And, This is How Democrats Win Back Men with Jackson Katz

Gender scholar Jackson Katz joins the show to discuss the manosphere, the real impact of feminism, and whether the Trump administration is actually good for men.

Warning: This episode contains adult language and subject matter, including discussion of sexual violence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
When it comes to the issue of race and gender,
when it comes to the issue of masculinity, there are
few people that hold more credentials on this subject matter
than my next guest. This is Gavin Newsom, and this
is Jackson Katz. You've got a new book coming out

(00:23):
at least overseas, and we'll see who comes out here.
It's called every Man. But I mean that's interesting. Obama
Renegade's Springsteen. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, yeah, my book was just published in the UK
in February, but it's coming out in September in the
United States the American version. It's called every Man, Why
violence against women is a men's issue and how you
can make a difference.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
And Jack, just so for people that don't know you,
you've been at this issue, been talking about the issue
of intersection between gender race violence for decades and decades.
I mean you've been in this space talking about the
issues of masculinity, what's happening to young men and the
relations between the sexes for twenty five plus years.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Right, Oh, yeah, since I was a college student really,
which is a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
And what what what what originally inspired all of this
and ultimately what inspired this book all these decades later,
building on what the work you've been doing.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, you know, as a young guy, and I was
a big, you know, athlete in high school. I was
an all star football player, and I was I came
from a blue collar family, you know. If my stepfather
was a truck driver and an army veteran of World
War Two. My father was a medic in Germany and
France in World War Two. I came from a family
where you know, well, you know, it was a blue

(01:36):
collar family, and and and and yet education was a
big emphasis. And and when I was in college, I
started taking courses in subjects that related to you know,
gender and race and other things. And I was learning.
I thought I was smart when I was a young guy,
but I realized how little I knew, especially about how
other people lived, because I, you know, I came from

(01:58):
a kind of a white suburban background just north of Boston.
And when I started taking classes on gender related topics
and started hearing about women's experiences of violence, and I
started seeing women organizing around the fear that they have
so often, especially at night, you know, because that was
the beginning of the take back to Night movement where

(02:19):
women were marching to say, we have the right to
walk outside at night. And I remember thinking when I
saw these women, you know, sort of organizing for better
lighting on campus, I remember thinking not that these women
hated men, but that they felt like they had the
right to walk across campus. And I felt like that
was what leadership looked like. I was inspired by it.
I was a young student journalist at the time, and

(02:39):
I was inspired by women standing up and speaking up
for themselves, just as I was inspired by African Americans
and what we used to call, you know, the in
the gay what used to be called the gay rights movement,
which is now the LGBTK.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
And just put us in context of what year, roughly
would we be talking.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
About, Roughly around nineteen eighty, So it's like, you know,
I'm a little long in the two, but I've been
doing this work so since I started speaking out then,
and because I had this background in traditional male culture
as a as an athlete and pretty successful, I knew
that I had a platform. I knew that people were

(03:13):
interested when I started saying, hey, you know, sexual assault
and domestic violence, this is wrong, guys, this is like
wrong and women should be able to shouldn't have to
worry constantly about their personal safety and how would you
feel if you were a woman, and how to live
like that? I remember thinking, why aren't more men saying
these things? Why aren't more men speaking out? Why is
it always you know, women having to organize and speak
out and push for, you know, reforms of the laws.

(03:37):
Why aren't men doing this? And I know most men
are not abusive, but yet most men don't speak out.
And so because I knew I had a platform, I
started speaking out. And honestly, I'm doing today, Governor, what
I started doing as a you know, nineteen year old.
I always say my hair is a lot shorter, not
by choice, right, And I have nicer clothes than I
did when I was a you know, a nineteen year

(03:57):
old guy. But it's the same message. And you know,
my book every Man, you know why violence against women
as a men's issue is like what I've been saying
for forty years. It's just because of my work and
other people's work and the way the culture moves. There's
you know, there's an energy now, there's a receptivity to
talking about this, thinking about this. With the exception of

(04:20):
the backsliding that we're doing in our country right now,
which is a really dramatic series of steps backwards. And
you know, we can talk about that as well.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
So what I mean when you look back forty years,
I mean, did you really feel like you were the
lone voice back then? I mean, were there was there
any organized movement or recognition or was there any political
leadership with men in this space to call out that
violence against women? Or is it primarily would you describe
as the feminist movement that was really organized behind the

(04:49):
women's rights in this space or.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
At least yeah, it was definitely a sort of multi racial,
multi ethnic feminist women led movement, and there was a
tiny number of men. I mean I was, you know,
I was kind of an early adapter as they would say,
or adopter, like when I was twenty. I mean, there
was not that many men doing this work, and now

(05:11):
there are. I mean, there's no question that my work
and a lot of other people's work over the last
couple of generations has made a difference in terms of
normalizing this kind of conversation. But political leadership very limited.
I'm not saying it didn't exist, but it was very
limited and in the public space, it was very unusual
to hear men talking about any of this subject matter.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
And the fact that you started to say this is
a man's issue, I mean, what do you mean by that?
And how was that received by women that were expressing
themselves and leaders in the feminist movement? Was it well
received in that respect? Was it understood when you started
talking initially about this being a man's issue?

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Generally speaking? I would say yes, because what feminist leaders
were saying back then and they say this now, is
that the role for men who are really know, concerned
about these matters, which, by the way, all men should be.
It's not something that should be a specific to me
or a small number of men yourself, but a lot
of the you know, a lot of the women leaders,
including Bell Hooks famously, the African American, the sadly late

(06:15):
African American feminist scholar and writer and activist, would say,
would she and others would say the proper role for
men in this work is to educate, organize, and politicize
other men. It's not to it's not to go in
and save women or even to work with women. It's
to go into male culture in every racial and ethnic

(06:36):
you know, community and every it's a global These are
global problems, not local problems. I mean they're manifest locally,
but their global problems. The proper role for men is
to is to like, yeah, with their guys, you know
what I mean, like their their friends, their colleagues, their peers,
and adult men need to be providing much more over
it and explicit leadership to young men. And if you
stay in that lane. In other words, I think that's

(06:57):
what women are asking. It's, by the way, it's very
similar to what people of color have been saying for
white people who are whether you call them allies or collaborators.
It's like, you don't need white people going to black communities.
You need white people organizing white people and speaking out
and using the platform of influence that they have within
their own sort of you know, culture or spheres of influence.

(07:19):
It's a simple concept. It's not even that complicated.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
So you say, I mean for forty years you've been
at this and obviously there was you know, you've had
an incredibly successful career, had a lot of influence in
this space. But you referenced yourself that this is there
seems to be a door that's opening now in this space.
But they're also a door closing, and we'll get to
that in a minute in terms of some regression. But
the door that's opening in terms of what consciousness in

(07:43):
the space, a recognition of the crisis of young men.
The political side of this, how do you describe from
Is it a policy framework that you see shifting or
political framework that's shifting.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's both, I would say, I would say I would
say there's a shift in consciousness that's been happening over
the last couple of generations. Really it's not a really,
you know, brand new thing. I mean, whole generations of
men and young men have grown up with feminist mothers,
with women in the workplace as equals, with girls and
women sitting next to them in school, in the professional world.

(08:17):
I mean, my parents' generation didn't have those experiences. It
was much more sex segregated, and women were excluded from
mainstream sort of competition with men in so many areas.
But there's a whole generations of men who have come
of age in a way that it's been normalized, you know,
and a lot of men have much more likely to
have female friends and colleagues. And take that as just

(08:41):
obvious as opposed to something that some radical new, you know,
development that they have to adjust to. But at the
same time, I think there's a whole lot of men
who have done very little speaking out about men's violence
against women, and a lot of men get really uncomfortable
about this subject. And I think a lot of men,
including powerful men, who are really incredibly articulate about a

(09:02):
whole range of subjects, but when it comes to this subject,
they are like, oh my god, I don't I don't
want to go near this, or I don't know exactly
what to say, or they become inarticulate. And so what
ends up happening for a lot of men, including powerful men,
I'm serious, Uh, what they'll do is they'll either remain
silent because they don't want to screw it up, or
they're or they're just so uncomfortable, or they'll defer to

(09:23):
women and women's leadership. And I think on one level, fine,
we need to, we need to, you know, uplift women's leadership.
But in a sense that's that's not fair. It's not
what it's not why why is it women's responsibility? It
should be men's. That's that's that's a way of hoisting
off of you know, putting onto women what should be
what men should be carrying, especially those of us who

(09:43):
have you know, cultural, political, economic, you know, power and influence.
And so I think, I think one of the big
challenges of our time is getting more men who are
already there in the sense that we're uncomfortable with other
men's abusive behavior. We don't like it, we know it
when we see it, but we don't either know what
to say or we feel uncomfortable around it and don't

(10:04):
know what to do, and so we retreat. And I think,
I think what we need to do is not that
we have to quote unquote convert the men who are
the most deeply you know, misogynists and angry at women.
It's that we have to talk to men. I mean,
that would be a good thing, but I mean that's
not where I spend my time. I spend my time
with men who are already knows that, who already know
that gender justice, gender equality, reducing gender based violence are

(10:28):
important things, but they don't really know how or what
to do about it. My goal is to empower them
and to give them, both conceptually and practically the tools
to be better leaders. And to be better partners, be
better you know, fathers, uncles, you know, teachers, coaches, youth workers,
you know, religious leaders. There's so many men who are

(10:50):
good men in positions of influence, especially with young people,
who could be doing so much more than they're doing
right now.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Contextualize the issue for and just sort of, you know,
bring us in a little bit on you know, one
of the trend lines we've seen in the last few decades.
I mean, when you started this work, was sort of
was that an apex of the anxiety in this space?
Was it? Was there just little data, a little research
in this space. Are we seeing a diminution and violence

(11:21):
perpetrated against or against women? Are we seeing a return
to a little more misogyny? And has it been impacted
by culture? Social media, has been impacted even by our
politics today.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
All of that, I think, I think you've touched on
a whole bunch of really important developments. It's a complicated thing,
like social change itself is really complicated. So we're making
all kinds of forward progress. There's reforms in the laws,
There's a level of consciousness that seeps through, whether it's
through the education system, through media. There's so many powerful

(11:57):
and empowered women that are vocal and thoughtful around this
subject matter to a lesser extent men. But at the
same time, yes, we have had an enormous backlash against
some of this progress, and I think, honestly, I think
right wing populism in the United States and in Europe
and other parts of the world. But a big part
of it that doesn't get enough sort of discussion is

(12:20):
that it's not just resistance to racial integration and immigration
and the increasing you know, sort of racial and ethnic
heterogeneity of some of these societies that had previously been
pretty white. That's a part of it I'm saying. I mean,
part of it, clearly is right wing populism feeds on
that energy, that sort of racial grievance. But I think

(12:42):
it's also a lot of men who are really put
off by and decentered by feminism and by the LGBTQ revolution,
which decenters sort of heteronormative heterosexual men in particular, And
I think that has to be part of the conversation.
I mean trump Ism, for example, me trump Ism is
so much of that is about not just white backlash,

(13:05):
but white male backlash against forward progress by by by women. Basically,
and this is tricky stuff because you know, can I
also say I also, I think it's really important that
I say. People like me who have been doing the
work that I and we have been doing, have long

(13:26):
made the connection between men's violence against women, men's violence
against other men, and men's violence against themselves, because you know,
suicide is violence turned inward. So the idea that sometimes
men will say, well, well you talk about violence against women, yo, okay,
what about violence against men? You know you'll hear this,
And I write about this in my book, of course,
because this is so predictable. It's like, well, I've thought
about that. Of course, we've all thought about we all

(13:47):
understand this. My friend Michael Kaufman, who's the co founder
of the White Ribbon Campaign, which is the largest global
movement of men working to end men's violence against women.
It's in like sixty something countries and it's a great thing.
It started after the Montreal men massacre in nineteen eighty nine,
where a man, a twenty five year old man, lined
up fourteen women in the Institute of Technology and murdered
them in cold blood. This is in nineteen eighty nine,

(14:10):
and he left a suicide note that said feminists, you know,
blaming feminists for having ruined his life, and he was
going to take revenge. Well, a group of men created
the White Ribbon campaign, which is this big public display
two years later where a man, you know, at the
end of November every year, men wear white ribbons, Michael
to say that they're not going to condone men's violence
against women, be silent in the face of it. Michael

(14:31):
Kaufman wrote this essay in nineteen eighty seven where he
connected men's violence against women to men's violence against other men,
to men's violence against themselves because they're all connected, and
so no thoughtful person in the twenty first centuries who's
looking at men's violence against women fails to see that
all kinds of other things in men's lives are also connected.

(14:52):
In addition, by the way, look at all the men,
I mean, who have women in our lives who have
been assaulted by other men. Who look at all the
men adult men who have you know, partner partnered with
women who are sexual assault survivors or domestic mind and
full disclosure.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
You know, well, my wife who's been very vocal about that,
and I am what occurred with Harvey Weinstein.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
She has been, and she's been an incredible brave leader
on this subject. And I love her leadership on this
and her bravery, and I love working with her on
these matters absolutely. But I'm saying there's so much I
don't know what your point. Yes, I don't know any
man who doesn't have women, So.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
I imagine you go to audiences all the time and
just ask people to raise their hand.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Or or or yes or just in terms of my
social networks and the people that I know, I mean,
I'm I'm surprised if I meet a man who doesn't
have women in his life who have been assaulted by
other men. It's it's not some esoteric subject matter that
affects some small.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Again? It's a complicated question. I think we've made enormous
progress until the current regime, and the level we've made
enormous progress.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I'm curious. I mean, you just you just put out
a report that can really quantify that in terms of
research dollars that are rolling back. Obviously, advocacy in the
DEI space, which is not I think so much of
what people focus on DEI is around racial issues, but
A big part of the movement was a gender issues
and obviously that's that's under assault. But what else I

(16:29):
mean is the actual statistics in terms of acts of
violence perpetuated against women. Is that increasing, decreasing or is
those research dollars drying up? And we're going to finally
not really have any understanding of that.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
All of the above, I would I would say we
have been making progress. There have been some there has
been some data that showed that we have been making
progress over the past, you know, twenty five thirty years
in reducing the incidents of domestic and sexual violence. But
the flip side is you don't know fully because of
the vast majority has never reported. And then when you're
effective at raising consciousness, when you're effective at providing services

(17:06):
to victims and survivors, when you create an environment in
an institutional setting, whether it's in a corporation or obviously
in a school or some other in the military or
at some other setting, if you create an environment where
people feel comfortable coming forward to access services or to
say that this has happened to them, then they're going
to come forward. But if you create an environment where
the institution is non responsive, then they're going to remain silent.

(17:31):
And so when all these programs are being cut, one
of the effects is people won't come forward because they'll
be scared that or they'll be doing a cost benefit
analysis they'll say, you know what, it's not worth it
because why why do I want to be re injured
by the system not being responsive to my needs and
put myself even more in more position of vulnerability. So

(17:51):
it's complicated in terms of the back and forth. But
also I do have to say the social media is
sort of the digital revolution has created a whole new
set of challenges. It's also created new possibilities obviously for
connection and for solidarity and community and people connecting with
each other from their isolated, you know, silos. There's no
question that it's a mixed bag in terms of this

(18:13):
subject matter. But the porn culture, the pervasiveness of like
deeply misogynous, the complication.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Of women, the objects ownership.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yes, and the complete sexual degradation of women in the
mainstream porn culture that a lot of young people growing
up with it are seeing that as normal. They're not
they're not seeing this as like some oh my god,
some radical you know, uh, you know, new development. They're
more like, this is what sex is supposed to look like.
It's it's some of it's just incredibly abusive and cruel.

(18:45):
We're not talking about sexual expression here. We're talking about
cruelty and misogyny enshrined in the sexual act. And a
lot of young guys, I mean, who think that that's
supposed to be that's normal. What ends up happening in
some of these relationships is guys are doing things to
women like in heterosexual relationships, non consensually. They're you know,
they're starting to strangle them during you know, consensual non
consensual strangulation during consensual sex and things, thinking that it's

(19:08):
normal and it's unbelievable. Have you seen adolescens?

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, I didn't have the guts. I mean, I back
to my wife Jen, she wanted me to see it,
and I did the opening scene, realizing the depths of it.
As a father, you know, I've.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Got I mean at this age, right.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
I mean, I've got We've got four young kids, two
boys and uh and social media is just encroaching upon
their lives and our lives.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
And it found way well I appreciate that, and I
and I'm going to say this is a spoiler alert.
But but I have to say that the main actor,
or one of the one of the main actors, Stephen Graham,
the British actor, who is also the uh one of
the creators and the co writer of the piece, brilliant.
This guy is brilliant, right, I mean he talks about

(19:53):
this publicly. He talks about it on Jimmy Fallon. So
I'm not giving away something that isn't like a mainstream
sort of you know, uh sort of plot point, but
one of the I think one of the most powerful
things about the story and one of the reasons why
I caught on so much. I mean caught on like
in the way that I think it might be the
biggest Netflix uh my success ever and in the UK
something like half the population I've seen the thing. Okay, Anyways,

(20:15):
the point is the storyline about the father and his
feelings of failure for having failed to protect his son,
and he thought he was doing a good job. In
other words, this was a you know, a heterosexual, heteronormai family,
blue collar family. He's a plumber, thought that he was
doing what his father didn't do for.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Him and and just just quickly it's a thirteen year
old kid.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Thirteen year old boy who is who murders his classmate?
And and what's in the background of the whole piece.
They don't really foreground it, but it's certainly always there
is the manisphere, the misogynist manisphere. That's the Andrew Tait
world where this young boy had been in his room,
so his parents thought he was safe. He's in his room,

(20:57):
he's you know, he's there. They're doing their job, and
meanwhile he was immersed in that whole world. The reason
why I think that so many people resonate with this film,
including man and myself. I'm a father of a son.
I have a young son. You know, he's in his twenties,
but he's, you know, young young guy. I think it
resonated with a lot of men because of the father's
pain and how badly he felt he had let down

(21:20):
his son, as well as of course the girl and
her family because she was the primary victim.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
No, I mean it's look, I mean it well, it
speaks with unpacking all of that, and I want to
get back to this mano sphere and I think, I mean,
you alluded to it in the context of social media,
but even unpacking that a little bit. You've made a
point and reinforced a point today in a report you
just put out that there is now a big setback.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
In this space.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
I mean there's a very intentional, organized effort now with
the current administration, the Trump administration, to vandalize a lot
of the progress in the space.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah. Yes, and it's disgraceful. Let me just say, I'll
just use that word. It's disgraceful and it's harmful to women,
but it's also harmful to men. I'll give you an
example the military. I've been working with the military. I
created the first gender violence prevention program in the United
States Department of Defense nineteen ninety seven. We started out
in the Marine Corps. And I and my colleagues have

(22:15):
been working in that space for a long time, twenty
seven years or something. And there's all these great people,
men and women, and you know, uniform military and DoD civilians.
And I was on the US Secretary Secretary of Defense
Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military. This is
back in two thousand. I mean, there have been so
many different talented people, including uniform military leaders, who are

(22:37):
on board with knowing how important it is to talk
about this stuff. To have programming to create it's for
morale purposes, for mission readiness purposes, for all these reasons.
Having this kind of educational process within the military space
is really important, and it's being all just radically cut back,
and it's just it's absolutely disgraceful. And I'm saying this

(22:57):
as somebody who's been working in that space. And if
anybody thinks that it's somehow anti mail, this is what
this is the subtext of all this, right, that somehow
it's anti mail to like talk about sexual assault or
domestic violence. This is BS. This is byes.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
They frame it in the wokesm just more woke.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
BS right and there and there and that's and I'll
call BS on that because there's so many good people,
including really powerful men in that space. I mean, I've
worked with so many powerful military leaders from the from
the you know generals and colonels and admirals at the
highest level of you know authority. But also like when
I started in the Marine, working in the in the
Marine Corps, we were working with it was called a

(23:34):
Sergeant's Major Initiative. It was an enlisted leadership initiative. We
were training sergeants. These are these are generally men. In
you know, the Marine Corps about ninety four percent male,
so there are women, but it's very much a male
dominated space. Let's be clear. Most of the you know
sergeants are in their twenties and they work directly with
the young troops, these you know, the eighteen nineteen, twenty
year old troops, and so providing the leadership, providing the

(23:57):
leadership training for them for how they can leadership to
the younger troops. This is to me such a basic thing.
It should be. It should be not only should it
not be rolled back, it should be expanded and deepened.
And it's what's happening is the exact opposite. Under the
name of supposedly caring about warrior culture, this is just
total bs. And I think under the name of anti wokeism,

(24:20):
some of the most some of the most forward thinking
and and sort of useful educational and other consciousness, you know,
shifting strategies over the last generation are being undermined.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And you've seen this happening also in sports, because I
know you've been not just working a military but you've
represented a lot of good work in many different venues
as it related to athletics as well.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Well again, the program that I created, the Mentors and
Violence Prevention Program MVP, was the first nineteen ninety three
at a place called the Center for the Study of
Sport in Society. That's an institute that was created by
Richard Lapchick, doctor Richard Lapschick, who's a pioneer of combining
sport and civil rights activism. Father. There was Joe Lapchick,
one of the pioneering players and coaches in the NBA,

(25:04):
who was a white guy. Joe Lapchick, He's in the
Hall of Fame. I mean, this is an NBA guy.
He ended up as the coach of the New York Knicks,
and he was the coach of the Saint John's men's
basketball team. This is the father. He was also a
white guy who was for racial integration, way ahead of
the curve. The son was an activist, like a sixties
era activist who wasn't an elite athlete, but he was
passionate about civil rights and sports. And he created this

(25:26):
institute in nineteen ninety In nineteen eighty four, and I,
as a graduate student in Boston, came over to his
institute pitching the program to train college male student athletes
to speak out on these matters. This is in nineteen
ninety three, and my thinking was not that there was
a problem in athletics of male athletes assoulting women, although
there was such a problem and continues to be. My

(25:47):
thinking was, where are we going to find young men
who have the status, the self confidence, and the platform
of influence to break the silence among men and young men,
Because I was thinking, lots of guys are uncomfortable with
abusive behavior and misogyny around them, but they don't speak up.
As I was saying earlier, so we need more men
who have already have some confidence because it takes guts.

(26:08):
One of the reasons why guys don't speak up on
these matters is it takes guts, it takes strength, it
takes self confidence. And not just twenty year olds, but
for fifty year olds. A lot of men get a
little they're anxious, and you know what they're anxious about.
They're anxious about other men, and they're anxious that other
men are going to think that somehow they're soft or weak.
And it drives me. I have to say, it drives
me crazy because I watch on people on the right

(26:33):
mock and ridicule men who speak out about domestic violence
or sexual assault. Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, These people mock
and ridicule. Andrew Tate is even more exaggerated in what
he in how he mocks, in ridicules men who stand
for gender equality and gender justice, as if we're somehow
soft and weak. And I often say, and I so
appreciate the opportunity to say this to you here in

(26:54):
this in this setting, if you're a guy, being one
of the guys takes nothing special whatsoever. Just going along
with you boys, It's like that takes nothing special. What
takes something special if you're a guy, is turning to
your friends and saying, hey, dude, that's not cool. The
way we don't do shit like you know, we don't
do stuff like that here, yeah, or we don't treat
women like that, or that's not you're my friend, But

(27:15):
the way you're talking to your girlfriend, I'm concerned. That's
not cool, dude. That takes so much more strength and
guts and self confidence. And yet the guy who does
who says it is a is a beta, is a
woos is a soy boy, is a virtue signaler, and
so many young guys have grown up in a media environment,
a social media environment where like me, I know that's

(27:38):
what's going to happen is when people watch this, there's
gonna be people that, who's that, who's that? Beta. It's
just so embarrassing to me because it's like literally the
opposite of the truth, right And so anyways, that's why
I started working with in the athletic subculture. And my
program was the first large scale program in college athletics,
and that was the first program in professional and I
have to say, you know who are first the first

(27:58):
team we work with in professional athletics, New England Patriots.
And then and then we work with the Red Sox
because you know, we're in Boston, right, So we had
the Patriots in the Red Sox and at one point
the Patriots had won like three out of the first
like five years we were working with them. The Patriots
had won the Super Bowl and the Red Sox had
won the World Series for the first time in eighty
six years right after they started working with us. And

(28:18):
so I said, I would always say, as a laugh line,
I would say, you know what about the Yankees, I'm sure,
well that's true. Well, that's true but but it was
even more self serving, I said, I said, you know,
I'm not going to claim that the Red Sox and
the patriots working with us was the reason why they
won incredible championships. But you can't prove disprove it either.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Wi.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Hi am Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications
and Wall Street financier. You might have caught me on
a recent episode of This is Gavin Newsom. If you
like that, I think you'll enjoy my own podcast, The
Rest Is Politics US. Alongside journalist Caddy k we go
behind the scenes of politics, from the chaos of the
West Wing to the forces shaping the world's most powerful economy.

(29:11):
I was in the Trump White House for eleven wild
days and Caddy's been reporting on US politics for nearly
thirty years. We bring sharp insight, real stories, and maybe
a few secrets you haven't heard before. Search The Rest
Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Hope to see you over there.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
So back to the manospeare because you mentioned Joe Rogan,
you mentioned Joe Peterson, obviously mentioned Andrew Tay, who you know,
respectfully need not be mentioned much. I mean he's I
mean even by extreme standards. He's a unique spectrum. That said,
he's also been embraced by members of the Trump administration
and Trump himself, which full disclosure. But talk to me

(29:53):
about the manos speirre, I mean, what is it?

Speaker 2 (29:55):
And who?

Speaker 1 (29:56):
By the way, who are some of these fun I
mean people I think I have heard of. Joe Rogan.
Average person may not have heard of Joe Rogan then
obviously heard something about him when it came to Kamala
Harris not deciding to go to Austin to go on
his podcast, though few people likely were first to learn
about him with that alone. But Joe Peterson's someone not

(30:17):
everybody knows who else in this mano sphere? What is it?
How do you define it? And when did you start
to see the emergence of it? And how real inconsequential
is it is? Is it in the context of this
gender conversation.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Well, it was certainly a small sort of dark corner
of the Internet for a number of years where men
who were many of them really angry at women, at
feminism more generally, and at women. Many of them were
men who were divorced, who had custody battles, you know,
who were really angry at both the courts in some
cases their you know, their wives or their ex wives

(30:52):
because they didn't have access to their kids. And some
of those men were abusive, some of them weren't abusive.
It's it's a complicated picture. And when it comes to
the you know, the messiness of relationships, I mean, i'm
you know, who knows, you know. But so there was
there was a sort of men's rights movement which was
organizing itself. And then when the Internet came came into
the picture, they were organizing through you know, through connecting

(31:15):
with each other through the digital universe. And it was
called the manosphere. And it was again a small sort
of corner of the Internet. It's become completely mainstream now.
So and and you know, Donald Trump's election in twenty
sixteen was a big accelerant to the to the mainstreaming
of the Manisphere. And now a lot of young people,
young boys in particular, but not exclusively, but certainly young

(31:35):
boys and young men get drawn into the manisphere. And
by the way, not necessarily because they're you know, ideological.
It's not because they have like a critique of feminism
or something or anything, or masculinity. It's more like the
algorithms draw them in and maybe.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Maybe learning on a YouTube version of a video game
they like, and all of a sudden there's an ad
that's right, it's you know, with a Bugatti or something,
and they click onto that. All of a sudden they're
part of some university's right, and then all of a sudden,
two months later, they're in a conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
That's right, that's right, and and and and part exactly
and part of the conspiracy is that is that men
are being taken advantage of, and that men are being disadvantaged,
and that you know, feminists are uh anti mail and
that and that you as a man need to stand
up and speak up and fight back because you know,
that's the whole red pill idea. Like somehow, somehow you're

(32:25):
now consciously seeing that the world is lined up for women,
and which is, by the way, again talk about a
topsy turvy understanding of the way the world works. Right
And by the way, a lot of these men, as
you know, a lot of these men have never they've
never taken a course on you know, gender. You know,
they've never read a book about it. They've never attended seminars,

(32:46):
they haven't watched you know, long YouTube videos or even
even Ted talks like my Ted Talk or other people's
Ted talks. They haven't had much exposure, but they have
heard that, you know, feminists hate men and especially white men.
Let me just say this is one of the things
that I think is really great about you doing this
podcast and the kind of people that you've been interviewing.

(33:06):
You're having a dialogue. I think I think a lot
of young guys don't hear any conversation like this whatsoever,
and certainly if there if all they're listening to is
the Jordan Peterson's of the world and the and Joe Rogan.
And by the way, Joe Rogan has enormous, enormous influence,
and he's not particularly ideological, although he does platform people

(33:27):
right of center, and he's very conspiratorial in the way
he thinks.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
So not long ago he was he was platforming in
Bernie Sanders, I mean, on the other side of the
political spectrum in that respect.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah. Yeah, But he's also he's a smart guy, even
though he's you know, I think he's a little bit
you know, he he goes in different directions and sometimes
I think, oh my god, he's so insightful, and other
times he says things that I'm like, oh my god,
But he does you know, he interviews you know, theoretical physicists,
and he has thoughtful conversations and my son and others
that I know, and I enjoy listening to him. So
I'm not this isn't just a complete, you know, sort

(33:58):
of dismissional of Joe. Yeah. I do think the Democratic
Party has done a horrible job of outreach to men.
And I think it's not just about Kamala Harris failing
to go on Joe Rogan. Although I think that was
a mistake. I don't think that that's unique to Kamala
Harris and her campaign, right, I think the Democratic Party
as a party has done a really poor job for
fifty years at outreach to men.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
So I want to talk. I want to unpack that
a little bit, because I mean, it connects to the
manto sphere, and it connects to what's happening with podcasts
and how media is now consumed. And that's been again
an expertise of yours. It's sort of the it's the
intersection of race and violence and gender, but also the
intersection of gender and media. But there's this larger trend
line that also connects, and that is men are not

(34:43):
doing well right. I mean, suicide rates four x, the
addiction rates three x, twelve times more likely a man
to be incarcerated. You look at obesity rates, dropout rates,
you look at graduation rates, you look at discipline, you
look at all these larger issues you've been focused on
in terms of violence. I mean this, this is a crisis, arguably.
I mean this is a serious, serious crisis the state

(35:04):
of men. And it's not just white men, it's young men.
I mean, what is going on in this space? And
what have you?

Speaker 2 (35:15):
I mean you've you've.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
You've talked in terms of hyper masculinity. You and my
wife full disclosure, were part of a film you guys
worked on together around women and girls called Misrepresentation. But
then you followed up a decade ago in this space
with a film called The mascul Living about masculinity, hyper masculinity.
Man up, be a man, you know, and you called

(35:38):
out in that film a lot of these stats a
decade plus ago, And so I think you're right to
call out the Democratic Party. Where the hell have we
been on this topic? We see where the Republicans have
gone with it and to exploit, I think a little
bit of it, not necessarily to solve for some of it.
But what are these trend lines? What do they mean
to you? And what have you gleaned from? And what
the hell is going on with young men in this

(36:00):
country and maybe around the world.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Sure well, I mean, there's no doubt that there's all
kinds of indict you know, indications that a lot of
young men are not doing well. And then you just
name some of those statistics. And some of your other
guests have talked about this subject and and thoughtfully and
and you know, and it's all good. By the way,
I do want to say one of the things that
that is frustrating to me is that feminism is not

(36:26):
the enemy of men.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
It's like, if you want to help men, if you
want if you want boys to thrive, if you want
boys to have better lives, better relationships, better self regard
and self care to take care of themselves, feminism is
not the uh antithesis of that. Feminism is giving giving
a pathway. Can I also let me just a related point,
the men's health movement, which is a small but growing

(36:49):
movement of of of people who are looking at ways
in which cultural ideal ideas about manhood. And this is
again around the world, it's not just in the United States,
but have contributed to men's health problems, both in terms
of risk taking behavior and certainly in terms of health
seeking behavior. In other words, men not going to the doctor,
men not going to the dentist, men not going to therapy,

(37:12):
you know, dealing with self medication rather like through the
bottle or through drugs, rather than going to get you know,
professional health like therapy, because that's unmanly to do. In
other words, in other words, the impediment to doing that
is a belief about manhood. Like a real man sucks
it up, a real man just deals with it. The
men's health movement, which is an important movement to say
the least, is directly connected to the feminist led women's

(37:37):
health movement. In fact, one of the major events in
the women's health movement was the publication in nineteen seventy
two of a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves, published by
the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, which was one of
the first interventions into the public conversation about how women's
health was affected by gender. You know ideas about femininity
and how the healthcare system was set up for men

(37:59):
and for women. Anyhow, the men's health women Some of
the major figures in it, including my friend and colleague
Terry Reel, who wrote the first major book about men's
depression called I Don't Want to Talk about It, Overcoming
the Secret Legacy of Male Depression in nineteen ninety seven.
People like Terry Reel talk openly about how his ideas
were informed by feminist you know, intellectuals and activists and

(38:22):
practitioners in the women's health space, in the therapy space.
And yet the average guy who cares about women, you know,
men's health, and who or listen or listens to manisphere
figures talk about how feminists hate men. They have no
idea that some of the most thoughtful things, you know,
thoughtful people about men's health are direct products of feminist

(38:44):
ideas and feminist activism. And I think the reason why
I think that's important is because we have we have
too much artificial division between men and women. And I
think the Right thrives on this division, and it's it's
it's dividing people from each other rather than bringing them
to And I think part of what I do in
my work, and I think you do it as well.
But I think certainly what I do in my work

(39:04):
is because I come from a fairly traditional background, and
I have all this experience in sports culture, in the
military and working with traditional men. In fifty I've been
all fifty states, you know, I work in Red States.
I work with really traditional men in every you know sector.
You can imagine men can have these conversations and with

(39:25):
each other. With women, it's not like it's not so polarized.
But I think if you go into these manisphere spaces
or the political spaces, or Fox, or you watch Fox,
or you listen to talk radio, conservative talk radio, which
I've been listening. I started listening in Rush Lombard like
nineteen ninety. I know this stuff really really well.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
We had on one of the OJEZU was the number
two on radio, Michael Savage, was that right where you're
sitting just a few weeks ago on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
That's right about that history as well, that's right they
and by the way, these guys created a formula that
made a ton of money for them and a lot
of other people, and dividing people and and making caricatures
of people that they don't agree with Rush Limbaugh did
it fabulously and ridiculed and mocked, you know, feminists and
women who are trying to be treated with respect.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
So you're basically, I mean, so this goes I think
this is This is the real dialectic right on this topic.
It's a difficult one because the people to see it
it's one or the other. It's a binary that somehow
it's a zero sum game, that that you are somehow
diminishing the feminist movement if you're trying to elevate young men,
or if you're elevating or the opposite. I mean, what

(40:33):
how do you start to there's more of an abundance mindset.
What's good for the feminist movement is good for young men.
Is the point I guess you're making. Is that the
point you're making?

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, yes, but it's all I have to say. It's
complicated because people can say, well, there's only so many jobs,
and if women are getting those jobs, then there's going
to be harder you know, competition for the men. But
you know what, if you believe in merit, if you
believe in democracy, if you believe in fairness, and you
believe in fairness. I think fairness is to me the
governing issue, right. I believe in fairness plat out women.

(41:00):
If women are smarter than men, if they work harder,
if they're more talented, then they deserve the job. It's
like you don't deserve the job.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
Just because aristocracy in that respect is certainly showcasing itself
an education system, and certainly higher education, which women are
on pace in half a decade to be two to
one of college graduates in that that's right.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
And by the way, anti intellectualism is deep in American culture,
especially among men. The idea that if you're somehow smart,
you're a wimp, or you're condescending because you're educated, you're
condescending to people who don't have an education. And I
appreciate that certain members of of you know, the educated
classes can be clunky, to say the least in terms

(41:39):
of the way they communicate with people like with with
with a less you know, less pedigree in terms of
their education. I don't think I'm like that, but I
do think that that's a real thing. But the idea
that being somehow intellectual, being you know, somebody who reads,
who engages with ideas is somehow makes you weak and
soft as a man, or less than a real man.

(42:01):
This is the most self defeating idiocy that I could
ever imagine, and yet it's fed daily in the in
the popular discourse, especially in you know, right wing talk radio.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
So what the hell is going on with young men?

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Then?

Speaker 1 (42:17):
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Well? I think it's a complicated world. I think I
think a lot of women, for example, have been pioneering
new ways of being women in a in a in
a in a very diverse and changing you know, sort
of historical social you know context, And I think a
lot of men are as well. We're just trying to
figure it out, Like what does it mean to be
a good father? What does it mean to be a
good husband? What does it mean to be a strong man?

(42:39):
If the historically being a strong man meant you're a
protector of your family and a provider. But then you
know your wife, say you're a heterosexual man and you're married,
what if your wife is like making more money than you,
what does it mean to be a provider at that point?
You know what I'm saying, Like, I mean, what does
it mean to protect your kids? When people are dropping
off their kids at school and they're worried that their
kids are going to get shot in a school shooting.
So are we protecting our kids effectively or are we actually,

(43:02):
through bad policy, making our kids more vulnerable. So I
think I think guys want to do the right thing.
They want to be respected, they want to be strong,
but they don't really know exactly how to go about
doing it. And because because of the changes in women's lives,
And again I'm making a wildly general statement, and it's
complicated by class and race and ethnicity and all these

(43:22):
other categories. I appreciate that intersectional thinking is not just
a that's not just a slogan. It's real. It's like
people have complex identities, right, and they occupy complex social positions.
But I think a lot of women have been doing
incredible things to sort of upend centuries, millennia of tradition,

(43:43):
and as a result, a lot of men are completely
dissentered and are still trying to figure out what does
it mean? What do I mean? What does it mean
to be me? What does it mean to be strong?
And I think some men are drawn to And again
I'm not dismissing this. I think it's okay. You know,
some men are drawn to more traditional ideas about manhood
in part because they're they're they're simpler, and they're they're

(44:05):
they're they're they're they're they're they're less comp they're just
less less complicated, like so, for example, celebrating physical strength,
I mean, I mean, and by the way, Trump in
his you know, his way, he's no, you know, he's
no intellectual, right, but he's he has a visceral understanding
of some of this. And so and the Trump campaign
how how they go to UFC fights and then Trump

(44:26):
walks into a UFC fight and everybody's cheering. It's like yes,
and it's like that re establishes that Trump is the
man's candidate. The Republican Party is the men's party. And
they just doubled down. The Republicans double down on this
in the twenty twenty for r NC. And it was like,
to me, it was like a cartoonish, hyper masculine spectacle.
It was I was embarrassed by it. But it were

(44:49):
shirt yes, yes, and and and Dana White saying he's
the best, you know, he's the biggest badass. And one
person after another going up and saying Donald Trump is
the strongest man I've ever met, and it's just I
was just embarrassed by this. But it worked, worked, It worked,
especially for young men.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
But you knew it was going to work because you
wrote books on this. Yes, you wrote a book about
Clinton and Hillary I mean about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
You wrote a book about masculinity and leadership.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I did. Yes, I saw this coming decades ago. I
mean it wasn't. And by the way, Reagan, I mean,
how do you think Reagan was marketed to the I
mean what your predecessor as governor of California. How Reagan
was marketed to the to the American population was he
was a cowboy riding in from the West to save
a degenerated, you know, liberal establishment that's soft and weak,

(45:33):
and and you know the Iranian hostage crisis, and rom
Reagan was going to come in. John Wayne wasn't available
Ronald Reagan, and and it started. It didn't start there,
but it accelerated with the Reagan administration and then for
the last forty plus years. One of the biggest challenges
that the Democrats haven't risen to is how do you,
on the one hand, represent the interests of the ascendant

(45:55):
classes of women and people of color and LGBTQ and
hang on to the one of the key parts of
the New Deal coalition, which is, you know, blue collar
white men and how do you do that at the
same time. And it's really a complicated challenge.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
So what's the.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Answer to that? Ha ha?

Speaker 1 (46:11):
I mean, because I mean it goes back to the
Democratic Party. It's interesting Democrat at the DNC, they didn't
necessarily platform. They platform pretty much every group, but they
didn't platform a group that's struggling and struggling to be
heard and identified as struggling, right, that are looking for
meaning and purpose and mission that you, for a long

(46:31):
period of time have recognized are feeling these pressures. There
are these macrol pressures. I mean, what is I mean,
why do you think the Democratic Party did not meet
that moment? Do you think the Democratic Party is waking
up to that moment? Maybe it goes back to my
question a little while ago about what does this moment

(46:52):
in this conversation mean? Why do you feel like is
there a political is it because the political opening in
the space, more people are having this conversation about men
than they have in the past. That's actually illuminating even
more of your work as well.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, there's so many pieces to that. I would say,
I would say the crisis of right wing populism and
trump Ism is focusing a lot of people's minds. I
think a lot of people who were kind of asleep
at the switch a little bit, and they thought, you know,
the Democrats could just keep going without really addressing this
complex set of identity issues, especially involving men, without being

(47:31):
seen to somehow be you know, selling out women, you know.
And I think the consultant class, I think I think
a lot of political consultants haven't been on this. They
haven't understood this dynamic, the dynamic of men and speaking
two men and how I mean Steve Bannon, one of
your formal guests, Steve Bennan says, everything is narrative. This

(47:53):
isn't about ideology. It's about narrative. And I mean, I'm
one of the co founders of an organization called the
Young Men Research Project, right, and we've been doing we
started in early twenty four and way before the election,
trying to push the Democratic Party, but not just the
Democratic Party, journalists, people in the media to think about
the young men's vote, to think about how to speak
to young men because we were worried about the slide

(48:16):
over to the to the right of young men. And
by the way, young women move into the left and
you know, politically and young men moving to the right.
But it's not ideological. In other words, the same men
who voted for Trump, but young men, many of them,
they're pro choice on abortion rights, and you've been a
strong leader on abortion rights and unapologetically, which is by
the way, what we need. We need unapologetic leadership from

(48:36):
the Democratic side on things like women's rights. But when
it comes to you know, strong labor unions, when it
comes to action on the climate crisis, when it comes
to increase of minimum wage and the issue after issues,
young men are progressive.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Way though there's some interesting state wide elections overwhelming they
went for Trump but supported a portion of reproductive freedom
and supported minimum wage increases. That's right, same exact voter.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Because it was about identity, not ideology. In other words,
there the identity politics. This is what identity politics are
always The Democrats are already are always accused of playing
identity politics when they talk about issues relating to you know,
women or people of color or LGBTQ or something. But
the Republicans have been playing identity politics with white male
voters for fifty years. Richard Nixon started playing identity politics

(49:23):
when he started talking about the forgotten man, and you
know they and that silent majority queens.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yes, yeah, they've only been playing those.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Games exactly identity politics. But it worked again in the
twenty twenty floor election. And I think a lot of
young men and a lot of young men were basically
being told that the party that cares about you and
the party that is the men's party is the Republican Party,
and Trump is the man's candidate, and the Democrats are
the party of women and non masculine men, right, And

(49:53):
that's that. That was the mainstream message to young men
and young men who were low engagement voters. In other words,
what does that mean? Low engagement voters? It means they
don't pay close attention to politics. They don't read, they
don't engage in political discourse, they don't you know, read
think pieces in the Atlantic. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
They're not where I am every night on MSNBC or
Fox or you know, Newsmax or CNN.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
No, but they're but then, but they're hearing on and
by the way. One of the things that we do
in the Young Men's Research Project is that you we're
looking at all these different ways that the media ecosphere
that young men are inhabiting are not necessarily overtly ideological.
In theres a lot of them. They're just talking about comedy,
they're talking about working out, they're talking about you know,
eating healthy and good, you know, relationship sports. But then

(50:36):
they throw in some politics, like like they're throw in
a little bit of politics, and like, yeah, Trump, Trump's
a guy, He's a guy's guy, you know, and then
this fight fight fight, which is you know, by the way,
let me just say I was impressed.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
I mean, I mean it was shot that was extraordinary
in the moment, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Knowledge, yeah, and so good good for him. It's like,
but but then Charlie Kirk comes out and says, if
you're a man, after this, after the after the assassination
attempt and Trump's response to it, if you're a man
and you don't vote for Trump, you're not a man.
That to me is that's embarrassing to me, Charlie Kirk,
you know, I'm sorry, that's embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Oh yeah, we had him on the show as well
as you know, yes.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
No, no, And again let me say also, I think
it's great talking to people, having dialogue with people I
have arguments with and discussions with people that I don't
agree with all the time, including men, you know, around
some of this fraught subject matter. It's fine, good, let's go,
let's go, let's have a discussion.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Let me ask you about just the me too movement.
You know, this sort of sendency of consciousness in this space,
and then there were action to it. Do you think
there was there's been an overreaction to it. Do you
think there's been appropriate reaction to it? Do you think
people have understated the power of the me too movement?

(51:51):
Where are you, I mean, just on that spectrum of observation, acuity, interest,
your own activity in that space. Where do you come
out in terms of just your experience with that movement
and with where we are today?

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Okay, I think I think we need to, like one
way to think about this is kind of widen the
aperture a little bit and think about this in the
longer terms. For thousands of years, men assaulted women in families,
in relationships, in marriages. Marriage was leg you know, rape
was legal within marriage, including in the West until very recently.
I mean in the UK it was only allowed in

(52:29):
nineteen ninety one rape within marriage, And in the United
States as late as the nineteen eighties, there were six
states where it was still legal for a man to
rape his his wife. I mean seriously, I mean, we
weren't so long ago cleaning up some statute language on that,
even in California. So I completely understand what you're saying, right,
So there's still some language in that space exactly, and
to this day. And there's hundreds of millions of people

(52:52):
who live in countries where it's still legal for men
to rape his own wife. So there's been thousands of
years of men brutalizing women and getting away with it
within absolute impunity. And finally, you have in the in
the twentieth century, you have a movement, you know, whether
it's the women's movement more broadly and then more specifically
the anti sexual assault movement that started really taking off

(53:14):
in the nineteen seventies and eighties, as well as the
anti domestic violence movement. So these are very recent movements.
I mean, for somebody who's twenty years old, the eighties
might sound like a long time ago, but let me
just say, it's not that long ago. You know. I
was just listening to us like a mixed list from
the eighties, and I was like, that was my I
was in my twenties during the eighties, and I was like,
I can I can say I could I know every

(53:35):
word to these songs anyhow. Anyhow, the point is, it's
not that long lack of seagulls.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Just Duran, Duran, I won't die anyway. That's another conversation.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, so, but the point exactly. But the point is
you have these movements organized against something that's been going
on for thousands of years, and finally, you know, giving
a voice to women, reforming the laws. And then because
of the Internet, because the you know, the incredible digital
technology that allowed the voices of women to be heard
in a way that they had never ever had the

(54:05):
opportunity to be heard. One of like the Me Too
movement happened in part not just on the ground because
of women coming forward, but it became possible because of
the technology of communication and the digital revolution. So many
of the women who came forward to say, this is
what happened to me, this is my truth, this is
my experience. Yes, those women were speaking not just for

(54:25):
themselves but for literally literally billions of women and girls
who had never ever had a voice for thousands of years.
And so was there were there examples where it went
over the top and there and where where you know,
due process for men who were accused of crimes, you know,
was was not taken seriously. Yeah, I'm sure there was,
and I and I'm empathetic, and but I always say

(54:47):
this because I do gender violence prevention education. I've been
doing this for a long time. If you're a man
who has been, you know, falsely accused of some crime
that you didn't commit, it's a horrible thing. And there
but for the grace of God, go I and other men.
So I'm not saying it's okay, it's horrible and it's unacceptable.
But you know, the vast majority of sexual assault is
never even reported, much less falsely reported. So I think

(55:08):
a lot of men have this falsely inflated sense of
their vulnerability to false accusations. And what ends up happening
is that this narrative develops that all these women are
coming forward, all they can ruin a guy's life easily.
And meanwhile, we know how how much, how difficult it
is for a woman to come forward, and how unlikely
it is that she's going to call that upon herself

(55:30):
unless it really something really happened. Now, having said that,
I do think there were some excesses, and there were
some statements, certainly by women and others, that were dismissive
of men's concerns about being unfairly targeted or falsely accused
or what have you. But I think that I think
overall it was a step forward. But it's messy. Life

(55:50):
is messy, and social change is messy, and I think
we have to give these and I'm just going to
say this. I mean, I'm not, you know, bizarre who
can make these, you know, issue these kind of edicts.
But I would say we have to give each other
a little bit of a break. I mean, we're all
struggling to try to be treated with respect and dignity,
try to live you know, lives of you know, you know,
of dignity and in relationships, and with all these complexities

(56:14):
of race and gender and and and and sexuality swirling about,
it's not easy and navigating that space. And so I
think what's happening with a lot of young men is
that is that they're really confused, They're really be fuddled.
And I think of a lot of adult men are too.
So it's not just the young guys are befuddled. And
so part of the reason why so many young guys
are befuddled is because the men, the adult men that

(56:36):
they look to for guidance, are themselves often bill bewildered.
What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed
to My wife wants me to be strong, she wants
me to be powerful, but but but I'm also vulnerable.
And when I express vulnerability then she's uneasy about that
because she wants me to be strong, and I'm not
sure what to do. And what you know this is,
this is you know therapists. You know, for example, couples

(56:58):
therapists deal with I'm not a therapist, right, but I
know that couple therapists deal with this every day. And
and and Terry Reel, who's this brilliant you know couple therapists. He's,
by the way, Bruce Springsteen and Patty his wife, Patty's
couple therapists. And I'm saying that because Bruce Springsteen wrote
the literally wrote the forward to Terry Reel's latest book,
which is called we it's about relationships. And Bruce Springsteen

(57:21):
is is like he's like a guy's guy, Like he's
like the prototypical American guy, right, he is, but he's
also extremely self reflexive and vulnerable, and he's it doesn't
make him any less of a of a of a
sort of alpha rock star to be able to say,
you know, he needed therapy, and he needed therapy for

(57:41):
his own stuff with his own father and his relationship
with his wife, and you know, and it was really
important to have support in this in the sort of environment.
And this this notion that vulnerability is somehow weakness, This
is one of the biggest lies that young men get sold.
But there's the pressure on young men to be sort
of sucking it up and pretending that they've got it
all going on because of because of the narrative that

(58:03):
they're hearing. Is that a real man does that. And again,
some of those manisphere of figures that we've been talking about,
including by the way, Donald Trump, who says it all
the time, you know, you don't admit weakness, you don't
acknowledge mistakes. To me, that's that's a sign of total
insecurity rather than strength. But I think we need adult
men to model strong adult men to model vulnerability, not

(58:26):
as weakness, but as I'm confident enough to say that
I don't have it all figured out. I'm confident enough
to say that, you know what, I make mistakes too,
but I'm going to I'm just still going to get
back up on the on the horse. I'm still gonna
do my thing, and and and hearing professional athletes say it,
I think it's one of the reasons why it's so
powerful to hear like professional male athletes in this case
who have mental health challenges, who will say, you know what,

(58:47):
I have panic attacks. I'm a I'm a I'm a
great professional athlete, and you know, look at me. I'm
you know, I'm I've succeeded at the highest level in
my sport, but I have issues and and I and
I and and that's so okay. Michael Phelps, the greatest
swimmer men's swimmer of all time. This is really a
powerful part of this. And last thing I want to
say about all this, I appreciate again, I appreciate all

(59:10):
the opportunities you're giving me to say these things. Sometimes
people will say to me or to other men who
talk about the issues in this way, they'll say, you're
trying to make men soft and weak. And if you
listen to Fox's News, they say it all the time,
the worsification of America. These the liberals are trying to
worsify America. They're trying to make men soft and weak.

(59:31):
And it's to me, it's a cartoon. It's like watching
a satire. But I reject the idea that I and
others are trying to make men soft and weak. I
think I want to be strong. I think I'm a
strong man. I think that I want my son to
be a strong man, and he is a strong young man.
The question is not whether we want men to be strong.

(59:52):
The question is how do you define strength? And how
do you define strength? Is it this cartoonish ability to
impose your will on another person and dominate? Is that strength? Really?
In the twenty first century, are we supposed to take
that seriously as the definition of strength? What about moral courage?
What about courage to do something even though there's going
to be a consequence for you that's negative because it's

(01:00:12):
the right thing to do. What about social courage, which
is to say, speaking up in the face of you know, abuse.
You know, it's whether it's you know, your friends of
yours making derogatory comments, or online spaces where guys are
being really disrespectful to girls or women and calling them
out and saying, hey, that's not cool. What about you know,
resilience in the face of adversity. These are all these
are evidence of strength and courage and positive, you know,

(01:00:37):
positive positive qualities. I think we need to say to
young men and older men, we want you to be strong,
but we want you to expand your definition of strength.
And the reason why that's so I think so helpful
is because it's positive and aspirational. It's calling men into
good behavior rather than calling them out for bad behavior.
And I think if you call them into good behavior
and say, we need more men with the guts to

(01:00:58):
speak up, we need more young men who the courage
to say misogyny is not cool. Treating women with disrespect
is not going to get you my respect. It's not
going to get you my admiration because you know what,
you've got some issues. If we had more men who
are willing to say that, and young men willing to
say that, then we would we would begin to counteract
some of these harmful things that are happening in men's lives.

(01:01:21):
And I think a lot of young men seek connection,
they want relationships, they want intimacy in their lives. But
if they're going down the route of hardening up, getting tough,
you know, being sort of you know, hiding in their shell,
if you will, and inhabiting this angry world of the
manisphere and the sort of the right wing populist movement,

(01:01:43):
that's not going to get them what they want. That's
not going to get them the love and the connection
and the intimacy that they crave. So I think we
have to say it in terms of men's self interest
and boys self interest. It's in women's self interest. Gender
equality and gender justice is obviously in women's self interest,
but it's also in men's self interest. And I think
if people can hear that, I think we have you know,
we've made a lot of progress.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Jackson Katz, thanks for joining us in this podcast A
hell of a way and close out this podcast. Thank
you for your work, thank you for your advocacy, thank
you for your clarity, your conviction, and thank you for
being at this for decades and decades.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Thanks Governor, and thanks thanks so much for giving me
this opportunity and for having these conversations right on. I
really appreciate that, that leadership and that thought leadership and
your commitment. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you,