian, he said, comment is free, facts are sacred. And so even if we're going to disagree about the interpretation of the facts or the causes of them, I think just calling the facts in good faith rather than cherry picking them to suit your agenda is important.

27:41The result of that will be to find some problems that are genuinely gendered. If you look at the impact of parenting on earnings, that's a highly gendered issue. It's really affecting moms. Yeah, because even women who out-earn their husbands are working hours more at home after they come back. Well, we'll come back to that because I don't think that's actually true. I have a stat on that. All right. Great, great. We can nerd out. Let's nerd out on that later. Because it depends how you define full-time work. But so you can see that there are some issues where a gender lens makes sense because either just the data shows.

28:17But there are a whole bunch of other issues like the cost of housing, like loneliness, like maybe the impact of some aspects of social media that are just everybody problems. And we shouldn't make everything into a gender problem when it's an everybody problem. But that's true of the women's groups as well. I totally agree. And by the way, one of my big rights of the women, I moderated a debate once on the women's gender gap, the wage gap. The pay gap, yeah. And there was a couple of arguments I found super interesting that were made in that. One was one of the debaters said, look, it's been about 82 percent 20 years ago and it's 82 percent now.

28:48And some part of this is just biology, like what I'm saying on the 3.8x. Like some part of this is like innate. It's cultural. It's like it's there to stay. And by focusing it as a women's gender gap issue, we're actually not focusing on the issues that need to be corrected. So I thought that was a really interesting argument. And the second argument that I thought was compelling was I think it's data from the Center for American Progress shows that Asian women out earn white men to the dollar. And again, if you splice it, like obviously that's not true for Taiwanese American women are like$1.07 to the man's dollar.

29:21And Nepalese women are, you know, a fraction of the white man's dollar. You love to disaggregate data. I love to disaggregate data. That's so great. Me too. It's so nerdy. This is so fun. No one else is listening at this point, but you're on a data disaggregation tear. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. But I do think that because we're talking about women's issues, all of a sudden, white women, Asian women are the disproportionate beneficiaries of that discussion. And we're not talking about Hispanic issues in the workplace. We're not talking about black issues in the workplace. We're not talking about class issues in the fucking workplace.

29:53And I actually don't think people are disappearing because I think people are really frustrated with this whole conversation about diversity and identity. And they don't like they want to have answers for why it's frustrating. My own experience is that if someone mentioned diversity, they'll often look at me in a room. And at the times, like they look at me and I'm like, OK, I went to Georgetown, Harvard and Stanford. Like I'm not a diversity candidate and I'm not like you shouldn't feel better that I'm here. Next to me was a white guy who hadn't finished college, had gone to the military, had gotten injured, didn't get his benefits, couldn't go to college, was one of the most fantastic video editors I worked with at the time, and had a very different point of view on the world.

30:30He had more diversity than me, but we couldn't say that. We couldn't see that. Have you heard this distinction between optical diversity and other kinds of diversity? So optical diversity is a diversity you can see. I think there's an office skit about this too, where he kind of looks to the Asian woman, right? it's very uncomfortable but it's exactly this where he looks to the asian woman uh when they talk about diversity but it's like you can put it on your you know your photograph or your like or your like whatever and you say oh look how diverse we are but actually you don't know what you've just said which is that that white guy actually comes from you know appalachia and has struggled his way up and on that measure of diversity is more diverse than others so is your work not at risk of that because i feel like you were constantly kind of like explaining that you're talking about um you know you have a whole dedicated chapter on on black men you explicitly say you're talking about heterosexual cis men mostly yeah yeah that's because you know that gay men have just exceeded us all if gay men were a nation they would be the best educated country in the world they definitely be the best dressed they is that true they would be the best educated country in the world really i just american gay men i often joke like gay men are an example of what men could be if they just tried harder i mean that more like stylistically you know like there's always like so put together but you do you worry about that like by talking about men as a kind of bulk group that we are.

31:44I do. Yes. And so I think the burden of proof should be on me or on us to say, okay, looking at this issue through the lens, gender lens of looking at boys and men is bringing rewards in policy, in understanding, et cetera. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. But I've got to tell you the number of times that simply looking at the data through that lens, through the disaggregated lens, throws up findings that nobody else is finding it. So there are some gender differences. You talk about them in your book, particularly physiological ones. How do boys' brains evolve differently to girls' brains?

32:20Mansplain women's brains to me. Yeah. Can you mansplain? No problem. The main difference is that boys' brains develop later than girls do. So partly because girls hit puberty about a year earlier, and that triggers all kinds of brain changes, including the frontal cortex, which is basically the executive functioning bit of the brain. It's the bit of your brain that It kind of turns in your homework for you, if you like. And that just is triggered by puberty. And so just on average, 16-year-old girls are a little bit older, developmentally speaking, than 16-year-old boys. How much older? About a year on some of those measures.

32:53I mean, they're older all the way through. Even like a six-year-old girl is a little bit older than a six-year-old boy. So there is just a maturation timing gap. That's the main difference. But there are also some other differences which are always at risk of being overemphasized, particularly by people who want to weaponize them against women. For example. But higher risk taking. Oh, yeah. Right. So there is just pretty strong evidence that some, and maybe aggression would be the other one, but risk taking. On pretty much every measure, like boys and men are slightly more risk taking. And of course, that's both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on how it's expressed, right?

33:29Right. So risk taking can be good. Yes. Entrepreneurship, et cetera. You'd be like, I don't want to have a female CEO because she won't take the right risks. because that's how they would weaponize it against women. That's how they would weaponize it. Yeah, that's what they say. And you don't want like a female president because sometimes you've got to take risks. It could be weaponized for sure, but also ignoring it is not a great answer because it's true and it's true at the average. And we're worried about stereotyping people based on average differences. This guy Hans Rosling, epidemiologist, who says we could solve half of the world's problems if people could understand an overlapping distribution, right?

34:01So whenever I talk about sex differences, I use the example of height. if I say men are taller than women very few people will come along and say but I just met a really tall woman and there's a short guy over there that can't be true right they get what I mean by that which is that on average but when it comes to psychological differences there is an understandable reluctance to have this conversation and so on the one hand you get some people who really overstate these differences really to justify sexism but then you also get some other people who are saying there are no differences we're blank slates it's all socialized it's about the dolls and the trucks etc and that's just not true and because it's not true it doesn't feel true to people and so then you lose credibility so beyond the physiology there's also this question of the anthropology here yeah so like simon de beauvoir i never say that right good enough i'm not a francophile but you know had talked about how men become men how women become women kind of the history of gender and you write in your book quote anthropologists all agree masculinity is fragile Not men are fragile.

35:02Masculinity is fragile. And women are defined by biology, men by social construction. Men become men by rights of initiation. I'm paraphrasing your book now, but that is the theory. That strikes me. Men become men by rights of initiation. That sounds right. That sounds like how historically that happened. Historically, that's true. But now it feels like those rights of initiation would be seen as bad things to go do right now. right like taking a nephew to asia so he could have his first sexual experience which like maybe like by the way i know like guys whose dads did that do you yes wow which is like i mean they're older or whatever just talk about that like what are the rights through which men became men historically and where are those rights today so again it's really important to emphasize here we're talking about a difference of emphasis men are more socially constructed than than women in the sense of mature masculinity.

35:54What it means to be a man in a society is very variant over time, and it does have to be more constructed, has to be more institutionalized, partly because fatherhood has been somewhat more voluntary, anthropologically speaking. And so every human society has to figure out how to turn its boys into men, and how to turn them into surplus providers, people who will kind of provide meat or defense or energy or love or time. it can vary and I much prefer mature and immature masculinity to toxic and non-toxic what does it mean to be like a mature to be a real guy a mature man in New York City in 2026 is obviously very different to what it was a thousand years ago so it's going to change but it is a bit more socially constructed and so I think it's a mistake to think we just don't need to do that work through institutions rites of passage but positive ones ones that bring out the best in our young men and Because where's that happening now, like hall of duty?

36:47Well, that's the danger. Is it happening online? Let's be honest. One of the reasons why rites of passage were historically quite violent for boys and young men was because violence was very often what we were going to ask of them. Right. They had to protect society. Yes, they had to protect the tribe. And so we needed them. But we don't need that now. I think every human society is engaged in a contest for the allegiance of its young men. and if we don't get their allegiance somebody else will i think it's just true that young men need to feel an allegiance to something call to something be part of something have us have a social institution that says okay you're one of us now we need you to join us and do this thing and that can change what what's the content of that can change and should change but the fact of it doesn't and we shouldn't be naive enough to think that we can be the first human society to neglect the task of turning boys into men.

37:40So rites of passage, I'm so curious how you, studying men and boys, look at the Epstein of it all. Because we're seeing some deeply disturbing emails on one side and behaviors on one side, and then some absolutely embarrassing, kind of cringeworthy, man-to-man communications on another side. And I'm just curious, as someone who studies men and kind of the rituals that make them what do you see about male bonding in this epstein story i don't think you've been asked about this i have definitely not been asked about this one of my friends has described me as someone that goes into this minefield and diffuses the mines around these issues and i feel like you've invited me into a whole another minefield where i don't know how to diffuse you're invited a little cliffhanger we'll be right back focus features in blumhouse present obsession when i have a crush on a guy.

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40:04You know, I'm not looking to have an answer, but there is a light being shine on how these men and powerful elite men are communicating and bonding with each other. Yeah. Not all powerful elite men, but this particular group. No, I would say that male solidarity, male socialization, male bonding is essential and is going to happen. And the question is, what does it happen around and to what end and to what purpose? And like even a less obvious example, terrible example would be something like the old boys club, right? The golf club or going to my wife actually worked for a company for a Japanese engineering company.

40:47And so there was this whole thing about they'd go for like cigars and gambling and sometimes to strip clubs. This is a while ago. Right. And so it was part of the culture. Right. And she obviously didn't want to do that. There's a gradation here of scale. And I think the challenge we face is to find ways for men to bond with each other and spend time with each other in a way that's pro-social. It's kind of positive that's maybe around service and it's about looking after each other in a kind of positive way rather than closing ranks around the antisocial behaviors that men are also very capable of.

41:17The danger is Pew actually did a survey where they found that among Democrat-leaning or Democrat-identified women, 76 % of them said that all male social groups are bad for society. Now, most of them said that all female social groups were good for society. But Epstein is an extreme, but it's not totally aberrant. Is that fair to say? Say more. In what way? I feel like it's extreme form of like, oh, dude, like locker room. It's an extreme form of like, oh, dude, I got that girl. Don't worry, I hook you up. It's like an extreme and terrible and dangerous form of that, particularly given the ages of some of these women.

41:57but it is not like oh my god i never thought men would behave like this that's what i mean yeah or there was this uh example of i'm gonna forget his name but you'll remember it was during the pandemic the new york writer who was tubin yes the masturbation on zoom masturbation on zoom yes um quickly how you can forget jeffrey tobin's name because now you just think of him as a zoom masturbating guy yeah it's not great branding is it even this amazing legal scholar and done terrific work and now he is as you you don't want to say the words i don't it sounds better coming from you but it was sort of interesting again because it's like look everyone reacted in horror but what i kind of noticed was that like a lot of the women reaction to that was just like why would you like how is that even a thing like why would you be doing that like and more of the men were like, why didn't you make sure your camera was turned off, you idiot, right?

42:55And so again, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but in our correct desire to be moving us all in a better direction, which generally speaking, we are, and we want to keep going that way, but we shouldn't, and this is the harder thing to say, we shouldn't think that somehow in our desire to get rid of antisocial masculinity, we can actually obliterate masculinity itself. And some of that will come with some of these tendencies, good or ill, like around sex and risk and stuff. And that's just a really difficult conversation to have, but I think people want to have it, but in good faith. I know I've invited you into a minefield.

43:29Yeah. And you are dancing around and trying not to say any of the buzzwords of Epstein and all that stuff. I'm trying not to step on the line. That's exactly right. How am I doing? I think you guys got to go for the juggler. You Jack Bauer the shit and go in for the bomb. Is that what you think? Yeah, I think you should do it. Yeah, I think that's terrible advice. But here's the thing. It's my show. Come on. People want to be honest. I'm trying to be honest. But I think that people, like, grapple with a specific issue, really. Like, this is about, I think, the specific issue of these files, these men.

43:56You know, you write in your book, like, there aren't that many elite men and many boys will not become them or something. That's right. But we are seeing something very specific. And I'm just curious. You must talk about this at dinner parties with your friends. Like, this must be something that you have thought about. So address the Epstein thing directly. What is it? What does it reveal? What's your takeaway? My takeaway is that powerful men in a genuinely patriarchal structure abuse that power in various ways that will track with the antisocial forms of male behavior, which will be around violence to each other sometimes or to others, which will be around sex and sexual exploitation.

44:36and so in that sense patriarchy does bring out the worst in men and then they will close ranks around it and so you end up with these here i'll quote martha nussbaum's brilliant book on this around citadels where in actually you'll see in sports sometimes too you'll see in creative media in hollywood where you have these institutions or even just spaces where there's very little institutional accountability very little transparency and when that happens it kind of brings out the worst in everybody and what you see is it brings out the worst in these men and so i'm very uncomfortable with some of these terms like patriarchy and so on but but i think it applies in this case which is where you have a an environment an ethos and a set of institutions where we're not holding men powerful men especially to account for their behavior now it's very unlikely that this kind of thing will happen in a fortune 500 company because they've got lawyers and HR and rules and transparency and so on too.

45:38It will happen to things like Epstein. It will happen in these situations where there just isn't enough transparency and accountability. I really appreciate you going there, which I know is not where you necessarily wanted to go. It's not my happy place, for sure. But whose is it? But I like the fact that you're kind of not looking away from it. And we shouldn't say, look, it's very hard to imagine a version of the Epstein cases where it's all women. Yeah. Right. and we shouldn't just ignore that obvious fact there is some percentage of what's happening in epstein that's about power and there's some percentage of what's happening in epstein that's about men yes and there's some percentage of what's happening about an epstein which is about those specific men that's exactly but how much of it is about like them wanting to impress each other like what is that what is the size what is the psychology of that yeah and how does it present itself in men versus women is there research about this what's interesting i mean this is probably a slightly more comfortable conversation but about the fact that like there is a status thing right um and on the average it does look as if men are a little bit more status seeking than women but there were plenty of women around this stuff too who were doing it for the status too totally and i find that very interesting what actually what i think it was it was like a status game that was the shell around this horrible exploitation ring the number of people who went to his parties or kind of part of him because of who else is going to be at the party and they wanted to be in that room with those other people, even when sometimes they must have had some sort of vibe or suspicion about him.

47:02They were willing to pay the price. And that included a lot of very high profile progressive women, as you know. And I think one of the frustrating things is like, you'll see some of these photos and they'll like name all the men and then they don't ID the woman. The first lady came out and said, you know, basically her version of the I did not have relations with that man speech from Clinton, you know, reprised. But these women were in the room. And as a woman, i'm not pointing a finger on it but i'm just like the woman to be in the room when that kind of shit happens it's like that to me did feel like oh i couldn't imagine that but it was very interesting to me and i can think of other other men uh that some of the women in my life would just say yeah just don't get a good vibe of him somewhat ick and you saw that in some of the coverage here too where sometimes the women the wives were like i don't i don't and they didn't have like concrete proof or anything yeah melinda french gates being right but they had incredibly good radar i don't know what the equivalent would be for like gaydar here but like what's good radar for pedophile i'm gonna let you do a radar i don't know this is definitely a clip that i want on your accounts not mine but we're gonna collab with you but it's like the women like they they could feel it yeah they could feel it about this guy and we're like no and saying to their husbands and actually i think a lot of men honestly and i've certainly had this experience in my own life too where there's been like a bunch of women who've said about a particular pretty high profile guy have said, and all the guys have gone, really?

48:25He's so great. I really, what are you talking about? He's awesome. I saw him at the gym the other day, but all the women are like, no, no, no, no, no. There's something off about that guy. Yeah, that's spidey sense. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the question. If you were like, if you, would you rather you're hiking in a forest, would you rather see a bear, a man or Jeffrey Epstein? Right. Definitely bear or man over Jeffrey Epstein. I do not want to see Jeffrey Epstein in a forest. Well, that's what that's also the danger with these kinds of cases is that of course the overwhelming majority of men are not Jeffrey Epstein exactly that's why I separate and so but again as soon as you say that you say like it's not all not all men hashtag etc is that you then somehow seem to be excusing it right or excusing any bad male behavior and you're not doing that what we're doing is being unflinching I think about the truth there was a very good article in the Atlantic uh the feminist case for Jordan Peterson.

49:13And the basic argument was that he takes the problem of male violence seriously and says, how do we reduce male violence, especially male violence against women? And we don't do that by pretending there are no differences between men and women in the propensity to violence. What we do is we say it's there, the potential is there. It can actually in some ways be released in a way that's positive for the tribe. So for example, in Ukraine right now, the men are not allowed to leave. It's illegal to leave Ukraine if you're male because you have to stay and fight. And so what Peterson's doing at his best, and I'm obviously not here to defend him generally, but...

49:46No, I want you to defend Epstein and Peterson. All in one go. One clip. Okay. That's terrible. That's a great invitation. Thank you. Do you want to throw somebody else in the mix as well? I love that you canceled your next meeting to stick around for this. Yeah, I know. Exactly. I didn't realize I was canceling every meeting for the rest of my life. Yourself, in fact. Exactly. isn't it difficult though to to have just an honest conversation about the things that everyone knows to be true but finds it difficult to talk about for fear that it will be misinterpreted right so if you talk about the greater propensity of men naturally towards aggression or the differences between men and women when it comes to issues like sex that you're somehow immediately going to be cast as a defender of the of the violence yeah i don't know how you walk the tightrope you have to walk all day every day because you do it politically you do it on this stuff and you're you're on a kryptonite topic so it's what you do but i will say that i think my audience at smart girl dumb questions is actually very open to this kind of conversation they want to hear this kind of conversation that's an uncomfortable have that's direct and to the point because there's so much shit we just don't say out loud right people the people are smarter than everyone thinks and they know the shit that's not being said out loud they really do And I think that your audience would show this and your success and of others is that actually the hunger for a good faith conversation like this, where we might agree and disagree and learn facts from each other and so on.

51:06The hunger for that is enormous. And the majority of people want that kind of conversation. And as long as they feel like someone is calling it as they see it and is well motivated, people actually are much hungrier for that than to give them credit. Do you think, it seems like, okay, when you were at this book, we were like deep in Me Too era. When you had the idea. When I was pitching the book around New York publishers. Yeah. So it seemed like 2016, Trump comes into office. There's this huge reckoning, Me Too movement takes off. Then there's a huge reckoning. It seemed like Me Too was out. Like there was a lot of anti-woke culture in our culture.

51:40Yes. And a lot of people kind of fighting a ghost that didn't exist. Yes. And now with Eric Slawwell, Tony Gonzalez, Jeffrey Epstein, it feels like it's coming back. Does that sit with you? Yeah. Is Trump like the number one galvanizer for the Me Too movement? Well, Trump was a big part of it, but it predates him. I think it's unfortunate that so much of the Me Too movement did get actually intertwined with some of the kind of anti-Trump sentiment. Because the Me Too, I'm old enough to have been in newsrooms in my 20s, which I look back on with a degree of shame about the behavior that was seen as acceptable there, especially towards women, and the stuff that we just didn't call out from each other.

52:20and so I think that that really positive movement to kind of create a better and more respectful environment and to treat women better it's just amazing and to call out the men who weren't doing it sure then you can have an argument about the edge cases right then there's always going to be gray areas sure but I think overwhelmingly a positive movement and I would like to think we get to an equilibrium which is maybe where we are now which is when when there is evidence that someone's behaved that way we know about it they're called to account for it and they pay the price great without that being like a hunt for every microaggression and everything you've ever said or kind of done wrong.

52:56Maybe at its worst, there was kind of moment. It's like, okay, let's try and catch everybody. Right. So it was like a drag net. And so I do think we've got to get to an equilibrium where we take this stuff seriously. People held to account in a way that they were not before the Me Too movement, but without dragging everybody into the same net. No, I agree. I think that's completely right. So do you think that we're back in a Me Too moment right now? Or you think it's specific? You were saying it's specific. It's nuanced. I think it's specific. I would like to think that we're always in a Me Too movement and moment, if what that means is we take accusations seriously, we investigate them, people held to account.

53:28I just think that's the world we all want to live in. And it shouldn't be a moment or a movement. It should just be the way we live. Speaking of the way we live, I want to now talk about dating a little bit. But there's new data in this 2026. I know you love data. Love it. Okay, some new data. I think in the 2026 dating recession report, they report six in 10 men under 30 are single women are now 23 less likely to want to date than men which obviously creates a market imbalance yeah a lot of women are saying like you know i have my dog i got my vibrator i got a stepladder or step stool or whatever like i got ivf why do i need a man i was wondering about the step stool for a moment but yeah i got it the hype thing yeah got it um so how do we fix this is it something to be fixed the dating problem it's not something to be fixed there isn't like a policy solution to this there isn't a fix that cultures cultures shift they go through uncomfortable periods they go through recalibrations i think we're going through a recalibration right now so if you're like a woman of childbearing age right now you're just fucked a little bit it look among especially among college educated women they as i said they are getting married most of them are still having kids i think it's a kind of danger of it's a danger of over interpreting short-run trends That's what I'll say.

54:40But I do think, however, that there is a challenge around mating and dating. I think there's no question about that. Because I think the social technologies around mating, courtship, my God, that's an old word. We love it. They've gone through a massive change, not least because of the online world and then online dating. And then this kind of algorithmic separation of young men and young women from each other. So I think we're going through a difficult time for sure. but I'm also reasonably confident we'll kind of figure our way through it. And what will happen is that if it's true that women are now getting to the point that Gloria Steinem said we'd get to where marriage becomes a choice rather than a necessity for women, and women are exercising that choice, hallelujah, that was the point.

55:29I am reasonably confident that the overwhelming majority of women and the overwhelming majority of men want to do it with each other, want to have a relationship with each other. Yeah, want to do it with each other. Which is a fine thing to say too. I knew I could feel the clip coming as I said it. They do want to do it with each other. And that will actually drive change. It just will. It'll take a while, but I'm pretty sure it'll be okay. So I asked an evolutionary biologist this month, like, fast forward 200 years, will like really tall women be like dating and paying for short men who, you know, stay at home and take care of kids?

56:02And he said no. You can't change height distributions that quickly. But you've proposed like men go into these heel jobs. Heel. So health, education, administration, and then literacy. And in that I hear, okay, let's say nurses, teachers, secretaries, librarians, let's say. Yeah, writers. Okay. One of the commenters on your substack was like, well, nobody wants to date that. They didn't say those. They just took heel and they said, nobody wants to date that. I'm making it even more visceral by saying nurses, teachers, et cetera. And I think the quote was, women will not be attracted to men doing these roles.

56:36What is your response to that? It's not true. Scott Galloway also makes this point. Yeah, it's not true. At least I hope to God it's not true because my son is a fifth grade teacher in Baltimore City. Are you dating? He is. And I don't think it's true. And I think that it's one of those things that will actually become self-perpetuating. If men don't go into those fields, then they will code increasingly female. And then maybe that will happen. But actually, I think kind of right now, actually, if you look at the marriage rates for men in those fields, they're pretty good. And I think if you say to a woman, like, how would you feel about a guy who's passionate about teaching, say, and who absolutely loves it?

57:16So my son does this. He coaches the girls' soccer team as well and does summer school. And at the end of every day, the kids are allowed to arm wrestle him. And if they beat him, they don't get to do their homework. And he just, this kid, he just absolutely loves it. And he's passionate about it. And he's, you know, And you're very proud of him. I'm incredibly proud of him. And my sense of him is that he's not hurting that much in the dating market. Actually, it's like a lot of women actually quite like that. Actually, what they want is like men who are passionate. Does he have the British accent?

57:45Because that just might be like a data throwing out thing. He does. We have to throw him out of the data. Correct for that. But the same with male nurses and like therapists. I worry a little bit about that. I worry that that becomes a self-perpetuating trend because I don't think it's true. I don't see the evidence for it, and I wish people would stop saying it. I think that it's what the evolutionary biologist told me, Justin Garcia, and people can go back and listen to that, is that there is a higher incidence of infidelity in relations that are imbalanced where women are earning more or more successful.

58:19And the women will cheat more. But the last Pew survey on this had 45 % of women earn equal to or more of their male partner. and it was around 20 % more then. That's right, a lot of equal to. A lot of equal to. Within that range, equal to. And then there's a few that earn more. I think this is a challenge for marriage. So now I take it to the individual marriage level. I think it used to be like if Doug lost his job at the gas station or Chad lost his job in finance, then other Dugs and Chads would help them. The community would be like, oh, we got to help this guy. And now it's kind of like what you were mocking me when we're talking about the construction, calling the handyman when my former boyfriend was trying to fix things.

59:02When you destroyed your earlier relationship. I think it's okay. But now it's often the women picking up that challenge. So it's like, oh, now don't help Doug. You can help Betty get a job. And that is emasculating for the man at home. It can be. It can be. It can be. It doesn't have to be. How long till it's not as a mean or more? I don't know. but I do know that we have to go forward through that. We're in a lag moment right now. Is it true that in situations where the woman is out earning the man or he loses his job and she becomes, I was a stay-at-home dad for a while, right? And so is it true that that is currently going against some of our cultural expectations of each other, that it's going to create dynamics in the marriage where even the kind of most feminist woman is going to have views about men and herself that she's struggling, right?

59:49We're all going to struggle through that, right? But the only way is forward because the share of women earning more than their partner is going to go up year after year after year after year right so this is the future so we better get ready for it and if what we're saying is we have a choice between gender equality in pay and the workplace at the cost of emasculated men we've got to decide which one we want more that's a terrible choice what we've actually got to do is to rebrand fatherhood such that actually being at home is an awesome and very masculine thing to do. Not stereotype these professions that men might do.

1:00:23Call more men into service in their communities. So when I was at home, I felt like a provider. My wife was the economic provider, but I ran the scout group. I organized the kids to bike to school. I looked after my kids. I was doing some other stuff. I didn't feel emasculated, but I know, and I'm being honest here, that I did a whole bunch of things and behaved in a certain way as a dad at home that did code more masculine, right? I know I did. and that's what i wanted to do because i'm a guy right and so um we've got to find a way through this and it's going to be painful what i see again when you look at the data like men just even through this last 10 years of all of this stuff we've been talking about the share of housework being done by men has gone up the share of parenting being done by young fathers has shot up in the last few years and not by the way just among like educated men but among working class men too and i want them to know that that's awesome and we see that and then we can do it but we don't do it by pathologizing each other and panicking and crisis or trad wife we've got to go back or we're emasculating and my my son's girlfriend is going to leave him because he's just a teacher and so he's emasculated by that it's all bullshit and and i'm tired of it and and i think most people are tired of it like it's not easy but it's happening it's happening and The upside is great if we get this right.

1:01:47I love it. So now let's move to the last part of the conversation, which is what can people do? One thing that people listening right now who have sons, our sons, our young men listening to this, what should they do to equip themselves for this change in this world that's happening? Well, number one is a what not to do, which is like don't panic if he's struggling at school or is drawn to certain kind of online content that you're not happy with. Don't panic. he is quite likely to go through a period of searching, a period of discovery, a period of rebellion, etc. And you've got to be curious about that.

1:02:18So try and adopt towards his interests, whatever they are, a posture of curiosity, not contempt. Yes. Okay. Very careful. Because if you react the wrong way, you're going to drive him into the arms of the reactionaries, not out of them, number one. Number two, make sure that the amount of screen time is contained. It's not that actually what boys and men do online is actually that directly harmful. It's just it's replacing other things. So it's cool. There's nothing wrong with video games. In fact, I, you know, I had such a great time playing now with my sons, but it wasn't instead of the other stuff we did.

1:02:53And so they've got to have that in real life stuff too. So the civic engagement stuff, the extracurriculars, and then ask about the education system. Like where are the male teachers? Is the school system working for your boy? And if it isn't, he's going to need a little bit of extra help. And don't treat him like a malfunctioning girl, right? Don't ask, if you have a boy and a girl, never, never, ever, ever say, why aren't you more like your sister? And I didn't have a sister, but if you've actually got a daughter, I think there's a real danger that you, and teachers do this too, is that they just accidentally treat boys like malfunctioning girls.

1:03:21And just as a parent, you've just got to have a little bit more grace about that. Right now, we're seeing a lot of governors take action or start talking about this stuff. I think Spencer Cox is probably one of the most kind of action-oriented and has been there the longest. Gavin Newsom, certainly, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore from Maryland. They have two things, I think, in common. One is that they've read your book. The second is that they likely are going to be running for president in the year 2028. How much of this is political kind of pandering to win an election versus real earnest belief?

1:03:52And does it matter? Until the 2024 election, it was very hard to get Democrats in particular to pay attention to this issue. And so we have to be honest about this is that they can read a poll. What happened was that the votes of young men came up for grabs in 2024, especially, and the Republicans grabbed them. They didn't so much move towards the Republicans as away from the Democrats. I think a lot of Democrats, so Spencer Cox was doing this before, but a lot of Democrats in particular - That's why I gave him first billing. Yeah, I think, and I'm glad you did because I think the politics are different for him.

1:04:21But a lot of Democrats, I think they're kind of realizing they can read a poll, they need to win. I was candidly quite worried when some of these Democrat governors started saying that they're going to act on this issue. Now, that's a bit of a weird thing for me to say, right? Of course. Because you felt it was opportunistic. You didn't buy it. It could be. I was delighted, of course. But I was worried that if they did it the wrong way, at the wrong time, with the wrong tone, it would sound like pandering. And they haven't. So these are very, we have a full-time fellow working with Wes Moore in his office.

1:04:48We've worked with the governor of California, his executive order. And I can tell you, this is serious, right? They are trying to change policy. They are trying to think about data differently. This is real. This is not culture war stuff i was a bit worried and i'll risk saying this publicly but i was a bit worried particularly when governor newsome came out because he's doing this whole culture war thing i was a little bit worried that he might do something like challenge jd vance to a wrestling match he's deadly serious about this and you know partly why because his wife's deadly serious about it too and you know why because they've got kids and they've got a son the seriousness of the efforts make me very very happy partly because they should be serious but also because i think young men right now will see straight through it if it doesn't feel real and if it feels like oh now all of a sudden they will see straight through and it will backfire i think it's very important also like to the conversation we were having earlier of like the catch-all the data is changing for people like you yourself yourself or in the kind of service of the data and knowing what's real to constantly be signaling because politics has a way of just like reducing shit to its like most bare bones like demographic table versus really kind of reckoning with what has to be a targeted male loneliness thing versus a generational loneliness thing versus, you know, so I think it's really incumbent for the research and the policy to talk to each other in a way that hasn't.

1:06:10It could be very performative at worst, and it could also be short term. But this is too serious to just be a short term political fad. I'm worried about what we're doing about this in 2036. So after having said that, after having said we need nuance, I am going to reduce the policy section of this podcast to us using paddles. Not in the English public school boy sense where they get, you know, not that, not Roald Dahl stuff. But we have these paddles in our hand. They have red and green on one side. And I want you to tell me if it's a good policy proposal or a bad policy proposal. Okay. Got it?

1:06:45Affirmative action to help men get into college. Bad idea. Bad idea. But you said they should do something about it. They should, but it shouldn't have a thumb on the scale. It shouldn't be letting in less qualified men to college in order to keep their gender balance artificially. I think that's just like, it's just wrong on principle. No, it's a terrible idea. Okay, great. Let's just stop doing it. That's one. Another one, the draft. It's in the conversation these days. You talked about Ukraine. Just for men? Yeah. Military draft. Oh, wow, you're thinking about it. The gender specific thing about it is difficult.

1:07:18Well, we have to sign up for selective service now, right so i mean well my sons did right so we have it already so i don't know what we mean do you mean mandatory like if you're 18 18 plus the country goes to war men go the draft green good idea wow that's going to be so clippable well like if there's a war if there's a war they might have to go to war yeah yeah i mean like i do you don't think the ukrainian men in the culture right now there's a whole conversation bring back the draft on tiktok etc i know actually governor newsom's talked about national service a bit too i think it's so difficult but if national service i'm like green green green a public service requirement for all people like between high school and college please said if there's a war yeah i said if there's a war if there's a war in there yes what about um mandatory paternity leave for both genders define mandatory the state requires that employers provide it and if you're not employed the state provides it yes great for dads and months independently yes absolutely i agree by the way my greatest gripe with the women's movement it's wild that like this far in we don't have fucking maternity cover to be fair they have been trying incredibly hard for a very long time but that is a huge and they are winning at state level so there's a lot of state level policy but like getting the federal government to do paid leave in the u.s uh it is not for one of trying i agree but it is like that is a real i think it's a failure of the state versus i think maybe it'll help if we say look this is about dads as well yeah i think part of the problem was it was seen as only a women's issue yeah i gotta tell you as a dad uh actually dads should get equal rights to leave as well and we should make that clear yeah what about making that mandatory like if you're a dad and or mom and you have a child you must take off you don't get a choice you think bad idea yeah i'm just mandating it okay what about a ministry of the man the brits have a shadow of shadow minister i love a shadow minister i love i think we should have shadow ministry all the way around you know i'm like bring bring back the colony don't don't actually bring back the colony but um should we have a ministry of the man is there a ministry for women in this example sure so you have both uh yes i have no and no yeah well i don't here's what i want i want a ministry for gender equality so they actually created an office of gender equality in the in the white house but it would only work on women's and girls issues and my plea to them is like why don't you work on boys and men's issues as well and so what i really want is a minister who looks at gender equality both ways.

1:09:43Yes. That's what I want. Okay. Okay. I'm going to go no for any gender. I'm kind of like so anti-identity shit, but this is me. Would you get rid of the Office of Women's Health that currently exists? No, but I think that we should also have, we should embed it, infuse it, so it becomes like a joint effort, maybe. I think we're agreeing then. Yeah. Like an office of gender and health. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. Great. We like it. Okay, last one. Banning pornography. Banning it. Bad idea. Banning pornography. Temperance movement. The buzzing has started too. It's really. Banning pornography. Pornography is as old as humanity.

1:10:23You can't ban it. But what we can do is take it seriously. Yes. The trouble with the whole of it's cool, it's great, it's positive, or we should ban it thing. And actually, I'm very proud of the work my team's doing on this, which is actually, let's find out more about the you know what's good and bad about it yeah and actually most importantly let's equip our teenage boys with the skills to navigate it yeah to be clear your team is doing work on analyzing pornography they're not making pornography my team is not making pornography that is important distinction that's an important distinction all right richard reeves thank you so much for being with us this was fun thank you so much for having me i really appreciate it and good luck with the emmy i hope you fucking win yeah me too well if i win then they all What is that?

1:11:06We'll explode.

1:11:11So I really appreciated that conversation. I'm sitting here wearing this pink pantsuit. Like I feel like I'm a meme of a certain political type. But I really wanted to have a conversation with someone who's so deep in the conversation around men and boys. And have all these fault lines of our current politics. And like the things we can't talk about. The difficulty of talking about things like Jeffrey Epstein. And just have a real conversation about what's going on here. How healthy is this conversation? What needs to be done? What might be pushing too far? I appreciated how Richard was really willing to consider all of the questions I asked him.

1:11:43He obviously is extremely well researched, data driven, and also, I think, willing to reconsider his opinion, which I always just really admire. I like anyone who has a kind of intellectual consistency and the willingness to be curious and change their mind on the basis of like that kind of consistency. I want to know what you think about it. So please, please get into our comments. Leave us messages. Talk to each other. Do all the things. You can send us an email. NaimaRaza101 at gmail.com. You can slide into my DMs. Not that way. Although you could also slide into my DMs that way. I'm Naima Raza and it's at SmartGirlDumbQuestions.

1:12:17And this episode was produced with Desta Wunderad. Melissa Lee Gibson Sanjana Nagam Aisha Jordan It was engineered by Colin Lee Mixed by the great Johnny Simon Edited by Darlena Chiem and Devi Chin Our theme music is by David Kahn And I'm your host Naima Raza I'll see you next week for an all new Smart Girl Dumb Questions

1:12:50Thank you.

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