Straight White American Jesus - The Manosphere and the Fundamentalism Pipeline
Aired: 2026-05-06
Duration: 01:19:49


=== Religion Shapes American Democracy (01:57) ===

[00:00:07]  Axis Mundi.
[00:00:14]  What's up, everyone?
[00:00:15]  Brad Onishi here with the one and only Reza Aslan, and we've got something you do not want to miss.
[00:00:21]  That's right, Brad.
[00:00:22]  The brand new season of Our Seven Neighbors from the Interreligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary is live right now.
[00:00:30]  And this year, the United States marks its 250th anniversary.
[00:00:34]  We're stepping back to ask a big question What is the real story of religion in America?
[00:00:41]  This season, we're lifting up the deep history of spiritual diversity in the United States and revisiting the founders' very different visions.
[00:00:48]  For the role of religion in public life.
[00:00:50]  The truth is, there's never been just one religious story in this country.
[00:00:53]  There have always been many.
[00:00:54]  Exactly.
[00:00:55]  From the earliest days of the Republic, debates about faith, freedom, pluralism, and power shaped the nation.
[00:01:01]  Some founders imagined a country with strong protections for religious liberty, others had narrower visions.
[00:01:08]  And alongside them were native traditions, enslaved African spiritual practices, immigrant faith communities, all shaping America in ways that often go untold.
[00:01:18]  Instead of repeating a tidy myth.
[00:01:20]  Narrative, this season tells a braver, more accurate story, one that honors the breathtaking diversity that's always been here.
[00:01:26]  If you care about how religion has shaped American democracy, if you want to understand how spiritual communities have fueled movements for justice, if you're ready for a fuller account of our shared history, this season is for you.
[00:01:39]  From the Axis Munby Podcast Network and Chicago Theological Seminary.
[00:01:44]  The new season of Our Seven Neighbors is streaming now wherever you get your podcasts.

=== Roman Empire and Christian Manhood (15:14) ===

[00:02:04]  Welcome, Dan, back to the Sunday School Dropouts podcast.
[00:02:07]  And I just thought of this.
[00:02:08]  I think you are now officially the winner of most appearances.
[00:02:14]  So your gold Sunday School Dropouts coat will be in the mail.
[00:02:19]  I was like, I'll send my measurements right over, right?
[00:02:23]  Yes, please, please do.
[00:02:25]  Yes, we'll get you a crown also, and we'll put you in our wall of fame.
[00:02:29]  It'll be like one of those Burger King crowns, like in a gold coat.
[00:02:33]  Yeah.
[00:02:34]  And then that'll be my.
[00:02:35]  Yeah, that'll be well aware every time.
[00:02:37]  So, yes, I love it.
[00:02:39]  It's going to be so good.
[00:02:40]  You'll start a club and you're now the president of it.
[00:02:43]  And anybody else who reaches your status, you know, will get matching coats and crowns.
[00:02:49]  Sweet.
[00:02:49]  Yeah.
[00:02:50]  Well, it is good to have you back because, you know, I feel like the last time we were on, we kind of teased, like, maybe we should do another episode.
[00:02:57]  And then here we are because you have been reading the best books lately.
[00:03:05]  The best, the very best.
[00:03:08]  Yes.
[00:03:09]  So, You know, okay, so for people who don't know, Dan has another podcast called Straight White American Jesus.
[00:03:15]  You have been doing the in the code Wednesday episodes for what, two years now?
[00:03:20]  Even longer, yeah.
[00:03:21]  It's been a lot of episodes now.
[00:03:23]  Yeah, I think I'm okay.
[00:03:24]  Brad's the one who always counts the episodes.
[00:03:26]  I think I'm up over 150 episodes now, maybe something like that.
[00:03:29]  Holy cow.
[00:03:30]  Yeah, it was originally going to be 12.
[00:03:32]  It was going to be like 12.
[00:03:34]  Yeah.
[00:03:35]  It just turned into a thing.
[00:03:36]  So, yeah.
[00:03:37]  Yeah.
[00:03:37]  So, yeah.
[00:03:38]  So, we, so you've been reading through just, Incredible textbooks.
[00:03:42]  And one of them that we are going to be kind of using as a launching pad for our conversation today is Senator Josh Hawley's most recent book.
[00:03:51]  Is it a New York Times bestseller?
[00:03:53]  I don't even know.
[00:03:53]  I don't know if it is.
[00:03:55]  Yeah.
[00:03:56]  Probably not.
[00:03:57]  Or if it is, you're like, is it because, like, I don't know, the Republican National Committee bought like a bunch of copies and that whole thing that people do?
[00:04:05]  The Mark Driscoll thing, you know, where, you know, what is it?
[00:04:08]  Mars Hill bought, you know, tens of thousands of copies and, Yeah.
[00:04:12]  So it's probably something like that.
[00:04:14]  But yeah, we're going to talk a little bit more.
[00:04:16]  Just we have actually several things that we're going to try to kind of get through today in terms of manhood.
[00:04:23]  We might talk about the Roman Empire a little bit, you know, just kind of like what is this vision for manhood, the manosphere to fundamentalism pipeline.
[00:04:32]  Yeah.
[00:04:32]  And all things in between.
[00:04:34]  So for those of us who have not had the delight of reading Josh Hawley's book, Manhood, can you just kind of summarize what it is and kind of the Core arguments that he is trying to make, you know, just so that we have kind of a basis to go off of.
[00:04:51]  Yeah.
[00:04:52]  So the title of the book is Manhood.
[00:04:54]  And the subtitle kind of tells you, I think, what it is that he's claiming it is the masculine virtues America needs.
[00:05:01]  And his basic claim is that if men recover and kind of reclaim authentic manhood and masculine virtue, it will fix what ails America.
[00:05:12]  So, like, what's wrong with America is essentially a loss.
[00:05:15]  Of authentic manhood, which is due to liberals and progressives.
[00:05:19]  He calls us the new Epicureans.
[00:05:21]  Yes.
[00:05:22]  But it's ostensibly a Christian vision, a vision of like Christian masculinity, Christian manhood.
[00:05:27]  It's supposed to be drawn from the Bible and has biblical exemplars and so on.
[00:05:31]  And the idea is that if you cultivate manhood and he identifies six roles, sort of social roles that men are called to play, and if they play these roles and fulfill these, America will be fixed.
[00:05:42]  So that's basically the long and short of it.
[00:05:46]  Nice and easy.
[00:05:47]  It's tidy.
[00:05:48]  Yep.
[00:05:49]  It's tidy, which is what we need at a time like this.
[00:05:52]  Well, I know when we were having our conversation kind of about this episode, you talked about how he uses Adam in the book of Genesis as kind of this like primary model of manhood, not Jesus, but Adam.
[00:06:07]  So, yeah, what's kind of this like the theological claims that he makes about men as a result of Adam, you know, and kind of their role in the world?
[00:06:16]  Yeah.
[00:06:16]  So, I guess I should give him some props because I didn't actually expect it.
[00:06:19]  He just has a fair amount of footnotes and things in his book.
[00:06:22]  So, he's reading stuff.
[00:06:23]  It's all, you know, conservative.
[00:06:25]  You know, theological this and that, whatever.
[00:06:27]  But basically, his account is in the very beginning of the Bible for a few verses.
[00:06:32]  It's not very long, but in the book of Genesis, the first human, Adam, the Bible famously says that he's created in God's image.
[00:06:40]  And you have the whole story of the Garden of Eden.
[00:06:43]  And basically, it's this theology that says the Garden of Eden was intended to be a space of the divine presence, right?
[00:06:49]  So the temple.
[00:06:50]  And Adam is created in God's image.
[00:06:52]  And he's told to go and like cultivate the earth and subdue it and so forth.
[00:06:56]  And the idea that Adam was tasked with.
[00:06:59]  Transforming all of the earth, all of the world into a kind of temple for God's dwelling, and that this is what it means to be created in God's image and to be tasked with the same thing that God is tasked with, and so forth.
[00:07:10]  Adam fails.
[00:07:12]  And so Holly outlines what he calls the Adam Saga.
[00:07:16]  So basically, his way of reading the Bible is that all of these other Bible stories are sort of recapitulations.
[00:07:22]  They're like a new Adam coming up and continuing to carry forward this divine mission of making the world into God's temple.
[00:07:30]  And this is the calling of man.
[00:07:33]  The call of men now is to fulfill this calling to be like Adam and to do that.
[00:07:39]  I do find it interesting that he is basing his picture of manhood on somebody other than Jesus.
[00:07:46]  What do you think the reason is for that absence?
[00:07:49]  Yeah.
[00:07:49]  So, I mean, I'll plug, I guess by the time people hear this, it will have come out, but I just recorded it.
[00:07:55]  It's in the code for this week.
[00:07:56]  But the title is Jesus Isn't an Alpha.
[00:08:00]  The simple fact of the matter is, I think part of the reason they don't is that certainly the Jesus of the Gospels, he's not.
[00:08:07]  The model of manhood that the Christian manhood people tell us is a biblical model of manhood.
[00:08:12]  And they'll complain oftentimes and say that Jesus has been feminized and the church today has turned him into a wimp and, you know, whatever, and kind of imply that there's some other, I don't know, super bro y Jesus out there.
[00:08:25]  But they almost never actually talk about Jesus.
[00:08:28]  When they want models of manhood, that's not where they go.
[00:08:32]  They often, they may go to the Bible, other places.
[00:08:35]  Josh Hawley looks at like Joshua, right?
[00:08:37]  The warrior in the book of Joshua.
[00:08:38]  Or he looks at King David or he looks at, King Solomon, but sometimes they'll reach to pop culture.
[00:08:44]  There was a book, it's an older book now, but at the time it was like they noted how often like Braveheart will come up.
[00:08:50]  Oh, gosh, yeah.
[00:08:51]  Or, you know, that kind of thing.
[00:08:53]  And Josh Holley, he also talks about everything from like Arthurian myth to like the ancient Greeks and the Romans to Gandalf.
[00:09:02]  He's got a chapter on the priest.
[00:09:04]  Men are called to be a priest, and it's Gandalf.
[00:09:07]  Like, literally, he cites Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.
[00:09:10]  But the fact of the matter is, I think that they don't look to Jesus, because he's just not, he's not the dude that they think it should be.
[00:09:20]  He's all talking about meekness and violating social gender norms.
[00:09:25]  And like the neonatal, the pronatalists don't like him because he's like, you know, he's not married.
[00:09:30]  He doesn't have kids.
[00:09:32]  He doesn't side with political authority.
[00:09:34]  He's like a political loser.
[00:09:36]  He gets executed by the Romans.
[00:09:38]  Like, you know, he's just the wrong guy for the story, I think.
[00:09:41]  And so I think that that's one of the reasons that they don't, that they don't, Reach to him.
[00:09:47]  And so they're always looking at like other sort of exemplars for their vision.
[00:09:52]  And I'll just throw this out there.
[00:09:53]  And I know we need to move probably past Jesus, but it's a weird in the abstract thing for Christians when you're like, wait, hold up.
[00:10:01]  I thought the whole Christian core claim was like this Jesus guy who is, in fact, a man, is God and is God incarnate and is the fullest revelation and manifestation of what divinity is.
[00:10:15]  So you would think if you were going to be like, oh, biblical manhood, I guess we'll go study like what Jesus was like as a guy.
[00:10:22]  Completely absent from Holly.
[00:10:23]  And I should also say, I'm looking at Holly because he's not unique.
[00:10:27]  There's nothing unique to him.
[00:10:28]  If you look at lots of Christian masculinity stuff, the sort of Christian side of the manosphere thing, all of that, you're just not going to hear a lot about Jesus in there.
[00:10:37]  You're going to hear a lot of like Christian identity and Christian manhood and this and that.
[00:10:42]  But Holly is typical in that regard, which is why I'm looking at him.
[00:10:46]  Why do you think that is?
[00:10:47]  Because I mean, I know some of these books that you're referencing with, you know, I'm thinking of Wild at Heart by John Eldridge, you know, where it's like, yeah, the amount of.
[00:10:56]  Times he talks about William Wallace, you know, in Braveheart, you're just like, I mean, you would think that he's actually in the Bible, you know, for the amount of kind of like esteem that he gives him.
[00:11:07]  But I, it's interesting to look like how, and maybe, I mean, I'm sure Chris and Colbes Dumais' book, Jesus and John Wayne, I feel like touches on this a bit.
[00:11:16]  Like, when and why did we transfer from like the picture of Jesus as like, you know, here's what it means to be a Christian man in this world to now like Jesus who?
[00:11:29]  And Whether it's William Wallace or Gandalf or whatever the next biggest football star is or whatever, like, why do you think there was that shift?
[00:11:40]  Yeah, I mean, I'll go way back to a really, what I think is actually a really fundamental shift in Christian thought and culture.
[00:11:48]  And it's Emperor Constantine in the Roman Empire, right?
[00:11:52]  So for the first like two, 300 years of Christianity in the Roman West, for example, it was largely assumed that to be a Christian, you had to be a pacifist and that.
[00:12:04]  Yeah.
[00:12:04]  All of Jesus' teachings require this.
[00:12:06]  And there were debates about can Roman soldiers become Christians?
[00:12:09]  Or if you were a Roman soldier, do you have to repent of that and how and so on and so forth?
[00:12:15]  Well, then the Roman emperor becomes Christian.
[00:12:17]  And all of a sudden, Christianity has to be okay with being imperial, with being the religion of an empire.
[00:12:25]  And you get thinkers like Augustine who take on that role of essentially re articulating it.
[00:12:29]  And most of the history of Christianity in the West has been.
[00:12:34]  As the religion of power, the religion of empire.
[00:12:38]  And so I think that vision of a certain kind of masculinity that is about imperial power and warrior cultures and patriarchal society and so forth gets kind of projected into the Bible and becomes the lens through which the Bible is interpreted.
[00:12:55]  And therefore, the Christian tradition and theology and so forth.
[00:12:59]  And there are more proximate answers.
[00:13:00]  Like, you know, everybody walking around now is not like, well, Emperor Augustine's or Emperor Constantine said this or that.
[00:13:07]  But I think that it's just, it's a long, really long Western Christian cultural habit.
[00:13:13]  And I think that what we see is really the continuation, the latest version of that.
[00:13:17]  I think it's often been a kind of a minority discourse to talk about, you know, Jesus as, you know, as meek, as healer, as, you know, this and that.
[00:13:28]  And those traditions have always been there as well.
[00:13:30]  But I think that they've often been counter traditions to the culturally dominant forms and expressions of Christianity that, Americans through the colonial period forward also inherit and modify in different ways.
[00:13:42]  But I think that, I think that that's a long, long, long cultural habit.
[00:13:47]  Do you think that's connected to like a desire for power and control?
[00:13:51]  You know, because when I'm looking at like, yeah, this imperialist versus pacifist, like a pacifist, like just generally speaking, that's not going to be a person in a position of power or control over much.
[00:14:04]  And then your influence deeply disintegrates at that point.
[00:14:09]  Yeah.
[00:14:09]  I'm just curious to know what you think about the correlation between those.
[00:14:12]  Yeah.
[00:14:13]  I think they're absolutely, surprise, surprise.
[00:14:15]  I think they're related.
[00:14:17]  Yeah, I mean, Christianity becomes a discourse of power, right?
[00:14:20]  And you can get that with Jesus too.
[00:14:21]  The New Testament doesn't speak with one thing.
[00:14:24]  You've got the Jesus of the book of Revelation who comes back as a conqueror and fights his foes and tramples, literally tramples his enemies, and there's blood flowing everywhere and whatever.
[00:14:34]  So if you want the conquering warrior Jesus, you can get that too.
[00:14:39]  And I think it's absolutely about power and authority.
[00:14:43]  It's about sanctifying power and authority, right?
[00:14:46]  It's about making it good.
[00:14:47]  So, like, you know, it.
[00:14:49]  It's okay to exercise power and authority as long as it's for the right reason or it's for the truth or it's for a Christian society or whatever.
[00:14:56]  And those all become pretty slippery terms that we can fill in in different ways and whatever self serving way we want.
[00:15:03]  But yeah, I think it absolutely is.
[00:15:05]  And there have always been the critics of a certain criticism of Christianity, right?
[00:15:11]  That has always seen it as essentially a religion of power.
[00:15:16]  And yeah, and I think that that, again, I think that that goes all the way back to that sort of Constantinian sort of shift.
[00:15:22]  Yeah.
[00:15:24]  So, I think, you know, like the meme that kind of has floated around for, I don't know, a year or so of like, you know, the whole, how often do you think of the Roman Empire?
[00:15:32]  And some guys, like, you know, at least once every day.
[00:15:35]  And most people, women or those socialized females are like, what?
[00:15:40]  Like, that's not a thing.
[00:15:42]  But when you put it in that context, it's like, yeah, they might not be thinking exactly of Constantine, but it's like the, what it represents, right?
[00:15:52]  So, I think about, you know, on a daily basis, The Roman Empire, which represents conquering and power and control, and often positioned as an expression of male virtue, right?
[00:16:04]  You had a lot of language of virtue and moral development within this broadly sort of militaristic, martial, imperialistic society.
[00:16:13]  And so it was often very explicitly what patriarchally reflective, like a kind of self reflective form of patriarchy, right?
[00:16:23]  That could articulate here's why, excuse me, why it's patriarchy, why it's men.
[00:16:29]  Here's what male virtue is.
[00:16:31]  And Holly cites that.
[00:16:34]  Because you look around in the Bible and you're like, I'm going to go find the list of male virtues.
[00:16:37]  Like, it doesn't ever say anywhere, here's what male virtues are.
[00:16:40]  You know, the Romans did.
[00:16:42]  And again, longstanding cultural habits from the time of the collapse of the Western Empire forward, there was always this kind of callback to it, right?
[00:16:51]  You always had the Catholic Church modeled on the administrative structure of the Roman Empire.
[00:16:56]  It saw itself as the cultural inheritor of the Roman Empire.
[00:16:59]  And as you get the emergence of Western Christendom, You had everything from the Holy Roman Emperor to this group to that group, always hearkening back to this vision of Rome as this kind of high point of Western civilization.
[00:17:16]  And you still have that.

=== Politics Defined by Attacking Men (12:32) ===

[00:17:18]  And we get it with the language.
[00:17:20]  We used to learn this in college courses if people took Western Civ, whatever the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.
[00:17:26]  It's a really one sided kind of account of Roman imperialism, right?
[00:17:32]  It was peace, so to speak, but it was.
[00:17:34]  Peace through conquest.
[00:17:35]  And if you were those conquered peoples, the Roman peace probably didn't seem all that great.
[00:17:39]  If you were women in the Roman Empire, life wasn't great.
[00:17:41]  If you were one of the many, many, many slaves in the Roman Empire, life wasn't great.
[00:17:44]  It's a very specific kind of discourse, but I think it's one that has always fascinated Westerners and it put men at the top.
[00:17:54]  And over time, it becomes this story of Christian Rome.
[00:17:57]  And so it puts Christian men at the top.
[00:17:58]  And so, yeah, I think it's a pretty appealing story if you are a Christian man or want to claim that title.
[00:18:07]  And if you want to be the kind of Christian man that says power is good, God doesn't tell us to be meek, doesn't tell us to be powerless, doesn't, yeah, Jesus said if you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword.
[00:18:16]  It's just meant to be nice to the people around you.
[00:18:18]  It's not statecraft, you know, whatever.
[00:18:21]  Yeah.
[00:18:21]  It becomes a really legitimating kind of discourse.
[00:18:24]  I think that's, I mean, this might sound like a quote unquote boring history lesson, but I think if you start to like step back and put the pieces together, it makes a lot of sense.
[00:18:33]  Like, how did we get to where we're at today?
[00:18:35]  Or even a book like this being written, you know, and being touted as like this, you know, vision of masculinity or whatnot.
[00:18:44]  I just see, I see the connections in terms of like, The allure of like religion and politics coming together and using this as a framework that is supposed to be holy and a template for what we should be moving towards or aspiring towards.
[00:18:58]  Yeah, I think, I mean, and yeah, I'm not trying to be the super wonky cultural historian person, but I think on a long view, one of the things that fascinates me about Christian nationalism or so many of these discourses is yes, they're new in lots of ways, lots of ways they're not.
[00:19:14]  And even, you know, people will talk about the fusion of religion and politics, like true, but like for most.
[00:19:19]  Of Western history, religion and politics were not the separate things we envision, right?
[00:19:23]  They were, most of European history, they weren't.
[00:19:27]  And so now you've got people sort of hearkening back to a time when they're not.
[00:19:30]  And that's the other thing.
[00:19:31]  I think that those earlier histories become a kind of resource for them to be like, well, you know, I know all you lefties and crazy people talk about separation of church and state.
[00:19:41]  And you assume that Thomas Jefferson didn't want a Christian state and whatever, all of which is true.
[00:19:48]  But look, here was this other time.
[00:19:51]  Of what they envision as this golden age of the past.
[00:19:54]  And it was a golden age precisely because religion and politics were merged together and defined by masculine virtue.
[00:20:00]  And look what we achieved.
[00:20:01]  And, you know, so it really becomes this kind of mythic past that can be appropriated now.
[00:20:07]  And so it really is many times, sometimes an increasingly self conscious effort of kind of recapitulation.
[00:20:13]  We're going to recapitulate that.
[00:20:15]  We're going to recreate that here in America, here and now.
[00:20:18]  This is our chance.
[00:20:20]  Yeah.
[00:20:20]  Well, I think that's interesting too, because, you know, we've talked about this before, but.
[00:20:25]  You know, I think what Holly is hitting on, and even all, you know, at this whole conversation, is that there does seem to be like a void that a lot of men are experiencing in terms of identity and purpose.
[00:20:38]  So, yeah, I wonder if we can just talk about that a little bit and like what's going on that makes a book or a rhetoric like this even appealing or necessary.
[00:20:47]  Yeah, I think it's really important to recognize that there are real needs.
[00:20:52]  I think Holly identifies real social ills and problems.
[00:20:56]  He's got lots of stuff in there about.
[00:20:57]  You know, the unemployment rates among men and how many men have just, especially young men, have just left the workforce entirely and are not even trying to enter into that.
[00:21:07]  And he and others will talk about the so called loneliness epidemic, right?
[00:21:11]  And as you know, probably better than I do, there's a lot of social science and mental health evidence that that's a real thing and that, you know, men, many men are lacking social support and feelings of connection and meaning and purpose and like all of that's real.
[00:21:27]  And so what Holly is providing, what people like him provide is.
[00:21:31]  They're putting forward an answer to that, right?
[00:21:33]  I think it's the wrong answer.
[00:21:34]  And I think it doesn't satisfy and work.
[00:21:37]  And I talk about this when I'm talking about him.
[00:21:39]  But again, this is something I think goes much, much more broadly than Josh Hawley.
[00:21:44]  I look at all those things, and if I'm going to tell the story of how do we get to the place where we are in America now in terms of jobs and this, and I'm going to start talking about really super exciting things like neoliberal economics in the 1980s and Reaganomics and deregulation and doing away with organized labor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all of that kind of stuff, all of which the right popularized and championed.
[00:22:06]  And then you have, in many ways, predictable social and economic costs of that.
[00:22:12]  And in some ways, it is much easier and can even feel more satisfying to have this kind of mythic story.
[00:22:18]  About why that is and how we fix it than it is to talk about.
[00:22:23]  Certainly, if you're a person on the right and you've been a champion of neoliberal economics for the last 40 or 50 years, you're not going to turn around and be like, you know what?
[00:22:29]  We all made a huge mistake back in the Reagan years.
[00:22:32]  We need to walk away from that.
[00:22:34]  No, you'll adopt other strategies.
[00:22:36]  You can blame immigrants, right?
[00:22:37]  That's one piece of it.
[00:22:38]  You can blame women for disrupting the proper social order.
[00:22:42]  That's another piece of it.
[00:22:43]  And then you can sort of blame men themselves, but say, here's this vision.
[00:22:48]  This is what it could be like.
[00:22:50]  This is what it could look like if we just recover this and so on.
[00:22:53]  And I think it's a real response to real needs, real problems, but I don't think it's a response that works.
[00:23:02]  And I think it ignores fundamentally the real cause of some of which I think we understand, some of which we don't, frankly, fully understand the real causes of the malaise that lots of men experience.
[00:23:13]  Yeah.
[00:23:14]  I mean, I think that's interesting because, yeah, we're talking about like these systems that are being set up to give a very specific Ideal of what a man is in response to this other very real thing that's happening, which, you know, whether we want to call it the male loneliness epidemic or something else, but it really boils down to, yeah, like it is an identity thing.
[00:23:37]  But it's also interesting to me that, like, thinking through, like, a I think, I don't know if it would be sociological or anthropological lens, like, as other groups of people have become more equal or there's a path more towards equality, right?
[00:23:53]  The only solution it feels like.
[00:23:56]  For cis hetero white men in particular, is just more power rather than considering my identity could be found in something else.
[00:24:06]  I don't even know if that's a question so much as an observation, but it feels like there's just this rigid, it's either like we are without an identity or our identity is power.
[00:24:17]  Like it doesn't feel like there's been a lot in between that.
[00:24:21]  And I think that's a bigger conversation to have, but it makes sense then why some of these things, whether it's Josh Holley or the Manosphere or Christian fundamentalism becomes so appealing.
[00:24:32]  Yeah.
[00:24:33]  I think there are a few dynamics there.
[00:24:35]  One is what we might call what somebody like Kristen Dumay would call militant masculinity, or more broadly, it's a term I think is kind of overused and obviously not well defined, but you don't talk about toxic masculinity or whatever, or what the Christian bros and the Manosphere people will just call like the alpha kind of thing, whatever.
[00:24:55]  I think they won the branding war in the sense that that's what masculinity is, full stop.
[00:25:01]  To be masculine is to be assertive, to be powerful, to not be subject to certainly emotional expression.
[00:25:09]  Or if you do express emotions or emotions like, you know, anger or, you know, whatever, you're not supposed to be vulnerable.
[00:25:14]  Vulnerability is weakness, you know, things like that.
[00:25:17]  But when I say they won the branding war, I think they also won the branding war oftentimes among those who don't support that vision.
[00:25:25]  And so one piece of this is often that rather than conceiving of this as we need to think about how, like, what are masculinities.
[00:25:35]  What are ways of being masculine?
[00:25:37]  What are ways of men being in the world that no masculinity is bad because all it is is that it comes to be defined simply as that.
[00:25:45]  And so I think that's one piece is that there hasn't felt like for many that there is an alternative.
[00:25:50]  You're just attacking men, and that's the discourse you hear all the time.
[00:25:54]  And you'll try to be like, no, I'm not attacking men.
[00:25:56]  I'm just saying that you don't have to be an asshole, maybe, like, you know, maybe that's all that that means, or you don't have to be a misogynist to be a man, like, maybe that's possible, or you don't have to be straight to be masculine, or whatever it is.
[00:26:10]  But all of those come to be just denials of manhood, right?
[00:26:13]  And you get that discourse.
[00:26:14]  And so I think that that's one of the difficulties is I think, kind of across a political and social spectrum, there were a lot of people that sort of accepted that equation, right?
[00:26:24]  That toxic masculinity is masculinity as such.
[00:26:28]  So when you critique that, there doesn't feel for many people, there's like, what else is left?
[00:26:33]  Where do you go?
[00:26:33]  What do you express?
[00:26:34]  And I think that that's one of the difficulties that confronts, I think, a lot of us trying to challenge those views.
[00:26:40]  I run into it, and somebody's like, so what is.
[00:26:43]  Masculine answer.
[00:26:44]  It's hard.
[00:26:44]  We don't have a great answer for that because we've spent a long time kind of letting the other side define what that is, rhetorically speaking.
[00:26:53]  And then you get that notion where everything's a zero sum game, right?
[00:26:56]  If women have greater social authority, it can only mean that I don't if I'm a man.
[00:27:00]  Yes.
[00:27:00]  If the economy changes and it's not a production based economy, that kind of idyllic 1950s manufacturing economy model, right?
[00:27:11]  And if I'm a man and I'm not building with my hands, I'm not really a man.
[00:27:15]  And So, everything's a zero sum game.
[00:27:17]  Change can only be a loss.
[00:27:18]  It can only be a loss of social status.
[00:27:20]  It can only be a loss of identity.
[00:27:21]  It can only be a loss of all of those things.
[00:27:24]  And everything becomes a narrative of loss and threat.
[00:27:27]  And then it provokes this response, which turns into a reassertion of that kind of masculinity.
[00:27:34]  Yeah.
[00:27:35]  Which, you know, whatever Josh Hawley is like promoting in his book is this very clear like, here's these roles and these virtues that you're supposed to have.
[00:27:46]  Which then becomes very psychologically appealing.
[00:27:49]  It gives, it's why fundamentalism, religion can be appealing.
[00:27:53]  It plays on our need for certainty and stability of like, if I match these ideals, I will be okay, accepted, I will survive.
[00:28:03]  Yeah.
[00:28:04]  And identity.
[00:28:04]  I mean, we talk about identity, and I like to do a fair amount of work in identity theory, and a couple of theorists that I like will point out that identity is more of a verb than a noun.
[00:28:13]  Like, we talk about it as if something is something we possess.
[00:28:17]  What they'll point out is that identity is always a social process, right?
[00:28:20]  It's where we're always identifying and sort of being in certain ways, and we're recognized by others and we recognize ourselves.
[00:28:27]  And the idea is it's always this ongoing sort of dynamic process.
[00:28:30]  And that's hard and that can be really scary and that can be difficult and that can be uncertain.
[00:28:36]  And so to have a nice pre made template that you can just sort of adopt and be like, nope, that's what masculinity is.
[00:28:42]  And then what we essentially do is we work to enact that template, right?
[00:28:47]  And I think that that's what.
[00:28:48]  High control religion can provide that's what the kind of manosphere vision can provide, and of course, it's a pretty nice identity if it says you're always the winner, like you know, others are supposed to be subordinate to you, and you're so you know, oh, all those soft people tell you that your aggression is a bad thing and that taking advantage of people is bad, but no, these are strengths, these are just what it is to be like.
[00:29:09]  There's some appeal to that, too, right?
[00:29:11]  That like, oh, I don't have to do any work on myself, I can just embrace all of my most, you know, maybe socially damaging features.
[00:29:19]  Turns out those are all my strengths, and you know, so.
[00:29:23]  It provides a lot of certainty.
[00:29:25]  Yeah, the kind of template, and we don't have to do the really hard thing about living, which is living with ambiguity and figuring out who we are and recognizing that that changes over time.
[00:29:34]  And, you know, all of those kinds of things that I think are really hard things to face up to.
[00:29:40]  Yeah.
[00:29:40]  Well, I appreciate kind of like the inclusion of the manosphere because I think it's important to talk about that and maybe even talk about how that can be such a nice pipeline for Christian nationalism and fundamentalism.

=== Wealthy Self-Help Discourse (05:01) ===

[00:29:51]  But when we look at kind of like the broader ecosystem, we do have the manosphere, like, you know, People like Andrew Tate, and I know that documentary just came out too on Netflix, the Louis something.
[00:30:03]  Through a documentary called Manosphere.
[00:30:06]  You know, they have an extreme amount of influence with young men in particular.
[00:30:11]  And, you know, just kind of from your thoughts, opinions, research, what do you think the Manosphere is like actually offering young men?
[00:30:20]  Yeah, I think what it promises is so, first of all, I mean, it's fine.
[00:30:23]  There are so many layers, and Theroux sort of shows this in his documentary, you know, the sort of the capitalist piece of it.
[00:30:29]  The, you know, they're all like shilling, you know, investment opportunities and things like this.
[00:30:34]  And it's also a certain, there's a certain kind of, I think, broader self help discourse that gets in there.
[00:30:40]  I used to, long ago, when people read self help books and didn't have online influencers, I came up with this concept that I called public esotericism, by which I meant like you would get the person who's like the self made successful person, whatever, and they would sell their book or their package or their, you know, whatever.
[00:30:57]  And they'd be like, I did it.
[00:30:59]  You can too, right?
[00:31:00]  Anybody can do it.
[00:31:02]  You just got to sell, spend the 50 bucks to buy my thing, and I'll teach you the secrets of how to do this thing.
[00:31:07]  It's like this kind of esoteric knowledge, but also convincing you that everybody can do it.
[00:31:11]  And so you get this weird dynamic of the person who's this exceptional person, but also telling everybody that they could be just as exceptional, which is a kind of paradox.
[00:31:22]  It's the newer version of that.
[00:31:23]  So you have these guys who are incredibly successful and wealthy, or at least all look wealthy.
[00:31:28]  There's sometimes questions about, you know, what is that and how, and they're all self made.
[00:31:33]  Like, I made 6,000 pounds today before I got out of bed.
[00:31:36]  What did you do?
[00:31:37]  You know, whatever.
[00:31:38]  And so there is the classic kind of self help, get rich quick kind of piece to this that I think just appeals.
[00:31:47]  But there's also, you get that mat, the distinctly, what I think, distinctly masculinist conception built in there, all the alpha stuff.
[00:31:54]  They're all like lifting weights and they're surrounded by beautiful women.
[00:31:58]  They're almost all straight, right?
[00:31:59]  They're straight, they're wealthy.
[00:32:02]  They've got attractive women hanging all over them.
[00:32:04]  They'll talk about their body count or that, like, whatever, all of this kind of stuff.
[00:32:09]  And so it's pitching again, often that thing of like this sort of backlash of all the things society says are bad about you that you need to work on or that you need to mitigate.
[00:32:20]  I didn't.
[00:32:21]  And look what it got me, right?
[00:32:23]  It often didn't.
[00:32:24]  They're making their money not because they're men, but because they're getting like a percentage of all the clicks that people make to invest in whatever to buy this or that.
[00:32:32]  It's just capitalism, that piece of it.
[00:32:35]  But it does speak, I think, to that need.
[00:32:37]  It's that same.
[00:32:39]  Public esotericist knowledge that anybody can do this.
[00:32:42]  And you're like, if anybody could do it, everybody would do it.
[00:32:45]  If it was that, like I would do it, if it was that easy to make 6,000 bucks a day just laying in bed, I'd be doing it.
[00:32:50]  You know, but it sounds good.
[00:32:52]  And when you have those real things, those real challenges that young men are facing, and I recognize young men are not the only people in the world that face challenges, right?
[00:33:02]  But like, sure, but they are that promise that if you just, I don't know, if you're just more confident, if you're just more aggressive, if you just believe in yourself.
[00:33:12]  If you just quit listening to negative voices or whatever, you too can achieve this and this and this.
[00:33:19]  It's really appealing.
[00:33:20]  And I think it's maybe important to recognize and to say to normalize it.
[00:33:26]  I just mean in the sense that we people get exploited by, you know, older people getting exploited by reverse mortgage promises or women getting exploited by fitness trends or, you know, people that can prey on fundamental insecurities, people who are skilled at identifying real anxieties that people have and using those as leverage points, right?
[00:33:50]  It's another version of that.
[00:33:51]  I think that what makes it feel And maybe be more significant at present is that it's, you know, it's a central part of like why we have the political situation we have.
[00:34:02]  Like it's, it's, it's in this kind of culturally ascended moment right now.
[00:34:07]  And yeah, so, but I think it's there and it's, it's all built on being exactly the kind of authority wielding, power wielding man that, as you talk about the fundamentalist pipeline, that fundamentalist Christianity has also said is.
[00:34:24]  The ideal, right?
[00:34:25]  The male head of the household, the breadwinner, the spiritual authority.
[00:34:28]  And we see the effects.
[00:34:30]  You know, there's some pretty significant percentage.
[00:34:32]  I think it's what, like a third or something of Gen Z men report that like women should defer to their husbands in discussions about finances, you know, this or that or whatever.
[00:34:42]  The numbers shift, but it's a notable chunk of that younger population that shows real effects of this, I think.
[00:34:49]  Yeah.
[00:34:50]  As you were talking, like two things kind of came up.

=== Trauma Behind Social Traits (04:09) ===

[00:34:53]  First of all, it was just like the similarity to fundamentalism or any sort of a high control religion in terms of, It really is not about your actual character.
[00:35:02]  It's like about checking off this list of things that you do these things and that makes you whatever a good Christian, a good religious person, a holy person, a good man, a strong man, a confident man, the right man.
[00:35:16]  And yeah, so like I know we'll get into kind of that, you know, pipeline of manosphere to fundamentalism, but I think to me that like definitely tracks in terms of how easy it can be to go.
[00:35:31]  Down that road.
[00:35:32]  And it also strikes me too that it's a way to deal with discomfort that doesn't actually make you deal with the discomfort.
[00:35:43]  So if you are feeling badly about yourself, if you feel guilt or shame or discomfort or whatever it is, you don't have to deal with that, whether it's in the manosphere system or a high control religion system.
[00:35:56]  You just do these five things or blame, you know, outsource your blame like it's somebody else's fault.
[00:36:03]  And That then is supposed to like take away your discomfort, but it actually just like deadens you to the experience of life because it's everybody else's fault and you never learn how to sit with your own big feelings and discomfort and sadness and grief and all of that.
[00:36:20]  Yeah.
[00:36:20]  You know, in the documentary, Theroux makes a point.
[00:36:23]  I don't think this is going to be generalizable to everybody, but he does make a point that the manosphere influencers he's looking at all come from kind of damaged households.
[00:36:35]  Often didn't have, like, you know, they'd sort of abandoned by fathers or male figures or experiencing neglect or abuse or whatever.
[00:36:42]  And he opens up the issue of trauma and says, is there some potentially unresolved trauma here?
[00:36:48]  And often there sort of is.
[00:36:51]  I mean, when people experience trauma or emotional dysregulation of whatever kind, whether strictly traumatic or not, you've kind of got a number of things that you can do with that, right?
[00:37:04]  As we know, the hard thing to do is to look at it and be like, wow.
[00:37:08]  I've got some things I think I need to work on.
[00:37:10]  I keep flying off the handle, or I keep alienating people, or I don't know.
[00:37:14]  I got in trouble at work because I said something snide or rude, or I can't sustain a relationship because of this or this or this.
[00:37:22]  One of the things that they do, and this is where I think Theroux may be onto something, is it's a way of not just bypassing that work, but you say, nope, the problem really is everybody else.
[00:37:33]  The problem, the reason I don't have any relationships that work really is because everybody else is wrong and they just don't recognize that I'm right.
[00:37:42]  And man, that's a lot more comfortable kind of response.
[00:37:45]  Yeah.
[00:37:46]  It may not be as sustainable.
[00:37:47]  And it, as I think, as you say, it deadens you to a lot of real things that are going on.
[00:37:52]  But that is one piece of it I think it often takes what are, let's just call them maladjustive social traits, exploitative social traits, and turns them into strengths, right?
[00:38:04]  So if women have a problem with the way I talk, well, women are just oversensitive.
[00:38:07]  We all know this, right?
[00:38:08]  Just that misogynistic kind of repeated sort of thing that women have heard for, I don't know, as long as there have been women.
[00:38:18]  They're being oversensitive, or you're out of line, or you know, whatever.
[00:38:22]  And it does away with that need to reflect on yeah, are there things, ways that I could be better for me and for others?
[00:38:30]  And are there ways to, you know, live in community with others where everybody kind of flourishes and so on?
[00:38:36]  That can be really hard to do, especially if it means having to do the work of processing perhaps trauma or just a sort of a cultural model that has been normalized and having to try to reach for something else.
[00:38:50]  Man, that's hard.
[00:38:51]  So, it can be a lot easier and very comfortable when some guy with big muscles and women all over driving this fancy car comes along and says, Hey, if you just embrace all of that instead of trying to change it, yeah, look what it does.

=== Co-opting Awkwardness in Development (02:31) ===

[00:39:03]  Look at this.
[00:39:03]  And you're like, Oh, okay.
[00:39:05]  All right.
[00:39:05]  Yeah, I'm in.
[00:39:07]  And I think that I think there's a real appeal to that.
[00:39:09]  Yeah.
[00:39:10]  Yeah.
[00:39:10]  I mean, especially when we're talking about younger boys, you know, adolescents who are, you know, just coming into their own and their brains are not fully formed and are therefore highly suggestible and influenceable.
[00:39:24]  And Adolescence is already such a time of like awkwardness and discomfort.
[00:39:30]  You know, like I think back to, yeah, when I was, you know, 13, 14, 15 years old, I would never want to go back and live those years again because everything inside of you and outside of you is changing.
[00:39:43]  And it's just a recipe for like, it's a recipe for all the things that happened, right?
[00:39:49]  All the awkwardness and the embarrassment and the, you know, some good moments.
[00:39:54]  But I don't know if I've ever met anybody who's like, you know what I want?
[00:39:56]  I want to be 14 again.
[00:39:58]  Yeah.
[00:39:59]  25?
[00:39:59]  Give me 25.
[00:40:00]  I'll be 25 again, but I don't want to be 15 again.
[00:40:03]  Yeah.
[00:40:04]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:40:05]  But, you know, it's like such a natural time, anyways, in that adolescence phase for figuring out who am I?
[00:40:11]  What do I like?
[00:40:12]  Who do I like?
[00:40:12]  What do I want?
[00:40:13]  You know, what is life going to look like?
[00:40:15]  And it's part of the norm in just like development.
[00:40:18]  I mean, developmental psychology and it just is.
[00:40:22]  And it's like it's co opting, you know, these systems are co opting these normal developmental processes.
[00:40:29]  And questions and experiences that we all have to go through in order to get to adulthood.
[00:40:36]  And they're saying, like, well, because you're feeling this way, yeah, like you said, we're outsourcing it to someone else.
[00:40:42]  And like, you don't have to learn how to self reflect.
[00:40:44]  You don't have to learn how to develop emotional regulation.
[00:40:48]  You don't have to learn all of these things.
[00:40:50]  You just have to say that you, whoever you are, is the one that's causing this.
[00:40:55]  And I can, you know, like bump up against it.
[00:40:57]  And it is, I mean, again, you know, He uses his analogies, and I recognize it's not always the case, but there is a real feel of arrested development to a lot of this, right?
[00:41:09]  Like, it's just this perpetual adolescent stage where you're like, dude, just grow up.
[00:41:15]  Like, I get it, but like, why does it still bug you so much if, I don't know, if somebody's not into what you're into or like how insecure do you have to be to like really care whether or not, like, I don't know, you bench more than that guy over there or whatever?
[00:41:32]  Like, you know, it's important, Dan.

=== Fears Masking Deep Insecurities (15:40) ===

[00:41:35]  Like, it's important.
[00:41:36]  You know, but yeah, and there's that part.
[00:41:38]  And I think that's what can make it hard to take it seriously because you can look at it.
[00:41:45]  I don't know for some of us who maybe aren't completely arrested in our 15 year old development to look at it be like, dude, like you're so insecure.
[00:41:52]  Like it, it, it projects such strength and security and assurance.
[00:41:56]  But I think many of us look at it be like, can you not see just how insecure that person is?
[00:42:00]  Like, but people don't.
[00:42:02]  And that person doesn't because they're this perpetual 14, 15 year old trying to, you know, sort of make their way in the world.
[00:42:08]  But yeah, instead of having to figure out what it means to grow up, they're just, I don't know, like the lost boys or something.
[00:42:14]  Like living in the, The island of the manosphere and the lost boys who are stuck in perpetual adolescence, and then turning that into a new norm of masculinity.
[00:42:23]  Yeah.
[00:42:24]  Yeah.
[00:42:25]  Well, I think, you know, if we add the religious component on there too, you know, because we know and research even talks about this a lot, you know, there's a lot of cult like high control religion, you know, these groups that specifically target adolescents for the purpose of, you know, they're trying to form their identity.
[00:42:40]  Their brains are not fully formed.
[00:42:42]  If we can get them now, the chances that they will repeat this and have children who will do this, you know, it's like it all is like part of the system.
[00:42:50]  But yeah, let's talk about that, like, you know, manosphere to Christian nationalist or fundamentalist pipeline.
[00:42:57]  Like, how do you see that working?
[00:43:00]  I think I see it as a.
[00:43:02]  I mean, sometimes they're connected and sometimes they're not directly.
[00:43:05]  Like, you know, I mean, there are plenty of manosphere folks who are leaning into the whole, like, America's a Christian nation, you know, all of that, that kind of stuff.
[00:43:15]  But I think there's a kind of, like, a sort of feedback loop, right, that works.
[00:43:20]  I mean, on, on, on, The fundamentalist or high control Christianity piece, right?
[00:43:26]  I understand there are other forms of high control religion in America, but that's the biggest and most significant in terms of numbers and so on.
[00:43:34]  You've had it explicitly patriarchal.
[00:43:37]  Yeah.
[00:43:37]  Men are called to be the head of the family and the head of society and the spiritual head and so on and so forth and all of that.
[00:43:45]  That's a pretty natural homology with, let's call it secular manosphere stuff, if you like.
[00:43:53]  And so I think the two can become mutually reinforcing, right?
[00:43:56]  Yeah.
[00:43:56]  So the same kid that's maybe hearing sermons or being taught in youth group that is a 15 year old kid, if he's like dating somebody, he's supposed to be the spiritual.
[00:44:05]  I don't know what that even is even supposed to mean to be the spiritual head of your relationship with your like 15 year old girlfriend or like what, like what is that?
[00:44:12]  But that's what he's being taught.
[00:44:14]  That's what's maybe his dad is saying.
[00:44:17]  If his dad grew up in this context and he knows what that looks like.
[00:44:19]  And then you've got the manosphere people talking about, you know, being an alpha and always being in charge and never letting others take advantage of you and so on.
[00:44:28]  I think that there's a very natural.
[00:44:30]  Fit.
[00:44:30]  And that's why I think there are, if you drew the Venn diagrams, right, the circles of them, there's a lot of overlap, right?
[00:44:36]  There are points where they do overlap, where there is what I would call the Christian manosphere.
[00:44:41]  But even where there isn't, I think there's a, let's just say, such a commonality of emphasis and the centrality of masculinity and a vision of what that looks like and an understanding of the social role of that, that one can shift from one side of that.
[00:45:02]  You know, that Venn diagram to the other very naturally and very easily.
[00:45:07]  I think that it can feed into that.
[00:45:08]  I also think that, as you know, as the manosphere thing, you look at the manosphere, there's not a lot of 65, 70 year old manosphere influencers, right?
[00:45:19]  Like, you can be as big and strong as you want to be, but when you're in your 60s, you're probably not going to keep up with the 24 year olds and whatever, right?
[00:45:26]  There's a little bit of a time stamp on that.
[00:45:29]  But high control religion is cradle to grave, right?
[00:45:31]  That's a, you know, and so I think it also provides sort of a landing spot in some ways as some people maybe shift.
[00:45:39]  From the manosphere thing, even recognize how puerile it can be.
[00:45:44]  Oh, but now we've got this thing that lets me essentially occupy a lot of the same social roles, but it feels like it has greater depth.
[00:45:51]  And it's about spirituality.
[00:45:53]  And it's about, you know, I think lending more gravitas to it.
[00:45:57]  As somebody, I don't know, maybe they do have to go get a job and they start having a family.
[00:46:00]  They don't get to just watch TikTok like, you know, six hours a day or whatever, but they can still go and kind of hear the same message and something that feels more robust.
[00:46:10]  It has a landing place for them in their 30s and beyond.
[00:46:13]  I think that that's another piece of it as well.
[00:46:15]  Yeah.
[00:46:16]  Well, and I think as humans, we are designed to kind of want to have something bigger than ourselves to be a part of.
[00:46:23]  And that could be religion, it could be a service opportunity, it could be your family, it could be so many things.
[00:46:30]  But yeah, so if this space is providing not only the same messaging, which puts you in this similar position of power and leadership and control, and now it's for this greater purpose and you get to live forever.
[00:46:44]  Like that, yeah, that's absolutely more appealing.
[00:46:47]  That's definitely a good bonus, right?
[00:46:48]  You also get eternal life out of it, right?
[00:46:50]  Like, yeah, exactly.
[00:46:52]  Yeah.
[00:46:52]  And it kind of feels cleaner too, right?
[00:46:55]  Like, cause you know, in the manosphere, it's really like very self serving, right?
[00:46:58]  The end goal is me and myself and I and whatever.
[00:47:02]  And there's something that feels more like noble and clean that it's for this greater good.
[00:47:08]  And not only that, I'm like looking out for all of these other people and trying to convince them of the same thing.
[00:47:14]  Definitely gives a savior complex in some very real ways.
[00:47:17]  One of the ways that I talk about this, it feels like sort of what you're talking about as well, is I'll talk about like the kinder, gentler patriarchy, right?
[00:47:25]  That's Josh Holley's book.
[00:47:26]  He doesn't read like the Manosphere folks, right?
[00:47:28]  It's a much kinder, gentler, men are called to sacrifice for others, you know, and so on.
[00:47:35]  They're still called to lead and rule.
[00:47:36]  And like one of the social roles they have to play is that of king, but, you know, they're called to serve others.
[00:47:43]  It's not, Different in my view, but it's a different, it's like the same song in a very different key, right?
[00:47:50]  And it provides, as you're saying, that it feels more wholesome.
[00:47:53]  It feels like the kinder, gentler patriarchy.
[00:47:56]  And this is also a kind of discourse we've seen in high control religion for decades, right?
[00:48:00]  You've got the really militant in your face ones, but you've got the ones that are like, well, you know, it's patriarchy, but it's about, it's about, you know, serving our wives and protecting our little princess daughters and whatever.
[00:48:12]  And if you're kind of like, yeah, but you're still like demeaning women and your daughters aren't princesses and maybe you should.
[00:48:17]  Teach them how to take care of themselves and their own capabilities, et cetera.
[00:48:22]  It's the same thing, but it feels nicer, it feels kinder, it feels gentler, it can be more benevolent.
[00:48:30]  But I think the same underlying structure is there.
[00:48:33]  Yeah.
[00:48:34]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:48:35]  And it's hitting the same core needs.
[00:48:39]  I remember hearing a talk a long, long, long time ago about what are the core needs of a human?
[00:48:44]  And they listed like six or seven.
[00:48:46]  And one of them was autonomy and individuality and identity.
[00:48:51]  You know, is one of them.
[00:48:52]  And I think about like those adolescent years is all about figuring out your own identity.
[00:48:58]  It's pretty much been suggested to you by parents up until that point.
[00:49:02]  Right.
[00:49:03]  And so, when you are breaking out of it, which is super natural to do, you know, like it feels untethering.
[00:49:12]  Like, you know, part of why I would never want to be 14 or 15 again, or probably even 20 or 21 or 22 is I felt like I had nothing to stand on.
[00:49:21]  Like, I felt like I was out to sea and the waves were choppy and I was just trying to keep my head above water.
[00:49:27]  And that's where, like, I really started leaning into purity culture because it gave me this sense or this illusion of safety.
[00:49:34]  That I have something to stand on.
[00:49:36]  And so, even though there's so much chaos around me, if I follow these rules and become this person, I will get this reward.
[00:49:43]  And I think about how what is being sold in the manosphere or the Christian nationalism or the Christian manosphere, however we want to say it, is like a sense of stability and certainty in the midst of choppiness, which is like, again, so normal for that stage.
[00:50:03]  But that's what's happening.
[00:50:05]  Is they're selling this identity and it's meeting some deep psychological and relational and emotional needs.
[00:50:11]  Yeah.
[00:50:12]  Yeah.
[00:50:13]  As somebody with two adolescents at different stages in the house, I like, I get the front row seat to this.
[00:50:22]  Yeah, it's real stuff and it's hard.
[00:50:24]  And you can see people, these young people in my life, trying to feel their way through that.
[00:50:31]  And yeah, it could be nice to just have a nice template.
[00:50:35]  To follow, right?
[00:50:36]  And you see that at that age with like peer groups and things like that.
[00:50:38]  What does that do?
[00:50:39]  It gives them kind of the template, right?
[00:50:42]  It gives them the group to fit into.
[00:50:43]  And I think just again to that point that these are real needs, real developmental steps and processes and so forth.
[00:50:52]  And so I think we have to understand that these things, the reason why high control religion and manosphere stuff or whatever are such a threat is precisely because they appeal to something real.
[00:51:02]  I think that they are not helpful and I think that they don't help people.
[00:51:06]  Meet the needs that they're trying to meet or deal with the things that they need to deal with, but they're providing, promising, I guess, to respond to something real and something that is something that people really, really struggle with.
[00:51:21]  Yeah.
[00:51:22]  And maybe that's a good direction to go because we've talked about how much it focuses on things like power and control and dominance and authority, but I see that as masking a lot of deep insecurities, fear, things like that.
[00:51:35]  And yeah, I wonder if maybe that's like part of the conversation that we should be having is like, What does all of this tell us about what's actually happening on a human level?
[00:51:46]  Yeah.
[00:51:48]  I couldn't put a date on it, but I do kind of remember this is going to sound weird.
[00:51:52]  I promise I'll land this plane.
[00:51:55]  The first time I told somebody that I was envious of them, like instead of getting defensive or just resentful toward them or whatever, I remember I've said, Yeah, I'm like really envious that this thing happened for you and not for me.
[00:52:08]  And I'm really having a hard time with that.
[00:52:11]  And it was, you know, obviously a very vulnerable kind of thing.
[00:52:13]  But I remember, I remember how freeing that felt and how all of these emotions that had been going on inside of me to mask that, right?
[00:52:23]  To try to give me a sense of control or whatever, whether it's, oh, they did this or that, that's wrong, or resentment or anger or whatever.
[00:52:29]  And it was, it was in, I think it was in college, right?
[00:52:31]  When I had this first time of just telling somebody and being like, I'm really envious that this happened for you, if I'm honest.
[00:52:38]  I'm happy for you, but I am also really envious and disappointed that it didn't happen for me and I'm having a hard time with it.
[00:52:44]  It was amazing how transformative that was, but it's also amazing how hard that was to do, right?
[00:52:50]  And what was it about insecurities and fears and, and, you know, putting those out?
[00:52:55]  I think that oftentimes trying, number one, recognizing that that's what's going on, right?
[00:53:05]  That there are insecurities and fears that are there and trying, and it can be hard.
[00:53:11]  It can be hard to be compassionate when you're engaging people who are spewing this kind of stuff or whatever, or to go back to the adolescence, certainly not my adolescence.
[00:53:22]  But perhaps others will remember when adolescents would say unkind things to caregivers or parents or, you know, whatever.
[00:53:29]  And anybody who has had adolescence in their life knows how hard it can be to not take that to heart or to want to respond in kind or to, you know, whatever, to just have the compassion to recognize that this is being said out of fear or insecurity or whatever, to recognize that that's what's going on and to try to get.
[00:53:53]  To that, yeah, right, and and I don't pretend to have all the answers of how to do that, but you know, to give just an anecdotal experience, I've had conversations with people high for those where they get really into like the Bible, it has to be this way, the Bible says this, you know, and it's the certitude and the vitriol that comes out of it.
[00:54:11]  I remember asking them once, I said, I can hear how important that matters to you.
[00:54:15]  What would it mean for you if that wasn't what the Bible said?
[00:54:18]  Like, what would be put at risk?
[00:54:20]  And they actually started talking about like how just.
[00:54:25]  The world would kind of fall apart for them, right?
[00:54:27]  And you're beginning to get at that at the real issue.
[00:54:31]  And I think that that's a real key is on one hand, I'm going to sound like such a pop psych kind of person, but you know, kind of creating the space for that, trying to create the space for people to actually articulate that, yeah, to absorb some of that vitriol and let it slide away so that you can get to the emotion.
[00:54:51]  But I think also trying to model other ways of being.
[00:54:55]  And I think that.
[00:54:57]  Just to address those issues of insecurities and fears and so on.
[00:55:02]  And I think that's why it's also important.
[00:55:03]  They're not as visible, but I was thinking about this in anticipation of our discussion that there are other visions of masculinity in society, right?
[00:55:12]  They don't get the notoriety, but I was thinking of, you know, as I know so many people have, the anti ICE protests in places like Minnesota.
[00:55:21]  Guess what?
[00:55:21]  There were lots of men, you know, participating and standing up for the rights of others and exercising.
[00:55:28]  You know, a certain degree of authority or male privilege or what have you, things that they didn't choose.
[00:55:36]  It's just who they are in the world and people, way that people respond to them to try to help others or people who are articulating fears and anxieties and people who are prioritizing not just their family and their immediate sphere and whatever, but total strangers.
[00:55:50]  I think also trying to elevate those visions of masculinity or things that men do, if one's uncomfortable with, you know, Calling it masculinity as such.
[00:56:02]  I think that's important too to help counter that discourse because that's the trick with the influencers, right?
[00:56:08]  Their aim is to influence.
[00:56:09]  Like they're so visible.
[00:56:10]  They're there all the time.
[00:56:12]  They're self promoters.
[00:56:14]  And regular people out in the world living a different way are not self promoters and they're not influencers and they're not going to get lots of likes and so forth.
[00:56:23]  So I think elevating those as alternative models, but also trying to create spaces of like, how do we really get at the true emotions that are driving these things?
[00:56:32]  And often recognizing that they are about.
[00:56:34]  Emotions and deeply felt, you know, affects, not things out in the world, right?
[00:56:40]  The concern about immigrants isn't really about immigrants.
[00:56:43]  It's not really about those people.
[00:56:45]  It's about some feared loss of status.
[00:56:48]  It's about a fear that you're going to lose identity.
[00:56:50]  It's about, you know, let's figure out ways to try to get to that real issue.
[00:56:58]  Well, there's, I mean, there's those memes that are like, you know, men will literally do X, Y, or Z, you know, like go to war with a country in order, you know, instead of going to therapy or whatever.
[00:57:08]  Yeah.
[00:57:09]  Yeah.
[00:57:10]  And it's funny, but also not totally untrue.

=== Fighting Feared Loss of Status (15:18) ===

[00:57:15]  But I think that is, you know, whenever I'm working with a client and I can see them holding on to something so tightly, I will ask them, you know, like, what is it that you're afraid would happen?
[00:57:27]  Like, if you were to let go, right?
[00:57:29]  If you were to not be in control.
[00:57:31]  And that almost always gets to like the heart of what's actually happening.
[00:57:35]  And it's usually I am scared of something or I'm, you know, fearful that I am unworthy or unlovable, like some very core wound.
[00:57:45]  That is not pleasant to sit with at all and often doesn't have clear answers.
[00:57:51]  You know, you think about like some of these identity pieces, even like as an adolescent, of like, who am I?
[00:57:56]  Right.
[00:57:56]  Like, that's a process of figuring out.
[00:57:59]  So much of like the work that we do with clients is not necessarily like figuring out a five point plan, do these things, plan, whatever.
[00:58:06]  It's like sitting with discomfort and letting it kind of like ride that wave through you.
[00:58:11]  But I think humans are so averse from like feeling that, that we move into.
[00:58:18]  Ideals and control, and then we try to put that on other people to make ourselves feel better.
[00:58:24]  When in reality, it's like, yeah, like just like you said, make space for whatever that is, and it starts to work itself out a little bit.
[00:58:32]  I think what it sounds like to me that you're highlighting is we, we humans, all of us, right, have these defense mechanisms, ways of trying to protect ourselves from unpleasant feelings and experiences and so forth.
[00:58:45]  And we all know, everybody knows that those can take different forms.
[00:58:48]  You've got Flight and fight, and you know, of freezing and this and that.
[00:58:53]  And you know, some people shut down and some people withdraw.
[00:58:55]  But I think what people often miss is that anger and aggression are also defensive responses, and it can be really hard to respond to them as defensive responses because the whole purpose of them is to feel offensive.
[00:59:08]  I think it helps people get a sense of agency, or maybe they don't have agency, or if they feel vulnerable or out of control, I think raging and whatever it gives you a sense that you're in control, that you're doing something.
[00:59:21]  And so I think it's hugely important to recognize that that is a defensive reaction and to try to approach it that way, which is hard.
[00:59:30]  I think it's really counterintuitive because my defensive response, one of my primary ones, is fight.
[00:59:36]  I'm a fight response person.
[00:59:37]  So if somebody comes at me a certain way, I want to cut, like, you escalate and you go back, and I have to fight an intuition to respond that way.
[00:59:46]  Or for somebody else to just, if they're like, they withdraw, they shut down, they go away, like, That is like those fundamental intuitions have to sometimes be fought on our own part to engage at that level and to recognize that this is a defensive reaction that this person has had.
[01:00:04]  They don't know it is, they don't think it is.
[01:00:07]  It's not going to do any good to tell them it is, but sort of being able to try to stick with it enough to start getting at some of those deeper things.
[01:00:16]  And I think that's really, really hard to do.
[01:00:19]  I'm glad you mentioned therapy.
[01:00:20]  I was looking at it, you know, women are selling what, like twice as likely as men to.
[01:00:25]  To go in there.
[01:00:26]  And even most women don't, right?
[01:00:27]  Yeah.
[01:00:28]  But on the flip side, I was, you know, in our podcast, we look for reasons for hope.
[01:00:32]  And so prep today, I was like, there'd be some reasons to be hopeful here.
[01:00:35]  But at the same time, more men than ever are seeking therapy, right?
[01:00:39]  And they are learning how to do that.
[01:00:41]  I think that that's important too.
[01:00:43]  And to keep sort of feeding that sort of thing of like, if somebody's really angry, right, there are spaces you can go and you can be really honest about how you feel and nobody's going to judge you for it.
[01:00:54]  And that can be as much of a benefit as anything with therapy or coaching or whatever is.
[01:00:59]  Yeah.
[01:00:59]  Maybe there are things like, I don't know, maybe you don't need to tell your partner.
[01:01:02]  Like maybe now is not the time to really tell them these things, but there are spaces where you can go and do that and begin exploring that so that you, you know.
[01:01:11]  Those resources are there.
[01:01:12]  And I think trying to see that that is what's needed and that that's a part of the solution, I think is really important.
[01:01:20]  Yeah.
[01:01:21]  No, I think so too.
[01:01:23]  And I think about like, I have some really great male friends, and I never mind having like conversations about this stuff with them because I see their effort and they don't need to do things perfectly or feel things perfectly or, you know, whatever.
[01:01:38]  It's just like, I like the effort that they put in and it makes me as a, Human, more prone to be like, yeah, let's navigate this.
[01:01:47]  Let me show up and support you in whatever way I can.
[01:01:51]  But I think that that can be part of the daunting process is finding people that will not bristle and get defensive when we're trying to muddy our way through these murky paths.
[01:02:06]  And maybe that's just a challenge for all of us to be open to that.
[01:02:10]  Yeah.
[01:02:11]  Yeah.
[01:02:11]  I think it's got to be one of the most counterintuitive.
[01:02:14]  Things I think is to recognize that those aggressive responses are defensive in nature, let alone, and I recognize it's a big ask to ask people.
[01:02:24]  And it's not something everybody should do, frankly.
[01:02:25]  I mean, somebody's attacking you, or no obligation, you're under no obligation to be like, oh, please keep it coming, right?
[01:02:32]  You know, I'm not saying that to excuse it either, but I am saying that to start untangling this really messy knot of a problem, I think that that's an important piece of it is recognizing what's really going on, what's really driving it.
[01:02:45]  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[01:02:47]  So, you know.
[01:02:49]  We talked about Josh Hawley and all of his incredible examples of what his version of manhood is.
[01:02:55]  But, like, when we think about a newer version, and it sounds so, gosh, it almost sounds religious, like this new masculinity or whatever.
[01:03:04]  But, like, what are examples?
[01:03:07]  What are things that offer kind of more of this vision that I don't want to say is attainable, but is just like approachable by anyone?
[01:03:17]  Yeah, I think, and I don't know that anybody's like formulated this, just thinking about this, you know, I don't.
[01:03:22]  Off the top of my head, I don't know.
[01:03:24]  The I don't know.
[01:03:25]  Here's the magic book that shows you know the other thing, but I think identifying and maybe foregrounding people who are men who are male identified, who are not who do the things that traditionally aren't the alpha things, right?
[01:03:41]  Who are the men in the caring professions and why do they do that and what do they get out of that?
[01:03:45]  Let's hear from them.
[01:03:46]  Like, let's hear from Josh Holly has this part in his book where he kind of craps on male teachers a little bit, like.
[01:03:54]  He's sort of like, it's good that they're teachers because young men need male role models.
[01:03:59]  It's kind of like it's a less than thing that they could do to be an educator, but it's okay because young men need male role models.
[01:04:06]  You're doing that.
[01:04:08]  But let's talk about people who, these things that traditionally were not quote unquote masculine or manly or whatever.
[01:04:17]  How do we foreground those?
[01:04:19]  How do we foreground the men who are protesting on behalf of women's access to health care?
[01:04:25]  How do we foreground the men who are Are protesting on the behalf of people who are politically targeted and so forth and sacrificing for that.
[01:04:33]  Things that are not the vision of the alpha manosphere sort of man.
[01:04:40]  And I suspect they're kind of all around us, but they don't have the notoriety that those have.
[01:04:45]  And this is what made me think about it.
[01:04:46]  It's like, I think what we need to do is start looking a little more around us because I think that they're there.
[01:04:52]  But precisely because they're not the angry, vitriolic alpha male people, they tend to go unnoticed.
[01:04:59]  And I think that that's maybe a failing on the part of a lot of us who want.
[01:05:03]  To counter that other kind of masculinity, to fail to notice that, to fail to foreground that, to fail to normalize that.
[01:05:10]  And I think that as I was thinking about it, I was like, I think it's not some counter influencer thing.
[01:05:16]  There's a role for that.
[01:05:17]  It's not another book that somebody can write.
[01:05:21]  There's a role for that.
[01:05:22]  But I think it's going on around us all the time.
[01:05:25]  And it's learning to see that and recognize it and value it, whatever that looks like.
[01:05:32]  The men.
[01:05:34]  The male identified people who are living in the world as men, but in a different way and beginning to just recognize and normalize that.
[01:05:42]  Yeah.
[01:05:43]  Since you are a father of adolescents, I'm curious to know how would you talk to the parents who are saying, I want to raise my children differently, while still also acknowledging they are in this weird, funky time of not knowing who they are and being highly suggestible and all of these.
[01:06:05]  Very real things.
[01:06:06]  Like, so instead of, you know, like just putting another form of like authoritarianism or you must be this identity, like, how, what would you say to some of those parents?
[01:06:17]  Hmm.
[01:06:18]  All the answers I've got.
[01:06:20]  Here we go.
[01:06:21]  No, I think like your wisdom.
[01:06:23]  Things that I try to do.
[01:06:24]  So, one thing is I've had this discussion with a lot of friends and others is I think all of us feel like we're working without a playbook because totally feel like I have not met anybody yet who's like, yep, my parents got it all right and I'm doing everything they did.
[01:06:37]  It's, Tends to kind of go a different direction.
[01:06:40]  I think some of it is, I think what I find myself doing is when I have, especially like a knee jerk reaction to something, a request to do something or some behavior that an adolescent is involved in, and I want to shut it down, I've got to ask myself, what is my rationale?
[01:06:58]  Can I actually give a reason why they should or shouldn't do this thing?
[01:07:01]  And oftentimes, I kind of can't.
[01:07:05]  It's like, it really bugs me, but I'm like, Does it just bug me because that's how my parent would have bugged them?
[01:07:11]  Do I actually have a reason to be opposed to this?
[01:07:14]  Or, you know, I think that's part of it.
[01:07:16]  I think a certain degree of collaboration with communication with the adolescents.
[01:07:21]  I'm very well aware that I'm the adult and they're not, and my prefrontal cortex is developed and theirs isn't.
[01:07:26]  And this is not a one to one, but actually being able to like talk through things with them.
[01:07:31]  Like, you know, if you do this or this or this, and we say that this would be the consequence, what do you think?
[01:07:37]  Like, you know, walking through those, helping them see.
[01:07:42]  The positives and negatives of decision making.
[01:07:44]  I think part of it is just recognizing that all the trying on of identities is real, that some of the mistakes and the bad decisions they're going to make are real and also developmentally appropriate.
[01:07:59]  And that most of us who did those things grew up to be okay, right?
[01:08:04]  It's probably not the end of the world, right?
[01:08:06]  And that's really hard.
[01:08:07]  But I think part of it for me is recognizing how much.
[01:08:12]  They are trying to figure these things out, and that their answer today is not going to be their answer tomorrow.
[01:08:17]  There's nothing like that makes me feel sort of funnier than when one of my kids will, like, they'll be bad mouthing a certain pop artist or something.
[01:08:24]  They'll be like, I can't people believe still listen to her.
[01:08:26]  Yeah.
[01:08:26]  And I'm like, you were so into that person six months ago.
[01:08:30]  Like, you know, it's as if, like, they've never, but you know what?
[01:08:33]  I don't need to say it.
[01:08:34]  It's just part of what it is.
[01:08:35]  And I think recognizing that and creating that space.
[01:08:38]  Yeah.
[01:08:39]  And yeah, just not, I think the idea that there isn't a template that a kid has to be, right?
[01:08:47]  Whether it's gender, whether it's sexuality, whether, you know, whatever it is.
[01:08:51]  And so then having to sort of reverse engineer that and say, if I really believe that, what does that mean about the decisions I make on a daily basis and which ones I choose to, To prioritize and which ones I don't, and yeah, those are some of the guidelines I try to go by.
[01:09:07]  And then I think you mentioned the authoritarian thing, I think a lot of us of a certain age probably grew up in relatively authoritarian parenting styles, right?
[01:09:18]  Some people didn't, but I think a lot of us did.
[01:09:20]  And I think being conscious of that and trying to consciously sometimes it's just take a beat, something happens, I want to respond right now.
[01:09:29]  You know, it's like, you know what, we're going to talk about this tomorrow, and I'm going to spend what I don't say is.
[01:09:34]  I'm going to spend the next like 12 hours trying to sort out for myself why I'm actually bothered by this.
[01:09:39]  You know, do I have a reason?
[01:09:41]  Is this about you or is it actually about me?
[01:09:44]  Is it about, you know, whatever that is?
[01:09:46]  And I think all of those, a lot of self reflection, because I feel like, I guess for me, I'm having to invent who I am as a parent as I figure out how to parent, because I just don't think we have great templates for it.
[01:09:59]  Yeah.
[01:09:59]  At this point.
[01:10:00]  I mean, I think that even if you didn't grow up in a high control religion, Like that was also just like a cultural piece that was very present, whether it's you know, children should be seen and not heard, or the expectation or what you could expect in terms of punishment, corporal punishment, or whatever it might be.
[01:10:18]  Right.
[01:10:18]  Like, I think there were cultural pieces that just aligned really well with you know, religious pieces and expectations of gender, expectations of sexuality, right?
[01:10:30]  All of those kinds, like what we call purity culture, the idea that one, for example, has to wait till they're married to have sex, that was not a uniquely Christian.
[01:10:39]  Kind of perspective.
[01:10:40]  Lots of people didn't, but there were still lots of people who thought you should, right?
[01:10:43]  You get these cultural norms.
[01:10:44]  And so, yeah, I think we're all kind of working without a nice handbook.
[01:10:49]  Yeah.
[01:10:50]  And recognizing that is hard.
[01:10:52]  Yeah.
[01:10:52]  And I think even like I've tried to look back, you know, like generationally.
[01:10:57]  So it's like, okay, if the boomer generation kind of like this is how they are as parents, but they also grew up in a generation, you know, like being parented with a lot of what we would now very much considered abuse and neglect.
[01:11:09]  And Even more children seen, not heard, and silence.
[01:11:13]  You know, you have to be, you know, keep the family business in the family, right?
[01:11:16]  Like all of these things.
[01:11:17]  And so it's not coming from nowhere.
[01:11:19]  But what I think gives me hope is that whether it's with my clients or my siblings or my friends or whatever, like there is more that, like being prone to go, like exactly what you're saying, like, hey, is this a me thing?
[01:11:34]  Like, am I getting all riled up because my kid is actually doing something that's inappropriate or disrespectful?
[01:11:42]  Or illegal, or you know, whatever, or is this like a preference thing that is my own stuff coming up?
[01:11:48]  And you know, probably at least 50% of the time, I'm not a parent, so I don't know, but I would say like half the time, it's like, oh yeah, that's that's my stuff.
[01:11:55]  And I think these, you know, like millennial Gen X are the first generation that are really doing that in like a proactive way with their kids, not getting it perfect, but that's actually not the goal.
[01:12:08]  It's just to try something different rather than doing either the same or the exact opposite of their, you know, How they grew up, they're trying to find this like middle way of being like, yeah, I've, this might be a me thing a little bit.
[01:12:22]  Yeah.
[01:12:23]  Yeah.
[01:12:23]  I think, I think the other piece, another piece of that is the, we talk about the desire for control, right?
[01:12:28]  And wanting to control what can't be controlled, adolescents are unruly.
[01:12:33]  Oh my gosh.

=== Finding a Middle Way for Parents (06:07) ===

[01:12:34]  Yeah.
[01:12:34]  Most of us remember what it felt like when somebody would do the authoritarian move and try to.
[01:12:39]  And it's why some of us don't have great relationships with parents now.
[01:12:42]  I don't know how much time with my clients is spent dealing with like, you know, dysfunctional relationships with parents.
[01:12:50]  And so there's a little bit of a reflection.
[01:12:51]  Like, so you have that impulse sometimes to impose control.
[01:12:54]  And you're like, yeah, pragmatically speaking, if nothing else, how effective was that?
[01:12:59]  How well did that work for me?
[01:13:00]  It didn't.
[01:13:01]  So I'm going to try something else.
[01:13:03]  Maybe it'll be better.
[01:13:04]  Maybe it won't.
[01:13:05]  But here's this strategy that I'm pretty confident didn't work for me.
[01:13:08]  I don't think it's going to work when I try to do it.
[01:13:11]  So maybe I'm going to try something else.
[01:13:14]  And I think that that's like just sort of another piece of like, you know, we all do that.
[01:13:18]  We all grow up being like, I'm never going to do that when I'm a parent.
[01:13:20]  And then what do we do?
[01:13:21]  We do all this, like, you have the tendency to do all the same things.
[01:13:24]  I think trying to keep that front of mind sometimes and be like, yeah, I think that's the harder way.
[01:13:31]  That's not here.
[01:13:32]  It kind of like brings this conversation full circle in the sense that, like, living in those gray spaces where it is messy and it's not so neat and tidy of like right, wrong, good, bad, yes, no, you know, whatever, it is the harder way to do it.
[01:13:47]  And even thinking about this vision of masculinity or the manosphere, Christian nationalism, it's echoing on like our human desire to have something very concrete and measurable and tells us essentially if we are doing the right thing so that we are going to live another day.
[01:14:04]  And As it turns out, humans aren't really like that, but we keep trying to like put ourselves back into that box because it gives the illusion of safety.
[01:14:13]  And so, yeah, it seems like it's a bit of like an invitation.
[01:14:16]  Like we're talking about masculinity and manhood, but that actually starts like decades before, you know, in terms of the connection you have with your child, the openness for making mistakes and admitting you're wrong and trying something different, checking yourself.
[01:14:30]  Like, I think the way we don't repeat it is by, yeah, like taking a different approach all the way at the beginning.
[01:14:37]  Yeah.
[01:14:38]  Yeah.
[01:14:39]  And it's like any other changed behavior thing, right?
[01:14:42]  It can take a lot of reflection to get to the point where, I don't know, where you are even aware that you're doing it or you can catch it before you do it versus having to come up and pick up the pieces later, which also has value.
[01:14:55]  That's its own vulnerable piece, right?
[01:14:59]  I grew up in a household of the occasional explosions and kinds of things, but there was never any verbal resolution to it later.
[01:15:05]  There were ways that parents would express, I knew that they were expressing remorse, but nobody would ever say, I shouldn't have responded that way, or I'm sorry I said that, or whatever.
[01:15:15]  And so, even those moments of having to come to a kid and say, I didn't respond the way I should have, and you didn't deserve to be addressed that way, or whatever, is certainly, I think, like a big step, right?
[01:15:29]  It takes a lot of vulnerability and it's a lack, you're setting aside a veneer of unquestionable authority or whatever else.
[01:15:37]  And I think that there's even value in that, even when it kind of happens after the fact.
[01:15:41]  But I think the goal we're all shooting toward is to.
[01:15:43]  Start getting it right the first time, um, you know, instead of having to pick up pieces later.
[01:15:48]  But even the picking up pieces oftentimes is a departure from what had been models of masculine and maybe models of dads, right?
[01:15:57]  Dads who never had to admit that they were wrong, who never had to admit emotion, who never had to apologize, who never had to, you know, do all of those things that a certain vision of masculinity told them wasn't masculine.
[01:16:10]  Yeah, yeah, I think you know, like you said earlier, kind of like the reasons for hope.
[01:16:15]  I mean.
[01:16:16]  Kind of underhandedly, like that's where we got to.
[01:16:18]  And I feel like that's something that feels really hopeful about a conversation like this.
[01:16:23]  You know, it's like somebody like Josh Hawley or Andrew Tate has such a huge platform that sometimes it can feel like insurmountable to try to, you know, go up against that.
[01:16:34]  But I think a conversation like this invites like very practical ways that you can just show up 10% different, 20% different in the relationships that you are in in this moment, whether that's with your family, your neighbors, your community.
[01:16:50]  And that actually feels a bit more tangible, at least to me.
[01:16:54]  Yeah.
[01:16:56]  So, what gives you hope about, you know, the future of masculinity?
[01:17:00]  Anything?
[01:17:02]  I think as we talk about this, I do think it is the fact that I think there's a lot of great things, good things going on.
[01:17:10]  And I think that they're just not as visible.
[01:17:12]  I think that, you know, it's what we see in a social media saturated world is not everything.
[01:17:19]  It's often not the whole thing.
[01:17:20]  It's often not most of something.
[01:17:23]  Even in, I realize I might be squinting to find positives sometimes, but.
[01:17:28]  Even you know, whatever I so somebody's gonna contact you or me and tell me that my statistics are wrong, but whatever it is that that roughly a third of Gen Z men who say that women should also means that two thirds don't, right?
[01:17:43]  So, like, okay, let's amp up the two thirds, right?
[01:17:45]  You know, that kind of thing.
[01:17:46]  So, I think that that's the hopefulness is that in a world where a very small sliver of reality can soak up all of our bandwidth, to just remember that that's not the whole story, and how do we look and find those other pieces?
[01:17:59]  Yeah.
[01:18:00]  No, I really appreciate that because I see that being true in so many different ways.
[01:18:05]  And this is absolutely one of them.
[01:18:07]  And it can be so easy to get lost in the shuffle of like this really extreme ways of living, thinking, you know, speaking.
[01:18:15]  And so, yeah, that is helpful to know that there's more people than not that are not like in those screaming camps of, you know, what a man should be, you know.
[01:18:29]  William Wallace.
[01:18:32]  Or Gandalf.
[01:18:33]  Right, as you know, whatever, yeah, you know, whatever floats your boat, right?
[01:18:38]  So, anyway, so I've really appreciated this conversation.

=== Notes from Daniel Miller (01:06) ===

[01:18:42]  And for people who are wanting to get in touch with you or you know, follow along with your work, where can they find you?
[01:18:48]  Yeah, so straight white American Jesus, right?
[01:18:50]  You can google that, find all the work we do on the podcast, and it's in the code.
[01:18:54]  People who want to reach out to me directly, I have an email, it's old school, but you know, so they could do Daniel Miller swag, just Daniel Miller, SWAJ, at gmail.com, and always welcome hearing thoughts, questions, comments, and if you Subscribers to our podcast.
[01:19:09]  Also, we have a Discord that we hang out in and do different things, and we do live events and stuff.
[01:19:14]  So, like, lots of ways for people to see what I do and to engage if they want to do that.
[01:19:20]  And would love to hear from folks.
[01:19:22]  Yeah.
[01:19:23]  Well, I'll make sure that all of that information ends up in the show notes, but it's been great to have you, I think, now five times.
[01:19:29]  I think that's what we're at, or is it six?
[01:19:30]  Maybe.
[01:19:31]  I don't know.
[01:19:31]  Yeah.
[01:19:32]  Yeah.
[01:19:32]  I'll go back in my notes.
[01:19:34]  The jacket will be coming, but no, I appreciate this conversation.
[01:19:38]  And I'm just, I'm hopeful that people will get a lot out of it.
[01:19:41]  Yeah, that will be both realistic and hopeful.
[01:19:45]  Yeah.
[01:19:45]  Yeah.
[01:19:46]  Awesome.
[01:19:47]  Great.
[01:19:47]  Well, thanks for having me.
[01:19:48]  Thank you.