October 3, 2025 • 52 mins
Tonight on The Brian Crombie Hour, Brian interviews Dr. Jacqueline Murray, PhD, FRHistS—University Professor Emerita (University of Guelph), Fellow of St. Michael’s College, and 3M National Teaching Fellow—for a thought-provoking conversation on masculinity. Drawing on her expertise in medieval history and gender studies, Dr. Murray explores how concepts of manhood have evolved across centuries and why these debates remain urgent today.
Together they examine the so-called “crisis of masculinity,” unpacking the pressures young men face as media portrayals, social expectations, and cultural stereotypes reinforce narrow ideals. Dr. Murray challenges the notion that masculinity has ever been singular, noting that even in the Middle Ages, honor, integrity, and provider roles varied across classes and communities—offering a richer, more nuanced view than today’s headlines. They conclude this episode with a call to reimagine masculinity for the modern age—not around dominance or aggression, but around honor, moral compass, and self-worth. Dr. Murray argues society thrives when young men embrace diverse masculinities and when role models reflect integrity over bravado. It’s an eye-opening exchange connecting lessons from history to the challenges of today.
Together they examine the so-called “crisis of masculinity,” unpacking the pressures young men face as media portrayals, social expectations, and cultural stereotypes reinforce narrow ideals. Dr. Murray challenges the notion that masculinity has ever been singular, noting that even in the Middle Ages, honor, integrity, and provider roles varied across classes and communities—offering a richer, more nuanced view than today’s headlines. They conclude this episode with a call to reimagine masculinity for the modern age—not around dominance or aggression, but around honor, moral compass, and self-worth. Dr. Murray argues society thrives when young men embrace diverse masculinities and when role models reflect integrity over bravado. It’s an eye-opening exchange connecting lessons from history to the challenges of today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Soda nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Believe and everyone and welcome to the Brian Crime Radio.
I've got an interesting conversation today with doctor Professor Jacqueline Murray.
She called me up after I posted an interview with
doctor Thomas Varney about the challenge the Crisis of masculinity
and said, you know what, we should chat because she's
(00:38):
got an interesting and potentially a different point of view
on this topic and she comes to it with a
really interesting history. So Professor Murray is the University Professor
America of History at the University of Guelfh. She's also
an adjunct Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto,
a fellow at Saint Michael's College at the University Toronto,
and she's written and studied this topic in medieval times
(01:01):
quite a bit. In nineteen ninety nine, she published a
collection of essays entitled Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities Men
in the Medieval West. In twenty twenty three, she published
two collections, The Male Body and Social Masculinity in pre
modern Europe and the patriarchy, honor, and violence, masculinities in
pre modern Europe. So she's studied masculinity through the ages.
(01:25):
And then Dr Thomas Vernie following up to a lot
of commentary that's appeared, particularly in the United States but
also in Canada about the crisis of masculinity, about young
men feeling lost and losing their identity and losing sort
of a way of meaning. Doctor Murray said, let's talk,
and so Doctor Murray, let's talk. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Thank you very much, delighted to be here, Brian, and
I just thought I mentioned that it's not only that
I have done a lot of work in the past,
but also people have been debating this question for decades.
Iron John the book by Robert Blake came out in
nineteen ninety talking about how are men ever going to
(02:08):
have appropriate ways to express their masculinity? And Jordan Peterson
writes about this quite a lot, and you know, around
the twenty twenty two, twenty three and so on, and
so we've got a lot of people that have been
talking about this question for a long time. And it's
(02:31):
really interesting because the question never really changes. They keep
reiterating in the same thing, men are lost, men don't
know how to be men. And in one sense I
think it's rather condescending, But in another sense, because I mean,
(02:53):
men are individual human beings with their own identities and
so on, and so to talk about a crisis of
masculinity is such a broad generalization and in companies everyone,
but also has it gotten worse? What are we doing
(03:16):
about it? I don't know. I find it interesting about
how now the statistics that people talk about that men
aren't going to universities, that's something that's been in the
news quite recently. Yet when I looked at the statistics
that were published, there are still more men in bachelor
(03:40):
degree programs than there are women. There are still more
men in college level programs than there are women. And
while there may be a few more women professors and teachers,
in fact that is still dominated by men the teaching
(04:01):
profession at universities, not obviously at schools. So you know,
I think the statistics are being assessed in a kind
of overwrought manner on one side, and on the other side,
I think that there are there is a real situation
(04:25):
for young men in particular today that something has happened
socially that is leading many young men to flounder and
to be somewhat aimless. But I don't think it's a
(04:48):
case that they're being displaced by women. Statistically, that's not
correct in particular because it's the same number of men
as there's always been. It's just that the increased size
of universities, for example, has allowed more female students to
enroll than did in the past.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So you're questioning this idea of a crisis of masculinity,
and you're saying that the statistics that Tom's Varney and
other people are quoted are wrong, where the proportion of
females in post second education is increasing dramatically and the
proportion of males in post second education is decreasing. You
(05:31):
question that statistic, and so that's interesting. And then but
at the same time you're saying that there is this
challenge that young men have, and you know that the
commentary that's been made, and it's certainly been made by
lots of different people, including Charlie Kirk who was assassinated
last week as one other example, that that too many
(05:53):
men are feeling, particularly young men, are feeling lost a
sense of a loss of identity, a loss of meaning,
a loss of purpose. Are you a green that they
have that or they don't have that?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
No, I think that many young men do experience that.
And I mean it's almost a trope to talk about
the young guy living in his parents' basement, playing video games,
not working, not going to school, just kind of being
(06:28):
being a not even a burden, but maybe being a
burden psychologically on himself. I don't know, I'm not a
young man in a basement, but that's you know, that's
what we talk about.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So what's the source of that? Then what's the cause
of that?
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Then? Well, I think that it's a circular cause. And
the young men are in their basement because they in
their basement, if you, if you can stand something that's
almost like a syllogism. What are they doing in their basement?
They're playing video games? What are those video games like? Well,
(07:05):
let me telling you, Brian, they're not tac Men or
candy Crush. Those video games are violent. They're reinforcing an
antiquated form of masculinity that popular culture believes comes from
(07:29):
the Middle Ages, and so they're replicating of false Middle
Ages in which men are men and in these video games.
They're all petroonormative. They're all physically robust, to the point
(07:49):
of being excessively muscular, even more than steroids would allow.
They're violent and uh, they are are seeking to dominate
and uh within these games there are very few female characters,
(08:10):
and those that are are completely subservient. Uh. And they're
either vaguely evil or hostile to whatever the men's mission is,
or they're sexually uh uh subservient and are they're just
as sex symbols. And their presentation is you know, curvy,
thin waisted breastst defy gravity and and and so on.
(08:36):
So that this and they're these boys are playing these
from from childhood in particular online in particular. If they're
they're not being supervised by parents, which I think is
often the case for for even ten eleven twelve boys
because of parents being so busy in the boys wanting
(08:58):
their their own space. So they're getting this message about
what it is to be a man. There's the physical
robuton bustness, there's the violence, there's the seeking power, and
then you know they're not doing that well in high school.
(09:20):
We know that that is factually true. High school is
not a happy place. For boys, they the proportion of
them that do not excel is huge, and that's very sad.
And they see that and they can't go any further.
(09:41):
Maybe they can only be laborers. And they're sitting in
their basements feeling shame and feeling like they aren't real
men because they're not fulfilling this faux medieval fantasy masculinity.
(10:01):
When I think about the crisis of masculinity, what I
really wonder is it the crisis of patriarchal masculinity, and
the fact that these antiquated, anachronistic notions of patriarchal masculinity
(10:23):
where men control everything, are being challenged at every turn
in society, not only by women, but by the decrease,
for example, of jobs that require physical muscle rather than
(10:43):
the ability to run the robot.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
And so.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
There's a lot of ways in which some young men's
ego makes them feel like failures because they have been
been on these games that tell them what a man
should be like, and they're not like that, and so
it becomes a vicious circle.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So the problem is number one, these video games, and
number two that these video games describe or copy a patriarchy,
a patriarchal masculinity that you say is wrong, that didn't
exist in the past, and that's fascinating. We're going to
take a break for some messages, and when we come back,
I'm going to ask you to take that big step
(11:29):
back and describe, if you could, what you think masculinity
has been over the ages. Because what you said is
that you've given a considerable thought to a long view
of masculinity and how the past is a foundation for
many contemporary ideas and the ideals of masculinity. But also
that you said that there were misapprehensions about the past
(11:50):
and how they feed this so called crisis of masculinity.
So this is going to be interesting because what you're
really doing is you're looking back into our history and
you're seeing whether we had the masculinity that we think exists,
did it actually exist? Stay with us, everyone, This is
GONN an interesting conversation tonight. Back into.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Stream US live at SAGA nine sixty am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Wellcome back everyone to the Brian Cropty Radio. This is
gonna be a interesting conversation today because I've got Professor
Jacqueline Murray with us tonight. She's a university professor a
Merita in history at the University of Wealth. She's also
an adjunct professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto,
and she's a fellow at Saint Michael's College. And she
has to chat with me about a show that I
did as a follow up to an article written in
(12:50):
the Globe Mail by doctor Thomas Varney, who is a psychologist,
and he wrote about the crisis of masculinity. And she
said that maybe there's a different point of view, and
then she wrote me, which is interesting. You described several
of the different essays and books that you've written about
conflicted identities and multiple masculinities men in the medieval West,
(13:13):
and also two different collections that you wrote called the
Male Body and Social Masculinity in Pre modern Europe and
the Patriarchy, Honor and Violence Masculinities in pre modern Europe.
And then you said, so I have given considerable thought
to a long view of masculinities and how the past
is a foundation for many contemporary ideas and the ideals
(13:36):
of masculinity. Wow, So tell me, Professor Murray, what is
the long view of masculinity?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Well, the long view, and please note my earliest book
title talked about identities and masculinities plural. That's something that's
really important for us to realize, Brian, that there is
no one way of being masculine and having a masculine identity.
(14:12):
And we see this quite carefully in the Middle Ages,
where different social groups had their own definitions of masculinity,
and these were tied to concepts that we don't think
about very much in our own society, concepts of honor
(14:36):
personal honor, which is about integrity, it's about self worth,
it's about having doing the right thing, the old saying
being a man of honor, and that was all internal
(14:58):
and we don't talk about men and honor very much
unless it's defending their honor with violence. And even then,
I don't know that the gangs and the drug dealers
and so on think of themselves as defending their honor,
but there's a sense in which it is.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
So.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
In the Middle Ages, there were about ten percent of
men who were part of what we could in shorthand
call the knights in Shining Armor group, or the other
side of it is the violent, powerful men that dominated others.
(15:50):
These are two sides of the same coin in that
ten and both of them aren't fairly inaccurate because is
part of the Romantic Middle Ages, and of one is
part of the Gruesome Middle Ages, neither of which endured
or actually occurred. But uh, what about the other groups?
(16:15):
So there were different types of masculinity and different types
of honor that accrue to men in other social groups. Uh,
in terms of merchants in towns doing business with integrity
(16:36):
and uh, not charging interest and not cheating and not
clipping the coins so that the coins weren't worth as
much as they were supposed to be. This kind of
thing merchants honor and was came from their masculinity and
(16:57):
their perceived masculinity by societ. And it could be for
a wealthy merchant, a cobbler who was making you know,
good shoes from good material. All of these men supporting
their families and their households, even froto the peasant out
(17:18):
in the rural areas who we think of, as you
know from that Monty Python scene, kind of living in mud.
And so that wasn't true. Their masculinity was based in
their ability to grow food, to pay the dues to
the lord, to be able to support their family, to
(17:40):
be an honorable man who would be called upon to
stand surety for his neighbors in court, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So you're saying that this sort of very aggressive masculinity
was only with the knights, which was when you say
ten or fifteen percent, and that that that there was
a fair amount of masculinity that was identified with interesting
different terms honor and provider and ethical.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
That's absolutely ethical, I think is very important there too. Yes,
that's absolutely the case, different masculinities to different social groups,
even even among the clergy, because masculinity so often is
defined as having control of wives and children. Yet even
(18:35):
the clergy had a kind of masculine honor.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Now the thing that you're saying, I apologize for interrupting.
Did you say there are you saying therefore that the
patriarchy didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
No, absolutely, I'm not saying that by any means of course,
it existed, but it wasn't singular. There were patriarchy acted
itself out in different ways. Certainly, for example, in all
of those groups that I just mentioned, certainly there would
(19:11):
have been the belief that the man was the head
of the household, but there was not the reductionism of
women were either evil slaves or sex objects. You know,
wives and women of all classes played an important part
in society, both socially and economically, so that it was
(19:35):
patriarchal and hierarchical, absolutely, but not what you see what
is it's misinterpreted as we go across the centuries, and
you see how it's played out in what we call medievalism,
the appropriation of the Middle Ages in a popular cultural
(19:59):
setting that in fact makes the Middle Ages seem familiar,
but in fact is uh only reinforcing contemporary values. So
there's a lot of angst among men because women are
working and doing this and that. But they did that
(20:22):
in the Middle Ages too, But we don't get.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
From women worked in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Absolutely, you couldn't have a farm a house of business
if you didn't have a wife that was working equally
with you. That was not possible to make an economically
viable household and living if you did not have a
woman who was Often in urban businesses, they kept the
(20:54):
books and they dealt with the customers, or in a
peasant hold they had kitchen gardens, they helped with the fields,
and they sold eggs and butter at the market.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
But we've all watched Mary Poppins. Where when was that?
You know, that's when the Suffragettes were just arguing for
the vote, and you didn't Females didn't get the vote
in canon until what nineteen ten or something like that.
And you know the Equal Rights Amendment, pay equal work
for equal pay, you know, you go through all the lists.
(21:30):
Are you saying that that's wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
No, I'm saying that women were doing all that work
all that time and it was unrecognized, and at some
point they wanted to demand more social equality and more opportunity.
And part of that, at least I think in the
late twentieth century and this century, is due to the
(21:56):
fact that men are not the filling their masculine roles
as the bread winner, as father, and I think that
at this point I would agree with mister Varney that
there is in fact quite a lot of shirking of
(22:20):
that those kinds of social and personal roles. But that
is in part because it doesn't meet their expectations. We've
got a society now where young men think that the
road to success is on a basketball court, wrapping being
(22:45):
or being business tycoons. It's not successful to be a
good husband and father, to go to work every day
and to just have a life where uh, you're not spectacular.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So you're saying, we all want to be the knight,
we all want to be the king, we all want
to be this uh, this this uh, this caricature of
what masculinity was that we perceive in the in the
Middle Ages of of this very uh violent, aggressive, uh
you know, incredibly athletic. But that was only a small
(23:26):
part of what masculinity was in the Middle Ages. That
there were a whole bunch of other people that that
were shopkeepers and farmers that were you're saying, honorable and
uh and providers and ethical and and what we're not patriarchal.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Uh, Patriarchy doesn't have a lot to do with it.
We're talking about masculinity and identity, and so they were
recognized as masculine because they've fulfilled all those expectations. I mean.
One of the theorists, Gary Taylor, who studied masculinity in
(24:05):
the early nineties, said masculinity only exists if it's recognized
by other men. So the female gaze within a household
is not as important as the men around.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Them recognizing them as men and what that means within
their level of society, A good family provider, honest person.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
And so on. And now we don't even value integrity
that much. And in business, for example, and the role
models for young men and even financially are people like
(25:03):
Elon musk Or, who is not you know, I don't
think meets any kind of standard of male integrity.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
But he's a billionaire, if not a trillionaire, he'saly successful.
He's got several wives, numerous kids from several different wives,
et cetera. Isn't that the definition of success?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
That's the problem, Brian. Too many people think that it is,
and it isn't it.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
You look at the President United States, several wives, children
from several wives, and billionaires.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Why is that a standard of success other than money
and the domination of others? That kind of that people
now talk about toxic masculinity, but I would say is
also the one that is related to the gruesome middle
ages where you see violence and domination. What has happened
(26:03):
to good parenting, good fatherhood, being a provider for your
partner and your children. That's not seen as important. I mean,
these divorced rich men are anomalies in our society. What
(26:25):
we need is a kind of a masculine identity to
which all men can aspire, And I would say that
that really revolves around masculine honor and being doing the
right thing, even if it doesn't benefit you, doing the
(26:47):
right thing because you know inside yourself that it's the
right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
So having a moral compass this masculine honor that you describe,
whether it be today or in the Middle Ages, Where
does this come from? Is this come from the Bible,
from religion, from culture? You know, where does it? Where
we've lost it it would appear, Where did it come from?
(27:17):
And where does it come from?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You're right, a lot of it came from religion, but
it doesn't have to religion enough to say what the
twentieth century, but as religion became less important in the
lives of many people, nevertheless there was a moral code
(27:40):
of how people should behave that you could do business
with a handshake, that you could be reliable and countered upon,
and that it has endured and that's still a value
in many areas of life, but the need it takes
(28:07):
work to do that, and it also does take a
certain ethical education and an ethical society that reinforces fairness,
following the rules and so on the fact that so
few young boys are in organizations like boy Scouts or
(28:31):
team sports where they're taught to play by the rules,
to do the right thing, to behave with integrity is
a real problem. You know, you learn about that on
a soccer field. You don't learn about it being the
lone person shooting baskets on a basketball court because you
(28:56):
think you're going to be in the NBA and then
you're not feel like a failure.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
There's a fascinating conversation. We're gonna take it break for
some messages. We back in just two minutes with Professor
Murray talking about masculinity over the ages and uh and
is there a crisis in masculinity? And I guess you're
saying that maybe there is a small amount of one
in regards to to young men that are losing their
(29:24):
identity and being socialized by not boy Scouts and soccer,
but by video games in their basement. But but really
what it is is is that we're misinterpreting what masculinity
has meant in the past. And uh and and that
we need to refine what the definition of masculinity has been,
which has got something to do with honor and provider
(29:46):
and ethical and and it would appear that you don't
think that frankly, other than the vote and uh and
and and and paid work, that that the perception that
females we're subservient is not right, that females in the
past have not been subservient, that they played a very
(30:06):
critical role, and that men have to recognize that. Hey, fascinating.
We're gonna take a break for some messages and come back.
I want to ask you a little bit about made
a comment about heteronormative and you made a comment about sexuality,
and you made a comment about physical appearance. I'm gonna
come back and ask you about that. Staley sad one
back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA ninety
six am dot C.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crommey Radio. I've
got professor Jacqueline Murray with me tonight. She's written some
interesting books, The male Body and social masculinity in pre
(30:56):
modern Europe. And the painting that I presume you've got
on the cover of the book is a gentleman that
isn't overly muscular. If anything, we might describe as almost effeminitive.
And then you've got another one patriarchy, honor, and violence.
Masculinities in pre modern Europe, and you know, some look
(31:19):
pretty masculine and others look dressed up like no one
would dress today. You made a comment about that we
have this perception that everyone was very athletic, and then
you said you had this perception that everyone was heteronormative.
What do you mean by all that?
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Well, first of all, we see let's talk about physique first,
and physique is in many ways something man can you know,
completely control. They can go to the gym and lift
a thousand pound weighs, or they can take steroids or whatever.
But really it's what is. It's what you're created with.
(32:03):
It's your genetic makeup, it's your biology. But if we
look at the role models in some of these video games,
but also I think even in cartoons and certainly in movies,
you get the heroes being so overly muscled that they
(32:28):
can hardly move and they're the ones that are going
to save society or whatever and defeat the evil power.
And they're so big that their heads look like little
pinheads because of their big, huge shoulder muscles. And you
know that's a crazy ideal to have and so, but
(32:54):
it's being presented in multiple areas that physical prowess, big muscles,
the ability to fight and win, to dominate physically is
the ideal. And I think that if we look at
(33:16):
how this plays out, it explains some of the violence
we see committed by young men who are the biggest
risk of going out selling drugs, buying guns, being in
a gang. They're acting out on the streets of cities.
(33:41):
This notion of medieval warfare that they see in these
video games, and that's, you know, because that's how they
think men behave, and that's a sense of self work.
The other thing about the perception of the Middle Ages
(34:03):
that is found in these appropriations in video games and
elsewhere is this idea that all men are heterosexual and
they conform to the norms of heterosexual masculinity, which usually
means having sex with a lot of women, having a
(34:25):
lot of children to prove that you've got a good,
strong semen, having more boys than girls if you can
possibly swing it. And this is seen in the video
games where there are very few female characters, and when
they are, they're all of sexy women that the men
(34:46):
get to I mean the roles of women in some
of these games are prostitute, cortisan or which, so this
idea that men sexually dominate women and have control not
just of one woman, but many women is being absorbed
(35:10):
through these video games. And then you see in fact,
a reinscribing of patriarchal masculinity. And we see it in
the conservative right wing right now in our neighbor to
the south, where state after state is trying to control
women by reducing their access to abortion, and where some
(35:38):
of these right wing groups headed by both men and
women are saying women should be at home in being
housewives and so on, so trying to bring back, in
this case a glorious view of the nineteen fifties with
women as housewives. And the other thing is these games
(36:02):
present a sexual binary. There's men who have sex with
women and the women that passively accept sex for men.
You don't see gay characters, gender queer characters, and so on,
(36:23):
so that because of that, it's seeing that men are
all heterosexual. And this leads to again some of the
anti gay and anti trans legislation we see being enacted,
because because it's reinscribing this idea that there's only one
(36:44):
way to be a man and one sexuality.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
So what are you saying that in the Middle Ages
there was homosexuality was trans people.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Absolutely yes to both of those. How do you know that,
because we've got records show them. Historians go back and
they read things like court cases or chronicles or even
saints' lives. One of the biggest group of people in
(37:14):
the early Middle Ages who were transgendered were actually also saints, and.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
They took were transgendered people.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Because they took on the character, the good holy characteristics
of the other sex and denied the body. We see
in cases from the fourteenth and fifteenth century, not saints,
but real people, women dressing like men and living like men,
(37:50):
Men who actually dressed like women and were arrested for
prostitution and so on, and would give in court their
female name and say that they identified as female. We've
got other examples of men who had sex with men
(38:12):
describing how they had sex, which was not what we
all think of as anal intercourse. It was different types
of sex that also involved emotion and affection, and there
was a sexual home, effective relationships across society for both
(38:35):
men and women where their primary focus and emotional relationship
with someone of the same sex. So there were multiple
sexualities in the Middle Ages. But again popular culture now
has suppressed that knowledge and fights against that knowledge.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Certainly, there's you know, there's been you know, lots of
movies and uh and different things that describe ancient Greek
society that would suggest that homosexual homosexuality was accepted or
part of society. So are you saying that homosexuality or
(39:23):
or trans people were more accepted or less accepted or
or just there and and and part of existence?
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Just there? They were transgressive, absolutely, uh. The if if caught,
they would be taken before the courts unless they were
the one of the saintly group. But it was a
binary system where men were men and women were women
(39:56):
in theory and in law. But that doesn't mean that
that's how people lived. And so we only see that
kind of legalization and that binary of creation in law
and the church when we look at the Middle Ages,
(40:19):
and we don't see it's more complicated and refined aspects.
And so this then reinforces the submission of women, the
passivity of women and women in the home, and that
this if this is not the case, men are threatened.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Some of them go ahead apologizes.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
I was just going to say, and they don't need
to be threatened by that.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
So some of the criticism from the right and from
people that are really worried about, you know, where this
crisis of masculinity has come from, criticized, you know, the
women's movement, criticized women's liberation, criticized the pill, abortion, divorce
as ways that have broken up. I don't know whether
(41:10):
it's the patriarchy or the family unit, but given women
a lot more power to control their bodies, control reproduction,
and they would say that women's liberation went too far.
What do you think of that?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
I think that they used to call it in the
nineteen nineties. They called it men's liberation. And really I
think that men should attend to themselves rather than spending
their time controlling women so they can feel good about
being masculine. That if men had the same inner strength,
(41:46):
the same built a sense of identity that was not
based on unreachable kinds of goal like being a professional athlete,
and instead played pickup ball on Saturday and went to
(42:08):
work Monday or Friday, and supported their children and supported
their partner, that they would get an intrinsic sense of
self worth at whatever social level they lived. We all
don't have to have social mobility. We all don't need
(42:29):
university degrees. It's as honorable to be a plumber as
it is to be a business tycoon if you have
that sense of worth and you are an honorable man
and have integrity.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So it sounds to me like what you're saying is
we need to redefine masculinity. Let's take a break and
come back with some final comments. So I'm going to
ask you how and to what do we we define masculinity.
Stay was the one. This is really interesting. We'll be
walk into MALS.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Stream us live at SAGA nine sixty am dot C.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
A Welcome back everyone to the Brian Crommee Radio Armor.
I'm having a really interesting conversation with Professor Jacqueline Murray,
who's written a lot of books about the Middle Ages
and about male sexuality and and and masculinity in the
(43:39):
male in the Middle Ages. And after I aired an
interview with doctor Thomas Varney about the crisis of masculinity
and he wrote a really interesting article Nicole mail about it.
She said, maybe we should talk about it because there's
some incorrect perceptions we have of masculinity in the past. So,
(44:00):
you know, it is interesting that you mentioned Jordan Peterson,
who has talked about how we need to redefine masculinity
and talked about honor and provider, which a lot of
people reacted negatively to the word about provider, but you know,
the idea that that provider was a key part of
what masculinity he thought needed to be sort of redefined.
(44:24):
As there's a there's a business school professor in the
United States called Scott Galloway who's talked about this fair
amount as well about provider, family man ethics, et cetera.
Charlie Kirk who used religion as a way of defining
a different style of masculinity. Frankly, also a different style
(44:45):
of femininity that was, as you said, stayed at home
in a nineteen fifties definition potentially of females. So what
do we do if we've got this crisis? And you know,
at the same time as you did admit that the
right wing has become attractive to a lot of young men,
(45:05):
and they are appealing to these young men that feel
lost and are are you called it a trope, but
but you know, living in their parents' basements, playing video
games and and and not having losing a sense of
who they are, sense of identity, a sense of meaning. So,
given the situation that you're saying that masculinity has been
(45:26):
under misunderstood in the past, and today we're having this
toxic masculinity that is being described as positive or or
attractive or something that people might want to to to
admire and and emulate, whether it be uh President Trump
or Elel Musker or Jeff Bezos or other people. And
(45:51):
you know, you're comment about females that have breasts that
the fire gravity, A lot of them are attracted to
those females that have breasted defied gravity. What's the solution
in your mind, because I think you're admitting that, while
you're questioning some of the statistics, some of that does exist.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
And I would say that some of it exists because
of this false perception of the past and what real
men were like. And I believe, Brian, that one of
the most dangerous aspects of all of this is through
(46:37):
social media and the way that social media pulls in
young men and feeds their discontent, and they go into
these chat rooms and are recruited not only to a
patriarchal view of the role of men and women, but
(47:02):
also to the far right, to concert to radicalism, to
conservative radicalism. And the social media has a big role,
and I don't know how maintain it, but I think
we must, and I think that we need to start
reinforcing in young men self worth. A lot of in cells,
(47:28):
as it were. They say that they can't get a
girl to go out with them. And when you see
photographs of them, or even see half the guys that
are on the streets or the campuses, they're unkempt, they
haven't kept there, they haven't washed their hair in a week,
They're dish heeaveled, and you know what woman would want
(47:50):
to go out with them. I think one of the
reasons that our last federal election was such a landslide
is because mister Carney came on the stage dressed in
a suit and tie, spoke in moderate tones, and suddenly
(48:11):
people thought, my god, there's an adult in the room
instead of all the yelling and vilifying and so on.
And I'm not talking about his politics now, I'm talking
about his presence. When I started university, all my professors
wore a suit and tie. You'll not find a suit
(48:34):
and tie anywhere in the university classroom. Now people have
to portray and be role models for young men and
show them how to behave to take pride in their presentation,
to take pride in themselves, to learn a gain of
(48:55):
sports that has rules that can be followed and not
try and elbows up, as it were, and to really
reinforce integrity. And it's going to take a long time.
But the worst is how to get young men off
social media, off their cell phones. And the longer they're
(49:17):
off cell phones in school the better. But to leaver
them out of these basements and into team sports and
into training programs and apprenticeships and so on. I think
that we have overplayed university education and that we need
(49:40):
to refocus on doing the job that's right for you,
not being forced into something that's an uncomfortable fit. And
I'll tell you, I always appreciate the plumber that comes
and saves me when my foss is leaking much more
(50:02):
than I appreciate yet one more MBA on Bay Street.
I think we have to allow them to take pride
in varieties of masculinities as in the past, so.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
If you had to define, I guess I'll call it
positive masculinity rather than toxic masculinity. What would be some
of the words you would use? It sounds like it
is a provider. It is ethical, It is a variety
accepting of a variety of different descriptions of masculinity. What else?
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Honor being a person of honor that will do the
right thing even if no one's looking so. Honor and integrity,
but also self worth and not self worth and pridefulness
or ambition, but a sense of the internal person being
(51:16):
worthy and knowing that he is living out a masculinity
that is good and strong and appropriate for him.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Professor Jacquela Murray, thank you so much for joining us.
I really appreciate it. This has been an ancient conversation.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Thank you, Brian.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
That's our show for today. Everybody, thank you for joining.
I remind you I'm on every Monday through Friday at
six o'clock on nine to sixty am. You can ste
me online even from wealth at TRIPLEW Saga nine sixty
am dot CA. On my podcast and videos go up
on my website Brianconnery dot com, on social media, on
my YouTube channel, and on podcast servers. As soon as
the radio show goes there, good night, everybody, thank you,
(51:58):
has some ray. This has been great.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
No radio, no problem, stream us live on SAGA nine
sixty am dot ca A
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Soda nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Believe and everyone and welcome to the Brian Crime Radio.
I've got an interesting conversation today with doctor Professor Jacqueline Murray.
She called me up after I posted an interview with
doctor Thomas Varney about the challenge the Crisis of masculinity
and said, you know what, we should chat because she's
(00:38):
got an interesting and potentially a different point of view
on this topic and she comes to it with a
really interesting history. So Professor Murray is the University Professor
America of History at the University of Guelfh. She's also
an adjunct Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto,
a fellow at Saint Michael's College at the University Toronto,
and she's written and studied this topic in medieval times
(01:01):
quite a bit. In nineteen ninety nine, she published a
collection of essays entitled Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities Men
in the Medieval West. In twenty twenty three, she published
two collections, The Male Body and Social Masculinity in pre
modern Europe and the patriarchy, honor, and violence, masculinities in
pre modern Europe. So she's studied masculinity through the ages.
(01:25):
And then Dr Thomas Vernie following up to a lot
of commentary that's appeared, particularly in the United States but
also in Canada about the crisis of masculinity, about young
men feeling lost and losing their identity and losing sort
of a way of meaning. Doctor Murray said, let's talk,
and so Doctor Murray, let's talk. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Thank you very much, delighted to be here, Brian, and
I just thought I mentioned that it's not only that
I have done a lot of work in the past,
but also people have been debating this question for decades.
Iron John the book by Robert Blake came out in
nineteen ninety talking about how are men ever going to
(02:08):
have appropriate ways to express their masculinity? And Jordan Peterson
writes about this quite a lot, and you know, around
the twenty twenty two, twenty three and so on, and
so we've got a lot of people that have been
talking about this question for a long time. And it's
(02:31):
really interesting because the question never really changes. They keep
reiterating in the same thing, men are lost, men don't
know how to be men. And in one sense I
think it's rather condescending, But in another sense, because I mean,
(02:53):
men are individual human beings with their own identities and
so on, and so to talk about a crisis of
masculinity is such a broad generalization and in companies everyone,
but also has it gotten worse? What are we doing
(03:16):
about it? I don't know. I find it interesting about
how now the statistics that people talk about that men
aren't going to universities, that's something that's been in the
news quite recently. Yet when I looked at the statistics
that were published, there are still more men in bachelor
(03:40):
degree programs than there are women. There are still more
men in college level programs than there are women. And
while there may be a few more women professors and teachers,
in fact that is still dominated by men the teaching
(04:01):
profession at universities, not obviously at schools. So you know,
I think the statistics are being assessed in a kind
of overwrought manner on one side, and on the other side,
I think that there are there is a real situation
(04:25):
for young men in particular today that something has happened
socially that is leading many young men to flounder and
to be somewhat aimless. But I don't think it's a
(04:48):
case that they're being displaced by women. Statistically, that's not
correct in particular because it's the same number of men
as there's always been. It's just that the increased size
of universities, for example, has allowed more female students to
enroll than did in the past.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So you're questioning this idea of a crisis of masculinity,
and you're saying that the statistics that Tom's Varney and
other people are quoted are wrong, where the proportion of
females in post second education is increasing dramatically and the
proportion of males in post second education is decreasing. You
(05:31):
question that statistic, and so that's interesting. And then but
at the same time you're saying that there is this
challenge that young men have, and you know that the
commentary that's been made, and it's certainly been made by
lots of different people, including Charlie Kirk who was assassinated
last week as one other example, that that too many
(05:53):
men are feeling, particularly young men, are feeling lost a
sense of a loss of identity, a loss of meaning,
a loss of purpose. Are you a green that they
have that or they don't have that?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
No, I think that many young men do experience that.
And I mean it's almost a trope to talk about
the young guy living in his parents' basement, playing video games,
not working, not going to school, just kind of being
(06:28):
being a not even a burden, but maybe being a
burden psychologically on himself. I don't know, I'm not a
young man in a basement, but that's you know, that's
what we talk about.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So what's the source of that? Then what's the cause
of that?
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Then? Well, I think that it's a circular cause. And
the young men are in their basement because they in
their basement, if you, if you can stand something that's
almost like a syllogism. What are they doing in their basement?
They're playing video games? What are those video games like? Well,
(07:05):
let me telling you, Brian, they're not tac Men or
candy Crush. Those video games are violent. They're reinforcing an
antiquated form of masculinity that popular culture believes comes from
(07:29):
the Middle Ages, and so they're replicating of false Middle
Ages in which men are men and in these video games.
They're all petroonormative. They're all physically robust, to the point
(07:49):
of being excessively muscular, even more than steroids would allow.
They're violent and uh, they are are seeking to dominate
and uh within these games there are very few female characters,
(08:10):
and those that are are completely subservient. Uh. And they're
either vaguely evil or hostile to whatever the men's mission is,
or they're sexually uh uh subservient and are they're just
as sex symbols. And their presentation is you know, curvy,
thin waisted breastst defy gravity and and and so on.
(08:36):
So that this and they're these boys are playing these
from from childhood in particular online in particular. If they're
they're not being supervised by parents, which I think is
often the case for for even ten eleven twelve boys
because of parents being so busy in the boys wanting
(08:58):
their their own space. So they're getting this message about
what it is to be a man. There's the physical
robuton bustness, there's the violence, there's the seeking power, and
then you know they're not doing that well in high school.
(09:20):
We know that that is factually true. High school is
not a happy place. For boys, they the proportion of
them that do not excel is huge, and that's very sad.
And they see that and they can't go any further.
(09:41):
Maybe they can only be laborers. And they're sitting in
their basements feeling shame and feeling like they aren't real
men because they're not fulfilling this faux medieval fantasy masculinity.
(10:01):
When I think about the crisis of masculinity, what I
really wonder is it the crisis of patriarchal masculinity, and
the fact that these antiquated, anachronistic notions of patriarchal masculinity
(10:23):
where men control everything, are being challenged at every turn
in society, not only by women, but by the decrease,
for example, of jobs that require physical muscle rather than
(10:43):
the ability to run the robot.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
And so.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
There's a lot of ways in which some young men's
ego makes them feel like failures because they have been
been on these games that tell them what a man
should be like, and they're not like that, and so
it becomes a vicious circle.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So the problem is number one, these video games, and
number two that these video games describe or copy a patriarchy,
a patriarchal masculinity that you say is wrong, that didn't
exist in the past, and that's fascinating. We're going to
take a break for some messages, and when we come back,
I'm going to ask you to take that big step
(11:29):
back and describe, if you could, what you think masculinity
has been over the ages. Because what you said is
that you've given a considerable thought to a long view
of masculinity and how the past is a foundation for
many contemporary ideas and the ideals of masculinity. But also
that you said that there were misapprehensions about the past
(11:50):
and how they feed this so called crisis of masculinity.
So this is going to be interesting because what you're
really doing is you're looking back into our history and
you're seeing whether we had the masculinity that we think exists,
did it actually exist? Stay with us, everyone, This is
GONN an interesting conversation tonight. Back into.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Stream US live at SAGA nine sixty am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Wellcome back everyone to the Brian Cropty Radio. This is
gonna be a interesting conversation today because I've got Professor
Jacqueline Murray with us tonight. She's a university professor a
Merita in history at the University of Wealth. She's also
an adjunct professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto,
and she's a fellow at Saint Michael's College. And she
has to chat with me about a show that I
did as a follow up to an article written in
(12:50):
the Globe Mail by doctor Thomas Varney, who is a psychologist,
and he wrote about the crisis of masculinity. And she
said that maybe there's a different point of view, and
then she wrote me, which is interesting. You described several
of the different essays and books that you've written about
conflicted identities and multiple masculinities men in the medieval West,
(13:13):
and also two different collections that you wrote called the
Male Body and Social Masculinity in Pre modern Europe and
the Patriarchy, Honor and Violence Masculinities in pre modern Europe.
And then you said, so I have given considerable thought
to a long view of masculinities and how the past
is a foundation for many contemporary ideas and the ideals
(13:36):
of masculinity. Wow, So tell me, Professor Murray, what is
the long view of masculinity?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Well, the long view, and please note my earliest book
title talked about identities and masculinities plural. That's something that's
really important for us to realize, Brian, that there is
no one way of being masculine and having a masculine identity.
(14:12):
And we see this quite carefully in the Middle Ages,
where different social groups had their own definitions of masculinity,
and these were tied to concepts that we don't think
about very much in our own society, concepts of honor
(14:36):
personal honor, which is about integrity, it's about self worth,
it's about having doing the right thing, the old saying
being a man of honor, and that was all internal
(14:58):
and we don't talk about men and honor very much
unless it's defending their honor with violence. And even then,
I don't know that the gangs and the drug dealers
and so on think of themselves as defending their honor,
but there's a sense in which it is.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
So.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
In the Middle Ages, there were about ten percent of
men who were part of what we could in shorthand
call the knights in Shining Armor group, or the other
side of it is the violent, powerful men that dominated others.
(15:50):
These are two sides of the same coin in that
ten and both of them aren't fairly inaccurate because is
part of the Romantic Middle Ages, and of one is
part of the Gruesome Middle Ages, neither of which endured
or actually occurred. But uh, what about the other groups?
(16:15):
So there were different types of masculinity and different types
of honor that accrue to men in other social groups. Uh,
in terms of merchants in towns doing business with integrity
(16:36):
and uh, not charging interest and not cheating and not
clipping the coins so that the coins weren't worth as
much as they were supposed to be. This kind of
thing merchants honor and was came from their masculinity and
(16:57):
their perceived masculinity by societ. And it could be for
a wealthy merchant, a cobbler who was making you know,
good shoes from good material. All of these men supporting
their families and their households, even froto the peasant out
(17:18):
in the rural areas who we think of, as you
know from that Monty Python scene, kind of living in mud.
And so that wasn't true. Their masculinity was based in
their ability to grow food, to pay the dues to
the lord, to be able to support their family, to
(17:40):
be an honorable man who would be called upon to
stand surety for his neighbors in court, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So you're saying that this sort of very aggressive masculinity
was only with the knights, which was when you say
ten or fifteen percent, and that that that there was
a fair amount of masculinity that was identified with interesting
different terms honor and provider and ethical.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
That's absolutely ethical, I think is very important there too. Yes,
that's absolutely the case, different masculinities to different social groups,
even even among the clergy, because masculinity so often is
defined as having control of wives and children. Yet even
(18:35):
the clergy had a kind of masculine honor.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Now the thing that you're saying, I apologize for interrupting.
Did you say there are you saying therefore that the
patriarchy didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
No, absolutely, I'm not saying that by any means of course,
it existed, but it wasn't singular. There were patriarchy acted
itself out in different ways. Certainly, for example, in all
of those groups that I just mentioned, certainly there would
(19:11):
have been the belief that the man was the head
of the household, but there was not the reductionism of
women were either evil slaves or sex objects. You know,
wives and women of all classes played an important part
in society, both socially and economically, so that it was
(19:35):
patriarchal and hierarchical, absolutely, but not what you see what
is it's misinterpreted as we go across the centuries, and
you see how it's played out in what we call medievalism,
the appropriation of the Middle Ages in a popular cultural
(19:59):
setting that in fact makes the Middle Ages seem familiar,
but in fact is uh only reinforcing contemporary values. So
there's a lot of angst among men because women are
working and doing this and that. But they did that
(20:22):
in the Middle Ages too, But we don't get.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
From women worked in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Absolutely, you couldn't have a farm a house of business
if you didn't have a wife that was working equally
with you. That was not possible to make an economically
viable household and living if you did not have a
woman who was Often in urban businesses, they kept the
(20:54):
books and they dealt with the customers, or in a
peasant hold they had kitchen gardens, they helped with the fields,
and they sold eggs and butter at the market.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
But we've all watched Mary Poppins. Where when was that?
You know, that's when the Suffragettes were just arguing for
the vote, and you didn't Females didn't get the vote
in canon until what nineteen ten or something like that.
And you know the Equal Rights Amendment, pay equal work
for equal pay, you know, you go through all the lists.
(21:30):
Are you saying that that's wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
No, I'm saying that women were doing all that work
all that time and it was unrecognized, and at some
point they wanted to demand more social equality and more opportunity.
And part of that, at least I think in the
late twentieth century and this century, is due to the
(21:56):
fact that men are not the filling their masculine roles
as the bread winner, as father, and I think that
at this point I would agree with mister Varney that
there is in fact quite a lot of shirking of
(22:20):
that those kinds of social and personal roles. But that
is in part because it doesn't meet their expectations. We've
got a society now where young men think that the
road to success is on a basketball court, wrapping being
(22:45):
or being business tycoons. It's not successful to be a
good husband and father, to go to work every day
and to just have a life where uh, you're not spectacular.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So you're saying, we all want to be the knight,
we all want to be the king, we all want
to be this uh, this this uh, this caricature of
what masculinity was that we perceive in the in the
Middle Ages of of this very uh violent, aggressive, uh
you know, incredibly athletic. But that was only a small
(23:26):
part of what masculinity was in the Middle Ages. That
there were a whole bunch of other people that that
were shopkeepers and farmers that were you're saying, honorable and
uh and providers and ethical and and what we're not patriarchal.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Uh, Patriarchy doesn't have a lot to do with it.
We're talking about masculinity and identity, and so they were
recognized as masculine because they've fulfilled all those expectations. I mean.
One of the theorists, Gary Taylor, who studied masculinity in
(24:05):
the early nineties, said masculinity only exists if it's recognized
by other men. So the female gaze within a household
is not as important as the men around.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Them recognizing them as men and what that means within
their level of society, A good family provider, honest person.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
And so on. And now we don't even value integrity
that much. And in business, for example, and the role
models for young men and even financially are people like
(25:03):
Elon musk Or, who is not you know, I don't
think meets any kind of standard of male integrity.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
But he's a billionaire, if not a trillionaire, he'saly successful.
He's got several wives, numerous kids from several different wives,
et cetera. Isn't that the definition of success?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
That's the problem, Brian. Too many people think that it is,
and it isn't it.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
You look at the President United States, several wives, children
from several wives, and billionaires.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Why is that a standard of success other than money
and the domination of others? That kind of that people
now talk about toxic masculinity, but I would say is
also the one that is related to the gruesome middle
ages where you see violence and domination. What has happened
(26:03):
to good parenting, good fatherhood, being a provider for your
partner and your children. That's not seen as important. I mean,
these divorced rich men are anomalies in our society. What
(26:25):
we need is a kind of a masculine identity to
which all men can aspire, And I would say that
that really revolves around masculine honor and being doing the
right thing, even if it doesn't benefit you, doing the
(26:47):
right thing because you know inside yourself that it's the
right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
So having a moral compass this masculine honor that you describe,
whether it be today or in the Middle Ages, Where
does this come from? Is this come from the Bible,
from religion, from culture? You know, where does it? Where
we've lost it it would appear, Where did it come from?
(27:17):
And where does it come from?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You're right, a lot of it came from religion, but
it doesn't have to religion enough to say what the
twentieth century, but as religion became less important in the
lives of many people, nevertheless there was a moral code
(27:40):
of how people should behave that you could do business
with a handshake, that you could be reliable and countered upon,
and that it has endured and that's still a value
in many areas of life, but the need it takes
(28:07):
work to do that, and it also does take a
certain ethical education and an ethical society that reinforces fairness,
following the rules and so on the fact that so
few young boys are in organizations like boy Scouts or
(28:31):
team sports where they're taught to play by the rules,
to do the right thing, to behave with integrity is
a real problem. You know, you learn about that on
a soccer field. You don't learn about it being the
lone person shooting baskets on a basketball court because you
(28:56):
think you're going to be in the NBA and then
you're not feel like a failure.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
There's a fascinating conversation. We're gonna take it break for
some messages. We back in just two minutes with Professor
Murray talking about masculinity over the ages and uh and
is there a crisis in masculinity? And I guess you're
saying that maybe there is a small amount of one
in regards to to young men that are losing their
(29:24):
identity and being socialized by not boy Scouts and soccer,
but by video games in their basement. But but really
what it is is is that we're misinterpreting what masculinity
has meant in the past. And uh and and that
we need to refine what the definition of masculinity has been,
which has got something to do with honor and provider
(29:46):
and ethical and and it would appear that you don't
think that frankly, other than the vote and uh and
and and and paid work, that that the perception that
females we're subservient is not right, that females in the
past have not been subservient, that they played a very
(30:06):
critical role, and that men have to recognize that. Hey, fascinating.
We're gonna take a break for some messages and come back.
I want to ask you a little bit about made
a comment about heteronormative and you made a comment about sexuality,
and you made a comment about physical appearance. I'm gonna
come back and ask you about that. Staley sad one
back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA ninety
six am dot C.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crommey Radio. I've
got professor Jacqueline Murray with me tonight. She's written some
interesting books, The male Body and social masculinity in pre
(30:56):
modern Europe. And the painting that I presume you've got
on the cover of the book is a gentleman that
isn't overly muscular. If anything, we might describe as almost effeminitive.
And then you've got another one patriarchy, honor, and violence.
Masculinities in pre modern Europe, and you know, some look
(31:19):
pretty masculine and others look dressed up like no one
would dress today. You made a comment about that we
have this perception that everyone was very athletic, and then
you said you had this perception that everyone was heteronormative.
What do you mean by all that?
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Well, first of all, we see let's talk about physique first,
and physique is in many ways something man can you know,
completely control. They can go to the gym and lift
a thousand pound weighs, or they can take steroids or whatever.
But really it's what is. It's what you're created with.
(32:03):
It's your genetic makeup, it's your biology. But if we
look at the role models in some of these video games,
but also I think even in cartoons and certainly in movies,
you get the heroes being so overly muscled that they
(32:28):
can hardly move and they're the ones that are going
to save society or whatever and defeat the evil power.
And they're so big that their heads look like little
pinheads because of their big, huge shoulder muscles. And you
know that's a crazy ideal to have and so, but
(32:54):
it's being presented in multiple areas that physical prowess, big muscles,
the ability to fight and win, to dominate physically is
the ideal. And I think that if we look at
(33:16):
how this plays out, it explains some of the violence
we see committed by young men who are the biggest
risk of going out selling drugs, buying guns, being in
a gang. They're acting out on the streets of cities.
(33:41):
This notion of medieval warfare that they see in these
video games, and that's, you know, because that's how they
think men behave, and that's a sense of self work.
The other thing about the perception of the Middle Ages
(34:03):
that is found in these appropriations in video games and
elsewhere is this idea that all men are heterosexual and
they conform to the norms of heterosexual masculinity, which usually
means having sex with a lot of women, having a
(34:25):
lot of children to prove that you've got a good,
strong semen, having more boys than girls if you can
possibly swing it. And this is seen in the video
games where there are very few female characters, and when
they are, they're all of sexy women that the men
(34:46):
get to I mean the roles of women in some
of these games are prostitute, cortisan or which, so this
idea that men sexually dominate women and have control not
just of one woman, but many women is being absorbed
(35:10):
through these video games. And then you see in fact,
a reinscribing of patriarchal masculinity. And we see it in
the conservative right wing right now in our neighbor to
the south, where state after state is trying to control
women by reducing their access to abortion, and where some
(35:38):
of these right wing groups headed by both men and
women are saying women should be at home in being
housewives and so on, so trying to bring back, in
this case a glorious view of the nineteen fifties with
women as housewives. And the other thing is these games
(36:02):
present a sexual binary. There's men who have sex with
women and the women that passively accept sex for men.
You don't see gay characters, gender queer characters, and so on,
(36:23):
so that because of that, it's seeing that men are
all heterosexual. And this leads to again some of the
anti gay and anti trans legislation we see being enacted,
because because it's reinscribing this idea that there's only one
(36:44):
way to be a man and one sexuality.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
So what are you saying that in the Middle Ages
there was homosexuality was trans people.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Absolutely yes to both of those. How do you know that,
because we've got records show them. Historians go back and
they read things like court cases or chronicles or even
saints' lives. One of the biggest group of people in
(37:14):
the early Middle Ages who were transgendered were actually also saints, and.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
They took were transgendered people.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Because they took on the character, the good holy characteristics
of the other sex and denied the body. We see
in cases from the fourteenth and fifteenth century, not saints,
but real people, women dressing like men and living like men,
(37:50):
Men who actually dressed like women and were arrested for
prostitution and so on, and would give in court their
female name and say that they identified as female. We've
got other examples of men who had sex with men
(38:12):
describing how they had sex, which was not what we
all think of as anal intercourse. It was different types
of sex that also involved emotion and affection, and there
was a sexual home, effective relationships across society for both
(38:35):
men and women where their primary focus and emotional relationship
with someone of the same sex. So there were multiple
sexualities in the Middle Ages. But again popular culture now
has suppressed that knowledge and fights against that knowledge.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Certainly, there's you know, there's been you know, lots of
movies and uh and different things that describe ancient Greek
society that would suggest that homosexual homosexuality was accepted or
part of society. So are you saying that homosexuality or
(39:23):
or trans people were more accepted or less accepted or
or just there and and and part of existence?
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Just there? They were transgressive, absolutely, uh. The if if caught,
they would be taken before the courts unless they were
the one of the saintly group. But it was a
binary system where men were men and women were women
(39:56):
in theory and in law. But that doesn't mean that
that's how people lived. And so we only see that
kind of legalization and that binary of creation in law
and the church when we look at the Middle Ages,
(40:19):
and we don't see it's more complicated and refined aspects.
And so this then reinforces the submission of women, the
passivity of women and women in the home, and that
this if this is not the case, men are threatened.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Some of them go ahead apologizes.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
I was just going to say, and they don't need
to be threatened by that.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
So some of the criticism from the right and from
people that are really worried about, you know, where this
crisis of masculinity has come from, criticized, you know, the
women's movement, criticized women's liberation, criticized the pill, abortion, divorce
as ways that have broken up. I don't know whether
(41:10):
it's the patriarchy or the family unit, but given women
a lot more power to control their bodies, control reproduction,
and they would say that women's liberation went too far.
What do you think of that?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
I think that they used to call it in the
nineteen nineties. They called it men's liberation. And really I
think that men should attend to themselves rather than spending
their time controlling women so they can feel good about
being masculine. That if men had the same inner strength,
(41:46):
the same built a sense of identity that was not
based on unreachable kinds of goal like being a professional athlete,
and instead played pickup ball on Saturday and went to
(42:08):
work Monday or Friday, and supported their children and supported
their partner, that they would get an intrinsic sense of
self worth at whatever social level they lived. We all
don't have to have social mobility. We all don't need
(42:29):
university degrees. It's as honorable to be a plumber as
it is to be a business tycoon if you have
that sense of worth and you are an honorable man
and have integrity.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So it sounds to me like what you're saying is
we need to redefine masculinity. Let's take a break and
come back with some final comments. So I'm going to
ask you how and to what do we we define masculinity.
Stay was the one. This is really interesting. We'll be
walk into MALS.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Stream us live at SAGA nine sixty am dot C.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
A Welcome back everyone to the Brian Crommee Radio Armor.
I'm having a really interesting conversation with Professor Jacqueline Murray,
who's written a lot of books about the Middle Ages
and about male sexuality and and and masculinity in the
(43:39):
male in the Middle Ages. And after I aired an
interview with doctor Thomas Varney about the crisis of masculinity
and he wrote a really interesting article Nicole mail about it.
She said, maybe we should talk about it because there's
some incorrect perceptions we have of masculinity in the past. So,
(44:00):
you know, it is interesting that you mentioned Jordan Peterson,
who has talked about how we need to redefine masculinity
and talked about honor and provider, which a lot of
people reacted negatively to the word about provider, but you know,
the idea that that provider was a key part of
what masculinity he thought needed to be sort of redefined.
(44:24):
As there's a there's a business school professor in the
United States called Scott Galloway who's talked about this fair
amount as well about provider, family man ethics, et cetera.
Charlie Kirk who used religion as a way of defining
a different style of masculinity. Frankly, also a different style
(44:45):
of femininity that was, as you said, stayed at home
in a nineteen fifties definition potentially of females. So what
do we do if we've got this crisis? And you know,
at the same time as you did admit that the
right wing has become attractive to a lot of young men,
(45:05):
and they are appealing to these young men that feel
lost and are are you called it a trope, but
but you know, living in their parents' basements, playing video
games and and and not having losing a sense of
who they are, sense of identity, a sense of meaning. So,
given the situation that you're saying that masculinity has been
(45:26):
under misunderstood in the past, and today we're having this
toxic masculinity that is being described as positive or or
attractive or something that people might want to to to
admire and and emulate, whether it be uh President Trump
or Elel Musker or Jeff Bezos or other people. And
(45:51):
you know, you're comment about females that have breasts that
the fire gravity, A lot of them are attracted to
those females that have breasted defied gravity. What's the solution
in your mind, because I think you're admitting that, while
you're questioning some of the statistics, some of that does exist.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
And I would say that some of it exists because
of this false perception of the past and what real
men were like. And I believe, Brian, that one of
the most dangerous aspects of all of this is through
(46:37):
social media and the way that social media pulls in
young men and feeds their discontent, and they go into
these chat rooms and are recruited not only to a
patriarchal view of the role of men and women, but
(47:02):
also to the far right, to concert to radicalism, to
conservative radicalism. And the social media has a big role,
and I don't know how maintain it, but I think
we must, and I think that we need to start
reinforcing in young men self worth. A lot of in cells,
(47:28):
as it were. They say that they can't get a
girl to go out with them. And when you see
photographs of them, or even see half the guys that
are on the streets or the campuses, they're unkempt, they
haven't kept there, they haven't washed their hair in a week,
They're dish heeaveled, and you know what woman would want
(47:50):
to go out with them. I think one of the
reasons that our last federal election was such a landslide
is because mister Carney came on the stage dressed in
a suit and tie, spoke in moderate tones, and suddenly
(48:11):
people thought, my god, there's an adult in the room
instead of all the yelling and vilifying and so on.
And I'm not talking about his politics now, I'm talking
about his presence. When I started university, all my professors
wore a suit and tie. You'll not find a suit
(48:34):
and tie anywhere in the university classroom. Now people have
to portray and be role models for young men and
show them how to behave to take pride in their presentation,
to take pride in themselves, to learn a gain of
(48:55):
sports that has rules that can be followed and not
try and elbows up, as it were, and to really
reinforce integrity. And it's going to take a long time.
But the worst is how to get young men off
social media, off their cell phones. And the longer they're
(49:17):
off cell phones in school the better. But to leaver
them out of these basements and into team sports and
into training programs and apprenticeships and so on. I think
that we have overplayed university education and that we need
(49:40):
to refocus on doing the job that's right for you,
not being forced into something that's an uncomfortable fit. And
I'll tell you, I always appreciate the plumber that comes
and saves me when my foss is leaking much more
(50:02):
than I appreciate yet one more MBA on Bay Street.
I think we have to allow them to take pride
in varieties of masculinities as in the past, so.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
If you had to define, I guess I'll call it
positive masculinity rather than toxic masculinity. What would be some
of the words you would use? It sounds like it
is a provider. It is ethical, It is a variety
accepting of a variety of different descriptions of masculinity. What else?
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Honor being a person of honor that will do the
right thing even if no one's looking so. Honor and integrity,
but also self worth and not self worth and pridefulness
or ambition, but a sense of the internal person being
(51:16):
worthy and knowing that he is living out a masculinity
that is good and strong and appropriate for him.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Professor Jacquela Murray, thank you so much for joining us.
I really appreciate it. This has been an ancient conversation.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Thank you, Brian.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
That's our show for today. Everybody, thank you for joining.
I remind you I'm on every Monday through Friday at
six o'clock on nine to sixty am. You can ste
me online even from wealth at TRIPLEW Saga nine sixty
am dot CA. On my podcast and videos go up
on my website Brianconnery dot com, on social media, on
my YouTube channel, and on podcast servers. As soon as
the radio show goes there, good night, everybody, thank you,
(51:58):
has some ray. This has been great.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
No radio, no problem, stream us live on SAGA nine
sixty am dot ca A
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