Josh Hawley's "Manhood" [TEASER]

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Transcript

Michael: Yeah. What do we have, Peter? I guess I could say, what do you know about manhood? Maybe that's a longer answer. [Peter laughs] What do you know about your own, Peter? And others and that of others, or what do you know about Josh Hawley? 

Peter: Oh, yeah. 

Michael: I was going to challenge you to describe him without using the phrase evil twink. 

Peter: I still remember that video of him jogging away on January 6th. 

Michael: His little leg. 

Peter: He's got, like a runner's stride, just falling-

Michael: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Peter: -ass away from the rioters to then turn around and be like “You know what's missing?-

Michael: I know.

Peter: -Masculinity or whatever.” 

Michael: You guys are pussies. Too many pussies out here. We need more real men like me. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: I'm afraid. 

Peter: All right. I think I have it. 

Michael: You have one? Okay, Peter. 

Peter: Michael. 

Michael: what do you know about Manhood by Josh Hawley? 

Peter: All I know is that when I want to learn about masculinity, I go to an effete man best known for being a coward.

[If Books Could Look theme]

Michael: I guess for our listeners, like for some of our listeners who don't know who Josh Hawley is. Do you want to describe who this man is? 

Peter: He's a senator from Missouri. 

Michael: Missouri. 

Peter: He's one of those young Republican senators, sort of in the vein of Ted Cruz, like a debate kid, right? Who's sort of bombastic, likes to just do culture war bullshit for attention. Grandstands about trans people and shit like that. Very, very fundamentally slimy.

Michael: Yeah. The word I kept thinking of was worm. 

Peter: Worm, like in soul and appearance. 

Michael: But speaking of grandstanding, Peter, I wanted to start with how Hawley became like, the Manhood Republican and I think, really launched this narrative that Reeves repeats a lot in his book, too that, Republicans are the ones who are taking care of men. Republicans care about men, and Liberals are all effeminate and don't care and just look down upon men. 

Peter: Half right. 

Michael: Yeah. [laughs] And the way that Josh Hawley has done this is he started with a speech in 2021 where he basically laid out the case for, we need to bring back manhood, manhood is under attack, blah, blah. And then he follows it up with the book. But I want to start with a couple of excerpts from the speech because this is really like the first most Americans heard about him branding himself as the protector of American masculinity. So, I'm sending you a clip.

Male Speaker: But what I want you to notice, what I want to call out tonight, is that the deconstruction of America begins with and depends on the deconstruction of American men. 

Michael: Look how shiny he is. 

Male Speaker: The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. 

Peter: Mm-hmm. 

Male Speaker: They want to define the traditional masculine virtues, things like courage and independence and [Peter laughs] assertiveness as a danger to society. 

Peter: Yeah.

Michael: We hate those. 

Male Speaker: This is an effort that the left has been at for years now and they have had alarming success. 

Michael: We've destroyed men. 

Male Speaker: American men are working less. They're getting married in fewer numbers. They're fathering fewer children. 

Michael: Love it. 

Male Speaker: They're suffering more anxiety and depression. 

Peter: Sweater polos. 

Male Speaker: They're engaging in more substance abuse. Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling. 

Michael: Mm. Swelling. 

Male Speaker: And that's not just a crisis for men. That's a crisis for the American Republic. 

Michael: We're going to watch another clip, intermediate thoughts, intermission thoughts. Peter? 

Peter: Yeah. No, I mean, one of the things that I hate the most is courage. 

Michael: Yep. 

Peter: I don't like seeing it. I don't like hearing about it. 

Michael: When men are like, “I'll shovel the driveway.” We're like, “Fuck you.” That's the patriarchy right there. 

Peter: When my cat jumps on the counter, even though I always yell at her. Toxic masculinity. 

Michael: Okay, clip two.

Male Speaker: Let me just start by pressing home this point to you that the left's attack on America leads directly to an attack on men. For years now, Democrats and other leftists have insisted that America is systemically oppressive and unjust. They've said it so much and so often. To them, it's a truism. 

Michael: They say so much, they think it's true. 

Male Speaker: Joe Biden has, as president, repeatedly decried America's systemic racism. His administration has loudly called for a new gender equity agenda to right the structural injustices of our society.

Michael: He thinks there's injustice.

Male Speaker: His nominees have advocated critical race theory and training in equity for federal workers. This past week, the administration celebrated the introduction of an X gender marker on American passports. Did you see this? 

Peter: Unbelievable.

Male Speaker: X meaning neither male nor female, just so you're keeping up. 

Michael: Pick one. Pick one.

Male Speaker: All of this points. All of this points to how important the deconstructionist agenda is for Team Biden and for the American left. 

Michael: The left.

Male Speaker: I mean, you think about it. Inflation may be rampant. Store shelves are bare. It costs 100 bucks to fill up a minivan in America. But the administration will not be deterred from focusing on the important issues. They are laser focused on exposing just how bad America is. Other prominent liberals have taken this, the next step, and identified America's many alleged woes with men in particular. Take Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. 

Peter: I knew they'd be booing. 

Male Speaker: “White supremacy and patriarchy are linked in a lot of ways,” she says, meaning that America's systemic racism is a systemic problem with men.

Michael: You're racist if you have courage.

Male Speaker: Author John Stoltenberg writes that talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer. Professor Suzanna Walters of Northeastern University says “It seems logical to hate men unless they pledge to vote for feminist women only and don't run for office.” 

Peter: I love, like, I found some fucking professor somewhere who ran their mouth a little bit. 

Michael: Yeah. Who said something I disagree with, basically. 

Peter: Also, it's been decades since it costs $100 to fill up a minivan with what I imagine is groceries. What are you talking about? 

Michael: He means filling it with eggs. Filling with eggs. 

Peter: I think they just like pull together these things that make it seem as if there's a really coherent point, but what does gender markers on passports have to do with your point exactly? How is the average man being undermined in their ability to express themselves? 

Michael: This is also what really frustrates me is people like Richard Reeves who I think are trying to have a good faith conversation about this kind of talk around the fact that the vast majority of people who bring this up constantly are having a bad faith conversation about this. 

Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Michael: He brings up all these ways in which men are struggling. Marriage rates are falling. Men don't earn as much money as they used to. Real things, fine, like complicated societal phenomena that we can discuss. And then he immediately goes to these just like, podunk examples of a gender studies professor. This is based on a Washington Post op-ed where she's like, “Yeah, women are mad at men because men do most of the raping in society.” 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: I don't think it's a particularly good op-ed, to be totally honest, and I don't totally agree with it, but it's just sort of like, yeah, it's an op-ed by a woman saying, like when people say men are trash, this is like what they're expressing. 

Peter: It's one lady who said something that you think is stupid. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: I mean, it's not indicative of some broad agenda or anything like that. 

Michael: And there's also the other example that he cites here is there's this author who says “Talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer.” It's just a random ass blog post by this random ass guy. And then the really bad one is he cites, “AOC is saying white supremacy and patriarchy are linked in a lot of ways as like, an example of how the left has gone too far.” This is an interview with AOC talking about how she was afraid of getting raped on January 6th because she's a survivor of sexual assault. 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: And so, she's like, yeah, the fact is these people are fucking psychos. And when people are psychos, they also act out in violently gendered ways as well. So, like, wow. Yeah, you really got her on this one. 

Peter: You just can't talk about sociology around Republicans. It makes them upset. The quote from her is almost irrelevant to what he's talking about, really. He's just looking for those buzzwords. “White supremacy, toxic masculinity.” 

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. 

Peter: Right. He just wants to upset the audience, which is at like the National Conservative Conference. 

Michael: And he's also kind of doing what she's talking about. He's talking about how men are under threat. And he also throws in critical race theory. 

Peter: Right, right, right.  

Michael: And in there, which has nothing to do with anything. It's like, “Oh, yeah, how dare she say that people who protect the interests of men also protect the interests of whites.” [laughs] 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: Literally, what he's doing. 

Peter: I also, I wish that podcasting is a bad format for Hawley Speak, because- 

Michael: I know. 

Peter: It really is important to just take a glance at him. 

Michael: We can't get the moisture. I know you're not getting the glistening, just the shininess of this man. 

Peter: He's a real slime boy. 

Michael: So that was 2021. In 2023, he comes out with the Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, which gets a lot of discourse. We are going to talk about the book in some detail. I said on the podcast that it was a rich text. I regret saying that. It's got a lot of filler. It's not like dense with meaning. We're going to talk about a couple of the highlights, but the vast majority of this book, honestly, is just really boring. It's a lot of Bible verses and him just telling Bible stories a lot. 

Peter: This is what happens when you want to sell a bullshit book, but like you don't really have more than a long essay's worth, right?  

Michael: So, I am going to send you thesis of the book. 

Peter: All is not well with men in America. And that spells trouble for the American republic. It has been a perennial question of political philosophy, since the first republics were formed, whether a free nation could survive without soundness of character in its people. The old-fashioned word for that is "virtue," meaning not just moral uprightness but the personal fortitude and vision such uprightness produces, strength, in other words. Machiavelli called it virtù. [laughs] 

Michael: It's not well written. It's sort of overwritten and underwritten at the same time. 

Peter: I like how he's like, it's virtue. Machiavelli called it virtù in Italian. [laughter] Practically everywhere one looks in America now, male virtù is crumbling. Except he's doing the Italian virtù. 

Michael: Yeah, male virtù. 

Peter: And the consequences for the country are grave. Crime is on the rise, overwhelmingly committed by men. Disinterest in work is becoming commonplace. And in perhaps the starkest example of male weakness, fatherlessness abounds. Doing like a crime on the rise thing in 2021, when crime's been rising for exactly one year, [crosstalk] is pretty ballsy. Crime on the rise, disinterest in work, commonplace, fatherlessness abounds. One of those already solved. So, we're actually doing fantastic.

Michael: The main reason I'm including this is just to point out the fact that he's essentially making the same case as Richard Reeves. 

Peter: Ah-ah.

Michael: The case that Richard Reeves makes in his book has basically been workshopped by men's rights activists. And they always kind of cherry pick the same, like, three or four categories of things. As we've said, many of these things are real issues and should be addressed and investigated, etc.

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: But it's like you really have to look for these specific ways in which men are falling behind women in America. And it's always the same, like, four things. 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: So, he then goes through. I mean, I'm not going to do it, but he goes through like, boys are falling behind in school. And then he follows up with a bit more analysis, which I'm sending to you. 

Peter: Much has been said in recent years of the divisions in American society, the dangers to our democracy, and our growing polarization. Surely it is no coincidence that these ills have proliferated while American men have struggled. As the anthropologist David Gilmore once wrote, "Manhood is the social barrier that societies must erect against entropy, human enemies, the forces of nature, time, and all the human weaknesses" that threaten social life. David Gilmore really running his mouth there. [laughs] 

Michael: Well, he does. He's making a factual error here. That's actually the lead singer of Pink Floyd. I don't know why he said it's anthropologist, but what he's basically saying is, according to this anthropologist, manhood is our last bastion against chaos. We need men to protect us- 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: -from these creeping social forces that want to tear us apart. 

Peter: All of which, by the way are other men. 

Michael: Yeah [laughs].

Peter: Men keep crime at bay. And also, are the primary culprits of the crime. 

Michael: Also, all other people doing the criming.

Peter: He has to say that it's a barrier against human enemies- 

Michael: Humans 

Peter: -because if he just said enemies, you'd probably be thinking men. 

Michael: So, he mentions this David Gilmore guy and he has this quote which really sounds like a defense of manhood. Like, we need men, right. I was like, “Okay, who's this David Gilmore guy? Where is this quote from?” This is from a book called Manhood in the Making, which I bought and started reading. I was like, “Oh, I should read like the introduction to this. What is this anthropologist saying about manhood?” It's basically a survey of like the way that manhood is socially constructed around the world. And it's fascinating. And I sat there and read the book all day. We're going to talk about this for like 45 minutes, Peter, I don't care if you're interested or not. You could just sit silent, like, I'm going. This stuff is so fucking interesting to me. 

So basically, what he finds is that it's remarkably common and consistent that societies have this like very socially constructed and socially enforced notion of manhood and especially rituals associated with becoming a man. So, this thing of like Jewish people have like bar mitzvahs, this sort of like a symbolic way of showing like, “You're no longer a boy, you're becoming a man.” This is like remarkably consistent. 

Peter: I'm a little upset that you just said that to me like I might not know what a bar mitzvah is. 

Michael: Well, [laughs] am I talking to you or am I talking to listeners? I don't know.

Peter: Are you talking to me or our incredibly antisemitic listeners? 

Michael: [laughs] So, he profiles an East African tribe where boys get circumcised at age like 13, 14. And part of the ritual is you can't change your facial expression so you're considered less of a man if you sort of react to pain. 

Peter: By the way, I use that same analysis with babies who get circumcised. 

Michael: He notes that like, even in kind of non-violent societies, like societies that don't do a lot of warring with other groups, you still find these like pretty brutal rituals associated with becoming a man. So, in the Kalahari Bushmen, they make you like track an antelope, which involves like running and it takes days to do this and it's a real feat of endurance. 

Peter: Yeah, yeah. 

Michael: He has a really interesting section on the practices in Victorian England. They would send off their boys to these boarding schools. And the fact that the boarding schools were cruel were kind of part of the point. It's partly the parents being like, “Oh, he has to become a man. He has to face adversity to become a man.” 

Peter: Mm-hmm. 

Michael: And oftentimes these masculinity norms involve a lot of risk taking. So, he profiles the South Pacific islands, called the Truk Islands, where you're supposed to do these deep-sea fishing expeditions where people die constantly, it's like really dangerous. But if you don't want to do them or if you refuse to do them, everybody basically just says you're a pussy.

Peter: That's what they say about podcasting, too. And has it stopped us? 

Michael: He profiles probably like 25 or 30 different societies. He goes region by region. And what he finds is that in almost every society, manhood understandings are marked by this need for constant renewal. He says, “Although this stressed or embattled quality varies in intensity, true manhood frequently shows an inner insecurity that needs dramatic proof. Its vindication is doubtful, resting on rigid codes of decisive action in many spheres of life, as husband, father, lover, provider, warrior. A restricted status, there are always men who fail the test. These are the negative examples, held up scornfully to inspire conformity to the glorious ideal.” So, this thing of, like, American manhood that's kind of constantly being redefined, and it's like a little fake, and it feels kind of ad-hoc, and it feels like they're making it up on the fly. That's actually is very common, [laughs] but like every society is just like, I know it when I see it. He profiles this guy in southern Spain, which is like very traditional, very Catholic, where basically everyone thinks this guy is a huge pussy because he loves his wife and he stays home with his wife and helps her cook. 

Peter: Yeah, it's gay. It's gay to love your wife. There's no question. 

Michael: He also says myths and manhood social constructions are oftentimes totally contradictory. So, it's like, people expect this guy to be the strong, silent type, but the fact that he's introverted is a knock against his masculinity. And it's seen as a huge threat to his masculinity that he helps his wife cook specifically. It's like, “Oh, my God, you're helping in the kitchen, you fucking loser.” But also, if he cooks professionally, that's like not considered a threat to masculinity because, like, “Oh, you're doing it as a professional.” 

Peter: Yeah, because then you're doing it for pussy. Then chicks like that. You're cooking food for women who come into your restaurant. 

Michael: Right. 

Peter: Not just to enjoy a meal with your family, which is pathetic. 

Michael: He also profiles two societies that are exceptions to this. This is quite common, these manhood understandings, but they're not universal. So, he profiles this Tahitian community where there just aren't any divisions between men and women. And the people seem kind of confused. Like, when he brings up, like, “Oh, what about manhood?” They're like, “What?” So, here's him describing Tahiti. 

Peter: Anthropologist visits [unintelligible 00:17:08] Island and has no idea what's going on. [Michael laughs] Both perform most of the same tasks, and there are no jobs or skills reserved for either sex by cultural dictate. The men routinely do the cooking. Women do almost everything that men do outside the house. In addition, there is no stress on proving manhood, no pressure on men to appear in any significant way different from women or children. Men have no fear of acting in ways Westerners would consider effeminate. During dances, for instance, adult men will dance together in close bodily contact, rubbing against each other without any anxiety. Sorry--

Michael: I know. 

Peter: I was reading ahead because I got excited. 

Michael: It's like a real thing. 

Peter: And most men visit the village homosexual frequently and without shame. 

Michael: They visit the village homosexual. 

Peter: Okay. I feel like we're skimming right over the village homosexual. 

Michael: He then goes into it. 

Peter: Okay, okay. 

Michael: It's so interesting. He has a whole section. It's called the Mahu. And it's a guy who's like-- I think to our understanding, it would be somewhat in between gay and trans. There's also a gender in between component to this as well, but, there's literally a village homosexual, and it's very common for men to just be like, “Oh, hey, my wife is away. I'm kind of horny. Do you mind if I like fuck you?” 

Peter: Mm-hmm. 

Michael: And he's like, “Oh, yeah, okay.” This is not considered a threat to their masculinity. Very interestingly, Peter, in a lot of other societies, there's this weird thing where it's not a threat to your masculinity to be gay. to do stuff with dudes as long as you're topping, but if you're bottoming, it's gay. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: I love how fucking arbitrary this is. But for the Mahu, in this Tahitian society, they're mostly bottoming the straight guys, they're like, “Do you mind fucking me real quick?” 

Peter: It sounds to me like the village homosexual rules over this place like royalty. [Michael laughs]

Michael: No, this is lit. 

Peter: Yeah.

[laughter]

I want to hear a lot more about the village homosexual. 

Michael: [laughs] He also profiles a society in Papua New Guinea where part of the manhood ritual is fellating a grown man and swallowing his semen because that's like, the seed of manhood inside of you. 

Peter: Yeah. What's more manly than a cock? 

Michael: Yes. 

Peter: And so, in order to absorb its essence, you must suck it. 

Michael: Well, what was so fascinating to me about this book is like to any, I think American straight male, there's nothing gayer, less masculine than blowing another man and swallowing, but that's completely socially constructed in this society. They're like, “No, it's gay not to swallow. It's gay not to blow it up.” 

Peter: It's gay not to suck dick, dude. It's gay to fuck chicks, bro. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Chicks are girls and therefore not masculine. 

Michael: Exactly. 

Peter: Spending your time around men, it makes perfect sense. 

Michael: I think this stuff is so fascinating just how fucking fake it is everywhere. And also, the fact that this society is like, “Yeah, why wouldn't men be doing the cooking?” 

Peter: You can even see this on the right, where they are so disdainful of women and femininity-

Michael: Mm-hmm. 

Peter: -that like even pursuing women is embarrassing to some degree. 

Michael: Totally. Totally. 

Peter: And in fact, they have personalities that start to revolve around hating women and therefore not getting laid, which is the thing that traditionally you would have thought is seen as masculine.

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Being able to impress women or whatever. 

Michael: And the Andrew Tate stuff, like, fellas, is it gay to have sex for more than six minutes? Is one of Andrew Tate's fucking things. [laughs]

Peter: Right. 

Michael: You're just making up a masculinity thing. 

Peter: No, but when you have a huge incel following, you can just make all of your failures gay, right?

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. 

Peter: You're trying to not bust after six minutes. You can't do it. And so, you're like, actually, it's gay. 

Michael: Yeah. It’s super gay. 

Peter: It's gay to go longer than six minutes. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: it's gay when the woman cum’s, actually. 

Michael: Gilmore also profiles another very egalitarian society called the Semai in central Malaysia. And what he notes about these exceptions is that both societies where the genders are super equal are characterized by a lot of abundance. Both of these places have a ton of arable land. In central Malaysia, they do hunting, but they're hunting like small, kind of like capybaras or like quokkas or something, like, not a dangerous animal, and there's just like a shitload of them around. There's just like a lot of food and enough time in the day to rest. 

And so, his theory on this, the fact that these masculinity myths and masculinity norms are fairly common. Not universal, but fairly common around the world. His theory on this is that evolutionarily, life is hard. And because men are more physically strong and taller than women, societies over time have come up with these manhood norms basically to get men to get off of their asses and take care of the collective.

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: Somebody has to hunt the mammoth. And nobody wants to hunt the mammoth because hunting the mammoth sucks shit. And so, societies not really deliberately, but over time have developed these manhood norms to say, like, “Oh, you're a fucking pussy if you don't hunt the mammoth. You got to hunt the mammoth to prove yourself to other men.” And that was the way that societies got through times of scarcity and the fact that, you know, for most of human history, there just wasn't abundant resources. 

Peter: Right. You need some social pressure for people to do stuff-

Michael: Yeah. Exactly. 

Peter: -because it's important that people do stuff. You need social pressure for women to cook, not necessarily, but because someone has to cook.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And also, he says what you find in these manhood norms across the world is that women-- The norms of femininity are oftentimes about caretaking for individuals. You have to take care of your kids, you take care of your husband, whereas manhood norms are oftentimes about taking care of the community. And so, a lot of these manhood norms, they are actually nurturing norms, but they're nurturing of the collective rather than the individual. I just want to have you read a little bit of his conclusion.

Peter: When I started researching this book, I was prepared to rediscover the old saw that conventional femininity is nurturing and passive, and that masculinity is self-serving, egotistical and uncaring, but I did not find this. One of my findings here is that manhood ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity, even to the point of sacrifice. Again and again, we find that real men are those who give more than they take. They serve others. Men nurture their society by shedding their blood, their sweat and their semen, by bringing home food for both child and mother. By producing children and by dying, if necessary, in faraway places to provide a safe haven for their people. This, too, is nurturing. This actually goes to show how completely out of step modern American toxic masculinity is-

Michael: I know.

Peter: Because it started to become like a pure how belligerent in public can you be? How uncaring about others can you be publicly? 

Michael: What Hawley is doing is focus exclusively on the individual. He's not really focusing on, like, yeah, you can nurture your wife and kids. You can treat other people well. You can ignore the fact that there's an X fucking marker on a passport. If you're not X, don't fill out X, then who cares. There are positive examples of masculinity. The idea that no one could admit that masculinity is good, that's just fucking fake. Everyone is fully happy to admit and explore the ways in which masculine values can actually be nurturing and positive for society. It's only people like Hawley who are enforcing and basically inventing this norm where you just have to be a fucking dick all the time. 

Peter: One thing that often happens in these discourses is that a lot of people are reacting to the fact that people already do appreciate this sort of thing. 

Michael: Yeah, no shit. The strong, silent type is like an archetype for reason. This is wildly valorized in our society.

Peter: The archetype of the guy with high executive function, who makes decisions and goes after it or whatever. That sort of stems from the hunting the mammoth thing, like you're taking some risks to get shit done. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah. 

Peter: So, you have these archetypes that are consistently praised throughout our society. And then you have a bunch of people being like, “Should we be praising that? Or like, are there elements of this that shouldn't be praised?” And immediately you get some fucking slime ball like Hawley being like, “Oh, you can't even say that masculinity is good anymore.” 

Michael: I also love the fact that Josh Hawley is citing. Remember, he brought up David Gilmore to say, like, “Manhood is our last bastion against chaos.” 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: And then he's citing this anthropologist who's like, “Ah, this kind of seems fake,” and totally arbitrary. 

Peter: I want to see Hawley's chapter on the village homosexual. The feminists say you can't swallow cum anymore.

Michael: So that was kind of the introduction. We then get to Chapter 2, “A Man's Mission.” 

Peter: Can't believe we're only at the introduction of it. We've already talked about the village homosexual and sucking dick to prove your masculinity. 

Michael: Well, we're going to speed through the book because the book gets very boring after the first two chapters. This is where he lays out kind of the philosophy and the guiding principle of the book. He basically says, like, “Men are valueless. They're flailing. They have this kind of overall general aimlessness.” Richard Reeves said this too. This general sense of ennui that men are having trouble putting their finger on. What he says is there's no real guiding principle of society. There's no guiding philosophy. We're kind of adrift in this morally relativistic void. 

Peter: There's no village homosexual. You're going to severely regret teaching me the- 

Michael: I know. 

Peter: -term village homosexual. 

Michael: I'm like, all right, I'll let Peter spin his wheels on this for a couple more minutes. [laughs] 

Peter: We're going to be doing a business book in a year and a half, [Michael laughs ]and I'm going to be zoning out while you talk about shareholder returns, trying to think of a village homosexual joke. 

Michael: [laughs] Hawley is very explicit that men should be referring to the Bible for their definition of masculinity. So, in Chapter 2, the opening anecdote of Chapter 2 is literally just like the creation story. He's like, “The first day God created heavens and earth--” He literally just like goes through the Bible at length in this book. 

Peter: Jesus Christ. 

Michael: I know it's so-- Peter. 

Peter: No pun intended. But, my God, it is truly so dull. Although, are we about to do an episode within an episode, “Michael? Peter, have you ever heard about the Bible?” 

Michael: [laughs] I was going to be like, “Oh, for this. I also read the Bible.” 

Peter: Six days. Are you kidding me? 

Michael: I was going to have an excerpt for you to read, but it's so boring. His whole thing is basically like-- And this is very common in evangelical Christianity, basically, that God created the heavens and the earth seven days, etc., but his work is unfinished. And so, it is the work of man, specifically men, not mankind, men to complete his work. 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: Men are called upon to continue creating the universe. We should be creating the world that we want to see, fine whatever shit.

Peter: And women are little ribs. 

Michael: And then so he does-- I mean, this takes, like, 20 fucking pages, fine, whatever. He goes through all of the early Bible stuff. This is the purpose of man. Then he says the modern left has a different creation myth. [Peter gasps] He says modern liberalism comes to these conclusions by way of an alternative origin story, a rival account to Genesis about the beginning of all things. And so, then he goes through the philosophy of a Greek philosopher called Epicurus. Epicurus, do not email us. And this is basically theory like we've all heard this. It's basically like the world is made up of atoms and we're all just a bunch of little particles floating in space. And gods don't really care what's going on with us. And because there's no real meaning to life, what you should do is just seek pleasure. Try to have a nice time. Try to be happy. Spend time with your friends. Enjoy your life, that's basically the philosophy, which Hawley finds completely disgusting. [laughs]

Peter: Yeah, repulsive.

Michael: Yeah, he's like, the idea that you would be trying to enjoy yourself throughout your life. He's like, look at these fucking losers. 

Peter: No, life is about discipline. 

Michael: And specifically biblical morality. The idea that there would be any kind of morality or philosophy outside of the Bible is not only foreign to him, but totally offensive. 

Peter: I mean, this is like Burkean conservatism. The idea that once you abandon God, it's all eventually nihilism. No matter what you try to do, no matter what ideology you try to spin, without God, it will degrade into something nihilistic. This is Conservatism 101. 

Michael: So, here is Hawley talking about how we're all Epicureans. I'm only going-- I find this so boring, but the reason I'm going through this is because for the rest of the book, he doesn't really say left or anything. He says epicureans. 

Peter: Oh, hell, yeah. 

Michael: Sometimes he'll say, like, “The Epicurean left.” But oftentimes he'll just say, like “Today's Epicureans,” but what he means by that is just Liberals essentially. 

Peter: Got it. 

Michael: So here is him summarizing why it's bad. 

Peter: Epicurus’ ideas have exerted enormous influence on the modern mind. Today's popular culture instructs us to prioritize self-fulfillment over duty, pleasure over sacrifice. It tells you to find your truth and choose your own values. Like Epicurus, today's thought leaders reject religious faith in favor of atheism and materialism. Modern liberals say there are no permanent truths, only constructs.

Michael: Constructs. 

Peter: And now they want to deconstruct masculinity on the basis that the demands of manhood prevent individuals from doing what Epicurus said was the only thing worth doing, achieving personal happiness. 

One thing I do appreciate about these types of analyses is that at least we can sort of set the boundaries of discussion because there is some element of truth in what he's saying that like if you are on the right, your goal politically, your broader political, ideological project is not actually human happiness in the micro or macro. It's like serving some broader purpose that you have basically defined as like obeying the will of God, but doesn't actually translate to the improvement of human life on earth in any meaningful way. 

Michael: And this is usually the point in conversations with people where I just give up. I'm like, “Well, you think without Christianity, there's no such thing as morality, and you think de facto, any morality that doesn't refer to the Bible is just bunk.” 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: And so, like, I can't get anywhere with you. 

Peter: This is why I stopped doing online atheist debates 15 or 20 years ago. 

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, totally. 

Peter: And part of it was because nothing was ever better than just like. Yeah, sorry. I don't-- I just think that this doesn't make much sense to me. I don't know what to do with Josh Hawley being like, “Without God, everything falls apart.” 

Michael: No. Yeah, I struggle too, because every time I read stuff like this, he's like, “You have to have the Bible to be moral.” I'm like, “No, you don't.” 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: I don't know that I have a more articulate argument than that, I'm just like, “Nah ah”

Peter: It's very annoying to be like your framework doesn't count because it doesn't come from God and mine does because it does come from God, except I don't actually know that it does. I'm just saying it's like, okay, well then it's the same thing, isn't it? 

Michael: Right.

Peter: We're all just doing our best here. 

Michael: We then get to the pattern for the rest of this book. Every future chapter, he opens with an anecdote, usually from his own life. Most of them are like very normal anecdotes, just growing up doing stuff like, they're not all that interesting. And then he'll immediately switch to “The left says you can't do this.” So, in Chapter 4, he talks about in college, a friend of mine invited me to join the rowing team. And then I enjoyed rowing, fine. He then is in London in the early 2000s. He's teaching at a school. He doesn't say the name. He's very coy about his entire biography throughout the book, which is very funny. But he's like, “I was teaching in England and I was teaching at a boys school, and somebody invited me to be the coach of the rowing team.” And then he tells this completely conventional story about how the rowing team was bad. And then like, “I identified some leaders on the team and I helped those boys believe in themselves as leaders. And then were better at rowing.” And then he transitions into the rest of the chapter by being like, “Liberals hate it when you coach things.” 

Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Michael: So, here's his transition into the rest of the chapter. 

Peter: Mention men, leadership and power in the same breath these days and you are liable to be swiftly denounced as a misogynist or worse.

Michael: Worse. 

Peter: The epicurean left sees little to praise in male leaders. On the contrary, liberal voices portray masculine power as a disease in need of curing-

Michael: Disease. 

Peter: -as a particularly virulent social toxin. 

Michael: No one cares if you coach a rowing team.

Peter: Truly.

Michael: Nothing in this story is remotely offensive to me or would be offensive to anyone who's on the left. Like, yeah, I joined the rowing team and we got better after we trained more or whatever. This is again what you find over and over again in this men's rights stuff. Throughout this entire manosphere world, people will describe the most anodyne shit and be like, “Leftists don't want you to do this.” 

Peter: Any implication that sports teams can only succeed with masculine energy at the top.

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Go watch a seven-year-old's gymnastics practice right now. 

Michael: So, he then walks through again, it's tedious, like the ivory tower academics. He does some history stuff. Then he gets to the more contemporary understandings of masculinity, so here's this. 

Peter: The revolutionaries eventually decided the problem wasn't just the system that produced masculinity. The problem was men. The American Psychological Association rehearsed precisely this view in 2019, opining that traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression is, on the whole, harmful. 

Michael: Masculinity is harmful. 

Peter: The organization offered that “Conforming to traditional masculinity ideology," ideology since manhood is supposedly nothing more than a social construct, can “Negatively influence mental health and physical health.” 

Michael: So, the American Psychological association says that men are harmful and toxic and bad. You can't even be a man anymore. 

Peter: Right. The second quote seems basically right, that a “Traditional masculinity ideology can negatively impact mental and physical health,” sure. The first one I have to feel like is out of context. 

Michael: So, I do want to dig into this APA guidelines controversy. I don't know if you noticed this going on at the time. I remember vaguely seeing it pop up in 2019. 

Peter: I have so much masculine energy that I don't read what the American Psychological Association has to say about masculinity. 

Michael: So, in 2019, the American Psychological Association puts out these guidelines for psychology. It's a professional body, so they put out this 40-page PDF document about how should psychologists deal with masculinity? This is on the heels of a previous document they put out about like women and girls for researchers, for clinicians, how should we be thinking about and talking about and dealing with women and girls in our practice? So, this is one for boys and men. And partly because of these quotes that go around, the American right completely loses its fucking mind for like weeks. So, in the National Review, David French writes an article called “Grown Men Are the Solution, Not the Problem.” Jordan Peterson says, “Make no mistake about it: this document constitutes an all-out assault on masculinity, as such or to put it even more bluntly, on men.”

I also found an article in Quillette which had responses from 12 scientists, all of whom were like, “I can't believe how bad this is.” One them has the headline, “Who will mount up and ride to the sound of the guns?”

Peter: In another society, that's the village homosexual right there. 

Michael: [laughs] I love this. 

Peter: [laughs] I'm sorry, but it's not going to stop. 

Michael: Dude one of the Patreon comments of the last bonus episode was, “I like it when Peter gets a little bit homophobic.”

[laughter]

Peter: I'm sorry, but folks, you cannot encourage me like that. [Michael laughs] 

Peter: You have to be chastising me. There needs to be a barrier.

Michael: Keep him in line, keep him in line, man. So, this says, “Perhaps the next APA manifesto will seek to abolish religion, athletics, heterosexual marriage and eating meat.

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: How will this affect our armed forces, police and fire departments, and all the other dangerous but important jobs that must be done. Who will volunteer to mount up and ride to the sound of the guns to protect our nation and its founding principles when masculinity has been smothered in our society?”

Peter: I love the image of a bunch of firemen trying to break through a door, but really limp-wristedly tossing the axe.

Michael: [laughs] It's because of the guidelines. We’ve read the. 

Peter: Because they read the APA guidelines. 

Michael: There's also another commentator refers to the APA guidelines extensively. I'm going to send you an excerpt and you have to guess who this is. 

Peter: The mission of the American Psychological Association is to “Benefit society and improve lives. But the association failed against this benchmark with its 2018 guidelines on working with boys and men. The summary of the guideline states that traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression is, on the whole, harmful. The association quickly came under attack from conservative critics who said the guidelines amounted to conversion therapy similar to similar to that once offered to lesbian women and gay men.” 

Michael: Keep conversion therapy out of your mouth. Fuck off. 

Peter: All right, okay. You're asking me who wrote this? I see two paths in my mind. I see the Atlantic and I see the New York Times. 

Michael: You're correct in spirit. This is from Richard Reeves’ book. 

Peter: Oh fuck, dude. 

Michael: I skipped it in the main feed episode, but Richard Reeves talks about this numerous times in his book, and basically, he's more mad at the APA guidelines here than conservatives comparing this document to conversion therapy.

Peter: Right. He says that like he's just reporting the fucking news. 

Michael: Yeah, exactly. 

Peter: Some conservatives compared it to conversion therapy, a thing that no longer happens anymore, which is why I'm writing a book where I complain about the left.

Michael: And also, people doing this, like, “We're not going to have firefighters anymore.” This catastrophizing--

Peter: Come-on man. Right. 

Michael: All from people who did not read the fucking guidelines, which we're about to get to. But, like, that does not come under scrutiny or scorn from him. 

Peter: Yeah, I don't want to harp on this again, but this is so emblematic of how these centrists and reactionary centrists think about this and the ways in which they are spending their time. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Him complaining about APA guidelines and saying, “Conservatives compared this to conversion therapy once offered to lesbian, women and gay men.” 

Michael: I know.

Peter: Conversion therapy still exists, by the way, really good chance it's about to be legalized nationwide [crosstalk] court.

Michael: Yeah, they're trying to bring it back. 

Peter: -next year. So, the fact that he treats these very real threats from the right as if they are a problem of the past and is instead focused on these bizarre, abstract, “Threats from the left.” It's perfect. It's pitch perfect. 

Michael: And also, I want to zoom in on this quote. “Traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression is, on the whole, harmful.” So, Josh Hawley mentions this quote, and Richard Reeves mentioned this quote too. Richard Reeves says “The summary of the guidelines states.” And then he gives this quote. This is not in the guidelines. 

Peter: Oh-oh. 

Michael: This quote is from a article in the APA magazine. Like a lot of these professional bodies have trade like monthly magazines or whatever that they put out, where the author interviews a guy named Ronald Levant who was head of the APA in 2005 when they started this process. This is the culmination of like a decade long process to come up with these guidelines for men and boys. And so, in this interview, this isn't even a quote from Levant, this is a paraphrase. So, here's the full quote.

Peter: Once psychologists began studying the experiences of women through a gender lens, it became increasingly clear that the study of men needed the same gender aware approach, says Levant. The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression is on the whole harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors. For example, a 2011 study found that men with the strongest beliefs about masculinity were only half as likely as men with more moderate masculine beliefs to get preventative health care. And in 2007, researchers found that the more men conformed to masculine norms, the more likely they were to consider as normal risky health behaviors such as heavy drinking, using tobacco and avoiding vegetables and to engage in these risky behaviors themselves. Oh, so the idea that this is harmful is basically entirely about men's self-care.  

Michael: Or lack thereof. Yes. 

Peter: What the Hawley’s of the world want you to believe is that like what we need is like the assertiveness and risk taking of men, our willingness to put ourselves in danger and things like that. And he's like, “You're saying that's harmful? Society will wither without it.”

Michael: Right. 

Peter: And then you read what they're actually saying and it's like, “Guys should be eating more vegetables. They shouldn't be smoking too much.” It's like, yeah, that actually sounds totally correct. It sounds to me. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: This quote is taken out of context. Three Pinocchios. 

Michael: Yeah, I also, I don't love the way that the sentence is written. I think what the sentence is actually talking about is like it's not necessarily traditional masculinity, she's saying, marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression. So basically, like, the negative aspects of masculinity are associated with like worse health behaviors, which is completely accurate. And also, it provides evidence in the following. It keeps going. There's tons of evidence for this that men with more traditional views on masculinity are more likely to engage in risk taking behaviors. They're more likely to kill themselves, they're more likely to own guns. And so, it's sort of like, what are you really mad at here? It's like a sentence that could have been written better, but the actual phenomenon here, do you have counter evidence to this? Are you proposing that, “Oh, people with traditional masculinity do better?” No. 

Peter: Dude, these people are in like the “farming business.” You know what I mean? The idea of engaging with the broader literature is absurd to them.

Michael: Oh, completely yeah. 

Peter: So far outside their scope that it's pointless to even think about it because again, the conclusions here are so completely inoffensive. 

Michael: And also, I think the actual APA guidelines are extremely instructive here. So I went to the guidelines, I read the entire guidelines. This is from the executive summary. 

Peter: Boys and men are diverse with respect to their race, ethnicity, culture, migration status, age, socioeconomic status, ability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religious affiliation. Each of these social identities contributes uniquely and intersecting ways to shape how men experience and perform their masculinities, which in turn contribute to relational psychological and behavioral health outcomes in both positive and negative ways. Although boys and men as a group tend to hold privilege and power based on gender, they also demonstrate disproportionate rates of receiving harsh discipline, academic challenges, mental health issues, physical health problems, public health concerns, and a wide variety of other quality of life issues. Additionally, many men do not seek help when they need it, and many report distinctive barriers to receiving gender sensitive psychological treatment. 

Michael: And then it then goes through statistics, which we're going to skip because Richard Reeves kind of covered it, but it basically goes through like boys are falling behind in school, men are falling out of the labor force, overdoses, suicides, etc. And then it gets to this. 

Peter: Men, despite being four times more likely than women to die of suicide worldwide, are less likely to be diagnosed with internalizing disorders such as depression, in part because internalizing disorders do not conform to traditional gender role stereotypes about men's emotionality. Indeed, therapists, gender role, stereotypes may explain why boys are disproportionately diagnosed with ADHD compared to girls. Other investigations have identified systemic gender bias toward adult men in psychotherapy and in other helping services such as domestic abuse shelters. Broader societal factors, such as the stigma of seeking psychological help also negatively impact men's help seeking behaviors and the subsequent delivery of psychological services. 

Michael: So, this is precisely what both Josh Hawley and Richard Reeves say that they want. This is institutional academia acknowledging all of the challenges that men and boys are facing and acknowledging that there may in fact be discrimination against men in some of these services. And it's a real problem and we need to address it. But instead of actually taking any of the fucking purpose or the content or anything of these guidelines, they take one sentence and they hate you because you're a man. 

Peter: And the thing is that if you want to talk about gender stereotypes, you don't get to have it one way. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: It doesn't get to be this one thing where, like, we're talking about stereotyping and we're only going to talk about the ways that it harms men. We're not going to talk about the ways that it benefits them. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: You're allowed to have this holistic conversation. And the fact that they get hung up on some of the negative stereotyping around men and masculinity prevents them from actually engaging in some of the negative things where we could have a productive dialogue about how to improve the daily lives of men. 

Michael: I also think this pattern is so important for understanding. We now have this wave of media coverage of the crisis of men and boys and how it always includes this thing of, “The left is always scolding men. The left is condescending to men.” You saw that in Richard Reeves book where he's like, “Jordan Peterson, finally somebody showing empathy to men.” 

Peter: Finally, someone crying like a bitch whenever people are mean to men. [Michael laughs] Sorry, sorry for doing gender norms there. 

Michael: You're allowed. You get one per episode. I feel like people are sitting in a little tick box, like, all right, Peter. 

Peter: Yeah, that was definitely my one per episode. 

[laughter]

Michael: But I think the social construction of like liberals are condescending to men. Liberals excoriate men. Liberals are scolding men. It's so important to understand what is actually going on here. You have a document that is extremely empathic. The entire document is like, “Hey, here's how better to understand your male clients, your male research participants.” 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: They're doing what you want them to do. They're acknowledging all of the problems you want them to acknowledge. And instead of any congratulations, any acknowledgement that, like, “Hey, some of the wording of this document could better, but ultimately this is institutions of, I guess, broadly of the American left, or at least academia, acknowledging the problems they're just scolding and fucking losing their minds, about how one sentence in the fucking trade publication was slightly not perfectly written.” This is why it is impossible to have a fucking conversation about this. It's not because the left is shutting it down. It's because the right melts down at the slightest acknowledgement of the basic structure of this problem. You cannot talk about male suicide, the ways in which men are falling behind, without talking about norms of masculinity.

Peter: Which I think Is hard to separate from the idea that the right is actually shutting this conversation down because Hawley himself is someone who right now is actively working to deny the sort of funding-

Michael: Yeah, exactly. 

Peter: -that would actually address these problems, right? 

Michael: Yes. 

Peter: So, like, when the source of male problems is just the left being mean about the boys. That's something that a Republican politician can just point to and not have to actually do anything, right? 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter: This is like how fascist ideology works where you don't actually really have material solutions, you just have the ability to identify enemies. And he's going to always be pointing at the left and saying, “They are doing this to you,” no matter what the thing is. And any attempt to actually engage in a good faith conversation with them is a waste of fucking time because they are not trying to actually get to the end goal of solving these problems, they are just trying to identify the enemy. 

Michael: Right. 

Peter: That's the end goal to them, is to be mad at the left and to create the political will to reduce the [unintelligible 00:48:39] power.

Michael: So that was Chapter 4. We're then going into Chapter 5. The rest of the chapters are listed in the roles that men should play. So, Chapter 5 is called “Husband.” And I know we've already done this, and this is probably tedious, but he starts with this really long anecdote about his grandparents. And I don't know, it's a perfectly cute anecdote. He's like, “We went over. They used to live in an A-frame house in the wilderness. And we'd go over there and you could smell the brewing coffee because they're always brewing coffee.” And then he transitions, so here's his little transition paragraph, Peter, after his opening anecdote. And he's talking about how happy their marriage was and how they built this beautiful family. 

Peter: There was a time when this message was widely affirmed by our culture. Marriage was viewed as foundational to a good life. Men were expected to be husbands and were proud to be. Today, our Epicurean age teaches a different set of lessons [Michael laughs] against commitment, against sacrifice, against the idea that one can truly become oneself only by giving oneself to another. 

Michael: Leftists don't want you to get married. Leftists don't want you to brew coffee and live in an A-frame house in the wilderness. They hate you for being married. [laughs] 

Peter: It's so funny that all of these people circle around the same. The left has made marriage less appealing in-- This abstract social way that no one can quite pinpoint, but then the idea that no one can buy a house is just like not part-

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, [unintelligible 00:50:05]

Peter: -of the equation. The hilarious part of this is that we sort of dance around the fact that, like, a lot of these social norms basically just sucked. 

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. 

Peter: Getting married at 22 is dumb as hell. [Michael laughs] And I will absolutely, absolutely go down fighting on that point. 

Michael: This is his like dating, marriage, everything is going to shit because of the left chapter. This is the argument of this entire chapter. This is also not the first time, but one of the many times in this book he shows a huge amount of contempt for men. One thing that's funny is the left is always being chided for being, like, oh, condescending to men, but Josh Hawley is so fucking condescending in this book, so here is him talking about how men are dropping out of the labor force.

Peter: What are these young men doing with their time? Screens, leisure, porn. 

Michael: Porn. 

Peter: By far the biggest differences between the daily schedules of men not in the labor force and those who are is the time spent in what researchers label socializing, relaxing, and leisure. Well, yeah. 

Michael: Well, I mean, yeah, what else is there? They're not working. 

Peter: Because you're not working, it's leisure. 

[laughter] 

Peter: Am I [laughs] missing something here? 

Michael: People who aren't working, aren’t working.

Peter: “Sitting around,” in other words. Excuse me, I'm fucking so good at [Michael laughs] [unintelligible 00:51:23] it would shock. You can basically take any civilization to the end game on immortal, but go ahead. On average, men not working spend almost eight hours a day on leisure, nearly twice the time as men who have a job. Yeah. Yeah, dude that’s what leisure is.

Michael: They're not working. They're not working. 

Peter: Now. He says, and leisure does not mean visiting museums or listening to books on tape. Okay, now he's narrowing the definition of leisure a little bit in ways that, frankly, I don't understand. The vast majority of men's leisure time is screen time including video games and pornography. 

Michael: American screen time obviously has exploded in the last 20 years. Although that's for everybody, whether you're working or not. And it's like a component of that is video games and, I suppose, pornography. But, like, yeah, we don't have granular data on like are men viewing pornography eight hours a day? 

Peter: Yeah, I quit my job to jack off more. 

Michael: Just touching my leathery genitalia just chafed from hours. 

Peter: working 9 to 5 was getting in the way of my ability to jack it and--

Michael: To just cranking. 

Peter: Imagine, a man-- I'm sure that somewhere out there is like the guy that he wants you to envision who was, like, getting caught watching porn at work, and then gets fired. And he's like, “You know what? This is good. I like work a lot less than porn, so this makes sense for me.” But I don't even understand this argument. “Men who don't have jobs have more leisure time.” Is less a fact about leisure time than it is like a necessary-

Michael: Just like the definition of a term. 

Peter: -extension of not working. There's no other way to put it. And then he's sort of like, people are just wasting their time on screens more, which like 100%, but it's not really related to what you're talking about. 

Michael: This. I mean, he then goes into. He spends an insane amount of time on porn.

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