Strung Out Episode 56 MEET TIM GOLDICH, THE FOUNDER OF EQUALISM

Tim Goldich, author and men’s work facilitator, has devoted the last 25 years to researching, pondering over and refining viewpoints regarding gender issues. His first book, Loving Men, Respecting Women: The Future of Gender Politics is part of a four-book series on the topic. The second book – Love and Respect in the Past: The History of Gender Equality – is due out in 2022.

Dedicated to educating the public about the equality of the genders, Tim has also created a series of YouTube videos under the umbrella title of “Man Against the Wall.”

A board member of both the National Coalition For Men and of the ManKind Project – two organizations that support men politically and emotionally – Tim is president of the Chicago chapter of NCFM and the editor of its “Transitions: A Journal of Men’s Perspectives,” the longest running journal of its kind.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Martin McCormack: [00:00:00] Great to have you with us today on STRUNG OUT. And we are looking at our 56th podcast here. I have somebody that I've been wanting to interview for a long time. It's Timothy Goldich.. He's the author of two books. Am I correct? 

[00:00:17] Tim Goldich: [00:00:17] Sort of a four book series, but only one of them has been published so far.

[00:00:22]First one is called loving men, respecting women, the future of gender politics. 

[00:00:27]Martin McCormack: [00:00:27] . Can you believe that we actually have such a thing as gender politics? Well we do. Tim is an expert on what is called Equalism.. Why don't I start there, Tim, by asking you, where did the term equalism yeah. How did that come about? 

[00:00:44]Tim Goldich: [00:00:44] was looking for a third alternative  not feminism and not,  masculism which are just defined as the mirror opposite of feminism. I was looking for a third alternative, something that would be a new gender neutral gender politics. [00:01:00] And at first I thought equity. Yeah. But then it became clear to me that equity was a bit slippery or concept that was more subjective. So I switched to equalism, which is at least partly objective as in all the number of dollars that are paid for a particular job are either equal or they're not. So some parts of a of equality are actually objective. 

[00:01:30]Martin McCormack: [00:01:30] We're in an era right now, Tim, where with black lives matters. There's a lot of social awareness. There's a lot of upheaval. Of course feminism has been with us for a while. And men's rights is something that's come out within the last decade or so maybe a little longer why do you feel there is a need to be talking about equalism right now and why is it so important?

[00:01:53]Tim Goldich: [00:01:53] I would say it's so important because the age old battle of the sexes has escalated into something [00:02:00] like a war between the sexes. And I believe that the source of that enmity is not gender reality, as much as it is gender politics with the gender politics has insinuated itself into every aspect of life in academia and the home within family in business it's in politics. It's everywhere to be seen. Yet it is not really being held accountable.

[00:02:33]Martin McCormack: [00:02:33] Give me an example of gender politics . Let's just pretend the listener just dropped in on planet earth. Okay.

[00:02:40] Tim Goldich: [00:02:40] Yeah. We can take a look at the issue of the pay gap that makes the news regularly. It generates a lot of hostility between the sexes women get very angry around it, believing that they are paid less, just because they are women and whose fault is it? Men's fault. [00:03:00] Now that is, I would say that.

[00:03:04] This pay gap is a gender political fabrication. That overwhelming the sound of a train is not that easy. 

[00:03:13] Martin McCormack: [00:03:13] Now we're going to, we're going to let this go by. And I'm gonna throw that question at you. That's the joy of doing this and Tim, I have a question for you and a full disclosure where we're out at the outside today.

[00:03:27] We're enjoying this beautiful weather and you're going to hear a little bit of nature, a little bit of wind, a listener. So before warned, if a Cardinal lands on the mic, you're going to hear it first, Tim give me an example for somebody that just dropped in on planet earth. This gender gap is, 

[00:03:48]Tim Goldich: [00:03:48] I think the that the toxin within gender politics is the belief system that men have, the power and women are the victims.

[00:03:57] I believe that is one sided and therefore [00:04:00] false and therefore poisonous. An example would be the pay gap. That's the belief that women are paid less just because they're women, but many careful analysts have looked at it and looked at it in depth. We just find that there's many more plausible reasons, many more.

[00:04:20] What many more likely reasons why men have. Been paid more than women and it includes that women it starts out with 90% of the art history majors being female and 90% of the engineering majors being male. It's too complicated. I'm not going to use that exact cause it's just it's a good example, but it takes too long to explain.

[00:04:46] I thought maybe. 

[00:04:48] Martin McCormack: [00:04:48] Let me ask you this way. You're what, you're, what you're not trying to advocate is the idea that women that women don't deserve to have equal pay. You're saying that people deserve to be [00:05:00] paid equally. What you're saying is that up to this point, the way that dynamics and society has been is just that it's been a natural occurrence of this glass ceiling this pay gap or.

[00:05:12]Tim Goldich: [00:05:12] I was going to go back to fundamentals. So the belief is that men have the power and women are the victims. But what if that's only true along the respect to axis? What if we refocused our attention along the love axis in that case, we can make a case that it's, then that would have been less powerful along the love axis.

[00:05:33] And it's women that have been advantaged along the love app. And I would argue that the enormous consequences and vast repercussions suffered by women for being less respected, have been matched in full by the enormous consequences and vast repercussions suffered by men for being less loved. But because men are less loved, they don't elicit empathy.

[00:05:53] So the issues men face do not elicit empathy. And so these issues, men [00:06:00] face remain non-issues. 

[00:06:04] Martin McCormack: [00:06:04] Does that then mean that that these issues, historical issues, that's really what you're saying. How and current, but these these exist, but how do you, if you put things into a love factor you're going to have somebody who's going to say you can't eat love Kenya.

[00:06:21]Let's, I want to make sure that. My work gets paid equal is a man. I don't care what happened in the past. How do you respond to that? 

[00:06:31]Tim Goldich: [00:06:31] I say that women are already paid as much as men for the exact same work that this is a straw man argument, this whole pay gap. Look if you offer Jack and Jane, they've been at the company for the same number of years and have all the same qualifications and they should be paid the same, but then the boss offers Jack and Jane contracts is, look, if you sign this, I will raise you from 75,000 a year to a hundred thousand dollars a year. And I will make you [00:07:00] a vice-president. And they look at this contract and Jane says, are you crazy? This means that you can relocate me yet will anywhere in the country.

[00:07:12] I could end up in Detroit. There's no way I'm going to sign this thing. But Jack looks at it. Wow. A hundred thousand year vice-president I really be a catch. All these women I'll be able to interest them. Or if I married, I'll be able to bring home the news, honey. I'm now going to be making a hundred thousand dollars a year. We're now going to be able to live in a much better house and you'll be married to a vice president. So Jack signs it and Jill does not. So why should you be paid the same as Jack, if Jill is not willing to do whatever it takes to be paid the same? 

[00:07:49]Martin McCormack: [00:07:49] One of the things that's come out of this pandemic is that you have people now that are they're calling it the great resignation where a lot of people are resigning. And Jack, at this [00:08:00] point might be. Yeah let Jill have it. I don't want it. When you're trying to establish equalism are you basically saying, going forward, it all balances out in the sense that everybody is contributing to the pot?  What you're saying is that there's still some sort of headbutting between the more militant factions of feminism and male. Yeah. Men's rights activists. 

[00:08:26] Tim Goldich: [00:08:26] Yeah. Okay. So first of all, I would say that fundamental to feminism or fundamental to equalism rather is our willingness to call it. So equalism begins with the premise that equality is and has always been. So the woman and man are, and have always been equal partners in the human system. They've always played an equal overall force of influence in the human system and are thus equally responsible for outcomes. So equal isms goal is not to create equality, which already exists.

[00:08:55] Equalism goal is to increase intersects fairness, [00:09:00] justice. So these injustices. May come out, even you see, but they are injustice all the same. And so it all balances out is not suggesting that everything's fine. We can all go home now. Misery can balance out, but that doesn't mean that the system is good or let alone.

[00:09:19] Perfect. So it all bounces now out is not a plea for complacency. It is not an end point. It is a new. There's a place to start all over and look at all these gender issues with a whole new attitude. So that on issue such as anorexia does not become any less, it does not become any less severe. It does not become any less catastrophic to those that suffer it.

[00:09:47] However, if we understand that all these gender issues are mirrored, then we can look at. Anabolic steroids and human growth, hormone abuse as a mirror, [00:10:00] opposite of anorexia. So if anorexia is women taking a a self-destructive sometimes even fatal path and their efforts to achieve a societal ideal quote unquote I E the Barbie doll figure then anabolic steroid abuse.

[00:10:15] Is males taking a self destructive, sometimes fatal path toward a societal ideal. The GI Joe physique, if anorexics women look in the mirror and think that they look fat, even when they are emaciated males with muscle dysmorphia, looking in the mirror and they think they look weak and scrawny, even when they're huge animals.

[00:10:36]Martin McCormack: [00:10:36] That's an interesting point. Let's take a little break  [00:11:00]and we're going to be right back with Tim Goldich.

[00:12:03] [00:12:00] Back with Tim Goldich. And we are having a beautiful summer day here in Chicago and we're just sitting outside having this podcast. Where does was the role of the media, the role of capitalism play into this? With equalism because if you do hear of a society is saying, are holding up these paragons of beauty. So to speak that the man has to be ripped. The woman has to be are they guilty of being sexist on both levels? Is there who's the enemy?

[00:12:38]Tim Goldich: [00:12:38] I don't think there is an enemy. Look at it that way. I think feminism has identified men and or masculinity as the enemy. That's a big problem. I would I would not look at it. I would look at all these gender issues as matters of shared responsibility. See what happens is when we start to look at these gender issues as mirrors of each other the issues are not diminished, but the [00:13:00] attitudes are improved. So rather than just look at anorexia as if it stood alone and spotter with rage and bitterness about this terrible injustice that women face, we can be looking at these things as gender politically mirrored. And then we take turns. We see how these issues are systemic. That they that women have their version of it and men have theirs.

[00:13:32] And as gender politicians, there's a vast reduction in intersects rage, rancor, resentment, victim vengeance. Self-righteousness all this poison, all this unnecessary poison anorexia remains a deep issue. And something that is is a horrible thing.

[00:13:53] And it does not stand alone. And it is part of a larger [00:14:00] system human system. That would also include steroid abuse and human growth hormone all together. That it's not so as gender politicians, we would take turns. We wouldn't be, in place of this feminist monologue, we'd have a dialogue. And we look at these things back and forth and rather than point the finger of blame, we would take shared responsibility for these things, woman and man. 

[00:14:22]Martin McCormack: [00:14:22] What is your take then as an equalist on the whole, me too movement where you hear women stepping forward and saying that they've been sexually abused. We just had that huge case of the the doctor that was with the U S Olympic team for the women's, gymnastics team Nasser, guilty of  molesting what is in an equalist view, what would be the, what would give that equivalency? 

[00:14:49]Tim Goldich: [00:14:49] The equivalency is 40 year old woman who rapes a 14 year old boy. And the court's only action is to grant her [00:15:00] request for child payments. So now you've got a 14 year old boy who will spend the next 18 to 21 years paying off a legally enforced child payments to his rapist. So if you want to look at if gender political atrocities, we can do that on both sides. The primary problem with me too, is that it's basically me exclusively it's me. It's it's women saying. Only I suffer only. We suffer only. We own victim. We own pain. We own feelings of of hostile work environments. We own the issues, it's all empathy, all caring, all concern, compassion should come to us. Exclusively me exclusively.

[00:15:43]Martin McCormack: [00:15:43] I've been seeing a lot of press lately. And it sounds like maybe your message is getting out there because there's actually prosecution of teachers, women who have done just what you said they've taken advantage of their students [00:16:00] having sex with underage boys. And they're now going to jail. Is that equalism in action? 

[00:16:08] Tim Goldich: [00:16:08] I would say so. Yes. I would say that is holding womenaccountable. See to me, in my judgment, the greatest victimization of women is the withhold of accountability, which is the withhold of respect. It is the withhold of an understanding of women's power. Women's efficacy, women's weaponry women's equal partnership in the human system.

[00:16:32] What we're finally beginning to see is more. Equality in terms of respecting women as autonomous adults, responsible for their choices. And so if some 40 year old woman goes and gratifies herself with a 14 year old boy, it's about time. She starts just to be held accountable for this sort of action. And for her effect on this 14 year old, 

[00:16:56] Martin McCormack: [00:16:56] We are talking to Tim Goldich. And we're going to take [00:17:00] just a little break here and we're going to talk more about equalism. It's a fascinating topic. You're on STRUNG OUT.

[00:17:07] [00:19:00] [00:18:00] We're back, Tim, you found this whole movement of equalism and you're an author on this. And I wanted to bring up a couple other things that I've observed in society. And maybe you can expound on these from an equalist viewpoint. , we have seen within this latest generation a rise of transgender ambiguity when it comes to sexuality, so to speak. There's all sorts of terms that I think one keeps cropping up every week from my readings. Is this the young generation basically intuiting what [00:20:00] you've been preaching all along about equalism and they're basically acting in a way in which they're saying, yeah, if we're going to have this, I choose not to have any gender whatsoever.

[00:20:10]Tim Goldich: [00:20:10] That's a very good question.  It's very deep. My best guess is future generations will be able to look back on this and know much better than we who were in the thick of it. There it is possible that there is so much anxiety over gender equality that the easiest most the simplest possible solution is render the sex is identity. Eliminate male and female eliminate the binary. And then gender equality becomes a moot point between men and women. When there are no men and women than what are we talking about? Equality between men and women. This is what I would call a unisex equality, and I call that four equals four equality.

[00:20:57]It's render just self-eval. [00:21:00] If men and women are identical, then there are equal ness is self-evident. However, I resist unisex equality because I don't think we are a unisex species. And I see lots of problems with this attempt to Eliminate the binary, the male, female binary. I would advocate what I would call balanced equality, which is something I think that is.

[00:21:26] And it's always been. And this allows that men will have certain advantages that go along with being male and women will have certain advantages that go along with being female. It will not be rigid. Rendered idea. Let's take a look at what it would mean for the sex to be rendered identical.

[00:21:44] So if women have a right to abortion, then to be identical, males would also have a right to abortion. And what would that mean? So that would mean he would say we created a pregnancy together. I demand that the pregnancy be. So then what they put the [00:22:00] woman in handcuffs and take her to the hospital and tire down and, cut the baby out.

[00:22:05]That's insane. I see it. If you're going to try and make male and female, like identical, you have to resort to these draconian methods. It's becomes absurd. Just catch can't. We let men and women be. And still be equal that the two ends of a balance beam need not be identical to weigh the same.

[00:22:23]Martin McCormack: [00:22:23] We're coming up against that especially with transgender with sports, you see a lot of especially in high school sports, college sports where you have somebody that is transgender that has all the physical attributes of a man, but he Is now a she and and wants to participate. Now you have a quandary. 

[00:22:45] Tim Goldich: [00:22:45] So my analysis of political correctness, it's strong on love, weak on truth. So from a love standpoint, we want everyone to be the same. We want everybody to be equal. We want everybody to get along. When everybody to be in.

[00:23:01] [00:23:00] And from a love standpoint, truth just gets in the way because truths conflict. And when we have conflicting truths, we have people that conflict. So from a love, for pure love standpoint, we don't really want to know about truth from a pure truth standpoint. Love just gets in the way a pure truth is ruthless.

[00:23:23] Truth with no love in it,  it's just ruthless just as this is the truth, and it's just stomps all over anything that gets in the way of this truth wars get started over this whole thing. Love without truth that you just take all the truth out of it. It becomes pablum or my favorite to George Carlin jokes is that, when I was a kid, my aunt Harriet would come over and she had this big mole on her face with this hair sticking out of it.

[00:23:48] And one day I asked my mother what's that onAunt Harriet's face? And his mother said that's a beauty mark. And George Carlin said from that moment on, I knew adults were full of [00:24:00] expletive deleted. Okay. Now, so what, so it's like love without any truth, then it becomes pablum. And now you're looking at these this transgender in sports and we're just looking at it from a along the love acts, but the truth is.

[00:24:16] This woman is not a woman from a fact-based reality. This man has Y chromosome. This man produces sperm gametes. This man does not have the internal organs of a woman and his brain may be partially feminized, but it's rare for a biological male to have an entire. Feminized brain even after hormone treatment.

[00:24:43]From a fact-based position from a truth-based position she is not she's a hero. And he's out there. Trouncing all these women out on the plane. 

[00:24:52]Martin McCormack: [00:24:52] Anybody that what's aKinks fan and listening to Lola, they totally get what Tim is saying right now. 

[00:24:58] Tim Goldich: [00:24:58] She walks like a woman and talks [00:25:00] like a man. 

[00:25:00] [00:27:00] [00:26:00]Martin McCormack: [00:27:03] Let's take a little pause here and we're going to be back with the founder of equalism Tim Golidich.. You're listening to STRUNG OUT.

[00:27:16] We are back with the founder of Equalism Tim Goldich. I want to just ask you one more question having to do with this amazing topic. We've gone through so many different things, but one area that it seems that people have a hard time coming to terms with is should there be equalism on the battle field that now that technology has gotten to the point where we don't even have to be on the battlefield anymore.

[00:27:50] Is it okay to have a man or a woman warrior sitting in a room flying a drone?  Usually the military is [00:28:00] forward thinking . Do you see them  embracing equalism? 

[00:28:02]Tim Goldich: [00:28:02] I would say that they are embracing a political correctness. . Women in the military is much more complex can of worms than would normally be recognized. Yes. There would be those elements of war that had become so mechanized. A matter of data entry that w one really can't see any reason why women can't do it as well as men. However assuming that the battlefield is not a thing of the past all my, just get into so much.

[00:28:40] The problem. I'm going to go back with balanced equality versus a unisex equality. One of the problems with unisex equality is it leads to what I'll call female only equality. And by that, I mean that in every objective sense we can make, we can force women to be equal to men. We can [00:29:00] force it.

[00:29:02] Women must be paid the same number of dollars as men in regardless we can force that women must be awarded the same number of Nobel prizes. And we can see it's really complicated. Marty, within the more objective world of men, things are numeric things. Measurable. Sure. And I get that.

[00:29:27]When you enter into the world of women, it becomes much more subjective. How do you get equality for men say in terms of getting women to be just as addicted and willing to pay for the bodies of men as women, men are for the bodies of women ever be willing to pay men's mortgages equal to men paying women's mortgages.

[00:29:48]Martin McCormack: [00:29:48] But that's where it's going to go. 

[00:29:50] Tim Goldich: [00:29:50] So far what we're seeing much more egalitarian marriages, however, we're seeing far fewer marriages, so [00:30:00] that this trying to make men and women identical is not really working out very well in terms of the heterosexual dynamic heterosexuality is by definition.

[00:30:11] Queued on difference, hetero means different. And to the degree that men and women are rendered the same, the eroticism is diminished. We might look at Japan as perhaps an example of what happens when we take unisex equality to a certain extent the birth rate there has been cut in half. The, actually the population has been cut in half and is due to be cut in half again.

[00:30:40]Apparently according to surveys for people under the age of 40, 25% have never even had heterosexual sex at all. So we're looking at, the possibility of we're already seeing a vast diminish. Of heterosexual love marriage [00:31:00] parenting 

[00:31:01]Martin McCormack: [00:31:01] Your theory is that since equalism is not there, what you're seeing is trying to level things in such a way that the upshot of it is that people lose that joy that exists between the sexes and therefore crashing population. 

[00:31:20]Tim Goldich: [00:31:20] Yeah, I it's much more complicated than that manufacturers are implicated in the re reducing populations, but yes, there's this effort to abolish the binary will of course have obvious implications in heterosexual sparks flying.

[00:31:37] Okay. And it all comes down in my judgment, is that equality, just, people just are not willing to see equality unless it's for equals for equality. It has to be that self-evident identical. The sex is rendered identical, which means that they just aren't no sex any anyway. And only then do people willing to concede equality, but if we could open our [00:32:00] minds, equals MC squared, okay.

[00:32:03] Now energy bears, no resemblance to me matter in, in the human world, these are entirely different things, and yet they are equal because they weigh the same. The two ends of a balance beam need not be identical to weigh the same men and women need not be identical to be equal. And we are expanding way too much energy on trying to achieve equality by rendering the sex is identical and this is running into all kinds of problems. 

[00:32:34]Martin McCormack: [00:32:34] As a French, like tosay, Vive la difference! I want to wrap up this podcast by focusing on something that I think is very brave and that is by talking about love. As an issue is a demonstrable factor in dealing with anything, but in this case, gender politics.  Nowadays,, if you have somebody on [00:33:00] a national international level, such as yourself talking about it, love that's perceived still as weakness. So how do you champion not only equalism, but how do you champion the idea that we have to go back to this notion of love?

[00:33:17]Tim Goldich: [00:33:17] How do we ever lose that notion, back in the sixties, we were singing. All you need is love. Yeah. How did that okay. So I would say that the opposite of love is not hate as much as it is indifferent. And this is what men have suffered most throughout history. Is it an indifference and indifferent, so profound that we could allow ourselves to by the the deaths of millions of men in battlefields and in hard hazardous labor in the prison system and in, in homelessness and imprisonment.

[00:33:50] Did I say that? And It's a, it's an indifference to the suffering of men and the sex is are, it's always a matter of co-equal complicity. You [00:34:00] understand, I'm not blaming either sex. This is these, all these matters are things that woman and man co-created and unconscious collusion. And there's neither sex to blame for any of this.

[00:34:12]But both sexes may be held account. Where accountability is different from blame. And that accountability doesn't have that, that foolish judgment in the middle of it. Account really doesn't even necessarily make the other wrong. It just says you did X, Y, and Z a B and C, where the results, I invite you to take responsibility for your effect in the world.

[00:34:33]It isn't this. This heavy blame, neither sex, both sexes have just worked the powers they've had in compensation for the powers they lacked. There, there's no sense in and the gender system. It's been like a contract and each sex has fulfilled its end and earned its rewards fair and square.

[00:34:52]There's really no basis for all this intersects a resent. 

[00:34:57] Martin McCormack: [00:34:57] But the idea of love being [00:35:00] something that can be talked about in the same parlance as equality, the same parlance says civil rights 

[00:35:08] Tim Goldich: [00:35:08] love is empathy. I What are we got without empathy? 

[00:35:10]Martin McCormack: [00:35:10] That is just as revolutionary as the concept of equals.

[00:35:16] Tim Goldich: [00:35:16] I think that's right. I think we've only looked at gender reality along the respect axis, and it's never really occurred to us that one sex may be more loved than the other, or that the more loved sex, my derive power equal to what the more recent respected sex wields that the lack of empathy toward men is a profound powerless.

[00:35:40] That men experience it's probably the main reason why men tend to skip the cry for help and go directly to a bullet in the brain. Men are four and a half times as likely to commit suicide. 

[00:35:52]Martin McCormack: [00:35:52] We are talking to Tim Goldich  the founder of equalism.

[00:35:56] We are just barely pricking the surface [00:36:00] of what is going to have to be a return to talk even more about this, because it's such a vast subject that is entangled with so many different things, economics and not policy. Politics comes to such a big role that plays into it and academia, religion.

[00:36:21] What you're going against is in some ways with equalism is you're going against the the Western construct that's been around since, the holy Roman Empire. The idea that where men were set up being expendable, but also men were looked upon as being able to hold on to the economics fortunes where contracts are made.

[00:36:43] Yeah. Bereft of love. Love was such a funny notion. It didn't really come into fashion until the Rennaisance. We're going to wrap it up for this podcasts. I want to thank you, Tim. And I want to invite you back so we can [00:37:00] continue along and start parsing through some of these facets because it's extremely fascinating and I hope you listening at home or wherever you are finding it as equally fascinating. Always love the feedback. And Iwant to thank you for listening to STRUNG OUT.