4280 "APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys" - Rebutted
Audio: https://soundcloud.com/stefan-molyneux/apa-issues-first-ever-guidelines-for-practice-with-men-and-boys-rebutted"For the first time ever, APA is releasing guidelines to help psychologists work with men and boys.At first blush, this may seem unnecessary. For decades, psychology focused on men (particularly white men), to the exclusion of all others. And men still dominate professionally and politically: As of 2018, 95.2 percent of chief operating officers at Fortune 500 companies were men. According to a 2017 analysis by Fortune, in 16 of the top companies, 80 percent of all high-ranking executives were male. Meanwhile, the 115th Congress, which began in 2017, was 81 percent male.But something is amiss for men as well. Men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9 years shorter than women’s. Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in school—especially boys of color.APA’s new Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men strive to recognize and address these problems in boys and men while remaining sensitive to the field’s androcentric past. Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Girls and Women were issued in 2007 and, like the guidelines for men and boys, aim to help practitioners assist their patients despite social forces that can harm mental health. Many researchers who study femininity also work on masculinity: Several contributors to the guidelines for girls and women have also contributed to the new guidelines for boys and men.“Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” says Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and co-editor of the APA volume “The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.” Levant was APA president in 2005 when the guideline-drafting process began and was instrumental in securing funding and support to get the process started."▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneuxSources:https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner.aspxhttps://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2015/07/28/how-americas-psychologists-ended-up-endorsing-torture
Well, it looks like, of course, the American Psychological Association has issued its first ever guidelines for practice, which I guess means dealing with men and boys.
Now, before we dive into this, let me tell you something that you always need to remember when you're talking about the American Psychological Association, which is this little Juicy tidbit.
So this is an article from The Economist from 2015 and it says here, How America's Psychologists Ended Up Endorsing Torture.
New revelations reveal a surprisingly cozy relationship between the American Psychological Association and the Department of Defense.
So a New York Times reporter published a book, I guess this was in 2014, accusing the APA, the American Psychological Association, this is the largest professional organization of American psychologists, of working with the Bush administration on torture.
Now the APA of course said, good heavens no, we would never dream of such a thing.
They said, APA is committed to fostering the highest ethical standards for the profession.
We will continue to proactively communicate our strict and explicit no-torture-under-any-circumstances policy to federal officials so they are fully aware of the appropriate restrictions on psychologists' role.
So there was an independent investigation.
The members, 122,500.
They said that there's no way that the association or its members would ever Endorse the government's use of enhanced interrogation tactics.
Well, eventually a 542-page report came out.
According to The Economist, its findings diverged considerably from the APA's expectations.
Far from upholding their Hippocratic oath to do no harm, APA psychologists did indeed work with officials from the Defense Department and the CIA to facilitate the torture of detainees.
Now apparently it was legal, but seems to have violated medical ethics.
So that is the wonderful American Psychological Association.
So I'll put links to that below.
But let's go back to these first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.
This just came out, although apparently it's been in the work for about 13 years.
So let's see what this article has to say.
For the first time ever, APA is releasing guidelines to help psychologists work with men and boys.
At first blush, this may seem unnecessary.
Now, this is the standard disclaimer that simply has to be put in place every conceivable time that any resources are being devoted to men's needs or issues in any way, shape or form.
You have to say, well, I can't imagine why.
We would need any resources for men.
So it says here.
For decades, psychology focused on men, particularly white men, to the exclusion of all others.
By God, the things that people believe.
Absolutely astounding.
I mean, okay, so here's a little empirical question for you.
Go into a bookstore.
Go to the psychology section.
And have a look at how many of the self-help and pop psychology and psychology books are dedicated to either A women or B men.
The idea that psychology has been focusing almost exclusively on men, particularly white men, to the exclusion of all others is completely mad.
Have a look at Dr. Phil and the issues that he addresses.
And he's the most popular dude doing this kind of stuff on daytime television, has been for well over a decade now, I suppose.
So have a look at how many men versus women go into the field of psychology.
So this, I don't, like, when you have this kind of ideology where you won't Even submit to a basic empirical test if there's no hesitation about what you write.
Like, well, of course psychology is only devoted to white males to the exclusion of everyone else, doesn't have anything to do with women, has never addressed women's issues, sells no books to women, and there are no women in the profession.
Like, I don't know what to say other than look around.
Like, open your eyes.
Crowbar open.
Those clockwork orange eyeballs, have a look around and just drink deep and savor the basic empiricism of what's going on.
Go to a psychological conference and just see how many men there are and how many women there are.
So then, we have to go into this, right?
Always.
This tells you how political this organization has become.
And men still dominate professionally and politically.
As of 2018, 95.2% of chief operating officers of Fortune 500 companies were men.
According to a 2017 analysis by Fortune, in 16 of the top companies, 80% of all high-ranking executives were male.
Meanwhile, the 115th Congress, which began in 2017, was 81% male.
Notice I never really talk about Jewish over-representation in high-ranking positions, or universities, or scientists, or anything like that.
Jews, what, 2% of the American population.
Never talk about that.
But, you know, this mysterious white dude thing.
Now, of course, this is after 150 years of feminism.
So, two possibilities to all of this.
Number one, there's just massive amounts of Greed operating in the free market system, right?
And it's greed for domination.
It's greed for the exclusion of women.
It's frankly not greed for money.
If less than 5% of the chief operating officers of Fortune 500 companies are men, what that means is that The most ardent, profit-hungry, driving free market capitalists can't find a way to make money with more than a couple of percentage point of female executives.
Why?
Well, because women usually have a little bit less physical stamina, they're usually a little bit lower in intelligence on average, lots of exceptions, and they have less testosterone, less aggressive often, less assertive often, And some of this, no, no, it's not all socialization.
Or if it is socialization, then we can say, well, after 150 years of pushing back against this, this is the result.
So, at some point you have to accept that socialization is essentially unmovable.
Like, to all environment, 100% environment, it's all about what... But these messages have been going around for 150 years, for women to become more equal, and there are less than 5% of chief operating officers, which means So what?
The progress has been 4.8% in 150 years.
So, let's not imagine anything's going to change anytime soon.
But of course, it's not all environmental.
There's a lot of genetics involved.
Women score higher on neuroticism, which means they're more anxious, which means that they're less, they're more risk averse.
Women score higher on On agreeableness, which means they're less likely to rock the boat, and so on.
And of course, women have babies.
See, I feel it's odd that I have to say to people in the APA that women have babies.
Women have babies.
And babies interfere with your capacity to work and travel if you want to be halfway decent.
parent.
And so what happens, of course, is that women can work harder when their babies are little, right?
So women can dump their kids in daycare, they can refuse to breastfeed, or they can do that weird robot pumping in a toilet in a corporate something, something somewhere.
So what they can do is they can say, okay, I'm going to really, really focus on my career.
I'm I'm not going to be around for my kids, and I'm going to dump them in daycare, dump them in schools, get nannies, get after-school care, spend very little time with them, constantly be traveling, because that's what you need to do if you want to get to the top.
I mean, I've not been to this stratosphere of business success, but I was on a board, and I was a chief technical officer, and I was traveling two weeks a month or more, sometimes three weeks a month, which for me, as a young single man, was a great
Deal of fun but the married guys in the company it was really rough on their marriages so you can as a woman say well I just want to focus on my career and what happens is you can kind of squish your kids connection you can squish their needs you can grind them down when they're little right because you can dump them in daycare what are they going to do cry and then you just walk off right but what happens is
You know, probably about ten years after you dump them in daycare, you get this astounding blowback, this horrifying blowback, when your kids just go off the rails, on average, in their teenage years.
So, it's, you know, parenting.
Pay me now, or pay me later.
And then, of course, when these women, and men, to some degree, get old, they're going to be dumped in daycares by, sorry, they're going to be dumped in old age homes by their kids, and they're going to say, but why?
Say, well, you know, you need to socialize with With people your own age, mom.
So I'm gonna just put you in there like you put me in daycare.
So yeah, this idea that this is just sexism.
No, that's not sexism.
Look, if you could make money by having 50% of chief operating officers in your company be women, the market would have dictated this long ago.
No one can find out a way to make money With more women in the heads of their companies.
It's just not possible.
There's no way.
150 years.
Capitalists are so greedy for profit, they would just bid up women they could profit from.
Anyway.
So, okay, so we say men have all this patriarchy, right?
And then they say, but something is amiss for men as well.
Men commit 99% of homicides in the United States.
Oh, one does get weary.
One does get a little bit weary.
I mean, people think that they're thinking like I occasionally have dreams at night of combing my hair.
It's, it's a delusion.
Like, men don't commit 90% of homicides in the United States.
Like, it's, it's like, okay, so they already go up here, they see white men, right?
So they're bringing race into it, right?
White men.
Just so they know the differences.
Talking about race.
Men commit 90% of homicides in the United States.
No.
Black men commit vast majorities of those homicides, proportional to population, right?
So young black males are about 3% of the American population, and they commit close to half of the murders.
It's horrifying and it's explainable to some degree by IQ differences between the races, which has been a central aspect of psychological research for the last hundred years or so.
For the last hundred years or so.
The IQ metric and its robustness and its predictability and its lack of cultural bias and so on, it's about the most robust metric in all of psychology.
Rough gauge of human intelligence called the IQ test that you can give to a two-year-old that is not culturally biased, that you can just have symbols if you want.
It doesn't really matter how you measure abstract reasoning and pattern recognition.
It has a very strong correlationship to how your life turns out, right?
If you're smart, then your life is likely to be better, your marriage is likely to be more stable, your life is likely to be healthier, and you're going to make more money and achieve more professional success, get higher education.
It's just the way that it is.
Now, sorry, when I say life could be better, let me qualify that.
Happiness is not related to IQ.
So people of lower IQ can have wonderfully happy lives, but of course, If you have lower IQ, one of the ways in which you have a wonderfully happy life is don't listen to people telling you that the only reason you're not making more money is because those evil capitalist white males are stealing from you.
Because that's a way to ensure that you're going to have a miserable, miserable life.
But anyway, so just this idea, right?
They're already slicing and dicing by race, right?
White men right here.
But then, even though they know, even though all psychologists of any decent educational standing No, that racial IQ differences are robust, they're intransigent, they've been studied for a hundred years, they predict an enormous and accurate amount of life outcomes, including criminality.
IQ 85 or so is kind of the sweet spot for criminality.
American black males are in around 85 and it's just one of these unfortunate things.
That has occurred.
So this idea that just men as a whole commit 90% of homicides, no.
See, whites commit murder at about the same rate no matter where they are in the world.
In South Africa, in America, in Brussels, in England, it's very low.
Now, East Asians, like Japanese, Chinese and so on, they commit murder at an even lower rate than white people.
And Hispanics commit a higher rate than white people, and blacks commit the highest rate of all, as far as I understand it.
So, Blending in what's going on in the black community with everything else...
is a lie.
It's an incredibly destructive lie.
Okay.
So they're the demographic group, that's men, most at risk for being victimized, of being victimized by violent crime.
And again, men as a whole.
They're 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9%, sorry, 4.9 years shorter than women's.
Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in school, especially boys of color.
You see, here now, Well, and of color, like, Jews are a minority in America, East Asians are a minority in America, and they make more East Asians make more money than whites and Jews make more money than East Asians.
So I don't know.
East Asians, they're not called boys of color, right?
They're basically they're saying, That Hispanics and blacks get more punishments in school.
Well, sure, because they act worse on average, right?
I mean, you can't just can't talk about this kind of stuff, but they'd see and if it was just an average, you know, idiot, prostitute journalist, it'd be like, okay, well, but these are psychologists.
I assume that this is people who know something about psychology, know about IQ, know about racial IQ differences, and they just won't talk about it.
And it's incredibly destructive because So much hatred, and particularly anti-white hatred, gets generated because all differences in group outcomes are ascribed to monolithic, universal, evil, bigoted, white racism and privilege and so on.
And this is basically appointing and targeting blacks and Hispanics and whites to be violent and aggressive and all that.
I mean, it's horrendous.
It's horrendous.
So, yeah, these guys are fueling the fire and lying, in my view, about these facts, because they're not breaking them down.
Now, if they said, well, there's nothing to do with race in any of this stuff, yeah, but we've got up here white men, we've got down here boys of color, and so this is just political garbage.
It's just political garbage.
And, of course, how do you explain, if there's this wonderful patriarchy and women are excluded, how do you explain all these terrible things that happen?
To men.
How do you explain it?
If there's this wonderful patriarchy that just men benefit from and all of that, then why are they doing so poorly?
All right.
APA's new guidelines for psychological practice with boys and men strive, I guess they're guidelines, strive to recognize and address these problems in boys and men while remaining sensitive to the field's androcentric past.
13 years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys that suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.
Well, first of all, the field of psychological research is really trashy at the moment.
And again, there's some exceptions for IQ and a couple of other robust measures, but Massive portions of psychological research is regularly found to be wanting that people don't release their source data You can't reproduce the information.
I mean, it's just a mess.
So no mention about any of this because the problem is is men and boys Socializing boys to suppress their emotions now, that's fascinating So there's two kinds of ways to deal with your emotions if you don't want to have, like, an emotional moment, right, in the here and now.
So one is called suppression, which is, I'm really, really upset but I'm going to focus on the task at hand and I'll deal with my emotions later.
We've all been in that kind of experience, right?
And the other is repression, which is where you consistently say to your emotions, none shall pass, right?
You don't let your emotions come through and that's not healthy.
Suppression is An act of maturity, right?
So if someone says something, like I've been quite the Twitter flame god lately, and if someone says something that bothers you, upsets you and angers you, then you say, okay, well, let me deal with my emotions.
I'm going to listen to how you think about it and intercept my impulse to act out and have a more mature, measured response and so on.
Well, that's suppressing your emotions so that you don't just act out.
Repression, where you continually do that is not healthy, but suppression, suppression, that is an act of psychological maturity, of wisdom.
of self-ownership, of self-mastery, and not doing anything to differentiate these two things does not seem to be particularly helpful.
Now, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
Now, a lot of that has to do with the fact that school has been really calibrated to deal with girls' needs and boys' needs are really thrown by the wayside.
That's sort of one thing.
And boys learn by doing girls is fine to sit and listen at this all generalities and so on.
But school has become more confining, more girl centric, more feeling centric, more drag queen centric, it seems like these days, and boys don't really work that well in that kind of environment.
So it's kind of funny how they've set up this environment where boys are going to fail.
And the anti boy Sexism and prejudice from largely female primary school teachers is horrible and horrifying.
They have done tests where they anonymize answers particularly written answers to tests and like so that they don't the teacher doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl and the boys are marked substantially higher if the teacher doesn't know that they're a boy, right?
So it's absolutely horrendous what's going on to boys in schools these days and Boys are bored, and they act out, and they complain, and what happens?
Well, they get drugged, right?
See, if I can't hold your attention, it's my job to hold your attention, which is why, like, I'm half a cartoon character sometimes when I describe things.
It's my job to hold your attention, to keep you engaged with what it is that I'm saying.
Now, if I can't hold your attention, that's on me.
That's not on you.
I mean, maybe you have some difficulty paying attention and so on, but basically the job for me is to keep your attention.
Now, if you don't pay attention to what it is that I'm saying, maybe I'm just not doing a good job of explaining it.
That's sort of the ownership that I take.
It's like if I make a movie and you get bored during the movie, maybe you just find the movie boring.
But for me to say, well, you see, if you find my movie boring and if you get restless, And if you start checking your phone, you have a problem and you need to be drugged.
Can you imagine how entitled and weird and freaky a mindset that would be?
If you have problems paying attention, you have a brain issue and you need to be seriously drugged for years.
Well, rather than say, well, maybe school ain't working for boys, so let's figure it out.
And the reason I'm saying all of this is that if you say, well, you see, suppressing your emotions is really, really bad.
But a great way to get kids to not suppress their emotions is to listen to what they have to say.
And if the boys are saying, I find this boring.
I don't care about the subject matter.
I'm tired of sitting.
I want to go do something.
And you say, no, that's bad.
You're disobedient.
You have oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD and you need to be drugged.
Well, what use are the boy's emotions?
Right?
The boys are telling you something by being restless and bored.
They're saying, it's boring stuff.
And So if you want boys to express their emotions, how about you listen to what it is that they have to say?
All right.
So let's go on here.
My concession to middle age here.
So APA's guidelines for psychological practice with girls and women, blah, blah, blah, aim to help practitioners assist their patients despite social forces that can harm mental health.
Alright, blah blah blah.
So Robert F. Levant, EDD, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Akron, co-editor of the APA volume, The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.
So he said, though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy.
So the question of whether there is such a thing as patriarchy is not even open for discussion.
It's not even open for discussion.
All men benefit from patriarchy.
Like, a guy born to the very highest echelons of society is benefiting from patriarchy.
And a guy who's, you know, poor and low IQ and ends up being talked into going into the army and getting his arm blown off is also benefiting from patriarchy.
No delineation, no subtlety, no slicing and dicing, no fruit ninjing of the actual data.
All men benefit from patriarchy.
Anyway, it's just, you know, anyway.
Okay, prior to the second wave feminist movement in the 1960s, all psychology was the psychology of men.
Well, that's a pretty big statement.
All psychology was the psychology of men.
So I think what he's saying, if I understand this correctly, is that Freud, for instance, never wrote about women.
Just for example.
And again, people type this stuff and it seems perfectly believable to them at the time.
It seems perfectly reasonable to them at the time.
It's wild.
Most major studies were done only on white men and boys who stood in as proxies for humans as a whole.
Researchers assumed that masculinity and femininity were opposite ends of the spectrum and healthy psychology entailed identifying strongly with the gender roles conferred by a person's biological sex.
So...
Yeah, well, I mean, psychology again, it's kind of tough.
I know that Freud doesn't have quite as good a reputation now as he used to in the past, although I've heard mixed things about that.
But apparently, mostly neurotic women in Vienna in the 19th century, were the ways in which you found the understanding of human psychology as a whole, right?
Privileged, upper class, neurotic, Women, for the most part, in Freud's Vienna was perfectly fine for things like projection, transference, counter-transference, for the Oedipal complex, the Electra complex, and so on.
Yeah, it's fine.
So, hmm.
All right.
But just as this old psychology left out women and people of color and conformed to gender role stereotypes, it also failed to take men's gendered experiences into account.
Huh?
Okay.
Most major studies were done only on white men and boys, but it failed to take men's gendered experiences into account.
I don't, like, I don't see how you can say there's a patriarchy that focuses entirely on men, but failed to take men's experiences into account.
I don't know what that, like, I don't know how to square that circle, but please let me know if I'm missing something in the comments.
All right.
The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression is on the whole harmful.
Huh.
Okay.
So let's have a look.
So stoicism is the denial of feelings in the pursuit of a larger goal, whether that's money or building a city or, or trading plumbing, uh, or, Wiring up some house to electricity, stoicism.
So that's on the whole harmful.
Now, you can really only say that stoicism is harmful if you believe that it is magic that brings all these technology and, you know, basement full of Downton Abbey slaves amenities to your house, right?
Like the water and the electricity and the roads and the plumbing and all of this kind of stuff.
Well, if you have ever been in Canada, right, sometimes there are ice storms and power goes down all over the place, particularly in the country.
And it's almost exclusively men who are out there working overnight in order to restore the power.
So, that's not fun.
Nobody does that for a hobby.
You know, climbing into an ice-laden tree with limbs flailing all around you to try and wire back something up in a pretty damp environment, that's not fun.
Stoicism, you know, like if your house is on fire and you want someone to run in and carry you out, that hopefully isn't a 90-pound woman.
With delusions of grandeur, well, I guess you would expect the fireman to be stoic, right?
And to go and do something, or if you're being invaded and you want men to, say, protect you from invaders, would that require a certain level of stoicism?
Hmm.
So competitiveness, apparently, is harmful.
Competitiveness is harmful.
Well, I mean, I kind of get that in a way, in that there's probably an Aristotelian mean to competitiveness, like the hyper-competitiveness where, you know, you're playing tennis with someone and they get so angry they missed a shot that they smash their racket and scream.
Okay, that's a little bit, but also you don't want to be You know, soap dish, slug head, and not rouse yourself to compete with anyone.
Because competitiveness is important.
It's how excellence is generated.
Competitiveness is how you measure yourself against someone else.
And competitiveness almost always drives better performance.
Like if you want a runner to run faster, have him run with a really fast runner.
If he runs with a slow runner, he generally won't.
So competitiveness is Something that is very good.
Yeah, you can take it to extremes, but just saying that competitiveness is bad.
I don't know.
Dominance?
I find this kind of confusing because what's wrong with dominance?
Don't you want to be the best at what you do?
It's like that old Schwarzenegger thing.
He says, if I'm going to take something on, I want to be the very best at what I do.
Yeah, of course you want to dominate other people.
You want to win.
You want to be the best at what it is that you do.
I want to be a great philosopher and I want to Create ideas that are going to stand the test of time and challenge people's complacency and bring new data and arguments and evidence to bear and that's going to involve research and memorization and courage and all of that.
But the dominance is to the betterment of the population as a whole, right?
So it's interesting because dominance or competitiveness, let's say, let's just sort of take a particular example, right?
So there are two trucking companies that are vying to win a contract to deliver groceries to a grocery store, right?
Company A and Company B. Now, Company A is 10% cheaper than Company B. And so what that means is that Company A, all other things being equal, Company A will get the contract because they're cheaper.
So what that means is that company B has lost and company B has lost out in the competition and they have to go revamp their business model, figure out how to cut costs and come back with a better approach or business model or whatever it is, right?
So as far as competition goes, there are four, basically there are only three participants in that competition, right?
There's company A, there's company B, And there is the consumer, right?
Whoever's going to shop at the grocery store.
Now, whoever's going to shop at the grocery store, let's just, for the sake of argument, say that 10% less trucking means 5% less cost of new groceries.
So the fact is the company A has won, company B has lost, but the consumer has won.
Right?
So competition has delivered lower costs to the consumer.
Their grocery bill is 5% cheaper, which is a huge benefit.
Huge benefit.
I mean, grocery costs are insane these days.
So, company A has dominated company B and has gotten the contract to deliver the groceries to the grocery store, but the consumer has won.
And the reason why company A won is that the grocery store is representing the interest of the consumer.
Right?
Because the grocery store wants to provide the best possible shopping experience to their consumer.
Part of that is lower prices, all other things being equal.
So, by acting on behalf of the consumer to choose which trucking company delivers the groceries, The grocery store is representing the needs of the many over the needs of the few, right?
The needs of the many are, I mean, the people who shop at the grocery store outnumber the people who work at company B. So the needs of the many are outweighing the needs of the few because company B would much rather get that contract, right?
So dominance, I don't, like I don't, It's sort of saying, well, there's only two people in the room, Company A and Company B, and Company A wants to dominate Company B, and it's win-lose, it's win-lose.
No!
It's win-win.
It's win-win for the consumers and the grocery store and Company A. Now, it's lose for Company B. And they're not happy, but they're not as efficient, right?
They're costing extra money from hard-earned people's paychecks to pay for their groceries, because they've got some kind of inefficiency or whatever it is, right?
So competitiveness and dominance is the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few.
Isn't that considered to be a good thing?
And aggression?
Well, I don't know.
Aggression is... Okay, so assertiveness is good.
Aggression is bad.
Assertiveness is when you stand up for your beliefs and your ideals and don't back down.
Aggression is when you scream at people or threaten them because they disagree with you, right?
So yeah, okay, aggression is bad, but...
Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.
Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.
Now, funny story guys, funny story.
The survival and continuation of the civilization that provides you the luxury to type all this away in an air-conditioned office on a nice computer over the internet, the continuation of that Society specifically requires that men engage in less healthy behaviors.
You understand?
9 out of 10 workplace deaths are men.
Go work on an oil rig.
I did really dangerous work when I worked up north hauling 80 pound peon jar drills on snowshoes across a snowy landscape in minus 30 degree weather in order to drill for core samples to find gold so that Women could have nice earrings, right?
I mean, so if you've not done that kind of work, if you've had this really privileged life where you grew up middle class, upper middle class, you've never really had a job where any significant body part aches at the end of the day, if you've not been like a waiter where your feet are going to ache or you know, I would have like sometimes that really painful Back muscles at the end of the day.
There were guys I was working with up there whose backs were so wrecked by the job that sometimes they had to lie in a tent on a board all day because they'd thrown their back out doing this kind of really hard physical labor.
So if you're going to say, well, we don't want men to engage in any unhealthy behaviors, well, you better start cranking up the old robot workforce, my friend, because women ain't going to do it.
And if it doesn't get done, civilization collapses.
You like wood?
Well, someone's got to go out there with chainsaws and cut stuff down.
Sometimes it's going to fall on their head and they're going to die.
Do you like being able to drive?
Somebody's got to dig oil out of the ground.
Hazardous, dangerous stuff!
Construction!
Dangerous work!
So, it's just weird where people, well, we don't want men to engage in less healthy behaviors.
Like, well, you better ask women to do it then and they're not going to.
So, that was Interesting.
The other thing too that's fascinating about this, men socialized in this way.
There's a reason I paused on that because who's socializing men these days?
This report's been 13 years in the making, right?
So I guess they started what?
2005, 2006.
Thirteen years in the making, so significant numbers of boys these days are growing up without fathers.
So, you got a single mom, you got no dad around.
Often times there's no even male extended family.
Because single moms now become multi-generational, so there may be a grandmother, but probably isn't a grandfather.
So, you've got a single mom, probably no substantial male relatives, You have daycare where it's almost exclusively women.
I worked in a daycare for years and it's almost exclusively women in daycare.
So you're raised by a single mom, you're dumped in daycare, you go to kindergarten where the vast majority of the teachers are women, you go to primary school where the vast majority of the teachers are women because of this horrible calumny against men that if you're a man who wants to work with children you must be a pedophile.
Can you imagine saying that about any other group or race or ethnicity.
Well, if you're Hispanic and you want to work with kids, you're not right.
But you can say it about men.
But you see, then you can say that about men, even though it's horribly, horribly offensive to men.
I mean, it's absolutely horribly offensive to men.
And it's a way of keeping the totalitarian grip on the minds of children safely in the hands of women.
But, you know, if you want to work with kids and you're a male, you've got to be a pedophile.
I don't know why men don't express their feelings more.
That's weird.
Come on, come on.
So who's socializing men?
You've got single moms, female teachers, primary school teachers, even high school teachers, significant numbers of women.
And as a result of affirmative action, you've got women all over the place, in universities and so on.
So a man can get into, a boy can get into his early to mid-teens having almost no contact with a male authority figure.
So if you have a problem with masculinity, you have a problem with women these days because So many men, so many boys are growing up without men and being horribly treated in school by women and so on, right?
So, anyway.
All right.
A 2011 study led by blah blah blah of blah blah blah found that men with the strongest beliefs about masculinity were only half as likely as men with more moderate masculine beliefs to get preventive health care.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
I think that's a helpful and useful thing to do.
But that's what wives are for, is to nag you to go get your blood work done.
All right.
So yeah, I think that's a good criticism.
It's helpful.
In 2007, research is led by James blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, found more likely men conform to masculine norms, the more likely they were to consider as normal risky health behaviors, such as heavy drinking, using tobacco and avoiding vegetables, and to engage in these risky behaviors themselves.
Now, What I want to know, and I'm not going to know, I guarantee you I'm not going to know, what I want to know is, is this normalized by IQ?
Right?
So they're saying, well, if you believe in more masculine norms, well, you're going to have risky health behaviors, heavy drinking, using tobacco, avoiding vegetables, blah blah blah, right?
So if you have this machismo, Is this a function of IQ?
So, in other words, do lower IQ people tend to conform to masculine norms and heavy drinking, using tobacco, avoiding vegetables, risky behaviors themselves, right?
Because, and the reason I'm saying this is things like smoking, excessive drinking, avoiding vegetables, and engaging in risky behaviors is all to do with A lack of capacity to defer gratification.
A lack of capacity to see the possible, in fact likely, consequences of your actions.
Hmm.
So, these are all associated with lower IQ.
So, I want to know.
I want to see if this is normalized by IQ.
Also, if you, I know this, like I grew up without a dad.
I remember having to go to a life magazine in the library to figure out how to shave.
Nobody told me how to shave.
So, my question is, if you're raised by a single mom, females in daycare, females in primary school, females in middle school and so on, how are you getting your masculine norms?
It's not from continual association with a male authority figure who can teach you about manhood and masculinity.
Where are you getting your masculine norms from if you don't grow up with a father?
It's hard!
You know, they say you can't miss what you never had.
That is totally not true.
You can fundamentally, foundationally, in your bone marrow, miss what you've never had, which is a father.
So, where are you learning masculinity from?
If it's not from a father.
If it's not from a male authority figure.
Because they always say, well, you know, women, they need these mentors.
They need women in science.
They need women.
They need examples.
Otherwise, they have no idea that they can be scientists or engineers or rugby players or CEOs.
They need these mentors and they need these examples.
But men, boys, can grow up without fathers and they just inhale masculinity in the ether.
Come on.
Come on.
Boys need fathers.
Boys aren't getting fathers these days.
So... Where are they getting these masculine norms?
And are you normalizing this information?
This... You're more risky if you don't have masculine... Are you normalizing this by boys who grew up A. with fathers or B. without fathers?
Because moms can do many wonderful things, but they can't teach you how to be men.
They can't teach you how to be men.
So if you grow up without a father, how do you learn what masculinity is?
Action movies?
Video games?
Cliches?
Social media?
You can't learn how to be a man By watching The Rock save San Francisco.
You can't.
You can't.
Sorry.
So where are they getting these masculine norms?
Is this normalized by IQ?
Is this normalized by the presence of a male authority figure?
Is this normalized by the presence or absence of fatherhood?
Nope!
Men are all this just big giant blob who magically get masculine norms through secret handshakes and sneeze of nasal hairs from prior ancestors.
This masculine reluctance towards self-care extends to psychological help.
Men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were more negative about seeking mental health services than those with more flexible gender attitudes.
Now that's interesting, because you see, if psychology has been all about men, then why are men so reluctant to use it?
The answer to that, at least from what I've seen and what I've heard, may be something along these lines.
That most psychologists are women who are feminists.
Yep, I'm gonna say it.
I believe.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
I don't know if the studies have been done, but from what I've seen and experienced, a significant proportion, let's say, I don't know about most, but a significant proportion of psychologists are women who are feminists.
I know the majority of psychologists are women these days, but So if you're a woman who's a feminist, how empathetic can you be towards men and males issues?
If you're a woman who's a feminist, what then men see, if they have psychological problems, a lot of which have to do with fatherlessness, and you had your single mom authority figure, you had your aunts, you had your grandmother, you had primary school teachers, daycare teachers, you had kindergarten teachers, all women, women, women.
It's that great line from Pipe Club.
We're a generation of men raised by women.
I'm not sure that another woman is the answer we need.
So the idea, you say, well, I don't have a male authority figure, probably pretty much never have.
So when I have difficulties, a lot of which have come from being raised by women for men, do they really want to go and see another woman?
Is that really going to solve their problems?
Probably not.
Okay.
Mental health professionals need to be aware that men are often reluctant to admit vulnerability.
Well, the other thing too, like I've had guys who've called in or who've wanted to call into my show and they say, well, I'm, you know, I'd like to talk about my issues, but I'm afraid if I get a divorce, it's going to be used against me.
I don't know if any of that's true, but there is this fear.
What happens when men are vulnerable?
See, let's say that's true.
Men are afraid to admit vulnerability.
Why is that?
Why are men afraid to admit vulnerability?
Well, because of toxic masculinity.
No, no, come on.
You're a psychologist.
Don't make up stuff, right?
Ghosts in the machine.
Why are men afraid to admit vulnerability?
Well, try it.
You know, I mean, go to a vulnerable man online and see the comments, right?
A lot of it is brutal.
A lot of it is vicious.
A lot of it is aggressive.
A lot of it is shaming and humiliating and man up and you can't get laid and you live in your mom's basement and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And I'll give you an example, right?
So some years ago, I spoke at a men's rights conference in Detroit, where men were attempting to get together and form a supportive community to help themselves navigate an increasingly often male hostile world.
So there was vulnerability, right?
There was vulnerability, and there was a desire for community.
And there were bomb threats, there were death threats, there was a cheering from the media about how terrible everyone was, everybody was A misogynist who wanted to justify wife beating and like... So, there's a reason why men are having trouble expressing vulnerability and getting together and having productive conversations and so on.
And it's because men who express need, men who express dissatisfaction, are roundly and viciously and brutally abused.
Verbally and sometimes physically, right?
Yeah, men are just reluctant to admit vulnerability.
The fact that they're viciously attacked when they do so, so often, woof.
Anyway, so Rabinowitz says, because of the way many men have been brought up to be self-sufficient to be able to take care of themselves, any sense that things aren't okay needs to be kept secret.
Okay, so men have been brought up I don't know, Rabinowitz could be Jewish, maybe because he comes from a matriarchy, has a little bit of trouble understanding that it's not quite as common for Christian men.
But because of the way many men have been brought up, so who's bringing up the men?
Huh?
Who's bringing up the men?
Freddie?
Women are bringing up the men.
So if men are dysfunctional and women are bringing them up, It's not toxic masculinity that's the issue.
It's toxic femininity that is the issue.
But you can't see that.
You can't see that.
And so, well, women are paying a lot of psychologist bills these days and sometimes it seems to be the case that women aren't so comfortable.
Maybe that's just me.
All right.
Part of what happens is men who keep things to themselves look outward and see that no one else is sharing any of the conflicts that they feel inside.
That makes them feel isolated.
They think they're alone.
They think they're weak.
They think they're not okay.
They don't realize that other men are also harboring private thoughts and private emotions and private conflicts.
No!
Men are very comfortable talking to other men about their difficulties.
It's just that if you do it publicly, you're going to be attacked as a misogynist.
And people will try and destroy your source of income, destroy your career, destroy your life.
That's kind of a factor.
I don't know what to say.
These private conflicts can have tragic ramifications.
Though men report less depression than women, they complete suicide at far higher rates than women.
Yeah, men are better at suicide than women.
The suicide rate for non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native men jumped 38% between 1999 and 2014.
White men's suicide rates increased 28% for that time span.
1999 and 2014, white men's suicide rates increased 28% for that time span.
Now, that's interesting.
So, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native men jumped 38%.
Well, if you ever want to know why the welfare state doesn't work, just look at The American Indian and Alaska Native men.
I'm not so sure.
I don't know as much about the Alaska Natives, but the American Indians, you know, I mean, kind of fenced off into their reservations.
The money's all given to the chiefs who dole it out.
There's huge addiction issues there.
Again, on average, their IQ is in the 80s, so it's really a big challenge.
But that's how you know the welfare state doesn't work, because the amount of money transferred to the American Indians is in the, I don't know, hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions over the years.
And, um, They're miserable, of course, right?
Because we have personalities, because we have resistance, because reality is a challenge.
And if you take away people's challenges, you take away their culture, their reason for being, their reason for getting out of bed in the morning.
We are an eternal fire that lights only on friction.
So for white men, suicide rates increased 28% in that time span.
Now that's interesting.
Because According to the narrative, see, masculinity is toxic.
And again, this is just basic logic 101 stuff.
I don't know why, I guess I know why they never ask anybody who can have a clear thought to review these things.
You say, okay, well, so if masculinity is so toxic, and masculinity has been enormously diminishing in men's lives as the result of single motherhood and massive amounts of female teachers and daycare teachers and so on.
So, if masculinity is toxic, then the removal of fathers From childhood should result in increased mental well-being and mental health for men.
Clearly, right?
So if men are killing themselves more as there are fewer and fewer male authority figures in boys' environments, then clearly it is the absence of masculinity that is a toxicity to men.
At least that's one Very strong indication.
Like if I say, well, it's this ingredient in your drinking water that is causing people to get sick.
And then we cut that ingredient by half, but people get sicker.
Well, guess what?
My whole freaking thesis is disproven.
Why?
Why?
I'm not actually...
I don't know.
This is... I mean, tell me if I'm wrong.
Isn't this stuff just completely obvious?
Like, I hate to be Mr. Giant Brain or whatever, but this doesn't even seem that complicated.
Masculinity is toxic.
There are far fewer male authority figures around boys.
Suicide rates have gone up 28% in 15 years!
Suicide rates for women have been on the rise as well.
So...
Yeah, and girls don't do well without fathers either, right?
So, again, are they ever talking about there are far fewer fathers in homes now than there used to be?
It's got to have anything to do with anything.
I can't talk about it!
All right.
Depression and other mental health problems are missing something.
Men don't struggle with these issues as much as women.
You know, there's another thing, too, why men might be killing themselves, and it's deadly serious stuff.
So, I remember I was about 11 or 12 years old.
My mother used to go to a little restaurant in the mall and we would order fish and chips.
And my mother would pull out a pad and she would list down all of the money she wanted to extract from my dad through the force of law.
Because my parents divorced when I was a baby.
And she'd sit there and she'd list all of these things, all of these wonderful things.
We need this money for this vacation.
We need this money for your medications or whatever.
We need this, this, this, right?
There'd be this big giant list.
She'd go, I'm gonna take this to a lawyer.
And it was really, really striking to me.
I was a precocious kid that way.
I remember reading a book, Made in Heaven, Settled in Court, about divorce and all that.
Because I was fascinated by it.
I voluntarily paid to watch the movie Kramer vs. Kramer three times when I was dead broke just because I really, really wanted to examine what was going on with this kind of stuff.
The Meryl Streep character is like, I'm making more money when she doesn't even see her kid.
No kidding.
You don't have to be a parent.
You can make more money.
So one of the reasons why Men are killing themselves is because so many men get accused of sexual abuse of children in divorce.
It's so common it's got its own acronym.
S.A.I.D.
S.A.I.D.
Sexual Abuse in Divorce.
These allegations, right?
Which are all investigated.
The man is facing jail time and the destruction of his life.
Alimony and child support payments are brutal, even though women who owe child support are in arrears more often than men who owe child support.
It's just that it's more rare.
So divorce is incredibly brutal for men.
They can lose custody of their children.
They can get investigated for horrible crimes, which all can't be true.
And yeah, so maybe it isn't just toxic masculinity.
Maybe it's a toxic gynocentric court system that has something to do with it.
But you see, if you were to actually ask men as to why they might be upset, say, oh, well, let's look at the lives of men who kill themselves and figure out if they have anything in common.
I bet you divorce is going to come up quite a lot.
All right.
So, um, okay.
John Wayne, blah, blah, blah.
More to masculinity than macho swagger.
Issues of manliness bump up against issues of race, class, and sexuality that can further complicate men's lives.
Masculine requirement to remain stoic and provide for loved ones can interact with a systemic racism and lead to so-called John Henryism for African American men, a high effort method of coping that involves striving hard in the face of prolonged stress and discrimination.
Race, ethnicity, and discrimination can also intersect with immigration status.
68% of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border were male.
Most of these children, blah, blah, blah.
So yeah.
Well, unaccompanied minors who crossed the border, why are they crossing the border?
Who's sending them?
Usually it's the moms, right?
But can't talk about that.
All right, racist stereotyping.
Why Joel Wong and colleagues have reported that, at least among white college students, Asian American men are viewed as less manly than white or black American men.
Men and boys of color may also be viewed with suspicion by schools, law enforcement, and others, leading to harsher punishments compared with white men and boys.
Yeah, this, I mean, this is just, it's so boring, it's so boring, it's so boring.
When people simply don't read anything that contradicts with their worldview.
Anything.
This idea that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately targeted and thrown in jail for longer and blah blah blah.
No, no, no.
Come on.
I mean, again, it's just a moment's thought.
So let's say some woman goes to the police and says, a guy hit me and took my purse.
Right?
It was mid-afternoon.
I was walking to my car.
Guy jumped out from behind my car, hit me in the face, and took my purse.
Right?
And she says, it was a black guy.
Why would she bother doing that if it was a white guy?
Right?
So then what happens is she gets a line up, she goes into the whole time.
She's maintaining it was a black guy when it was in fact a white guy.
Like, this makes no sense.
Not what people do.
It's not how they spend their time.
Especially because if she says it was a black guy and it was a white guy, Then she could get charged with filing a false police report, and she could face significant sanctions, in particular because she's accusing a black man when it was in fact a white man, which could be indications of racism.
So all you have to do is compare the arrest records with crime victimization studies, right?
Which is where, you know, people get phoned up and asked, were you the victim of a crime?
What was the race?
What was the gender?
And so on, right?
And if it's like, okay, well, 10% of daylight robberies in a particular town The the rest are black and and 10% of the crimes that people say that they report are also from black men You have a purport like it's not disproportionate.
It's not how the justice system works Say well, we got longer sentences for the same crime.
It's like yeah, have you taken into account?
Prior convictions have you taken into account any other circumstances or situations?
Are you normalizing by come on?
And it's so destructive.
It's so destructive because if you say to black men, well, you know, you're just going to get harshly treated and thrown in jail and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Well, what's the incentive for them to walk the straight and narrow?
What's the incentive for them to get educated?
But oh, well, you know, the white cell just hate us.
They're going to throw us in jail no matter what.
Like you're really, really harming.
Talk about toxic ideology.
Holy crap.
All right.
As of 2014, black men make up 37% of the male state and federal prison population.
More than 10 times as likely to be incarcerated in state or federal prison as white men.
Did you normalize by IQ?
Nope.
See, people with an IQ of 85, a lot of them will end up in prison.
Now, blacks have an average IQ of 85.
Again, some brilliant blacks never judge an individual, but that's the general pattern.
Right, so black men make up 37%, Hispanic men make up 22%, despite only making up 8% of the general US population.
So here's my question, and this should be the obvious question of anyone with half a brain, or a third of a brain, or a quarter of a brain, or half a soap dish of a brain, is why is it blacks and Hispanics?
Why are blacks in jail more, Hispanics in jail less, whites in jail less, East Asians in jail even less, and Jews in jail least of all?
The answer is that it conforms exactly to the IQ hierarchy, exactly to the IQ hierarchy.
And these guys all know this.
They all know this because this is the most robust data in psychology as a whole.
So they all know this.
All right, so then gender, blah, blah, blah.
It's no longer just male, female, binary.
Okay, gender norms 30 years ago, all this kind of stuff, sexual minorities, and so on.
And so yeah, you know, it's funny, because talk about toxic masculinity, then they say, basically, there's no such thing as gender.
Pick a lane, guys.
Okay, retirement comes.
Oh, yeah.
So military service, The guidelines suggest that therapists cultivate an awareness of military norms and common mental health concerns for veterans, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and retirement.
Now that's interesting.
Because they say, well, you know, it's really terrible you see that men engage in risky behavior.
But it's really also important that they join the military.
Anyway, it's just kind of wild.
When retirement comes, a lot of guys get thrown into an abyss.
Particularly those who identified as workers and achievers, retirement can force a reckoning.
So, yeah, that is a big challenge.
And yeah, you don't want to just define yourself by what it is that you do.
You've got to have good relationships and so on.
But yeah, don't retire.
I mean, unless it's like a real physical job and you just can't do it anymore.
Retirement is You think it's going to be paradise and basically it's not, from everything that I've seen.
All right.
All right.
Let's see here.
Clinicians must be aware of dominant masculine ideals, cognizant of their own potential biases.
Ooh, you see?
Got to be aware of those biases, you know, such as not pointing out that women are raising men these days, for the most part.
All right.
Mental health professionals must also understand how power, privilege, and sexism work by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles.
See, conferring benefits like higher suicide rates, shorter lifespans, more workplace deaths, longer prison sentences.
There's the real disparity.
Even if you normalize, by prior convictions, men get far longer prison sentences for the same crimes as women.
Ah, they should consider how stoicism and a reluctance to admit vulnerability hamstring men in personal relationships.
Engage more fully with their children.
Ah, encouraging fathers to engage more fully with their children.
That's an interesting idea.
You know how you can do that?
By beginning to oppose horrible divorce law situations where men so often are denied access to their children.
That could be very helpful.
All right.
Dropping out of school, blah, blah, blah.
Well, you know, make schools more useful and friendly towards boys, right?
I mean, boys are saying that they really find school boring and annoying and, and, um, unengaging and so on.
But yeah, let's just drug them.
Just drug him.
Important to encourage pro-social aspects of masculinity.
Yeah, here we go.
Certain circumstances, traits like stoicism and self-sacrifice can be absolutely crucial.
And it's a funny thing too, right?
And the idea that masculinity is somehow divorced from femininity, women shape masculinity by who they have children with, by how they raise their children.
So the fact that women have, like, is anyone here saying, we need to talk to single mothers to make sure that they have an effective adult authority figure in their boys' and girls' lives?
To teach them positive masculinity.
No, there's no talk here about single mothers.
We need to make sure that women and men are more equal in terms of who works in daycares.
We need to make sure that there are more male primary school teachers so the boys can get exposure to a masculine authority figure when they're young.
There's none of that.
None of that!
But, you know, it's really, really important to make sure the clinicians are aware of their own biases, you see.
And this, it means like, if you wanted to talk about this kind of stuff, like, wouldn't you talk to a couple of men's rights groups, a couple of men's rights activists to get some?
No, they won't.
Because this, it's just like, it's, it's like physics.
It's like, it's like gravity.
You can't talk your ass out of clinging to a chair.
And like this stuff, it's just, it's, it's all a fact.
It can't possibly be questioned.
To question it would be insane.
Ah, crazy.
Harmful ideologies of traditional masculinity and find flexibility in the potentially positive aspects, courage, leadership.
Now that's interesting as well too, because why are they not talking about particular ideologies that I think could be safely argued promote less positive aspects of masculinity?
You know, like Islam.
Why are they not talking about, you know, well there's a Significant increase in the influence of Islam and of Muslims in the West and some of the teachings within Islam and some of the practices within Muslim communities can be pretty rough and bad for women and patriarchal and so on.
It's like, nope.
Can't talk about it.
Can't mention it.
Doesn't exist.
It's white males.
White males have treated women the best throughout all human history, which is why white males are constantly attacked for misogyny.
It's just cowardly and terrible.
When researchers strip away stereotypes and expectations, there isn't much difference in the basic behaviors of men and women.
I don't know.
So, that's just so it ends up here.
Getting that message out to men, that they're adaptable, emotional, and capable of engaging fully outside of rigid norms, is what the new guidelines are designed to do.
And if psychologists can focus on supporting men and breaking free of masculinity rules that don't help them, the effects could spread beyond just mental health for men.
McDermott says if we can change men, We can change the world.
So you see, women have no agency in this world.
They don't exist.
They don't affect men.
They don't raise boys.
They don't choose to have children with irresponsible men.
They don't drive away good men.
They don't end up as single moms through any choice of their own.
They don't have unprotected sex with jerks who don't hang around and then decide to keep the kids rather than giving up the kids for adoption.
Because if a single mother holds on to a child, it's very selfish action, very bad for the child as a whole.
Children do better, in some cases far better, if they're put up for adoption into a two-parent household rather than being raised by a single mother.
So single mother's just kind of greedy, just kind of holding on to the kids.
Maybe it's for benefits, maybe it's for loneliness, maybe it's for whatever, right?
But yeah, single moms, if they really, really cared for their kids, they would give those kids up for adoption and give their kids the best possible chance in life, but they don't because reasons.
So you can't talk to women.
about this.
You can't have women as agency.
There's just this weird ether of toxic masculinity floating around that men imbibe.
It has nothing to do with their environment.
It has nothing to do with whether they have access to a benevolent and good father or good provider.
Nothing to do with that whatsoever.
Boys can grow up to be dysfunctional men and it has nothing to do with the fact that they're almost exclusively raised so often by women.
Can't ever talk about women changing.
Can't ever talk about you've got to choose more responsible men to be the fathers of your children.
You've got to close your legs until you've got a good commitment and the guy's established himself as a decent provider.
You've got to not have kids.
You've got to not have kids out of wedlock because it's incredibly toxic for children.
For boys and for girls, but just talking about boys, single motherhood is by far the most toxic and dangerous environment relative to just about anything else.
If they're talking about risky behaviors, risky behaviors arise out of, so often, being abused as a child.
If you were significantly abused as a child, it can shave about 20 years off your lifespan.
I've got a whole series on this very YouTube channel I did years ago called The Bomb in the Brain about how dangerous it is for your health to be abused as a child.
Now, women hit children more than men and a child is over 30 times more likely To be abused by a man who's in the household who's not the biological father.
So the single mother household is very often the abuse-heavy household.
And neglect-heavy household, because single moms, if they're working, they're working.
And if they're not working, they're usually doing something else.
Not a lot of playing with the kids.
I've been to a lot of play centers with my daughter.
A lot of women on the phones.
A lot of women on the phones.
Not all single moms, I'm sure.
And again, that's just anecdotal.
So you can't say, oh, if we can change men, we can change the world.
Can you change women?
Is that on the table at all?
Do women have anything to do with how men are raised, given that women are the primary caregivers for children?
