December 19, 2025 • 33 mins
Is masculinity toxic—or just misunderstood? Join Michael Berry and Professor Mark Defant as they dive into evolutionary psychology, gender roles, and the crisis of empirical rigor in feminist studies. From the origins of patriarchy to the truth about the gender pay gap, this episode challenges cultural narratives with hard science and bold questions.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load you. So,
Michael Vari Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Professor Marcus font is our guest. Professor. I interrupted you
in the middle.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
So if you just kind of pick up rewind like
they do on the American Greet or any of other specials,
kind of catch us up to where we were. Keith
Morrison's great at this and then and then continue to
launch in because it's just fascinating.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Okay, well, give me a heads up if I'm running
down the wrong track here. I was talking about how
our large brains have forced women to have babies early
before the brain is fully developed, and as a consequence,
we have the birth of pretty helpless animals. You know,
(00:57):
it's very different, and much of the animal kicking is
when a when a baby giraffe is born, boy, they're
they're pretty much up and running within the first few
hours of life, whereas it takes years for humans to
reach full development. And then there's another thing going on
here which Darwin knew about when he was studying evolution,
(01:20):
and that is that it's not all about natural selection.
A natural selection being that the fittest survive in the
animal kingdom. But he also noticed that there was a
sexual selection going on, where for example, with some species
like gorillas and lions, big males fight with other big
(01:41):
males and the winner takes all, so they have harems basically,
and uh, and that's a true what I would call
a patriarchy, where where the society is controlled by males.
The male gorilla basically forces of the female to have
sex one in wherever he chooses because he's so much
(02:02):
larger two two and a half times larger than the
female and of course stronger than all the other males.
Now humans fall into the area of may preference, where
in our we do have some of the same things
gorilla's experience because men are about one point one point
five times larger than women. So we know that there's
(02:24):
some selection going on the way gorillas do it. Males compete,
but also women are selecting and men select too. But
women are choosing who they want to have children with
because they have to be careful as I mentioned earlier,
and this is known as may preference. And what are
women looking for? Well, primarily they're looking for men with
(02:45):
resources or men that can achieve resources to help in
male parental investments. And this has cost kind of a
clash men. Men that they're looking for are good hunters,
they're good trackers, They and protect women. They can also
form coalitions with other men to attack other villages, and
(03:07):
we see this throughout hunter gather society. And so I
think you can begin to see where men may have
developed evolutionarily speaking, some characteristics that we see today. Men
are much more aggressive than women, and we have higher
risk tolerance. Women tend to be risk adverse. Women tend
(03:28):
to be nurtures. Men tend to be very aggressive and
interestingly enough, because they want they want to have sexual
relationships with women. They compete with other men, and women choose.
So this whole concept that feminism has about some patriarchy
where men are how to oppress women, or that our
(03:51):
behaviors masculine and feminine are created by society is kind
of almost a lie. It's a misinterpretation at the very least.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Okay, just to in a circle and put a bow
on it, because sometimes I realize when we're not looking
at someone, it's harder to understand their argument. And this
is a this is an advanced argument. You're basically saying
then that you can't say that men want to oppress women,
and that is the underlying basis of feminism, of feminist
(04:21):
UH scholarship today, you cannot say that because it is
it is empirically untrue, because it's biologically not true and
has never.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Been absolutely And why not why.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Wouldn't women Let's just let's just play this out. Why
why wouldn't men want to oppress women? It's in my
it's in my best interest if other people are knocked down,
leaving me the tallest midget. Why wouldn't I want to
oppress women to my own good for the same reason
that doctor.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
It's a barrier to entry, right.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Yeah, And I think I don't want you to misunderstand
me here. We all have We all have a desire
to some extent greater or lesser, to control our spouse.
That's obvious in that, you know, we don't want them
to have extramarial relationships. Most of us don't anyway, and
so each is trying to control the other to some extent.
(05:15):
But in general, there isn't a situation where men are
conspiring to oppress women. Women would argue that culture has
formed us to be masculine or formed us to be feminine,
and I mean women to be feminine, men to be masculine,
(05:37):
and that doesn't seem to be true at all when
you start looking at evolutionary psychology and biology. So did
I clarify that to some extent.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with my point. I just
made it for the sake of exploring that a little further.
I guess I'm interested in you know, you talk about
the biology of it, and that gets left out of
all of this. I'm very interested in the untamed, untouched,
uncorrupted man and woman, but particularly man as it relates
(06:11):
to other men and women if he's not inculcated beginning
with his mother as to what a boy should be,
and then with his female teachers who tell him to
tuck his wiener and sit quietly and basically, don't be
a boy, don't don't don't wrestle, don't fight, don't climb trees,
(06:31):
don't do dangerous things, don't be aggressive. And now now
they've advanced it to the point where we fill him
full of drugs to to uh deny his natural urges
and inclinations, which would have dissipated in time. Civilized society
has proven that I just wonder about who a boy
becoming a man is uncorrupted by all those things.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I don't know that we have we don't have a
we don't have a sample to choose from to draw from.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Yeah, that's unfortunate, isn't. I mean, I think you're you're
you're making it very clear. Your clarity is great. I
like ADHD has become so popular to say that boys
are you know, out of control in classrooms. Well, it's
because we you know, women tend to be biologically much
(07:23):
better behave. They're they're nurturing, they're not aggressive, and they're
not as violent as men either. So boys get out
there and they wrestle, and of course wrestling and fighting
and all those kinds of things are the things to
prepare men to be men in hunter gathered society. Now,
you know, we don't live in a hunter gathered society now,
but these are things that are left over from evolution
(07:45):
in three hundred thousand years of Homo sapiens. And you know,
ten thousand years of civilization isn't going.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
To change that.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
We mean hundreds of thousands of years to change behavior
through evolution. So boys, then when we women teachers, women
teachers don't like boys that are aggressive and violent, but well,
certainly not violent, but are aggressive, and they tend then
to suppress or try to suppress that. And I think
(08:13):
it's a shame for boys. I think males in general
are really not treated very well by society these dates,
and I think feminists have a lot to do with that.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Michael Berry show Mark Defont is our guest.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
The peer reviewed paper in Sexuality and Culture is titled
Evolutionary Psychology in the Crisis of Empirical Rigor in Feminist Studies.
This is a bit of an NPR style interview with
a conservative, at least from my perspective as it relates
to me. Bent not your typical talk radio fair, but
(08:50):
interesting nonetheless because it underpins everything we're talking about as
relates to feminism today and what Rush I think accurately
called femineazis and certainly cleverly called femininzis. And we get
to the point where we have to ask the question,
what is at the root of feminism and feminist studies,
(09:11):
and more importantly than the studies is the application in
the real world of what they are studying and teaching.
And that's not only the scholarship, that is, as applied
in therapy sessions, as applied in movies, as applied in
news stories, because I do think there has been a
tectonic shift in the way we look at sexual relations,
(09:36):
by which I mean boys and girls, men and women,
and that what was once referred to as chivalry is
now toxic. Masculinity is what is natural and endemic to
the male in most cases biologically is now being referred
to as some form of criminal, immoral.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Evil, oppressive.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
And I think there's a dastardly effect over the law
long term of this happening. And if we go back
to the title of the article, Evolutionary Psychology and the
Crisis of empirical rigor in Feminist studies, our professor Mark
Dafont is saying that there is not empirical rigor, that
they are not basing it on the tenets of science
(10:17):
that we have respected from the time of Copernicus, Newton.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Aristotle, you name it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And so now what we're doing is a touchy feely
quote unquote science and that's a problem, right.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Absolutely, and you're so right to make those points. The
American Psychological Association has accepted this idea that our masculine
behaviors and feminine behaviors are not biological, they're psychological. And
(10:51):
if you can change behavior, then they can make men
behave more feminine, less aggressive, and get rid of masculinity
in general. And that's where it ruffles my feather, so
to speak. Why are we punishing masculine men, Why are
we calling them toxic? It's things that women originally chose
(11:15):
for a hunter gatherer society. They wanted protecting men. They
wanted men that were good hunters. They wanted men that
could go out and risk their lives. It came at
a price. One of the reasons why young men die
so much younger and so more often than women is
because we are aggressive. We live a shorter life on
(11:39):
general by six years if I remember correctly. So, so
you know, this whole masculinity thing can be detrimental to men,
but it also can be very very good attribute.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Not only a very good it's very natural and it's
important that we understand, and I think a lot of women,
especially feminazi women, don't understand. We don't need everyone. I'll
use a sports analogy. We don't need everyone on the
team to be a quarterback because somebody needs to be
the right guard, and somebody needs to be the field
goal kicker, and somebody needs to be the wide receiver,
(12:17):
and those are very different skill sets, body types, strength levels,
speed levels, and so this idea that you are trying
to basically feminize men, which I see as the tendency,
we see it taken to its disturbing and all too
common conclusion, where they're feminizing men to the point that
(12:37):
men have this fetishistic sense of womanhood about themselves. Dylan
Molvaney would be a great example, which is really just
a twelve year old girl. Grown women don't run around
the way Dylan Molvaney does having their coming out party,
their debutante ball. This is absurd, It's ridiculous. It's like
(12:58):
some episode front of Frozen. Then every dad has lived
through in the backseat of a bunch of girls. It's
a twelve year old girl. It's silly, that's not it's weird.
But I think that what we're seeing is this desire
to make men be more like women, thereby feminizing them
is being taken to its most disturbing distraint extreme, which
(13:20):
is making them into women itself. That's a trend that
I believe feminism has accelerated.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Oh, yes, that's a I mean, that's almost a non
secuitor in the universities that women are trying to do this.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yes they are.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
They're feminizing the universities. Next time you get on a university,
see how many men are acting masculine on the university campuses, aggressive,
all those things that are looked down on university of campuses.
I'm careful not to judge all people, but certainly a
(13:58):
large percentage of females that I know on campus are
trying to feminize the university and in general, feminized men.
And in fact, the American Psychological Association published a large
report in twenty eighteen basically saying, we want to feminize men.
We want to make sure that the therapists out there
(14:21):
are coming down on behavior, on masculine behavior. That scared
the heck out. I mean, when I heard that, I thought, gosh,
you know, we as scientists have to speak out against
this thing. Men and boys are being punished for simply being.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Masculine, and nothing is more natural than being what you
biologically are. You know, one of the great compelling moral
arguments against racism is that someone should not be judged
to quote Martin Luther King Jr. By the color of
(14:58):
their skin, but rather the content of the character. We
can't control what we were born, and it feels that
feminism has done exactly that to boys. And anyone who
does not understand that if you have seen how I've
raised two little boys into grown men, and little boys
are very different than little girls in consistent ways. And
(15:19):
I'll tell you it's the same thing with breeds. I've
had chuawas, I've had German shepherds, and they are very
consistent with their breed. I was a little boy, my
brothers were little boys. I watched how little boys behaved,
and I watched how girls behave differently, and it wasn't
because we were conditioned or socialized to those behaviors. It's
because that's what came naturally to us. Well, I'm gonna
(15:43):
have to hold you right there. My clock management is
not as good as I would like it to be.
But I don't want you to have to stop in
the middle of a discussion. We will continue our conversation
with Professor Mark Defunt regarding the lack or he says
a crisis of empirical rigor and feminist studies by which
he means they're just making stuff up. It's not scientific anymore,
(16:04):
and it does have real effects. It has real effects
on your children, the real effects on you, on whether
boys go into girls' bathrooms, whether boys play sports with
on the same field as a girl, even when they
can injure them.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And so much more.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
To be honest with you, Michael Berry. Professor Martin DuPont
is our guest. He's a professor at the University of
South Florida. He wrote a piece recently, a paper entitled
Evolutionary Psychology and the Crisis of Empirical rigor in Feminist study.
(16:46):
In other words, how did we get to the point
that these people in the name of feminism are defying
biology beating up on boys. I would argue feminizing boys
and not using any science to get there. Well, that's
what he's trying to lay out and discuss. It happens
to be important. You can see that this social issue
is one of the issues of our day in the
(17:06):
way that in the past we would have dealt with others.
And they mark the zeit. Guys, this is what we're
talking about all day, every day. Professor Mark Dfant, you
note that you drew on research in evolutionary psychology, neuroscience,
and behavioral biology examining topics such as the gender pay gap.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Let's talk about.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
That, Okay, if I could just follow up real quickly,
this is the things you're saying is it's precisely why
feminists are so against evolutionary psychology, because if it's not
evolutionary psychology and it's due to culture, then they can
change men. They can also say that men and women
(17:49):
are equal, so you can make movies where you see
a woman beating up to ten guys. It's absolutely gotten insane.
And many studies show, as you mentioned, the differences between
boys and girls right from the start, boys and girls
are different, and study after study shows that many done
(18:13):
by women. Okay, let's get into the pay gap, because
I think you know that's going to open up some
interesting discussion. I think the first thing I should say
is when I started to study the pay gap, I
went to economics research, much of it being done by women,
good examples of Claudia Golden at Harvard University, and they
(18:37):
were showing I mean, it's almost shocking how different the
economic research is from what feminists are saying. The economic
research is telling us that the pay gap is due
to women's choice. Basically, women tend to be risk adverse.
They tend to be looking for jobs that give them
(19:00):
freedom to raise children. They also tend to like to
take off time in their careers to raise children. So
we have a pay gap developing, not because a bunch
of men out there are pressing women through discrimination, but
primarily according to these economists, that they are basically women
(19:23):
that is, are choosing to work in fields caregiving fields
like education, like social work like nursing, and other medical care.
Whereas men tend to like risk. They go out and
get into these high risk, high reward performance they work
fifty sixty hours a week, and oftentimes women are raising
(19:45):
the children that help them do well in their jobs.
So it's a nice synergy between men and women there
if it works correctly women And I don't want to
say all women in this way. I want to say
all men are this way. But I'm just saying what
the biology is telling us and what the economists are
(20:06):
telling us and the gender payback gap. The best scenario
I can give you here to summarize is that the
gender pay gap is not due to discrimination. It may
have been partly due to discrimination decades ago, but certainly
today it is not, and it is due to female choice.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Once again, Yes, and we can when we consider the
various roles that people play. You know, dangerous jobs often
have higher pay attendant, and women choose not to engage
in dangerous jobs, for instance, the patriarchy. You said, drawing
on research in these various forms of biology, I examined
(20:49):
topics such as the patriarchy and rape theory through an
evidence based lens. Talk about what rape theory is and
what you came to learn about.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
This, Well, well, I want to I want to be
careful here because it's a sensitive subject, but I do
I got into rape theory because there's this attitude in
feminist studies that rape is and I still can hardly
(21:20):
believe that that feminists believe this at one time and
still do to some extent. When they're saying that rape
is basically men colluding to oppress women with fear about
about rape, I don't think anything could could be further
(21:42):
from the truth. Uh. In fact, I've got a well
I can read it later, but one of the top
feminists in this field claimed that men use rape to
subjugate women and when you start looking at who rapes
and why they rape, it turns out to be a
(22:04):
whole different story from And you can see why I'm
worried about the rigor and feminist studies when they seem
to be in this echo chamber where they get a
good idea, what they think is a good idea, and
then everybody just expounds on that and nobody goes into
the lab to test what they're saying. And that's where
I have the real problem. Let's go back to rape, though. Rape.
(22:28):
Rape has some interesting characteristics. For one thing, men rape
women not in their eighties or sixties or fifties. They
rape women in the peak of their fertility, in their
late teens and twenties. And so that should tell us
right there that rape has little to do with oppression.
(22:51):
If men were trying to oppress women through fear, seems
like we would rape all kinds of women, not just
women that are attractive and at a very fertile age. Now,
most evolutionary psychologists believe that it's not an evolutionary adaption.
(23:11):
It's a byproduct of our evolution in a hunter gathered society.
So my disagreement is not that it's not evolution. My
disagreement is that they're saying that it's a bunch of
men trying to oppress women, and the data just simply
isn't telling us that at all.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Professor Martin Defint, let me ask you. I have found,
at least anecdotally, that a number of feminists, particularly feminist academics,
are lesbian, and I suspect that informs some of their
(23:52):
opinions toward men, particularly because the path to a full
blown lesbian often starts as not realizing their lesbian young
in life and maybe having unpleasant experiences due to that,
and later I'm not saying they become lesbians because men
(24:13):
are assets to them. I'm saying they were lesbian or
had tendencies, and they did not have a functional relationship
with a male, and they had a bad experience, and
out of that bad experience they developed they developed, perhaps
opinions of men that are not entirely healthy, and so
(24:34):
that informs, if not fully motivates their writing, which becomes
almost this the opposite of misogyny, this man hating. And
I do see that, and it is clear to me
and that is not scientific in any you talk about
what was our word, the Crisis of empirical rigor in
(24:54):
feminist studies. I think they lack the empirical rigor of
of objectivity. Professor Mark Defant is our guest. Will continue
our conversation and ask him for an answer to.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That coming up.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Professor Martin D. Defont of the University of South Florida
is our guest.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
He's written a piece called Evolutionary Psychology and the Crisis
of Empirical Rigor in Feminist Studies. In other words, how
did we end up to the point that feminists on campuses,
for instance, and in writing and scholarship and in speeches,
this feminism wildfire that has that has spread across the country.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
He says it lacks the traditional underpinnings of science, the
empirical rigor, asking tough questions, uh, debating things, studying things,
studying data and analysis. You can't have your own facts.
You can have your own opinions, not your own facts.
And I have asked the question, to what extent are
(26:02):
lesbian academics who are angry at men leading this charge?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Well, I'm already catching a lot of the wrath from
my publication, so I want to be careful here not
to generalize it would be. I haven't read any articles
on how many women are lesbians in feminist studies, although
like you, I have noticed that there are some, if
(26:32):
not the majority, and I think that this does skew
in your in your observation, it would tend to skew
in terms of working I think. I think the woman's movement,
which I consider very different than the feminist movement, the
women's movement has had a very positive effect I think
on women. Uh it's you know, if they want to
(26:55):
leave the house and work, you know, that's great. But
where I think feminists may have skewed it is they
seem to be interested only in working women and not
women who choose to stay home and raise children. And
I oppose that kind of view. I think we should
(27:16):
be open to both kinds of behaviors. And it may
be and I don't know this for certain, but it
may be due to the fact that there are many
lesbians who do not have children that populate women's studies programs.
It's something I don't have any data on, but it
wouldn't surprise me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
It does, and delicately answered Professor Martin Defont, is our guest,
let me go back into some of the things that
you described in your piece. You said I examined topics
such as the gender paid gap, patriarchy, and rape theory.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Guy gloss over patriarchy.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
First of all, I'm not sure that patriarchy in and
of itself is necessarily a bad thing. Throughout history, there
is typically a hierarchical relationship to the family unit, the community,
the nation, far and beyond modern America that has typically
(28:21):
been the strongest in one way or another, particularly throughout
most of history. Why wouldn't it be the case, as
you noted, empirical rigor requires you look at the biological differences.
Why wouldn't the stronger of the species be the head
of the household.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Well, you're very clever to see that. I think, yes,
it's a subtle point. But it's the point that I
make in this paper and several other papers that I've written,
and that is that there's a difference between what I
call evolutionary patriarchy and the feminist patriarchy. I think we
do have a patriarchy if you're going to define it
(28:59):
as a society that's run by men, but it's a
patriarchy that's due to choice by women. In other words,
women are choosing men that are aggressive, men that take
risks throughout the history of evolution. So we would expect
(29:20):
men to be in leadership roles if that were the way,
or that was the way that women were choosing. And
so you can see, I hope you can see how
the kind of patriarchy we have today is the result
of women's choice and not due to a bunch of
men getting together and saying we want to oppress women.
(29:41):
I have an interesting quick story if I might talk
to you about a wonderful study that was done in
the nineteen nineties. It involves the Kublitz in Israel. It
turns out that the Kublitzes were formed by Eastern European
basically commune certainly socialists, who moved from Eastern Europe to
(30:05):
Israel where they had the freedom to develop the society
they wanted to develop, which was they believed men and
women should be treated exactly the same, and they set
up the kabouts to be basically a communist system where
everyone was treated equally. And some very interesting things happened
in the early goings on of the kibbutz. Women worked
(30:30):
in the fields right along with the men the hard labor.
It was mainly a farming community and men and women
took care of the children. In fact, the children were
raised without parents. Basically they were given over to the commune,
and the commune raised the children, both men and women.
And then as it developed through the nineteen hundreds, it
(30:53):
evolved and we find that women didn't like so much
working away from children in the fields. They didn't like
the labor, and they didn't like being away from their children.
So it evolved in the sense of, you know, changing
over time that the women ended up taking care of
the children more and the men were out in the
(31:14):
fields doing most of the hard labor. And it's kind
of funny because one of the things that set it
off was they believed that the children should do everything together,
and they treated the boys and girls the same way.
But as the girls got older and past puberty they
were supposed to take showers and bathe with the boys.
(31:36):
They started raising hell about that, and so the commune
decided it might be a good idea if we didn't
have them bathing together. Because women were embarrassed dressing and
undressing in front of others, were in front of boys,
so it evolved that way also, and finally, women also
gave up their rights to control the kaboots and leadership roles.
(32:00):
Women wanted to raise the children, and they let the
men take leadership leadership roles. And this all happen even
though men and women wanted equality. So I'm not sure
that if we give one hundred percent equality, which I
think you know we're getting close to today, that it's going
to make much difference in society. I think we're finding
(32:21):
that women are predisposed towards enjoying raising children, and men
are predisposed towards working hard and competitively.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I'm also not certain that I guess it depends on
what we define as equality or in what space. My
wife was a very successful professional before retiring, and she
had every opportunity that every man did.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I would consider that equality.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
I don't know that you're ever going to achieve the
equality for men with women that men are going to
birth a child out of their womb.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
And I think this.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Desperate desire by feminists to suggest that men can get
pregnant and all this nonsense, and then the playing with
words to deprive them of their meaning. Talk about a
crisis of empirical rigor. Professor. I find this to be
a very brave subject for you to have tackled, and
(33:20):
in an academic setting there is an absence of bravery.
I admire you for that. I commend you for that.
Thank you, Professor Mark Defont, if you want to look
him up. D E F A n T. Keep up
the good work, sir, I'm out of time. Alas all right.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
I appreciate you having me on. Thank you.
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load you. So,
Michael Vari Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Professor Marcus font is our guest. Professor. I interrupted you
in the middle.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
So if you just kind of pick up rewind like
they do on the American Greet or any of other specials,
kind of catch us up to where we were. Keith
Morrison's great at this and then and then continue to
launch in because it's just fascinating.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Okay, well, give me a heads up if I'm running
down the wrong track here. I was talking about how
our large brains have forced women to have babies early
before the brain is fully developed, and as a consequence,
we have the birth of pretty helpless animals. You know,
(00:57):
it's very different, and much of the animal kicking is
when a when a baby giraffe is born, boy, they're
they're pretty much up and running within the first few
hours of life, whereas it takes years for humans to
reach full development. And then there's another thing going on
here which Darwin knew about when he was studying evolution,
(01:20):
and that is that it's not all about natural selection.
A natural selection being that the fittest survive in the
animal kingdom. But he also noticed that there was a
sexual selection going on, where for example, with some species
like gorillas and lions, big males fight with other big
(01:41):
males and the winner takes all, so they have harems basically,
and uh, and that's a true what I would call
a patriarchy, where where the society is controlled by males.
The male gorilla basically forces of the female to have
sex one in wherever he chooses because he's so much
(02:02):
larger two two and a half times larger than the
female and of course stronger than all the other males.
Now humans fall into the area of may preference, where
in our we do have some of the same things
gorilla's experience because men are about one point one point
five times larger than women. So we know that there's
(02:24):
some selection going on the way gorillas do it. Males compete,
but also women are selecting and men select too. But
women are choosing who they want to have children with
because they have to be careful as I mentioned earlier,
and this is known as may preference. And what are
women looking for? Well, primarily they're looking for men with
(02:45):
resources or men that can achieve resources to help in
male parental investments. And this has cost kind of a
clash men. Men that they're looking for are good hunters,
they're good trackers, They and protect women. They can also
form coalitions with other men to attack other villages, and
(03:07):
we see this throughout hunter gather society. And so I
think you can begin to see where men may have
developed evolutionarily speaking, some characteristics that we see today. Men
are much more aggressive than women, and we have higher
risk tolerance. Women tend to be risk adverse. Women tend
(03:28):
to be nurtures. Men tend to be very aggressive and
interestingly enough, because they want they want to have sexual
relationships with women. They compete with other men, and women choose.
So this whole concept that feminism has about some patriarchy
where men are how to oppress women, or that our
(03:51):
behaviors masculine and feminine are created by society is kind
of almost a lie. It's a misinterpretation at the very least.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Okay, just to in a circle and put a bow
on it, because sometimes I realize when we're not looking
at someone, it's harder to understand their argument. And this
is a this is an advanced argument. You're basically saying
then that you can't say that men want to oppress women,
and that is the underlying basis of feminism, of feminist
(04:21):
UH scholarship today, you cannot say that because it is
it is empirically untrue, because it's biologically not true and
has never.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Been absolutely And why not why.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Wouldn't women Let's just let's just play this out. Why
why wouldn't men want to oppress women? It's in my
it's in my best interest if other people are knocked down,
leaving me the tallest midget. Why wouldn't I want to
oppress women to my own good for the same reason
that doctor.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
It's a barrier to entry, right.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Yeah, And I think I don't want you to misunderstand
me here. We all have We all have a desire
to some extent greater or lesser, to control our spouse.
That's obvious in that, you know, we don't want them
to have extramarial relationships. Most of us don't anyway, and
so each is trying to control the other to some extent.
(05:15):
But in general, there isn't a situation where men are
conspiring to oppress women. Women would argue that culture has
formed us to be masculine or formed us to be feminine,
and I mean women to be feminine, men to be masculine,
(05:37):
and that doesn't seem to be true at all when
you start looking at evolutionary psychology and biology. So did
I clarify that to some extent.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with my point. I just
made it for the sake of exploring that a little further.
I guess I'm interested in you know, you talk about
the biology of it, and that gets left out of
all of this. I'm very interested in the untamed, untouched,
uncorrupted man and woman, but particularly man as it relates
(06:11):
to other men and women if he's not inculcated beginning
with his mother as to what a boy should be,
and then with his female teachers who tell him to
tuck his wiener and sit quietly and basically, don't be
a boy, don't don't don't wrestle, don't fight, don't climb trees,
(06:31):
don't do dangerous things, don't be aggressive. And now now
they've advanced it to the point where we fill him
full of drugs to to uh deny his natural urges
and inclinations, which would have dissipated in time. Civilized society
has proven that I just wonder about who a boy
becoming a man is uncorrupted by all those things.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I don't know that we have we don't have a
we don't have a sample to choose from to draw from.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Yeah, that's unfortunate, isn't. I mean, I think you're you're
you're making it very clear. Your clarity is great. I
like ADHD has become so popular to say that boys
are you know, out of control in classrooms. Well, it's
because we you know, women tend to be biologically much
(07:23):
better behave. They're they're nurturing, they're not aggressive, and they're
not as violent as men either. So boys get out
there and they wrestle, and of course wrestling and fighting
and all those kinds of things are the things to
prepare men to be men in hunter gathered society. Now,
you know, we don't live in a hunter gathered society now,
but these are things that are left over from evolution
(07:45):
in three hundred thousand years of Homo sapiens. And you know,
ten thousand years of civilization isn't going.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
To change that.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
We mean hundreds of thousands of years to change behavior
through evolution. So boys, then when we women teachers, women
teachers don't like boys that are aggressive and violent, but well,
certainly not violent, but are aggressive, and they tend then
to suppress or try to suppress that. And I think
(08:13):
it's a shame for boys. I think males in general
are really not treated very well by society these dates,
and I think feminists have a lot to do with that.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Michael Berry show Mark Defont is our guest.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
The peer reviewed paper in Sexuality and Culture is titled
Evolutionary Psychology in the Crisis of Empirical Rigor in Feminist Studies.
This is a bit of an NPR style interview with
a conservative, at least from my perspective as it relates
to me. Bent not your typical talk radio fair, but
(08:50):
interesting nonetheless because it underpins everything we're talking about as
relates to feminism today and what Rush I think accurately
called femineazis and certainly cleverly called femininzis. And we get
to the point where we have to ask the question,
what is at the root of feminism and feminist studies,
(09:11):
and more importantly than the studies is the application in
the real world of what they are studying and teaching.
And that's not only the scholarship, that is, as applied
in therapy sessions, as applied in movies, as applied in
news stories, because I do think there has been a
tectonic shift in the way we look at sexual relations,
(09:36):
by which I mean boys and girls, men and women,
and that what was once referred to as chivalry is
now toxic. Masculinity is what is natural and endemic to
the male in most cases biologically is now being referred
to as some form of criminal, immoral.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Evil, oppressive.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
And I think there's a dastardly effect over the law
long term of this happening. And if we go back
to the title of the article, Evolutionary Psychology and the
Crisis of empirical rigor in Feminist studies, our professor Mark
Dafont is saying that there is not empirical rigor, that
they are not basing it on the tenets of science
(10:17):
that we have respected from the time of Copernicus, Newton.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Aristotle, you name it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And so now what we're doing is a touchy feely
quote unquote science and that's a problem, right.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Absolutely, and you're so right to make those points. The
American Psychological Association has accepted this idea that our masculine
behaviors and feminine behaviors are not biological, they're psychological. And
(10:51):
if you can change behavior, then they can make men
behave more feminine, less aggressive, and get rid of masculinity
in general. And that's where it ruffles my feather, so
to speak. Why are we punishing masculine men, Why are
we calling them toxic? It's things that women originally chose
(11:15):
for a hunter gatherer society. They wanted protecting men. They
wanted men that were good hunters. They wanted men that
could go out and risk their lives. It came at
a price. One of the reasons why young men die
so much younger and so more often than women is
because we are aggressive. We live a shorter life on
(11:39):
general by six years if I remember correctly. So, so
you know, this whole masculinity thing can be detrimental to men,
but it also can be very very good attribute.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Not only a very good it's very natural and it's
important that we understand, and I think a lot of women,
especially feminazi women, don't understand. We don't need everyone. I'll
use a sports analogy. We don't need everyone on the
team to be a quarterback because somebody needs to be
the right guard, and somebody needs to be the field
goal kicker, and somebody needs to be the wide receiver,
(12:17):
and those are very different skill sets, body types, strength levels,
speed levels, and so this idea that you are trying
to basically feminize men, which I see as the tendency,
we see it taken to its disturbing and all too
common conclusion, where they're feminizing men to the point that
(12:37):
men have this fetishistic sense of womanhood about themselves. Dylan
Molvaney would be a great example, which is really just
a twelve year old girl. Grown women don't run around
the way Dylan Molvaney does having their coming out party,
their debutante ball. This is absurd, It's ridiculous. It's like
(12:58):
some episode front of Frozen. Then every dad has lived
through in the backseat of a bunch of girls. It's
a twelve year old girl. It's silly, that's not it's weird.
But I think that what we're seeing is this desire
to make men be more like women, thereby feminizing them
is being taken to its most disturbing distraint extreme, which
(13:20):
is making them into women itself. That's a trend that
I believe feminism has accelerated.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Oh, yes, that's a I mean, that's almost a non
secuitor in the universities that women are trying to do this.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yes they are.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
They're feminizing the universities. Next time you get on a university,
see how many men are acting masculine on the university campuses, aggressive,
all those things that are looked down on university of campuses.
I'm careful not to judge all people, but certainly a
(13:58):
large percentage of females that I know on campus are
trying to feminize the university and in general, feminized men.
And in fact, the American Psychological Association published a large
report in twenty eighteen basically saying, we want to feminize men.
We want to make sure that the therapists out there
(14:21):
are coming down on behavior, on masculine behavior. That scared
the heck out. I mean, when I heard that, I thought, gosh,
you know, we as scientists have to speak out against
this thing. Men and boys are being punished for simply being.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Masculine, and nothing is more natural than being what you
biologically are. You know, one of the great compelling moral
arguments against racism is that someone should not be judged
to quote Martin Luther King Jr. By the color of
(14:58):
their skin, but rather the content of the character. We
can't control what we were born, and it feels that
feminism has done exactly that to boys. And anyone who
does not understand that if you have seen how I've
raised two little boys into grown men, and little boys
are very different than little girls in consistent ways. And
(15:19):
I'll tell you it's the same thing with breeds. I've
had chuawas, I've had German shepherds, and they are very
consistent with their breed. I was a little boy, my
brothers were little boys. I watched how little boys behaved,
and I watched how girls behave differently, and it wasn't
because we were conditioned or socialized to those behaviors. It's
because that's what came naturally to us. Well, I'm gonna
(15:43):
have to hold you right there. My clock management is
not as good as I would like it to be.
But I don't want you to have to stop in
the middle of a discussion. We will continue our conversation
with Professor Mark Defunt regarding the lack or he says
a crisis of empirical rigor and feminist studies by which
he means they're just making stuff up. It's not scientific anymore,
(16:04):
and it does have real effects. It has real effects
on your children, the real effects on you, on whether
boys go into girls' bathrooms, whether boys play sports with
on the same field as a girl, even when they
can injure them.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And so much more.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
To be honest with you, Michael Berry. Professor Martin DuPont
is our guest. He's a professor at the University of
South Florida. He wrote a piece recently, a paper entitled
Evolutionary Psychology and the Crisis of Empirical rigor in Feminist study.
(16:46):
In other words, how did we get to the point
that these people in the name of feminism are defying
biology beating up on boys. I would argue feminizing boys
and not using any science to get there. Well, that's
what he's trying to lay out and discuss. It happens
to be important. You can see that this social issue
is one of the issues of our day in the
(17:06):
way that in the past we would have dealt with others.
And they mark the zeit. Guys, this is what we're
talking about all day, every day. Professor Mark Dfant, you
note that you drew on research in evolutionary psychology, neuroscience,
and behavioral biology examining topics such as the gender pay gap.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Let's talk about.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
That, Okay, if I could just follow up real quickly,
this is the things you're saying is it's precisely why
feminists are so against evolutionary psychology, because if it's not
evolutionary psychology and it's due to culture, then they can
change men. They can also say that men and women
(17:49):
are equal, so you can make movies where you see
a woman beating up to ten guys. It's absolutely gotten insane.
And many studies show, as you mentioned, the differences between
boys and girls right from the start, boys and girls
are different, and study after study shows that many done
(18:13):
by women. Okay, let's get into the pay gap, because
I think you know that's going to open up some
interesting discussion. I think the first thing I should say
is when I started to study the pay gap, I
went to economics research, much of it being done by women,
good examples of Claudia Golden at Harvard University, and they
(18:37):
were showing I mean, it's almost shocking how different the
economic research is from what feminists are saying. The economic
research is telling us that the pay gap is due
to women's choice. Basically, women tend to be risk adverse.
They tend to be looking for jobs that give them
(19:00):
freedom to raise children. They also tend to like to
take off time in their careers to raise children. So
we have a pay gap developing, not because a bunch
of men out there are pressing women through discrimination, but
primarily according to these economists, that they are basically women
(19:23):
that is, are choosing to work in fields caregiving fields
like education, like social work like nursing, and other medical care.
Whereas men tend to like risk. They go out and
get into these high risk, high reward performance they work
fifty sixty hours a week, and oftentimes women are raising
(19:45):
the children that help them do well in their jobs.
So it's a nice synergy between men and women there
if it works correctly women And I don't want to
say all women in this way. I want to say
all men are this way. But I'm just saying what
the biology is telling us and what the economists are
(20:06):
telling us and the gender payback gap. The best scenario
I can give you here to summarize is that the
gender pay gap is not due to discrimination. It may
have been partly due to discrimination decades ago, but certainly
today it is not, and it is due to female choice.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Once again, Yes, and we can when we consider the
various roles that people play. You know, dangerous jobs often
have higher pay attendant, and women choose not to engage
in dangerous jobs, for instance, the patriarchy. You said, drawing
on research in these various forms of biology, I examined
(20:49):
topics such as the patriarchy and rape theory through an
evidence based lens. Talk about what rape theory is and
what you came to learn about.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
This, Well, well, I want to I want to be
careful here because it's a sensitive subject, but I do
I got into rape theory because there's this attitude in
feminist studies that rape is and I still can hardly
(21:20):
believe that that feminists believe this at one time and
still do to some extent. When they're saying that rape
is basically men colluding to oppress women with fear about
about rape, I don't think anything could could be further
(21:42):
from the truth. Uh. In fact, I've got a well
I can read it later, but one of the top
feminists in this field claimed that men use rape to
subjugate women and when you start looking at who rapes
and why they rape, it turns out to be a
(22:04):
whole different story from And you can see why I'm
worried about the rigor and feminist studies when they seem
to be in this echo chamber where they get a
good idea, what they think is a good idea, and
then everybody just expounds on that and nobody goes into
the lab to test what they're saying. And that's where
I have the real problem. Let's go back to rape, though. Rape.
(22:28):
Rape has some interesting characteristics. For one thing, men rape
women not in their eighties or sixties or fifties. They
rape women in the peak of their fertility, in their
late teens and twenties. And so that should tell us
right there that rape has little to do with oppression.
(22:51):
If men were trying to oppress women through fear, seems
like we would rape all kinds of women, not just
women that are attractive and at a very fertile age. Now,
most evolutionary psychologists believe that it's not an evolutionary adaption.
(23:11):
It's a byproduct of our evolution in a hunter gathered society.
So my disagreement is not that it's not evolution. My
disagreement is that they're saying that it's a bunch of
men trying to oppress women, and the data just simply
isn't telling us that at all.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Professor Martin Defint, let me ask you. I have found,
at least anecdotally, that a number of feminists, particularly feminist academics,
are lesbian, and I suspect that informs some of their
(23:52):
opinions toward men, particularly because the path to a full
blown lesbian often starts as not realizing their lesbian young
in life and maybe having unpleasant experiences due to that,
and later I'm not saying they become lesbians because men
(24:13):
are assets to them. I'm saying they were lesbian or
had tendencies, and they did not have a functional relationship
with a male, and they had a bad experience, and
out of that bad experience they developed they developed, perhaps
opinions of men that are not entirely healthy, and so
(24:34):
that informs, if not fully motivates their writing, which becomes
almost this the opposite of misogyny, this man hating. And
I do see that, and it is clear to me
and that is not scientific in any you talk about
what was our word, the Crisis of empirical rigor in
(24:54):
feminist studies. I think they lack the empirical rigor of
of objectivity. Professor Mark Defant is our guest. Will continue
our conversation and ask him for an answer to.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That coming up.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Professor Martin D. Defont of the University of South Florida
is our guest.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
He's written a piece called Evolutionary Psychology and the Crisis
of Empirical Rigor in Feminist Studies. In other words, how
did we end up to the point that feminists on campuses,
for instance, and in writing and scholarship and in speeches,
this feminism wildfire that has that has spread across the country.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
He says it lacks the traditional underpinnings of science, the
empirical rigor, asking tough questions, uh, debating things, studying things,
studying data and analysis. You can't have your own facts.
You can have your own opinions, not your own facts.
And I have asked the question, to what extent are
(26:02):
lesbian academics who are angry at men leading this charge?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Well, I'm already catching a lot of the wrath from
my publication, so I want to be careful here not
to generalize it would be. I haven't read any articles
on how many women are lesbians in feminist studies, although
like you, I have noticed that there are some, if
(26:32):
not the majority, and I think that this does skew
in your in your observation, it would tend to skew
in terms of working I think. I think the woman's movement,
which I consider very different than the feminist movement, the
women's movement has had a very positive effect I think
on women. Uh it's you know, if they want to
(26:55):
leave the house and work, you know, that's great. But
where I think feminists may have skewed it is they
seem to be interested only in working women and not
women who choose to stay home and raise children. And
I oppose that kind of view. I think we should
(27:16):
be open to both kinds of behaviors. And it may
be and I don't know this for certain, but it
may be due to the fact that there are many
lesbians who do not have children that populate women's studies programs.
It's something I don't have any data on, but it
wouldn't surprise me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
It does, and delicately answered Professor Martin Defont, is our guest,
let me go back into some of the things that
you described in your piece. You said I examined topics
such as the gender paid gap, patriarchy, and rape theory.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Guy gloss over patriarchy.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
First of all, I'm not sure that patriarchy in and
of itself is necessarily a bad thing. Throughout history, there
is typically a hierarchical relationship to the family unit, the community,
the nation, far and beyond modern America that has typically
(28:21):
been the strongest in one way or another, particularly throughout
most of history. Why wouldn't it be the case, as
you noted, empirical rigor requires you look at the biological differences.
Why wouldn't the stronger of the species be the head
of the household.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Well, you're very clever to see that. I think, yes,
it's a subtle point. But it's the point that I
make in this paper and several other papers that I've written,
and that is that there's a difference between what I
call evolutionary patriarchy and the feminist patriarchy. I think we
do have a patriarchy if you're going to define it
(28:59):
as a society that's run by men, but it's a
patriarchy that's due to choice by women. In other words,
women are choosing men that are aggressive, men that take
risks throughout the history of evolution. So we would expect
(29:20):
men to be in leadership roles if that were the way,
or that was the way that women were choosing. And
so you can see, I hope you can see how
the kind of patriarchy we have today is the result
of women's choice and not due to a bunch of
men getting together and saying we want to oppress women.
(29:41):
I have an interesting quick story if I might talk
to you about a wonderful study that was done in
the nineteen nineties. It involves the Kublitz in Israel. It
turns out that the Kublitzes were formed by Eastern European
basically commune certainly socialists, who moved from Eastern Europe to
(30:05):
Israel where they had the freedom to develop the society
they wanted to develop, which was they believed men and
women should be treated exactly the same, and they set
up the kabouts to be basically a communist system where
everyone was treated equally. And some very interesting things happened
in the early goings on of the kibbutz. Women worked
(30:30):
in the fields right along with the men the hard labor.
It was mainly a farming community and men and women
took care of the children. In fact, the children were
raised without parents. Basically they were given over to the commune,
and the commune raised the children, both men and women.
And then as it developed through the nineteen hundreds, it
(30:53):
evolved and we find that women didn't like so much
working away from children in the fields. They didn't like
the labor, and they didn't like being away from their children.
So it evolved in the sense of, you know, changing
over time that the women ended up taking care of
the children more and the men were out in the
(31:14):
fields doing most of the hard labor. And it's kind
of funny because one of the things that set it
off was they believed that the children should do everything together,
and they treated the boys and girls the same way.
But as the girls got older and past puberty they
were supposed to take showers and bathe with the boys.
(31:36):
They started raising hell about that, and so the commune
decided it might be a good idea if we didn't
have them bathing together. Because women were embarrassed dressing and
undressing in front of others, were in front of boys,
so it evolved that way also, and finally, women also
gave up their rights to control the kaboots and leadership roles.
(32:00):
Women wanted to raise the children, and they let the
men take leadership leadership roles. And this all happen even
though men and women wanted equality. So I'm not sure
that if we give one hundred percent equality, which I
think you know we're getting close to today, that it's going
to make much difference in society. I think we're finding
(32:21):
that women are predisposed towards enjoying raising children, and men
are predisposed towards working hard and competitively.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I'm also not certain that I guess it depends on
what we define as equality or in what space. My
wife was a very successful professional before retiring, and she
had every opportunity that every man did.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I would consider that equality.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
I don't know that you're ever going to achieve the
equality for men with women that men are going to
birth a child out of their womb.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
And I think this.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Desperate desire by feminists to suggest that men can get
pregnant and all this nonsense, and then the playing with
words to deprive them of their meaning. Talk about a
crisis of empirical rigor. Professor. I find this to be
a very brave subject for you to have tackled, and
(33:20):
in an academic setting there is an absence of bravery.
I admire you for that. I commend you for that.
Thank you, Professor Mark Defont, if you want to look
him up. D E F A n T. Keep up
the good work, sir, I'm out of time. Alas all right.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
I appreciate you having me on. Thank you.
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Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.