December 16, 2025 • 61 mins
Dr. Chloe Carmichael is a clinical psychologist and USA Today bestselling author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety. Her latest book, Can I Say That: Why Free Speech Matters and How to Use It Fearlessly, unpacks the psychological benefits of free speech and provides practical tools for speaking up as well as listening resiliently. Dr. Chloe is a Fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. She is featured regularly in national media, including CNN, FOX, VH1, and others. She speaks frequently for law firms and other corporations on topics like how to unlock the healthy function of anxiety, how to discuss sensitive topics in the workplace or on campus, and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you
may be. My name is Brian, and welcome to Honey
Badger Radio. This is the fireside chat where we have
good conversations with interesting people. So today we're going to
be speaking to doctor Chloe Carmichael, who is a clinical
psychologist and us say today best selling author of a
(00:22):
lot of different books. One of them is what I
thought was really interesting is can I say that why
free speech matters and how to use it fearlessly. She
has been on Doctor Phil, She's been on uh, Doctor Drew.
I for some reason, I tongue twisted Doctor Drew. But yeah,
(00:43):
welcome to the show, Chloe.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you. It's really truly great to be with you. Brian.
It was fun to chat with YouTube before we came on.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, it's really neat that you know that you're even
aware of who we are. I don't know, like I
feel like we are just so out in the fringes
and it's it's weird when we get Like the other
last week I spoke to a guy who is an
activist for East Turkestan that's trying to like, you know,
(01:12):
have like an issue with the Chinese government. Addressed, and
I thought, how do you know who we are? So
so anyway, but thank you for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it. You have a really great pedigree
and background. So let me first ask, I guess, tell
us a little bit about you know, what you do
and why where is it that we kind of like
(01:37):
are at cross purposes or like similar purposes.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah. So I'm a clinical psychologist, and I guess I've
always been really interested in independent thought, So I mean
I would think that right there is kind of an overlap,
but my interest in independent thought was a little bit
more the background until the pandemic. So prior to the pandemic,
(02:05):
I did what was more normal psychologist stuff, like my
previous book was about the healthy function of anxiety, which
is to stimulate preparation behaviors. And then during the pandemic,
I started getting really uncomfortable with some of the stuff
that was being said or rather not said, you know,
(02:25):
like in particular, the last straw for me was as
a psychologist and as a mother when the public was
being told to just mask their kids, like even toddlers,
for you know, months, days, years on end, and I
started speaking up about it, even though I knew it
was going to cause some real problems for me in
(02:45):
terms of like media relations, because I at the time
had a pretty big practice, like and playing a dozen
therapists and doing a lot of big national TV. But
and you know, we all knew that TV wasn't going
to like that if I started talking about like that
we shouldn't be masking kids. But I just it was
like a kind of a Mama Bear switch flip, like
(03:08):
redline in the sand type moment. I was just I
couldn't take it. I had to start speaking up about
that as a public service issue. So I did, and
like doctor Jay Badicharia and different people picked it up,
which was kind of fun, and it led to a
lot of conversations that I wasn't having previously. I was
holding a lot of stuff inside previously, stuff that I thought,
(03:30):
could you know, get me blacklisted from the media or
hurt my business or whatever. But after that, it was
like something snapped. I started talking about that, and then
I started talking about trans issues like that, the fact
that men can't become women. It still feels good to
just say that aloud, because, to be honest, I was
afraid to say it aloud for a long time, and
(03:52):
so all of this led to my new book, which
is about the mental health benefits of free speech, because
I think a lot of people feel like they have
to keep stuff inside because it would just be safer
that way, and hey, what's the harm if I just
told it back? And I even thought that way myself
for a long time, and I finally realized it's truly
(04:14):
better for us mentally, emotionally, socially, societally if we just
speak up. So that's why I'm here all.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Right now, and now when I speak to psychologists, I
think it's great that I have this opportunity. One of
the things that I am I think of and this
is also I guess in line with that, like you know,
speaking out, because they're sort of like this, I don't know,
it's almost like like a mythology that we have to
(04:46):
live under where there's certain things that are just completely like,
you know, like the conversation is done and dust it on,
we can't bring this up again. And I think yes,
COVID kind of tried to like speed run that from
the moment it started happening to like not only were
they were asking kids to mask up, but you know,
they were isolating them from their classmates. They had to
(05:08):
stay home, or if they did go, they were in
these like you know, I've seen pictures anyway with people
in like little bubbles of their own, little isolated spaces,
and I wondered, what we're going to be the negative
effects of that. And so one of the other things
I think about is the men's mental health. And I
don't know if you have talked a lot about this.
(05:29):
I presume you did, because this is what you do,
and you know who we are, and it looks like
there isn't a lot of help for them, even from
the American Psychological Association, And I wanted to know what
your thoughts were on the APA's guidelines on traditional masculinity
for you know what they call, I guess, pathologizing traits
(05:53):
like stoicism and competitiveness. How do these kinds of narratives,
would you say, impact men's willingness to seek help?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, I am so glad that you brought that up.
And yeah, I actually did talk about that some through
preg or you. They did a documentary called something like
Men in Masculinity or something, and I talked about the
issue of toxic masculinity or so called you know, toxic masculinity.
(06:26):
But yeah, so it's a good documentary and if you're
a Daily Wire member now you can actually get it
through the Daily Wire app as well. I noticed they
have some kind of a partnership with Prager, it seems.
But yeah, that's definitely something I talked about as those
ridiculous guidelines about you know, toxic masculinity. To be honest,
(06:46):
it's it's all kind of embarrassing to me at this point,
like being frankly a psychologist in some ways, because I
feel like, you know, my whole profession has you know,
disgraced itself with all this you know, incredible nonsense. And yeah,
as you said, like pathologizing stoicism or competitiveness or I mean,
(07:11):
and it's so weird too because the same people that
are telling us that men and women are like social
constructs in the first place, you know, But then at
the same time, all of a sudden, it becomes very
real if we're talking about actual men, like then they
have something to say about it. It just if it
(07:31):
feels it feels so circular and soft. And as you said,
it's they're not only quote what you said, not a
lot of help I believe they're actively harmful to men
and in counterpart therefore to women, you know, because I've
also worked with women that have felt, you know, like
(07:55):
there's something wrong with them, that deep down inside they
have thisire to like, you know, be with a masculine
man and make him a sandwich, and enjoy motherhood and
enjoy you know, being a wife, and so you know, rabbing.
You know, society of masculine men obviously hurts men, but
it also I don't mean to like make women the
(08:18):
victim here. I'm just saying it's not good for men
or for women. It's it's it's really messed up. And yeah,
I have a lot to say about that.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
There seems to be Yeah, so there there's definitely with
the APA, and I guess there's a I don't know
if it's a lack of oversight or an unwillingness to
look at you know, like like different kinds of data
or conducts, different kinds of studies that look at different
you know, behaviors or or other phenomena. But it does
(08:50):
seem like it's going to create an inevitable contradiction where
you're they're trying to suppress a certain kind of masculine
behavior which is normal for men. I mean, they pathologize it,
they exaggerate it, they straw man it right, They paint
a picture of like a lumberjack that cuts down trees
(09:11):
all day and you know, slaps his wife around when
she doesn't like make the casserole the way he likes
it or something. But it ends up the way that
it's applied, ends up just basically just tarring any kind
of positive masculine behavior. And this does put women in
a weird position because it they never say to women, Okay,
(09:33):
you have to make you know, like your choices for
a mate have to fit within the new parameters that
we have put men into, because they know if they do,
women won't prefer that, because I think the average woman
wants the average man and that that comes with average behaviors,
if that makes sense, right, And the best thing to
(09:54):
do is just leave people free to just you know,
decide what they want without pathologizing anything, so that even
though they haven't explicitly attacked femininity, they do by extension
when they attack masculinity because women want men who are men, right,
and so it's going to have that effect no matter what.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, And you know, by extension, just like they have
this reflexive reaction it seems to tear down or belittle
or devalue masculinity. There's this, you know, similar reverse thing
of trying to elevate, you know, really aggressively anything that's feminine.
(10:41):
There's a man named Michael Anton who coined a really
wonderful phrase called the celebration paradox, and what that refers
to is that if you are, for example, to say,
you know, there's a lot more women on the judiciary
bench these days, you find a whole lot more women
and so the you know, judicial system has become a
(11:04):
lot more compassionate. It's okay to say that, just for example,
but it's not okay to say, you know, there's a
lot more women on the bench today, and it has
caused the judiciary system to be a little bit histrionic,
like you can only comment on a change that's been
brought about or you know, aspect of women if it's positive,
(11:26):
otherwise it's sexism. Whereas, of course it's really totally unscientific
because either you're able to notice a change in a
variable such as the increase in the quantity of women
and then discuss changes and you know results from that
or you're not, but to say, you can only do
(11:47):
it essentially if it's positive. And by the way, the
same thing happens about race, right, you can, you can.
And I remember being perplexed about this even in graduate school,
that we would do these quote cultural sensitivity trainings and
I would have the same feelings about women's stuff too,
By the way, I would be like, why is there
(12:09):
a women's affinity group but not a men's affinity group? Right?
Or you know, it's just the whole thing is It
drives me, It drives me nuts. And I spent so long,
you know, not talking about it because, especially as a student,
I had a first of all, I think, like a
(12:30):
humble belief that hey, I'm here to learn, and maybe
these people know something I don't like I should learn
from them. But then when I came to realize that
I genuinely just simply disagreed with them, I still felt
like I couldn't speak up because it would, you know,
railroad me from getting my PhD. And then the same
thing kind of happened a little bit with as I
(12:52):
was trying to build my business and build media relationships.
I was almost like the frog that gets cooked slowly,
and finally I jumped out of the pot. So that's
how it all happened.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
So going back to your sort of like story of
how you got here, since you did write a book
about confronting like not just like using free speech fearlessly,
but also confronting anxiety, was that something that kind of
came out of personal experience with that particular event.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, so not entirely of personal experience, except the personal
experience of you know, running a big practice in New
York City where there's a lot of people that are
very anxious, and that also at the same time have
a sense that their anxiety does give them a little
bit of an edge, you know that seeing only the
paranoid survive, right. And so I built my practice working
(13:49):
with a lot of really anxious people. And one of
the things that I discovered was really helpful for them
to learn is that the healthy function of anxiety is
to stimulate preparation behaviors. And that helped them a lot,
because otherwise what was happening is they would come to
(14:10):
my practice and say, you know, Doctorcally, help me how
to get rid of my anxiety. But they had a
little part of themselves that didn't really want to let
go of the anxiety because they had a sense that
it was on some level driving.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Them useful too.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, and so I felt like they're just for what
I think one of the reasons my practice grew so
quickly and became very successful is because I was one
of the only psychologists that was really helping people to
straddle that line of saying okay, like, yeah, we don't
want to have anxiety run our lives, but at the
same time, a little anxiety is okay. It's almost like
(14:48):
if like a ridiculously underweight anorexic comes in for help,
she does there's a part of her that's afraid to
get well because she's afraid it means that she's going
to like blow up and get super fat like a balloon.
But when you can teach her to say no, no,
you can eat normally and it doesn't mean you're going
to get fat. You can even still be very slim.
(15:09):
You're just going to learn how to like manage your
food instead of the food managing you. And so the
same sort of thing happened, I think with the anxiety.
And so anyway, my practice was doing really, really well
with that, and somebody, to be honest, it's like a
silly story. Somebody was like, Chloe, the next step in
your career path is that you need to write a book.
(15:30):
And I was like, okay, what should it be about?
And they said, well, what do you always talk to
clients about? And I said, you know, the whole healthy
function of anxiety thing. And they said, okay, well what
are the techniques that you explain? And and so I
put in, say, the nine most popular techniques and the
book did really well. It's in five languages now it's
(15:51):
you know, and it got an endorsement by Deepak Chopra.
So it's a great book. But my new book, it
really was more of a passion project. My first book
I knew was going to be very widely marketable because
everybody has anxiety and it's like not a controversial topic.
But my new book, which I think you have on
(16:13):
screen right now if I'm seeing correctly, that one got
me dropped by my big publisher. It got me dropped
by my fancy literary agent. And I knew oddly enough
that it was going to be controversial to try to
talk about the mental health benefits of free speech. I
think that's because my profession leans literally ninety percent plus
(16:36):
to the left, and for whatever reason, free speech is
currently coded as a right wing issue, and so there's
just not many psychologists talking about it, which is frankly
why I think we need to talk about it, because
otherwise the narrative from psychologists seems to be, let's put
speech codes on because we need to tamp down hate
(16:59):
speech and bullying, and that that will be better. We'll
work on safe spaces for everybody, and that that will
be psychologically good for us. And I think the apposite,
And I think that a lot of my profession has
got blinders on from like political foggers or something, and
so I'm trying to peers through that.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So yeah, the book is called can I say that
why free speech matters? So I want to know you
said that, you talked about the psychological benefits. I am
a free speech absolutist and I have never felt so free,
But I don't really know if that's just like a
me thing or what. So what can you say about that?
(17:41):
Because the thing is we want to talk about on
this channel. Our goal is to discuss men's issues, and
that means, first of all, that is already a bit
of a taboo subject, which we don't think it should be.
Kind of like in the same way that free speech
is considered a taboo subject even though we don't think
it should be. Uh, And that means that we have
(18:02):
to constantly, I guess, like fight against you know, censorship
or suppression or dismissal and heck, I mean you know
in in uh, earlier this year, a man was murdered
for a speech. And when we saw that, I mean
I wasn't that surprised because I know that censorship tends
(18:23):
to be a precursor to murder because if it doesn't
stop someone, eventually they'll take extreme measures to silence you.
And I know that's a dark thing to talk about,
but I think it's true. But I'm curious about what
the like, what what does your what does your book say?
In short? And I suggest you guys check it out.
(18:44):
I put links in the description to all of your
to your website as well as your book about what
the you know, like why free speech is beneficial to us?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yes, well, I mean you've said so many important things there.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I know, I know I do that.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, I mean that's I love that And so I
just I was just jotting down some notes as you
were talking because I wanted to like make sure I
really capture on all of that. But yeah, so, first
of all, I totally agree with you that we literally,
well maybe not literally, it's virtually set the table for
violence when we when we when we tamp down on speech,
(19:22):
when we don't allow people to talk, which is the
opposite of what the left thinks is going to happen. Right.
They think that by putting on speech codes, we will
reduce hate speech and bullying and have this kind of
gentlair society, or at least that's what they say they think.
Who knows if that's really what they think. It could
just all be like a just strategic method to control
(19:44):
people wrapped in flowery language. But like, if I take
them at their word, it's it's it's with a well
intentioned goal. But yeah, I mean when when we can't,
when we can't use words to solve our problems, we're
more likely to bottle up our problems and then act
them out with you know, action with violence, yeah, or
(20:07):
just other more socially hostile behaviors than you know, just
simply having a heated exchange with somebody. So I just
wanted to mention that I think it's really important that,
for example, the same group of people, which happens to
be people who identify as very liberal there I discuss
(20:28):
this in my book, they're statistically more likely to do
what I call the five d's, which is to defriend
on social media, distance or drop contact in real life,
disinvite a speaker, or decline to datacross the aisle. They
are also the same group of people is two to
eight times more likely to endorse political violence. And I
(20:50):
really think that those two things are related. So, you know,
Charlie Kirk always said when people stop talking, like that's
when when we're going to have the violence, and I
just I really agree with that. You know, it's I
think it also has to do with you know, we
talked earlier a little bit. I think about the feminization
(21:12):
of psychology, and it's interesting that with women, the need
for power is often expressed through nurturing, so we mask
it as a nurturing behavior, like oh, I have another
bite of soup, dear, Oh, I organized all your drawers
for you, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Like, yeah, yeah, it's like, what's the there's a character
on Harry Potter that I often bring up that was
like a more terrifying villain than Voldemort. It was that woman.
I can't remember her name, but that was she was
very like motherly and nurturing and like nice and sweet,
but really controlling, like you know, and yeah, I don't.
(21:54):
I didn't read those books, but I saw the movies once,
so that stuck in my mind. Have you ever read
speaking of the feminization? Are you familiar with Helen Andrews.
I assume that you know about her. She's been she
was doing the rounds A while ago. She wrote an
essay I want to say, uh it was on her substack,
but it might have been on a website. It was
called the Great Feminization, and she was talking about how
(22:16):
women entering like basically talking about.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
The the the challenges of the sort of unforeseen consequences
of women entering the workforce and how they have altered
the entire like dynamic, the social dynamics of the workplace.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Have you have you seen this?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I think I have seen her like on YouTube and
things like that, and and I love that. And I
feel like even just the conversation that we're having now
is an example of you know, the mental health benefits
of free speech. So what you and I are saying
even would be unsayable in most you know, academic circles, right,
(22:59):
And so there's three main benefits of mental health benefits
to free speech. There's cognitive, emotional, and social. And on
the cognitive side, it's really through language. It's one of
those things that's so natural. It's like breathing. We don't
even think about it. It's truly a natural, innate human process.
(23:20):
Language even more so specific to humans. Other animals have
interesting sound patterns they make, but we're the only ones
that use symbolic language that can even convey abstract ideas
and thoughts and whatnot. And so it gives us this
incredible cognitive tool that we can not only exchange information rapidly,
(23:40):
we can apply systems of logic like if then statements
and you know all this, you know, history, narrative type stuff.
And so when we suppress language and dialogue, we really
start messing with our cognitive abilities, just the same way
that if you cut off a few of your fingers,
(24:02):
it would interfere with your ability to use your hand
as nature intended it. And so when we start you know,
essentially slicing out and removing parts of our dialogue or
you know, parts of our you know, rational capacity for
reality to notice and process information because it's taboo, we're
(24:24):
interfering with our ability to process that information. And that
is then how we end up with these ridiculous scenarios.
You know of like many academic departments where it's ninety
percent female, but there's still recruiting women into the profession
for the sake of diversity, you know, but they're not
(24:47):
recruiting men for the sake of diversity. Or there's no
men's affinity group even though men are a minority, and
they used to say, well, we need a women's affinity
group because of women being a minority or whatever. So yeah,
that's just whe example of like even just how the
conversation that we're having if some of the things we're
(25:07):
saying felt unsayable to me for many years.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, and speech, like if you can't speak freely, it's
it's it's like I guess what how I would how
I say it is? It makes it where you can't
really think without being able to speak, especially to someone else.
So if I have ideas or thoughts or whatever, theory
on something, but I can't share it with someone in
(25:33):
an earnest and in let's say stoic way, that's sort
of like emotionally divorced from whatever you know, might whatever
baggage it may have, but you're just trying to look
at it for what it is. I can only do
that if I'm if I'm exchanging that idea with someone
else who is also interested in it in the same
for the same reason, So I don't have to worry
(25:53):
about like how I choose my words or if I
have to like make any like you know, land acknowledgments,
as we like to say, where before you start talking
about men, I have to start by saying we all
understand that women have problems too, blah blah blah. That
just eats up time and it's kind of exhausting and
it makes it harder for me to just focus on
the thing that I'm trying to talk about. And I
(26:13):
think that if you can't speak freely, it's sort of
it makes it hard to think freely totally.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
And you know, again, I'm almost embarrassed to mention psychology
studies because I feel like it's such a krac in
so many ways, but like the studies I cite in
my book, many of them are like older, like decades
ago before my you know, profession became so corrupted and
distorted and you know, falsified. But to your point there
(26:41):
about the importance of being able to discuss things in
a rational manner, there's a lot of studies again almost
stayingly obvious, that it really boosts our problem solving skills.
That there's been a lot of studies done where they
give people, you know, problems to solve and they have
to either solve them alone, or they solve them with
(27:03):
a partner, or they solve them even just alone, but
they have to verbalize to somebody else like what they're
doing along the way, and give a little presentation about
the issue. And the people who are given the direction
to verbalize about it, they tend to you know, create
more and better solutions that you know, than the people
who you know, are are forced to do it in
(27:25):
isolation or without talking. Because again it's just one of
our most innate tools. We have specific regions of our
brain that are devoted to the production and the comprehension
of language. I mean, just to keep it even the
focus on men's issues this really came up strong with
that ridiculous believe all women me too world. Right, So
(27:48):
that's back when I was a little bit still in
the closet about being like a real person with real thoughts,
and so the media would call me for my thoughts
about the me too situation, and I never said anything
I thought was untrue. So I would give them the
comment that they wanted about, you know how, of course
sexual harassment is bad, blah blah blah. But I would
(28:10):
never say to them the part that I knew that
they didn't want to hear, which is that, of course
women also sometimes lie. Women can make stuff up. I've
sat with women in my office that have told me
very calculatingly that they plan to make up an allegation
for you know, personal gain. I've worked with men that
(28:30):
have been the victims of that. But when nobody could
say it, it was almost like an emperor has no
clothes thing. People were making all these ridiculous, irrational decisions,
and men's lives were being ruined because nobody wanted to say, hey,
wait a minute, believe all women doesn't actually make sense, right, Like,
it just just doesn't make sense. And so when people
(28:53):
can't speak freely, they do what we call repression and suppression,
and they go into denial. They start really dissociating with
even their true rational mind. It's how we end up
in group think and things like that. So I do
think there's a lot of overlap with some of the
issues that have been impacting men and some especially when
(29:16):
women are the ones who are controlling speech in the
name of their quote, compassion or their nurturing behavior. But
yet they're the ones who are like setting all the
speech roles.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yes, yes, so it sounds like you would probably be
a bit of a like a misfit in the in
the psychological community. Have you had like are you like
I don't know, like do you have any issues with
because I'm not sure how that field works, Like I
don't know if it's a club and you know, you
get kicked out or or you don't have as much access,
(29:49):
Like has has your positions ort have made your career
more difficult?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, I mean yes and no. So I mean in
the obvious predictable ways. Yes, But I firmly believe again
that free speech is good for mental health, and one
of the reasons is because it also creates greater social
authenticity and relationships become more real. And I can tell
you some stories about where I've been uninvited to the barbecue.
(30:16):
It's in fact, in particular around men's rights. But the
relationships that I have retained or even found through speaking
out have been so much richer and like, you know,
more real than anything I had before. But just as
an example, I was speaking for a group called Families
(30:36):
Advocating for Campus Equality. They work with young men that
have been falsely accused of sexual misconduct. This was back
before they finally restored a little bit of sanity to
Title nine. Like up until pretty recently, a girl could
just say a man raped or on campus, and the
man could just be automatically expelled, you know, by nothing
(31:00):
like a kangaroo court of a bunch of professors, without
ever a police report ever being filed. And so I
was going to go speak for face Families Advocating for
Campus Equality, and they asked me not to publicize it
because they were so used to like people trying to
like trash, you know, and destroy their conventions. So I
didn't mention it to anybody, but I wrote into a
(31:23):
list for psychologists, a very big and prominent one, and
I just said, hey, I'm looking into research about false
allegations of sexual misconduct and wondering, you know, asked a
few questions about it, and within like literally an hour,
somebody wrote in with a flyer from this event, which
(31:43):
I didn't even know that there was a flyer, but
they were like, this is what doctor Carmichael's asking. I
suggest none of us should try to help her with
this you know, awful project, and like it was from
there it was like this huge pilon You would have
thought I was asking people like I'm going to a
puppy kicking contract and someone like, you know, like it
was insane. And so I then went and spoke, and
(32:05):
then afterwards at the convention, I met with young men
that shared where all of them had the same story.
It was heartbreaking that they'd been accused, falsely accused. They
went to a therapist to try to regain their life back.
The therapist in session would accuse them again and say,
(32:25):
maybe you just don't know what rape is, or maybe
you maybe are not being honest.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
I was just going to ask you about that if that,
like this is why men don't seek therapy a lot
of the time, like there's a lot of talk about
why aren't why aren't men seeking therapy? Women are seeking therapy.
I'm not even sure that it's helping women, and it's
stuff like this because they go in and they're already
the bad guy. I'm sorry, go ahead and finish your story.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
No, no, totally, I'm glad you jumped in, because I mean,
again again, the benefits to me of true dialogue is
we can resonate together. But yeah, so after I was like,
I was blown away at the experiences of these men,
and so again, somewhat foolishly, this is years ago before
(33:10):
I really fully understood like what I was dealing with
with my profession. So I then wrote into this list
serve again. And usually many therapists are very hungry for
clients there. Many of them don't have very good business skills,
and they jump at the chance for referrals. So I
wrote and I was like, hey, you know, this organization
like really needs therapists that are willing enabled to help
(33:32):
young men that have been falsely accused of sexual misconduct.
You know, can anyone would anyone be interested in being
on their referrals list? And every time in the past
that I tried to offer a referral for other reasons.
I literally would get dozens of people trying to clamor
for that referral. I got zero on this one. I
(33:52):
mean again, it was just I think you're right though too.
I don't think that my profession is really helping women
that much either by just validating everything they stay in,
telling them that they're a victim and all this other
stuff exactly. Yeah, but it was it was amazing to
see like the way that my industry treated these young men,
because can you imagine the reverse, like a therapist accusing
(34:13):
a rape victim of like, well maybe you're confused, honey,
maybe you wanted it, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, it is wild. And I noticed that you you
brought up multiple times that there's a lack of spaces
for men to like, you know, have discussions. And one
of the things that I like, we all in the
in the in HBr, we have like our specific focus
and I have my thing that I'm most concerned with,
(34:43):
I think is the most crucial is one restoring fathers.
You know, the right wall place in the in the home.
And there's a lot of talk about deadbeat dads and stuff,
but I think that it's likely. And again we don't
have data because no one has thought to do a
study on But I would bet that most men who
want to be involved and they are excluded by from
(35:07):
their kids by their mother because there's incentives in place
to essentially make it to where the mother doesn't need
the father around, like they get paid by the state
and you know, and they're encouraged to continue to live
like the life of a single woman even if they
have children. And I think that that's damaging the children.
But I'm getting a little bit off, But fatherhood is
(35:27):
like a big, big, big big thing for me. And
then right after that is that men need spaces where
they can be with other men like there was. I
think that for most of our history, men spend a
lot of their time with other men, and women spent
a lot of their time with other women. Now I'm
(35:47):
not saying that we have to go back to that,
because I think that people just being allowed to freely
associate with whoever they want is optimal right, and they
can figure out what it is that they need. But
we don't allow men to do this every time. Men gather,
whether it's in a real place or online or something,
(36:07):
there's always this like this narrative that problematizes that if
they're in sports, there's you know, they talk about locker
room talk, and these are all little ways that they
like break that up, right, Like though men need to
be monitored if they're online, there's concerns that they're going
to be radicalized, you know, and and all of it
(36:29):
is specifically so that men don't talk to each other
and exchange ideas and have conversations. And I think this
goes back to kind of like looking at the other
side of what we were talking about with the way
that women communicate. I think that there is some value
in the way that women communicate because it is to
build let's say, they create the social boundaries when they
(36:51):
communicate with each other. It's like this, you know, this
is what we're going for, and this is like I
want to create a comfortable space for women. And I
think there's probably you know, it's inherited from ancient traditions
of like raising children and stuff like that and building community,
but men need something like that as well, and they
don't have that like whenever they do again, like I
(37:14):
said before. We problematize it, we criminalize it, and we
like there's asks their request to have it be monitored,
have it be censored, have them be broken up. And
I think it it It isolates them, It adomizes them
from other men. And the only thing and you think
about it, if you're a boy, and I know I'm
(37:35):
going on for a little bit here, no, I love it.
If you're a boy, Okay, you're born into the world
and maybe and this is just like as an aside,
maybe you get circumcised, which I'm also against. First thing
that happens is like a you know, a physical act
of trauma. Then you are growing up around the there's
a pretty good chance that you only know your mother,
(37:57):
you don't know your father. Then you go to school
and you're surrounded by women because there are most of
the teachers. A lot of men can't get teaching jobs
because again we have criminalized men. If they want to
work with children, we immediately act suspicious like there's something
wrong with him, he's going to do something. Even though
there's a lot of women that rape boys in school
(38:18):
and girls by the way, but they're surrounded by girls
and women when they get into school. When they go
to high school, you know, they can't. They're they're sort
of kept away. And especially this young generation now after
what happened during COVID, they're even more like isolated, you know,
their masks, they had to stay at home, they take
(38:40):
classes at home, whatever. And then they grow up and
that we're we're still jumping down their throat because they
haven't made enough money to attract a mate. Even though
we're giving all of the you know, preferential education to
women and girls, we're still acting like girls are behind that.
There's not enough in stem, there's not enough in you know, CEOs,
(39:00):
there's not enough in politics, there's not enough in law,
there's not enough in the courts, whatever it is, right,
and these boys are growing up in this world which
is extremely feminized, and it's making them like confused because
they don't know what it means to be a man.
So they're trying to figure that out. They feel I
(39:24):
think that they're they're experiencing mental health problems that people
are not not only not talking about because they haven't
decided to like look into it, but they don't have
a solution for because most of the mainstream psychological help
is not engineered to help men as they are. It
sees them as a problem, right, as opposed to having problems.
(39:46):
So when they do become let's say, dysfunctional as a result,
instead of looking inward and saying, well, how did we
contribute to this problem, it's just, oh, this is what
men are. So it's almost like they create the problem
and then they point to the men as the problem
when that actually manifests, which usually doesn't. I'm sorry I
(40:08):
went on a long thing, but I mean, I don't
know what you think about that.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
No, No, I thought you again, were just layered in there.
I was making some notes as you spoke, just so
I could try to like really keep up with you,
because I think you said a lot of really important
things there. I think you're right that when men, you know,
gather in their spaces or their private spaces or whatever,
(40:31):
it is almost always viewed in a pejorative manner, like
it's the mano sphere, it's bro culture, it's the boys club,
it's you know what I mean. Like whereas with again,
it's that celebration paradox, you know. But you know, if
women do it, it's like, oh, well, it's women's spaces.
Or even explicitly like free of men, like as if
(40:51):
you know, like it's better for you know, sanitized city, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I think you're right. Just even the labels there
say a lot and you also pointed out importantly too legally,
like the It truly still baffles to me. And I
still do a fair amount of corporate speaking, and I've
you know, in the spirit of my book, I've just
(41:13):
decided to, like I want to say, as a sidebar,
my goal is not to say we should have no filter.
So it's not as if I'm saying I now have
no filter, But my goal is to say that we
should we should be a little bit more outspoken about
things that are important to us on a values level.
And so therefore, even though it's I've been a little
nervous about it when I'm speaking on this topic, even
(41:35):
in corporate settings where I know they probably do have
a women's committee but not a men's committee, I'll still
bring that up. I'll be like, you know, like there's
things that we feel we can't say, like why do
we have a women's committee but not a men's committee.
And it's been interesting to see that even despite that,
HR has still been like inviting me back, which has
been like a little bit of a surprise. It's been
(41:56):
a little weird, but so maybe things are opening up.
But I just wanted to go back to what you
also said there, because again you said so many I
think important things you talked about too, that when women,
you know, do gather, what that's like, And I can't
tell you how often unfortunately, when women do gather, the
(42:18):
phrases like you know, well men are pigs or whatever,
like that kind of thing can be said.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
And it's so you say, so you're saying when women
gather there is like a they start ragging on the
men in their lives, complaining about men in general, that
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
They often do not everywhere like And I'm so pleased
to say. We recently relocated to Florida and I'm homeschooling
and I've connected with a group that specifically describes itself
as conservative Christian homeschooling families, and it's been so wonderful.
When I'm with the wives there, if they talk about
(42:58):
their husbands, it's in a positive way, to say how
much they appreciate their husbands and whatever, like, not to
say everybody's marriage is perfect, but there's a love and
a respect for men that isn't I hadn't found to
be present in you know, women's networking groups in New
York where I was before, for example, And so yeah,
I just I wanted to say, you know, to your
(43:19):
point that when men gather, it's often viewed with these
pejorative labels like manospherical culture or whatever, but that when
women gathered, it's not only viewed as positive, but then
even within the group there's a lot of negativity about men,
whereas if men were to gather and say, like you know,
kind of like blow off some verbal steam about women,
(43:40):
they could be totally like labeled as misogynists or something.
And yeah, I just again to the unsayable stuff like
I'm sure you know this and your listeners probably know
this too, But you know, there's an intelligence Bell curve
that's different for men and for women. So we we
men and women have the same average levels of intelligence,
(44:04):
but the Bell curve for women is that there's a
whole bunch of average intelligent women and a very small
amount of very very smart women and a very very
small amount of very stupid women. And there's as far
as men goes, it's not quite as many in the average,
and there's a lot of super genius guys and a
lot of you know, maybe not so smart guys, but
(44:24):
the intelligence distribution is different. And one of the things
nobody wants to talk about then, in specific, is the
fact that there are a lot more male geniuses than women.
And so then you know, for example, like if we're
going to talk about, well, why are all the CEOs
men or whatever, it always has to be about sexism.
(44:44):
Nobody can ever say, maybe it has to do with
the fact that that's a job that requires an incredible
level of intelligence and there are a lot more really
intelligent men out there, and so, like, you know, but
nobody can talk about that. Or even for me as
a woman, I have an incredible amount of education, and
I have built businesses that have been much more successful
(45:07):
than the average business of men or women. I'm just
saying that just as a statistical fact. But I when
I became a mom, it was always like my secret desire,
you know what I mean? And now that I am
a mom, frankly, I don't. I have almost zero employees
now at this point, I barely work at all, and
(45:27):
I'm so thankful that my husband, you know, provides for
our family. And again, it's just it's weird to me
that it has felt almost like some kind of a
dirty secret, and it hurts both men and women because
I've talked to men as well where they get smeared
if they have a desire to like take care of
(45:49):
a woman and they'd like her to stay home with
the kids, it's like they're viewed as a misogynist. And
at the same time, it makes it feel like some
dirty secret for women to say like that they want
to like be a mom and to stay home, it's like, well,
what's wrong with you? Or you know, I don't know.
I know I'm going way off topic here, but it's
just to me. Again, it's an example of these incredible
(46:09):
cognitive and emotional benefits of free speech, is that just
by speaking candidly, it can be such a stimulating and
interesting conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Mmmmmm yeah. And you know what you're saying about men
wanting to, you know, like something I guess that people
would frame as more traditional. I think it's just normal,
but that men would say, you know, i'd like to
basically work and have like I see my family as
(46:38):
my highest priority. There was a study that was done.
I guess it was a poll really, and who knows
what polls. You don't know how accurate they are, but
I think it's pretty it seems like it's probably very correct,
which looked at what liberal men and liberal women wanted,
like in terms of like a list of the top
ten most important, you know, things that they're after. And
(47:01):
then they also had like what they call conservative men
and conservative women. And with the conservative men and the
liberal men, the for the conservative men, the number one
thing was a family, Like that was their number one goal,
Like that's what they want, right, and then after that
it was like a wife, and then after that it
was like, you know, a good job, you know, so
(47:23):
they can like a stable so they have like a
steady paycheck essentially the thing that's going to support the
other two things, right, And with liberal men, I think
it was like children was like number two. So what's
interesting is that we there's a lot of talk about
the political divide in terms of like, you know, oh,
gen Z is this and that, but I think it's
(47:43):
men are basically not changed that much in terms of
what they want. I think that I think even liberal
men they just they just have more of a let's say,
an egalitarian worldview, but they still want the normal stuff.
And they're and they're working within this kind of you know, say,
feminist paradigm of supporting women whatever it is that they
(48:05):
want to do because they don't want to be called sexist.
That's ultimately what a lot of this boils down to.
Why people are controlling their speech, why speaking freely is
so important, is that people are so afraid of being
seen as bigots that it already does the good job
of like controlling their language right at the outset. But
(48:25):
I just wanted to like support what you were saying
about what men want. I think that most men that is.
That's it like, and they're and they're they're trying to
navigate a mine field of you know, like what do
I say, how do I which, how much should I have?
How tall should I be, et cetera. But it's also like,
you know, is she gonna think that I'm a misogynist
(48:46):
because I want you know, children, not even like not
even necessarily to stay at home mom. Thing like maybe
they'll be willing to work with you and whatever. I
mean in this economy that's not exactly like you know,
let's say, a it could be seen as not viable
depending on where you are. But but I think that,
you know, men having preferences is basically a problem for them.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, you know. I I saw that Paul as well,
and specifically it was male and female Trump voters versus
Harris voters. Yeah. Yeah, And you know, it's interesting again because,
as you said, the Harris voting women had put having
children as like literally last or.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Like higher up.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, like what was it what they wanted? And that
is the same group of people that ranks the highest
in terms of self reported mental illness like depression and
anxiety and whatnot. So again, coming coming back to my book,
But like no, I wrote the book because in my opinion,
(49:57):
this is such a live topic for me. It's something
I just think about a lot. And having worked as
a psychologist in New York City for twenty years, I
worked with a lot of young liberal women who like
to see psychologists. It's kind of the vogue, normal thing
to do there. And I believe that they truly felt
(50:18):
like it was unsayable to say that they wanted to
have children, or to say that they wanted to stay home,
or whatever the case. May be, and I again think
that when they have to push that down so much,
because it you know, again it's like saying you want
to kick puppies or something, they when you dissociate and
(50:39):
push down so far what you really want, of course,
it's going to manifest as depression. It's going to manifest
as anxiety because they've had to push down. I don't
believe that they really truly don't care about wanting children.
I believe that they've been told that so much and
unable to say it so much, that they've disconnected with
(51:02):
what they really want. And so therefore, the more they
claim the corporate ladder or you know, go to abortion
right rallies or whatever, the deeper and lonelier sadness is
being cultivated on the inside. Because when we can't be
conscious and talk about what we really think and want,
we're powerless to act on it to achieve it, and
(51:25):
a sense of helplessness is actually one of the hallmarks
symptoms of depression. And again, the healthy function of anxiety
is to stimulate preparation behaviors. So if you can't be
conscious and say what you really want because it's not
politically correct, of course, it's a recipe for depression and anxiety,
which is what young liberal women are, you know, by
(51:47):
self report most depressed and anxious group of people.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Mm hmmmm. Yeah. And they're trying to like have two
things at once, Like there's like what they actually desire
and then they're what there's what they're told they should
desire and they don't want because they are more agreeable.
They don't want to rock the boat on that front,
so they kind of try to talk themselves into, you know,
(52:13):
doing the girl boss thing and holding off on like
what they kind of want because they were told that
it's it's bad.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Does that make sense totally? Yeah? And then of course
the men who want that stuff are bad too.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Right, yeah? Yeah, and that those guys just get told
that to their face, that they're just bad. But so
you talk other than like not getting invited to the barbecue,
what what did you ever like feel I don't know,
like your I guess because you kind of like start
your own company, you didn't have to worry about getting
fired or anything like that. But do you did you
(52:47):
ever worry that there was going to be more severe
consequences to the things that you were saying that you
have any issues with the sort of like community.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, I mean, as you said, having my own company WASP,
which is interesting too, Like people talk about, well, why
has academia been taken over, you know, by liberals, and
one there's many reasons, but I think one reason is
that also conservative or independent people are so much more
likely to be entrepreneurs. So if you look at like
(53:17):
successful small businesses and entrepreneurs, a lot of them, you know,
are are not started by liberals. Right, So yeah, I
think that having my own like I knew even before
I went to school, that my whole reason. I didn't
finish college until I was twenty nine, and then went
on to get a PhD right after that. But the
(53:37):
only reason I went back to school in the first
place was because I wanted to have my own business
as a psychologist. But you know, so I did avoid
a lot of those problems. However, I had to go
through many years of training within you know, hospital and
academic environments, and I did get into hot water, like,
you know, pretty much all the time until I learned
(54:00):
to just you know, smile and nod, you know, and
get through that way. But anyway, I do feel Brian,
like I could talk to you all day. I know
we're coming up on our time, but I love that
we've been able to have this conversation, and I just
want to do I want to have to be able
to stay really quickly again before I, you know, lose
people that if they take nothing else away from today,
(54:23):
that free speech is good for mental health. You know,
don't don't write off all mental health and psychologists just
because you know, so much of our field is so crazy.
Even before psychologists came along, we had a brain that
had a part of it that was devoted to the
production and comprehension of speech and language that predates the
existence or the concept of psychologists. And so if anyone
(54:47):
ever tries to put on a speech code to you
to like tamp down hate speech and bullying, or to
create safe space or mental health for other people, I
want people to answer back and say, no, wait a minute.
Free speech is good for mental health. It's good for
us dignitively, emotionally and socially. And this book will tell
you all the reasons why, as well as techniques and
how to speak up, as well as techniques and how
(55:08):
to listen when other people are seeing stuff that's triggering.
Because I've been on that side of the equation too,
where people are making me mad and I find it
hard to listen, And so there's both parts are important
for dialogue.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
All right, Well, thank you, Chloe. I really appreciate this conversation.
I could talk for hours about this kind of stuff
with you, and I'm really glad that you came on
and appreciate your company. I did get a rumble rant.
We're going to read it out because we always read them.
It is a question directed at you, but I know
that we got to take off after this, so I'll
(55:42):
just read it out really quick. Yeah. Nova Fan twenty
one gives us a dollar and says, at doctor Chloe Carmichael,
have you heard of stories of women, especially feminist women,
falsely accusing each other only for someone to redirect the
blame to men Because I'm a patriarchy, I mean, yeah,
if you want to say anything about.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
That, you can accusing each other of what.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
I guess, of anything I suppose, and then redirect the
blame to men. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
Yeah, well, I do think redirect the blame to men
is pretty much a feminist go to no matter what,
all roads leads to redirect the blame to men. So
if I understand the question correctly, then yes.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
All right, Well I'll just make one last given one
last thought, I'd like to see a conversation about how
do we like you know, in the last five years,
I've lost a lot of friends because of my views,
because the things I've said, you know, things that have happened,
(56:44):
and I'm I'm always open to techniques on how to
invite them to speak freely and so they can feel
as free as I am, because I think they're still
operating in that under that like shadow of I don't
know if it censorship is the right word, but it's
it's political correctness that you know, that discomfort I don't.
(57:06):
I wonder if there's like a psychological phenomenon or something
that that can be done in that in that department
that sort of related to this. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (57:13):
Yeah? I mean so, I wish we had more time
to delve into it. But but I would say, to
a certain degree, if someone's truly going to walk away
from you over something that you've said, I wouldn't think
of it necessarily as losing a friendship as much as
potentially exposing a false friendship, which is you know, not
(57:34):
such a bad thing to discover that you know somebody.
Really it really wasn't like a true safe space. The
true friendship is one where people can disagree and uh,
and that's okay. And if and if that wasn't really
the case, you know, then maybe it wasn't really truly
a friendship. But I do think it's I mean, I
(57:57):
think it's important to let people know that you want
want them to be able to disagree with you, and
that you want to be able to speak your piece too.
And it's kind of a cheesy psychology term, but we
call it narrating your experience, which is just taking your
internal life and trying to put it into words for
other people to understand. So, if you're broaching a topic
(58:18):
that you know is sensitive and you feel like, boy,
you know this is the part where sometimes people get
angry in a huff and walk away, you might preface
it by saying, Hey, look, it's really important to me
when I respect someone enough to be real with them,
I want to be able to share what I really
think about stuff, even if we disagree, and I really
want you to be able to do the same. And
(58:39):
so I just want to say, like, I've had this topic,
you know, become sticky with people before, but I really
want to be able to be authentic with you and
vice versas, so I want to share it with you
and I really want to know what you really think
about it, and I hope that's okay. And if the
person says yes, then great. And if they say no
or they get really weird before you've even said anything,
(59:01):
I feel like that can be saying a lot. And
then one more quick technique. This one's from couple's therapy,
but I think it works in many other situations too,
where to make sure we're not talking past each other
because when we get upset, our heart rate if it
goes above one hundred beats per minute, we're cognitively not
processing what the other person says. This is why people
(59:23):
have to practice fire drill exits, because in a moment
of panic, they forget how to exit the building right.
So what you do is, you know, person A like
says their peace, and then person B just repeats it back,
says okay, before you know, I just want to repeat
you believe A, B and C for reasons X, Y,
and Z is that right? And then person A either
(59:43):
confirms or clarifies, and then you switch hats and person
B will say, well, I actually feel this way about
the issue for reasons D, E, and F, and then
person A is like, okay, so you're saying you believe
and just recaps it. And that simple mark sure make
sure that people again are not talking past each other
(01:00:04):
or failing to truly understand each other. It removes a
lot of the power dynamics of like people talking over
each other, and it just gives a little bit of
structure to make sure that everyone's really actually putting their
thoughts on the table and being heard.
Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Yeah, very well said. I like that. I'm gonna I'm
gonna think about that. I'm gonna remember that, all right.
So sorry this went over Chloe, but I appreciate you
coming on. Hopefully we'll have you on again sometime we
can talk about some other things. I don't know what
you think about that, but I have a great time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Good Thanks me too, take care of Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
All right, Well, let me just wrap the show up here.
Thanks guys for coming on the show. Thank you for
the lively conversations you guys are having in the chat there.
If you guys like this video, please hit like subscribe
if you don't already subscribed to the BELF notifications, leave
us a comment let us know what you guys think
about what we talked about in the show today. And please,
please please share this video because sharing is care. And
you'll find links to all of Chloe's books in the
(01:01:02):
description and her website, so you know check those out please,
And thanks guys so much for coming on today's episode
of The Fireside Chat, and we'll talk to you guys
in the next one.
All right, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you
may be. My name is Brian, and welcome to Honey
Badger Radio. This is the fireside chat where we have
good conversations with interesting people. So today we're going to
be speaking to doctor Chloe Carmichael, who is a clinical
psychologist and us say today best selling author of a
(00:22):
lot of different books. One of them is what I
thought was really interesting is can I say that why
free speech matters and how to use it fearlessly. She
has been on Doctor Phil, She's been on uh, Doctor Drew.
I for some reason, I tongue twisted Doctor Drew. But yeah,
(00:43):
welcome to the show, Chloe.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you. It's really truly great to be with you. Brian.
It was fun to chat with YouTube before we came on.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, it's really neat that you know that you're even
aware of who we are. I don't know, like I
feel like we are just so out in the fringes
and it's it's weird when we get Like the other
last week I spoke to a guy who is an
activist for East Turkestan that's trying to like, you know,
(01:12):
have like an issue with the Chinese government. Addressed, and
I thought, how do you know who we are? So
so anyway, but thank you for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it. You have a really great pedigree
and background. So let me first ask, I guess, tell
us a little bit about you know, what you do
and why where is it that we kind of like
(01:37):
are at cross purposes or like similar purposes.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah. So I'm a clinical psychologist, and I guess I've
always been really interested in independent thought, So I mean
I would think that right there is kind of an overlap,
but my interest in independent thought was a little bit
more the background until the pandemic. So prior to the pandemic,
(02:05):
I did what was more normal psychologist stuff, like my
previous book was about the healthy function of anxiety, which
is to stimulate preparation behaviors. And then during the pandemic,
I started getting really uncomfortable with some of the stuff
that was being said or rather not said, you know,
(02:25):
like in particular, the last straw for me was as
a psychologist and as a mother when the public was
being told to just mask their kids, like even toddlers,
for you know, months, days, years on end, and I
started speaking up about it, even though I knew it
was going to cause some real problems for me in
(02:45):
terms of like media relations, because I at the time
had a pretty big practice, like and playing a dozen
therapists and doing a lot of big national TV. But
and you know, we all knew that TV wasn't going
to like that if I started talking about like that
we shouldn't be masking kids. But I just it was
like a kind of a Mama Bear switch flip, like
(03:08):
redline in the sand type moment. I was just I
couldn't take it. I had to start speaking up about
that as a public service issue. So I did, and
like doctor Jay Badicharia and different people picked it up,
which was kind of fun, and it led to a
lot of conversations that I wasn't having previously. I was
holding a lot of stuff inside previously, stuff that I thought,
(03:30):
could you know, get me blacklisted from the media or
hurt my business or whatever. But after that, it was
like something snapped. I started talking about that, and then
I started talking about trans issues like that, the fact
that men can't become women. It still feels good to
just say that aloud, because, to be honest, I was
afraid to say it aloud for a long time, and
(03:52):
so all of this led to my new book, which
is about the mental health benefits of free speech, because
I think a lot of people feel like they have
to keep stuff inside because it would just be safer
that way, and hey, what's the harm if I just
told it back? And I even thought that way myself
for a long time, and I finally realized it's truly
(04:14):
better for us mentally, emotionally, socially, societally if we just
speak up. So that's why I'm here all.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Right now, and now when I speak to psychologists, I
think it's great that I have this opportunity. One of
the things that I am I think of and this
is also I guess in line with that, like you know,
speaking out, because they're sort of like this, I don't know,
it's almost like like a mythology that we have to
(04:46):
live under where there's certain things that are just completely like,
you know, like the conversation is done and dust it on,
we can't bring this up again. And I think yes,
COVID kind of tried to like speed run that from
the moment it started happening to like not only were
they were asking kids to mask up, but you know,
they were isolating them from their classmates. They had to
(05:08):
stay home, or if they did go, they were in
these like you know, I've seen pictures anyway with people
in like little bubbles of their own, little isolated spaces,
and I wondered, what we're going to be the negative
effects of that. And so one of the other things
I think about is the men's mental health. And I
don't know if you have talked a lot about this.
(05:29):
I presume you did, because this is what you do,
and you know who we are, and it looks like
there isn't a lot of help for them, even from
the American Psychological Association, And I wanted to know what
your thoughts were on the APA's guidelines on traditional masculinity
for you know what they call, I guess, pathologizing traits
(05:53):
like stoicism and competitiveness. How do these kinds of narratives,
would you say, impact men's willingness to seek help?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, I am so glad that you brought that up.
And yeah, I actually did talk about that some through
preg or you. They did a documentary called something like
Men in Masculinity or something, and I talked about the
issue of toxic masculinity or so called you know, toxic masculinity.
(06:26):
But yeah, so it's a good documentary and if you're
a Daily Wire member now you can actually get it
through the Daily Wire app as well. I noticed they
have some kind of a partnership with Prager, it seems.
But yeah, that's definitely something I talked about as those
ridiculous guidelines about you know, toxic masculinity. To be honest,
(06:46):
it's it's all kind of embarrassing to me at this point,
like being frankly a psychologist in some ways, because I
feel like, you know, my whole profession has you know,
disgraced itself with all this you know, incredible nonsense. And yeah,
as you said, like pathologizing stoicism or competitiveness or I mean,
(07:11):
and it's so weird too because the same people that
are telling us that men and women are like social
constructs in the first place, you know, But then at
the same time, all of a sudden, it becomes very
real if we're talking about actual men, like then they
have something to say about it. It just if it
(07:31):
feels it feels so circular and soft. And as you said,
it's they're not only quote what you said, not a
lot of help I believe they're actively harmful to men
and in counterpart therefore to women, you know, because I've
also worked with women that have felt, you know, like
(07:55):
there's something wrong with them, that deep down inside they
have thisire to like, you know, be with a masculine
man and make him a sandwich, and enjoy motherhood and
enjoy you know, being a wife, and so you know, rabbing.
You know, society of masculine men obviously hurts men, but
it also I don't mean to like make women the
(08:18):
victim here. I'm just saying it's not good for men
or for women. It's it's it's really messed up. And yeah,
I have a lot to say about that.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
There seems to be Yeah, so there there's definitely with
the APA, and I guess there's a I don't know
if it's a lack of oversight or an unwillingness to
look at you know, like like different kinds of data
or conducts, different kinds of studies that look at different
you know, behaviors or or other phenomena. But it does
(08:50):
seem like it's going to create an inevitable contradiction where
you're they're trying to suppress a certain kind of masculine
behavior which is normal for men. I mean, they pathologize it,
they exaggerate it, they straw man it right, They paint
a picture of like a lumberjack that cuts down trees
(09:11):
all day and you know, slaps his wife around when
she doesn't like make the casserole the way he likes
it or something. But it ends up the way that
it's applied, ends up just basically just tarring any kind
of positive masculine behavior. And this does put women in
a weird position because it they never say to women, Okay,
(09:33):
you have to make you know, like your choices for
a mate have to fit within the new parameters that
we have put men into, because they know if they do,
women won't prefer that, because I think the average woman
wants the average man and that that comes with average behaviors,
if that makes sense, right, And the best thing to
(09:54):
do is just leave people free to just you know,
decide what they want without pathologizing anything, so that even
though they haven't explicitly attacked femininity, they do by extension
when they attack masculinity because women want men who are men, right,
and so it's going to have that effect no matter what.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, And you know, by extension, just like they have
this reflexive reaction it seems to tear down or belittle
or devalue masculinity. There's this, you know, similar reverse thing
of trying to elevate, you know, really aggressively anything that's feminine.
(10:41):
There's a man named Michael Anton who coined a really
wonderful phrase called the celebration paradox, and what that refers
to is that if you are, for example, to say,
you know, there's a lot more women on the judiciary
bench these days, you find a whole lot more women
and so the you know, judicial system has become a
(11:04):
lot more compassionate. It's okay to say that, just for example,
but it's not okay to say, you know, there's a
lot more women on the bench today, and it has
caused the judiciary system to be a little bit histrionic,
like you can only comment on a change that's been
brought about or you know, aspect of women if it's positive,
(11:26):
otherwise it's sexism. Whereas, of course it's really totally unscientific
because either you're able to notice a change in a
variable such as the increase in the quantity of women
and then discuss changes and you know results from that
or you're not, but to say, you can only do
(11:47):
it essentially if it's positive. And by the way, the
same thing happens about race, right, you can, you can.
And I remember being perplexed about this even in graduate school,
that we would do these quote cultural sensitivity trainings and
I would have the same feelings about women's stuff too,
By the way, I would be like, why is there
(12:09):
a women's affinity group but not a men's affinity group? Right?
Or you know, it's just the whole thing is It
drives me, It drives me nuts. And I spent so long,
you know, not talking about it because, especially as a student,
I had a first of all, I think, like a
(12:30):
humble belief that hey, I'm here to learn, and maybe
these people know something I don't like I should learn
from them. But then when I came to realize that
I genuinely just simply disagreed with them, I still felt
like I couldn't speak up because it would, you know,
railroad me from getting my PhD. And then the same
thing kind of happened a little bit with as I
(12:52):
was trying to build my business and build media relationships.
I was almost like the frog that gets cooked slowly,
and finally I jumped out of the pot. So that's
how it all happened.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
So going back to your sort of like story of
how you got here, since you did write a book
about confronting like not just like using free speech fearlessly,
but also confronting anxiety, was that something that kind of
came out of personal experience with that particular event.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, so not entirely of personal experience, except the personal
experience of you know, running a big practice in New
York City where there's a lot of people that are
very anxious, and that also at the same time have
a sense that their anxiety does give them a little
bit of an edge, you know that seeing only the
paranoid survive, right. And so I built my practice working
(13:49):
with a lot of really anxious people. And one of
the things that I discovered was really helpful for them
to learn is that the healthy function of anxiety is
to stimulate preparation behaviors. And that helped them a lot,
because otherwise what was happening is they would come to
(14:10):
my practice and say, you know, Doctorcally, help me how
to get rid of my anxiety. But they had a
little part of themselves that didn't really want to let
go of the anxiety because they had a sense that
it was on some level driving.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Them useful too.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, and so I felt like they're just for what
I think one of the reasons my practice grew so
quickly and became very successful is because I was one
of the only psychologists that was really helping people to
straddle that line of saying okay, like, yeah, we don't
want to have anxiety run our lives, but at the
same time, a little anxiety is okay. It's almost like
(14:48):
if like a ridiculously underweight anorexic comes in for help,
she does there's a part of her that's afraid to
get well because she's afraid it means that she's going
to like blow up and get super fat like a balloon.
But when you can teach her to say no, no,
you can eat normally and it doesn't mean you're going
to get fat. You can even still be very slim.
(15:09):
You're just going to learn how to like manage your
food instead of the food managing you. And so the
same sort of thing happened, I think with the anxiety.
And so anyway, my practice was doing really, really well
with that, and somebody, to be honest, it's like a
silly story. Somebody was like, Chloe, the next step in
your career path is that you need to write a book.
(15:30):
And I was like, okay, what should it be about?
And they said, well, what do you always talk to
clients about? And I said, you know, the whole healthy
function of anxiety thing. And they said, okay, well what
are the techniques that you explain? And and so I
put in, say, the nine most popular techniques and the
book did really well. It's in five languages now it's
(15:51):
you know, and it got an endorsement by Deepak Chopra.
So it's a great book. But my new book, it
really was more of a passion project. My first book
I knew was going to be very widely marketable because
everybody has anxiety and it's like not a controversial topic.
But my new book, which I think you have on
(16:13):
screen right now if I'm seeing correctly, that one got
me dropped by my big publisher. It got me dropped
by my fancy literary agent. And I knew oddly enough
that it was going to be controversial to try to
talk about the mental health benefits of free speech. I
think that's because my profession leans literally ninety percent plus
(16:36):
to the left, and for whatever reason, free speech is
currently coded as a right wing issue, and so there's
just not many psychologists talking about it, which is frankly
why I think we need to talk about it, because
otherwise the narrative from psychologists seems to be, let's put
speech codes on because we need to tamp down hate
(16:59):
speech and bullying, and that that will be better. We'll
work on safe spaces for everybody, and that that will
be psychologically good for us. And I think the apposite,
And I think that a lot of my profession has
got blinders on from like political foggers or something, and
so I'm trying to peers through that.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So yeah, the book is called can I say that
why free speech matters? So I want to know you
said that, you talked about the psychological benefits. I am
a free speech absolutist and I have never felt so free,
But I don't really know if that's just like a
me thing or what. So what can you say about that?
(17:41):
Because the thing is we want to talk about on
this channel. Our goal is to discuss men's issues, and
that means, first of all, that is already a bit
of a taboo subject, which we don't think it should be.
Kind of like in the same way that free speech
is considered a taboo subject even though we don't think
it should be. Uh, And that means that we have
(18:02):
to constantly, I guess, like fight against you know, censorship
or suppression or dismissal and heck, I mean you know
in in uh, earlier this year, a man was murdered
for a speech. And when we saw that, I mean
I wasn't that surprised because I know that censorship tends
(18:23):
to be a precursor to murder because if it doesn't
stop someone, eventually they'll take extreme measures to silence you.
And I know that's a dark thing to talk about,
but I think it's true. But I'm curious about what
the like, what what does your what does your book say?
In short? And I suggest you guys check it out.
(18:44):
I put links in the description to all of your
to your website as well as your book about what
the you know, like why free speech is beneficial to us?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yes, well, I mean you've said so many important things there.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I know, I know I do that.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, I mean that's I love that And so I
just I was just jotting down some notes as you
were talking because I wanted to like make sure I
really capture on all of that. But yeah, so, first
of all, I totally agree with you that we literally,
well maybe not literally, it's virtually set the table for
violence when we when we when we tamp down on speech,
(19:22):
when we don't allow people to talk, which is the
opposite of what the left thinks is going to happen. Right.
They think that by putting on speech codes, we will
reduce hate speech and bullying and have this kind of
gentlair society, or at least that's what they say they think.
Who knows if that's really what they think. It could
just all be like a just strategic method to control
(19:44):
people wrapped in flowery language. But like, if I take
them at their word, it's it's it's with a well
intentioned goal. But yeah, I mean when when we can't,
when we can't use words to solve our problems, we're
more likely to bottle up our problems and then act
them out with you know, action with violence, yeah, or
(20:07):
just other more socially hostile behaviors than you know, just
simply having a heated exchange with somebody. So I just
wanted to mention that I think it's really important that,
for example, the same group of people, which happens to
be people who identify as very liberal there I discuss
(20:28):
this in my book, they're statistically more likely to do
what I call the five d's, which is to defriend
on social media, distance or drop contact in real life,
disinvite a speaker, or decline to datacross the aisle. They
are also the same group of people is two to
eight times more likely to endorse political violence. And I
(20:50):
really think that those two things are related. So, you know,
Charlie Kirk always said when people stop talking, like that's
when when we're going to have the violence, and I
just I really agree with that. You know, it's I
think it also has to do with you know, we
talked earlier a little bit. I think about the feminization
(21:12):
of psychology, and it's interesting that with women, the need
for power is often expressed through nurturing, so we mask
it as a nurturing behavior, like oh, I have another
bite of soup, dear, Oh, I organized all your drawers
for you, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Like, yeah, yeah, it's like, what's the there's a character
on Harry Potter that I often bring up that was
like a more terrifying villain than Voldemort. It was that woman.
I can't remember her name, but that was she was
very like motherly and nurturing and like nice and sweet,
but really controlling, like you know, and yeah, I don't.
(21:54):
I didn't read those books, but I saw the movies once,
so that stuck in my mind. Have you ever read
speaking of the feminization? Are you familiar with Helen Andrews.
I assume that you know about her. She's been she
was doing the rounds A while ago. She wrote an
essay I want to say, uh it was on her substack,
but it might have been on a website. It was
called the Great Feminization, and she was talking about how
(22:16):
women entering like basically talking about.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
The the the challenges of the sort of unforeseen consequences
of women entering the workforce and how they have altered
the entire like dynamic, the social dynamics of the workplace.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Have you have you seen this?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I think I have seen her like on YouTube and
things like that, and and I love that. And I
feel like even just the conversation that we're having now
is an example of you know, the mental health benefits
of free speech. So what you and I are saying
even would be unsayable in most you know, academic circles, right,
(22:59):
And so there's three main benefits of mental health benefits
to free speech. There's cognitive, emotional, and social. And on
the cognitive side, it's really through language. It's one of
those things that's so natural. It's like breathing. We don't
even think about it. It's truly a natural, innate human process.
(23:20):
Language even more so specific to humans. Other animals have
interesting sound patterns they make, but we're the only ones
that use symbolic language that can even convey abstract ideas
and thoughts and whatnot. And so it gives us this
incredible cognitive tool that we can not only exchange information rapidly,
(23:40):
we can apply systems of logic like if then statements
and you know all this, you know, history, narrative type stuff.
And so when we suppress language and dialogue, we really
start messing with our cognitive abilities, just the same way
that if you cut off a few of your fingers,
(24:02):
it would interfere with your ability to use your hand
as nature intended it. And so when we start you know,
essentially slicing out and removing parts of our dialogue or
you know, parts of our you know, rational capacity for
reality to notice and process information because it's taboo, we're
(24:24):
interfering with our ability to process that information. And that
is then how we end up with these ridiculous scenarios.
You know of like many academic departments where it's ninety
percent female, but there's still recruiting women into the profession
for the sake of diversity, you know, but they're not
(24:47):
recruiting men for the sake of diversity. Or there's no
men's affinity group even though men are a minority, and
they used to say, well, we need a women's affinity
group because of women being a minority or whatever. So yeah,
that's just whe example of like even just how the
conversation that we're having if some of the things we're
(25:07):
saying felt unsayable to me for many years.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, and speech, like if you can't speak freely, it's
it's it's like I guess what how I would how
I say it is? It makes it where you can't
really think without being able to speak, especially to someone else.
So if I have ideas or thoughts or whatever, theory
on something, but I can't share it with someone in
(25:33):
an earnest and in let's say stoic way, that's sort
of like emotionally divorced from whatever you know, might whatever
baggage it may have, but you're just trying to look
at it for what it is. I can only do
that if I'm if I'm exchanging that idea with someone
else who is also interested in it in the same
for the same reason, So I don't have to worry
(25:53):
about like how I choose my words or if I
have to like make any like you know, land acknowledgments,
as we like to say, where before you start talking
about men, I have to start by saying we all
understand that women have problems too, blah blah blah. That
just eats up time and it's kind of exhausting and
it makes it harder for me to just focus on
the thing that I'm trying to talk about. And I
(26:13):
think that if you can't speak freely, it's sort of
it makes it hard to think freely totally.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
And you know, again, I'm almost embarrassed to mention psychology
studies because I feel like it's such a krac in
so many ways, but like the studies I cite in
my book, many of them are like older, like decades
ago before my you know, profession became so corrupted and
distorted and you know, falsified. But to your point there
(26:41):
about the importance of being able to discuss things in
a rational manner, there's a lot of studies again almost
stayingly obvious, that it really boosts our problem solving skills.
That there's been a lot of studies done where they
give people, you know, problems to solve and they have
to either solve them alone, or they solve them with
(27:03):
a partner, or they solve them even just alone, but
they have to verbalize to somebody else like what they're
doing along the way, and give a little presentation about
the issue. And the people who are given the direction
to verbalize about it, they tend to you know, create
more and better solutions that you know, than the people
who you know, are are forced to do it in
(27:25):
isolation or without talking. Because again it's just one of
our most innate tools. We have specific regions of our
brain that are devoted to the production and the comprehension
of language. I mean, just to keep it even the
focus on men's issues this really came up strong with
that ridiculous believe all women me too world. Right, So
(27:48):
that's back when I was a little bit still in
the closet about being like a real person with real thoughts,
and so the media would call me for my thoughts
about the me too situation, and I never said anything
I thought was untrue. So I would give them the
comment that they wanted about, you know how, of course
sexual harassment is bad, blah blah blah. But I would
(28:10):
never say to them the part that I knew that
they didn't want to hear, which is that, of course
women also sometimes lie. Women can make stuff up. I've
sat with women in my office that have told me
very calculatingly that they plan to make up an allegation
for you know, personal gain. I've worked with men that
(28:30):
have been the victims of that. But when nobody could
say it, it was almost like an emperor has no
clothes thing. People were making all these ridiculous, irrational decisions,
and men's lives were being ruined because nobody wanted to say, hey,
wait a minute, believe all women doesn't actually make sense, right, Like,
it just just doesn't make sense. And so when people
(28:53):
can't speak freely, they do what we call repression and suppression,
and they go into denial. They start really dissociating with
even their true rational mind. It's how we end up
in group think and things like that. So I do
think there's a lot of overlap with some of the
issues that have been impacting men and some especially when
(29:16):
women are the ones who are controlling speech in the
name of their quote, compassion or their nurturing behavior. But
yet they're the ones who are like setting all the
speech roles.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yes, yes, so it sounds like you would probably be
a bit of a like a misfit in the in
the psychological community. Have you had like are you like
I don't know, like do you have any issues with
because I'm not sure how that field works, Like I
don't know if it's a club and you know, you
get kicked out or or you don't have as much access,
(29:49):
Like has has your positions ort have made your career
more difficult?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, I mean yes and no. So I mean in
the obvious predictable ways. Yes, But I firmly believe again
that free speech is good for mental health, and one
of the reasons is because it also creates greater social
authenticity and relationships become more real. And I can tell
you some stories about where I've been uninvited to the barbecue.
(30:16):
It's in fact, in particular around men's rights. But the
relationships that I have retained or even found through speaking
out have been so much richer and like, you know,
more real than anything I had before. But just as
an example, I was speaking for a group called Families
(30:36):
Advocating for Campus Equality. They work with young men that
have been falsely accused of sexual misconduct. This was back
before they finally restored a little bit of sanity to
Title nine. Like up until pretty recently, a girl could
just say a man raped or on campus, and the
man could just be automatically expelled, you know, by nothing
(31:00):
like a kangaroo court of a bunch of professors, without
ever a police report ever being filed. And so I
was going to go speak for face Families Advocating for
Campus Equality, and they asked me not to publicize it
because they were so used to like people trying to
like trash, you know, and destroy their conventions. So I
didn't mention it to anybody, but I wrote into a
(31:23):
list for psychologists, a very big and prominent one, and
I just said, hey, I'm looking into research about false
allegations of sexual misconduct and wondering, you know, asked a
few questions about it, and within like literally an hour,
somebody wrote in with a flyer from this event, which
(31:43):
I didn't even know that there was a flyer, but
they were like, this is what doctor Carmichael's asking. I
suggest none of us should try to help her with
this you know, awful project, and like it was from
there it was like this huge pilon You would have
thought I was asking people like I'm going to a
puppy kicking contract and someone like, you know, like it
was insane. And so I then went and spoke, and
(32:05):
then afterwards at the convention, I met with young men
that shared where all of them had the same story.
It was heartbreaking that they'd been accused, falsely accused. They
went to a therapist to try to regain their life back.
The therapist in session would accuse them again and say,
(32:25):
maybe you just don't know what rape is, or maybe
you maybe are not being honest.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
I was just going to ask you about that if that,
like this is why men don't seek therapy a lot
of the time, like there's a lot of talk about
why aren't why aren't men seeking therapy? Women are seeking therapy.
I'm not even sure that it's helping women, and it's
stuff like this because they go in and they're already
the bad guy. I'm sorry, go ahead and finish your story.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
No, no, totally, I'm glad you jumped in, because I mean,
again again, the benefits to me of true dialogue is
we can resonate together. But yeah, so after I was like,
I was blown away at the experiences of these men,
and so again, somewhat foolishly, this is years ago before
(33:10):
I really fully understood like what I was dealing with
with my profession. So I then wrote into this list
serve again. And usually many therapists are very hungry for
clients there. Many of them don't have very good business skills,
and they jump at the chance for referrals. So I
wrote and I was like, hey, you know, this organization
like really needs therapists that are willing enabled to help
(33:32):
young men that have been falsely accused of sexual misconduct.
You know, can anyone would anyone be interested in being
on their referrals list? And every time in the past
that I tried to offer a referral for other reasons.
I literally would get dozens of people trying to clamor
for that referral. I got zero on this one. I
(33:52):
mean again, it was just I think you're right though too.
I don't think that my profession is really helping women
that much either by just validating everything they stay in,
telling them that they're a victim and all this other
stuff exactly. Yeah, but it was it was amazing to
see like the way that my industry treated these young men,
because can you imagine the reverse, like a therapist accusing
(34:13):
a rape victim of like, well maybe you're confused, honey,
maybe you wanted it, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, it is wild. And I noticed that you you
brought up multiple times that there's a lack of spaces
for men to like, you know, have discussions. And one
of the things that I like, we all in the
in the in HBr, we have like our specific focus
and I have my thing that I'm most concerned with,
(34:43):
I think is the most crucial is one restoring fathers.
You know, the right wall place in the in the home.
And there's a lot of talk about deadbeat dads and stuff,
but I think that it's likely. And again we don't
have data because no one has thought to do a
study on But I would bet that most men who
want to be involved and they are excluded by from
(35:07):
their kids by their mother because there's incentives in place
to essentially make it to where the mother doesn't need
the father around, like they get paid by the state
and you know, and they're encouraged to continue to live
like the life of a single woman even if they
have children. And I think that that's damaging the children.
But I'm getting a little bit off, But fatherhood is
(35:27):
like a big, big, big big thing for me. And
then right after that is that men need spaces where
they can be with other men like there was. I
think that for most of our history, men spend a
lot of their time with other men, and women spent
a lot of their time with other women. Now I'm
(35:47):
not saying that we have to go back to that,
because I think that people just being allowed to freely
associate with whoever they want is optimal right, and they
can figure out what it is that they need. But
we don't allow men to do this every time. Men gather,
whether it's in a real place or online or something,
(36:07):
there's always this like this narrative that problematizes that if
they're in sports, there's you know, they talk about locker
room talk, and these are all little ways that they
like break that up, right, Like though men need to
be monitored if they're online, there's concerns that they're going
to be radicalized, you know, and and all of it
(36:29):
is specifically so that men don't talk to each other
and exchange ideas and have conversations. And I think this
goes back to kind of like looking at the other
side of what we were talking about with the way
that women communicate. I think that there is some value
in the way that women communicate because it is to
build let's say, they create the social boundaries when they
(36:51):
communicate with each other. It's like this, you know, this
is what we're going for, and this is like I
want to create a comfortable space for women. And I
think there's probably you know, it's inherited from ancient traditions
of like raising children and stuff like that and building community,
but men need something like that as well, and they
don't have that like whenever they do again, like I
(37:14):
said before. We problematize it, we criminalize it, and we
like there's asks their request to have it be monitored,
have it be censored, have them be broken up. And
I think it it It isolates them, It adomizes them
from other men. And the only thing and you think
about it, if you're a boy, and I know I'm
(37:35):
going on for a little bit here, no, I love it.
If you're a boy, Okay, you're born into the world
and maybe and this is just like as an aside,
maybe you get circumcised, which I'm also against. First thing
that happens is like a you know, a physical act
of trauma. Then you are growing up around the there's
a pretty good chance that you only know your mother,
(37:57):
you don't know your father. Then you go to school
and you're surrounded by women because there are most of
the teachers. A lot of men can't get teaching jobs
because again we have criminalized men. If they want to
work with children, we immediately act suspicious like there's something
wrong with him, he's going to do something. Even though
there's a lot of women that rape boys in school
(38:18):
and girls by the way, but they're surrounded by girls
and women when they get into school. When they go
to high school, you know, they can't. They're they're sort
of kept away. And especially this young generation now after
what happened during COVID, they're even more like isolated, you know,
their masks, they had to stay at home, they take
(38:40):
classes at home, whatever. And then they grow up and
that we're we're still jumping down their throat because they
haven't made enough money to attract a mate. Even though
we're giving all of the you know, preferential education to
women and girls, we're still acting like girls are behind that.
There's not enough in stem, there's not enough in you know, CEOs,
(39:00):
there's not enough in politics, there's not enough in law,
there's not enough in the courts, whatever it is, right,
and these boys are growing up in this world which
is extremely feminized, and it's making them like confused because
they don't know what it means to be a man.
So they're trying to figure that out. They feel I
(39:24):
think that they're they're experiencing mental health problems that people
are not not only not talking about because they haven't
decided to like look into it, but they don't have
a solution for because most of the mainstream psychological help
is not engineered to help men as they are. It
sees them as a problem, right, as opposed to having problems.
(39:46):
So when they do become let's say, dysfunctional as a result,
instead of looking inward and saying, well, how did we
contribute to this problem, it's just, oh, this is what
men are. So it's almost like they create the problem
and then they point to the men as the problem
when that actually manifests, which usually doesn't. I'm sorry I
(40:08):
went on a long thing, but I mean, I don't
know what you think about that.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
No, No, I thought you again, were just layered in there.
I was making some notes as you spoke, just so
I could try to like really keep up with you,
because I think you said a lot of really important
things there. I think you're right that when men, you know,
gather in their spaces or their private spaces or whatever,
(40:31):
it is almost always viewed in a pejorative manner, like
it's the mano sphere, it's bro culture, it's the boys club,
it's you know what I mean. Like whereas with again,
it's that celebration paradox, you know. But you know, if
women do it, it's like, oh, well, it's women's spaces.
Or even explicitly like free of men, like as if
(40:51):
you know, like it's better for you know, sanitized city, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I think you're right. Just even the labels there
say a lot and you also pointed out importantly too legally,
like the It truly still baffles to me. And I
still do a fair amount of corporate speaking, and I've
you know, in the spirit of my book, I've just
(41:13):
decided to, like I want to say, as a sidebar,
my goal is not to say we should have no filter.
So it's not as if I'm saying I now have
no filter, But my goal is to say that we
should we should be a little bit more outspoken about
things that are important to us on a values level.
And so therefore, even though it's I've been a little
nervous about it when I'm speaking on this topic, even
(41:35):
in corporate settings where I know they probably do have
a women's committee but not a men's committee, I'll still
bring that up. I'll be like, you know, like there's
things that we feel we can't say, like why do
we have a women's committee but not a men's committee.
And it's been interesting to see that even despite that,
HR has still been like inviting me back, which has
been like a little bit of a surprise. It's been
(41:56):
a little weird, but so maybe things are opening up.
But I just wanted to go back to what you
also said there, because again you said so many I
think important things you talked about too, that when women,
you know, do gather, what that's like, And I can't
tell you how often unfortunately, when women do gather, the
(42:18):
phrases like you know, well men are pigs or whatever,
like that kind of thing can be said.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
And it's so you say, so you're saying when women
gather there is like a they start ragging on the
men in their lives, complaining about men in general, that
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
They often do not everywhere like And I'm so pleased
to say. We recently relocated to Florida and I'm homeschooling
and I've connected with a group that specifically describes itself
as conservative Christian homeschooling families, and it's been so wonderful.
When I'm with the wives there, if they talk about
(42:58):
their husbands, it's in a positive way, to say how
much they appreciate their husbands and whatever, like, not to
say everybody's marriage is perfect, but there's a love and
a respect for men that isn't I hadn't found to
be present in you know, women's networking groups in New
York where I was before, for example, And so yeah,
I just I wanted to say, you know, to your
(43:19):
point that when men gather, it's often viewed with these
pejorative labels like manospherical culture or whatever, but that when
women gathered, it's not only viewed as positive, but then
even within the group there's a lot of negativity about men,
whereas if men were to gather and say, like you know,
kind of like blow off some verbal steam about women,
(43:40):
they could be totally like labeled as misogynists or something.
And yeah, I just again to the unsayable stuff like
I'm sure you know this and your listeners probably know
this too, But you know, there's an intelligence Bell curve
that's different for men and for women. So we we
men and women have the same average levels of intelligence,
(44:04):
but the Bell curve for women is that there's a
whole bunch of average intelligent women and a very small
amount of very very smart women and a very very
small amount of very stupid women. And there's as far
as men goes, it's not quite as many in the average,
and there's a lot of super genius guys and a
lot of you know, maybe not so smart guys, but
(44:24):
the intelligence distribution is different. And one of the things
nobody wants to talk about then, in specific, is the
fact that there are a lot more male geniuses than women.
And so then you know, for example, like if we're
going to talk about, well, why are all the CEOs
men or whatever, it always has to be about sexism.
(44:44):
Nobody can ever say, maybe it has to do with
the fact that that's a job that requires an incredible
level of intelligence and there are a lot more really
intelligent men out there, and so, like, you know, but
nobody can talk about that. Or even for me as
a woman, I have an incredible amount of education, and
I have built businesses that have been much more successful
(45:07):
than the average business of men or women. I'm just
saying that just as a statistical fact. But I when
I became a mom, it was always like my secret desire,
you know what I mean? And now that I am
a mom, frankly, I don't. I have almost zero employees
now at this point, I barely work at all, and
(45:27):
I'm so thankful that my husband, you know, provides for
our family. And again, it's just it's weird to me
that it has felt almost like some kind of a
dirty secret, and it hurts both men and women because
I've talked to men as well where they get smeared
if they have a desire to like take care of
(45:49):
a woman and they'd like her to stay home with
the kids, it's like they're viewed as a misogynist. And
at the same time, it makes it feel like some
dirty secret for women to say like that they want
to like be a mom and to stay home, it's like, well,
what's wrong with you? Or you know, I don't know.
I know I'm going way off topic here, but it's
just to me. Again, it's an example of these incredible
(46:09):
cognitive and emotional benefits of free speech, is that just
by speaking candidly, it can be such a stimulating and
interesting conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Mmmmmm yeah. And you know what you're saying about men
wanting to, you know, like something I guess that people
would frame as more traditional. I think it's just normal,
but that men would say, you know, i'd like to
basically work and have like I see my family as
(46:38):
my highest priority. There was a study that was done.
I guess it was a poll really, and who knows
what polls. You don't know how accurate they are, but
I think it's pretty it seems like it's probably very correct,
which looked at what liberal men and liberal women wanted,
like in terms of like a list of the top
ten most important, you know, things that they're after. And
(47:01):
then they also had like what they call conservative men
and conservative women. And with the conservative men and the
liberal men, the for the conservative men, the number one
thing was a family, Like that was their number one goal,
Like that's what they want, right, and then after that
it was like a wife, and then after that it
was like, you know, a good job, you know, so
(47:23):
they can like a stable so they have like a
steady paycheck essentially the thing that's going to support the
other two things, right, And with liberal men, I think
it was like children was like number two. So what's
interesting is that we there's a lot of talk about
the political divide in terms of like, you know, oh,
gen Z is this and that, but I think it's
(47:43):
men are basically not changed that much in terms of
what they want. I think that I think even liberal
men they just they just have more of a let's say,
an egalitarian worldview, but they still want the normal stuff.
And they're and they're working within this kind of you know, say,
feminist paradigm of supporting women whatever it is that they
(48:05):
want to do because they don't want to be called sexist.
That's ultimately what a lot of this boils down to.
Why people are controlling their speech, why speaking freely is
so important, is that people are so afraid of being
seen as bigots that it already does the good job
of like controlling their language right at the outset. But
(48:25):
I just wanted to like support what you were saying
about what men want. I think that most men that is.
That's it like, and they're and they're they're trying to
navigate a mine field of you know, like what do
I say, how do I which, how much should I have?
How tall should I be, et cetera. But it's also like,
you know, is she gonna think that I'm a misogynist
(48:46):
because I want you know, children, not even like not
even necessarily to stay at home mom. Thing like maybe
they'll be willing to work with you and whatever. I
mean in this economy that's not exactly like you know,
let's say, a it could be seen as not viable
depending on where you are. But but I think that,
you know, men having preferences is basically a problem for them.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, you know. I I saw that Paul as well,
and specifically it was male and female Trump voters versus
Harris voters. Yeah. Yeah, And you know, it's interesting again because,
as you said, the Harris voting women had put having
children as like literally last or.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Like higher up.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, like what was it what they wanted? And that
is the same group of people that ranks the highest
in terms of self reported mental illness like depression and
anxiety and whatnot. So again, coming coming back to my book,
But like no, I wrote the book because in my opinion,
(49:57):
this is such a live topic for me. It's something
I just think about a lot. And having worked as
a psychologist in New York City for twenty years, I
worked with a lot of young liberal women who like
to see psychologists. It's kind of the vogue, normal thing
to do there. And I believe that they truly felt
(50:18):
like it was unsayable to say that they wanted to
have children, or to say that they wanted to stay home,
or whatever the case. May be, and I again think
that when they have to push that down so much,
because it you know, again it's like saying you want
to kick puppies or something, they when you dissociate and
(50:39):
push down so far what you really want, of course,
it's going to manifest as depression. It's going to manifest
as anxiety because they've had to push down. I don't
believe that they really truly don't care about wanting children.
I believe that they've been told that so much and
unable to say it so much, that they've disconnected with
(51:02):
what they really want. And so therefore, the more they
claim the corporate ladder or you know, go to abortion
right rallies or whatever, the deeper and lonelier sadness is
being cultivated on the inside. Because when we can't be
conscious and talk about what we really think and want,
we're powerless to act on it to achieve it, and
(51:25):
a sense of helplessness is actually one of the hallmarks
symptoms of depression. And again, the healthy function of anxiety
is to stimulate preparation behaviors. So if you can't be
conscious and say what you really want because it's not
politically correct, of course, it's a recipe for depression and anxiety,
which is what young liberal women are, you know, by
(51:47):
self report most depressed and anxious group of people.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Mm hmmmm. Yeah. And they're trying to like have two
things at once, Like there's like what they actually desire
and then they're what there's what they're told they should
desire and they don't want because they are more agreeable.
They don't want to rock the boat on that front,
so they kind of try to talk themselves into, you know,
(52:13):
doing the girl boss thing and holding off on like
what they kind of want because they were told that
it's it's bad.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Does that make sense totally? Yeah? And then of course
the men who want that stuff are bad too.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Right, yeah? Yeah, and that those guys just get told
that to their face, that they're just bad. But so
you talk other than like not getting invited to the barbecue,
what what did you ever like feel I don't know,
like your I guess because you kind of like start
your own company, you didn't have to worry about getting
fired or anything like that. But do you did you
(52:47):
ever worry that there was going to be more severe
consequences to the things that you were saying that you
have any issues with the sort of like community.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, I mean, as you said, having my own company WASP,
which is interesting too, Like people talk about, well, why
has academia been taken over, you know, by liberals, and
one there's many reasons, but I think one reason is
that also conservative or independent people are so much more
likely to be entrepreneurs. So if you look at like
(53:17):
successful small businesses and entrepreneurs, a lot of them, you know,
are are not started by liberals. Right, So yeah, I
think that having my own like I knew even before
I went to school, that my whole reason. I didn't
finish college until I was twenty nine, and then went
on to get a PhD right after that. But the
(53:37):
only reason I went back to school in the first
place was because I wanted to have my own business
as a psychologist. But you know, so I did avoid
a lot of those problems. However, I had to go
through many years of training within you know, hospital and
academic environments, and I did get into hot water, like,
you know, pretty much all the time until I learned
(54:00):
to just you know, smile and nod, you know, and
get through that way. But anyway, I do feel Brian,
like I could talk to you all day. I know
we're coming up on our time, but I love that
we've been able to have this conversation, and I just
want to do I want to have to be able
to stay really quickly again before I, you know, lose
people that if they take nothing else away from today,
(54:23):
that free speech is good for mental health. You know,
don't don't write off all mental health and psychologists just
because you know, so much of our field is so crazy.
Even before psychologists came along, we had a brain that
had a part of it that was devoted to the
production and comprehension of speech and language that predates the
existence or the concept of psychologists. And so if anyone
(54:47):
ever tries to put on a speech code to you
to like tamp down hate speech and bullying, or to
create safe space or mental health for other people, I
want people to answer back and say, no, wait a minute.
Free speech is good for mental health. It's good for
us dignitively, emotionally and socially. And this book will tell
you all the reasons why, as well as techniques and
how to speak up, as well as techniques and how
(55:08):
to listen when other people are seeing stuff that's triggering.
Because I've been on that side of the equation too,
where people are making me mad and I find it
hard to listen, And so there's both parts are important
for dialogue.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
All right, Well, thank you, Chloe. I really appreciate this conversation.
I could talk for hours about this kind of stuff
with you, and I'm really glad that you came on
and appreciate your company. I did get a rumble rant.
We're going to read it out because we always read them.
It is a question directed at you, but I know
that we got to take off after this, so I'll
(55:42):
just read it out really quick. Yeah. Nova Fan twenty
one gives us a dollar and says, at doctor Chloe Carmichael,
have you heard of stories of women, especially feminist women,
falsely accusing each other only for someone to redirect the
blame to men Because I'm a patriarchy, I mean, yeah,
if you want to say anything about.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
That, you can accusing each other of what.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
I guess, of anything I suppose, and then redirect the
blame to men. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
Yeah, well, I do think redirect the blame to men
is pretty much a feminist go to no matter what,
all roads leads to redirect the blame to men. So
if I understand the question correctly, then yes.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
All right, Well I'll just make one last given one
last thought, I'd like to see a conversation about how
do we like you know, in the last five years,
I've lost a lot of friends because of my views,
because the things I've said, you know, things that have happened,
(56:44):
and I'm I'm always open to techniques on how to
invite them to speak freely and so they can feel
as free as I am, because I think they're still
operating in that under that like shadow of I don't
know if it censorship is the right word, but it's
it's political correctness that you know, that discomfort I don't.
(57:06):
I wonder if there's like a psychological phenomenon or something
that that can be done in that in that department
that sort of related to this. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (57:13):
Yeah? I mean so, I wish we had more time
to delve into it. But but I would say, to
a certain degree, if someone's truly going to walk away
from you over something that you've said, I wouldn't think
of it necessarily as losing a friendship as much as
potentially exposing a false friendship, which is you know, not
(57:34):
such a bad thing to discover that you know somebody.
Really it really wasn't like a true safe space. The
true friendship is one where people can disagree and uh,
and that's okay. And if and if that wasn't really
the case, you know, then maybe it wasn't really truly
a friendship. But I do think it's I mean, I
(57:57):
think it's important to let people know that you want
want them to be able to disagree with you, and
that you want to be able to speak your piece too.
And it's kind of a cheesy psychology term, but we
call it narrating your experience, which is just taking your
internal life and trying to put it into words for
other people to understand. So, if you're broaching a topic
(58:18):
that you know is sensitive and you feel like, boy,
you know this is the part where sometimes people get
angry in a huff and walk away, you might preface
it by saying, Hey, look, it's really important to me
when I respect someone enough to be real with them,
I want to be able to share what I really
think about stuff, even if we disagree, and I really
want you to be able to do the same. And
(58:39):
so I just want to say, like, I've had this topic,
you know, become sticky with people before, but I really
want to be able to be authentic with you and
vice versas, so I want to share it with you
and I really want to know what you really think
about it, and I hope that's okay. And if the
person says yes, then great. And if they say no
or they get really weird before you've even said anything,
(59:01):
I feel like that can be saying a lot. And
then one more quick technique. This one's from couple's therapy,
but I think it works in many other situations too,
where to make sure we're not talking past each other
because when we get upset, our heart rate if it
goes above one hundred beats per minute, we're cognitively not
processing what the other person says. This is why people
(59:23):
have to practice fire drill exits, because in a moment
of panic, they forget how to exit the building right.
So what you do is, you know, person A like
says their peace, and then person B just repeats it back,
says okay, before you know, I just want to repeat
you believe A, B and C for reasons X, Y,
and Z is that right? And then person A either
(59:43):
confirms or clarifies, and then you switch hats and person
B will say, well, I actually feel this way about
the issue for reasons D, E, and F, and then
person A is like, okay, so you're saying you believe
and just recaps it. And that simple mark sure make
sure that people again are not talking past each other
(01:00:04):
or failing to truly understand each other. It removes a
lot of the power dynamics of like people talking over
each other, and it just gives a little bit of
structure to make sure that everyone's really actually putting their
thoughts on the table and being heard.
Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Yeah, very well said. I like that. I'm gonna I'm
gonna think about that. I'm gonna remember that, all right.
So sorry this went over Chloe, but I appreciate you
coming on. Hopefully we'll have you on again sometime we
can talk about some other things. I don't know what
you think about that, but I have a great time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Good Thanks me too, take care of Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
All right, Well, let me just wrap the show up here.
Thanks guys for coming on the show. Thank you for
the lively conversations you guys are having in the chat there.
If you guys like this video, please hit like subscribe
if you don't already subscribed to the BELF notifications, leave
us a comment let us know what you guys think
about what we talked about in the show today. And please,
please please share this video because sharing is care. And
you'll find links to all of Chloe's books in the
(01:01:02):
description and her website, so you know check those out please,
And thanks guys so much for coming on today's episode
of The Fireside Chat, and we'll talk to you guys
in the next one.
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