July 23, 2024 • 48 mins
Welcome back to The Forging of Men. In this episode, we delve into a conversation that began in our recent Men's Group, tackling complex questions about masculinity, especially in today's culture. We aim to provide a comprehensive recap of our discussions, featuring insights from our panelists: Jim, Joe, and Jonathan.
The discussion takes a deep dive into the definitions and perceptions of masculinity, starting with a recent breakout session on toxic masculinity and emasculation. We explore the differences between these concepts and the notion of authentic masculinity, using examples from both historical and modern contexts.
We also examine the inherent biological and psychological differences between men and women, discussing how these play out in parenting, protection, and provision. The conversation touches on the impact of technological advancements and economic pressures on traditional gender roles, highlighting how these factors have blurred the lines of masculinity and femininity.
Join us as we seek to define what it means to be a man in today's world, how to raise the next generation of men, and navigate the challenges posed by modern society. Whether you're a father, mother, or simply interested in the topic, this episode offers valuable insights and thought-provoking discussions.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:58):
Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me on The Forging of Men.
Welcome back. And we're going to have a really interesting conversation today.
And it's one that I feel like started, it was actually a couple of weeks ago
at Men's Group that we went down a bit of a rabbit hole.
And we had some good answers, but I don't know that we got the answers.
(01:18):
And so we're here today to kind of give you a recap, talk with you about what
we talked about together as a group, and then also to flesh it out a little further,
because I think that there are some questions that need answering,
especially for those of us as fathers who are trying to raise our men in today's culture.
So before we hop into it, do a quick around the table of introductions.
(01:42):
We've got my friend Jim, who is
returning. He's been with us on a couple episodes in the podcast before.
And we've also got Joe and we've got Jonathan.
Both of them are new to the podcast. And so I guess that, and of course, I'm Josh.
So I guess that makes us the J crew for this episode, the dream team of Forging of Men, the J crew.
(02:04):
So Jim, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, very simply, I'm a father of two boys. And I think in our men's group,
I have mainly the two oldest.
I've got a 22-year-old college graduate, and I've got a 19-year-old college
rising sophomore. more.
Awesome. Joe, how about yourself? Yeah, I have no kids, but I've been working with kids since I was 18.
(02:28):
So I worked in youth ministry for a number of years. Then I went to graduate
school and now I am the assistant headmaster at Chesterton Academy of the Incarnation.
So I don't have the practicals here to bring, but I got a lot of books. I read a lot of books.
I didn't realize that you were the assistant headmaster now.
Yeah, it's kind of new. Congratulations.
Congratulations. That's very cool. Jonathan, how about yourself?
(02:49):
Jonathan, I have eight kids. I'll just get that out there now.
Six boys, two girls soon that I don't know that that makes me more qualified
or less qualified, but yeah.
It certainly makes you the most experienced.
I don't think anybody. And what is your mix of boys and girls again?
I got six boys and two girls.
So my oldest is a girl and then four boys and girl and then two boys.
(03:14):
Yeah. That's the order. Yeah. So youngest is, youngest is a year as of next
week and the oldest will be 17 in August. So.
I'm curious, your, your youngest, when was the first time that you saw him do
something that you're like, oh yeah, there's, there's a little masculinity popping through.
It's pretty much the second he started moving, right? Like he's smashing things.
(03:36):
He's, he gets excited. He kicks things. Now he climbs. So we bought him for his birthday gift.
We got him this little like wooden structure that's made for climbing and he
will go all out, climb to the top. And he has no plan on how to get down.
So he'll get up there and he just screams out for someone to grab him.
And if you don't get them, then he just let's go. See what happens.
(03:58):
Like a house cat. Yeah. Stuck in the, stuck in a tree. Yeah.
So, and he'll do that. So you just sit next to him now and he climbs up it and
then you put him back down on the ground and he climbs up and that's the game.
That's awesome. I love it. Well, today's discussion started and I mentioned it earlier.
You were on mission trip. Has it been a month ago now?
(04:19):
Three weeks ago. About three weeks. Three weeks ago. Yeah.
And there was breakout sessions that they did on a regular basis for the students
and the adults that were there. And one of those breakout sessions had a name
that piqued your interest and you went there to check on that.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about that experience for context for this conversation? Yeah.
So they announced the breakouts and they had a few different interesting ones,
(04:43):
but the one that caught my attention was one of the priests was going to give
a discussion on toxic masculinity and emasculation.
And so I looked over at Matt and I was like, we've got to go to this one because
what if they say something that's wrong?
And Matt starts laughing. He's like, I wanted to go just to talk.
(05:03):
To listen you're expecting them to say something wrong and
it's like i don't know but it's anytime you start with toxic masculinity it
feels like that's a that's an opportunity to just paint with really what wide
brush strokes and and you can kind of miss the point so we had to check into
it so we rushed over there and it was father matthew i don't remember what parish he's from.
(05:26):
And he he started the conversation explaining
his perspective what the difference between
the two you were and so being a
priest he's got a he's he's well versed in
the bible so he he pulls it right up to jesus and he
said toxic masculinity was the
roman soldiers when when jesus was being
(05:48):
crucified because they just wielded their
power but not for you know not not in
any controlled manner it was just they can do what they want
so they did what they wanted and then he said an emasculation was the
two people who were were crucified next to
jesus because their their life was taken from them right
they they were their opportunity to live
(06:09):
as men to do what they what god intended them to do
was removed by force so they were emasculated and
his example of authentic masculinity was
jesus he gave up his life no one took it from
him it was his sacrifice so he started with that and i figured okay then we're
probably good here he's not gonna he's not gonna say anything too too far off
(06:33):
but the interesting part was he was expecting mostly young men to be there.
And it was about a 50 50 mix there were a lot of young women there oh interesting
and their reason for being there is they wanted to understand masculinity because
they wanted to know how to
see it how to recognize authentic masculinity and
(06:53):
how to support the young men in their lives and
their future husbands in being authentic with
their masculinity so it's an interesting thing and we started that conversation
i think we were supposed to do the wrap-up on the virtues and instead that came
up in conversation and what three hours later we were yeah a little bit better
(07:14):
off on that uh but yeah like you said we didn't have a we didn't have a good
answer and i think To even start that conversation,
we probably need to settle in on what we would define as masculinity or what is masculine.
First, can we state the question that we're trying to answer? Yeah.
What's ultimately the question, John?
(07:34):
Yeah, so I think that one of the problems that we run into is we talk about toxic masculinity,
we talk about authentic masculinity, but then we have to say,
okay, well, what is masculinity?
What are the masculine traits that are exhibited?
And then in doing so, those are traits that have to be...
(07:59):
Unique to us as men in a
lot of ways and and not necessarily even that the the
core trait like i think there are some things that men
and women share from a positive trait
aspect and even a negative trait aspect to some degree but they just exhibit
themselves differently to the different genders of which there are two so i
(08:23):
think that there's there's a lot to be done there but but
I also want to make sure that we allow the path to kind of God,
because it took us to get to that, to get to that particular series of questions.
We had probably two hours of unpacking specific examples.
Jim, I think just brought up a really good point here by handing me his phone
(08:46):
and the dictionary definition of masculinity.
I do remember talking about this qualities or attributes
regarded as characteristics of men
or boys which nobody
uses dictionaries anymore when you get yeah is that
a book or something i feel like somewhere i think it
you put it under your monitor to make it the right height so it doesn't strain
(09:09):
your neck yeah and then the interestingly the the attributes that they give
here is examples are handsome muscled driven and then he's a prime example of masculinity,
I guess is the sentence that they used there is a, is an example,
(09:30):
which I don't know is, is helpful really at all.
And I don't know if that's indicative of culture struggling with how to identify
masculinity. I don't, I don't know.
So yeah, that's, that's what I'm gunning for here is that if,
if the whole point of the podcast is to help, to help fathers mothers of sons
be able to dial in on how to help their sons become the next great generation of men.
(09:58):
We have to really figure out, all right, what does masculinity look like?
What is culture telling us it is? And how do we navigate that in a way that's
going to be productive for us?
Right. So if you're trying to build a house, you have to know what a house is
and what it looks like first, right?
So if you're trying to build men, we have to figure out what that is.
That's the question? Yeah. All right.
(10:18):
What I was thinking was this word, masculinity, is a derivative word.
It's got the I-T-Y ending on it, right? I think we should start with the masculine
and we should start by thinking about where does that word come from?
Words, we use them to name things in reality, right? So there's something in
reality that we first encountered and we had a name for it and it's the masculine.
(10:40):
And then that word I think is then transposed into other things like in language,
we talk about masculine and feminine words, but we're not talking about manly
words and girly words, right? That's not what we mean.
We mean something else. And so coming back to the root of where this word comes
from, I think it's the body.
I think when you look back at the way they use the word masculine in old texts,
(11:04):
they're talking about the masculine form, the feminine form, right?
So I think starting with that distinction is going to be helpful.
And then we can, I think, explore like, okay, what is attitude?
To when we're talking about the qualities which perfect the masculine form or
the feminine form right we i think we start though with all right what's the
(11:27):
masculine form what's the most simple sort of expression of a man it's going
to be the grown man in his body.
So what does that express yeah and i think a good way to look at it is just sort of,
basic differences between men and women and which attributes are distinctly
masculine and so i just just from a basic biological difference,
(11:50):
men on average, and not to say that there's outliers, but men on average are taller, stronger,
able to lift greater percentages of their own body weight.
And those, I think, are the three large things. I do think that there are some
(12:12):
finer points that that we could discuss as well that played significance historically,
but also may play out a little bit in different ways today.
I think a great example is.
Aural location precision, and aural there is A-U-R-A-L. I believe it's A-U-R-A-L.
(12:33):
But essentially, what that means is how precisely can you locate the source
of a noise upon hearing it but not being able to see it?
The example I give is if my wife and I are walking through the woods and a branch
falls from a tree or a branch snaps on the ground or there's some distinct sharp
(12:57):
noise that reverberates through the woods,
my wife will be able to tell you to within 8 to 10 degrees of where the source of that sound came from.
But she's not going to be able to give you a sense of like distance in any rough
guesstimate other than to be able to say near or far, which is like Sesame Street
(13:18):
distance, right? Just near.
However myself as a man and this is true for most men if we hear something in
the woods it's that sharp precise sound we will be able to give you a trajectory
on that within two to three degrees,
(13:39):
and also be able to give you a relatively accurate distance on the source of
that sound so not to say a near or far,
but to be able to say closer than a hundred yards, 100 to 200 yards in excess
of 200 yards, like data that's usable on being able to either,
(14:01):
circumvent the source of that sound or to be able to close in on it in such
a way as to approach it for whatever purposes without being detected perhaps.
So I think there's some, some finer points like that.
On the physical side of what men are good at.
I think it would also be good to talk a little bit, maybe things that women
(14:24):
are better at naturally.
And I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts as well on both sides of the fence with that.
I want to just justify that move. I think that's important because we wouldn't
have a word for masculine unless there was a counterpart in the feminine, right?
You just wouldn't name it. If the human body was just the masculine body,
you would just call it that, right? Right.
But we introduce words because there's some distinction.
(14:46):
So there's the masculine form, there's the feminine form.
And so if we're going to be naming something distinctly, there's got to be a
difference that we're, that we're identifying.
So we need to understand, I think the masculine alongside the feminine as co-relatives.
Yeah. I think we've used the phrase on this podcast before, and I know this
is super loaded because of American history, but separate, but equal.
(15:07):
And the caveat that I would put that would would be separate in attribute, but equal in dignity.
And I feel like that we've been so focused on trying to make men and women equal
in dignity that we have forgotten that we are separate in attribute and that
we all have strengths and weaknesses that we can bring to bear that are significant.
Well, I think the language is a big part of it, right?
(15:29):
We have all these words for a reason, right? And there's different words and
they have similar meanings, but it doesn't mean the exact same thing.
I think at the tail end of our discussion during the men's group.
I think it was Taylor brought up the difference between what like protect and defend, right?
Like he was talking about how if someone were to break into his house,
(15:53):
like if he had an invader, his wife would go to the kids and huddle up in the
room with them and she'd be ready to attack if someone came in.
Whereas he'd sweep the house, right? He'd get
the gun and he he'd pursue the threat right
and that's his that's that's i thought that was a good way to look at kind of
(16:13):
the differences because we do have you know provider protector right i provide
my wife nurtures and i give them food and say eat this.
My wife tries to explain why it's important. You got to eat this before you
can have dessert. This is good for you, all that. And I was like, no, just eat.
Are we both giving them what they need?
(16:35):
Yes. But we have different approaches, just like Taylor said.
His approach to protecting his family is very different than what his wife would
do in terms of defending.
His is a proactive approach. Hers is, she's with the kids.
So if the threat passes by, everything else can get destroyed.
If they don't come into that room, she's between her and her children where
(16:58):
she feels like she needs to be.
He's going to go out and attack. He's going to, he's going to neutralize that
threat before it even gets to that point. He's not going to huddle up and wait.
Well, I think the, the interesting thing though, there is if you take Taylor
out of the equation, right? So take the masculine out of the equation.
Does she go from defend to protect?
(17:20):
Oh, so are, do women have to essentially take on the attributes of masculinity
in the absence of masculinity?
Entity well that's exactly it so if you you know
i'm a big lord of the rings geek right so when
there's a whole sequence where i've arwen
or somebody like that she's now flailing about with a sword not flailing about
(17:43):
but showing skill with a sword in the middle of a castle before they even have
to enter battle and her thing was when she was complimented on it was Because
the men are not at the camp and they need to defend themselves.
Right. So my, my thought is while as masculine, we may be denser muscle,
(18:04):
which is what makes us stronger.
Or technically larger, although I'm sitting here and not particularly large, right?
But do they take over those attributes in that absence?
How capable are they to take that over?
And then how capable are we to be able to shift that dynamic in the opposite direction, right?
(18:26):
Because there are plenty of great dads, nurturing dads, dads that find a way
to speak to their kids about the whys behind what you should eat,
why, and so on and so forth, right?
I don't know that, I think we end up flipping those dynamics given the,
whatever the environment requires.
(18:46):
So I've got an observation I've not thought about in years, but
I think it might be pertinent to this conversation is I used to be an archery
instructor for students and had tons of students go through the program because
we launched this program called Center Shot at a church at the same time that
the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out in theaters,
(19:08):
and the Hunger Games movies were coming out in theaters and kids
came out in droves to learn and how to shoot a
bow the people that
picked up on archery the quickest and who
were who became proficient at it with the least amount of effort were girls
that either had a cheerleading or a dance background because they had the ability
(19:34):
to be aware of the small things that their bodies these were doing so that,
you know, if I had a guy that shot well and they put one in the bullseye and
be like, that was the perfect shot.
What did you do differently? I don't know.
Like, I'm just like the gross motor skills was there.
If a girl shot well and it hit the bullseye, I was like, that was a great shot.
(19:57):
What did you do differently that time? She's like, I kept my elbow higher.
So they have better reflection skills.
Oh, okay. The ability to reflect, which goes to that emotional aspect, right?
I mean, listen, you know, we're classified as non-thinkers sometimes,
maybe not as in touch with our emotions.
(20:18):
And women are classically more in
touch with theirs is that their ability to reflect on
what happened what they've done and then
what the future holds and how it'll impact it whereas we're
a bit more present yeah i think the flip
side of that could also be oh metaphorically this
there's a lot with this is that as men we are so focused
(20:41):
on the target on the
bullseye that we forget to pay attention to
exactly what we are doing in a precise way
it sounded like from your example you're
talking about girls who were trained precisely to pay
attention to these things right so we're not necessarily talking about a natural
disposition that they had but they had some sort of training and well and they
(21:03):
they the ones that had a a dance and a cheerleading background accelerated the
fastest but if i took if i took a girl and a guy and i put them on the the line
who had zero archery experience,
I could get the girl to hit bullseyes probably twice as fast as the guy.
And I'm, I'm, I can't tell, I can't tell you where that comes from.
(21:24):
I don't know if it's that guys felt like that they couldn't come as empty vessels to learn.
And so they were likely to just do it their own way instead of absorbing the
knowledge to be able to do it.
Or if there was some physical aspect to it,
but I just think give, give them the conversation at hand to have this
example where i had hundreds of
students come through the program a vast majority which
(21:47):
had zero archery experience and more
often than not right out of the gates the girls
outshot the guys when i think it's part of it is is just
you look back to the basic nature of of like man
and woman so like women when when
the man was off hunting right in in you
(22:07):
know back at hunter-gatherer times she'd have
to keep track of the kids and keep an eye out for
predators so just by their nature and you know
what their their obligations are in
in you know that whole relationship they have
to be able to multitask and take in more and we
have much more singular focus i think of watch watch
(22:29):
college or professional level football what are they those guys are out there
and it's just off instinct that they're acting and then someone pulls them to
the sideline after they're done playing and they're like watch this video of
you making this play right and and going back to archery when when i was helping
out with archery at chesterton,
two years ago i didn't do it last year.
(22:50):
The girls would know, Addie would know, like, I'm doing this or I'm doing that.
And she knew her consistency. She didn't draw as far back.
She took something off of it to control her arms so her arms wouldn't get fatigued.
And I'd watch the boys, they would draw it all the way back and then they would
try to get their shot, right? It was first draw, then it was aiming your shot.
(23:10):
And by the time they got their shot, their arm is like wobbling, right?
And so I would go over to them and be like, okay, you're dropping your elbow,
line up your shot, then draw back.
Don't do a full draw on the name because now you've got to hold that draw the whole time.
And it was things like you'd say it to them and they'd be thinking about it
and you'd realize it would click.
But the thought never crossed their mind to change the way they were doing things in that moment.
(23:34):
Someone had to come and correct it for them. And it was that singular focus.
They were locked in on hitting that target. There was concern about,
I don't want my arrow to fall short. I don't want to hit the ground.
I don't want it to look weak. I would rather blow past the target and miss completely,
but it has some force on it.
So I think the understanding there, the ladies there were definitely taking
(23:59):
some off of it to be precise and consistent with their motions.
And the guy, they would hit him and you'd watch it.
It was like one of the kids hit a bullseye and then he hits another bullseye
and he looks over to like, because he's all excited.
He broke his focus and then he missed the target on his third one.
And it was like what was different between the three shots he's
like i don't know it was like you moved your feet you you'd gone
(24:21):
off your mark you had lined up everything you had the
motions he had no idea why one was different than
the other he just he he split off
from that that consistent behavior but he didn't understand that that was the
problem he didn't know his feet were in the right spot before his form was correct
yeah i sort of thinking back on prior discussion we were talking about the the
(24:44):
ability to locate sounds easily i think that men.
Maybe are able to identify things that need correction externally with more ease.
And perhaps women are able to identify things that need correction internally with more ease.
(25:04):
What do you mean? So I think about the amount of correction that I have to provide
my wife, which is minimal.
And often the the correction that i
provide her most often is
make sure that you
are making time to take care of yourself as well so is that that's an external
(25:26):
correction yeah so that would be an external correction to her is like hey make
sure that you're making time for yourself there there's so much awareness of
her own like hey here's things that i need to work on whereas i feel like Like as men,
we provide a lot more sort of outward focus on providing correction towards
others or things that could be better in our work or things that could be better
(25:49):
in our spouses or our children versus having time to reflect and look internally
and be like, all right, what could I do better about myself?
So we're better world critics and they're better self critics.
Is that what you're saying?
I think that might be a good way of, and I don't, I don't know that I've gotten
any data or science to, to back that up. That's just thinking about what we've
(26:10):
just talked about and sort of observation on what that would look like.
So when I got married, my father-in-law gave me the best advice.
He sat me down. He said, we're going to be part of the family now.
You're going to be part of the family.
He said, you need to know what the men in this family do.
He said, we worry about the big picture. What are we going to do with world
politics, local politics?
(26:33):
What's our stance going to be on larger issues?
He said things like where you're going to live, how you're going to make a living,
who's going to eat what for dinner.
That's your wife. Then he laughed and said, don't worry, she'll get involved
in the others too. Right.
But it was, but it really is good advice. Right. We tend that to have that bigger focus.
(26:57):
Right. So when I'm doing training for sales, there's a thing called Genusian thinking.
Right. And it's nothing special. It's just a great name for it.
But the Roman God Janus was the God of doors and it was looking forward and backward.
And what I train my techs to do is when they have a sales call,
as soon as they leave, to sit down and meditate on the moment,
(27:19):
that entire sales call, walk through it front to back, turn the volume on and off, reflect,
keep reflecting through it until you can see what worked, like an archery,
and what didn't work, right?
So that way you could go ahead and correct yourself into the next one or accentuate what was positive.
But I had to be trained on that. And the trainer that taught me that was a really great female trainer.
(27:45):
That's, that's the kind of thing that we don't do.
Men just don't do naturally. We don't sit down and go, wow, that conversation
didn't go well. What did I say?
Where did that go wrong? We just go, wow, that conversation didn't go well. Off to the next.
I think we lean on our instincts a lot more until they don't work.
(28:07):
Right. And then you have to have that moment of reflection.
I've done it a certain way, and it's worked this way until it doesn't work.
And when it doesn't work, then I have to figure out, was it a fluke?
Do I go about it the same way again?
Or do I reassess and adjust my process?
It's not something that we do.
(28:30):
We don't do that every time because, again, for me, it's wasted motions.
Why am I going to do something? why am i going to analyze this process that
worked if it worked the only reason i need to analyze it is if it took two hours
and i didn't have two hours to get it done and now i got to be faster right
so how do i fix that but otherwise i'll just do it that way and and like you
(28:50):
know helping with with like household stuff like folding clothes or whatever
and i'll be folding helping my wife and then.
I'll look over and she's done three times as much. And then,
you know, at some point I'm looking at her and she goes, well, do it this way.
Like you're folding this slowly, right? If you do this way, it's faster.
I don't think about it because the clothes get folded.
So why would I do it this other way? Well, she's got a hundred other things
(29:13):
on her list. So she's figuring out the process because she needs it. Right.
And I didn't. So it was one of those, like you, I think that's part of it. Right.
But circling back to the initial, like trying to differentiate between masculine and feminine.
I think we were having the same struggle now that we had during men's group,
which is we can come up with a lot of examples,
(29:36):
but trying to put like any kind of definitive, like definition around this is
masculine, this is feminine is the challenge, right?
We can, we can give all the examples. I'm thinking about your example with the
folding laundry and I'm thinking, well, I mean, if I, if I have a job,
I do try to actually maximize my efficiency, right?
It's just, if this is something that I spent a lot of time doing,
(29:57):
I'm going to find the best way to do it.
I don't think men, I don't think this is distinctively masculine or feminine at all.
I think the possession of an art, even if it's the art of folding laundry,
it's just, you're going to acquire it if you do it over and over and over again, right?
So yeah, I do think we need to go back to where do these ideas originally come from, right?
And I think I want to at least be
(30:19):
careful about importing too many assumptions about hunter-gatherer
society or what that was like right because none of us are hunter-gatherers
so I want to just I I think that the place to start is where we started with
body you mentioned the masculine body is taller it's stronger it's more mobile
right the feminine body is I think I.
(30:41):
You could just define all that negatively, but I don't think that's right,
right? I think what the feminine body provides is the capacity to nurture children.
I think that's one of the most distinctive things. So the feminine body can
conceive, gestate, and nurture a child, right? That's what the body can do.
And then what the actual human person living in that body can do with that body
is then on top of that and added to it.
(31:03):
And I think that's what femininity is, is what the woman can add to the natural
capacities of her body. how she can kind of direct the capacities of her body
for the sake of her children or her family or whatever.
So I think that starting with the fact that a woman's body can conceive,
gestate, and nurture a child, right? And we build out of that.
So we want to ask questions if we're trying to find like, okay,
(31:26):
what is the perfection of woman that we call femininity?
What is the perfection of a man that we call masculinity?
We start with what are the natural powers that
that body has how are those natural powers related
to the family and then what is
necessary for the man to what
sort of qualities is necessary for the man to acquire in order
(31:47):
to fully actualize the powers that his body has and what are the natural qualities
or what are the qualities that the woman needs to acquire in order to fully
actualize the powers that her body has so i I think the example I gave a men's
group was when a woman breastfeeds a child,
there is this sense of comfort that the child is just going to have naturally
(32:13):
and even materially and mechanically, right?
So that the child is really comfortable when it's being nurtured by its mother.
And so the child is going to naturally look to the mother for nourishment and for comfort, right?
That is its originative source for these things. and
so if a woman developed
the quality of being let's say I mean
(32:35):
obvious ones would be like really bitter really angry right such that when the
child came running inside with an injury and the mom did not provide the the
comfort that the child came for that would really harm the child's development
element, it would lead to a really confused child,
like it would not know where to go to get that sort of comfort anymore, right?
(33:00):
So it just the natural and even for a long time in history, the necessary way
of giving natural nourishment and comfort to a child.
Would have been breastfeeding the child and then if the child is then trained
to seek those things from mom and then mom does not have the qualities to actually
(33:20):
provide those things once the child is three or four or five or 18 i think that
the child ends up kind of lost right and damaged,
so i think i think yeah i
think we need to explore okay what is the man's body
naturally bring to the table for the family what is
the woman's body naturally bring to the table for the family and
(33:40):
then what does a man and a woman need to do
to fully fully actualize or fully make present
those realities for the household yeah there's
there's a stand-up comedian he's actually a catholic guy and he's talking about
how he's like women are so amazing because they can grow a child in their body
and then pass that child into the world from their body and then feed that child with their body.
(34:07):
He's like, man, when you think about the male contribution to life,
it's kind of embarrassing.
We're DNA donors. Yeah. But I do, to your point on, on sort of a high level,
we talked about women's ability to.
Birth and nurture a child for the first, first few years of life.
(34:28):
And then men being taller, stronger, more able to lift higher percentages of their own weight.
When you step way back and just look at it from that level,
it's like the woman's job is to have the child and to start growing that baby
(34:48):
into a young child and then eventually an adult. old.
The man's role during that time is to essentially provide an area of safety
for that to be able to happen.
Yeah. Yeah. So even matrimony, that's what it means, right? To make a mother,
right? So it enables, it enables the woman to do her job.
(35:11):
I'll unpack that a little bit more. So the word matrimony, when you break it
down into its individual parts.
Matron, right? Yeah. Matron. So you're, you're making a matron,
you're, you're producing a mother so i'm extrapolating
a little bit to broaden it because we're not just
saying like you've impregnated somebody that's not matrimony right
we're saying you've enabled motherhood yeah right and and and everything that
(35:35):
is required for that as a foundation right one of one of which is that you're
you're a fertile man right so you can produce offspring but the the other one
is that you enable all the other things that belong to motherhood which is yes
the woman can feed the child with her body.
She's fed right so the woman
can look after the kids she can she
(35:56):
can kind of focus in on all the kids in front of her if
she knows that the walls of the city have guards
on them and she doesn't have to be worried about what's going on out there right
she can focus on her job if she can trust that everything else is taken care
of right and so motherhood is actually in a way a leisurely activity right because
all the necessary things are supposed no no no you're jim's laughing at me I
(36:20):
mean something very specific.
I was going to say, go tell my wife. Do you not?
Can we call Janet? I don't mean recreational.
I don't mean fun. I mean that it's the sort of work that you can only do when
necessary work is being done on the side.
And this is why so many women today, I think, are afraid to become mothers.
(36:40):
Because men are not trustworthy or because they've got to go get their job.
They've got to have their career. and so being able
to be a mother and especially like a stay-at-home mother is a luxurious thing
in the sense that it requires somebody to be
there to assist you yeah right if you're going to do it well well and
i think that there's the interesting thing is how that has expanded to where
(37:02):
as our communities grow there's this shared responsibility so if you go back
to where it's a single family unit that's out in the wilderness by themselves
you've got the the mother with the baby,
and then you've got the father and maybe older male children that provide that security.
But then we also give the example of sort of the larger community,
(37:26):
like the big castle where you get guards along the walls.
So now you have people that are protectors occupationally that are helping provide
that opportunity for family growth inside of the walls.
And now we're in our society now where you've got responsibility as a husband
and a father to be a provider and protector, but you've also got.
(37:48):
The police department, the fire department, first responders,
your community of friends that are all able to help out.
And, you know, when we say it takes a village, I think we kind of take for granted
that there was a time that villages didn't exist.
And that's where men were particularly important.
Jim, what you got? So, and I think when we're talking about this,
(38:08):
we're talking about it in a very classical sense, right?
I'm always talking in a classical sense. Which is awesome, Right.
So where did it start? But, but the reality is where are we today?
Right. And what we're trying to define for your listeners are,
well, how do you go ahead and teach your sons?
And, you know, how do we develop that, that modern masculinity?
Wait, do you think it's changed?
(38:56):
Butcher? It's not to go hunt down an animal. right and and bring home the food so i think
we've we've outsourced it in those ways and
it's made it much more difficult for young men especially
to understand what their role is because like you
said like we know that it was really easy to define that one unique characteristic
of a woman that that they do like raising a child giving like nurturing creating
(39:20):
life that boom there's There's the one thing that like you think of all the
other ones, like, okay, we say hunting, right?
Pointing out the location of where a branch fell, right?
Those are, those are skills. And I think if you took a man and a woman who had
no experience with that and you trained them both up, eventually the man would,
would exceed on average.
But I think, I think the gaps are narrowed where, where a lot of these women
(39:44):
are able to do some of those things well enough with what society has provided,
like through technology, they can get groceries, they can do all these things.
And so it's reduced the footprint of what, what masculine, what masculinity
means. And I think that's the challenge is what does it fit?
I don't think it's changed, but I think you're right in, in modern society.
(40:04):
We've, we've made it a much smaller window for what, where, where we're allowed to do it.
Well, and it's not only that it's that we've done it to ourselves. Yeah.
Right. So the continued advancement of technology has made it that I don't need
to go out and hunt my, my meal.
Yeah. What I need to do is go out and hunt my paycheck to pay for the meal.
(40:28):
Right. There's a, there's a, I can choose to hunt out in the field, but I don't have to.
Yeah. Right. And we've taken all of those pieces away willingly and we've shifted
it. We've also let economics get into this.
And I think that's the real piece is that many families can't exist on a single income.
(40:53):
Right. Yeah. Right. So we've forced.
To become those lines, to become a little blurred. It's not like somebody woke
up one day and said, you know what?
Everybody needs to go out and work. It was all of a sudden my home,
my mortgage, my car payment, grocery bills, this, that, and the other.
If you want to find the biggest culprit for blurring those lines,
(41:15):
I think the word is inflation.
I thought it was government, but- Well, I'm going to go with inflation there,
but do you know what I'm saying?
That's what's really driven. It's an economic drive. It's not a social drive.
Listen, you know, girls still go to the beach and guys still go to the beach.
And how do you select a mate?
You, you find somebody that is physically attractive to you.
(41:36):
They have a quality that you see physically in them, right?
It's not like we walk up and go, Oh, wow, you are a hideous person with a horrible
personality. Let's connect.
It's, there's something about you. It doesn't, but you, there's always a physical
element that starts with it and then we move on to the next piece because we're
a little more intellectual we're not crow magnets like we were talking about
(41:58):
before and then we move on to the next piece and
but it starts in those classic masculine feminine pieces but we've blurred it
over time one of the things that's interesting there is that i think technology
has actually done a lot to rob the woman of the sort of work that she would
have done as a mother too so it's not like prior to to, I don't know,
(42:19):
you know, 1850 or whenever that women just stayed home and just,
they looked around and they watched their kids all day until their husband came
home. Right. But they were working.
It's just that the work they were doing has actually been taken over by technology too.
So the cooking is more efficient, clothes making, right?
Very, you can go to Walmart and get cheap clothes, right?
(42:40):
So there's the sort of tasks that a woman was doing at home,
which was work and did bring value and wealth to the household has been outsourced
to technology such that you now purchase those things with the man's paycheck,
such that the entire resource value of the household now comes through income, what the paycheck is.
And then that's what pushes women out of the household to then go get a paycheck.
(43:03):
And what was interesting about quote unquote women's work back in the day is
it was the sort of work that enabled you to, at one and the same time,
watch the kids, educate the kids and produce something valuable for the household, right?
You can be knitting and you can be watching children in the field, right?
Or you can, you can be grinding at the millstone, right?
(43:25):
And you can be watching the children in the field. Like there's a,
there's a multitasking that was always, always belonged to the woman to do.
And the sort of work that was left for her to do in the household was the sort
of work that was in an agreement with raising children at the same time.
And we traded, we traded, I think we, we traded control over our lives in that
way for convenience, right?
(43:47):
There's a lot of, there's a lot of, I mean, there's some technology that.
That it would be difficult to ever move away from. I think of like concepts
of like just sanitation and like refrigeration,
things that allow us to get greater value out of things that we consume because
we can make sure that they're safe to eat, right?
(44:07):
Like leaving meat out on the counter is not a good long-term plan versus a refrigerator.
Refrigerator so there's things
like that but we've traded that and like you said like once it became,
kind of idle hands like if if it's more
efficient and it's cost effective to go buy the clothes versus like getting
fabric and and making clothes then why would you not do that and then now i've
(44:31):
got all this extra time on my hands what are they supposed to do and more where
you still have to buy as cheap as they are you still got to buy them with something
and that's going to further draw on the man's income.
Right. And now the woman has extra time. And so she's going to feel this push
to go contribute to the income generation, the council, but she can't do that. Usually.
I mean, there's ways, but it's harder to do that in a way that also includes
(44:52):
watching the kids, right. And helping them grow.
Well, and then we've created institutions to help watch this.
Yeah. We've exported that too.
Right. Yeah. But the, I want to go back to the cooking, the cooking piece,
you brushed on it real quick, the meat on the counter, right. Right.
Prior to refrigeration. Mm-hmm. What did that, the, the matron of the home do?
(45:13):
Smoke or salt meat. Smoke or salt meat.
Or if they lived in a city, they went down to the corner market,
they got that day's food, and then they went back home and prepared whatever
needed preparing. Yeah, sure. Right.
Now it's, I'm going to go to the grocery store once a week or once every two
weeks or whatever that number is.
Mm-hmm. Go ahead and stick it in my refrigerator, freezer.
(45:37):
You know, whatever it can do, all the chemicals that can be put into it so it
can sit on a shelf for the next 18 years, whatever it might be, and that job is done.
So we've taken the convenience, this job is put away.
What else can we do from technology? Put that job away. And it happens to men too.
I mean, we used to be out there all day mowing the lawn because we had these
(45:58):
little blades that would spin around as we walked, right?
Now you can hop on your zero turn, have two acres done in five hours and call it a day. Yeah.
Right. And, and have a, have a drink. Why are you doing it? Exactly.
Like we, we keep trading. There is a consequence for technology and advancement every single time.
We just need to decide if it's the price worth paying.
(46:20):
Now me being lazy. Yes. I like my lawnmower, right?
I don't want to be out there pushing my lawn every day. I got a rider because I got tired of pushing.
Yeah. What, but what did that cost me? Well, that cost me the physical benefits.
What do I get for pushing my lawnmower for four hours?
I go to a gym. Oh, well, I can make it up somewhere else.
(46:43):
We're constantly trading off. And I think if we continue to try to a thousand
years ago, a hundred years ago, or even 70 years ago, we could pigeonhole and
say, this is someone's job and this is someone else's job.
But the way the technology has brought us to this point, we can't pigeonhole anymore.
And going back to the masculine feminine, the women can have that,
(47:08):
gestate that child, carry that child, birth that child, feed that child.
She can also become physically stronger, a better archer, and all of those pieces
too, and become a protector and not a defender.
A man cannot not gestate a child.
We have, we are singularly, we have one real job, right?
(47:31):
So what is, what do we then end up doing with that power when we have no place to put it?
And we try to take that power and overpower someone else, which is your toxic masculinity.
Where do we, where do we take the the unused piece of our personality and enforce,
(47:52):
our will on somebody else.
And that, and not for the good. And that's where I think that toxic masculinity.
(48:19):
Music.
Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me on The Forging of Men.
Welcome back. And we're going to have a really interesting conversation today.
And it's one that I feel like started, it was actually a couple of weeks ago
at Men's Group that we went down a bit of a rabbit hole.
And we had some good answers, but I don't know that we got the answers.
(01:18):
And so we're here today to kind of give you a recap, talk with you about what
we talked about together as a group, and then also to flesh it out a little further,
because I think that there are some questions that need answering,
especially for those of us as fathers who are trying to raise our men in today's culture.
So before we hop into it, do a quick around the table of introductions.
(01:42):
We've got my friend Jim, who is
returning. He's been with us on a couple episodes in the podcast before.
And we've also got Joe and we've got Jonathan.
Both of them are new to the podcast. And so I guess that, and of course, I'm Josh.
So I guess that makes us the J crew for this episode, the dream team of Forging of Men, the J crew.
(02:04):
So Jim, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, very simply, I'm a father of two boys. And I think in our men's group,
I have mainly the two oldest.
I've got a 22-year-old college graduate, and I've got a 19-year-old college
rising sophomore. more.
Awesome. Joe, how about yourself? Yeah, I have no kids, but I've been working with kids since I was 18.
(02:28):
So I worked in youth ministry for a number of years. Then I went to graduate
school and now I am the assistant headmaster at Chesterton Academy of the Incarnation.
So I don't have the practicals here to bring, but I got a lot of books. I read a lot of books.
I didn't realize that you were the assistant headmaster now.
Yeah, it's kind of new. Congratulations.
Congratulations. That's very cool. Jonathan, how about yourself?
(02:49):
Jonathan, I have eight kids. I'll just get that out there now.
Six boys, two girls soon that I don't know that that makes me more qualified
or less qualified, but yeah.
It certainly makes you the most experienced.
I don't think anybody. And what is your mix of boys and girls again?
I got six boys and two girls.
So my oldest is a girl and then four boys and girl and then two boys.
(03:14):
Yeah. That's the order. Yeah. So youngest is, youngest is a year as of next
week and the oldest will be 17 in August. So.
I'm curious, your, your youngest, when was the first time that you saw him do
something that you're like, oh yeah, there's, there's a little masculinity popping through.
It's pretty much the second he started moving, right? Like he's smashing things.
(03:36):
He's, he gets excited. He kicks things. Now he climbs. So we bought him for his birthday gift.
We got him this little like wooden structure that's made for climbing and he
will go all out, climb to the top. And he has no plan on how to get down.
So he'll get up there and he just screams out for someone to grab him.
And if you don't get them, then he just let's go. See what happens.
(03:58):
Like a house cat. Yeah. Stuck in the, stuck in a tree. Yeah.
So, and he'll do that. So you just sit next to him now and he climbs up it and
then you put him back down on the ground and he climbs up and that's the game.
That's awesome. I love it. Well, today's discussion started and I mentioned it earlier.
You were on mission trip. Has it been a month ago now?
(04:19):
Three weeks ago. About three weeks. Three weeks ago. Yeah.
And there was breakout sessions that they did on a regular basis for the students
and the adults that were there. And one of those breakout sessions had a name
that piqued your interest and you went there to check on that.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about that experience for context for this conversation? Yeah.
So they announced the breakouts and they had a few different interesting ones,
(04:43):
but the one that caught my attention was one of the priests was going to give
a discussion on toxic masculinity and emasculation.
And so I looked over at Matt and I was like, we've got to go to this one because
what if they say something that's wrong?
And Matt starts laughing. He's like, I wanted to go just to talk.
(05:03):
To listen you're expecting them to say something wrong and
it's like i don't know but it's anytime you start with toxic masculinity it
feels like that's a that's an opportunity to just paint with really what wide
brush strokes and and you can kind of miss the point so we had to check into
it so we rushed over there and it was father matthew i don't remember what parish he's from.
(05:26):
And he he started the conversation explaining
his perspective what the difference between
the two you were and so being a
priest he's got a he's he's well versed in
the bible so he he pulls it right up to jesus and he
said toxic masculinity was the
roman soldiers when when jesus was being
(05:48):
crucified because they just wielded their
power but not for you know not not in
any controlled manner it was just they can do what they want
so they did what they wanted and then he said an emasculation was the
two people who were were crucified next to
jesus because their their life was taken from them right
they they were their opportunity to live
(06:09):
as men to do what they what god intended them to do
was removed by force so they were emasculated and
his example of authentic masculinity was
jesus he gave up his life no one took it from
him it was his sacrifice so he started with that and i figured okay then we're
probably good here he's not gonna he's not gonna say anything too too far off
(06:33):
but the interesting part was he was expecting mostly young men to be there.
And it was about a 50 50 mix there were a lot of young women there oh interesting
and their reason for being there is they wanted to understand masculinity because
they wanted to know how to
see it how to recognize authentic masculinity and
(06:53):
how to support the young men in their lives and
their future husbands in being authentic with
their masculinity so it's an interesting thing and we started that conversation
i think we were supposed to do the wrap-up on the virtues and instead that came
up in conversation and what three hours later we were yeah a little bit better
(07:14):
off on that uh but yeah like you said we didn't have a we didn't have a good
answer and i think To even start that conversation,
we probably need to settle in on what we would define as masculinity or what is masculine.
First, can we state the question that we're trying to answer? Yeah.
What's ultimately the question, John?
(07:34):
Yeah, so I think that one of the problems that we run into is we talk about toxic masculinity,
we talk about authentic masculinity, but then we have to say,
okay, well, what is masculinity?
What are the masculine traits that are exhibited?
And then in doing so, those are traits that have to be...
(07:59):
Unique to us as men in a
lot of ways and and not necessarily even that the the
core trait like i think there are some things that men
and women share from a positive trait
aspect and even a negative trait aspect to some degree but they just exhibit
themselves differently to the different genders of which there are two so i
(08:23):
think that there's there's a lot to be done there but but
I also want to make sure that we allow the path to kind of God,
because it took us to get to that, to get to that particular series of questions.
We had probably two hours of unpacking specific examples.
Jim, I think just brought up a really good point here by handing me his phone
(08:46):
and the dictionary definition of masculinity.
I do remember talking about this qualities or attributes
regarded as characteristics of men
or boys which nobody
uses dictionaries anymore when you get yeah is that
a book or something i feel like somewhere i think it
you put it under your monitor to make it the right height so it doesn't strain
(09:09):
your neck yeah and then the interestingly the the attributes that they give
here is examples are handsome muscled driven and then he's a prime example of masculinity,
I guess is the sentence that they used there is a, is an example,
(09:30):
which I don't know is, is helpful really at all.
And I don't know if that's indicative of culture struggling with how to identify
masculinity. I don't, I don't know.
So yeah, that's, that's what I'm gunning for here is that if,
if the whole point of the podcast is to help, to help fathers mothers of sons
be able to dial in on how to help their sons become the next great generation of men.
(09:58):
We have to really figure out, all right, what does masculinity look like?
What is culture telling us it is? And how do we navigate that in a way that's
going to be productive for us?
Right. So if you're trying to build a house, you have to know what a house is
and what it looks like first, right?
So if you're trying to build men, we have to figure out what that is.
That's the question? Yeah. All right.
(10:18):
What I was thinking was this word, masculinity, is a derivative word.
It's got the I-T-Y ending on it, right? I think we should start with the masculine
and we should start by thinking about where does that word come from?
Words, we use them to name things in reality, right? So there's something in
reality that we first encountered and we had a name for it and it's the masculine.
(10:40):
And then that word I think is then transposed into other things like in language,
we talk about masculine and feminine words, but we're not talking about manly
words and girly words, right? That's not what we mean.
We mean something else. And so coming back to the root of where this word comes
from, I think it's the body.
I think when you look back at the way they use the word masculine in old texts,
(11:04):
they're talking about the masculine form, the feminine form, right?
So I think starting with that distinction is going to be helpful.
And then we can, I think, explore like, okay, what is attitude?
To when we're talking about the qualities which perfect the masculine form or
the feminine form right we i think we start though with all right what's the
(11:27):
masculine form what's the most simple sort of expression of a man it's going
to be the grown man in his body.
So what does that express yeah and i think a good way to look at it is just sort of,
basic differences between men and women and which attributes are distinctly
masculine and so i just just from a basic biological difference,
(11:50):
men on average, and not to say that there's outliers, but men on average are taller, stronger,
able to lift greater percentages of their own body weight.
And those, I think, are the three large things. I do think that there are some
(12:12):
finer points that that we could discuss as well that played significance historically,
but also may play out a little bit in different ways today.
I think a great example is.
Aural location precision, and aural there is A-U-R-A-L. I believe it's A-U-R-A-L.
(12:33):
But essentially, what that means is how precisely can you locate the source
of a noise upon hearing it but not being able to see it?
The example I give is if my wife and I are walking through the woods and a branch
falls from a tree or a branch snaps on the ground or there's some distinct sharp
(12:57):
noise that reverberates through the woods,
my wife will be able to tell you to within 8 to 10 degrees of where the source of that sound came from.
But she's not going to be able to give you a sense of like distance in any rough
guesstimate other than to be able to say near or far, which is like Sesame Street
(13:18):
distance, right? Just near.
However myself as a man and this is true for most men if we hear something in
the woods it's that sharp precise sound we will be able to give you a trajectory
on that within two to three degrees,
(13:39):
and also be able to give you a relatively accurate distance on the source of
that sound so not to say a near or far,
but to be able to say closer than a hundred yards, 100 to 200 yards in excess
of 200 yards, like data that's usable on being able to either,
(14:01):
circumvent the source of that sound or to be able to close in on it in such
a way as to approach it for whatever purposes without being detected perhaps.
So I think there's some, some finer points like that.
On the physical side of what men are good at.
I think it would also be good to talk a little bit, maybe things that women
(14:24):
are better at naturally.
And I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts as well on both sides of the fence with that.
I want to just justify that move. I think that's important because we wouldn't
have a word for masculine unless there was a counterpart in the feminine, right?
You just wouldn't name it. If the human body was just the masculine body,
you would just call it that, right? Right.
But we introduce words because there's some distinction.
(14:46):
So there's the masculine form, there's the feminine form.
And so if we're going to be naming something distinctly, there's got to be a
difference that we're, that we're identifying.
So we need to understand, I think the masculine alongside the feminine as co-relatives.
Yeah. I think we've used the phrase on this podcast before, and I know this
is super loaded because of American history, but separate, but equal.
(15:07):
And the caveat that I would put that would would be separate in attribute, but equal in dignity.
And I feel like that we've been so focused on trying to make men and women equal
in dignity that we have forgotten that we are separate in attribute and that
we all have strengths and weaknesses that we can bring to bear that are significant.
Well, I think the language is a big part of it, right?
(15:29):
We have all these words for a reason, right? And there's different words and
they have similar meanings, but it doesn't mean the exact same thing.
I think at the tail end of our discussion during the men's group.
I think it was Taylor brought up the difference between what like protect and defend, right?
Like he was talking about how if someone were to break into his house,
(15:53):
like if he had an invader, his wife would go to the kids and huddle up in the
room with them and she'd be ready to attack if someone came in.
Whereas he'd sweep the house, right? He'd get
the gun and he he'd pursue the threat right
and that's his that's that's i thought that was a good way to look at kind of
(16:13):
the differences because we do have you know provider protector right i provide
my wife nurtures and i give them food and say eat this.
My wife tries to explain why it's important. You got to eat this before you
can have dessert. This is good for you, all that. And I was like, no, just eat.
Are we both giving them what they need?
(16:35):
Yes. But we have different approaches, just like Taylor said.
His approach to protecting his family is very different than what his wife would
do in terms of defending.
His is a proactive approach. Hers is, she's with the kids.
So if the threat passes by, everything else can get destroyed.
If they don't come into that room, she's between her and her children where
(16:58):
she feels like she needs to be.
He's going to go out and attack. He's going to, he's going to neutralize that
threat before it even gets to that point. He's not going to huddle up and wait.
Well, I think the, the interesting thing though, there is if you take Taylor
out of the equation, right? So take the masculine out of the equation.
Does she go from defend to protect?
(17:20):
Oh, so are, do women have to essentially take on the attributes of masculinity
in the absence of masculinity?
Entity well that's exactly it so if you you know
i'm a big lord of the rings geek right so when
there's a whole sequence where i've arwen
or somebody like that she's now flailing about with a sword not flailing about
(17:43):
but showing skill with a sword in the middle of a castle before they even have
to enter battle and her thing was when she was complimented on it was Because
the men are not at the camp and they need to defend themselves.
Right. So my, my thought is while as masculine, we may be denser muscle,
(18:04):
which is what makes us stronger.
Or technically larger, although I'm sitting here and not particularly large, right?
But do they take over those attributes in that absence?
How capable are they to take that over?
And then how capable are we to be able to shift that dynamic in the opposite direction, right?
(18:26):
Because there are plenty of great dads, nurturing dads, dads that find a way
to speak to their kids about the whys behind what you should eat,
why, and so on and so forth, right?
I don't know that, I think we end up flipping those dynamics given the,
whatever the environment requires.
(18:46):
So I've got an observation I've not thought about in years, but
I think it might be pertinent to this conversation is I used to be an archery
instructor for students and had tons of students go through the program because
we launched this program called Center Shot at a church at the same time that
the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out in theaters,
(19:08):
and the Hunger Games movies were coming out in theaters and kids
came out in droves to learn and how to shoot a
bow the people that
picked up on archery the quickest and who
were who became proficient at it with the least amount of effort were girls
that either had a cheerleading or a dance background because they had the ability
(19:34):
to be aware of the small things that their bodies these were doing so that,
you know, if I had a guy that shot well and they put one in the bullseye and
be like, that was the perfect shot.
What did you do differently? I don't know.
Like, I'm just like the gross motor skills was there.
If a girl shot well and it hit the bullseye, I was like, that was a great shot.
(19:57):
What did you do differently that time? She's like, I kept my elbow higher.
So they have better reflection skills.
Oh, okay. The ability to reflect, which goes to that emotional aspect, right?
I mean, listen, you know, we're classified as non-thinkers sometimes,
maybe not as in touch with our emotions.
(20:18):
And women are classically more in
touch with theirs is that their ability to reflect on
what happened what they've done and then
what the future holds and how it'll impact it whereas we're
a bit more present yeah i think the flip
side of that could also be oh metaphorically this
there's a lot with this is that as men we are so focused
(20:41):
on the target on the
bullseye that we forget to pay attention to
exactly what we are doing in a precise way
it sounded like from your example you're
talking about girls who were trained precisely to pay
attention to these things right so we're not necessarily talking about a natural
disposition that they had but they had some sort of training and well and they
(21:03):
they the ones that had a a dance and a cheerleading background accelerated the
fastest but if i took if i took a girl and a guy and i put them on the the line
who had zero archery experience,
I could get the girl to hit bullseyes probably twice as fast as the guy.
And I'm, I'm, I can't tell, I can't tell you where that comes from.
(21:24):
I don't know if it's that guys felt like that they couldn't come as empty vessels to learn.
And so they were likely to just do it their own way instead of absorbing the
knowledge to be able to do it.
Or if there was some physical aspect to it,
but I just think give, give them the conversation at hand to have this
example where i had hundreds of
students come through the program a vast majority which
(21:47):
had zero archery experience and more
often than not right out of the gates the girls
outshot the guys when i think it's part of it is is just
you look back to the basic nature of of like man
and woman so like women when when
the man was off hunting right in in you
(22:07):
know back at hunter-gatherer times she'd have
to keep track of the kids and keep an eye out for
predators so just by their nature and you know
what their their obligations are in
in you know that whole relationship they have
to be able to multitask and take in more and we
have much more singular focus i think of watch watch
(22:29):
college or professional level football what are they those guys are out there
and it's just off instinct that they're acting and then someone pulls them to
the sideline after they're done playing and they're like watch this video of
you making this play right and and going back to archery when when i was helping
out with archery at chesterton,
two years ago i didn't do it last year.
(22:50):
The girls would know, Addie would know, like, I'm doing this or I'm doing that.
And she knew her consistency. She didn't draw as far back.
She took something off of it to control her arms so her arms wouldn't get fatigued.
And I'd watch the boys, they would draw it all the way back and then they would
try to get their shot, right? It was first draw, then it was aiming your shot.
(23:10):
And by the time they got their shot, their arm is like wobbling, right?
And so I would go over to them and be like, okay, you're dropping your elbow,
line up your shot, then draw back.
Don't do a full draw on the name because now you've got to hold that draw the whole time.
And it was things like you'd say it to them and they'd be thinking about it
and you'd realize it would click.
But the thought never crossed their mind to change the way they were doing things in that moment.
(23:34):
Someone had to come and correct it for them. And it was that singular focus.
They were locked in on hitting that target. There was concern about,
I don't want my arrow to fall short. I don't want to hit the ground.
I don't want it to look weak. I would rather blow past the target and miss completely,
but it has some force on it.
So I think the understanding there, the ladies there were definitely taking
(23:59):
some off of it to be precise and consistent with their motions.
And the guy, they would hit him and you'd watch it.
It was like one of the kids hit a bullseye and then he hits another bullseye
and he looks over to like, because he's all excited.
He broke his focus and then he missed the target on his third one.
And it was like what was different between the three shots he's
like i don't know it was like you moved your feet you you'd gone
(24:21):
off your mark you had lined up everything you had the
motions he had no idea why one was different than
the other he just he he split off
from that that consistent behavior but he didn't understand that that was the
problem he didn't know his feet were in the right spot before his form was correct
yeah i sort of thinking back on prior discussion we were talking about the the
(24:44):
ability to locate sounds easily i think that men.
Maybe are able to identify things that need correction externally with more ease.
And perhaps women are able to identify things that need correction internally with more ease.
(25:04):
What do you mean? So I think about the amount of correction that I have to provide
my wife, which is minimal.
And often the the correction that i
provide her most often is
make sure that you
are making time to take care of yourself as well so is that that's an external
(25:26):
correction yeah so that would be an external correction to her is like hey make
sure that you're making time for yourself there there's so much awareness of
her own like hey here's things that i need to work on whereas i feel like Like as men,
we provide a lot more sort of outward focus on providing correction towards
others or things that could be better in our work or things that could be better
(25:49):
in our spouses or our children versus having time to reflect and look internally
and be like, all right, what could I do better about myself?
So we're better world critics and they're better self critics.
Is that what you're saying?
I think that might be a good way of, and I don't, I don't know that I've gotten
any data or science to, to back that up. That's just thinking about what we've
(26:10):
just talked about and sort of observation on what that would look like.
So when I got married, my father-in-law gave me the best advice.
He sat me down. He said, we're going to be part of the family now.
You're going to be part of the family.
He said, you need to know what the men in this family do.
He said, we worry about the big picture. What are we going to do with world
politics, local politics?
(26:33):
What's our stance going to be on larger issues?
He said things like where you're going to live, how you're going to make a living,
who's going to eat what for dinner.
That's your wife. Then he laughed and said, don't worry, she'll get involved
in the others too. Right.
But it was, but it really is good advice. Right. We tend that to have that bigger focus.
(26:57):
Right. So when I'm doing training for sales, there's a thing called Genusian thinking.
Right. And it's nothing special. It's just a great name for it.
But the Roman God Janus was the God of doors and it was looking forward and backward.
And what I train my techs to do is when they have a sales call,
as soon as they leave, to sit down and meditate on the moment,
(27:19):
that entire sales call, walk through it front to back, turn the volume on and off, reflect,
keep reflecting through it until you can see what worked, like an archery,
and what didn't work, right?
So that way you could go ahead and correct yourself into the next one or accentuate what was positive.
But I had to be trained on that. And the trainer that taught me that was a really great female trainer.
(27:45):
That's, that's the kind of thing that we don't do.
Men just don't do naturally. We don't sit down and go, wow, that conversation
didn't go well. What did I say?
Where did that go wrong? We just go, wow, that conversation didn't go well. Off to the next.
I think we lean on our instincts a lot more until they don't work.
(28:07):
Right. And then you have to have that moment of reflection.
I've done it a certain way, and it's worked this way until it doesn't work.
And when it doesn't work, then I have to figure out, was it a fluke?
Do I go about it the same way again?
Or do I reassess and adjust my process?
It's not something that we do.
(28:30):
We don't do that every time because, again, for me, it's wasted motions.
Why am I going to do something? why am i going to analyze this process that
worked if it worked the only reason i need to analyze it is if it took two hours
and i didn't have two hours to get it done and now i got to be faster right
so how do i fix that but otherwise i'll just do it that way and and like you
(28:50):
know helping with with like household stuff like folding clothes or whatever
and i'll be folding helping my wife and then.
I'll look over and she's done three times as much. And then,
you know, at some point I'm looking at her and she goes, well, do it this way.
Like you're folding this slowly, right? If you do this way, it's faster.
I don't think about it because the clothes get folded.
So why would I do it this other way? Well, she's got a hundred other things
(29:13):
on her list. So she's figuring out the process because she needs it. Right.
And I didn't. So it was one of those, like you, I think that's part of it. Right.
But circling back to the initial, like trying to differentiate between masculine and feminine.
I think we were having the same struggle now that we had during men's group,
which is we can come up with a lot of examples,
(29:36):
but trying to put like any kind of definitive, like definition around this is
masculine, this is feminine is the challenge, right?
We can, we can give all the examples. I'm thinking about your example with the
folding laundry and I'm thinking, well, I mean, if I, if I have a job,
I do try to actually maximize my efficiency, right?
It's just, if this is something that I spent a lot of time doing,
(29:57):
I'm going to find the best way to do it.
I don't think men, I don't think this is distinctively masculine or feminine at all.
I think the possession of an art, even if it's the art of folding laundry,
it's just, you're going to acquire it if you do it over and over and over again, right?
So yeah, I do think we need to go back to where do these ideas originally come from, right?
And I think I want to at least be
(30:19):
careful about importing too many assumptions about hunter-gatherer
society or what that was like right because none of us are hunter-gatherers
so I want to just I I think that the place to start is where we started with
body you mentioned the masculine body is taller it's stronger it's more mobile
right the feminine body is I think I.
(30:41):
You could just define all that negatively, but I don't think that's right,
right? I think what the feminine body provides is the capacity to nurture children.
I think that's one of the most distinctive things. So the feminine body can
conceive, gestate, and nurture a child, right? That's what the body can do.
And then what the actual human person living in that body can do with that body
is then on top of that and added to it.
(31:03):
And I think that's what femininity is, is what the woman can add to the natural
capacities of her body. how she can kind of direct the capacities of her body
for the sake of her children or her family or whatever.
So I think that starting with the fact that a woman's body can conceive,
gestate, and nurture a child, right? And we build out of that.
So we want to ask questions if we're trying to find like, okay,
(31:26):
what is the perfection of woman that we call femininity?
What is the perfection of a man that we call masculinity?
We start with what are the natural powers that
that body has how are those natural powers related
to the family and then what is
necessary for the man to what
sort of qualities is necessary for the man to acquire in order
(31:47):
to fully actualize the powers that his body has and what are the natural qualities
or what are the qualities that the woman needs to acquire in order to fully
actualize the powers that her body has so i I think the example I gave a men's
group was when a woman breastfeeds a child,
there is this sense of comfort that the child is just going to have naturally
(32:13):
and even materially and mechanically, right?
So that the child is really comfortable when it's being nurtured by its mother.
And so the child is going to naturally look to the mother for nourishment and for comfort, right?
That is its originative source for these things. and
so if a woman developed
the quality of being let's say I mean
(32:35):
obvious ones would be like really bitter really angry right such that when the
child came running inside with an injury and the mom did not provide the the
comfort that the child came for that would really harm the child's development
element, it would lead to a really confused child,
like it would not know where to go to get that sort of comfort anymore, right?
(33:00):
So it just the natural and even for a long time in history, the necessary way
of giving natural nourishment and comfort to a child.
Would have been breastfeeding the child and then if the child is then trained
to seek those things from mom and then mom does not have the qualities to actually
(33:20):
provide those things once the child is three or four or five or 18 i think that
the child ends up kind of lost right and damaged,
so i think i think yeah i
think we need to explore okay what is the man's body
naturally bring to the table for the family what is
the woman's body naturally bring to the table for the family and
(33:40):
then what does a man and a woman need to do
to fully fully actualize or fully make present
those realities for the household yeah there's
there's a stand-up comedian he's actually a catholic guy and he's talking about
how he's like women are so amazing because they can grow a child in their body
and then pass that child into the world from their body and then feed that child with their body.
(34:07):
He's like, man, when you think about the male contribution to life,
it's kind of embarrassing.
We're DNA donors. Yeah. But I do, to your point on, on sort of a high level,
we talked about women's ability to.
Birth and nurture a child for the first, first few years of life.
(34:28):
And then men being taller, stronger, more able to lift higher percentages of their own weight.
When you step way back and just look at it from that level,
it's like the woman's job is to have the child and to start growing that baby
(34:48):
into a young child and then eventually an adult. old.
The man's role during that time is to essentially provide an area of safety
for that to be able to happen.
Yeah. Yeah. So even matrimony, that's what it means, right? To make a mother,
right? So it enables, it enables the woman to do her job.
(35:11):
I'll unpack that a little bit more. So the word matrimony, when you break it
down into its individual parts.
Matron, right? Yeah. Matron. So you're, you're making a matron,
you're, you're producing a mother so i'm extrapolating
a little bit to broaden it because we're not just
saying like you've impregnated somebody that's not matrimony right
we're saying you've enabled motherhood yeah right and and and everything that
(35:35):
is required for that as a foundation right one of one of which is that you're
you're a fertile man right so you can produce offspring but the the other one
is that you enable all the other things that belong to motherhood which is yes
the woman can feed the child with her body.
She's fed right so the woman
can look after the kids she can she
(35:56):
can kind of focus in on all the kids in front of her if
she knows that the walls of the city have guards
on them and she doesn't have to be worried about what's going on out there right
she can focus on her job if she can trust that everything else is taken care
of right and so motherhood is actually in a way a leisurely activity right because
all the necessary things are supposed no no no you're jim's laughing at me I
(36:20):
mean something very specific.
I was going to say, go tell my wife. Do you not?
Can we call Janet? I don't mean recreational.
I don't mean fun. I mean that it's the sort of work that you can only do when
necessary work is being done on the side.
And this is why so many women today, I think, are afraid to become mothers.
(36:40):
Because men are not trustworthy or because they've got to go get their job.
They've got to have their career. and so being able
to be a mother and especially like a stay-at-home mother is a luxurious thing
in the sense that it requires somebody to be
there to assist you yeah right if you're going to do it well well and
i think that there's the interesting thing is how that has expanded to where
(37:02):
as our communities grow there's this shared responsibility so if you go back
to where it's a single family unit that's out in the wilderness by themselves
you've got the the mother with the baby,
and then you've got the father and maybe older male children that provide that security.
But then we also give the example of sort of the larger community,
(37:26):
like the big castle where you get guards along the walls.
So now you have people that are protectors occupationally that are helping provide
that opportunity for family growth inside of the walls.
And now we're in our society now where you've got responsibility as a husband
and a father to be a provider and protector, but you've also got.
(37:48):
The police department, the fire department, first responders,
your community of friends that are all able to help out.
And, you know, when we say it takes a village, I think we kind of take for granted
that there was a time that villages didn't exist.
And that's where men were particularly important.
Jim, what you got? So, and I think when we're talking about this,
(38:08):
we're talking about it in a very classical sense, right?
I'm always talking in a classical sense. Which is awesome, Right.
So where did it start? But, but the reality is where are we today?
Right. And what we're trying to define for your listeners are,
well, how do you go ahead and teach your sons?
And, you know, how do we develop that, that modern masculinity?
Wait, do you think it's changed?
(38:56):
Butcher? It's not to go hunt down an animal. right and and bring home the food so i think
we've we've outsourced it in those ways and
it's made it much more difficult for young men especially
to understand what their role is because like you
said like we know that it was really easy to define that one unique characteristic
of a woman that that they do like raising a child giving like nurturing creating
(39:20):
life that boom there's There's the one thing that like you think of all the
other ones, like, okay, we say hunting, right?
Pointing out the location of where a branch fell, right?
Those are, those are skills. And I think if you took a man and a woman who had
no experience with that and you trained them both up, eventually the man would,
would exceed on average.
But I think, I think the gaps are narrowed where, where a lot of these women
(39:44):
are able to do some of those things well enough with what society has provided,
like through technology, they can get groceries, they can do all these things.
And so it's reduced the footprint of what, what masculine, what masculinity
means. And I think that's the challenge is what does it fit?
I don't think it's changed, but I think you're right in, in modern society.
(40:04):
We've, we've made it a much smaller window for what, where, where we're allowed to do it.
Well, and it's not only that it's that we've done it to ourselves. Yeah.
Right. So the continued advancement of technology has made it that I don't need
to go out and hunt my, my meal.
Yeah. What I need to do is go out and hunt my paycheck to pay for the meal.
(40:28):
Right. There's a, there's a, I can choose to hunt out in the field, but I don't have to.
Yeah. Right. And we've taken all of those pieces away willingly and we've shifted
it. We've also let economics get into this.
And I think that's the real piece is that many families can't exist on a single income.
(40:53):
Right. Yeah. Right. So we've forced.
To become those lines, to become a little blurred. It's not like somebody woke
up one day and said, you know what?
Everybody needs to go out and work. It was all of a sudden my home,
my mortgage, my car payment, grocery bills, this, that, and the other.
If you want to find the biggest culprit for blurring those lines,
(41:15):
I think the word is inflation.
I thought it was government, but- Well, I'm going to go with inflation there,
but do you know what I'm saying?
That's what's really driven. It's an economic drive. It's not a social drive.
Listen, you know, girls still go to the beach and guys still go to the beach.
And how do you select a mate?
You, you find somebody that is physically attractive to you.
(41:36):
They have a quality that you see physically in them, right?
It's not like we walk up and go, Oh, wow, you are a hideous person with a horrible
personality. Let's connect.
It's, there's something about you. It doesn't, but you, there's always a physical
element that starts with it and then we move on to the next piece because we're
a little more intellectual we're not crow magnets like we were talking about
(41:58):
before and then we move on to the next piece and
but it starts in those classic masculine feminine pieces but we've blurred it
over time one of the things that's interesting there is that i think technology
has actually done a lot to rob the woman of the sort of work that she would
have done as a mother too so it's not like prior to to, I don't know,
(42:19):
you know, 1850 or whenever that women just stayed home and just,
they looked around and they watched their kids all day until their husband came
home. Right. But they were working.
It's just that the work they were doing has actually been taken over by technology too.
So the cooking is more efficient, clothes making, right?
Very, you can go to Walmart and get cheap clothes, right?
(42:40):
So there's the sort of tasks that a woman was doing at home,
which was work and did bring value and wealth to the household has been outsourced
to technology such that you now purchase those things with the man's paycheck,
such that the entire resource value of the household now comes through income, what the paycheck is.
And then that's what pushes women out of the household to then go get a paycheck.
(43:03):
And what was interesting about quote unquote women's work back in the day is
it was the sort of work that enabled you to, at one and the same time,
watch the kids, educate the kids and produce something valuable for the household, right?
You can be knitting and you can be watching children in the field, right?
Or you can, you can be grinding at the millstone, right?
(43:25):
And you can be watching the children in the field. Like there's a,
there's a multitasking that was always, always belonged to the woman to do.
And the sort of work that was left for her to do in the household was the sort
of work that was in an agreement with raising children at the same time.
And we traded, we traded, I think we, we traded control over our lives in that
way for convenience, right?
(43:47):
There's a lot of, there's a lot of, I mean, there's some technology that.
That it would be difficult to ever move away from. I think of like concepts
of like just sanitation and like refrigeration,
things that allow us to get greater value out of things that we consume because
we can make sure that they're safe to eat, right?
(44:07):
Like leaving meat out on the counter is not a good long-term plan versus a refrigerator.
Refrigerator so there's things
like that but we've traded that and like you said like once it became,
kind of idle hands like if if it's more
efficient and it's cost effective to go buy the clothes versus like getting
fabric and and making clothes then why would you not do that and then now i've
(44:31):
got all this extra time on my hands what are they supposed to do and more where
you still have to buy as cheap as they are you still got to buy them with something
and that's going to further draw on the man's income.
Right. And now the woman has extra time. And so she's going to feel this push
to go contribute to the income generation, the council, but she can't do that. Usually.
I mean, there's ways, but it's harder to do that in a way that also includes
(44:52):
watching the kids, right. And helping them grow.
Well, and then we've created institutions to help watch this.
Yeah. We've exported that too.
Right. Yeah. But the, I want to go back to the cooking, the cooking piece,
you brushed on it real quick, the meat on the counter, right. Right.
Prior to refrigeration. Mm-hmm. What did that, the, the matron of the home do?
(45:13):
Smoke or salt meat. Smoke or salt meat.
Or if they lived in a city, they went down to the corner market,
they got that day's food, and then they went back home and prepared whatever
needed preparing. Yeah, sure. Right.
Now it's, I'm going to go to the grocery store once a week or once every two
weeks or whatever that number is.
Mm-hmm. Go ahead and stick it in my refrigerator, freezer.
(45:37):
You know, whatever it can do, all the chemicals that can be put into it so it
can sit on a shelf for the next 18 years, whatever it might be, and that job is done.
So we've taken the convenience, this job is put away.
What else can we do from technology? Put that job away. And it happens to men too.
I mean, we used to be out there all day mowing the lawn because we had these
(45:58):
little blades that would spin around as we walked, right?
Now you can hop on your zero turn, have two acres done in five hours and call it a day. Yeah.
Right. And, and have a, have a drink. Why are you doing it? Exactly.
Like we, we keep trading. There is a consequence for technology and advancement every single time.
We just need to decide if it's the price worth paying.
(46:20):
Now me being lazy. Yes. I like my lawnmower, right?
I don't want to be out there pushing my lawn every day. I got a rider because I got tired of pushing.
Yeah. What, but what did that cost me? Well, that cost me the physical benefits.
What do I get for pushing my lawnmower for four hours?
I go to a gym. Oh, well, I can make it up somewhere else.
(46:43):
We're constantly trading off. And I think if we continue to try to a thousand
years ago, a hundred years ago, or even 70 years ago, we could pigeonhole and
say, this is someone's job and this is someone else's job.
But the way the technology has brought us to this point, we can't pigeonhole anymore.
And going back to the masculine feminine, the women can have that,
(47:08):
gestate that child, carry that child, birth that child, feed that child.
She can also become physically stronger, a better archer, and all of those pieces
too, and become a protector and not a defender.
A man cannot not gestate a child.
We have, we are singularly, we have one real job, right?
(47:31):
So what is, what do we then end up doing with that power when we have no place to put it?
And we try to take that power and overpower someone else, which is your toxic masculinity.
Where do we, where do we take the the unused piece of our personality and enforce,
(47:52):
our will on somebody else.
And that, and not for the good. And that's where I think that toxic masculinity.
(48:19):
Music.
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