March 7, 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.
Watch the original segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmiHDeTi-w
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
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 and 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 with Junian 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 and go
to therapy. Roll the clip. 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,
(01:11):
and you're lonely. In fact, fifteen percent of men say
they have zero zero friends, and the other eighty five
they don't have friends either, but they was too sad
to fill out the surveyor now, luckily there's a tool
that can help you with all of this. Five That
(01:36):
rape 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, they're almost
half as likely to go to therapy as women. Men
out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms. They're
(02:01):
here to help you, Nick. But we know why men
is this way, because, starting from a young age, we
cheat them that they can't have feelings. Today, I'm joined
by co founder of a Call to Men and co
author the Book of Dares, one hundred Ways for Boys
to Be Kind, Bold and Brave, Ted buch Welcome to
(02:24):
be on the scenes. How you doing, Ted, I'm good, Roy,
Thank you so much, Happy to be here with you
and Niobie. 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 grown men, You
got one of them coach gots 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
(02:46):
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 to the show, Naobie,
are you doing I'm doing great. I'm so happy to
be here Roy with you and Ted. I'm really excited
about this conversation. Well, I'm happy to be a part
(03:07):
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 dad worked mornings and nights,
(03:29):
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 and 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
the way to the bus stop. So this idea of
intimacy and hugs and conversation, and that was not I
(03:52):
knew I was loved, I felt love, but you know,
I came up in an era with 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 helped me because you know, and and
(04:13):
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 a man while you're crying, boy,
be a man. What does that mean? My knee hurt?
(04:34):
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 manbox. Explain to us what the
man box and what does healthy manhood actually look like.
(04:55):
So thank you Roy for that, and U and I
appreciate what you're sharing about the difference from 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 men coined
(05:16):
more than twenty years ago, that's a short version of
saying the collective socialization of manhood. Right. The man boxes
sounds cooler, right, But when we talk about the man box,
you can imagine all the things that we're taught around
manhood masculinity. Even if we were to ask a six
year old boy or sixteen year old boy what it is,
(05:37):
what have you been taught about what a man is?
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. When they're 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've
fallen short of the manhood that you're expected to live
up to. So there's a few things that happen in
the man box. 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 of 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. Peace 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, and that 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.
Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods
slide a tampon to another golfer as a way to
(07:07):
say that that shot he just drive, he just took
kidding me. Oh yeah, that happened recently. That's amazing. Oh
they got on Tiger Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's surely
no cameras here at this televised golf tournament. I will
slide you a woman joke. Yeah, I didn't mean to
cut you off, Tiger. That's it. That's that's a great
example because this is done everywhere because like that six
(07:31):
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 that like you throw
like a girl and girls still just fine, Right, But
does he leave that interaction thinking that girls were equal
to him or less than him, less than And we're
giving him those messages all day long, and Tiger continues
to give those messages. So it's not just Tiger, it's
(07:53):
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. He
says to me, say, so that's it. Mind you of
business one way or another, and the other is around
the objectification. Our boys are actually taught to objectify girls.
(08:16):
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
gonna give a quick example. High school boy in your community,
or in your community, Niobi, 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.
(08:38):
He's just taking her out right, takes her out to
the movie. His name's John, her name is Keisha. He
takes John, takes Keisha out and gets on a 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 prep for that, but he takes her, takes
her back home, perfect gentleman. He gets it back on
the group text and says, hey, guys, I'm back. Is
the first thing those boys, good boys ask him is
(09:00):
how was the movie nor right? So where did they
learn that from? So that's the man box that collective.
So did you get the Kissa, did you get the
grand right? Because the only purpose to spend time with
her is the conquest. That's what they're taught. Okay, So, Niobe,
you've studied young boys friendships and how these relationships change
(09:21):
as they get older. Can you tell us more about
what you found in your research. No, 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 what I expected.
They were talking about their friendships, their desires for close friendships,
(09:42):
their desires for intimate connection with other guys, and that
led really to a lifetime 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
(10:04):
basically twenty four to twenty five, they tell something very
different in terms of their socialization, especially when they're younger
and they're less pressure 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
(10:26):
not being laughed at, by the way, is a big one.
Being able to share something that they're not laughed at,
that being able to trust them. And then 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
(10:47):
right at the point where boys start to disconnect with
their own desires for closeness, especially with other young men,
you see the suicide rate goes up. 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,
(11:08):
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, 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 this
is the whole part of Ted's work too. The only
(11:29):
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 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, then don't value the soft side.
(11:49):
First of all, we're not going to 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, go against their nature, which is to be
loving human beings, and we raise them to go against
that and to actually value the sort of only the
hard side of themselves, that's the manning up part, then
(12:09):
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? 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 and honest
(12:32):
with for fear of being teased or being called a girl. Man,
why you crying? 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
(12:53):
then I wouldn't have to be emotionless. We are asking
human beings to be emotionless and then we expect them
to have healthy relations. 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,
(13:13):
and so are men. By the way. Once once we
remove that, it's uh the it's that there's a shaming
of being vulnerable and talking about it. 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.
(13:34):
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 an emotion that men can express,
and lusty you can express that as well. So those
are the harmful things, and it's 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
(13:58):
express how they're feeling. So we become these men who
also don't have that language, and so we don't no
doubt to ask for help because when we when we
tried to ask for help, that's spend seen as a weakness,
is something that men don't do. How much of all
of this that we're that we've been laying out because
what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men are
(14:18):
going through Hey, show your emotions. Hey, women can do
it too. Meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism side
of the game and going we are girls, girls strong,
girl power, we go on march, we can do whatever
we want. So it almost seems as if both sides
are getting are having two different types of awakenings concurrently.
(14:40):
That also kind of but heads, 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 I
also want to put it in the context that for
a long time in America, the man had to go
(15:01):
to 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 where we didn't
have to live like that anymore. But men were maybe
subconsciously passing on that rhetoric to their next generation and
(15:25):
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, Like someone
said to me something I thought was very profound, don't
confuse the tactics you use to survive with the tactics
you need to go on. How much does the history
(15:48):
of gender dynamics play a role in a lot of
these bad habits being passed down from generation to generation. Yeah,
so in a male dominated society, right, because that's what
it is, and it's patriarchal society, it's a male dominant 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 supremacy society you have people
(16:10):
of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all of those
things because these constructs exist, and there is 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 this ugly head, right and seeks to
put down what women have achieved or are doing in
(16:33):
those kind of things, as if it's taking away from men.
But it's not. It's not just 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
(16:55):
to me and to the men who are listening. There's
so much more to who we are that we can
now brace are full 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. Right. 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
(17:16):
go buy flowers because I like flowers in the house.
I don't have to breathe 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 my authentic self.
I love flowers. So now I'll go to the flowers
and I pick out what I want, they say, do
(17:37):
you want me to do it? Put in the vast
for you, mister bumps. No, I want to take them
home and arrange them because you know what, Roy, and
they will be I like flowers. So so, there's so
much that we're missing as men that these rigid nooses
of manhood patriarchy harms all of us. It really does.
There's lots of wonderful things about being a man. I
don't want 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
(17:59):
not about calling men out for wrong behavior. It's about
calling men into a healthy, respectful manhood. 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. Hard
is masculine and feminine. Right, you get where I'm going, Right,
(18:21):
where I'm we got to marinate on network? Yeah, right,
you get what I'm saying. So thinking is masculine feminine? Right?
That sound like every argument I've had with everybody I've
dated in my life. Goodness gracious. If you live in
a culture that says basically independence, thinking, the self stoicism
(18:43):
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, 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're saying exactly what you just said, Ted,
(19:07):
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 associated with feminity, 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?
And I feel like young people, honestly, Roy have been
(19:29):
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. 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
(19:50):
of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for lots
of different justified reasons. So I'm not 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 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 problems
(20:12):
should go away. But it's all of our problems, right,
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, etcetera, etcetera,
and some you know, and some women have been more
powerful than other women. But basically we have created society
that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities.
(20:35):
So then that means is that women are getting mad
at men when we're really what we should 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, the
men just feel attacked when we have to see it
as a collective problem. Before we get to the break,
I want to delve in for a second with you,
know about your work that you did where you essentially
(20:58):
walk me through this. You had a one hundred and
fifty boys ages thirteen to eighteen. Well, I followed them
over over four years. So I follow yeah, from twelve
to thirteen, and followed them over four to five years. Okay,
how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly start
to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at the
(21:20):
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. When you listen to
twelve year old boys, they will use the language of love.
They will talk given a safe space, right not give
(21:42):
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 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,
(22:05):
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 older, it's incredible because remember it's
the same kids. So it's the same kids. Over time,
you start to hear this, 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.
(22:27):
But it's all good. You know that whole pressure to
sort of sound like you're totally invulnerable. So you hear
in the language, and then you also hear the anger,
You hear the sadness, and then sometimes 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
(22:49):
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 nobody's paying attention
to their suffering. 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. Will be right back,
(23:13):
they will be 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 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
(23:34):
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
verbiage that you've seen in some of the mass shoot
of manifestos. What are some of the other ways that
(23:54):
this type of you know, and I don't want to
say dysfunction, but the absence of vulnerable, vulnerable, that's a
matter of word. You knew what I was trying to say,
just then, don't laugh. Vulnerability, the lack of stop laughing, Ted,
I see you. How does the lack of the inability
to be vulnerable? There? I did it? What are some
(24:15):
other negative ways that it manifests itself. It can show
up in a lot of ways. It can show outwardly, right,
because these are hurt kids, and you 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.
(24:37):
And when we talk about the emotional disconnection that Naobi
brought up and then you leaned into a little bit there, Roy,
I do want to say this that those emotions when
they stopped from that first year 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 they're not admitting it
(24:58):
is because becoming more and more indoctrinated in the man box,
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
(25:20):
in the same water, right, are saying, oh, no, you don't,
don't say that, you don't do that. They push them
back into the man box 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
(25:41):
really being taught that, okay, I can't it's not safe
for me to talk about 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 push them back into the man box, right, yeah, yeah,
they say things I know, homo. So my in my
(26:04):
in my, in my interviews, you get things directly 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 and sessions exactly well between men and boys. It does.
We don't say it, they don't say when they talking
to a girl. Yeah, right, so it really is it's
(26:26):
homophobia within that right, Yes, it's so. Yeah, if we
didn't live in a homophobic society, no homo actually wouldn't
necessarily be homophobic. But because we because we're right, so
so the idea, right, 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
(26:48):
I think I really like that image that I'm going
to use it again too and quote you. Of course,
it is the glue. It's the glue. It's it forces
up young men to actually it here because there are
consequences if you don't, and the consequences I hear about
in older men, I mean older teenagers sorry all the time.
The consequences of being teased, bullied, pushed around, if you
(27:10):
don't play sports, if you don't man up, if you
don't do things 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.
(27:30):
So there's this weird sort of almost backlash going on that, like,
it's cool, it's cool that you know, you you if
people do that, people love each other, but don't think
I'm gay. Yeah, let me clarify, don't put that by me.
So the men who are the least secure of their
masculinity are oftentimes the most likely to adhere to masculinity. So,
(27:53):
you know, the oftentimes you get athletes, for example Roy,
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 right exactly exactly exactly.
Buying is allowed that the Super Bowl, you lose the
Super Bowl, crying, crying exactly exactly exactly. Now you see
(28:17):
some of the most tender things between well known athletes. Yeah. Um,
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 thinking that thinking is masculine and straight, of course,
and feeling is feminine and gay because obviously feminine is
(28:41):
linked with being gay in a homophobic world. I also
like that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine, and
that when women think exactly punished for that exactly 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
(29:01):
that diminished that because it challenges again this patriarchal notion
of male dominance 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
(29:24):
my family tree, I knew that I did not have
when I was born, 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
(29:48):
when my father was living with his mother, you know,
well into adulthood. So 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,
(30:10):
this isn't me like unearthened family trauma and drama or
anything like that, but I just know that one thing
my dad would always state whenever he was losing an
argument with my mama, was I pay the bills. Because
my mom was pouring all her money into grad school
and second degrees and third degrees and law degrees. You
ain't don't running the house, you know, you know, we
(30:32):
get to it when we lose the argument. We started
bringing up the seats. But what I 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,
(30:54):
but it was not what I prioritized because the idea
of paying it cost to be the bo So the
example you get is the example you see. There was
no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this, there
was no Bearsteain bears about fatherhood. So you know, how
do fathers provide, you know, a model not only to
(31:17):
their sons, but to their daughters about what they need
from a man when they go out 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 could
say that the issue I'm dealing with is trying to
(31:39):
relearn something while also teaching it to someone at the
same time. 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 and paying the bill
are very important, and that's an important thing. And so
but whatever the women in the household does, right your
(32:00):
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, women have less value than men and boys.
So whatever men are doing is always elevated. We are
default setting is to give men the benefit of the doubt.
Our default setting is to elevate what men do over
(32:21):
what women do. So what women, Oh, she stays home
and takes care of kids. Have you stayed home and
take care of kids and you runs back to your job?
You know 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 is all day long
(32:44):
work and home and their relationship with their spouse as well.
So 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. And I want to add something
one other division that we do. We don't listen to
(33:05):
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
what we who we are as human, what gets in
the way, and how to solve it. A five year
old boy says to his mom who comes into the kitchen.
(33:29):
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 you smiling when you're
feeling sad? And what that five year old is showing
is he can he's where he is asking why are
(33:50):
you faking an 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 eld at you?
I mean, think about how genius We come out into
the world as humans with that natural intelligence, and then
what happens is we grow up and we become less intelligent.
(34:11):
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 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
(34:32):
boys were I promise you they know this stuff we're
talking about right now. They don't even be taught this stuff.
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
(34:56):
into the house. Because I'm sure to some degree my dad,
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,
had a cup 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
(35:16):
your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's
going on out there in the real world. How does
mental health player role in men sometimes misplaying the role
of father? Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting
mental health is becoming more and more acceptable among men.
(35:37):
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 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
(35:59):
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 charts.
Suicide is about three and a half times higher among
men that among women. Men are living only about six
years five or six years less than than women for
(36:20):
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
just dealing in walking around every day in a racist
(36:41):
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
they have to have a play to be able to
talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that
(37:03):
it's not about them, that it's not that it's 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 um they need to prove
(37:24):
that yourself in this man box. And black men haven't
really had the opportunity in the same white the same
way that white men have, right because white men can
do it, and so black men can do it. You know,
you'll see it more in sports, entertainment, music, that kind
of thing where 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,
(37:47):
So it can be exaggerated also, but it also can
be something where it's really harmful 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.
I naobe, I want to direct a question to you
and tell you feel free to jump in. I'm gonna
(38:07):
paint you the scenario. Can you tell me what the
hell I should have said to this child? 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, someone else's shop. I
don't know who's child. And he asked, with a straight face,
why do men work harder than the women? Yeah? And
(38:32):
I just o and you're not. You don't want to
give the wrong answer and poisonous child. And then he
takes it back to his family goes, yeah, so it
those daddy told me that men. Oh, And I was like, hey,
we all work hard and we 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
(38:52):
the work isn't happening. I just kind of ate my
pizza and drifted away from this child before he asked
more deeper philosophical prices. What role does media play in
influencing the perceptions of you know, what it means to
be a man, what fatherhood means. You know, there's a
(39:12):
type of content that we're exposing our children to also
kind of perpetuate those roles just a little bit. As
I became more conscious of gender equity within the home,
There'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 briefcas Yeah. Yeah,
so I had to run every show through a filter.
But what role does media play in a lot of this? 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 the what we're trying to fight against real,
(39:56):
like men work harder, men are more human than other people,
or manner smarter or whatever, it is the best way
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,
(40:16):
so that you're engaging the conversation. Because ultimately, what I
learned from working with college students roy is if you
say you're wrong that you know, it never works. So
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
(40:38):
told that they're wrong. And I think media, of course
reinforces I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story
we 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 what I don't care
(40:59):
what kind of media it reinforces it. Now, Obviously shows
like this are critical because this allows us to disrupt
those narratives. So I don't want to make media all blankets,
but obviously it does. I mean, you know, we are
we are living right now in an immoral, amoral, immature culture,
and we got to disrupt it with these kind of conversations.
(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 head straight out about
this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond
the scenes. We are around and third and headed for home.
(41:40):
It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here. How can somebody
priloritize their mental health? And if you are a man
that is in a friendship recession. Now I'm talking about teenagers,
we're talking about growing men. What tools can men take
to build and deepen and strengthen the connections that they
already normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get
(42:04):
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 from my book Deep Secrets. They
will start cracking up. I'll say, why you're laughing. They'll
say the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I
didn't look at his sexuality I'm just telling you that
(42:25):
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? And guess what happens roy Within four
I'm not kidding, they will immediately start talking about their
own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need is
the permission to feel and the permission to ask. And
(42:48):
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 in terms
of understanding how love works, how relationships works, how humans work,
(43:08):
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, and then talk about
how they can help each other learn the material, that
they learn it better with each other than by themselves.
(43:31):
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
in UVA that shows has been replicated. The subject of
the research stands in front of 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
(43:52):
standing next to a best friend in one condition, standing
there a stranger in another condition by themselves or with
someone 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. Those that are
standing next to a best friend see the hill as
(44:12):
less steep. 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,
whatever you're doing as less difficult when you're next to
someone who loves you. So use that in education, Use
that in the workplace. Put people who are close together
(44:33):
working on teams together. You see what I'm saying. So
you disrupt the 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 get my feelings hurt
with friends. I talk about how that made me feel
bad when so and so didn't return my text and
(44:55):
I wrote or 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 you do that with my
son as well, by the way, and so what they
what the message they get from this is this is normal.
This is normal. This isn't some weird thing that you
have to you know, you have to get special help
for you bring up a lot of great points, and
(45:16):
you know, and you're talking about your kids, and I'm
a father also they're being twenty one and thirty three now,
But I 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? Right? 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. Roy.
(45:40):
For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask
for help, to not need any here, 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
(46:01):
lean into the strength in 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 asked more questions about what
you're what you're feeling, then you might ask her you
just want to know you're okay, good, okay, Now I
don't have to talk about anything else, right, So you
don't ask enough questions therefore you don't care. It's do care?
I pay the bills? Don't you see this? Feel this
warm heating this house? We absolutely care, but we're not
(46:45):
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 um and to think 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, man, she's dating,
(47:06):
her husband, who's going to the doctor, she's gonna make
sure she goes with him. Why because he's not going
to ask the questions that he needs to ask. Because
even that, for us is vulnerability. Right, Even that for
us it's like huh, I don't know. I just want
to get in and out. Do you go to doctor? Yes?
But did you ask him about this? Right? So, vulnerability
is a strength, it really is. And honestly, when men
(47:28):
become vulnerable, they're respected for that because other men see that, Wow,
that was 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 and to be able to support everyone else along
(47:49):
the way. And it's going to really make us feel
better too, and it's modeling it for our children as well. Yeah,
how does therapy play a role in this? Men are
half the country, We are a percent of the suicides
according to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind
help with anything that you all have just been talking about.
(48:11):
I want to say something that's very specific to me
being a woman. I hear this from other women friends.
So therapy is huge because it allows the space and
this is what happens 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 burdened 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,
the therapist that everything you know for our husbands. And
(48:52):
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 can 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 a lot. 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. Therapy is very important and we don't need
to even call it that. When I when I when
I encourage men to get therapy, I'll say, man, you
just you 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
(50:21):
kind of want things to get better for you and
it may not me, it 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
(50:43):
also engaged in therapy at some point in their life,
because it's not it's not something to run away from.
It's actually they needed a sounding board too. And I
would say, even just 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
(51:04):
with us at this point. So therapy is essential. It
will prevent depression. The anxiety among men is off the charge.
As you said, suicide is really three and a half
times higher than women and eighty percent of suicidect believe
you mentioned from the CDC. So there's something that's not right,
that's not working for us as men. So this is
the fix. So with all of that being said, let's
(51:27):
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? Yeah?
I have a lot of hope. Ye're not finished really well,
you know, we're gonna see how to go. You know,
you got to understand how my sample size is one, y'all,
(51:49):
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 mile marker. And that's
what we need to allow, right, We really need to
allow our children like your son to embrace and express
(52:09):
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 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
to confront things even if they're difficult. We want them to,
but we don't want them, you know, we don't want
(52:31):
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
I have a lot of optimism about men, about manhood.
I think that we've reached a point where it's clearly
(52:53):
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.
That's the real thing, really connect with our 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,
(53:17):
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. 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
(53:38):
a culture that doesn't align with our nature, and a
culture that doesn't nourish the best angels 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
(54:00):
naturally hard and soft. And the hope is and I
work with Remember I teach at NYU, so I see
a 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,
(54:21):
I'm not even I'm not even exaggerating, they're yelling at us.
In those in my classes I teach 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 the Even This Close
(54:42):
got this nomination. It's just about boys friendships. That's all
the film is about. And then something happens because the
friendship gets in the way, and the enormous response to
it means that cultural change is already happening. Roy, It's
already happening. This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot
think both both of you enough for giving me a
(55:02):
piece of your time and giving our viewers a little
bit of knowledge. That's all the time we have for today,
Ted Naobe, thank you so much for going beyond the
scenes with me so much. Listen to the Daily Show
(55:22):
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 and 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 with Junian 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 and go
to therapy. Roll the clip. 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,
(01:11):
and you're lonely. In fact, fifteen percent of men say
they have zero zero friends, and the other eighty five
they don't have friends either, but they was too sad
to fill out the surveyor now, luckily there's a tool
that can help you with all of this. Five That
(01:36):
rape 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, they're almost
half as likely to go to therapy as women. Men
out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms. They're
(02:01):
here to help you, Nick. But we know why men
is this way, because, starting from a young age, we
cheat them that they can't have feelings. Today, I'm joined
by co founder of a Call to Men and co
author the Book of Dares, one hundred Ways for Boys
to Be Kind, Bold and Brave, Ted buch Welcome to
(02:24):
be on the scenes. How you doing, Ted, I'm good, Roy,
Thank you so much, Happy to be here with you
and Niobie. 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 grown men, You
got one of them coach gots 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
(02:46):
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 to the show, Naobie,
are you doing I'm doing great. I'm so happy to
be here Roy with you and Ted. I'm really excited
about this conversation. Well, I'm happy to be a part
(03:07):
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 dad worked mornings and nights,
(03:29):
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 and 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
the way to the bus stop. So this idea of
intimacy and hugs and conversation, and that was not I
(03:52):
knew I was loved, I felt love, but you know,
I came up in an era with 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 helped me because you know, and and
(04:13):
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 a man while you're crying, boy,
be a man. What does that mean? My knee hurt?
(04:34):
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 manbox. Explain to us what the
man box and what does healthy manhood actually look like.
(04:55):
So thank you Roy for that, and U and I
appreciate what you're sharing about the difference from 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 men coined
(05:16):
more than twenty years ago, that's a short version of
saying the collective socialization of manhood. Right. The man boxes
sounds cooler, right, But when we talk about the man box,
you can imagine all the things that we're taught around
manhood masculinity. Even if we were to ask a six
year old boy or sixteen year old boy what it is,
(05:37):
what have you been taught about what a man is?
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. When they're 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've
fallen short of the manhood that you're expected to live
up to. So there's a few things that happen in
the man box. 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 of 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. Peace 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, and that 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.
Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods
slide a tampon to another golfer as a way to
(07:07):
say that that shot he just drive, he just took
kidding me. Oh yeah, that happened recently. That's amazing. Oh
they got on Tiger Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's surely
no cameras here at this televised golf tournament. I will
slide you a woman joke. Yeah, I didn't mean to
cut you off, Tiger. That's it. That's that's a great
example because this is done everywhere because like that six
(07:31):
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 that like you throw
like a girl and girls still just fine, Right, But
does he leave that interaction thinking that girls were equal
to him or less than him, less than And we're
giving him those messages all day long, and Tiger continues
to give those messages. So it's not just Tiger, it's
(07:53):
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. He
says to me, say, so that's it. Mind you of
business one way or another, and the other is around
the objectification. Our boys are actually taught to objectify girls.
(08:16):
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
gonna give a quick example. High school boy in your community,
or in your community, Niobi, 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.
(08:38):
He's just taking her out right, takes her out to
the movie. His name's John, her name is Keisha. He
takes John, takes Keisha out and gets on a 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 prep for that, but he takes her, takes
her back home, perfect gentleman. He gets it back on
the group text and says, hey, guys, I'm back. Is
the first thing those boys, good boys ask him is
(09:00):
how was the movie nor right? So where did they
learn that from? So that's the man box that collective.
So did you get the Kissa, did you get the
grand right? Because the only purpose to spend time with
her is the conquest. That's what they're taught. Okay, So, Niobe,
you've studied young boys friendships and how these relationships change
(09:21):
as they get older. Can you tell us more about
what you found in your research. No, 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 what I expected.
They were talking about their friendships, their desires for close friendships,
(09:42):
their desires for intimate connection with other guys, and that
led really to a lifetime 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
(10:04):
basically twenty four to twenty five, they tell something very
different in terms of their socialization, especially when they're younger
and they're less pressure 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
(10:26):
not being laughed at, by the way, is a big one.
Being able to share something that they're not laughed at,
that being able to trust them. And then 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
(10:47):
right at the point where boys start to disconnect with
their own desires for closeness, especially with other young men,
you see the suicide rate goes up. 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,
(11:08):
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, 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 this
is the whole part of Ted's work too. The only
(11:29):
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 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, then don't value the soft side.
(11:49):
First of all, we're not going to 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, go against their nature, which is to be
loving human beings, and we raise them to go against
that and to actually value the sort of only the
hard side of themselves, that's the manning up part, then
(12:09):
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? 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 and honest
(12:32):
with for fear of being teased or being called a girl. Man,
why you crying? 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
(12:53):
then I wouldn't have to be emotionless. We are asking
human beings to be emotionless and then we expect them
to have healthy relations. 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,
(13:13):
and so are men. By the way. Once once we
remove that, it's uh the it's that there's a shaming
of being vulnerable and talking about it. 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.
(13:34):
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 an emotion that men can express,
and lusty you can express that as well. So those
are the harmful things, and it's 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
(13:58):
express how they're feeling. So we become these men who
also don't have that language, and so we don't no
doubt to ask for help because when we when we
tried to ask for help, that's spend seen as a weakness,
is something that men don't do. How much of all
of this that we're that we've been laying out because
what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men are
(14:18):
going through Hey, show your emotions. Hey, women can do
it too. Meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism side
of the game and going we are girls, girls strong,
girl power, we go on march, we can do whatever
we want. So it almost seems as if both sides
are getting are having two different types of awakenings concurrently.
(14:40):
That also kind of but heads, 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 I
also want to put it in the context that for
a long time in America, the man had to go
(15:01):
to 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 where we didn't
have to live like that anymore. But men were maybe
subconsciously passing on that rhetoric to their next generation and
(15:25):
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, Like someone
said to me something I thought was very profound, don't
confuse the tactics you use to survive with the tactics
you need to go on. How much does the history
(15:48):
of gender dynamics play a role in a lot of
these bad habits being passed down from generation to generation. Yeah,
so in a male dominated society, right, because that's what
it is, and it's patriarchal society, it's a male dominant 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 supremacy society you have people
(16:10):
of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all of those
things because these constructs exist, and there is 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 this ugly head, right and seeks to
put down what women have achieved or are doing in
(16:33):
those kind of things, as if it's taking away from men.
But it's not. It's not just 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
(16:55):
to me and to the men who are listening. There's
so much more to who we are that we can
now brace are full 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. Right. 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
(17:16):
go buy flowers because I like flowers in the house.
I don't have to breathe 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 my authentic self.
I love flowers. So now I'll go to the flowers
and I pick out what I want, they say, do
(17:37):
you want me to do it? Put in the vast
for you, mister bumps. No, I want to take them
home and arrange them because you know what, Roy, and
they will be I like flowers. So so, there's so
much that we're missing as men that these rigid nooses
of manhood patriarchy harms all of us. It really does.
There's lots of wonderful things about being a man. I
don't want 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
(17:59):
not about calling men out for wrong behavior. It's about
calling men into a healthy, respectful manhood. 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. Hard
is masculine and feminine. Right, you get where I'm going, Right,
(18:21):
where I'm we got to marinate on network? Yeah, right,
you get what I'm saying. So thinking is masculine feminine? Right?
That sound like every argument I've had with everybody I've
dated in my life. Goodness gracious. If you live in
a culture that says basically independence, thinking, the self stoicism
(18:43):
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, 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're saying exactly what you just said, Ted,
(19:07):
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 associated with feminity, 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?
And I feel like young people, honestly, Roy have been
(19:29):
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. 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
(19:50):
of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for lots
of different justified reasons. So I'm not 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 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 problems
(20:12):
should go away. But it's all of our problems, right,
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, etcetera, etcetera,
and some you know, and some women have been more
powerful than other women. But basically we have created society
that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities.
(20:35):
So then that means is that women are getting mad
at men when we're really what we should 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, the
men just feel attacked when we have to see it
as a collective problem. Before we get to the break,
I want to delve in for a second with you,
know about your work that you did where you essentially
(20:58):
walk me through this. You had a one hundred and
fifty boys ages thirteen to eighteen. Well, I followed them
over over four years. So I follow yeah, from twelve
to thirteen, and followed them over four to five years. Okay,
how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly start
to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at the
(21:20):
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. When you listen to
twelve year old boys, they will use the language of love.
They will talk given a safe space, right not give
(21:42):
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 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,
(22:05):
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 older, it's incredible because remember it's
the same kids. So it's the same kids. Over time,
you start to hear this, 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.
(22:27):
But it's all good. You know that whole pressure to
sort of sound like you're totally invulnerable. So you hear
in the language, and then you also hear the anger,
You hear the sadness, and then sometimes 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
(22:49):
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 nobody's paying attention
to their suffering. 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. Will be right back,
(23:13):
they will be 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 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
(23:34):
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
verbiage that you've seen in some of the mass shoot
of manifestos. What are some of the other ways that
(23:54):
this type of you know, and I don't want to
say dysfunction, but the absence of vulnerable, vulnerable, that's a
matter of word. You knew what I was trying to say,
just then, don't laugh. Vulnerability, the lack of stop laughing, Ted,
I see you. How does the lack of the inability
to be vulnerable? There? I did it? What are some
(24:15):
other negative ways that it manifests itself. It can show
up in a lot of ways. It can show outwardly, right,
because these are hurt kids, and you 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.
(24:37):
And when we talk about the emotional disconnection that Naobi
brought up and then you leaned into a little bit there, Roy,
I do want to say this that those emotions when
they stopped from that first year 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 they're not admitting it
(24:58):
is because becoming more and more indoctrinated in the man box,
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
(25:20):
in the same water, right, are saying, oh, no, you don't,
don't say that, you don't do that. They push them
back into the man box 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
(25:41):
really being taught that, okay, I can't it's not safe
for me to talk about 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 push them back into the man box, right, yeah, yeah,
they say things I know, homo. So my in my
(26:04):
in my, in my interviews, you get things directly 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 and sessions exactly well between men and boys. It does.
We don't say it, they don't say when they talking
to a girl. Yeah, right, so it really is it's
(26:26):
homophobia within that right, Yes, it's so. Yeah, if we
didn't live in a homophobic society, no homo actually wouldn't
necessarily be homophobic. But because we because we're right, so
so the idea, right, 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
(26:48):
I think I really like that image that I'm going
to use it again too and quote you. Of course,
it is the glue. It's the glue. It's it forces
up young men to actually it here because there are
consequences if you don't, and the consequences I hear about
in older men, I mean older teenagers sorry all the time.
The consequences of being teased, bullied, pushed around, if you
(27:10):
don't play sports, if you don't man up, if you
don't do things 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.
(27:30):
So there's this weird sort of almost backlash going on that, like,
it's cool, it's cool that you know, you you if
people do that, people love each other, but don't think
I'm gay. Yeah, let me clarify, don't put that by me.
So the men who are the least secure of their
masculinity are oftentimes the most likely to adhere to masculinity. So,
(27:53):
you know, the oftentimes you get athletes, for example Roy,
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 right exactly exactly exactly.
Buying is allowed that the Super Bowl, you lose the
Super Bowl, crying, crying exactly exactly exactly. Now you see
(28:17):
some of the most tender things between well known athletes. Yeah. Um,
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 thinking that thinking is masculine and straight, of course,
and feeling is feminine and gay because obviously feminine is
(28:41):
linked with being gay in a homophobic world. I also
like that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine, and
that when women think exactly punished for that exactly 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
(29:01):
that diminished that because it challenges again this patriarchal notion
of male dominance 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
(29:24):
my family tree, I knew that I did not have
when I was born, 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
(29:48):
when my father was living with his mother, you know,
well into adulthood. So 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,
(30:10):
this isn't me like unearthened family trauma and drama or
anything like that, but I just know that one thing
my dad would always state whenever he was losing an
argument with my mama, was I pay the bills. Because
my mom was pouring all her money into grad school
and second degrees and third degrees and law degrees. You
ain't don't running the house, you know, you know, we
(30:32):
get to it when we lose the argument. We started
bringing up the seats. But what I 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,
(30:54):
but it was not what I prioritized because the idea
of paying it cost to be the bo So the
example you get is the example you see. There was
no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this, there
was no Bearsteain bears about fatherhood. So you know, how
do fathers provide, you know, a model not only to
(31:17):
their sons, but to their daughters about what they need
from a man when they go out 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 could
say that the issue I'm dealing with is trying to
(31:39):
relearn something while also teaching it to someone at the
same time. 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 and paying the bill
are very important, and that's an important thing. And so
but whatever the women in the household does, right your
(32:00):
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, women have less value than men and boys.
So whatever men are doing is always elevated. We are
default setting is to give men the benefit of the doubt.
Our default setting is to elevate what men do over
(32:21):
what women do. So what women, Oh, she stays home
and takes care of kids. Have you stayed home and
take care of kids and you runs back to your job?
You know 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 is all day long
(32:44):
work and home and their relationship with their spouse as well.
So 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. And I want to add something
one other division that we do. We don't listen to
(33:05):
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
what we who we are as human, what gets in
the way, and how to solve it. A five year
old boy says to his mom who comes into the kitchen.
(33:29):
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 you smiling when you're
feeling sad? And what that five year old is showing
is he can he's where he is asking why are
(33:50):
you faking an 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 eld at you?
I mean, think about how genius We come out into
the world as humans with that natural intelligence, and then
what happens is we grow up and we become less intelligent.
(34:11):
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 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
(34:32):
boys were I promise you they know this stuff we're
talking about right now. They don't even be taught this stuff.
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
(34:56):
into the house. Because I'm sure to some degree my dad,
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,
had a cup 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
(35:16):
your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's
going on out there in the real world. How does
mental health player role in men sometimes misplaying the role
of father? Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting
mental health is becoming more and more acceptable among men.
(35:37):
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 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
(35:59):
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 charts.
Suicide is about three and a half times higher among
men that among women. Men are living only about six
years five or six years less than than women for
(36:20):
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
just dealing in walking around every day in a racist
(36:41):
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
they have to have a play to be able to
talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that
(37:03):
it's not about them, that it's not that it's 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 um they need to prove
(37:24):
that yourself in this man box. And black men haven't
really had the opportunity in the same white the same
way that white men have, right because white men can
do it, and so black men can do it. You know,
you'll see it more in sports, entertainment, music, that kind
of thing where 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,
(37:47):
So it can be exaggerated also, but it also can
be something where it's really harmful 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.
I naobe, I want to direct a question to you
and tell you feel free to jump in. I'm gonna
(38:07):
paint you the scenario. Can you tell me what the
hell I should have said to this child? 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, someone else's shop. I
don't know who's child. And he asked, with a straight face,
why do men work harder than the women? Yeah? And
(38:32):
I just o and you're not. You don't want to
give the wrong answer and poisonous child. And then he
takes it back to his family goes, yeah, so it
those daddy told me that men. Oh, And I was like, hey,
we all work hard and we 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
(38:52):
the work isn't happening. I just kind of ate my
pizza and drifted away from this child before he asked
more deeper philosophical prices. What role does media play in
influencing the perceptions of you know, what it means to
be a man, what fatherhood means. You know, there's a
(39:12):
type of content that we're exposing our children to also
kind of perpetuate those roles just a little bit. As
I became more conscious of gender equity within the home,
There'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 briefcas Yeah. Yeah,
so I had to run every show through a filter.
But what role does media play in a lot of this? 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 the what we're trying to fight against real,
(39:56):
like men work harder, men are more human than other people,
or manner smarter or whatever, it is the best way
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,
(40:16):
so that you're engaging the conversation. Because ultimately, what I
learned from working with college students roy is if you
say you're wrong that you know, it never works. So
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
(40:38):
told that they're wrong. And I think media, of course
reinforces I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story
we 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 what I don't care
(40:59):
what kind of media it reinforces it. Now, Obviously shows
like this are critical because this allows us to disrupt
those narratives. So I don't want to make media all blankets,
but obviously it does. I mean, you know, we are
we are living right now in an immoral, amoral, immature culture,
and we got to disrupt it with these kind of conversations.
(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 head straight out about
this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond
the scenes. We are around and third and headed for home.
(41:40):
It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here. How can somebody
priloritize their mental health? And if you are a man
that is in a friendship recession. Now I'm talking about teenagers,
we're talking about growing men. What tools can men take
to build and deepen and strengthen the connections that they
already normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get
(42:04):
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 from my book Deep Secrets. They
will start cracking up. I'll say, why you're laughing. They'll
say the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I
didn't look at his sexuality I'm just telling you that
(42:25):
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? And guess what happens roy Within four
I'm not kidding, they will immediately start talking about their
own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need is
the permission to feel and the permission to ask. And
(42:48):
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 in terms
of understanding how love works, how relationships works, how humans work,
(43:08):
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, and then talk about
how they can help each other learn the material, that
they learn it better with each other than by themselves.
(43:31):
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
in UVA that shows has been replicated. The subject of
the research stands in front of 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
(43:52):
standing next to a best friend in one condition, standing
there a stranger in another condition by themselves or with
someone 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. Those that are
standing next to a best friend see the hill as
(44:12):
less steep. 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,
whatever you're doing as less difficult when you're next to
someone who loves you. So use that in education, Use
that in the workplace. Put people who are close together
(44:33):
working on teams together. You see what I'm saying. So
you disrupt the 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 get my feelings hurt
with friends. I talk about how that made me feel
bad when so and so didn't return my text and
(44:55):
I wrote or 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 you do that with my
son as well, by the way, and so what they
what the message they get from this is this is normal.
This is normal. This isn't some weird thing that you
have to you know, you have to get special help
for you bring up a lot of great points, and
(45:16):
you know, and you're talking about your kids, and I'm
a father also they're being twenty one and thirty three now,
But I 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? Right? 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. Roy.
(45:40):
For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask
for help, to not need any here, 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
(46:01):
lean into the strength in 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 asked more questions about what
you're what you're feeling, then you might ask her you
just want to know you're okay, good, okay, Now I
don't have to talk about anything else, right, So you
don't ask enough questions therefore you don't care. It's do care?
I pay the bills? Don't you see this? Feel this
warm heating this house? We absolutely care, but we're not
(46:45):
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 um and to think 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, man, she's dating,
(47:06):
her husband, who's going to the doctor, she's gonna make
sure she goes with him. Why because he's not going
to ask the questions that he needs to ask. Because
even that, for us is vulnerability. Right, Even that for
us it's like huh, I don't know. I just want
to get in and out. Do you go to doctor? Yes?
But did you ask him about this? Right? So, vulnerability
is a strength, it really is. And honestly, when men
(47:28):
become vulnerable, they're respected for that because other men see that, Wow,
that was 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 and to be able to support everyone else along
(47:49):
the way. And it's going to really make us feel
better too, and it's modeling it for our children as well. Yeah,
how does therapy play a role in this? Men are
half the country, We are a percent of the suicides
according to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind
help with anything that you all have just been talking about.
(48:11):
I want to say something that's very specific to me
being a woman. I hear this from other women friends.
So therapy is huge because it allows the space and
this is what happens 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 burdened 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,
the therapist that everything you know for our husbands. And
(48:52):
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 can 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 a lot. 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. Therapy is very important and we don't need
to even call it that. When I when I when
I encourage men to get therapy, I'll say, man, you
just you 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
(50:21):
kind of want things to get better for you and
it may not me, it 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
(50:43):
also engaged in therapy at some point in their life,
because it's not it's not something to run away from.
It's actually they needed a sounding board too. And I
would say, even just 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
(51:04):
with us at this point. So therapy is essential. It
will prevent depression. The anxiety among men is off the charge.
As you said, suicide is really three and a half
times higher than women and eighty percent of suicidect believe
you mentioned from the CDC. So there's something that's not right,
that's not working for us as men. So this is
the fix. So with all of that being said, let's
(51:27):
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? Yeah?
I have a lot of hope. Ye're not finished really well,
you know, we're gonna see how to go. You know,
you got to understand how my sample size is one, y'all,
(51:49):
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 mile marker. And that's
what we need to allow, right, We really need to
allow our children like your son to embrace and express
(52:09):
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 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
to confront things even if they're difficult. We want them to,
but we don't want them, you know, we don't want
(52:31):
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
I have a lot of optimism about men, about manhood.
I think that we've reached a point where it's clearly
(52:53):
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.
That's the real thing, really connect with our 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,
(53:17):
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. 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
(53:38):
a culture that doesn't align with our nature, and a
culture that doesn't nourish the best angels 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
(54:00):
naturally hard and soft. And the hope is and I
work with Remember I teach at NYU, so I see
a 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,
(54:21):
I'm not even I'm not even exaggerating, they're yelling at us.
In those in my classes I teach 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 the Even This Close
(54:42):
got this nomination. It's just about boys friendships. That's all
the film is about. And then something happens because the
friendship gets in the way, and the enormous response to
it means that cultural change is already happening. Roy, It's
already happening. This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot
think both both of you enough for giving me a
(55:02):
piece of your time and giving our viewers a little
bit of knowledge. That's all the time we have for today,
Ted Naobe, thank you so much for going beyond the
scenes with me so much. Listen to the Daily Show
(55:22):
Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or
wherever you get your podcasts,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.