August 8, 2023 • 55 mins
From a young age, boys are inundated with messages that teach them not to cry, openly express emotions, or show any sign of weakness for fear of appearing weak or feminine. And as a result, men experience a lack of intimacy and close friendships. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with the co-founder of “A Call to Men,” Ted Bunch, and developmental psychology professor at NYU, Niobe Way, to chat about how boy’s friendships evolve as they get older, the additional cultural pressures that Black and Brown men face, what men can do to prioritize their mental health, and how therapy could be transformative for a lot of men.
Original air date: March 7, 2023
Watch the original segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmiHDeTi-w
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into topics and segments that you might have seen on
the Daily Show. This is what this podcast is. This
is how you gotta think about this podcast. You have
a go bowling, right, you know you want to go
bowling and bowling. You're just going in. You have a
good time, the stars, the bowling pins, and the bowling ball.
But this podcast, we're all the extra shit that you
(00:29):
need to be able to bowl. All right. You gotta
have the goofy clown shirt. You gotta have the big
ass clown shoes. You gotta have beer, you gotta have wings,
you have to have an inability to bowl. All of
the skills that are required to make bowling fun. That's
exactly what this podcast is. So I'm Roy Viginia. Today
(00:50):
we're gonna be talking about a topic that has come
up on the show quite a bit, male vulnerability and
intimacy and why it is important that men go to therapy.
Roll the clip.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
We know that women are going through it, but we
have to acknowledge that men are going through it too.
You guys are angry, you're depressed, and you're lonely. In fact,
fifteen percent of men say they have zero zero friends,
and the other eighty five percent they don't have friends either,
but they was too sad to fill out the survey. Now,
(01:24):
luckily there's a tool that can help you with all
of this. Pharavey therapy is amazing. You pay someone to
unload all your bullshit on them. They're like prostitutes for
the feelings. The problem is men don't use it. In fact,
(01:49):
they're almost half as likely to go to therapy as women.
Men out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms.
They're here to help you, Nick. But we know why
men is this way, because, starting from a young age,
(02:10):
we cheat them that they can't have feelings.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Today, I'm joined by co founder of a Call to
Men and co author of the Book of Dares, one
hundred Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold and Brave,
Ted Bunch. Welcome to be on the scenes. How you doing, Ted,
I'm good, Roy, Thank you so much. Happy to be
here with you and Yob. You got a voice of
stature right there, that's a voice of statue. And I
see for the people listening, you got one of them
(02:34):
grown men, You got one of them coach Goate's I
just want to do whatever you tell me to do.
Ted also joining me, is a professor of developmental psychology
at NYU and author of the book Deep Secrets, Boys, Friendships,
and the Crisis of Connection. Her book was also the
inspiration for the Oscar nominated film Close Niobi Way, Welcome
(02:58):
to the show. How you doing.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here Royan,
with you and Ted. I'm really excited about this conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Well, I'm happy to be a part of this as well.
And as a father of a six year old, I
definitely you know, if I'm gonna be honest, just up front.
You know, I didn't come from a home. This is
why I feel like this discussion is very important. You know,
I had two parents that everybody worked odd hours. My
(03:27):
dad worked mornings and nights, so I rarely saw him
other than pick me up from baseball practice. My mother
worked until nine pm because she was going to law
school in PhDs and all of the secondary degrees that
you get to build your income. So I didn't see
my mom but right before I went to bed, and
first thing in the morning on a way to the
bus stop. So this idea of intimacy and hugs and conversation,
(03:50):
and that was not I knew I was love, I
felt love, But you know, I came up in an
era where intimacy within a family, actually man to man
was more incidental than intentional. So in coming up with
ways to be intentional with my son, it's these types
of stories and stuff within the show that have really
(04:12):
helped me because you know, and and I'll start with you, Ted,
because you know, the act of being a man is
something that's just said, but it's never really detailed. It's
never really laid out in specifics. You know, people tell you, man,
while you're crying, boy, be a man. What does that mean?
(04:33):
My knee hurt? I It's okay to cry, It's okay
to feel. So, Ted, let's start off with talking a
little bit about, you know, defining how society views manhood
and masculinity, or as you refer to it, the man
box explains us what the man box and what does
healthy manhood actually look like?
Speaker 4 (04:55):
So thank you Roy for that. And I appreciate what
you're sharing about the difference from you growing up and
then the type of parent you want to be, the
intentional father that you want to be around, nurturing and
supporting your son. And our parents did that too, to
the best of their ability. But we know much more now.
And so when we talk about the man box, which
is a term that a call to man coined more
(05:17):
than twenty years ago, that's a short version of saying
the collective socialization of manhood. Right. The manbox just sounds cooler, right,
But when we talk about the man box, you can
imagine all the things that we're taught around manhood and masculinity.
Even if we were to ask a six year old
boy or a sixteen year old boy what it is,
what have you been taught about what a man is?
(05:38):
They'll say, be tough, be strong, make money, carry a bag, right,
a bag of money. Don't ask for help, don't be vulnerable,
don't be weak, right, Because those things that vulnerability, that weakness,
those things where you need to ask for help are
not what men do. And I'm putting that in quotes
based on this male dominated society. It's what women do.
(06:00):
And if you're a man that does that, then you
fall in short of the manhood that you're expected to
live up to. So there's a few things that happen
in the manbox. One of them is that we're all
taught that on some level, women and girls have less
value than men and boys, that women are the property
of men, and that women and girls are sexual objects.
(06:22):
These are the things that we're taught, and we pass
these teachings down to our children. As well as that
we're not supposed to openly express emotion, that we're not
supposed to show weakness for fear. You're not supposed to
act like a woman or a girl. You're not supposed
to ask for help. I do want to unpack, just
for a moment, that less value, property, objectification piece roy,
if you don't mind. So we're taught our collective socialization, right,
(06:44):
it's just kind of in the air that women and
girls have less value than men and boys. So if
I say to a little boy, you have to throw
that ball hard on their son, you throw like a girl.
Everybody knows the answer to that. We've never had this conversation,
but we know the answer, right, And it's not that
it's true, but we know what the answer to that is.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods
slide a tampon to another golfer as a way to
say that that shot he just the drive. He just checked.
Oh they got on Tiger Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's
surely no cameras here at this televised golf tournament. I
(07:22):
will slide to you a woman joke. I didn't mean
to cut you off taking that's it.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
That's That's a great example because this is done everywhere
because like that six year old boy, right, what does
he what does he leave that situation when that man
he looks up to says you have to throw her
on it, You throw like a girl and girls still
just fine, right, But does he leave that interaction thinking
that girls are equal to him or less than him,
less than And we're giving him those messages all day long,
(07:48):
and Tiger continues to give those messages. So it's not
just Tiger, it's all of us. That's our collective socialization,
and that women on some level of the property of men.
So if I'm in New York or La or Cargo
or Texas, and I walk over to a man today
who's hitting his wife or girlfriend, I say, knock it off.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
He says to me, shut your way.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
So that's in my business, one way or another. And
the other is around the objectification. Our boys are actually
taught to objectify girls. And they're taught that by men
in their life. They're taught that by messages they're getting
in all different areas, right, And it's not that we're
doing things well. This is going to give a quick example.
A high school boy in your community, or in your community, Naobi,
(08:31):
or anyone who's listening here, a great kid, seventeen year
old kid who wants to take a young woman out
to go to a movie. He's just taking her out, right,
He takes her out to the movie. His name's John,
her name is Keisha. He takes John, takes Keisha out,
gets on the group text with a couple of his
boys and says, hey, guys, I'm taking Keisha out to
the movie. They give him a little prap for that,
but he takes her, takes her back home, perfect gentleman.
(08:54):
He gets it back on the group text and says, hey, guys,
I'm back. Is the first thing in those boys good
boys ask him is how was the movie No Right? So?
Where did they learn that from? So that's the manbox
that collective? So did you hit it?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Did you get the kisser? Did you get the grab mood?
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Did she right? Because the only purpose to spend time
with her is the conquest. That's what they're taught.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Okay, So, Nilobe, you've studied young boys friendships and how
these relationships change as they get older. Can you tell
us more about what you found in your research.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So I've been listening to boys and young men since
nineteen eighty seven, a long time, and I started off
as a high school counselor listening to boys and thinking
about surprise that what they were talking about was not
was I what I expected. They were talking about their friendships,
their desires for close friendships, their desires for intimate connection
with other guys, and that led really to a lifetime
(09:48):
of being fascinated by First of all, was this typical
of a lot of boys? But secondly, why aren't we
telling this story? And so what's interesting to me is
that when you listen to young people, when you listen
to boys, I would say, anywhere from your son's age
all the way up to basically twenty four to twenty five,
they tell something very different in terms of their socialization,
(10:10):
especially when they're younger and they're less pressured to man up,
which is that they want close friendships. You hear twelve
thirteen fourteen year olds talking beautifully about their desire for friendships,
their desire to really trust someone, to not be laughed at.
That not being laughed at, by the way, is a
big one, being able to share something with or not
laughed at, that being able to trust them. And then
(10:32):
as they get older, they basically the pressures to man
up starts to happen and they start to disconnect from
what they want. They start to sort of everything that
becomes a joke, even though even though basically that they
don't see it as a joke because they're looking for
that connection. And right at the point where boys start
to disconnect from their own desires for closeness, especially with
other young men, you see the suicide rate goes up.
(10:54):
You see all kinds of stuff. Mass violence happens right
at that age between sixteen twenty five, where men are
being asked by the culture young men to basically disconnect.
And this is the part I really want to say
Roy on your show, this is a human desire. This
is a human desire. It's not a girl thing, it's
not a guy thing. It's not a gender identity thing.
(11:16):
Or a sexuality thing, a gay thing. It's a human
desire to want to connect to other people deeply emotionally.
And the only way we connect, Roy this is the
whole point, and Ted, this is the whole part of
Ted's work too. The only way we connect is that
we're vulnerable, we're expressive, we share our feelings. We're also stoic, right, Ted,
I mean in relationships, you need to be able to
(11:37):
be stoic, you need to be able to be soft.
But we only value half of our half of ourselves,
and especially for young men. So if we only have
value the side, the hard side of ourselves, and don't
value the soft side, first of all, we're not gonna
have relationships. We're not gonna have good relationships. Secondly, we're
going to be in trouble. So if we raise kids
to go against their humanity, to go against their nature,
(11:59):
which is to be loving human beings, and we raise
them to go against that and to actually value this
sort of only the hard side of themselves, that that's
the manning up part, then we shouldn't be surprised that
a lot of them struggle when they get older and
need therapy. Right Right, I mean that you know, why
do so many men need therapy in the first place.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
All of the causations that you've just laid out, is
that part of why you think men are stuck in
I think, as you've called it, a friendship recession in
a way, because you can't be real with your friends.
You can't be open in eyes for fear of being
teased or being called a girl. Man, why you crying?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Exactly? Everything that I'm saying comes directly from the mouths
of boys. I mean, they will say things like, it
might be nice to be a girl because then I
wouldn't have to be emotionless. I mean, I just want
adults listening to that to register that comment it might
be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn't
have to be emotionless. We are asking human beings to
be emotionless and then we expect them to be have
(12:59):
healthy relations.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
It is a human desire and that our boys, as
they will be said, start out with all of these
things that they want to express, and actually when we
allow space for them to talk about it, they're thirsty
to talk about it. They really are. And so on men.
By the way, once we remove that, it's it's that
there's a shaming of being vulnerable and talking about it.
(13:21):
So we start teaching, We start teaching our boys not
to experience those feelings. When we tell our boys to
stop crying, then they don't they don't get to express
what they're feeling. When we tell them to stop crying,
we're also saying stop feeling. And so then they push
that those emotions down and the only thing that's expressed
with that's accepted is anger. Aggression that's what's seen as
(13:43):
an emotion that men can express, and lust you can
express that as well. So those are the harmful things,
and it directly ties to anxiety and depression and suicide.
All of those things are tied to this. So the
boys don't develop a language to express how they're feeling.
So we become these men who also don't have that language,
(14:03):
and so we don't no doubt to ask for help
because when we tried to ask for help, that's spends
seen as a weakness or something that men don't do.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
How much of all of this that we've been laying out,
because what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men
are going through Hey show your emotions. Hey, women can
do it too, meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism
side of the game and go on, we are girls,
girls strong, girl power, We go on, march, we can
(14:32):
do whatever we want. So it almost seems as if
both sides are getting or having two different types of
awakenings concurrently. That also kind of but hits how much
did the lack of women's rights in the thirties and
the forties and the fifties, and even if you really want,
because I'm not gonna put this solely on slavery, but
(14:54):
I also want to put it in the context that
for a long time in America, the man had to
go do the work, and the woman was at the
house and you was in the kitchen, and maybe the
man felt that he could never share because no matter
what the burden of providing was passed on, he has
to do it. And then we got to a time
(15:16):
where we didn't have to live like that anymore. But
men were maybe subconsciously passing on that rhetoric to their
next generation and then their next generation, and by the
time we got to the nineties, the idea of what
a man should be was molded by what a man
had to be at that time, and we thought that that,
(15:37):
like someone said to me something I thought was very profound,
don't confuse the tact that you use to survive with
the tact that you need to go on. How much
does the history of gender dynamics play a role in
a lot of these bad habits being passed down from
generation to generation.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah, so in a male dominated society, right, because that's
what it is, and it's patriarchical society. It's a male
dominated society. And then you do have women who are
seeking liberation because coming out of all of that, in
the same way that in a white supremaci society you
have people of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all
of those things because these constructs exist, and there is
(16:15):
an antiquated notion of manhood and masculinity that I think
is so woven into the fabric of our society that
when it's challenged, then sexism rears its ugly head, right
and seeks to put down what women have achieved or
are doing and those kind of things, as if it's
taking away from men. But it's not. It's not just
(16:36):
this one pie and that everybody's pieces a little smaller.
It's an expansion of a pie, right, It's much bigger
than that. So this allows men right to really look
at all authentic selves too, that we don't just have
to be this rigid notion of manhood. That there's so
much more to you and to me and to the
men who are listening. There's so much more to who
(16:58):
we are that we can now embrace are full of
authentic selves. Also, because there's things that you may have
wanted to do, or your son may want to do
that the man box says, oh no, no, no, you're
not supposed to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
I have flowers in my picture all the time when
I'm on zoom. Right. It took me years to accept that, oh,
I can go buy flowers because I like flowers in
the house. I don't have to bring them to a
woman to have flowers in the house, or to my
wife to have flowers in the house. That actually, I'm
the one who likes the color. I'm the one who
likes the smell of the flowers. And it took it
took me a while to really accept that now that's
(17:32):
my authentic self. I love flowers. So now I'll go
to the floorers and I pick out what I want.
They say, do you want me to put it in a
vase for you, mister bunch. No, I want to take
them home and arrange them, because you know what Roy
and Aobi, I like flowers. So there's so much that
we're missing as men that these rigid noses of manhood
patriarchy harms all of us. It really does. There's lots
of wonderful things about being a man. I don't want
(17:54):
to not be a man. I don't want to not
be a father. And this is not an indictment on manhood. Actually,
it's an invitation of men. It's not about calling men
out for wrong behavior. It's about calling men in to
a healthy, respectful man.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So what boys have taught me is that we've split right,
our culture, our modern culture, I call it boy culture,
but it's called we call our modern culture has split
us into thinking that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine.
Heart is masculine and femine. Right, you get where I'm going, Right,
get where I'm.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Got wet A Marin on Network.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, right, you get what I'm saying, Thinking is masculine, feminine.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Right, That's sounds like every argument I've had with everybody
I've dated in my life. Goodness gracious.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
If you live in a culture that says basically independence, thinking,
the self stoicism is masculine, and vulnerability, emotions, sensitivity is feminine,
you're going to be messed up because ultimately you are
half hard and half soft as a human. And again,
(18:57):
I'm not doing the human thing because it's my own ideology.
I'm doing it really because that's what the boys are
yelling at us about. Like they are saying exactly what
you just said, Ted, They're saying, I am actually half
what you call feminine. I am vulnerable, I am sensitive,
I'm emotionally intelligent. I like flowers or I don't like
you know, whatever it is, but things that have been
(19:19):
associated with femininity, and you're trying to push that down
in me. And that's how I actually build relationships and friendships.
So like, what's your problem? I mean, I feel like
young people, honestly, Roy, have been yelling at adults for
almost a century and saying what is wrong with you people?
You know that basically we get it. Young people get it. Ted.
You know that young people get it all the time.
(19:40):
And so I think when it comes to the women's issues,
this is what I think, Roy, I think that women obviously,
and I definitely identify as a feminist and I'm definitely
part of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for
lots of different justified reasons. So you know, I'm not
diminishing that in any way. But the reality is that
we keep on seeing the symptom as the problem, so
(20:03):
we keep on thinking that it's basically from women's from
a feminist perspective, we keep on thinking, well, it's men's problems,
so if you fix men, then the problem should go away.
But it's all of our problems. Roy it's the culture
that we have all created with obviously, this hierarchy that
some men have been more influential than other men. You know,
you're talking about white supremacy, et cetera, et cetera, and
(20:26):
some you know, and some women have been more powerful
than other women. But basically, we have a creative society
that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities.
So then that means is that women are getting mad
at men when we really what we should be doing
is trying to change the culture. And the more we
sort of blame it on men, actually, the more men
just feel attacked I've heard that a lot. You know,
(20:46):
the men just feel attacked when we have to see
it as a collective problem.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Before we go to the break, I want to I
want to delve in for a second with Younov about
your work that you did where you essentially walk me
through this had a one hundred and fifty boys ages
thirteen to eighteen.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Well, I followed them over over four years. So I
followed them. Yeah, I fought from twelve to thirteen. I
followed them over four to five years.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Okay, how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly
start to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at
the same age because you were essentially looking to see
how they related and how they spoke to other boys.
And when did the dissipation of feeling and turning into
creatures of action when that started happening.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
When you listen to twelve year old boys, they will
use the language of love. They will talk given a
safe space, right not get them a safe space, they
won't do it. When they talk about their friends, they
say I love him, I can't live without him, or
I want to find a friend that I could really
rely on and not be you know and be myself
and be a real self. So the language, it's right
(21:55):
there in the language. It's literally they're talking love. They're
asking questions about love. They're thinking about love, both heterosexual love,
romantic love, platonic love, all sorts of love. They're wanting,
they're having questions about it, and it given a safe space,
they actually ask it. Then as they get a bit older,
it's incredible because remember it's the same kids. So it's
the same kids. Over time, you start to hear this,
(22:17):
I don't care ted. You know this language, I don't
care whatever. It's all good. It's all good. You know, like, no,
I don't have you know, I don't connect to someone
that much anymore, But it's all good. You know that
whole pressure to sort of sound like you're totally and vulnerable.
So you hear in the language, and then you also
hear the anger, You hear the sadness, and then sometimes
(22:39):
in the worst case scenarios, you hear the depression and
the sense of feeling totally isolated and not knowing what
to do about it, and a lot of anger at
why is not anybody paying attention? Why is not anybody
paying attention to these basic human needs and everybody's calling me,
you know, in some cases mass shooters, I've read the
mass shooter manifestos, it's the same thing. They feel like
(23:02):
nobody's paying attention to their suffering.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Right there, I want to take a break, and I
want to come back and jump more into that. And
this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Maybe
before the break. We were just talking about how men
feel like they don't have a way to express their
feelings without being criticized or compared to being a woman
(23:25):
or having their feelings not be received properly, and so
as a result, it can bubble up in a number
of different ways. Now, the study that you conducted with
a number of boys over the course of four or
five years in their teenage years, you're seeing that a
lot of the conversation in verbiage as they became more
emotionally disconnected was similar to some of the verbias that
(23:48):
you've seen in some of the mass shoot of manifestos.
What are some of the other ways that this type
of you know, and I don't want to say dysfunction,
but the absence of vulnerable, vulnerable to that's a matter
a word. You knew what I was trying to say,
just Dan, don't laugh. Vulnerability the lack of stop laughing, Ted,
I see, how does the lack of the inability to
(24:12):
be vulnerable?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
There?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I did it? What are some other negative ways that
it manifests itself.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
It can show up in a lot of ways. It
can show outwardly, right, because these are hurt kids, and
it can show it outwardly where they're hurting other kids.
Maybe it's bullying or gun violence, all of these other
things where they're trying to establish some sort of power,
some sort of affirmation. And when we talk about the
(24:39):
emotional disconnection, that NAO be brought up and then you
leaned into a little bit there, Roy, I do want
to say this that those emotions when they stop from
that first year of the of the research to the
last year of the research where they're not vulnerable, where
they're not looking for that connection, or at least admitting
they're not they're looking for it, they're not they're not
admitting it is because becoming more and more indoctrinated in
(25:02):
the manbox, and the glue that keeps that man box
together is homophobia. Yeah right, So in other words that, yeah,
so that when they start saying that there's an emotional
connection other boys or men in their life, even or
even women in their life, because we're all social, we're
all swimming in the same water, right, are saying oh, no,
(25:23):
you don't, don't say that, you don't do that. They
push them back into the manbox because that glue, that homophobia,
is the glue that keeps that man box together. It
doesn't work without it, right, it doesn't work without it.
So they're punished when they show their emotions. They're punished
when they're vulnerable because it's seen as weakness. So they're
really being taught that Okay, I can't it's not safe
(25:44):
for me to talk about it. It's not safe for
me to hug my friend and say, hey, man, you
know what, I really do love you, you know, and
I'm glad you're in my life. And then they're saying
things like, you know, things that I don't even want
to say it, right, but they say things that push
them back into the man box, right.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, yeah, they say things I know, homo. So my
in my in my, in my interviews, you get things directly.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Which to define just real quick for our listeners. When
you say no, homo, it's like, hey, man, I love you,
no homo, as if to say I love you, but
not in a gay way, which assumes that love means intimacy.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
And exactly right, well, between men and boys, it does.
We don't say it. They don't say it when they
talk to a girl. Yeah, right, so it really is
it's homophobia within that, right, Yes, it's so. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
If we didn't live in a homophobic society, no homo
actually wouldn't necessarily be homophobic. But because we because we right, so,
so the idea, right, uh, the idea don't be such
a girl or no homo is misogynistic and homophobic because
we live in a homophobic, misogynist society. So it's it's
but I think I really like that image that I'm
going to use it again too and quote you. Of course.
(26:53):
Is the glue. It's the glue. It's it forces young
men to actually adhere, because there are consequences if you don't,
and the consequences I hear about in older men and
I mean older teenagers sorry all the time. The consequences
of being teased, bullied, pushed around if you don't play sports,
if you don't man up, if you don't do things
(27:13):
that make you look straight. And this is the thing
roy in our culture right now, It's okay according to
the kids in New York City right now, it's okay
if you have an aunt who's gay, you have an
uncle who's gay. Maybe you even have a you know,
a brother who's gay. But I'm not gay. So there's
this weird sort of almost backlash going on that, like,
(27:34):
it's cool, it's cool that, you know, you if people
do that, people love each other, but don't think I'm gay,
and yeah, let me clarify, don't put that means. So
the men who are the least secure of their masculinity
are oftentimes the most likely to adhere to masculinity. So,
you know, the oftentimes you get athletes, for example Roy,
(27:56):
really well known athletes who are actually breaking the gender
orders all the time, you know, hugging each other, kissing
each other, because they don't have to prove their manhood
because everybody else slaps on the hand exactly exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Ying is allowed that the Super Bowl you lose, the
Super Bowl.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Cry cry exactly exactly exactly. You see some of the
most tender things between well known athletes, and so it's
just interesting to me to think about the homophobia drives
and that's part of the culture. I mean, come on,
I just it's stunning to me that we still think
in a culture we still raise our kids roy that thinking,
that thinking is masculine and straight of course, and feeling
(28:37):
is feminine and and gay because obviously femininity is linked
with being gay in a homophobic world.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
I also like that thinking is masculine, feeling is feminine,
and that when women think exactly exactly, when women right,
when women exactly and show their intelligence and all those things,
men say things like, yeah, well she need to be
in the kitchen or you know, they're doing things that
diminished that right because it challenges again this patriarchal notion
(29:08):
of male dominance.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
When we talk about that as parents. So last year
I had the pleasure of going on Finding your Roots
with the wonderful doctor Henry Lewis Gates. And amongst all
the things that I found out about my family tree,
I knew that I did not have when I was born,
(29:30):
I had one living grandparent. What I did not know
before that television show was that my father lost his
father when he was four, and from that time on
there was no male head of household per census data
every eight years. That was done when my father was
living with his mother, you know, well into adulthood. So
(29:53):
as far as I know, there was never another man
of the house in my dad's life, and so it
really reconstituted a lot of how I viewed how he
raised me. And so there was one thing that always
came up without getting into like this isn't me like
unearthened family trauma and drama or anything like that, but
(30:14):
I just know that one thing my dad would always
say whenever he was losing an argument with my mama,
was I paid the bills. Because my mom was pouring
all of her money into grad school and second degrees
and third degrees and law degrees. You ain't run the house,
you know. You know, we get to when we lose
the argument. We started bringing up receipts. But what I
(30:37):
didn't realize until I became a father myself was that
was the first thing that I defined as manhood was
my ability to provide and clothe and feed And it
wasn't about feeling and connecting with my son. I knew
that was important, but it was not what I prioritized
because the idea of paying the cost to be the
(31:01):
So the example you get is the example you see.
There was no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this,
there was no bearsting bears about fatherhood. So you know,
how do how do fathers provide, you know, a model
not only to their sons, but to their daughters about
what they need from a man when they go out
(31:21):
and start dating. Like, how can we as parents, especially
as fathers, set a better example and roadmap to what
masculinity looks like? Because I feel like the issue that
I'm dealing with as a as a forty four year
old man, I can say that the issue I'm dealing
with is trying to relearn something while also teaching it
(31:42):
to someone at the same time.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
So your father, with the belief that I'm the provider,
I pay the bills all the things, those things are important.
Being a provider, paying the bill are very important, and
that's an important thing. And so but whatever the woman
in the household does, right your mom working, somebody's taking
care of children, to whatever she's doing is also just
as important. So the problem is that in our again,
(32:09):
women have less value than men and boys. So whatever
men are doing is always elevated. Our default setting is
to give men the benefit of the doubt. Our default
setting is to elevate what men do over what women do.
So what women, Oh, she stays home and takes care
of the kids. Have you stayed home and take care
of the kids and you run back to your job.
(32:29):
That's work, right, So it isn't like that's not work,
but it's not valued because women do it. And honestly,
when men do do it, it is valued. Oh what
a great dad, he's doing all of those things right
when women are juggling this all day long work and
home and their relationship with their spouse as well. So
(32:50):
we often put much more value on what men do
and not on what women do. And that's that's really
the way it plays out. Which is which which is harmful,
it's disrespectful.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
And I want to add something one other division that
we do. We don't listen to young people. So we
think we know, we think we know how it is,
we think we know how we should do it. And
if you actually listen to you know, five year olds
up until as I said, up until whatever in the twenties,
they tell you a story about who we are as human.
(33:22):
What gets in the way and how to solve it.
A five year old boy says to his mom who
comes into the kitchen of the mom's going through a divorce.
The mom doesn't want to have a sad face a
sad home, so the boy says to his mom. Within
a split second, seeing his mom with a big, happy
smile on her face, he says, mom, mommy, why are
(33:44):
you smiling when you're feeling sad? And what that five
year old is showing is he can he's or he
is asking why are you faking in emotion? That's a
deep feeling. That's a deep feeling. Another five year old
boy said to his mom, Mommy, are you yelling at me?
Because your mommy all at you. I mean, think about
how genius We come out into the world as humans
(34:06):
with that natural intelligence, and then what happens is we
grow up and we become less intelligent. And I'm not
just being snarky when I say that, we really do
become less intelligent. We become more cowed over by our
cultural norms, and we don't listen to our heart, we
don't listen to our minds. We start believing in things
that we know are not true. My daughter asked me
(34:26):
that at eight, why do we believe in things we
know aren't true? You know, and we start believing in
things about ourselves because seven year old boys were I
promise you they know this stuff we're talking about right now.
They don't even be taught this stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
What role does society play, especially in black and brown fathers,
you know, dealing with all of these extra cultural pressures
when they're outside the home and being able to or
not being able to partition those stresses and bringing that
into the house. Because I'm sure to some degree my
(34:59):
dad not to some degree, my dad dealt with a
lot of racism because that was his calling journalistically. So
you get a nice full day of white folks yelling
at you at a couple of protests, and you come home, Yeah,
you might be a little bit more on edge, and
you probably are also a little bit more disconnected with
your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's
(35:20):
going on out there in the real world. How does
mental health play a role in men sometimes misplaying the
role of father?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting mental health
is becoming more and more acceptable among men. And it's
really because men who have an influencing platform people like yourself, Roy,
who can talk about mental health being important. Other men
are listening to that and saying that, oh, okay, so
you know, maybe it's not about weakness. Maybe I do
(35:52):
need to do that because we know on some level
that this isn't working for us either, right, men know that.
But when we talk about again the construct of racism,
so we have men who living in this man box
and distressors around that not asking for help. So we
don't go to the doctor when we need to, We
don't ask for help when we need to. All these
other things, anxiety and depression are really off. The charge
(36:12):
suicide is about three and a half times higher among
men than among women. Men are living only about six
years five and six years less than women for all
of these things, including not getting medical checkups for prevention.
But we go in more for intervention all of those things.
But then when you have the issue of black men
and men of color, the trauma, as you said, of
(36:36):
just dealing and walking around every day a racist society
is a very traumatic thing, so much so that we
do it so much that we it's kind of like
we don't even pay attention to it anymore. Until it's
extreme like you know, some like George Floyd or something.
But we're dealing with these traumas all the time, and
our boys are too. Right, the boys are also, so
(36:59):
they have to have a place to be able to
talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that
it's not about them, that it's not that anything wrong
with them. It's actually the opposite. That they're that they're
good and that they're worthy and that they are enough.
But they're not getting these messages. So we need to
lean in, especially for our boys and for our black men.
But again because of this, they need to prove that
(37:24):
yourself in this man box. And black men haven't really
had the opportunity in the same that white same way
that white men have, right because white men can do
it and so black men.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Can do it.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
You know, you'll see it more in sports, entertainment, music,
that kind of thing where you'll you'll see many more
images of black men who are really successful where white
men get to play out this power and control thing
in all areas. Right, So it can be exaggerated also,
but it also can be something where it's really harmful
(37:54):
for us because it limits us so much as black
men It really is a limiting thing, but it's also
a way of protecting ourselves.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Naobi, I want to direct a question to you and
tell you feel free to jump in. I'm gonna paint
you the scenario. Yeah, and you tell me what the
hell I should have said to this child? Okay, So
I take my boy to a kid's birthday party and
like a five year old just turns to me and
we're just watching. It's not my child, it's someone else's child.
I don't know whose child. And he asked, with a
(38:26):
straight face, why do men work harder than women? Yeah?
And I just oh, and you know, you don't want
to give the wrong answer and poisonous child. And then
he takes it back to his family, goes and then yeah,
telling those daddy told me that me and oh, and
I was like, hey, we all work hard and we
(38:48):
have to look to make sure that the work that
we see the work. Just because you don't see the
work doesn't mean that the work isn't happening. I just
kind of ate my pizza and drifted away from this child.
Before you ask more deeper philosophical questions, what role does
media play in influencing the perceptions of you know, what
it means to be a man, what fatherhood means. You know,
(39:12):
there's the type of content that we're exposing our children
to also kind of perpetuate those roles just a little bit.
As as I became more conscious of gender equity within
the Home's like, there was a show as a pepper pig,
I was like, oh, let me make sure mama pig
out there doing some stuff too, and then it ain't
(39:33):
just daddy pig coming in the house with a briefcase. Yeah,
so I had to run every show through a filter.
But what role does media play in a lot of this?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Okay, so first I want to ask I want to
give you some support for how you responded to that point.
But I do think that when people say things that
make as if what we're trying to fight against real,
like men work harder, men are more human than other people,
or manner smarter or whatever, it is the best way
(40:03):
to deal with that, whether it's little kids or your colleagues,
roy is to ask questions about it. So tell me
about why you think they work harder. So what's the example.
And then the idea is to say, okay, so tell
me about what your mom does like, tell me what right,
so that you're engaging the conversation, because ultimately, when I
learned from working with college students roy is if you
say you're wrong that you know, it never works. So
(40:25):
I basically try to figure out what is the mindset
that's making them think that, and then all of a
sudden introducing like let's think about what women do, let's
look go into what your mom does? You know, and
so that they could begin to recognize it without being
told they're wrong. And I think media of course reinforces
I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story we
(40:47):
tell about ourselves that there's some humans that are more
human than others, there's some human qualities that are more
valuable than other human qualities, and we repeat that story.
So media just reinforces it. And I don't care what
kind of media it reinforces it. Now, obviously shows like
this are critical because this allows us to disrupt those narratives.
(41:07):
I don't want to make media all blankets, but obviously
it does. I mean, you know, we are living right
now in an immoral, a moral, immature culture, and we
got to disrupt it with these kind of conversations.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
On the other side of the break, We're going to
talk solutions. And I want to know how hopeful you
all are for this next generation of men coming down.
How hopeful are you from a six year old? I
want to know. I want to hear it straight out
your mouth. This is behind the scenes. We'll be right
back beyond the scenes. We are around in third and
headed for home. It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here.
(41:43):
How can somebody prioritize their mental health? And if you
are a man that is in a friendship recession. Now
we're not talking about teenagers, We're talking about grown men.
What tools can men take to build and deepen and
strengthen the connections that they.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Already normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get
a switch within four seconds. I'm not exaggerating, boys. I
will tell I will read a quote for twelve year
old boys that says something soft you know I love
him so much from my book Deep Secrets. They will
start cracking up. I'll say, why are you laughing? They'll
(42:19):
say the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I
didn't look at his sexuality. I'm just telling you that
eighty percent of boys sound like that at some point
in their teenage years. And they will say inevitably, for real,
And I'll say, oh, yeah, for real, that's really what
what teenage boys say. I guess what happens roy Within
four I'm not kidding, they will immediately start talking about
(42:40):
their own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need
is the permission to feel and the permission to ask.
And once they know it's normal that they want friendships
that they then they can. Then they know how to
do it. It's natural. I wish the world could hear
that the questions that twelve year old boys ask when
given a safe space, because they are geniuses. They're geniuses
(43:03):
in terms of understanding how love works, how relationships works,
how humans work. And so I just they normalize it,
and then in their homes and teachers and bosses, you
just got to make it normal so that you create
spaces where friendships are valued. Teachers, put don't separate out
kids that are friends, put them together. Put them together,
(43:24):
and then talk about how they can help each other
learn the material, that they learn it better with each
other than by themselves. So don't do that thing. And
we're going to separate you because you guys are friends.
It's like no, No, Actually use that relationship to learn.
There's a beautiful study at UVA that shows has been replicated.
The subject of the research stands in front of a
(43:46):
hill and has to estimate the steepness of the hill
with a backpack on their back. Okay, it's an experiment,
a research experiment. They're standing next to a best friend
in one condition, standing there a stranger in another condition
by themselves or with when they know who they don't
know very well. Okay, So in each condition they have
to estimate the steepness of the hill. You got it right.
(44:06):
Those that are standing next to a best friend see
the hill as less step. So what's incredible is that
we actually see the world as less difficult when we're
standing next to someone who loves us. We see that
the math problem, the whatever you're doing is less difficult
when you're next to someone who loves you. So use
(44:28):
that in education, Use that in the workplace. Put people
who are close together working on teams together. You see
what I'm saying, So you disrupt even at home, talk
about friendships. We got to think as parents to say,
tell me about you know, thinking about our own friendships.
Talk about with your kids. I don't share the intimacies
of my own friendship, but I talk about when I
feel get my feelings hurt with friends. I talk about
(44:51):
how that made me feel bad when so and so
didn't return my text and I wrote her three times
that you didn't write back, and that made me feel bad.
And then I asked them for advice their teenagers. So
I'll say, what do you think I should do? What
do you think I should say? And I see do
that with my son as well, by the way, and
so what the message they get from this is this
is normal. This is normal. This isn't some weird thing
(45:12):
that you have to you know, you have to get
special help for.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
You bring up a lot of great points. And you know,
you're talking about your kids, and I'm a father also
they're being twenty one and thirty three now. But would
it was not unusual at all for me to ask,
especially my boys, on a scale of one to ten,
how do you feel today?
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Right?
Speaker 4 (45:28):
Or to have those conversations that were informal conversations around
how they're doing, and to really lean in and ask
more and more questions. So that's really important to your question.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Roy.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask
for help, to not need any more, pull yourself up
by your bootstraps, all those kinds of things. And when
we do spend time with each other, it might be
around going and having a drink, or it might be
around a sporting event or watching a game. That's where
the bonding happens, right, And what we need to be
able to do, and what's helpful is that we really
(46:02):
lean into the strength and vulnerability, right, Like, I'm really
going through something right and I want to share that
with you, and I don't. What men often say is okay, man,
well you know it'll get better, let's just move on.
They don't really lean in and process in the same
way that women are taught, honestly in our society to
use more language and ask more questions, right, because I'm
(46:23):
sure I'm sure your wife asks more questions about what
you're feeling that you might ask her. You just want
to know you're okay, good, okay, now talk about anything else, right,
So you don't ask enough questions.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Therefore you don't care. It's do care, I pay the bills,
don't you see this, this warm heat in this house.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
We absolutely care, but we're not comfortable asking those questions
because we've been told you don't go into that emotional space.
You stay away from that emotional space. So much so
that even when we go to and thinking about your listeners,
I bet if there's a woman listening to the podcast,
there's a man in her life, her brother, her father,
(47:05):
mancy's dating her husband, who's going to the doctor, she
gonna make sure she goes with him. Why because he's
not gonna ask the questions that he needs to ask.
Because even that, for us is vulnerability. Right, Even that
for us is like, oh, I don't know, I just
want to get in and out. You go to doctor, yes,
but you ask him about this world truth. Right.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
So vulnerability is a.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Strength, it really is. And honestly, when men become vulnerable,
they're respected for that because other men see that, Wow,
that was vulnerable, and that's the strength. So it isn't
something we need to run away from. And that's going
to give us a better sense of well being, a
better sense of mental health, to really have health mentally
(47:46):
and to be able to support everyone else along the way.
And it's going to really make us feel better too,
and it's modeling it for our children as well. How
does therapy play a role in this? Men are half
the country. We are eighty percent of the suicides according
to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind help
(48:08):
with anything that you all have just been talking about.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
I want to say something that's very specific to me
being a woman, and I hear this from other women friends.
So therapy is huge because it allows the space. And
this is what happens, Roy, in between heterosexual relationships almost
always is women feel I'm going to now be the
voice of all women across the world, Roy, are you ready?
(48:31):
So basically that we are a burden with the care
of our children and the care of our husband, and
now with this new emotional awakening of men, we now
have to be the therapist for our husbands as well
and our partners. And there's a lot of anger about that,
like we can't be the therapist, we can't be the
caretaker of the therapist that everything you know for our husbands.
(48:52):
And then the dynamic I see in my friends. I
do not do research on this, but I see it
in my community is resentment, is that the woman doesn't
have time to be the therapist to her husband. He
wants her to because he feels safe talking to her.
So I would say, therapy. That's not your wife, that's
not your partner, that's not your romantic partner. Whatever it is,
could be a friend, could be a friend, but a
(49:15):
professional who really knows basically how to make you reconnect
with your own humanity. So I would very much encourage therapy,
especially in terms of understanding that you need multiple people
to support you. This whole notion that we could rely
on one person in our life, you know, our spouse
or our partner to be the end all be all
(49:37):
is getting in the way. It's getting in the way.
We need multiple people. We need our moms, our grandmas,
our aunts, our uncles, our therapists, our best friend, our partner.
We need we need a community to build, you know,
to make us fully human and so that we act
like humans. And we're still stuck in this model, Ted,
you know this, We're still stuck. We put all our
emotional eggs into one romantic basket and then expect us
(49:59):
to be happy with this one person, and that's just
not real.
Speaker 4 (50:03):
Therapy is very important, and we don't need to even
call it that when I when I encourage men to
get therapy, I'll say, man, you just need you need
a sounding board, you know what I mean. You need
somebody who can share objectively what they might think not
you know, it's great to have a friend, but we're
not always objective, and we kind of want things to
get better for you and it may not me. It
(50:25):
may not require us leaning in to really ask more
questions that really get to a real solution that's meaningful,
that's more more meaningful. So really encouraging therapy for men,
I encourage therapy for men. I've been in and out
of therapy for different things throughout my life. My children
know that my children have also engaged in therapy at
(50:45):
some point in their life because it's not something to
run away from. It's actually they needed a sounding board too.
And I would say, even just just go to share
any frustrations you have about me or your mom, Like,
just go to start talking about things where you can
share some things that you may not feel totally comfortable
sharing with us at this point. So therapy is essential.
(51:07):
It will prevent depression. The anxiety among manager is off.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
The charge.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
As you said, suicide is really three and a half
times higher than women and eighty percent of suicide I
believe you mentioned for the CDC. So there's something that's
not right, that's not working for us as men. So
this is the fix.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
So with all of that being said, let's end it here.
We've already kind of unpacked ways that we can try
and change the culture. What hope and optimism do you
have for the future of manhood?
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (51:39):
I have a lot of hope. Yeah, it looks like
you're not finished.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Really well, you know, we don't see how this grow up.
You know, you got to understand how my sample size
is one, y'all, the one studying one hundred and fifty
people and writing books. I'm not writing books. I'm just
raising one. He seems to be doing good so far.
He's definitely in tune with his emotions and expressive about it,
way more so than I was at the same mild marker.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
And that's what we need to allow, right, We really
need to allow our children like your son to embrace
and express his full range of emotions. And we need
to do that too. When he's going through fear, we
can say, you know, I feel afraid too, And this
is what I do, and I want to work through
that fear because on the other side, no matter how
it turns out, it's always good that I've worked through
that fear. So we're not saying don't push our children
(52:25):
to confront things even if they're difficult. We want them to,
but we don't want them, you know, we don't want
to motivate them by denigrating them or using girls or
women or others to say, don't be like that or
don't be like this. Right, those are the kind of
things that we really want to do. We want to
have them express through their language what's going on. So
(52:46):
I have a lot of optimism about men, about manhood.
I think that we've reached a point where it's clearly
not working and we know that, and so now it's
just a matter of time of how do we need
to purge what needs to happen so that we can
start talking in real ways that really connect with our humanity.
(53:07):
That's the real thing. Yeah, we really connected with omen
just as there's a racial awakening in a lot of ways,
and it's difficult, it's painful. People are being triggered all
the time, right, So it's difficult, but we have to
get through it, and the same thing here around our
own mental health and our own sense of well being.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
I think first of all, we have to make sure
we're locating the problem where the problem is. So, the
problem is not men, the problem is not women. The
problem is not non gender conforming people. Right. The problem
is not black people, it's not poor people, it's not immigrants.
The problem is a culture that doesn't align with our
nature and a culture that doesn't nourish the best angels
(53:43):
of our nature. Right. So the idea is if the
focus is on valuing both the heart and the soft
sides of ourselves equally equally, men and women, non gender conforming,
I don't care what your identity is. Your heart is soft.
If that's our goal, which it should be, then it
becomes easy because we're naturally hard and soft. And the
hope is and I work with Remember I teach at NYU,
(54:04):
so I see one hundred college students a semester, and
the hope when I see those young people across race,
across class, across nationality, all sorts of young people, they
are starving roy for this conversation. They are starving for it.
They are literally I'm not I'm not even exaggerating. They're
yelling at us in those in my classes I teach
(54:26):
of like what is wrong with you people? And this
is what we want? Why are you still saying academic
achievement is more important than close friendship? Like, why are
you still saying that? Because that's not what's important in
the world. I just have to say the fact that
they even this close scot this nomination. It's just about
boys friendships. That's all the film is about. And then
(54:47):
something happens because the friendship gets in the way, and
the enormous response to it means that cultural change is
already happening, right, It's already happening.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot think both
of you enough for giving me a piece of your
time and giving our viewers a little bit of knowledge.
That's all the time we have for today, Ted Naobi,
thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with me.
(55:21):
Listen to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into topics and segments that you might have seen on
the Daily Show. This is what this podcast is. This
is how you gotta think about this podcast. You have
a go bowling, right, you know you want to go
bowling and bowling. You're just going in. You have a
good time, the stars, the bowling pins, and the bowling ball.
But this podcast, we're all the extra shit that you
(00:29):
need to be able to bowl. All right. You gotta
have the goofy clown shirt. You gotta have the big
ass clown shoes. You gotta have beer, you gotta have wings,
you have to have an inability to bowl. All of
the skills that are required to make bowling fun. That's
exactly what this podcast is. So I'm Roy Viginia. Today
(00:50):
we're gonna be talking about a topic that has come
up on the show quite a bit, male vulnerability and
intimacy and why it is important that men go to therapy.
Roll the clip.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
We know that women are going through it, but we
have to acknowledge that men are going through it too.
You guys are angry, you're depressed, and you're lonely. In fact,
fifteen percent of men say they have zero zero friends,
and the other eighty five percent they don't have friends either,
but they was too sad to fill out the survey. Now,
(01:24):
luckily there's a tool that can help you with all
of this. Pharavey therapy is amazing. You pay someone to
unload all your bullshit on them. They're like prostitutes for
the feelings. The problem is men don't use it. In fact,
(01:49):
they're almost half as likely to go to therapy as women.
Men out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms.
They're here to help you, Nick. But we know why
men is this way, because, starting from a young age,
(02:10):
we cheat them that they can't have feelings.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Today, I'm joined by co founder of a Call to
Men and co author of the Book of Dares, one
hundred Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold and Brave,
Ted Bunch. Welcome to be on the scenes. How you doing, Ted,
I'm good, Roy, Thank you so much. Happy to be
here with you and Yob. You got a voice of
stature right there, that's a voice of statue. And I
see for the people listening, you got one of them
(02:34):
grown men, You got one of them coach Goate's I
just want to do whatever you tell me to do.
Ted also joining me, is a professor of developmental psychology
at NYU and author of the book Deep Secrets, Boys, Friendships,
and the Crisis of Connection. Her book was also the
inspiration for the Oscar nominated film Close Niobi Way, Welcome
(02:58):
to the show. How you doing.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here Royan,
with you and Ted. I'm really excited about this conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Well, I'm happy to be a part of this as well.
And as a father of a six year old, I
definitely you know, if I'm gonna be honest, just up front.
You know, I didn't come from a home. This is
why I feel like this discussion is very important. You know,
I had two parents that everybody worked odd hours. My
(03:27):
dad worked mornings and nights, so I rarely saw him
other than pick me up from baseball practice. My mother
worked until nine pm because she was going to law
school in PhDs and all of the secondary degrees that
you get to build your income. So I didn't see
my mom but right before I went to bed, and
first thing in the morning on a way to the
bus stop. So this idea of intimacy and hugs and conversation,
(03:50):
and that was not I knew I was love, I
felt love, But you know, I came up in an
era where intimacy within a family, actually man to man
was more incidental than intentional. So in coming up with
ways to be intentional with my son, it's these types
of stories and stuff within the show that have really
(04:12):
helped me because you know, and and I'll start with you, Ted,
because you know, the act of being a man is
something that's just said, but it's never really detailed. It's
never really laid out in specifics. You know, people tell you, man,
while you're crying, boy, be a man. What does that mean?
(04:33):
My knee hurt? I It's okay to cry, It's okay
to feel. So, Ted, let's start off with talking a
little bit about, you know, defining how society views manhood
and masculinity, or as you refer to it, the man
box explains us what the man box and what does
healthy manhood actually look like?
Speaker 4 (04:55):
So thank you Roy for that. And I appreciate what
you're sharing about the difference from you growing up and
then the type of parent you want to be, the
intentional father that you want to be around, nurturing and
supporting your son. And our parents did that too, to
the best of their ability. But we know much more now.
And so when we talk about the man box, which
is a term that a call to man coined more
(05:17):
than twenty years ago, that's a short version of saying
the collective socialization of manhood. Right. The manbox just sounds cooler, right,
But when we talk about the man box, you can
imagine all the things that we're taught around manhood and masculinity.
Even if we were to ask a six year old
boy or a sixteen year old boy what it is,
what have you been taught about what a man is?
(05:38):
They'll say, be tough, be strong, make money, carry a bag, right,
a bag of money. Don't ask for help, don't be vulnerable,
don't be weak, right, Because those things that vulnerability, that weakness,
those things where you need to ask for help are
not what men do. And I'm putting that in quotes
based on this male dominated society. It's what women do.
(06:00):
And if you're a man that does that, then you
fall in short of the manhood that you're expected to
live up to. So there's a few things that happen
in the manbox. One of them is that we're all
taught that on some level, women and girls have less
value than men and boys, that women are the property
of men, and that women and girls are sexual objects.
(06:22):
These are the things that we're taught, and we pass
these teachings down to our children. As well as that
we're not supposed to openly express emotion, that we're not
supposed to show weakness for fear. You're not supposed to
act like a woman or a girl. You're not supposed
to ask for help. I do want to unpack, just
for a moment, that less value, property, objectification piece roy,
if you don't mind. So we're taught our collective socialization, right,
(06:44):
it's just kind of in the air that women and
girls have less value than men and boys. So if
I say to a little boy, you have to throw
that ball hard on their son, you throw like a girl.
Everybody knows the answer to that. We've never had this conversation,
but we know the answer, right, And it's not that
it's true, but we know what the answer to that is.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods
slide a tampon to another golfer as a way to
say that that shot he just the drive. He just checked.
Oh they got on Tiger Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's
surely no cameras here at this televised golf tournament. I
(07:22):
will slide to you a woman joke. I didn't mean
to cut you off taking that's it.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
That's That's a great example because this is done everywhere
because like that six year old boy, right, what does
he what does he leave that situation when that man
he looks up to says you have to throw her
on it, You throw like a girl and girls still
just fine, right, But does he leave that interaction thinking
that girls are equal to him or less than him,
less than And we're giving him those messages all day long,
(07:48):
and Tiger continues to give those messages. So it's not
just Tiger, it's all of us. That's our collective socialization,
and that women on some level of the property of men.
So if I'm in New York or La or Cargo
or Texas, and I walk over to a man today
who's hitting his wife or girlfriend, I say, knock it off.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
He says to me, shut your way.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
So that's in my business, one way or another. And
the other is around the objectification. Our boys are actually
taught to objectify girls. And they're taught that by men
in their life. They're taught that by messages they're getting
in all different areas, right, And it's not that we're
doing things well. This is going to give a quick example.
A high school boy in your community, or in your community, Naobi,
(08:31):
or anyone who's listening here, a great kid, seventeen year
old kid who wants to take a young woman out
to go to a movie. He's just taking her out, right,
He takes her out to the movie. His name's John,
her name is Keisha. He takes John, takes Keisha out,
gets on the group text with a couple of his
boys and says, hey, guys, I'm taking Keisha out to
the movie. They give him a little prap for that,
but he takes her, takes her back home, perfect gentleman.
(08:54):
He gets it back on the group text and says, hey, guys,
I'm back. Is the first thing in those boys good
boys ask him is how was the movie No Right? So?
Where did they learn that from? So that's the manbox
that collective? So did you hit it?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Did you get the kisser? Did you get the grab mood?
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Did she right? Because the only purpose to spend time
with her is the conquest. That's what they're taught.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Okay, So, Nilobe, you've studied young boys friendships and how
these relationships change as they get older. Can you tell
us more about what you found in your research.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So I've been listening to boys and young men since
nineteen eighty seven, a long time, and I started off
as a high school counselor listening to boys and thinking
about surprise that what they were talking about was not
was I what I expected. They were talking about their friendships,
their desires for close friendships, their desires for intimate connection
with other guys, and that led really to a lifetime
(09:48):
of being fascinated by First of all, was this typical
of a lot of boys? But secondly, why aren't we
telling this story? And so what's interesting to me is
that when you listen to young people, when you listen
to boys, I would say, anywhere from your son's age
all the way up to basically twenty four to twenty five,
they tell something very different in terms of their socialization,
(10:10):
especially when they're younger and they're less pressured to man up,
which is that they want close friendships. You hear twelve
thirteen fourteen year olds talking beautifully about their desire for friendships,
their desire to really trust someone, to not be laughed at.
That not being laughed at, by the way, is a
big one, being able to share something with or not
laughed at, that being able to trust them. And then
(10:32):
as they get older, they basically the pressures to man
up starts to happen and they start to disconnect from
what they want. They start to sort of everything that
becomes a joke, even though even though basically that they
don't see it as a joke because they're looking for
that connection. And right at the point where boys start
to disconnect from their own desires for closeness, especially with
other young men, you see the suicide rate goes up.
(10:54):
You see all kinds of stuff. Mass violence happens right
at that age between sixteen twenty five, where men are
being asked by the culture young men to basically disconnect.
And this is the part I really want to say
Roy on your show, this is a human desire. This
is a human desire. It's not a girl thing, it's
not a guy thing. It's not a gender identity thing.
(11:16):
Or a sexuality thing, a gay thing. It's a human
desire to want to connect to other people deeply emotionally.
And the only way we connect, Roy this is the
whole point, and Ted, this is the whole part of
Ted's work too. The only way we connect is that
we're vulnerable, we're expressive, we share our feelings. We're also stoic, right, Ted,
I mean in relationships, you need to be able to
(11:37):
be stoic, you need to be able to be soft.
But we only value half of our half of ourselves,
and especially for young men. So if we only have
value the side, the hard side of ourselves, and don't
value the soft side, first of all, we're not gonna
have relationships. We're not gonna have good relationships. Secondly, we're
going to be in trouble. So if we raise kids
to go against their humanity, to go against their nature,
(11:59):
which is to be loving human beings, and we raise
them to go against that and to actually value this
sort of only the hard side of themselves, that that's
the manning up part, then we shouldn't be surprised that
a lot of them struggle when they get older and
need therapy. Right Right, I mean that you know, why
do so many men need therapy in the first place.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
All of the causations that you've just laid out, is
that part of why you think men are stuck in
I think, as you've called it, a friendship recession in
a way, because you can't be real with your friends.
You can't be open in eyes for fear of being
teased or being called a girl. Man, why you crying?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Exactly? Everything that I'm saying comes directly from the mouths
of boys. I mean, they will say things like, it
might be nice to be a girl because then I
wouldn't have to be emotionless. I mean, I just want
adults listening to that to register that comment it might
be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn't
have to be emotionless. We are asking human beings to
be emotionless and then we expect them to be have
(12:59):
healthy relations.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
It is a human desire and that our boys, as
they will be said, start out with all of these
things that they want to express, and actually when we
allow space for them to talk about it, they're thirsty
to talk about it. They really are. And so on men.
By the way, once we remove that, it's it's that
there's a shaming of being vulnerable and talking about it.
(13:21):
So we start teaching, We start teaching our boys not
to experience those feelings. When we tell our boys to
stop crying, then they don't they don't get to express
what they're feeling. When we tell them to stop crying,
we're also saying stop feeling. And so then they push
that those emotions down and the only thing that's expressed
with that's accepted is anger. Aggression that's what's seen as
(13:43):
an emotion that men can express, and lust you can
express that as well. So those are the harmful things,
and it directly ties to anxiety and depression and suicide.
All of those things are tied to this. So the
boys don't develop a language to express how they're feeling.
So we become these men who also don't have that language,
(14:03):
and so we don't no doubt to ask for help
because when we tried to ask for help, that's spends
seen as a weakness or something that men don't do.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
How much of all of this that we've been laying out,
because what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men
are going through Hey show your emotions. Hey, women can
do it too, meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism
side of the game and go on, we are girls,
girls strong, girl power, We go on, march, we can
(14:32):
do whatever we want. So it almost seems as if
both sides are getting or having two different types of
awakenings concurrently. That also kind of but hits how much
did the lack of women's rights in the thirties and
the forties and the fifties, and even if you really want,
because I'm not gonna put this solely on slavery, but
(14:54):
I also want to put it in the context that
for a long time in America, the man had to
go do the work, and the woman was at the
house and you was in the kitchen, and maybe the
man felt that he could never share because no matter
what the burden of providing was passed on, he has
to do it. And then we got to a time
(15:16):
where we didn't have to live like that anymore. But
men were maybe subconsciously passing on that rhetoric to their
next generation and then their next generation, and by the
time we got to the nineties, the idea of what
a man should be was molded by what a man
had to be at that time, and we thought that that,
(15:37):
like someone said to me something I thought was very profound,
don't confuse the tact that you use to survive with
the tact that you need to go on. How much
does the history of gender dynamics play a role in
a lot of these bad habits being passed down from
generation to generation.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah, so in a male dominated society, right, because that's
what it is, and it's patriarchical society. It's a male
dominated society. And then you do have women who are
seeking liberation because coming out of all of that, in
the same way that in a white supremaci society you
have people of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all
of those things because these constructs exist, and there is
(16:15):
an antiquated notion of manhood and masculinity that I think
is so woven into the fabric of our society that
when it's challenged, then sexism rears its ugly head, right
and seeks to put down what women have achieved or
are doing and those kind of things, as if it's
taking away from men. But it's not. It's not just
(16:36):
this one pie and that everybody's pieces a little smaller.
It's an expansion of a pie, right, It's much bigger
than that. So this allows men right to really look
at all authentic selves too, that we don't just have
to be this rigid notion of manhood. That there's so
much more to you and to me and to the
men who are listening. There's so much more to who
(16:58):
we are that we can now embrace are full of
authentic selves. Also, because there's things that you may have
wanted to do, or your son may want to do
that the man box says, oh no, no, no, you're
not supposed to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
I have flowers in my picture all the time when
I'm on zoom. Right. It took me years to accept that, oh,
I can go buy flowers because I like flowers in
the house. I don't have to bring them to a
woman to have flowers in the house, or to my
wife to have flowers in the house. That actually, I'm
the one who likes the color. I'm the one who
likes the smell of the flowers. And it took it
took me a while to really accept that now that's
(17:32):
my authentic self. I love flowers. So now I'll go
to the floorers and I pick out what I want.
They say, do you want me to put it in a
vase for you, mister bunch. No, I want to take
them home and arrange them, because you know what Roy
and Aobi, I like flowers. So there's so much that
we're missing as men that these rigid noses of manhood
patriarchy harms all of us. It really does. There's lots
of wonderful things about being a man. I don't want
(17:54):
to not be a man. I don't want to not
be a father. And this is not an indictment on manhood. Actually,
it's an invitation of men. It's not about calling men
out for wrong behavior. It's about calling men in to
a healthy, respectful man.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So what boys have taught me is that we've split right,
our culture, our modern culture, I call it boy culture,
but it's called we call our modern culture has split
us into thinking that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine.
Heart is masculine and femine. Right, you get where I'm going, Right,
get where I'm.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Got wet A Marin on Network.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, right, you get what I'm saying, Thinking is masculine, feminine.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Right, That's sounds like every argument I've had with everybody
I've dated in my life. Goodness gracious.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
If you live in a culture that says basically independence, thinking,
the self stoicism is masculine, and vulnerability, emotions, sensitivity is feminine,
you're going to be messed up because ultimately you are
half hard and half soft as a human. And again,
(18:57):
I'm not doing the human thing because it's my own ideology.
I'm doing it really because that's what the boys are
yelling at us about. Like they are saying exactly what
you just said, Ted, They're saying, I am actually half
what you call feminine. I am vulnerable, I am sensitive,
I'm emotionally intelligent. I like flowers or I don't like
you know, whatever it is, but things that have been
(19:19):
associated with femininity, and you're trying to push that down
in me. And that's how I actually build relationships and friendships.
So like, what's your problem? I mean, I feel like
young people, honestly, Roy, have been yelling at adults for
almost a century and saying what is wrong with you people?
You know that basically we get it. Young people get it. Ted.
You know that young people get it all the time.
(19:40):
And so I think when it comes to the women's issues,
this is what I think, Roy, I think that women obviously,
and I definitely identify as a feminist and I'm definitely
part of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for
lots of different justified reasons. So you know, I'm not
diminishing that in any way. But the reality is that
we keep on seeing the symptom as the problem, so
(20:03):
we keep on thinking that it's basically from women's from
a feminist perspective, we keep on thinking, well, it's men's problems,
so if you fix men, then the problem should go away.
But it's all of our problems. Roy it's the culture
that we have all created with obviously, this hierarchy that
some men have been more influential than other men. You know,
you're talking about white supremacy, et cetera, et cetera, and
(20:26):
some you know, and some women have been more powerful
than other women. But basically, we have a creative society
that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities.
So then that means is that women are getting mad
at men when we really what we should be doing
is trying to change the culture. And the more we
sort of blame it on men, actually, the more men
just feel attacked I've heard that a lot. You know,
(20:46):
the men just feel attacked when we have to see
it as a collective problem.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Before we go to the break, I want to I
want to delve in for a second with Younov about
your work that you did where you essentially walk me
through this had a one hundred and fifty boys ages
thirteen to eighteen.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Well, I followed them over over four years. So I
followed them. Yeah, I fought from twelve to thirteen. I
followed them over four to five years.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Okay, how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly
start to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at
the same age because you were essentially looking to see
how they related and how they spoke to other boys.
And when did the dissipation of feeling and turning into
creatures of action when that started happening.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
When you listen to twelve year old boys, they will
use the language of love. They will talk given a
safe space, right not get them a safe space, they
won't do it. When they talk about their friends, they
say I love him, I can't live without him, or
I want to find a friend that I could really
rely on and not be you know and be myself
and be a real self. So the language, it's right
(21:55):
there in the language. It's literally they're talking love. They're
asking questions about love. They're thinking about love, both heterosexual love,
romantic love, platonic love, all sorts of love. They're wanting,
they're having questions about it, and it given a safe space,
they actually ask it. Then as they get a bit older,
it's incredible because remember it's the same kids. So it's
the same kids. Over time, you start to hear this,
(22:17):
I don't care ted. You know this language, I don't
care whatever. It's all good. It's all good. You know, like, no,
I don't have you know, I don't connect to someone
that much anymore, But it's all good. You know that
whole pressure to sort of sound like you're totally and vulnerable.
So you hear in the language, and then you also
hear the anger, You hear the sadness, and then sometimes
(22:39):
in the worst case scenarios, you hear the depression and
the sense of feeling totally isolated and not knowing what
to do about it, and a lot of anger at
why is not anybody paying attention? Why is not anybody
paying attention to these basic human needs and everybody's calling me,
you know, in some cases mass shooters, I've read the
mass shooter manifestos, it's the same thing. They feel like
(23:02):
nobody's paying attention to their suffering.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Right there, I want to take a break, and I
want to come back and jump more into that. And
this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Maybe
before the break. We were just talking about how men
feel like they don't have a way to express their
feelings without being criticized or compared to being a woman
(23:25):
or having their feelings not be received properly, and so
as a result, it can bubble up in a number
of different ways. Now, the study that you conducted with
a number of boys over the course of four or
five years in their teenage years, you're seeing that a
lot of the conversation in verbiage as they became more
emotionally disconnected was similar to some of the verbias that
(23:48):
you've seen in some of the mass shoot of manifestos.
What are some of the other ways that this type
of you know, and I don't want to say dysfunction,
but the absence of vulnerable, vulnerable to that's a matter
a word. You knew what I was trying to say,
just Dan, don't laugh. Vulnerability the lack of stop laughing, Ted,
I see, how does the lack of the inability to
(24:12):
be vulnerable?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
There?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I did it? What are some other negative ways that
it manifests itself.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
It can show up in a lot of ways. It
can show outwardly, right, because these are hurt kids, and
it can show it outwardly where they're hurting other kids.
Maybe it's bullying or gun violence, all of these other
things where they're trying to establish some sort of power,
some sort of affirmation. And when we talk about the
(24:39):
emotional disconnection, that NAO be brought up and then you
leaned into a little bit there, Roy, I do want
to say this that those emotions when they stop from
that first year of the of the research to the
last year of the research where they're not vulnerable, where
they're not looking for that connection, or at least admitting
they're not they're looking for it, they're not they're not
admitting it is because becoming more and more indoctrinated in
(25:02):
the manbox, and the glue that keeps that man box
together is homophobia. Yeah right, So in other words that, yeah,
so that when they start saying that there's an emotional
connection other boys or men in their life, even or
even women in their life, because we're all social, we're
all swimming in the same water, right, are saying oh, no,
(25:23):
you don't, don't say that, you don't do that. They
push them back into the manbox because that glue, that homophobia,
is the glue that keeps that man box together. It
doesn't work without it, right, it doesn't work without it.
So they're punished when they show their emotions. They're punished
when they're vulnerable because it's seen as weakness. So they're
really being taught that Okay, I can't it's not safe
(25:44):
for me to talk about it. It's not safe for
me to hug my friend and say, hey, man, you
know what, I really do love you, you know, and
I'm glad you're in my life. And then they're saying
things like, you know, things that I don't even want
to say it, right, but they say things that push
them back into the man box, right.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, yeah, they say things I know, homo. So my
in my in my, in my interviews, you get things directly.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Which to define just real quick for our listeners. When
you say no, homo, it's like, hey, man, I love you,
no homo, as if to say I love you, but
not in a gay way, which assumes that love means intimacy.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
And exactly right, well, between men and boys, it does.
We don't say it. They don't say it when they
talk to a girl. Yeah, right, so it really is
it's homophobia within that, right, Yes, it's so. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
If we didn't live in a homophobic society, no homo
actually wouldn't necessarily be homophobic. But because we because we right, so,
so the idea, right, uh, the idea don't be such
a girl or no homo is misogynistic and homophobic because
we live in a homophobic, misogynist society. So it's it's
but I think I really like that image that I'm
going to use it again too and quote you. Of course.
(26:53):
Is the glue. It's the glue. It's it forces young
men to actually adhere, because there are consequences if you don't,
and the consequences I hear about in older men and
I mean older teenagers sorry all the time. The consequences
of being teased, bullied, pushed around if you don't play sports,
if you don't man up, if you don't do things
(27:13):
that make you look straight. And this is the thing
roy in our culture right now, It's okay according to
the kids in New York City right now, it's okay
if you have an aunt who's gay, you have an
uncle who's gay. Maybe you even have a you know,
a brother who's gay. But I'm not gay. So there's
this weird sort of almost backlash going on that, like,
(27:34):
it's cool, it's cool that, you know, you if people
do that, people love each other, but don't think I'm gay,
and yeah, let me clarify, don't put that means. So
the men who are the least secure of their masculinity
are oftentimes the most likely to adhere to masculinity. So,
you know, the oftentimes you get athletes, for example Roy,
(27:56):
really well known athletes who are actually breaking the gender
orders all the time, you know, hugging each other, kissing
each other, because they don't have to prove their manhood
because everybody else slaps on the hand exactly exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Ying is allowed that the Super Bowl you lose, the
Super Bowl.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Cry cry exactly exactly exactly. You see some of the
most tender things between well known athletes, and so it's
just interesting to me to think about the homophobia drives
and that's part of the culture. I mean, come on,
I just it's stunning to me that we still think
in a culture we still raise our kids roy that thinking,
that thinking is masculine and straight of course, and feeling
(28:37):
is feminine and and gay because obviously femininity is linked
with being gay in a homophobic world.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
I also like that thinking is masculine, feeling is feminine,
and that when women think exactly exactly, when women right,
when women exactly and show their intelligence and all those things,
men say things like, yeah, well she need to be
in the kitchen or you know, they're doing things that
diminished that right because it challenges again this patriarchal notion
(29:08):
of male dominance.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
When we talk about that as parents. So last year
I had the pleasure of going on Finding your Roots
with the wonderful doctor Henry Lewis Gates. And amongst all
the things that I found out about my family tree,
I knew that I did not have when I was born,
(29:30):
I had one living grandparent. What I did not know
before that television show was that my father lost his
father when he was four, and from that time on
there was no male head of household per census data
every eight years. That was done when my father was
living with his mother, you know, well into adulthood. So
(29:53):
as far as I know, there was never another man
of the house in my dad's life, and so it
really reconstituted a lot of how I viewed how he
raised me. And so there was one thing that always
came up without getting into like this isn't me like
unearthened family trauma and drama or anything like that, but
(30:14):
I just know that one thing my dad would always
say whenever he was losing an argument with my mama,
was I paid the bills. Because my mom was pouring
all of her money into grad school and second degrees
and third degrees and law degrees. You ain't run the house,
you know. You know, we get to when we lose
the argument. We started bringing up receipts. But what I
(30:37):
didn't realize until I became a father myself was that
was the first thing that I defined as manhood was
my ability to provide and clothe and feed And it
wasn't about feeling and connecting with my son. I knew
that was important, but it was not what I prioritized
because the idea of paying the cost to be the
(31:01):
So the example you get is the example you see.
There was no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this,
there was no bearsting bears about fatherhood. So you know,
how do how do fathers provide, you know, a model
not only to their sons, but to their daughters about
what they need from a man when they go out
(31:21):
and start dating. Like, how can we as parents, especially
as fathers, set a better example and roadmap to what
masculinity looks like? Because I feel like the issue that
I'm dealing with as a as a forty four year
old man, I can say that the issue I'm dealing
with is trying to relearn something while also teaching it
(31:42):
to someone at the same time.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
So your father, with the belief that I'm the provider,
I pay the bills all the things, those things are important.
Being a provider, paying the bill are very important, and
that's an important thing. And so but whatever the woman
in the household does, right your mom working, somebody's taking
care of children, to whatever she's doing is also just
as important. So the problem is that in our again,
(32:09):
women have less value than men and boys. So whatever
men are doing is always elevated. Our default setting is
to give men the benefit of the doubt. Our default
setting is to elevate what men do over what women do.
So what women, Oh, she stays home and takes care
of the kids. Have you stayed home and take care
of the kids and you run back to your job.
(32:29):
That's work, right, So it isn't like that's not work,
but it's not valued because women do it. And honestly,
when men do do it, it is valued. Oh what
a great dad, he's doing all of those things right
when women are juggling this all day long work and
home and their relationship with their spouse as well. So
(32:50):
we often put much more value on what men do
and not on what women do. And that's that's really
the way it plays out. Which is which which is harmful,
it's disrespectful.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
And I want to add something one other division that
we do. We don't listen to young people. So we
think we know, we think we know how it is,
we think we know how we should do it. And
if you actually listen to you know, five year olds
up until as I said, up until whatever in the twenties,
they tell you a story about who we are as human.
(33:22):
What gets in the way and how to solve it.
A five year old boy says to his mom who
comes into the kitchen of the mom's going through a divorce.
The mom doesn't want to have a sad face a
sad home, so the boy says to his mom. Within
a split second, seeing his mom with a big, happy
smile on her face, he says, mom, mommy, why are
(33:44):
you smiling when you're feeling sad? And what that five
year old is showing is he can he's or he
is asking why are you faking in emotion? That's a
deep feeling. That's a deep feeling. Another five year old
boy said to his mom, Mommy, are you yelling at me?
Because your mommy all at you. I mean, think about
how genius We come out into the world as humans
(34:06):
with that natural intelligence, and then what happens is we
grow up and we become less intelligent. And I'm not
just being snarky when I say that, we really do
become less intelligent. We become more cowed over by our
cultural norms, and we don't listen to our heart, we
don't listen to our minds. We start believing in things
that we know are not true. My daughter asked me
(34:26):
that at eight, why do we believe in things we
know aren't true? You know, and we start believing in
things about ourselves because seven year old boys were I
promise you they know this stuff we're talking about right now.
They don't even be taught this stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
What role does society play, especially in black and brown fathers,
you know, dealing with all of these extra cultural pressures
when they're outside the home and being able to or
not being able to partition those stresses and bringing that
into the house. Because I'm sure to some degree my
(34:59):
dad not to some degree, my dad dealt with a
lot of racism because that was his calling journalistically. So
you get a nice full day of white folks yelling
at you at a couple of protests, and you come home, Yeah,
you might be a little bit more on edge, and
you probably are also a little bit more disconnected with
your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's
(35:20):
going on out there in the real world. How does
mental health play a role in men sometimes misplaying the
role of father?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting mental health
is becoming more and more acceptable among men. And it's
really because men who have an influencing platform people like yourself, Roy,
who can talk about mental health being important. Other men
are listening to that and saying that, oh, okay, so
you know, maybe it's not about weakness. Maybe I do
(35:52):
need to do that because we know on some level
that this isn't working for us either, right, men know that.
But when we talk about again the construct of racism,
so we have men who living in this man box
and distressors around that not asking for help. So we
don't go to the doctor when we need to, We
don't ask for help when we need to. All these
other things, anxiety and depression are really off. The charge
(36:12):
suicide is about three and a half times higher among
men than among women. Men are living only about six
years five and six years less than women for all
of these things, including not getting medical checkups for prevention.
But we go in more for intervention all of those things.
But then when you have the issue of black men
and men of color, the trauma, as you said, of
(36:36):
just dealing and walking around every day a racist society
is a very traumatic thing, so much so that we
do it so much that we it's kind of like
we don't even pay attention to it anymore. Until it's
extreme like you know, some like George Floyd or something.
But we're dealing with these traumas all the time, and
our boys are too. Right, the boys are also, so
(36:59):
they have to have a place to be able to
talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that
it's not about them, that it's not that anything wrong
with them. It's actually the opposite. That they're that they're
good and that they're worthy and that they are enough.
But they're not getting these messages. So we need to
lean in, especially for our boys and for our black men.
But again because of this, they need to prove that
(37:24):
yourself in this man box. And black men haven't really
had the opportunity in the same that white same way
that white men have, right because white men can do
it and so black men.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Can do it.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
You know, you'll see it more in sports, entertainment, music,
that kind of thing where you'll you'll see many more
images of black men who are really successful where white
men get to play out this power and control thing
in all areas. Right, So it can be exaggerated also,
but it also can be something where it's really harmful
(37:54):
for us because it limits us so much as black
men It really is a limiting thing, but it's also
a way of protecting ourselves.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Naobi, I want to direct a question to you and
tell you feel free to jump in. I'm gonna paint
you the scenario. Yeah, and you tell me what the
hell I should have said to this child? Okay, So
I take my boy to a kid's birthday party and
like a five year old just turns to me and
we're just watching. It's not my child, it's someone else's child.
I don't know whose child. And he asked, with a
(38:26):
straight face, why do men work harder than women? Yeah?
And I just oh, and you know, you don't want
to give the wrong answer and poisonous child. And then
he takes it back to his family, goes and then yeah,
telling those daddy told me that me and oh, and
I was like, hey, we all work hard and we
(38:48):
have to look to make sure that the work that
we see the work. Just because you don't see the
work doesn't mean that the work isn't happening. I just
kind of ate my pizza and drifted away from this child.
Before you ask more deeper philosophical questions, what role does
media play in influencing the perceptions of you know, what
it means to be a man, what fatherhood means. You know,
(39:12):
there's the type of content that we're exposing our children
to also kind of perpetuate those roles just a little bit.
As as I became more conscious of gender equity within
the Home's like, there was a show as a pepper pig,
I was like, oh, let me make sure mama pig
out there doing some stuff too, and then it ain't
(39:33):
just daddy pig coming in the house with a briefcase. Yeah,
so I had to run every show through a filter.
But what role does media play in a lot of this?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Okay, so first I want to ask I want to
give you some support for how you responded to that point.
But I do think that when people say things that
make as if what we're trying to fight against real,
like men work harder, men are more human than other people,
or manner smarter or whatever, it is the best way
(40:03):
to deal with that, whether it's little kids or your colleagues,
roy is to ask questions about it. So tell me
about why you think they work harder. So what's the example.
And then the idea is to say, okay, so tell
me about what your mom does like, tell me what right,
so that you're engaging the conversation, because ultimately, when I
learned from working with college students roy is if you
say you're wrong that you know, it never works. So
(40:25):
I basically try to figure out what is the mindset
that's making them think that, and then all of a
sudden introducing like let's think about what women do, let's
look go into what your mom does? You know, and
so that they could begin to recognize it without being
told they're wrong. And I think media of course reinforces
I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story we
(40:47):
tell about ourselves that there's some humans that are more
human than others, there's some human qualities that are more
valuable than other human qualities, and we repeat that story.
So media just reinforces it. And I don't care what
kind of media it reinforces it. Now, obviously shows like
this are critical because this allows us to disrupt those narratives.
(41:07):
I don't want to make media all blankets, but obviously
it does. I mean, you know, we are living right
now in an immoral, a moral, immature culture, and we
got to disrupt it with these kind of conversations.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
On the other side of the break, We're going to
talk solutions. And I want to know how hopeful you
all are for this next generation of men coming down.
How hopeful are you from a six year old? I
want to know. I want to hear it straight out
your mouth. This is behind the scenes. We'll be right
back beyond the scenes. We are around in third and
headed for home. It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here.
(41:43):
How can somebody prioritize their mental health? And if you
are a man that is in a friendship recession. Now
we're not talking about teenagers, We're talking about grown men.
What tools can men take to build and deepen and
strengthen the connections that they.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Already normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get
a switch within four seconds. I'm not exaggerating, boys. I
will tell I will read a quote for twelve year
old boys that says something soft you know I love
him so much from my book Deep Secrets. They will
start cracking up. I'll say, why are you laughing? They'll
(42:19):
say the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I
didn't look at his sexuality. I'm just telling you that
eighty percent of boys sound like that at some point
in their teenage years. And they will say inevitably, for real,
And I'll say, oh, yeah, for real, that's really what
what teenage boys say. I guess what happens roy Within
four I'm not kidding, they will immediately start talking about
(42:40):
their own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need
is the permission to feel and the permission to ask.
And once they know it's normal that they want friendships
that they then they can. Then they know how to
do it. It's natural. I wish the world could hear
that the questions that twelve year old boys ask when
given a safe space, because they are geniuses. They're geniuses
(43:03):
in terms of understanding how love works, how relationships works,
how humans work. And so I just they normalize it,
and then in their homes and teachers and bosses, you
just got to make it normal so that you create
spaces where friendships are valued. Teachers, put don't separate out
kids that are friends, put them together. Put them together,
(43:24):
and then talk about how they can help each other
learn the material, that they learn it better with each
other than by themselves. So don't do that thing. And
we're going to separate you because you guys are friends.
It's like no, No, Actually use that relationship to learn.
There's a beautiful study at UVA that shows has been replicated.
The subject of the research stands in front of a
(43:46):
hill and has to estimate the steepness of the hill
with a backpack on their back. Okay, it's an experiment,
a research experiment. They're standing next to a best friend
in one condition, standing there a stranger in another condition
by themselves or with when they know who they don't
know very well. Okay, So in each condition they have
to estimate the steepness of the hill. You got it right.
(44:06):
Those that are standing next to a best friend see
the hill as less step. So what's incredible is that
we actually see the world as less difficult when we're
standing next to someone who loves us. We see that
the math problem, the whatever you're doing is less difficult
when you're next to someone who loves you. So use
(44:28):
that in education, Use that in the workplace. Put people
who are close together working on teams together. You see
what I'm saying, So you disrupt even at home, talk
about friendships. We got to think as parents to say,
tell me about you know, thinking about our own friendships.
Talk about with your kids. I don't share the intimacies
of my own friendship, but I talk about when I
feel get my feelings hurt with friends. I talk about
(44:51):
how that made me feel bad when so and so
didn't return my text and I wrote her three times
that you didn't write back, and that made me feel bad.
And then I asked them for advice their teenagers. So
I'll say, what do you think I should do? What
do you think I should say? And I see do
that with my son as well, by the way, and
so what the message they get from this is this
is normal. This is normal. This isn't some weird thing
(45:12):
that you have to you know, you have to get
special help for.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
You bring up a lot of great points. And you know,
you're talking about your kids, and I'm a father also
they're being twenty one and thirty three now. But would
it was not unusual at all for me to ask,
especially my boys, on a scale of one to ten,
how do you feel today?
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Right?
Speaker 4 (45:28):
Or to have those conversations that were informal conversations around
how they're doing, and to really lean in and ask
more and more questions. So that's really important to your question.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Roy.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask
for help, to not need any more, pull yourself up
by your bootstraps, all those kinds of things. And when
we do spend time with each other, it might be
around going and having a drink, or it might be
around a sporting event or watching a game. That's where
the bonding happens, right, And what we need to be
able to do, and what's helpful is that we really
(46:02):
lean into the strength and vulnerability, right, Like, I'm really
going through something right and I want to share that
with you, and I don't. What men often say is okay, man,
well you know it'll get better, let's just move on.
They don't really lean in and process in the same
way that women are taught, honestly in our society to
use more language and ask more questions, right, because I'm
(46:23):
sure I'm sure your wife asks more questions about what
you're feeling that you might ask her. You just want
to know you're okay, good, okay, now talk about anything else, right,
So you don't ask enough questions.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Therefore you don't care. It's do care, I pay the bills,
don't you see this, this warm heat in this house.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
We absolutely care, but we're not comfortable asking those questions
because we've been told you don't go into that emotional space.
You stay away from that emotional space. So much so
that even when we go to and thinking about your listeners,
I bet if there's a woman listening to the podcast,
there's a man in her life, her brother, her father,
(47:05):
mancy's dating her husband, who's going to the doctor, she
gonna make sure she goes with him. Why because he's
not gonna ask the questions that he needs to ask.
Because even that, for us is vulnerability. Right, Even that
for us is like, oh, I don't know, I just
want to get in and out. You go to doctor, yes,
but you ask him about this world truth. Right.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
So vulnerability is a.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Strength, it really is. And honestly, when men become vulnerable,
they're respected for that because other men see that, Wow,
that was vulnerable, and that's the strength. So it isn't
something we need to run away from. And that's going
to give us a better sense of well being, a
better sense of mental health, to really have health mentally
(47:46):
and to be able to support everyone else along the way.
And it's going to really make us feel better too,
and it's modeling it for our children as well. How
does therapy play a role in this? Men are half
the country. We are eighty percent of the suicides according
to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind help
(48:08):
with anything that you all have just been talking about.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
I want to say something that's very specific to me
being a woman, and I hear this from other women friends.
So therapy is huge because it allows the space. And
this is what happens, Roy, in between heterosexual relationships almost
always is women feel I'm going to now be the
voice of all women across the world, Roy, are you ready?
(48:31):
So basically that we are a burden with the care
of our children and the care of our husband, and
now with this new emotional awakening of men, we now
have to be the therapist for our husbands as well
and our partners. And there's a lot of anger about that,
like we can't be the therapist, we can't be the
caretaker of the therapist that everything you know for our husbands.
(48:52):
And then the dynamic I see in my friends. I
do not do research on this, but I see it
in my community is resentment, is that the woman doesn't
have time to be the therapist to her husband. He
wants her to because he feels safe talking to her.
So I would say, therapy. That's not your wife, that's
not your partner, that's not your romantic partner. Whatever it is,
could be a friend, could be a friend, but a
(49:15):
professional who really knows basically how to make you reconnect
with your own humanity. So I would very much encourage therapy,
especially in terms of understanding that you need multiple people
to support you. This whole notion that we could rely
on one person in our life, you know, our spouse
or our partner to be the end all be all
(49:37):
is getting in the way. It's getting in the way.
We need multiple people. We need our moms, our grandmas,
our aunts, our uncles, our therapists, our best friend, our partner.
We need we need a community to build, you know,
to make us fully human and so that we act
like humans. And we're still stuck in this model, Ted,
you know this, We're still stuck. We put all our
emotional eggs into one romantic basket and then expect us
(49:59):
to be happy with this one person, and that's just
not real.
Speaker 4 (50:03):
Therapy is very important, and we don't need to even
call it that when I when I encourage men to
get therapy, I'll say, man, you just need you need
a sounding board, you know what I mean. You need
somebody who can share objectively what they might think not
you know, it's great to have a friend, but we're
not always objective, and we kind of want things to
get better for you and it may not me. It
(50:25):
may not require us leaning in to really ask more
questions that really get to a real solution that's meaningful,
that's more more meaningful. So really encouraging therapy for men,
I encourage therapy for men. I've been in and out
of therapy for different things throughout my life. My children
know that my children have also engaged in therapy at
(50:45):
some point in their life because it's not something to
run away from. It's actually they needed a sounding board too.
And I would say, even just just go to share
any frustrations you have about me or your mom, Like,
just go to start talking about things where you can
share some things that you may not feel totally comfortable
sharing with us at this point. So therapy is essential.
(51:07):
It will prevent depression. The anxiety among manager is off.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
The charge.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
As you said, suicide is really three and a half
times higher than women and eighty percent of suicide I
believe you mentioned for the CDC. So there's something that's
not right, that's not working for us as men. So
this is the fix.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
So with all of that being said, let's end it here.
We've already kind of unpacked ways that we can try
and change the culture. What hope and optimism do you
have for the future of manhood?
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (51:39):
I have a lot of hope. Yeah, it looks like
you're not finished.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Really well, you know, we don't see how this grow up.
You know, you got to understand how my sample size
is one, y'all, the one studying one hundred and fifty
people and writing books. I'm not writing books. I'm just
raising one. He seems to be doing good so far.
He's definitely in tune with his emotions and expressive about it,
way more so than I was at the same mild marker.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
And that's what we need to allow, right, We really
need to allow our children like your son to embrace
and express his full range of emotions. And we need
to do that too. When he's going through fear, we
can say, you know, I feel afraid too, And this
is what I do, and I want to work through
that fear because on the other side, no matter how
it turns out, it's always good that I've worked through
that fear. So we're not saying don't push our children
(52:25):
to confront things even if they're difficult. We want them to,
but we don't want them, you know, we don't want
to motivate them by denigrating them or using girls or
women or others to say, don't be like that or
don't be like this. Right, those are the kind of
things that we really want to do. We want to
have them express through their language what's going on. So
(52:46):
I have a lot of optimism about men, about manhood.
I think that we've reached a point where it's clearly
not working and we know that, and so now it's
just a matter of time of how do we need
to purge what needs to happen so that we can
start talking in real ways that really connect with our humanity.
(53:07):
That's the real thing. Yeah, we really connected with omen
just as there's a racial awakening in a lot of ways,
and it's difficult, it's painful. People are being triggered all
the time, right, So it's difficult, but we have to
get through it, and the same thing here around our
own mental health and our own sense of well being.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
I think first of all, we have to make sure
we're locating the problem where the problem is. So, the
problem is not men, the problem is not women. The
problem is not non gender conforming people. Right. The problem
is not black people, it's not poor people, it's not immigrants.
The problem is a culture that doesn't align with our
nature and a culture that doesn't nourish the best angels
(53:43):
of our nature. Right. So the idea is if the
focus is on valuing both the heart and the soft
sides of ourselves equally equally, men and women, non gender conforming,
I don't care what your identity is. Your heart is soft.
If that's our goal, which it should be, then it
becomes easy because we're naturally hard and soft. And the
hope is and I work with Remember I teach at NYU,
(54:04):
so I see one hundred college students a semester, and
the hope when I see those young people across race,
across class, across nationality, all sorts of young people, they
are starving roy for this conversation. They are starving for it.
They are literally I'm not I'm not even exaggerating. They're
yelling at us in those in my classes I teach
(54:26):
of like what is wrong with you people? And this
is what we want? Why are you still saying academic
achievement is more important than close friendship? Like, why are
you still saying that? Because that's not what's important in
the world. I just have to say the fact that
they even this close scot this nomination. It's just about
boys friendships. That's all the film is about. And then
(54:47):
something happens because the friendship gets in the way, and
the enormous response to it means that cultural change is
already happening, right, It's already happening.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot think both
of you enough for giving me a piece of your
time and giving our viewers a little bit of knowledge.
That's all the time we have for today, Ted Naobi,
thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with me.
(55:21):
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